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.

 

 

Several Bedouin horse archers, seeing the men separated from the main ranks, bore down on them. One leaned out from the saddle and grasped the reins of Dalassenos’ horse. Dalassenos jammed the hilt of his sword into the face of the rider. Another of the Banu Kilab took firm hold of his horse’s reins from the other side. A third pulled Dalassenos from the saddle. They set upon the unfortunate doux. They kicked him, and beat him with their fists. Both Constantine and Theophylact Dalassenos were also pulled from the saddle, but they offered much less resistance and were tied hand and foot. The sons of Dalassenos were pushed over to the baggage wagons and leather sacks placed over their heads. Both were made to sit and tied securely to the wagon wheels. Dalassenos was no longer moving. One of the Banu Kilab leaned over and with a slick, wet slicing motion, cut the throat of the doux.  From where he stood, Ulf watched with a sinking heart as the body of Damian Dalassanos thrashed about on the ground. Their standard gone and their doux dead, the tide of the battle began to turn for the Roman forces.

The horsemen came upon them in a wave like a hot desert wind, with a rush of trampling feet. Somewhere in the chaos Ulf thought he heard his father’s voice to stand firm, but then all was drowned out by the shrill ki-yiing of the Bedouin. He was enveloped in thick choking dust stirred up by the horses’ feet, the clash of metal on metal, the screams of dying men, the smell of blood, coppery on the back of his tongue, making his gorge rise.

A hoarse cry rose up in the throats of the Fatimids. “The enemy of Allah is dead! The enemy of Allah is dead. May Allah be praised!” It was repeated over and over like a chant. A war cry. The heavy war drums, stretched with elephant hide, sounded deep and hollow, a steady thrum that set the rhythm of the swordplay on the plain. The gates of Apamea were opening. Now a stillness had taken over, so even at this distance they could hear the grind of the pulleys as they brought up the massive iron portcullis. The soldiers of Apamea rushed forward. First quietly. Then with a great cry, as their numbers swelled into the ranks of ibn Samsama’s soldiers. Someone had separated the head of Damian Dalassenos from his body and placed it on a spear where it waved, a grotesque battle standard over the now recaptured Fatimid baggage wagons.

from The Plague Casket

Thus was the gruesome end of Damian Dalassenoss, Doux of Antioch on July 19, 998. Apamea must have seemed like an easy victory to him. He had the numbers, though no longer the element of surprise as messengers were dispatched to the Fatimids who came to the rescue of the besieged Apameans who had been purportedly been living on dogs and cadavers as the siege dragged on.

Apamea is not a famous battle and only those who are students of the history of medieval Byzantine-occupied Syria will have ever heard of it. Damian Dalassenos learned of a fire in the city of Apamea early in June of 998. He set out to take advantage of the city and once he arrived was surprised and dismayed to discover that the Hamadid hajib Lu’lu’ al-Kabir of the Emir of Beroea (now Aleppo) had arrived before him. He must surely have attempted to treat with the Hamidid forces. They eventually left, but not before leaving supplies at the walls of Apamea for the inhabitants. Beroea was supposed to be a vassal state to the Byzantines, so al-Kabir’s actions must certainly have appeared treasonous. The Hamidids did retreat and Dalassenos set up a siege. Even once the Fatimid forces appeared, the Byzantines might have had an easy victory if ego had not gotten in the way. Al-hakim’s Bedouin forces (perhaps numbering 1,000 men by some accounts) took possession of the Byzantine baggage carts. Incensed by this, Dalassenos pursued them, accompanied by two of his sons. I have not read in any of the records I have thus far perused how many other accompanied him, as he pursued the Bedouin contingent. It was a staggeringly bad move on his part. Cut off from the rest of his men, Dalassenos found himself beset by the Bedouin tribesmen. For some reason he wore neither cuirass or helmet which made him all the more vulnerable. He was killed and his head was paraded so that all might see that the doux of Antioch had been slain. His two sons were taken captive, where they remained in Cairo as hostages for the next ten years, reportedly ransomed for six thousand dinari. The death of the doux disheartened the Byzantines and they fell back before the Fatimid forces who claimed victory for the day.

The battle was the instigation for the emperor Basil II breaking off his affairs in Bulgaria to ride with his Varangian Guard to Syria the following year, where he besieged Emesa (modern Homs, Syria) garrisoned Shaizar and burned several smaller forts. Basil spent three months in Syria personally campaigning there before he set his most trusted man Nikephoros Ouranos as doux over Antioch, replacing the unfortunate Dalassenos. He then turned his attention to Georgia where his former Kouropalatēs had just died (presumably at the hands of his angry nobles with poisoned communion wine) with the purpose of taking over the lands that the Kouropalatēs had been forced to hand over to Basil as his legatee upon the former’s death. (This was his punishment for backing the losing rebels against Basil earlier in the latter’s reign, but that is a story for another time.) Basil was able to conclude a ten year truce with the Fatimids, which gave him time to continue his ongoing wars in Bulgaria. A blip as it were on the timeline of the Byzantine Empire, the battle of Apamea was yet another marker in the ongoing turmoil that has marred the history of Syria.

 

 

Abū ʿAlī Manṣūr was one of the most interesting and yet controversial figures of his time. He was popularly known even in his day as “the mad caliph” though it is often difficult to separate fact from fiction and what stories about him were actually true. We do know that he rose to power while still a child when his father died. It was written he was up in a sycamore tree when his tutor, vizier and regent came to tel him that he was no caliph. The young caliph refused. His regent and wasīta (vizier) was a Slavic eunuch name Barjawan, whom al-Hakim may have had murdered later in life when Barjawan’s quest for power became too over-reaching. While he does not occupy a very large part of my second book, he cannot be overlooked as he had a part in the Fatimid Byzantine wars that occupied Emperor Basil II’s time when he was not trying to make the lives of the Bulgarians miserable. In spite of what has been written about the young al-Hakim, I had to piece together a picture of him as he might have been when young. I imagined a precocious child, calculating and suspicious, perhaps raised that way out of necessity for a boy brought up in his position. This was how Ahmed saw him when he met him rather unexpectedly in The Plague Casket:

After some time, Ahmed was ushered into an ornate room, decorated rather garishly with much gold plate. His eyes, having been outside in the blazing sun, took some time to adjust to the cool dimness here. He was left alone and the door pulled closed behind him. It was quiet. Too quiet. For a moment all he could hear was his own heart. From the lavishly piled cushions he heard a voice in careful, formal Arabic say, “Come.” Startled, he peered into the cushions and was surprised to see a boy of no more than ten or twelve years.

Looking back at him with an old man’s eyes in a small boy’s face, the child replied, “Why are you stunned to see your caliph, the son of my revered father, al-Hazziz? Did you expect a monkey on a chain? Come, give me your message.”

Ahmed hesitated. Amid the splendor and the gently bubbling fountains, he detected a hum of menace. It made his skin crawl. “I am sent by Damian Dalassenos, himself a representative of the autokrator, Basil Porphyrogenitus in Constantinople. He sends you respectful greetings, but bids that you not seek any of the lands north of Emesa for your own, lest you make him your bitterest enemy.”

The boy’s faced creased as if did not often form in more than one expression and he laughed. “You have been sent by that puppet in Antioch. Yes, he is a representative of an emperor so far away, the leagues I have forgotten. The Emperor does not even reside in the imperial city, but is occupied by his wars with the barbarian khan Samuil in far-off Bulgaria. His influence bothers me not. I am al-hakim bi-Amr Allah, son of al-Hazziz, a descendant of Fatimah, revered daughter of the holy Muhammad. I do not take orders from the Christian barbarian dogs!” His voice had turned to a spittle flecked snarl and the laughter was gone from his face. “And nor should you.”

As the boy grew to be a man, he had a reputation of killing those who displeased him on a whim and making absurd laws that no one could follow. His subjects both hated and feared him. He was said to walk through the streets of Cairo disguised as a commoner and notice which merchants were using illegally weighted scales. He meted out a terrible punishment  on them publicly right there in the market.

It was Barjawan who referred to the young caliph as “the gecko” a name he detested. It was said, that when al-Hakim grew displeased with Barjawan, he sent for his vizier saying, “Tell Barjawan that the gecko has grown into a large dragon.”

Whether true or not, one of the most infamous storiess about al-Hakim is the one in which he invite d number of rebels to a feast in his baths (lavish buildings which were used for dining as well as bathing). When all were assembled, he his his personal Berber guards slaughter them all. We don’t know if this story is true or not or merely propaganda promulgated by his enemies. It makes for an interesting story however and one I utilized for my book:

The heavy scent of myrrh was mixed with another scent Ahmed could not immediately identify. As heavy as the myrrh, but with a lingering sickly stench. Ahmed stood in the stone corridor, letting the sun scorch his skin. Columns too big for a man to put his arms around, stretched like an endless line of soldiers. Beyond them gleamed cool marble floors. He hesitated a moment and then set his foot on the floor. Now he heard only his footsteps. They seemed far too loud for the silence. Out of the intense burn of the sun, the shade was refreshing, but the cloying scent of myrrh grew stronger. Almost…almost as if it was being used to cover a stronger scent. One less pleasant. It was a familiar one to him. Even to him, Ahmed, who had once been a merchant of pepper. One to whom scent should have been everything, but which pepper had destroyed much of long ago.

The torches on either side gleamed dully from the black iron curlicues. It was odd even in the dim corridors that they should be lit at this time of day. They seemed to lead the way for him. Under the torches were great shields, hung like beads in a necklace on the walls.

He stopped. He had heard something else. A low hum. The kind of sound that makes horses shake their heads with irritation. The great doors, covered with silver beaten in ornate designs, lay closed before him. In the right circumstances, these opened to the sounds of laughter, the delicately rich scent of food.

He laid a hand on the doors and pushed them open. In this room the torches bloomed like fierce flowers. The light glanced off the gleaming marble, splashed off the copper bowls, danced on the silver, reflected off the still water in center of the great bath. Amid the spilled food and tumbled fruit, the flies droned. They tasted the sweetmeats, rested on the cups. They whined in the blood that caked blackly on the stone floors. They crawled like black clouds over the corpses stretched among the mess of food and wine on the table. His attention was held by men with empty eyes, mouths full of food only barely tasted. The high whine of flies. And the stench of myrrh.

There is too much for the scope of a blog article to write about al-Hakim. His end was fittingly colorful. He went out one night for a ride in the desert and he never returned. He was only thirty-six. All that was found of hm was his horse and his blood stained garments. His most admiring followers said that he had merely been taken up to heaven. Scholar John Esposito writes that the caliph believed that “he was not only the divinely appointed religio-political leader but also the cosmic intellect linking God with creation” He became a central figure in the Druze religious movement of that time. His disappearance only cemented this  idea in the minds of the Druze followers, though it was likely that he was assassinated.

Propaganda or a real life Joffrey of House Barathion, Game of Thrones style? Let me know what you think below.

See Paul Earnest Walker’s Caliph of Cairo: Al-Hakim Bi-Amir Allah, 996 -1021 for more about this fascinating historical figure