Rise of Rurik

While waiting for spring, Rurik's life was not simply sucking and sleeping.

In the first winter of his life, he received a gift from his mother - a necklace strung with amber.

Also, it is no ordinary necklace. The necklace consists of five pieces of amber, each with a symbol carved into it.

That's actually the Rune alphabet, the script of the native Scandinavian inhabitants, but it's not pure script either.

It is believed that Odin, at the cost of an eye, acquired some of the powers of Rune, the god of wisdom, to create this type of writing. Therefore, it is a word with divine power.

It's a pity that in this ignorant era, only a small number of people from any tribe have mastered this set of scripts.

For the Ross tribe, only the elders and priests of the tribe know how to use it. It can even be said that it is often only during the tribal sacrifice that the elders will take out the "sacred relics" that are inscribed with rune inscriptions, such as wooden boards inlaid with gold, in order to borrow the divine power of Odin and runes. , achieve prayer.

Of course, the only effect this kind of prayer can achieve is to calm the people of the tribe and stabilize their emotions.

Nia put an amber necklace around her son's neck as a blessing to him.

Each of the five amber pieces has a letter, and together they form a word.

It is transliterated in Roman letters to become SIGEL, which means "sunshine", and the extension has the meaning that light overcomes darkness.

Runewen is the script of the Scandinavian ethnic group, but it is not a purely common folk script. It is mastered by the ruling elite of the tribe, especially the full-time priests, and ordinary people basically do not use it in their daily life.

If you really want to use it, you will embroider the text on your clothes or carve it on the wooden beams of your own house for safety.

In the past fall, under the command of Chief Otto, all preparations for Sorgon's voyage were completed, such as pushing the required ships ashore and repairing their heights. Food, fresh water, and materials for ship repairs in preparation for long-distance voyages, as well as weapons to guard against enemy damage.

It can be said that Otto completed the Sorgon voyage very well.

For the men to prepare for the voyage, the women of the tribe spent as long as two months in the longhouses in Roseburg, storing food that could survive the cold winter for every family.

When it comes to stocking winter supplies, women have a huge say, and they are experts in this area.

They make a lot of smoked fish and bacon in a smoky roast.

They use wheat from trade or looting, add honey and dried cranberries to make sweet and bitter wine.

They even use flour to make a lot of bread, because the environment is dry, and a lot of shelf-stable rusks are made that way.

At the same time, they also go to tailors to make clothes, shoes and hats, and other daily necessities.

The whole of Scandinavia is indeed barren, but the barrenness here is only relative to other regions.

It has already formed a trade network around the Baltic Sea, and this trade network has not been damaged in any way by the rise and fall of Rome.

It is just that the trade network is completely different from the Mediterranean, so that the surrounding ethnic groups have been developing rapidly.

The Baltic trade network was formed in BC, and it was not until the southern Germanic cousins ​​of the Viking tribes, who learned a lot of advanced technology at the end of Rome, Jutland and Scandinavia, entered the "Iron Age".

Entering the slow and long night of winter, all trade and combat activities have almost stopped. No matter how brave sea fighters are, they all need a home that is warm and has plenty of food.

In other words, they desperately need a virtuous wife.

For those Viking warriors who were brave and skilled at sea, once they lost the stable harbor in the rear and left the women of the tribe,

In the cold winter, no matter how brave people are, it is difficult to survive to the next spring.

It is this harsh natural environment that has forced the people of the Baltic Sea to migrate southward. In the ninth century, the intention to migrate was even stronger.

Inhabitants of Scandinavia and Jutland, they are actually related to the Germanic tribes in the south.

In ancient times, after experiencing the fiasco of the Teutonic Forest, Rome stopped its strategy of expanding its borders in the north. Rome finally fell, and it perished precisely under the constant encroachment of the Germanic tribes. A considerable number of Scandinavians also participated in the massive national migration.

Four hundred years have passed since the fall of Rome, and the Germanic tribes have established large and small countries, and they have stepped out of barbarism and began to become orderly.

Scandinavia has always been isolated, never ruled by the Romans, but Rome loved the wealth of northern Europe.

Could it be that in the icy northern Europe, in addition to a large number of animal furs, is there anything else that the Romans in the Mediterranean region particularly like?

Of course there is! One of them is Amber!

Niya personally gave Rurik, who was only a few months old, an amber necklace. Each of the five amber pieces was the size of an adult's thumb, which was too big to wear on a baby.

In the Ross tribe, quite a few people have their own necklaces, which are often composed of shells and amber, or other precious stones.

In Scandinavia, amber is not a treasured thing, and if a merchant can traffic it to the Mediterranean region, it will make a fortune.

In ordinary days, most of the leading warships of the Ross tribe exist as trade transport ships, and the brothers of the other thinking sub-tribes in the south are their trading partners.

If life is basically stable, people in Scandinavia are doing their own traditional maritime trade in the Baltic Sea for thousands of years, and there will inevitably be maritime conflicts, and they will not be impatient to leave here.

But there is indeed a force somewhere, forcing them to leave this increasingly cold place.

That power is the climate.

Rurik was born in the early ninth century, and the climate of Europe began to turn cold in the seventh century. From then on, the whole of Europe began to face a cold period that lasted for four hundred years.

However, people in this era, they just instinctively feel that their hometown is too cold.

Scandinavia, it's a divided world.

There are a large number of fjords and streams, and there are as many as 50,000 islands in the ocean. Those islands are sometimes refuges and sometimes settlements.

Scandinavia's southern climate is very different from the traditional northern climate.

For example, Rossburg, the settlement currently occupied by the Ross tribe, is actually located in the Norge region of northern Scandinavia. This area has a large number of mountains, as well as fjords and small plains between the mountains. The land here is barren and the climate is the coldest. If it has any advantages, it is that it is easy to defend and difficult to attack, and a stream runs through the entire Roseburg, so that they have an inexhaustible source of fresh water to settle on the coast.

Another point, because Roseburg is backed by the rocks of the mountains, the artisans of the tribe discovered copper mines. Although artisans are not capable of large-scale smelting, after all, their demand for copper is not severe. Make bronze rivets to make more ships, it's perfectly manageable.

After all, the Ross clan is also a part of the Siam tribe, but the Norgay region was not the domain of the Siman for a time.

Hundreds of years ago, the ancestors of the Ross tribe forced the Urals who lived here to move northward by force, and occupied the place and built the Fortress of Ross.

The vast majority of the Thinkians settled in some southern plains, known as the plains of Svealan, whose original meaning was "the land of the Thinkians".

Svealan is a plain area, where the climate is relatively good for growing wheat and supporting a large number of cattle and sheep.

Because the population of the Si Yazhong tribe is not large, the natural resources here are enough to feed people.

However, the population of the Thinkian has been developing, the various tribes have begun to border each other, and the competition has directly started. In the competition, the big clan annexed the small clan, and a movement to integrate the whole thinking sub-clan is taking place, after all, they must form a country - Sweden.

However, the Ross clan was not present in the only movement for the merger of the thinking demihumans.

Perhaps, the fate of the Ross tribe is not to integrate into Svealan, but to go to another world to create a more magical future.

Whether it is the tribes of Svealand or the Rus tribe in the northern Jorge region, they must now face the ever-expanding Danish power.

In the ninth century Northern Europe was so cold that even the most prosperous Danish peninsula in the region, Jutland, the wheat that once thrived is not as good as it used to be.

The more populated Jutland region had many Dane tribes, who were forced to fight each other for their livelihoods and trade more frequently.

Their expansion further south was curbed by the mighty Frankish nations, and their attempt to expand north allowed them to occupy the Gotaland region, successfully bordering on the northern sthians, and conflict ensued.

Not even the current Danes and Siahians would have imagined that they would fight for hundreds of years for the southern Scandinavian region of Gotaland.

The Danes moved west again, beginning to trade and conflict with the Norse facing the North Sea, until they crossed the North Sea and entered Britain.

The Danes of Jutland set the record for the first time, and in 794 AD they began the raids of Britain, thus ushering in the Viking Age.

In the year Ururik was born, only 27 years after the raid, all the tribes around the Baltic Sea learned that they could cross the sea with swords and trade.

But the very interesting thing is that the Rus people have long realized that they are in a remote place and cannot compete with those brave Danes. They desperately want the development of the ocean in the west, in order to seek opportunities for development.

It was the cold that forced the Roth tribe to do so, until they entered a great lake and found a wide river, and upstream they encountered a wealthy but warlike people who spoke another language.

There, it seems like another world!