The Longboats

For five years I and my company of U.S. Marines along with a platoon of Danish Marines have been stuck in this.....Dimension. Five years ago we were on a joint military operation with the Danes when we were overcome by a thick fog that transplanted us to a different time and place, not of our own earth but of another world. That world was of the ancient Vikings and we, as modern United States Marines, felt we had to help these people when they were ruthlessly attacked by a superior force from Greece. That attack was not for land nor for political gain but for religious purposes of spreading the word of Christianity much the same as it was done in our own world. The difference here was the Greeks! After they split with the Roman Catholic Church to form their own Orthodox church, the Greeks over threw the Romans by force, then began to march across Europe. Anyone refusing to convert to Christianity was killed and their villages and towns were burned to the ground, which actually happened in our own world according to history.

Our company of Marines was commanded by a Captain who we called Skipper, as in nautical terminology and he too was appalled at the carnage the Greeks left in their wake as they marched across all of Europe until they arrived in what history will call Denmark. Here the Greeks were stopped in their tracks with our muskets and cannon I had produced by dozens of black smiths from across the land. That was not all as I continued to modernize our newly found friends with the help of my Marines. Some of whom knew communications so they made a telegraph; others knew how to make a steam engine from the Boy Scouts. Still another, our Corpsman, was actually a doctor that joined the Navy as an enlisted man because he wanted adventure and started his own hospital and medical school. Once the present king was killed in battle, I was voted on by all chiefs to be the next king simply because of my ideas and leadership in war.

That being said, I lead them from the seventh century into the nineteenth century, pushing the Greeks back to central southern Europe. Along with the allies we made on the way such as the Germans, Saxons and French and our modern military I created, our society grew to be more than the Greeks could handle. We now have a working stem engine rail road, a telegraph that stretches through central Europe, trade routes covering all of free Europe, weapons from around the turn of the twentieth century in our own world and I introduce the voting system for all citizens. Each province has representatives that come to the council at the main Great Hall of Skavateland, which became our capitol.

In the final battle of what they now call the Valley of Death, where we defeated the Greeks with such overwhelming power, they retreated south but I lost my love, Gyda. She was pregnant with our child when she was killed but the commander of my loyal followers I called Hardcore was Yngvildr, a strong, battle hardened woman that leads the Hardcore which numbered over two hundred. She and I married after two years of morning and we now have two children, a boy and a girl and she is teaching them the art of battle on a daily basis. Our youngest son is named Bjarni at three years old and the eldest daughter being Torhild who is four years old. They were to inherit this world and I hoped they would be good leaders for our people.