While waiting for spring, Rurik’s days were not as simple as sucking milk and sleeping.
In the first winter of his life, he received a gift from his mother - an amber necklace.
Moreover, it is no ordinary necklace. The necklace is made of five pieces of amber, each piece carved with a symbol.
That is actually the rune alphabet, which is the writing of the local residents of Scandinavia, but it is not a pure writing.
People believe that Odin created this writing by acquiring part of the power of Rune, the god of wisdom, at the cost of an eye. Therefore, it is a word with divine power.
It is a pity that in this ignorant era, only a small number of people in any tribe have mastered this set of writing.
As 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 tribal sacrifices that the elders will take out the "sacred objects" engraved with rune inscriptions collected by the tribe, such as wooden boards inlaid with gold, in order to borrow the divine power of Odin and rune. , achieve prayer.
Of course, the only role this kind of prayer can achieve is to calm down the tribesmen and stabilize their emotions.
Niya put an amber necklace around her son's neck as a blessing to him.
The five ambers each have a letter, and together they form a word.
It is translated into Roman letters and becomes SIGEL. The original meaning is "sunshine", and by extension it means the victory of light over darkness.
Run script is the script of the Scandinavian people, but it is not a purely folk script. It is controlled by the ruling elite of the tribe, especially the full-time priests, and ordinary people basically do not use it in their daily lives.
If you really want to use it, you can embroider the words on your clothes or carve them on the wooden beams of your house for peace.
In the past autumn, leader Otto commanded his men to complete all preparations for the Sorgon voyage, such as pushing the required ships ashore and highly repairing them. Prepare the food and fresh water needed for the long voyage, as well as materials for ship repairs during the journey, as well as weapons to protect against enemies.
It can be said that Otto completed the Sorgon voyage very well.
While the men were preparing for the voyage, the women of the tribe spent up to two months in the longhouses of Roseburg, stocking up on food for each family to survive the entire cold winter. .
Women have a huge say in stockpiling supplies for winter, and they are also experts in this area.
They make large quantities of smoked fish and bacon using a smoky grilling method.
They use the wheat brought by trade or plundering, add honey and dried cranberries to brew a sweet but bitter wine.
They even use flour to make a large amount of bread. Because the environment is dry, a large amount of shelf-stable rusks are made in this way.
At the same time, they also went to tailors to make clothes, shoes and hats.and making other daily necessities.
Scandinavia as a whole 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’s just that the trade network is completely different from that of the Mediterranean, which has allowed the surrounding ethnic groups to develop rapidly.
The Baltic Sea trade network was formed in BC. It was not until the southern Germanic cousins of the Viking tribes learned a lot of advanced technology at the end of Rome that Jutland and Scandinavia entered. "Iron Age".
With the long nights of winter, almost all trade and fighting activities have come to a standstill. No matter how brave the sea fighter is, he needs a warm home with 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, no matter how brave they were in the cold winter, it would be difficult for them to survive until the next spring. .
It is this harsh natural environment that forces people in the Baltic Sea to migrate southward. By the ninth century, the intention to migrate was even stronger.
The residents of Scandinavia and Jutland are actually related to the Germanic tribes in the south.
In ancient times, after experiencing the disastrous defeat of the Teutonic Forest, Rome stopped its strategy of expanding its territory in the north. Rome finally declined, and it perished under the constant encroachment of the Germanic tribes. In that massive ethnic migration, a considerable number of Scandinavians also participated.
Four hundred years have passed since the fall of Rome. The Germanic tribes have established large and small countries, and have stepped out of barbarism and become orderly.
Scandinavia has always been isolated and has never been ruled by the Romans, but Rome loved the wealth of Northern Europe.
Could it be that in addition to the large amounts of animal furs in the snow-covered Northern Europe, is there anything else that the Romans in the Mediterranean region particularly loved?
Of course! One of them is amber!
Niya personally gave Rurik a pair of amber necklaces when he was only a few months old. Each of the five amber necklaces 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 made of shells, amber, or other gemstones.
In Scandinavia, amber is not a precious thing. If a businessman can traffic it to the Mediterranean region, he will definitely make a fortune.
In normal days, most of the leading warships of the Ross tribe exist as trade transport ships, and the brothers of the other Siiya tribes in the south are their trading partners.
If life is basically stable, people in Scandinavia will be doing what they have always done in the Baltic Sea.After thousands of years of traditional maritime trade, and maritime conflicts that would inevitably occur, they would not be impatient to leave here.
But there is indeed a force in the dark that forces them to leave this increasingly cold place.
The mysterious force is the climate.
The era of Rurik's birth was officially the early ninth century, and the climate in Europe began to turn colder in the seventh century. From that time on, the entire Europe began to face a cold period that lasted for four hundred years. .
However, people living in this era just instinctively feel that their hometown is too cold.
Scandinavia is a divided world.
There are a large number of fjords and streams, and there are as many as 50,000 islands in the ocean. The islands were sometimes refuges and sometimes settlements.
The traditional climates in the south and north of Scandinavia are quite different.
For example, the settlement currently occupied by the Ross tribe, Rossburg, is actually located in the Norgai region in northern Scandinavia. This area contains 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 advantage, it is that it is easy to defend and difficult to attack. A stream runs through the entire Roseburg, giving those who settle along the coast an inexhaustible supply of fresh water.
One more thing, because Fort Ross is backed by rocks in the mountains, tribal craftsmen discovered copper mines. Although craftsmen did not have the ability to smelt on a large scale, their demand for copper was not severe. Bronze rivets were made to make more ships, which was perfectly manageable.
After all, the Rus tribe is also a member of the tribes of the Siiya people, but the Norgai region was not the territory of the Siiya people at one time.
Hundreds of years ago, the ancestors of the Ross tribe used force to force the Ural people living here to move north, and occupied this place to build Rossburg.
The vast majority of Svealans settled in some plains in the south, called the plains of Svealand, which originally meant "the land of the Svealans".
Svealand is a plain area. The climate here can be relatively good for growing wheat and raising a large number of cattle and sheep.
Because the population of the Siiyazhong tribe is not large, the natural resources here are enough to feed people.
However, the population of Siiya people has been developing, and various tribes have begun to border each other, and competition has begun directly. In the competition, large tribes annexed small tribes, and a movement to integrate the entire Si sub tribe was taking place. In the end, they must form a country-Sweden.
However, the Ross tribe was not involved in this unique movement to merge the Siyans.
Perhaps, the destiny 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 Zorge region in the north, now they must face the increasingly expanding Danish power..
It was so cold in Northern Europe in the ninth century that even the wheat that once thrived in Jutland, Denmark, the richest region in the region, was no longer what it used to be.
There are many Danish tribes in Jutland with a larger population. They are forced to attack each other for livelihood and engage in more frequent foreign trade.
Their expansion further south was curbed by the powerful Frankish state. Their attempt to expand north allowed them to occupy the Götaland region, and successfully bordered the Siyan people in the north, and conflicts soon broke out.
Even the current Danes and Siyans could not imagine that they would fight for the Götaland region in southern Scandinavia for hundreds of years.
The Danes developed westward and began to trade and conflict with the Norwegians facing the North Sea until they crossed the North Sea and entered Britain.
The Danes of Jutland set the record straight and began the raid on Britain in 794 AD, thus starting the Viking Age.
The year Yuririk was born, only 27 years after the robbery, all tribes around the Baltic Sea learned that they could trade with swords across the sea.
But a very interesting thing is that the Russians have long realized that they are in a remote place and are no match for those brave Danes, so they desperately want to develop in the west of the ocean for development opportunities.
It was the cold that forced the Ross tribe to do this, until they entered a large lake and found a wide river. They went upstream and encountered a group of wealthy but average warriors who spoke another language. Ethnic group.
It seems to be another world there!