Isle of Mull, 829
Yngvarr, a Danish born man in his late 20s, the leader of the warband, was moving through the nearly hundred victims of the recent battle. The afternoon rain was monotonously falling and he found it weird, extremely quiet, yet deafening after the clash of iron and steel from the battle before. He was feeling it as it went through his chainmail on his woolen tunic underneath and it was soaked by now.
“Yngvarr Jarl, we found their king,” said a huscarl as he was hovering over a body. Yngvarr approached him. It was easy to recognize Norseman from Pict or Irishman, mainly from the way their helmets looked, but also because in the former, one could see chain mail and leather armor, but on the other side, you could barely see any chain mail at all, mostly limited to a king and his retinue, but most of them wore cloth or leather, and nearly all had tartan cloths covering them.
Yngvarr, quite a short man, was a head shorter than the huscarl. He had a large blonde mane, with some fringes braided, falling down his shoulders and a beard that was short around his temples and jaw, but long on his chin, braided and tied with jewelry.
“Are you sure it’s him?” Yngvarr asked, skeptically and the man nodded. As he approached, he touched with his feet a body and the man there started groaning and coughing. Yngvarr stopped and looked at him. He was stabbed in the stomach. Yngvarr pushed his head with his feet, but as the man groaned and cried out with a rasp and dry voice, showing his near end, Yngvarr took out his sword.
These bastards would be sure to make me suffer if I would be in their place, he thought and decided against ending the man’s suffering, and sheathed his sword. He continued to walk to the huscarl, making sure he stepped on the wounded man right over his stab, smiling as the man groaned to his death.
“It is him, alright. Look,” the huscarl said as he used his sword to push the tartan cloak away, showing the torc on his neck. The native king was on a horse, something that already made him a perfect target in the way of warfare of the British Islands and Scandinavia, even if he could issue orders much easier from there. He had an arm cut off and a stab wound on his chest, while the horse had an arrow going through its neck, right beneath his ears.
Yngvarr checked the dead king’s neck closely and took out his sword. With a surgical strike, he put his sword through the vertebrae, cutting through the ligament. A few more cuts and the head was detached. Yngvarr pushed it aside and took the golden torc from him
“Let it be known, that Flann the Madman died here,” he proclaimed. “None but a madman would stand against our fury and even his God abandoned him,” Yngvarr said.
“Your brother sacked the monastery too, Herra Jarl,” the huscarl commended. Yngvarr nodded happily, as his eyes were still set upon the masterfully decorated golden torc of the Irish tuath king, vassal of the greater Pictish overking, Onuist map Vurguist, with his seat of power in Fortriu.
“King Soxulfr will be happy to bring him all this tribute,” Yngvarr commented to the huscarl who was listening to him absently. He turned and wanted to leave, but the huscarl caught his attention again, as he gave him the brooch the Irishman was wearing. Yngvarr looked at it closely. It was golden with silver decorations. It represented a stylized boar, caught in a circle that mimicked to torc that he had on his neck.
“Do we know what was his name?” Yngvarr asked the huscarl, but the latter shrugged.
“Probably the translator knows,” he said, referring to a Pictish merchant that travelled between Orkney and Shetland and the Firth of Moray, that Yngvarr took a year before as a hostage, and now was working to translate for them and to explain much of the inner workings of the northern shores of Britain. Yngvarr nodded, and he wanted to turn again, to move towards the monastery, while the rest of his hird was looting the dead on the field of battle, but at the very last moment, he turned towards the huscarl.
“What is your name?” Yngvarr asked.
“Alvar Sveinsson, Herra Jarn,” the man said, taking off his Gjermundbu-like helmet, showing a very short blonde hair with tattoos representing stylized stags.
“You didn’t join us from Ribe, when he left, at the beginning,” Yngvarr commented.
“No, Yngvarr Jarl, I joined you in the Norðreyjar, at the behest of King Þórir,” Alvar explained. Yngvarr nodded.
“Good! I will talk with you more, Alvar Sveinsson, for I did notice you during the battle and afterwards,” Yngvarr said and then turned, without letting the other to say more.
He was followed by four or five of his hirdmen that were acting as his bodyguards, being banned to leave him for the sake of looting the dead, and went a bit further to the west from the battlefield, going up a small hill, behind which smoke was coming.
“If they were smart, they could have waited for us here and if they forced us to attack them, we would be winded just by coming up this knoll,” he commented. One of his hirdmen nodded in approval.
“The best enemy is one who makes mistakes and is rushing into battle,” he nodded. Yngvarr laughed back at him.
“Just imagine, not only you Kjetill, but all of you, what this great land is for us. Filled with idiots who don’t know how to fight and with riches beyond any of our imaginations,” Yngvarr said, with his happy tone relaxing his men too.
“It is a perfect land for farming and for settling too,” the hirdman commented.
“It may be, yes, and this is only the far north. Imagine the south…” Yngvarr said, opening his arms and muttering some prayer to the All-Father, while looking at the sky, in an embrace to the land. The monotone rain stopped and the winds brought him shivers down his spine, as his clothes were soaked and he could still feel the sweat on him from the previous battle.
Towards them, from the burning monastery, his brother was approaching with chained prisoners and carts filled with goods.
“What do we have here?” Yngvar asked as Hrodulf came to him.
“Some priests, gold and other goods,” he said, licking his lips, like he has in front of him the best meal of his life. Yngvarr laughed. He knew Christian monasteries were perfect targets. For the past 30 years, men like him hunted such sites and yet, he felt that little was done by the Christians to stop him.
They walked back to the shores, where the twenty ships were grounded. Yngvarr was giving orders for the jewels and goods to be dispersed on the ships, while Hrodulf and Alvar came close to him.
“King Soxulfr will be happy for all of this,” Hrodulf said as he was eying the gold crosses and the other reliquaries which were stored in his brother’s ship.
“King Þórir too,” Alvar added, leading to a growl from Hrodulf.
“Þórir isn’t under the banner of Saxulfr and the Stjórnavágr, isn’t he?” Yngvarr asked as he turned to Alvar, referring the up and becoming major Viking port of Stornoway, which was now acting as the capital of the Kingdom of Isles, which was dominating already the Outer Hebrides, or as they called them, Suðreyjar.
“No, Norðreyjar is its own Kingdom and is growing with more and more Norwegians and Danes coming in,” Alvar commented. Hrodulf rolled his eyes.
“There’s nothing but stones and Picts there. The riches are here…” Hrodulf moaned. Yngvarr turned to Alvar.
“Do you have family there?” he asked him. Alvar straightened up, and responded with a warm voice.
“A wife, Sigrid, and a son, Einarr,” he said proudly.
“Just one son?” Yngvarr asked and he looked at Alvar’s shoulders going down a bit from how proud they stood beforehand.
“Only one, Sigrid is sickly and she had two stillbirths, but at least we have a healthy ten-year-old boy,” he said. Yngvarr put his hand on his shoulder, in a friendly manner.
“Maybe you are fated to have only one son, but he truly will be a strong one,” he said and Alvar nodded. Yngvarr then turned to his brother.
“I know you don’t even want to hear of it, brother, for you hate setting up roots, but I will need to find a wife and set myself up on one of these islands,” Yngvar said, as Hrodulf scoffed.
The latter muttered something for himself, and then left to aid the others as they loaded up the ships. The prisoners were, as he said, mostly priests and monks from the monastery, many adults but some children too. One of them caught Yngvarr’s attention, as he had pale skin, emerald green eyes and red hair. He went along them, checking them, followed by Alvar and by the Pictish translator. The adults were tonsured specifically, as they were monks, but Yngvarr scoffed at them.
“I’ve seen monks before, in Friesland, but they looked different, they had the center of their head shaven and a circle of hair right above the hair line,” he commented and then stopped in front of one that was outright sobbing, even if he tried to hide it with a prayer. “This one looks like I myself tried to cut his hair with a sheep shears,” he commented and he laughed, joined by Alvar, while the Pict stood straight, not reacting to the jarl’s comments. The monk had long hair, but right in the center of his head, forming a crescent, he was shaven from ear to ear, with hair covering his forehead, and his back, but an empty top. Another, had the front half of his hair shaved, the back half kept long, and a third the other way around. “We do have that type of hair too,” Yngvarr said, pointing to the man with a shaven back of his head, and short hair in front. Alvar nodded absently, but he nearly bumped into Yngvarr when he stopped, in front of the boy with that initially caught his attention.
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“What is this?” Yngvarr asked as he leaned over, and pointing towards a surprisingly rich tartan cloak made of wool, the other two observed the brooch the boy was wearing.
“A mark of something important, whomever he might be,” Alvar said as he leaned over too, and with a quick move took the brooch, tearing through the wool of the cloak, startling the boy and making him cry, while the other prisoners gasped and two more started crying too.
“Ask him who he is,” Yngvarr ordered the Pictish translator as he came closer. The man stinks like a wet dog, of sweat and piss, Yngvarr thought as the translator approached and he preferred to take a step back.
“Cū es tī?” the translator asked, with a firm but neutral voice. It can be felt he hates doing all of this, Yngvarr thought. The boy, who was still crying, stopped and while tears were still going down his cheeks, he tried to understand what he was saying. The Pictish translator repeated the question. The boy’s brow furrowed, but in the end, he shook his head. The translator sighed and put his palm on his forehead.
“It’s a savage one,” he said.
“He doesn’t understand you?” Alvar asked and the Pict nodded.
“He doesn’t speak my language,” he said, and then turned to the boy again.
“Cía thú?” the Pictman asked him and startled, the boy’s face warmed up a bit, clearly comprehending, much to the dismay of the Pict.
“Mise Áedán mac Eógan”, the boy said with a stifled voice.
“Cenél cia?” the Pict asked. Yngvarr was listening closely, and he could observe how the language changed from the raspy and twitchy language of before to something that he felt to be much more melodious.
“Cenél Loairn,” the boy said and the Pict nearly groaned, before he turned to Yngvarr.
“A seafarer from the west,” the Pict explained, to much of the dismay of both Yngvarr and Alvar. “He is from a tribe on the coast, the Cenél Loairn, part of the Dál Riata, a kingdom of Irishmen that came from across the sea and took over the whole area,” the he explained. Yngvarr was intrigued, but Alvar chuckled.
“They seem like us,” he jested, but the Pict, probably from wanting to win the goodwill of his masters quickly brushed it off.
“They are savages, unlike the men of the North. They may be Christian, but they take many wives, they write in unfathomable signs and they come from the island in the west, pushing my people north and east,” the Pict explained.
“Your people seem to be a weak one, if from the north, we pushed you away from Norðreyjar, if from the west, the people of the boy pushed you away from these islands, and if in the south, the Englishmen are continuously encroaching on your lands,” Yngvarr commented, much to the dismay of the Pict, who let his head fall into his chest.
“He seems to be under the protection of Logi,” Alvar commented, pointing to the dark red hair of the boy, referring to the mythological personification of fire. The Pict scoffed, but Yngvarr watched him closely.
“He is a son of the King of the Irishmen?” Yngvarr asked. The Pict man asked the boy some more questions.
“His father is the younger brother of the head of the Cenél Loairn, so while he’s not very close to the king of Dál Riata, he is rigdomna, which means he could be a legitimate leader of the kingdom,” he Pict explained.
“King Saxaulfr will enjoy this tribute then,” Yngvarr commented and then ordered the rest to continue loading the ships, including the prisoners. “Alvar, you take the boy,” he ordered.
It took about two hours for the jewelry, goods, prisoners and supplies to be loaded and as the sun was beginning to set, the thirty ships were finally sailing away. Over the evening and early into the night, the longships were going north-west, using the westerly wind to push their sails, as the men and even some women laughed and enjoyed themselves telling stories from the previous battle, rather than rowing. Yngvarr was happy for the loot got. Saxulfr should be happy too and give me some land here, if he sees I bring him so much, he thought.
He was of Danish origin, son of a Jarl around Ribe, but he always felt Denmark was too small for him, especially as his father gave his kingdom away by submitting to Harald 'Klak' Halfdansson, making him a king of the whole Jutland. His older brother, Sigfred remained by his father’s side, while he took his younger brother Hrodulf, hoping to carve a kingdom of their own on the British Archipelago, allying themselves with the King of Norðreyjar and hoping to win the support and friendship of the King of Suðreyjar.
The longships reached the Outer Hebrides during the night, and by the morning, they finally reached Stornoway. Yngvarr’s was the first to enter the natural harbor of the emporia. It was a surprisingly sunny morning, but chilly and windy, with the swirling waters of the high seas making way to beautiful azure waters, and in the natural harbor, they were so clean Yngvarr could see the bottom. Initially there were a few scouts that saw the ships approaching, and made their way by horse to the town to announce their arrival. Stornoway, or Stjórnavágr as the Norsemen called it, as at that moment, the largest of the emporias built in the British Isles by the Scandinavians. It had large docks and probably about 100 to 200 wood and adobe houses, with thatched roofs. Some of them, especially around the long house were nearly terraced together, but most of them had small vegetable gardens around them, surrounded by small fences. The whole city was surrounded by a ditch and rampart with a palisade, for protection. At the moment, it didn’t seem there was any chance the natives of the islands would push the norsemen out.
As the first ship landed on the beach, the people of the town hailed Yngvarr as he gesticulated towards the incoming ones and the loot, which he had on his drakkar, signifying a victorious raid and riches brought to the port city. Next up was Alvar’s, followed by Hrodulf and the others. Yngvar jumped down from his ship to the hails of the people, saluting them by raising his two arms.
“Yngvarr Jarl, the king is waiting for you,” a man wearing rich wools, showing his status proclaimed as he approached the Viking. Yngvarr nodded and pointed to Alvar and Hrodulfr to bring the prisoners and to follow him.
The three men, followed by some other Vikings and the line of prisoners, went through the muddy streets of the town, from the beaches and their docks, where the ships continued to be beached to be unloaded, as the docks weren’t enough for all of them. They went past some blacksmiths and mead brewers, and then reached the main longhouse. Yngvarr entered first, followed by his brother, and then Alvar, and only then the others came.
“Hail to you, King Saxulfr!” Yngvarr said, greeting the king, who was standing by the fire pit.
“Yngvarr Jarl! I’ve been told you’re coming back! How were the raids on the interior islands?” Saxulfr asked. He was a big man, probably double in width compared to Yngvarr, and a head higher than him. He had an undercut with a long braid, and his beard was braided and decorated with golden rings in his braids. Yngvarr looked at his hair closer. It was fair blonde, unnatural even. He washed his hair with strong lye, to keep it like that.
“They are rich in loot and weak in defenses,” Yngvarr said. “I brought you prisoners and loot as tribute,” he continued, as gestured towards Alvar and Hrodulf to bring the prisoners in. To the awe of the retainers of the King, the Vikings brought in not only the prisoners, but also the jewels stolen from the Monastery of Iona, which was pillaged earlier. “Gold, silver, and jewelries, prisoners from their priests and even a member of their royal household,” Yngvarr proclaimed.
Saxulfr looked at them all, unsure what to start first. He looked at the monks and the children taken prisoner, but then went past them and looked at the gold reliquaries, the censers, and the crosses, but also at the golden covered religious tomes, gospel books and golden miniatured Bibles.
“This is truly a treasure to behold,” Saxulfr muttered. “You found them at the great monastery down south, right?” he asked and Yngvarr nodded. “It was raided some 15 winters ago, but it seems the natives here find it easy to enrich themselves,” Saxulfr commended and then looked towards the prisoners. “What of them?” he asked.
“Mainly priests and other clerics, with a special child,” Yngvarr said as he went along the prisoners, with Saxulfr looking over them.
“They look like someone made a mockery of them,” the king said, looking at their tonsures. “Even so, they will fetch a good price as thralls back in Norway,” he continued, with Yngvarr nodding.
“With one exception, the boy blessed by Lodi,” he said, the two approached the Irish boy. Saxulfr looked at him, and pushed up his chin and looked at him in the eye. The boy made large eyes, showing his fear, but at the same time, one could see he was struggling to keep an air of defiance by looking into the king’s eyes.
“He is not like the rest,” Saxulfr commented. “They are afraid, but while he is too, he does his best to hide it,” he continued. “What is his name?”
“Áedán mac Eógan, of the Cenél Loairn, a far-removed nephew of the kings of Dál Riata,” Yngvarr said, with a proud voice as he presented the boy. Saxulfr scoffed.
“I don’t need far removed ones. It’s all the same as these monks,” the king said, leaving the boy and turning their back them. “If you want, you should have it. He will be hard to break as a thrall, but being young, it might make it easier,” Saxulfr said, and then turned to Yngvarr. “Now, tell me… Such tributes don’t come from nowhere. What do you want in exchange?” he asked him and this is where Yngvarr knew he won him over.
“My king, I want to raid under your banner and to settle an island,” Yngvarr said, smiling slyly. Saxulfr looked at him a bit concerned and confused.
“I heard you had an unsatiable ambition. Why would you want to be a jarl of mine if you left Denmark, especially because your father bent the knee?” Saxulfr asked. Yngvarr just shrugged.
“I had no chance to have my own land and jarldom back in Denmark, and even less when Harald 'Klak' became king of Jutland,” Yngvarr said. Saxulfr followed him closely, as he still wasn’t sure what he wanted from him.
“So, in the end, what is your ambition?” Saxulfr asked.
“I will raid in your name the lands, but I want on these islands to carve a jarldom of mine. I will send you tribute from anything I raid, but I want an attack on me, to be an attack on you too,” Yngvarr said, expectantly. Saxulfr thought of it for a bit. He knew his situation. Yngvarr was bringing many ships that could cement his reign over the Seas and at the same time, his own ambition will ensure that most of the north-western coast of Britain will be under his domain and suzerainty.
“Fine, we have a deal,” Saxulfr said. Yngvarr shook his hand happily and as the other jewels were being brought in, he left to meet with Hrodulf and Alvar which were standing outside the longhouse. By now, the weather was overcast and a slow rain started.
“This land will forever be green, with rains like this,” Hrodulf commented as he watched the water falling from the roof of the longhouse. “I wonder how it is in winter, because if it’s the same, it will be snowier than Denmark or Norway,” he continued.
“It’s not the same. It continues to rain like this,” Alvar said.
“It is the perfect land,” Yngvarr commented, as he was still thinking of the islands of the interior and even south, to the land they called Ireland. “Alvar, I told you that I wanted to speak to you,” he said as he turned towards the huscarl. “You showed bravery in battle and were righteous enough to show me the jewels of their king. I want you to join me. Leave King Þórir and Norðreyjar and join us,” Yngvarr said. Alvar was taken aback and surprised.
“Herra Jarl, I am honored but I have a wife and son in Shetland. I can’t return to a life of raiding,” he said. Yngvarr turned to him and rested his arm around Alvar’s neck and brought him closer.
“I know, but what I offer isn’t only raiding. I offer a new, better life, with better lands to settle. Think of the great lands one could build a homestead, in the islands here and in the south, rather than the stony and windy islands of Norðreyjar. Your son and wife will flourish if your farmhouse would be in an island like the one we just raided, rather than up in the north,” Yngvarr said, persuasively. Alvar slowly nodded.
“I do think a less windy spot would be better for my wife,” Alvar commented. “If we could also grow better crops, then why not?” he said.
“King Saxulfr rejected the gift of the red-haired Irish boy. He took the rest of the prisoners instead. I will give the boy to you,” Yngvarr continued. Alvar couldn’t but nod in approval. He knew King Þórir will never offer him better lands or a thrall, so he quickly recognized a once in a lifetime opportunity.