Gretchen Brown

Another space of time since a blog entry. I have been writing, but still focused on the third book, at this point still titled The Bone Goddess. It has been an interesting adventure, not least of which the twists and turns it takes that I don’t always expect. Sometimes this is because of characters who do things that I didn’t plan for or expect and then I decide to just go with it. It has a strange way of working out anyway. One such character is Þórsteinn.

Þórsteinn Dromund is a character who is based on (okay more inspired by at this point) Grettir’s Saga, an Icelandic saga. The Saga is lengthy and goes on about many things, but essentially Þórsteinn’s part in it starts with his brother, Grettir who is killed by a man named Þórbjørn who then proceeds to make his way to Constantinople and join the Varangian Guard. Þórsteinn follows him there and also joins the Varangian Guard in order to slay him. He is in the Guard for some time, before Þórbjørn shows himself, by drawing the nicked sword that he had taken off Þórsteinn’s brother Grettir. Without further ado, Þórsteinn takes the sword and kills his brother’s killer. This act of violence of course earns him an arrest and the possibility of a death sentence. Now Þórsteinn is a very fine singer and one day he is heard from his prison cell, singing by a bored lady named Spes (who we can only guess is also Norse as she is married to a man named Sigurd) and she falls in love with Þórsteinn. She is very wealthy and ransoms him and the rest is more or less predictable and it is easy to see where the romantic troubadours of the medieval era got their ideas of courtly love.

I diverged quite a bit from Grettir’s Saga. Part of this is no fault of mine. Characters tend to have a mind of their own, as I said. In my version, prior to his journey to Constantinople, Þórsteinn finds himself in Kiev and then in Novgorod. He falls in with a young Varangian named Gamli who engages him in a business proposition which finds out young hero with a band of Varangian merchant adventurers on a boat down the Dnieper River. At some point, while making portage around the southernmost of the rapids, they find themselves attacked by Penchenegs and Þórsteinn, our klutzy hero finds himself trapped under their boat that slides down the river embankment. Knocked out, he wakes to find himself alone and injured. Through a series of adventures he manages to make it to Constantinople to join the Varangian Guard. However, as the writer, I found the whole injury with the boat, to be unexpected. Þórsteinn trudges off with his three pounds of gold (the standard entry fee into the Varangian Guard) to sign up. He is promptly disqualified because of his bum leg.

He trudges back.

Author: Why are you here? You are supposed to be a member of the Varangian Guard and be on the hunt for Þórbjørn by now.

Þórsteinn: I can’t. They told me I couldn’t join up because of my permanent leg injury.

Author: Oh that’s very nice. You go get yourself hurt, which wasn’t even in our original outline and now this happens. You sure did screw things up.

Þórsteinn: (offended) How was I supposed to see that boat sliding down the embankment? That’s Helgi’s fault.

Author: Is Helgi even a character?

Þórsteinn: He is now.

Author: So how are you supposed to find Þórbjørn now?

Þórsteinn: I could inquire in some of the tavernas.

Author: We really need to work on your character development.

Þórsteinn (bristling) I suppose you’d be happier if I just got myself killed by Penchenegs.

Author: No. No. That would mess things up too. You aren’t supposed to die yet.

Þórsteinn: Wait. What? I die?

So yes, sometimes stories take a different twist than one originally intended thanks to klutzy or perhaps just – ahem – outright stubborn characters (Þórsteinn: Hey I heard that!) but sometimes you just have to go with it and it makes it more interesting.

Beside which the fictional Þórsteinn really isn’t a very good singer.

Þórsteinn: Hey!

I have left quite a gap of time since my last blog post. It has been quite a busy month or two. When I have gotten the chance to write, it has been to finish up the first draft of The Plague Casket and to begin on the third book: The Bone Goddess.

I am pretty excited about the third book. It may be the longest of the three, because there will be so many loose ends to tie up. It takes place over about a five year period and covers both Rus’ (what is today the Ukraine) and Bulgaria. A large part of it is taken up with Basil II’s Balkan wars.

I am asked by some when I am planning on looking into publishing. My reason for delaying it is simple. Because of the complex nature of the trilogy that I am writing, it requires constant vigilance to make sure there is continuity. I really do try for historical authenticity when I can and very rarely diverge from that. So there is quite a bit of historical research, but the research for this one has been the easiest yet. Possibly some of this may be because I am building on the research I have already established earlier.

With that in mind, I am working another idea for a blog post and this may be excerpted form the history I am using for The Bone Goddess. More on that soon…

I have not had much time to write blog articles lately due to family concerns, though I have made progress on the second book of the Varangian Chronicles and with only about sixty more pages to go, there is an end in sight. With winter battering the area where I live, and snow and ice making the roads all but impassable, one thinks of the year of 536 and the darkness that settled over Europe for at least three years. George R. R. Martin writes of winters that last years in his Song of Ice and Fire series. In reality, there is an historical basis for just such a winter.

There is indication that a volcanic eruption from a super volcano that occurred in the tropics (possibly in El Salvador) caused this devastation. Recent studies from Harvard are looking into the eruption of a super volcano in Iceland early that year as well. Two other eruptions in Iceland were reported to have occurred in 540 and 547. Volcanic ash and sulfuric particles called aerosols released into the the atmosphere resulted in eighteen months of virtually no sunlight. Crops failed, it grew abnormally cold and may even have led to the events a few years later that caused Justinian’s Plague. The effects of the plague in 541 were felt as far west as Ireland, a country already staggering under the effects of the volcanic eruption. The Byzantine historian Procopious writes of the time:

It came about that a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is accustomed to shed. And from this time when this thing happened men were free neither from war nor pestilence nor any other thing leading to death. And it was the time when Justinian was in the tenth year of his reign.

The early Germanic people believed that Fimbulvetr or in English Fimblewinter (a harsh winter) would occur prior to Ragnarok which would herald three years of no summer. Indeed, the Irish Annals of Innisfallen mention a time “without bread” from the years 536 to 539. Europe was very nearly brought ti its knees by this catastrophe and was n no shape to face the near annihilation of the known world a few years later when Justinian’s Plague broke out, killing an estimayed fifty million people. It was was supposed to have broken out in Constantinople, brought on grain ships from Egypt. Furthermore, it has been speculated that the eruption may have been responsible for the plague as the changing climate drove the rodents carrying the Yersinia pestis laden fleas into contact with the rats that would ultimately carry them to the grain ships bound for Constantinople.

There is ample archaeological and historical evidence to show a near agricultural and societal collapse on a massive scale in Northern Europe. Ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica show residue from sulfuric deposits indicating a volcanic eruption (of not several) of great magnitude. Tree ring dating shows drastically slowed growth in trees of this time. Scientific data extracted from tree rings in Scandinavia and Ireland and historic sources that mention a “failure of bread” have given us a bleak picture of the year 536.

The hardship during these years forced the Great Migration which saw Germanic tribes making their way westward and doubtlessly effected the Germanic invasion of England. It is simple logic that peole began to move about hoping to survive as their crops failed and their livestock and children died or failed to thrive. Rome had already pulled out of Britain, looking to secure its home defense as the Goths and Visigoths moved in. Britain was ripe for the taking though certainly faring no better than anywhere else in Europe.

The Völuspá (Prophesy of the Volva), a poem from the Norse Poetic Edda tells us:

The sun turns black, | earth sinks in the sea,
The hot stars down | from heaven are whirled;
Fierce grows the steam | and the life-feeding flame,
Till fire leaps high | about heaven itself.

In fact it has several references to the long darkness that was to come to Europe:

The giantess old | in Ironwood sat,
In the east, and bore | the brood of Fenrir;
Among these one | in monster’s guise
Was soon to steal | the sun from the sky.

There feeds he full | on the flesh of the dead,
And the home of the gods | he reddens with gore;
Dark grows the sun, | and in summer soon
Come mighty storms: | would you know yet more?

It goes on to speak of the battle of Ragnarok

Brothers will fight
and kill each other,
sisters’ children
will defile kinship.
It is harsh in the world,
whoredom rife
—an axe age, a sword age
—shields are riven—
a wind age, a wolf age—
before the world goes headlong.
No man will have
mercy on another.

History tells us of wars and raids initiated by such people as the Avars and and the Lombards as well as the Huns during this period. It truly was a “wolf-age”. Was Ragnarok based on an actual event that had already occurred and not some far off event like the biblical myth of Armageddon?

Perhaps the most startling thing to come out of all of this was how it effected the mostly Germanic languages spoken in Europe. The proto-Norse language died about this time, giving way to an early form of Old Norse. Runic inscriptions release clues that tell us language was developing so rapidly at tis time that a younger generation to survive the near annihilation of Europeans at this time would have spoken a different language than their grandparents! The crisis caused a startling shift in demographics. With this shift, this was quite possibly caused the Elder Futhark runes to gave way to the Younger Futhark with far fewer runes, indicating much knowledge had been lost. There was no older generation to pass down such knowledge. We may never know the full scale of such an event and how it effected our ancestors and to what effect this may have had even on us in the present day. One thing is for certain, climate change is nothing new, happening again and again in cyclical fashion. Scientists tell us that super volcanoes like Yellowstone are overdue for eruption. How we would fare again in the face of such a disaster, we can only speculate.

With Yuletide come and gone, I can hopefully finally settle back to a reasonable writing routine. Winter is a time of stillness and repose, or at least to my mind, it should be. True, there are always family obligations and a never-ending litany of things that must be done, but it invites the mind to turn inward. As I looked out upon the – as yet- – snowless landscape it struck me that winter, like Hel, the old Norse goddess of the underworld, strips away all illusions. Once the trees lay bare of their garment of leaves and the grass lies dormant, beaten down and dead, you can see the landscape for what it truly is. The trees stand against a winter sky like bones. There is no greenery to give them flesh as mother earth lies dormant for another season. Would that all could be so simple, with illusions stripped away and lies seen for what they are. Death is like that. Like winter it gives no illusions and like winter it gives dormancy and a much- needed rest to the earth. We are reminded of Hel’s lessons. Impermanence. Fate. Sacrifice. Happiness is nothing without pain. Summer is made more brilliant because of winter. Life more beautiful because of death.

Such is the developing theme in my novel the working title of which thus far is The Bone Goddess. The Bone Goddess has many themes in many cultures. In the Slavic culture which is the more prevalent one in my third book of the Varangian Chronicles, she is Mara, a deity much like the Norse Hel. She later became the folk character Baba Yaga, best known as a witch tho lives on a house with stilts of gigantic chicken legs and reminds us of the witch in the German folk tale, Hansel and Gretel. We are afraid of characters like Baba Yaga or Hel, because they remind us of our own mortality. We shy away from the lessons she teaches us, even the one that in spite of our own mortality, there is really no death. All things cycle into new life. The animal that dies in the forest decays and becomes part of the soil, feeding the insects and the crows in the process. If all life is energy and energy is a never ending recycling process and constant refeeding upon itself, then nothing every truly dies that does not become new energy.

This concept was well understood by our pre-Christian ancestors as the time of the solstice or Yule was a celebration of the death of the sun and the eventual return of longer days and rebirth. One of the few stories told of Hel embodies this. When jealous Loki sought the destruction of Odin’s son Baldur (a representation of the sun) he came upon a means of trickery to do so. Baldur began to have dreams of his impending death and so his mother, Frigg went throughout the earth to make all things living and inanimate swear not to hurt her son. Only the mistletoe had failed to swear an oath but Frigg thought it too small and of little consequence to swear an oath. Delighted that to find that he was impervious to all weapons and poisons, the gods began to throw darts and weapons at him and he was unharmed by all. But Loki, dark-souled and jealous, convinced Baldur’s blind brother Hod to throw a dart made of mistletoe at Baldur and so caused his death. The legend is that Friggs’ tears turned to the white berries of the mistletoe as a symbol of her love for him. She forgave the plant and decreed it should be a symbol of love and friendship, which is why we have the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe to this day at Christmastime. When Baldur was consigned to the realm of Hel, Helheim, Hermod, another son of Odin made the journey down to the roots of the world Tree to implore his release. It is a mark of the respect that Hel held for Odin that she was willing to concede on the condition that all things in the world must weep for him. All agreed, except for a giantess named Þökk , really Loki in disguise. And so Hel kept her prestigious guest. The story has a ring of similarity to it with the Greek story of Hades and his capture of Demeter’s daughter Persephone who was obliged to stay in the underworld a month for every pomegranate seed she had eaten. Both stories epitomize the dark days of winter and the release of the deity who brings back the sun. How much this story must have resonated with our early ancestors who longed for the return of the sun as we do today. Only then it also meant an ending to days of winter famine and freezing. We cannot truly appreciate in our time of modern heating and grocery stores the hard bitterness of winter for our Northern ancestors. And no time was more bitter and freezing for the Europeans than 536 CE, which will be the subject of my next blog post.

In the meantime, my friends, keep warm, wherever you are and be sure to ring in the new year with joy and friendship!

There is a custom in medieval Slavic culture that still survives today in modern Russia and the Ukraine and that is the banya or bathhouse. The bathhouse was and is akin to the Native American sweat lodge, the Scandinavian badstu or the Finnish sauna. All of these produced heat and steam, encouraging sweating and a general detoxing. Likewise, all of these were at one time used for a spiritual experience. In medieval Russia and Ukraine, the banya was also a place where women went to have their babies. Icons were forbidden there, as was laughing, singing or any sort of boisterous behavior. It was regarded as “a habitation for witches and ghosts of the dead.” As Kenneth Johnson further writes in his book Slavic Sorcery – Shamanic Journey of Initiation, “In short, the bathhouse was a Pagan temple, and in fact, was called the “temple of the Mothers”, the Three Fates who represented the ancestors of the clan and whom we shall meet later on. Its association with “witchcraft” reminds us that the bathhouse was often the setting for esoteric rites of sorcery. A sorcerer might heat himself up in the bathhouse, then dive into ice-cold water and, through his own shamanic inner heat, warm the water and change its polarity.

The “Mothers” Johnson mentions are the Rozhenitsa who can be likened to the Greek Fates or the Norse Norns. There are usually three of them and they spin the destiny of every newborn child just as do the Norns.

In my WIP The Bone Goddess, Sigga takes Þórsteinn out to the banya to divine for him what he wants to know.

Sigga said nothing as she poured water over the hot stones. The steam soon enveloped the banya, wreathing both of them in its density. “Will you help me or no?” Þórsteinn’s voice came to her over the hiss of steam.

You speak of the Norns and of Óðinn, yet I thought the people here had abandoned the Northern ways and Slavic gods only were followed here. Are you from the North?”

He could not contain his curiosity. She allowed silence again to fall between them. She pounded the herbs on the stone, their pungent fragrance filling her nose. She threw them onto the hot rocks and soon the entire banya reeked of wild chicory and hempr. She sat back, and laid her head back against the pine planks of the banya.

“No, my father’s people came from Norvegr. My mother was Thracian and a Christian. She died when I was young and my father thought it best that my sister and I be brought back to the north country to be raised among his people and learn the old ways. He gave to me and my sister Northern names and he tried, for the sake of my mother, to follow her Christian god, but it was not in his heart to do so.”

“I hear that your Rus prince has forbidden the oak pillars, both Norse and Slav and dragged the idols in the streets when he married the Roman princess.”

She gave him only the barest glimmer of a smile. The banya was not the place for laughter if one did not wish to anger the spirits. She probably should have warned him.

Historically, the banya has also had its use for revenge. The Radzivill Chronicle tells us how the Rus Princess Olga got revenge on the Drevalian (a Slavic tribe) murderers of her husband Prince Igor. When the Drevalian leader sent word of his interest in marrying Olga, she sent word back that she would entertain the idea.

“When the Drevlians arrived, Olga commanded that a bath should be made ready for them and said, ‘Wash yourselves and come to me.’ The bath-house was heated and the unsuspecting Drevlians entered and began to wash themselves. [Olga’s] men closed the bath-house behind them and Olga gave orders to set it on fire from the doors, so that the Drevlians were all burned to death.

Perhaps one of the most interesting and persistent things about the banya, was one of its spooky inhabitants, the Bannick. Like most Slavic folk spirits, he has a dark side. The Bannik was variously described as being small and having hairy legs. He could be very malicious and great lengths were gone to propitiate him. It was because of the Bannik that icons were not allowed in the banya for fear of offending him. He is supremely a creature of the old pre-Christian forest gods. If offended he could pour boiling water on you or even strangle you, or at the very least invite a whole host of forest spirits in with him. The banya may have been a place where a volkhvy (Slavic shaman) would work his magic. In the tradition of the Native American sweat lodge, the banya was a place to transcend yourself, perhaps to go into trance.

The banya was not just a place to maintain good hygiene or to bring young children into the world, but a place to commune with the old gods, long after Russia and the Ukraine had officially accepted Christianity. Even the 1917 revolution could not crush the indomitable spirit of of the native Slavs and today Rodnovery or the Slavic Native Faith has made great leaps in popularity in eastern Europe, especially with younger Slavs as they seek to reconnect with their ethnic identity in an increasingly global, multicultural world that pays no homage to distinct ethnic identity.