Interlude: The Missing Jul Chapter
Interlude: The Missing Jul Chapter
(King Þorolfr’s Partial Reign 787-788)
A fir tree is cut to be decorated as part of Jul, in this woodcut print used as an illustration by Howard Pyle from 1897. The image is in the public domain.(King Þorolfr’s Partial Reign 787-788)
When Chapter V of this series was put together, it was shortened from its original form and one character was written out as part of the editing. That character is Ofeig Flod, the son of Chief Tryggve “The Moaner” Flod of Burgundaholmr. When that was done it made sense at the time. However, Ofeig is about to become part of the plot at the ongoing blót, and eventually he will have a major role to play in the overall story. So sketching him back into the story is necessary now. And who doesn’t like an excuse to revisit a good tale for Jul?
Gyrið, the chieftess of Hordaland had taken care to oversee all of the details of the Jul celebration in her holding. She wanted it to be a grand and memorable festival. She had picked out the fir tree to be cut and stood up inside Chief Froði Kráka’s longhouse where the crowds would gather for many parts of the 12-day long series of feasts and events. She had worked with the mothers, children and servants to decorate the tree with wooden representations of Odin, Thor, Freyr, and other Norse gods. She and the servants had decorated the longhouse with other wooden representations of the gods and mistletoe. She had supervised the woodcutters who would decorate the Jul log with a message for the new year. The slogan she had chosen to be carved in the runes translated roughly as “better tomorrows.”
ᛒᛖᛏᛏᛖᚱ ᚠᚢᛏᚢᚱᛖᛋ
She had worked with the mothers of the holding to get the craftsmen to build sufficient toys for the children. They had already left those gifts for the children on the night the mothers told them that Odin was riding across the sky on his eight-legged horse Sleipnir and sprinkling gifts on the houses below. On that special night, the aurora borealis had appeared brightly over the settlement and many of the mothers had said it was glowing because it was the Bifrost bridge that Odin traveled from Åsgard to Midgard, earth.
On the morning of the final day of the Jul festival, Gyrið was straightening the longhouse with the assistance of Froði’s ward, the 15-year-old Ofeig Flod of Burgundaholmr. Froði’s concubine, Margareta, was tending to Froði’s two daughters: Freyja, who had been born in the past year to Margareta; and Aslaug, who had also been born in the past year to Gyrið.
Gyrið opened a chest and brought out an arrangement of dried purple-pinkish flowers. The flowers were the size and shape of thimbles and sat on stalks in rows, with the stalks ranging in size from two to three feet in length.
Hailing from the island of Burgundaholmr in the Danish lands, Ofeig was always asking about the differences between Danish and Norwegian culture.
Ofeig was always full of curiosity and looking to make small talk.
Gyrið said this as she placed the flower arrangement on the head table in the longhouse.
Gyrið's special arrangement of flowers as imagined by Playground AI and the Stable Diffusion XL image generator.
The furniture in the longhouse had been rearranged so the room was not in the shape of the audience room for Chief Froði but instead that of a feasting hall, with a head table set on the riser where the chief’s special chair usually rested. The large Jul tree flanked this riser on one side. The rest of the house was set with long feasting tables and benches and the house’s fire pit was in the center, with the tables arranged around it. The sleeping area for the chief and his growing family was walled off by using wooden screens, hung with rugs and woven tapestries.
On this final day of Jul, the people of Hordaland had gathered inside and outside the settlement’s worship house with its wooden idols to Odin and Freyr. On each day of the festival, Seer Öysteinn had sacrificed animals in the worship house and sprinkled the blood of the sacrifice on those gathered. Large cooking pots were set alight inside the worship house to cook the sacrificial meats. As tradition held, on this final day of Jul, Öysteinn would sacrifice the settlement’s finest pig with the chief and his family prominent at the gathering. Gyrið and Margareta held the crying babies, while Ofeig flanked Chief Froði.
Froði was a bald and bearded Viking warrior in his early 40’s. He stood over six feet in height. He was still strongly muscled and toned, although his body had thickened as he moved into middle age. He was proud and walked with a swagger, earned from his reputation as one of the heroes of the Great Danish-Geatish Conflict. Although many still regarded Jarl Sigurd “Ring” af Munsö the greatest general of the age, Froði often boasted of how many times his men had put The Ring’s warriors to flight in that great conflict. Indeed, Froði was a great general too, but his behavior during the war to maintain Noregr’s independence was well known. The Ring would never forsake the battlefield to be bedding a mistress or camp followers.
On this final day of the Jul festival, Froði was dressed in a billowing fur cape and matching fur hat. He wore a leather vest over his cloth shirt and he had loose-fitting leather pants. Also, he wore a variety of golden necklaces. Like the tribe he ruled now, he was decked out in his finest for the end of Jul and the beginning of the new year. After the seer had slit the pig’s throat, he put his bloodied hand on the chief’s forehead to denote Froði’s importance. The seer’s attendants helped gather the pig’s blood in bowls and sacred instruments used to sprinkle the crowd called hlaut-staves, basically a branch from an evergreen tree with a carved and formed handle and the greenery used to brush and sprinkle the blood.
After the seer had sprinkled the pig’s blood on many in attendance inside and outside of the worship house, the crowd dispersed. The seer and his helpers then butchered the pig, cutting the meat into sections to be boiled and stewed for the evening’s feast at the chief’s longhouse.
“You have outdone yourself, Öysteinn!” Chief Froði exclaimed from the head table during the feast later that evening. “This is surely one of the finest pork stews.”
“Thank you, my liege,” the seer responded from far down the table.
The chief was seated in the center of the table, flanked on one side by his wife, Gyrið, and the other by his concubine, Margareta. Ofeig sat next to Gyrið, and Seer Öysteinn was seated next to Margareta. The rest of the head table consisted of other members of the chief’s council or others of importance in the settlement.
This was the infamous night when Froði propositioned one of the serving women to join him after the feast for a sexual romp, right in front of his wife and concubine. Also, this was the night that Froði made his lewd toast and claimed to have the largest male endowment in all the kingdom.
This was also the night that Gyrið had slipped a secret ingredient into her husband’s many horns of strong drink.
But Ofeig Flod could not remember much of that night, because he had fallen asleep at the feasting table before the dessert was served. Ofeig had passed out with his head on the table in a brown puddle from a spilled bowl of stew. He had missed the toasts and passed out from too much of the mulled apple spirits. He had been too woozy to notice the chief’s proposition to the serving woman. Gyrið roused Ofeig to bed as she began some of the clean up process. Gyrið and the serving women were left to tidy up the longhouse a bit now but most of the cleaning would be left for the next day. Meanwhile, Chief Froði was already leading his concubine Margareta out of the longhouse toward his private hut just as the babies woke up from all of the commotion, as the guests left.
What Ofeig remembered from that night was a blur of drinking wine, laughing, and then being led to his bed in a hazy fog. What he would certainly remember was his headache the next morning, but also the confusion and tumult caused by the untimely passing in the night of Chief Froði, his hero. He also remembered Gyrið taking charge of the settlement like never before and pushing him off as soon as possible on a merchant vessel eventually bound for Burgundaholmr.
For her part, Gyrið never showed any celebration after the passing of her cheating husband who had carried on many infamous and scandalous affairs. She did her best to feign sorrow and grief with almost every person in Hordaland fooled by her actions after Froði passed in the night of what looked to be a heart attack. She had mixed the finely ground flowers and stems from the fingerhut plant, a plant the English would call later the foxglove. Those special ingredients had done their magic and stopped Froði Kráka’s heart during the night.
Gyrið knew much of the immediate time in front of her would be trying and difficult. She had no idea what her future might bring. However, as she made herself appear sad and gloomy, she repeated softly to herself, “Better tomorrows. Better tomorrows.” The year 788 C.E. lay ahead, already with so much accomplished. She had now provided the king with the Jul gift he had requested: revenge for the murder of his father.
(The images included in this chapter that are not from Crusader Kings II are all from accounts linked to @Chac1 where he holds the copyright. They are primarily from Playground AI, but some are from Bing, including the Lost Seasons of the Danes logo.)
(Lost Seasons of the Danes will return after the Jul celebrations.)
ᛚᛟᛋᛏ ᛋᛖᚨᛋᛟᚾᛋ ᛟᚠ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛞᚨᚾᛖᛋ
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