Yksisarvinen - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

The general pattern follows one of Utrio's usual arrangements: a young woman and a young man encounter one another several different times, even if they come from very remote origins, like fate draws them together, and in the end they get each other.

The teenage twins Geir and Ivar, sons of a Viking chieftain Inge Ragvaldson jarl and his wife Ulvhild Svendsdatter in Newfoundland, America, in a Norse colony started by Leif the Lucky, find the carcass of a whale, narwhal, and they take its big horn-like tooth, tusk, to their luggage. The colony fares badly, and the family decides to emigrate to Scandinavia. After seeing the martyr death of their maternal uncle king Canute IV of Denmark, they end up to Germany with their travel companions, a missionary bishop and his family. Their whale tooth -protected in a big sack- becomes a magic item, the unicorn, whose material is believed to have some magical powers. They get paid for both touches of the tusk, and for amulets made of it. Geir, who becomes count Gero, marries Sigberta, the heiress of the bishop's family's German county of Berga, but is restless and decides to embark to the first crusade, after his young wife died leaving an only heiress, baby named Beatrix.

Meanwhile, in Italy, Juvalos Gerakis, the Finnish- or Greek-born Count of Sinetra in Calabria and his current wife, countess Aurelia, another Finno-Byzantine noble, rescue Aurelia's daughter Constanzia -heiress of Montecaldo- from a bad marriage in Rome, acquire a Roman fortified tower in the process, and marry her to her stepbrother Roger, son of count Juvalos and his first wife the late countess Adela, who is heir to the county of Sinetra. Then the count sends his son and heir to the crusade. Constanzia and her first husband, the knight Ferro Furni from Rome, had already some years earlier met Geir and Ivar in Hamburg and Berga when they were as envoys in Germany.

The count Geir, his brother Ivar and their retinue travel and adventure with the crusade, meeting the troop from the Calabrian county of Sinetra. Also Constanzia de Montecaldo is with the troop. A love affair develops between Geir and Constanzia. A portion of the retinue get abducted by Armenian mountain robbers, but after winter spent in Armeno-Cilician fortress, they flee. After Jerusalem is conquered by the crusader army, Roger dies in the warfaring. The paramours now have one another, and they marry, embarking towards southern Italy with Constanzia's young daughter Maria, who is an heiress of the old Count of Sinetra (although Maria's uncle, Arnulf, son of the old count's second marriage, will be a rival heir). And Constanzia has also inherited Montecaldo.

The young girl, Maria, is great-granddaughter of Terhen of "Vaskilintu" from Finland, and granddaughter of Aure from Finland. On the other hand, she is granddaughter of the Italian Norman Fulberto and granddaughter of the French Norman Adela. Her great-grandfather had been the Swedish Varangian Eirik. People think that she has two ancestresses (Terhen 'Theodora' and Aure 'Aurelia') who were Byzantine noblewomen, so in this series of plots, Byzantine is the codeword masking Finnish. Her great-grandfather spatharokandidatos Eirik and great-uncle droungarios Leo were officers in service of Constantinople, in Varangian guard. Her both parents were born in Italy.