The Last Kingdom (The Saxon Stories, #1)

by Bernard Cornwell

It was dark and my brother had not returned, but no one was unduly anxious about that. Uhtred was capable, if sometimes reckless, and doubtless he would arrive in the small hours and so my father had ordered a beacon lit in the iron becket on top of the High Gate to guide him home.

Uhtred was capable, if sometimes reckless, and doubtless he would arrive in the small hours

Foreshadows for how Uhtred becomes- tries to model himself after his brother?

Foreshadows for how Uhtred becomes- tries to model himself after his brother?

But I said nothing.

refused to give up his wolf’s head banner that proclaimed our family’s descent from Woden, the ancient Saxon god of battles.

The wolf, Ealdwulf the smith had told me,

Father Beocca insisted that I should be baptized again,

baptized again, or else heaven would not know who I was when I arrived with the name Uhtred.

“We should be kings again,” Ælfric, my uncle, said. “It doesn’t matter what they call us,” my father said curtly, “so long as they obey us,” and then he made Ælfric swear on the comb of Saint Cuthbert that he would respect the new will and acknowledge me as Uhtred of Bebbanburg. Ælfric did so swear. “But it won’t happen,” my father said. “We shall slaughter these Danes like sheep in a fold, and we shall ride back here with plunder and honor.”

the East Anglians had given horses and winter shelter to the Danes who had captured Eoferwic so my father was right to despise them. They were treacherous frogs.

recognized him as the man who had killed my brother and, like the fool I was, I screamed at him. A standard bearer was just behind the long-haired Dane, flaunting an eagle’s wing on a long pole. Tears were blurring my sight, and perhaps the battle madness came onto me because, despite my panic, I rode at the long-haired Dane and struck at him with my small sword, and his sword parried mine, and my feeble blade bent like a herring’s spine. It just bent and he drew back his own sword for the killing stroke, saw my

It just bent and he drew back his own sword for the killing stroke, saw my pathetic bent blade, and began to laugh. I was pissing myself, he was laughing, and I beat at him again with the useless sword and still he laughed, and then he leaned over, plucked the weapon from my hand, and threw it away. He picked me up then. I was screaming and hitting at him, but he thought it all so very funny, and he draped me belly down on the saddle in front of him and then he spurred into the chaos to continue the killing.

I was screaming and hitting at him, but he thought it all so very funny, and he draped me belly down on the saddle in front of him and then he spurre...

And that was how I met Ragnar, Ragnar the Fearless, my brother’s killer, and the man whose head was supposed to grace a pole on...

skald.”

skaldic poetry

father: always cheerful, boisterously happy, enthusiastic about whatever needed to be done, and friendly to anyone who paid him respect.

Nor, looking back, did I miss him. He had always been a morose man, expecting the worst, and not fond of children.

Woden,

The Danes, indeed, seemed very casual about their gods, yet almost every one wore Thor’s hammer. I had torn mine from the neck of a boy who had fought me, and I have it to this day.

my uncle had usurped Bebbanburg.

Ivar finally spoke “The boy is not for sale,” he announced. “Ransom,” Ravn corrected him gently.

Highlights Ragnar’s compassion and benevolence in general and towards Uhtred

Ragnar came and stood beside me. “You’re mine,” he said softly, “I just bought you.” “Bought me?” “My sword’s weight in silver,” he said. “Why?” “Perhaps I want to sacrifice you to Odin?” he suggested, then tousled my hair. “We like you, boy,” he said, “we like you enough to keep you.

He lowered his voice so only I could hear him. “Your uncle will kill you,” he whispered. “Kill me?” “He wants to be ealdorman. That’s why he wished to ransom you. So he could kill you.”

Beocca’s loyalty to Uhtred and to his father

“You can’t live somewhere,” he told me, “if the people don’t want you to be there. They can kill our cattle or poison our streams, and we would never know who did it. You either slaughter them all or learn to live with them.”

Foreshadows Uhtred’s future policies

were rarely treated in the same way that the Christians worshipped their god.

Difference in how each region is performed

tunic from her upper body. There was nothing to see there, she was just a small girl, only eight years old and thus four or five years from being marriageable, but she was pretty and that was why Sven had half stripped her. I could see that Sven’s two companions were unhappy. Thyra, after all, was Earl Ragnar’s daughter and what had started as a game was now dangerous, but Sven had to show off. He had to prove he had no fear. He had no idea Rorik and I were crouched in the undergrowth, and I do not suppose he would have cared if he had known.

Sven is arrogant and stupid, his pride and hope to be a great warrior very much clouds his judgement

I was not being brave. Sven’s companions had lost their appetite for the game, Sven himself had his breeches round his ankles, and his sword was lying loose in the clearing’s center and I snatched it up and ran at him. He somehow kept his feet as he turned. “I’ll touch it,” I shouted, and I swung the long blade at his prick, but the sword was heavy, I had not used a man’s blade before, and instead of hitting where I had aimed I sliced it down his bare thigh, opening the skin, and I swung it back, using all my strength, and the blade chopped into his waist where his clothes took most of the force. He fell over, shouting, and his two friends dragged me away as Rorik went to untie his sister.

Uhtred is really becoming himself, highlights his honor, selflessness, and his full integration in the Danes

He spoke darkly, his usual cheerfulness gone. “You did well, Uhtred. You behaved like a Dane.”

There was no higher praise he could have given me,

splendid helmet, its crown and face piece decorated with silver, and I thought it looked better on Ragnar than it had on my father.

and, with my long fair hair, men mistook me for his son and I liked that.

The Svear, the Norse, and the Danes were the Northmen, the men who went on Viking expeditions, but it was the Danes who had come to take my land, though I did not say that to Ragnar.

confused. Northumbrian or Dane? Which was I? What did I want to be?

Important question in Uhtred’s character

he went on, “our kings are the hard men, and if their sons are soft, then a man from another family becomes king, but in England they believe the throne passes through a woman’s legs. So a feeble creature like Alfred could become king just because his father was a king.”

“What happens to you, Uhtred, is what you make happen. You will grow, you will learn the sword, you will learn the way of the shield wall, you will learn the oar, you will learn to give honor to the gods, and then you will use what you have learned to make your life good or bad.” “I want Bebbanburg,” I said.

This story is one of ambition of men from different ideologies Ragnar’s to conquer England, Alfred’s to unite England, and Uhtred’s for Bebbanburg

with favor.” I still did not understand the Danish way of religion. They took it much less seriously than we English, but the women prayed often enough and once in a while a man would kill a good beast, dedicate it to the gods, and mount its bloody head above his door to show that there would be a feast in Thor or Odin’s honor in his house, but the feast, though it was an act of worship, was always the same as any other drunken feast.

Ragnar said, “than for a man to have no lord. No ring-giver,” he added, touching his own arm rings.

Ragnar has similarities to Uhtred’s daughter’s husband (sygtriggar)