Viking Boorish, King of England

By Borja Loma Barrie

Historical novel. Biography. William of Normandy and his acces to power. The humiliation by his condition of bastard. Revenge on those who offended and humiliated him. History of the Vikings. How and why they settled in Normandy before the impotence of the king of France. The Vikings in England. The assault of William to England and his coronation in Westminster.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Dec 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781507167168

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Viking boorish King of England

Life of William I The Conqueror

Borja Loma Barrie

Viking boorish King of England Life of William I The Conqueror

© BORJA LOMA BARRIE 2015

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INTRODUCTION

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The Scandinavian Peninsula, also called Scandinavia, is, to a large extent, the original terroir of the Vikings, the people of Germanic origin who terrorized and subjected vast territories of Europe, intermittently, for almost three hundred years, between the eight and eleven centuries, approximately.

The Viking is also the hometown of William I, Duke of Normandy and King of England, called indifferently the Bastard and the Conqueror, although he is more generally known with the latter name than with the first.

But it is not, that peninsula of north-western Europe, adjoining in its northern part with the Sea or Arctic Ocean, the only territory in which the Vikings were born. It also includes another Peninsula, that of Jutland, in whose northern zone extends the present kingdom of Denmark and to the south the present Germany. Likewise, in the Scandinavian Peninsula, today two kingdoms, that at the moment were Vikings, the one of Sweden, in the east, and the one of Norway, in the west. With the emigration of the Swedes, Norwegians and Danes Vikings, they passed close lands, such as Finland, where the Swedes remained 500 years, located very close to the east of Scandinavia, and others very distant, at the northern end of the Atlantic Ocean, such as the islands of northern Scotland (Shetland, Hebrides, Orkneys), Faroe, Iceland and Greenland, the latter already in America, although still under Danish sovereignty, in spite of the strong secessionist political movement that occurred in that enormous frozen insula and that concluded with the electoral triumph of the Independents between 2010 and 2011. The Vikings, thanks to the manoeuvrability and lightness of their ships, the drakkars (dragons), and thanks to their determined and reckless character, for which they feared virtually nothing, they also managed to reach America, namely the Peninsula of Newfoundland (Currently Canada). But the central nucleus where they originated is the one mentioned, the peninsulas of Scandinavia and Jutland (occupied today by Sweden and Norway, the first, and Denmark, in the second). And they are so close to each other that they almost touch each other. They are separated by narrow straits called the Skagerrak, to the west on the North Sea, and Kattegat to the east, also in the North Sea, although the latter area, Kattegat, presents to the south islands and other smaller peninsulas, which border on the Baltic Sea, which begins here to spread eastward, until arriving in Russia.

The Baltic Sea, whose rule throughout history became imperative for all countries bordering, reason why the central empires and the states bathed by their icy waters went into continuous wars, especially between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, is deployed from that point of convergence with the North Sea until it reaches Russia and the most northern part of Finland, through the Gulf of Botnia, where the country borders Sweden and Norway, to the northwest, and Russia itself, across the Kola peninsula. Today bathe Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Russia.

Russia, following the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the subsequent independence of the so-called Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia), still have a way out of these waters, by means of a narrow coast, the Gulf of Finland, that penetrates like a blade between the south of the Peninsula of Kola and the northeast of Estonia. It is not the Russian a wide coastline, therefore, although in its final part is the magnificent city of Saint Petersburg.

The north of the Scandinavian Peninsula is virtually under ice. And during the winter the sun does not rise. There are therefore periods in which the inhabitants live long days of complete darkness. And of full luminosity, for which there are no nights. A strange, unique circumstance in a land from which a people emerged: The Viking or Norman (the latter term coming from the Anglo-German Nordman or man from the north), also unique.

In the long night of Scandinavia, we must add an intense cold and a rocky ground, hard as flint, mostly unsuitable for agriculture and lacking pastures for livestock. Although sometimes temperate in certain areas, it is fertile, especially in the southern plains, which are known in Sweden as Gottaland or Gotia or Country of the Goths, probably because the early Vikings, or their German ancestors resided in this area. It is a large southern territory, flat sometimes and other mesothelioma, which covers three large regions, called Bleekinge, Scania and Halland. They are the most fertile. And where the majority of the population is based. The most feral among the three is Scania, known as the Swedish barn, for the large variety of vegetables, wheat and oats it produces.

The entire Scandinavian Peninsula is filled with large lakes of glacial origin. Lakes that correspond to the remains of water that were left after the glaciers melted and which usually freeze in winter. The layers of ice contained in that season are very thick.

However, the waters of the Baltic that reach Sweden are not as cold as you might imagine. They are actually quite warm, surprisingly. This is due to the influence of the Gulf of Mexico, which however distant it may seem and in fact to be, since it is in another continent, its influence reaches here, being able to mix its currents of warm waters with the frozen Baltic ones, being produced, then this warmth would otherwise be impossible. This is not the case with the coast and the waters of the north. For we have already said that they correspond to the Arctic Glacier, reason why in winter they are frozen. And even in summer they are so cold that it is impossible for a person to survive submerged in them for more than twenty minutes.

In the northernmost area is Lapland, ancestral home of the Lapps, whose residence counties extend across the north, from the extreme west of Norway to the east of the Kola Peninsula in Russia.

The Lapp people are of Asian and Mongoloid origin, another strange and unusual Scandinavian circumstance. They are of short stature, and of sallow skin, which certainly contrasts with the appearance of most of the rest of the Scandinavians, very tall, very white and blond and red-haired with blue eyes.

The Lapps call themselves Sami or Samelat. They hardly have contact with Swedish, Finnish, Norwegians and Russian Slavs. And they are dedicated, just as in the Neolithic, to the hunting and the reindeer herding, a type of ruminant very numerous in Scandinavia and generally in the north of Europe. They are also engaged in hunting other edible species and fishing, including cetaceans, although it is prohibited (a violation of international law, incidentally, that several Norwegian whalers are also allowed today or until very recently).

Lapps are of Swedish, Finnish, Russian or Norwegian nationality. But they care very little. For Sami is known before anything else, including, of course, one nationality or another. The Sami are believed to be unlike any other people on the planet. And they probably are. Since according to their religious beliefs, which present shamanic characteristics, with the difference that the shaman lives isolated from the rest of Lapps, the universe was created by Jubmel, king of all gods. Jubmel had two children. One of them, frightened by the snowstorms, fled to take shelter in a cave. The other, indifferent to the inclemency of the weather, remained in the open. The latter, brave and stoic, is from which descend all the Sami or Lapps. From the other, pusillanimous and quay, the rest of humanity descends.

The important Viking emigrations suggest several things. One of them is that it is possible that these were real escapes, rather than migrations. That flight could only be due, in addition to confrontations and bad harvests, to the harsh environmental conditions. But that is just an assumption. That also comes into clear contradiction with some facts. For in the North Atlantic places that the Vikings chose to stay and to colonize, like Iceland and Greenland, the climate and the environment were very similar, and even worse, to those left behind in Scandinavia and Jutland. Some historical trends of the Vikings, rigorously documented, are presented below, which will offer the reader the possibility of arriving at your own conclusions.

Norway has large moors, plateaus, short torrential rivers, wide glaciers and many lakes. These, all together, account