Book 3: 'Arrow Odd'

14.0 THE DEATH OF RAGNAR 'LOTHBROK' SIGURDSON

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE DEATH OF RAGNAR 'LOTHBROK' SIGURDSON  (Circa 863 AD)

"If the porkers knew the punishment of the boar-pig

surely they would break into the sty and hasten to

loose him from his affliction."

The Saga of the Sons of Ragnar Lothbrok; Anonymous

(863 AD) Count Ragnar 'Lothbrok' could remember it as though it had happened yesterday. His wife, Princess Aslaug, the witch Kraka, had been awakened by a dream. She saw her son dying out on the ice, and she blamed his half-brother for it. "It's Erik's fault!" she had called out in her sleep. "Roller shall die because of the snow! They both shall die because of the snow!" Ragnar woke his wife and asked her what she had dreamed. She told him that she had seen her son and Erik battling on ice with Westmar's berserks, but the bone skates Erik had built for them would not work because snow had covered the ice. They would be slaughtered unless a suitable sacrifice was made to Odin.

Then Ragnar sacrificed himself, offered himself up to Odin, to stop the snows. He marked himself with a spear and set off to attack his old enemy, King AElla of Northumbria, who had long ago lost his country to Ragnar and his sons, but now lost the small county in Mercia that he lorded over and he fled to the protection of the Mercian king. So Ragnar took his two ships south and he attacked Frankia afterwards. He recaptured all the Hraes Trading Company stations King Charles 'the Bald' had taken from him and later he'd even sacked Rouen and Paris, but he always kept in mind who he had originally planned to attack. When his sons in York had taken warfleets east to the great Battle of the Goths and the Huns and one had even died there, King AElla had used the respite to take back York for himself, so, when Ragnar felt the time was right, he had Frankish shipbuilders craft him two of the largest knars ever built and equipped them handsomely and manned them with as many fine warriors as the ships could carry. He had marked himself for Odin to save two sons, so he always limited himself to two ships, but he wanted to attack King AElla of Northumbria with as many men as the large knars could hold and they were enormous ships. He learned that his wife, Kraka, did not approve of the idea because she came to him in a dream and told him the English coast was not fit for such ships, only for longships, but Ragnar did not listen to her advice. But true to her dream message, the ships proved very difficult to handle in the North Sea and were damaged by a storm. Ragnar did manage to beach them safely with his army intact on the coast of Northumbria and they began to ravage and burn.

When King AElla of Northumbria learned of the pillaging army, he mustered an overwhelming force and crushed Ragnar's army. They captured the old merchant warrior and held him for a long time under terrible conditions, but he refused to die for them. Ragnar demanded a death befitting a warrior who had marked himself with a spear for Odin. But King AElla was afraid to kill him; afraid of what his sons would do. So, he held a feast for Ragnar in his longhall in Castle York. He invited all his nobles and they were sworn to secrecy and during the feast Ragnar 'Lothbrok' Sigurdson was brought into the center of the hall and was fed the fine highseat cuts and the king's best wine while AElla selected twelve of his finest nobles and gave them poison slaked swords out of his armory and when the food was done and Ragnar had finished his wine he stood up and servants took his stool away and chained his hands to a tall post in the middle of the hall between the two sets of highseats and they looked down from the highseats and it seemed as though Ragnar was in a fight pit, a blood-snake pit. The twelve nobles circled around Ragnar 'Lothbrok' like vultures spiralling down on a carcass and a poisoned blood-snake would flash out and strike Ragnar and he would stumble from the blow and the circling would continue and then another blood-snake would strike and cut him and a new wound spurted blood across the floor of AElla's great hall. Ten more times the blood-snakes struck, and the poison drove Ragnar to his knees, each of the dozen wounds on his body no worse than the others, but cumulatively fatal. No one person could be blamed for striking the mortal blow that killed Ragnar 'Lothbrok' Sigurdson, and certainly not King AElla, so the feast carried on for another hour as Ragnar sang his death dirge and succumbed to the poison and bled out. "When my young porkers learn of how their old boar has died, they shall surely free me from this pit of snakes," he finally cried and then he collapsed.

King Ælla suddenly became fearful of the sons of Ragnar 'Lothbrok' and he asked his young daughter, Princess Blaeja, who was a healer, to go over and revive him but she said, "It is too late. He is dead."

"What did he cry out at the end?" AElla asked.

"He said that his young porkers, meaning sons, shall free the old boar, being him, from this pit of snakes, meaning us," she answered.

"He must have been delirious to think that that might happen."

"I think he's cursed us," she replied. "I told you not to torture Ragnar or use death by poison blood-snakes to kill him. You should have put him and his men in those god awful knars and sent him on his way back to Frankia."

"How has he cursed us? He just babbled about pigs!"

"He has made us the snakes and his sons are the swine, the mortal enemies of snakes. If a farmer's fields are being overrun by snakes he lets his swine out into the fields and they kill and eat all the snakes. They are impervious to poison. His sons shall be let out onto the battlefields of Northumbria and they shall kill all the snakes and set Ragnar 'Lothbrok's spirit free. I fear, dear father, that we are focked!"

But there was even more to Ragnar's words than that. The City of York had originally been called Eburakon by the Britons, meaning place of the Yew tree, the saplings that the famous Briton Yew bows were fashioned from. When the Romans conquered Briton they Latinized the name as Eboracum and when they left to defend the Empire, the Angles conquered York and they renamed it Eorforwic, meaning the Village of the Boar and when King Ragnar and his Norse Danes conquered York, they left it as that, and it was not called Jorvik until King Frodi and his Anglish Danes, the Great Heathen Army, reconquered York in 866 AD. The Anglish Danes and the sons of Ragnar 'Lothbrok', having avenged the Old Boar, renamed the city in the hopes of ending the curse, but this was not to happen. When King Ragnar 'Lothbrok' Sigurdson had called his sons young porkers and had referred to himself as the Old Boar, he was reinforcing his rightful claim to the Village of the Boar, and his sons as the rightful heirs, right into the wording of his curse, compounding the meanings of his words, as skalds of the time were wont to do. The dual nature of the curse required a duality of vengeance. Perhaps this inspiration had come to him with the approach of death, for he was not noted as a gifted skald, as was his son, Prince Erik 'Bragi' Ragnarson, but the healer, Princess Blaeja, had been charged by her father, King AElla, to prepare the poison that had been slaked upon the twelve blood-snake swords, and she had mixed an opioid into the apothecary drug to take a bit of the bite out of the blades and that, too, could have brought the poet out in the Old Vik King.