Summer War

Summer War
The Battle of Lágröð, the first engagement of the Summer War
Date 25 Metrial - 9 Nollonger 1812 (5 Harsavur 1012 - 18 Pisasmur 1013 ÁL) Location Messenia Result Secession of Siursk inland commonholds Treaty of Fensbrú
Belligerents
Siurskeyti	Alliance of Independent Siur Commonholds
Commanders and leaders
	Hraður Stórlind Valur Sandlóa Natin Skógar

The Summer War (Sumarstrið) is the name usually given to the conflict of 1812 in which the five commonholds of present-day Helminthasse seceded from the nation of Siurskeyti. While this is the name preferred by historians and other academics, as well as that officially used by both governments, a more widely-used and more poetic name within the Siur country is the Skammarstrið or the “War that Died of Shame”, given its relatively short-lived status and the increasing distaste for a fight on both sides of the war towards its end.

Origins

Siurskeyti’s strength and prosperity in the period since its unification under Sterkur Fálk in 1623 have often driven from the minds of many just how much of a leap of faith the new state represented for the commonholds which formed it. The War of the Teþar, which ended in 1590, had involved most of them to greater or lesser extent on opposing sides as Fálk’s Vonskil and Skjóll faced off in a battle for dominance decades in the making; but the outbreak of Seranian fever in the early 1600s had removed from the table many of the best and brightest among the Siur. Fálk’s message that unity would allow them to transcend their individual weaknesses and limitations was thus a very seductive one.

There were nonetheless still concerns, not least over the possibility of the smaller and weaker brethren being swept aside by the stronger – or, indeed, Fálk using the others to create the “Greater Vonskil” that his family had failed to win on the battlefield. The Sáttmáli, the accord which he created, tried to allay those suspicions by deliberately limiting the extent to which central authority could override the wishes of an individual commonhold; and the admission of Skjóll to the union in 1632, despite its own undoubted strength, went a good way to reassuring the other members that these long-term rivals would “keep each other honest”, to the benefit of all.

For much of the Gullöld period, the experiment proved itself a success. Siurskeyti expanded and exerted its strengths in the Medius Sea and the coastal regions of northern Lestria and eastern Ascesia, and began to stake out and develop the empty lands of Serania Major; at the same time it fought off challenges from the other nascent great powers of Messenia to its claims to dominance in the “Siur lake” that many at home held the Medius to be. As this process went on, there developed a genuine sense that all of the Siursk commonholds drew benefit from acting in combination. Economic studies of the period between 1620 and 1780 have indicated that all of the member states saw their GDP increase by at least 30% in real terms, and often substantially more.

For all this, though, there were still genuine frictions between several of the union’s members. The very nature of Siurskeyti as a maritime power had seen economic power accrete even more unevenly towards the Median seaboard generally, and towards Ostari, the capital, and Reylatur, its largest city and a pivotal trading hub for the entire Median basin, in particular; and the issue of internal tariffs between individual commonholds, originally tolerated by the Sáttmáli as a means of protecting the weak against the strong, was subjected to repeated legal challenges during the 1790s, several of them successful. As the stronger commonholds, almost all of them located on the coast, began to pull ahead from the rest, a sentiment began to develop that an even closer union, in which the individual commonholds surrendered yet more power to a central government, was the way forward. To that end the Sáttmáli as written was increasingly seen as deficient and unfit for purpose.

Hringur Slátrari, first althein of Helminthasse.

To those not so favoured, the mood music was sounding increasingly discordant. They saw the balance of power in what was supposed to be a gathering of equals shifting definitively in favour of a select few; and the idea that they should surrender the rights – the sovereignty – that they had fought and shed blood over centuries to win was unconscionable. A counter-argument within several inland commonholds began to be voiced, in which the wealthier players were decried as having betrayed, through their rapacity and blind self-interest, the principles which the Sáttmáli had been created to honour; and influential figures in the dissenting states were now taking it up. Hringur Slátrari, the thein of Helminthasse and Siurskeyti’s minister for defence, was probably the most prominent, but others began to fall in behind him. Slátrari’s cabinet colleague Fórn Eldhress, a Sarevskur and arguably the country’s finest public speaker in the period, spoke eloquently in support of the belief that those commonholds which could not accept what Siurskeyti was becoming should walk away from it and recreate a new alliance, one whose members would support each other in the manner which Sterkur Fálk had intended. A majority in support of such a position probably existed as early as 1810, by which point the theinar of four of the five commonholds which would eventually break away had declared themselves in favour of such action, if the decline could not be halted.

The road to secession

The idea that a commonhold could withdraw from the Sáttmáli accord had hardly been considered in the past, given the clear successes of the initiative. Only one member had actually withdrawn since 1623, and the departure of Árakan in 1660 had been the direct result of the death of its thein; Fljót Rjúpufelli had been a sceptic over the issue, and had signed the accord on a documented understanding that he did not bind his successors to it. His son Hólmgarður, when asked to reaffirm the commonhold’s commitment, had declined; the central government in Ostari had challenged his right to do so, but Siurskeyti’s constitutional court had ruled that Árakan’s exemption was wholly legal.

Whether legal or not, the idea of secession was viewed as an affront by the thár, Ármann Lindskold, and by the greater part of the Siurskeyti government. Historically, a thein held his authority through the promise of support of his rule by the people, and he in return promised to rule his lands in the best interests of all who had pledged their support; such was the core principle of the axareiður which was customarily given by men of lands to the thein. The giving of similar promises to the thár – a role defined as distinct from that of the thein who held the title, to avoid suggestions that a commonhold’s sovereignty had actually been surrendered to a supposed equal – was seen in legal terms as the axareiður principle elevated to the next level; and the fact that some theinar now sought to renege on that promise was seen as a step too far. It is worth recalling here that the deliberate and malicious bearing of false witness has historically been seen by most Siur as one of the most heinous offences against the community.

For their part, the would-be rebels pointed out that the axareiður had always carried with it obligations on both sides, that Lindskold and the country were failing to honour their obligations by their conduct – and that they, the people, had become little more than bondsmen as a result. Slátrari was one of the key figures behind the Skynsemi essays, written between 1808 and 1811, in which he and other prominent divisionists put forward the intellectual case for a separation.

The challenge

An interlude at the Mikillhörsalur sessions; this painting from 1890.

In Conservene 1811, matters in the Visráð came to a head when Slátrari, acting in his capacity as thein of Helminthasse, called for a formal vote on the removal of thár Lindskold from office under the Siur legal principle of moltalandi. While such an action was not unheard of, this was considered by most observers to be a reckless decision by Slátrari, and even at this point, he was probably not certain of support from his fellow would-be rebels. The scepticism of Kal Járnsmagi, the thein of Ærlasse on the issue was already well-known, and, despite her personal sympathies, his counterpart in Sarevi Armæða Bani was not a certainty to back Slátrari, given the position of her commonhold as probably a net beneficiary of the status quo in Siurskeyti at this time, as well as her own somewhat unstable personality.

A majority vote in favour of removal was obtained from delegates of five of the country’s ten commonholds – Helminthasse, Sarevi (albeit narrowly), Vinhaxa, Ærlasse and Æthelin. However, the remaining five (Geirroð, Hélla, Moðalund, Skjóll and Vonskil) returned a vote in support of Lindskold. Under the procedural rules of the Visráð as they then stood, the motion was tied and thus automatically failed.

Slátrari led a group of discontented ráðsmenn in an officially private gathering at the Mikillhörsalur in his home city of Virkið over the period 5-7 Petrial 1812 (15-17 Gimindur 1012 ÁL); over three days of protracted and impassioned debate, the crucial decision to secede from the union that was Siurskeyti was reached. This action has been dissected by historians and decried by constitutional scholars for generations – the Siursk historian Þíofil Garðveit famously dismissed it as “the act of petulant children denied their own way” – but Helmin commentators have dressed it as the only available resort when the structures of Siur domestic politics acted to deny natural justice.

Still trying to push the government in Ostari into negotiation, Slátrari and Fórn Eldhress contacted the Virkið financier Réfur Háll one week after the Mikillhörsalur declaration. With substantial contacts of his own within the corridors of power in Ostari, but also as a former leading figure in the Siblinghood of the Axe, probably the most prominent pro-union grouping, Háll was probably as good a choice as go-between as Slátrari and his band could hope to find. On 22 Petrial, Háll and the Alliance’s new treasurer, Galvaskur Tálgær, met with Siursk officials to present the inlanders’ terms for a negotiated settlement of separation. By this time, an angry Lindskold was in no mood to compromise; he curtly dismissed Háll’s petition with the comment that “what you seek to sever by soft words we will hold together, if need be, by the points of our swords.”

Even the more moderate voices in the rebel camp saw their dying hopes finally extinguished. Insistent that what they saw as the correct legal formalities should be observed, over the next few weeks all five of the seceding commonholds presented a formal statement of their withdrawal from the Siursk union, and their reasons therefor. Promulgation of those statements across each of the five rebel commonholds was the final, irrevocable step; for the first time in centuries, Siur would face Siur on the battlefield.

The war begins

The leaders of the secession had not been merely talking. A start had already been made on setting up logistics networks, taking over assets in place belonging to the Siurskeyti government where practicable, and putting in place the structures required of a new nation. As to the key issue of an army to fight the war which they now expected, the secessionists had already seen a wave of would-be combatants flocking to the colours, and a number of existing Siursk army regiments based in their territories, and largely composed of inlander troops, declaring for the rebellion. A key windfall for the rebels was the decision of the senior Siursk general Hraður Stórlind, born in Æthelin and the husband of its thein, to hold his loyalty to his commonhold above his military oath. Stórlind was appointed as commander of the army of the new Alliance, as well as being co-opted into its cabinet as minister for defence.

On the ground, the population was hunkering down against the war that was coming. The period between mid-Petrial and late Metrial was characterised by a war of words, rather than weapons, but one that was nonetheless growing in volume. Although army defections were certainly an issue in undermining the Siursk state’s war effort, some studies have argued that Lindskold, having talked tough, was now seeing reality break through the armour of his certainty, and was suddenly reluctant to back up that talk with action.

Helmin reinforcements muster before an early battle of the Summer War; painting by Lutr Sturri, 1816

By mid-Metrial, however, the anna had finally dropped, and the Siurskeyti government finally acknowledged that the rebels would not be reconciled. Forced, finally, to act while it considered itself able to put a force in the field, the Siursk army advanced on Virkið; crossing the new border from Móðalund into the húð of Ýllirisbútur, it met with forces of the new Alliance army south of the town of Lágröð, some ten kilometres inside the border, on 25 Metrial (5 Harsavur). The attack, while certainly not unexpected, had not been anticipated in that location, with Stórlind and his staff expecting a direct attack on Virkið and deploying their forces accordingly. A small garrison force at Lágröð put up a brave fight, but were outnumbered by more than two to one and could only offer limited resistance, falling back towards Ýllirisbútur, where they set up a defensive line while awaiting reinforcements.

Reports of the victory played well in the unionist commonholds; while a good few recognised some of the rebels’ grievances – and some griped that they were a shackle around the legs of the more dynamic coastal folk and should be left to fail alone – this was generally outweighed by a sense that the inlanders had acted dishonourably and had thus forfeited the right to fair treatment. Public opinion in favour of the war in Reylatur, Ostari and the larger Siursk towns was therefore markedly positive, and Ívar Seiðamaður, the chief minister of Lindskold’s government, expressed a strong view that the entire matter would be over by midsummer. However, this view would fade rapidly in the next few weeks.

The push from Lágröð, probably seen as a flanking manoeuvre towards the rebel capital became bogged down in skirmishing across the centre of the Helminthasse commonhold. Seeking to make use of their superior naval strength in what was principally a land-bound conflict, at the beginning of Floridy the Siursk sent a river flotilla upstream on the Esker to mount an attack on Hydrædsdalur, an important rebel centre with additional significance as the home of the “turncoat” general Stórlind. The bold move came close to succeeding before a scratch force gathered from Hydrædsdalur and other river towns was able to turn them back downriver from the town at Hunsá. A further assault on loyalist capacities came in early Floridy, as Lágskáli, the rebels’ only significant port, threw off its earlier uncertainty and swung behind the Alliance, while the Siursk ship of the line Spori was captured by a rebel cadre among its crew and put into service as the flagship of the Alliance’s newly-created navy.

The confusion within the Siursk body politic alerted the attention of other regional powers; although in most cases they officially chose to maintain a watching brief, for the Savamese admiral Lionel de Versroche the prospect of possibly seizing a foothold in the Medius – a vital necessity to aid safe passage eastward and a perennial goal of the Quesailles general staff – was too tempting to ignore. Learning of the outbreak of civil war in Siurskeyti during a layover for provisioning in Árakan, he diverted from orders to take his expeditionary force out to the Seranian territory of West Felicia, despite the clear certainty of court-martial if he failed. The audacious attempt succeeded; in a series of lightning raids, the Savamese took advantage of Siursk internal discord to seize the Skógarey territory on Yarin and the islands of Dórrey and Mirrey in a two-week period in late Floridy and Fabricad 1812. Despite fierce counterattacks, particularly on Dórrey, the raiders held; a Siursk command which was almost overwhelmed by events, and now facing the possibility of a new war with Savam, accepted an offer from the northerners to respect the status quo elsewhere in the region and not intervene in the war in exchange for the cession of Dórrey.

While the Siursk were distracted at sea, the rebels made further gains on land. After an assault on Spræna was repulsed on 15 Floridy, early Fabricad saw a push southward from the town under colonel Natin Skógar which saw the rebels seize a large part of Skjóll north of the Teþar, including the important regional centre of Mósborg, which fell to a surprise attack launched in the early morning of 6 Fabricad. At around the same time, Siursk negotiations with the government of Árakan to allow an expeditionary force to land in that country and make transit into northern Sarevi broke down in acrimony, and Siurskeyti’s ambassador there was expelled.

(...)

In mid-Estion Stórlind moved to draw unionist forces away from the central front by making a surprise thrust through northern Helminthasse into the commonhold of Hélla. Siursk land forces in the area were limited, with Hélla itself being principally a navy base; the Alliance force under Valur Sandlóa smashed its way through the húð of Beinnvað, reaching its eponymous seat and the shore of the Æthelflói on 27 Estion. In a pointed rejoinder to local unionists, their former thosse, the secessionist Viska Skaft, was restored to her title. Hélla was now entirely surrounded, with its only recourse being to the sea; and Sandlóa placed the city under siege in Dominy and into early Empery in a determined bid to force its surrender.

The tide turns

An artist's impression of a Siursk vessel under challenge by a ship of the new Alliance navy during the siege of Hélla.

The Alliance’s siege of Hélla can be seen in some respects as the point at which public opinion in both camps shifted definitively away from warfare as a solution. To a country – or countries – for which the practice of Arlatur had become a defining feature of the popular mentality, the attempt to starve out the people of the town where, according to tradition, the Summoner had been born and brought up was a profound shock. Even the Alliance commanders most responsible for prosecuting the siege found themselves having to rapidly backtrack as they tried to justify their actions.

With popular support for a military solution beginning to fall away on both sides of the divide, unionist and Alliance forces alike began to suffer as desertions in the field depleted their strength. Lindskold urged more from the Siursk army, but cut an increasingly haggard figure at the helm, and harangued his army commanders out of an increasingly impotent fury; post-war memoirs have suggested strongly that by late Sation he was driven primarily by a dread of being remembered by history as the man on whose watch Siurskeyti fell apart. He was also now losing support among the powerful merchant and commercial classes which had stood so firmly behind him as he fought for their interests; cold business logic indicated that if they wished to retain access to the resource base of the inland commonholds on any basis, they would have to accept the Alliance’s independence and do their best to treat with its producers on a more even footing, even if they had to accept reduced margins as a result. Úlfur Þyrnbýlis, head of a prominent Reylatur shipbuilding family and an adviser to Eir Kaupland, the thein of Skjóll, expressed the sentiment clearly, if brutally: “thirty per cent of something is better than sixty per cent of nothing.”

Although the Alliance’s forces were also weakened, they had not suffered as badly from the desertions; and reports from its sources in Ostari convinced Stórlind that a concerted effort against a single key target would be threat enough to break the Siursk command. Over a period of some three weeks in late Sation and early Ediface he drew in forces from across the scattered frontlines, amassing them just outside Hattur, on the southern outskirts of Virkið, aiming them like an arrow down the Tarsa river valley at Ostari itself, only 120 kilometres away. On 23 Ediface, Stórlind gave the order to advance; and the Alliance force began to roll slowly and ominously down the valley towards the capital.

In Ostari, the mood was grim. Protests wracked the streets as the capital’s citizens vented their fury at a leadership that had been so unwilling to accept counsel from its people. The Siursk army may have still been able to fight; but its masters now cast aside the will to do so. Humiliatingly, Lindskold was placed under arrest by his own guards and taken before the Vísráð, which voted unanimously to dispense with any further process and strip him of the title of thár, choosing Kaupland to take his place. With Lindskold removed from the table, Kaupland dispatched a messenger towards Stórlind’s advancing army, carrying a message which summarised recent events and requested a six-day ceasefire in which the new thár could meet with the Alliance’s leadership and discuss terms by which the war could be ended. Stórlind was sceptical, but agreed, and allowed the messenger safe passage on to Virkið with a message of his own for Slátrari and his colleagues.

The two sides met formally on 3 Nollonger, within the town hall at Fensbrú, a small town in the Tarsa valley just north of what would become the interordinate border. Many of the participants at the meeting – a good few of whom would become influential figures in the post-war period – would speak afterwards of the remarkable sense of goodwill which existed at a meeting between men who had been officially enemies until only days earlier; this extended even to an impromptu musical recital on the first evening of the negotiations, in which Stórlind played the viola (an old and battered instrument which he routinely brought with him on campaign) and Kaupland the piano.

The settlement was straightforward; Slátrari and the Alliance did not claim a victory, nor Kaupland a defeat. Instead, both sides agreed to cease hostilities on the basis of the lands held by each side at the time of the meeting (thus allowing the Alliance to keep its gains around Hélla and in northern Skjóll). Ostari agreed to accept the rebels’ Statements of Departure as they were written and to relinquish all residual controls held over the Alliance’s territories; and the new Alliance government, now established in Virkið, agreed to take no action towards persuading other commonholds to follow its lead. Kaupland and Slátrari, the Alliance’s new althein (the title of thár being thought inappropriate and tainted by association), formally signed the Treaty of Fensbrú on 9 Nollonger (18 Pisasmur 1013 ÁL), although transmission through both sides’ chains of command would see a week pass before all forces in the field were officially stood down. The Summer War – or to some, the War that Died of Shame – was at an end.

The overseas war

The dispute at home was echoed by conflicts in Siurskeyti’s overseas territories, and was arguably made worse by the greater extent to which loyalists and rebels lived and worked alongside each other. Because of communication lags from the homeland, the overseas aspect of the Summer War both started and ended later than at home, lingering as late as Floridy 1813 in places before reports of a peace brought fighting to an end.

In the Lestrian territory of Kisilland, the war was made more complicated by the involvement of the various native tribes, primarily the northern-based Kiši and Odam. Loyalists and secessionists alike sought aid from native combatants; and the natives perhaps used the cover of inter-group fighting among the chetler (“foreigners” in Kiši) to settle some old scores among themselves. Authorities in Matshöfn, the territorial capital and largest settlement, declared for the loyalists early on, but the rebels gradually gained the upper hand towards the end of 1812 and had taken control of the town and the lower Sordar valley by late Petrial 1813, when news of the end of the war at home reached Kisilland.

In Serania Major, there were no native communities to complicate this internecine dispute. While Jannaland was for the Alliance in sufficient numbers that control of the territory passed quickly, in the south of the Siursk claims around the Múskatsströnd and Spóaland, the sides could largely be divided geographically, with the bulk of separatist sentiment being concentrated in the south around Nýfoss, and the loyalists holding the fort at the regional capital in Ugluvogur. The loyalists made an attack by sea on Nýfoss on 6 Ediface 1812, in which the stone fort on the headland outside the town’s harbour was severely damaged by loyalist shellfire before the attacking vessels were driven off by a scratch rebel flotilla. This battle between ad hoc fleets, for all its strange nature, probably ranks as the largest naval battle of the entire war. Continuing skirmishes went on until Floridy of 1813, and a de facto border between Siursk Serania and the new Alliance territory of Múskatsströnd was not settled until 1816.

Aftermath

Stripped of the effect of competing state interests, the effect of the Summer War on both the new Helminthasse and the rump Siurskeyti was severely damaging in the short to medium term, illustrating the sense held by the more moderate unionists that the Siursk union was genuinely greater than the sum of its individual parts. Most weight of historical analysis has come down on the side of a belief that more could, and should, have been done to prevent the Alliance’s real grievances from becoming the existential issue that the war made of them; and that, at the one time at which the ability and the will to objectively view both sides of a question – which the Siur have claimed as part of their unique genius as a people – would have been most valuable, they clearly failed to manifest.

The Helmin alliance achieved its ends in the narrow sense that it avoided falling victim to the growth of centralising force in the remainder of Siurskeyti; the five member commonholds retained their individual statuses (and still do to a fair extent), and the Bandalagsplögg, their articles of alliance, are replete with references to mutual support and association, rather than the sublimation of their sovereignty to a central authority. However, even if in a more muted fashion, the same drives which caused them to rebel would re-emerge in the new Alliance; and for many, the willingness of the central government in Virkið to nail the exit door closed as Vinhaxa sought to quit in 1879 wrote the death sentence to any sense of “alliance”, as opposed to “union”.

While they now had greater say over the exploitation of their own internal resources, residual ill-feeling over the break-up cast a shadow over cross-border relations and trade for more than a decade; the Alliance’s economy was in recession until the later 1810s, and did not recover as far as pre-war levels until at least 1825. The relative absence of larger commercial interests hampered it as the fruits of industrialisation manifested across Messenia; and the lack of the kind of extended trade networks which Siurskeyti, for the most part, retained left it distinctly underpowered in the development of wider interordinate trade in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. The pervading sense in the country of a kind of collective inferiority complex was probably not completely shaken off until the 1930s, as Helminthasse began to project itself on the world stage with more confidence and assert a genuine status as a second-order power close behind its great-power neighbour.

If the Alliance struggled with its success, then the rump of Siurskeyti was near-traumatised by its failure. Before the war, it had been acknowledged as one of the strongest polities in Messenia, with economic interests stretching across the entire Median basin and well beyond; and its navy – both its military and commercial fleet – was objectively regarded as the best anywhere in the world. But the loss of the Alliance commonholds left the Siursk mainland with barely a quarter of its land area and less than half of its population; and the business houses which increasingly drove the Siursk economy were forced into at-times drastic accommodations with suppliers of key resources in the now-independent interior. Supplies of wood and flax – for the making of the ships which powered so much of the country’s commerce, and of the sails which harnessed the wind for those ships – were a critical issue; and the development of alternative sources elsewhere in Messenia and in Ascesia, Lestria and the far-flung Siursk overseas territories was always only a support to historic supplies in the new Alliance. Treating with those sources on a proper commercial basis was a drain on the Siursk economy for at least two decades before the system fully rebalanced itself.

More pertinently, the loss seemed to create in the minds of many across Siurskeyti a kind of crisis of confidence; quite apart from the loss of actual real estate, belief – by the Siursk and by others – of the political, diplomatic, military and economic heft wielded by Siurskeyti had been severely weakened. While this was shorter-lived than some studies of the period would suggest, it could not be wholly ignored; and the sense of uncertainty felt in the Siursk military certainly factored into the War of the Islands (1822–24), in which Savam captured the Seranian island of Ljúfsland (today known as Victoria) and created havoc for the Siursk elsewhere across its possessions. The ratcheting-up of Savamese military power relative to that of Siurskeyti was never really recovered, leaving the two states far closer to par than they had ever previously been.

Effects on the present

The effects of two hundred years of separate development have fostered an odd love-hate relationship between the two countries. While being for the most part mutually respectful – acknowledging their common origins and cultural mores – Siurskeyti and Helminthasse still view each other at times with an element of suspicion. A belief that Siurskeyti still harbours ambitions of reuniting the two countries under Ostari’s dominance continues to linger in the Helmin subconscious, although there is little evidence at the present time to suggest that this is either possible or even being contemplated in the Siursk capital. Helminthasse has also periodically expressed concerns that, as the weaker economy of the two, it is at risk of being “re-colonised” as Siurskeyti exercises economic “soft power” where overt military force would be unacceptable. A common Helmin jibe at the Siursk is that “they don’t want to rule the Medius – they just want to own it.”

On the Siursk side, a sense still remains that the Helmin are rustic yokels and bumpkins by comparison with the more sophisticated Siursk mentality. Helminthasse’s continuing ties with Savam and, to a somewhat lesser degree, with Zeppengeran also cause concern in Ostari; the qualms as to the former arise out of a belief that Savam is using Helminthasse to gain a foothold in south-western Messenia, and to dispute Siurskeyti’s control of the southern Medius. This is probably justified to some extent, given the use of Helmin port facilities by elements of the Savamese fleet for refuelling and reprovisioning on journeys to their island territory of Doreysne in the Medius, and to the shores of northern Lestria beyond it. The issues as regards Zeppengeran are more religiously motivated, given the long historic antipathy shown by adherents of Siriash towards non-believers in general and, at times, Arlaturi in particular.

A particular case of selective memory arises on both sides of the border today as regards the extent to which the Summer War was a bloodless conflict – and whether it was truly the “War that Died of Shame” which folk memory holds it to be. Certainly it was not bloodless; the early Alliance drive to the sea in Beinnvað and its push southward towards Skjóll were strongly resisted, and there were significant casualties on both sides. On the other side of the coin, loyalist forces made genuine efforts in various parts of the country to hold onto would-be secessionist húðir, most notably in Vinhaxa, where the butchery of irregular raiding parties organised by Oddur Kendrill has left his name vilified across the whole region even today. While the ferocity of combat did genuinely die away as the split became more profound is not at question, but it can be argued – and, at times, has been forcibly argued by non-Siur historians – that the idea of the “War that Died of Shame” is, similarly to the earlier period of the Vinadeila, an element of the self-image of the Siur as a tolerant and liberal people, to whom no problem is so intractable that it cannot be resolved peaceably by people of good will. That this is quite spectacularly at odds with most of the pre-unification history of the Siur is an issue usually glossed over.