Siursk Serania

Siursk Serania or, as it is more formally known, the Seranian Territories of the United Commonholds (Hártal Serönsk Landsvæðin af Safnaðum Sameiginhöldunum), is the overarching term given to the various territories and outports held by Siurskeyti on the continent of Serania Major.

The Siursk possessions extend over a broad belt of central Serania Major, ranging roughly between 7° north and 28° south latitude at the widest extent, although markedly narrower in the Prothenian coastal regions. They are bordered by overseas possessions of Zeppengeran (north), Tassedar and Zeppengeran (north-east), Odann (territory of Trá Bhuí, central east), Helminthasse (territory of Múskatsströnd) and Madaria (south-east), Savam (principality of Grand-Sud, south), Agamar (Silver Coast, south-west) and Terophan (west). They also include the Gæseyjar island group in the ZZ Sea south-west of the mainland.

History

Discovery

Gísli Hellisgils, leader of the first Messenian expedition to Serania.

For almost as long as the Siur had been a definable people, they had maintained a strong affinity with the sea; and as shipbuilding techniques improved and theinar began to look beyond their immediate surrounds, some of the coastal commonholds developed into substantial maritime powers, with Skjóll, Vonskil and Sarevi probably the most prominent – to the extent that many Siur thought of the Medius Sea almost as a “Siur lake”. However, it was quite some time before the more intrepid among the country’s mariners sought to explore the waters beyond the Strait of Calcar, with some exploration along the southern Ascesian coast and the shores of western Lestria during the later 15th and 16th centuries. Surviving ship’s logs of the period indicate that contact may have been made with the Min, Hsia and other small kingdoms in what is today the Baygil Empire as early as 1540; if so, then this does not appear to have been maintained over a period, and Min court documents, which have otherwise been fulsome, do not reference such a visit beyond a few cryptic remarks. Nonetheless, the experience of Siur mariners in the nearer Prothenian Ocean was sufficiently detailed as to provide Gísli Hellisgils with enough confidence to venture even further afield.

During the previous centuries, tales making their way westward out of Joriscia in more or less distorted form had suggested the existence of a land of great riches (known as Serebria to the Joriscians) to the far east of the Messeno-Joriscian landmass, and in the absence of a route around the frozen wastelands of Boréa – a fact confirmed to the satisfaction of most in the later 15th century – the most viable means of finding this new land from the far west of Messenia appeared to be by way of a westward voyage across the Prothenian. However, as a theory this was far from conclusive; and it took Hellisgils some time to find a backer for what must have seemed at the time to be an absurdly risky project before he secured principal sponsorship from Ragna Stuttsöla, then the thein of Skjóll, and set sail for the putative “New World” in Sation 1602.

After almost nine months of hazard at sea, Hellisgils’ apparently reckless gamble paid off, as his three ships made landfall on an island to the north of the main continent of Serania Major, which he claimed for Skjóll and named Ljúfsland after Stuttsöla’s father. The voyagers spent some three months exploring the area and the surrounding coastline; Hellisgils believed that he had landed on the “Serebrian” mainland, but never confirmed the fact. The travellers returned home to receive well-merited accolades and, certainly for Hellisgils himself, substantial tangible rewards. However, the Siur were not able to capitalise on this early and precocious discovery; the outbreak of Seranian fever in 1606 – brought to Messenia by way of the original infection striking Joriscia – prostrated them (as well as most of the continent), and more than a generation would pass before the Siur were in a strong enough state of health and finances to turn their attentions westward again.

The new claim

By the later 1640s most of the various feuding Siur polities had been brought into a viable union; and the new Siurskeyti, growing in strength and confidence, now sought visible and tangible expansion. While some of this was in their familiar stamping grounds around the Median littoral – including an increasing influence in parts of the east coast of Ascesia, and to an extent further inland – the great and good in the Siur country were finding an increasing appetite for the grand gesture, not least because unification had merely redirected traditional rivalries between commonholds, not neutered them. In this way the proposal by the Ostari sea-captain Rannver Ekill gained a more immediately positive response than had that of Hellisgils; with the firm support of the thein of Vonskil, Ekill raised sail for Serania on 28 Dominy 1654.

Whereas Hellisgils had been forced into a more northerly approach by damage to one of his ships, Ekill had better fortune and could stick to his original intention of sailing a westerly course. Aided by largely benign weather conditions, he made landfall on the coast of Serania Major early in the morning of 30 Nollonger 1654, naming the bay in which his ship anchored Eiguflói (from Hártal eiga, “possession”) to honour its being claimed for Siurskeyti, and dubbing his crew’s improvised encampment Fálkahöfn in honour of Sterkur Fálk, the country’s first thár. Ekill and his crew remained in the region for the next five months, exploring the nearer vicinity, charting its coastline and assessing its landscape, plant and animal life – the greater majority of which was completely unknown to Messenian natural science at that time, and (as marsupial species) markedly different from Messenian fauna. While the visitors were dismayed at being unable to find any sign of habitation, much less the abundant wealth which the fables had led them to expect, Ekill was nonetheless highly enthusiastic about the new land; his personal journal waxes lyrical about “a rich and abundant land, overflowing with natural bounties and wonders; a land which, if it is brought under proper control and stewardship, any person may be proud to call home.”

Their only identification of human habitation in the region would come only on their return journey, when, as they hugged the coast and readied to catch strong currents back towards western Ascesia, they saw fires burning from a headland on the north-eastern coast. Thinking that here, at last, may be the native Serebrians who had been so elusive, the Siur anchored nearby, to be met by small boats from the shore containing “a multitude of small, dark-skinned men, speaking to us in an odd, gabbling tongue which yet seemed passing familiar to some of our number.” After some substantial initial confusion and exchanges in trade pidgins, the Siursk identified their new hosts as Agamari; the Joriscians had established a small beachhead here from which to supply vessels making towards the Ascesian coast and outports of their own around the Tranoroa island group in the south-west. The apparently well-established facility disinclined Ekill to make a claim to this area; the Siur traded for provisions and began their journey home, skirting around the Ràhatrizày Peninsula and following the southern Ascesian coastline, returning to Ostari in Metrial 1656 to report their momentous discovery. Ekill would continue to push for further development of the claim in the next two decades; reports of his discovery spread across the Siur lands after his return home, and the first would-be settlers appear to have started making their way westward as early as 1660.

Slow growth

It must be allowed that the Siursk hardly leapt from the starting gates to make the most of this new opportunity; the distance and the expense of paying passage almost guaranteed that, for all but the wealthiest would-be settlers, going to Serania would be a one-way trip and tantamount to exile. However, there was a clear attraction in new land more or less there for the taking by people who had the courage to claim it and the skills to work and tame it – especially since Siur inheritance law tended to break up even large farms into smaller plots which, at the lower end of the scale, could not provide their owners with a living.

At the institutional level, there was little real impetus to explore in Serania Major; the Siur commonholds had established a very strong grip on interordinate commerce in the south-eastern Ascesian peninsula, and the sentiment within government and higher commercial levels was that there was too little to be gained from diversion of resources into areas like the Seranias, largely unknown and at the end of precariously long supply chains through difficult territory. But, as is often the way, where there was a need, a way of meeting that need arose; from a very early stage, a trickle of settlers began to make their way out to the far west. It remained small at first; for those who felt themselves driven to such a step, there were other options closer to home in the Lestrian territory of Kisilland, and in some of the eastern and south-eastern princely states of Ascesia where the Siur held significant influence. These destinations saw some arrivals, all the more since the costs of uprooting oneself and relocating to Serania were such that, for most practical purposes, most of those who made the journey recognised that they would never return; and the journals and private papers of many colonists testify to the sense of utter dislocation felt by so many. Even so, it was not a complete deterrent when set against the absence of natives with greater claim on land which was already in shorter supply.

It must be said, though, that not everyone who took on Serania did so out of economic necessity; Siur society, as with any other human society, had and continues to have its share of people who either cannot or choose not to comfortably fit themselves into it. For some of these, the prospect of exploration and the physical and spiritual challenge of this new frontier could not be resisted. The langflakkarir or “far-farers”, in some ways more than the farmers, herdsmen and government officials, were responsible for opening the country. Some remained on the fringes of that wilderness the whole of their lives, in some respects fleeing from a society which they neither wanted nor needed. As one far-farer put it, “When the day comes that I can talk to my neighbour without getting off my front doorstep, I know that that’s the time to move on.”

For these and other reasons, settlement was slow to take off. Siurskeyti was largely at peace for much of the fifty years since unification, which removed one root cause of any push to emigrate; and while wealthy individuals provided sponsorship for some settlements and small groups clubbed together to raise funds for others, Siurskeyti’s central government in Ostari was still finding its strength and was unable to exert much influence on the process. As such, there was no concerted push towards the Seranias for much of the remaining 17th century, although a number of small and individually tenuous footholds were established around the Eiguflói which forms the central coast of Siursk Serania, including the town of Fyrstaskýli which is today the territorial capital. Further south, more concentrated patterns of settlement around Muskat Bay – named for the nutmeg which grew in profusion in the area – provided a fulcrum for further development and expansion in the south of the lands claimed by the Siur, with the founding of Nýfoss in 1703 being followed by other townships around the Tötra Peninsula. Trade in spices and in the high-quality tropical hardwoods native to the region gave the Muskat Bay region an early advantage in economic development which they would hold until the Summer War forced the Siursk government to shift the focus of their activities in Serania further north towards the Eiguflói.

Crime and punishment

One understandable, but unfortunate, aspect of Seranian isolation was that it allowed authorities in the homeland – consciously or otherwise – to use the territory as a dumping-ground for the unwanted, the dangerous, and on occasion the crazed. While the concept of a death penalty was not completely unknown to the Siur – especially in the sense of the blóðsskuld (literally “blood-debt”), an archaic practice under which a murderer could himself be killed with impunity by a member of his victim’s family – by the time that the Seranian territories were being opened up, such a penalty had become reserved for the most heinous of offences, with lesser crimes often permitting exile in lieu of imprisonment (an attractive option to rulers who preferred the one-off cost of transportation to the ongoing expense of incarceration).

However, one “colonial” venture aimed at resolving this issue would both prove to be misjudged and come back to cause greater problems for the Siursk, and others, in time. While some use had been made of forced labour, mainly from kalpar, in land clearance and othe projects elsewhere in the Siursk territories, the practice was becoming discomfiting to many Siur as too akin to slavery for their liking; but the perceived need to isolate the worst offenders in Siur society – in keeping with the traditions of exile which featured large in Siur law – combined with the push to develop the Seranian possessions to prompt the Ostari government to revive its claim to Ljúfsland, setting up a penal settlement there in 1735.

The Siursk very quickly built up some friction with the Agamari settlement at Huranmokukila, which had been established some fifty years earlier, although this was in many ways a three-cornered dispute between the Agamari, the Siursk soldiers and their prisoner-settlers. The last group received the odium of both of the others – the Agamari considering the Siursk prisoners as analogous to the rabtat system common in their own country – but were still often used as pawns in some respect as the other groups strove for dominance.

The relationship shifted markedly for the worse when the Siursk colony escaped the control of the metropole, after the garrison troops sent there to maintain order removed the governor in 1744 and seized power themselves, beginning a period of more than a decade in which the Ljúfslanders operated as pirates along the Ivarstead Passage which separated the island from the mainland, defying efforts by both Messenian and Joriscian navies to rein them in. Early in this period, the Huranmokukila settlement was attacked and overrun, with the locals putting it to the torch and fleeing into surrounding countryside or putting to sea in small boats; Agamar would not re-establish a presence there until 1817.

Only in Animare 1757 were the rebels finally brought to heel, when two Siursk battleships shelled the settlement at Selshöfn (today Hâvre-la-Victoire) and captured or killed most of the rebels’ leadership cadre. While the area was rife with piracy during the period – and Messenian navies mounted several campaigns against the pirates – Ljúfsland was the only Messenian “pirate state”, and as such a standing embarrassment to the Siursk. The recovery forced Siurskeyti to take a more hands-on interest in the island, but its economic value to the homeland was limited at this time and, even as a free territory (the prison experiment being summarily closed), its population remained very low and it remained peripheral to overall Siursk interests in Serania.

With the failure of the Ljúfsland colony, the Siursk were obliged to keep their exiled criminals on shorter leashes and closer to law-abiding communities. This was not necessarily a satisfactory response; it was hardly the work of genius for an individual felon to slip his bounds once loose in the territory, and to allow himself to vanish. The more hardened cases frequently continued their outlaw careers with only the slightest pause for a change of venue. But the rule of law was perhaps one of the first things which the Siur imposed on their new territories; although an actual police force would be many years from developing even in their Messenian homelands, the Siur settlers created informal, primitive but surprisingly robust networks of law enforcement even against the exiled recidivists. The Hvíthendur, established in Fyrstaskýli in 1802, are considered by some to be the world’s first detective force in the modern sense of the term, emerging even earlier than counterparts in the Siur metropole – an all the more surprising development given the widespread distaste of most Siur at this time for anything redolent of covert policing.

Further exploration

The collapse of Great Neritsia after 1701 produced an extended period of instability within many Joriscian holdings in Serania Minor, with some of the more peripheral settlements becoming, in the eyes of the Messenian powers emerging from the east, legitimate targets for expansion and absorption. While much of this activity took place elsewhere on the continent, Siurskeyti enjoyed some small successes during this period. The pioneering expedition led by Rauðurbjörn Vetrarþorpi in 1743 and 1744 had established the first, albeit tenuous, route overland to the west coast of what is now Siursk Serania, crossing frequently hostile terrain from Pólsborg on the north shore of the Einingarvatn to reach the ZZ coast in Nollonger 1743. Exploration from the settlement of Óhætthöfn, founded by Vetrarþorpi, found the Gæseyjar island group some distance to the south-west; driving off its small transient colony of fishermen and claiming the islands for Siurskeyti; they have withstood claims by Agamar and Terophan in subsequent years to remain Siursk possessions today.

During the two decades between 1770 and 1790, Siurskeyti and other Messenian states created a framework of bilateral agreements – collectively referred to as the Seranian Treaties – which established accepted borders between the various territorial claims in Serania Major. While these did not completely end disputes between them over sovereignty, in particular over resource development, they did serve to establish fixed reference points which achieved a measure of acceptance even among those states not directly signatory to a particular agreement.

Ut possideatur and the Heathen Wars

While the Seranian Treaties may have eased tensions among the Messenians, the question of borders in the west with claims by Joriscian states remained very much open, with overlapping claims around the hinterlands of the eastern Coactian Sea coast; and a westward push was mandated to some extent by the emergent doctrine of ut possideatur, originally a Sabamic legal concept but increasingly recognised at this time among the Messenian states as a tenet of interordinate law. However, the key argument of ut possideatur – “that it may be possessed” – was of little relevance in dealing with claims which were unsupported by a presence on the ground, and which could therefore be dismissed as spurious and / or irrelevant by a disputant state. A Joriscian corpus of law informed substantially by the region’s Vaestic faith made little provision for the rights of non-Vesnite “ignorants” at this time in any event.

The Joriscian states, largely preoccupied with internal issues within the metropole, were in a poor position to act against outside attack, and their colonies, although at this point often semi-independent actors with weak allegiances to their putative homelands, were usually too small and feeble to offer much resistance to Messenian assault. In the particular case of the Siursk, most of this interest was directed at Terophan and, to a lesser extent, Agamar; the Terophane homeland was currently wracked by internal dissent under the increasingly unstable Spytihnev III and his short-lived successor Krasimir I, and much too distracted to mount an effective intervention.

The increasingly frenzied resistance by the Joriscians against increasing Messenian pressure culminated in various brush wars which broke out in the coastal west of Serania Major and the nearer Serania Minor territories, today collectively referred to as the Heathen Wars, with Messenian authorities deliberately seeking to invoke the Western Expedition of 1567-68, the first major clash of arms between the continents, dressing what was in many respects a blatant grabbing of territory in the borrowed raiment of threat to their cultures. Over the period between 1790 and 1800 the limits of Siursk control stretched to the Coactian coast, and almost as far as the line of the later-built Mirsky Canal, before Terophane recovery established the present borders. A ceasefire was agreed to early in 1802, with the later Agreement at Mudry establishing a non-aggression pact between the Siursk and Terophane territories and formally bringing about peace in the region; it also began a tentative process of growth towards a mutual understanding between the two states which has developed a workable strength and durability, if at times falling short of a genuine alliance.

In some respects the Messenian advances during the Heathen Wars period may be regarded as a last flourish, as the reassertion of Joriscian strength in the early 19th century produced a sometimes uneasy stasis along the borders, which in some respects could be better regarded only as lines of ceasefire.

The Summer War and after

As arguments raged over the rights of the commonholds against the centre in the homeland, Siursk Serania experienced some of the same travails, albeit shifted into an oddly dissonant key; to some extent the patterns of settlement of the territories had created mixtures of settlers from different commonholds, which in turn brought about conditions in which inter-communal tensions could rise. In some more heavily-populated parts of Siursk Serania this was indeed the case; the south-eastern area around Muskat Bay was a particular hotbed of dispute, with the largely secessionist inhabitants of the Múskatsströnd in sharp antagonism to the loyalists of Spóaland and the Tötra Peninsula. The scratch sea-battle off Nýfoss in Ediface 1812, for all its limitations in men and materiel, actually represents the peak of the naval conflict in what was essentially a land-based war.

For the most part, however, paucity of numbers and sheer distance kept actual fighting to a minimum and allowed the Summer War to pass Siursk Serania by without extensive damage to people or property. While the Múskatsströnd and Jannaland to the south were able to make their secession stick – becoming overseas territories of the new Helminthasse – the rest of the Seranian territories stayed loyal to Ostari.

Further development

Open-cast nickel workings near Málmsborg in north-eastern Siursk Serania.

Deprived of much of their powerful internal market by the Helmin secession, the Siursk turned their eyes more sharply on their overseas possessions to help make up the shortfalls. However, they were initially distracted by conflict with Savam, with peripheral activity in the south of the Siursk claim during the War of the Islands (1822-24) producing some small losses of territory along the border with the Savamese possessions in Grand-Sud along with the seizure in the far north of the small Ljúfsland colony, which was renamed Île de la Victoire (Victoria in Ellish). However, the border country – on both sides – was too sparsely populated to cause significant loss of life; the fourteen Siursk deaths in the Duftá incident in Floridy 1823 – in which a successful Savamese attack detonated a gunpowder magazine in the camp of the same name – represented the largest death toll in a single incident during the brief conflict. The aspect of the peace settlement, agreed in Troarn in Fabricad 1824, relating to the Seranian territories was the last of the Seranian Treaties to which Siurskeyti was a signatory.

With the accelerating pace of industrialisation in Messenia came a greater need for raw materials for manufacturing processes; in response Siurskeyti, in common with most powers with interests in the Seranias, began a more detailed survey of its potential resources in the territories. Although government departments were involved in the work and substantially directed it, most of the boots on the ground were put there by private concerns. The mineralogical assays carried out during the middle 19th century, while costly and difficult, would prove highly beneficial in the longer run, with the discovery of the continent’s largest known deposits of nickel in the north-east of Siursk Serania – prompting the development of the “company town” of Málmsborg – and significant quantities of other industrial metals in other parts of the territory.

Although the full impact of the Industrial Revolution was slow to be felt in Serania, change could not be held off indefinitely. The gradual opening up of the Siursk Seranian interior had given way to a bigger and, to some degree, more systematic expansion by as early as 1900, especially along the coasts, and the process was pushed along further and faster by the development of better roads and more reliable vehicles to travel along them. Beyond questions of scale and a certain quaintness and crudity to the local architecture, a visitor from the Siurskeyti homelands would have seen little difference between, say, Öryggisvogur, a major administrative centre on the central coast and the first Siursk Seranian town to exceed a population of 100,000, and large provincial towns in the Siursk metropole such as Hélla and Laugar. In some respects, the locals were becoming distinctly embarrassed about their rough-and-ready origins and were eager for acceptance as Siursk on equal terms with their siblings in the homeland.

The 20th century

This urge towards normalcy spread gradually away from the coasts during the first two decades of the 20th century; even small towns in the Seranian interior strove towards what they saw as the “Siur style”. While a genuine homogeneity was never feasible, the mere fact that it was being attempted signified a slow end to the vibrancy and difference which had typified the culture of Siursk Serania. Although the wheel would take a further turn – to a point at which the Seranians would take conscious pride in their origins and celebrate the history which had brought them to this point – this would not come about until well after the Long War.

With their historical dominance in south-eastern Ascesia coming under increasing challenge from the early 1920s, Siurskeyti was forced to pay greater – and distinctly belated – attention to its Seranian territories. Over a period of almost twenty years up to about 1945, the Siursk put substantial sums of money into development of the interior; the road network was enlarged and improved – including the construction of the first proper roads in parts of the deep interior – as was the railway system; and alongside the limited telegraph system a basic telephone network was started, although it remained essentially confined to the cities until at least as late as 1980. Administrative structures were similarly modified and enhanced, although control of the deeper interior would retain a degree of informality well into the 20th century; and this process also saw the division of the existing provinces or tilköll into smaller and more readily manageable units.

The Long War prompted the beginnings of change in the relationship between Siursk Serania and the homeland; as Siurskeyti drew upon the territories’ resources and manpower to provide power to the war effort, their inhabitants began to more closely question the manner in which they were governed and, in particular, the restrictions built into their representation in Siurskeyti. While the tilköll had had individual chambers of government since the 1880s – elected, following Siur custom, on the basis of the amskyldr system – they had no formal representation in Siurskeyti’s Allmenràð and were allowed only observer status; their governors or landstjórir functioned in many respects as theinar in miniature. Protests against these injustices began on a relatively small scale as early as 1943, but gained strength as the Siursk homeland leaned more heavily on the resources of its overseas possessions to support itself during the years without summers; during the later 1950s and early 1960s there was a visible and audible undercurrent of public opinion which called for a complete break with Siurskeyti, as had happened with the commonholds which now form Helminthasse in the 19th century. The parallels in this case were not lost on Ostari; and a consultative commission chaired by the prominent Reylatskur jurist Lína Mislyndur examined possible courses of action over a sixteen-month period in 1965 and 1966. This has resulted in a substantial devolution of powers to the territories, which now control most of their own internal budgets, and improved representation at the metropolitan level. The changes have dampened down some of the wilder calls for formal independence in favour of something more closely resembling a federation or commonwealth (Hártal samnauður), although the pro-separation lobby has noted in this context the 1967 Samþykkiræða statement by the Helmin alráðherra Sanntráð Vilgóður, in which Helminthasse committed itself in principle to a managed transition to independence for its possessions in Kisilland, and argued for a similar recognition by Ostari.

Administration

Due to the sheer size of the Siursk possessions in Serania, the territory is not administered as a single unit, but is instead divided into eleven smaller provinces or tilköll; these bear some similarities to the commonholds of the metropole, although they are not hereditary fiefs as the commonholds are, having been originally established in the early 18th century by central government fiat rather than as separate commonhold projects. The territory does host a small population regarded as nobility (eðalkyn) by Siur custom, either as relatives of Siursk noble houses – many based semi-permanently in Siursk Serania as administrators for central government or managers of familial interests – or through tháric grant of patents of nobility specific to the territories.

In a mirror of the concatenated structure of government commonly practiced by the Siur, each of the provincial administrations sends representatives to a central body which meets in Fyrstaskýli, capital of the Spóaland tilkall, as well as to the Siursk Allmenráð in Ostari, where they have full voting rights on all matters which have a bearing on territorial affairs, a definition which has been liberally drawn in the past. Although the populations of individual tilköll today are in some cases quite substantial, particularly along the Eiguflói coast, they are still somewhat disparaged at times by home-based Siursk as leikfangsráð or “toy chambers”.

Education

A home-based pupil studies at the Seranskur Útvarpsskóli, c. 1975.

For much of the recent history of Siursk Serania, education has been made more difficult by the size of the country and hazardous conditions of much of it; while larger towns and areas closer to the coast are at or close to contemporary Siursk standards in the present day, providing education services in the interior has been more of a hit-and-miss process. The position was somewhat improved from 1969, in which year the Seranskur Útvarpsskóli (“Seranian Radio School”, SÚS) was established; the school provides tuition to children between six and sixteen years of age in remote locations by shortwave radio broadcasts from central bases in Fyrstaskýli, Pólsborg and Óhættshöfn. Assessments by Siursk educationalists have praised the SÚS as providing a standard of education very much on a par with schools in the metropole; and the basic model has been adapted for use elsewhere on the continent.

There were no tertiary education facilities in Siursk Serania for most of the 20th century, although the establishment of the University of Eigur Bay (Háskóla Eiguflóar) in 1978 has provided an outlet for the territories’ best and brightest which did not call for a lengthy and expensive period in the Siursk metropole. Given the use of a shared language, the university also accepted some students from the Helmin Gleymtlönd to the south before their own facility, the Seranian University of the Alliance, was founded in 2003.