Successor

The Successor is, as the name implies, the successor of Ragnar the Prophet as the leader of the House of Submission. As Ragnar felt death approaching in SE 26 [798 CE], he appointed his most loyal Companion, Hakon of Senja, to succeed him. However, Ragnar believed that he alone had been chosen by the Allfather as His Prophet, so that Hakon and those who followed him would not share in the divine revelations Ragnar had received; they would simply serve as temporal rulers of the House of Submission. On matters of religion, Ragnar laid out in the Epistles to the Swedes that a Great Holy Thing of scholars and pious men would be the final judges of religious interpretation.

While Ragnar himself chose Hakon to succeed him, he did not lay out a process for Hakon's own successors to be chosen. Hakon's assassination in SE 30 brought the question to a head. The obvious choice was Gorm, a Danish chieftain who had converted to Submission after the Battle of Flensburg. Yet he chose to submit his claim to the Thing, setting a precedent. While the Thing was delighted to be granted this power, and approved his succession wholeheartedly, a number of Submissives were unhappy with the centralization of power in the Danish families which followed. When Gorn was succeeded by his son Erik I, the notion that the Succession would be hereditary among Gorn's descendants outraged these pious men. They claimed the Thing had betrayed Ragnar and Hakon and announced that as true Submissives they would establish their own holy Things, whose members were truly pious. These groups became known as Outsiders, and many left the Scandinavian heartland of Submission.

It was Erik I who called a meeting of the Great Holy Thing and announced that the work of Submission was not over -- there must be continuous conversion, not just of the Norse, but of all the peoples of the world. The House of Submission had not triumphed until it was synonymous with the world. It is unclear whether Ragnar had envisaged Submission as a religion for peoples other than the Norse -- while he may have thought in such abstract terms as mankind, in practice he dealt only with the conversion of Norse peoples. However, there was wealth and riches to be won in the lands beyond Scandinavia, so the Thing acclaimed the piety of Erik's Succession, and the Viking Age began.

In some cases, the Submissive warriors who went out conquering found simple tribesmen such as the Saxons, the Slavs, and the Balts who worshipped heathen gods such as the Norse themselves had done before Ragnar. These lands tended to see wholesale conversions to Submission, making them much like Scandinavia. In other cases, however, the Vikings conquered lands such as England, Ireland, and Francia with complex societies and the older monotheistic religion of Christianity. The Christians tended to resist conversion to Submission, making incorporation of their lands into the House of Submission more difficult.

The Successor Erik III, who had spent several years in England fighting the Anglo-Saxons, called a meeting of the Great Holy Thing in SE 72 [844 CE] where he made a major proposal, the Edict of Toleration, calling for the tolerance of Christians under Submission, as long as they swore fealty, obeyed certain restrictions, and didn't proselytize. The debate lasted for months, and split the Thing. In the end it was realised that Outsiders and many Submissive Kings in Ireland were already negotiating with and living alongside Christians, and it was only right that such interaction be moderated in order to preserve the piety of the Submissives.

Although a majority of the Thing finally sided with Erik, many stormed out, and the King of the Saxons, Ulf I, rose up in rebellion, proclaiming himself to be High King (though not Successor). In Saxony there was no idea of tolerance towards Christians, as there were no Christians there. The Norse who had settled down the Elbe could not see the need for tolerance that those in the west could. Though the Holy Thing finally supported Erik, they would not condemn Ulf's stand, and the Saxons remained within the House of Submission.

Erik himself returned to England where he resumed the task of bringing the land under his control. Erik made the English city of York his permanent capital, which brought Submission to another turning point. From the time of Erik III onward, the Successors made their capitals outside of Scandinavia, though the Great Holy Thing continued to meet in Trondheim. In this way, the two centers of authority in the House of Submission were separated, and began to drift apart.