What was there to hope for?

Iceland hadn't been the only one unhappy with Danish rule. Sweden had risen up against him, and being geographically close, Denmark responded strictly. Iceland couldn't see it as fair how the one got a reaction while he was always brushed off as the temperamental 'kid'. As time wore on, Sweden had broken free from Denmark's hand, not without much blood spilt, and taking Egill's close friend with him. In the decades following the breaking of the union, Denmark would tighten down on everyone else, trying desperately to prevent a repeat. Norway was dissolved, bringing him and all of his territories under the direct and full control of the Danish crown.

As well as having more exerted control over them, they fell to the wayside as Denmark's entire attention was focused on bringing Sweden back home, making Sweden see who was really in power in the North, Sweden, Sweden, Sweden. The wars were frequent, and everything else was only secondary to them.

"Why didn't you go with Sweden, Bróðir?" Egill was almost whining. "You could have saved us from this, why didn't you go?" He was pulling at his brother's clothes, trying to awaken an answer from the stoic young man.

"I'm sorry, Egill."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not going to leave Denmark alone."

"But you're suffering!"

"And I suffered before I ever was under his rule. Mathias has a one-track mind and even if he is kind of slow, he doesn't mean to do wrong. He needs someone to be there for him. What would happen if we left him, do you know?"

"I don't even like him…"

"He'd fall apart. I'm sorry that it hurts, but he needs me."

The waves of reformation were sweeping Europe, igniting bloodshed across the continent. The ideals of freedom, to choose one's own beliefs in a way, but also liberation from the cultural norms of what would come to be known as the 'Dark Ages', were spreading like wildfire. Slowly but surely, nationalism was being born across vast empires and small states, awaking people to make a change.

Protestantism was an easy acceptance in North, at least to the rulers and the majority of the population. The break from Rome was peaceful compared to the wars that sprung up over and again in the mainland Europe. But Iceland, oft forgotten, misplaces or overlooked, took it as an invitation to disagree and rebel. The island nation could almost be thought of as backwards, maybe a little unnatural. While Europe had sunk into darkness and stagnancy in the middle ages, Iceland enjoyed a golden age that they would forever be chasing after to return to. As liberty and nationalism broke light into mainland society, those ideals had long existed as some of Icelandic culture's pillars. While the Reformation was pulling most of Europe out of a dark age, the same movement drug Iceland down in a rapidly sinking spiral into the most disastrous time they would experience.

The plummet had little to do with the actual movement to reform religion. The clash of headstrong rulers with equally headstrong and inherently rebellious people led to long conflicts whose only end was the reassertion of Denmark's control of the nation. His violent temper has been re-awoken by the royal orders to change, but the child simply simmered and fumed, his physical attacks less frequent.

On top of this, the increasing the increasing change of climate had almost reached a low. Frozen more now than ever before, famine was taking a hold of the land, continuing to keep Egill weak and sick. His spirit was alive and afire, but his body couldn't act on his angry wishes. Over several decades, his people attempted to stave off the foreign influence to the nation to no avail, and the boy reclused within himself. Maybe it looked like a recovery to others, but he was really tip-toeing on the thin line between life and death. He grew silent and withdrawn, promisingly like quiet, analytical and smart child he used to be, but actually nowhere near that.

By the late-mid sixteenth century, he had been frozen in time for three centuries. It was drawing near to half of his life that he had remained the same size and age physically, if he had grown any at all, it was thinner and more sickly. Only a distant memory were the rich days he spent in his own world. It was now those memories that kept him alive. One day, he told himself, those golden days would return, he would be respected once again, his life would be looked at as enviable. It wasn't like he could end this life anyway, if he ever wanted to. Hope, no matter how far away it seemed, was all he had for the future. For the present, he had memory and in withdrawing into himself, he could almost feel those warm days. If he began to live in an imaginary dream world, he could erase the bare, painful reality in front of him, at least in his own eyes.

The continuous wars began to weaken Denmark. Loss after loss, defeat after defeat, everything he had had been poured into battle and disappeared without return. In order to keep the country afloat, they had to draw from their own, often neglected lands. Where there had never been a need for Iceland's products, they grew dependent on them. Trade had slowly been whittled down over the centuries, making the island more and more isolated and cut off from the world around it.

In the dawning of the seventeenth century, Denmark instituted a monopoly on all Icelandic trade, almost as if the protests against the ruling nation had gone entirely overlooked. In this, only Danish merchants who paid into national interests were permitted to buy and sell with the Icelanders, and had freedom to choose their own prices. As a result, a near-barren land was forced into supplying for another, the people forced to sell everything of worth they had in order to keep themselves alive. The unbalanced prices of foreign imports through these merchants made life turn to be almost entirely reliable on whatever they had in their homeland that wouldn't be considered worth anything. As if the famines of the Little Ice Age weren't enough, entirely livelihoods were poured into just being able to scrape by. The peopled turned to eating what would usually be considered inedible so that what was decent food could be sold to afford the things they didn't have but needed. Starvation quickly came to claim lives, it was during this time that the population of Iceland dropped below what it had been at the height of their glory four hundred years before.

The people and their nation turned to anything as a symbol of hope. Within that forbidding and condemned landscape, there were little glimpses. Even though the explosive land, as alive as it had ever been, kept them aware that any small things could end their existence forever, they kept on looking forward. From the foxes who had lived here for who-knows-how-long before the humans ever came, to the birds and fish who called this their home, to the horses and sheep who had been brought all of those centuries ago and continued to survive. These were the plucky images that yes, even an oppressed and subjugated people could tame this other-worldly land bordering between the real and unbelievable, forever balanced on the fine line between natural and supernatural, the undeniably alive and yet uncontrollably deadly.

A/N: Shorter chapter again, sorry. There's so many text walls in this that I thought anymore would be off-putting, plus I liked to end it te way I did.

Ehehe, I'm getting so close to the chapter I've wanted to write for months…

I hope you all enjoyed~ uwu /psIlikereviews,IlikeramblingaboutIceland,sogivingmeopportunitiestodos oisfun

~Butter~