A Viking Story

[VerbalAbuse]

In a different time, in a different place...
A better man would simply step up and take another's wife.

Skarde, an old man, is married with Yrsa, the hottest young woman in town.
When he married her, he was at the top of the pack. A companion of the king. The leader of a great clan.
Nothing strange about the marriage, exactly what to expect: the most powerful men get the most beautiful women.

But then, a few mishaps, a few unfortunate turns of events, and now Skarde is just an old man. Once somebody to reckon with, he has sunk in the pack's hierarchy.

Enters Hrafnkel, a rising young warrior. He takes Yrsa from Skarde. As typical for the viking society, Yrsa is all for it.
In different circumstances, Hrafnkel would have taken more from Skarde, head included. As it is, he just couldn't be bothered with.

(and if you want to make this an incest story, you could have Hrafnkel being Skarde's nephew, or Yrsa's cousin.)

 

[Andreas_Kreuz]

The scenario you’ve described fits the pop-culture "Hollywood Viking" aesthetic perfectly, but when measured against historical records, the Icelandic Sagas, and Norse law codes (like the Grágás), it is actually not typical of how Viking society functioned.

While the Norse respected strength, they were not wolves; they were farmers and traders who met at the Thing (the assembly) to settle disputes.

A man like Hrafnkel, who took what he wanted by force without regard for law, would be seen as a berserker or a tyrant—not a leader. History shows that "rising young warriors" who broke social norms were usually killed by a coalition of smaller farmers who didn't want a tyrant in their neighborhood.

This is a typical American "survival of the fittest" attitude appropriated to a foreign culture. When authors "appropriate" a culture just to use it as a skin for a story about savagery, they "flatten" that culture. It turns a complex, legalistic society into a caricature of "glorified thugs."

 

[Rob_Royale]

Andreas has a good point. The obvious answer here is to create a fictional world. You can keep the viking aesthetic, and not worry too much about historical accuracy. I'd start the story with something fantastic, like a shamanic ceremony that shows a little magic, so readers realize it's fantasy, not historical.

 

[Carnevil9]

Andreas has a good point. The obvious answer here is to create a fictional world. You can keep the viking aesthetic, and not worry too much about historical accuracy. I'd start the story with something fantastic, like a shamanic ceremony that shows a little magic, so readers realize it's fantasy, not historical.

That's exactly what John Norman does with his Gor novels: he sets them on a planet with many ancient cultures which kind of mirror similar cultures on Earth; but since it is a different planet, he has no great need to make them scrupulously accurate. That means anything can go as the stories unfold.