Sublime

Odin’s hall, and Freyja’s, hold “all men who have fallen in battle since the beginning”, but they will be too few “when the wolf comes”, as Fenrir inevitably will at the Ragnarök. Kings and their retinues are therefore especially welcome, with the Valkyries serving wine for such a royal entrance.

‘Wrong,’ he said. ‘A happy man is too occupied with his life. He thinks he is beholden to no one. But make him shiver, kill his wife, cripple his child, then you will hear from him. He will starve his family for a month to buy you a pure-white yearling calf. If he can afford it, he will buy you a hundred.’

Oswald Iding ruled Northumbria for eight years, from ad 634 to 642. In that time he was recognised as overlord of almost all the other kingdoms of Britain: of Wessex, Mercia, Lindsey and East Anglia, of the Britons of Rheged, Strathclyde, Powys and Gwynedd, the Scots of Dál Riata and the Picts of the far North. A famed warrior, the ‘Whiteblade’ or

Gerravon of the Silverlords remembered Ozriel. The Reaper

In the Viking mind, somewhere inside each of us is also a hamingja, a remarkable being that is the personification of a person’s luck. This was a very important attribute for the people of the North in the late Iron Age, as everyone’s path in life was determined by fate but rode on a wave of luck.

Yerin chose. She decided who needed to die and made it a reality. This wasn’t revenge. It was an execution. In a world that still seemed frozen, Yerin pulled her sword back almost casually. An image in the sky mimicked her movements. Not a sword. A vast, black scythe. “Die,” Yerin ordered. She brought her sword down in a simple overhand chop. And a

Ostensibly,