by Jason Born
Unlike his father and grandfather, Leif was not exiled from his home. That aspect of the story is total fiction. Bjarni Herjolfsson did have the fantastic voyage in 986 A.D. described in my story and there was a long time lag of fourteen or fifteen years before Leif set about on his adventures of discovery so the exile made the timeline make sense. I have been particularly unkind to Bjarni in this story. No sources site his character as flawed as that presented here, but every story needs a villain and so he became one in mine. I do, however, agree with the character, Leif, in the story when he chastises the dim-witted Bjarni for being unforgivably uncurious.
Swansea is a city on the southern coast of Wales today. Its Welsh name is Aber Tawe which means “at the mouth of the Tawe” and it has been speculated that the English name Swansea evolved from Sweynsey, which would mean Sweyn’s Island, in a similar fashion to Guernsey and Jersey in the English Channel. Supporting that claim may be a 12th century charter of the town which lists the city as “Sweynesse” and coins of the same era bearing different spellings such as “Swensi” and “Svenshi.” One final reason to support the origin of the town’s name is that later in Forkbeard’s life he was actually the King of England as well as Denmark. He held the English crown for five weeks before his death and was succeeded by his son Cnut. The name could have been given to the city by Sweyn, his son, or by someone trying to buy favor from their Danish master. Since Leif was never exiled, it is clear that my telling of the events in the city is complete fabrication. It is logical to assume that since the town was isolated and easily accessible on the coast, it must have received frequent raids during the Viking era.
Olaf was a quintessential Viking and embodied all of the qualities you would expect of a seafaring raider. He was known to juggle swords and threw two javelins at once with great accuracy. Olaf did grieve over the loss of several brides as described in the story. He did spend time in Dublin (Dyflin, in the story) and York (Jorvik, in the story) and raiding the English Isles. His visit to the seer in the Scilly Islands is mentioned in The Olaf Tryggvason Saga and helps make Halldorr’s story fun.
The Battle of Maldon is second only to Beowulf as representative of Old English verse and does an excellent, if not highly dramatized, job of recording that famous battle from the English point of view. The battle actually occurred and the archeologists have reached a consensus on the battlefield location. Today the site sits in Essex on the mainland and there still exists a narrow jetty to Northey Island where the raiders landed their boats. This causeway floods with the tides and is just another indication that the poem gets much of the basic narrative correct. The story relates how Byrhtnoth was confident enough to let the seafarers cross the path safely for battle and that confidence, which bordered on arrogance, was his undoing. Historians disagree on whether Olaf or Sweyn or both were at Maldon, so I included both.
Aethelred and Olaf did become friends following the former’s sponsorship of the latter in his acceptance of Christ. When Olaf vowed to never return to England again to make war, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes a point to state that he kept his word.
Olaf seized the crown of Norway from Haakon in the Fjord of Agdenes. He pursued Haakon across the land and Haakon was betrayed and killed in a pig sty by his slave. Olaf built the first church in all of Norway on the Isle of Most, though there was no man named Erling from that location who helped betray Olaf.
I describe the book captured in Halldorr’s raid of Aber Tawe in some detail. It is an anachronism. It’s called a Book of Hours because it consisted of various prayers that were said at different hours of the day. These books were the most common books in the Medieval Time period, but they didn’t become popular until long after Halldorr’s story. The description I gave was an amalgamation of several Books of Hours I discovered in my research.
When Halldorr and Olaf went to retrieve Thyre in Roskilde I described the fortress in detail. The type of fortress depicted is common among Danish ruins and is known as a Trelleborg Fortress after one of the most famous locations. To my knowledge no Trelleborg Fortress has ever been unearthed in Roskilde, but it seems likely that since most of these strongholds have been dated to Harald Bluetooth’s, Forkbeard’s father, reign, that something similar would reside in his capital city. Bluetooth was, by most accounts, a strong monarch and could, therefore, dictate that the design of his fortresses remained consistent throughout his realm.
Olaf struggled in what is today called the Battle of Swoldr, a battle he fought against the overwhelming odds of the combined forces as described. Eleven ships were in his fleet that day, among them Short Serpent, Crane, and Long Serpent. The master shipwright, Thorberg Skaffhog, was the builder of Long Serpent, but it is not clear in the sagas who built Crane. The sagas say that Einar was a large man and when his bow was shattered at Swoldr, he snatched up Olaf’s bow and pulled the head of the arrow all the way past the bow’s belly. A significant change from accepted history in my story is that Olaf most likely died at Swoldr. He jumped into the sea wearing mail and held his shield over his head so that he couldn’t be captured. However, legends say that he escaped to Paris or the Holy Land and for years after, gifts were delivered to his friends including King Aethelred with warm notes from Olaf. I chose the happier version.
I’ve said that Leif Eriksson was not exiled, but he did travel to Europe from Greenland before his more famous journeys later on. Sometime before the Battle of Swoldr, Leif found that a lover, Thorgunna, on Sudreyjar in the Hebrides was with child and eventually married her. He did visit King Olaf in Norway in the year 999 or 1,000 A.D. and the king bestowed upon him two Scottish slaves and a priest to help spread the Word to the heathens in Greenland.
Halldorr, our hero, is fiction. In this part of his story he was named as a Berserker of Olaf. Berserkers were the mythical crazed warriors with powers of Odin. They were known to fight with intense fury. They were said to gnaw on their shields before the opposing shield walls came together. The word translates literally as “bear shirt” because they dressed in bear or wolf skins and would howl and scream to intimidate their enemies. It is where we get the word berserk, meaning frenzy. Historians speculate that King Olaf had named Berserkers, his best men, about him at Swoldr. I took names like Thrond Squint-eye, Ox-foot, etc. straight from the list of Berserker names in the sagas.
As we follow Halldorr’s tales which come to us from his mythical memoirs we will find he has more adventures on which to go. He has revenge to carry out and perhaps lands to discover with his friend Leif. And he must again encounter his spirited enchantress, Freydis. I hope you enjoyed this part of his story and are willing to follow along with his further escapades in his next book. Turn to the “About the Author” section to see what you can do to ensure that there are more books to come.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jason Born is an analyst and portfolio manager for one of the largest banks in the United States. He lives in the Midwest with his wife and three children. He loves learning in general, especially history. If you enjoyed this work and would like to see more, Jason asks you to consider doing the following:
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