Hello everyone and welcome back to the Viking Age podcast. My name is Lee and this is Eastern Way 3,

catastrophe and opportunity. This is the third episode in our series covering the Viking Age in the East.

If you haven't had the chance to listen to the earlier episodes in this series yet. You might want to pause this episode.

Go back and start listening at Eastern Way 1 to make sure that you get the full story.

But don't worry. we'll still be here whenever you get back.

Is everyone good? Excellent. I'm going to do. Oh, In our last time out, we explored the mythical and explored how they allegedly plowed away the land of Central Sweden to form Lake Meleran.

We then witnessed the God Odin establish himself in his quote-unquote priests as rulers over this newly

lakeside region. The results was a political geography which was divided up into multiple local centers of power, each of which was in turn subject to the all fathers rule.

When Odin finally gave up the ghost and either died or made his way to Gothamer, depending on what you choose to believe, he was succeeded as king of theiar, first by the Vanier God Niorder, and then by Niorder's son, Frere.

Upon assuming the throne, Freer promptly established his home at Uppsala as the capital of the region, building a lavish

temple there and eventually amassing great wealth from taxes and tribute. This fortune formed the basis for what would become

known as the Apsala Order or Apsala Wealth, which would go on to sustain the future kings of the Svia.

Speaking of future kings, it was Freier's descendants who would continue to call Uppsala home and rule the sphere for generations to come.

In many ways, these descendants, who are collectively referred to as the Inglingar by later medieval authors, would go about

their business at Uppsala in the shadow of their noble ancestor. And this is not merely an analogy. If we believe our sources,

the Inlingar would quite literally rule in the shadow of the great burial mound which was erected for their

divine ancestor upon his death. Indeed, the grandness of Freier's tomb seems to have had a larger impact on the elite of the region.

According to Snory Sturluson, who is, unsurprisingly, our main source for this tale.

Freier's mound kicked off a bit of a trend among the ruling classes of Svei-Land, and we are told

that several other burial mounds were erected in the decades and centuries which followed.

It is in these great mounds that we find a link between the clearly fictional mythic origin stories which are told to us by Snory,

and the very real archaeological evidence which has been uncovered in the region around Lake Maloran. In many ways it is this evidence

...