The Long Hunt (The Strongbow Saga)

by Roberts, Judson

  One fort—Eketorp—has been the subject of extensive archaeological excavation, and has since been reconstructed. The rebuilt fort, which today operates as a living history museum, provides graphic visual evidence of the imposing military might that must have characterized the culture of the Oland fort builders at the height of their power.

  The feast on Oeland during the story takes place in the ruined fort now known as Barby, or Barby Borg. Although all of the other forts on the island are circular ring forts, and many contain the ruins of interior buildings, Barby consists of a semicircular wall enclosing an open space overlooking a steep cliff-side. The sacrifice of horses by the Oelanders in the story is based on a theory developed after a large number of horse bones were discovered in a nearby pit during excavations at Eketorp.

  My characterization of the population of Oland as having become, by the mid-ninth century, a somewhat meek folk with little ability to defend themselves against armed intruders such as Sigvald's pirate band is my fictional creation for the purpose of the story, although it was inspired by the mystery of the abandoned network of forts on the island.

  The Sea Battle

  The old sagas contain numerous accounts of sea battles fought between naval forces during the Viking era, and I have long intended to work such a battle—an iconic aspect of the Viking period—into Halfdan's story in The Strongbow Saga. As preparation for writing the battle scene in The Long Hunt, I reviewed numerous saga accounts of such battles, including those in the Heimskringla, Egil's Saga, and The Saga of the Jomsvikings.

  Common elements found in many Viking era sea battles included the practice by the weaker defending side—and on occasion both sides—where they would lash their ships together to create a single large floating platform from which to fight. As a passage in the Heimskringla, describing the battle of Solskel won by King Harald Fairhair of Norway, states: "[I]t was then the custom when they fought on ships to lash the ships together and fight on the stems"—i.e., in the bow and stern of the ships.

  Early phases of such battles generally consisted of heavy missile fire back and forth: shooting arrows, throwing spears, and, in many descriptions, also throwing stones. The latter would almost certainly have been ballast stones pulled out of the bottoms of the ships' hulls for use as improvised missile weapons.

  Eventually, attempts to board the enemy's ships would occur, for Viking sea battles were ultimately decided by brutal, close-quarters hand-to-hand combat. Based on the various saga accounts, it was not uncommon for boarding attempts to be beaten back, often repeatedly, but in the end, battles were decided when a ship was "cleared"—i.e., all of its defenders were either slain or so badly wounded they could no longer fight.

  The Heimskringla contains a very vivid account of the famous battle of Svold, in which King Olav Trygvason of Norway, while sailing separate from his main fleet with only three warships, was ambushed by a much larger fleet composed of a mix of Danish ships led by King Svein Forkbeard of Denmark, Swedish ships led by King Olav of the Sveas, and followers of Eric the Jarl, a Norwegian nobleman who was a sworn enemy of Trygvason. During that battle, an archery duel between two skilled bowmen occurred, which inspired the duel during the sea battle in The Long Hunt between Halfdan and the Finn archer on Sigvald's ship. One of the two dueling archers in the battle of Svold, who fought from the ship of Eric the Jarl and who bested a famed archer aboard Trygvason's ship, was described as "an outstanding bowman…who was called Finn and who was said by some to be a Finn." That description planted the seed in my mind which led to the characters of Rauna and her father becoming part of the story.

  The tactic Halfdan uses to defeat the Finn archer—having Asbjorn, Gudfred, and Einar shoot at the Finn's shield bearer, to cause him to flinch and expose the Finn to Halfdan's shot—was inspired by an account of a battle in the Heimskringla that occurred when a large force of Wends, raiding up the western coast of Sweden, attacked a town in Vastergotarland. During the battle, a skilled Wendish archer was killing a man with every arrow he shot. The Wend was protected from enemy fire by two shield bearers, but a father and son pair of archers, among the defenders of the town, killed him. The father shot at one of the shield bearers, causing him to pull his shield away to protect himself just long enough for the son to be able to shoot an arrow into the Wendish archer's head.

  Sigvald's unusual armor and weapon are inspired by several different saga sources. Mail shirts, or brynies, were quite expensive and fairly rare during the early centuries of the Viking era. The typical mail armor worn during that period would have been a shirt with short sleeves, coming down at most to the elbow, and a relatively short skirt which covered only part of the thighs. More comprehensive mail armor did exist, however. King Harald Hardrada of Norway had a special mail shirt which was so long that his men nicknamed it "Emma," perhaps because its length was the same as a woman's dress. I envisioned Sigvald's long brynie as being a somewhat similar garment.

  Sigvald's axe-spear does not match any actual weapon found from the period. However, there are descriptions in several sagas of heavy "hewing spears" of unknown design, and in Egil's Saga, at one point the title character and his brother both fight in a battle armed with unusual, heavy spear-like weapons called, in the English translations of the saga, "halberds." The translator must have been unable to discern an exact meaning for the original Old Norse description of the weapon, for a halberd is a long-handled pole axe that was developed centuries later during the Middle Ages. However, I chose to arm Sigvald with a somewhat similar, though far shorter, weapon—a spear with an axe-like blade on its shaft, which could be used for both stabbing and hewing.

  The Sami

  The ancestors of the Sami people—also called Lapps, although not by the Sami themselves—were a people of Finno-Ugrian ethnic origin, who reached Scandinavia as early as 10,000 B.C., long before the Germanic tribes who became the Viking peoples reached the same lands. By around 800 B.C., possibly earlier, they had split into two distinct cultures: the Finns and the Sami.

  The Finns were concentrated mostly in the lands which today comprise southern Finland, plus Estonia and western Russia, particularly the area around Lake Ladoga. By the Viking Age, the Sami populated a broad swath of land across Scandinavia, including parts of modern day Norway, central Sweden, and Finland.

  During the Viking era, the Sami lived a simple hunter-gatherer existence and engaged in seasonal migrations, moving to coastal and lake regions in the summer, when fishing played a major role in their food production, and deeper into the forests in winter, when hunting—particularly the hunting of reindeer—became their primary source of food, as well as a means of acquiring furs to be used as trade goods. By the Viking period, it had apparently become common for the Sami to gather in relatively large winter villages, although in summer months they may have more often lived in smaller, family-based groups. While migrating and during summer months, the Sami often lived in tents made from animal skins that looked remarkably like the tipis of North American Plains Indian tribes. Although known today as herders of reindeer, the Sami of the Viking period merely hunted the deer—they did not domesticate and begin herding them until the late 1500s.

  The Sami were, rather confusingly, called "Finns" by the Viking era Scandinavians, or sometimes "Skridfinns," which translates roughly into "Ski" and "Finn"—during the winter months, the Sami traveled and hunted on a primitive form of ski. Both archaeological and saga evidence reflect that the Sami engaged in trade with the Viking era Scandinavians, exchanging furs for goods they did not produce. However, saga sources, as well as the account told by Norwegian merchant Ottar to King Alfred of Wessex, also reflect that some Scandinavian chieftains regularly extracted "tribute," paid in furs, from the more peaceful Sami, and both Viking sagas and Sami legends tell of occasional raiding expeditions against the Sami.

  Knowledge of the old Sami religion is spotty at best, for the Scandinavian peoples of the Middle Ages and later forced the Sami to convert to Christianity and
did their best to stamp out all vestiges of their former beliefs. Apparently their gods were closely connected with different aspects of nature, and they believed in two parallel realms of reality: the physical world and the spirit world. The Sami's shamans, called noaidi, were men and women who possessed the power to enter into trance states and travel back and forth between the two worlds.

  Sweden and Birka

  During the Viking Age, the lands which constitute modern-day Sweden were not a single country or kingdom. Both Skane, the region comprising the southwestern coast, and Halland, just above Skane, were considered Danish lands. The ancient homelands of the Goth tribes—Vastergotarland and Ostergotarland, collectively known as Gotarland—stretched from the western coast above Halland across central Sweden. To the northeast was Svealand, the Kingdom of the Sveas.

  Between 1,000 and 300 B.C., waves of Germanic peoples migrated out of Scandinavia and into eastern Europe, establishing new homelands there. The Goth tribes—the Goths, Ostrogoths, and Visigoths, as they were known to the Romans—conquered and settled vast regions, at their peak controlling lands ranging from the Baltic to the Black Sea. But in the late fourth century, the Huns invaded the Goths' lands from the east, and drove them and other Germanic tribes westward into the Roman Empire, precipitating its collapse.

  By the beginning of the Viking Age, the original Scandinavian homelands from which the various Goth tribes had migrated hundreds of years earlier were still identified by name. Although they were collectively considered a single people, the Gotars—or Geats, as they were known to the Anglo-Saxon English—in the early Viking era, two distinct Gotar kingdoms at least nominally still existed: Ostergotarland and Vastergotarland. But as independent kingdoms, they figure almost not at all into the history of the Viking era, and well before the end of the period, the lands and peoples of the Ostergotars, and parts of Vastergotarland, had fallen under the rule of the Sveas.

  The town of Birka, located on the island of Bjorko in Lake Malaren, within the kingdom of the Sveas, was an important trading center in the early centuries of the Viking era. It was flourishing by 800 A.D., but was abandoned around 970, possibly because subsiding water levels in Lake Malaren made access from the sea more difficult.

  Archaeological examinations have provided much evidence about Viking Birka. The town faced a natural harbor which may have been surrounded by a man-made barricade of pilings, and was protected on its landward side by an earthen wall, probably topped by a wooden stockade. A fort, built atop a rocky hill, overlooked the town, and was apparently manned by a garrison of warriors provided by the Svear king. According to Adam of Bremen in the History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, the channel leading from the sea to Lake Malaren and Birka had hidden obstacles of boulders which had been placed there to make access more difficult for the unwary. Building on that description for the purpose of the story in The Long Hunt, I created the fictional island and temple to Odin where pilots wait to guide ships up the channel.

  The Frankish monk and missionary Anskar reached Birka in 839 A.D. after a perilous journey from Hedeby in Denmark. With the permission of Bjorn, one of the kings of the Sveas, he founded a Christian church in Birka, and converted many of its inhabitants, including Herigar—sometimes also spelled Hergeier in Frankish sources—who is described by Adam of Bremen as the king's prefect in Birka. After two years, Anskar returned to Frankia to become Bishop of Hamburg, but the church flourished under the care of the priests he left behind until 845, when an uprising occurred against the Christians in Birka, and one of the priests there, named Nithard, was slain. Another priest, Gautbert, escaped with the help of Herigar, who is repeatedly described in Frankish sources as a good man. The attack on the Christians in Birka is attributed by Adam of Bremen to instigation by Anund, the brother of King Bjorn who was subsequently expelled from Svealand.

  Within the kingdoms of Viking-era Scandinavia, there was no general taxation of the populace by the kings. The primary means of raising revenue were raiding other lands and collecting tribute from peoples who had submitted to the superior might of a given king. The king was entitled to call upon his own people for service in times of need, and kings did sometimes collect specialized tolls or taxes, particularly in relation to towns. Although I have thus far found no explicit references to a tax on merchants who traded in Birka, in Norway a tax called the landaurar was assessed on merchants and travelers landing in the kingdom from abroad. Given that the Svear king maintained a fort and garrison at Birka to protect it, I think it likely that he, too, would have imposed some similar sort of tax to help defray that expense. I have based the amount of the landing tax which Herigar assesses against Hastein—four aurars of silver per ship—on the Norwegian landaurar, which equaled five aurar when established in the late ninth century.

  Readers who would like to learn more about the Viking peoples, culture, and history, and the world in which The Strongbow Saga is set are urged to visit www.strongbowsaga.com, an educational website dedicated to the Vikings and their age. Those seeking news about The Strongbow Saga series or wishing to discuss the story with the author or other fans are encouraged to visit my website, www.judsonroberts.com.

  Acknowledgements

  It has been a long and winding journey to reach publication of The Long Hunt, the fourth installment of Halfdan's adventures in The Strongbow Saga. The first three books of the series, Viking Warrior, Dragons from the Sea, and The Road to Vengeance, were originally published by HarperCollins Publishers between 2006 and 2008. Many mistakes were made which I will not go into here, but their ultimate result was that after publishing book 3, HarperCollins cancelled the series.

  Not being someone who is prone to give up without a fight, I regained the rights to the series from HarperCollins, and with the help of my wife, Jeanette, formed my own publishing company, Northman Books Inc. Together we republished new editions of books 1 through 3 over the course of 2010 and 2011. Once the series was alive and kicking again, I began work on book 4, The Long Hunt.

  Work on the book was interrupted when, in early 2012, Jeanette and I realized a long-held dream and moved from Houston, Texas to a small farm on the eastern edge of the Cascade Mountains near Eugene, Oregon. The change from being a city-dweller to small-scale farming on our own homestead has been a wonderful, transformative experience, but on a farm the work is never done. Learning our new life caused me to fall far behind in my writing, although in the long run it has greatly enriched the story in The Strongbow Saga. Being surrounded by the beauty and majesty of nature, having daily encounters with wildlife, and living a life that is closely tied to the rhythms of the seasons has without question given me a deeper empathy and understanding of life in a simpler time. But when 2012 ended and there was still no new installment of Halfdan's story, I made a vow to myself and to the loyal fans of the series that the next book would come out in 2013.

  It could not have happened without Jeanette. Many, many days while I worked at my desk, she single-handedly managed our farm: cutting and storing hay by hand, tending to our garden, caring for the animals, as well as taking care of the myriad chores that exist within every home. I am blessed to have her as my partner in every aspect of our lives.

  Republishing a preexisting book is a very different undertaking from creating one from scratch. Whatever issues I had with HarperCollins, I was fortunate to have had wonderful editors there, whose input greatly enhanced books 1 through 3. After I completed writing The Long Hunt, four volunteer editors read my efforts and gave me their suggestions and feedback, and they, too, helped the finished book become a better product. My thanks go out to my wife Jeanette, who has a strong feel for the integrity, flow, and emotional impact of stories; to her daughter Laura Beyers, a professional technical writer and editor who helped identify several scenes where the emotional reactions and motivations of characters could be more clearly manifested; to Alexa Linden, a long-time fan of the series who has often corresponded with me about it, who sometimes seems to know the c
haracters almost better than I do, and helped me keep them true to themselves; and to Luc Reid, a friend and author who helped me focus on the structure and plot arcs of the story.

  Layla Milholen was the copy editor for The Long Hunt, and I am in awe of the thorough job she did polishing away its rough edges.

  Luc Reid deserves special thanks. He has been a part of The Strongbow Saga since its very beginning in 2001, when he gave me editorial feedback on my first efforts at putting Halfdan's tale into words. He has played a major role in the republication of books 1 through 3, and not only acted as one of the editors for The Long Hunt, but also transformed my rough sketches into the maps and diagrams that are contained in the book, created its cover, and set up the format for the print edition of the book. He is a good friend, a man of numerous talents, and a true comrade. Thank you, Luc.

  When writing, I draw inspiration from many sources. Two bits of phrasing in the story I borrowed from songwriters. In chapter one, Halfdan recalls Genevieve's final words when they parted in Paris. The phrase "shelter my love from wind and wave" is from the song "Nostalgia" by Emily Barker. And in chapter eleven, when Hastein tells Herigar that "when I die, it will be with my arms unbound," his words are taken from the song "This Is Why We Fight" by The Decemberists.

  Last but far from least, I would like to thank all of the loyal fans of the series, including those who have recommended it to their friends and family, creating a word-of-mouth demand that has kept it alive, and who have so often told me how much they enjoy the story and long for more. My thanks to those who have taken the trouble to contact me and tell me that some aspect of Halfdan’s story touched or moved them, and to those who have written to thank me for bringing to light aspects of their ancestors and heritage. All of you have helped keep my own faith in this journey alive. You are why I write.