Halogaland was a land unlike any that Hakon had ever heard of or seen. It stretched from Namdalen in the south to Finnmark in the north, and under full sail, it took five or six days to follow its coast—a distance greater than the whole of Athelstan"s kingdom. Much of the land to the far north was snow-covered wasteland inhabited by a people known as the Sami. The areas populated by the Halogalanders were weather-torn and rugged, where men lived off what they could fish and hunt, and where homes lay a day"s sail or more apart. Here, where temperature and weather determined the fate of families, gods ruled, and men depended on their favor to survive.
This environment had instilled in them a rugged individualism that, by its very nature, spurned the rule of man. King Harald had tried, and f
