The Northlands

The first folk who lived in the Northlands are known to history as the Andøvan. Very little else other than their name is so known. They left behind only barrow mounds, earthen hill forts, and enigmatic rings of standing stones upon the heights. The ancients who once dwelt in the Northlands are still held in a mixture of awe and fear by modern Northlanders, their barrow fields still haunted by the specters of their civilization that walk the night-darkened hills and forests.   The next to arrive were the Nûk, a tribe of wild elves seeking refuge from the Hyperborean wars in the south. Their descendants live in the Northlands to this day.   Next came the Uln, a wandering tribe of Shattered Folk, remnants of the Hundaei of the Haunted Plains far to the west and south. They founded cities in the Far North, but it is said they fell under the sway of a demonic cult and eventually were destroyed.   Barely a century and a half after the rise and fall of the Uln in the Far North, a third migration of humans began for the Northlands. At the far southern end of the continent of Akados, on the aptly named Helcynngae Peninsula lived the Heldring, a people of feared warriors of great size and martial prowess who sold the soul of their people to the goddess Hel in exchange for might and protection from the invading legions of the Hyperboreans. This contract served them well, for the Hyperboreans were never able to conquer these tribes and ultimately had to wall off the entire peninsula with a defensive breastwork known as the Helwall. It was from this ruthless and bloodthirsty people that the final migration emerged.   Not all of the tribes among the Heldring were as devoted to the Lady of Pestilence and, at a time when her cult’s power was waxing among the Heldring, one thegn called Swein Sigurdson turned his back on the wicked ways of Hel and sought an escape for his people. Swein gathered his family and related clans and headed north to cross the Helwall. The clergy of Hel, however, learned of his defection and sent an army in pursuit. Unable to reach the Helwall, Swein retreated into the Cumorian Mountains to find safety. The Helite council’s army pursued doggedly and drove them ever deeper among the jagged clefts. Finally, Swein and his people were forced to seek shelter in a cave and await the arrival of their imminent executioners. However, even as the Helite raiders charged up the valley and Swein formed his shieldwall across the mouth of the cave, an earthquake struck the valley. The cliff face above the cave mouth collapsed, sealing it off and trapping Swein’s people within while killing many of the charging Helite warriors.   Saved by seemingly divine intervention, Swein nevertheless despaired at the prospect of his people dying trapped within the collapsed cavern. However, when torches were lit, it was found that the back of the cave had likewise collapsed to reveal a series of natural tunnels that ran deep beneath the earth and into the Under Realms. For two years, the clans following Swein survived and forged their path through the darkness of the Under Realms on what they came to call the Neimbrall Trail. At some point during that journey, the Æsir gods of their ancestors, long forgotten when Hel became the dominant deity of the Helcynngae Peninsula, reappeared to them. Swein received a vision from Wotan the All-Father of a distant land of snowy peaks and timbered forests far from the Helcynngae Peninsula, a land where they could hack their homes out of the wilderness and live as a free people.   Swein Sigurdson became the first godi and led his people toward this promised land. For nearly three years, the clans of Swein stumbled through the dark, being forged by the hardships they faced and tempered by the foes they fought until finally one day he led them into the light of day from beneath the chain of mountains in a wide valley they named Storstrøm. Across the vale at the foot of another mountain range they found the Stone of Andøvan, which gave cryptic clues to the people who had lived in the valley long before, and named these mountains for them as a result. Unfortunately for Swein’s people, the lands they found were not unoccupied; a troll-blooded people known as the thrydreg held sway in the lowlands around the North Sea. But the Æsir favored Swein’s people and provided them with a stone fortress built upon a river from which they could defend themselves and begin their own expansion. Thus, with the might of their faith in the Æsir behind them and the tempering they had endured on the Neimbrall Trail within them, Swein’s clans made war upon the thrydreg. No longer as numerous as they had once been due to the faltering resources since the climate shift, and with most of their true troll overlords long since relocated into the mountains, the thrydreg fell before the onslaught of Swein and his people. In a few short years, the thrydreg had been driven from the Vale and the new society of Northlanders had been established.   Over the following decades, the Northlanders continued to push the thrydreg back. They mastered the art of crafting swift longships with which they could launch raids all along the coast, and soon the last pockets of thrydreg were destroyed or in hiding among the Wildlands. Swein was named the first køenig of Storstrøm Vale, and what became the first modern nation of the Northlands was begun.