Along the low rivers where the ice had begun to break, the skraelingr gathered one final time.
They buried their dead in shallow graves lined with spruce boughs, chanting the old songs with voices rough from weeping and cold.
Small children clung to their mothers, wide-eyed, watching as rough stone markers were set above kin who would never see the long sun again.
Above them, gulls wheeled and cried, the only witnesses to these rites now that the wolf-men owned the valleys.
When the last prayer was whispered, the clans turned their backs on the land that had given them life for generations.
Small hide canoes and longer, narrow boats laden with furs, tools, and frightened eyes pushed off into the steel-grey water.
They slipped away beneath a leaden sky, paddles dipping without a word. By dusk, the fjord was empty but for the wash of the tide against dark stone.
High upon his fortress mound, Vetrúlfr watched the last plumes of smoke from abandoned skraelingr camps fade into the wind.
Around him, banners of the ochre Vegvísir marked upon earthen fields snapped from heavy timbers driven deep into the frost.
Farmsteads ringed his hall now. Fields already lay furrowed where before there had been only stubborn tundra.
Smiths’ hammers rang through the settlement, forging spearheads, rivets, and chains.
Even here, at the edge of the world, the land itself was learning to wear Norse hands like a yoke.
A huskarl approached at a respectful distance, breath misting.
"Lord," he said, bowing slightly. "Word from the north. The ships sent by Ármodr and your Varangian captains have touched upon Svalbarð. They raise your marks there even now."
Vetrúlfr let out a slow breath, his pale eyes narrowing on the horizon; as if he could see through mountains and fog to where his banners now stood even beyond Greenland’s shoulders, planted on the back of the world.
"Good," he murmured, voice so low the wind nearly stole it.
"Let the gods themselves see it; that there is no land too cold or cruel for the reach of my house."
Around him, his huskarljar shifted with quiet pride, hands resting upon axe hafts and sword belts.
Below the fortress, Greenland lay quiet. At last unchallenged, its rivers and coastlines bearing only Norse sails.
And far beyond, upon Svalbarð’s frozen brow, the wolves had begun to carve their mark into the very bones of the earth.
On the shores of Svalbarð, the men of Vetrúlfr’s kingdom labored beneath a sun that barely climbed the horizon even at the height of day.
It hung there like a pale, watchful eye, casting long, thin shadows across stone and drift-ice.
Their first task was simple survival. They dug into the frost-hardened earth, stacking sod walls thick to hold the heat.
The roofs were laid with driftwood rafters hauled from far down the beaches, sealed over with turf and packed snow.
Inside these low houses, fires burned day and night, choking the close air with the sharp tang of salt and whale oil.
Outside, the men raised a stout palisade of split pine trunks around the growing cluster of sod huts.
A crude barrier, but enough to turn aside hungry bears or worse yet, wandering eyes from ships yet unseen.
By the shallow curve of the bay, they drove heavy timbers into the seafloor, lashing them together to make a rough quay.
It was little more than a long platform perched over the dark water, yet even this small harbor was a marvel upon such desolate shores.
A promise that ships would come again and again, each bearing tools, grain, iron, or more hungry men.
Above the wooden piers fluttered a handful of narrow banners: simple cloth dyed with wolf shapes and runes from Vetrúlfr’s own hand, snapping in the cold gusts.
They declared to sea and sky alike that this far reach of the world now bent its neck to the king of the North.
At night, the settlement glowed with small hearth fires. Frost rimed every wall, creeping in delicate webs over the timber palisade.
The men huddled close inside, speaking low of Greenland, of the kingdom being built upon its soil, and of the wealth that might yet be found even here.
Some swore they could smell gold beneath the rocks of Svalbarð’s soil, though it was more likely salt and madness teasing at their senses.
Yet still they stayed, driving deeper roots with every log they placed.
For never before had men come so far, nor dared raise walls against a night this long.
And in the hush between the crackle of fire and the howl of the wind, it seemed the land itself listened,
As if weighing whether to suffer these wolf-men, or swallow them whole as it had every other intruder before.
Yet the land did not swallow them.
It watched in silence, as it always had; through ages of ice, of spirits, of quiet beasts who lived by its rhythms.
But now came men who did not ask for its permission. They carved into its frozen skin with axes and fire, laying down hearths and hoisting runes not to beg, but to declare.
The first men to step foot on Svalbarð’s icy shores since the gods themselves would build something here that would last long enough to be immortalized in the annals of history.
Soon enough, knarrs and longships would arrive to follow these men. Roads would be paved, walls would be built, and fields would be sown; all the while beasts of burden would graze the land.
The wind would carry a new sound; not birdsong or breath, but the ring of steel, the growl of wolves.
And in that sound was a promise.
Not of peace. Not of plunder.
But of roots driven deep. Of gods reborn. Of kingdoms yet unnamed rising where none had dared plant banners before.
The North was no longer watching.
It had chosen its King. And his name was Vetrúlfr.