The three Nordic countries were briefly united under a single royal power......

With his own brutal force, Harald forcibly integrated several Nordic countries and threw horse meat, armor and battle axes dedicated to the great god Odin in the peat ponds of the holy land of Uppsala.

Claim to be the king of all the tall, ruddy-faced, golden-haired Vikings!

Many of the Norwegian and Danish counts who were loyal to him, and of course powerful families from Sweden, seemed to have established a Viking kingdom like any other civilized people.

After all the high-sounding things, the old pirates sat in the castle and looked at each other, only to realize that building a country was far less pleasant than robbing a country, and the red tape of the court constrained the nature of Odin's descendants eager to conquer.

Bluetooth jumped aboard his own warship and led a murderous Viking fleet to attack England under the weakling Æthelred, easily defeating them, sacking London, forcing England to pay the humiliating Danish gold every year, recognizing the Vikings' right of abode in Britain, and establishing many settlements along the coast as outposts for military occupation and as a transit point for the Frankish state further south.

Harald left nine sons, and he wanted to follow Charlemagne's approach, choosing one son to be the main king, and the other eight sons to be the vice-king, using the family's blood and kinship to maintain this huge northern empire, but he ignored this fact!

Today's Vikings are no longer the invincible pirates of the past, they have the wealth and status that their poor ancestors who lived on the ice fields in the past did not have, and they are increasingly afraid of sharing and precarious cross-sea expeditions, power is like a deadly plague, which soon corrodes the healthy bodies of princes, a Nordic version of the Nine Dragons is staged, the Viking kingdom that has not yet been covered with heat in the palm of the hand falls apart, and the three regions that are difficult to unify no matter what, go their separate ways and start a new era.

The priest closed the thick book in front of him, which was rotting and about to fall apart, rubbed the dark circles under his eyes caused by long-term fatigue, squeezed out two tears, moistened the dry corners of his eyes, and carefully bowed to show the smooth head of St. Peter, indicating that he had completed the task of telling.

The biography of a British missionary who supposedly had been to the Vikings, vaguely depicting the ins and outs of the history of the Norsemen, made me doze off until I heard it, and if it hadn't been for Leonardo's timely tapping on his crutches, the long saliva hanging from the corners of his mouth would probably have flowed directly to his feet.

"Oh? Is it over so soon? ”

I wiped my saliva and asked weakly, pretending to be listening carefully, Leonardo coughed disdainfully, and Kohler turned his head slightly next to him, and it seemed that everyone was uncomfortable with my self-deception.

"You are doing a good job, dear brother."

Leonardo sat up straight, his old torso making an overwhelmed sound, and devoting himself to work for a long time was tantamount to asking for trouble for a man of his age, but the old guy was like an oiled engine, running at a higher speed.

"Thank you for your wonderful explanation, and the Duke may summon you to ask for some Viking history, and please accept Nijmegen's devotion to God." He nunu chin down, and the attendants behind him pulled out a delicate box, which must have been the most hated filthy gold coins of God's servants, but they had to reluctantly accept them in order to show the glory of the Lord.

The priest took it in trepidation, and walked out of the hall under the guidance of the attendants, and I leaned back in a comfortable position, and I had not fully recovered from the slumber I had just had, Leonardo came to his senses the moment the door closed, and cleared his throat to remind me that it was time to come out and speak.

I reluctantly pursed my lips, dragged my chair to the edge of the table, straightened my thoughts a little, looked around at the henchmen sitting around and said:

"I don't know if everyone is like me, I haven't listened to any history at all, but I clearly sort out a context, the Danes and the Swedes have a good relationship, the Norwegians are now at war with the Danes, the Swedes have a close relationship with the Rus, and the Rus' are at war with the Poles, so in line with the principle that the enemy of the enemy is a friend, the next plan is very clear, the Swedes are friends, the Norwegians are friends that can be fought for, the Danes are tentatively enemies, and the Poles are out-and-out enemies!"

Leonardo pursed his lips, as if adjusting his uncomfortable old teeth, and the wrinkles at the corners of his mouth were tangled, as if an eighteen-folded dog ignored the bun and muttered a concluding statement:

"The Duke will soon set out for the new fiefdom of Billon Marco, which will become the new fulcrum of Nijmegen's intervention in northern trade, maintaining a fragile line of defense against the Pomeranian Slavic tribes in the east of this barren coast, and not far from the kingdom of the Danes in the north, and we simply do not have enough room to breathe in the environment of strong enemies, so I need to warn you, especially the often emotional bulls."

Leonardo looked at the bull's unconvinced eyes, and continued indifferently: "The Swedes may often visit this land, at the beginning they don't quite understand the meaning of allies, and it is inevitable that they will do something out of the ordinary, but we must exercise restraint, because the Swedes dominate in the country of the Rus', and good relations with them will help unite Kievan Rus to attack Poland on both sides, which may be a long process, and it will require patient long-distance and close attack and planning, and the union majority is isolated and very few, Slowly clean up the situation in the north. ”

After listening to his words, I nodded meaningfully, after Gniezno met Isaac and his Enides came back, I didn't say a word to Leonardo, this is my conscious avoidance of involving him in more core affairs, covertly set out to remove Leonardo, control and influence on all aspects, not so much the Enides organization under his command, clinging to Nijmegen and growing stronger, but rather the rapid development of Nijmegen's career, thanks to the help of Enides, it is like a few ropes that bind the puppet, The thread is all in Leonardo's hands, I have no secrets in front of him, even including my personal private life, I have to monitor and arrange, this kind of parental behavior that is very similar to the trajectory of my life in my previous life, I must not re-fiddle with my future in this life, my own destiny must be decided by myself!

"We'll leave on the fifth day before Halloween, and the Duke of Hanover has already greeted him for transit."

I calmly stated the plan: "The troops that will fight the front station this time are mainly the Valangian Guards and Ravenna pikemen, Jensen and Kohler will stay, and the bulls and Hans will go with me, and we will have a whole winter to wrestle with the northern barbarians." ”

I saw Kohler twitch his eyebrows vaguely, he knew very well what he was leaving behind for, and the chess match against the opponent made this thoughtful man inevitably excited.

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Halloween in the Middle Ages was not as fun as it was later and had completely turned into a joyous party, Halloween in this era did not have jack-o-lanterns and all kinds of bizarre drag balls, nor ghost stories and Halloween candy, but was the first Sunday after Pentecost, which marked the end of the Easter season, to honor the famous and unknown, faithful saints and martyrs, and to celebrate the feast of all saints who were consecrated in the holy goods.

In the evening, people gather in the church with candles in hand to keep a vigil to remember the deeds of the saints, and then an eight-day celebration begins.

But I think most people may not be happy at all, because when they sincerely gather in the church to give thanks, the thieves cursed by God will not stay in the church honestly, listening to the fat priest read the Bible, the moon is dark and the wind is a good time to work, and the priests are also happy, because those pickpockets who have been cursed and abandoned by God will wait for themselves in the secret room of the church the next day, and offer half of the stolen goods to atone for their sins and make up for their mistakes, after all, everyone needs God, Who wouldn't want to go to heaven after death?

The road between Nijmegen and Hanover, which was almost finished, made it possible to get to the Duke's castle on Halloween.

Along the way, I was constantly met with a constant stream of caravans, who were like tireless migratory birds, selling amber and furs from the north to Nijmegen, and then selling back to the north the produce gathered here, and I had already signed a tax exemption document with the Duke of Hanover, and worked together to eliminate and co-opt the bandit gangs, making this trade route the safest trade route in the whole Christian world, and from a commercial point of view, Nijmegen and Hanover had long since become a whole, similar to the common free trade zone in later generations, Abolishing mutual tariffs and various trade barriers, realizing the two-way transfer of commodity assets, and achieving the goal of common prosperity, at least the Duke of Hanover tasted the sweetness from it, and his pockets gradually bulged, and he firmly stood on the side of Nijmegen.

From Hanover Castle, the rest of the journey is not so easy.

The road to the north was muddy and rugged, and the forests were filled with robbers and barbarian tribes, and although the northern frontier of Germany had already advanced to the area close to the Oder, thus establishing many border areas as a buffer, most of the Slavic tribes more frequently bypassed the scattered castles on the border and crossed the Elbe River deep into the hinterland of Saxony, like an old stomach disease that had been difficult to cure for many years, and from time to time there was a faint pain, harassing the sleep of His Majesty the Emperor on the side of the couch.

The new fief granted to me by Emperor Henry was located on the shores of the Baltic Sea, part of the royal direct jurisdiction of the Billenmarko Frontier, and was in the shape of a narrow stretch along the coast of the icy waters, and as it was called, this gentle land covered with dense taiga was called Verlatzen, what the Danes called barren land, which was about to become Nijmegen's first fiefdom in the north and an isolated enclave.

(End of chapter)