Warrior Prince: The action-packed, unputdownable historical adventure from J. C. Duncan

By JC Duncan

Prince. Mercenary. Exile.The lost throne of Norway must be won in foreign lands.

1030 AD

Some men are gifted a crown. Others have to fight to claim it.

Exiled from Norway, Harald Sigurdsson, brother to murdered King Olaf, must battle mercilessly for survival in the lands of the Kievan Rus.

His brother’s legacy gifts him a warband of hardened warriors and entry to the court of Prince Yaroslav the Wise. By his wits, sword and skill in battle, Harald must learn not just to survive but to triumph.

He fights for glory, for fame, and to regain his family’s battle-stolen throne. But his greatest challenge may not come from battlefield foes but from those who stand by his side.

The first instalment in a remarkable story of an exiled boy’s incredible journey to become Harald Hardrada; The Hard Ruler and The Last Viking.

Perfect for fans of Matthew Harffy, Peter Gibbons, Bernard Cornwell and Christian Cameron

Praise for JC Duncan

'Harald Hardrada as you've never seen him before! A fantastic story written by a fantastic author' - Donovan Cook

'Immersive and impeccably researched, JC Duncan brings Harald Hardrada's epic journey to life with gripping authenticity.' - Richard Cullen

'A fresh, vibrant take on perhaps that most Viking of all Vikings, Harald Hardrada. Bloody, epic and full of detail, Duncan paints a vivid picture of Harald’s early life, as he battles his way into legend.' - Matthew Harffy

'The gripping tale of the last great viking, Harold Hardrada, told in compelling style.' - Tim Hodkinson

'An engrossing, epic tale of Harald Hardrada's early years, brimming with historical detail and brave daring do. This is the story of a man who will become a legend, told lovingly through the eyes of one of his loyal followers and sure to delight readers.' - MJ Porter

• Language: English
• Publisher: Boldwood Books
• Release date: Oct 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805498032

JC Duncan

JC Duncan is a well-reviewed historical fiction author, with a passion for Vikings. When he isn't writing or doing his full-time engineering job, James is happiest being an amateur bladesmith.

Book preview

PREFACE

Hardrada: The name resonates through history. A man whose life was so momentous that his death marks the end of an age: the last of the Vikings.

Harald Sigurdsson, king of Norway and known both contemporaneously and today as Hardrada, meaning ‘the hard ruler’, is perhaps most remembered (on this side of the North Sea at least) for his death at Stamford Bridge. But his legend was not built there; it is merely where the bright flame of it finally flickered out. He was a warrior prince of fierce renown, an exile, a Varangian, a Viking and a ruler before he was ever a king. This book charts and brings to life the first part of the tale of Harald Sigurdsson, his early years and his adventures in the lands of the Kyivan Rus long before he became Hardrada.

Harald was born into a time of momentous change in his native Norway. Son of a petty king, Sigurd Syr, his mother was also the mother by a previous marriage of King Olaf II, later known as Saint Olaf, who spurred the Christianisation of Norway and the end of the old pagan Norse religion there. As the much younger half-brother of the king, he was minor royalty, and not destined for succession to the throne.

At the time of Harald’s youth, nearing the end of the Viking age, England was united as a single kingdom under the rule of King Cnut, who also ruled Denmark and had aspirations on Norway, aiming to create a unified North Sea empire of the Norse.

The kingdom of France was also more united, and better defended. This meant opportunities for Viking raids were more limited, and along with the progressing Christianisation of Scandinavia, the Norse nations were rapidly moving towards being much more like the other Christian nations of Western Europe, and less like the constantly warring, raiding, petty kingdoms of the early Viking age.

There were, however, still Viking colonies and semi-independent conquered lands on the fringes of the British isles that the Norse kings fought to control: The Northern Isles, comprised of the Shetlands and Orkney (Orkneyjar in Norse); the Southern Isles, comprised of the chain of islands west of Scotland, extending down as far as the Isle of Mann; and the Various Norse-Gaelic kingdoms in Ireland, most notably the Kingdom of Dublin.

Cnut and the Norwegian and Danish kings that followed him would fight over these wild extremities of the Norse lands until the thirteenth century, and retain control over much of it well into the fifteenth century, when the Norse grasp would finally be shorn from all but the islands of the furthest north: Iceland, Greenland and the Faroes.

In the east, the Norse settlers in the lands of the Rus (parts of Modern Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states and occasionally Poland,) had long since become independent, and perhaps eclipsed their ancestral lands in power and wealth. Foremost among those nations was the Princedom of Kyiv, led at the time of Harald’s youth by Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise, who was uniting the Rus into one great nation.

The Rus and the Norse maintained close connections and alliances. Prince Yaroslav and King Olaf married two sisters of the Swedish king Anund Jacob, tying the entire Eastern Norse world together in a family network, opposed by the dynasty of King Cnut and his Danish and English kingdoms of the Western Norse. These two powerful Norse blocs would compete for control of the North for hundreds of years until the Kalmar Union in 1397 ended the struggle and unified Scandinavia.

The Norse influence in the early eleventh century reached beyond even the Rus, down into the lands of Sicily and the Byzantine Empire, which, although still powerful, was starting to show the signs of terminal decline that would lead to its eventual demise over the next centuries. Norse warriors were famous in the Mediterranean area both as raiders and mercenaries. Vikings that could no longer practise their way of war in the relatively peaceful kingdoms of their homelands often went east and south and sold their services to the constantly warring rulers of the Rus and Byzantium. The most famous destination for the Norse mercenaries was the Imperial Varangian guard of the Emperors at Constantinople, which the Norse called Miklagard.

It was a complex time for the Norse, and much more of it will be revealed in the story to follow, but this is the world into which Harald Sigurdsson was born. He was not destined by birthright to be a king, fabulously wealthy or a great war leader. Everything that he gained over his long life, he had to earn.

This is the story of how he did it, of the adventures and challenges and wars he faced, mixing fiction into the bones of history to bring the story of the legendary Harald Hardrada back to life.

PART I

EXILE

1

NIDAROS, NORWAY; SPRING 1098 AD

Thirty-two years after the death of Hardrada.

‘Be careful in here, boy. These are men of oaths and violence.’ Jarl Hakon thumped his son on the shoulder with his palm, ignoring the annoyed look that was cast from those bright young eyes in return. Ingvarr, in his sixteenth year, was at that terrible age for a young warrior – bursting into the prime of his speed and strength and skill, desperate to prove himself and be counted as a man. But he was not yet old enough to attain the warrior’s calm; to correctly assess a situation, to know his own weaknesses.

Simply put, the boy had a habit of pissing off older, wiser, more experienced men. One day Hakon worried it would get him killed, have his only son bleeding his life out around the cold steel of an older man’s blade, drawn against some insult or slight the boy was too foolish to keep sheathed. Hakon feared that far more than he feared his son dying on the spears of their king’s foreign enemies.

They approached the doorway to the large hall in Tinghaugen, leaving their weapons and armour with their men, carrying only their belted seaxes which no warrior would ever willingly go without, even in a great lord’s hall.

And this was indeed a great hall. Tinghaugen was the place where the Frostating was held, the great Thing (meeting) of the northern Norwegian lords where they would decide matters of state, give their rulings on crimes, and even choose their kings. That was what brought Hakon with his son and his small hird to Tinghaugen – to attend the Thing, and to join King Magnus of Norway’s proposed campaign to the Kingdom of the Isles, the string of islands north-west of England, if the men of the North decided to go.

It would be the first major expedition westwards since the disaster of Harald Hardrada’s great invasion of England thirty years before. A new generation of warriors, cleansed by time of the timidity and the shame of that colossal defeat, were flocking to join the king in his new endeavour.

It was six days until the Frostating met, but Hakon had travelled far and wanted to make sure of arriving in time. In the end it had been an easy journey in good weather, so here they were, days early, his men having set up their small camp outside the town, with Hakon set on finding out who of note, if anyone, was already in the hall.

Hakon was not a powerful jarl, but he was a modestly wealthy man with good lands near the coast in Trøndelag, and had a name that men knew, which mattered far more than his silver. Enough of the locals in his valley respected him and looked to him for him to have a small hird of loyal warriors, and a desire to increase his power and wealth so he could leave to his son more than his own father had left for him.

They stepped inside the hall and glanced around, finding the room disappointingly sparse, just a few small groups of men talking and drinking. He looked up to the end of the hall and saw the seat was empty. Jarl Halfdan was not there.

Grimacing a little, he nevertheless walked in, scanning the benches, trying to find anyone he recognised and could greet, and was pleased to see a man stand with a smile and beckon him over. It was a man he knew well – another petty jarl from the northern coast: Jarl Torvald.

‘Hakon! My old friend, it is good to see you here.’

The two men clasped hands and Hakon gestured to his son. ‘My son, Ingvarr.’ He swept his hand back towards his friend with a proud smile. ‘This is Jarl Torvald. We fought together in Orkneyjar when we were young men.’

Ingvarr jutted his chin out and nodded, seemingly unimpressed by the revelation, but accepting the arm that Torvald offered.

‘I am pleased that we meet, young Ingvarr. Your father is a fine warrior, and a terrible drinker. Maybe you will prove his better at that at least.’

Hakon laughed and sat down on the bench, his son taking the place beside him. A servant brought over horn mugs of ale and Torvald smiled and thumped the table with a meaty palm. ‘So, you have come to join the king to reclaim the Southern Isles?’

‘We have,’ said Hakon with a nod and a grin. ‘I have raised my son to manhood and farmed my land to prosperity, and now I feel there is one good campaign left in these old bones.’

‘Bah, not so old,’ said Torvald with a shake of his head. ‘And your son, he is coming too?’

‘Of course!’ said Ingvarr, a little too forcefully, earning him a quick look of reprimand from his father.

‘And why do you wish to come and fight with the king, young warrior?’

Ingvarr straightened and took on a look of great seriousness. ‘For the honour of my family, and of our people. We cannot let these rebels, these usurpers, humiliate us. We will go there and regain those lands. And I will make my name and fortune too.’

Torvald’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead and he nodded, looking at Hakon, whose eyes subtly rolled in response. ‘Your son has passion.’

‘He certainly does.’

Ingvarr did not read the humour of the older men’s words. ‘We will regain our former power, now that the nation is united by King Magnus. He will lead us to England and wipe the shame of Hardrada’s defeat.’

Torvald’s eyebrows only climbed further up his forehead, scrunching together and meeting in the middle. ‘Well, I do not believe he intends to invade England. It is to the isles, and Ireland, that King Magnus leads us.’

Hakon elbowed his son gently and tried to calm him with a stern glare. He was worried the boy was going to embarrass himself, and him by extension. Behind his son at the next table he saw an old man regarding them with a furrowed brow and cold eyes. The look was unsettling. He turned away from it.

Ingvarr had stopped talking but Hakon could feel the hot temper and resentment coming off him in waves.

‘You know a lot about the past, for a young man who lives in a quiet valley,’ said Torvald with a disarming smile.

‘He spent too much time talking to my father, who would never be quiet about these things,’ said Hakon. ‘He marched with Hardrada,’ he added by way of explanation.

‘He believed in the honour of our people,’ said Ingvarr quietly. ‘He only wanted what Hardrada wanted. He never forgot the betrayal of King Harald.’

‘And, what betrayal, may I ask, was that?’ A soft, powerful voice called out, but loud enough that many around them turned to look.

Hakon looked around and saw the old man had spoken, his gaze fixed on Ingvarr. Hakon felt Ingvarr rising to an angry reaction, and put his hand on his son’s shoulder to restrain him. He was beginning to regret bringing him here; his youthful certainty and thirst for significance needed to be tempered.

‘King Harald was betrayed by the devious Saxons. They promised him peace and then attacked him when he was resting,’ said Ingvarr, shrugging off the hand on his shoulder.

‘No,’ said the old man simply.

Ingvarr bridled. ‘No?’

‘No, that is not what happened.’

‘That is what my grandfather told me. Are you calling him a liar, old man?’

Hakon kept his hand firmly on Ingvarr’s shoulder, pressing him down into his seat as he tried to rise.

The old man merely laughed, not appearing to take offence.

‘Stop this foolish pride of yours,’ Hakon whispered harshly in his son’s ear. ‘We are guests here.’

‘I do not claim to know why your grandfather is mistaken, but he was. That is not what happened, it is a story spread by some of those who lost the battle, to help assuage their shame, and recover their reputation.’

Ingvarr bridled but was kept silent by his father’s stern words.

Torvald regarded the old man curiously. ‘And how would you know so surely?’

The old man’s smile faded. ‘I was there.’

There was a quiet that descended on the hall; everyone was listening now.

‘You were at Yorvik?’ said Ingvarr doubtfully. Hakon felt the doubt too. Few men had returned from the west with Harald’s defeated army, his own recently deceased father among them. And it had been so long ago, and very few men were left alive from that ragged army. Time had finished most of those that Saxon steel had not.

But as he looked at the man more closely, he saw that indeed he was old enough – too old, almost. It was possible he spoke the truth.

Torvald nodded. ‘Respect to you, greybeard.’ He raised his mug with a solemn nod. ‘Not many are left alive that knew the great king in his final days.’

The old man laughed again. ‘So you young men intend to follow where we trod? To relive the glory of his conquests? You sail west, for war and riches?’

‘We do,’ said Hakon proudly.

‘Well, beware the fate that befell my king. Riches can lure beyond reason, and conquest can seem like it is never enough. I feel it in this boy, who thinks to claim England from our Norman kin. The whole circle of the world cannot satiate such hunger, as it never satiated Harald’s. All his victories and glory and conquests, yet as a man older than any of you he still wanted more. And fate punished him for it so cruelly.’

The man nodded sadly to himself and finally broke his gaze, leaving a strained silence after the surprisingly bitter words.

‘You say you fought with the king at Yorvik. Thousands did, tens of thousands, my father too. Why would you alone know his mind so well?’ Hakon said, starting to think the old man was mocking them.

‘I said I was there. I did not mean at Yorvik. I mean all of it.’ The old man paused and stared at him again, that unbreakable, unflinching stare. ‘I was with Harald since he was a boy, no older than this one.’

Ingvarr let out a single laugh of disbelief that earned him an instant look of deep displeasure.

‘You cannot be so old?’

‘Oh, I am as old as the trees, boy. Older than many, in fact.’

‘But you would be…’ Torvald tried to work it out in his head.

‘This was my eighty-eighth winter,’ said the old man with a wizened smile.

‘I know you,’ said Hakon with a devout whisper as he realised who the man must be. Those old eyes flicked to him and the smile was still in them. ‘You are Eric Alvarsson, aren’t you,’ said Hakon with wide eyes. ‘My father spoke of you.’

‘I am.’

‘He is a drunk or a liar, claiming honour that isn’t his,’ said Ingvarr scornfully.

Hakon cuffed his son hard around the head, pointing a finger into his shocked face when he turned. ‘Be careful who you insult, boy.’ He looked up to meet the old man’s eye again. ‘That man was one of Harald’s Varangians.’

That got Ingvarr’s attention. He stopped rubbing his head and turned to the old man again, who seemed unperturbed by the given insult.

The Varangians were the famous imperial guard of the Byzantine Emperors, recruited only from Norse warriors with experience in battle, peerless on the battlefield and the very manifestation of the status and glory that young warriors like Ingvarr craved.

‘He is who he claims,’ said another warrior on a nearby table defensively, a hint of anger in his voice. ‘He is known to our jarl, and he is a guest here, to be respected.’ Eric waved the man’s concern away with a wink and a smile.

‘I apologise for my son. He seldom thinks before he speaks,’ said Hakon.

‘I have been called much worse things, by much bigger men. Do not be concerned, I am too old to care much what is said of me.’

Hakon smiled in relief. ‘Well, I am honoured to meet you. I thought you were dead. Ten years ago or more I last heard of you.’

‘No, not dead. I was merely travelling after my wife left this world, seeing the lands of my youth one final time, waiting for death and telling my story to whoever would hear it. But death did not claim me, and I heard that a new king was here, with new dreams of conquest, so I came.’

‘So you are coming with us, to the isles?’ said Ingvarr breathlessly, his doubt shorn away and replaced with adoration on learning Eric was a famous Varangian.

Eric looked at him for a moment and then laughed until he coughed, a ragged hacking cough, slapping the table with one hand as he leant on it with the other. ‘God no. Are you simple? I am an old man who must rest for three days for every one he walks. No, no, no… I merely want to attend the Frostating, and meet the king, to offer him my council.’

‘Are you sure the king will hear your advice?’

Eric’s lined mouth curled into a mischievous grin. ‘No one ever turns me away.’ He gestured to the bench beside Torvald, who quickly made way, shuffling along it to allow Eric to sit.

‘And what advice would you give him?’

‘Ha! What use would I be as a council to kings if I shared it with their subjects. No, my thoughts for the king are his alone.’

Torvald could not hide his disappointment but nodded. ‘So you were really a friend of King Harald.’

‘Friend? Hmm, I do not know if I can say I was his friend. I am not sure Harald ever had a friend. He was above us, above such things. He had allies, and I surely was one. He had companions, soldiers, followers and worshippers and I was all those things, at one time or at every time. But friend? I still don’t know.’

‘But you were with him for his whole life?’

‘No, not his whole life. I was there when he fought his first battle, and there when he fought his last, and most of what passed between.’

‘And yet you were not his friend?’

The old man smiled mirthlessly. ‘It is hard to explain. You could live your whole life beside a river that you love, that cools you and waters you and sustains you with fish and fowl, but are you its friend?’ he asked, looking around the table. ‘That is what Harald was, a force of the earth, more restless power than man of flesh.’

‘So that is why they call you Sveitungr,’ said Hakon with a smile.

‘Yes.’

‘I always thought it was an insult.’

Eric laughed. ‘Yes, I can see why being called The Follower could seem that way. But to follow a great river is no weakness, to be carried by is current is no failing.’

‘Tell me of his first battle. You said he was my age,’ Ingvarr said, leaning forwards, his eyes burning with intense curiosity.

Eric thought for a moment, a mixture of pleasure and sadness swirling on his face. ‘Very well. Because I see a little of him in you, boy – his arrogance, his confidence, his surety.’ Ingvarr swelled with the compliments, visibly rising in his seat. ‘And his foolish pride.’

Eric smirked as Ingvarr’s face fell and men around the table laughed.

‘I have not spoken of it for many years. It is a difficult memory, from so long ago, longer than any of you here have been alive. And I will need some ale.’ He looked around but the serving girl was nowhere to be seen, so he leaned across and took Ingvarr’s mug with a mischievous grin. ‘Fair payment, I think, for a tale.’

Ingvarr knew better than to protest. And Eric took a satisfied draft of the good ale and smacked his wizened lips contentedly. ‘So, to tell you the story of Harald’s first battle, I must begin before we marched to it. It was the year of our Lord 1030, and I had never met Harald before. I was in the service of his half-brother, King Olaf, exiled with him in Sweden.’

Eric sat back and clasped his hands together on the table, thinking to himself for a moment before he began to speak again.

2

SWEDEN, MAY 1030 AD

I was in my twentieth year, with King Olaf and a few hundred of his men, exiles in Sweden having just returned from the lands of the Rus, where Olaf had been seeking the support of our distant kin. I might have been a nobody in his army, a young man of pride and ambition but no place in the world, but an accident of birth meant I was Olaf’s kin, the grandson of his father’s sister. And he cared for me, and raised me up into his huskarl, and I loved him for it.

We all loved him; he was a man so easy to love. He cared for his men, he led with inspiration not fear, and he was terrible to his enemies. A fearsome warrior and a peerless leader in battle. Above all we loved him for that. He was feared, feared and respected, and as his men, the glory of that shone on us and we bathed in its light.

Oh, what fools we were, eh? To bathe in the hatred of our enemies and think the heat of that hatred warmed us in turn. But it made us feel strong, it made us feel like the young wolves we all believed we were. And by God we were good, I tell you. We were a warband of killers, pure and unashamed. I was newly joined and then barely blooded by war, but I was something to behold with a spear. In later years I was known as a famous sword wielder, perhaps the best of my time, but back then I was like a snake with a spear as my steel tongue, and I longed to prove myself in greater battles, against greater foes.

And my shield brothers, what men they were. That hird had won almost every battle they ever fought, from the land of the Finns to Cantwareburh, where Olaf and his warriors broke through the walls and made his name famous in the blood-filled streets.

They were the men who tore down the great bridge at Lundenburgh. Have you heard of that? Ah, what a tale that is – although not mine to tell, for it was when I was merely a newborn child, and Olaf was already a famous Viking. He made a terrible foe that year, for it was Cnut’s men he took Lundenburgh from, and Cnut never forgave him. There is no man alive who remembers that battle, the glory of that day. It is a loss to the world that not a single one of those heroes yet draws breath. All living things pass, and surely soon will I, but the stories remain. And I know the stories of those early days, as surely as if I was there to witness them.

The next year he returned home from England to Norway in his glory and pronounced himself king, and heir to Harald Fairhair’s legacy as the ruler of all Norway. He brought most of the great lords to his side simply by force of his reputation. Few men would stand up to the warband that had achieved such things. You can win battles before they are fought if your enemies know your name and your reputation. It is, perhaps, the sweetest of victories when you do not even have to draw a blade – such is the respect your name and deeds inspire. And that was my King Olaf. His name was his greatest weapon.

So you can imagine the way I looked up to him in my first years as a man. My cousin – the legendary warrior, king, and servant of Christ. Ha! I see your surprise. It is normal now to worship our true God, but my father was a heathen, as were many of the people at that time. It was Olaf who led so many out of the darkness of the old gods and into the light of Christ. Olaf converted those who would listen, forced those who would not, and killed those who stood against him.

But by 1029, Olaf’s campaign to convert all the people had made him too many powerful enemies, especially in the North, where the old ways were hardest to end. He was so focused on ensuring the people were faithful to Christ that he forgot to ensure they were faithful to him. His own people turned against us and, fearing to try our strength themselves, invited King Cnut to invade, driving us out to live in Sweden and leaving Jarl Eiriksson to rule in his place. King Cnut had found his way to vengeance after all those years, and turned our country against us.

So we lived in Sweden, and some of Olaf’s allies came to join him there. That is when I met Harald Sigurdsson, as he was known then. Harald Hardrada, as you know him now. They were half-brothers, Harald and Olaf. They shared their mother, Åsta, each with a different petty king as father. I won’t tire you with those details; you either know the history or you should.

Harald had spent most of his childhood – which I shall not recount as I was not there – with his brother, growing up and watching Olaf rule. They were separated shortly before I entered Olaf’s service, and Harald stayed in his father’s old lands while Olaf was campaigning and in exile, until he returned to his brother’s side with an army of loyal men.

He was a fine strong lad of fifteen years when we met in 1030, already the size of a grown man and good with his weapons. For all we loved Olaf, Harald worshipped him. He would go wherever Olaf went, and Olaf saw in him the strength and decisiveness to rule.

‘One day you will be a king,’ he would tell his younger brother with fondness.

‘No, I will always follow you,’ Harald would reply.

‘And when I am dead, a crown will be yours, I am sure of it.’

Oh, how those words haunt me to this day.

But that fool traitor who King Cnut left to rule Norway, Eiriksson, died within a year – he lost his ship and life in a storm on his way to see his foreign master, and Olaf saw that opportunity for what it was. I remember the day well, when news came to us in Sweden. We were guests of King Jacob of the Swedes, who hated Cnut as much as we did – perhaps more. And Olaf’s wife Astrid was King Jacob’s sister, and so they shared an uncommonly close bond, for rival kings of great nations.

‘King Olaf! King Olaf!’ shouted the messenger, riding his horse into our camp with sweat pouring off man and beast.

Olaf went to greet him as we all watched with curiosity. We still had many friends in Norway, and often messages were passed to us. But there was something different about this messenger, his haste, his excitement. He dropped off his horse without stopping it and put his mouth to Olaf’s ear.

For a few heartbeats he whispered to the king while our hearts rose into our gullets, and then Olaf nodded and turned to face us, looking around, and then he smiled. ‘We’re going home!’ he shouted, raising a fist into the air. And we cheered ourselves hoarse.

Oh, how confident we were! Days passed as we prepared; the Swedes gave us more warriors; messages ran back and forth. We expected to gather a fleet, to force our way past our enemies to reach our home, or to march to the southern lands through Sweden to gather forces from our allies in southern Norway before going north to confront the northern jarls who had betrayed us by siding with Cnut.

But no, that was not what Olaf decided. We marched north-west, through the wild country of Sweden and into the godforsaken mountains of the interior. ‘We will not do as they expect,’ King Olaf told us. ‘We will strike directly at Nidaros and seize it. They will never predict that, and once the seat of kings is in our hands, the whole country will join me once again without a great massacre of our people or terrible years of war.’

And, of course, we believed him. Why wouldn’t we? We loved him, we knew many of the people loved him, and he had never been defeated in battle. So we marched through the wilderness of Dalarna with a few hundred men to capture a kingdom by surprise, and we felt like heroes. Oh god! We felt like the Aesir themselves.

When we reached the broad valley of Veradalr, just a few dozen miles north-east of Nidaros, we met with a warband of our allies that had been sent to meet us. We had friends, even that far north.

We marched down that valley, over a thousand strong, each man a warrior, and Olaf sent messengers to every town and village and farm, asking for support. We took anyone who would profess loyalty and be baptised, and Olaf spared those who would not. Some of the other great men tried to persuade him to kill those who would not swear to him, but he refused.

‘I intend to rule these lands, and I wish them to be prosperous and full of people. Not wastelands of smoke and bone.’

If any of you wonder why the old gods were driven out and the