Björn, Ironside, Ragnarrsson af Munsö
Lived: (est.) 821-889
Petty King of Svipjod: 860-872
High King of Svipjod: 872-880
King of Egypt: 880-889
Head of House af Munsö: 860-889
By far the most successful of the ‘sons’ of legendary King Ragnar Lobrok, and indeed of any of the great warlords of the Viking Age, Björn Ironside is remembered as both a magnificent leader of men and the most tyrannical conquerors of the most barbarous of ages. Whilst his earlier life remains shrouded in the legends of proto-historical Sweden in his later life the scale of his actions began to attract the attention of writers from the Eastern Mediterranean and Catholic West alike. What is clear is that by the time he made the transition towards being a historical figure in the 870s and 880s he already dominated Sweden – making him the most powerful of the Norse lords in Scandinavia.
Whilst the Great Heathen Army set off to avenge Ragnar Lobrok in England, Björn resisted the temptation to join with his brothers in war against the petty kinglets of the British Isles and instead went on the warpath closer to home – subjugating most of the lesser chieftains of Southern Sweden during the last years of the 860s.
It would not be until after his wars in Sweden had been concluded that Björn would transform himself into both an eternal legend in his homeland and a historical figure abroad. This links between the Swedes and the Rus, and indeed between the Ironside and the Rus King Rurik, were strong and information had spread of the great riches of Byzantium and a route to reach it (through the great rivers of Eastern Europe). The Rus had raided Constantinople as early as 860, and Björn appeared eager to follow in the footsteps of his cousins to the East.
Setting off from Sweden in 870 Björn travelled through the Great Rivers of the East, emerging from the Dnieper into the Black Sea. After several months raiding the scarcely protected Byzantine towns of the region the Ironside struck at Constantinople – raiding the environs of the city before being forced to withdraw following the arrival of an Imperial Army. However the Byzantines were not able to prevent Björn’s raiders from escaping their clutches in Thrace and sailing through the Marmara to the Aegean and Mediterranean. From there Björn terrorised the Eastern Mediterranean world for two years – Smyrna, Thessalonica, Athens, Antioch, Acre, Alexandria, Damietta – just a few of the cities that faced the terror of the Swedish Vikings as the ravaged the most civilised area of the known world. But the greatest triumph and atrocity of the ‘Great Raid’ came at its very climax as the Norsemen sacked, looted and all but burnt to the ground the prosperous city of Venice. The Republic would not recover for almost a century whilst Björn’s name became infamous across Europe and the Near East.
Upon his return to Scandinavia Björn’s star had risen immeasurably high. Not only was he now the richest of all the Norsemen, his brothers had also failed in their efforts to conquer England – the Great Heathen Army being destroyed by a coalition of Northumbrians and Mercians – leaving him with unmatched prestige. With this in mind he proclaimed himself the High King of Sweden (or Svipjod), this title would remain the most prestigious amongst the Norse of Northern Europe through to the end of the Viking Age.
The great warrior was far from done. As the victories in the South were celebrated in a great blot (a festival involving human sacrifice) Björn Ironside was already planning a second, far larger expedition – this time with the goals beyond simple plunder. As the chieftains of the North wilfully swore allegiance to Björn the High King began to assemble a new army. During the Great Raid the Vikings had found that, in contrast to the Byzantine Empire, the Muslim powers of the Near East – the Abbassids in the Levant and Mesopotamia and the Tulunids of Egypt – were weak and divided, and incredibly wealthy. This view was reinforced by the diplomacy of the Byzantines. The Byzantines had a long history of taming violent barbarians through diplomatic means and their treatment of the Norsemen was no different. As the Muslims turned aghast at the barbarism and paganism of the Vikings the Byzantines opened up diplomatic channels with the Swedes, their aim was to redirect the energies of the Norsemen away from the Byzantine Empire and towards its enemies in the Muslim world. Tales of the weakness of the Muslims and their great wealth, information that corresponded with the Norsemen’s experiences during the Great Raid, helped convince Björn that the Islamic world was there for the taking and he had his eyes on its greatest prize –Egypt.
Björn Ironside’s great host took around two years to assemble, attracting thousands from across Scandinavia – including legendary warriors like Kolbjörn af Kalmarhus (who would later lead a large section of the army in Egypt). The great barbarian army finally set off as soon as the snow melted in the Spring of 875. 18,000 men – 4,000 of which were Slavic mercenaries recruited through the Ironside’s connections in Holmgard – the rest Norsemen from across Scandinavia, accompanied by the largest fleet that had ever been assembled by a Viking leader.
Arriving in July 875 Björn and his host descended upon Northern Egypt like a plague, sacking Alexandria in August and one by one seizing the cities of the Delta. The Norse had arrived in Egypt, few would ever return to the North, not least amongst them the High King himself.
In the year before the arrival of the Norsemen the Tulunid Sultanate of Egypt had been hit by a Civil War, leaving disunity amongst the Egyptians, but more importantly it had sapped the country’s much needed military manpower. This in large part explains the failure of the Tulunids to muster enough men to drive out the invaders. At the Battle of Abu Rowash (just to the West of the capital, Fustat) the Arabs had just 8,500 men – their army being dwarfed by the Norse who also benefited from a far higher quality of soldier. The Arabs were smashed, by the end of 875 Tulunid authority along the Nile had collapsed.
From 876 the Tulunids could do little but send small raiding parties from their base in Cyrenaica to harass Björn’s armies and support what resistance the local population and lords could manage. Needless to say the Northmen went from triumph to triumph. The gruesome savagery of the Viking conquest of Egypt was much talked about by Christian and Muslim writers of the time alike. Along almost certainly gross exaggerations were common it seems likely that the population of Egypt fell by around 10-30% from 875 to 900 through a mixture of warfare, famine (caused in large part by the destruction of the agricultural infrastructure during the invasion) and emigration. Indeed, Björn’s conquest was perhaps the greatest human tragedy ever to have been suffered by Egypt – a country no stranger to the concept.
At the time the Norse also benefited from an extremely favourable geopolitical situation with the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate (that surely would have sent assistance otherwise) being embroiled in decades of instability, the Byzantine Empire having little interest in sending assistance to the Muslims in Egypt, and still believing the Norse could be controlled and the Tunis based Aghalabid Sultanate lacking the resources to embark on an adventure in Egypt. In essence Egypt had been abandoned to Björn.
As the dust settled on the invasion in 878 Björn set out to divide up the new realm amongst his army. Alexandria and Fustat – the country’s two wealthiest cities – were placed under his personal control whilst at Aswan a new capital was built, far from the corruption and softer living to be found in the Arab and Roman palaces of the former two cities. Elsewhere the great Kolbjörn Kalmarhus was granted the Sinai, the King’s only son was granted the rich Delta whilst the rest of the country was split amongst the minor nobility of the army.
As the ageing Björn Ironside settled down to rule his new realm from Aswan – proclaiming himself King of Egypt and relinquishing his Swedish throne in 880 – the Egypto-Norse population as a whole remained as militant and aggressive as ever. Egypt now became a base for raiding across the Mediterranean world – Pisa and Genoa were sacked in 879 by Björn’s son and heir Eirikr – whilst the Byzantines began to pay a small tribute to Aswan to spare themselves from Viking raids. At the same time those amongst the Norse nobility who had failed to gain sufficient lands in 878 moved out to expand Egypt aggressively Southward and Westward, Eirikr was again at the forefront, capturing Tobruk in 886.
Although to his followers and enemies alike he had seamed barely human, Björn Ironside’s mortality finally caught up with him as he passed away peacefully at his capital of Aswan in 889. Thus ended the life of the greatest of all the Vikings.
, as you could probably guess from the title in this AAR I will be playing the Old Gods DLC. I started out as Bjorn the Ironside and moved to invade Egypt. I subsequently give up my lands in Scandinavia to migrate entirely to Egypt, playing as a Norse realm based on the Nile. Something a bit different from the usual root taken in a Viking game 
