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* In 1997, a computer engineer in California, a Viking-history buff, chose the name Bluetooth for short-duration communications as a tribute to the king’s uniting of Scandinavian peoples.

* Canute negotiated free trade and free movement with European leaders, announcing, with echoes of today’s Brexit negotiations, he had ensured that ‘a juster law and securer peace might be granted to them on the road to Rome and that they should not be straitened by so many barriers along the road, and harassed by unjust tolls’. Canute’s noble humility and ecological sensitivity was illustrated by his placing his throne on the beach saying, ‘Let all see how empty is the power of kings.’ This story was later recast to illustrate the exact opposite of the original, that Canute’s humiliation by the defiant waves symbolized the arrogance of kings.

* Scotland shook off Bluetooth empire. In 1031, Canute had invaded Scotland and forced High King Malcolm II and a kinglet, Mac Bethad of Moray, to submit. In 1039, Scottish king Donnchad the Sick, grandson of Malcolm II, ineptly raided England, a disaster that led to a rebellion by his magnate the dux and mormaer of Moray, Mac Bethad, who killed him in battle and ruled as king for seventeen years with his queen Gruoch. Gruoch’s first husband had been burned to death, probably by Mac Bethad, whom she then married. In 1057 Donnchad’s son Malcolm III invaded and killed Mac Bethad with English help. In 1606 Shakespeare premiered a play about these characters. Mac Bethad became Macbeth – though Shakespeare missed a trick in not using the name Gruoch.

* The Cahokians were in contact with the north, where turquoise was acquired from Utah, and with the south, bringing jade and obsidian from Mexico. They filed their front teeth and ate chocolate as Maya did, using Mesoamerican cacao. One of the technologies they sent south was the bow and arrow, which had spread southwards from the Arctic peoples, reaching the south-west around 500 and then on to Mexico. In New Mexico, at Chaco Canyon, other peoples, known as Pueblans, built villages with houses (one complex had 800 rooms), underground storage rooms and squares, along with a road system that had mysterious ritual purposes. They too drank chocolate, lived off domesticated turkeys and wore turquoise and macaw feathers from the south.

* Iceland stayed inhabited, and was visited by English seamen, but the ancient Norse settlements in Greenland did not last, suffering as they did from falling temperatures, Inuit attacks and starvation. Bones discovered record their malnourishment, while Icelandic sagas recount that ‘the old and helpless were killed and thrown over cliffs’.

* This occulted vanishing only added to al-Hakim’s mystique among his disciples, who were massacred on his sister’s orders. Some of them escaped: today two million Druze in Israel, Lebanon and Syria still revere his divinity. Sitt al-Mulk covered her own traces, executed Ibn Daws and ruled the Fatimiyya empire as princess-aunt, reversing al-Hakim’s bans: wine drinking and music playing were restored, women were allowed to dress as they wished and to shop; Jews and Christians could return to their faiths and stop wearing distinguishing clothes; Easter and Christmas were back.

ACT SEVEN

226 MILLION

Song, Fujiwara and Chola

DREAM POOL ESSAYS: GUNPOWDER, PAPER MONEY, POETRY – THE SOPHISTICATES OF SONG

Emperor Zhenzong welcomed contact with Egypt along with other trading partners in India and Malaysia, as his China – its population having doubled to 120 million – was becoming the most refined state in the world. But the Song dynasty’s founder, his uncle, Zhao Kuangyin, was a roughhewn horse archer who was so tough that once, riding without stirrups, he was thrown by his horse and concussed but still chased it, caught it and rode on. Rising to the top during fighting between warlords, in 960 he declared himself Emperor Taizu – the Great Forefather. He had fought savagely to defeat multiple contenders but was always innovative. In one battle, he used explosive ‘fire arrows’ to bomb war elephants; in another case his generals ate ‘fat captives’ in front of other, thinner prisoners, who were then released to spread word of Song ferocity. It worked.

An avid martial artist who supposedly invented the Taizu Long Fist technique, he promoted a game called cuju which he was painted playing: football. But once in power this semi-literate conqueror proved constructive and creative. He persuaded his paladins to retire, reassured by marriage into the family, and insisted that ‘my chief counsellors should be men who read books’. He also restored the civil service examinations, founded academies and tried to avoid capricious terror: ‘Officials and scholars must not be executed.’ Choosing his brother Taizong rather than his sons for a smooth succession, he called his reign ‘Nation Restored’. So it was.