Epilogue

Three years would pass from the twins was born until Elizabeth bore the Jarl another child.

Another boy saw the light of day and they named him Thormod as the giant had passed in a brawl, on Irish soil, with the Danes.

He sported the same red hair as his namesake and his older sister.

He was followed by two girls with a couple of years in between.

Solveig, fair as her aunt, with a sunny disposition and Ingvild, a dark haired quiet beauty.

Those were the children that lived until adulthood but there were others that were not so fortunate. The Jarl and his wife buried three of their children...

The Volva stayed with them for the rest of her days. She was knowledgeable with herbs and Elizabeth learned a lot of her healing abilities from her but further than that, she was sceptical to her trans like performances but heeded her stellar intuition.

Jane and Carl lived prosperous lives and Carl never went on another expedition. They had a girl after Birk and that was to be the last of their offspring.

Gjendine accompanied Odin on his sojourn to the far east. After three years they headed back to Norwegian soil to welcome their one and only child, a son, four months later.

One would think that Caroline Bragesdottir had gotten off lightly by ending her days in Valhall, wining and dining for all eternity. Unfortunately for her, she had not died instantly on the battle field but had succumbed to a fever a few days later. She spent her afterlife in illness and starvation with Hel the goddess of death. Hel's north faced castle was filled with venom of the serpent while the dragon Nilhogg sucked the blood from the inhabitants bodies.

Elizabeth ventured back to her homestead of Longbourn once.

Her father and mother had passed but her brother had married Charlotte as a penance for the sins he had committed and the fate he had inflicted upon his sisters.

It was not a love match as Elizabeth had thought but a marriage of convenience.

The childless pair let Lydia and the eldest of her multiple offspring inherit Longbourn when their time came.

Mary never married and Kitty succumbed to the same fever that took her parents, before she had the chance to marry.

Lydia's son took the Bennet name and the farm would prosper for many years to come, perhaps even as long as Pemberley.

When William the conqueror came to England, his Norwegian ancestry was little known and even less spoken about.

William was the great-great-great-grandson of Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy or Rolf as he was called in Norse. He later earned the appendage of Gaange Rolf, gaange meaning walking. It was an ironic nickname as Rollo grew too heavy for his horse to carry him. Rollo was the younger brother of Darcy Erikson and Fenrir Darcyson's uncle.

Descendants of William the Conqueror settled in Derbyshire under the name D'Arcy were history would repeat itself by another pair of Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam, centuries hence...

Thank you for reading!

Note: I am halfway through two other stories. I promise that neither of those will have any hint of an adulterous Darcy...

One is a modern variation situated in England where Elizabeth works at an explosive plant, owned by Catherine de Bourgh. A two component military explosive will be stolen and ODC will go on an adventure to Yemen at odds. They will be looking for the stolen explosives, the thief and a missing Bennet sister.

The second is a Regency romance where it will be ODC against the world as I try to write a continuation of the 2005 movie. The plot bunny it started with was: If Mr and Mrs Bennet had blue eyes and Elizabeth 's were brown... Well, at least it is not Darcy who has...

I am looking for Beta readers who use UK spelling, with a greater knowledge of the English language than myself. As you have probably guessed, English is not my native language and I have a lot to learn... You know conjugation, mood, tense and to correct misused words etcetera...

Explanations

The Viking era, stretches from 793 to 1066.

Although the Vikings first attacked Portland in 789, the Danes raid of the convent Lindisfarne is more commonly known and symbolise the beginning of the Viking era.

It ended with the battle on Stanford bridge by Harald Hardrade in 1066, where he lost the battle of England.

In the years in between, the Vikings were known for raiding, raping and their fierce warriors. An apt description in many ways but the Vikings were also farmer, fishermen, traders and craftsmen. Recent genetic research in the areas where the Vikings travelled, suggest that rape were not as common as the tales tell. They find little genes from Vikings which they would have expected.

I have not tried to romanticize the era in this book but to give a truthful rendition of what their lives might have been. I have chosen to omit or tone down a few traits like human sacrifices. Not all Vikings were as barbaric as the Berserkers and I have made my Darcy Viking more of a tradesman than warrior on purpose.

Unfortunately, there are very little written down from the era apart from the sagas which was written down after Norway was christened and contains little of everyday life. What we do know, was that the Vikings valued cleanliness and the archaeological finds of combs, toothpicks, tweezers and ear spoons underlines that. It is believed that they were in fact the cleanest of the medieval people, bathing every Saturday. Although childbirth was risky business, less Viking women died of childbed fever compared to the women in Regency England.

They had strange traditions, double-standards especially in terms of their sexuality, their Gods demanded little of them in form morality or ethics. They were stories to be told and were asked for help but demanded only blót in return. They did not even have a word for religion but called it customs.

Coming home with an English bride, "won" in warfare and otherwise attained were not uncommon in the Viking era. Sigurd the Crusader was the illegitimate son of Magnus Barefoot by an English lady. He ruled with his two illegitimate brothers until they both had died and he gained the throne by himself.

Female Selective Infanticide is one of the most grotesque traditions of the Vikings. There are theories that the Vikings, because of the lack of females this tradition brought, went on expeditions as much to find females as they did raiding and loitering.

The thralls was the Nordic form of slavery. It was perceived as a status symbol to own slaves, they had no rights and were regarded as property of their owner. The thralls were also sexually abused, both the male and the females. The slavery were abolished in the thirteenth century in Norway.

I am picturing this story in the late eight-hundreds, when Alfred the great ruled in the Anglo-Saxons and Harald Hairfair ruled in Norway.

Language-wise I could not write the story in the English language of the era, although I could have written it in Norse but it would have served no purpose. I have tried to avoid the most modern words but I might not have been entirely successful.

*Jarl, the highest noble title in medieval Norway, from the twelve-hundreds the title was changed to Duke. The king appointed the Jarl and he was to provide the king with at least 60 warriors. Under the Jarl were the Herses, four men that had to provide another twenty warriors each.

*Harald Hairfair was the king of Norway from 872 ad to 930 ad. He is known to have gathered Norway into one kingdom. If that really meant the entire Norway is less certain but it is safe to say that he ruled over major parts.

*Bruđ-hlaup, bride-running has developed in to the modern word for weddings in Norway, which are called bryllup today. The running is no longer a tradition though.

*Bride Bang: It was tradition to slam the doors tree times but no one knows why...

*Thviet and Kunta were names for the female genital.

*Munuth: means love-thought and was a word used to describe desire.

*Blót: Sacrificial offerings to the various gods in Norse mythology.

*Skerry/skerries, Scottish word for an islet with sharp rocks that originates from Norse.

*Holm, a small island, often close to land.

*The wolf: Vikings was fond of taming wildlife as pets, most usual were the brown bear.

*The Vikings had a binary sexuality with a lot of contradicting rules. They abused the male thralls as sign of their submission that can be described as nothing less than rape today. The Vikings was never the passive participant as that would make them an outcast and deprave them of their manliness nor could any man gain pleasure from being penetrated. It was not a problem to gain pleasure from penetrating though. It was not looked upon as a sexual act but an act of power and submission. The Vikings were homophobic, homophile practitioners.

*Runer is the letters that the Vikings used.

*Volva (wand-wed) were a wise woman, healer and priestess that could travel around alone in the Viking era with no worries of being assaulted as the Vikings cultivated them. The Volva chose whom she spoke to and whom she did not speak to. Even the master and mistress cowed for the Volva. Grave sites of Volvas have showed that they could possess great wealth and that they used white lead and henbane seeds to reach psychedelic heights. They carried a decorated wand and performed magic. She was what could be described as a shaman or a witch today. She could speak to spirits, enter animals and leave her own body. Male Volvas did exist but they were rare and looked down up on.

*Nagflar, the ship that giants called Jotuun's built by the nails of the dead, to sail to Aasgard and end the world in Ragnarok.

*Draugr, the Viking form of Zombie or a ghost.

Description of the blood eagle further down the page, read it if you can stomach grotesque torture.

The blood eagle (copied fro. )

First, the victim was restrained face down, then the shape of an eagle with outstretched wings would be cut into his back.

After that, his ribs would be hacked from his spine with an axe, one by one, and the bones and skin on both sides pulled outward to create a pair of "wings" from the man's back. If everything went to plan the victim would still be alive at this point to experience the agony of having salt rubbed into his vast wounds.

After that, his exposed lungs would be pulled out of his body and spread over his "wings," offering witnesses the sight of a final bird-like "fluttering" as he died...