The Homeless

The Homeless, (Northian: toy adāyhō) are a Viking community of Northian origin, first recorded in history circa 780. Their settlement, Kimurā, is one of the federal cities of the Northern States today. The community enjoyed the notoriety or (depending on perspective) infamy of being particularly fierce fighters even amongst Viking communities. They were often employed as mercenaries by aspiring kings seeking to exploit ready fighters to acquire new wealth.

Name

The word adāyhō is plurale tantum and hence only used in the plural, even if only a single person of this description is meant.

The term toy adāyhō in Northian means "unhomed", referring to their reputation amongst Northians as outcasts. Within the context of the waning ability of the Acrean Empire to preserve peace, the four Northian cities federally enacted strict laws suppressing "going Viking" towards the end of the 8th century, with the provision that individuals who were found with bands of Vikings were forever banished from their native cities, often upon pain of death. While the term "Viking" refers to seafaring expedition almost exclusively in modern discourse, in this period in the Northern States it encompassed all unsanctioned expeditions with the aim of unlawfully obtaining plunder. Thus, if a Northian person went Viking, they were deemed to have lost their citizenship, estate, and protection under the law, and if they returned, they were unable to claim the protection usually given to foreigners.

adāyhō has a range of other meanings relating to wildness. Of animals, it indicated the wild variety as opposed to a domesticated variety. From this sense probably the adāyhō were deemed to be in a condition less civilized than the various city states of the Northians, despite whatever sophisticated and (at times) egaltarian characteristics their society actually had.

Religion

The adāyhō were known as Odin worshippers in the medieval period, and to this day Odin is still worshipped as the chief god of Kimura. Odin (Elder Nordic Wotanaz; Northian Wozimā) was worshipped in various ways in the Northern States, but the kind of worship practiced by adāyhō was considered profane by the Northian priesthood. It is possible that blood sacrifice was performed in manner somewhat similar to that in Shalum or Æþurheim to the south; such a thing would agree with the general disposition of the Northian priesthood that the Nordic gods demanded profane sacrifices. But a multitude of other practices was considered profane in an age when religious strictures were becoming more formalized, against the backdrop of the nascent Northian identity, which was heavily constructed though religious ritual and dogma. For example, the usage of the Gales in worship was much more fluid prior to the 6th century, but afterwards the only correct usage became a complete recitation of the 132-hymn canon. Thus, it is also possible that the "profane" worship merely meant non-conformal worship practices.

Relationship with other Northians

In the Classical world, the Northians generally defined their common identity with the term āmruwąs (as though from *sm̥-mru-wn̥ts; usually pl. āmruwātáŋhah = the Hamruvunts), which can be literally glossed as "bringing forth conversation". Northians often felt that the āmruwās were the largest cultural sphere to which they belonged by birth and, by extension, the largest group capable of having shared ethic. Yet the adāyhō together with the Nordic diaspora population that started to migrate from Acrea to the sparse-populated southern lands seemed to exploit the insability of the Acrean Empire. The Northern States did not object to their (real or imagined; co-incident or intentional) association with a non-Hamruvunt civilization but to their refusal to uphold the old peaceful order of the Classical world and exploitation of its dissolution. Yet the language of the adāyhō was Northian, and they could not be separated from the term āmruwātáŋhah, leading to the obsolescence of that term as far as political allegiences were concerned.

In the 9th century, the adāyhō were billed in Cleiden as the āmruwātõm aγammatāhah "the honourless of the Hamruvunts". It is interesting that the Cleidenians were still interested in defining them as āmruwātáŋhah despite expressing all manner of disparagement and contempt towards them. On the one hand, it could be argued that this meant the Northians still confessed to a certain connection towards them on the basis of shared language. But on the other hand their ability to understand only showed their steadfast refusal to join the common enterprise of the Northians (namely to uphold a peaceful international order) in an even more negative light, this refusal being not attributable to a language barrier. While a language barrier can technically be pierced by translation, the Northian concept of Hamruvunt was that a shared language communicated more than mere meaning but also shared ethics, rationality, and even religion.

See also

• Northern States