THE SAGA OF PRINCE HELGI ‘ARROW ODD’ ERIKSON Has Been Added to The Site Under the New Heading The VARANGIANS / UKRAINIANS Book Series – The True History of ‘The Great Viking Manifestation of Medieval Europe’© and the below Post Covers CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT & NINE:
Princess Silkisif Olmarsdottir of Tmutorokan
BOOK THREE: THE SAGA OF PRINCE HELGI ‘ARROW ODD’ ERIKSON
A Novel By Brian Howard Seibert
© Copyright by Brian Howard Seibert
WRITER’S UNCUT EDITION
(Contains Scenes of Violence and Sexuality Consistent with the Viking Period)
(May be Offensive to Some)
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
28.0 KING ALF ‘THE OLD’ FRODISON (Circa 887)
“The king wants to collect back tribute from a land called Bjalka (Kiev),
ruled by a king named Alf (Frodison) and nicknamed Bjalki. He is
married to a witch named Gydja, and they are both great for sacrifices
and offerings. They are so powerful as magicians that they could hitch
a horse to a star. They have a son called Vidgrip, who is a mighty warrior.
King Herraud (Olmar) has tribute to collect there that has long been unpaid.”
Arrow Odd’s Saga (Chapel)
(887 AD) Prince Erik often talked with Oddi about the situation developing in Kiev. Oddi wanted the Southern Way slave trade stopped. He had promised Gudrun that he would stop it if she and Sigrid and their sons would join him in Gardariki and she had arrived quite suddenly with her whole family and father and most of the Polotsk Hraes’ Trading Company people just ahead of the northern rebellion. Oddi put the sisters and sons up in his longhall in Gardariki and The Prince looked after the rest.
“This is Odd,” Gudrun said, introducing her son by Oddi, “And this is Asmund,” Sigrid said, introducing her son by Asmund and they were both fine looking young men and both twenty four years old. Oddi had somehow been expecting boys. And these two young men were already experienced traders of the Hraes’ Trading Company of Polotsk.
“Are you the same Oddi who went to Bjarmia a long time ago?” Odd asked, shaking his father’s hand vigorously.
“Traders still talk about the gold you made in Bjarmia,” Asmund added.
“It wasn’t really that long ago,” Oddi said, looking at Gudrun. “At least it doesn’t seem that long ago.”
Oddi took the two sisters and his son and foster-son on a tour of Gardariki that concluded at Prince Erik’s palace and a great banquet welcoming the Polotsk branch of the Hraes’ company.
“So what do you think of Odd?” Gudrun asked Oddi the next morning in bed.
Oddi raised himself up on his elbow and kissed her gently. “He is so much like me,” he answered, “it almost floored me. I was looking at myself.”
And what did you think of Asmund?” Sigrid asked.
Oddi rolled over and raised himself up on his other elbow and said, “He is so much like Asmund. I’ll have to tell him all about his father,” and he kissed Sigrid gently.
Oddi then rolled onto his back and both women dove onto his arms and they all hugged warmly. It took Oddi back to his freedom days fighting slavers with Asmund and he was glad he made that port stop in Polotsk before killing King Frodi.
Prince Erik was overjoyed to see his son, Oddi, so happy, even though the people of Gardariki thought that Oddi was perhaps happier than one ought to be. Multiple wives and multiple concubines were common in Gardariki, especially with all the different religions that were tolerated in the city, but there were no marriages in Oddi’s longhall and these women were free to come and go as they pleased. But Oddi and Gudrun and Sigrid were at an age where they really didn’t give a shit.
One day, Princess Silkisif was alone with Oddi in King Olmar’s highseat hall and she asked Oddi if he cared for her at all. “I only ask,” she said, “because it always seemed to me that when you were here as the Barkman, you were always trying to impress me. I thought perhaps that you intended to court me.”
“I did intend to court you,” Oddi admitted. “But I didn’t know that I had a son and foster-son with two sisters that I love very much from my past.” Oddi then told her about that period in his past when he was battling slavers with Asmund, and Gudrun and Sigrid were their Freedom Movement confidants and lovers and Silkisif was swept up in the story and she saw him and these women in a totally different light. “When I was the Barkman,” Oddi concluded, “I used giant magic to anonymously battle slavers on the Nor’Way and I was very much trying to impress you.”
“You never stop,” Princess Silkisif said.
“Stop what?” Oddi asked.
“You never stop impressing me. I was impressed when you barged into father’s highseat hall and you stopped those guards from throwing poor Jolf out, and I’ve been impressed with everything you’ve done since. And the story you’ve just told me…now I wish to meet these sisters of yours.”
Oddi was discussing the Kiev situation with his father one day and then he asked him if men hadn’t vied for the hand of Silkisif. “Many men have asked for the hand of Silkisif,” Prince Erik answered, “but my grandfather has always turned them down. She wants to be impressed.”
“I want to impress her,” Oddi said. “How can I really impress her?”
“By impressing her father,” Erik said. “He used to rule Kiev. Now he rules the city that Gunwar and I built. He thinks that King Alf is slowly destroying Kiev. He knows that Kiev can be so much more, not just a seedy slave route to Baghdad. Alf is married to an Aesir witch named Gydja and they have begun making blood sacrifices in the city. Their son, Vidgrip, is a powerful warrior who protects them but sacrifices others. King Hraerauld would like King Alf gone. That would impress them both. But Prince Alf inherited all the power of King Frodi and it would take a very large army to take him out.”
“So, if I could take him out with a small force,” said Odd, “the king may want to give me her hand.”
“My grandfather is a wise man,” said Erik, “and I think Silkisif is already impressed with you.”
A proposal was brought before the king, and it was agreed by all that Oddi would lead an army and recapture Kiev for the Hraes’ Trading Company and bring all the northern towns from Chernigov to Polotsk back into the Hraes’ fold, and if he was successful, he could ask for the hand of the king’s daughter, and he promised Princess Silkisif that he would do this in front of many witnesses.
Prince Erik put Oddi in command of a legion of his Tmutorokan Cataphracts, five thousand strong, as well as a thousand mounted archers equipped with both horn and foot bows, and when he was ready to go, the king and Princess Silkisif saw him off. “There is a costly treasure,” the king announced, “that I will give to you that may help.”
“What is it?” said Oddi.
“It is a she, a shield-maiden called Lagertha, who has been a shield for me in every battle.”
Oddi replied, “I have never had the need for a shield-maiden, but I’ll take all the help I can get.” The King and Oddi parted and Silkisif gave him a silk kerchief and tied it to his arm for luck. Oddi and his army travelled north until they reached the Don River which was in the midst of its spring flooding and was raging, and Oddi crossed it on his horse. The shield maiden was next after him, but her horse became frightened and balked at the raging flood. Odd shouted back, “Why have you not followed after me?”
“I was not prepared,” she said.
“Well then,” he yelled, “prepare yourself.” She spurred on her horse and it ran into the river and was swept away by the current and so it went too with the rest of the horse troop, that most made it across, but some did not. Oddi sent back home the third of his troop that could not make the crossing, saying, “it is better to have a staunch few than a wavering many.”
Odd then went on with his remaining troop and sent scouts on before him, and they came back with news that King Alf’s son, Prince Vidgrip, was leading a very large army against them. The two armies met on a plain where the Orel River forks into the Dnieper, but it was too late in the day for fighting. Prince Vidgrip rode out with some officers and they staked out hazel poles marking the field of battle. Oddi sent two of his Cataphract officers out to adjust the field of battle to be a bit narrower and they returned to their army and Prince Vidgrip waved acceptance of the change as Oddi watched him carefully.
The armies of the Kievan and Tmutorokan Hraes’ both set up their camps at their respective edges of the plain, and Oddi kept watch that evening for exactly where Prince Vidgrip had his camp followers pitch his campaign tent. The archers of Gardariki were grumbling and the Cataphract officers agreed that they were outnumbered and could have sure used the help of those Odd had sent back home. When the men had fallen asleep, save for the watch, and all was calm and quiet, Oddi got up and snuck out of camp. He carried only a sword in his hand as he ran, half crouched, across the plain. When he got to the enemy camp, he evaded their guards and was soon in front of the huge campaign tent where Vidgrip and his officers slept, and he stood in the shadows for some time, and waited for a man to come out of the tent. At last, a man walked out to relieve himself, but it was very dark and he almost walked into Oddi waiting there. “Why are you standing out here?” he said. “Go back into the tent or go do your business.”
“I have,” Oddi said, “but I can’t remember where I placed my bedroll in the tent earlier this evening.”
“Do you know whereabouts it was in the tent?”
“I am sure that I was one man this way from Prince Vidgrip, but as it is now, I can’t find my way to it. I will be every man’s laughing-stock if you do not help me.”
“Okay,” said the other, and he popped back into the tent. “Vidgrip lies on his bedroll right by that pole,” and he pointed it out in the shadows.
“Thank you,” said Oddi, “and I’ll be quiet going over there, because now I see my bedroll clearly.” The man walked out again to take care of his business and Oddi walked in, going up to the bedroll of Vidgrip to confirm that he was the leader he had seen placing the hazel poles the day before. He recognized the prince and he stuck a peg through the tent wall where Vidgrip slept. After that he went out and almost ran into the man he had asked for directions. “I got so worried about not finding my spot, I forgot to take care of my business!” The other man laughed and entered the tent. Oddi waited a bit to give the man time to hopefully go back to sleep, then he went to the wall of the tent where the peg was pushed through, and he lifted the tent side and pulled Vidgrip out quickly and cut off his head with his sword. He pushed the body back into the bedroll and smoothed out the tent wall, replacing the tent peg as though nothing had happened. He took the head and returned to his camp, erecting the countenance on a pole, then he went into his campaign tent and lay down and whispered to himself, “a staunch one is better than a wavering many,” and he went to sleep as if nothing had happened.
The next morning, when the Kievan host all rose, they found Vidgrip had lost his head and was in his bedroll quite dead. It seemed to some of them that some kind of witchcraft had been perpetrated, and to others it seemed that they had a traitor in their midst, but one thing was certain: the man who had directed a strange warrior to the bedroll of Vidgrip the night before was minding his own business the next morning and told no one of his odd midnight encounter while taking care of business. The captains all talked together and it was decided that they would take one of themselves as leader and give him Vidgrip’s armour and banner so that none would know that their leader was dead.
Oddi woke up next morning, armoured himself and sauntered out of his campaign tent to find a group of his complaining captains discussing how Vidgrip’s head got onto a standard pole in the middle of their camp. “I’d recognize Vidgrip anywhere,” one stated adamantly, “and that’s his head!”. Oddi had his captains arrange their standards so that Vidgrip’s head was at the center of them. As the two armies drew up against each other, Oddi and his standard bearers rode out ahead of his legion and he saw that he had a much smaller force. Oddi called out to the Kievan Hraes’ force and asked them if they recognized the head that was borne beside him. The Kievan force then looked to the Vidgrip armoured man at the head of their host and grew suspicious and one sergeant knocked the helm from him and they saw it was an imposter, so they dragged him from his saddle and began beating him, thinking he was some usurper who had used magic to behead their prince. And with the prince dead, many of the Varangian mercenaries began to wonder who would be paying them and why the Kievan officers were trying to deceive them into battle.
Oddi gave them two choices, either to fight against him or to join him and get their pay from Prince Vidgrip’s baggage train and a second payment from his own baggage train if they would follow him against Kiev. Oddi welcomed the mercenaries that joined him and he accepted the surrender of the Kievans that were no longer in any position to fight him. But a third option arose for Varangians that didn’t want to fight without pay but didn’t want to go against King Alf of Kiev. Oddi offered these mercenaries full pay and a second payment to take the Kievan prisoners to Gardariki and from there they would be provided sea transport to Constantinople so that they could join the Varangian Guard there. Since many Scandinavians had left the north in the hope of joining the Roman Varangian Guard, this offer was hard to turn down, so Oddi sent them off to Gardariki at the head of a column of prisoners that were to be held captive until Oddi returned to Tmutorokan.
Oddi now led a respectably sized army of four thousand Roman Cataphracts, five thousand Varangian foot soldiers and several thousand mounted and marching archers. And he took them and all their camp followers and headed to the capital, Kiev, where King Alf ‘the Old’, the son of Frodi ‘the Peaceful’, awaited him. Both armies now had great numbers of troops, but again Oddi had fewer than Alf. The battle started just before the southern gates of Kiev, and it was so fierce that Oddi was dumbfounded by the slaughter taking place on both sides of the shield wall. Oddi battled his way towards the banner of Alf but could see him nowhere. Then one mercenary who had been with Vidgrip before said, “I’m not sure what stands before your eyes, but King Alf is standing just behind his banner and he never leaves it and he is using witchcraft, because he shoots an arrow from each finger and kills a man with each shot.”
“I still can’t see him,” said Oddi.
Then the mercenary raised his hand above Oddi’s head and said, “Look here from under my hand.” And then Oddi saw King Alf and saw that everything else the man had claimed was happening, really was.
“Hold your hand there for a bit,” said Oddi, and he felt for a Gusir’s Gift and took one out of his quiver and put it to the string, keeping his eyes on Alf the whole time, afraid to lose sight of him again and he took his shot, but Alf put up his hand and the arrow hit his palm and did not bite. “Now you shall all go,” said Odd to Gusir’s Gifts, and he shot both remaining arrows, but neither one bit, and he could see all of Gusir’s Gifts lying in the grass before the king. “I am not sure,” Oddi said to the Varangian, “but maybe the time has come to give Jolf’s stone arrows a try,” and he took one of them and nocked it and shot at King Alf. When he heard the whine of the arrow that flew at him, Alf again raised his palm but the arrow flew straight through it and his eye and out of the back of his head, taking his helmet off with it. Odd quickly took another stone arrow and laid it to string and without it even slowing him down, he thought about the five berserk brothers on the Island of Zealand and how they had tumbled off of their horses and he could see the dust rise as they crashed to the metaled road and he shot at the king again. Alf quickly put up his other palm to protect his remaining eye, but the arrow passed right through it and through that eye and out of the back of his head. Still, Alf did not fall, though now blind and holding both hands in front of his face. Then Oddi shot the third stone arrow, hitting Alf in the gut, and then he fell, and all the old man’s stone arrows vanished, as he had said they would because they could only be shot once and then would not be found.
Once King Alf had fallen, the fight was quickly over. The enemy was routed and the survivors retreated through the city gates. Queen Gydja stood at the center of the gates and she shot arrows from all her fingers, just as Alf had done, to cover their retreat. She held the one gate until her men were through but retreated into the city as Oddi’s men, close after them, overwhelmed the gates and swarmed inside. Near the city were shrines and temples and Oddi had them set on fire and he burnt everything outside the walls.
Then poetry came to Gydja’s lips:
“Who is causing this blaze, this battle;
who on the other side arrows rattle?
Spear Odd to Arrow Odd did giants turn.
Shrines are blazing, and temples burn.
“I harried the gods fainthearted two,
like goats from a fox they ran anew;
evil is Odin as a close ally;
it must not continue, their devilish cry.”
Oddi and his Varangians now attacked Gydja and she retreated into the city with her personal guard behind her. Oddi and his men chased her retainers and killed them all, but Gydja fled to the main temple of the city and took sanctuary inside.
Then she said this:
“Help me gods and goddesses,
aid me, Powers, your own Gydja.”
Oddi came to the temple but his men would not go inside so he went up on the roof and saw where she was hiding through a clerestory window. He then tore off a large square stone from the battlement and threw it through the window and it hit her on her spine and smashed her up against the wall, and she died there.
Oddi and his men continued to battle throughout the city and he finally came to where AIf had been taken, for he had not been quite dead, then Oddi beat him with a club until he was. Soon Oddi accepted the surrender of the city and he set up his lieutenants as the new Polis officers. His army occupied the city and Oddi sent messengers and ships back to Gardariki with great wealth and riches and a request for reinforcements with which to conquer the northern towns, for his losses had been great and the Kievans had fought well.
When his messengers returned, he learned that old King Hraerauld was dead, and he was requested to return to Gardariki at once. When he got back, the king had already been laid to rest in a mound. Oddi at once ordered a funeral ale for him , and it was prepared, then Prince Erik betrothed to Oddi, Princess Silkisif, and the people of Gardariki drank the funeral ale of King Olmar, then started into the marriage ale of his daughter, Queen Silkisif, for at that feast Oddi was given the name of king, and they both now ruled the kingdom.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
29.0 THE SECOND SIEGE OF KIEV (Circa 888)
“Oleg (Helgi) set himself up as prince in Kiev, and declared that it should
be the mother of Gardar Hraes’ cities. The Varangians who accompanied
him, were called Hraes’ (Rus’). He commanded that Novgorod should
pay the Varangians tribute to the amount of 300 grivny a year and
this tribute was paid to the Varangians until the death of Yaroslav.”
Paraphrased from The Hraes’ Primary Chronicle
(888 AD) The quays of Kiev extended a mile both upstream and downstream of the city and the main quay led to the howe of King Frodi with roads on either side leading to a main gate in the centre of Kiev’s massive wooden riverside wall. The gate, itself, consisted of a steel portcullis set between two stacked log towers and the walls extending outwards from the towers were huge heavy palisades regularly interrupted by more stacked log towers. The Hraes’ navy still had longships in the Dnieper just off the quays, but the land walls that surrounded Kiev were, in turn, surrounded by the armies of the Poljane and Drevjane and Radimichi. There were five hills inside the city walls and at the top of each one was a massive stockade fort, with the valleys between the hills teaming with wooden houses and buildings and barns. And the chinking and the whitewash for the logs were all the same ochre clay, a clay that made the logs impervious to fire, so the city of Kiev had a red dusky hue in the fall air.
In order to test if a material is impervious to fire, take a sample of that material and throw it into a campfire. When the fire goes out, see what is left of your sample. If your sample remains there amongst the campfire cinders, it is impervious to fire, if it no longer remains there, it is not. King Frodi should have tested his ochre painted logs in this fashion, for King Oddi’s lieutenants and troops were soon to learn the difference.
Try as they might, the rebel troops could not storm the high palisade walls. The storm of arrows that would erupt from the double story parapets was too fierce for even the bravest warriors to weather. So, they fired back volleys of arrows of their own, fire arrows that could not set the tall log walls alight.
The Poljane warriors scoured the countryside for heavy wagons and wains and loaded them up with firewood and lined them along the only road that had a slight downward slope toward the Kievan wall at the western gates. They set a wagon ablaze and rolled it backwards down the road and six men with shields strapped to their backs guided the wagon by its tongue, sometimes pushing and sometimes being pulled along, until the wain crashed into the wall, then they ran back up the road for their lives, as the shields on their backs danced with darts. Then the next wagon was set ablaze and a fresh team guided it into the wall. And the next, and the next and then more, until all the wagons that had lined the road were burning at the base of the high palisade. A stone wall would have cracked under the heat of that conflagration, but at least it would have had a chance to remain standing. The log wall, ochre clay or not, had no chance at all. The next day, when the fire died down, all that was left of the gate towers and the palisade were the steel spikes and the portcullis lying red hot in the embers.
The Poljane and Drevjane entered Kiev as King Oddi’s lieutenants and men withdrew to their ships at the quays of Kiev and fled down the Dnieper back to Gardariki. The Radimichi didn’t even enter the city…they went home to prepare for winter fur trapping. The Poljane sent emissaries to Constantinople to set up treaties and re-establish slave-less trade. The Drevjane complained that they, too, should be allowed emissaries. But Prince Erik had already re-negotiated his treaty with the Romans and it did not allow for any Greek trade concessions with the Slavs. All trade would be conducted through the Nor’Way and it would follow Hjalmar’s rules—no slaves.
The fall weather in Tmutorokan was mild as the last of the Nor’Way ships left the quays of Gardariki and made their way down the Kuban for the Sea of Azov. The trading season was lasting longer each year as a centuries’ old warming cycle was reaching its peak. Five hundred years earlier, Erik had explained to Oddi, it was so cold that the Nor’Way sea remained frozen all year round and the Glassy Plains became impassable to trade. A final migration was made by King Eormanrik and his Goths as they marched south in search of food and land, because their northern fields could no longer sustain crops. Erik’s father, Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’, was the first to capitalize on the end of the cooling cycle and the return of the warming. When the Nor’Way sea started to break enough for a trading season, he was there with his warrior merchant fleet, and when it wasn’t warm enough for the ice to break, they would raid: Angleland, Frankland, Ireland, Scotland. If his fleet couldn’t trade for Roman gold, it would ransom cities for silver. The fickleness of the warming cycle led to the sporadic pattern of Viking raids of that time. Trading was always safer than raiding, but often, not by much.
“You wish you were going with them?” Princess Eyfura asked.
“No, not this late in the season,” Erik replied. “It will be starting to freeze by the time they clear Kandalak’s Bay.”
“Nor this late in the season of our lives,” Eyfura added. “And speaking of late,” she further added, as she slipped her hand into Erik’s. She had news for her husband to be, but she wanted to be sure. She went to see a healer before telling Prince Erik the good news.
“It is a good thing you came to me,” the healer told Princess Eyfura. “Your period is late because you have started menopause.”
“I’m not old enough for menopause,” the princess protested.
“You are still young and very beautiful for your age,” the healer said, “but you are well within the age for menopause. “Having a baby now will be very difficult, but I have several fertility potions and spells I can give you.”
“I have used this potion and spell before,” Eyfura said, passing the healer a rune stick.
“This potion is for four sons,” the healing witch said.
“I used it three times. I had twelve sons in under three years.”
“And are they all healthy?” the healer asked, shaking her head.
“They are all dead. But it had nothing to do with the potion. They were all killed in a holmganger,” the princess said sadly, and it looked as if she would cry, but she raised her head proudly and announced, “They were the finest of sons.”
“I’m glad the potion worked well for you in the past, but if I give this to you now, at your age, it will likely kill you. Let me see what I have here,” she said, going through her rune bag. “This will give you one son, if it works for you.”
Chapter 30.0: RECONQUERING THE SOUTHERN WAY of BOOK 3: THE SAGA OF PRINCE HELGI ‘ARROW ODD’ ERIKSON shall follow on next Post.
Note: This website is about Vikings and Varangians and the way they lived over a thousand years ago. The content is as explicit as Vikings of that time were and scenes of violence and sexuality are depicted without reservation or apology. Reader discretion is advised.
The VARANGIANS / UKRAINIANS or The Nine Books of Saxo’s Danish History Per Brian Howard Seibert
BOOK ONE: The Saga of King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ Sigurdson
King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ Sigurdson’s third wife, Princess Aslaug, was a young survivor of the Saga of the Volsungs and was a daughter of King Sigurd ‘the Dragon-Slayer’ Fafnirsbane, so this is where Ragnar’s story begins in almost all the ancient tales (except Saxo’s). In our series, we explore this tail end of the Volsungs Saga because King Sigurd appears to be the first ‘Dragon-Slayer’ and King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ would seem to be the second so, it is a good opportunity to postulate the origins of Fire Breathing Dragons and how they were slain. King Ragnar would lose his Zealand Denmark to the Anglish Danes of Jutland, who spoke Anglish, as did the majority of Vikings who attacked England, which spoke both Anglish and Saxon languages, sometimes mistakenly called a common Anglo-Saxon language. The Angles and Saxons of England never really did get along, as shall be demonstrated in the following books. King Ragnar assuaged the loss of Zealand by taking York or Jorvik, the City of the Boar, in Angleland and Stavanger Fjord in Thule from which he established his Nor’Way trade route into Scythia.
BOOK TWO: The Saga of Prince Erik ‘Bragi’ Ragnarson
Book Two of the Nine Book The Varangians / Ukrainians Series places The Saga of Prince Erik ‘Bragi’ Ragnarson from Book Five of The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1200 AD) about King Frodi ‘the Peaceful’ into its proper chronological location in history. In 1984, when I first started work on the book, I placed Prince Erik’s birth at circa 800 CE, but it has since been revised to 810 CE to better reflect the timelines of the following books in the series. Saxo had originally placed the saga at the time of Christ’s birth and later experts have placed the story at about 400 CE to correspond with the arrival of the Huns on the European scene but, when Attila was driven back to Asia, the Huns didn’t just disappear, they joined the Khazar Empire, just north of the Caspian Sea, and helped the Khazars control the western end of the famous Silk Road Trade Route. Princes Erik and Roller, both sons of Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’, sail off to Zealand to avenge their father’s loss, but Erik falls in love with Princess Gunwar, the sister of the Anglish King Frodi of Jutland and, after his successful Battle Upon the Ice, wherein he destroys the House of Westmar, Erik marries Gunwar and both brothers become King Frodi’s foremost men instead, and the story moves on to the founding of Hraes’ and Gardar Ukraine.
BOOK THREE: The Saga of Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson
Book Three, The Saga of Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson, recreates Arrow Odd’s Saga of circa 1200 AD to illustrate how Arrow Odd was Prince Helgi (Oleg in Slavic) Erikson of Kiev, by showing that their identical deaths from the bite of a snake was more than just coincidence. The book investigates the true death of Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ by poisoned blood-snakes in York or Jorvik, the ‘City of the Boar’, and how his curse of ‘calling his young porkers to avenge the old boar’ sets up a death spiral between swine and snake that lasts for generations. The book then illustrates the famous Battle of the Berserks on Samso, where Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ and Hjalmar ‘the Brave’ slay the twelve berserk grandsons of King Frodi on the Danish Island of Samso, setting up a death struggle that takes the Great Pagan Army of the Danes from Denmark to ravage Norway and then England and on to Helluland in Saint Brendan’s Newfoundland. A surprise cycle of vengeance manifests itself in the ‘death by snakebite’ of Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’.
BOOK FOUR: The Saga of Prince Ivar ‘the Boneless’ Erikson
Book Four, The Saga of Prince Ivar ‘the Boneless’ Erikson, reveals how Ivar ‘the Boneless’ Ragnarson was actually Prince Eyfur or Ivar (Igor in Slavic) Erikson of Kiev and then King Harde Knute ‘the First’ of Denmark. By comparing a twenty year lacuna in the reign of Prince Igor in The Hraes’ Primary Chronicle with a coinciding twenty year appearance of a King Harde Knute (Hard Knot) of Denmark in European Chronicles, Prince Igor’s punishment by sprung trees, which reportedly tore him apart, may have rather just left him a boneless and very angry young king. Loyal Danes claimed, “It was a hard knot indeed that sprung those trees,” but his conquered English subjects, not being quite as polite, called him, Ivar ‘the Boneless’. The book expands on the death curse of Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ and the calling of ‘his young porkers to avenge the old boar’ when Ivar leaves his first son, King Gorm (Snake) ‘the Old’, to rule in Denmark and his last son, Prince Svein (Swine) ‘the Old’ to rule in Hraes’, further setting up the death spiral between the swine and snake of the ‘Lothbrok’ curse.
BOOK FIVE: The Saga of Prince Svein ‘the Old’ Ivarson
Book Five, The Saga of Prince Svein ‘the Old’ Ivarson, demonstrates how Prince Sveinald (Sviatoslav in Slavic) ‘the Brave’ of Kiev was really Prince Svein ‘the Old’ Ivarson of Kiev, who later moved to Norway and fought to become King Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ of Denmark and England. But before being forced out of Russia, the Swine Prince sated his battle lust by crushing the Khazars and then attacking the great great grandfather of Vlad the Impaler in a bloody campaign into the ‘Heart of Darkness’ of Wallachia that seemed to herald the coming of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and included the famed 666 Salute of the Army of the Impalers. The campaign was so mortifying that the fifteen thousand pounds of gold that the Emperor of Constantinople paid him to attack the Army of the Impalers seemed not nearly enough, so Prince Svein attacked the Eastern Roman Empire itself. He came close to defeating the greatest empire in the world, but lost and was forced to leave Hraes’ to his three sons. He returned to the Nor’Way and spent twelve years rebuilding Ragnar’s old trade route there.
BOOK SIX: The Saga of Grand Prince Valdamar ‘the Great’ Sveinson
Book Six, The Saga of Grand Prince Valdamar ‘the Great’ Sveinson, establishes how Grand Prince Valdamar (Vladimir in Slavic) ‘the Great’ of Kiev, expanded the Hraes’ Empire and his own family Hamingja by marrying 700 wives that he pampered in estates in and around Kiev. Unlike his father, Svein, he came to the aid of a Roman Emperor, leading six thousand picked Varangian cataphracts against Anatolian rebels, and was rewarded with the hand of Princess Anna Porphyrogennetos of Constantinople, a true Roman Princess born of the purple who could trace her bloodline back to Julius and Augustus Caesar. She was called ‘Czarina’, and after her, all Hraes’ Grand Princes were called ‘Czars’ and their offspring were earnestly sought after, matrimonially, by European royalty.
BOOK SEVEN: The Saga of King Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ Ivarson
In The Saga of King Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ Ivarson, Prince Svein anonymously takes the name of Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ in Norway and befriends the Jarls of Lade in Trondheim Fjord in Norway as he expands the Nor’Way trade route of his grandfather, Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’. He had come close to defeating the Eastern Roman Empire, and still felt that he was due at least a shared throne in Constantinople. He used the gold from the Nor’Way trade to rebuild his legions and his Hraes’ cataphracts and though his brother, King Gorm ‘the Old’, was dead, his son, Sweyn’s nephew, King Harald ‘Bluetooth’ Gormson had usurped the throne of Denmark and had hired the famed Jomsvikings to attack Prince Sweyn in Norway, setting up the famous Battle of Hjorungavagr in a fjord south of Lade. King Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ would emerge from that confrontation and then he would defeat King Olaf Tryggvason of Norway in the Battle of Svolder in 1000 AD, in an engagement precipitated over the hand of Queen Sigrid ‘the Haughty’ of Sweden. Later he attacked England in revenge for the following St. Brice’s Day Massacre of Danes in 1002 AD and he fought a protracted war with the Saxon King Aethelred ‘the Unready’ that could only be described as the harvesting of the English for sale as slaves in Baghdad and Constantinople. With the help of his son, Prince Valdamar of Kiev, and the legions and cataphracts of Hraes’, he conquered England on Christmas Day of 1013, but victory was not kind to him.
BOOK EIGHT: The Saga of King Canute ‘the Great’ Sweynson
Prince Valdamar ‘the Great’ Sveinson of Kiev, who had supported his father, King Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ of Denmark in attacks upon England left his ‘Czar’ sons in charge of Hraes’ and took over as King Valdamar of England, but the Latin Christian English revolted against his eastern name and Orthodox Christian religion and brought King Aethelred back from exile in Normandy and Valdamar had to return to Hraes’ and gather up the legions he had already sent back after his father’s victory. His half brother was ruling in Denmark and his sons were ruling in Hraes’ so, in 1015 AD Grand Prince Valdamar ‘the Great’ of Kiev was written out of Hraes’ history and in 1016 the Latin Christian Prince Canute ‘the Great’ returned to England to reclaim his throne. He defeated Aethelred’s son, King Edmund ‘Ironside’ of England, at the Battle of Assandun to become King Canute ‘the Great’ of England and later King Knute ‘the Great’ of Denmark and Norway as well. But that is just the start of his story and later Danish Christian Kings would call his saga, and the sagas of his forefathers, The Lying Sagas of Denmark, and would set out to destroy them, claiming that, “true Christians will never read these Sagas”.
BOOK NINE: The Saga of King William ‘the Conqueror’ Robertson
The Third Danish Conquest of Angleland was seen to herald the end of the Great Viking Manifestation of the Middle Ages, but this, of course, was contested by the Vikings who were still in control of it all. Danish Varangians still ruled in Kiev and Danes still ruled the Northern Empire of Canute ‘the Great’, for the Normans were but Danish Vikings that had taken up the French language, and even Greenland and the Newfoundland were under Danish control in a Hraes’ Empire that ran from the Silk Road of Cathay in the east to the Mayan Road of Yucatan in the west. “We are all the children of Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’,” Queen Emma of Normandy often said. Out of sheer spite the Saxons of England took over the Varangian Guard of Constantinople and would continue their fight against the Normans in Southern Italy as mercenaries of the Byzantine Roman Empire. They would lose there as well, when in the Fourth Crusade of 1204, the Norman Danes would sack the City of Constantinople and hold it long enough to stop the Mongol hoards that would crush the City of Kiev. It would be Emperor Baldwin ‘the First’ of Flanders and Constantinople who would defeat the Mongol Mongke Khan in Thrace. But the Mongols would hold Hraes’ for three hundred years and this heralded the end of the Great Viking Manifestation. The Silk Road was dead awaiting Marco Polo for its revival. But the western Mayan Road would continue to operate for another hundred years until another unforeseen disaster struck. Its repercussions would be witnessed by the Spanish conquerors who followed Christopher Columbus a hundred and fifty years later in the Valley of the Mound Builders.
Conclusion:
By recreating the lives of four generations of Hraes’ Ukrainian Princes and exhibiting how each generation, in succession, later ascended to their inherited thrones in Denmark, the author proves the parallels of the dual rules of Hraes’ Ukrainian Princes and Danish Kings to be cumulatively more than just coincidence. And the author proves that the Danish Kings Harde Knute I, Gorm ‘the Old’ and Harald ‘Bluetooth’ Gormson/Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ were not Stranger Kings, but were Danes of the Old Jelling Skioldung Fridlief/Frodi line of kings who only began their princely careers in Hraes’ and returned to their kingly duties in Denmark with a lot of Byzantine Roman ideas and heavy cavalry and cataphracts.
SeiberTeck: 'The Varangians Series' 