This Friday, the first chapter of the book Dengamle – an not always so successful journey through world history. will be released. I have started to understand that you can sit and polish it for exactly as long as you want.
All similarities with DenGamle are unintentional and I have stocked up with an entire law firm on open account.
Welcome comments and feedback – negative as well as positive. Since I never got the block button from MXT, it’s risk-free to go all out because he will give you extended login as a reward for criticism.
I have laid out a fairly broad corridor where Dengamle can move during 1500 years of our history + a whole extra world. Stolen from all sorts of places and writing as I find fun.
Apparently managing to keep a chapter together but longer than that is difficult with concentration. Probably chapter-long deep dives into some event and then jump on to the next, and try not to contradict myself.
Don’t forget to stock up with some tall cans of Mariestads because it’s Friday.
Chapter 1 – The Beginning.
Dengamle has wandered our world since the Viking Age and has basically seen most things by now as he is an adventurous soul. He has stood in the middle of history’s great epicenter where things have not always gone as described, and often because of him.
Few believe his stories and he has had to get used to being a lone nomad in a constantly changing society. Some periods have been harder to get through than others, when the plague ravaged Europe or the witch burnings raged at their worst, he does not miss them. He also managed to avoid being burned at the stake through more luck than skill and even though he has a regenerative ability, stake burning with mandatory post-staking would have bordered on that.
Our world is infinitely larger than what we humans can comprehend, not in surface but beyond the three dimensions we can perceive there are several more that have been named differently by various cultures or religions throughout world history. In constant motion these sometimes overlap or cracks appear. We then get snapshots of things we cannot explain which has given us all the horror movies on Netflix for Friday cozy time with the little kids for example.
Others in these dimensions live roughly like us, then there are those who can float between the planes and finally those who at least can read them where the latter are those we call clairvoyants or spiritual. Just as we humans mostly wage war with each other to seize what others have worked hard for, there is a constant struggle in all the other dimensions that sometimes spills over into ours. They are called in the book the shadow world.
Dengamle is one of the few completely ordinary humans who has had so much time that he partly has gained insight into parts of this unknown world to us and also encountered beings and creatures different from us over the years. Some have, like Dengamle, a longer lifespan and they greet each other happily when they run into each other on the street with a few hundred years in between.
In what later became Sweden, the Iron Age transitioned into something called the Viking Age starting around 750-800 AD.
Hunter peoples from continental Europe moved into the Nordics when the inland ice retreated 10,000 – 11,000 years ago.
When civilizations came and went in the biblical lands, often through total annihilation and salting of the earth, those who inhabited northern Europe lived in relative peace in their barren corner because no one else liked cold winters and scarce food.
They were farmers, fishermen, hunters and seafarers. Tall people by the standards of the time due to their meat-rich diet and formidable warriors who worshipped the Nordic gods until Christianity spread even in the distant north.
Dengamle was born Arne (Eagle) son of Frode in the year of grace 773 AD as the third child in a farming family settled by the coast in what is today Västergötland. After a few hundred years he realized that the easiest is to fit in so he has the habit of taking a new working name at the start of each century. Arne was and is his given name even though he sometimes lies and says it is Bald Eagle. Some centuries Arne was common so then he called himself that. In the book he is called Dengamle.
Souls are often reborn in new bodies but without the knowledge and experience we lost with, our ancestors then follow these returned ones through their lives where some are destined for great deeds and others much less. Arne’s life journey was absolutely zero, nothing written in the stars there and no ancestor was the least bit interested when he came into the world with a shrill cry and waving arms.
His older brother was registered as a jarl.
Then there is always the unknown, life’s chance that no one can foresee and when Arne was 9 years old his older brother was injured during a hunt – a wild boar shot out of a thicket and gave the brother a bite in the thigh. The worried father set off after the district’s shaman (or Völva but we use shaman) to try to save his son’s life.
There was a plethora of shamans in the Nordics at this time, they were healers, spirituals, magicians and outright frauds – all at different levels. They mastered nature’s healing properties, could communicate with the spiritual world and practiced soul care. They were consulted on all sorts of matters and every man of importance had one on open account to consult on big and small matters. Some belonged to darkness and others to light, all slandered each other whenever opportunity arose so it was not always easy to know in whose hands one ended up every time. It usually went by recommendation and not infrequently there was a go-to shaman per district who over time had staked out the area and worked by the hour.
The shaman available in the district was a level five light magician with exceptional abilities which was unusual, she was also very old so her sharpness was not what it once was. Nothing was close to anything else and the woman had half-run after the father for two days to arrive in time. She already knew what was at stake – the older brother’s life had to be saved and a life must be exchanged for a life, so serious was the injury. Of this the father naturally knew nothing but answered dutifully all questions about the family’s other children and who was worst at swinging a wooden sword.
First, the woman was given a meal as was customary and the parents brought out the strong mead as it was important to stay on good terms with such a significant guest besides their son’s life hanging in the balance. The shaman was far too thirsty after all the half-running but as the condition of the older brother worsened during the meal she could not wait – just had to get started.
The older son’s life was to be saved at the cost of Arne’s life being shortened because he was by far the worst at sword fighting. Arne had to lie next to his brother in bed and, under threat of severe beating from their father, remain completely still.
Then everything went wrong
The leather bag was emptied onto a low stool beside the bed, and already there the woman began mixing the various powders and talismans. The treatment, besides these items, involved a battery of spells and rites which she certainly knew by heart, but due to her level of intoxication, she also mixed these into a wild mess.
When a level five magician randomly starts mixing everything she has in front of her, one risks a cosmic collision. The air was thick with all kinds of powders she blew over the bed, talismans and coins flew in all directions, and spell after spell was hissed in the wrong order mixed with hand movements, jerky dances around the bed, and low chanting.
Arne fell asleep to the rhythmic voice and the steady beating on the magic drum, so he slept through being upgraded to a very long life where his body also gained regenerative abilities.
The older brother got nothing.
The shaman managed to patch up the brother barely with the herbs and spells at hand and was too drunk to realize her mistake. Moreover, she had a full schedule that week, and as soon as she was done, she thanked everyone, hastily gathered everything into the leather bag, reached for a long strip of dried meat when no one was looking, and ran off.
The mix-up thus completely escaped everyone at the time, and Dengamle was a blank slate without guidance.
This mistake did not make Arne, or Bald Eagle, a great warrior at all, but at that time one built strength by working the land. One learned automatically to hunt and was constantly fighting with siblings or getting beaten by the father. Which boys and girls didn’t enjoy receiving a short wooden sword from their parents and then chasing their siblings across the yard with their shining golden broad sword?
The foundation for a great warrior was acquired from the cradle up in the harsh northern land, but it was a completely different matter to stand in full battle chaos with adrenaline pumping and try to suppress the instinct to flee. One had to experience and survive it; above all, one must not embarrass oneself in front of one’s own group—not necessarily in that order. Cowardice in battle immediately earned a derogatory nickname that followed one for life, paired with guaranteed single status because no one liked a coward back then.
As a father, one chooses the timing of a child’s baptism by fire with care if possible. Yes, the farm could be attacked and then everyone fought for their lives, but taking children on raids or other war expeditions was not taken lightly. When it finally happened, it was under the guidance of the father and friends, where one, if possible, gradually built up the child’s exposure to life-threatening danger until one could trust they would survive.
Families often lived in isolation, and there were plenty of others who wanted to take what they had. A responsible father always tried to teach his children self-defense as early as possible, and in the long run, these were the same skills useful later in life in conflicts that might arise. The older children defended with axes or swords near the father, and the younger ones with bows a bit behind. The mother’s task was to protect the smallest inside the house where she was also the last line of defense, ready to fight behind the door if needed. A Viking-era deep defense where a not insignificant number of professional criminals got an axe in the back of the head when they broke in through the front door thinking the house was open for plundering.
In the larger area where a group of Vikings had settled, there was often a chieftain. A formidable warrior who was somewhat better off and could afford to employ some warriors full-time called the hird. The rest of the area, or district, had to accept his levies, and it often worked because bad chieftains were burned alive at night so that over time a balance of terror was established that actually functioned.
This was the seed of our modern democracy, even though in our time we have forgotten that one should burn down bad politicians’ houses after barricading the door, otherwise the balance of terror does not work.
For hundreds of thousands of years, the light and dark sides have been at war with each other, and both try to win humanity to their side.
Sometimes a great darkness rises, like when a corporal in Germany, through the dark side’s agency, rose to the top, and they completely lost control. The German Third Reich was very interested in the occult, but in the extermination camps, both the light and dark were eliminated as soon as they could be caught – in hindsight, the dark side deeply regrets this and has refrained from similar actions for about a hundred years because they are still licking their wounds.
Sometimes it is instead humanity that has united and nearly wiped out the shadow world when it was too exposed.
Today, the shadow world lives under strict regulations where they partly keep hidden and then maintain a balance between the light and dark sides, both having worldwide organizations for surveillance and justice of the opposing team. A bureaucratic colossus that can bring down the best with all its administration.
Dengamle has learned to navigate this world after his 1500 years on earth, and although he has no great spiritual abilities despite diligent practice, he has been highly valued at the S8L office for a few hundred years now. His regenerative ability is rare, and with his long life experience, he has firsthand knowledge and skills many others can only read about. He has also picked up a trick or two along the way and is easy to socialize with, unlike many light magicians who retreat into their shells the stronger their abilities become. They become odd birds tolerated because of their rank, but no one really wants them at staff parties. Dengamle always smiles broadly at everyone and never refuses a cold beer; no one wants to be the first to leave a party with him, especially when the large boot-shaped beer stein comes out and a shot of Jägermeister slowly sinks to the bottom in a sea of yellow bubbles.
It hasn’t always been like this, and his journey began when the rumor reached the district of a returning Viking fleet that had traveled across the sea to a green island and returned with longboats weighed down by kidnapped children, women, and the enormous loot they had acquired.
The year was 793 AD, and Lindisfarne was burned to the ground.
“You could just walk straight in, the men went down on their knees so it was even easier to cut them in the neck, and there was more gold than we could carry with us.” Who wouldn’t have been interested in that – low risk of death and a shortcut to becoming the richest in the village in just a few months. The alternative was to till the land all your life with increasing osteoarthritis so that you at least left something behind for your children to cultivate during their lives, and so on with a bent back (and osteoarthritis) for generations. Suddenly, an attractive life-hack presented itself that no one wanted to miss.
At the next meeting in the chieftain’s longhouse, Dengamle was more than eager to secure a spot, but so were all the others. At 20 years old and untested in battle, he was no one’s first choice at all; he wasn’t even chosen last and had to stand there with a flushed face, ashamed. This was before school, but we all know how it feels to be picked last in gym class when no one else is left, not very uplifting at all.
The raiding party consisted of about ten longships where each shipowner, or helmsman as some had started calling themselves in recent years, automatically became responsible for those on their ship. They divided into two groups, planned to land a few kilometers apart, comb the countryside until they found the gold, and then go home – a Viking-era smash-and-grab raid. The father and his older brother got a place on a longship in the first group.
The chieftain’s role was to give his blessing to the venture and then take an unreasonably large share of the profits for that favor.
It was not encouraging for Dengamle to see all the local men making their preparations, patting each other on the back, and with broad smiles discussing what they would do with all the gold when they got home. Moreover, they immediately rose to the top in esteem among the village’s unmarried women who did not spare Dengamle a glance. Dengamle thought that those guys could probably be called gold diggers, which is actually an expression that has survived into modern times.
Many fathers, as mentioned, were forced to train all their children in self-defense, including the daughters. In Viking society, women and men had the same status – this was also a further development from the fact that weak men burned up in their beds until it was formalized in law out of pure self-preservation. However, it was more common for chieftains to employ men in their bodyguard, or hird, and the man in the family was the one who stood up when the village was called to defense since the women were more important for the children.
That did not mean that women could not fight, and there were definitely female professional warriors, although they were slightly fewer than the men, so only a few were part of the expedition.
None of that made Dengamle feel any better.
D-Day finally came with a group of men hauling their equipment down to the makeshift harbor and hugging their families with promises of a quick upgrade within a few months. You could cut the anticipation in the air with a knife; this was something new and exciting for all the village’s adventurers – which was basically everyone who could swing a sword except Dengamle, the elderly, and the children.
He didn’t plan to go down to the big festival, but since the alternative was slaughtering chickens, he decided to go to the harbor anyway; not being chosen at all still stung terribly.
It is part of the story that Dengamle has an outrageous amount of luck; the troubles the shaman mixed affected his probability of positive outcomes, if he flipped a coin he rarely lost. Later in life, he tried his luck in Las Vegas until he was banned from every casino in the city after winning something colossal. When he couldn’t be caught cheating, he was banned anyway with reference to the fine print in the hotel’s rules he never got to read.
Once down at the harbor after the first group had set sail, Dengamle was fiddling with one of the longships’ dragon head ornaments that looked like a roughly carved cod head or so and drifted away in his thoughts. One of the men stumbled during boarding and got his calf pierced by a short sword. The ship’s owner, or helmsman, realized he was short a rower and loudly asked if there was any man willing to take his place – Dengamle was closest and quickly jumped aboard completely without equipment, this kind of chance you either take or you don’t, he thought.
That became somewhat his trademark, act first and think later.
The ship’s owner examined him and said he was good enough as a rower but would not get a share – Dengamle was absolutely overjoyed, the rest will sort itself out he thought, and he didn’t understand what a share meant anyway.
The crossing was miserable, rain, wind, and since he hadn’t brought any packed food or rain protection, he got soaked and begged for something to eat as best he could for about a week.
Land was made a good distance south of Lindisfarne, and Dengamle’s task became dishwashing after they had made camp.
The local inhabitants had spotted the ships a few days earlier when they came too close to the coast and searched for Lindisfarne until they gave up and landed where they were. Moreover, there was a baron with his own soldiers and a mobilizable local guard a day’s ride from the makeshift Viking camp – very far from easily killed unarmed monks.
On the night of the second day, the baron tried to attack the camp towards the early hours; it is in an Anglo-Saxon’s nature to always try to cheat their way to victory, and the baron did not disappoint.
Dengamle woke with a start to an inferno where screaming men were cut down around him and the battle noise was deafening. He picked up a battle axe from the ground, like the tomahawks we are used to from the Indian wars movies, which he then stood weighing in his hands for a few moments until he managed to suppress the impulse to run back into the tent.
He had learned to handle this weapon since childhood and was in good physical shape, but the scene before him was unknown and so chaotic that he was overwhelmed – a terrifying wall of death he could not even have imagined in his wildest dreams, and honorable war was almost the only thing he daydreamed about.
Dengamle thought he saw an opening and then threw himself straight into the swirling battle with youthful recklessness. It was precisely for this reason that fathers always tried to be there for their sons during their first battle, so they wouldn’t throw themselves headlong into a swirling fight with youthful recklessness.
Now he was not an excellent warrior at all yet, but his regenerative abilities meant he could take more blows and cuts than any other living man and still stand. This served him well as he was now to undergo his baptism by fire entirely on his own.
The Anglo-Saxons did not have the same, for that time, impressive physique as the Norsemen because hunting rights were more limited and they had less access to protein-rich food. Apart from the baron’s own guard, no one was really a soldier but had trained in combat on weekends. They moved in formation and tried to remember their training.
A Viking is a warrior who accepts that sometimes one needs to fight in coordination and form up in defense, attack, or protection because they must – the individual’s strength and ability were crucial. Both sides adapted over time and finally, with an equal measure of deceit and luck, the kingdom managed to free itself from the Viking scourge.
The Vikings were not anxious either; to fall in battle and go to Valhalla was an honor, even though Dengamle’s total lack of fear was mostly because he did not know any better.
Dengamle did as he had learned at home on the farm and wildly swung his battle axe loose at a group of short-statured Anglo-Saxons, immediately landing a blow to the side that would have felled a full-grown man. Not at all acceptable, but since this did not slow him down and he could handle his weapon, the foot soldiers fell one by one in a cloud of deadly axe blows.
The other Vikings had finally begun to form a defensive line about twenty meters further back and shouted to Dengamle to fall back under their shield wall. Dengamle heard nothing in the din of battle and was now really picking up speed. He spotted the next group of three Englishmen crouching behind their shields and with growing concern watched how this apparently formidable warrior had easily felled four of their comrades – now he was turning his attention towards them as well.
The Anglo-Saxons had no Nordic mythology where the victors go to Valhalla, and fear paralyzes.
With a nimble leap, Dengamle crashed into the second group, who were now more interested in how wide their shields were than in wielding their swords, and the short battle axe struck softly no matter which way he swung it. Again, he took a blow, but after a short fight, this group of men also lay motionless on the ground.
A bit further away stood the professional foot soldiers with the sheriff who led the militia, and safely behind them, the baron. When Dengamle charged in their direction, they had seen enough. No Anglo-Saxon with any self-respect stays when the leaders take to their heels, so the entire Anglo-Saxon line retreated in turmoil.
The battle was over.
Dengamle stumbled over a spear lying on the ground and when, with some effort, he managed to crawl up on stiff legs, the rest of his group had caught up and the backslaps rained down.
The chaos he had just experienced spun around in his head so he mostly nodded with an uncertain grin and wondered how he had performed. Whether he had been a coward or not overshadowed everything else, for eternal single status was tantamount to a death sentence. He also did not understand why every Viking came forward and patted him on the shoulder with a polite nod; at first, he thought he was going to be scolded for stumbling, which he understood was not very impressive.
After a while, he managed to piece together the barrage of words being thrown at him and understood that he had fought well, very well indeed. He recovered lightning-fast, put on a confident expression, and began vividly describing how he had thought and navigated the battle – all planned down to the smallest detail, of course. The talent to quickly turn and seize an opportunity in flight was a strictly social skill that served him well through the centuries since he often misunderstood situations at first.
Then he collapsed, and everything went black; the injuries he had sustained would have killed any other man on the spot, so he too was battered.
Since the baron had now tasted a full-fledged Viking raid he had also spectacularly lost, and against only a young man, he was not at all eager for more humiliation, so he chose the next best thing – generous bribes. The Vikings, who were no longer battle-worthy at all, pretended they wanted more blood and only reluctantly accepted the bribe to generously save Anglo-Saxon lives – all sides came through with their honor intact this time, but that mistake would lead to a few hundred years of plundering. Strength must always be met with strength, the baron had not yet learned, and it brought great misfortune over the entire kingdom because after this raid it spread like wildfire throughout Scandinavia that just by beating the shield and looking battle-ready, one would be richly rewarded, easy money.
Dengamle, who lay in a small sick tent with improvised medical care that would have led to death for anyone else without his regenerative ability, woke up after a few days.
Something had changed; when Dengamle got up from the fox skin and began to stagger among the campfires, he was met with respect and nods from experienced Viking warriors who had fought all their adult lives. The same warriors who earlier had not bothered to give him a glance. It was not just because the whole group had cowardly backed down when he stood firm, which they collectively felt deeply ashamed of; they had all seen him fell two groups of Englishmen while taking formidable damage. All had been around long enough to understand that Dengamle had almost performed better than they themselves would have in the same situation, and that was held in very high regard in the Viking Age.
Since he had won the battle completely alone, the expedition leader generously offered him half a man’s share, which an overjoyed Dengamle accepted – for him, it was a fortune, but going forward he would learn the value of his contribution and never to trust anyone. Even the fallen were entitled to their share, which would be distributed to families upon return, but there was some creative bookkeeping involved there. The chieftain would also have his five shares for allowing the expedition; since he had a large retinue, one always paid with a smile and a bow even if one swore inwardly.
The baron’s generous bribe was distributed among the expedition members, everyone began comparing gold jewelry, counting their coins, and forgot about Dengamle. He had bled like everyone else, been knocked out, and was probably a tough guy who had been lucky with where the blows landed, maybe.
He was now a full-fledged member of the gang with a guaranteed place whenever he wanted – no one wanted to be without Dengamle after this. All longships had standing invitations, and if they happened to be full, space was made if he decided to choose just them. It went so far that he eventually chose longships based on the food they promised him during the journey. Since he negotiated hard for his special travel provisions, there was a lot of smoked beef on his travels over the next fifty years.
Here begins a journey through the centuries for Dengamle, where his first prime of life was the hardest because he aged noticeably slowly and eventually had to leave his family when the tributes waned and suspicion turned into hostility.
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