The Amber Road

by Harry Sidebottom

  The name Gudme may well be ancient. Lundeborg is not, so in this novel it is given the fictional name Gudmestrand.

  Gudsø Vig (Norvasund in the novel)

  Illustrations and discussion of the sea barrage at Gudsø Vig are provided by A. N. Jørgensen, ‘Fortifications and the Control of Land and Sea Traffic in the Pre-Roman and Roman Iron Age’, in Jørgensen et al., The Spoils of Victory (2003), 194–209. The village demolished to create palisades is borrowed from Priorsløkke; ibid., 206–8. The name Norvasund usually referred to the Straits of Gibraltar, but here is taken from an unidentified place in The Saga of the Volsungs, 9.

  THE HIMLING DYNASTY

  From the start, back in 2006 when I began planning the Warrior of Rome series, the hero had to be an outsider. In a classicist’s terms, he had to be Polybius rather than Tacitus of the Annals. An outsider may lack the depth of understanding, but he always comments more openly and naturally on what an insider may take for granted. Ballista became Germanic because we know more about that culture than that of any other people beyond the frontiers, thanks to the Germania of Tacitus (obviously, here the Roman senator was writing as an outsider). Having gone that far, I made Ballista an Angle because his descendants, if they survive, will one day become English. At that stage, I imagined his father as a petty northern chieftain. Archaeology was to prove me wrong.

  From the mid-second century AD the archaeology of southern Scandinavia shows a great increase in riches and Roman imports. These are found both in deposits of war booty and in aristocratic burials, the latter particularly at the site of Himlingøje on the Danish island of Sealand. Danish archaeologists have argued convincingly that from the Marcomannic wars (AD162–80) onwards, the Roman empire backed the rise of a Baltic hegemony ruled by the native dynasty which interred its dead at Himlingøje. Both sides benefited. The new client kingdom received rich diplomatic gifts, possibly weapons, and could send some of its potentially troublesome young men overseas. Rome got the service of additional northern warriors, and a friendly power to the rear of the ones on the frontier, who were often hostile. For an accessible introduction to the ‘Himlingøje empire’, see B. Storgaard, ‘Cosmopolitan Aristocrats’, in Jørgensen et al., The Spoils of Victory (2003), 106–25.

  As a newcomer to this field of study, it struck me that the modern literature conspicuously avoids addressing two issues. First is the relationship of the burial site of Himlingøje on Sealand with the rise of the settlement of Gudme on Funen. Second, and far more understandable, scholars are reluctant to link any of the peoples named in literary sources to the dynasty of HimlinØje (see above, ‘Map of the North’). A novelist need not be so constrained. In The Amber Road I create a fictional narrative that joins Himlingøje and Gudme. The Angles were recorded in Denmark both before and after the third century. So were lots of other peoples, but none had the same resonance for me. The name of the fictional dynasty was created by abbreviating the modern place name for the burial site.

  Ballista’s father, Isangrim, stands revealed as a ruler of the highest consequence.

  NORTHERN BATTLE STANDARDS

  The tribes of the north used standards in battle. When discovered at Vimose in 1849 the gilded bronze head of a gryphon originally from a Roman parade helmet had been mounted on a pole with a red and blue flag (X. Pauli Jensen, ‘The Vimose Find’, in Jørgensen et al., The Spoils of the North (2003), 237). I gave this standard to the Heathobards. For the others, I used images from contemporary art (the page references are to illustrations in Jørgensen, ibid.): the bull with silver horns of the Brondings of Abalos (p. 13), the golden dormouse of Varinsey (p. 244), the gold and black rampant lion of the Wylfings of Hindafell (p. 268), the double-headed beast of the Geats of Solfell (p. 273), the silver (changed from gold) on black wolf of Unferth (p. 286), the three-headed man of the Wrosns, the deer and fawn of Varinsey, and the killer and slain man of the Dauciones (p. 293). The white horse of the Himlings of Hedinsey and Ballista’s own white draco have been described already in previous novels.

  SHIPS

  The majority of scholars consider that northern ships lacked masts and sails in the third century AD (e.g. O. Crumlin-Pedersen, ‘Large and Small Warships of the North’, in A. N. Jørgensen and B. L. Clausen (eds.), Military Aspects of Scandinavian Society in a European Perspective, AD1–1300 (Copenhagen, 1997), 184–94). For a robust attack on this view, see J. Haywood, Dark Age Naval Power: A Reassessment of Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Seafaring Activity (revised edn, Hockwold-cum-Wilton, 1999).

  AMBER

  The most important discussion of amber in classical literature is in Pliny the Elder, Natural History XXXVII.xi.30–xiii.53. It contains the fascinating story of a Roman equestrian who was sent to the Baltic to procure amber to adorn a display of gladiators in the reign of Nero. This anecdote was the original inspiration for The Amber Road.

  ZENO

  Aulus Voconius Zeno is known via one inscription (AE 1915, 51). He was appointed a Studiis while governor of Cilicia under Gallienus (PLRE Zeno 9). L. de Blois, The Policy of the Emperor Gallienus (Leiden, 1976), 49, n.21, reverses these posts. The Zeno of The Amber Road owes a lot to various of the Characters of Theophrastus: Obsequiousness (no. 5); Petty Ambition (no. 21); and Cowardice (no. 25). He is given an origin in Arcadia in the novel and used to explore some of the ambiguities of being a Greek under Roman rule. A good introduction to this fascinating topic is Greg Woolf, ‘Becoming Roman, Staying Greek: Culture, Identity and the Civilizing Process in the Roman East’, PCPhS 40 (1994), 116–43. A more comprehensive study is provided by Simon Swain, Hellenism and Empire (Oxford, 1996). In the novel, the irony that Zeno affects to despise Virgil while often thinking in images from the Aeneid is quite intentional.

  QUOTES

  The battle song of the Angles in Prologue One is adapted from the translation by J. L. Byock of the anonymous Saga of King Hrolf Kraki (London, 1998, p. 41).

  When the Iliad of Homer is recited – by Gallienus in Chapter 2, Zeno in Chapter 14 – it is, as ever in these novels, in the translation of Richard Lattimore (Chicago and London, 1951).

  The passage of the Odyssey wheeled out by Zeno in Chapter 14 is in the translation of Robert Faggles (London, 1997).

  In Chapter 5, Simplicinius Genialis’s quotations from the Letters and the Panegyric of Pliny are in the translation by Betty Radice (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1969).

  The Historia Augusta, Gallieni Duo 11.7–9, claims that the epithalamium in Chapter 12 was composed by Gallienus. The translation here is by D. Magie (Cambridge, Mass., 1932). The lines that slip the emperor’s mind in this novel can be found in the Latin Anthology, i.2, p. 176, no. 711.

  The defence speech of the father with the Cynic son in Chapter 16 is from The Lesser Declamations attributed to Quintillian abridged and slightly altered from the translation of D. R. Shackleton Bailey (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2006) – which would be particularly fitting if they were really written by Postumus Iunior, as in the unlikely claim of the Historia Augusta (Tyranni Triginta 4).

  The prophesies of the witch in Chapter 20 are taken from the Völuspá in The Elder Edda: A Book of Viking Lore, translated by A. Orchard (London, 2011). The scene also takes sentences verbatim from Eirik’s Saga, translated by M. Magnusson and H. Palsson in The Vinland Sagas (Harmondsworth, 1965), and the curse at the end draws on Grettir’s Saga in the translation by J. Byock (Oxford, 2009).

  All lines from The Aeneid of Virgil are translated by F. Ahl (Oxford, 2007): Oslac in Chapter 20; Zeno in Chapter 32 and Epilogue Two.

  In Chapter 21, the line of Beowulf which comes to Ballista is in the translation by Kevin Crossley-Holland in The Anglo-Saxon World (Woodbridge, 1982), with wyrd reinstated for the modern English ‘fate’.

  Kadlin’s thoughts of Wulf and Eadwacer in Chapters 22 and 32, and The Wife’s Complaint in Chapter 32 are from M. Alexander, The Earliest English Poetry (London, 1991).

  The invocation on the Scorn-Pole in Chapter 24 is altered from Egil’s Saga,
translated by B. Scudder (London, 1997).

  Rikiar the Vandal’s poems in Chapters 26, 27 and 29 are taken, and in places adapted, from Egil’s Saga, as translated by B. Scudder (London, 1997).

  OTHER NOVELS

  In all my novels I include homages to a couple of writers who have given me pleasure and inspiration.

  As The Amber Road involves much travelling up a river in small boats, I reread Black Robe by Brian Moore (1985). As I remembered, its authenticity and action, combined with its character development and profundity of theme, brings the historical novel close to perfection. Probably it says something that all I took from it were some images of paddling.

  Consciously, I borrowed just the subtitle from Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West (1985), but the influences of Cormac McCarthy’s magnificent prose and unflinching vision are both challenging and inescapable.

  Something at a very different level occurred to me as I was typing up the contents page. Hyperboria was the world of Conan the Barbarian. When I was twelve or thirteen, I loved the pulp fiction of Robert E. Howard. Not having reread any, I cannot tell if it has left its mark.

  Thanks

  Once again I thank almost all the same people, but my pleasure in doing so does not diminish.

  Family at home in Woodstock and Newmarket: my wife, Lisa, and sons, Tom and Jack, my mother, Frances, and aunt, Terry.

  Colleagues at Oxford: Maria Stamatopoulou of Lincoln College, John Eidinow of St Benet’s Hall and Richard Marshall of Wadham College. The latter exhibited even wider scholarship than before in helping compile the List of Characters and Glossary.

  Students at Oxford, especially Tim Bano and Dan Draper, who both had far more talk of Ballista than tutorials.

  Friends at various locations: Kate and Jeremy Habberley, especially in Cromer and Chipping Norton, and Peter Cosgrove and Jeremy Tinton all over the place.

  Finally, the professionals: Alex Clarke, the editor of my first six novels, Sarah Day, the copy-editor of the same, and James Gill, my agent, for those and beyond.

  Harry Sidebottom

  Newmarket

  February 2013

  Glossary

  The definitions given here are geared to The Amber Road. If a word or phrase has several meanings, only that or those relevant to this novel tend to be given.

  A Memoria: The emperor’s keeper of records.

  A Rationibus: Official in control of the emperor’s finances.

  A Studiis: Official who aided the literary and intellectual studies of the emperor.

  Ab Epistulis: Secretary in charge of the emperor’s correspondence.

  Abalos: Island famed in antiquity for its amber, visited by the Greek explorer Pythias in the fourth century BC, but whose exact location is now unknown. In The Amber Road, this island is identified with Bornholm and populated by the Brondings.

  Abasgia: Kingdom on the north-east shore of the Black Sea, divided into an eastern and a western half, each with its own king.

  Abritus: Battle fought in AD251 against the Goths in what is now eastern Bulgaria. A disaster for the Romans, the emperor Decius and his son were killed in combat.

  Achilles Pontarches: Achilles, Ruler of the Sea, a demi-god widely worshipped in the region surrounding the Black Sea.

  Acropolis: Sacred citadel of a Greek city.

  Actio Gratiarum: Speech of thanks delivered to the emperor by a newly appointed consul.

  Adlected: Someone personally promoted by the emperor to a higher social or civic status.

  Aegir: Norse god of the sea.

  Aeneid: Epic poem by Virgil recounting the ancestral myths of the Romans.

  Aenus: Modern river Inn, running from the Alps to the Danube.

  Aestii: German tribe living at the eastern end of the southern coast of the Baltic Sea.

  Agora: Greek term for a marketplace and civic centre.

  Agoranomos: Official in Greek cities, responsible for the agora and the food supplies of the population.

  Ala (plural, alae): Unit of Roman cavalry, usually numbering around five hundred cavalrymen.

  Alamann (plural, Alamanni): Federation of German tribes along the border of the Roman province of Germania Superior.

  Alani: Nomadic tribe north of the Caucasus.

  Albania: Kingdom to the south of the Caucasus, bordering the Caspian Sea (not to be confused with modern Albania).

  Albingauni: Gallic tribe living around modern Albenga on the Italian Riviera.

  Alexandria: Capital of the Roman province of Egypt, second-largest city in the empire.

  Alfheim: In Norse myth, the home of the light elves.

  Allfather: Epithet of Woden, the supreme god in Norse mythology.

  Alpes Maritimae: Roman province including the mountain ranges of the southern Alps and the Mediterranean coast roughly between Marseilles and Genoa.

  Amazons: In Greek mythology, a legendary tribe of female warriors.

  Amber Road: Collective name for a number of trade routes leading south from the Baltic to the Roman empire.

  Amicitia: Friendship. Important Roman concept that included notions of social obligation.

  Amicus (plural, amici): Latin, friend.

  Amphitrite: In Greek mythology, a sea goddess and wife of Poseidon.

  Amphora (plural, amphorae): Large Roman earthenware storage vessel.

  Anabasis: Greek term for an expedition upcountry.

  Andreia: Greek, manliness, courage.

  Angeln: Land of the Angles.

  Angles: North German tribe, living on the Jutland peninsula in the area now occupied by southern Denmark and the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, and in this novel on the Danish islands of Funen and Zealand.

  Aphrodite: Greek goddess of love.

  Apollo: Greek god adopted by the Romans, with many spheres of responsibility. Worshipped in Olbia as Apollo Prostates, Stands-in-Front, he seems to have been a protector of the city.

  Aquileia: Town in north-eastern Italy, where the emperor Maximinus Thrax was killed in AD238.

  Aquitania: Roman province covering south-west France.

  Arabia: Roman province including the Sinai peninsula and modern Jordan.

  Arcadia: Geographical region of Ancient Greece lying in the centre of the Peloponnese.

  Archon: Greek title for a leading civic official; literally, ruler, lord.

  Arelate: Modern Arles, city in the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis.

  Arete: Fictional town on the Euphrates, based on Dura-Europos, scene of the action in Fire in the East.

  Argestes: Greek name for the north-west wind.

  Armatura: Roman military drill performed in full armour.

  Armenia: Kingdom bordered by the Roman empire and Parthia, over which both struggled for influence.

  Arsacid: Dynasty that ruled Parthia from 247BC–AD224.

  Asclepius: Greek god of healing and medicine.

  Asgard: In Norse mythology, the realm of the gods and site of Valhalla.

  Assessor: Advisor to a Roman judge.

  Atheling: Anglo-Saxon, lord.

  Athena: Greek goddess of wisdom and courage.

  Atrebatic cloaks: Produced by the Atrebates tribe in north-western France.

  Atrium: Central court of a Roman house.

  Augusta Ambianorum: The modern town of Eu, just inland from the coast of northern France.

  Augusta Raurica: The modern town of Augst in Switzerland, situated on the southern bank of the river Rhine.

  Augustodunum: Roman town, now Autun in eastern France.

  Augustus: Name of the first Roman emperor, subsequently adopted as one of the titles of the office.

  Autochthonous: From the Greek, literally, people sprung out of the earth.

  Autocrator: Greek, one who rules alone. Title applied to the Roman emperor.

  Auxiliary: Roman regular soldier serving in a unit other than a legion.

  Avarini: German tribe living along the Vistula river.

  Aviones: German tribe inhab
iting a part of the Jutland peninsula.

  Baetica: Roman province occupying south-western Spain.

  Balder: In some Norse myths, the son of Woden, killed by a trick of Loki.

  Banausic: From the Greek term for a manual labourer, hence common or vulgar.

  Barbaricum: Lands of the barbarians. Anywhere beyond the frontiers of the Roman empire, which were thought to mark the limits of the civilized world.

  Barritus: German war cry.

  Basilica: Roman public hall, used as an audience chamber and law court.

  Batavians: German tribe living around the Rhine delta in the modern Netherlands.

  Bifrost: In Norse mythology, the bridge connecting the world of men and Asgard.

  Boeotia: Region of Greece north-west of Athens.

  Borani: German tribe living near the Sea of Azov.

  Borysthenes: Greek name for the Dnieper river.

  Borysthenetica: Literally, pertaining to or regarding the Borysthenes river.

  Bosporus: Roman client kingdom in the Crimea.

  Boule: Council of a Greek city; in the Roman period made up of local men of wealth and influence.

  Bouleuterion: Greek, council house, where the Boule met.

  Bravoll: Legendary battle mentioned in Norse sagas.

  Brisings: In Norse mythology, four dwarf smiths, makers of the goddess Freyja’s necklace.

  Britannia Superior: Roman province of southern England and Wales.

  Brondings: Unidentified tribe named in Beowulf; in this novel inhabiting the island of Abalos (Bornholm).

  Bucinator: Latin, trumpeter.

  Bucolic: From the Greek boukolikos; literally, pertaining to shepherds; rustic.

  Byzantium: Greek name for the modern city of Istanbul.