—————————————————————–
Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Simzy
—————————————————————–
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
There is no strongest weapon. There are only strongest warriors.
If you give Xiang Yu a wooden stick and the swordsman before him a steel sword, who will win?
The answer is the ranger with a sniper rifle 100 meters away.
This means that before the advent of firearms, in the age of cold weapons, discussing the strongest weapon is meaningless.
The formulas we usually memorize, like [Spear > Cavalry > Sword > Spear], are actually very rough schematics of battlefield situations.
From the battles I’ve fought in Britain and the Eastern Roman Empire, I’ve learned that the correct formula is [Cavalry >>>>> Spear, Sword, etc.].
Whether heavy or light cavalry, you need at least ten men to face one mounted warrior.
So, I wanted to train Viking cavalry somehow… but the native Scandinavian horses were too small for heavy cavalry. The Scandinavian terrain itself was also unsuitable for cavalry charges.
If I made good use of the land between Novgorod and Kyiv, it might be possible… I had asked Árpád of the Magyars for advice on horsemanship, and he would send someone. They were already reaping the benefits of the stable Dnieper River trade route since last winter, so he’d readily agree.
I needed to make the most of this opportunity.
[Clang-! Clang-! Clang-!]
A life dedicated to iron and hammer. Randi’s hammering, worthy of being called that of a master, was filled with obsession and determination.
The rhythmic clang of the hammer was like the ringing of a temple bell. Watching and listening to it, all sorts of thoughts arose in my mind, followed by a moment of sudden silence.
[Clang! Clang! Sizzle-]
The extraterrestrial ore, enraged after countless strikes, plunged into the water with a red-hot face, boiling the calm surface to cool itself down.
An acrid smoke, smelling of iron, like blood, filled the workshop. The skilled craftsman, measuring time with his own internal clock, lifted a massive sword.
[Drip-]
“Brokkr and Eitri…”
Randi murmured the names of Brokkr and Eitri, the Norse smith gods. Even he, with his strong body built from a lifetime of wielding heavy hammers, had to lift the massive sword with both hands. The sword was worthy of the names of the divine brothers he invoked.
“When you melt 100 pieces of ordinary iron ore, 10 of them become high-quality steel with the gods’ blessing. And among those, one piece of steel is particularly good, and with the right timing and luck, becomes a legendary sword, like the Sword of Courage I presented to the Konungr.”
Randi, while focusing all his attention on the forging, murmured to me, having sensed my presence. His eyes were still fixed on the sword in his hands.
In a time without standardized measurements for iron and steel, anyone who used weapons could distinguish between good and bad iron, but crafting it was a different story.
The natural state of the iron ore, the condition of the furnace, the intensity of the flames, the humidity, the weather, the skill of the craftsman, and so on.
A legendary sword was the result of countless conditions aligning. Randi was talking about legendary swords.
“Those who don’t know much about iron believe that with exceptional skill, you can create a legendary sword even with the worst materials. But that’s not true.”
[Sizzle- Sizzle-]
Randi, having confirmed that there were no impurities or imperfections on the blade he had hammered, plunged the sword into the water again to cool it down.
Randi silently watched the rising steam, his face resembling that of a meditating monk.
“What is the reason for making good iron in the first place?
It’s to create purer iron crystals. The reason we use all sorts of methods, like charcoal, coal, my own blood, animal blood, human bone fragments, animal bone fragments, is to create strong and resilient iron. Iron like this.”
[Ting-]
He lightly flicked the blade with his thick finger, and a clear sound, unbelievably pure for such a massive sword, resonated through the workshop.
“Human skill comes after that. I never folded or unfolded this sacred iron. I just melted it and let it solidify into the shape of a sword. The iron did the rest. This is… a truly divine sword, Konungr Helgi. A sword only you can wield.”
Although it must still be hot, Randi’s hands, covered in thick animal hide gloves, held the part where the hilt would be and the blade, longer and wider than an ordinary sword, with both hands.
I, wearing gloves handed to me by Randi’s apprentice, carefully lifted the sword.
[Hum- Hum-]
Perhaps due to its excellent elasticity, the still-vibrating hilt gently accepted my two hands. The tip of the sword, pointed towards the sky, revealed its sharp, bluish blade.
‘A legendary sword. No, a divine sword.’
The massive sword, already gleaming even without polishing, with a blade as long as a woman’s height and wide, seemed to welcome its new owner.
‘Made from extraterrestrial ore, is it an extraterrestrial sword?’
Since Randi made it, was it half and half?
The center of gravity was located in the hilt and the custom-made guard above it, so I could adjust the angle for slashing and thrusting with just my wrist strength.
My heart pounded rapidly, excited like a child receiving a Christmas present.
“Randi, you are the world’s greatest craftsman. I guarantee that the moment this sword enters the memory of the world, the name of Randi will precede the name of Ulfberht.”
At my deeply satisfied voice, Randi, who had been tense, finally burst into laughter.
Uha- Hahahaha!
The laughter of one who had finally achieved his lifelong dream. It was so hearty that some of his apprentices even teared up.
Leaving Randi to his laughter, I handed the greatsword, which still needed finishing touches, to his apprentice standing respectfully beside me and requested him to make a spear and a short sword from the remaining meteorite.
The price would be the rest of the meteorite.
Of course, the items Randi would create in the future would go to me, his top priority customer… but I would pay him handsomely. I could even expand his workshop…
Since he had already diverted the water, it might be good to create an industrial area.
I could also build workshops for carpenters and stonemasons nearby. I would have to convey this idea to Eric.
“Then keep up the good work.”
“Yes…! Konungr!”
“I’ll be going now, Randi.”
“Uha-hahahaha! Uhahaha! Uhahahahahaha!”
Turning my back on Randi, who had collapsed to his knees, tears streaming down his face, I walked towards the heart of Aarhus, filled with the clamor of ongoing civil engineering works. Randi’s laughter saw me off.
Even as the fresh shockwave of the new faith I advocated, called “Helatru” (believers in Hel) among the people, spread rapidly by those who witnessed “Helgi’s Proof” that day, the redevelopment of Aarhus and its surrounding areas continued.
Leon, who had been frantically searching the valleys and caves of the mountains north of Aarhus with Hrolfr, came in, eager to report to me. He was about to turn back upon hearing the news of the split boulder in Uppsala, but Hrolf had dissuaded him.
He said he would head straight to Uppsala after reporting to me. He had to write about my great feat and spread the word…
Having given up on understanding the eccentric scientist’s thoughts, I told him to go ahead. The Roman, looking even more excited than when he first barged into my office, chattered on and on about his and Hrolf’s great discovery.
Although half of it was excessive praise and grandiloquent rhetoric about me, the content itself was worth talking about.
Surprisingly, the Northmen, who had knowledge of mining but weren’t particularly interested in it, showed remarkably little interest in the long, high mountain range above them.
Except for one iron mine, it was practically unexplored, until Leon and Hrolf’s efforts shed some light on it.
The result?
There were copper, gold, and another iron mine in this land.
At first, I was skeptical.
Could a scholar find copper, iron, and gold mines just by poking around the foothills?
But it turned out… the villagers in the area had been unknowingly collecting gold dust and gold-colored stones flowing down from the valleys.
Leon, finding this suspicious, wanted to follow the stream upwards. He eventually discovered mines practically screaming “Find me-!” with veins of copper and gold clearly exposed.
‘I should have thought of this. Why did I think the blessing of abundance would only affect crops, fish, and bees?’
I had a feeling that there were probably more things slumbering beneath the earth, besides these mineral veins.
Of course, I didn’t have the reason or the capacity to start a large-scale gold rush right now. I just kept this information to myself, dispatched a small force to the village, appointed the villagers as honorary mine guards, and discussed the more pressing issue with Leon.
We had a city to build.
I wanted to turn all the major cities in my territory, like Aarhus, Uppsala, Roskilde, Bamburgh, Jorvik, Novgorod, and Kyiv, into beautiful brick cities like Constantinople.
How wonderful would it be? A fairytale-like city painted in the same color, sturdy and less prone to massive fires.
But the problem was, we didn’t have the materials to build such… magnificent stone houses.
Porphyry? Portosola? (Pozzolana) Anyway, we needed special materials to make Roman concrete… and the biggest problem was the lack of volcanic ash.
No volcanic ash in mountainous Scandinavia? It might be surprising, but as far as I knew, there were no active volcanoes in this area, not even anything that looked like one.
Naturally, volcanic ash was unobtainable. According to Leon, we could make concrete somehow… but he was skeptical that it would be as effective as the concrete the Roman Empire produced.
Even if we miraculously produced high-quality concrete… we would still have to use the surrounding stones for construction, and the stones in Scandinavia were incredibly hard gneiss, also known as granite.
I had seen the blessed marble of the Mediterranean in Constantinople. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that if I pressed my finger on it with even a little force, it would leave a mark.
It was the combination of such blessed materials and excellent concrete that enabled such magnificent architecture… If the Mediterranean had been filled with granite instead of marble, the Roman Empire would have never dreamed of the Colosseum or the Hippodrome.
One option was to buy it from the Roman Empire at a premium… but using local materials for maintenance was fundamental.
So, after a whole day of contemplation, Leon finally suggested a new approach, which was a blessing of nature bestowed upon granite-less, marble-deprived Scandinavia: sturdy timber.
In a way, the true masters of Scandinavia weren’t us humans, but the dense forests. The forests, which grew faster than we could cut them down, provided us with a near-infinite supply of timber…
For us, logging wasn’t just a choice for winter firewood, but a way to protect our right to survive against an ever-expanding nature.
We would build houses by laying a foundation of sturdy, long-lasting granite and then erecting smooth, uniformly sized wooden pillars vertically. The gaps would be filled with Leon’s special Scandinavian concrete.
According to the sketches Leon drew, it would be a very stylish and somewhat familiar wooden building.
I readily approved, and since a king leads by example, I decided to build my house first, using this state-of-the-art(?) construction method, on a low hill slightly east of Aarhus.
It was natural that my vassals, as well as the people of Aarhus and Uppsala who were interested in their king, would gather around with curious faces, but soon a new problem arose…
A redevelopment boom suddenly erupted among the Northmen.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
