The real story of Ragnar 'Lothbrok' right out of the Danish Histories! He sails halfway round the known world to slay a fire breathing dragon for the hand of Princess Aslaug. The Saga of Ragnar 'Lothbrok' Sigurdson is about King Ragnar Lothbrok of...
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Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, September, 9 AD, by O.A.K. Varusschlacht (1909)
(Circa 812 AD) When King Skiold of the Anglish Danes had led an army through Saxony to the Alemanni it had been to answer a call for aid throughout the Teutonic lands for troops to fight the Romans and their legions in the Teutoburg forest of Lower Saxony. Emperor Augustus lost three legions in the deep forests of Germany and they were never heard from again, mostly. King Skiold had fallen in love with a Saxon princess after the battle, for there was much feasting and celebrating after the great victory, but an Alemanni king had also fallen in love with her and they fought a battle themselves, the Danes and the Alemanni, over her hand and the Danes won. When King Fridleif, many years later, many many years later, again led the Anglish Danes against the Alemanni, they were the Roman Empire and they were so much harder to beat. King Fridleif had fought Emperor Charlemagne to a draw and was now at war with his son, Emperor Louis 'the Pious'. After defeating the Alemanni, Fridleif had planned to take Zealand and Skane from King Ragnar, but when he heard of the great success King Ragnar had had against the Swedes and then the Sclavs, he directed his army south against the Franks once more. He could not afford a war on two fronts. So he changed his plan to take over Ragnar's Southern Way somewhat and he allied himself with the Obotrite Slavs and built a fortress on the Wendish Island of Jom, at the mouth of the Oder River and the Anglish Danes sailed along the Slavic coast of the southern Baltic to the Nieman River and they rowed up it, instead of the Dvina, to make their way into the Land of the Slavs and to King Olmar's Kiev, his City of Key, in order to trade with the Eastern Roman Empire and Constantinople.
This eastern trade was more important to the Anglish Danes than ever before, for they were now at war with the Western Holy Roman Empire and all trade with the east had to come from the east because it no longer flowed up from the south. And to deal with the Caesar of the Eastern Roman Empire, one had to deal with the Kaezar or Khagan of the Eastern Khazar Empire and that meant dealing with the Huns, the most powerful tribe of the seven tribes of the Khazar Federation. King Fridleif had to cater to the wants and needs of the Obotrite Slavs and the Wend Slavs and the Pripyat Slavs and the Drevjane Slavs and the Poljane Slavs and then the Huns and then the Khazars and finally the Romans of Constantinople in order to get the goods the Anglish Danes used to just buy from the Saxon merchants and Frisian traders just south and west of them. It was a process. But the Anglish traders went out and, with the warming trend that was lengthening seasons, they could leave and return in one long summer season, which was of utmost importance to them. But they were going through so many different lands and peoples that their approach, by necessity, had to be different than that used by King Ragnar and his Zealand Danes, the approach of bashing everybody that stood in between him and his goals. When the Jutland traders arrived in Kiev and met the Zealand traders, they were ordered not to tell them who they really were. And they were not allowed to participate in the slave trade. The Roman word for slaves was actually servants, and the term slaves came from the Slavs that the earlier Gothic traders would capture and sell in Vanir Roman Constantinople. So the Slavs did not like slave traders and the Anglish Danes needed the Slavs to like them. And they needed the Huns to like them and they needed the Kaezar of the Khazars and the Caesar of the Romans to like them as well. So, the Jutland Danish traders were very secretive and very likeable and the Zealand Danish traders were nothing of the kind. They were bellicose and drunk, trading in furs and flesh, fighting everywhere they went and they enjoyed themselves everywhere they went and became renowned for their fighting and bargaining skills.
