Fic Updates Agent 47

[Mamorien]

I wouldn't normally be up this early, but we have a special occasion.

It might take a year, but I will see you all again as we return to the world where a boy looked at an enemy... and saw himself. And changed the path of everything.

It's actually been a little more than a year since he capped off Book III with those words, but for those of you who didn't get the advance warning I pastede (yay) on the discord a while or two back, today's the day A Thing of Vikings begins its long-awaited fourth book, and we see what can grow From A Mustard Seed!

Pre-Norse Germanic and Early Norse calendars were highly regional in use, with significant differences in practice and even names for months between different areas, with some using leap days, leap weeks, leap months, pure lunar reckoning with no adjustments for precession, or 12 months of 30 days each, with five or six additional days inserted as needed. Post-Reformation Norse calendars, however, are universally based on the calendar established by the Hooligans of Berk, which was itself restructured eighty years prior to the Reformation by the Jewish teacher Dror ben Ezra. Dror essentially used the Jewish calendar as a direct model, simply renaming the Jewish months for the Norse months, but keeping the general underlying structure of calculations the same, with months beginning with the new crescent phase of the moon.

As a result, the modern Norse calendar is a luni-solar calendar, structured around the Mahzor 19-year lunar cycle, with leap months added in the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th, and 19th years of the cycle, thus keeping the calendar from precessing excessively from the seasons. Like the Jewish calendar, it does have the singular flaw that the lunar Mazhor cycle does not perfectly match up with the mean solar calendar over time, and falls one day behind per 216 years. This is a point of discussion among the Norse on possible methods to compensate, due to the fact that, as the beginning and ending of the months are tied to the natural cycle of the moon, skipping days to bring the calendar in line with the mean solar year, as was done with Julian calendar in the mid-1700s AD, is not practical.

The era used for the Norse calendar is År Odin (Year of Odin), abbreviated as ÅrO; as with Anno Mundi (In the Year of the World) or Anno Domini (In The Year of Our Lord), the words or abbreviation should precede the date rather than follow it. The epoch of this era is based on the historical Norse Reformation, beginning with the publication of the Norse holy texts in Harpa ÅrO 0.

One year to the month before that moment, on Berk, Picknose Rolfsson clan Jorgenson and his newest friends, Mairwen and Signy Roswynnsdoittor clan Bog, witness a meeting their clans have been half-dreading for 20 years. In the Chief's hut, Esther bat Rivkah passes the latest news from Normandy, for good and/or ill, along to William clan Haddock, then helps King Chief Stoick give advice to Jacob of Glenfinnan.

Two days later in the Training Arena, Hiccup gets advice about no longer putting all Berk's eggs in one basket (rimshot) and getting additional teachers for Dragon Training, interrupted by a visit from his newest thane.

Two days after that, in Constantinople's storied Hippodrome, Sophia Jorgenson née Makris and her close personal bodyguard Gudmund discuss politics draconic and human. Back on Berk, Astrid helps Spitelout explain to Hiccup why Berk needs a standing army now, or at least a proper militia. And we close along the Jīnniú Dào, somewhere between Hangzhou to Chengdu, where Fa Mulan DBA Fa Ping is relieved of a heavy burden and promptly has to take on a heavier one...

On unhappy news, due to harassment I got from some fascists over the hiatus, I've had to strike a compromise. While the fic is readable if you don't have an AO3 account, only people with AO3 accounts can comment. This way they can't hide behind guest comments when they want to spew their bile.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/104089...s/98681010