The Queen and The Chief.

TGWITL

First day of autumn in the strange land of Dun'Broch.

I started this journal because there is no way I could possibly speak my mind without having the whole clan listening to me. The cause of that may be, for one thing, that I'm the chief. My name is Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, and about a year ago I became chief of the Hairy Hooligan tribe of Berk. Well, everyone calls me chief anyway, but we all know the real leader is Astrid, alongside my mother, Valka.

Those two seem to get along perfectly fine, and once again I start to feel as a talking fishbone. My only real friend, actually, happens to be Toothless, the Night Fury. We were the only two creatures in Berk who didn't want to go to war, in the first place.

Since the war with the dragons ended long ago, and every dragon hunter in the archipelago has faced an awful destiny, us Vikings had, for the first time, the chance to live peacefully and use our days to explore new lands. That, of course, set the clan off, because my people are physically unable to stay out of a fight for more than five minutes: if they aren't fighting dragons, they're fighting enemies, or each other. That is why my mother had the marvellous idea of sending them off to fight the Celts of the South, Scots, to be more precise. Now that wouldn't have been a problem, had there been any further explanation as to why, but the idea seemed to come out of nowhere and it was engrained in everyone's mind.

I'm going to give you a brief explanation; before the war against the dragons begun, the Hairy Hooligan tribe was submerged in a very violent quarrel against Clan Dun'Broch. This clan joined forces with three others, the McGuffins, the McIntosh and the Dingwall, forming an extraordinary alliance and pushing my father and his troops back into the north. That was the end of it, because we were far too busy fighting dragons anyway.

Now that the hatred among dragons and Vikings is over for good, mum brought back the memory of this once sublime fight against the scots, and everyone -- being the hot-blooded mess of a tribe that they are—thought of continuing the fight as a stupendous idea. Did they even ask the chief? No, the decision was taken far before the chief (me) even found out. Were they, then, leadless and messy? Now, again, of course not, since Astrid is such good of a leader.

So by the first morning of spring of this very year, all the fleets and ships were loaded, every Viking was armoured and bearing their weapons, and every dragon was being fed and saddled, just when I found out what was the matter. My 'friend' Astrid, surely, tried to set peace to my mind, explaining everything and begging me to go with them, for I was, or I think I am, the chief.

That is how we got into this disastrous chain of events, because after sailing for exactly one month and a day, we found ourselves in the most unwelcoming land of all: The Kingdom of Dun'Broch. We fought and killed, and died and fought again for three days and three nights, until we finally settled among the wood. The natives are far more than sure that these woods are bewitched and stuffed with spirits, my fellow Vikings, although believing in dragons alright, deny the existence of any other creature that might haunt us amongst the forest. So here we are, all divided in tents, camping in the wood by night and fighting the scots by day.

To sum everything up, the war is going alright. Both sides have lost a great number of warriors, and although we are outnumbered, we have dragons. If you are anything like me, you must know how absolutely beastly it is to make the dragons fight human wars, for it is unfair and abusive. That, clearly, no one thought of, or no one cared enough to think, for here they are, our valiant creatures, fighting alongside us.

They not only have more people, weapons and resources, but they also happen to have what everyone here seems to call 'The greatest warrior in the land', also known for being the bravest and the strongest, the most clever, the swiftest, or any other threat that might end with 'Est'. I know three things about this warrior: He never shows his face, he never kills, and he never misses an arrowshot. For the sake of saving space in the journal, I've decided to name him TGWITL.