In the days of 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.
And, it's 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 few people from any tribe have mastered this set of writing.
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 effect this kind of prayer can achieve is to calm down the tribal people and stabilize their emotions.
Niya put an amber necklace around her son's neck as a blessing to him.
Each of the five ambers has a letter, and together they form a word.
It was translated into Roman letters and became SIGEL. Its original meaning is "sunshine", and its extension means that light conquers darkness.
Rune 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, Chief 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 stocking up on the longhouses in Roseburg with enough 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 cook large quantities of smoked fish and bacon in a smoky grilling method.
They used wheat from trade or plunder, added honey and dried cranberries to brew a sweet but bitter wine.
They even used flour to make a large amount of bread. Because the environment was dry, a large amount of shelf-stable rusk was produced in this way.
At the same time, they are also the ones who go to tailors to make clothes, shoes and hats, and other daily necessities.
Scandinavia as a whole is indeed barren, but the barrenness here is only relative to other regions.
It had already formed a trade network around the Baltic Sea, and this trade network had 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 the "Iron Age".
As the winter slowly grows longer, all trade and fighting activities have almost 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 inhabitants of Scandinavia and Jutland, they were 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 emerged from barbarism and become orderly.
Scandinavia had always been isolated and had never been ruled by the Romans, but Rome loved the wealth of Northern Europe.
Could it be that in the snow-covered Northern Europe, apart from the large amounts of animal furs, is there anything else that the Romans in the Mediterranean region particularly loved?
Of course! One of them is amber!
Niya personally gave a pair of amber necklaces to Rurik, who 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 composed of shells, amber, or other gemstones.
In Scandinavia, amber is not a precious thing. If a businessman can traffic it to the Mediterranean, he will definitely make a fortune.
In normal days, most of the Ross tribe's leading warships exist as trade transport ships, and the brothers from the other Siiya tribes in the south are their trading partners.
If life is basically stable, people in Scandinavia will be doing their traditional maritime trade in the Baltic Sea for thousands of years, and if maritime conflicts will inevitably occur, they will not be impatient to leave here.
But there is indeed a force in the dark that forces them to leave this increasingly cold place.
That 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 of Scandinavia's south and north are quite different.
For example, the settlement currently occupied by the Ross tribe is Rossburg, which is actually located in the Norgai region of 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.
Another point is that because Fort Ross is backed by the rocks of 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 Ross tribe is also a member of the Siiya tribes, 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 and built 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, and 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, there was no sign of the Ross tribe in this unique movement to merge the Siyans.
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 Zorge region in the north, they must now 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 were many Danish tribes in Jutland, which had a larger population. They attacked each other for livelihood and engaged 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 Sthians 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 were the first to set the record straight and began the raid on Britain in 794 AD, thus beginning the Viking Age.
The year Yuryrik 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 the 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 people who spoke another language, were wealthy but had average fighting power.
There, it seems to be another world!
