30 Days of Biographies:
Hallvard the Circle-Farer

The byname “Circle-Farer” refers the fact that the Hrifamxi sailor Hallvard Rognvaldson his the first known individual to have circumnagivated the entire continent of Realmgard. While his journey did not follow a perfectly circular path, it did begin and end at the same point, and this name follows the poetic conventions common in such Hrimfaxi nicknames, which often poetically — if imprecisely — refer to a famous individual’s most notable deeds or features.

Previously accompanying his father on several journeys east — recorded going at least as far as Archipelago — Hallvard eventually settled in a Hrimfaxi colony in Middelmere and spent the next few years sailing merchant ships between Hrimfax and the Kingdoms of the Sea. Eventually, Hallvard sailed to mainland Gallicantu and made several voyages along the east coast of the continent of Realmgard.

He is known to have fought on behalf of the Gallicantiens in a Hrimfaxi mercenary force that was eventually granted lands in the Duchies of the Sea, though Hallvard himself returned to Middelmere.

Despite the reputation of the Hrimfaxi as ruthless marauders, Hallvard himself spent most of his life as a merchant. His famous voyage around Realmgard was ostensibly undertaken as a trade voyage. Crossing from Middelmere to Porthaven and moving along the coast of Realmgard in a clockwise direction, visiting the other Free Cities and sailing up the Cruesa River to trade in Valico.

From there, he spent the better part of the next year in Gallicantu before sending his previous ship back to Middelmere laden with the goods he had acquired up to that point. He traded ships with another Hrimfaxi captain and continued on to Natalis. Famously, while sailing along the southern coast of Realmgard, Hallvard and his crew fought off an attack by pirates from the Wandering Coast. When reaching Pelayo, Hallvard composed a famous poem at the sight of the towering red cliffs of Duradero.

Reaching Pelayo, Hallvard proceeded north up the west coast of Realmgard. In the time he spent among the Amazons in the Land of the Phoenix, he fell in love with an Amazon merchant and the two were married. The journey along the frigid northern coast of Realmgard was the most arduous part of the journey and Hallvard and his crew were able to narrowly escape calamity through the aid of local Aurorean fishermen.

Upon his return to the Hrimfaxi community in Middelmere, Hallvard was not lauded as any particular sort of hero, though his tenacity and seamanship were noted by the other Hrimfaxi. It is largely in retrospect that Hallvard has earned his fame. Later scholars and cartographers drew heavily on his accounts of the coastal regions of Realmgard to develop more accurate maps of the continent.

Although Hallvard’s own account of his travels are largely devoid of embellishment or exaggeration and, indeed, consisting of little more than headings and distances with the occasionally account of what he saw and did in a region, he has grown into a folkloric, larger-than-life figure as later writers took his story and ran with them, adding all sorts of fanciful elements to his journey around Realmgard.

---

Now, Hallvard is being represented by a picture of Leif Erikson, but he’s not really based on Leif Erikson beyond “noteworthy Viking sailor.” Though he is named after (and, again, not really based on) patron saint of Oslo Hallvard Vebjørnsson.

Also, those things he’s pointing at are supposed to be the red cliffs of Duradero, but I couldn’t quite get the colour right to really work.

Incidentally, the word for the literary genre of this sort of account of a lengthy sea voyage is “periplus” — which means “sailing around”, and that’s basically what it is. I was hesitant to use the word “clockwise” in describing his travels. They had clocks in the time period Relmgard is supposed to be equivalent to, but I’m not sure how common either the clocks themselves or the word would be. Incidentally, before clocks, the word was apparently “sunwise.”

Also, his nickname was originally Far-Farer, as in “one who fares far”, but I was worried people’s instinct would be to read it as “Far-More Far”. “Circle-Farer” may not be entirely accurate, but I think it at least conveys the sense of “dude who sailed all the way around an entire continent.”

Follow me here:

If you’ve enjoyed my content, please consider supporting me through Ko-fi or Patreon, or through Paypal by scanning the QR code below:

Follow Realmgard and other publications of Emona Literary Services™ below:

Subscribe to the Emona Literary Services™ Substack newsletter here.

---

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The author prohibits the use of content published on this website for the purposes of training Artificial Intelligence technologies, including but not limited to Large Language Models, without express written permission.

All stories published on this website are works of fiction. Characters are products of the author’s imagination and do not represent any individual, living or dead.

The realmgard.com Privacy Policy can be viewed here.

Realmgard is published by Emona Literary Services^TM