Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ and Hjalmar ‘the Brave’ Bid Farewell After the Duel on Samso Island by Marten Eskil Winge

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Reconstructing The Samso Cycle of Saxo Grammaticus

By Brian Howard Seibert

© Copyright by Brian Howard Seibert

With Notes in [Square Brackets] by Brian Howard Seibert

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“Logic takes you from A to B.

Imagination takes you everywhere!”

Albert Einstein                                             

In the spring of 865 AD the most famous island duel of northern history, the Holmganger on Samso Isle, was fought between The Twelve Berserk Sons of Jarl Arngrim Eygrimson and Princess Eyfura Frodisdottir and their opponents, Jarl Hjalmar ‘the Brave’ and his second, Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson.  The outcome of the duel was Earth shattering, launching many thousands of ships from as far as Kiev in the east to as near as Jutland in the west and they descended upon Norway and England and formed what has been called The Great Heathen Army.  Elements of that Pagan army had been sworn in to pursue the lone survivor of that duel to the ends of the Earth and that took them to the Newfoundland, the Old World’s end and the New World’s beginning. 

The setup of the great battle is most eloquently covered in Book 5 of ‘The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus’ and the lead up and duel is best covered in ‘Arrow Odd’s Saga’.  Disparate fragments of the duel are depicted in ‘The Saga of King Heithrek the Wise’ sometimes called, as Nora Kershaw Chadwick translated it, ‘The Saga of Hervor and Heithrek’.  But the true cycle of the Samso Holmgangr has been fully reconstructed in Books Two and Three of my ‘The Varangians’ Saga Series, ‘The Saga of Prince Erik ‘Bragi’ Ragnarson’ followed by ‘The Saga of Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson.  All these Sagas are available to read for free @ Seiberteck.com @ your convenience.

While Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ acted only as a second in the famous duel on Samso Island in Denmark, there is little doubt that the duel is all about Oddi.  The twelve berserker grandsons of King Frodi ‘the Peaceful’ of Denmark and Kievan Hraes’ want one head and one head only when they challenge Jarl Hjalmar ‘the Brave’ to a Holmganger on Samso, and that head is Arrow Odd’s.  And Angantyr Arngrimson, the eldest of the twelve brothers, wants the world to know that when he marries the daughter of Jarl Bjartmar of Bolm just before sailing off to Samso to fight for the hand of Princess Ingibjorn Hlodversdottir of Sweden.  He is not after the hand of a princess, he is after the head of a prince.

The Samso Cycle is all about beginnings and endings so we shall start at the beginning that prophesizes the end.  We shall start with the curse, but even the curse stirs up controversy that only the end can resolve.  So let us start with The Death of Arrow Odd Foretold:

In the Saga of Arrow Odd the prophesy is told this way:

(Circa 852 AD)  There was a witch named Heid who knew how to predict the future.  She was often invited to banquets to tell people their destinies.  She had a troupe of fifteen boys and fifteen girls that would chant up spirits for her, and she was at a banquet not far away from Ingjald’s farm.  And she was invited to a naming feast and to prophesize there as well.

“It is good, Ingjald,” she said as she sat on a highchair between the high seats, “that you have come here before me.  I can tell you that you shall live here until you are old and with great dignity and respect,” and this prophesy was applauded by all.

Then Ingjald went off, and Asmund came. “It is well,” said Heid, “that you have come here, Asmund, for your honour and dignity will go around the world. You will not wrestle with old age, but you will be thought a good fellow and a great warrior wherever you are.”  Asmund went to his seat, and others went before the witch and she told each of them their fortunes, and they were all well satisfied with the prophesies.  Then she predicted the weather for the farmers and many other things as well.  Ingjald thanked her for her predictions.

“Has everyone come before me that are to have their fortunes told?” Heid asked.

“I think now almost everyone,” said Ingjald.

“What about Oddi, the subject of this naming feast?  What lies on that bench over there?” she asked.  “A fur cloak is lying there, but I think it stirs sometimes when I look at it.”

Oddi threw off the fur and sat up on the bench.  “That’s right,” said Oddi, “you thought that a sleeping man might be stirring under the fur, and it is a man trying to sleep, and what he would like is for you to be quiet and not talk about my future, because I do not believe in what you say.”  Oddi had a rod in his hand and said: “I will hit you on the nose with this, if you prophesize about my future.”

“You are yet a child,” Heid said.  “You will be a man on the morrow when your father, The Prince, arrives, but right now you are still a child.  I will speak, and you will listen.”  Then all ears perked up as poetry came to her lips:

“Awe me not,             Odd of Stavanger,

With that rod,             although we row.

This story will hold true,      as said by the seeress.

She knows beforehand      all men’s fate.

You will not swim           wide firths,

Nor go a long way    over lands and bays,

Though the water will well       and wash over you,

You will burn             here, at Berurjod.

Venom-filled snake             shall sting you

From below the                skull of Faxi.

The adder will bite               from below your foot,

When you are terribly              old, my lord.”

Heid saw that Oddi was angry and she ended her poesy and switched to prose.  “This is to say, Odd,” she started, “that you are destined to live much longer than others.  You shall live to be three hundred years old, and go from land to land, and always seem the greatest wherever you go.  Your reputation will go around the world but, travel as far as you try, you’ll die here, in Berurjod.”

“You make the worst prophecies of any old woman I have ever known,” said Oddi.  He jumped up as she was about to speak and he brought the rod down on her nose and blood soon flowed.

“Pack up my belongings,” said the witch, holding her face in her hands, “as I wish leave of this place.  I have never been treated, beaten like this before.”

“Do not leave,” pleaded Ingjald, “for there’s recompense for every ill, and you will stay here for three nights more and get good gifts.”  Heid took the gifts but left anyway.

Later that night, Oddi and Asmund went to the barn and they took Ingjald’s favorite horse, Faxi, and put a bridle on him and led him off towards the bay.  There they dug a deep pit and Oddi killed Faxi and they dropped him into the hole.  Oddi and Asmund brought the largest stones they could find and piled them over him, and then they poured sand between every stone.  Then they smoothed the grave over and, when they had finished their work, Oddi said, “I suppose witches shall have a hand in it if Faxi gets up out of this.  I think I’ve thwarted the fey that he will be the death of me.”

A very similar prophesy was being told in Kievan Hraes’, perhaps in Kiev itself, as is related in the Kievan Hraes’ Primary Chronicle in retrospective fashion:

(Circa 912 AD)  Thus Oleg ruled in Kiev, and dwelt at peace with all nations.  Now autumn came, and Oleg bethought him of his horse that he had caused to be well fed, yet had never mounted.  For on one occasion he had made inquiry of the wonder-working magicians [the Magis of the Aesir religion] as to the ultimate cause of his death.

One magician replied, “Oh Prince, it is from the steed which you love and on which you ride that you shall meet your death.”  Oleg then reflected and determined never to mount this horse or even to look upon it again.  So he gave command that the horse should be properly fed, but never led into his presence.  He thus let several years pass until he had attacked the Greeks.  After he returned to Kiev, four years elapsed, but in the fifth he thought of the horse through which the magicians had foretold that he should meet his death. He thus summoned his senior squire and inquired as to the whereabouts of the horse which he had ordered to be fed and well cared for.  The squire answered that he was dead. Oleg laughed and mocked the magician, exclaiming, “Soothsayers tell untruths, and their words are naught but falsehood. This horse is dead, but I am still alive.”

Then he commanded that a horse should be saddled. “Let me see his bones,” said he.  He rode to the place where the bare bones and skull lay.  Dismounting from his horse, he laughed and remarked, “So I was supposed to receive my death from this skull?”  And he stamped upon the skull with his foot.  But a serpent crawled forth from it and bit him in the foot, so that in consequence he sickened and died.  All the people mourned for him in great grief.  They bore him away and buried him upon the hill which is called Shchekovitsa.  His tomb stands there to this day, and it is called the Tomb of Oleg.  Now all the years of his reign were thirty-three.

Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ and Prince Oleg of Novgorod both suffer identical deaths in their respective Norse and Hraes’ sagas, the foretold death by snakebite from a poisonous viper that crawls out from under the weathered skull of their favourite expired horse.  Not only are the deaths identical, but they are both foretold, similarly avoided, and identically foiled and executed, the one death in Kiev and the other in Norway, thousands of miles apart.  Is this coincidence or is this the saga of the death of the same man as told by completely different chroniclers?

Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson and Prince Oleg Rurikson are one and the same person!  And I shall spend the next hour or two proving it to you.  By reconstructing the Samso Cycle from beginning to end we shall soon see.

And of course the most famous sword used in the most famous holmganger is called Tyrfing and is most fully described in ‘The Saga of Hervor and Heithrek’, so we shall next begin there:

“Ch. II.°  There was a King called Sigrlami who was said to be a son of Odin [He may be King Frodi ‘the Peaceful’, main character of Saxo’s Book 5]. His son Svafrlami [This may be Prince Alf Frodison of Book 5] succeeded to the kingdom after his father and was a very great warrior. One day as the King rode a-hunting he got separated from his men, and at sunset he came upon a big stone and two dwarfs beside it. The King banned them with his graven sword from entering the stone. The dwarfs begged him to spare their lives.

The King said: “What are your names?”

One of them said his name was Dvalin and the other Dulin.

The King said: “As you are the most cunning of all dwarfs you must make me a sword, the best you can. The hilt and the grip must be of gold, and it must cut iron as easily as if it were cloth and never rust; and it must bring victory to whoever uses it in battle and single combat.”

They agreed to this, and the King rode away home.

And when the appointed day came, the King rode to the stone. The dwarfs were outside, and they handed to the King a sword which was very beautiful.

But as Dvalin was standing in the doorway of the stone he said:

“Your sword, Svafrlami, will be the death of a man every time it is drawn; and moreover it will be the instrument of three pieces of villainy; and to you yourself also it shall bring death.”

Then the King struck at the dwarfs with the sword. But they sprang into the stone, and the sword came down on it—sinking so deep that both the ridges of the blade were hidden; for the door into the stone closed as they disappeared. The King called the sword ‘Tyrfing,’ and ever afterwards he carried it in battle and single combat, and was always victorious.

The King had a daughter who was called Eyfura [This is Princess Eyfura Frodisdottir], an exceedingly beautiful and clever girl.

At that time Arngrim [This is Jarl Arngrim who marries Eyfura in Book 5] was raiding among the Perms in the Baltic. He raided the Kingdom of King Svafrlami and fought against him. They met face to face, and King Svafrlami struck at Arngrim who parried the blow with his shield; but the lower part of the shield was cut away and the sword plunged into the earth. Then Arngrim struck off the King’s hand, so that he had to let Tyrfing fall. Arngrim caught up Tyrfing and cut down first the King, and then many others. He took great booty there, and carried off Eyfura, the King’s daughter and took her to his home in Bolm.

By her he had twelve sons [as related in Book 5]. The eldest was Angantyr, then Hervarth, then Hjörvarth, Sæming and Hrani, Brami, Barri, Reifnir, Tind and Bui, and the two Haddings who only did one man’s work between them, because they were twins and the youngest of the family; whereas Angantyr, who was a head taller than other men, did the work of two. They were all berserks, and were unequalled in strength and courage. Even when they went marauding there were never more than just the twelve brothers on one ship. They raided far and wide in many lands, and had much success and won great renown. Angantyr had Tyrfing, and Sæming Mistletoe, Hervarth had Hrotti, and each of the others possessed a sword famous in single combat. And it was their custom when they had only their own men with them, to land when they felt the berserks’ fury coming upon them, and wrestle with trees or great rocks; for they had been known to slay their own men and disable their ship. Great tales were told about them and they became very famous.”

Chapter 2 starts with a King Sigrlami who we shall posit as being King Frodi ‘the Peaceful’ Fridleifson from Book 5 of The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus and his son Svafrlami who represents King Frodi’s son Prince Alf, who here forces dwarves to make him a magical sword called Tyrfing.  The dwarves don’t pull a sword from a stone, as with Excalibur from the Tale of King Arthur, but it couldn’t get much closer with Dvalin standing in the doorway of a stone.  The concept of pulling a sword from a stone or an ingot is actually describing the process of drawing out a blade on an anvil, be it from an ingot or, if the blade is to have magical properties, from a star stone or meteorite.  At the beginning of the King Arthur tale, the wizard Merlin witnesses a meteorite shower, and then young Arthur pulls a sword from a stone.  In my own writings on the subject, in the start of my Book 2 of ‘The Varangians’ Saga Series, Prince Erik ‘Bragi’ Ragnarson witnesses a meteorite crashing on his farmstead in southwestern Norway and he pulls a sword from a shard of starstone with the help of a dwarf named Dvalin.  He decides to use the magical sword to avenge the theft of Zealand from his father, King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ Sigurdson, by the Angles of Jutland and their ruler, King Frodi ‘the Peaceful’ Fridleifson.

The author describes Sigrlami as being a son of Odin and this may be a hint that he, like King Frodi, is from the Old Line of Danish kings, the Skioldungs, or Shieldings, often given the moniker ‘the Old’.  But the author condenses the Sigrlami, or Sigr ‘the Lame’, contribution to the Samso Cycle into one short line.  And, outside of the mythical origins of Tyrfing, he does not give the son, Svafrlami, Svafr ‘the Lame’, much more of a contribution, except when he states, “The King had a daughter who was called Eyfura, an exceedingly beautiful and clever girl.”  But Princess Eyfura was the daughter of King Sigrlami (Frodi) according to Saxo, and the sister of Prince Alf, as shall be described below.  Still, the moniker ‘the Lame’ seems to be out of place in describing both the father and son, King Frodi and Prince Alf.  Perhaps King Frodi’s grandson is the originator of ‘the Lame’ name, the third Hraes’ ruler of Kiev, Prince Eyfur, the son of Princess Eyfura, also known as Prince Ingvar or Igor of Kiev and further, and more famously, he may be Prince Ivar ‘the Boneless’.  Emperor John Tzimiskes I of Constantinople tells Prince Ivar’s son, Svein, or Sviatoslav ‘the Brave’ that “the Germans tied Ivar’s legs to two staked trees and tore him apart by releasing the knots”.  Perhaps he survived the Roman ‘Death by Sprung Trees’ execution and gained the family the insulting byname ‘the Lame’, just as his great grandfather had gained the Danes the insulting ‘Swift’ moniker, as in swift to run from battle, when back in Denmark, King Fridleif ‘the Swift’ had challenged the great Charlemagne to battle and prudently left the field when faced by a German army twice the Dane’s size.

In Book 1 of ‘The Varangians’, ‘The Saga of Prince Erik ‘Bragi’ Ragnarson, the pulling of a sword from a stone is depicted as follows:

CHAPTER ONE

1.0  THE FORGING OF TYRFINGR  (Circa 828 AD)

“This sword is renowned in all the ancient tales.”

Anonymous; The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise.

On a dark spring night, yet crisp with winter’s cold, Erik saw something come crashing down from the heavens.  He was riding his rounds, checking the herds, the northern lights shimmering in the darkness above him, when the dancing curtains parted for a plummeting star.  Growing while falling from the Boreal sky, the ethereal orb soon caught his eye.  Each time Erik blinked in wonderment the falling star grew larger, all the time coming towards him, at first in silence, then accompanied by the lowing of cattle, then by the stamping of his own mount and finally by the prayers of the field slaves singing out in their native tongues.  When at last he could hear it over all that din, there was a whiz as it passed overhead like an arrow, an arrow of the gods, and a bang as it tore through earth towards Hades.  Ducking while dancing his mount once about, Erik watched the dust rising in a copse of trees a hundred paces away.  A dozen trees had shattered as the meteorite buried itself deep within the earth, but a red‑hot shard that had burst free of the main remained on the surface and set the battered brush ablaze.

Erik gathered the slaves and led them into the woods to put out the fire, but the grass was dry and the flames had spread quickly.  Try as they might to beat it down with tattered cloaks and musty horse blankets, the fire fought back.  It enlisted the help of the wind and the darkness and it fought back hard.  Erik handed one of the slaves, a dwarf, the reins of his horse and sent him back to Hraegunarstead to get the freemen and the rest of the slaves.  They would need all hands to fight this blaze.  “And shovels and axes,” Erik shouted after the dwarf as he rode off into the darkness.  The dwarf’s hair was long and black like his own and he thought it odd that he would notice that while a wildfire blazed behind him and the young Norseman then tore off his own heavy wool cloak, his best, he reminded himself, and set to beating down the flames.  Aligning the thralls on either side of himself along the fire front, he had them working with the wind to drive the fire up into the foothills where Ulf Creek ranged and wandered across the field diagonally to the settlement below.  Beyond the creek there was still snow on the ground and, as more men arrived, he would put them in the fire line where the flames fought hardest, and he would shift slaves from the left flank and put them on the right as though he was some officer directing his reserves into a foreign fray in some battle far away.  Sometimes the wind would shift and the long billow of smoke rising from the fire would blow back in their faces and double them up in fits of coughing and the fire would threaten to get away on them until the wind would shift back again.  As more men came, and soon women too, the fire line grew longer and longer, and the front moved forward up the slope until it met the cold rushing water of the spring swollen creek and the fire died in the wet grass of the creek bed.

Tired and exhausted, the freemen and slaves made their way back to the farmstead, but Erik and the dwarf stayed to watch for flames that might spring up.  In the morning’s light he surveyed the damage and he found the star stone shard, still warm in the dew, weighing a quarter stone.  It was an odd bit of metal, akin to a bog iron nodule and the blacksmith within him was aroused.

“If you wish to pull a sword from that stone,” the dwarf cried with glee, peering up into the forge, “there are a few things you shall need.”

“Go back to your hearth, Dvalin,” Erik cried.  “Go play amongst the coals.”  Erik let go the bellows and tonged the red-hot fragment from the forge.  He set it upon a great flat stone and held it in place with the tongs while he beat it with a forging hammer as hard as he possibly could.  It seemed as though the stone should shatter; Erik flushed with the effort while the metal grew pallid with the blows.  When the forging glow had dissipated he sat down, and he rested.  He was exhausted, and the shard showed barely a bruise.

“But it’s the coals that you need,” the dwarf exclaimed, rolling his eyes and shaking his head.

Erik sensed that the dwarf knew some secret of this stone from the stars.  “Tell me Dvalin,” he said, patting the wooden bench he sat upon, “tell me what you know of this star stone.”

Onto the far end of the bench climbed the dwarf; he bunched up his fists and he swung his arms and he stomped down to the end where Erik sat; standing there, his arms akimbo, he looked Erik straight in the eyes, his own face tightening up into a wrinkled mass as if giant secrets were about to unfold.  “You need the finest coals,” he exploded, “the hardest you can find, and the largest of bellows, two or more,” and he shot out as many fingers on as many hands.  “…enough to make the metal white hot.  Then, and only then, can you forge your sword.”

“How do you know all this, little one?” Erik asked.  “You’ve seen such stuff as this before?”

“If I tell you my secret,” Dvalin explained, backing off to the far end of the bench, “it is only because … of all the folk of Hraegunarstead, only Hraerik’s foot has Dvalin’s rump not met.  You alone have been kind to me, and kinder yet you will be, for there is a great price to be paid in working the star stone.  Ask me no more of it and I will understand.”  The Dwarf used Erik’s Norse name, Hraerik, when he answered him.

“Ah…,” Erik whispered.  “You would like your freedom, no doubt, in exchange for this secret of yours?”

“What good would my freedom do me here?  My backside would but trade my owner’s sole for every freeman’s foot at fancy.  You must take me back to wherefrom I was torn, back to the east, where giants and dwarves like myself roam free.”

“But that is a journey I have never made,” Erik said, humouring the dwarf.  “And, like as not, never shall.”  A sad hone dulled the edge in his tone.  “How can you ask such a price of me?” he queried the dwarf wistfully.

Dvalin shuffled down the bench, took up Erik’s coarse hand and studied it.  “A ship shall soon be yours,” he started, “and such a journey shall be well within your grasp.”

“No ordinary ship can sail the Nor’Way.  It must have double the cross-members and side-timbers.”

“Shush, shush, shush,” the dwarf exclaimed, his face once more a wrinkled mass.  “Such a journey shall soon be yours, and great though it is, it shall be but one of many long trips you shall make in your long life, my lord.”

“Tell me more of this stone, little one,” Erik encouraged him in amused disbelief.

A sudden calm set about the dwarf’s countenance, even though he still seemed quite troubled.  He sat down beside Erik and, staring into the fire of the forge, began his tale.  “In the land of my birth, in my father’s time, we had no iron.  We knew not how to mine it, nor how to search out the iron nodules in the bogs, but odd times we would find metal stones such as the one you have here and from them we would forge our weapons and tools.  They made the finest blades: better by far than the swords of the  Franks or your Stavanger blades….even better than Damascus steel.  But the star stone was scarce and very difficult to forge and sometimes there was a price to be paid in its working.  When your people came to the east, they taught us an easier way…how to find and smelt iron into steel…and how to whet an edge from stone.  The art of my father and his forefathers was working the star stone…and now it is an art all but lost, known only to some fool of a dwarf mucking about the hearth coals of a far-off land.”

A pained look crossed the face of the dwarf and Erik knew then how he longed for home.  “Tell me more Dvalin and, if what you relate of my fate be true, I’ll take you back to the Glassy Plains, to Giantland.”

The dwarf cheered up somewhat and continued his tale.  “I have watched the star stone being worked and have worked it some myself, so I know its varying qualities,” and the dwarf’s eyes shifted from the forge to the metal upon the anvil, “but I have never seen such a stone as yours.  Even cold as it is now, it retains some of the hearth‑glow.”

Erik studied the stone for a glow.

“Few see it clearly,” the dwarf explained, “some see it better than others, most don’t see it at all.  But I have heard tales about star stones that glowed from my father and others; tales enough to know that if we do forge it into a sword:

      it will never rust,

      it will forever remain sharp,

      it will neither bend nor break

      and the most powerful of berserks

     shall never blunt its edge.”

“I’ll get you this hard coal,” Erik exclaimed, “and the bellows…all the pumps you’ll ever need.  And, if what you say of this ship and my travels be true, I’ll return you to your homeland.  When we forge the sword, I’ll consider the bargain as struck.”

“Get me what I need, and the striking shall come soon enough,” Dvalin replied.  He stared into the flames of the forge once more and he contemplated the price of the forging and he wondered, “How soon is soon enough?”

It was the spring of 828 and there was once a powerful Norwegian Vik-King named Ragnar Lothbrok Sigurdson and he had two sons.  Roller, the elder, was a strapping young man of nineteen, with long blonde hair, bright blue eyes and a fresh ruddy face that women found attractive.  Over the winter Ragnar had decided to take Roller with him on a viking expedition down the coast of Jutland, so in the early spring they sailed off leaving the youngest son, Erik, to tend the homestead.

Erik was a big strong lad, a half year younger than Roller and not as tall, but more powerfully built, with coal black hair and deep blue eyes set under heavy brooding brows.  Hard work had always been his lot, and this was reflected in his harsh features.  Unlike Roller, he was neither handsome, nor well trained in arms, but he had surprising strength and drew the heaviest bow in the district.  A steady hand and a sharp eye made his shot unmatched thereabouts.  He was well trained in the black art of the smith and there was a little of the uncanny about him.  He had learned all the old poems and the ancient tales of many lands that his foster-father, Brak, had taught him, and he could read the runes as well as any skald or witch.  But while Ragnar worshipped Odin and Roller trusted in Thor, Erik showed fealty to none of the gods, putting his faith in the strength of his arm and the stroke of his sword; yet there was still a little of the uncanny about him.

The main hall of Hraegunarstead was a longhall of a size befitting Ragnar’s  station as Vik-King of Stavanger Vik or Fjord and Rogaland Province, being thirty-two feet wide, a hundred and forty feet long and standing twenty-four foot at the gable peak.  It was of massive post and beam construction–the huge squared timbers having been hauled out of the great mountain forest surrounding the farm–with board and batten walls and a steep pitched pole and thatch roof that, from the front porch at the gable end, seemed to arc up into the very heavens.  The posts and beams were detailed in carved reliefs of ancient religious motif–the work of finely skilled craftsmen–and the designs marched down the doorposts and across the great oaken entrance doors, twin story panels at the front of the hall.  The heavy front doors opened with effort into the main hall and there was a vestibule with a great square entrance hearth where a fierce fire roared, keeping the chill of the doorway at bay.  The inner front wall of the hall was studded with pegs upon which guests hung their outer garments and weapons.  In the front half of the hall, sleeping benches were butted up endwise to the heavy plank side walls, twelve on either side, and the walls themselves were adorned with the painted shields and silver inlaid weapons of Ragnar’s hired men.  Halfway down the longhall, two sets of triple highseats faced each other, backed against either wall, sitting above the worn plank floor, each upon its own dais.  The highseats, too, were handsomely carved and behind them the walls were rich with tapestries.  In the back half of the hall two dozen more sleeping benches hugged the walls and again the shields and weapons of warriors graced the greying planks.  Down the centre of the hall ranged six long narrow flagstone hearths spaced out evenly between the two rows of sleeping benches leaving an open area between the two sets of highseats where audiences and entertainments took place.  The wood smoke from the hearth fires rose freely up into the beams and rafters where it blackened them with creosote before escaping through smokeholes in the thatched roof.  Beyond the main hall were the bedrooms, three plank walled chambers on either side with a six-foot hallway between them.  And at the very back of the hall was the kitchen and scullery where the feasts and the meals were prepared.

The longhall was the largest of many buildings at Hraegunarstead, a great meadow of a farm at the head of a fjord, closed off from all other land by the heavily forested mountains that surrounded it.  A large crafthouse where all the wool was spun, and the cloth was woven stood to the south of the hall, while a long shipwright’s shop, where the sturdy ships for crossing the Nor’Way were built, stood to the north, all three facing west, opening out onto the bay.  Farther down the shore was a large smithy shop where iron was smelted, and steel was forged.  The homes of Ragnar’s freemen were nestled into the slope behind these buildings and behind the smithy shop there was a greying dilapidated hall in which the slaves slept.  Between the halls and the rising meadow was a loose crescent of outbuildings: a dairyhouse where the cows were milked, and the cheeses were moulded and a salthouse where the meat was laid up.  There were cattle barns, horse stables, sheep sheds and granaries and beyond them all, the meadows, fields and pastures rising gently to meet the surrounding mountain forests.  And running down from the mountains was Ulf Creek, quencher of fires, wandering its way south-west through the fields then west through the little settlement and just south past Ragnar’s longhall, where a little wooden bridge crossed it, then out across the beach and into the bay. 

That evening at supper all Ragnar’s hired men, freemen, the women and children of the stead and the slaves attended their usual places, save for the men out raiding and one dwarf slave named Dvalin.  Erik’s stepmother, Kraka, sat alone in the highest highseat, which she normally shared with Ragnar.  Roller’s highseat to her right sat empty, but on her left Erik shared his highseat with Dvalin, who was dressed in his finest attire, a patchwork of colourful rags.  The matching highseats on the opposite side of the hall were empty, reserved only for guests of high station.  Below them the people of Hraegunarstead were occupied with their meals, sitting at the ends of their sleeping benches or on stools with their trencherplates on their laps, devouring roasted and boiled meats, baked breads, meal cakes, curds and cheeses, then washing them down with milk or ale.

Kraka marked a tendril of smoke as it fled the flames of a nearby hearth, spiraling past a sooty crossbeam, up into the rafter poles, where it joined with a band of smoke playing about the thatch while seeking a smokehole through which to escape out into the cool night air.  She was worried about her son, Roller.  “Much like smoke a child is,” she mused, absorbed in her melancholy reverie.  Dvalin chose this inopportune moment to belch loudly.  Kraka began shaking her head slowly, first left, then right and her silver-blonde hair danced about her shoulders.  Finally, staring into the trencher that was laid across her lap she said, “I never thought I’d see the day when a slave would sit upon a highseat of Ragnar’s.  And a dwarf at that!  What is this world coming to?” she asked of Erik this seemingly eternal question.

“Mother,” Erik sighed, breaking away from his third helping, “you know full well that I have taken Dvalin aside and extended him some freedom in faith of what he proposes to do.”  Erik felt Dvalin shifting nervously beside him.

“Freedom is one thing, Hraerik,” she said, rising from her seat.  Her trencher, which she held a little away from her body, hung down, threatening momentarily to drop from her fingertips.  She was a splendid woman, tall and lithe with a gracefulness that belied her age.  “But from hearth to highseat in a day is quite another.  Hraegunar shall hear about this when he returns.”  Kraka turned, stepped down from the dais and walked away.  A slender bondmaiden rushed up behind her, caught up the trencher plate and followed her into the chamberway.

Erik watched his stepmother disappear and it suddenly struck him how much she had aged.  “Soon she shall walk upon the bitter green,” he thought, then returned his attention to the trencher upon his lap.  Dvalin, too, resumed his meal, savouring the choice cuts of the high seat spread.

“You said there was a price,” Erik started, “a price that is paid when working the star stone.  Has it to do with the peculiar glow of the metal?”

“It is precisely the glow!” the dwarf cried, then continued his repast.  While Erik watched impatiently, he finished his plate, smacked his chops and wiped his mouth on his cuff.  “Stones that glow like yours, I have never actually seen before, but I have heard of them.  My grandfather told me of a blade that was forged from a star stone that glowed thus.  It is heavenly poisoned, this steel, and when forged to an edge it is death to any man it cuts, for, no matter how insignificant the injury, the wound never heals.  We must be very careful when we work it.”  Dvalin looked about the hall nervously, his eyes finally coming to rest at his old spot among the ashes of his former hearth.

“There is more?”

“It is said,” the dwarf sputtered, staring into the flames of the hearth, “that the blade must always be sheathed still smothered in the blood of its last victim, or it will be the death of its owner.”

“Does it smite the hand that wields it?” Erik laughed.

“It is no joking matter,” Dvalin answered palely.  “The man who carries the unquenched blade, a blade cooled only in human blood, is set upon by a disease that sours his own blood, and, over time, he turns quite ash grey and dies!”

“I am not sure I am willing to pay such a price for this sword you propose,” Erik replied, turning suddenly grave.

“I believe the choice is beyond us both, for you have the stone and I have the skill and we’ll both be loath not to use them; when the forging becomes difficult…I will put the edge on the blade, for that is when it is most dangerous…when the blade has not yet been consummated in the blood of a human being.”

Over the course of the next week Erik had his father’s hired men about on errands.  Some he sent off in search of the hardest coals they could find, while others he sent to neighbouring steads looking for the largest bellows they could borrow.

At Trondheim, in the north of Norway, Erik’s emissaries located a coal so hard the locals had difficulty mining it and so vitrified it hardly burned on its own, requiring softer coals to keep it alight.

With the required resources gathered, Erik and Dvalin set to work forging the sword.  They employed three bellows to keep the coals fired bright, but even these hottest of coals could only just bring the star steel to a white heat and the forging remained very difficult.  It was like working with Ton-stone.  For two days they struggled, hammering out, or pulling, a three-foot blade, pounding in bloodletting grooves, forging the trident guard, beating down the middlepiece and forming the heavy Ton-stone pommel until a fine sword started to emerge.  Erik did all the heavy forge work, keeping three slaves sweating at the pumps while Dvalin prepared a special leaden scabbard to receive the weapon.

Finally, when the sword was ready to receive its edge, Dvalin asked Erik, in his lilting native tongue, “Which of your slaves do you least prefer?” and he motioned towards the bellowsmen.

Of all the folk of Hraegunarstead, only Erik had managed to master the language of their dwarf captive.  Ragnar had always cursed the eastern tongue and likened it to the twittering of birds, but languages came easy to Erik and he had learned to converse with the dwarf at an early age.  “The fat one is too lazy for my liking,” he replied in same.

That night Dvalin snuck away from his new sleeping bench in the high seat hall, roused the slaves to run the bellows and refired the forge in the smithy shop.  While an exhausted Erik slept, the dwarf set about putting an edge on the blade.

The smithy shop was a long-weathered shed of ancient stone construction with its whole front left open to the sea.  The acrid smoke from a score of twisted tallow tapers joined up with the soot smoke from the forge and floated out over the moonlit waters of the bay.  The crescent of candles lit the centre of the shed, leaving the periphery in shadows.  In the darkness at the back, three slaves sweated at the bellows.  Dvalin was at the anvil stone, his haggard features emerging softly from the halo of flickering light, as he patiently tinked an edge onto the sword.  He reheated the blade every few minutes and all the while he sang as he worked.  His worn and cracked voice rose above the sighing of the bellows and wafted out over the lapping waters, a low soft song in that lilting native tongue.  When he hammered on the blade the metal would flash brightly, lighting his wrinkled and whiskered face, a cameo floating in the velvet darkness.  Tinking his way up from the guard, he worked both sides of the blade into fine matched edges.  It was with a patience known only to men of his stature that Dvalin worked the metal.  No file or hone had effect on such steel, its sharpness coming straight off the anvil stone.  The dwarf kept tinking the two edges, reheating the sword in the forge, then tinking some more until the edges came together at the tip of the blade.  He then worked a fine point onto the sword.  And a visible glow remained in both edges and converged at the tip even as the blade grew stone cold.  Dvalin held the sword up and surveyed the work he had done.  He slipped the sword into the scabbard several times to check the tight fit then he set the nervous slaves back to work at the bellows as if to heat the blade one last time.  As the man nearest him, the fat one, stretched upward at the pump, Dvalin withdrew the sword from its sheath and thrust it straight through his belly.  The bellowsman screamed in pain, then pitched forward into his own gore and writhed upon the dirt floor.  The other slaves fled in terror lest they be fated to join him.  But Dvalin remained above him, sword still in hand, as the slave churned up mud in his death throes.  The dwarf drove the blade in yet further, all the way to the hilt.  When he prized the sword free it was crimson with gore and the glow had subsided somewhat.  He then slid the blade, still awash with blood, into the heavy scabbard.

The dawn to which Erik awoke was heralded by the death cry of a slave from the smithy shop.  By the time he had dressed and rushed down to the forge Dvalin was ready to present him with the sword.  “It is done, my lord,” the dwarf panted as he held forth the sheathed blade.  “What shall you name her?”

Erik took up the scabbard in his hands and inspected the guard, still dripping with gore.  He was about to withdraw the blade when Dvalin stopped him with a warning.

“She must never be relieved of her scabbard unless there is slaying to be done, for she must always be sheathed in the blood of her last victim.”

Only with blade in hand, gore dripping off the guard and a slave lying dead on the floor, could the sword’s curse be fully felt.  Erik studied the crumpled corpse at his feet and a shudder ran up his spine, for he had no love of the weird; yet he knew even then he would strike the same deal all over again.  He’d found the stone and in Dvalin the skill and he had been loath not to use them.

“I was going to call her Aurvandil’s Toe, but I think the appendage unfitting the blade, be she half what you claim her to be.”

“She’ll be that and more if one can judge by the forging.”

“I believe you are right, and, in such light,  I shall name her after the only god for which I have respect, Tyr, the god of justice.  I name her Tyr’s Finger.”

“Tyr’s Finger”, Dvalin reflected.  “Tyrfingr.  The name fits the forging.”

Saxo’s Book 5 setup for The Samso Cycle is quite in depth, so next I shall provide a slightly condensed version of it as follows:

[Circa 817 AD]  “After the death of [King] Fridleif [‘the Swift’], his son FRODE, aged seven, was elected in his stead by the unanimous decision of the Danes.  The brothers Westmar and Koll were summoned to the charge of bringing up the king.  The wife of Koll was Gotwar, who used to paralyse the most eloquent and fluent men by her glib and extraordinary insolence; for she was potent in wrangling, and full of resource in all kinds of disputation.  Westmar had twelve sons, three of whom had the same name—Grep in common. These three men were conceived at once and delivered at one birth, and their common name declared their simultaneous origin. They were exceedingly skillful swordsmen and boxers. Frode had also given the supremacy of the sea to Odd; who was very closely related to the king.  Koll rejoiced in an offspring of three sons. At this time a certain son of Frode’s brother held the chief command of naval affairs for the protection of the country, Now the king had a sister, Gunwar, surnamed ‘the Fair’ because of her surpassing beauty.

The sons of Westmar and Koll, being ungrown In years and bold In spirit, let their courage become recklessness and devoted their guilt-stained minds to foul and degraded orgies. At last the eldest of those who shared the name of Grep, wishing to regulate and steady his promiscuous wantonness, ventured to seek a haven for his vagrant amours in the love of the king’s sister. Yet he did amiss. For though it was right that his vagabond and straying delights should be bridled by modesty, yet it was audacious for a man of the people to covet the child of a king. She, much fearing the impudence of her wooer, and wishing to be safer from outrage, went into a fortified building. Thirty attendants were given to her [shieldmaidens?], to keep guard and constant watch over her person.

Now the comrades of Frode, advised and urged the king to marry. At first he alleged his tender years as an excuse, but in the end yielded to the persistent requests of his people. And when he carefully inquired of his advisers who would be a fit wife for him, they all praised the daughter of the King of the Huns beyond the rest. Frode ordered that Gotwar, Westmar and Koll, with their sons, should go on an embassy to the east to gain the hand of Princess Hanund.

They were entertained by the King of the Huns at a three days’ banquet, ere they uttered the purpose of their embassy. After a few trials and tribulations King Hunn promised his daughter in marriage to Frode. Then King Hunn took her away with the most splendid pomp, and, followed by the envoys, hastened to Denmark to give away a daughter in marriage. Frode welcomed his bride most joyfully, and also bestowed the highest honours upon his future royal father-in-law; and when the marriage rites were over, dismissed him with a large gift of gold and silver.

And so with Queen Hanund, the daughter of the King of the Huns, for his wife, he passed three years in the most prosperous peace. But idleness brought wantonness among his courtiers, and peace begot lewdness, which they displayed in the most abominable crimes. Only those maidens might marry whose chastity they had first deflowered. This and a full plethora of maddening mockeries did this insolent and wanton crew devise, and thus under a boy-king freedom fostered licence. This unbridled impudence of the soldiers ended by making the king detested, not only by foreigners, but even by his own people, for the Danes resented such an arrogant and cruel rule.

But Grep was contented with no humble loves; he broke out so outrageously that he was guilty of intercourse with the queen, and proved as false to the king as he was violent to all other men. Then by degrees the scandal grew, and the suspicion of his guilt crept on with silent step. The common people found it out before the king. For Grep, by always punishing all who alluded in the least to this circumstance, had made it dangerous to accuse him. But the rumour of his crime, which at first was kept alive in whispers, was next passed on in public reports; for it is hard for men to hide another’s guilt if they are aware of it.

Princess Gunwar had many suitors; and accordingly Grep, trying to take revenge for his rebuff by stealthy wiles, demanded the right of judging the merits of the young men. So he gathered all the wooers of Gunwar together with the pretence of a banquet, and then lined the bedroom of the princess with their heads—a gruesome spectacle for all the rest. Yet he forfeited none of his favour with Frode, for he isolated the young king from all about him. And none had the spirit to lift up his voice in public against this season of misery.”

Although Saxo’s Book 5 is said to have taken place in the time of Christ, this is a Christianized detail likely added by Saxo’s patron, Absalon, the Bishop of Lund.  Nora Kershaw Chadwick speculates that events likely took place circa 400 AD, as the Huns are involved and that period has Huns.  However, Attila ‘the Hun’ was not defeated by the Romans at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains near Chalons, but strategically withdrew to the Pannonian Plains where he may have died of excess (or poison).  Attila’s sons then attacked the Ostrogoths, but were repelled, and a large group of Ernak clan Huns moved to Scythia, joined the Khazar Federation as their seventh tribe and took over trade there.  The capital of Khazaria was Atil at the mouth of the Volga, so it is possible that Attila may have been there before.  And the Goths were still there in Scythia: both Oster and Vaster in the form of Greutungs and Thervings of the Kingdom of the Volsungs.  Saxo’s further writings in Book 5 would seem to indicate circa 800 AD as being a probable starting point due to the likely identities of his next characters in his set up of the Samso Cycle, but further writings seemed to indicate circa 810 AD as being the birthdate of both Prince Erik ‘Bragi’ Ragnarson and King Frodi ‘the Peaceful’ Fridleifson.

Saxo’s intro to the cycle continues [Circa 828 AD]:

“When Gotar, the King of Norway, heard this, he assembled his soldiers, and said that the Danes were disgusted with their own king, and longed for another if they could get the opportunity; that he had himself resolved to lead an army thither, and that Denmark would be easy to seize if attacked because Frode’s government of his country was as covetous as it was cruel.

Then Erik rose up and gainsaid the project with contrary reasons. “We remember,” he said, “how often coveters of other men’s goods lose their own. For though the Danes now seem divided in counsel, yet they will soon be of one mind to meet the foe. Thou hast an ample guard of nobles, so let your soldiers first try the fortunes of their king. Provide in peace for thine own safety, and risk others if thou dost undertake the enterprise: better that the slave should perish than the master. Let thy servant do for thee what the tongs do for the smith, who by the aid of his iron tool guards his hand from scorching, and saves his fingers from burning. Learn thou also, by using thy men, to spare and take thought for thyself.”

[But young Erik had an ulterior motive for offering to be King Gotar’s tongs.  He wanted to avenge his father’s honour.  Also, while representing his father in The Vik, he had fallen in love with Princess Alfhild, King Gotar’s daughter.]

“So spake Erik, and Gotar, who had hitherto held him a man of no parts, now marvelled that he had graced his answer with sentences so choice and weighty, and gave him the name of Shrewd-spoken [Eloquent may have been a better translation of the Latin Desertus, or perhaps Bragi, after the Norse god of eloquence], thinking that his admirable wisdom deserved some title. For the young man’s reputation had been kept in the shade by the exceeding brilliancy of his brother Roller. Erik begged that some substantial gift should be added to the name, declaring that the bestowal of the title ought to be graced by a present besides. The king gave him a ship, and the oarsmen called it “Skroter” [Fair Faxi]. Now Erik and Roller were the sons of Ragnar [Lothbrok], the champion, and children of one father by different mothers; Roller’s mother and Erik’s stepmother was named Kraka [Princess Aslaug ‘Kraka’ Sigurdsdottir, her father being King Sigurd ‘Fafnirsbane’ of Volsunga].

And so, by leave of Gotar, the task of making a raid on the Danes fell to one Hrafn [foiling Erik’s attempt at revenge]. He was encountered by Odd, who had at that time the greatest prestige among the Danes as a rover, for he was such a skilled magician that he could range over the sea without a ship [sometimes translated as ‘he could traverse the waters on a bone’], and could often raise tempests by his spells, and wreck the vessels of the enemy. When he began to fight with the Northmen he so dulled the sight of the enemy by the power of his spells that they thought the drawn swords of the Danes cast their beams from afar off, and sparkled as if aflame. So Hrafn and many of his men were slain, and only six vessels slipped back to Norway to teach the king that it was not so easy to crush the Danes. The survivors also spread the news that Frode trusted only in the help of his champions, and reigned against the will of his people, for his rule had become a tyranny.

In order to examine this rumour, Roller, who was a great traveller abroad, and eager to visit unknown parts, made a vow that he would get into the company of Frode [for he too had that same ulterior motive]. But Erik declared that, splendid as were his bodily parts, he had been rash in pronouncing the vow. At last, seeing him persisting stubbornly in his purpose, Erik bound himself under a similar vow; and the king promised them that he would give them for companions whomsoever they approved by their choice. The brethren, therefore, first resolved to visit their father and beg for the stores and the necessaries that were wanted for so long a journey. He welcomed them paternally, and on the morrow took them to the forest to inspect the herd, for the old man was wealthy in cattle. Also he revealed to them treasures which had long lain hid in caverns of the earth; and they were suffered to gather up whatsoever of these they would [This hidden wealth would seem to add weight to the posit that this Ragnar was King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ Sigurdson].

When they returned to Ragnar’s longhall, Kraka served the boys up a dish of pottage that she had infused with magical properties and Erik sensed which dishes had the stronger potions and he helped himself to those. So Erik, now refreshed by this lucky meal, attained by its inward working the highest pitch of human wisdom. For the potency of the meal bred in him the fulness of all kinds of knowledge to an incredible degree. He was also gifted with an eloquence so courteous and graceful, that he adorned whatsoever he desired to expound with a flow of witty adages. But when Kraka came up, and found that the dish had been turned round, and that Erik had eaten the stronger share of the meal, she lamented that the good luck she had bred for her son should have passed to her stepson.

Then Kraka, accompanied by her husband, took away the brothers on their journey to the sea. They embarked in a single ship, but soon attached two others. They had already reached the coast of Denmark, when, reconnoitering, they learned that seven ships were anchored nearby. That night Erik got into a boat and rowed, pulling silently, close up to the keels of the enemy; and gradually, by screwing in an auger, he bored the planks, nearest to the water, and soon made good his return, the oar-beat being scarce audible. Now he bore himself so warily, that not one of the watchers noted his approach or departure. As he rowed off, the water got in through the chinks of Odd’s vessels, and sank them. The billows were washing away the thwarts, and the sea was flush with the decks, when Odd, seeing the vessels almost on a level with the waves, ordered the heavy seas that had been shipped to be baled out with pitchers. And so, while the crews were toiling on to protect the sinking parts of the vessels from the flood of waters, the enemy hove close up. Thus, as they fell to their arms, the flood came upon them harder, and as they prepared to fight, they found they must swim for it. Thus was Odd slain with all his crew; the look-outs were captured, and it was found that no man escaped to tell the tale of the disaster.

Erik, when the massacre was accomplished, made a rapid retreat, and put in at the isle Lesso. Finding nothing there to appease his hunger, he sent the spoil homeward on two ships, which were to bring back supplies for another year. He would go by himself to the king in a single ship. Meantime Frode learned that Odd and his men had gone down fighting, for a widespread rumour of the massacre had got wind, though the author of the deed was unknown. There were men, however, who told how they had seen three sails putting in to shore, and departing again northwards. Thus Erik went to the harbour, not far from which Frode was tarrying, without suspicion, for it was three ships the Danes were on the lookout for.

When Grep heard of his coming, he hastened down to the sea, intending to assail with chosen and pointed phrases the man whom he had heard was better-spoken than all other folk. Grep’s eloquence was not so much excellent as impudent, for he surpassed all in stubbornness of speech. So he began the dispute with reviling, and assailed Erik with insults to which Erik responded by accusing Grep of cuckolding his king.

At this Grep, shorn of his glibness of rejoinder, set spurs to his horse and rode away. Now when he reached home, he filled the palace with uproarious and vehement clamour; and shouting that he had been worsted in words, roused all his soldiers to fight, as though he would avenge by main force his luckless warfare of tongues. For he swore that he would lay the host of the foreigners under the claws of eagles. But the king warned him that he should give his frenzy pause for counsel, that blind plans were commonly hurtful; that nothing could be done both cautiously and quickly at once; that headstrong efforts were the worst obstacle; and lastly, that it was unseemly to attack a handful with a host. Also, said he, the sagacious man was he who could bridle a raging spirit, and stop his frantic empetuosity in time. Thus the king forced the headlong rage of the young man to yield to reflection. Finding armed vengeance refused him, Grep asked leave at least to try his sorceries by way of revenge. He gained his request, and prepared to go back to the shore with a chosen troop of wizards. So he first put on a pole the severed head of a horse that had been sacrificed to the gods, and setting sticks beneath displayed the jaws grinning agape; hoping that he would foil the first efforts of Erik by the horror of this wild spectacle.

Erik was already on his road to meet them, and saw the head from afar off, and, understanding the whole foul contrivance, he bade his men keep silent and behave warily; no man was to be rash or hasty of speech, lest by some careless outburst they might give some opening to the sorceries; adding that if talking happened to be needed, he would speak for all. And they were now parted by a river; when the wizards, in order to dislodge Erik from the approach to the bridge, set up close to the river, on their own side, the pole on which they had fixed the horse’s head. Nevertheless Erik made dauntlessly for the bridge, and said: “On the bearer fall the ill-luck of what he bears! May a better issue attend our steps! Evil befall the evil-workers! Let the weight of the ominous burden crush the carrier! Let the better auguries bring us safety!” And it happened according to his prayer. For straightway the head was shaken off, the stick fell and crushed the bearer [who fell dead through the river ice].

Then, as Erik advanced a little, it came into his mind that strangers ought to fix on gifts for the king. So he carefully wrapped up in his robe a piece of the river ice to take to the king by way of a present. But when they reached the palace he sought entrance first, and bade his brother follow close behind. Already the slaves of the king, in order to receive him with mockery as he entered, had laid a slippery hide on the threshold; and when Erik stepped upon it, they suddenly jerked it away by dragging a rope, and would have tripped him as he stood upon it, had not Roller, following behind, caught his brother on his breast as he tottered. So Erik, having half fallen, said that “bare was the back of the brotherless.” And when Gunwar said that such a trick ought not to be permitted by a king, the king condemned the folly of the messenger who took no heed against such treachery.

Within the palace was blazing a fire, which the aspect of the season required: for it was now gone midwinter. By it, in different groups, sat the king on one side and the champions on the other. These latter, when Erik joined them, uttered gruesome sounds like things howling. But when Koll, who was the keeper of all gifts offered to the king, asked him whether he had brought any presents with him, Erik produced the ice which he had hidden in his breast. And when he had handed it to Koll across the hearth, he purposely let it go into the fire, as though it had slipped from the hand of the receiver. All present saw the shining fragment, and it seemed as though molten metal had fallen into the fire. Erik, maintaining that it had been jerked away by the carelessness of him who took it, asked what punishment was due to the loser of the gift.

The king consulted the opinion of the queen, who advised him not to relax the statute of the law which he had passed, whereby he gave warning that all who lost presents that were transmitted to him should be punished with death. Everyone else also said that the penalty by law appointed ought not to be remitted. And so the king, being counselled to allow the punishment as inevitable, gave leave for Koll to be hanged.

Then Frode began to accost Erik thus: “O thou, wantoning in insolent phrase, in boastful and bedizened speech, whence dost thou say that thou hast come hither, and why?”

Erik answered: “I came from Rennes Isle [Rennesoy, at the entrance of Stavanger Vik in southwest Norway], and I took my seat by a stone.”

Frode rejoined: “I ask, whither thou wentest next?”

Erik described his sea voyage in simile that went on for some time before finally answering: “Oft again I made my way to the lopped timbers of the woods; but, as I rested there, wolves that were sated on human carcases licked the points of the spears. There a lance-head was shaken from the shaft of the king, and it was the grandson of Fridleif.”

Frode said: “I am bewildered, and know not what to think about the dispute: for thou hast beguiled my mind with very dark riddling.”

Erik answered: “Thou owest me the prize for this contest that is finished: for under a veil I have declared to thee certain things thou hast ill understood. For under the name I gave before of `spear-point’ I signified Odd, whom my hand had slain.”

And when the queen also had awarded him the palm of eloquence and the prize for flow of speech, the king straightway took a bracelet from his arm, and gave it to him as the appointed reward, adding: “I would fain learn from thyself thy debate with Grep, wherein he was not ashamed openly to avow himself vanquished.”

Then said Erik: “He was smitten with shame for the adultery wherewith he was taxed; for since he could bring no defence, he confessed that he had committed it with thy wife.”

The king turned to Hanund and asked her in what spirit she received the charge; and she not only confessed her guilt by a cry, but also put forth in her face a blushing signal of her sin, and gave manifest token of her fault. The king, observing not only her words, but also the signs of her countenance, but doubting with what sentence he should punish the criminal, let the queen settle by her own choice the punishment which her crime deserved. When she learnt that the sentence committed to her concerned her own guilt, she wavered awhile as she pondered how to appraise her transgression; but Grep sprang up and ran forward to transfix Erik with a spear, wishing to buy off his own death by slaying the accuser. But Roller fell on him with drawn sword, and dealt him first the doom he had himself purposed.

Erik said: “The service of kin is best for the helpless.”

And Roller said: “In sore needs good men should be dutifully summoned.”

Then Frode said: “I think it will happen to you according to the common saying, `that the striker sometimes has short joy of his stroke’, and `that the hand is seldom long glad of the smiting’.”

Erik answered: “The man must not be impeached whose deed justice excuses. For my work is as far as from that of Grep, as an act of self-defence is from an attack upon another.”

Then the brethren of Grep began to spring up and clamour and swear that they would either bring avengers upon the whole fleet of Erik, or would fight him and ten champions with him.

Erik said to them: “Since it is best for a man in distress to delay evil and stave off hard necessity, I ask three days’ space to get ready, provided that I may obtain from the king the skin of a freshly slain ox.”

Frode answered: “He who fell on a hide deserves a hide”; thus openly taunting the asker with his previous fall.

But Erik, took the hide that was given him anyway, because he planned to make some special boots for his people. At last, having meditated what spot he should choose for the fight—for he said that he was unskilled in combat by land and in all warfare—he demanded it should be on the frozen sea. To this both sides agreed. The king granted a truce for preparations, and bade the sons of Westmar withdraw, saying that it was amiss that a guest, even if he had deserved ill should be driven from his lodging. Then he went back to examine into the manner of the punishment, which he had left to the queen’s own choice to exact. For she forebore to give judgment, and begged pardon for her slip. Erik added, that woman’s errors must often be forgiven, and that punishment ought not to be inflicted, unless amendment were unable to get rid of her fault. So the king pardoned Hanund.  [In Heidrik’s Saga, the king sends his queen back to the Huns, not knowing that she is with child.]

As twilight drew near, Erik said: “With Gotar, not only are rooms provided when the soldiers are coming to feast at the banquet, but each is appointed a separate place and seat where he is to lie.” Then the king gave up for their occupation the places where his own champions had sat; and next the servants brought the banquet. But Erik, knowing well the courtesy of the king, which made him forbid them to use up any of the meal that was left, cast away the piece of which he had tasted very little, calling whole portions broken bits of food. And so, as the dishes dwindled, the servants brought up fresh ones to the lacking and shamefaced guests, thus spending on a little supper what might have served for a great banquet.  Erik then took special care to gather up the shin bones of the beef served them and he wrapped them in the hide he was given.

So the king said: “Are the soldiers of Gotar wont to squander the meat after once touching it, as if it were so many pared-off crusts? And to spurn the first dishes as if they were the last morsels?”

Erik said: “Uncouthness claims no place in the manners of Gotar, neither does any disorderly habit feign there.”

But Frode said: “Then thy manners are not those of thy lord, and thou hast proved that thou hast not taken all wisdom to heart. For he who goes against the example of his elders shows himself a deserter and a renegade.”

Then said Erik: “The wise man must be taught by the wiser. For knowledge grows by learning, and instruction is advanced by doctrine.”

Frode rejoined: “This affectation of thine of superfluous words, what exemplary lesson will it teach me?”

Erik said: “A loyal few are a safer defence for a king than many traitors.”

Frode said to him: “Wilt thou then show us closer allegiance than the rest?”

Erik answered: “No man ties the unborn (horse) to the crib, or the unbegotten to the stall. For thou hast not yet experienced all things. Besides, with Gotar there is always a mixture of drinking with feasting; liquor, over and above, and as well as meat, is the joy of the reveller.”

Frode said: “Never have I found a more shameless beggar of meat and drink.”

Erik replied: “Few reckon the need of the silent, or measure the wants of him who holds his peace.”

Then the king bade his sister [Gunwar] bring forth the drink in a great goblet. Erik caught hold of her right hand and of the goblet she offered at the same time, and said: “Noblest of kings, hath thy benignity granted me this present? Dost thou assure me that what I hold shall be mine as an irrevocable gift?”

The king, thinking that he was only asking for the cup, declared it was a gift. But Erik drew the maiden to him, as if she was given with the cup. When the king saw it, he said: “A fool is shown by his deed; with us freedom of maidens is ever held inviolate.”

Then Erik, feigning that he would cut off the girl’s hand with his sword, as though it had been granted under the name of the cup, said: “If I have taken more than thou gavest, or if I am rash to keep the whole, let me at least get some.” The king saw his mistake in his promise, and gave him the maiden, being loth to undo his heedlessness by fickleness, and that the weight of his pledge might seem the greater; though it is held an act more of ripe judgment than of unsteadfastness to take back a foolish promise.

Then, taking from Erik security that he would return, he sent him to the ships; for the time appointed for the battle was near at hand. Erik took the hide and bones he had garnered and set about making special Finnish boots his father, Ragnar, had taught him to fashion.  Using his smithy skills Erik rivetted bone blades to the boots Gunwar’s maidens were sewing and, at the appointed time, he and Roller and ten of their men went on to the sea, then covered near with ice; and, thanks to the speed and stability of their Finmark ice skates, felled the enemy, whose footing was slippery and unsteady. For Frode had decreed that no man should help either side if it wavered or were distressed. Then he went back in triumph to the king.

[In the Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok there is an episode when King Ragnar of Zealand went to war with the Finns and found their winter hit and run guerilla tactics very difficult to deal with until he and his men learned all about the equipment of the Finns and learned how to ski and even skate.  Then the Danes turned the war in their favour and were soon collecting tribute from the Finns.]

After several more contests in which Erik brought down the rest of the House of Westmar and earned the support of Frode by saving his life, he finally earned the hand of Princess Gunwar.

The king had an assembly summoned, to which he called Erik, and under the pledge of betrothal gave him his sister and command over a hundred men [a Centuriata]. Then he added that the queen, Hanund, would be a weariness to him, and that the daughter of Gotar had taken his liking. He must, therefore, have a fresh embassy, and the business could best be done by Erik, for whose efforts nothing seemed too hard. He also said that he would stone Gotwar to death for her complicity in concealing the crime; but Hanund he would restore to her father, that he might not have a traitress against his life dwelling amongst the Danes. Erik approved his plans, and promised his help to carry out his bidding; except that he declared that it would be better to marry the queen, when she had been put away, to Roller, of whom his sovereignty need have no fears. This opinion Frode received reverentially, as though it were some lesson vouchsafed from above. And so the brethren celebrated their marriages together, one wedding the sister of the king, and the other his divorced queen.

Erik and Roller sailed back to Norway, taking their wives with them, and they were successful in their embassy and, after many trials and tribulations involving the deceit and deception of their own King Gotar, they returned to Zealand and the wedding of Alfhild and Frode was kept.

Here Saxo is stepping away from the tradition that Hanund had been returned to her father in Khazaria, unbeknownst to King Frodi, pregnant with child, and beknownst only to the gods who it was fathered by, Grep or Frodi.  Saxo quite elaborately set up the Samso Cycle only to step away from it at the last moment.  As a note, the Norwegians themselves must have seen Erik and Roller’s allying themselves with the Danish king as being high treason, for in the Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok, Prince Erik ends his life impaled upon spears, impalement being the Roman punishment for high treason.  In Hervor and Heidrek’s Saga, a fragment may be interpreted as Queen Hanund being returned to Khazaria with child and soon has a son:

Hlöth the son of King Heithrek Frodi was brought up at the court of King Humli, his grandfather. He was a very handsome and valiant man. There was an old saying at that time that a man was “born with weapons or horses.” And the explanation is that it referred to the weapons which were being forged at the time when the man was born; also to any sheep, beasts, oxen and horses that were born about the same time. These were all given to high-born men as an honour to them, as is here related about Hlöth the son of Heithrek Frodi:

In the land of the Huns was Hlöth born

In a holy forest glade,

With ring-bedizened helmet,

With dagger and keen-edged blade,

With byrnie and with broadsword,

And noble prancing steed.

Returning to Saxo’s Book 5 (Circa 831 AD) we learn that King Frodi has decided to attack the Sclavs [Scandinavian Slavs? Goths?] settled along the Dvina River in Northern Scythia:

Meanwhile Strunik the King of the Sclavs sent envoys to ask for a truce; but Frode refused him. After these words he fought a furious battle, slew Strunik with the bravest of his race, and received the surrender of the rest. Then Frode called the Sclavs together, and proclaimed by a herald that any man among them who had been trained to theft or plunder should be speedily given up; promising that he would reward the character of such men with the highest honours. He also ordered that all of them, who were versed in evil arts should come forth to have their reward. This offer pleased the Sclavs: and some of them, tempted by their hopes of the gift, betrayed themselves with more avarice than judgment, before the others could make them known. These were misled by such great covetousness, that they thought less of shame than lucre, and accounted as their glory what was really their guilt. When these had given themselves up of their own will, he said: “Sclavs! This is the pest from which you must clear your land yourselves.” And straightway he ordered the executioners to seize them, and had them fixed upon the highest gallows by the hand of their own countrymen. The punishers looked fewer than the punished. And thus the shrewd king, by refusing to those who owned their guilt the pardon which he granted to the conquered foe, destroyed almost the entire stock of the Sclavic race.

In my writings it is here that King Frodi earned himself the byname ‘Angantyr’ (the Hanging God King) for having the thieves hanged with a wolf, a very brutal type of execution whereby a thief and a wolf would both be hanged by their feet together and were left to fight it out.

Meanwhile, Gotar, in order to punish Erik, equipped his army for war: and Frode, on the other side, equipped a great fleet to go against Norway. When both alike had put into Rennes Isle [Rennesoy, at the mouth of Stavanger Fjord, which Saxo claims Ragnar Lothbrok ruled], Gotar, terrified by the greatness of Frode’s name, sent ambassadors to pray for peace. Erik said to them, “Shameless is the robber who is the first to seek peace, or ventures to offer it to the good. He who longs to win must struggle: blow must counter blow, malice repel malice.”

Gotar listened attentively to this from a distance, and then said, as loudly as he could: “Each man fights for valour according as he remembers kindness.” Erik said to him: “I have requited thy kindness by giving thee back counsel.” By this speech he meant that his excellent advice was worth more than all manner of gifts. And, in order to show that Gotar was ungrateful for the counsel he had received, he said: “When thou desiredst to take my life and my wife, thou didst mar the look of thy fair example. Only the sword has the right to decide between us.” Then Gotar attacked the fleet of the Danes; he was unsuccessful in the engagement, and was slain.

Afterwards Roller received his realm from Frode as a gift; it stretched over seven provinces. Erik likewise presented Roller with the province which Gotar had once bestowed upon him. After these exploits Frode passed three years in complete and tranquil peace.

[Circa 831 AD]  Meanwhile the King of the Huns, when he heard that his daughter had been put away [or, more likely, was returned home unknowingly with child], allied himself with Olmar, King of the Easterlings [King of Kiev], and in two years equipped an armament against the Danes. So Frode levied an army not only of native Danes, but also of Norwegians and Sclavs. Erik, whom he had sent to spy out the array of the enemy, found Olmar, who had received the command of the fleet, not far from Russia; while the King of the Huns led the land forces. He addressed Olmar thus:

“What means, prithee, this strong equipment of war? Or whither dost thou speed, King Olmar, mighty in thy fleet?”

Olmar. “We are minded to attack the son of Fridleif. And who art thou, whose bold lips ask such questions?”

Erik. “Vain hope of conquering the unconquered hath filled thy heart; over Frode no man can prevail.”

Olmar. “Whatsoever befalls, must once happen for the first time; and often enough the unexpected comes to pass.”

By this saying he let him know that no man must put too much trust in fortune. Then Erik rode up to inspect the army of the Huns. As it passed by him, and he in turn by it, it showed its vanguard to the rising and its rear to the setting sun. So he asked those whom he met, who had the command of all those thousands. Hun, the King of the Huns, happened to see him, and heard that he had undertaken to reconnoitre, and asked what was the name of the questioner. Erik said he was the man who came everywhere and was found nowhere. Then the king, when an interpreter was brought, asked what work Frode was about. Erik replied, “Frode never waits at home for a hostile army, nor tarries in his house for his foe. For he who covets the pinnacle of another’s power must watch and wake all night. No man has ever won a victory by snoring, and no wolf has ever found a carcase by lying asleep.”

The king, perceiving that he was a cunning speaker of choice maxims, said: “Here, perchance, is that Erik who, as I have heard, accused my daughter falsely.”

But Erik, when they were bidden to seize him instantly, said that it was unseemly for one man to be dragged off by many; and by this saying he not only appeased the mind of the king, but even inclined him to be willing to pardon him. But it was clear that this impunity came more from cunning than kindness; for the chief reason why he was let go was that he might terrify Frode by the report of their vast numbers. When he returned, Frode bad him relate what he had discovered, and he said that he had seen six kings each with his fleet; and that each of these fleets contained five thousand ships, each ship being known to hold three hundred rowers. Each millenary of the whole total he said consisted of four wings; now, since the full number of a wing is three hundred, he meant that a millenary should be understood to contain twelve hundred men. When Frode wavered in doubt what he could do against so many, and looked eagerly round for reinforcements, Erik said: “Boldness helps the righteous; a valiant dog must attack the bear; we want wolf-hounds, and not little unwarlike birds.” This said, he advised Frode to muster his fleet. When it was drawn up they sailed off against the enemy; and so they fought and subdued the islands lying between Denmark and the East; and as they advanced thence, met some ships of the Ruthenian fleet. Frode thought it shameful to attack such a handful, but Erik said: “We must seek food from the gaunt and lean. He who falls shall seldom fatten, nor has that man the power to bite whom the huge sack has devoured.” By this warning he cured the king of all shame about making an assault, and presently induced him to attack a small number with a throng; for he showed him that advantage must be counted before honour.

After this they went on to meet Olmar, who because of the slowness of his multitude preferred awaiting the enemy to attacking it; for the vessels of the Ruthenians seemed disorganized, and, owing to their size, not so well able to row. But not even did the force of his multitudes avail him. For the extraordinary masses of the Ruthenians were stronger in numbers than in bravery, and yielded the victory to the stout handful of the Danes.

When Frode tried to return home, his voyage encountered an unheard-of difficulty. For the crowds of dead bodies, and likewise the fragments of shields and spears, bestrewed the entire gulf of the sea, and tossed on the tide, so that the harbours were not only straitened, but stank. The vessels stuck, hampered amid the corpses. They could neither thrust off with oars, nor drive away with poles, the rotting carcases that floated around, or prevent, when they had put one away, another rolling up and driving against the fleet. You would have thought that a war had arisen with the dead, and there was a strange combat with the lifeless.

By this time all the kings of the Russians except Olmar and Dag [Askold and Dir?] had fallen in battle. After this the king asked Erik whether the army of the Huns was as large as the forces of Olmar, and Erik answered in the following song:

“By Hercules, I came on a countless throng, a throng that neither earth nor wave could hold. Thick flared all their camp-fires, and the whole wood blazed up; the flame betokened a numberless array. The earth sank under the fraying of the horse-hoofs; creaking waggons rattled swiftly. The wheels rumbled, the driver rode upon the winds, so that the chariots sounded like thunder. The earth hardly bore the throngs of men-at-arms, speeding on confusedly; they trod it, but it could not bear their weight. I thought that the air crashed and the earth was shaken, so mighty was the motion of the stranger army. For I saw fifteen standards flickering at once; each of them had a hundred lesser standards, and after each of these could have been seen twenty; and the captains in their order were equal in number to the standards.”

Now when Frode asked wherewithal he was to resist so many, Erik instructed him that he must return home and suffer the enemy first to perish of their own hugeness. His counsel was obeyed, the advice being approved as heartily as it was uttered. But the Huns went on through pathless deserts, and, finding provisions nowhere, began to run the risk of general starvation; for it was a huge and swampy district [Novgorod?], and nothing could be found to relieve their want. At last, when the beasts of burden had been cut down and eaten, they began to scatter, lacking carriages as much as food. Now their straying from the road was as perilous to them as their hunger. Neither horses nor asses were spared, nor did they refrain from filthy garbage. At last they did not even spare dogs: to dying men every abomination was lawful; for there is nothing too hard for the bidding of extreme need. At last when they were worn out with hunger, there came a general mortality. Bodies were carried out for burial without end, for all feared to perish, and none pitied the perishing. Fear indeed had cast out humanity. So first the divisions deserted from the king little by little; and then the army melted away by companies. He was also deserted by the prophet Ygg, a man of unknown age, which was prolonged beyond the human span; this man went as a deserter to Frode, and told him of all the preparations of the Huns. [The Huns would not be the last army to be defeated by the vastness of Scythia].

Meanwhile, Frode distributed his soldiers through the towns, and carefully gathered in the materials needed for the winter supplies; but even so he could not maintain his army, with its burden of expense: and plague fell on him almost as great as the destruction that met the Huns. Also, when Frode saw that the cost of keeping up his army grew daily harder to bear, he sent Roller to Norway, Olmar to Sweden, King Onef and Glomer, a rover captain, to the Orkneys for supplies, each with his own forces. Thirty kings followed Frode, and were his friends or vassals. But when Hun heard that Frode had sent away his forces he mustered another and a fresh army.

According to Hervor and Heidrek’s Saga, it is only when Prince Hlod is old enough to claim his share and fight for it that his grandfather, King Hun or Humli of the Khazars, musters an army, so we shall defer this war for another seven years as Prince Erik and Princess Gunwar build their Camelot, Gardariki, in Tmutorokan in Southern Scythia, between the Land of the Huns and the Land of the Volsungs, the East Goths (Greutungs) and the West Goths (Thervings).

Frode, now triumphant, wished to renew peace among all nations, that he might ensure each man’s property from the inroads of thieves and now ensure peace to his realms after war. So he hung one bracelet on a crag which is called Frode’s Rock, and another in the district of Wik, after he had addressed the assembled Norwegians; threatening that these necklaces should serve to test the honesty which he had decreed, and threatening that if they were filched punishment should fall on all the governors of the district. And thus, sorely imperilling the officers, there was the gold unguarded, hanging up full in the parting of the roads, and the booty, so easy to plunder, a temptation to all covetous spirits.  Frode also enacted that seafarers should freely use oars wherever they found them; while to those who wished to a thief was to be hung up with a sword passed through his sinews, with a wolf fastened by his side, so that the wicked man might look like the savage beast, both being punished alike. He also had the same penalty extended to accomplices in thefts. Here he passed seven most happy years of peace, begetting a son Alf and a daughter Eyfura.

In my writings when Prince Hlod reaches the naming age of twelve, he begins making demands for a share of Tmutorokan and the wealth of the Hraes’ Trading Company and the Dan’Way and Nor’Way trade routes.  Prince Erik learns that there is a secret connection between the Khazars and the Eastern Roman Empire and he sets out for Constantinople to remind Emperor Theophilos of their mutual trade agreements and support.  But he leaves his famed sword Tyrfingr with Princess Gunwar because he doesn’t want it to fall into Roman hands.  In Constantinople he is seized and imprisoned and then sent off for execution in the court of King Louis ‘the Pious’ in Angelheim:

CHAPTER THIRTY

30.0  ESCAPE AT INGELHEIM  (Circa 839 AD)

“…along with his envoys the Emperor sent also

  some men who called themselves and their own

  people Rhos;  they asserted that their king,

  Chacanus by name, had sent them to Theophilos

  to establish amity.”

Prudentius, Bishop of Troyes;  Annales Bertiniani (839)

(839 AD) The embassy that the Roman Emperor, Theophilos, sent to the German King, Louis the Pious, consisted of: two state officials, Theodosius, Bishop of Chalcedon, and Theophanes, Imperial Spatharius, along with a cavalry troop of officers of the Immortals, as well as several Norsemen led by Erik, Kagan Bek of the Hraes’.

The two Roman ambassadors carried with them gifts and a sealed letter from their Emperor.  Theophanes explained to Erik, as they travelled the old Roman road through Dacia, that the Emperor had written to King Louis the Pious about Erik’s situation and begged the western sovereign to assist the Rhos in returning to their homeland.  The ambassador even showed Erik the sealed letter, but Erik made sure he noted into which chest Theophanes returned the document.  Later, in the impenetrable darkness of night, Erik slipped into Spatharius Theophanes’ pavilion and purloined the letter.  Taking it back to his own tent, he gently prized the seal open and he read the parchment.  The Emperor Theophilos, true to his Khazar blood, had written a request that Louis the Pious put to death Erik and his Varangians.  Erik put down the letter.  Such deception and treachery were the warp and weave of the ancient Roman legends, Erik told himself, yet, it had been Theophilos who had taught him the tales, and it had been Theophilos who had expounded upon the duplicity within them.  While the wily emperor had wanted Erik dead, apparently, he did not want Erik’s blood upon his hands.  Such were the efforts of a deep mind, Erik reflected, and, while his respect for Theophilos, the Emperor, waned, his regard for Theophilos, the emissary, waxed.

Erik opened his chest with his exposure plate in it and he withdrew a pen, some ink and camphor oils, and Erik made a minor modification to the personal letter of Emperor Theophilos.  The new instructions requested that King Louis the Pious extend to Erik and his men all required assistance in returning to their homeland, instead of the former request that he execute them.  That was how Theophanes had originally told Erik the letter read, and now, indeed, it did.  Erik studied his handywork and was satisfied it would pass scrutiny.  He then carefully heated the back of the wax seal over a candle and reapplied it to the envelope.  Stealing out into the night, Erik returned the letter to the chest in the Spatharius’ pavilion.

Ingleheim was a small town on the Rhine River in Germany, where Louis the Pious had his palace.  It was there that Bishop Theodosius presented his Emperor’s letter to the King of the Franks.  Although Erik’s seal tampering had fooled both Theodosius and Theophanes, King Louis, well-practised in the scrutiny of wax seals and such, became suspicious that the seal had been opened, and when he read the letter he suspected that its contents had been altered.  When he questioned the ambassadors on this mystery, they pleaded innocence, having been told only that the Rhos, according to their Emperor, were, as noted, to be given safe passage north.  King Louis then asked them if Erik or any of the Rhos could have altered the letter, but Bishop Theodosius assured the king that they were pagans and barbarians and quite illiterate.  Erik could make out some of the conversation in German.

“Who are these people, the Rhos?” King Louis asked the bishop.  “Who is their king?”

Bishop Theodosius answered, “They are Swedes and their king is called Kagan.”

On hearing that the Rhos were Swedes, King Louis grew very suspicious, for the northern provinces of the Holy Roman Empire were currently suffering from Viking raids executed by Danes, Norwegians and Swedes.  The Frankish king ordered Erik and his men detained until he could learn their true purpose of being in Germany.

Again, Erik found himself imprisoned by an emperor, however, this time he and his men had no treaty with their hosts guaranteeing them proper treatment, so their accommodations consisted of one common cell in the dungeons of the pious one’s palace.  And, as with his previous stay in prison, Erik was again visited by a stranger.  The Frankish king’s court poet visited Erik often in his prison cell and Erik told him many tales of the Eastern Realm: tales of his father, Hraegunar fighting the fire breathing dragonship Fafnir of the Roman navy, and tales of the Goths and the Huns on the Scythian steppe.  Erik also taught the poet many poems from the northern lands, including some about Germany, itself, before the advent of Christianity had caused clerics and officials to purge the state of pagan poetry and sorcerous tales.  Saga rune sticks and scrolls were burned along with witches, and the Aesir religion and witchcraft were banned from the land.  It was not without risk that the young Frank poet learned the ancient rhymes of his forefathers, and not without price.

“Teach me the pagan poetry and I promise to help you in any way that I can,” the young German told Erik.

“First, you must put in a good word for us to your emperor,” Erik had stated when he first began to teach the Frank.

“Now, you must send a message out to my brother, King Roller of Norway,” he added, several weeks into the lessons.

“Finally, you must help us escape,” were Erik’s words once he had caught the young man up in the spell of mystic and historic poetry.

Erik and the young German had spent many weeks planning Erik’s escape from the dungeon confines, when word came to Ingleheim that there was a large Norwegian fleet anchored at the mouth of the Rhine River, and that the Viking leader sent word demanding the release of Erik Bragi Ragnarson.  It was said that King Roller of Norway personally led the raiders.  At first, King Louis refused to release Erik and the Rhos, for he had not heard any word from Emperor Theophilos on the true meaning of the altered letter, and Erik, growing impatient, wanted the young German poet to carry on with their own plan of escape.

“I will help you if you so desire,” the young man offered, “but I shall have to flee with you.  The king knows that I visit you daily and I will be the first one they’ll suspect of aiding you.  If I am to teach others the poetry of the ancients, I must remain in the court of my king.  Let me talk to the king, convince him that you should be returned to your homeland, and, failing that, I shall help you escape,”

Erik agreed to the plan, and, when Roller advanced the Norwegian fleet up the Rhine, the young poet’s suggestion to his king was well received.  In the dead of the night, the young poet had the guards release Erik and his men and their gear from the cell and he led them to a waiting troop of Frankish cavalry that would escort them from the courtyard of the palace to the Norwegian fleet on the Rhine.  Erik rode off to his brother and the young Frank poet was promoted in the court of King Louis, and his recounting of the ancient poetry Erik had taught him made him very popular with the local nobility.

Although I have Prince Erik escaping the clutches of the Emperors, a rumour got out that he had died:

Then Hlöth learnt of the death of his father Prince Erik and also that his father Angantyr Frodi had been made King over all the territory of the Hraes’. Then King Humli and Hlöth resolved that Hlöth should go and request his father Angantyr to allow him a share of Princess Gunwar’s property, and that he should try first by fair words—as is said here:

Hlöth, the heir of Heithrek,

Came riding from the East,

To where Angantyr was holding

Prince Heithrek’s funeral feast.

He came to his court in Arheimar

Where the Gothic people dwell,

Demanding his share of the heritage left

By the Prince when he journeyed to Hell.

He was offered less than he expected and was insulted to boot:

Hlöth grew very angry at being called an outcast and the child of a bondwoman, if he accepted his father’s offer; so he departed at once with all his men and returned home to King Humli, his mother’s father, in the land of the Huns. And he told Humli that Angantyr his father had not granted him an equal share. King Humli enquired as to all that had passed between them, and was very angry that Hlöth, the son of his daughter, should be called the son of a bondmaid, and he cried:

We will stay in our homes for the winter,

And as princes are wont when they dine,

We will hold high converse together,

Quaffing the costly wine.

We will call on the Hunnish people

To arm them with spear and with shield.—

They shall march to the fight

Right royally dight,

And conquer their foes in the field.

That winter, King Humli and Hlöth remained quiet, but the following spring they collected such a large army that the land of the Huns was swept bare of fighting men. All those of twelve years old and upwards, who were fit for military service and could carry arms, joined the army, and all the horses of two years old and upwards. The host was now so big that thousands and nothing less than thousands could be counted in the legions. And a commander was set over every ‘thousand,’ and a standard was set up over every legion. And there were five ‘thousand’ in each legion, each ‘thousand’ containing thirteen ‘hundreds’, and each ‘hundred’ four times forty men; and these legions were thirty three in number.

When these troops had assembled, they rode through the forest which was called Myrkvith, and which separated the land of the Huns from that of the Goths. And when they emerged from the forest, they came upon a thickly inhabited country with level fields; and on these plains there was a fine fortress. It was under the command of Hervör Princess Gunwar, the sister of Angantyr Frodi, and Olmar, her foster-father was with her, as she was heavy with Erik’s child. They had been appointed to defend the land against the Hunnish host, and they had a large army there:

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

31.0  THE FATE OF GARDARIKI  (Circa 839 AD)

“One morning at sunrise Hervor stood on a

watchtower above the fortress-gate, and she saw

a great cloud of dust from horses’ hooves rising

southwards towards the forest, which for a long

time hid the sun.  Presently she saw a glittering

beneath the dustcloud, as though she were gazing

on a mass of gold, bright shields overlaid with

gold, gilded helms and bright corselets; and

then she saw it was the army of the Huns, and a

mighty host.”

Anonymous (Trans by Nora Chadwick);  Hervor’s Saga

(839 AD) Erik had left Gardariki in the spring, and it was summer before the crew of Fair Faxi returned without him.  They brought news that Emperor Theophilos had sent Erik and several crew members along with a Roman mission to Frankland.  From there, Erik was to be allowed make his way to Gardar and King Frodi and gain the aid of the Kievan Hraes’.  Princess Gunwar heard their report, but she did not believe it.  She knew that, if her husband had failed to gain the support of the Greeks, Emperor Theophilos would not allow Erik to go elsewhere for aid.  Her husband was either imprisoned or, more likely, dead.  All at once a great sense of loss overwhelmed Gunwar and she near fainted.  King Olmar caught her up and helped her to her high seat.  A handmaiden loosened Gunwar’s platemail byrnie, then began fanning her with a silk kerchief.

“Erik is dead!” Gunwar whispered to King Olmar.  “I fear my husband is dead.”

“Have faith,” Brother Gregory said, reassuring her.  The Christian cleric and the Slav king exchanged worried glances.

“Take care for the child,” King Olmar said.

For the second time in her life, Gunwar was pregnant, but, with Gotwar out of her life, the baby was expected to go full term and was due in the late fall.

“You croon and worry over the baby as though it were your own,” Gunwar remonstrated them.

King Olmar had arrived in Gardariki with a troop of Slav soldiers shortly after Erik had set out for Constantinople.  He brought word that Princess Alfhild was dead, slain by her husband, and that King Frodi had fallen into an abyss of alcoholism and degradation.  In an unexplained fit of rage, he had had all his senior officers hanged, and shortly after that King Olmar had gathered up his Slav troops and abandoned the capital for Gardariki.  The presence of his soldiers had helped to ensure that the victorious but decimated Hun army retreated back into Khazaria to regroup rather than press on into Tmutorokan.

The day before Fair Faxi had returned, ambassadors of King Hunn and Prince Hlod had visited Gardariki with demands that Princess Gunwar relinquish her rights to Tmutorokan.  The Hraes’ army had been crushed in the Battle of Sarkel, and the Huns believed, once again, that Erik was dead.  Gunwar had sent the emissaries home with a firm rejection of their demands and had assured them that Erik was still very much alive, drawing his famed sword Tyrfingr from its scabbard and showing them its strange glow as proof of her husband’s escape.  She had then sheathed the sword and sent the ambassadors back to the land of the Huns with reassurances that her husband still lived, but now she was no longer so sure of that claim.

In the early fall, a messenger that Gunwar routinely sent out to attempt to contact her brother, King Frodi, got through the Magyar blockade.  She managed to gain an audience with the king, and, even more incredibly, she made it back through the Turkoi barrier.  In Gotland, she found General Ygg at the head of a large contingent of Goth troops bound for Gardariki, so, being in the guise of a male warrior, she joined them on the return home.  Gunwar announced that there would be a great feast of welcoming for General Ygg and his Gothic host, but she had a private audience with her messenger.

“It is like Denmark of old,” the messenger claimed, “when King Frodi ruled with his berserker champions.”   She had been a long time with Gunwar’s shield-maiden retinue.  “He is in a drunken and tragic state, and crime runs rampant in Konogard.  All the citizens of note have fled the capital, and a new cadre of young officers control the city with a vile hand.  We can expect no help from your brother,” she concluded.

Gunwar stood up off her high seat and paced.  Age had not touched her at all.  Tall and lithe, she walked the dais, her long blond hair flowing over her platemail byrnie, which was loose at the bottom, allowing room for her pregnancy.  She had resumed wearing her warrior’s armour the day Erik had left; male warriors viewed a woman in war gear with a certain uneasy reverence, and Gunwar knew she would need all the leverage she could muster in order to hold their crumbling little trading empire together.  ‘Her’ crumbling little empire, Gunwar corrected herself, as the weight of Erik’s likely death came down upon her.  She wished she could die with her husband, but she felt the baby within her and she was thankful.  A small part of Erik was growing within her.  Erik’s son.  Gunwar felt it was a boy.  Now she had to hold her little empire together for him.

As summer waned and the seasons changed, the demands of the Huns grew increasingly aggressive.  Military units replaced ambassadors in presenting the Hun terms, and these were, in turn, replaced by cavalry regiments.  Finally, in late fall, word filtered into Gardariki, as news often does in a city under siege, that the Huns had raised a huge host and that it was on its way to Tmutorokan.  When the rumoured army failed to materialize, the Gardariki Hraes’ breathed a sigh of relief.  There had been a revolt in Atil, the capital of Khazaria, and the loyal Hun regiments were recalled to put down the rebellion.  Several noble houses of the At-Khazars had attempted to overthrow the rule of the great kagan, and King Hunn, as kagan bek of the Khazars, was forced to return to the capital to rescue his Caesar.  At the approach of the feared Hunnish host, the rebellious At-Khazar forces fled the country to shelter among the Magyars.  There, beyond reach of the Khazar regular forces, they continued to foment trouble for the Khaganate.  But the Hun army was freed up to carry on its campaign against the Hraes’.

Just when the people of Gardariki began to believe that the season was too far gone for the Huns to renew their campaign, that they would be spared from Khazar attack until spring at the earliest, just then did the Hun army penetrate through the Mirkwood Forest.  Thousands of cavalry troops led the way, as the Huns emerged from the trees onto the grassy plains of the Don Heath, followed by many more times their number in lightly armed foot-soldiers, complemented by archers and slingers and support troops.  Trailing back into Khazaria for many miles, the column of soldiers worked its way into the land of the Hraes’.

One morning, King Olmar and General Ygg returned to Gardariki from a scouting expedition and called Princess Gunwar forth to the fortress gate.  From a high stone tower of her city wall, Gunwar saw a mighty cloud of dust rising up on the eastern horizon, obscuring the orient pearl of dawn, the sun, the dust rolling slowly and effortlessly west across the plain.  An aura glowed gold beneath the dusty cloud, evincing glittering armour and bristling raiment, as the fiery mass of the Hunnish host blazed across the eastern firmament.

The sight of such a fine array, or perhaps its dire portents, caused Gunwar’s water to break and she went into premature labour.  She was two weeks early when her contractions began up upon the walls of the city.  Her handmaiden helped her down the stone stairs, across the compound and into her high seat hall.  From the bed in her chamber, Gunwar gave the order to sound the general alarm.  Soon the church bells were heard ringing and there was a great movement of troops as the Slav king and the Goth general rushed out of the high seat hall and rallied their warriors.  The dwarf, Durin, sent for Brother Gregory, and he arrived in Gunwar’s bedchamber just as her baby was being born.

Two of the princess’s shield-maidens were at each side as Gunwar cried out in agony.  A midwife was at the foot of the bed massaging her swollen belly.  Durin stood back a little and watched a small crown of hair issuing forth from between the princess’s legs.  Gunwar was breathing in short gasps and pushing hard.

“Stop pushing,” the midwife said, as the head of the infant cleared its mother, and she untangled the blue-white cord wrapped about the throat of the baby and cleared mucus from around the nose, mouth and eyes.  “Now push!” the midwife said, and the rest of the baby slid out into the cool still air of the room.  Gunwar cried out in pain.  Durin watched, in awe, the spectacle of birth.  Brother Gregory saw his premonition come to life from the doorway.  Suddenly, the still body came to life, and it cried.  “The knife,” the midwife said once she felt the pulsing of the cord cease, and Durin stepped forward and cut the umbilical cord with his dagger.  The midwife drew a brand from a nearby brazier and cauterised the cord, then passed the brand to Durin and raised the infant so that Gunwar could see.

“It’s a boy!” Brother Gregory exclaimed, as the midwife passed the infant up to his mother.

Immediately, Gunwar ceased her painful sobbing and, as if by magic, all pain was gone, and a passionate glow overcame her.  “I knew it was a boy,” Princess Gunwar said weakly, exhausted, but radiant with the aura of motherhood.  “I wish to name him Helgi,” she announced.  “It means Holy in the Christian faith,” and Gunwar confessed to having accepted the Orthodox Christian religion into her life.  “I have taken Hervor as my Christian name,” she added.

Just then, King Olmar and General Ygg entered the chamber.  General Ygg surveyed the situation in dismay and said, “The Huns are but a day’s march away, my lady,” but King Olmar went straight to the child in Gunwar’s arms and exclaimed, “It’s a boy!” and he held the child up, proudly, for all to see.

The next day, Princess Gunwar sent King Olmar and General Ygg out onto the plains outside Gardariki and they marked their battlefield with hazel poles and then they challenged the Hunnish host to battle in two days’ time.  This was, of course, done against the protests of all her officers.  General Ygg recommended a general retreat to the land of the Goths and offered Gunwar and the Gardariki Hraes’ sanctuary there.  King Olmar suggested that they sail up the Dnieper and fight their way through the Magyar blockade.  The dwarf Durin was the only one to side with Gunwar in her desire to fight the Huns.  After the battle of Sarkel he had no love of the Khazar army.

After two days respite, in the soft frosty glow of false dawn, the Hunnish host drew up in battle array, their ranks bristling with gilded barbs, their war ponies pawing at the hoarfrost dew.  Gunwar led a smaller but determined force out from the protective walls of Gardariki and onto the field of battle, leaving her new-born son suckling at the breast of a nursemaid.  The dwarf, Durin, rode before her, in the vanguard of the Gardariki Hraes’, with King Olmar leading his Slav troops on the left flank and General Ygg commanding his Goths on the right.  With her long blond hair tucked up under her Greek helmet, and her body clad in her platemail armour, Gunwar looked every bit a Roman cavalry officer.  She drew Tyrfingr from its sheath, raised the famed sword above her, and gave the signal for her army to move forward.  The Huns, in turn, began their advance.

First the archers on both sides loosed their arrows, then the heavy infantry hurled their spears, and then the armies merged, two wavering lines blending into one mass, and the fighting began in earnest.  Up and down the main line of battle, the standards danced, first advancing a little, then falling back.  Mounted soldiers and officers fought side by side with foot-soldiers all along the front, while Hraes’ cavalry regiments fought the Hun horsemen on the outer flanks.  A dull clattering roar sounded across the plain and would not stop.

As the sun rose up high into the late fall sky, it looked as though neither side would budge, but a savage blow from a Hun horseman’s lance knocked the helmet off Gunwar’s head, and the force of it stunned the princess momentarily, as her bright flowing locks leapt about the gold gilt mail on her shoulders.  Regaining control of her mount, Gunwar lashed out at the Turk with Tyrfingr and killed him.  All the Huns before the princess fell back and none would withstand the fierce blows of the female warrior and it looked as though the Hunnish host was breaking up before her attacks, when Prince Hlod, slinking in from her blind side, pierced his aunt with a bright golden lance.  Princess Gunwar dropped Tyrfingr into the battlefield dust, and she clutched at the lance stuck between her ribs, and she pulled the spear free of her nephew’s grip.  She held the lance ever so gently and she slid from the saddle of her mount, then she kneeled by her husband’s cursed sword, and, like someone grown suddenly tired, she lay down beside the blade and she died.  Durin flew into a great rage and he drove back the cowardly attack of the Hun prince, then leapt down from his mount, but he was too late–Princess Gunwar was already dead.  The dwarf dragged her body into the sheltering ranks of the Hraes’ army, then he laid Gunwar across the saddle of her mount and he tied her in place.  He then gathered up his own mount and he led Gunwar’s horse in trot back to Gardariki.

General Ygg came to the vanguard from the flank and attempted to rally the Hraes’ forces, but their losses were too great and the Hun warriors too numerous.  Soon a general panic came over the Hraes’ army, and everyone began to flee to the safety of the walls of Gardariki.  King Olmar and his Slav troops fought a brave rear guard battle as the Hraes’ and then the Goths fled the field.  Within the walls of Gardariki, calm returned to the troops and they took to the battlements and prevented the pursuing Huns from overrunning the city.  Once the surviving rear guard forces had entered the fortress, King Olmar broke away from the fight, looking for Gunwar in her high seat hall.  He found General Ygg and Durin and Brother Gregory there, all gathered in a semi-circle about the serene body of Princess Gunwar laid out upon her dais. 

“How died she?” King Olmar asked.

“Slain from behind by her nephew, Prince Hlod,” Durin answered.

“Oh, infamous day!” General Ygg cried.  “Murderously early the evil whelp claims his inheritance.  Pray to your God, brother that Erik yet lives to avenge her.”

But Brother Gregory did not hear his brother, Yggerus.  He was busy administering last rites to the slain Princess Gunwar, but by her Christian name, Hervor, for he had just recently baptised her in to the Orthodox faith.

Outside the hall, chaos reigned.  The citizens of Gardariki were in a panic and frightened groups of women and children thronged in and about the small stone church of the Christians.  King Olmar and General Ygg took joint control of the Hraes’ troops and began to organize the evacuation of Gardariki, placing all the ships in the city on standby for a retreat to the land of the Goths under cover of darkness.  As evening came upon the steppe, the victorious Huns withdrew from the walls of the city and returned to their war camp.

When Brother Gregory had finished his obsequies over the body of Princess Hervor, he looked about himself to find everyone gone.  The high seat hall was deserted and quiet, and even the sounds from without ceased suddenly.  Then Brother Gregory heard the crying of an infant, and Durin entered the hall from the bedchambers carrying Prince Erik and Princess Hervor’s baby in his arms.  The child was crying as Durin placed him up to Hervor’s cheek, and the rivulet of a tear from the infant could be seen running down her pale dusty countenance.  “She didn’t even get to name him,” Durin cried.

“What is to become of the child?” Brother Gregory asked the dwarf.

“Erik placed me under oath to protect his household, and, again, I have failed him.  I must take the child across the Nor’Way, to King Roller of Norway, Erik’s brother.  The Huns must never know he is alive, for he has a just claim to Gardariki.  He must be raised in the north, safe from Khazar treachery.”

“I shall help you,” the cleric offered.

“I intend to take him in his father’s ship up and across their family’s Nor’Way.  The path will be through Hun lands, long, hard and dangerous.  All would understand if you chose not to go.”

“I give you my word that I shall do all within my powers to see that you fulfil your oath.”

That night, Brother Gregory, King Olmar, General Ygg and Durin buried Princess Hervor in an unmarked grave beside the small stone church of the Christians.  Then King Olmar and General Ygg began to argue over what was to be done with the baby.  King Olmar wanted to take it back to Kiev.  General Ygg wanted it raised amongst the Crimean Goths.  But Durin and Brother Gregory insisted on taking him to Erik’s family in Norway.  General Ygg finally relented, so when the midnight evacuation of Gardariki took place, all the ships of the Hraes’ sailed to the mouth of the Kuban River, and, while the rest of the fleet sailed west for the Crimea, Durin and Brother Gregory sailed north in Fair Faxi, bound for the Don River and beyond.

Prince Hlod had gathered up the famed sword Tyrfingr out of the battlefield dust and later offered it to the Kagan of the Khazars:

   “Prince, this tribute is not good.  We have

  conquered them with a weapon having one edge,

  which is called the `sabre’;  but their weapon

  has two edges and is called `sword’, and (later)

  they will have tribute from us and from other countries.”

            Khazar Elders;  The Hraes’ Primary (Nikonian) Chronicle

Returning once more to Book 5 of Saxo’s Danish History Circa 840 AD (but not in quite the correct order):

At the same time came to pass a savage war between Alrik, king of the Swedes, and Gestiblind, king of the Goths [Oster and Vaster Goths of Southern Sweden, not Scythia]. The latter, being the weaker, approached Frode as a suppliant, willing, if he might get his aid, to surrender his kingdom and himself. He soon received the aid of Skalk, the Skanian, and Erik, and came back with reinforcements. He had determined to let loose his attack on Alrik, but Erik thought that he should first assail his son Gunthion, governor of the men of Wermland and Solongs. So he made an attack, wherein perished Gunthion, whose tomb records his name. Alrik, when he heard of the destruction of his son, hastened to avenge him, and when he had observed his enemies, he summoned Erik, and, in a secret interview, recounted the leagues of their fathers, imploring him to refuse to fight for Gestiblind. This Erik steadfastly declined, and Alrik then asked leave to fight Gestiblind, thinking that a duel was better than a general engagement. But Erik said that Gestiblind was unfit for arms by reason of old age, pleading his bad health, and above all his years; but offered himself to fight in his place, explaining that it would be shameful to decline a duel on behalf of the man for whom he had come to make a war. Then they fought without delay: Alrik was killed, and Erik was most severely wounded; it was hard to find remedies, and he did not for long time recover health.

[In my writings I speculate that perhaps King Bjorn ‘of the Barrows’ may have been another son of King Alrik and survives Erik’s initial rule by playing the fool and flying kites atop the barrow of his father in Sweden, but when Erik has difficulty recovering from his wound, Bjorn seizes the opportunity to take back Sweden and orders Erik to be executed once he recovers.  While healing, news arrives that his wife, Princess Gunwar (Christianized as Hervor), has died in battle defending Gardariki in Southern Scythia, so Erik ‘Bragi the Old’ Ragnarson writes a drapa in honour of his princess and Bjorn ‘of the Barrows’ hears it and is so impressed by it that he offers to spare Erik’s head if he would just write a Praise Drapa in honour of himself and this becomes ‘The Head Ransom Drapa’ written by Bragi ‘the Old’ that is referenced by Prince Arinbjorn in the later ‘Egil’s Saga’.  And Bjorn’s survival by playing a fool may also be the spark that ignites the Amleth Tale that is told in Books 3 & 4 of Saxo’s Danish History and that may be why the tale precedes Book 5…because Erik ‘Bragi’ is the original writer of Hamlet, having read the tale of Lucius Junius Brutus while imprisoned in Constantinople.]

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

32.0  BRAGI THE OLD AND BJORN OF THE BARROWS  (Circa 840 AD)

“That’s what my kinsman Bragi the Old did when he had to face the

  anger of King Bjorn of Sweden.  He made a drapa of twenty stanzas

  overnight and that’s what saved his head.”

Prince Arinbjorn; Egil’s Saga (c. 1230 A.D.)

(Circa 840 AD) “You must garner the support of the north,” Brak told Erik.  “You must get all of the Aesir behind you.”

And that is exactly what Erik ‘Bragi the Old’s drapa in praise of Princess Gunwar and her death on the dusty Dunheath did.  And the Head Ransom drapa that followed saved his life and compelled King Bjorn ‘of the Barrows’ to champion his cause.  It galvanized the North; the Scandinavian kings and champions were all drawn to the East to help against the matricidal Huns.

And now, back to Book 5:

Now a false report had come to Frode that Erik had fallen, and was tormenting the king’s mind with sore grief; but Erik dispelled this sadness with his welcome return; indeed, he reported to Frode that by his efforts Sweden, Wermland, Helsingland, and the islands of the Sun (Soleyar) had been added to his realm. Frode straightway made him king of the nations he had subdued, and also granted to him Helsingland with the two Laplands, Finland and Esthonia, under a yearly tribute. None of the Swedish kings before him was called by the name of Erik, but the title passed from him to the rest.

It chanced that in these days Arngrim, a champion of Sweden, who had challenged, attacked, and slain Skalk the Skanian because he had once robbed him of a vessel, came to Frode. Elated beyond measure with his deed, he ventured to sue for Frode’s daughter; but, finding the king deaf to him, he asked Erik, who was ruling Sweden, to help him. Erik advised him to win Frode’s goodwill by some illustrious service, and to fight against Egther, the King of Permland, and Thengil, the King of Finmark, since they alone seemed to repudiate the Danish rule, while all men else submitted. Without delay he led his army to those countries which he conquered. Enriched with spoils and trophies, he returned to Erik, who went with him into Denmark, and poured loud praises of the young warrior into the ear of Frode, declaring that he who had added the ends of the world to his realms deserved his daughter. Then Frode, considering his splendid deserts, thought it was not amiss to take for a son-in-law a man who had won wide-resounding fame by such a roll of noble deeds.

In the autumn, the men in search of supplies came back, but they were richer in trophies than in food. For Roller had made tributary the provinces Sundmor and Nordmor, after slaying Arthor their king. But Olmar conquered Thor the Long, the King of the Jemts and the Helsings, with two other captains of no less power, and also took Esthonia and Kurland, with Oland, and the isles that fringe Sweden; thus he was a most renowned conqueror of savage lands. So he brought back 700 ships, thus doubling the numbers of those previously taken out. Onef and Glomer, Hedin and Hogni, won victories over the Orkneys, and returned with 900 ships. And by this time revenues had been got in from far and wide, and there were ample materials gathered by plunder to recruit their resources. They had also added twenty kingdoms to the sway of Frode, whose kings, added to the thirty named before, fought on the side of the Danes.

(Circa 841 AD)  Trusting in their strength, they engaged with the Huns. Such a carnage broke out on the first day of this combat that the three chief rivers of Russia were bestrewn with a kind of bridge of corpses, and could be crossed and passed over. Also the traces of the massacre spread so wide that for the space of three days’ ride the ground was to be seen covered with human carcases. So, when the battle had been seven days prolonged, King Hun fell; and his brother of the same name, when he saw the line of the Huns giving way, without delay surrendered himself and his company. In that war 170 kings, who were either Huns or fighting amongst the Huns, surrendered to the king. This great number Erik had comprised in his previous description of the standards, when he was giving an account of the multitude of the Huns in answer to the questions of Frode. So Frode summoned the kings to assembly, and imposed a rule upon them that they should all live under one and the same law. Now he set Olmar over Holmgard; Onef over Conogard; and he bestowed Saxony on Hun, his prisoner, and gave Revil the Orkneys. To one Dimar he allotted the management of the provinces of the Helsings, of the Jarnbers, and the Jemts, as well as both Laplands; while on Dag he bestowed the government of Esthonia. Each of these men he burdened with fixed conditions of tribute, thus making allegiance a condition of his kindness. So the realms of Frode embraced Russia on the east, and on the west were bounded by the Rhine.

This is The Battle of the Goths and the Huns as told by Saxo.  Below we have the expanded version as told in Hervor and Heidrek’s Saga:

Olmar rode day and night as fast as he could to King Angantyr [Frodi] in Arheimar [Kiev]. The Huns then proceeded to ravage and burn throughout the land.

And when Olmar came into the presence of King Angantyr, he cried:

“From the south have I journeyed hither

 To bear these tidings to thee:—

 The whole of the forest of Myrkvith

 Is burnt up utterly;

 And the land of the Goths is drenched with blood

 As our warriors fall and die.”

Then he continued:

“All of thy noblest warriors

 On the field are lying dead.

 Prince Erik’s wife fell by the sword;

 She drooped and bowed her head.

 Thy sister Hervör [Gunwar] is now no more.—

 By Prince Hlod was her life-blood shed.

 O prouder and lighter the maiden’s step

 As she wielded her prince’s sword

 Than if she were sped to her trysting place,

 Or her seat at the bridal-board!”

When King Angantyr [Frodi] heard that, he drew back his lips, and it was some time before he spoke. Then he said:

“In no family wise hast thou been treated, my noble sister!”

Then he surveyed his retinue, and his band of men was but small; then he cried:

“The Gothic warriors were many,

 As they sat and drank the mead;

 But now when many are called for,

 The array is poor indeed!

 Not a man in the host will venture—

 Though I offer a rich reward—

 To take his shield,

 And ride to the field,

 To seek out the Hunnish horde.”

Then Gizur the Old cried:

“I will crave no single farthing,

 Nor ringing coin of gold;

 I will take my shield

 And ride to the field

 To the Huns with their myriads untold.

 And the message of war that you send to the host

 Will I carry, and there unfold.”

It was a rule with King Heithrek Frodi that if his army was invading a land, and the King of that land had set up hazel stakes to mark the spot on which the battle was to take place, then the Vikings should not go raiding till the battle had been fought.

Gizur armed himself with good weapons and leapt on his horse as if he had been a young man. Then he cried to the King:

“Where shall I challenge the host of the Huns to battle?”

King Angantyr [Frodi] replied: “Challenge them to battle at Dylgia and on Dunheith, and upon all the heights of Jösur, where the Goths have often won renown by glorious victories!”

Then Gizur rode away until he came to the host of the Huns. He rode just within earshot, and then called loudly, crying:

“Your host is panic stricken,

 And your prince is doomed to fall;

 Though your banners are waving high in the air,

 Yet Odin is wroth with you all.

 Come forth to the Jösur Mountains,

 On Dylgia and Dunheith come fight;

 For I make a sure boast,

 In the heart of your host

 The javelin of Odin will light!”

When Hlöth heard Gizur’s words, he cried:

“Lay hold upon Gizur of the Grytingar, Angantyr’s man, who has come from Arheimar!”

King Humli said: “We must not injure heralds who travel about unattended.”

Gizur cried: “You Hunnish dogs are not going to overcome us with guile.”

Then Gizur struck spurs into his horse and rode back to King Angantyr, and went up to him and saluted him. The King asked him if he had parleyed with the Huns.

Gizur replied: “I spoke with them and I challenged them to meet us on the battlefield of Dunheith and in the valleys of Dylgia.”

Angantyr asked how big the army of the Huns was.

“Their host is very numerous,” replied Gizur. “There are six legions in all, and five ‘thousands’ in every legion, and each ‘thousand’ contains thirteen ‘hundreds,’ and in every ‘hundred’ there are a hundred and sixty men.”

Angantyr asked further questions about the host of the Huns.

He then sent men in all directions to summon every man who was willing to support him and could bear weapons. He then marched to Dunheith with his army, and it was a very great host. There the host of the Huns came against him with an army half as big again as his own.

XV.°  Next day they began their battle, and they fought together the whole day, and at evening they went to their quarters. They continued fighting for eight days, but the princes were then still all unwounded, though none could count the number of the slain. But both day and night troops came thronging round Angantyr’s banner from all quarters; and so it came about that his army never grew less.

The battle now became fiercer than ever. The Huns were desperate, for they now saw that their only chance of escaping annihilation lay in victory, and that sorry would be their lot if they had to ask for quarter from the Goths. The Goths on the other hand were defending their freedom and their native land against the Huns; so they stood fast and encouraged one another to fight on. Then towards the close of the day the Goths made so fierce an attack that the line of the Huns recoiled before it. And when Angantyr saw that, he pressed forward from behind the rampart of shields into the forefront of the battle and he saw his son, Prince Hlod, grasping Tyrfing in his hand, mowing down both men and horses. But then the ranks fell apart in front of the Kings of the Huns, and Hlöth was surrounded by Goths and was dragged from his horse into a sea of swords. There fell Hlöth and King Humli, and then the Huns took to flight. The Goths cut them down and made such a great slaughter that the rivers were dammed with the bodies and diverted from their courses, and the valleys were full of dead men and horses. Angantyr then went to search among the slain, and found his son Hlöth. Then he cried:

“I offered thee wealth unstinted, my son,

 And treasures manifold,—

 Riches of cattle and land, my son,

 Riches of glittering gold;

 But now thou hast wagered and lost in the battle

 Thy desires and glories untold.

 A curse has fallen upon us, my son,

 I have dealt destruction to thee;

 And ne’er shall the deed be forgotten, my son;

 Full ill is the Norns’ decree!”

Now, back to Saxo’s Book 5:

Frode, now triumphant, wished to renew peace among all nations, that he might ensure each man’s property from the inroads of thieves and now ensure peace to his realms after war. So he hung one bracelet on a crag which is called Frode’s Rock, and another in the district of Wik, after he had addressed the assembled Norwegians; threatening that these necklaces should serve to test the honesty which he had decreed, and threatening that if they were filched punishment should fall on all the governors of the district. And thus, sorely imperilling the officers, there was the gold unguarded, hanging up full in the parting of the roads, and the booty, so easy to plunder, a temptation to all covetous spirits.  Frode also enacted that seafarers should freely use oars wherever they found them; while to those who wished to a thief was to be hung up with a sword passed through his sinews, with a wolf fastened by his side, so that the wicked man might look like the savage beast, both being punished alike. He also had the same penalty extended to accomplices in thefts.

This becomes ‘The Peace of Frodi’ by which the king gets his name Frodi ‘the Peaceful’.  For the next stage in the Samso Cycle we must go to Arrow Odd’s Saga, or more precisely, The Varangians, Book 3, The Saga of Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson: 

0.1  BABY HELGI – BORN IN A WAR ZONE  (Circa 839 AD)

This Chapter reprises Princess Gunwar (Hervor) giving birth to her son, Prince Helgi Erikson, just before her defence of Gardariki from an attack by her nephew, Prince Hlod, the Huns of Khazaria.

1.0  GRIM ‘HAIRY-CHEEK’ KETILSON  (Circa 840 AD)

Prince Helgi is taken to safety in the north and ends up being raised on Ingjald’s farm called Berurjod next to Hraegunarstead in Stavanger Fjord.  Young Helgi is known for leaving his arrows lying about and earns the byname of ‘Arrow Odd’ meaning arrow’s edge.

2.0  THE SACK OF PARIS OF 845.

Following the path of Odin, the Vik King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ Sigurdson enlists the help of all his sons from York and Stavanger and The Vik and Gardariki for an attack upon Paris.  The Vikings defeat an army of the Franks and capture the ‘City of Lanterns’ and ransom her for 7,000 pounds of silver.

3.0  THE PROPHECY  (Circa 852 AD)

It is during Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’s naming ceremony that the Prophesy of a Death Foretold is made by the witch Heid.  He is to die from the bite of a poisonous snake from under the skull of a horse named Faxi.

4.0  THE VARANGERS OF SEVILLE  (Circa 855 AD)

Following the path of Odin, the Vik King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ Sigurdson had led an attack upon Seville years earlier that had failed.  Now he led Varangians that had traversed the Nor’Way from the east, south in an attack upon Spain and Italy as they sailed the Mediterranean.

5.0  ODDI AND THE NOR’WAY  (Circa 856 AD)

Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ begins trading along the Nor’Way trade route of King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ and makes a reputation for earning a fortune trading iron swords for the silver swords of the Permians.  But it is actually walrus and narwhal ivory that makes him a fortune in the markets of Constantinople and Baghdad as his traders decimate the northern walrus population and discover new lands while pursuing the huge marine mammals.

6.0  HILDER THE GIANT  (Circa 856 AD)

In this chapter, Arrow Odd visits Giantland and is carried off by a giant eagle, a Rok, very reminiscent of The Seven Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor (perhaps as a result of Baghdad trade), and is saved and captured by Hilder ‘the Giant’.  Before earning his freedom he manages to knock up Hilder’s young daughter and she tells him that if the child is a boy she will send him to him for training as a warrior.

7.0  THE ATTACK ON CONSTANTINOPLE OF 860.

The Hraes’ and Varangians attack Constantinople by sea simultaneously from both the east and the west, but a storm destroys most of the eastern fleet.  King Frodi gets concessions from the Romans but loses so many men that it is a Pyrhic victory.

8.0  THE SIEGE OF KIEV  (Circa 861 AD)

After losing his eastern fleet, King Frodi can no longer hold Kiev against attacks by the local Slavs whom he has spent decades enslaving and selling in the slave markets of Baghdad and Constantinople.  He is forced to retreat back to Denmark and his fortress in Liere.  His Varangians soon begin enslaving the Irish and English and Franks.

9.0  HALFDAN’S GIFT  (Circa 861 AD)

Joining the Freedom Movement, Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ attacks a Varangian slaver called Halfdan (Half Dane) and destroys his fleet and rescues his slaves.

10.0  SOTI’S GIFT  (Circa 861 AD)

Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ next attacks a Varangian slaver called Soti (Another Dane) and destroys his fleet and rescues his slaves.

11.0  HJALMAR THE BRAVE  (Circa 861 AD)

Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ next attacks a possible slaver called Hjalmar ‘the Brave’ (a Swede) and fails to destroy his fleet and finds no slaves.  Hjalmar is an anti-slaver as well, so they join forces.

12.0  THE CALLING BACK OF THE HRAES’  (Circa 862 AD)

“The tributaries of the Varangians drove them back beyond the sea and, refusing them further tribute, set out to govern themselves.  There was no law among them, but tribe rose against tribe.  Discord thus ensued among them, and they began to war one against another. They said to themselves, “Let us seek a prince who may rule over us and judge us according to the Law.”  They accordingly went overseas to the Varangian Hraes’: these particular Varangians were known as Hraes’, just as some are called Swedes, and others Norsemen, Angles, and Goths, for they were thus named.”

The Hraes’ Primary Chronicle

13.0  FIVE EASY BERSERKS  (Circa 862 AD)

Although King Frodi has lost two Varangian slaver fleets to an unknown marauding fleet, he must return to Kiev at the invitation of the Slavs to rule over them once more.  Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ now attacks and kills five Berserker Jarls on Zealand, Denmark and he becomes a wanted man.

14.0 THE DEATH OF RAGNAR ‘LOTHBROK’ SIGURDSON  (Circa 863 AD)

King Ælla suddenly became fearful of the sons of Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ and he asked his young daughter, Princess Blaeja, who was a healer, to go over and revive him but she said, “It is too late.  He is dead.”

“What did he cry out at the end?” AElla asked.

“He said that his young porkers, meaning sons, shall free the old boar, being him, from this pit of snakes, meaning us,” she answered.

“He must have been delirious to think that that might happen.”

“I think he’s cursed us,” she replied.  “I told you not to torture Ragnar or use death by poison blood-snakes to kill him.  You should have put him and his men in those god awful knars and sent him on his way back to Frankia.”

“How has he cursed us?  He just babbled about pigs!”

“He has made us the snakes and his sons are the swine, the mortal enemies of snakes.  If a farmer’s fields are being overrun by snakes he lets his swine out into the fields and they kill and eat all the snakes.  They are impervious to poison.  His sons shall be let out onto the battlefields of Northumbria and they shall kill all the snakes and set Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’s spirit free.  I fear, dear father, that we are focked!”

15.0  PRINCESS OLVOR’S SCALE-MAIL SHIRT  (Circa 864 AD)

“The shirt will have powers thus:  “You shall never get cold when wearing it, whether on sea or on land.  Swimming shall not wear you out, and fire shall not burn you, hunger shall not waste you, and iron shall not bite you unless you are fleeing.”

Princess Olvor;  Arrow Odd’s Saga

16.0  HOLMGANGER ON SAMSO  (Circa 865 AD)

We return to Saxo’s Book 5 for a short take on The Holmganger on Samso:

Arngrim had twelve sons by Eyfura, whose names I here subjoin: Brand, Biarbe, Brodd, Hiarrande; Tand, Tyrfing, two Haddings; Hiortuar, Hiartuar, Hrane, Anganty. These followed the business of sea-roving from their youth up; and they chanced to sail all in one ship to the island Samso, where they found lying off the coast two ships belonging to Hialmar and Arvarodd (Arrow-Odd) the rovers. These ships they attacked and cleared of rowers; but, not knowing whether they had cut down the captains, they fitted the bodies of the slain to their several thwarts, and found that those whom they sought were missing. At this they were sad, knowing that the victory they had won was not worth a straw, and that their safety would run much greater risk in the battle that was to come. In fact, Hialmar and Arvarodd, whose ships had been damaged by a storm, which had torn off their rudders, went into a wood to hew another; and, going round the trunk with their axes, pared down the shapeless timber until the huge stock assumed the form of a marine implement. This they shouldered, and were bearing it down to the beach, ignorant of the disaster of their friends, when the sons of Eyfura, reeking with the fresh blood of the slain, attacked them, so that they two had to fight many; the contest was not even equal, for it was a band of twelve against two. But the victory did not go according to the numbers. For all the sons of Eyfura were killed; Hialmar was slain by them, but Arvarodd gained the honours of victory, being the only survivor left by fate out of all that band of comrades. He, with an incredible effort, poised the still shapeless hulk of the rudder, and drove it so strongly against the bodies of his foes that, with a single thrust of it, he battered and crushed all twelve. And, so, though they were rid of the general storm of war, the band of rovers did not yet quit the ocean.

The Holmganger on Samso is also covered more extensively in both Arrow Odd’s Saga and Hervor and Heidrek’s Saga which has been combined into The Varangians Book 3 The Saga of Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson as follows:

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

16.0  HOLMGANGER ON SAMSO  (Circa 865 AD)

“Hervard, Hjorvard,      Hrani, Angantyr,

 Bild and Bui,               Barri and Toki,

 Tind and Tyrfing,        two Haddings,

 East in Bolm            they were bairns,

 Sons of Arngrim    and Princess Eyfura.”

Arrow Odd’s Saga;  Author Unknown (Trans by Chappell).

(Circa 865 AD)  Arrow Odd gripped a bow in his left hand and held three arrows called Gusir’s Gifts in his right and he surveyed the misty shores of Samso Island, struggling to keep his balance as the waves of Munarvagr Bay rocked his Nor’Way ship, Fair Faxi.  He had never seen Samsey, as the locals called it, but he was sure this was the right island, the island where the holmganger had been called, west of Zealand, east of Jutland, smack in the middle of Denmark.  The bay looked just as Hjalmar’s lord, King Hlodver, had described it, strangely mystical in a moonlit dusk, with a bright curving beach that instantly turned, with a grassy lip, into forest.  “This must be it!” he called out towards the other longship pulling up beside him.

Hjalmar ‘the Brave’ stood at the forestem of that ship and answered back, “I see no one here.  I think they are late.”

“That’s okay,” Oddi shouted.  “Tomorrow we’ll work on your ship.”  They had hit a bit of rough weather while sailing from Sweden.  Hjalmar was in need of a new rudder oar.  The awnings were let on both ships, lookouts were posted and the crews slept at their benches, weapons at the ready.

On the way to Samsey, Angantyr, a giant of a man a head taller than his eleven berserker brothers, touched in at Jarl Bjarmar’s stead and he married Svafa, the Jarl’s daughter…not because he wanted her, but because he did not want Ingibjorg.  He wanted to give the world notice that he was after their heads, Arrow Odd’s and Hjalmar ‘the Brave’s.  And that’s why they were late.  After their wedding nuptials, Angantyr had a portent dream and he stirred so much in his sleep that he woke Svafa.  The next morning he told Jarl Bjarmar about it.

“In my dream,” Angantyr said, “we went to Samsey and we found a lot of birds there and we slew them all.  Then we walked further and two eagles came at us; I struggled with the first and we fought long and hard and the second eagle fought my brothers and seemed to get the upper hand.  I woke in a cold sweat and I fear the dream’s meaning.”

Jarl Bjarmar told Angantyr to return to Holmgard and tell his father, Prince Arngrim about the dream, because the felling of mighty oaks seemed to have been foretold.

So Angantyr and Svafa returned to Holmgard with the brothers and Prince Arngrim understood the portents of the dream and he told his sons that he had never before feared for his sons in their travels, but he agreed with Jarl Bjarmar’s interpretation.  Princess Eyfura pleaded with her sons to stay, but they refused to have their honour rebuked, but she would not let Svafa leave with them.  Prince Arngrim accompanied his sons to their ship and gave Angantyr the famed sword of Prince Erik, Tyrfingr, saying, “I think that good weapons will be needed now.”

When the twelve berserk brothers came to Samso from the east, they saw two longships anchored in the exposed expanse of the bay called Munarvag.  They knew right away that they were the ships of Arrow Odd and Hjalmar ‘the Brave’.  They rowed their own longship hard toward the other two and, just when the two crews had got their oars into the water, the berserk’s ship came crashing through them.  Shattered oars kicked up and sent men flying, as the sons of Princess Eyfura drew their swords and gnawed their Lindenwood shields before flying into their berserk rages.  Of the twelve, only Angantyr was not a berserker.  He was so big and so strong, he didn’t need to fly into fits.

“Odin is with us,” Angantyr called as he leapt aboard Oddi’s Nor’Way ship.  Five crazed brothers followed and six more attacked the crew of Hjalmar’s ship on their starboard side.  The warriors raged up the foredeck of Fair Faxi, hacking and hewing their way through men as though possessed and six more berserks raged up the length of Hjalmar’s ship with sword moves and sword strokes so fast and furious that the furies, who were watching from hell, were impressed, and the two warrior groups fought on until they met at the after decks, and both decks had been totally cleared of their men.  A dozen wolves howled on the aft decks as Sweden’s finest lay dead or dying.

Angantyr looked about and he realized that the battle had been far too easy for champions the likes of Hjalmar and Odd.  When his brothers came out of their furies, he said, “Our grandfather, King Frodi, has that foremost man named Ogmund Eythjofsbane Tussock and he told me that Hjalmar ‘the Brave’ and Arrow Odd were the greatest foes he had ever encountered, and you all know what a killer Ogmund is,” and he led them to shore and pointed out two sets of tracks going inland across the wet sandy beach and disappearing into that grassy lip that turned into woods.  “We have killed only birds.  The eagles have escaped us,” Angantyr swore bitterly.  Amid all this death, his portent, his dream, was coming to life.  “Even though you are all exhausted from your fits, we must go inland and kill them both,” Angantyr said.  “If we return to King Frodi in Kiev without Arrow Odd’s head, we shall throw shame on our father.”

Just then Hjalmar and Oddi stepped out of the woods carrying a freshly hewn rudder for the Swede’s ship.  The berserk brothers all started howling furiously and fear set upon Oddi momentarily.  Hjalmar shouted, “They have slain all our men!”

“I think we should escape into the forest,” Oddi blurted.

“Let us never flee our enemies,” Hjalmar cried.  “We must endure their weapons even though we rest tonight in Valhall.”  Then Hjalmar bolstered Oddi with these words:

“Mighty are the warriors       our warships leaving,

  Twelve men together,         inglorious in giving;

  We shall be Odin’s             guests this evening,

  Two sworn brothers,           with the twelve still living.”

Oddi suddenly realized that the berserk brothers were all now weak from their fits and he knew that now would be the best time to fight them, so he encouraged Hjalmar with these words:

    “Now we’ll fight them           weak from rages:

     And to your words         I say, I give:

     They shall this evening       be Odin’s pages,

     These twelve berserks;        and we two shall live!”

The fully armed berserks approached the champions in a clearing in the woods and the sunlight, dappling down through the leaves, brought the forest floor to life.  Angantyr strode foremost and drew the famed sword, Tyrfingr, and a ray of light flashed from it as though a beam of sunlight had burst through the verdant canopy above.  Then Hjorvard stepped forward and drew his sword beside him. 

“I shall take on Angantyr,” Hjalmar pledged.

“I should fight Angantyr,” replied Oddi, slipping the rudder oar off of his shoulder.  “He has that famed sword, Tyrfingr, and shall lash out harshly with it.  I have more faith in my plate-mail shirt than you should have in your ring-mail byrnie.”

“When have you ever taken priority in battle?” Hjalmar shouted angrily.  “You wish to fight him because it shall be the more famed combat.  I am the principal here, and you are my second.  I fight for the hand of Princess Ingibjorg.  It is I who shall fight Angantyr with his famed blade,” and he stepped forward to face him, drawing his sword.

They were ill prepared to fight, having only their shirts and their swords, while the berserks had their swords and shields and mail draped helms, and long byrnies and greaves and arm-rings of red gold.  Oddi patted the haft of the rudder and called out to the berserks:

     “Singly shall we fight,         strong men in mail,

      Unless you be soft,            or your spirit doth fail!” 

He had always preferred a good strong club when fighting berserks, blade blunters or giants.

Hjorvard stepped forward, sword in hand.  The foursome engaged in their deathly combat.  Oddi was angry that he could not face off against Angantyr and Tyrfingr.  He knew the sword, had learned to make arrowheads at the very stone that the sword had been drawn out on, and he’d heard of its blessings and curse:

“It will never rust,           it will forever remain sharp,

 it will neither bend              nor break,

  the most powerful of berserks       shall never blunt its edge,

 and the blade must always be sheathed       still smothered in the blood

  of its last victim,            or it will be the death of its owner.”

This ode Oddi cited under his breath as he fought patiently, prodding his opponent back with the great oar.  Hjorvard was still weak from his fit and Oddi watched Tyrfingr take a bite out of Hjalmar’s chainmail shirt.  As Hjalmar fell back a step, Angantyr watched Oddi and he wanted his head, but Hjalmar came at him anew.  Hjorvard overcommitted himself on a stroke and did not even see the great spinning blow that crushed him and killed him and sent his weapons clattering.  Oddi kicked his shield over to Hjalmar, who took it up quickly in a move none had ever seen before.  Hervard stepped forward to take his place and Oddi rested as the young berserk readied himself.  Hjalmar and Angantyr had been going hard for a while so they took a break as Oddi waited.

“We should swear an oath to bury the dead,” Angantyr shouted between breaths, “whoever they may be.  And with our weapons and arms so we don’t go to Valhall with empty hands.”

“You just want Tyrfingr in death, as you’ve had her in life,” Oddi shouted, eyeing the blade, then charging at Hervard.  A few pokes and prods, then a mighty blow and Angantyr watched another brother fall.  Then Hrani stepped forward and he quickly fell.  And the famed sword took another bite out of Hjalmar.  Bild and Bui were next, and they fell to the great club one after the other.

Once more Hjalmar and Angantyr rested while Oddi waited.  Barri stepped forward.  He was recovering from the exhaustion of his fit and was able to fight more vigorously, so Oddi had a difficult time finally striking him down.  And Hjalmar managed to strike a blow that wounded Angantyr.  As Toki prepared to face Oddi, Angantyr once more insisted that they take oaths to provide full and proper burials for the slain.  Hjalmar was losing blood now and was more prone to agreeing with the request.

“We shall provide for burial with weapons,” Hjalmar shouted, as he prepared to renew his battle with the eldest berserker brother.  Just as Oddi was about to protest, Tyrfingr once again bit into the chainmail of Hjalmar.  Oddi took the fight to Toki hard.  He knew he would have to defeat the rest of the brothers quickly or his friend was going to die.  A few club blows later and another brother was dead.  But it was too much.  Tind and Tyrfing both attacked simultaneously and Oddi was pressed defending himself, but he kept to the one side of the brothers and he slew Tind first and then Tyrfing.  The Hadding twins attacked in a similar fashion and got a similar result.

Oddi then turned his attention to Angantyr.  “Let me finish him for you,” Oddi shouted out to Hjalmar, again patting the haft of his bloody rudder oar.

“I must finish him off,” Hjalmar replied angrily.  “If I do not win this combat, the hand of Princess Ingibjorg is forfeit.  King Hlodver could well withhold her hand.”  And the exhausted combatants carried on with their duel.

Oddi could see Hjalmar was dying.  It was the curse of Tyrfingr:

“The blade is             heavenly poisoned;

 the steel,         when forged to an edge

 is the death of          any man it cuts,

 for, no matter               how insignificant

 the wound,       it never heals.”

Jarl Brak had told Oddi this in his youth.  And Hjalmar’s wounds were anything but insignificant.  He was slowing down now, as the poison took hold.  “It matters not if Ingibjorg is forfeit,” Oddi shouted over the din of battle.  “Angantyr shall not be leaving Samsey alive.”

“I will not be leaving Samsey ever!” Angantyr shouted.  “And I don’t give a damn about Ingibjorg.  You can have her for all I care.  We came here for Odd’s head and his head alone.  King Frodi wants it bad, and he’ll want it even more now that Odd has slain his twelve berserker grandsons.”  Angantyr swung Tyrfingr in a high arcing blow that sliced off the leading edge of Hjorvard’s shield and buried the blade tip deep in the ground.  Starting to pull the blade out of the earth, Angantyr suddenly stopped himself and he placed both hands on the blade’s Tonstone pommel, left atop the right, and he leaned forward, fully exposing himself.  “We pledged full burial with weapons,” the great berserker reminded Oddi, as Hjalmar thrust his sword deeply into Angantyr’s chest.

“Eleven berserker grandsons,” Hjalmar corrected, as, foot upon chest, he pulled his sword free of the dead berserk.  Hjalmar sat and rested on a huge flat stone, leaning forward weakly, his elbows on his knees.

Oddi said:

“What ails you, Hjalmar?                Your colour is gone;

 Wasting your strength:            many wounds many ways,

 cleft is your helmet,            your ring-mail is done

 I think you have seen            the sum of your days.”

Hjalmar replied to his comrade in arms:

“Wounds have I sixteen,         slit is my corselet,

 Sight is darkened,               I see not my way;

 To my heart pierced me,          poison-hardened,

 Angantyr’s Tyrfingr,             bitter is that blade.

 Farms I owned there           five together,

 my lot in that land                yet loved I never;

 now I must lie here              of life bereft,

 here on Samsey                   by the sword wounded.

 Mead they are drinking,      adorned with gems,

 the throng of his folk            in my father’s hall;

 ale overmasters                    many a warrior,

 but the marks of the blade   torment me here.

 I went away                   from that white maiden

 on the outer shore               of Agnafit;

 her fore-telling                      true will prove now:

 I shall return not                   ever again.

 The red gold ring-                from my wrist take it,

 to Ingibjorg                      I ask you, bear it;

 it will give her                    grief long-lasting

 when I come not ever          to Uppsala.

 I went from delight             of women’s singing,

 for joy eager                    east with Soti,

 sped my journey                  to join the host,

 left for the last time              loyal companions.

 From the high treetop          hurries the raven,

 from the east flying,      the eagle his escort;

 food for the eagle                 I find for the last time:

 he shall make his meal       on my blood now.”

Then Hjalmar died.

Oddi carried Hjalmar out of the woods and across the beach, then rowed him out to Fair Faxi and laid out the body of his friend on a rowing chest.  He covered him with an awning and returned to the scene of the holmganger.  He sat down beside Angantyr and cursed Hjalmar for promising the berserks a burial with weapons.  “You should have stayed in Holmgard,” he told Angantyr.  “You’re all too young to be playing this game by yourselves!” he shouted to the rest of them.  Then he thought of Ogmund Eythjofsbane, who was even younger and impossible to kill.  “These are hard young men coming out of the east these days,” he muttered as he got to work.

He dragged the berserks bodies into a side by side line, with Angantyr and Hjorvard in the middle and he covered them with a sail, then he threw all eighty of his men into the sea and he waded in the water and herded them toward shore.  He washed the blood from their bodies as they floated in the shallow water and he cleaned and dressed their wounds as best he could before dragging them up onto the beach.  He laid them out on several sails and covered them with the sailcloth, then put large rocks around the edges to keep the wind at bay and the wolves in the woods.  He unfooted the masts of two ships and guided them as they fell into the sea, then he floated them to shore and dragged them up onto the beach.  He went back into the water and dragged the twelve oared ship of the berserks onto the beach.  He left Hjalmar’s ship at anchor, but he tied it to Fair Faxi in case a storm arose.  He went back inland with more sailcloth and he covered the berserks bodies with several more layers and weighed down the edges with deadfall.  Then he went back to his ship and he let down the awnings and he gripped a bow in his left hand and held the three arrows called Gusir’s Gifts in his right and he watched the misty shores of Samso Island for wolves and eagles until he nodded off in the moonlight.

The next morning, he sawed rollers out of oars and he used the masts and yardarms to support the rollers from the sand and he portaged the twelve oared ship of the berserks across the beach and up to the grassy lip of the forest.  The great rudder oar he had used to batter the berserks, he now used to pry the ship up over the lip and into the woods.  He strung out the masts and laid them across with rollers and he pushed the ship into the forest to where the berserks lay in a line.  He tipped the ship over them to form the roof of a howe and he laid their weapons under their bodies.  He could stand up under the ship, but he had to stoop under the port topstrake to get out from under the howe.  He sealed up the open side with deck planks that he nailed in place.  He then realized that the twelve oared ship had the clinch-nailed strakes that he had invented as a youth.

While he was working on a howe for his men, some local farmers came along and Oddi hired them and paid them silver to cover the first howe with turf.  He paid them for draught horses to drag Hjalmar’s thirty oared ship out of the water and onto the rollers and up the masts.  When they reached the grassy lip, even with the two horses, they could not get it over.  Oddi stepped back and looked out at the view of the beach of Munarvagr Bay on Samsey and he told the farmers, “I think my men wish to watch the sea rolling into the bay and out again.”  They laid up the ship much as before along the grassy knoll and Odd laid out his men without weapons so they could rest in peace and sealed off the view with deck planks.  He paid the farmers more silver to haul turf out of the woods and cover the ship and the sand around it.  They were still working at that when Arrow Odd sailed away from Munarvagr Bay with Hjalmar’s body in Fair Faxi.

Back in Sweden, Princess Ingibjorg died of grief when Oddi announced Hjalmar’s death and King Hlodver buried the two lovers in a great mound together in Uppsala.

The king had watched his daughter’s champion, Hjalmar, and his friend, Arrow Odd, struggle as their sea battles and combats with the Danes and then the Hraes’ of Gardar grew more and more desperate and the rivalry of champions spiralled out of control.  The harder the two young men had fought, the harder the champions they faced became.  And now they were dead….his daughter and his foremost man, his future son in law.  Never had he met men as hard as the Hraes’ warriors from Gardar.  They were hard men living hard lives.  And he knew Oddi’s growing desperation was not over.  He could see it changing the young man….wearing him down.  He would need friends now, more than ever.

Returning to Saxo’s Book 5, we see that King ‘Angantyr’ Frodi of Kiev has gathered up an army in the east composed of Varangian and Hraes’ warriors and he has sworn to pursue Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson to the ends of the Earth, if required, to exact revenge for the killing of his grandsons and the disruptions of his slave trade.

After this Frode gathered together a host of all his subject nations, and attacked Norway with his fleet, Erik being bidden to lead the land force. For, after the fashion of human greed, the more he gained the more he wanted, and would not suffer even the dreariest and most rugged region of the world to escape this kind of attack; so much is increase of wealth wont to encourage covetousness. So the Norwegians, casting away all hope of self-defence, and losing all confidence in their power to revolt, began to flee for the most part to Halogaland. The maiden Stikla also withdrew from her country to save her chastity, preferring the occupations of war to those of wedlock.

In my Book 3, The Saga of Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson, of The Varangians Sagas, King Roller Ragnarson flees The Vik for the relative safety of England and Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ retreats to his lands in Halogaland (Helgi’s Land) to set up a defence of Nor’Way.

[Circa 865 AD]  Frode had by this taken his fleet over to Halogaland; and here, in order to learn the numbers of his host, which seemed to surpass all bounds and measure that could be counted, he ordered his soldiers to pile up a hill, one stone being cast upon the heap for each man. The enemy also pursued the same method of numbering their host, and the hills are still to be seen to convince the visitor. Here Frode joined battle with the Norwegians, and the day was bloody. At nightfall both sides determined to retreat. As daybreak drew near, Erik, who had come across the land, came up and advised the king to renew the battle. In this war the Danes suffered such slaughter that out of 3,000 ships only 170 are supposed to have survived. The Northmen, however, were exterminated in such a mighty massacre, that (so the story goes) there were not men left to till even a fifth of their villages.

After fighting to a draw in Stiklastad, Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ retreats to his lands in East Anglia, England, where he meets up with his uncle, King Roller Ragnarson and his father, Prince Erik ‘Bragi’ Ragnarson.  Meanwhile, the only Norwegian likely to have profited from King Frodi’s attack may have been King Harald ‘Fairhair’ Halfdanson, who may have sided with the Danish King Frodi.  Leaving his last name be, the Hrafnsmal poem in his honour includes the lines:

“The highborn king [Haraldr] who took the Danish wife rejected the Holmrygir and the maidens of the Hordar, every single one from Hedmark and the family of Holgi (Helgi?).”

“How generous is [he] to those who guard [his] land, the excellent war-hastener [Warrior] to his men of skills?”

“Strife-displayers [Warriors] are greatly enriched, those who cast dice at Haraldr’s court.  They are endowed with valuables and handsome treasures, with Hunnish metal and an eastern bondwoman.”

It would appear that King Harald ‘Fairhair’ took a Danish wife over his own Hordaland maidens and his men were rewarded with Hunnish gold and eastern bondmaidens (concubines?).  King Frodi of Kiev had just defeated the Huns, so he likely had Hunnish metal and, being a slaver of monstrous proportions, he would have had access to innumerable eastern Slav concubines.

Carrying on with Saxo’s Book 5, this is what Saxo said was the result of the duel, the response of King Frodi to the death of his 12 grandsons in 865 AD:

[Circa 866 AD]  This it was that chiefly led Frode to attack the West [the outcome of the Holmganger on Samso], for his one desire was the spread of peace. So he summoned Erik, and mustered a fleet of all the kingdoms that bid him allegiance, and sailed to Britain with numberless ships. But the king of that island, perceiving that he was unequal in force (for the ships seemed to cover the sea), went to Frode, affecting to surrender, and not only began to flatter his greatness, but also promised to the Danes, the conquerors of nations, the submission of himself and of his country; proffering taxes, assessment, tribute, what they would. Finally, he gave them a hospitable invitation. Frode was pleased with the courtesy of the Briton, though his suspicions of treachery were kept by so ready and unconstrained a promise of everything, so speedy a surrender of the enemy before fighting; such offers being seldom made in good faith.

When the king found their minds thus wavering he again approached Frode, and invited him to the banquet with 2,400 men; having before bidden him to come to the feast with 1,200 nobles. Frode was encouraged by the increase in the number of guests, and was able to go to the banquet with greater inward confidence; but he could not yet lay aside his suspicions, and privily caused men to scour the interior and let him know quickly of any treachery which they might espy. On this errand they went into the forest, and, coming upon the array of an armed encampment belonging to the forces of the Britons, they halted in doubt, but hastily retraced their steps when the truth was apparent. For the tents were dusky in colour, and muffled in a sort of pitchy coverings, that they might not catch the eye of anyone who came near. When Frode learned this, he arranged a counter-ambuscade with a strong force of nobles, that he might not go heedlessly to the banquet, and be cheated of timely aid. They went into hiding, and he warned them that the note of the trumpet was the signal for them to bring assistance. Then with a select band, lightly armed, he went to the banquet.

The Britons, when they saw that the Danes were very drunk, began gradually to slip away from the banquet, and, leaving their guests within the hall, made immense efforts, first to block the doors of the palace by applying bars and all kinds of obstacles, and then to set fire to the house. The Danes were penned inside the hall, and when the fire began to spread, battered vainly at the doors; but they could not get out, and soon attempted to make a sally by assaulting the wall. And the Angles, when they saw that it was tottering under the stout attack of the Danes, began to shove against it on their side, and to prop the staggering pile by the application of large blocks on the outside, to prevent the wall being shattered and releasing the prisoners. But at last it yielded to the stronger hand of the Danes, whose efforts increased with their peril; and those pent within could sally out with ease. Then Frode bade the trumpet strike in, to summon the band that had been posted in ambush; and these, roused by the note of the clanging bugle, caught the enemy in their own trap; for the King of the Britons, with countless hosts of his men, was utterly destroyed. Thus the band helped Frode doubly, being both the salvation of his men and the destruction of his enemies.

Meantime the renown of the Danish bravery spread far, and moved the Irish to strew iron calthrops on the ground, in order to make their land harder to invade, and forbid access to their shores. Now the Irish use armour which is light and easy to procure. They crop the hair close with razors, and shave all the hair off the back of the head, that they may not be seized by it when they run away. They also turn the points of their spears towards the assailant, and deliberately point their sword against the pursuer; and they generally fling their lances behind their back, being more skilled at conquering by flight than by fighting. Hence, when you fancy that the victory is yours, then is the moment of danger. But Frode was wary and not rash in his pursuit of the foe who fled so treacherously, and he routed Kerwil (Cearbal), the leader of the nation, in battle. Kerwil’s brother survived, but lost heart for resistance, and surrendered his country to the king (Frode), who distributed among his soldiers the booty he had won, to show himself free from all covetousness and excessive love of wealth, and only ambitious to gain honour.

So the above attack on England is Saxo’s account of The Great Heathen Army attack on England that began in East Anglia.

In The Varangians Saga, King Frodi was in pursuit of Prince Helgi and King Roller, but while he was being entertained and attacked by the English, Prince Erik joined up with his brother in Northumbria and they attacked King AElla in York and slew him and his sons on the battlefield for poisoning their father, King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’.  When Prince Helgi joined them from Halogaland, he was allotted the task of plundering Princess Blaeja Aellasdottir.

After King Frodi defeated the English he led his fleet in pursuit of Prince Helgi in York, but the Norwegian fleet was gone, off to Scotland.  The huge Danish Hraes’ fleet pursues them and King Roller’s ships head south to Ireland in an attempt to draw them away, while Prince Helgi’s fleet sails straight west into the unknown.  King Frodi swore to follow Prince Helgi to the ends of the Earth and that was just where Arrow Odd was headed.  The chase goes on all the way to the Newfoundland and up the Kanata River to the Great Lakes and the Nia Gara Falls that Helgi uses York boats to portage around and he and his men escape out into the wilds of The Valley of the Mound Builders.

After the triumphs in Britain and the spoiling of the Irish they went back to Denmark [and Kiev]; and for thirty years there was a pause from all warfare. At this time the Danish name became famous over the whole world almost for its extraordinary valour.

There was a ‘twenty’ year pause from all warfare because it took that long for King Frodi and his son, Prince Alf, to learn that Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson and his uncle, King Roller ‘Rollo’ Ragnarson, were hiding in Rouen, Frankia.  King Frodi raised an eastern fleet and drove the two conspirators further into Frankia, finally attacking Paris in 885.  According to a contemporary, Abbo Cernuus, Danish Vikings under Sigfred (SigFred being SigFrodi, as Frodi is the Danish form of Freddy) and Sinric (Prince Alf?) sailed up the Seine River and attacked Rouen and then Paris.  Sigfred was refused tribute by King Charles and attacked Paris with 700 ships, carrying perhaps as many as thirty or forty thousand men, the largest number ever recorded for a Viking fleet in contemporary sources.  This is likely a high estimate, but for Varangians (Eastern Vikings), who often fought the Romans of Constantinople, certainly not beyond their means.  After a one year siege, Sigfred received sixty pounds of silver to leave and, somehow, it was Rollo who took over the attack on Paris (or, more likely, just refused to leave) and eventually ended up with Rouen and Normandy as a reward.

About the same time, the Author of our general salvation, coming to the earth in order to save mortals, bore to put on the garb of mortality; at which time the fires of war were quenched, and all the lands were enjoying the calmest and most tranquil peace. It has been thought that the peace then shed abroad so widely, so even and uninterrupted over the whole world, attended not so much an earthly rule as that divine birth; and that it was a heavenly provision that this extraordinary gift of time should be a witness to the presence of Him who created all times.

Here Saxo sets the reign of King Frodi to coincide with the Time of Christ, placing all the Danish history before Book 5 as Before Christ and all that follows as being Anno Domini.  This is perhaps at the suggestion of his arch patron, Absalon, the Bishop of Lund, Denmark.  It seems to have been common at the time of Saxo’s writing to extend national histories back as far as legend permitted to legitimize the rule of present kings and it seems to have worked, for the offspring of Saxo’s kings lord over Denmark to this very day.  One of the key tasks of my writing ‘The Varangian Saga Series’ is to establish Circa 800 AD as the beginning of Saxo’s Book 5 and posit 886 AD as being the end of it.

[ Circa 886 AD]  Meantime a certain matron, skilled in sorcery, who trusted in her art more than she feared the severity of the king, tempted the covetousness of her son to make a secret effort for the prize; promising him impunity, since Frode was almost at death’s door, his body failing, and the remnant of his doting spirit feeble. To his mother’s counsels he objected the greatness of the peril; but she bade him take hope, declaring, that either a sea-cow should have a calf, or that the king’s vengeance should be baulked by some other chance. By this speech she banished her son’s fears, and made him obey her advice. When the deed was done, Frode, stung by the affront, rushed with the utmost heat and fury to raze the house of the matron, sending men on to arrest her and bring her with her children. This the woman foreknew, and deluded her enemies by a trick, changing from the shape of a woman into that of a mare. When Frode came up she took the shape of a sea-cow, and seemed to be straying and grazing about the shore; and she also made her sons look like calves of smaller size. This portent amazed the king, and he ordered that they should be surrounded and cut off from returning to the waters. Then he left the carriage, which he used because of the feebleness of his aged body, and sat on the ground marvelling. But the mother, who had taken the shape of the larger beast, charged at the king with outstretched tusk, and pierced one of his sides. The wound killed him; and his end was unworthy of such majesty as his. His soldiers, thirsting to avenge his death, threw their spears and transfixed the monsters, and saw, when they were killed, that they were the corpses of human beings with the heads of wild beasts: a circumstance which exposed the trick more than anything.

We shall go to Book 3, The Saga of Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson, of The Varangians Series for the following version of King Frodi’s demise:

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

27.0  HAVE SWORD — WILL TRAVEL  (Circa 886)

“6388-6390 (880-882) 886 AD. Oleg (Helgi) set forth, taking with

 him many warriors.  He then came to the hills of Kiev, and saw

 how Askold and Dir (Angantyr Frodi) reigned there. He hid his

 warriors in the boats, left some others behind, and went forward

 himself.  Askold and Dir (Angantyr) straightway came forth.  Then

 all the soldiery jumped out of the boats, and Oleg (Helgi) said to

 Askold and Dir (Angantyr Frodi), that he was the son of Rurik (Erik)

 and he killed Askold and Dir (Angantyr Frodi, ‘the Hanging God King’).”

Paraphrased From The Hraes’ Primary Chronicle

(886 AD)  Arrow Odd called out the cadence of the rowing by stout young Danes from the new Duchy of Normandy as Fair Faxi slipped away from the mouth of the Seine and entered the Anglish Sea.  They were picked men, warriors chosen for a mission in the east, and their backs bowed as their oars bit into the dark heavy waves of the open sea.  Sailing east and then north, they slipped past the land of the Jutes undetected, then sailed down the coast of Gotland and entered the Baltic.  With a good eastern wind, they sailed quickly across that sea and entered the mouth of the Dvina River and the land of the Lithuanians.

Oddi stopped at Polotsk and found Gudrun working at her father’s Hraes’ Trading Company station there.  He learned that both sisters had been pregnant when their father took them out of Norway to the east and that both Oddi and Asmund had sons living in Polotsk.  He told Gudrun that he would be back for her, but if he didn’t make it back, he wanted both sisters and their sons to meet him in Gardariki as soon as she could.  He told her that the Southern Way was soon to be slave free.

When they came to the Dnieper Portage, they unfooted Fair Faxi’s mast and, posing as traders, paid the local Slav porters to portage their ship to the tributary of the Dnieper.  It was yet early spring; the weather was cold and wet; patches of snow remained upon the ground in shaded riverbank areas.  Soon they came upon a trading station consisting of several longhalls in a clearing by the riverbank, along with a large stable for horses, warehouses for the storage of furs, rans for the keeping of slaves and a number of boat sheds for the repair of ships and monoxylan.  This was the jumping off point for Southern Way trade and the Dan Par river route to Kiev, King Frodi’s Konogard.

Oddi and his crew set off in Fair Faxi and, within hours, his company had passed from the territory of the Radimichi to the lands of the Dregovichi.  The sun was yet high in the east and a steady breeze blew from the north, adding its power, to the speed of the current and the efforts of the rowers, driving the vessel south towards the Scythian Sea.  When they moved into Drevjane territory, the river slowed and widened and fishermen worked their nets from the shores.  In the land of the Poljane, the river slowed even more and the wind died down so the Normans rowed even harder.

A week of this found Oddi and his men at the main quay of Kiev, the Ferry Quay, and Oddi showed all his valuable load of walrus and narwhal ivory tusks and he said they came bearing gifts and he sent the ferryman to fetch his king.  The ferryman returned with a small retinue of guards from King Frodi’s longhall and they asked who it was that had business with their king.  Oddi told them that they were ivory traders and had gifts for their king as his eleven men set about unloading the Narwhal tusks and stacking them at the head of the quay.  Then King Frodi came out of his longhall and exited his city gate at the head of another dozen guards led by a giant that looked like Ogmund ‘Eythjofsbane’ Tussock, but Oddi could not tell because the guard had strapped on a heavy black iron Vanir helmet that had but a horizontal slit for the eyes and a number of vertical slits below it for breathing.  Then Oddi recognized his movements and Ogmund recognized the same and they both rushed forth to meet each other.  Oddi and Ogmund stopped dead in their tracks and then began circling each other.

“I challenge you to personal combat,” Ogmund shouted, waving back his men.  “Catch your breath.  I don’t want excuses!”

“I don’t need a break,” Oddi shouted back.  “Bring on your battle!”

“Rest,” Ogmund demanded.  “I must tell you why I’m going to kill you.”

King Frodi took a seat upon a bench that a courtier rushed out from the hall and placed in front of his personal howe at the head of the main quay.

“You’re going to try to kill me because I slew the twelve berserker grandsons of King Frodi!”

“That is the part I am being paid for,” Ogmund growled, glancing back at his king.  “But the part I am doing for free, including the killing of Thord ‘Prow Gleam’ with an arrow, is payment for what you did with Gusir’s Gifts in Bjarmaland so many years ago.”

Oddi stopped circling an instant, then started again.

“You shot my sister through the eyes and you killed my mother and wounded my father in Giantland.  I am half giant,” Ogmund growled and he straightened up and looked much taller than Oddi remembered.  “I hunched down when we last fought because I didn’t want you to run away.  Here you can’t run,” and he flexed his muscles and looked even more a giant.  “My mother was on an embassy to the dwarfs and was left for dead by King Gorm when your Arthor led him to the land of the dwarfs and sacked their city.  Giants fell during that battle.  Your father saw their armour and weapons when he visited the ruins and he thought they were props.”

“What else does your prescience tell you?”

“Besides the fact that you are going to die here today, I can tell you that you are called Arrow Odd because all your true friends die from the bite of an arrow.”

“I have complained about that,” Oddi said, still circling and catching his breath, “but my best friend, Hjalmar died from the bite of the famed sword Tyrfingr.”

“The sword forged by your father,” Ogmund started, “the ruler of the Nor’Way, Erik ‘Bragi’ Ragnarson.  It is a starstone blade forged from a falling star that Erik thought was an arrow of the gods as he watched it descend from the heavens.  And that arrow of the gods bit Hjalmar sixteen times before he died of its poison.”

“And the starstone blade rests in Angantyr’s howe.  I know because I put it there.  So, what sword do you propose to kill me with, for I am my own best friend now,” and Oddi hiked up his shield and lunged at Ogmund with a stroke so quick, the giant barely avoided it.  Oddi stepped back into the circle they were pacing and blocked a vicious set of blows with his shield before whacking back at Ogmund’s shield with a blow of his own.  Oddi realized that Ogmund thought he had come to kill him, not King Frodi, and he decided to use that to his advantage.  They circled each other trading blows for a while and then King Frodi gave Ogmund a look of impatience as he sat on his bench.  Ogmund attacked once more with renewed vigour and managed to lock up shield arms with Oddi.  He then used his greater size to spin Oddi about and throw back towards the quay, but Oddi used his imparted momentum to land and bounce back up next to the stack of narwhal tusks and he grabbed the topmost tusk and he hurled it straight towards King Frodi, as he sat and watched, and the ivory tusk pierced the old monarch through the heart, bowling him over his bench stone dead.  Ogmund dashed after Oddi but tripped over the bench and flew headfirst into a huge wooden post and the heavy helmet snapped his neck with a loud crack.  All watching were stunned as the giant died with a huge grunt and Oddi, satisfied that Ogmund was dead, led his men defensively down the quay towards Fair Faxi.  Then Frodi’s troops surrounded their dead king and his dead giant and watched in dismay as the giant’s hands moved and grabbed the iron helmet and twisted it, popping the neck back into place with a grinding crack.

The soldiers grabbed at their amulets and said prayers to both Odin and Thor, as Oddi led his men running back down the quay to his ship.  They had already started rowing before the stunned guards started throwing their spears.  Ogmund sat up against the post and watched through his helmet slit as two men at the rudder blocked the flying shafts with their shields and the rowers bent their oars in the waters of the Dnieper.  Spears were followed by arrows and rowing back upriver would have been fatally slow.  Oddi could not return to his uncle in Flanders, so he headed downriver to visit his father in Tmutorokan.

First, they came upon a rapid called Essoupi, meaning Do Not Sleep in the native Slav, a narrow rushing cataract broken by jagged rocks that caused the water to veritably roar.  There were local Poljane guides along the river that were paid to help merchants unload their ships and draft the vessels through a narrow channel by the right riverbank.

The second cataract, called Ostrovouniprach by the Slavs and Oulvorsi by the Norsemen, both meaning Island Rapid, was similar to the first and was traversed in a like manner.  The third rapid was called Gelandri which the Poljanes explained as meaning Noise of the Rapid and it, too, was coursed in a similar fashion.

The fourth of the seven rapids, the largest, was called Neasit by the Slavs and Aeifor by the Danes, because pelicans nested out in the rocks of the cataracts.  Here, there was no safe passage along the banks, and the Normans had to haul Fair Faxi out of the water and drag the ship six miles around the torrent.  The fifth cataract was called Voulniprach in Slavic and Varouforos in Norse because it forms a large lake.  It was traversed in the same manner as the first, as was the sixth rapid, called Veroutzi and Leanti in the Slav and Norse tongues, meaning the Boiling of the Water.

The seventh and last rapid, called Naprezi or Stroukoun, meaning Little Rapid, was reached just upstream of the Ford of Vrar, a wide and shallow ford susceptible to attack on horseback.  The Stroukoun Rapid was navigable and gave the Normans little trouble and the Ford of Vrar was peaceful and they camped on the Island of Saint Gregory.  Exiting the Dnieper into the Scythian Sea, Oddi and his men sailed wide around the Cherson peninsula and along the Sea of Azov until they reached Tmutorokan.

At the mouth of the Kuban River, before the Sea of Azov, of gleaming gold and glittering marble, sat Gardariki.  Prince Erik had been busy building this tribute to his wife, Princess Gunwar.  It was no longer a trading settlement, but a small city of high stone walls, paved streets and marble faced concrete buildings.  As Oddi approached in his Nor’Way ship, he marvelled at how much the riverward side of the city resembled Paris, the Walled Island City, but on the landward side the walls seemed even greater: taller, wider and brighter, glittering of white marble.

Many quays thrust out into the river and between every two quays there was a gate with twin towers built into the wall.  Sentries ran out to the ends of quays and waved them on past dozens of docks.  There was a great gate in the center of the riverside wall and the sentries waved Oddi in.  Standing atop the near tower of the gate was Prince Erik in baggy red velvet trousers and a white silk shirt with elaborate red silk piping.

“Hoi, Oddi, my son!” Erik shouted.  “I thought you were staying with your uncle, Count Roller, in Flanders.”

“It is called Normandy now, father,” Oddi shouted, leaping from the ship to the dock, “and Count Roller is now Duke Rollo.”  As his men tied the ship off, he headed for the tower.  “I thought I might visit with you and take care of some business on the way here.”  By the time Oddi had entered the great gate, Erik had skipped down the stone stairs of the tower.  “Last year King Frodi attacked Count Roller and the army of the Franks.  We stopped him at the gates of Paris.  He withdrew to Liere, and then back to Konogard.”  Then Oddi whispered, “I paid him a visit on the way here and killed him near the main quay in Kiev.”

“King Frodi is dead?” Erik whispered, stopping suddenly.  “The Southern Way shall die with him.  Come.  We must make preparations.  I no longer have friends in Kiev.  Like Ragnar in The Vik, I have only spies now.  We must take steps to protect the Nor’Way.  But first, you’ve never seen Gardariki as my son.  It has changed so much since you were last here as a merchant warrior.  Let me show you your mother’s city…the place of your birth.”

Erik led Oddi down the street that ran from the main gate on the river to the front gate facing the Don Heath to the northeast.  “This is the tower your mother stood upon as she watched the Hun army approach just days after your birth.”  They climbed the stone stairs of the tower and looked out through castellations over the plain.  “That is where your mother, Princess Gunwar, fell at the hands of her nephew, Prince Hlod.”  There were a few travellers on the road running across the plain, but there was a stillness in the air and faint echoes of battles fought there.  “Are you sure he is dead?” Erik asked in a low tone.

“Quite sure,” Oddi answered.  “I pierced him through the heart with a single sword thrust.  It was quick and sudden, a fatal strike.”

“It is good that it was quick,” the prince said.  “He was bad, but we had good times too, and I still love his sister, your mother, though she be two decades gone now.” 

“We tried to lay low, father,” Oddi said, “but he came after your brother, Roller, Duke Rollo of Normandy.  His growing fame became hard to hide.”

“King Roller,” Erik corrected.  “He is still the rightful King of Norway, to my mind at least, not that usurper, Harold Fairhair, that Frodi instilled after crushing Norway.”

“Yes, of course.  King Frodi must have learned of where your brother was ruling, because he sent Prince Alf with a small fleet to scout out Flanders and Frisia several times then returned with King Frodi and an armada of three hundred ships and attacked your brother in Rouen.  We withdrew with a fleet of one hundred ships to Paris and sought the protection of the Franks, but they were suspicious and thought we were attacking them.  So, we portaged around Paris and planned to hunker down in Melun to watch the siege.  Count Oddo of Paris only had two hundred men to hold the walls, but he still refused our help.  I don’t think he trusted us.  I don’t think, at that point, he knew we were being pursued by King Frodi of Gardar.  We warned them of the size of the coming fleet, then carried on upstream.  King Frodi laid siege to Paris, but the Franks had built high walls and ramparts after your father’s sacking of the city decades ago and now Paris could not be stormed.  King Frodi lost many men trying to scale those grey stone walls and Count Oddo, after losing half his men, suddenly became more accepting of our aid.  The siege was meant to keep the Parisians within, so it was quite easy for us, under cover of darkness, to sneak in from without.  Your brother as Count Rollo and I as Bjorn ‘Ironsides’ wintered in Paris defending its walls while King ‘Sigfried’ and Prince ‘Alfgeir’ spent the winter in tents outside the walls trying to get in.  It was during the defence of Paris that Count Oddo made your brother Duke Rollo of Normandy and Count of Rouen.

“In the spring a Frankish army arrived from Saxony, but King Frodi’s warriors wasted no time in destroying it.  Yet our defenders of Paris never seemed to be depleted, no matter how many fell in attacks.  We kept sneaking in fresh Vikings from Melun.  Finally, King Frodi left and your brother, Duke Rollo, and Count Oddo were the heroes of Frankia.  But I knew that King Frodi would never let your brother rule in Normandy unscathed, so I became determined to kill him, and I’ve done just that.”

“Prince Alf is in Denmark,” Erik started, “but he’ll return to Konogard to establish order.  The local Slav tribes are near revolt and only their fear of King Frodi has kept them in check.  If the Slavs overthrow Alf, they’ll shut down the Southern Way.  They are fully against the slave trade that is carried out through it, since they make up most of the slaves.”

“I can’t condone the slave trade myself.  I swore an oath to my friend, Hjalmar, that I would never force someone unwillingly onto any ship under my command.”

“Your mother was so dead set against it, she became a Christian.  It was many years after her death that I learned that Princess Gunwar actually founded the Freedom Movement that is so prevalent in Sweden now, ironically, using gold I made off of the slave trade.”

“But you freed Sister Saint Charles from slavery so many years ago,” Oddi started.

“There was nothing noble in my actions at that time,” Erik explained.  “She became determined to teach me Latin and French so she could try to explain that I could get a mark of silver for her from Bishop Prudentius of Troyes.  She had no idea that I could already read the Runes and had learned Latin from Brak, my foster father, or that I was very adept at learning spoken languages, yet she became determined to teach me Greek, as well, so she could earn her freedom.  It was her determination that made me free her.  And the Greek she taught me saved my life in Constantinople more than once.  After your mother died, I banned all slave trade on the Nor’Way out of respect for her beliefs.  That was the finale of my falling out with King Frodi.  My falling out was always there, but it really got started when he murdered Queen Alfhild.  Then he left your mother to deal with Prince Hlod alone.  But the Slavs were the Menja that ground his gold for him.”

“I’m glad.  I could not break faith with Hjalmar at this point in my life.”

“Now, Prince Alf won’t be feared near as much as his father was, so I would expect an uprising as soon as he takes over in Gardar.  We must try and establish new trade agreements with Constantinople and Baghdad for Southern Way trade.  It must go through us.  As long as the Slavs control the Southern Way, everything will go through the Nor’Way.”

And now, back to Saxo’s Book 5 for the finale:

So ended Frode, the most famous king in the whole world. The nobles, when he had been disembowelled, had his body kept embalmed for three years, for they feared the provinces would rise if the king’s end were published. They wished his death to be concealed above all from foreigners, so that by the pretence that he was alive they might preserve the boundaries of the empire, which had been extended for so long; and that, on the strength of the ancient authority of their general, they might exact the usual tribute from their subjects. So, the lifeless corpse was carried away by them in such a way that it seemed to be taken, not in a funeral bier, but in a royal carriage, as if it were a due and proper tribute from the soldiers to an infirm old man not in full possession of his forces. Such splendour did his friends bestow on him even in death. But when his limbs rotted, and were seized with extreme decay, and when the corruption could not be arrested, they buried his body with a royal funeral in a barrow near Waere, a bridge of Zealand; declaring that Frode had desired to die and be buried in what was thought the chief province of his kingdom.

One might expect the Samso Cycle to end here with the death of King Frodi, but it does not.  Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ was impatient and did not wait for the Slavs to rebel against King Alf ‘Bjalki’ Frodison of Kiev, but led his own army north from Tmutorokan and slew King Alf in battle.  By this time Princess Eyfura had married Prince Erik ‘Bragi’ Ragnarson and she quickly made herself Queen Eyfura of Kiev and she and Erik moved into the city.  The following is from The Saga of Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson:

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

31.0  THE BIRTH OF IVAR THE BONELESS  (Circa 896 AD)

“Erik came to me in a dream and he said, ‘Ivar the Boneless

 is Prince Igor of Kiev’, so I researched Ivar the Boneless.  It was said in

 the Sagas that he had no bones in his legs.  Then I researched Prince

 Igor of Kiev, hoping to find a similar nickname, but I could find none.

 ‘Show me,’ I pleaded with Erik.  ‘Show me.’  He came to me in a

 dream again and repeated ‘Ivar the Boneless IS Prince Igor of Kiev.’

 So I researched further and read of Emperor John Tzimiskes telling Ivar’s

 son Svein what had happened to his father:  ‘on his campaign against the

 Germans, he was captured by them, tied to tree trunks, and torn in two.’

 But Prince Erik said, ‘Prince Igor of Kiev IS Ivar the Boneless.’  Perhaps

 he did not die from the trap.  But even if he did, he still would have been

 called ‘the Boneless’ post-mortem anyway.  It was the Viking way.”

Comment on:  ‘The History of Leo ‘the Deacon’  as read by B H Seibert

(896 AD)  King Odd had been spotted returning from the north in his longship, Fair Faxi, so a great crowd of Hraes’ people were on the quays of Kiev to greet him.  A harbourmaster had brought the message to Prince Erik in his palace and soon he would explain to Oddi that over the winter he had married the mother of the twelve berserker brothers that Oddi had killed, and that they were now trying to have a baby together even though it was a little late in life for children.

“I’ll have to leave for Gardariki immediately,” Oddi stated quite emphatically.  “It is her family duty to avenge the deaths of her sons, not to mention her father, King Frodi!”

“Princess Eyfura has assured me she has no intention of seeking vengeance,” Erik repeated, as Oddi stepped down from the highseat he was sharing with his father and searched the hall for spies, checking behind draperies and statues.  He could find no others in the hall, so he rejoined his father on the second highseat.

“You are in love,” Oddi said, “and blinded by it.  Princess Eyfura is a royal and will not give up her right to vengeance.  That is not how royal bloods operate.  They hold all the rights and give up none.  They not only support slavery, they depend on it.  A free man wouldn’t wear a king’s yoke if he did not have a slave wearing his own yoke first.  Where there are royals, there are slaves.”

“You are now a royal, yourself, King Odd, and Princess Eyfura is not like that.  She is the spitting image of her mother, and Alfhild was not like that, not vengeance minded.”

“I saw vengeance in the havoc her nails wreaked upon Frodi’s face as he perpetrated his foul deed.  How could I have seen that?  I have always felt connected with Queen Alfhild somehow…I don’t understand it, but I do understand I cannot stay here!”  Oddi again searched about the hall, prodded the tapestries, for a spy.

“There is no one here, son.”

Oddi had arrived late evening in Kiev and Erik had sent everyone away from the hall of his palace.  Only preparers of food and purveyors of wines entered and left the hall and none were presently in the chamber.  “I told all to leave us alone.  I wanted to be the first to tell you of my troth with Eyfura.  She is the love of my life.  She is Alfhild and Gunwar as one.  I am afraid I have failed you again.  I cleared this with Eyfura, ensuring that she bid you no ill will, but I should have cleared it with you as well.  For that neglect I am sorry.”

“You have not failed me,” Oddi reassured his father.  “I am glad you have found love again.  I hope you have found a love such as I have for Queen Silkisif, or a love such as Hjalmar had found with Princess Ingibjorg.  But he paid with his life for that love.  Angantyr didn’t kill Hjalmar; your famed blade, Tyrfingr, did.  Your arrow of the gods.  It bit into Hjalmar sixteen times and, each time, the poison in that blade worked its evil magic on my friend until he could barely stand in the end.  Had Angantyr not fully exposed himself to Hjalmar’s final death stroke, Hjalmar would not have had the strength left to kill him.  Angantyr deprived me of my victory, deprived me of all twelve berserker brothers.  I was so angry I almost didn’t bury the boys.  But I promised the brothers full burial with weapons, so I built them a howe and Angantyr sleeps atop Tyrfingr.  I’m sorry, I should have brought the blade back to you.”

“I gave the sword to King Frodi,” Erik explained, “and he gave it to Prince Arngrim, and Angantyr was given the blade expressly for the holmganger.  So, I guess it is fitting that it should rest with him.  Tyrfingr is not evil.  It is just dangerous.  I forged it out of a starstone metal that radiates intense energy like a fire radiates heat.  The energy is the poison and any cut from the blade will never heal and will result in death, no matter how slight the wound.  I’m sorry it bit your friend, Hjalmar.  Tyrfingr is best left buried with Angantyr on Samso Isle.”

“Angantyr told us before he died that he had no interest in Princess Ingibjorg.  That he just wanted my head for King Frodi.  Hjalmar and Ingibjorg were in love and both died because King Frodi wanted my head.  What makes a man do what Angantyr did just to impress his king?”

“You must not blame yourself,” Erik said.  “They didn’t call him ‘the Hanging God King’ for nothing.  Angantyr Frodi.  Hanging Tyr Frodi.  I called my sword Tyr’s Finger, Tyrfingr, after the god of justice.  I conquered many lands with that sword for King Frodi, and I did it because I loved his sister, Princess Gunwar, your mother.  I am so glad I finally learned the truth of your birth.  It is best you buried the thing.  The crushing burden of that blade was wearing on me.”

“Then I’m glad it rests between the shoulder blades of Angantyr on Samsey,” Oddi stated, seeming a little less perplexed.

“You left it in its sheath, I hope.”

“Yes.  It seemed to glow without it.”

“You could see the glow?  That is good.  Most people can’t.  It is best left buried.”

“But I must leave here.  I must return to Gardariki.  It will always be your city, yours and my mother’s,” Oddi said.  “But I cannot stay here.”

“If I can stay here,” Prince Erik said, “then you can stay here, for I too have a connection with Queen Alfhild.  Her spirit visited me soon after she had died.  She came to me on the battlefield and she warned me that a witch was planning to poison Gunwar and that she was pregnant with you at the time.  The witch, Gotwar, had already terminated eleven of Gunwar’s pregnancies and you were to be the twelfth and final one, dying together with your mother, in revenge for my slaying the witches twelve sons and for razing the House of Westmar.  I rode back to Gardariki to save your mother and we lost the battle against the Huns while I was gone.  I never told your mother this, but I slept with the spirit of Alfhild as repayment for her warning.  I would do it again to save you both, but I fear that Kiev is haunted by Queen Alfhild’s spirit, and I don’t want to be here.  I told Eyfura this, but she wanted to come live in Kiev anyway.”

“I shall make time and stay for a day or two,” Oddi told his father.

“Timing is the soul of soldiery,” Erik started, “and your timing is perfect.  We have just received a delegation of the Poljane and Drevjane and they are cooperating with the reopening of the Southern Way.  Without the wealth of the Way trade, the Slavs are turning on each other.  They do not want to miss another trading season.  I would like you to help with the negotiations.”

“Southern Way trade without slave trade, right?”

“They would have it no other way.”

As Erik and Oddi went through the details of the new Southern Way trade, Oddi would occasionally look about the hall as if expecting to find spies lurking in the tapestries, but he should have looked up.  High above the highseats, in amongst the heavy ochred oak rafters, where the blackened war arrows rested, laid a red war shield, and curled up on it hid Hervor, Princess Eyfura’s young handmaiden.

“Now that you have told me all that was said between Oddi and my husband,” Queen Eyfura started, leaving a long pause, “there is something I must tell you of your birth.  Your mother was my handmaiden, but your father was not a slave.  He was my eldest son, Prince Angantyr.  When your mother died following your birth, I had you raised in our household, but, for your own safety, I kept your true lineage a secret.  Your father was too drunk to remember your conception, but your mother would not spare me the details.  You must avenge your father’s death, as I must avenge mine.  You shall begin training in the morning.”

Hervor, a lithe young woman with green eyes and auburn hair, was happy to learn that she was not slave spawn, but of royal blood.  She reached out to her grandmother and Eyfura hugged her coldly.  “We must keep the truth of your birth a secret until we have avenged our fathers.”

Oddi stayed in Kiev a week before they had a contract hammered out with the Slavs, then he and his crew left for Gardariki in his longship, Fair Faxi.  Right after he left, Hervor’s training as a shield-maiden began.  The more skill she gained, the more independent she became and she would often squabble with Eyfura’s household slaves.  When handmaidens refused to believe Prince Angantyr had been her father, Hervor went to her grandmother for support.  “My son was drunk when he raped your mother,” Eyfura started, “and your mother tried to kill herself afterwards.  I saved her and kept her close while she carried you and after you were born she did kill herself.  Is that what you want me to tell them?”

Once news of the Way’s reopening got out, it spread like wildfire and many merchant ships returning from Baghdad and Constantinople took the southern route instead of the Nor’Way, paying a double tithe just to save time.  Once the fall trading season was complete, and all the merchant ships were plying their various routes, Prince Erik had more time to spend with Queen Eyfura.  She was so much like the Princess Alfhild he had known a generation earlier and he remembered watching his young queen with child walking with her King Frodi and he and Gunwar had been so envious.  He often wondered what would have happened had he not had that moment of anger so many years ago when Alfhild told him she needed a blooded king for a match, that he was not good enough for her, and he had lashed out at her mentally and struck a blow that had ended his love for her.  Then he realized that it was his greatest fear that he would repeat that mental bow with Eyfura and ruin it all.  That was why he had feared a confrontation between Eyfura and Oddi.  That was why he had allowed Oddi to go to Kiev without meeting his new wife.  He instinctively knew that his newfound love for Eyfura was a fragile thing that would need protecting, a protection that his love for Alfhild had not received.  Eyfura was as proud as her mother had been, perhaps even more so.  She had so much more to be proud of.

“What are you thinking?” Eyfura asked her husband as they rested on their bed together.  “You’re so deep in thought.”

“I was thinking, you have so much to be proud of,” Erik answered.  “You have survived so much in this hostile land.  I look upon you with so much pride.  Our child shall be lucky to have you as a mother.”

“I am afraid to be a mother again,” Eyfura confessed.  “What if the potion doesn’t work?”

“If the potion doesn’t work,” he said.  “Then we’ll just have to work at it harder.  There is an old Roman saying that goes…If you love your work…then your job must be…trying to get your wife focking pregnant!” and he pushed Eyfura onto the bed and kissed her passionately.  They made love on the bed and then they made love again.  As they rested, Erik said, “There are two kinds of sex.  There’s having sex while you’re trying your damnedest not to get your woman pregnant, and then there’s having sex while trying to knock up your wife, and I have to say that I, by far, prefer the latter.”

“I can feel the difference,” Eyfura agreed.  “You spout like a whale!”

The next morning, Eyfura asked her husband if he was still anxious about living in Kiev.  He told her that sometimes he could feel the presence of Queen Alfhild’s spirit in the palace.  He told her he was thankful that King Frodi and Queen Alfhild’s bedchamber down the hall was kept shuttered under lock and key.

“You must get over your fear,” Queen Eyfura told Erik.  “The ghost of my mother doesn’t haunt the palace of Kiev.”

“Queen Alfhild doesn’t frighten me.  I told you what happened to me on the battlefield of the Don plain many years ago.  We made love shortly after she had died and I still feel bad about it.”

“You shouldn’t feel bad,” Eyfura said.  “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I don’t feel that kind of bad…”

“What kind of bad do you feel?”

“I feel bad that she was so good!  Once you’ve had spirit, well…nothing comes near it.”

And Eyfura pummeled her husband, and then they had sex on the bed again.

“But seriously,” Erik started, as they rested after.  “She was my first love, your mother.  But she chose another.  A true king.  Your father, King Frodi.”

“And I’m glad she did.  If you were my father, I could not have married you….even this late in our lives.”

“And I am glad as well,” Erik breathed into his wife’s ear as he rolled out of bed.  “I shall stay in Kiev then, but I will depend on you to keep me safe here.”

“I will not trust my mother, Alfhild, alone with you,” Eyfura chimed.  “Not even her ghost!”

One night Erik held on to Eyfura as she slept, fitfully.  She tossed and she turned but was asleep when he heard an odd noise down the hall.  Erik slipped out of bed and crept into the hallway and he saw her….Alfhild.  She was young again, her wispy blonde hair catching up the light of the tapers as she spun and walked toward the king’s chamber, trailing a hand and a finger as though to compel him to follow.  When he entered the room, she was on the bed, so he closed the door behind himself.  They never said a word, he just brushed her hair back and kissed her and her silks fell open and he kissed her all over as if to consume her so she could never leave again.  He remembered that night on the bed in King Gotar’s high seat hall, with Tyrfingr sheathed between them, and all the nights since fell away like rose petals in the darkness of denial.  A lifetime of denying their truth, denying their young love, fell away with each kiss.  And they made passionate love for what seemed hours, what seemed days, then Alfhild fell asleep in his arms on the bed and Erik slipped his arm out from under her tender throat and he could see by the tapers that there were no strangle marks about her neck like the first time they made love in his campaign tent on the Don Plain, and he realised that she was younger now, from before she had died, and he slipped out of the room and returned to the bed of Eyfura.  She was still sleeping fitfully as though in a trance and Erik thought this must be a dream.

The next morning Prince Erik got up early to check King Frodi’s bedchamber but it was still locked.  He asked some of the handmaidens and servants if anyone had been in the room and they all answered not in years.  It was a dream, Erik thought.  Just a dream.  What a dream.

The next night Prince Erik went to sleep with Eyfura as before and he drifted off holding her in his arms and she woke him up with her tossing and turning once more.  Again, he heard an indistinct noise out in the hallway.  Erik slipped out of bed and crept into the hall and he saw her….young Alfhild.  She was at the door of King Frodi’s bedchamber and she was waving him to hurry to her and they entered the room together and she stripped off her silks, and as she slowly peeled away Erik’s linen bedclothes he could see she was even younger now and she wore her hair as it had looked when he visited her in her mother’s hall when the matron was sick and coughing in her room.  Again, they never said a word.  He just brushed his naked body up against hers and he held her and kissed her and then he hugged her and lifted her off the floor and he slid her onto himself and she touched the floor with her toes and she went up on her toe tips and she went back down then up on her toe tips and down again and she did this until waves crashed through their bodies and they held each other for what seemed hours and Alfhild fell asleep standing in his arms.  He picked her up and they disengaged and he laid her out upon the bed and he stroked her beautiful blonde hair and he stroked her beautiful young face and then he stroked her beautiful lithe body and he covered her in her shimmering silks and then covered her with a sheet and he left the room and returned to the bed of Eyfura, who was still sleeping fitfully as though in a trance.  Erik slid into bed beside Eyfura and he realised that this was not a dream.

The next morning Prince Erik got up early to check King Frodi’s bedchamber but it was still locked.  He asked the handmaidens if anyone knew where the key to the chamber was kept, but nobody seemed to know.  ‘It was not a dream,’ Erik thought.  ‘But it is not a dream that I don’t want to stop.’

The third night Prince Erik went to sleep with Eyfura as before but he didn’t drift off, staying awake as she fell asleep in his arms, and when she started tossing and turning as though in a trance, he slipped his arm out from under her and slid out of bed.  He stood by their chamber door until he heard that undefinable noise out in the hallway.  He stepped out into the hall and he saw her again….youngest Alfhild.  The Alfhild he had seen his first time entering the Vik when she stood high upon a headland and the sun played and danced with her wispy blonde hair and drove away the shadows casting in the cliffs.  She entered the king’s bedchamber and Erik did follow, and she kept her silks on and she stripped Erik naked and she led him onto the bed and she sat him against the headboard and she kissed his forehead and she kissed his lips and she kissed his chin and she kissed his throat ever so gently and she kissed his chest three times working her way down, and she kissed him and had him in her mouth, as much as she could take, and when he was wet enough she rose and sat astride him and took up the rest and she bounced high in her saddle like a princess riding out to a picnic in the woods and he exploded within her and hugged her so she would stop.  But she had a nice gait going and she was still riding Erik when Queen Eyfura walked into the room and saw her handmaiden, Hervor, riding her husband’s steed.

“Eyfura, you must leave the room at once,” Hervor cried, but the voice wasn’t her’s….it was Queen Alfhild’s.  And Erik woke and he pushed Hervor away from himself, as though he had seen a ghost, and Hervor said in Alfhild’s voice, “I tried to scratch his eyes out in this very bed, I clawed his face to the very end.”  Then Hervor awoke and she was a frightened young woman tearing away the silks and then pulling them around her again to cover up her nakedness.

“What have you done, Hervor?” Eyfura whispered hoarsely.  “You are possessed!”

Hervor sat upon the bed, hugging her knees and crying, with no idea how she had gotten there.

“It is the ghost of Alfhild,” Erik lamented.  “She has tricked me.  Please forgive me, Eyfura.  I should have never come to Kiev!”

“Hush, girl,” Eyfura cooed, trying to calm the young woman.  “How long has this been happening?” she asked her handmaiden, but the young woman had no recollection.

“I think it has been happening three nights,” Erik answered.  “I remember it happening now, as one recollects a dream.  Three nights!  I should have not come here,” and he sat on the bed with his head in his hands.  “Three nights in a row and you’ll get a Bo.  When did you last have your period, Hervor?”

Hervor answered in a weird Alfhild voice, “Three nights in a row and you’ll get no Mo.”

“Ask her!” Erik demanded.  “Ask her when she last had her period,” and Erik held out one finger on one hand and five fingers on the other where only Eyfura could see them.

So Queen Eyfura asked Hervor how long it had been.

“Just over two weeks,” she said.

Then Prince Erik recited this verse:

“Wait fifteen days,                then three nights in a row

             Fock your wife                     and you’ll have a Bo.

             Wait only days,                    and have your way,

             And a girl will come,           come birthing day.

“It is a Warlock Song,” the Prince said.  “And why did you wake up?” Erik asked Eyfura.  “You were tossing and turning like you were in a trance when I left you.”

“I remember tossing and turning, but then I stopped and I woke up and then I heard a noise in the hallway.”

“What kind of noise?”

“I don’t know.  It was just a noise.”

“Ghosts can’t make noises,” Erik explained.  “They can only make you think you’ve heard a noise, so it’s always just a noise, but can never be described.”

“We shall never talk about this again,” Eyfura said, as a shiver coursed through her body.  “Ever!”  And she sent Erik back to their room as she escorted Hervor back to the servants’ chambers.

When she got back she found Erik asleep in their bed, exhausted.  “Sometimes I think my mother was a witch,” she complained, sliding into bed next to her husband.

The ghost of Queen Alfhild did not return, but Princess Eyfura had no doubt that the affair was the work of her mother and bought charms and potions to keep her ghost away.  She loved her mother, but she loved her husband even more.

They all stayed in Kiev together over the winter; Hervor was with child and they wanted to keep it quiet.  Prince Erik went to Gardariki after the spring trading rush, but Eyfura stayed at home with her granddaughter as Hervor’s belly swelled.  Eyfura kept Hervor under lock and key, ‘for the good of the baby’, she claimed.  Queen Eyfura became inordinately determined that the child be born in Kiev and that no one learn that it was Hervor’s.  Secretly born in the summer, Eyfura passed the baby off as her own, naming the boy Eyfur, or Ivar, after herself.  And Erik and Hervor did not dispute her choices.  The Poljane Slavs around Kiev called him Igor Rurikslavich in line with the naming and they called him Prince Igor of Kiev because he was their prince.

When Arrow Odd got back to Tmutorokan from Khwarizm for the fall trading rush, he learned he had a younger brother named Eyfur.  And when he visited Kiev he noticed a distinct difference in the way Queen Eyfura addressed him.  It was ‘King Oddi Erikson this’ and ‘Prince Eyfur Erikson that’ and he was astonished at how her pregnancy had changed the princess.  She seemed to want to make sure that all knew they were brothers, even though there was a great age difference between them.  But he was still nervous with the princess being around him; he had, after all, killed eleven of her sons, and so was relieved when it was time for him to return to Gardariki for the spring trading season.

The Waking of Angantyr is well covered in Arrow Odd’s Saga and Hervor and Heithrek’s Saga, but is best covered here in The Saga of Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson:

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

33.0  THE TREATY OF 911 or THE WAKING OF ANGANTYR

” Beneath my back is laid               the bane of Hjalmar,

  All around it                         enwrapped in fire;

  In the world walking                      no woman know I

  Who would dare in her hand          to hold this sword?

The Ghost of Angantyr;  Arrow Odd’s Saga

(Circa 911 AD)  Four years after the Treaty of 907, Erik and Oddi once more led a fleet against the Eastern Romans.  This time it was a show of force.  Heavily armed longships accompanied the spring throng of merchants heading for trade in Constantinople.  The longships waited on the Bosporos while the merchant ships carried on with their trade in the city.  The full Roman fleet was home and on manoeuvres around the Golden Horn, so there was much belching of Greek fire and a number of target ships were burned in warning.  The Varangian Guard came out from behind the city walls to warn the Hraes’ to respect the existing treaty, but they ended up drinking and celebrating with the Hraes’ troops.  The standoff carried on for several weeks until, eventually, a large number of Hraes’ merchants and sailors were released from Roman custody.

The previous year’s trade was marked by numerous storms on the Bosporus and the Scythian Sea and a number of Hraes’ merchant ships sank or broke up on reefs and the survivors were often captured and enslaved by the Greeks and forced to work off their ‘saviour debt’ by rowing in the bellies of Roman biremes and triremes.  Varangians were prized as ‘debtors’ because they were born to the oar, and spent most of their lives rowing, and a trireme full of Varangers was the fastest warship on the seas.  So, the Roman Hraes’ Treaty of 907 became a fuller, more encompassing Treaty of 911, that included maritime laws protecting the rights of stranded and injured sailors and merchants of any nation.  Strand laws more favourable to those being shipwrecked were implemented, as well as mutual laws in the handling of crimes.  Asylum laws were also included granting rights of civil protection.

Once the treaty was concluded, Prince Erik returned to Kiev, but had extracted a promise of a visit from his son.  King Oddi had been mulling over a return to Hrafnista via the Nor’Way, with perhaps a stop in Giantland along the way, followed by stops in York and Dub-Lin and Rouen and then perhaps even a stop in Stavanger Province to visit Hraegunarstead and Berurjod before an extended visit with his father in Kiev.

Prince Erik told Princess Eyfura that he had convinced his son to visit him in Kiev on his return trip from the Nor’Way.  Princess Eyfura told Hervor, “It is time.”

And Hervor said:

“As quick as you can           equip me in all ways,

   wisest of women,               as you would your own son!

 In dreams is told me           the truth only;

 No contentment      shall I taste here now.”

A longship was secretly prepared for Hervor and manned by stout young warriors of Kiev.  They sailed north up the Dnieper, past Chernigov to Smolensk, then portaged across to Surazh and were discharged into the Dvina.  They continued north down the river, passing by Polotsk, and kept sailing all the way across the Baltic until they reached Zealand.  It was late summer, so Hervor passed herself off as Captain Hervard, and she and her crew spent the winter in the harbour town that served the Royal City of Liere.  She spent time in the round fortress of her great grandfather, King Frodi.  Tales were still being told by skalds of a great battle upon the ice there and the fall of the House of Westmar.  Newer poems were being forged of a great holmgangr fought on the Island of Samso between Hjalmar ‘the Brave’, representing Sweden, and his second, Arrow Odd, representing Norway, against Angantyr of Holmgard and his eleven brothers, serving King Frodi the Peaceful, and representing Denmark.

In late spring Hervor gathered up her crew and they sailed to Samso and arrived at Munarvag Bay one evening, just as the sun was going down.  Fearing the spirits of that now infamous island, Hervor’s crew refused to leave their ship, so she had their four oared boat lowered into the water and she rowed herself to the beach of the bay.  She could make out the great howe on the beach that Oddi had erected for his own men and further up on the land, just outside the woods, she saw the howe fires glowing of what looked like her relatives’ barrow.

A local farmer saw the warrior and shouted:

            Who among mortals             moves on the island?

            Now flee you fast           to find shelter !

Hervor replied:

            Flee I will not            to find shelter,

            none do I know            of the native people;

            rather tell me             ere we turn away:

            where do the cairns lie        called after Hjorvard?

Then the herdsman said:

            Do not ask me —       you are not wise !

            Friend of Vikings,        you are far astray;

            fare us as fast as        feet can bear us —

            out in the open         all is evil for men.

She answered:

            We’ll not faint nor fear         at such fire’s crackling,

            though all the land           be alight with flame;

            men such as these              who matter too small

            to make us tremble–              let us talk further !

He spoke:

            Fool I call him              who fares onward,

            a man all alone                 in the murky night;

            fires are moving,            mounds are opening,

            burns field and fen —           let us faster run !

And the farmer ran off home.  Hervor saw where the barrow fires burned and she followed the flames to the howe of her ancestors, ‘the Barrow of the Berserks’.

Then she spoke:

            Wake, Angantyr,                  wakes you Hervor,

            Svafa’s offspring,           your only daughter;

            the keen-edged blade         from the barrow give me,

            the sword dwarf-smithied      for Svafrlami.

            Hervard, Hjorvard,                Hrani, Angantyr !

            From the roots of the tree       I arouse you all,

            with helm and corselet,       keen-edged weapon,

            gear and buckler                  and graven spear.

            All but to dust                  have Arngrim’s children,

            men of evil,               in the mound been turned,

            if of Eyfura’s sons            no single one

            to me will speak             in Munarvag.

            Hervard, Hjorvard,                Hrani, Angantyr !

            May it seem to you all           within your ribs

            as if in mound of maggots      you moldered away,

            if you fetch not the sword      forged by Dvalin;

            it becomes not ghosts         costly arms to bear.

Then Angantyr answered her:

            Why do you hail me,            Hervor, daughter?

            To your doom you are faring     filled with evil !

            Mad you are now,        your mind darkened,

            when with wits wandering     you wake the dead.

            No father nor kinsman        in cairn laid me;

            It was our banes            who laid us in this barrow,

            they kept Tyrfingr,                the two survivors –

            one alone did                wield it after.

Hervor answered:

            You give me a lie !               May the god let you

            rest whole in your howe        if you’re holding not

            Tyrfingr with you;              unwilling you are                   

            to give the heirloom             to your only child.

            Even though child,        with your mother plot wild,

            a revenge on the          bane of your brothers.

            One survivor doth claim        you deprived him of fame,

            by baring your breast           to the other.’

With those words the barrow opened, and Angantyr spoke angrily:

            Hel’s gate is lifted,               howes are opening,

            the isle’s border                    ablaze before you;

            grim outside now                 to gaze around you –

            to your ships, if you can,     quick now, maiden !

She answered:

            No blaze can you light,         burning in darkness,

            that your funeral fires          should with fear daunt me;

            unmoved shall I remain          the maiden’s spirit,

            though she gaze on a ghost   in the grave-door standing.

Then Angantyr said:

            I tell you, Hervor —               hear my words out ! –

            what shall come to pass,    prince’s daughter:

            trust what I tell you,             Tyrfingr, daughter,

            shall be ruin and end          of all your family.

            You shall bear offspring     who in after days

            shall wield Tyrfingr               and trust in his strength;

            by the name Erik            known to his people,

            born the strongest                beneath the sun’s curtain.

Then Hervor said:

            A human indeed                    I was held to be

            ere I came hither                  your hall seeking;

            hater of mailcoats                from the mound give me,

            peril to bucklers                      bane of Hjalmar !

Angantyr answered:

            Beneath my back is laid      the bane of Hjalmar,

            All around it                           enwrapped in fire;

            In the world walking              no woman know I

            Who would dare in her hand     to hold this sword?

Then Hervor said:

            I will guard it                      and grasp it in hand,

            The keen-edged sword,      can I but obtain it;

            No fear have I                   of the fire burning;

            The flame grows less          as I look towards it.

Angantyr answered:

            Fool you are, Hervor,           in your heart’s daring,

            With eyes open                      to enter the fire !

            The blade from the barrow     I will bring, rather;

            O young maiden,                 I may not refuse you.

Hervor answered:

            Son of warriors,                      you do well in this,

            The blade to me                   from the barrow yielding;

            king, to keep it                        I count it dearer

            than were all Norway           beneath my hand.

Angantyr spoke:

            You see it not —                    you’re in speech accursed,

            woman of evil ! —                    why you’re rejoicing;

            trust what I tell you,             Tyrfingr, daughter,

            shall be ruin and end             to all your family.

Hervor spoke:

            I will go my way                    to the wave horses,

            chieftain’s daughter,               cheerful hearted;

            I care not at all                      O king’s companion,

            how my sons will                     strive hereafter.

Angantyr spoke:

            You shall keep Tyrfingr         with contentment long;

            the bane of Hjalmar             in hiding (sheathed) keep;

            touch not the edges —           in each is poison;

            worse than deadly,              doom-bringer to men.

            Farewell, daughter !             fain would I give you

            twelve heroes’ lives —            trust what I tell you ! –

            the goodly strength              and strong endurance

            that Arngrim’s sons                 left after them.

And now Hervor said:

            May you all lie unharmed        in the howe resting –

            to hasten hence                       my heart urges;

            I seemed to myself              to be set between worlds,

            when all about me                  burnt the cairn fires.

Hervor went down to the beach and curled up in a fur in her four oared boat and held Tyrfingr close to her breast.  With dawn came her longship, with a soft drawn-out scud, into the sand of the beach.  She showed her crew the hilts of Tyrfingr and pulled the sword free of the sheath and, in morn’s waxing light, some could make out a glow along the blade’s edges and some could not.  She sheathed the sword, they loaded up the boat and sailed back to the port town that serviced Liere.  With the last of the gold that her grandmother had given her, Hervor bought their supplies for the long trip back to Kiev.  It was summer’s end before Hervor’s ship slunk into a quay of the city.

“We must be patient,” Princess Eyfura told Hervor.  “Whenever it is that Arrow Odd returns to Kiev, you must cut him with the blade and let the poison do the work.  The bones of my son, your father, have kept the poison trapped within the blade, so it is stronger now than ever, thus, even in death, Angantyr shall play a part in avenging his brothers.  We do not want to kill Oddi.  Any blade could do that.  But the poison in this blade has been paid for by the blood of your father.  It is imperative that the poison of the blade, the blood of Angantyr, kill Oddi.”

And the End draws near:

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

34.0  THE PROPHECY OF ARROW ODD, Part One  (Circa 911 AD)

‘It is remarkable what may be accomplished through witchcraft and enchantment.  For on one occasion he (Helgi/Oleg) had made inquiry of the wonder-working magicians as to the ultimate cause of his death. One magician replied, “Oh Prince, it is from the steed which you love and on which you ride that you shall meet your death.” Oleg then reflected and determined never to mount this horse or even to look upon it again. So he gave command that the horse should be properly fed, but never led into his presence. He thus let several years pass until he had attacked the Greeks.’

Hraes’ Primary Chronicle

(911 AD)  King Odd had been long settled in his kingdom, and he’d had a long life there, and he had two sons with his wife, Queen Silkisif.  Asmund, the eldest, was named after Odd’s foster-brother, and the youngest was named Holmar after Silkisif’s father.  They were both very promising young men.  One evening, when Oddi and Silkisif went to bed, he slowly told her: “There is one place that I would like to go.”

“Where would you like to go?” Silkisif asked.

“I want to go north to Hrafnista,” he answered, “and I want to know who now holds the island, because I own it with my family and I have much wealth buried there.”

“I think,” she said, “you have enough wealth and property here.  You have Gardariki and have won all Tmutorokan and can take other goods and countries that you want, and I think you should not worry about one small island in the north.”

“Yes,” he said, “that may be true, it may be that the island is worth little, but I have the treasures of many victories buried there and I wish to choose the ruler it will have, and you should not discourage me, because I have decided to go.  I will only be away for a while.”  The next day he sailed away in Fair Faxi, with a cargo knar following, and with forty picked and well-armed warriors aboard each, and they sailed up the Nor’Way to Hawknista and entered Giantland.  He found the dwarf, Durin, there and had gifts for him.

“Prince Erik left to find aid in Constantinople,” Durin explained, “and when he didn’t return with his ship, Princess Gunwar thought the Romans must have killed him.  She was pregnant with you at the time and she wanted to protect her lands for you.”

“I just wanted to thank you for helping her when she was so alone,” Oddi said.

“Don’t thank me,” the dwarf said, dejectedly.  “I failed her.  I failed Prince Erik, when he rushed back to Gardariki to save you and your mother; I lost the battle against the Huns on the Don Heath.  The Hraes’ officers wouldn’t follow the orders of a dwarf.  And I failed Princess Gunwar.  She died fighting beside me, when Prince Hlod snuck up on the other side of her and pierced her with his golden lance.  And now, I learn that I failed Brother Gregory as well.  I should have helped him further, perhaps I could have saved him.”

“Still, you beat back Prince Hlod and recovered her body for the Christian burial she so wanted,” Oddi said encouragingly.  “And the Prince and Duke Roller always speak fondly of you.”

“King Roller is a Duke now?”

“Yes.  A Duke in Frankia.  King Frodi pillaged Norway and set up a puppet king there, Harold Fairhair.  Roller fled with me and now he is Duke Rollo of Normandy and is a good Christian now, haunted only by my mother.”

“Princess Gunwar haunts King Roller?”

“She has her way with him whenever she wants something,” Oddi said, laughing.  “And it’s mostly when she’s trying to save me!”

Durin joined him, laughing, “Those Christians!  They’re taking over the spirit world as well.”

Oddi was glad that he was able to cheer up the dwarf somewhat.  They parted great friends.  Then Oddi returned to Hawknista and proceeded further north to Varg Island and entered the north of Giantland, leaving his men to wait on the isle for him.

Oddi learned that Hildigunn had taken his advice and married a giant and they had many children together.  Hraegunhild was all grown up and married to a half giant and she had many children as well.  King Hilder was old and ill.  Giants didn’t seem to live as long.  Oddi had gifts for all of them.

“You were right to have Hraegunhild with Hildigunn,” King Hilder told Oddi privately.  “Hraegunhild has brought us both much happiness over the years.  And she kept us both occupied until Hildigunn was ready for marriage.  You have given us both much sage advice, and for that I thank you.”

When Oddi got back to Varg Island he learned from his terrified men that several young giant warriors had brought him another two chests full of gold Byzants and a silver cauldron full of Kufas but had covered them with a large flat stone.  It took both ships crews to get the stone off of the gifts.

There is nothing more to be said about his journey until he came north to Hrafnista in Halogaland.  His relatives welcomed Oddi there and they gave him a great banquet to greet him with and they gave him a fortnight of feasting.  They invited him to rule over the island and all the property that belonged there.  He gave them all the property he had kept there and would not stay there.  He dug up all his treasures and shared much of the gold with his kin, then he prepared for his homeward journey, and the people brought him fine gifts.  When they left, his men understood why he had taken two ships.

In Ireland, Queen Olvor and Hraegunhild were happy to see Oddi.  His first child was married with children and some of her children had children.

“It makes me feel old just watching all of them,” Queen Olvor said.  “Age doesn’t seem to touch you, Oddi, the way it seems to touch others.”

“I’ve never felt old,” Oddi confessed, getting up on his elbow and stroking Olvor’s silver blonde hair as she lay in bed.  “Even my wounds haven’t bothered me.  It takes longer for them to heal these days, but once they’re healed, it’s like I never had them, save the scars that is.”

“You’re blessed, Oddi.  I remember taking your shirt off years ago when I was fitting you for your Roman scale shirt, your body was so beautiful, but so battle scarred.  That’s when I fell in love with you.  Now, it’s still beautiful, but some of your scars have scars.  It’s like you’re immortal.”

“I’m not feeling that good,” Oddi laughed.  “But my father, Prince Erik, he’s an alchemist and I’m starting to think he just may be immortal.  I have silver in my blonde, but his hair is still Hrafn black.  I guess he does have a bit of grey, but he still leaps into his saddle.  You’re a healer, how is this possible?

“I did join the Healers Guild, as Princess Blaeja requested,” Olvor started, “but that’s medical alchemy.  Your father is a Magi.  He’s way up there in the ‘turns lead into gold’ alchemy, the talking to the Norns category.  Anything is possible with the Alchemists Guild.  But I did attend a Hraes’ Trading Company meeting in Rouen last year and your uncle, Rollo, is looking quite spry with his young wife and new baby.  Perhaps it just runs in your family?”

“I’ll ask him,” Oddi replied, getting up, out of bed, “because that’s where I’m heading next.”

“Will you be stopping in at York as well?”

“Right after Rouen.  Why?”

“Princess Blaeja has a surprise for you.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not supposed to tell.”

 “Com’on, spill it,” Oddi prodded.

“Let’s just say…it’s a boy!”

“It is a boy,” Duke Rollo confirmed in Rouen.  “But he’s a handsome young man now.  You’ve been away quite a while.  Hraegunhild is married with children.  You’re a grandfather now!”

“People keep telling me that,” Oddi complained.  “But she named our son Ragnar!  She’s still afraid of the curse.”

“I’m sure she just named him after your grandfather.”

“And to try to keep her offspring clear of the curse.  Kraka was quite clear that she considered Ragnar’s curse to be ongoing.”

“My mother, Kraka, God bless her soul,” and Rollo crossed himself, “should perhaps have kept that opinion to herself.  But even if Princess Blaeja is trying to buy herself some extra blessings, then what’s the harm.  It could be worse…she could have named him Prince AElla.”

“Don’t even say that,” Oddi said, looking over both his shoulders, first the left, then the right.

“See?  It doesn’t hurt to be safer than sorry.”

Oddi spent a lot of time in Rouen visiting with his uncle and his new wife and baby.  They all spoke in French around the Duke’s palace and Oddi found it a good opportunity to brush up in the language.  He spent time in Paris, visiting with his foster-mother, Sister Saint Charles, and some time in Flanders visiting his brother, Baldwin.  He wanted to go to Kiev just before spring trading got started, and Frankia seemed like a good place to overwinter.  He didn’t have any children here, at least that he knew of.

“If you’re nervous about going to York to overwinter,” Duke Rollo started, “Princess Blaeja is still single and beautiful and, if things don’t work out, you can come back here.”

“It’s not that,” Oddi began, “well, it’s just that they’re grandmothers.  I still found Queen Olvor very attractive, but I’m having sex with grandmothers.  I think back to the days when I was raiding and battling slavers and Asmund and I were having sex with Gudrun and Sigrid.  We’d have scared shitless sex before we headed out after those sea-king bastards and then we’d have thank the gods we’re still alive sex when we got back.  And the people that we saved thought we were heroes and we’d have cook-outs for them on the beaches of The Vik and then we’d have more thank the gods sex.  It was the worst of times and the best of times.”  A servant brought more mead to the highseats.  “I felt so young and alive.  Now I’m having sex with grandmothers.”

“I know,” Rollo said.  “I was there, and if I remember right, you’re the one that made them grandmothers.  Well, mothers anyway.  But that’s a necessary step in becoming a grandmother.”

“I know.  I hold myself fully responsible.  Do you know that, after you told me that Gudrun and Sigrid had been whisked off to Polotsk by their father, I stopped in at Polotsk, on my way to kill King Frodi, and told them to meet me in Gardariki when they got the chance.  So, the two sisters show up at my longhall, looking hot as hell and we have this great threesome all night long and in the morning they tell me that they each have a son, one named Oddi, and one named Asmund, so I’m overjoyed because Asmund has a son, and me as well, of course, so I tell the girls that I want to meet them.”  Oddi paused and quaffed some mead.

“Well, go on,” Rollo said, “don’t leave me hanging.”

“So I get invited to their father’s hall, expecting to meet some boys,” Oddi explained, “and I get there and these boys are each twenty four years old.  I was just floored.  I didn’t know what to say.”  Oddi started laughing and Rollo joined in.  “I had brought some boys games as gifts, I think it was Jacks and Knights, so I had to hide the gifts in my tunic and they were scratching my side the whole visit…”  Oddi was laughing so hard he couldn’t get the words out.  Rollo was laughing so hard he started choking on the mead.  “And Gudrun and Sigrid had seen me hide the gifts and you’d think they would have helped, but no.  And the next time we had sex, Gudrun played the Jack and Sigrid played the Knight, and they wouldn’t stop.  And they’re grandmothers now and we still fock.  And I travel halfway around the world, and I’m still focking grandmothers!”

The young servant girl set a pitcher of mead between the highseats and fled the hall.

Oddi and his uncle drank late into the evening and the next day Oddi left for York.

As Oddi sailed up the Humber River and entered the mouth of the River Ouse, he noticed that he was being shadowed by cavalry units.  He considered rowing back to the Humber, as it was a large river and afforded ships some security from land based attack that the smaller Ouse just could not.  And both his ships were full of treasure.  But he soon gathered, from the peace banners and the cheerful demeanor of the troops, that they were there to welcome him, not bury him.  He had his men row Fair Faxi towards the riverbank, but he directed his knar to remain centered in the river.

“Princess Blaeja sends greetings,” the cavalry officer shouted from the riverbank.  “She has planned a welcoming banquet for you on your arrival.”

“Tell her we shall arrive tomorrow,” Oddi shouted.

“If you ride with us,” the officer started, “we can be in York tonight.”

“A Viking never leaves his ships behind!” Oddi shouted.  ‘Especially when going to York,’ he thought.

“We shall ride ahead and tell the Princess you’ll arrive tomorrow,” the officer replied, and the troop rode off.

Oddi knew that Princess Blaeja controlled only her small corner of York which included Castle York, the Hraes’ Company Trading Station of York and a few surrounding streets and fields.  The rest was controlled by various Northumbrian princes who were all allied with various southern Angle and Saxon kings.  And he knew and trusted only Blaeja.

“I thought if I threw you a great welcoming banquet and royal reception,” Princess Blaeja explained, “then I could convince you to stay in my castle, instead of having me join you on your ship.”  They were sneaking aboard Fair Faxi after the welcoming banquet and had both been drinking a bit too much to be overly stealthy in the darkness of night.

“Hjalmar’s rules,” Oddi said, as he gently lifted Blaeja over the topstrake.

“I’m glad that Fair Faxi still has two masts,” Princess Blaeja said, but Oddi had a puzzled look, so she added, “Your second mast was jabbing me in the ribs as you were lifting me.”

“It is the second mast that is hardest to control,” Oddi apologized, as he carried her under the awnings and placed her gently upon the bed.

“Let’s see what we can do about that hardness,” Blaeja offered, pulling Oddi onto the bed with her.  It had been years since they had been together, made love together.  And the children of their past times together were still in the hall celebrating.  Their daughter, Hraegunhild, was married with six children of her own and their son, Ragnar, was a young man in charge of all Hraes’ trading in Northumbria.

“What do you think of Ragnar?” Blaeja asked.

“He is a fine young man with a marked resemblance to yours truly,” Oddi answered.  “But his name concerns me.”  Oddi paused.  “You’re still anxious about this curse thing and it worries me.”

“I have dreams,” Blaeja admitted.  “Viking princes coming out of the east and having their way with the women of York and having their way with Angleland.”

“Are all you healers gifted?” Oddi asked.  He took dreams very seriously.

“They aren’t nice like you are, Oddi,” Princess Blaeja said, sitting up and crying.  Oddi sat up and held her in his arms.  “And the last Viking prince,” she said, “the worst Viking prince, isn’t even from the east.  He’s from Frankia.”  Oddi held her, crying, for a long time.

“My father dreams of great kagans riding into Tmutorokan from the east with hordes of horsemen and they are all killers and rapists and slavers.  He says the evil of King Frodi shall shine next to the darkness they shall bring.”

“Will they come here?” Princess Blaeja asked incredulously.

“No.  He has plans to stop them.”

“How?  How will he stop these terrible hordes?”

“He says sometimes our enemies are far better than the enemies that will replace them once they are defeated.  So he works with our Khazar enemies, rather than crushing them, by giving them a working interest in the Nor’Way.  He feels that they will hold back those hordes if they have as much to lose as we do.”

“He sounds like a very wise Prince,” Blaeja said, feeling better knowing she was not alone in her dreams.  “No wonder he is a Grand Magi of the Alchemists.”

“Yes, I suppose he is,” Oddi replied, “but if this is what you believe the fates hold for your future, for our children’s future then you must prepare for the coming storm.”

“I have been.  Why do you think our children’s names are Hraegunhild and Ragnar?”

“To insulate them from Ragnar’s curse?”

“Yes.  And to expose them to Ragnar’s Hamingja, his luck.”

“You’re Christian,” Oddi stated.  “You’re not supposed to believe in that.”

“When it comes to our children, I leave nothing to chance.  I haven’t seen anything intelligent coming out of Christian mouths for a very long time.  They are beginning to persecute our healers of the Alchemists Guild.  In Frankia they are burning our medical alchemists as witches and are replacing medicines with prayer.  People are dying from things as simple as a tooth ache, because their prayers are not being answered.”

“If it wasn’t for your healers guild, I’d be dead a few times over,” Oddi admitted.

“A plague broke out in Amarka and people refused to wear masks, claiming they are unholy, and praying to God for protection from foul ethers.  They’re dying like flies there and our healers can’t speak up or they’ll be burned alive.  It’s all quite sinful.”

“Not to change the subject,” Oddi whispered, “but I have a gift for you.  Only if you have time,” he teased.  He got out of bed and lifted the lid on his raised quarterdeck and withdrew several packages.  “Silks from Rouen,” he started, “and the latest fashions from Paris!”  And Oddi began opening the gifts and showering Blaeja in silk as she knelt on the bed and bounced in glee.  Oddi returned to the quarterdeck and withdrew a chest of gold Byzants and set it on the bed.  “This is for you and the children,” he said as Blaeja pulled him onto the bed and into the silks.

In early spring, Oddi sailed straight from York to Hraegunarstead, in Stavanger Fjord.  Then he told his men to reef the sails.  Oddi went ashore with a group to where Ingjald’s farm, Berurjod, had been, and it was all a shambles and grown over with weeds.  Norway still suffered from the damage that King Frodi had wrought.  He looked the place over and said, “This is awful, a good farm should be in ruins like this, instead of the grand place it was before.”  He told his men where he and Asmund had practiced archery all day and where they had gone swimming to cool off, and then he named off all the landmarks.  They were heading out, going down to the bay, and everywhere around them the soil had been eroded.  “I think that now hopes are fading that Heid’s prediction will ever happen,” Oddi said confidently, “as the old witch foresaw so long ago.  But what is that, there?” Oddi asked.  “What lies there exposed?  Is that not a horse’s skull?”

“Yes,” his men agreed, “and extremely old and bleached, very big and all grey outside.”

“Do you think it could be the skull of Faxi?”  Oddi asked and he pounded the skull with the steel butt of his spear.  The skull suddenly turned all white against the black earth, but nothing crawled out from under it.  Oddi flipped the skull over with the spear tip but there was no adder there.  No serpent sprang forth and struck at Oddi.  No snake bit his leg above the boot and no venom took him down.  “That old witch Heid,” Oddi swore, “she lied.”  When they got to their ships, Odd stood up on a huge flat stone on the beach and said, “Now we must divide up into two groups.  Forty men must stay here with the knar and the silver and rebuild Berurjod.  And when King Harold Fairhair is dead, rebuild Hraegunarstead.  Forty must come with me in Fair Faxi and help guard the gold until we reach Gardariki.  I shall leave it up to you who shall stay and who shall go.”

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

35.0  THE PROPHECY OF ARROW ODD, Part Two  (Circa 912 AD)

‘After he returned to Kiev, he thought of the horse through which the magicians

 had foretold his death. He thus summoned his senior squire and inquired about

 the horse which he had ordered to be fed and well cared for. The squire

 answered that he was dead. Oleg laughed and mocked the magician,

 exclaiming, “Soothsayers tell untruths, and their words are naught but

 falsehood. This horse is dead, but I am still alive. Let me see his bones!”

 He rode to the place where the bare bones and skull lay.  Dismounting from

 his horse, he laughed and remarked, “So I was supposed to receive my death

 from this skull?”  And he stamped upon the skull with his foot.  But a serpent

 crawled forth from it and bit him in the foot, so that in consequence he

 sickened and died.’

Hraes’ Primary Chronicle

(912 AD)  Princess Eyfura and Hervor waited through the spring trading season without a sign of Oddi.  They were hoping he would have visited Kiev and his father, but he had sent word that he was rebuilding Berurjod in Stavanger Fjord and would arrive in Kiev after the spring trading season.  Prince Erik was waiting on the main quay of Kiev, when Oddi sailed up in Fair Faxi.  He saw his father and leapt onto the dock.  As they embraced and hugged below the dragonhead of Fair Faxi, a slight hooded figure approached and pulled a long blade out from under a cloak.  The spectre thrust out the blade at Oddi, who instinctively blocked it with his wrist band, and he smashed the figure down to the dock and the spectre curled up in pain and lashed out with the sword again, and the edge bit Oddi’s ankle to the bone.  Then the sword went flying across the dock and clattered on the boardwalk and Erik saw right away that it was Tyrfingr.  Oddi pinned the assailant to the decking and pulled back the hood to expose Hervor, dazed but still breathing with a black bolt of lightning painted across her grey stained face.  Erik threw his fur cloak over Tyrfingr and saw Eyfura approaching from the longhall, so he rolled the sword into the fur and kicked it into the river.  “The water will protect us from the rays of the blade,” Erik explained to Oddi as his wife drew near.

“I saw Hervor quickly leave the hall,” Eyfura said.  “What has she done now?”

They returned to Oddi and Hervor.  Erik inspected Oddi’s wound while Eyfura revived Hervor.  Erik tore the white silk shirt from his chest and tore off a strip of it to tie around Oddi’s left leg.  He then stripped his belt of his seax and used the sheath to twist the silk strip tight around Oddi’s leg.  He pulled out the seax and told his son, “Your leg has to come off at the knee!”

“You’re mad!” Oddi cried, pulling his leg free of his father.  “This limb isn’t going anywhere.”

“The sword she cut your leg with is Tyrfingr.  The blade is poisoned.  If I don’t take it off at your knee, you’ll be dead within hours.”

Oddi sat down on the dock, hugging his legs to his body.  “I know.  I saw what it did to my friend, Hjalmar.  It’s probably too late already.”

“Let me take off your leg, son.  Please.  We can fit it with a prosthetic.”

“And I’ll join one of your Special Centuriatas?”

Eyfura had fully revived Hervor by then and both women watched the father arguing for the life of his son.

“No, father,” Oddi continued.  “It is too late.  I can feel the poison at work already.  I think the hours you gave me may have been overly optimistic.”  Oddi remembered watching Hjalmar die and he realized he was sitting just as Hjalmar had been sitting.  “I want to die with us holding each other in our arms.”

By now all Oddi’s men had come from Fair Faxi, gathered round their captain and began clamouring for Hervor’s head.  Eyfura huddled over Hervor as if to protect her from the throng.  Oddi ordered his men to respect the fine blood of the women and sat down on a bench below the forestem of Fair Faxi.  Erik sent for some camp chairs and fine wine from King Frodi’s highseat hall and they sat in the warm spring sunshine as Oddi’s strength waned.

Erik helped his son into a camp chair from the bench.  “Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked.

Oddi asked him to record in Latin the Death Ode of Arrow Odd and then said this:

1st (c. 912)

“Listen to me,                        to what I must say,

 you witnesses of                 my friends long gone.

 No need to hide it                nor conceal the way

 this forest ash                      could not take fate on.

2nd (c. 840)

 I was fostered early             by my father’s wish,

 to be brought up                 at Berurjod;

 I felt no loss                         of love or bliss,

 and took what Ingjald         could offer Odd.

3rd (c. 845)

 We both grew up                at Hraegunarstead,

 Asmund and I,                     through childhood,

 spear shafts shaping,        and ships a building,

 children fletching                arrows of wood.

4th (c. 852)

 A witch said, ‘You will        burn here at Berurjod.

 Venom-filled snake            shall sting you,

 from below the                     skull of Faxi,

 the adder will bite                just above your shoe.’

5th (c. 852)

 The seeress read                true runes to me,

 but no way could I,              would I, heed;

 Asmund and I buried Faxi,    Ingjald’s best horse,

 a visit to my father’s           estate we’d need.

The verses go on for a bit, so I’ll skip you on towards the end:

133rd (c. 912)

 So we headed off to           the quay of Konogard,

 My father waited for me     with his bride and youngest son,

 Queen Eyfura and Prince Eyfur,    but her grand-daughter, Hervor,

 slunk onto the dock with    Tyrfingr in her homespun.

134th (c. 912)

 She lashed out with            the poisoned blade,

 and I knocked her down,    but as she fell,

 she nicked my leg with      the blood-snake, Tyrfingr,

 its poison’s in my body,      my blood doth start to jell.

135th (c. 912)

 My father offered to            amputate my leg,

 but I just said no,                 the poison’s going to my head,

 I just saw Angantyr,            he warned his daughter,

 about the blade and           tells me she’ll soon be dead.

136th (c. 912)

 He’s asked me for a favour    to bring her to Valhall,

 my shield maid can enter    the warrior’s paradise,

 she can watch us battle,      then bring us our sweet mead,

 Asmund’s there, he does swear,    I see it and it’s nice.

137th (c. 912)

 I know I took the faith         of Christianity,

 but I had fingers crossed     when in waters they dipped me.

 Promise me young Hervor,   for you are soon to die,

 you’ll come with me to Valhall    in a burial at sea.

138th (c. 912)

 I bid you farewell father     and love you in my heart,

 And love you Prince Ivar,     Eyfura, you’d your chore.

 To Silkisif send love           and to my sons also,

 send them all my greetings,    I’ll go there no more.”

“Angantyr came to you?” Queen Eyfura came up close.  Prince Erik was transferring Oddi onto a great bearskin one of his men had laid upon the dock.

“Yes.  He came to me and added a bit of verse,” Oddi said weakly.  “Angantyr wants me to bring Hervor to Valhall with me.”  While Erik and Eyfura were attending to Oddi, Hervor was tearing off her clothing and she laid herself naked beside Odd.  She hugged him and tried to be him and she whispered, “I shall treat you so fine in Valhall, this I promise.”  Prince Erik could see a grey pallor to the skin of Hervor and it was a grey he had seen before.  He knew she was not long for this world.

Oddi took Hervor under his arm.  “Finally,” he said, “a shield-maiden here to my liking,” and she hugged him.  “If you ever go to Ireland, Father,” Oddi began, “could you stop and visit with my wife and daughter in Dub-Lin?  Tell them both I love them and was thinking about them at the end.”

“Anything else?” Erik asked, as more wine was poured.

“Yes.  Give my scale mail shirt to little Ivar when he gets old enough to fit it.  It has saved my life more than once.  Ragnar and Ladgerda left it with the king of Ireland and I got it from his daughter.”

Oddi’s forty picked men sat about, watched and listened.  They all knew they were witnessing a most famous death, a death foretold.

“Your brother, King Roller figured the prophecy out,” Oddi said weakly as he savoured the wine as if it might be his last.  “When the witch Heid foretold your future, Father, she said your son would die from the bite of a poison snake that crawled out below the skull of Fair Faxi.  Because Ragnar was in the room with you, everyone thought she was talking to him and that the son was you.  When I was twelve, you and Grim gave me your ship, Fair Faxi, and that same witch foretold that I would die from the bite of a poison snake below the skull of Faxi.  In Heid’s first foretelling, she was talking to you, father, not to Ragnar.  It is your son dying under the skull of Fair Faxi.”  And Oddi looked up at his ship and laughed, bravely.  “Tyrfingr, your ‘arrow of the gods’, is that poisoned blood-snake that crawled out under the skull of Faxi.  I am, indeed, dying below its weathered skull.  It has all been preordained.  Fate is all.  Of all the great things we have done, this will be the most famed.”  Oddi laughed again, but then he coughed and then coughed up blood.  He quickly drank more wine and this time it was his last.  Below the skull of Fair Faxi, from a poisoned blood-snake bite, he died.

Hervor was crying at Oddi’s side and Queen Eyfura was trying to console her.  She got up, naked, and began walking back up the quay toward the main gates of Kiev and when Eyfura followed and tried to cover up Hervor with a blanket, she pushed it away.  Erik had his men carry Oddi’s body into the hall and laid him out on his highseat and covered him with the blanket.  He went to Hervor, standing naked in the hall and he stroked her hair.  “Where is the scabbard?” he asked gently.  “We must sheath Tyrfingr.  The water will shield us from its poison, but it is still dangerous.”

“The scabbard is in my room under my bed,” Hervor blurted.  Erik and Eyfura led the shield-maiden to her room and Erik recovered the scabbard while Eyfura put Hervor to bed.  Erik went out to the dock and into the river to sheathe Tyrfingr.  The blade glowed dangerously until he got it in the leaden scabbard.  Trapped under the bones of Angantyr, the blade’s power had grown.

“Quiet, child,” Queen Eyfura whispered, as she tucked Hervor into bed.  “We wanted revenge and we got it.”

“But he died so bravely, grandmother.  And I feel so bad.  It’s all so sad.”

“It was our duty to avenge our fathers.  And we did it.  I’m proud of you, Hervor,” she said, hugging the girl.

Later, in bed, Erik told Eyfura that he suspected Hervor may have been overly exposed to Tyrfingr’s poison.

“How overly?” Eyfura asked.

 “She will likely be dead in two days.”

“I don’t know what caused her to do all that,” Eyfura said.  “Angantyr’s sword.  The lightning bolt painted on her face.  She stained her body grey.  It’s all so sad.”  She rolled over and went to sleep.

Erik watched the beauty of her form as moonlight filtered into the room.  The faint light glistened on her shoulder and followed along her side, dipping under the blankets to her waist and thrusting up to follow the curve of her hip then tapering down her shapely legs.  Perfection in form…if not in substance.  He wondered how much of the blade Eyfura had been exposed to. 

Duke Rollo of Normandy woke up in a sweat.  His wife, Poppa, was beside him asleep.  He listened for the sound that had awakened him.  It came again….a low whisper of wind, a sound without effort, but, still, a sound.  He rose out of bed and wrapped a robe about himself.  It was spring but it was still unseemingly cold.  He went to the door that led to the balcony and he opened it a crack.  Her figure seemed a wisp of smoke, beautiful as ever.  She never seemed to age.  Always as young as she had been when she’d fallen in battle.  The moonlight caught up in her hair and she looked toward him.  He hadn’t seen her in years.  He was married now, with children, but it mattered not.  He shifted the door and slipped out onto the cold stone deck.

“He is dead you know,” she said.  “My son is dead.”

“I know.  I had a dream of his death,” Rollo replied, then checked himself.  ‘Was this still the dream?’ he thought.

“Angantyr’s daughter, Hervor, cut him with the blade, Tyrfingr, and its poison killed him under the skull of Fair Faxi, as prophesied.”

“It was preordained,” Rollo responded, as if those words might help.

But they didn’t help, so he held her as she cried.  He stood and he held her for hours and he cried with her and he kept holding her as if he held her long enough, she would stay.  In the morning, Duke Rollo’s wife told him he had been sleep walking, that she found him standing on the balcony, frozen and shivering and wet and she’d led him back to bed.

Two days after Oddi’s death, Hervor joined him.  She had bequeathed her only possession, Tyrfingr, to her son.  Erik prepared a great feast and funeral for his son and Oddi and Hervor were burned together in Fair Faxi on the Dnieper River in a stone ship burial at sea.  Two months later, Prince Erik left for Gardariki and Queen Eyfura and Prince Ivar remained in Kiev to rule in her father, King Frodi’s name.

THE SAGA OF PRINCE HELGI ‘ARROW ODD’ ERIKSON      .

THE END

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Saxo Grammaticus.  The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus.  Denmark, c.1200.  As translated by Oliver Elton, B.A. London, 1893, with consideration toward the translation by Peter Fisher.  Cambridge, 1979.

Author unknown.  Arrow-Odd:  A Medieval Novel.  Iceland, c.1200.  As translated by Paul Edwards and Hermann Palsson.  New York, 1970.

Author unknown.  The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise (Hervor’s Saga).  Iceland, c.1200.  As translated by Christopher Tolkien.  Oxford, 1960, and Nora Kershaw Chadwick, 1934.

Dunlop, D.M.  The History of the Jewish Khazars.  New York, 1967.

© Copyrighted Intellectual Property of Brian Howard Seibert:

© The Copyrighted Intellectual Property of the Work ‘The VARANGIANS Saga Series’ includes (but is not limited to) the following series of related ideas:

As well as making claim to a Literary Copyright, I, Brian Howard Seibert, lay claim to an Intellectual Property Copyright on a series of related discoveries/ideas based upon four decades of research and evaluation that concludes that it was Danish kings and princes who founded what has come to be known as the Kievan Hraes’ (Rus’) state with intellectual claims as follows:

BOOK ONE:  The Saga of King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ Sigurdson is based upon Book Nine of The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus and upon The Saga of the Volsungs. Because Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ is the earliest and most legendary of the Hraes’ kings and princes, I waited until I had completed Book 8 before attempting Book 1 and, as Saxo, himself, saved Ragnar to the last of his Nine Books of Danish History, I am guessing he did the same for similar reasons. I am glad I waited, but many of my Book 1 theories remain from very early on in the research process and from them I hypothesized the following intellectual property discoveries:

1.1 That the famed shield called “Hrae’s Ship’s Round” mentioned in the Elder Edda was the shield that ‘Hrae’ Gunnar ‘Lothbrok’ Sigurdson took shelter under while attacking the Greek fire Breathing Byzantine bireme, Fafnir, and that the Hrae prename came from the roar of the pneumatically propelled Greek fire emulsion flame that flew from the firetube of the bireme.

“And his shield was called ‘Hrae’s Ship’s Round’,

  And his followers were called the Hraes’.”

Eyvinder Skald-Despoiler;  Skaldskaparmal

1.2 That the Hraes’ or Rhos were called ‘Dromitai’ by the Romans, meaning ‘men who run fast’, as an insult for the Hraes’ retreat back up the riverways of Kievan Hraes’ before the much larger army of the Khazars (Huns) in Saxo’s Book 5. This ‘men who run fast’ insult was continued forward when in 1018 AD Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg called the citizens of Kiev ‘Swift Danes and their Runaway Slavs’ after the Hraes’ abandoned Kiev before the armies of the Germans and Poles. It was further carried on into 1040 AD when the English began calling their King Harald, successor of Canute, ‘the Harefoot’, meaning ‘the Swift’ as an insult and not ‘fleet of foot’ as is often surmised.

“These sentences give good sense if we abstract the words Áŋœřȧȿ … ßàþõ, for we then get left with the ordinary aetiological explanation of the two names of the Rus’, ‘Rhos’ and ‘Dromitai’:  they are called ‘Rhos’ after the name of a mighty man of valour so called, and ‘Dromitai’ because they can run fast.”

            Jenkins, Romilly:  Studies on Byzantine History of the 9th and 10th Centuries.

1.3 That the name Varangians comes from Vay, meaning Way, and Range, meaning to Wander, or Way Wanderers. In my early studies I learned that the Rang River in Iceland meant the Wandering River and Vay speaks for itself. Varangers were initially Wanderers of the Nor’Way as can be seen in the Varanger Fjord of the Northern Cape of Norway where the trading fleets gathered to catch the right wind to take them into the White Sea, which was the original Varangian Sea of the Sagas and Chronicles.

1.4 That the name Nor’Way comes from the original Northern Way trade route name for transportation and commerce of goods conducted across Norway’s North Cape and into the White Sea and the riverways of Northern Hraes’.

BOOK TWO:  The Saga of Prince Erik ‘Bragi’ Ragnarson is based upon Book Five of The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus and upon The Saga of King Heidrek ‘the Wise’ (aka Hervor’s Saga) by an unknown contemporary author. This was the first discovery. While preparing a University research essay on the origins of the play ‘Hamlet, Prince of Denmark’ by William Shakespeare, I read Books Three and Four of Saxo’s Nine Books of Danish History which contain the Tale of Prince Amleth, a story almost identical to the 16th century play that was compiled by Saxo in the 12th century. Reading on to Book Five of Saxo’s work I found a tale of two Norwegian brothers, Erik and Roller Ragnarson, who join their brother-in-law, King Frodi of Denmark, an Angle king of Jutland, in establishing a trading empire in Scythia that culminates in the famous Battle of the Goths and the Huns and the total victory of the Danes. Having studied Roman History in first year university and Khazar History in second, I came to the conclusion that this tale was about the 9th century entry of Varangians into Scythia and their conquest of Kiev from Khazar domination. In 1984 I set about turning Saxo’s 50 page Book Five History into a 500 page Historical Research Novel to investigate how well Saxo’s work, which he had placed in the time of Christ, would fare in 9th century Kievan Scythia. It did very well, and from it I hypothesized the following intellectual property discoveries:

2.1 That the Ragnar father and Kraka mother characters of the two Norwegian brothers in the saga were none other than King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’ Sigurdson and Princess Aslaug ‘Kraka’ Sigurd-Fafnirsbanesdottir.

2.2 That Erik ‘the Eloquent’ Ragnarson was also known as King Heidrek ‘the Wise’ and Prince Rurik of Novgorod and perhaps Prince Rorik of Jutland.

2.3 That King Roller Ragnarson of Norway later became Duke Rollo of Normandy.

2.4 That the three brothers of Saxo’s Book 5, Erik, Roller and Frodi were the founding Varangian brothers, Rurik, Truvor and Sineus mentioned in the Rus’ Primary Chronicle.

2.5 That the children of King Frodi by Queen Alfhild, Princess Eyfura and Prince Alf, would play roles in the following two sagas.

2.6 That King Frodi ‘the Peaceful’ Fridleifson had assumed the Khazar title of Kagan of Kiev after taking the city from the Huns and that his brother-in-law, Prince Erik ‘Bragi’ Ragnarson, had assumed the title of Kagan-Bek.

“…along with his envoys the Emperor sent also some men who called themselves and their own people Rhos;  they asserted that their king, Chacanus by name, had sent them to Theophilos to establish amity.”

Prudentius, Bishop of Troyes;  Annales Bertiniani (839 AD)

BOOK THREE:  The Saga of Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson is based upon Book Five of The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus and upon The Saga of Arrow Odd by an unknown contemporary author. Prince Helgi (Oleg) of Kiev (ruled c. 879-912) of the Chronicle corresponds with Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Erikson, of ‘Arrow Odd’s Saga’ fame, and was the bane of King Frodi and then his son, King Alf of Kiev. Prince Helgi (Oleg) ruled Kiev until his death from the poisonous bite of a snake that struck out from under the skull of a horse he had owned just after he had given it a kick, the same death that Arrow-Odd experiences in the Norse Saga. In the book I have hypothesized the following intellectual property discoveries:

3.1 That King Ragnar ‘Lothbrok’s death by poisonous snake bites was derived from the kenning for death by cuts of poisonous blood-snakes (swords) by twelve swordsmen so that no one person could be blamed for the death of the most famous Viking.

3.2 That Prince Helgi (Oleg) ‘Arrow Odd’s death by poisonous snake bite was derived from the kenning of death by a poisonous blood-snake (sword) under the skull of Faxi (the skull above the forestem of the longship ‘Fair Faxi’).

3.2a That Prince Helgi (Oleg) ‘Arrow Odd’s death by poisonous snake bite may also bea an analogy for death from the STD Syphilis, which Helgi may have brought back with him from the Newfoundland. Once caught, Syphilis presented rather benign first and second stages, but it was the third unavoidable stage that appeared up to thirty years later that killed the victim, usually by attacking the shins and lower limbs, and in Helgi’s case, one foot in particular. This discovery added October 19th, 2023.

3.3 That Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ was the sea cow that killed King Frodi in Kiev because King Frodi had targeted Prince Helgi for death to avenge Helgi’s killing of Frodi’s twelve grandsons at the Holmganger on Samso.

3.4 That Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ killed King Frodi’s son and successor, King Alf ‘Bjalki’, in Kiev because he had refused to pay tithes to King Olmar of Tmutorokan.

3.5 That in the battle against Alf ‘Bjalki’ much witchcraft was used that is very similar to the witchcraft later used in the Battle of Hjorungavagr, namely the five arrows of death used by the spirit of Thorgerder Helgibruder and of Goddess Irpa.

3.6 That the Danish Great Heathen Army that attacked England in 867 AD originated out of Kievan Hraes’ (Rus’) and the Dnieper/Danube River Basin and was led by King Frodi ‘the Third’ Fridleifson of Hraes’ and Anglish Jutland in Denmark as stated in a contemporary report of that time:

Note on the Danish Great Heathen Army from ASSER’S  LIFE OF KING ALFRED:

“The same year (866 AD) a great fleet of heathen came to Britain from the Danube,[51] and wintered in the kingdom of the East Saxons, which is called in Saxon East Anglia; and there they became in the main an army of cavalry.”

[51] Probably meaning the mouths of the Rhine (Stevenson).

[51]  No.  Probably meaning the Dnieper River and Kiev, which was at that time ruled by King Frodi ‘the Third’ Fridleifson who was also king of Anglish Jutland in Denmark.  Asser may have stated the Danube as it was the closest European river to the Dnieper that would be known of by his audience.  A hundred years later, Prince Svein ‘the Old’ Ivarson (Sviatoslav) of Kiev would move the Hraes’ capital from Kiev on the Dnieper to Pereyaslavets on the Danube, so, in the end, for a short time, Asser was correct (Brian Howard Seibert).

This discovery added August 30th, 2023.

3.7 That the Danish Great Heathen Army that attacked England in 867 AD originated out of Kievan Hraes’ (Rus’) and Denmark and was led by King Frodi ‘the Third’ Fridleifson of Hraes’ and Anglish Jutland in Denmark, a royal from ‘the Old Fridleif/Frodi Line of Danish Kings, and that references to the Great Heathen Army as being the ‘Scaldingi’ (Skioldungs) as stated in the ‘History of Saint Cuthbert’ chronicle of that time (and others):

“Chapter 12 of the HSC, after reporting once more on the crushing and slaying of the Northumbrian Kings Ælla and Osberht in 867 AD, says that ‘the Scaldingi slew nearly all the English in the southern and the northern parts [of England]’.”

Here the Scaldingi are the Skioldungs, the followers of the Skioldung King Frodi and, in the true fashion of the slavers that they had become, the Hraes’ Danes enslaved all captured English and transported them east to Kiev for sale in the slave markets of Baghdad (Brian Howard Seibert).

This discovery added September 10th, 2023.

3.8  The only Norwegian likely to have profited from King Frodi’s attack on Norway in 865 AD may have been King Harald ‘Fairhair’ Halfdanson, who may have sided with the Danish King Frodi.  Leaving his last name be, the Hrafnsmal poem in his honour includes the lines:

“The highborn king [Haraldr] who took the Danish wife rejected the Holmrygir and the maidens of the Hordar, every single one from Hedmark and the family of Holgi (Helgi?).”

“How generous is [he] to those who guard [his] land, the excellent war-hastener [Warrior] to his men of skills?”

“Strife-displayers [Warriors] are greatly enriched, those who cast dice at Haraldr’s court.  They are endowed with valuables and handsome treasures, with Hunnish metal and an eastern bondwoman.”

Hrafnsmal by Thorbjorn Hornklofi (Circa 880 AD)

It would appear that King Harald ‘Fairhair’ took a Danish wife over his own Hordaland maidens and his men were rewarded with Hunnish gold and eastern bondmaidens (concubines?).  King Frodi of Kiev had just defeated the Huns, so he likely had Hunnish metal and, being a slaver of monstrous proportions, he would have had access to innumerable eastern Slav concubines.  He may have enticed Harald (Har ‘the Old’?) to join him in crushing Norway and allowed him to clean up and become the first full King of Norway (at least up to Halogaland, which is purported to have been named after Prince Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’).

This discovery added October 2nd, 2024.