Chapter 1 - Author's Introduction

Huginn’s Yule, or, How the Jólfaðr Came Calling on Yuletide Eve

First up, this little tale is dedicated to the author of “The Longships”, Frans G. Bengtsson, who I hope is sitting in Valhalla at the right hand of Odin, sword or battleaxe at his side, drinking ale from his horn and laughing as he reads my little homage.

And, well, why? It’s Christmas, and what was Christmas (at least in northern Europe) before Christianity hijacked the winter solstice festival? Yule. And what was Yule? It’s a mid-winter (winter solstice) festival historically observed by the Germanic peoples, with probable far earlier origins, which was later Christianized. Many present-day Christmas customs and traditions such as the Yule log, Yule goat, Yule boar, Yule singing, and others all stem from those old pre-Christian traditions. The word is attested in an explicitly pre-Christian context primarily in Old Norse. Words with an etymological equivalent to Yule are still used in the Nordic countries and in Estonia to describe Christmas, and Yule’s roots lie deep in the past, possibly far back into the Stone Age, but have survived into the present.

So in honor of Yule, here’s a little stand-alone story set in the middle of the Dark Ages, circa 540-580AD, when Yule was that explicitly pre-Christian festival of the Germanic peoples of Northern Europe. The Dark Ages are a period not too many people know much about, apart from some vague ideas gained from popular culture and movies, so I’m going to give you a little historical background here, both on China and on Northern Europe at the time this story is set in (and there’s a much longer note on this at the end), just to give you some context to the story. And okay, I’m no expert at all, and this is so high level that it’s the view from outer space, but it’s a period I love reading about.

Many people romanticize the Dark Ages, thinking of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the Song of Roland, and Charlemagne (altho Charlemagne was more at the tail end of the Dark Ages, as the lights of civilization began once more to shine), the Welsh stories of the Mabinogion, the Irish myths and legends such as those of the great Cuchulain and the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology, or the Fianna, or the Volsungasaga, whose core is a story from the Rhineland. Forget it. Although the blood and guts may well be real, the romanticism is a real stretch. The early decades of the 6th Century (501-600 AD), the time in which this story is set, were during the Volkerwanderung period, when the Western Roman Empire had fallen, and the tribes of the Eurasian steppe, and the Germanic tribes of northern Europe, were on the move, a wild a time as the world has ever seen.

There’s a revisionist view that the Dark Ages weren’t actually so bad. Well, love to see those revisionists go back in time. They would, to be blunt, be totally fucked. Let me quote here, from Poul Anderson, who was somewhat of an expert on this era and a couple of whose novelized versions of the sagas I’ve used as source material (I used some of the actual sagas as well, I have a few of them -- there’s a brief list of my source material at the end): This was “ ... the midnight of the Dark Ages. Slaughter, slavery, robbery, rape, torture, heathen rites bloody or obscene, were parts of daily life ... Love, loyalty, honesty beyond the most niggling technicalities, were only for one’s kindred, chieftain, and closest friends. The rest of mankind were foemen or prey. And often anger or treachery broke what bonds there had been...

Yep, well, that was western Europe circa 500-600 AD, and it seems accurate enough to me to describe a period when a man could only go to the outhouse with four friends to guard him while he was doing his business, lest someone take him out with a spear through the back. Makes concerns about running out of toilet paper seem a little trivial doesn’t it.

Moving now to China in approximately 500AD, there were then two large states, Northern Wei, and Southern Qi (in the south), with smaller states around the periphery. To the north of Wei, stretching across the steppe, was the Khanate of Rouran (possibly the Avars, who would be part of that great westwards migration from the steppe into Europe, which would include the Avars, the Magyars, the Bulgars, and a host of other tribes, including of course the Huns, known to the Chinese as the Xiongnu, although that’s not conclusive, and nothing about this period is). Northern Wei ruled northern China outright from 386 to 534 AD, and also saw the establishment of Buddhism in China.

Founded by nomadic tribesmen, the Xianbei (who became Sinicized over time), from the northern steppes, the empire of Northern Wei was carved out as the Jin Dynasty collapsed in the “War of the Eight Princes”, followed by the “Uprising of the Five Barbarians.” The Xianbei held together their empire through the strength of the sword and bow, as did the Mongols and other nomadic invaders before and after. War with the southern dynasty was endemic through this period, and towards the end of the dynasty that ruled Northern Wei, there was significant internal dissension resulting in a split into Eastern Wei and Western Wei. Neither Eastern Wei nor Western Wei was long lived, with successor states Northern Qi established in 550, and Northern Zhou established in 557, replacing both Eastern and Western Wei.

Incidentally, the Legend of Mulan originated from the Northern Wei era, in which Mulan, disguised as a man, takes her aged father’s place in the Wei army to defend China from Rouran invaders. Also as a footnote, the original Shaolin Temple was built by the Northern Wei Emperor, Xiaowen, in 477 AD. This then is the milieu from which the heroine of my story emerges.