“Valhalla, I am coming.”

My background is Scandanavian. On my mother’s side I’m Swedish and German and on my father’s side I am Danish. When I tell people this they think of IKEA, lefse and lutefisk. They might even think about socialized medicine, but what they don’t think of is a brutal people who terrorized and bullied their neighbors because…well, they could.

Oh, what a difference a 1000 years makes!

The Vikings lived in hard lands at a brutal time. Their religion was that of warring gods that welcomed men slain in battle. If a neighbor should kill your cattle, you killed his (unless you wanted to accept monetary compensation, but the sagas don’t sing of Sven the gild collector) and if you killed his son in the process you could be sure he would be coming to burn down your farm. Farmers carried their battleaxes with them to work their fields.

Most luxury goods had to be gotten from elsewhere because there was little that could be grown, and it was a sure bet that if you didn’t like herring you might starve. These people may have remained the poor of northern Europe, if some soul hadn’t stumbled on the longboat with a single large sail. It was a marvel for its age and allowed my ancestors to send their younger sons out into the world to make their fortunes, and that of their families.

At first, there was trade and renting themselves out as mercenaries, even going so far as be “invited in” to rule Kiev (nice work that). And always the ear was to the ground for new lands where the women were plenty and young, and the beer was good, and if there was easy gold for the picking, who’d complain? The churches and coastal towns of Britain certainly fit the bill, and soon monks and priests were arming themselves and towns were paying ransom to the Danes to keep from having their towns raided yearly.

At the height of their power, the Norse (Swedes, Danes and Norwegians, collectively) held land on 2 continents and had the ruling of numerous countries. Most historians count the end of the Viking terror at the death of Harald Hardrada in 1066, but really did it end then? William the Bastard, after all, was a direct descendant of Norse who’d settled in France, extending the Viking legacy even farther.

They were terrorists. Terror was their most powerful weapon, coupled as it was by speed and brutality. They sang songs delighting in the terror they inflicted on others. And it is here that my story joins theirs. I am not just a descendant of these men and women, my name is in the sagas. My birth name was traditionally a boy’s name. It is the name of the frost giant at the beginning of the world who created Jotenheim – a brother to Loki. And it was the name of a Viking…a man whose wife and son are killed by a warring neighbor, who takes up his sword and dedicates himself to the decimation of his neighbors family – his entire family – and their lands.

This is my legacy. These are my people. This is the beginning of my story.