Chapter 111: The Great Northern Empire
Once, the land beyond the western sea was spoken of only in hushed tones — as a curiosity, a ghost story, a sailor’s lie.
But now... now it had a name.
The Great Northern Empire.
Not Vinland. Not Markland. Not the half-whispered shores of Skraeling legends. But The Great Northern Empire also known by as the Land of Winter, or Vetrland, carved from the marrow of a new age by wolves who came not to trade, but to build.
And build they had.
In just four winters, the empire of the White Wolf had risen like a sword from the soil. Where once there had been only scattered Norse settlements clinging to the coast, now there were stone keeps, walled towns, and paved roadways that stretched like veins through the forests and fields.
From Ullrsfjǫrðr, the capital; with its great hall carved atop a fortified mound, built with foundations of granite and ironwood.
Roads of crushed basalt and lime spread outward in all directions. No longer the mud-rutted goat trails of old, but standard Roman roads, built with the precision Vetrúlfr had studied in the scrolls of Constantinople and Cairo.
Over icy rivers now rose arched stone bridges, some capped with battlements, others adorned with statues of wolves, ravens, or runic gods rendered in a syncretic style that was neither Christian nor pagan; but distinctly Vetrulfr’s.
Aqueducts, raised on native stone and reinforced with brick from kilns fired inland, carried clean water from the upland springs to the coastal cities.
From there, hypocaustic flue chambers ran beneath public halls, bathhouses, and private homes, venting warmth even in the deepest frost.
In Reykjavik, the city-ring built near the coast, public baths of heated marble buzzed with life; a fusion of Norse, Greek, and Persian ideals.