Jealousy Of A Viking

Chapter 2

I’ve been a bit lax with historical events in this story.

I had Biorn coming over with what is known as The Great Heathen Army in 865, but that didn’t work with Helgha’s age. It would have made her only 11 years old. So I took a liberty and moved that event back 5 years to 860. That would give Biorn time to marry Ædelflaed and for Helgha to be born. It would also fit in with the Battle of Eddington, where Alfred defeated the Danes and Sigfried was killed. Helgha would then be around 16 years old.

Another liberty I took was moving the Danelaw a bit farther north, or Helgha would have had problems getting into Mercia before Erik caught her. As this is a follow-on from Vengeance of a Slave, and Helgha a descendant of Adelbehrt from that story, I had to have it near York as that’s where he settled.

Vengeance of a SlaveFinally, I could not find out if the rich nobles, like Erik, had a separate compound within the city of York. I don’t think they would have lived in homes without the trappings of their civilisation, like bathhouses and places for their animals and for their followers to practice their fighting skills, so I allowed Erik and his family have a fenced compound in the city.

Modes of address in the Viking era I found difficult, no impossible, to discover. The modes of address in Anglo-Saxon Briton was clear. Goodwife or Goodman were the common ways of addressing people.

So because there was nothing I could find out, I had Helgha, Erik and others address each other by their first names.

In the northeast of England, the Viking peoples were known as Danes. They may have been predominantly Danish, but in the Great Heathen Army that came over in 865 were people from all the Scandinavian countries, but in England and France, all the Vikings were known as Danes.

After the Battle of Eddington, where Alfred defeated the Danes, part of the treaty was that all the land to the north and east of Watling Street, the Roman road that led from London to Chester, would be under Danish Law. It came to be known as The Danelaw. The other part of the treaty was that the Danes would become Christian.

I found it difficult to believe that people would give up their religion so easily, especially for one they thought of as soft and weak, and so I had the Danes of Jorvik still worshipping their old gods even after they had been defeated.

The Vikings worshipped a variety of gods, many of which are well-known. Such as Thor and Odin. Others in the text may not be so familiar.

Eir is one such. Her name means ‘help’ or ‘mercy’, and she was a physician, hence Inga calling on her to help Solveig.

There is a little confusion about Freyja and Frigga. Some say they were both the same goddess as there are many similarities between them. I have separated them, though, as I think there are enough differences for them to be considered separate.

Freyja, meaning ‘Lady’, was the goddess Helgha sacrifices to, and is usually associated with, love, fertility, sorcery, war and death.

As well as warriors going to the well-known Valhalla and Odin, some went to Folkvang, a realm ruled over by Freyja. There is little written about this, though, and so we don’t actually know what it was like.

Frigga, meaning ‘Beloved One’, was the wife of Odin, and her remit was marriage and motherhood.

The Vikings believed in things like draugr (people returned from the dead, a bit like zombies); elves, both light and dark; dwarves; trolls and other supernatural beings. It would be feasible for shadows to be misinterpreted as these creatures, as the children and then adults did when accusing Helgha of witchcraft. I am not sure whether or not they actually believed in demons, but I have assumed they did for the purposes of the story.

They also believed in magic. It was accepted, and wandering women, known as Volva, were healers. Magic was not, per se, considered to be bad. I did come across a website that mentioned that the Vikings did punish practitioners of Black Magic. Such women were put to death after t*****e or, as mentioned in the story, dunked into a pond. If they lived, they were guilty and if they died, innocent!

The term that the Vikings used for Jesus, The White Christ, was to indicate that He was a cowardly creature, much as we use ‘yellow’ today for a coward.

If I have made mistakes and offended people who know these things, my apologies, but I hope the story makes up for it.