Harald
Once you get a taste for Viking cruises you can’t really kick it. Get together with 50 or so of your best buds, sail someplace new; camp, rape, pillage, and plunder; back home in time to bring in the harvest. Plus, I always enjoyed fucking with Sweyn of Sweeden.
Wikipedia
Sweyn was married three times, and fathered 20 children or more out of wedlock. He was courageous in battle, but did not have much success as a military commander. His skeleton reveals that he was a tall, powerfully built man who walked with a limp.
Sweyn managed to escape the battle of Nisa, reached land and stopped at the house of a peasant to ask for something to eat.
“What was the terrible rumbling in the night?” she asked.
“Didn't you know the two kings were fighting all night?” asked one of Sweyn's men.
“Who won, then?” the woman asked.
“Norwegians,” came the reply.
“It's a shame on us, for a king we already have. He limps and is timid.”
“No,” King Sweyn explained.
“Timid the king of the Danes is assuredly not,” defended another of the king's men, “but luck isn't with him and he lacks a victory.”
The housecarl brought the men water and a towel to wash themselves. As the king was drying his hands, the woman tore the cloth from him,
“You should be ashamed of yourself for using the whole towel for yourself,” she scolded.
Her husband gave the king a horse and Sweyn continued on his way to Zealand.
Harald
I was on a Viking cruise. Down Jutland, into the Elbe. Looking for a sweet castle that was open to the water and defensible from the land. Found a monastery instead. At the time I needed the Pope to canonize my brother Olaf, to open a church in Trondheim, and to take care of Olaf’s remains, from which hair and fingernails still could be trimmed.
I raided
the monastery, threw all the monks aboard, and them back to Trondheim.
We didn’t have good winds, so I entertained myself by drinking and talking to the monks. One of them spoke good Norse, another taught me some Latin The sailing directions are pretty accurate. The stuff about Uppsala, the more outrageous it got the more they believed, so I just kept going. Besides, after that they were motivated to anoint Olaf a saint and to finish the church.
Adam of Bremen
On account of the roughness of its mountains and the immoderate cold, Norway is the most unproductive of all countries, suited only for herds. They browse their cattle, like the Arabs, far off in the solitudes. In this way do the people make a living from their livestock by using the milk of the flocks or herds for food and the wool for clothing. Consequently, there are produced very valiant fighters who, not softened by any overindulgence in fruits, more often attack others than others trouble them. Poverty has forced them thus to go all over the world and from piratical raids they bring home in great abundance the riches of the lands. In this way they bear up under the unfruitfulness of their own country.
Those who have a knowledge of geography also assert that some men have passed by an overland route from Sweden into Greece. But the barbarous peoples who live between make this way difficult; consequently, the risk is taken by ship.
The route is of a kind that, boarding a ship, they may, in a day’s journey, cross the sea from Aalborg or Wendila of the Danes to Viken, a city of the Norwegians. Sailing thence toward the left along the coast of Norway, the city called Trondhjem is reached on the fifth day. But it is possible also to go another way that leads over a land road from Scania of the Danes to Trondhjem. This route, however, is slower in the mountainous country, and travelers avoid it because it is dangerous.
Situated between Norway and Britain and Ireland, the Orkneys, therefore, laugh playfully at the threats of a menacing ocean. It is said that one can sail to them in a day from the Norwegian city of Trondhjem. They say, too, that from the Orkneys it is just as far whether you steer toward England or set sail for Scotland.
This happens on the island of Thule, six days’ sail distant from Britain toward the north. … This Thule is now called Iceland, from the ice which binds the ocean. … It has on it many peoples, who make a living only by raising cattle and who clothe themselves with their pelts. No crops are grown there; the supply of wood is very meager.
In the ocean there are very many other islands of which not the least is Greenland, situated far out in the ocean. … To this island they say it is from five to seven days’ sail from the coast of Norway.
The third island is Helgeland, nearer to Norway but in extent not unequal to the rest. That island sees the sun upon the land for fourteen days continuously at the solstice in summer and, similarly, it lacks the sun for the same number of days in the winter.
Yet another island of the many found in that ocean. It is called Vinland because vines producing excellent wine grow wild there. That unsown crops also abound on that island we have ascertained not from fabulous reports but from trustworthy relation.
The very well-informed prince of the Norwegians, Harold, lately attempted this sea. After he had explored the expanse of the Northern Ocean in his ships, there lay before their eyes at length the darksome bounds of a failing world, and by retracing his steps he barely escaped in safety the vast pit of the abyss.
Now we shall say a few words about the superstitions of the Swedes. That folk has a very famous temple called Uppsala, situated not far from the city of Sigtuna and Björkö. In this temple, entirely decked out in gold, the people worship the statues of three gods in such wise that the mightiest of them, Thor, occupies a throne in the middle of the chamber; Wotan and Frikko have places on either side. The significance of these gods is as follows: Thor, they say, presides over the air, which governs the thunder and lightning, the winds and rains, fair weather and crops. The other, Wotan—that is, the Furious—carries on war and imparts to man strength against his enemies. The third is Frikko, who bestows peace and pleasure on mortals. His likeness, too, they fashion with an immense phallus. But Wotan they chisel armed, as our people are wont to represent Mars. Thor with his scepter apparently resembles Jove. … For all their gods there are appointed priests to offer sacrifices for the people. If plague and famine threaten, a libation is poured to the idol Thor; if war, to Wotan; if marriages are to be celebrated, to Frikko. It is customary also to solemnize in Uppsala, at nine-year intervals, a general feast of all the provinces of Sweden. From attendance at this festival no one is exempted.
The sacrifice is of this nature: of every living thing that is male, they offer nine heads, with the blood of which it is customary to placate gods of this sort. The bodies they hang in the sacred grove that adjoins the temple. Now this grove is so sacred in the eyes of the heathen that each and every tree in it is believed divine because of the death or putrefaction of the victims. Even dogs and horses hang there with men. A Christian seventy-two years old told me that he had seen their bodies suspended promiscuously. Furthermore, the incantations customarily chanted in the ritual of a sacrifice of this kind are manifold and unseemly; therefore, it is better to keep silence about them.
Near this temple stands a very large tree with wide-spreading branches, always green winter and summer. What kind it is nobody knows. There is also a spring at which the pagans are accustomed to make their sacrifices, and into it to plunge a live man. And if he is not found, the people’s wish will be granted.
A golden chain goes round the temple. It hangs over the gable of the building and sends its glitter far off to those who approach, because the shrine stands on level ground with mountains all about it like a theater.
Feasts and sacrifices of this kind are solemnized for nine days. On each day they offer a man along with other living beings in such a number that in the course of the nine days they will have made offerings of seventy-two creatures. This sacrifice takes place about the time of the vernal equinox.
Heimskringla
It happened one summer that Haraldr Guðinason had a journey to make to Bretland and went by ship. And when they got out to the open sea, then a contrary wind arose and they were driven far out to sea. They reached land west in Normandy and had endured a deadly storm. They made for the city of Rúða and there met Jarl Viljálmr. He welcomed Haraldr warmly and his company. Haraldr stayed there a long time in the autumn with hospitable entertainment, for storms were raging and it was not possible to go to sea. So when it got close to winter, then they discussed this, the jarl and Haraldr, that Haraldr should stay there for the winter. Haraldr was sitting in a seat of honour on one side of the jarl, and the jarl’s wife on his other side. She was fairer than any other woman that people had seen. They always all had entertaining talk together over their drinks. The jarl generally went early to bed, but Haraldr sat long in the evenings talking with the jarl’s wife. So it went on for a long time during the winter.
Harald
Matilda. One hell of a woman. William’s wife. Tostig’s
wife’s sister. One hell of a woman.
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