The Hrodvald Clanholds

The Realm at a Glance

Territory: The Frostmarch, from the north Spine to the northeast coast, centered on Lake Farvig.
Seat: Krasvuv, a timber hall-town on the shore of Lake Farvig where the Vuvud meets each summer. Not a true capital.
Government: A loose league of clans, each led by a war chieftain (stelest). Every summer the clans meet at the Vuvud, and in time of war or famine they choose a Hearthking to lead them all. The title does not pass from father to son.
Ruler: Hearthking Selra Stormbrand (41), the first woman chosen in a hundred years, a raider of great name who is trying to make one people out of a pack of feuding clans.
Key figures: Stelest Kruman Ironjaw, her chief rival, who thinks her too friendly with southerners; Old Statha the Far-Seer, a storm priestess held in awe.
Religion: The Old Ones. Worship of storm and the wild: Selthar the sky-father of storms, the Ice Mother of winter and death, wolf and raven spirits, sacred groves and standing stones.
Economy: Furs, whale oil, amber, walrus ivory, bog iron, dried fish, raiding, and hiring out as fighters abroad.
Military: Axe-and-shield infantry, frenzied storm-sworn warriors (the north's berserkers), huge war hounds, and longships on Lake Farvig and the northern sea. In winter they fight on the ice with sleds.
Architecture: Timber longhouses, turf roofs, gables carved with dragon prows, palisade forts. Almost no stone.
Currency: Hacksilver traded by weight, and gold arm-rings kept as wealth and given as reward. They take any foreign coin by weight.
Strengths: The hardiest people alive, fearless raiders, superb shipbuilders, and very hard to conquer (no one wants their land).
Weaknesses: Clan feuds, famine in hard winters, almost no skill at siege, few real towns, and a Hearthking whose word could count for nothing after the next Vuvud.

Plates

**The Vuvud**In time of war the clans elect a Hearthking at the Vuvud Stones

**Storm-Sworn**The warriors sworn to Selthar the storm-father

**Midwinter Silence**No Hrodvald speaks from sundown to sunup, so the Ice Mother cannot count them early

**War on the Ice**In winter the Hrodvald fight on the ice with sleds

**The Old Ones**Selthar, the Ice Mother, wolf and raven, and the groves where they are kept

The sketchbook: crest, arms, landmark and heraldry sheets

The Land

**The Frostmarch and the Pale Waste**Taiga, tundra, glaciers and a frozen lake under seven months of winter

Realm map of The Hrodvald Clanholds. Tap to open it full size.

Provinces

Clan Stormbrand

The clan land around the south shore of Lake Farvig, holding Krasvuv, the Vuvud's meeting place. It is the clan of Hearthking Selra Stormbrand, who led the last great Hrodvald raid, on Shanyo in 1138, and was elected on a promise to trade instead of starve.

Clan Ironjaw

The clan land of Stelest Kruman Ironjaw, Selra's chief rival, centered on Ironjaw Hold west of Lake Farvig. Kruman keeps the Old Way exactly, hospitality without limit and vengeance without limit, and has not come back to the Vuvud since he walked out in 1144.

Clan Barerk

The northeastern clan land along the River Barerk, with its city at Barmin and a whaling coast facing the northern sea. Its longships made the Barerk Raid of 763, rowing down the northeast coast to sack Shanyo.

Clan Durtha

A clan land east of Lake Farvig, with its town at Durvek. It is the clan of Sauld Durtha, called Sauld Half-Sung, the hrind who is rewriting the clans' sagas to make Selra the hero of every one.

Clan Nugag

The westernmost clan land, against the Spine, with its town at Nugvek. Under Thuba Nugag, who lost the Hearthking's election to Selra by four votes, the clan lives by trade, iron and marriage, dealing with the Dunmorrow and the Vargate Clans and marrying its daughters into Aldmere's Northmere lords.

Clan Fevur

The easternmost clan land, on the border with Kaishon's Shanyo province, with its town at Fevstel. The small thick-coated Fevur pony, which can dig grass out from under snow, is bred here.

Voices of Hrodvaldnaurka

Hearthking Selra Stormbrand

Hearthking, chieftain of Clan Stormbrand · 41

Red-haired, broad-shouldered, with a face full of freckles and old cold-burns, and three blue tattoo bands on her left arm for three longship voyages beyond the ice. A wolf's-tooth scar on her right calf. Laughs like a landslide.

Stelest Kruman Ironjaw

Chieftain of Clan Ironjaw · 55

A mountain with a beard, iron-gray, one eye milk-white from a spear at Thalmirn, the other very sharp. Jaw broken and set crooked in youth, hence the name; he chews on the left. Killed eleven men in single combat and buried two wives and four sons.

Statha the Far-Seer

Storm priestess · 80s

Bird-boned, white-braided, blind in both eyes and the only person on the Frostmarch who claims to see anything at all. Reads the weather, the entrails, and the Northern Lights, and is right often enough that no stelest sails against her word. Raised Selra after her mother died on the ice.

Sauld Durtha, "Sauld Half-Sung"

Hrind and warrior of Clan Durtha · 27

Golden-haired, handsome, vain, with a lute on his back and an axe on his belt, both of which he uses well. A scar bisecting his left eyebrow from a duel over a song. Sings the histories of the clans and is rewriting them, verse by verse, to make Selra the hero of every one, which Kruman has noticed.

Thuba Nugag

Chieftain of Clan Nugag · 34

Dark-haired for a Hrodvald, quiet, with a flat unreadable face and a bear-claw necklace she took herself. Leads the westernmost clan, against the Spine, and trades with the Dunmorrow more than she raids. Was Selra's rival for the Hearthking's seat and lost by four votes; has been perfectly, ominously loyal since.

Cities and Townsdrind

Krasvuv

You smell Krasvuv before you see it: pine tar, wood smoke, and whitefish drying on racks. Then the forest opens, and the town lies below you on the south shore of Lake Farvig, a huddle of turf roofs inside a palisade of gray taiga pine. From the road the roofs look like a herd of beasts lying down. Above them rise the tarred dragon-prow gables of the two great halls, and beyond them the lake runs north to the edge of the sky.

Read the full chapter on Krasvuv →

Ironjaw Hold

Ironjaw Hold stands where the Fur Trail comes up out of the Vargate and reaches the Clanholds, and it is built to be seen by everyone who comes that way. A double palisade of whole pine trunks, their tops sharpened and tarred, rings a steep knoll above a dark tarn. The gate faces south, down the trail toward Aldmere, and over it hangs the shield Kruman carried at Thalmirn, painted with an iron jaw and split down the middle by an Aldmere axe. The first thing a traveler hears is the hounds, a hundred of them. The second is the gate being opened for him before he asks. Kruman keeps the Old Way to the letter: hospitality without limit and vengeance without limit, in that order.

Read the full chapter on Ironjaw Hold →

Other towns and strongholds: Barmin, Durvek, Nugvek, Fevstel, Lenrik. Every town on the continent →

Great Houses and Armsstarlad

Stormbrand

Feed Them First

Ironjaw

The Door Is Open

Nugag

Speak Once

Barerk

One Whale, One Winter

Durtha

Sing It True

Fevur

Dig Under the Snow

The houses in full: descent, heads, heirs, feuds

Succession law

The Hrodvald have no dynasty. A clan's stelest is chosen by its reldith, most often from the old stelest's kin, which is why Kruman Ironjaw's want of a living son is a crisis for his clan. In time of war or famine the Vuvud elects a Hearthking to lead all the clans. The title is never inherited, and on the Speaking Mound any stelest may challenge the Hearthking to single combat under the Old Way. Children inherit equally, and whoever keeps the hearth keeps the longhouse. Every longhouse sets a stone from the clan's first longhouse into its hearth. When a clan splits, its Hearth-Stone is broken, and the halves are enemies until the stone is set back together.

The Hearthkings, and Clan Stormbrand

```text HEARTHKINGS OF THE CHRONICLES (elected; no line of descent) Fevar Red-Axe ............ raids to Chomtholk, 283 Anoga Wolf-Mother ........ the first woman elected; leads the clans south to buy grain, 432 Mulrik Halfhand .......... killed by his own stelestuk in the Wolf Winter, 570 Farrun Icebrand .......... dies in a longship on Lake Farvig, 1041 Selra Stormbrand ......... elected 1144

CLAN STORMBRAND (Selra's mother, unnamed; died on the ice) │ └── Selra Stormbrand, born c. 1105; stelest of Clan Stormbrand; Hearthking 1144 raised by Statha the Far-Seer ```

Seat: The Stormbrand Hall, Krasvuv (krasvuv); the clan land around the south shore of Lake Farvig (clan-stormbrand).
Arms: The clan beast is a black raven holding a burning brand, on red. The Hearthking's standard is the realm's: the wolf of the Frostmarch under the bolt of Selthar, with the Ice Mother's ravens.
Words: Feed Them First.
Head: Hearthking Selra Stormbrand (41), with three blue bands on her left arm for three voyages beyond the ice.
Heir: None. The reldith will choose the next stelest from her kin, and the Vuvud will choose the next Hearthking, if it chooses one at all.
Wealth and power: The clan holds Krasvuv's Hinrell and the weigher's twentieth, the best longships on the lake, and the Vuvud. It owes Farisel 40,000 leusores for grain and has paid nothing this year.
Allies and feuds: Selra leads the Hearth-Makers. She wants the Wolfmarch outlaws dead, and Golen No-Clan hates her for her own sake.
History: Selra's longships raided Shanyo in 1138, the last great Hrodvald raid. She was elected in 1144, the first woman in a century, and built the Debt Barn with Farisel's grain loans in 1145.
Hooks: Kruman will come back to the Vuvud this Barerk and challenge her. Farisel's factor will offer to take longships and crews instead of silver.
Direction: CONTESTED.

Ironjaw

Seat: Ironjaw Hold (ironjaw-hold), in the clan land west of Lake Farvig (clan-ironjaw).
Arms: An open iron-gray jaw on white, the device of the split shield over the Thalmirn Gate. The clan beast on its post in the Vuvud Hall is a hound's head with an iron jaw.
Words: The Door Is Open.
Head: Stelest Kruman Ironjaw (55), one-eyed since Thalmirn.
Heir: None. He has buried four sons and two wives, and his nephew is an outlaw.
Wealth and power: The clan lives on the weighed gifts of every Fur Trail caravan, bog iron from the Red Bog, the best war hounds in the west, and a hall whose benches grow longer every winter the grain fails to reach a clan.
Allies and feuds: Kruman leads the Old Way. Half the north agrees with him in its heart. His clan's post in the Vuvud Hall has worn a cloak since 1144.
History:
1127 — Kruman loses an eye at Thalmirn and hangs his split shield over his gate.
1140 — He burns a Sun-Turner lamp-house on the Barerk coast.
1144 — He walks out of the Vuvud.
Hooks: The stakes on the Stelis, one for each man he has killed in single combat, number twelve, though he has killed eleven. If he dies on the Speaking Mound, the Ironjaw have no heir.
Direction: RISING.

Nugag

Seat: Nugvek (nugvek), in the westernmost clan land against the Spine (clan-nugag).
Arms: A white fox on dark blue.
Words: Speak Once.
Head: Thuba Nugag (34), who wears a bear-claw necklace she took herself.
Heir: Chosen by the reldith from her kin.
Wealth and power: The clan lives by trade, iron and marriage. The white Nugag fox pelt is worth its weight in silver in Solvaine, and Castavari ships reach the clan's western fjords in summer.
Allies and feuds: Thuba leads the Silver Road. The Nugag marry their daughters into Aldmere's Northmere lords, and Thuba is Grerik Coldbrook's sister-in-law. She lost the Hearthking's seat to Selra by four votes and has been perfectly, ominously loyal ever since.
History:
1089 — The Frost-Nugag branch of the far northwest dies in the Great Winter.
1144 — Thuba loses the election by four votes.
Hooks: Half the clan follows the Deep Cold, and those Nugag Marches may split away and break the Hearth-Stone. Thuba is the only one in the north who could take the seat without a war.
Direction: RISING.

Barerk

Seat: Barmin (barmin), on the River Barerk (clan-barerk).
Arms: A black whale over gray waves. Barerk is the Hrodvaldr word for whale.
Words: One Whale, One Winter.
Head: The stelest of Clan Barerk.
Heir: Chosen by the reldith.
Wealth and power: The clan holds a whaling coast and the only Hrodvald town large enough to be called a city. It takes one whale in five from the Barerk Whalers and cannot make them give more.
Allies and feuds: Its shores hold both Salt-Sworn and Sun-Turners. The Whalers have begun electing their own Harpoon-Master.
History:
763 — Barerk longships sack Shanyo. The survivors among its fishers flee north and become the Barerk Whalers, on Barerk's own coast.
Hooks: Kruman burned a Sun-Turner lamp-house on the Barerk coast in 1140. The Sun-Turners are rebuilding it, and a Caelvennois grain ship is due the same week.
Direction: STABLE.

Durtha

Seat: Durvek (durvek), east of Lake Farvig (clan-durtha).
Arms: A gray wolf running, on white. Durtha is the Hrodvaldr word for wolf.
Words: Sing It True.
Head: The stelest of Clan Durtha.
Heir: Chosen by the reldith.
Wealth and power: The clan lives on snow hares, furs and the road from Krasvuv to Barmin. Its most famous son is Sauld Durtha, "Sauld Half-Sung" (27), the hrind who sings Selra's sagas.
Allies and feuds: Of the clan towns, Durvek lies nearest the Wolfmarch, and the outlaws raid it most.
History:
877 — The Concord. Every Durtha outlaw since has gone to the taiga on its doorstep.
Hooks: Sauld has sung the saga of Thalmirn anew, with Selra in Kruman's place. By old clan law a false hrind loses his tongue, and Kruman demands it.
Direction: STABLE.

Fevur

Seat: Fevstel (fevstel), on the border with Kaishon's Shanyo province (clan-fevur).
Arms: A brown Fevur pony pawing at snow, under an axe laid level. Fevur is the Hrodvaldr word for axe.
Words: Dig Under the Snow.
Head: The stelest of Clan Fevur.
Heir: Chosen by the reldith.
Wealth and power: The clan breeds the small thick-coated Fevur pony and holds the road to Shanyo.
Allies and feuds: Its coast keeps Sun-Turners, whose lamp is tended by a woman who inherits the task; the storm priests hate them. Fevstel watches the Barerk Whalers uneasily.
History:
283 — The clan's hrinduk claim Hearthking Fevar Red-Axe as a Fevur. The other clans dispute it.
Hooks: Selra has asked how many longships could reach Kaishon by the Farvig Outflow before the ice closes, and they would pass Fevur's coast.
Direction: STABLE.

The Wolfmarch: No-Clan

Seat: The Wolfmarch taiga between Durtha and the Grass Sea (the-wolfmarch).
Arms: None. They have no Hearth-Stone.
Head: Golen No-Clan, Kruman's nephew, chieftain of about a thousand Wolfmarch Outlaws.
Wealth and power: They live on what they take from the clans that cast them out.
Allies and feuds: They are every clan's enemy, and Selra's own. Kruman, quietly, wants them. Golen has eaten at his uncle's table under Kruman's own peace.
History:
877 onward — Oath-breakers, outlaws and drolak-refusers are driven out to the taiga.
Hooks: Wolfmarch men under false names want to build a longship on Icebrand's Slip.
Direction: CONTESTED.

Hrodvald's clans are CONTESTED. One challenge on the Speaking Mound will decide whether the north is one people or goes back to being a field by a lake.

Faith, Myth and Folklorevonosk

Myths

Selthar's Anvil. The first storm was Selthar the sky-father forging the world on an anvil of ice.

Selthar's Anvil. The first storm was Selthar the sky-father forging the world on an anvil of ice. Every thunderclap is his hammer, every lightning bolt a spark, and the Frostmarch is what fell off the anvil while he worked: the scraps, the hardest parts, the ones that would not bend. The Hrodvald are the people made from scraps, and proud of it.

The Ice Mother's Count. At the end of every winter the Ice Mother walks the Frostmarch and counts who is left. Those she counts, she lets live until next winter. Those she misses die in spring for no reason. The Deep Cold go out on the ice naked at midwinter so she will count them first. Everyone else stays indoors and hopes.

The First Longship. A stelest's daughter who could not bear to watch her father's men drown in coracles carved a whale out of a taiga pine and told it to swim, and it did, and that was the first longship. Every prow is carved as a beast so it remembers it was alive.

Folk tales

Fevar Red-Axe and the Bread. The Hearthking who raided to Chomtholk in 283 and, so the tale goes, came home with nothing but bread, because his men had eaten the gold.

Fevar Red-Axe and the Bread. The Hearthking who raided to Chomtholk in 283 and, so the tale goes, came home with nothing but bread, because his men had eaten the gold. Told to laugh at raiders who forget why they raid. Selra's grandmother told it to her.

Anoga Wolf-Mother. The first woman Hearthking, who led the clans south in 432 to buy grain instead of raiding, and is said to have walked into Hethlend with a wolf on a rope and left with a hundred wagons. Selra's supporters call her "Anoga's daughter." Kruman calls her "Anoga's shadow."

The Hrind Who Sang Backward. A hrind who lied in a saga was cursed to sing every saga backward for the rest of his life, so that every hero died first and every battle ended before it began. Sauld Half-Sung is reminded of this one a great deal.

Old wives' tales

Never build a fire with birch alone; the Ice Mother sees through the smoke.
A raven on the roof-tree is Selthar listening; say nothing you would not say to him.
A child born in a Wolf Winter will never be warm and never be afraid.
If the salmon come late, a stelest has lied at the Reldith.
Sun-Turner wives say: if the lamp goes out, someone at sea is dead. Old Ones' wives say: if the lamp goes out, good.
Never count longships leaving. Count them coming back.

Traditions

The Voyage Bands. A blue band is tattooed on the arm for every longship voyage beyond the ice. Three is rare. Selra has three. Kruman, who does not sail, has none, and it is the one thing he does not mention.
Drolak. Since the Concord of 877, a killing is paid for in silver before the Reldith, not in blood at night. Half the north honors it, half remembers how, and everyone knows which half they are in.
The Hearth-Stone. Every longhouse has a stone from the clan's first longhouse set into its hearth. When a clan splits, the stone is broken, and the halves are enemies until they are set back together.
Midwinter Silence. On the longest night no Hrodvald speaks from sundown to sunup, so the Ice Mother cannot hear them and count them early. The hrinduk find it the hardest night of the year.

Law and Daily Lifefrarn

Courts, crimes, marriage, food, dress and a day in Hrodvald

Law

The Hrodvald have no written law and no king who makes law. Each clan rules itself through its reldith, where every free clansman may speak, and its stelest, the war chieftain. Since the Frostmarch Concord of 877, all the clans have agreed that blood feuds are settled by drolak, the blood-price, paid in silver before the clans rather than in blood at night. It is honored about half the time. The hrinduk recite the code at each Vuvud. The Vuvud settles feuds between clans, hears drolak too large for any reldith and, in time of war or famine, elects a Hearthking. Nobody keeps a watch. The halls keep order among their own, and the hounds keep it everywhere else.

Wrong	Drolak or penalty (in hacksilver, by weight against an Aldmere mark)
Killing a free clansman	100 marks' weight, paid to his kin
Killing a stelest or a storm priest	300 marks' weight
A wound that cripples	30 marks' weight
A wound that heals	5 marks' weight
Theft	The goods returned twice over
Stealing a hound	The hound returned, and a pup besides
Passing lead-cored hacksilver	The bar cut in half on the scales and the silver owed twice
A false hrind	By old clan law, the tongue
Breaking the Vuvud's peace	Made golest by every clan at once
Refusing drolak	Made golest by his own clan

Outlawry. An outlaw, a golest, has no clan, no hall and no drolak. Anyone may kill him and owe nothing. Since 877 the clans' outlaws, oath-breakers and drolak-refusers have gathered in the taiga of the Wolfmarch, where Golen No-Clan leads them and raids the clans that cast them out.

Debt. Everything is weighed. Hacksilver is chopped from brooches, bowls and bars and weighed against an Aldmere mark, and gold arm-rings are wealth that nobody sells except in a very bad winter. Debts between clans are settled at the Vuvud. A hall's guest eats free, and a stelest who feeds all comers, as Selra does, ends up owing the House of Farisel.

Family

Marriage and divorce. Marriages are made between clans to end feuds and seal trade. The groom's kin give arm-rings, the bride's kin give a hound or a cow, and the couple swear before the Hearth-Stone of the groom's hall. Either may end a marriage by declaring it ended three times before witnesses at the hearth, and the wife takes back what she brought, the hound's pups included.

Inheritance. Children inherit equally, and whoever keeps the hearth keeps the longhouse. A stelest is chosen by the reldith, most often from the old stelest's kin, and that is why Kruman Ironjaw's lack of a living son is a grave matter for his clan. The Hearthking's title is never inherited. When a clan splits, its Hearth-Stone is broken.

Women. Hrodvald women fight, trade, lead and speak in the reldith. Three women have been elected Hearthking, Thuba Nugag leads her clan, and Statha the Far-Seer is the most revered priestess in the north.

Who is not free. The Hrodvald hold no one as property. A raid-captive was held for ransom, and one not ransomed by the next Vuvud was taken into the clan or let go. The "free clansmen" of the reldith are those who are neither captives nor golest.

Children and schooling. About one Hrodvald in twenty can read the Storm-Runes. Children learn by doing: nets, oars, axes, the ice. They give their ages in winters, and they learn never to count longships leaving. The hrinduk and storm priests are the north's libraries.

Daily life

Food and drink. The north eats black rye bread with everything and drinks ale and mead.

	A stelest's hall	A Net Row fisher of Krasvuv	A rye-stead farmer
Morning	Rye bread, butter, cold elk, ale	Rye bread and dried whitefish	Rye porridge with milk
Midday	Bread, cheese, dried fjord cod	Bread and a fish from the net	Bread and cheese in the field
Evening	Elk or taiga capercaillie, salmon in Hamul, cloudberries, mead	Farvig whitefish stew, rye bread, ale	Rye bread, mutton or fish, ale; seal fat in the worst of winter

In spring everyone drinks sweet sap from the Farrur birch.

Dress and houses. Men and women alike wear wool and fur in layers. A stelest is known by the gold on his arms, and a sailor by the blue voyage bands tattooed on the arm. A family and its animals share one timber longhouse with a turf roof, the hearth in the middle and benches along the walls.

Health and hygiene. The Hrodvald bathe in steam-huts beside the water and then in the lake or the snow, even in winter. Storm priests read weather, ice and entrails for the sick as well as for longships. On Krasvuv's Keel Strand the man who sets bones and pulls teeth is Fakoth the Bonesetter (fakoth, "kind"). He charges a cup of mead for a finger and will not touch a stelest before he has been paid. Seal fat is rubbed on cold-burns, and every child knows wolf-lichen, the wolf-bait poison. The great killers are winter and hunger. The Ice Mother's Count at the end of Selthar is, said plainly, the stores running out.

Birth and death. A child born in a Wolf Winter will never be warm and never be afraid. A child is named after it has lived nine nights. The dead are buried in barrows, and on the coasts the Salt-Sworn give their dead to the sea. A longship that does not come back is remembered by an oar laid in the path to its stelest's door.

Pastimes. The north races sleds on the ice, wrestles, sets hounds to fight and hears sagas sung to the lute. On Midwinter Silence, the 6th of Stauni, nobody speaks from sundown to sunup, and the hrinduk find it the hardest night of the year.

A day. In summer the sun barely sets and the town works half the night. In winter it barely rises, and people mend nets, tell sagas and count the stores. There is no week. A journey is so many nights long.

Where it is going: CONTESTED. The Concord's law has held for 270 Vuvuds by being honored half the time. Selra wants one law and one nation, Kruman wants the Old Way, and the Speaking Mound allows a challenge that could settle it with an axe. If Selra holds, the north may get its first law kept on purpose. If Kruman wins, drolak will go back to being something a man pays when he would rather not wait for winter.

Trade, taxes and money

Makes and sells. Furs, walrus ivory (its richest export), whale oil, amber, bog iron, dried fish, tar, longships, war hounds and crews for hire.

Buys. Grain above all, then salt, wine, cloth and Dunmorrow steel.

Taxes. The Hearthking levies none. Each stelest takes gifts from his clan and his road. Kruman takes no toll at Ironjaw Hold, but no caravan leaves without a gift, and the gifts are weighed. Clan Barerk takes one whale in five from the Barerk Whalers and cannot make them give more. Since 1145 the Stormbrand Hall takes the weigher's twentieth, one part in twenty of every weighing on the Hinrell, to feed the hall and pay Farisel. Drolak for a killing runs to about a hundred marks' weight in 1146, and less for a wound.

Direction. CONTESTED. The north has begun to trade instead of raid, and has learned what trading on credit costs.

The Year in Hrodvaldnanard

Hrodvald never signed the Accord and does not keep the Reckoning at home. It knows the Reckoning's months from trade and names them its own way, but its own year begins at the dawn after Midwinter Silence, and the Hrodvald count nights, not days: a journey is five nights, and a man is so many winters old.

Months. Aninn (raven), Bradunn (seal), Bryrso (oar), Kalig (sail), Barerk (whale), Hamul (fish), Galdan (elk), Stajend (mead), Thubor (frost), Stauni (silence), Farrur (ice), Selthar (storm). The raids follow the Farvig geese south in autumn, in Galdan and Stajend.

Week. None.

Years. Vuvud-count, from the Frostmarch Concord of 877, when all the clans first agreed to one law at the Vuvud: the summer of 1146 is the 270th Vuvud. Before 877 the skalds named each winter for what happened in it, and they still do: the winter the Farvig froze is 1089.

Festivals:

The Vuvud (in Barerk, high summer). The clans meet at Krasvuv. In time of war they choose a Hearthking.
The salmon run (in Hamul). The clans meet at the Farrur falls to net the run and share the catch. If the salmon come late, a stelest has lied at the Reldith.
Midwinter Silence (the longest night, 6th of Stauni). No Hrodvald speaks from sundown to sunup, so the Ice Mother cannot hear them and count them early. The month is named for it. The same night the Deep Cold go out naked onto the ice so she will count them first. The Hrodvald year begins at the dawn after.
The Ice Mother's Count (the end of Selthar, the last nights of winter). She walks the Frostmarch and counts who is left. Everyone stays indoors and hopes.

Speak Hrodvaldrosgand

Hrodvaldr	English
Nynog krald hlamod.	Hale and happy. (The greeting.)
Selthar, farrur, vatark.	Storm, ice, hearth. (The Hearthking's standard.)
Hjir gotameth?	Where is the ship? (Note -eth, "the.")
Drer breld thagang.	I don't know.
Hjún mard?	What does it cost? (Asked rarely; things are taken or given.)
Drer thranadeyk.	I swear to hold it. (The oath form: binding.)
Jonut gotamuk thulon, breld óngong.	Bring ships home, not away. (A shipwright's blessing.)
Selthar skivol.	Selthar hears. (Said when a raven lands.)
Drolak kúg skivuth.	Blood-price or blood. (The Concord's whole law.)
Stauni, fuktak svusk.	Silence, the Ice Mother is listening. (Midwinter night.)
Hlir thronad krásmaseth.	We held the hall. (A strong verb changes its vowel for the past.)
Stelestuk	chieftains (the plural ending -uk)

Hrodvaldr	English
lothid	person
verkil	father
movurd	husband
daleld	king
falis	farmer
nald	sun
drynen	wind
vigurn	lake
balgerk	wood (material)
gukad	town
daust	door
frilnuld	day
dergaf	spring
deld	bread
dojul	wine
nylin	dog
theral	bird
adyl	nephew
fraklod	parent
konrinn	carpenter
hagvud	healer
kaskan	master (of a house or craft)
hreng	hail
narmu	plain

The full Hrodvaldr dictionary

The script of Hrodvald, with numerals and a sample line

Great Worksthrada

The Hrodvald keep their books in the heads of their hrinduk and old women, and what is written at all is cut in Storm-Runes on staves, gables and standing stones, exact about the number of ships and vague about everything else. A saga is sung from memory at a hearth, from the Speaking Mound, or in the Vuvud Hall, and a hrind who sings it false can, under the old clan law, lose his tongue.

Faith · hymn (storm priests' chant)

The Hymn of the Anvil

Hogu thoji balnasa “the storm-father makes the world”

Unknown (the storm priests of the Old Ones) · before the Reckoning

The chant of Selthar forging the world on an anvil of ice, every thunderclap his hammer, and of the scraps that fell off while he worked, the hardest parts, which became the Frostmarch and its people. It is chanted in the sacred groves and at the standing stones when a storm comes down the lake, and it uses the storm-father's old name, Hogu, which is heard nowhere else.

Hlir tonkesk; hlir breld duseng.We fall; we do not break.

Its author, and how it lives now

Unknown (the storm priests of the Old Ones). No hrind claims it; the storm priests say it was chanted before there were clans, and carve no verse of it.

Chanted by storm priests in every grove; the last line is shouted by crews in a gale, and Statha the Far-Seer is said to be the only one who knows every verse.

Chronicle · saga

The Saga of Anoga Wolf-Mother

Anogek dausvum “the wolf-mother's song”

Tigna Road-Singer · c. 440 R.

The Frostmarch Famine of 432, and the first woman Hearthking leading the clans south to buy grain instead of raiding for it: the wolf on a rope at Hethlend, the hundred wagons, and Anoga coming home with the bread and without her arm-rings. Clan Nugag sings a longer form in which two men walk behind her, speak Aldmeri to the king's men and Hrodvaldr to Anoga, and name the price as not raiding; the other clans leave those verses out, and nobody has ever settled who is right.

Skond drard grorn deld, hesul bágunuk.She comes back with bread, and without her arm-rings.

Its author, and how it lives now

Tigna Road-Singer. A hrind of Clan Nugag who, the Nugag say, walked south behind the Hearthking's wagons and came back to sing them.

Sung in the Ice Mother's Count, most lately by Sauld Half-Sung at the Split Shield in 1146; Selra's side calls her "Anoga's daughter" from it, and Kruman Ironjaw calls her "Anoga's shadow."

Stage · mock-saga for two voices

The Hrind Who Sang Backward

Hrindeth danlá “the hrind, backward”

Thasig the Crooked · c. 640 R.

A hrind lies in a saga and is cursed to sing every saga backward forever after, and the piece is his punishment performed: one hrind sings a famous saga forward while the other sings it from the end, so that every hero dies first and every battle is over before it starts. The two voices meet in the middle at the lie, and the hall is expected to shout it out.

Lymun frirn grevy; drolam frirn hrarga.Death before life; the end before the war.

Its author, and how it lives now

Thasig the Crooked. A hrind of the Barerk coast, remembered as the man who made the clans laugh in the hungry years after the Year Without Summer.

Played at the fire at the Farrur falls in the salmon run and on the benches of the Split Shield; since 1146 it is sung, pointedly, whenever Sauld Half-Sung is in the room.

Song · work song (shipwrights' blessing)

The Launching Blessing

Jonut thulon “bring home”

Lemra of the Keel Strand · c. 764 R.

A short song sung over every new hull as it goes down the slip onto Lake Farvig, asking that the ship come home rather than go away. It names no god and promises nothing, which is why storm priests, Sun-Turners and Salt-Sworn crews all sing it without argument.

Jonut gotamuk thulon, breld óngong.Bring ships home, not away.

Its author, and how it lives now

Lemra of the Keel Strand. A shipwright's widow of Krasvuv who, the Strand says, made it the winter after the Barerk Raid on Shanyo, from which two of her ships did not come back.

Sung at every launching on the Keel Strand, by Sauld Half-Sung among others, and it is the one song in the north no one has changed a word of.

Learning · law code in verse

The Frostmarch Concord

Vuvudek frarn “the Vuvud's law”

Frarna Law-Tongue · 877 R.

The first law every clan agreed to at the Vuvud, that a killing be paid for in silver before the Reldith and not in blood at night, with the prices, the witnesses and the oaths set out verse by verse. The Vuvud-count begins from it, and its staves are kept in the roof-beam of the Vuvud Hall at Krasvuv.

Drolak kúg skivuth.Blood-price or blood.

Its author, and how it lives now

Frarna Law-Tongue. The hrind who set the Vuvud's one law into verse so it could be remembered, and who is said to have made the clans repeat it until the sun came up.

Recited whole from the Speaking Mound every Vuvud by the hrinduk taking it verse about, Sauld Half-Sung and Kausk of Clan Ironjaw among them, and neither of those two changes a word of it; it is kept about one time in two.

Chronicle · saga

The Saga of Thalmirn (the Old Way)

Kruman-deyganek dausvum “the iron-jaw's song”

Skivar the Loud · 1128 R.

The raid on Thalmirn in 1127, the last great raid after the Great Winter: the Burnt Row, the gate, and Kruman Ironjaw taking a spear in the eye and holding the gate while the longships load. It is the saga Sauld Half-Sung has rewritten, and it is the saga every Ironjaw child knows before any other.

Veyr gaseg haberka. Veyr thranad dausta.He loses an eye. He holds the door.

Its author, and how it lives now

Skivar the Loud. An Ironjaw hrind who was at the raid on Thalmirn and taught the saga to the Ironjaw hrinduk before he died on the ice in 1139.

Sung the old way at Ironjaw Hold and by Kausk of Clan Ironjaw; in 1146 it and Sauld's version were sung to the same field on the day of the sagas, and a hrind who sings Sauld's version at the Ironjaw Open Door is fed and asked very politely to sing something else.

Poetry · saga cycle, still being made

The Hearthking's Sagas

Brúbanek dausvumuk “the Hearthking's songs”

Sauld Durtha, "Sauld Half-Sung" · 1144–1146 R.

Sauld's retelling of the clans' sagas, verse by verse, so that Selra Stormbrand is the hero of every one, the Hearth-Makers' sagas made before the Hearth-Makers have made anything. Its most famous piece is his Thalmirn, sung in the Vuvud Hall on the fourteenth night of Aninn 1146, in which the gate is held and Kruman is not named; to it he has added the envoys' star, the grain wagons, and a saga of this summer's Vuvud that the older hrinduk say is the first of his to sing a thing as it happened, with the other side in it.

Hleyflothid thronad dausta; brúbaneth thronad balnasa.Someone held the door; the Hearthking held the world.

Its author, and how it lives now

Sauld Durtha, "Sauld Half-Sung". The Durtha hrind who keeps Selra Stormbrand's sagas in the Vuvud Hall, reads everything, and writes it down wrong on purpose.

Sung nightly in the Vuvud Hall and at the Split Shield, which sings the star verse with him; Kruman demanded Sauld's tongue for the Thalmirn verses as a false hrind's, then at the Vuvud of 1146 asked for no one's, and the Durtha are proud of Sauld and nervous about him in the same breath.

A Thousand Yearsneltil

Year	What happened
0 R.	The Accord of Surmave. The six surviving great powers and the Tharaxi sign the Accord on an island in Lake Surmave, fixing borders and founding the calendar: Vareth, Wessary, the Marrowmere League, the Twin Crowns of Castavar and Lasdara, the Sarvani Khaasarate, the Three Thrones of the East, and Tharax. Hrodvald sends no envoy and signs nothing.
160s R.	The Gray Cough. The Gray Cough, a lung plague, sweeps north from the Sunmaw through the Heartlands and into the Frostmarch. A fifth of the Heartlands dies. Hethlend is abandoned for three years.
255 R.	The Marrowmere Wars begin. The Marrowmere Wars begin. The League cities fight each other over lake tolls for forty years, hiring Hrodvald raiders, Tharaxi spears and Castavari knights by turns.
283 R.	Fevar Red-Axe's raid. Hrodvald clans under Hearthking Fevar Red-Axe raid down the Fur Trail as far as Chomtholk. Aldmere builds the first fortress at the Vargate.
432 R.	The Frostmarch Famine. The Frostmarch Famine. Two failed summers. Hearthking Anoga Wolf-Mother, the first woman elected Hearthking, leads the clans south to buy grain from Aldmere instead of raiding for it. The precedent lasts a generation.
570 R.	The Wolf Winter. The Wolf Winter in the Frostmarch. Wolves come into the longhouses. Hearthking Mulrik Halfhand is killed by his own stelestuk for failing to feed the clans.
623 R.	The Year Without Summer. The Year Without Summer. Crops fail across Aethorra. The Frostmarch, the Heartlands and the Sunmaw all starve. Kaishon opens its granaries and survives better than anyone. The Hizkari, who lived on the slopes, become a hardened remnant people.
624–630 R.	The Hunger Wars. The Hunger Wars. Hrodvald raids, Aldmere border wars, and a Castavari invasion of Zarvand for grain that ends in the desert. It is in these years that Zarvand first uses naphtha from the Cinder Teeth seeps as a weapon: Talodin fire.
763 R.	The Barerk Raid on Shanyo. The Barerk Raid on Shanyo. Hrodvald longships row down the northeast coast and sack Kaishon's northern city. Kaishon extends the Rampart's northern forts to the sea.
877 R.	The Frostmarch Concord. The Frostmarch Concord. For the first time, all the Hrodvald clans agree to a single law-code at the Vuvud. Blood feuds must now be settled by drolak before the clans, not by night raids. It is honored about half the time.
895 R.	The Battle of the Darthir. The Battle of the Darthir. Caelvenne's galleys land the Lilies, four hundred Castavari knights and two thousand hired Hrodvald crews below Wromthalm to take the Toll House. Kraxor Deneskid's Phymun meet them on the shingle in silence, and three thousand Zarvani horse archers under Khusjiraad shoot the Lilies' horses in the harbor shallows. The Lilies break, the Hrodvald reach the galleys, the Castavari knights are ransomed at fifty larrama a head. Caelvenne holds the water and never lands on it again.
1041 R.	Farrun Icebrand dies. Hearthking Farrun Icebrand, the last woman elected before Selra Stormbrand, dies in a longship on Lake Farvig. The clans return to feuding.
1089 R.	The Great Winter. The Great Winter. The worst winter in the chronicles. Lake Farvig freezes to the bottom in the shallows. A third of the Frostmarch dies. The Hrodvald raid south for a generation to survive, and Aldmere's northern shires are emptied by it.
1127 R.	The Hrodvald raid on Thalmirn. The Hrodvald raid on Thalmirn. The last great raid of the Great Winter's aftermath. Aldmere finally fortifies Lulstat and the Northmere.
1131 R.	Grerik Coldbrook marries Drolba Nugag. Grerik Coldbrook, chieftain of the Vargate Clans, marries Drolba Nugag, elder sister of Thuba Nugag, closing the northern Spine's trade triangle by blood: Nugag iron at the Vargate, Vargate timber at Nugvek. Grerik is Thuba's brother-in-law from this year, and the Coldbrooks have kin on both sides of any war between Selra and Kruman.
1138 R.	Selra's raid on Shanyo. Selra Stormbrand's longships raid Shanyo on Kaishon's north coast, the last great Hrodvald raid of any kind.
1144 R.	Selra Stormbrand elected Hearthking. Selra Stormbrand is elected Hearthking at the Vuvud, the first woman in a century. Stelest Kruman Ironjaw walks out of the Vuvud.
1145 R.	The saddle on the Bench. In the Accord Days that close 1145, Sarsak Tolmar sends a rider, Kholab, to the Sitting at the Isle, the first Cherüsh envoy in six centuries. Kholab refuses the Bench and demands a chair as the Charnazin's heir; the Sitting refuses, since the Charnazin never signed the Accord. He leaves his saddle on the Bench and rides for the fords. The same Sitting hears the Khaasar's letter of 1137 read into the record without reply from Tharax, the bishop's sermon on the Fourth Crusade, and Selra Stormbrand's letter asking for the Absent Chair, answered as always. Nothing is settled.

Dispatchesgogom

From 1 January 2027 the Reckoning runs day by day, and news from Hrodvald arrives here as it happens: who rode where, who fell, who lied at council.