Absolutely not. Anglo-Saxon England was unfortunate enough to suffer Christianisation from both the top down and bottom up simultaneously and by the time the Vikings invaded England was thoroughly Christianised, even if folk traditions still persisted.
Of course, there's no record of people who might have converted from Christianity to paganism during the Danelaw. It's improbable that it didn't happen, of course.
I agree with @Emperor-of-New-Zealand that there might be too late for a reversion to happen in both Anglo-Saxon and Celtic Britain and Ireland, but I expect that will still happen a great del of syncretism between Celtic/Anglo-Saxon Christianity and this organized Norse paganism to the point that the mainland Christians would condemn the Insular Christianity as heretical. I have plans for this ATL Celtic christianity and how this syncretism might happen hence the tag.
Thank you for your feedback. Indeed Ribe lost its importance to Altona/Hamburg and later to Esberg but in this timeline it would stay as an important gateway to Europe and Britain and eventually reach its full potential.
You however ended your sentence with "But we could". Was you meant to finish it?
Thank you. Ill look at it. I think such a overview would be enough for my timeline. While my timeline has Scandinavia and paganism as a main focus, the Carolingians would without doubt have a major influence in its development.
I agree with @Emperor-of-New-Zealand that there might be too late for a reversion to happen in both Anglo-Saxon and Celtic Britain and Ireland, but I expect that will still happen a great del of syncretism between Celtic/Anglo-Saxon Christianity and this organized Norse paganism to the point that the mainland Christians would condemn the Insular Christianity as heretical. I have plans for this ATL Celtic christianity and how this syncretism might happen hence the tag.
Thank you for your feedback. Indeed Ribe lost its importance to Altona/Hamburg and later to Esberg but in this timeline it would stay as an important gateway to Europe and Britain and eventually reach its full potential.
You however ended your sentence with "But we could". Was you meant to finish it?
It was part of some other thoughts I had, but which I thought would diverge from the point. The weakness of Ribe is the fact that it lack hydropower and wind power is not yet a thing. So I made some thought about other potential towns in Denmark, as example the Silkeborg Lakes have access to hydropower, was the center of Danish (bog) iron production until the 17th century thanks to the large forests of the region (which had disappeared in the 17th century).
But a interesting factor is that both Ribe and Hedeby was the first towns of Denmark and both failed in the long term mainly because of the borders of the duchy of Schleswig. Of course in the short term they also ended outcompeted by Hamburg and Lübeck. Ribe could have rivaled Altona with no trouble as the main port of Danish oxen trade.
But a interesting factor is that both Ribe and Hedeby was the first towns of Denmark and both failed in the long term mainly because of the borders of the duchy of Schleswig.
What do you mean by this? Hedeby disappeared in the 11th century, long before Schleswig became a separate Duchy from the Danish Kingdom, and the town that rose to replace it was an important town for centuries forward.
Absolutely not. Anglo-Saxon England was unfortunate enough to suffer Christianisation from both the top down and bottom up simultaneously and by the time the Vikings invaded England was thoroughly Christianised, even if folk traditions still persisted.
Of course, there's no record of people who might have converted from Christianity to paganism during the Danelaw. It's improbable that it didn't happen, of course.
What do you mean by this? Hedeby disappeared in the 11th century, long before Schleswig became a separate Duchy from the Danish Kingdom, and the town that rose to replace it was an important town for centuries forward.
I see Slesvig By as the successor to Hedeby and Slesvig stayed important until it ended up part of Gottorp after the partition after which Flensburg took over as the main town of Schleswig. I would say in a world where Gottorp Amt (county) had ended up in Oldenburg hand and Flensburg Amt in “Gottorp” hands, Slesvig would outcompeted both Flensburg and Kiel, instead of ending up a minor provincial town.
I would say in a world where Gottorp Amt (county) had ended up in Oldenburg hand and Flensburg Amt in “Gottorp” hands, Slesvig would outcompeted both Flensburg and Kiel, instead of ending up a minor provincial town.
Whats happening to the Saxons here the POD is about six years after their finale revolt was put down. Will the see a resurgence in the chaos caused by the Danish raid on Aachen?
Oh god, yes. My folks are addicted to it and have been showing me episodes while I've been home visiting. It may not be the msot historically accurate (obviously), but its really funny.
The Saxon Wars (772 - 818) was a holy war. Made in the name of the Christian god and in the name of fanaticism. The greatest achievement of Karl the Cruel but also his greatest failure. To us the Saxon Wars was both a political, religious and cultural war. We fought to defend our land the Franks forcibly took from us, we fought to restore democracy that the Christians had robbed from us and we fought to preserve our religious freedoms.
Excerpt of “Saxon Wars from a modern perspective”
Saint Karl the Great and father of Europe was one of the most important figures of history. He was crowned as emperor in 800 by Pope Leo III, and ruled over a vast expanse of Europe. Besides his campaign of military conquest, Karl the Great was also known for his many reforms, including the economy, education, and government administration. His rule ushered Europe into a renaissance, a period of spirited cultural and intellectual activity within the Christian Church.
However, to the people in the north outside the Christian Europe, he was known as Karl the Cruel.
Karl the Cruel was determined to wage war on the Saxons until they had either been overcome and subjected to the Christian faith or face total extermination. To the end he had embarked on a thirty years of military campaign of conquest against the Saxons, instituted a forced mass baptism, massacred those who resisted the corvension to the Christian faith and imposed laws that reduced Saxons to merely serf and robbed them of their lands and their political privileges.
But this aggressive conquest of Saxland had also forced the fierce tribes of the Danes further north to respond in a way that Europe never had expected. This was the beginning of an era of raiding, colonisation, exploration and trade all together with the rise of Heathenry as an organised religion separated from the Abrahamic religions. The so-named Viking Age
While there was much debate among scholars what drove the sudden expansion of the Norsemen, there was common agreement that Saint Karl’s campaign to force Saxons to convert to Christianity was one of major links in a long chain of circumstances that drove the Norsemen to go aboard seeking adventure.
The conflict between the Saxons and the Franks had raged for generations on the borderland between Rhine and Weser, a territory of easily traversable plain that lacked impassable mountain ranges or dense forests. Due to this easily obtained wealth of the Rhineland, Saxons developed an affinity for raided the borderland with ease by which the Franks became greatly irritated and attempted to invade and subjected the borderland to their control without much luck.
When the Saxons sacked and burned the church of Deventer in mid-january 772, king Karl had it enough and sought advice from the servants of God and gathered a great army, invoking the name of Christ and departing for Saxland with bishops, priests, and abbots in tow. According to Christian dogma, the Saxons had been bound by the chains of the devils and King Karl believed it was his duty to submit the Saxons to the soft and sweet yok of Christ.
Conversion of the Saxons to the correct faith would ensure salvation for these people and the king himself, whose stock would rise in the eyes of God for having spread the Christian faith. Furthermore he wanted to ensure that their vows of obedience to the king were made with the binding power of Christianity sworn on sacred relics as he didn’t trust the words of these heathens.
He marched into Saxland, where with his army, he laid waste to everything with fire and sword, and his first action was to burn the idol which was called Irminsul by the Saxons in an attempt to destroy the faith of the heathens..
The Irminsul was a sacred pillar of a tree trunk erected in the open air, very much similar to Yggdrasil the World-tree, a great symbol of the Saxon faith and the very connection between the spiritual world and the mortal world. The Axis Mundi of their world view. Its destruction was far from the first event of its kind.
This was one of the weapons used by missionaries against the heathens designed to demonstrate the impotence of their gods. By violating sacred places without incurring divine retribution, both king Karl and the missionaries sought to prove the power of their God and the powerlessness of the heathen gods.
One of these sacred sites was near present day Paderborn and it took three days to destroy the site. According to Royal Frankish Annals, during this time the army became parched due to a recent lack of rainfall. This prompted the Christian God reportedly to miraculously cause water to erupt from the side of a nearby mountain, filling a dry riverbed and providing enough water for the whole army.
Unfortunately this didn’t work as they intended as unlike the Christian god, the pagan gods didn’t care about happenings in the mortal world other than receive sacrifices. So the Saxons continue to resist the Franks unconvincingly about the power of the Christian god. However these sacred sites were not only religious centres but also political and cultural centres.
These sites were also home to Þing and besides serving as an assembly, it was also a place to trade, to host religious festivals, and to establish social ties between communities. The Þing was the very center of Saxons political and cultural life. as well as a means to unite the communities.
Hence the destruction of these sacred sites was not only an attack on the Saxon faith but also an attack on the very fundament of Saxon legal system, trade and culture. Destruction of the Irminsul and the desecration of the sacred site was also a crime to the Saxons.
Discontent spread among the Saxons and they used the opportunity in the Frankish invasion of the Italian kingdom of Lombards to ravage the territories of the Hessians. They attempted to burn a church in Fritzlar, but their poorly organized raid was easily defeated by the Franks. According to the Frankish Annals, they were forced to abandon their efforts due to divine intervention. They reportedly were driven away by a sudden terror sent by God when two young men in white appeared to defend the church from fire.
King Karl returned to Saxland in the campaign season of 775, after successfully concluding his siege of Pavia in 774 and took Desiderius’s kingdom for his own. In Saxland king Karl devastated everything, burning and plundering while killing a great number of Saxons who attempted to resist the conquest. He pushed his conquest towards Oker before as he had in years past securing the customary oaths and hostages and returned to winter in Francia with great rewards.
However the conflict between Franks and Saxons had forced many Saxons to find refuge in Daneland. Those who fled refused to convert to Christianity, lost their land, their political privilege or preferred to live according to their ancient customs.
The exiled Saxons assembled and elected a hertug (war leader) to lead the Saxon resistance and to organize the warriors into a more cogent force. This hertug called himself Widukind, a name that means “Child of the Woods” in obvious reference to old myths and fitting to the hit-and-rut tactics used by his forces.
A violent Saxon rebellion broke out in the following year organized by Widukind whilst king Karl was dealing with another uprising in Italy. Karl brought his army on the perfidious and treaty-breaking people of the Saxons once again and swiftly crushed any resistance. All of Saxland except Nordalbingia was pacificated and was brought under the Frankish control, though Widukind fled back to safety in Daneland.
Another so-called miracle was recorded in 776. According to the Frankish Annals, a church at Syburg was protected by an miracle emanating from the building, which sows terror and descruction among the Saxons, causing their death as the Christian god sook revenge.
In the year 777, king Karl called for a royal diet on Saxon soil in the newly founded Karlsburg, later Paderborn, to integrate Saxland fully into the Frankish kingdom. All of the defeated Saxon jarls were in attendance, save Widukind. Those at present surrendered themselves fully to the power of the king and acknowledged that they would be deprived both of their estate and their freedom should they breach the king’s decrees.
According to the Frankish Annals, they were deeply repentant that they sought forgiveness for their error in rebelling against king Karl, after which he pardoned them mercifully. He had those who declared they wished to become Christians baptized.
In truth they began to fear the wrath of king Karl and his victories had also made them believe that the Christian god was stronger than their sovereign god Týr, the god of victory, war, justice and assembly. Though the consequences for disobedience or falsely converting to the Christian faith had yet extended to death. It had also been suggested that the Frankish Annals chose to interpret their conversion as voluntary rather than compulsory.
Saxland was divided into Westphalia, Angria and Eastphalia, and Karl recruited Anglo-Saxon missionaries to promote the conversion of the Saxons. He strived to use the church with its monasteries, its educational institutions, and its administration as his administrative instrument in Saxland. Missionaries began to travel from village to village and preached the Christian faith while the converted skálds told the tales and deeds from the bible.
However in his absence from the Royal Diet, Widukind traveled to Lejre, the royal seat of the kings of the Skjöldungar, in Zealand in search of an alliance against the Franks.
Daneland was at the time the most centralized kingdom beyond the Christian Europe as it had over the last century consolidated itself under pressures from its surrendering neighbors and eventually united for the first time in the late 8th century. The kingdom at the time of the Saxon Wars was ruled by Sigurd from the Skjöldungar dynasty.
The Franks were the king’s least concern as the Danes had many hostile neighbors surrounding themselves. They lived between the Saxons to the west, the wends to the east, and to the north Geats, Svears, Gutes and other Norsemen. This was one of the major reasons why Daneland was the first centralized kingdom, created exactly so they could protect themselves against their neighbors. King Karl did also do a favor to the Danes by destroying the Saxons which were a threat to the Danes constantly. Besides, the Danes received the Saxon refuges, which was just as beneficial for them, as they were a great boost in their manpower to man their defensive systems.
Yet king Sigurd was very much concerned about the rapidly expansive Frankish empire. Their trade was likewise disturbed when the Franks conquered Frisia and cut them off from the trade network. Soon or later the Franks would become their neighbors and then they would become a far greater threat then the Saxons even were.
In the end king Sigurd felt that the Franks seemed to be the worse of the two and he knew very well that it was a question of the lesser evil. Thus he agreed to enter an alliance with the Saxons and married his daughter Geva away to Widukind for limith support to the rebellion.
In 778, King Karl campaigned in Al-Andalus, hoping to gain a number of cities from the Moors there. On his return through the Pyrenees, the rearguard was ambushed and slaughtered by Basques at the Battle of Roncesvalles. This prompted the Saxons to rebel once again. Widukind and his rebel army laid waste and both destroyed churches and pro-Frankish estates within Saxland with the intention not to plunder but to exact vengeance.
An alliance of Frankish and Alemanni troops intercepted them and inflicted such a great slaughter upon the rebels that only few, including Widukind, managed to escape back to Daneland. King Karl returned the following year and once again invaded Saxland with full retribution and received oaths and hostages before wintering at Worms.
Deeply irritated by the oath-breaking and treacherous Saxons, king Karl demanded several jarls and karls to meet him at Ohrum, on the river Oker in 880, and after settling their affairs forcibly converted them to the Christian faith in a mass baptism, and forced them to swear new oaths of faith to the king in the name of the Christian God. He divided Saxland further into mission areas.
Following the mass baptism, king Karl departed for Pavia, where he stayed for the winter before traveling to Rome the following spring to meet with Pope Adrian. His son Pippin was baptized, and both his two sons Pippin and Louis anointed as kings of South Francia and West Francia respectively by the hands of the Pope.
It was unknown what king Karl and Pope Adrian discussed in Rome, but it was very likely that they spoke on the difficulties in finding a lasting solution to the rebellious Saxons. King Karl was deeply frustrated by his inability to subjugate and convert a people who had plagued in the last ten years.
When king Karl returned to Saxland with the blessing of the Pope and the Catholic Church in the next year, he initiated the next phase of the Saxon Wars.
A particularly brutal stage in the Saxon Wars.
772: First military campaign against the Saxons
773: Frankish invasion of the Italian kingdom of Lombards
774: King Karl crowned as king of the Lombards
775: Second military campaign against the Saxons
776: First Saxon rebellion and completed pacification of Saxland
777: Frankish National diet and Widukind emerged as a rebel leader
778: King Karl’s campaign in Al-Andalus and Second Saxon rebellion.
I heard somewhere that Charlemagne walked an army to the border of Denmark, and was met by a manned Dannevirke. I don't know if it actually happened but if it did that's an interesting prospect.
Bastiram - as early as 782 Danish King Sigfred send emissaries to the Emperor Karl residing at Lippe. Godfred moves his Army and Cavalry to Sliesthorp during 804 to demonstrate his strength to Karl who had camped an Army south of the Elbe. Godfred 808 capture Reric and moves the merchants to Hedeby; being allies of Karl his son Karl moves an Army to intercept Godfred whose nephew Reginald is killed during the fighting. Post this Godfred rebuilds/strengthen Dannevirke by adding the stonewall (if you watched Gåden om Danmarks første konge you're aware of this). Next year Karl? dad or son builds a fortress at Itzehoe.
If not this chain of events the next Frankish Army is the one led by Harald Klak 815 during the civil war of the branches of the Danish Royal line going as far as possibly Eiriksø near Fredericia but not crossing the Lillebælt.
Nice TL Zillian - will pop in from time to time to see where you're taking this. Have to read about the literacy of the Vikings first - which have always been my interpretation..
This law Lex Saxoum (law of the Saxons) made a complete restructuring of our society. A different station for women, a different idea about land ownership, and a completely different relationship between the commoner and nobility along with completely different customs included an alien desert god from a distant land. All this leaves no place for our own ancient tradition and faith. Of course we continued to defend ourselves against this unjust holy war.
Excerpt of “Saxon Wars from a modern perspective”
King Karl wanted to end the uprising in Saxony once and for all, and he saw that a firmer hand was the best means to achieve this goal. He called for another Royal Diet at Lippspring near Paderborn in 782 and both Frisian and Saxon noblemen were present in the diet. The Danish king Sigurd even sent his brother Halfdan as an envoy to the royal court of king Karl to support his brother-in-law Widukind.
The mission of this envoy was lost to history, but it was likely that the Danish support to the Saxons was one of the main subjects possible about the extraction of Widukind. With him, Halfdan brought his four young sons, Anulo, Hemming, Harald Klark and Reginfred. He and his sons were deeply impressed by all the pomp and splendor that unfolded in the Frankish royal court.
At the diet king Karl presented one code of law, Lex Saxum. This laws severed to consolidate the Frankish power over the Saxons and among other included:
Capital punishment on rejection or contempt of the Christian faith
Capital punishment on rebellion or conspiracy against the church or the king
Mandatory church tithe
Mandatory communal worship at the church on sundays
Forced compulsory Infant baptism
Restricted marriage laws
Forbidding of practice pagan customs
Forbidding of burials in pagan burial mounds
Persecution of völva and other practitioners of Seiðr (magic)
Dissolution of Þing and forbidding public assemblies
Only counts have the authority to enact justice
According to the ancient Saxon customs, all free and empowered Saxon men had the right and duty to attend the thing and be involved in decisions about warfare, jurisdiction or even elect their own leaders in Þing. A karl could become an indentured thrall to pay off debt, while a thrall could be made a karl for his services to his community. A karl could be elected to the position of jarl. The jarls often held a position of power as leader of the community but they could not just ignore the karls.
However the Lax Saxonum completely re-written this ancient custom. The position of jarl was made obsolete with the introduction of the hereditary Frankish countship. Now only Christian counts have both legislative, executive and judicial powers, and karls no longer had political and legal privileges nor judicial powers as Þing was forbidden. The Saxons who stayed were persecuted and worshiping their old faith was punishable with death.
In return most of these converted Saxons were hersirs, an elected leader of a herred, an administrative, judicial and military unit just beneath a jarldom, and they were usually a large landowner themselves. Dissolution of Þing and centralization of judicial powers in their hands were in their best interest.
As a result Lax Saxonum solidified a class division between converted nobility partly on the side of the Franks and a large group of free peasants still remained attached to their old beliefs and traditional customs.
The news of the unjust and unfair law stirred a renewed resistance across Saxland. When king Karl departed for Francia, Widukind who had returned from Daneland used the opportunity to incite another rebellion and gather a large army of deeply outraged and armed karls. The most brutal phase of the Saxon Wars had begun.
Since king Karl had already ordered an attack on the Sorbs, his main host, led by the dignitaries Adalgis, Gailo, and Worad, was already on the march when they received word of the Saxon uprising. They gave up on their original goal and turned in the direction of the rebel army without informing the king. Adalgis and his company rendezvoused with another hastily raised company under count Theodoric, a relative of the king.
Yet before the battle was to be joined, the three commanders undertook a premature and reckless charge with their force, afraid that Theodoric alone would be credited with the renown of the victory. This ill-advised gambit resulted in their decimation in the hands of the Saxons, as Adalgis and Gailo were killed along with at least 25 other nobles.
King Karl returned to Saxland and regained control of the situation and Widukind fled back north once again. The king received no fewer than 4500 Saxons prisoners near Verden and instead of a mass baptism, he ordered a mass execution and saw all rebels beheaded in a single day.
The news of the massacre of Verden quickly spread to the rest of Scandinavia to the horror of its inhabitants as the cruel law showed its true color.
In the eyes of the Christians and the spirit of missionizing, the mass execution was logical as the Saxons did indeed break the decree of the Lex Saxum by rebelling against the king. The use of lethal force against nonbelievers was even encouraged and used as a warning against the pagans like his uncle Karloman did in 746, in which the entire Alemannic nobility was wiped out. So the preceside for this mass execution was already there.
However the Norsemen doesn’t directly have capital punishment exept in rare exception and their hardest punishment was outlawry and hólmganga. The outlawry put the criminals outside legal protection and society, which in practice was a death sentence. The hólmganga was a ritualistic trial by combat and the combatants would fight until the first blood or until death. Hólmganga was indeed created to avoid the blood feuds that plagued the society at the time.
In the eyes of the Norsemen, the execution of the rebels was too extreme, unnecessary and dishonorable. The massacre of Verden divided the court of king Sigurd in two factions. One refused to come into further conflict with the Franks and preferred trade and co-exist with them. Another deeply disliked the Christians for their unjust holy war and wanted to support the Saxons against the Franks.
When Widukind returned to Daneland and asked the king for additional support against the Franks, Sigurd steadfastly refused to assist his son-in-law further even if he would break his own oath. He feared that his own kingdom and his people would face the same fate as the Saxons if he continued to intervene in King Karl’s conquest of Saxland.
Despite the refusal, Widukind received unexpected support from his brothers-in-law Gudfred and Harald, the sons of king Sigurd. The young princes had been boys when king Karl invaded Saxland a decade ago, and they grew up with the stories of the Saxon Wars. The hate of the Franks and the Christians had a good breeding ground among the warrior elites of their generation and the two sons were vehemently against their father’s policy of appeasement, and wanted to take vengeance upon the Franks.
Gudfred and Harald assemble a warband of young hirdmen promising blood, glory, spoils and a seat at the Valhalla in the Underworld. Unlike the Saxon nobility who followed the cult of Týr, the Danish nobility worshiped Óðinn, a dark and chaotic god of death, battle-rage, poetry and wisdom both feared and revered among the elites. The warrior cult of Óðinn was imported by the Danes as their sovereign god when the Hercules invaded Daneland in the 5th century and he was at the time not this benevolent all-father as he was known in future.
Both Widukind and the sons of Sigurd returned to Saxland, and waged war against king Karl in two straight years of constant warfare. King Karl engaged the Saxons and their Danish and Frisian allies and defeated them multiple times with such slaughter that out of their immense host very few escaped. Countless hosts were slain, spoils seized, villages burned down and great numbers of captives carried off as king Karl moved east, laying waste to everything in his path.
The Saxons found themselves in increasing distress and only the followers of Óðinn under Gudfred’s leadership wanted to fight on. Even as they won a few battles, they were forced to retreat to the north of the Elbe. Widukind realized that he couldn’t continue to fight or his people would face extermination, especially not with his father-in-law Sigurd refusing to assist him anymore. Eventually he decided to break his own oath to his gods and his kinsmen to save his people. Like when Týr sacrificed his hand to Fenis to save the gods from Ragnarök, when they bound the great wolf.
In the summer of 785, king Karl held an assembly at Paderborn where Widukind was given a promise of impunity and baptized in a public demonstration of submission. He swore an oath of allegiance to Karl who acted as godfather. A one-sided peace treaty was finally reached with the Franks and numerous rebels fled into the forests or crossed into Daneland. Insulted by Widukind’s decision to make peace with the Franks, Gudfred and his followers of Óðinn as well as restless Saxon rebels turned to piracy and raided the coasts along Frisian, and even southern England. The fate of Widukind was unknown.
For a little decade thereafter, a tense peace reigned between the Franks and the Saxons besides occasional raids from the sons of Sigurd and their followers, while king Karl was preoccupied with events in the Italian and Iberian peninsulas until both Frisians and Saxons rebelled in 792 against forcibly recruitment for wars against the Avars. King Karl returned in 794 to finish off what he had started and crushed the last of the rebellious tribes in northern Saxland. He forcibly deported many Saxons from their home and resettled across Francia. The land seized was distributed among loyal Frankish noblemen and local churchmen.
This time king Karl refused to allow Daneland to become a refuge for Saxon rebels. Since he was in Rome to restore Pope Leo III to the apotolic see, he sent an envoy on a diplomatic mission to Daneland to demand the aging king Sigurd to an agreement of non-aggression and end all involvement in the Saxon Wars. As Sigurd tried to keep the Franks at bay by not provoking them unnecessarily, he accepted the agreement not to interfere. The consequence of this diplomatic mission was not known as the envoy was slain by rebellious Saxons in Nordalbingia on a return trip.
Soon afterward king Sigurd died around the time of the coronation of Karl as emperor, and all free men in Daneland assembled in Þings to elect a new king to lead them. The highest of these Þings were langsÞing. One at Viborg in northern Jutland, one at Urnehoved in southern Jutland, one at Ringsted on Zealand, and one in Lund at Skåneland. It was there where decisions for the entire Danish realm were made such as the election of a king.
Two candidates from the legendary dynasty Skjöldungar claimed the Danish throne and each one represented the two political factions at the time. Most of pro-frankish jarls and merchants supported Harald Klak, the son of Halfdan and recently converted to Christianity. Gudfred was in return supported by the exiled Saxons and a majority of land-owning karls. However both factions feared the wrath of the newly crowned emperor and decided that they wanted a strong king who could unite all Danish tribes behind him. They elected Gudfred.
782: King Karl issued Lex Saxum and made Saxland a French province. He executed 4,500 saxons in the Massacre of Verden.
785: Widukind swears faith to king Karl and is baptized as Christian, ending the Saxon rebellion for now.
792: Resumed rebellion by the Saxons in response to a forcible recruitment for wars against the Avars.
793: The Frisian rebelled for the last time likewise due to the forcible recruitment against the Avars.
794: King Karl went on campaign against the Saxons with destructive force and forcibly resettled the Saxons and handed over the seized land to loyal Christian Franks.
798: The Franks formed an alliance with the Obodrites and they defeated the last remaining Saxon tribe in Nordalbingia.
799: Pope Leo III is attacked by Roman aristocrats and only barely managed to reach king Karl i alive. Karl sent him back and restored Leo to the apostolic see.
800: King Karl is crowned as Emperor of the Franks and the Romans by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day.
802: Gudfred succeeded his father as king of Danland.
This is really cool! Norse paganism reformation timelines are always a treat.
From the hinting before it does sound like that Saxony after 818 does finally regain their freedom from the Franks but I wonder, with the major influence that the Danes will probably have in ensuring that how Saxony's specific beliefs are going to be impacted. Perhaps Odin becomes the head god in Saxony just as he is/was in Scandinavia at the time?
Also whilst the Skoldunger dynasty obviously is unknown about their actual origins is it fair to assume they have written/created a mythological origin of the dynasty?
This is really cool! Norse paganism reformation timelines are always a treat.
From the hinting before it does sound like that Saxony after 818 does finally regain their freedom from the Franks but I wonder, with the major influence that the Danes will probably have in ensuring that how Saxony's specific beliefs are going to be impacted. Perhaps Odin becomes the head god in Saxony just as he is/was in Scandinavia at the time?
Also whilst the Skoldunger dynasty obviously is unknown about their actual origins is it fair to assume they have written/created a mythological origin of the dynasty?
