The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki

• King Helgi Attempts to Marry Queen Olof
• Queen Olof: "beautiful in looks, yet cruel and arrogant in temperament" - 50; ruler of Saxland (in Germany)
• Helgi tries to force Olof to marry him. She goes along with it until he falls drunk into her bed
• Olof sticks Helgi with a sleep thorn, shaves and tars him, sticks him in a clothes sack, and sends him and his drunk followers to their ship. They flee at the sounds of Olof's gathering army.
• King Helgi's Vengeance
• He tricks her into coming into the woods in the middle of the night to collect treasure he buried and told one of her slaves about
• Helgi takes Olof captive, sleeps with (rapes) her many nights, without wedding her
• The Girl Yrsa
• Daughter of Helgi and Olof, named after a dog of Olof's, showing her contempt for the offspring
• Helgi marries her after locating her after 12 years
• The Ring
• King Hroar, brother of King Helgi, wants a ring owned by Helgi, along with their sister Signy
• Hroar said to Helgi, "I will make this agreement [to grant Northumberland to him] if you will share with me some of our treasured possessions. I want the ring" - 56
• The Elfin Woman and the Birth of Skuld
• King Adils, ruler of Sweden from Uppsala, wants to marry Queen Yrsa
• Helgi has a one night stand with an elfin woman and 3 years later 3 people bring a daughter to him named Skuld and "she showed a vicious temperament." - 59
• King Hring of Norway Marries Hvit (daughter of the mistress of the King of Lappland)
• The Love of Bera and Bjorn (son of Hring)
• Bjorn Rejects Queen Hvit's Advances: The Curse
• Hvit, Bjorn's step-mother, said "while the king was away, they had an opportunity to share one bed." - 63
• Bjorn slaps the queen hard, and she hits him with her "wolfskin gloves, telling him to become a cave bear" and feed on King Hring's livestock - 63
• Bjorn's Transformation into a Bear and the Birth of Bodvar
• Bjorn and Bera reunite, she seeing him in the Bear's eyes and following him back to a cave where he turned back into his human form, as he does every night
• Bjorn predicts his death and the birth of 3 boys to Bera: Elk-Frodi, Thorir, and Bodvar
• The Queen eventually persuades Bera to eat a piece of roasted bear meat, against Bjorn's warning. Elk-Frodi develops the lower half of an elk, Thorir the feet of a dog, and Bodvar is of normal human appearance
• Thorir Becomes King of the Gauts
• after reuniting, "Elk-Frodi showed him [Thorir] the path to Gautland (southern province of Sweden), advising him that the king of the Gauts had just died and that Thorir should go to the kingdom." - 70
• Thorir attends the assembly of Gauts and, being a great size, fits a large throne used to determine who would be king, and he is called King Thorir Hound's Foot
• Bodvar's Vengeance
• "Bodvar entered the [queen's] chamber and turned to Queen Hvit. He placed the rough leather bag over her head. Then he pulled it down and tied it around her throat. He knocked her off her feet and with beatings and torments sent her to Hel, dragging her through every street." - 73
• King Hring became sick and died, and Bodvar succeeded him but was not long in that position
• Bodvar and His Brothers
• Queen Skuld Incites King Hjorvard (to rebel against paying tribute to King Hrolf of Denmark)
• Queen Skuld Attacks King Hrolf at Yule
• "It is not mentioned that King Hrolf and his champions worshipped the old gods at any time. Rather, they put their trust in their own might and main." - 88
• The Great Battle
• The Death of King Hrolf Kraki

The Saga of the Volsungs

• Sigmund Draws the Sword from Barnstock
• Siggeir: king of Gautland (southern province of Sweden); becomes engaged to Signy, daughter of King Volsung
• an unnamed man (likely Odin) "very tall and gray with age thrust [a sword] into the trunk [of the tree in the middle of King Volsung's hall, Barnstock,] so that it sank up to the hilt...'He who draws this sword out of the trunk shall receive it from me as a gift, and he himself shall prove that he has never carried a better sword than this one.'" - 2
• Sigmund: son of King Volsung; after removing the sword, refuses to sell the it to Siggeir even for all his gold
• Siggeir Plots Revenge
• King Siggeir wishes to leave the wedding celebration early to avoid bad sailing weather
• "Signy spoke to her father: 'I do not wish to go away with Siggeir, nor do my thoughts laugh with him. I know through my foresight and that special ability found in our family that if the marriage contract is not quickly dissolved, this union will bring us much misery.'" - 3
• The Fall of Volsung
• King Volsung, sons, and a small military force meet Siggeir and Signy in Gautland three months later, as agreed
• King Volsung is killed and his sons taken captive
• "an old she-wolf came up to them out in the woods as they sat in the stocks...She bit one of the brothers to death and then ate him all up." - 6
• Signy leaves the brothers, and for nine nights the she-wolf "ate one of the brothers until all but Sigmund were dead." - 6
• Sigmund kills the she-wolf by biting and pulling out her tongue; some claim the she-wolf was a witch form of Siggeir's mother
• Signy Plots Revenge
• "they decided that he [Sigmund] should make an underground dwelling in the woods...King Siggeir, however, believed that all the Volsungs were dead." - 7
• Signy has Sigmund kill both sons of King Siggeir
• Signy Gives Birth to Sinfjatli
• Signy changes appearances with a sorceress, has sex for three nights with Sigmund, her brother, and gives birth to Sinfjotli
• Sigmund and Sinfjotli Don the Skins
• they "put the [wolf] skins on and could not get them off. And the weird power was there as before: they howled like wolves, both understanding the sounds." - 11
• they kill 7 men together for treasure, Sinfjotli kills 11 men by himself, Sigmund bites him in the windpipe and is provided a healing leaf for Sinfjotli by a raven
• Sinfjotli kills the two children of King Siggeir and Signy after they betray their presence to the King
• "'Willingly I shall now die with King Siggeir, although I married him reluctantly.' Then she kissed her brother Sigmund and son Sinfjotli, walked into the fire [set by Sigmund], and...died there with King Siggeir and all the retainers." - 15
• Sigmund and Borghild bare two sons, Helgi and Hamund
• The Birth of Sigurd
• the son of King Alf and Hjordis
• The Otter's Ransom
• Regin, Sigurd's foster father, has two brothers, Fafnir and Otr, the latter having the shape of an otter during the day
• Loki and Odin are at Andvari's Falls, named after a dwarf, and they kill Otr while he is in otter form
• King Hreidmar demands gold for his son's killing and Loki takes gold and a special ring from Andvari to pay the "Otter's Ransom"
• Regin Fashions Gram (a special sword for Sigurd)
• Regin and Sigurd Go Riding
• Sigurd uses Gram to kill Fafnir, the large snake-bodied brother of Regin
• Fafnir warns Sigurd about taking his treasure and travelling by sea, but Sigurd ignores the warning
• Regin Drinks Fafnir's Blood
• while cooking Fafnir's heart for Regin, Sigurd touches it to test it, and "He stuck his finger in his mouth. And when the blood from the serpent's heart touched his tongue, he could understand the speech of birds." - 27
• Sigurd Eats the Serpent's Heart
• he begins hearing 6 birds telling him to cut off Regin's head and eat Fafnir's heart himself to gain wisdom
• "Sigurd found an enormous store of gold [in Fafnir's lair], as well as the sword Hrotti. He took from there the helm of terror, the golden coat of chain mail, and many other precious things." - 28
• Concerning Sigurd
• Sigurd finds a woman Brynhild lying in a rampart of shields on a mountainside and removes her armor
• she begins teaching him "the ways of mighty things" and presents him a magical beer "full of charmed verse / And runes of healing, / Of seemly spells / And of pleasing speech." - 30
• The Disappearance of Gudrun
• Gudrun mourns the "death" of Sigurd and goes to stay with Thora, daughter of Hakon, in Denmark for 7 1/2 years
• Grimhild, Gudrun's mother, pledges her to marry Atli the Powerful (Attila the Hun)
• Gudrun Carves Runes
• Hogni Interprets His Wife's (bad) Dreams (reassuringly)
• The Brothers' Journey from Home
• The Battle in the Fortress and the Victory
• Hogni Is Captured
• "at the urging of King Atli, they seized Hogni and cut out his heart. Hogni's strength was so immense that he laughed while he suffered this torture." - 44
• King Gunnar, Hogni's brother, was thrown into a snake pit and managed to put the snakes to sleep by playing a harp with his feet, except for an adder which killed him
• The Conversation Between Atli and Gudrun
• Gudrun slits the throats of the two sons she had with King Atli
• Gudrun and Hogni's son, Niflung, kill King Atli

The Vikings: A History by Robert Ferguson

• "Odin's curiosity about the world, and his willingness to take enormous risks to satisfy it, are among the characteristics that distinguish him most sharply from the omniscient and omnipotent God of the Christian conception...Odin's search for knowledge was very often a driven curiosity aimed at finding out more about how their deaths would occur." - 24-5
• "Thus far the Vikings had confined their attacks to coastal targets. From about the 830s onwards they began forcing their way ever deeper inland as prelude to larger and more organized raiding that was probably also an investigation of the possibilities of settlement and/or colonization." - 75
• March 845: "a fleet of 120 ships appeared in the Seine, 'laying waste everything on either side and meeting not the least bit of opposition', and presently threatening Paris....The army of Charles the Bald fled before this force and in desperation Charles offered 7,000 pounds of silver to leave. This is the first recorded example of the danegeld payment, a money-with-menaces tactic that the Vikings would later employ with great success in England." - 96
• "It seems obvious now that policies of appeasement and alliance with individual Viking leaders only encouraged them to push harder. The tactics employed by Louis the Pious, Lothar, Charles the Bald, and Charles the Fat established clear precedents for the gift of lands...which eventually led to the creation of the duchy of Normandy." - 104
• the Danish Viking king "Guthrum/Athelstan...and Alfred [of Wessex] came to a formal written agreement that marked a watershed in relations between the two sides. Its prologue recognized the reality of the status quo, invoking a peace between 'all the English race and all the people which is in East Anglia'. The boundary between the neighbors [, the Danelaw,] was settled as running 'up the Thames, and then up the Lea, and along the Lea to its source, then in a straight line to Bedford, then up the Ouse to the Watling Street'." - 140
• "Natural factors also played their part in the settlement [of Iceland], in particular the serendipity of an interlude of climate change, known to climatologists as the Medieval Warm Period or Little Optimum, that lasted from about 800 to 1200 and made these centuries among the warmest of the past 8,000 years" - 161
• 930: "with the available land taken, an awareness of Iceland as a country and of themselves as no longer settlers but Icelanders had arisen among the farmers. This manifested itself in the desire for an assembly that would serve the needs of the entire population...The general assembly, the althing, convened annually for two weeks in late June at Thingvellier, or 'the Assembly Plain'" - 165
• "While slavery was being replaced in other parts of the Carolingian empire by serfdom, the colonists in Normandy [under Rollo, or Rolf the Walker,] developed Rouen as an important centre for the trading of slaves. The trade brought such prosperity to the region that it was still thriving at the end of the eleventh century, occasioning a rebuke from the Lombard cleric Lanfranc to his master, William the Conqueror, and a request that he forbid slavery throughout his territories." - 195
• 962: "Otto [the Great] styled himself augustus and gave the name of Sacrum Romanum Imperium, or Holy Roman Empire, to his collected territories...It was not as large as Charlemagne's empire, but after a century of chaos its creation symbolized the return of order to central Europe." - 147
• "A wealth of words passed in the English language as a result of the Scandinavian settlements. Among the most striking adoptions were the Old Norse personal pronouns 'they', 'them' and 'their'...Many words with an initial sk sound, such as sky, skill and skin, derive from Old Norse, as do everyday words like anger, husband, wing, thrive, egg, bread, and die." - 238
• "a procession of men, Christian and Heathen, approached the Lawrock [in Iceland], named witnesses, and declared that they would not live under the same set of laws...Thorgeir [, the Lawspeaker since 985 for 15 years,] was being asked to set up a separate law code that would have required a separate assembly with its own, Christian, hallowing rituals, so that two communities could carry on separate but parallel lives." - 304
• Thorgeir said, "'It will prove true that if we tear apart the law, we will also tear apart the peace.'...both sides agreed that everyone should have the same law...It was then proclaimed in the laws that all people should be Christian, and that those in this country who had not yet been baptised should receive baptism" - 305
• "Unlike the god of the Christian, Odin felt that he understood little of the world he had created...His resignation [through Thorgeir's decision in Iceland] would leave him free to wander the world with his staff and his long coat, broad-brimmed hat pulled down over his one good eye, in pursuit of more knowledge and more understanding." - 313
• "The break between theCatholic and the Orthodox Churches that occurred in 1054 finally compelled the triumph of Roman Christianity among Swedes and the theory proposes that a century of Greek Christianity was therefore edited out of Swedish history." - 374
• 1090: "Inge [the Old] was able to press through the re-introduction of Christianity to the Svear [aka. Swedes]...he presided over the long-postponed destruction of the great Heathen temple at Uppsala. With that, the last true refuge of Odin, Thor, Frey, Freyja and the rest of the Aesir was gone." - 377