History of Dasonia (Doggerland Survives)

Doggerland Survives

9,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age, the landmass known as Doggerland (from the Basarin word of ‘Dogernaken’ meaning ‘Homeland’) or Dasonia that connected Britain to Mainland Europe mostly survived the rising waters and became 2 islands, the main landmass, which is 45km from England in the west and 89km from Flanders in the east. Bergen Island is 10km northeast and is 56km off the coast of Norway.

The Neolithic people there created a powerful culture called the Amars, who ruled over a prosperous Doggerland and Bergen Island from 5000-3000 BC. Later on, in around 700 BC, Doggerland was colonised by two people the Germanic Balsin and the Celts. The Celts ruled over the Dogger hills and fertile central plains, while the Balsinian domain was the marshy west, and the sweeping bays of the south and east coasts.

The Balsinians and the Celts lived relatively peacefully until the coming of the Romans. General Marcus Heldas conquered most of Doggerland in the First War of Conquest from 87 BC – 70 BC, with only the bravery of a Celtic chieftain, whose name is now lost, preventing him from conquering the Dogger Hills. The Romans built an expansive system of roads and also the city of Burundim, now known as Gatea, the capital of Dasonia, which is the Latinised name of Doggerland.

In 59 BC the island was used by Julius Caesar as a staging point for his conquest of Britain. In the 3rd Century AD, the first Christian missionary, St. John of Gaul, came to Doggerland and started preaching. Dogger Christianity eventually drifted away from the Roman Catholic faith and is now known as Gaulian Christianity, after St. John. Eventually, in 399 AD, the surviving Celts and Balsinians revolted together and drove the now weak Romans off of Doggerland. However, a small settlement of Latin-speaking Roman colonists survived in the far south-eastern corner of the Island.

The Celts and Balsinians clashed several times in the early Dark Ages, which resulted in the destruction of the vast majority of the Roman Infrastructure, making Doggerland easy to invade. From 765-778, the English kingdom of Northumbria conquered a lot of north-western Doggerland and in 801, the Frankish King Charlemagne, took some territory in the South of the island. In 789, the Vikings attacked Bergen Island, and almost wiped out the small native population, descended from the Amars.

From 795-841 the destructive Second War of Conquest, took place which ended up with three quarters of Doggerland in Viking hands, pushing the native population back to the Latin-speaking kingdom of Asius, which had made substantial gains in the chaos of the Dark Ages.

The Vikings rebuilt the infrastructure of Doggerland, and King Harald II of Norway, built many ‘Norwegian Roads’, which forms the basis of the National Highway System today. After they had conquered Doggerland, the Vikings increased the standard of living and infrastructure to Roman levels, and by the reign of King Cnut in the mid eleventh century, Doggerland was in the centre of a Viking Empire that included (OTL) Scandinavia, Iceland, parts of Russia, Normandy, Southern Italy, the British Isles, Greenland, and Eastern Canada.

However, this great empire would not last, as the Holy Roman Empire, started by the Frankish King Charlemagne, expanded its territory in Southern Doggerland, and eventually kicked out the Vikings in 1069 AD. Other territories were lost over the years, as France took Normandy (1087), their English territories fell by 1069 and Ireland too a few decades later. Across the Atlantic, they lost contact with Vinland in 1070, and Greenland roughly two centuries later. They continued to have possessions in Russia until the coming of the Mongols, and Southern Italy remained Nordic but became independent from Scandinavia.

The HRE rebuilt Gatea, which become a prosperous city in the Grand Duchy of Dasonia, where all territory south of the River Vadd was ruled from. Those far northern parts above that river was a patchwork of different states that spoke a mixture of Celtic Dasonic, Basarin, Latin Dasonic, Norse and Danish.

In the late 14th Century, the empire was weakened and ambitious Basarin Prince Henry took this opportunity to reunite all of the microstates and attack the HRE. This was done, and in 1403 he was crowned King Henry I in Gatea.

This was the first time in centuries that Dasonia was an independent state, and Henry expanded the influence of the country in his 22 year reign. He and the successive Balsinian dynasty stabilised the country and all the linguistic communities coexisted peacefully due to their efforts. Bergen Island was added through diplomatic pressure of the ailing Denmark in 1463, and the Faroe Islands were invaded in 1479.

The reign of John II, from 1504-1547 was a golden age, when Britain and Flanders became rich and Dasonia became an important trading centre, with the southern ports becoming wealthy merchant cities.

After the death of John’s son, Louis (in 1551) came what is known as the Two Centuries of Chaos, ignited by a succession crisis and characterised by wars between Catholics, Protestants and Gaulians. In this period, Scandinavia became strong again, which resulted in the loss of the Faroe Islands, Bergen Island and much of North-Eastern Doggerland.

Eventually, in 1756 the Lutheran claimant Richard of Vaddenia married Mary Hapsburg, the sister of Catholic claimant James Hapsburg and betrothed his young son, Henry, to the young daughter of the Gaulian claimant John V. Richard was crowned the next year and started a war against Scandinavia. Four years later, in the Treaty of Rheims, Scandinavia ceded North-East Dasonia, Bergen Island, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Norway south of the Arctic Circle to Dasonia.

The rule of Richard catapulted Dasonia into international prominence under the rule of the Vaddenians. A great empire was founded with colonies in Tierra del Fuego, the South Atlantic and the Caribbean. Dasonia also began trading with North America, as the once-thought lost Viking colonies there had grown into a great power by the time John Cabot rediscovered them in 1498.

In 1798, the Dasonians entered into an alliance with Britain, Prussia and Russia against the threat of France and Napoleon. They attacked Napoleon’s Scandinavian allies by sailing across the Baltic Sea from Norway and invading Denmark. They met up with Prussian and Austrian forces in 1804 and were triumphant in the Battle of Holstein, after which Scandinavia surrendered. They then joined the invasion of France, and were victorious (with the British, Prussians and Austrians) at the climactic Battle of Versailles in 1808.

Doggerland gained all of Norway and parts of Arctic Sweden in the peace settlement, with Denmark going to the expanded Prussians and the rest of Sweden as well as Finland going to Russia. In the next few decades, Dasonians explored vast areas of land, and got a reputation for being adventurers. However, as the industrial revolution dawned, many people became unhappy with the power of the Monarch which led to the Dasonian Civil War from 1840-1847, which resulted in the despotic and defeated King Henry VII being deposed and replaced by his nephew, Peter Glucksburg. A lasting result of the war was the establishment of the Assembly and the office of Chancellor.

When Dasonia was weak in the immediate aftermath of the war, the Norwegians began a long and violent struggle for independence that impoverished their nation and ignited the Great European War. From 1871-1876 Europe was engulfed in a deadly war. On one side were Britain, Dasonia, Prussia and Russia; on the other side was Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, a vengeful France, Spain and separatists in Scotland and Scandinavia. The war was brutal and ended in a very narrow victory for Austria and her allies. Scotland became independent, while Norway, Sweden and Denmark reunified, albeit with Dasonia controlling their Arctic territories.

The economies of Europe were soon being outstripped by a recently emergent Unite Provinces of Erikana, the former Viking colonies in the New World. To combat this threat, France, Prussia and Spain formed the European Alliance, an economic union in 1887. In the Scramble for Africa, European nations looked southwards for new lands to rejuvenate their economies. In this race, Dasonia got territories in the Horn of Africa, known in Basarin as Dasonian Eust Efrika or the DEE. The EA gained Portugal, Britain, Scotland, Dasonia, Austria and Russia in the late 19th Century.

The economic race soon became military as well. The EA and UPE were both building up their armies in a period known as the Cold War from 1897-1906. In 1906, Erikana (a republic) elected the nationalistic Hans Arundssen as President. He claimed that Dasonian territory of Iceland was part of North America and therefore, part of the UPE. In May, he launched an assault on it, which was the last straw for the EA.

The entire EA declared war on the UPE. Their navies sailed to the West Coast, where they joined up with the Polynesians and Russians who had come down from Alaska to attack them from the west, while another force defeated them at Ireland, and repeatedly raided cities on the east coast. Finally, Spain invaded Florida from their colony of Cuba. This was the conflict known as the Second Great War.

Eventually the UPE economy could not last due to mismanagement and fighting a war on 3 fronts. After the western army won the Battle of Erikbro (OTL St Louis) in 1909, the military staged a coup and imprisoned Arundssen. Eventually the UPE surrendered in 1910, and Arundssen was executed in Haraldsberg, formerly the capital of the UPE.

The former territory of Erikana was divided between Britain, Russia, Scandinavia, Prussia, Dasonia, Spain, the Polynesians and France to do with what they will in the Treaty of Haraldsberg. Dasonia gained the (OTL) states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky.

The war resulted in a massive financial boom from 1912-1930 that greatly enriched the nations of Europe, and their respective colonies, which were often granted semi-autonomous status. From the end of the war to present times is often known as the Pax Europa, with only two conflicts of note - the Prussian Civil War (1964-1970) and the Collapse of Russia (1939-1945). The collapse of Russia was instigated by a weak monarchy and government controlling various different ethnicities, and led to massive chaos. Eventually Russia was separated into countries – Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Siberia and the Central Asian Republic. Also, Finland and Karelia joined Scandinavia.

The Prussian Civil War was caused by ethnic tensions and the debate between Royalists and Republicans it was bloody and gruesome, with the Ethnic Prussians committing ethnic cleansing against the Poles, killing roughly 1.2 million of them. Prussia was broken up into the Kingdom of Prussia and the Republic of Germany, with some territory given to the Poles. Over time, with the help of the League of Nations (formed in 1911), the European colonies gained independence (Dasonian Eust Efrika in 1956, Tierra del Fuego and the Dasonian South Atlantic Colonies was given to Argentina in 1959, Iceland became independent in 1960, the same year as Dasonian West Indies) and there have been no serious wars since Prussia.

Dasonia is still a major power, with a strong economy and international reputation. Gatea is a cosmopolitan city where old and new melts in together, while nature is protected by 12 National Parks. It has a population of 31 million and its official languages are Basarin, English and Danish. Bergen Island and Doggerland are connected via the road and rail Dogernaken Bridge, completed in 1989, and in 2003 a rail tunnel between West Dasonia and Norfolk in England was completed.