Why 1246? The History Behind an Unlikely Medieval Love Story

ENTWINED MAGAZINE Every Love Has a Story. BEHIND THE CHRONICLE How we brought a northern shieldwoman and a Mongol horsewoman together in the same place, at the same time, without abandoning the history that shaped their lives. “She Was My Enemy. Now She Shares My Fire and My Bed.” Finding the Right Time for an Impossible Meeting When we first imagined a love story between a Viking shield-maiden and a Mongol warrior, the attraction was immediate. Two beautiful, formidable women, both accustomed to weapons, horses, danger, and the rough companionship of warriors, encountering one another under circumstances that should have made friendship impossible. One woman would come from the cold northern lands, carrying a shield and axe, her hair braided in the fashion of her people. The other would belong to the great horse-riding culture of the Asian steppe, armed with a powerful composite bow and possessing skills that would make her a dangerous opponent on almost any battlefield. They would not speak the same language. Their customs would be different. Their families would disapprove of the relationship, and the history of warfare between their peoples would make trust particularly difficult. Yet somehow, against all expectations, they would fall in love. There was only one problem. The classic Viking Age and the great Mongol conquests did not quite overlap. The Viking Age is traditionally considered to have ended in 1066, following the Battle of Stamford Bridge, while the Mongol Empire rose to prominence in the early thirteenth century under Genghis Khan. To place a Viking shield-maiden and a warrior from the Mongol Empire together in the same story without explanation would therefore mean bringing together two women separated by roughly a century and a half of historical change. We needed another approach. The Solution: A Woman Born After the Viking Age Rather than abandoning the Scandinavian character, we decided to make her a descendant of the northern families whose ancestors had traveled eastward as traders, settlers, and warriors. The people did not vanish when historians later declared that the Viking Age had ended. Their descendants continued to live, trade, fight, marry, and travel, even as their world changed. Our heroine, Astrid Thorsdóttir, would belong to that later generation. She would preserve the fighting traditions of her family, carry the sort of weapons familiar to her ancestors, and regard herself as a northern woman with a proud warrior heritage. Strictly speaking, she would not be a Viking shield-maiden from the traditional Viking Age. She would be a thirteenth-century Norse shieldwoman, imagined as preserving some of those older traditions. That small adjustment opened the door to a much more believable setting. Why the Year 1246? The year 1246 offered several advantages. By then, the Mongol armies had invaded the lands of the Rus and reached deep into Eastern Europe, bringing them into territories long connected with Scandinavian trade and settlement. The campaign of 1237–1241 provided the turbulent background we needed for Astrid and Altani's first encounter. We chose 1240 as the year in which they first met. Astrid, then twenty-eight, was traveling with a merchant caravan when violence overtook her companions. Altani, then twenty-five, discovered her wounded beside a destroyed wagon. One woman had every reason to hate and fear the other's people. The other belonged to the victorious military power, yet chose to save a wounded stranger. That gave their relationship a difficult beginning, with distrust, fear, gratitude, and dependence eventually developing into something neither expected. By 1246, six years would have passed. Enough time for the women to travel together, learn one another's habits and languages, establish a household, face rejection from their relatives, and become recognized as an inseparable pair. They would still disagree about almost everything. But they would know one another well enough to argue without waiting for an interpreter. Why the Volga River? The Volga region was an important center of the western Mongol world, connected with Batu Khan and the territories under his authority. It was also a region where people, goods, and languages could meet along the great routes linking Europe and Asia. Most importantly for our story, it offered a plausible reason for a European traveler to encounter Mongol encampments and the people who moved between them. In fact, a real European traveler, the Franciscan John of Plano Carpini, reached Batu's camp on the Volga in April 1246 during his famous mission to the Mongols. He continued eastward and left a written account of the peoples and customs he encountered. We did not want to turn this historical traveler into the author of an invented interview. Instead, we created Matthias of Lübeck, a fictional German chronicler accompanying merchants and travelers through the region. Unlike the famous Franciscan envoy, Matthias has no real surviving journal. His manuscript, his observations, and his conversations with our two women are literary inventions. But the world through which he travels is inspired by the historical circumstances of the period. The Problem of Language This was perhaps the most enjoyable challenge. In our previous CHANCE ENCOUNTER interviews, the women can explain themselves freely. They answer questions, interrupt each other, argue, laugh, and occasionally reveal things their partners would rather keep private. Astrid and Altani cannot do that so easily. Astrid speaks the northern language of her upbringing, while Altani speaks Mongolian. Both have learned some of the words used along the trading routes, but neither has received the kind of education that would allow her to converse effortlessly in several languages. We therefore introduced two interpreters. One understands Astrid's speech and the languages used by merchants in the Rus lands. The other can carry questions and answers between those languages and Mongolian. The chronicler records their replies in Latin. What reaches us in modern English is therefore imagined as the result of several stages of translation, interpretation, and later editorial reconstruction. Naturally, this creates complications. Astrid may use an especially colorful insult that has no direct equivalent in the other language. Altani may make a joke whose meaning is obvious to the people in the tent but almost impossible for the chronicler to understand. And when the women begin talking about their private life together, the interpreters may suddenly discover that they would prefer not to translate certain expressions at all. These moments are part of the humor, but they also reveal something more important about the relationship. For years, the women have been teaching each other the words they need. The language of shared work comes first. The language of friendship follows. And eventually there are the affectionate words whispered beneath the sleeping furs, where the most important lessons require remarkably little explanation. The Difficult Question of Family and Faith We also wanted to avoid presenting the relationship as though two thirteenth-century families would respond exactly like modern relatives. Astrid belongs to a Scandinavian Christian family that remembers older northern stories and traditions. Altani comes from a Mongol household shaped by the beliefs and customs of the steppe. Their families have different expectations concerning marriage, kinship, children, and social obligations. Moreover, their peoples have been affected by devastating warfare. Astrid's surviving relatives would regard her affection for a Mongol woman as an intolerable betrayal, particularly after members of her traveling party had been killed during the campaigns. Altani's family would struggle to understand why she had chosen a foreign woman instead of accepting a marriage that could strengthen family relationships and provide descendants. Their relationship therefore carries consequences. They lose the goodwill of people they love. They are sometimes treated with suspicion. And they must build a household that depends less upon the approval of relatives and more upon the loyalty they have developed toward each other. We cannot claim that every family of the period would have reacted in precisely this manner, nor do we possess a historical record of this fictional couple. But the pressures of family obligation, social expectation, religious difference, and political hostility give the story an appropriately difficult setting. What Their Home Would Look Like We imagined their home not as a stone castle or a modern romantic bedroom, but as a substantial felt tent that could be packed and moved with a caravan. Inside would be carpets, blankets, sleeping furs, wooden chests, cooking vessels, weapons, bags of supplies, and the everyday possessions of two women who earned their living through dangerous travel. Astrid's shield and axe would be close to hand. Altani's bow, arrows, and riding equipment would occupy another part of the tent. A central fire would provide warmth, and simple lamps or candles could illuminate the interior after dark. Their wealth would not necessarily be measured in gold ornaments or palaces, but in good horses, useful equipment, dependable trading relationships, and the ability to feed themselves through the winter. This also gives us a much more convincing domestic romance. One woman repairs a weapon while the other prepares food. They quarrel over the horses. They disagree over the cooking. They share blankets when the nights grow cold. And when one returns exhausted or injured, the other is there to care for her. The tenderness comes from their actions rather than from expensive gifts or modern declarations of romance. Why the Story Is Presented as a Discovered Manuscript We wanted CHANCE ENCOUNTER to move beyond modern interviews while preserving the idea that extraordinary couples tell their own stories. A medieval interview could not have appeared in a magazine, and it certainly could not have been accompanied by photographs. But a literate European traveler could have recorded remarkable encounters in a handwritten chronicle. That gave us our framing device. We imagine Matthias writing his account in Latin, describing the women, their household, the translators, and the conversations he was permitted to hear. Centuries later, the manuscript survives in a northern European collection and is eventually recovered, studied, and translated. The modern presentation retains the interview format for readability, while the conversations themselves are understood as a literary reconstruction of what the chronicler recorded. This is not an authentic discovered manuscript. It is historical fiction presented through the fictional discovery of a manuscript. That distinction allows us to enjoy the experience of uncovering a forgotten love story without pretending that Astrid, Altani, or Matthias are documented historical individuals. And the Illustrations? The change of period also means changing our visual approach. There will be no photographs, fashion magazine portraits, modern makeup, or contemporary clothing. Instead, the story can be illustrated as though its images were preserved in a medieval manuscript. We can imagine delicately painted scenes of Astrid carrying her battered shield, Altani on horseback with her bow, the two women arguing beside a fire, their first affectionate embrace, and the chronicler sitting inside their tent with his interpreters. Their clothing, weapons, furniture, and surroundings should be inspired by the material culture of the period, while the artistic presentation can evoke richly colored manuscript illumination. Some images may show scenes that the chronicler could not have witnessed personally, just as medieval illustrated books often portrayed events known to their artists only through written accounts. They would be interpretations of the story rather than photographic evidence. And perhaps that is appropriate. Because this is a tale that survives through words, memory, imagination, and the possibility that some extraordinary relationships were never recorded in the histories we inherited. Two Women, One Remarkable Encounter We chose 1246 because it offered a world in which these two characters could plausibly have crossed paths. We chose the Volga region because it stood near the meeting place of cultures, armies, merchants, travelers, and languages. We chose a Scandinavian descendant of the Viking world rather than a literal Viking-Age warrior because history demanded that adjustment. And we chose a European chronicler with interpreters because the women deserved the opportunity to tell their story without somehow acquiring the speech, manners, and knowledge of the modern world. Everything else grew from the characters themselves. Astrid is loud, suspicious, loyal, and stubborn. Altani is clever, quick-witted, daring, and equally stubborn. Their first encounter begins with a knife and a threat. Their friendship develops through shared work. Their love grows through affection, laughter, hardship, and the slow discovery of one another's language. By the time Matthias enters their tent, they are no longer a northern woman and a Mongol woman struggling to understand each other. They are simply Astrid and Altani. Two women who have made a life together. And although nearly eight centuries separate their imagined world from ours, their story reminds us that love has never required two people to come from the same place, speak the same language, or agree about everything. Sometimes it only requires one person to stop beside a broken wagon—and refuse to leave the stranger lying there.