Hakon Skoftesson Crovan
King of Norway
The vacant musings of the early years, 1190-1194
My insane spymaster dumped a sack full of rotting bones in my lap, an insult I tolerated for only two reasons.
First, he is crazy and just might kill me if I annoy him.
Second, the bones belonged to Saint Aslak of Tir Connail, famous as the man who drove all the frogs from Ireland. I understand we are related. But that is not important. What is important is that we can plant these bones in the Viken Cathedral right next to the bones of St. Franklin and double our tourist industry overnight!
Sweden, you might have noticed, has been completely overwhelmed by Spanish Saracens.
It is so bad that the Swedish King, a disgrace to the name Hakon, has fled with his court to this God-forsaken no-man’s land.
These Saracens have doubtless gotten soft beating up on the hapless King of Sweden, so you know what that means: Crusade!
Here is my son Inge. You’ll notice in the background that Ealmund the Steward has gotten himself into a bit of a pickle in Varmland.
The rest of the army arrived in time to save his bacon. We also shattered the Moor’s army. When I say “we,” what I mean is “my generals.”
As the King, I gave myself the critical task of guarding the escape routes, you know, in case anything went wrong.
I also have the vital task of taking official charge of all the lands we’ve conquered, so it’s not like I’ve been avoiding danger, no sir! I’ve just been busy with my critical duties.
Dear Astrid gave me another son, Haldor. I welcome any of you to guess why he can never be king.
1193 has been a really trying year. The Moors of Toledo would not make peace with me, so some genius at the court had the bright idea to sail the army down to Spain and break his power-base. We broke it alright. He still didn’t make peace, moving his court to the Western Isles, for some fool reason.
So, to recap, I spent a hot, miserable, and dusty summer tramping about Spain with the army all so I could add some new hassles…I mean vassals…thousands of miles from home.
I sweated like you wouldn’t believe and bathing isn’t “cool,” so I’d like you to take a guess at how the army smelled, marching about in full battle array, day in and day out for over a year.
Plus, all the natives spoke some gibberish language I didn’t understand and the food was all weird. Not a single Walrus Bladder Soup to be found anywhere.
Then we got lost and spent a month – a month mind you – marching in circles around Calatrava before we could find someone – anyone – who could give us decent directions to Toledo. And you know they didn’t speak Norse, damned heathens, so we spent another two months wandering around arguing about what the shepherd meant by “turn left two goat paths after the fork in the road.” I said that meant we should pass two goat paths and then take the next left, but nooooo, everyone else insisted it meant we should take the second goat path. Well who wound up being right, smartasses? The King, that’s who!
I swear before God that I will kill myself before I ever return to another miserable Mediterranean province. I hate this place.
We did stop off on the way home and take back my ancestral homeland. So, I spent the holidays on an island my ancestors fought like wolves to escape from.
I swear, I am never leaving Viken again if I can help it.
My experiments with Vassals have so far gone as well as dad’s did.
So Hakon went on Crusade and all he brought home was the same lousy attitude he left with. This is always the same old thing, let me guess, more vassals rebel? Hakon complains? Nothing at all purposeful happens? You know what. I quit. Well. Not really, but I should. Hopefully, Hakon gets the plague in the next “exciting” episode of