Chapter 10: Whetstones

''Perhaps the second most mythologized human figure to come out of the Norse domestication of dragons is the Hero's father, Stoick the Vast, a.k.a. Stoick the Lawgiver, Stoick the Wise, Odin's Spear-carrier, and other such titles. Primary sources from his personal contemporaries are minimal, with most of the surviving sources being from the perspective of his son and others of his generation. While the legends generally agree on the broad strokes of his life, the details are shrouded in mutually exclusive legends and myth. This especially pertains to the periods of his life preceding the ascendance of his son; mythologized and mutually contradictory accounts of his childhood, young adulthood, and ancestry are common. Even specific points that many of these accounts agree on have an odor of myth. For example, it is unknown if he truly did 'pop a dragon's head clean off of its neck' as a toddler, as is claimed by legend. His later accomplishments are known with more certainty, but the blank slate of his life prior to the birth of his son has resulted in endless embellishments of his youth, which makes determining the truth a near impossibility.

This is not helped by the fact that the man had a literally larger-than-life stature; in an era in which the average height of an adult man was sixty-eight-and-one-quarter inches (173.4 cm), Stoick, from modern analysis of his remains and attested from numerous primary sources, is confirmed to have measured eighty-one-and-a-half inches (207 cm) in height, with a build to match.

''Additionally, other romanticized aspects of his life are well-substantiated, rendering the sorting of truth from fiction to be more difficult. Perhaps the single most famous example of this is his famous devotion to his wife, Valka. As the cultural expectation of a high ranking Norseman of the era, even on Berk, was to be polygamous, Stoick's attested monogamy has been the subject of significant romanticization…''

—The Dragon Millennium, Manna-hata University Press, Ltd. ''

Chapter Overview
MacBethad's spies return to report just how bizzare Berk is. Stoick reminises and laments all the dragons he's killed over his life. The Frankish king Henry learns of Berk, and fears the Normans allying them to conquer him. Hiccup and Astrid make up after their fight.

Foreshadowing
Put spoilers here

Epigraph Tie-In

 * The epigraph mentions Stoick's famous devotion to Valka, which is brought up by Mac Bethad's spies.
 * Stoick's life and accomplishments are briefly discussed by the epigraph. Stoick himself reflects on both during the chapter.

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