Heh. It' the Jorvik festival next month, a friend of mine's going to be there in a longboat
Hehe, I have heard something about that festival, sort of a re-creation of battles right?
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21st of February, late at night
Yngvar stood up from the chear which he had been sitting in the whole day, telling the tale to Charles.
Yngvar: "I am beginning to get tired, I shall go to sleep now."
Charles: "Tell me more please, I cannot sleep until I hear the end."
"Have patience my friend, if you want to know more you can read the historical chronologies from the following twenty years. And when I wake up, I shall tell you the rest."
Yngvar went to his room and came back with a book that he gave to Charles. He did not say anything but got back into the room and fell asleep once he got in his comfortable bed.
The book was opened when Charles got it in his hands, he had a look at the title of the book "The History of Norway, by Gorm Skriftlærde". It was a book covering all the history from 860 to 1560, seven hundred years of history. Surely he could not read all until Yngvar woke up, but he would read about the years after the first English campaign.
He started reading the page where Yngvar had left a marker, the book was of course, translated into Latin for foreign readers.
~The History of Norway, chapter 16, page 723~
The Northern Kingdom was in an external good position to some degree in april 1528. The military had proved its power towards other nations and King Yngvar had truly gained reputition in all of Europe. Though he had not gained love from the other kings, he had gained the things of importance, respect and fear. One may look at the conquest of Lancashire and Yorkshire and state that there were no intentions of going further into England, but the king had a vision and this vision was conquest and glory for his empire and the people of the north. In order to achieve such, military expansion was aquired, and England was the perfect goal.
But how could the Northern Kingdom with its bad economy and internal crizis such as rebellions from the conquered lands and open protests from the homelands of Norway and Denmark against heavy war taxes?
The question cannot be answered directly, but if we look upon those different factors that lead to the haydays of the Northern Kingdom, we will only be left with one factor, the king himself.
King Yngvar's great-grandfather had been pre-occupied with freeing the nation and protect it from invading Swedes and Danes. His grandfather had subdued the Danes and kept the realm together with an iron fist, thus the add name for King Håvard, Hardråda, meaning Hardruler. His father had come with a new vision, the unification of Scandinavia. In the true spirit of a northern unifier he had sware and oath in the christmas of 1501 not to cut his hair or beard until the Swedes were finally subdued, this proving that the war was planed almost four years before it was declared. The fact that he died in battle before unifying all of Scandinavia left him with a remarkable long hair and beard, had he not been named Sjur the Brave, it would certainly be Sjur the Hairy.
And then, after the death of his father, King Yngvar I (later to be known as the Conqueror), rose to the throne in Norway. He was a very young man, crowned at fourteen of age and had no actual plans at the moment for what the future would bring to Norway. But he had excellent advisors and soon he became a man of great vision as it is written earlier in this chapter about the king.
Though the economy was crippled, and the revolts raged throughout the empire, it would all change during the reign of King Yngvar. He would turn the tide of bancruptcies, switch the economy from minus to plus, and still be able to maintain the large army of 60,000 that was left him at his father's death, yes even doubble it. The bad economy turned around gradually, especially between the years from the New Danelag peace of april 1528 and until around 1533 when the need for loans expired for eternity, the state economy of Norway had now gained an upperhand.
Let us take a look at the internal problems within the empire for the years between 1528 and 1535, while rebellions were frequently raging throughout the Norwegian posessions in the earliest of these years they were practically gone by 1535. A focus had been kept on stability these years and except for a few revolts in the newly aquired provinces in Germany and England, the rebels had nearly ceased to exist. There were great reforms in these years and one last was finally proclaimed by our just king about the freedom of the people as the year 1530 came to an end. As his father before had gradually increased the rights of the subjects, King Yngvar ended the task, finally freeing the innhabitants of the north completely from any form of serfdom.
As he said in his speeches to the people both in Oslo, Bjørgvin, Trondheim, København and Stockholm, let me quote the great man now,
"Northmen I talk to you all now, for you are all my fellow brothers and sisters. I speak to nobles, bishops, priests, merchants, farmers and last but not least, you brave warriors. I hereby claim that all men in my realm is left with the same rights, now may you all choose wisely how to use those rights as the free people you are, innhabitants of the Northern Kingdom."
We can clearly see that this was when Norway just became the center of a nation including much more land, the Northern Kingdom was proclaimed and new times would begin, the people of the provinces would gradually end their hopeless rebellions and became Northmen on the same line as Norwegians.
The kingdom started to gain more and more land in Germany at this time too, in order to gain a foothold to mount new expansion. Magdeburg and Kürstin was given to the Northern Kingdom as a peace was made with Brandenburg in december 1530. That peace would not last long however because King Yngvar broke the peace treaty with them in late 1533 and annexed them within half a year, along with Hannover. A last Swedish re-appearance took place in 1534, but was defeated within months. This was to be the very last of them, as the merciful king pardoned the leader of the rebellion and gave him a seat in the council.
In Vinland, Erlend of Losna had made contact with some Skrælings called Dakota in 1534 on his march from the south coast towards the other Norse posessions. The Dakota pagans denied them passage through their land so the conquistadores attacked them and made their way through. Erlend and his band of adventurers managed to slip away from the main army of the Skrælings so a peace was made and the Northmen continiued northwards and reached the sea in January 1535, expansion continiued rapidly in the west.
On the personal level of the great king, his French wife died, leaving Mary the only queen in the kingdom in 1530, a new son was born to King Yngvar by his Scottish wife in 1533, he was named Eirik also a third son was borned two years after, in January 1535, his name was Håvard. The future now looked bright for this great empire, and it would continiue to expand for the following years.
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If someone wants to see screenshots, the only way I see it is that I for example send them via email to someone. If you have a site you can put it on, since my arctic network don't do any good...