Epigraphs - Book 1

The epigraphs of Book 1. Click here to return to the index page.

## Epigraphs by Chapter

### Chapter 1 : On Approach

**Dragon War, The** —Popular name for the low-level raiding conflict between the Green Death Nest and the Viking settlements of the Hebrides islands; specifically in reference to Berk, in the Inner Hebrides, ranging from circa 750 Common Era until 16 September, 1040 Common Era (Julian reckoning).  While just one of many human-dragon conflicts in recorded history, The Dragon War is commonly referred to as the singular and eponymous conflict due to its resolution—specifically, the taming and subsequent domestication of dragons by the Norse of Berk, with the resulting impact on history.

Cross-references: Berk (Island); Green Death (Dragon); Haddock, Astrid, I; Haddock, Hiccup Horrendous, III; Haddock, Stoick, I…

—Encyclopedia Norlandia, 7th Edition, 1642, Edinburgh, Scotland

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### Chapter 2 : The Hero Of Berk

In the popular imagination, the end of the Viking Era is inevitably tied together with the Hero of Berk, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III.  Despite the hagiographic efforts of both contemporary and subsequent biographers, according to both his own accounts and those of his associates, he was an extremely humble individual throughout his entire life, his journals revealing a man honestly bewildered and disturbed by the adulation.  However, his accomplishments do speak for themselves, as a polymath and inventor whose name has become synonymous with both genius and altruism in the subsequent centuries…

—The Second Flowering Of Yggdrasil: An Analysis Of The Norse Resurgence, 1710

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### Chapter 3 : Idle Hands...

What is often forgotten by many, being focused on Hiccup Haddock and his accomplishments, is that he had an extensive support network in the form of his friends and family.  In particular, The Dragon Archivist, Fishlegs Ingerman, is often forgotten by popular histories or relegated to secondary consideration at best, despite the fact that his educational efforts allowed his friend's innovations to be retained as time passed…

…without Ingerman, Haddock would have been universally seen as a wizard or other arcanist within a generation of his passing.  Instead, their joint legacy resulted in the establishment of some of the modern world's greatest educational and intellectual institutions…

—A History Of The Isles, Oxford, England, 1591

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### Chapter 4: The Scottish Play

The political landscape that Haddock and his tribe found themselves thrust into was one marked by extensive conflict and political fragmentation.  The most significant power in Europa, beyond that of the Catholic Church, was the Holy Roman Empire, under Henry III, and it was undergoing a period of consolidation, and the Byzantine Roman Empire, which was likewise experiencing an era of decay in the aftermath of the death of the Emperor Basil the Younger in 1025 CE.  Otherwise, there were few extensive centralized powers; even those rulers who could claim significant domains, such as the Kievan Rus', consisted of tribal or feudal confederations that were not politically unified beyond the person of their sovereign.

—Corpus Historiae Berkiae, 1396

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### Chapter 5: Thawfest

**Thawfest**—Colloquial term for the **Sigurblót**, the traditional Norse Festival welcoming the summer.  Held the Sunday after the full moon after the **Dísablót** held at the Spring Equinox (Compare: Easter), in either April or May, to celebrate the Spring Thaw and the turning of the seasons.  Typical formulations consist of contests and demonstrations of prowess by all attendees in honor of the gods.  The Thawfest is a time of great social and legal importance; during the **Viking Era**, this festival marked the beginning of the campaigning season, and the winter was officially over at the conclusion of the festival; children who had seen sixteen winters were now officially adults.  The term **Sigurblót** literally means "victory sacrifice," and the festival is an acknowledgment of the Norse survival of another harsh dark winter.  Winter is over, and summer has won, and **Ragnarok** is postponed for at least one more year.

—From Aesir To Yggdrasil: A Norse Primer

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### Chapter 6: Return To Sender

In Berk's immediate vicinity in the Alban Isles, there were not many major dominant powers.  Eire was politically fragmented into dozens of warring petty kings, and had not been unified since the death of High King Brian Boru at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014.  Alba, in the north, was under the rule of the Red King, Mac Bethad mac Findlaích, but he was new to his title at the time, and, despite his later activities, was not by any means a major power.  Wales was politically splintered into five squabbling kingdoms that would not reunify for years.  Around the Eirish Sea and Hebrides were other warlords and petty kings, many of whom belonged to related dynasties and feuded endlessly with one another.

The single greatest powers in the immediate vicinity were England, which was ruled by the tyrannical King Harthacnut, and the politically decentralized Frankish kingdom to the south, ruled by King Henry of the Capets.  Neither power had the population, or the initial incentives, to pursue conflicts with Berk. Henry was dealing with conflicts with and between his nobility, while Harthacnut was imposing his will on a restive populace.  In particular, the autocratic methods that Harthacnut had used to rule over Denmark for the previous several years were backfiring on him tremendously and setting the stage for…

—Corpus Historiae Berkiae, 1396

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### Chapter 7: A-Viking

Burh— Old English fortified settlement or fortification, as a response to the threat of Viking raids of the 8th to 11th centuries.  Conceived of as a network of forts containing detachments of local defense militia and roads (known as herepaths) connecting them, they were intended to act as a place to shelter the populace against Viking attack, as well as allowing the English forces to concentrate quickly in the event of a raid or invasion.  Until the 1040s, and the domestication of dragons by the Norse, the burh and herepath system was notably effective in repulsing Viking raids.

—A History Of Old England, 1451, Oxford Press

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### Chapter 8: A Challenge

Despite popular tales to the contrary, Vikings did not constantly duel to the death over every little issue.  Indeed, they took considerable efforts to prevent unnecessary bloodshed among their communities and to ensure fairness between their members.

Political meetings, known as Things, had elaborate rules of conduct, designed to limit the potential for violence and the sparking of feuds.  This was one of the functions of the ritual trial-by-combat, the holmgang; to settle and close disputes and feuds in a hopefully nonlethal manner, yet in a way that was acceptable to the martial Norse.  This was done by means of creating the dueling area as a sacred space before the gods, defining the conflict, and rendering it such that what was 'slain' within the bounds of the demarcation was the opposing dispute.  Rather than start a brawl over a dispute at a Thing—an act that was in violation of the rules of conduct—one disputant could challenge another to a trial by combat, after which the matter was settled.  And to keep those with significant prowess from perverting the mechanics of the trial by combat against their intent, substitutions in the cases of gross mismatches were not only allowed, but encouraged.

—Origins Of The Grand Thing, Edinburgh Press, 1631

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### Chapter 9: Odd Neighbors

**Berk (Island)** —Largest island of the four Small Isles of the Alban Hebrides archipelago, and noted for its extreme geography, possessing glacier-carved high mountain peaks and an extensive array of sea caves and wave-carved coastal features.  The island is the ancestral homeland of House Haddock and the other Houses descended from the ancient Hooligan tribe.  Settled by the Hooligan Norse tribe in the early 700s CE as a longphort, to use as a base for further Viking raids against the Irish, Welsh, Alban and Saxon coastlines, the island was one of the focal points of the Dragon War, due to the tenacity and self-admitted stubbornness of the Hooligans.

—Encyclopedia Norlandia, 7th Edition, 1642, Edinburgh, Scotland

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### Chapter 10: Whetstones

Perhaps the second most mythologized human figure to come out of the Norse domestication of dragons is the Hero's father, Stoick the Vast, a.k.a. Stoick the Lawgiver, Stoick the Wise, Odin's Spear-carrier, and other such titles.  Primary sources from his personal contemporaries are minimal, with most of the surviving sources being from the perspective of his son and others of his generation.  While the legends generally agree on the broad strokes of his life, the details are shrouded in mutually exclusive legends and myth.  This especially pertains to the periods of his life preceding the ascendance of his son; mythologized and mutually contradictory accounts of his childhood, young adulthood, and ancestry are common.  Even specific points that many of these accounts agree on have an odor of myth.  For example, it is unknown if he truly did 'pop a dragon's head clean off of its neck' as a toddler, as is claimed by legend.  His later accomplishments are known with more certainty, but the blank slate of his life prior to the birth of his son has resulted in endless embellishments of his youth, which makes determining the truth a near impossibility.

This is not helped by the fact that the man had a literally larger-than-life stature; in an era in which the average height of an adult man was sixty-eight-and-one-quarter inches (173.4 cm), Stoick, from modern analysis of his remains and attested from numerous primary sources, is confirmed to have measured eighty-one-and-a-half inches (207 cm) in height, with a build to match.

Additionally, other romanticized aspects of his life are well-substantiated, rendering the sorting of truth from fiction to be more difficult.  Perhaps the single most famous example of this is his famous devotion to his wife, Valka.  As the cultural expectation of a high ranking Norseman of the era, even on Berk, was to be polygamous, Stoick's attested monogamy has been the subject of significant romanticization…

—The Dragon Millennium, Manna-hata University Press, Ltd.

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### Chapter 11: Norse-By-Norse-West

…due to the actions of merchants, couriers, and word of mouth, it is generally assumed that knowledge of Hiccup Haddock's victory over the Green Death, and the associated domestication of the Nest's dragons, had reached all of the major and minor capitals of Europe, North Africa, and Asia Minor within a year of the event, eighteen months at most.

Most of these feudal sovereigns and lesser lords reacted dismissively, especially at first, when evidence was minimal, while others, especially those who had seen evidence at first- or second-hand, reacted to the emerging power as a threat to appease or suppress.  And a rare few acted otherwise…

—Origins Of The Grand Thing, Edinburgh Press, 1631

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### Chapter 12: First Time For Everything

The premise that Magnus the Good's diplomatic overtures to Berk was the instigation to ending the Hooligan Tribe's unofficial policy of noninterference and isolationism has been debated repeatedly over the centuries in academic circles, to the point where it is a traditional topic for undergraduate papers in the subject.  Regardless of the specific perspective taken, however, the facts simply remain that Hiccup Haddock's state visit to Norway was the first time that the Hero of Berk traveled to another court and was greeted as an equal by a monarch, and that in the aftermath, Berk began to take a larger role in international affairs, in the economic, political, religious, and militaristic spheres.

—The Dragon Millennium, Manna-hata University Press, Ltd.

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### Chapter 13: Wakeup Calls

While she tends to be somewhat overshadowed in the stories by Hiccup Haddock's intellectual and political accomplishments, his partner, Astrid Hákonsdoittor, is frequently and explicitly credited in both the popular tales and in Haddock's own journals as his closest friend and intellectual associate.  While Ingerman was responsible for much of the educational and archival infrastructure that resulted in the retention of Haddock's innovations, their primary partnerships were in the area of recreations of Roman mechanisms and methods.  In contrast, Haddock's journals specifically state that, without her guidance, discipline, and partnership, the vast number of his original creations would have remained as undeveloped ideas, to the point that many are credited primarily to her.

This is in addition to her own independent innovations in the area of draconic military applications, to the point where her own authored text, The Wing And The Ax, on the uses of dragons in martial settings, was the standard primary text on the subject for nearly two centuries, and is still used and viewed as one of the foundational texts in the field.

—A History Of The Isles, Oxford, England, 1591

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### Chapter 14: Relationships

The initial Norwegian outreach to Berk, notwithstanding popular belief otherwise, was actually instigated by Magnus the Good's regent, Einar Eindridesson Thambarskelfir (c. 980-1047), of the Lade jarls, not Magnus the Good, although he was an enthusiastic supporter of the idea.

Originally an opponent of King Olaf Haraldsson, Magnus's father, Einar supported King Cnut the Great's efforts to overthrow Olaf.  Those efforts succeeded in 1028 AD, sending King Olaf and his family into exile.  Olaf returned two years later after the death of Cnut's first viceroy, Haakon Ericsson, in an attempt to regain his kingdom, and died at the Battle of Stiklestad (29 July 1030 AD), defeated by a peasant army led by Kálfr Árnasson, Thorir Hund and Hárek of Tjøtta.  Einar was not present at the battle, but this was more due to happenstance than intent—Einar was visiting King Cnut in London when the battle was joined.  The purpose of his visit was to petition Cnut to make him the new viceroy of Norway.

The petition failed; Einar was not given the viceroyalty over Norway, and neither were any of the other Norwegian nobility that had supported Cnut.  Instead, Cnut chose his fourteen-year-old son Sveinn as viceroy and Sveinn's mother, Ælfgifu of Northampton, as the boy's regent and therefore the effective ruler of Norway.  This decision infuriated Einar and the others who had supported Cnut's overthrow of King Olaf, as each of them had wished to be named as regent over Norway, and Cnut had promised each of them the position (or so they claimed).  Sveinn and Ælfgifu's subsequent viceroy reign was seen as oppressive due to new laws and taxes, and was marked by intense resistance on the part of the Norwegian nobility.

In 1035 AD, Einar, acting in concert with Kálfr, betrayed Cnut's viceroys.  Traveling to Yaroslav the Wise's court in the Kievan Rus', the two chieftains found Olaf's eleven-year-old illegitimate son, Magnus, who had been left there by his father to be fostered in exile by Yaroslav and his wife Ingegerd.  Returning to Scandinavia with Magnus, they allied with King Anund Jacob the Coalburner of Sweden, Magnus's step-uncle, to place Magnus on the Norwegian throne as a puppet ruler to the noble chiefs.

Political machinations quickly followed, and Kálfr was quickly outmaneuvered by Einar.  Using Kálfr's direct involvement in the death of King Olaf against him, Einar depicted himself as blameless, and managed to have Kálfr incriminate himself by showing how he killed the boy-king's father with a stab to the neck.  Einar became Magnus's new regent and effective ruler of Norway, while Kálfr and Thorir were driven into exile.  Magnus, reportedly furious, wished to have them executed, but refrained from doing so on the advice of his godfather, Sigvatr the Skald.

His primary rivals gone, Einar spent the next half decade as the de facto ruler of Norway; even when Magnus reached his majority and assumed some level of legal power, Einar made certain to keep the young monarch dependent on him.

This status quo, however, was broken by one of Einar's miscalculations.  Hearing of the tamed dragons and dragon-riders of Berk from a traveling skald in the spring of 1041 AD, he dispatched one of his minor rivals in the court, the herald Yngvarr Arlaksson, to make contact with Berk, reasoning that either his rival would be killed by fearsome Norse dragon-riders or they might potentially make an ally of the same.

This backfired, as Berk—and Hiccup Haddock and his associates in particular—were not what he had expected.

—Corpus Historiae Berkiae, 1396

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### Chapter 15 : Welcome To Berk

Despite perceptions to the contrary, the culture of the Norsemen of Berk at the time of Hiccup Haddock was profoundly different than most other Norse and Norse-derived cultures, despite surface similarities.  Two of the greatest differences were in the treatment of literacy and the social caste system.  Due to the long-simmering social pressures of the Dragon War, Berk had adopted universal literacy as a means for ensuring that critical knowledge would not be lost, and had abandoned the Thrall-Carl-Thane caste system on similarly pragmatic lines.

This, of course, caused significant culture shock to other societies, Norse and otherwise, that encountered them over the remainder of Hiccup Haddock’s life, and was instrumental in setting the groundwork for what followed.

—The Second Flowering Of Yggdrasil: An Analysis Of The Norse Resurgence, 1710

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### Chapter 16: Bindings...

It is generally agreed upon by historians that the moment where King Magnus Olofsson began to truly assert his own authority over Einar Thambarskelfir’s was the first attempted assassination of Hiccup Haddock and Astrid Hofferson, on their first state visit to Magnus’s court in 1041.  While Einar remained high in the young monarch’s councils with his considerable political power and influence, his grip on the young king only continued to loosen.  Given Einar’s desires for power, this became the primary source of conflict between the two of them over the ensuing years.

Magnus’s growth away from Einar’s control, however, took time.  There is no significant debate that Einar’s decisions were the instigating force behind, for example, the marital alliances for both Magnus and Wulfhild.  In that specific case, while Magnus could have resisted the directives of his regent, it is generally agreed that doing so would have caused an open rift within his court, especially given the later developments and innovations by Haddock that openly terrified Einar and the other nobles.

—Corpus Historiae Berkiae, 1396

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### Chapter 17: ...And Partings

Most historical analyses of King Magnus I of Norway focus excessively on the larger figures in his life—his regent, wife, sister, friends, and dragon, most typically.  Insufficient focus tends to be given to a quieter figure in Magnus's life, a state of affairs that is ironic, due to the man's profession as a skald.

Sigvatr Þórðarson (a.k.a. Sigvatr Tordarson, 995-1044), King Olaf's court skald, has a distinct tendency to stay in the background in most depictions and discussions of the king's life.  This is unsurprising, as the man's sagas are one of the few primary sources on the periods of King Olaf's life and the childhood of his son, with over three hundred surviving verses of his poetry; in those sagas, he spent his efforts recording the efforts and achievements of others than those of his own.  Furthermore, by the time Magnus reached adulthood and his alliance with Berk, Sigvatr had become a background figure in the king's court.  However, this does him a disservice in his impact, as many subsequent historians have focused on the influence of Hiccup Haddock and Einar Thambarskelfir upon the king, and ignored Sigvatr's.

Sigvatr was made Magnus's godfather when Magnus was born, was responsible for naming the baby (after Karla Magnus—King Charlemagne), and had been the skald and friend of King Olaf for years prior, also serving as the king's stallare (marshal).  He traveled with Olaf and Magnus when they fled to the Kievan Rus', raised young Magnus in exile, and returned with him when Einar Thambarskelfir came seeking a puppet he could control.  Even then, Sigvatr continued to act as mentor and father figure to the young king, counseling kindness, moderation, temperance and forgiveness.  It was due to Sigvatr's advice that Magnus refused to have the men who had killed his father executed, which would have removed two of Einar's rivals for power permanently.

Sigvatr's influence on Magnus's personality, as the sole consistent father figure in the young man's life, is noticeable in many areas.  These include Magnus's interests in the arts and sagas, his noted tendencies towards dramatic gestures, and a general bearing that was regularly referred to as gregarious and outgoing—an impressive achievement for someone who lost his home and his father by the age of six, his mother in his teen years, and who lived in exile for most of his childhood.

—Dragons of the North: Profiles Of The Viking Lords, Waterford University Press, 1733

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### Chapter 18: Leavetakings

On the topic of Snotlout Jorgenson, Astrid Haddock's journals frequently refer to the man in epithets, at turns variously angry, vulgar, or frustrated, rather than by name.  However, given their own tangled history, this is hardly unsurprising.  Jorgenson had a long history of clumsy attempts at seducing her in their youth, despite her repeated efforts at emphasizing that such interest was both unwanted and unrequited.  These culminated in a confrontation at the court of Magnus the Good—an event that Jorgenson himself later wrote as being one of the definitional moments of his life.  This shared history and established dynamic became the foundation for their infamous interactions as adults.

Interestingly, until her attention was brought to the significance of the moment years later, Astrid's own journals gave little mention of the incident that prompted Jorgenson's departure, beyond a few notations on having to explain matters to Spitelout Jorgenson, Snotlout's father and the marshal of Berk at that time.  Once the significance became clear, however, her journal entries on the topic essentially summarized to the points that she was not responsible for his choices or desires, that it was his own responsibility to control himself, and that her only regret was that she hadn't hit him harder that day.  This is, of course, excluding a significant portion of extremely creative vulgarity in regards to Jorgenson, to the point where it is suspected by historians that her friend and lifelong associate Ruffnut Fairhair I had some input into the layered kennings in the later journal entries, built upon earlier epithets (Fairhair having had her own negative adolescent experiences with Jorgenson and his attentions).

—The Dragon Millennium, Manna-hata University Press, Ltd.

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### Chapter 19 : Liminals

The Norse temple and associated cult at Uppsala was one of the last major bastions of the Norse religion during the attempted Christianization of Scandinavia in the 10th and 11th centuries.  Razed in 1044 and rebuilt in 1056, the original temple featured statues of the gods Odin, Freyr and Thor on a triple throne, a sacred well and a sacred grove.  When the temple was first destroyed by Christian Crusaders, many of the priesthood managed to evacuate to Berk, where they formed the core of…

—The Second Flowering Of Yggdrasil: An Analysis Of The Norse Resurgence, 1710

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### Chapter 20 : Homecomings

King Magnus's first visit to Berk was a watershed moment in many ways.  While the king had come for his marriage and for the dragon that later became emblematic of his reign, by the time he had arrived, the Hooligans had spent a year integrating dragons into nearly every level of their society and economy.  Witnessing the effects and advantages that this afforded his allies firsthand gave him not only the determination to effect similar changes on his own kingdom, it also gave him a map to doing so, the trailblazing having already been started by the Haddocks' and Ingerman's efforts over the prior year.  Even discounting the other innovations and events that were introduced and occurred subsequent to his arrival, Magnus was still exposed to a society that could function without thrall labor and still be more prosperous than his own, and this had an indelible effect on the young king.

—The Second Flowering Of Yggdrasil: An Analysis Of The Norse Resurgence, 1710

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### Chapter 21: Preparations

The dragon hydrocarbon organ system is the defining feature of the draconic clade; even in flightless, obligate aquatic, or the occasional limbless breed, if they possess the hydrocarbon organ system, they are defined as dragons.

The organ system is estimated to have originally evolved during the Neogene Period between 18 and 24 MYA, based on genetic evidence from the draconic genome, although some estimates put its origin much earlier, during the Paleogene's Eocene Epoch, between 48 and 34 MYA.  Originally an offshoot of an additional liver lobe among tunnel-dwelling reptiles, its original purpose appears to have been in protecting the proto-dragons from heavy-metal poisoning accumulated from the stones of their native environment.  Later evolutionary adaptations shifted the liver lobe into a distinct organ of its own, capable of chemical synthesis of basic hydrocarbons in conjunction with symbiotic bacteria, hypothesized as a form of energy storage.  Later mutations created the secondary organs in the hydrocarbon system that distill oxygen, and transport, store, mix and ignite the hydrocarbons for firebreathing.  True flight in the draconic species only appeared after the evolution of the pressurized oxygen bladders adjacent to the respiratory and hydrocarbon systems; at rest, the dragon uptakes oxygen from the atmosphere and stores it under pressure in the bladder.  This oxygen is then either used for fueling flight muscles or for igniting hydrocarbons for firebreathing.

—An Introduction To Dragon Biology, 17th Edition, Oxford University Press, 1793

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### Chapter 22: A Ruff But Magnus Wedding

According to nearly all primary sources, the marriage between Ruffnut Thicknutsdoittor clan Thorston and King Magnus Olafsson of House Fairhair was a love-match, despite the political considerations that instigated both their betrothal and their atypically quick marriage.  Both were staunch patrons of the arts, which apparently was the basis of their initial bond.  For the duration of their marriage, there is no record of either of them straying into affairs, or of Magnus taking official concubines.  This was an uncommon occurrence in medieval Scandinavia to say the least, where approximately a quarter of all monarchs between 700 and 1100 were of illegitimate issue by acknowledged concubines, including Magnus, and Magnus had himself sired an illegitimate daughter several years before his wedding.  However, the number of children and love poems that the pair produced speaks volumes for their mutual devotion on its own…

In addition to their personal compatibility, Ruffnut and Magnus were known to have fought alongside each other on multiple occasions.  One point that is dryly noted by both their biography-sagas and other primary sources is that the number of enemies slain by her hands was significantly higher than his, due to a combination of her own martial prowess and enemies underestimating her on the basis of her build or gender or both.  The most significant portion of these kills apparently came from the Siege of Roskilde, where Ruffnut guarded the stairway that led to their children's nursery, and the skalds and other eyewitness accounts reported that the bodies formed a battlement…

—House Fairhair And The Grand Thing, Oslo, Norway, 1667

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### Chapter 23: Changing The World

When considering the various polymaths who have speckled history's pages, Hiccup Haddock was certainly more influential than many of his peers in this multi-talented category, with noted and far-reaching works in the economic, political, social and scientific realms.  Indeed, compared to the Arabian polymath Ibn al-Haytham, who passed away shortly before Haddock's rise to prominence, Haddock's direct effects on history are immeasurably greater.  This holds true even when putting aside the fact that Haddock encountered al-Haytham's writings later in life and immediately began to make use of them in some of the most earth-shattering scientific innovations of his career.  However, this is exaggerated to the point where, in much of the literature on the topic, he is held up as singularly influential, a world-changer without peer in his own or any era.

What many of these historians have failed to consider is the simple facts of Haddock's life in comparison with those of other exceptional intellects—he was of the nobility, and as the first tamer of dragons, essentially sat on a treasury equal to that of the combined vaults of every contemporary European noble and royal.  This meant that unlike many other polymaths throughout history, Haddock, as his own patron, needed not labor for his supper; he was able to pour significant efforts and funds into his experiments without worrying about where his next meal would come from, and could afford to share his innovations freely.  Al-Haytham, in contrast, had to work as a tutor, and was once imprisoned under house arrest for ten years by the Fatimid Caliph while feigning madness to avoid punishment.  While Al-Haytham spent the time imprisoned productively, writing his famous Book of Optics and other treatises on math and the sciences, the obvious question arises of what sort of innovations the man might have produced had he possessed Haddock's resources and freedoms.

This is not to discount the distractions and diversions of focus that his diplomatic accomplishments cost Haddock, as he was the chief's herald and later the chief and king himself.  However, while his innovations and dragons attracted significant and intense interest from all over Europe and Asia Minor, the argument may be reduced to the point that, regardless of how many offers of alliance or marriage were made to Haddock and how many state visits he made over the course of his life, even with his complete upending of the status quo in regards to communications speeds, he still possessed idle time and resources in abundance for the pursuit of knowledge and innovation, something not available to most other polymaths in history.

—The Genius Has No Clothes: An Alternate View Of Innovation, 1818

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### Chapter 24 : Your Only Hope...

King Harthacnut's attack on Berk, in addition to costing the lives of dragon-riders in the first recorded battle on dragon-back (featuring human belligerents against the dragon-riders; Haddock's battle against the Green Death belongs to a different category), set the stage for the events that followed.  Within a matter of months, the entirety of Europe had heard of the event, and the awareness that dragons could be tamed set off what could only be called an arms race among the European kingdoms as they sought to replicate the feat, or defend themselves against dragons being used against them.  This was, of course, exacerbated by the fact that the continental European dragon populations had crashed due to human predation over the preceding centuries.

—A History Of The Isles, Oxford, England, 1591

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### Chapter 25: ...Hide, And Pray That It Does Not Find You

**Night Fury**: Strike-class dragon, Class Exemplar

**Overview**: Nocturnal-optimized strategic bombing and aerial supremacy dragon, capable of multiple mission profiles, with a focus on strategic and tactical raids.  Due to the high speed, agility, intelligence, stealth and firepower capacity of this dragon, nations with confirmed members of the breed (see Night Fury Appendix A for listing) are automatically classified at a higher degree of threat by the Office of Draconic Intelligence, as they offer first-strike capacity, even in the face of aerial countermeasures.

**Breath Type**: Acetylene and oxygen plasma charge

**Identification**: Medium-to-large adult size.  Black scales, single wing pair, four legs, grasping paws capable of minimal degree of fine manual dexterity; supplemental tail fins at end of long dexterous tail; wide, flat and blunt head with fleshy ear projections, eyes of green, yellow, blue, or orange coloration, with pupil slits of variable width based on lighting conditions and mood.  No spikes or talons.  Retractable teeth.  Distinctive sound produced when dive-bombing (see Night Fury Appendix B for audio recording).

**Strategic Role**: Front-line combat; materiel and industrial bombing strikes; ground support; aerial supremacy; reconnaissance (HA, BF)

**Known Weaknesses**: The rear tail-fins are required by the dragon in order to maintain flight trim and aerial stability; injury to or removal of these fins will ground the dragon without prosthetics.  Sound produced when dive-bombing also allows alert defenders a window for the deployment of countermeasures.

**Phenotype Cluster**: BØFØS6+S4!S5\*MØTØT8-

**Populations**: Minimal; breeding lines of this dragon are limited, and are mostly descended from Dragonlord Haddock's **Toothless** (NF-000001a), although rogue family lines are known, and there have been cases of egg theft and abductions over the centuries that have not been recovered, as well as other family lines that have been lost to the Empire due to state secession.

—North Sea Empire, Office of Draconic Intelligence, Dragon Breed Profiles (Declassified), 1822 Edition

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### Chapter 26: Aftermaths

Kingdom of Norway
●   Kingdom of Denmark
Hiccup Haddock III
Astrid Haddock I
Magnus Fairhair I
Godwin of Wessex (POW)
~300 unmounted Monstrous Nightmares (Stoker-class dragon)
1 aerial gravity bomb platform, Gronckle-carried (Boulder-class)
2,000 heavy Norse infantry, armed with bows
3,000 men-at-arms (mixed English and Danish), armed with bows
23 dragon fatalities
24 humans wounded
35 dragons wounded
~700 wounded
~40 longships destroyed
~15 longships captured
Capture of King Harthacnut
Capture of Earl Godwin of Wessex
Capture of Sweyn Godwinson
Capture of 15 lesser nobles (List)
691 other prisoners (List)

The Battle of the Sound of Berk was a naval/aerial battle in the waters of the Sound of Berk, between the forces of the combined Danish and English fleets and army under the leadership of King Harthacnut, and the Hooligan tribe of Berk, under the leadership of Dragonlord Stoick The Vast and then-Herald Hiccup Haddock.

This battle was the only engagement of the undeclared First Berkian-English War, and featured multiple firsts in the history of warfare, including the first deployment of dragons against naval targets, the first use of dragons in a military setting by humans, and the development of dragon-dropped gravity bombs.  The results of the battle was a decisive Berkian victory, and heralded a new era of warfare.

—Battle of the Sound of Berk (n.d.) In Wikikenna.  Retrieved September 26, 1847

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### Chapter 27: A Humble Proposal

…within half a year of the battle with the Green Death, the first recorded attempt at theft of dragons from Berk occurred, instigated by the then-petty king of Vedrarfjord, known at the time as Adalwin ua Imir, in southeastern Éire.  This first attempt failed, but Hiccup clan Haddock appealed for moderation on the part of his tribesmates and likewise failed to end the threat decisively.  This allowed Adalwin to insert a spy into Berk, Heather nic Oswald clan Murchadh, then age fifteen.  Trained in espionage from the age of thirteen, her orders were to infiltrate Berk, steal dragons, and exfiltrate back to Vedrarfjord.

While not all of the legends about Heather clan Murchadh (later clan Ingerman) are accurate, the broad strokes of those legends are generally on point.  Due to emotional attachments to Berk, specifically that of her future husband, Fishlegs clan Ingerman, she defected to the Hooligan tribe.  And, as her first action on behalf of her adopted society, she aided Berk in a Trojan Horse-style infiltration of Adalwin's keep for a retaliatory decapitation strike against her former masters.

The attack was a mixed success, with only some of its objectives achieved, and resulting in numerous unintended consequences.  These included…

—Origins Of The Grand Thing, Edinburgh Press, 1631

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### Chapter 28: Ties That Bind

The decisive defeat of the Danish-English navy by Berk in late 1041, in particular, resulted in a tremendous shock to the political status quo of the era.  While most of the nobility and royalty had heard of the story of the defeat of the Green Death in the year since the event, that had been an incident from which there was a limited number of primary witnesses, and only second-hand evidence was available (even if that evidence was compelling).  In contrast, there were thousands of survivors from the English fleet, all of whom were terrified first-hand witnesses to one of the most one-sided naval battles in recorded history.  The rumors and news would be much harder to dismiss as exaggeration or invention as many had done previously.  While it might be hyperbole to state that an air of hysteria began to descend on the monarchs of Europe, many did react to the news with varying degrees of fear, placation, aggression, or all three at the new power that had just made itself known.

—Corpus Historiae Berkiae, 1396

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### Chapter 29: In Fire Forged

Feudalism, as a general term for sociopolitical systems consisting of a series of social classes of landless workers, landowners, warriors, and priests in a low-currency, medium-resource environment, can be seen as a low-complexity societal failsafe in the aftermath of a collapse from a higher order political structure.  While higher-order political structures can potentially exist given the same conditions as a typical feudal society, their overhead costs (educational, infrastructure, lack of leisure, etc.) render them more unstable under such circumstances.  In contrast, a feudal system can be extremely stable; under conditions that allow for feudalism, the system can persist for centuries before enough excess social and financial capital is accumulated to allow for a shift to higher-order forms of government.

Key features of feudalism include systemic and institutionalized social stratification, wherein a minority of families or other institutions control the majority of the society's resources (typically in the form of arable land), a worker class that farms the land and produces the goods necessary for survival, a warrior class that protects the land and workers from encroachment by other landowners, and a priestly class that legitimizes the rule of the landowners.

It should be noted, though, that, as a low-complexity sociopolitical system, feudalism is highly vulnerable to disruption caused by changes that allow for an increase in productivity or social mobility by the worker class, who make up the majority of the population.  Nowhere is this better seen than in the events of the 1040s to 1080s in Europe…

—Nationbuilding: How People Move, Talk, Think, Organize, & Structure Themselves, 1888, Amsterdam University Press

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### Chapter 30: The Blood Of The Covenant Is Thicker…

…Ingerman's contributions to Haddock's legacy, however, pale in comparison to that of Astrid Haddock I, Hiccup's wife.  The only daughter of Chief Hákon Mortensson clan Hofferson and Chieftess Gunvor Dugalsdoittor clan Hofferson of Eire, married to Hiccup Haddock III on 27 November 1041 after a ~15 month courtship, the two were genuinely inseparable partners for the remainder of their lives.  Popularly known by multiple titles, including The Skydancer, Freyja's Chosen, Sif's Blade, and others, she is generally credited as having been instrumental in channeling and directing the productivity of her husband's intellect into practical ends.

…in addition to acting as Hiccup's manager, or as his whetstone, the metaphor that she preferred, Astrid, in her position as her husband's marshal, was widely feared and respected across Europa as the foremost military mind of her era, a reputation inspired from her tactics used during the Second Battle of the Seine River…

—A History Of The Isles, Oxford, England, 1591

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### Chapter 31 : ...Than The Water Of The Womb

However, while the social caste system and universal literacy were the areas in which Berk most drastically differed from other Norse cultures at the time, other, more subtle, differences lay in wait.  Perhaps the most paramount of these was Berk's degree of gender-based legal equality; while Norse cultures generally were significantly more advanced than their contemporaries in Europe in this regard, Berk's legal codes differed significantly from that starting base.  While Norse women could divorce and were able to inherit property and participate in combat, Hooligan women could also hold titles in their own names, purchase property, engage in commerce and lawsuits, vote in tribal Things, travel without a chaperon, and held other rights that were disallowed even in the most progressive Norse societies elsewhere.

This resulted in significant confusion to those interacting with and attempting to influence and control Berk's Norse.  There were numerous cases where the assumption that the legal codes were effectively identical ran into the reality that they were not, exacerbated by the fact that the Hooligans used the same terms for different concepts.

Perhaps the best case of this is in the Hooligan "concubinage" structure, which had been comprehensively reformed in the 960s AD during the Chiefdom of Hiccup Haddock II.  During these reforms, the concept was changed from a system of acknowledged lovers for a man in an arranged marriage to a legal definition of a temporary civil partnership that would expire after a given period unless renewed by the will of both parties.  This civil partnership was designed to offer significant protections and legal guarantees for the woman (or, significantly more rarely, the man) thus attached.  The intent of these reforms were to correct previous abuses that had grown with the concubinage system since the prior reforms after the outlawing of thralldom in the late 800s AD—specifically, that the wives, as head of the domestic household, were exploiting concubines and their children, who typically could not leave, even in the face of a failed relationship, without facing poverty.

As a result, the reforms attempted to financially incentivize peace and functional relationships in these polygamous households, by requiring the formal adoption of the (typically clanless) concubine into the clan, as well as their children, and the guarantee of a marriage price to be paid by the concubine-holder on behalf of their former partner in the event that their partner wished to marry someone else.  And yet, the Hooligans still called this system by the old term of "concubinage."

This and other such areas of confusion of legal terminology caused problems for the machinations of, among others, the Norwegian jarls and the Catholic Church.

—The Second Flowering Of Yggdrasil: An Analysis Of The Norse Resurgence, 1710

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