The Frisian Dossier
Excerpts from the NCI "Frisian Dossier", up to date as of year 9 of Eden. It's a booklet put together by French/German intelligence and other sources before being donated to the NCI as a way to bring new members up to date with the 'relevant' organisations in Frisia [1] and several key events in shaping it.
All Frisia Services: the complex web of micropolities that make up Frisia are, with exceptions, united by 2 organisations. These are the All Frisia Health Service (AFHS), and the All Frisia Post and Messanger Service (AFPMS). The AFHS is the older one, having emerged as a knock on effect of the mass vaccination campaigns for the transported Germani tribes that arrived in Germany. Health, fundamentally, is a public issue: every person carrying a disease is a potential problem for everyone else, meaning that the patient's problem is everyone's problem. With both unvaccinated Norse and Germani, who though vaccinated would go on to have children without access to vaccinations, settling in Frisia alongside NCI populations; the NCI and UN organisations active in the region didn't see much choice but to keep the campaign rolling and the All Frisia Health Service was born from the consolidation of their efforts and resources in the region.
Quite stretched for resources and struggling with the lack of infrastructure in Frisia, outside of their vaccine campaigns the AFHS would focus heavily on the education of the Frisian populations to allow them to help themselves where the AFHS might not have the resources or reach to do so. This "educational solution to the healthcare question" covered both preventative methods of health care and also teaching the Frisians how manufacture a number of medicines themselves with their limited resource (most famously penicillin and some antibiotics).
Whilst praised and beloved across the peoples of Frisia it needs to be emphasised that the AFHS did have some unintended consequences. The educational method itself, combined with the organisation initially being overwhelmingly made up of French and Germans, resulted in the Norse putting a high value on French and Germans as educators and carers, providing the motivation for a series of kidnapping cases that helped fuel
Les Querelles and culminated with the
Marie Lavelle Incident.
These kidnapping cases and subsequent low intensity conflicts between Franco-German settlers and the Norse were not the primary motivating force behind the creation of the All Frisia Post and Messenger Service, which had it's foundations laid before any of these cases gained prominence, but this environment and the need for a peaceful messenger network nevertheless fed into its creation, character and initial development to a degree that cannot be overstated. Fundamentally, the difference in understandings of the world, of justice and governance and warfare between the Norse and the Franco-Germans was so great that ways to allow for de-escalation to even occur soon became deeply necessary even as questions were raised as to whether de-escalation between such different fundamental understandings of reality were even possible.
Recruiting heavily from the Germani tribes in Frisia for their relatively neutral stance on the conflicts between the Franco-Germans and the Norse, the AFPMS is often considered one of the most important organisations in Frisia both for keeping the peace and, increasingly, for allowing for larger scale infrastructure initiatives to even be possible in the so called "lawless lowlands". Both the Norse and the Germani understood the taboo of killing a messenger, and the idea of a genuinely neutral service to act as one was something all could see the appeal of (an appreciation further entrenched when it was realised that a postage service meant the infrastructure to deliver important or valuable packages).
The practical upshot of this is that the members of the All Frisia Services enjoy protection and hospitality across all of Frisia, their uniforms and sigil afforded respect wherever they travel; even in places that haven't specifically taken the path of not doing harm the members they often find themselves with Norse or Germani guards volunteering to protect them given. As one anonymous Norse man said:
"I have seen so many lost to pestilence or to a war that none wanted but none could stop before arriving in Frysii. The weight of the gift the Services have given us measured in the bodies of so many we would have lost had their medicines and messages and kindness not been there. The sword I offer in protection is paltry compared to what Services have gifted us all."
Given the successes of the current All Frisia Services, there has been discussion to expand the services with either a range of hostels for travellers across Frisia or even road and railway networks, but this is judged to be unlikely. With resources dependent on either Norse immigration or NCI investment it's largely agreed that barring a change in the current situation future Services are more likely to be a result of separately built infrastructure being consolidated into a single service.
Anglish Conspiracy, The: Pre-dating colonisation of the Low Countries, the Anglish Conspiracy has its origins in the third recorded year in Eden. In it's own timeline, France was the centre of its own alliance, with both the diplomatic alliance the International and the military alliance INFOR having it's head quarters there, resulting in both official staff from the allied Union of Britain and a quite large British diaspora being marooned when France was transported to Eden. When the Celtic Empire came to Eden, contact was made between the substantial British remnants in France and the Anglish communities among the Celts (joined by the small but enthusiastic community of Bolshevik [2] exiles from the Franco-British Union that came with Palestine) and tentative but quite sincere plans were discussed for a joint colonisation of England under a single governing body.
Suffice to say, these plans hit a snag when Oceania was transported to Eden. However, by this point the networks between peoples and organisations had been made; and as such the remnants of the UoB in the International, INFOR and the ambassadorial staff in France consolidated into a true government in exile that existed at the centre of these networks. Due to the threat of Oceania making these networks hegemonic throughout Anglish communities among the Celts, as well as the increased cultural mixing between the two British populations, political commentators in the Celtic Empire started referring to them as "The Anglish Conspiracy" and the nickname stuck.
Anglish investment in Frisia was relatively small, most of their networks and resources were in Northern France or in the border areas of the Celtic Empire, but due to the sheer amount of support the Anglish Conspiracy received they were able to set up a collection of observation posts on the coast of Frisia. These were originally intended to listen in to Oceanian radio broadcasts, observe their ship movements and, in the event of cargo from an Oceanian ship washing up on shore, seizing the cargo for study.
When the Norse settlers arrived, they mostly took to the same coasts that the Anglish were using and, with the government in exile not wanting to lose their observation posts, the Anglish went out of their way to keep the peace with the Norse. This had the unintended effect of making the Anglish appear to be the reasonable members of the NCI to the Norse when compared to the clashes with the Franco-German (see
Les Querelles), resulting in a number of Norse factions trying to use the Anglish as go betweens to contact other members of the NCI.
Whilst initially the Anglish reluctantly went along with it to keep the peace, increasingly they have taken a more active role. After going through the information gained from the defector Winston Smith on the Oceanian regime, there's been greater and greater demand for their equipment (to get a greater idea of their capabilities for the war increasingly perceived as inevitable) and their culture (to get a better idea of how best to deprogram a population as thoroughly propagandised as the Oceanians); and due to the Vikingr practice of piracy and raiding they are among the best sources of these two things. This has resulted in the Anglish Conspiracy having "unofficial" or "off the books" relations with a number of pirates active in the North Sea to varying degrees of controversy.
Board(s) for Democratic Management: as two of the larger organising bodies in the so called "lawless lowlands", the Boards for Democratic Management were founded as a result of initial French and German attempts of socialist internationalism. Whilst a joint ownership of contested land would have to wait until trust was truly built up, joint ownership of rivers that ran through both France and Germany was a relatively uncontroversial easy victory for internationalist feelings, with this applying initially to just the Rhine but after further negotiation this was applied to the Meuse with Germany moving it's Western border the small distance to eastern bank of the stretch of the river where the cities of Venio and Roermond would have been located.
This easy victory for internationism however would have long running consequences when it came to colonisation of Frisia. Even without the canals that connected them outside of Eden, with no infrastructure built or forests cleared the rivers of Frisia were the best way to traverse it and before houses could be built a boat was often a home to early settlers, meaning that space along the rivers was a recurring issue that required management. Further questions were raised about the usage of the rivers' resources: fishing and other natural resources were threatened by pollution from further up river, whilst building water wheels to provide power to the settler towns raised further questions about space usage. In the end, the rivers needed management that was accountable to those who used it, and as a result the Board for Democratic Management of the Rhine (BDMR) and Board for Democratic Management of the Meuse (BDMM) were formed.
At present day, the Boards include representatives from the joint Franco-German settlements along the rivers, a number of Germani communities, the little Netherlands settlement on the Meuse (see
Low Countries Reconstruction Mandate) and one or two communities of the
Church of Baldr as well as representatives from France and Germany proper. With the current lull in
Les Querelles a number of Norse settlements on the Rhine and Meuse have applied to join the respective board: Germany is in favour of them joining and France against, with the other polities on the board being divided on the issue.
The Church of Baldr is cautiously optimistic about the more standard Norse settlements joining as it hopes that it will encourage them to give up the institution of thralldom and the Germani settlements are in favour under the theory that letting the Norse join the boards is the next step in the peace process; whilst Little Netherlands is torn between frustration with the Norse for complicating their hoped resurrection of Benelux region culture and their understanding that the mammoth labour the Norse could provide would be a great boon for the proposed Meuse to Scheldt canal and the Franco-Germans settlements are divided between those in favour of bringing the Norse in out of pragmatism and those who don't yet trust them after the wounds inflicted by the conflict.
Of course, the elephant in the room is the other rivers of Frisia: the Scheldt and the Yser. None of these have a Board of their own, instead being claimed in their entirety by France and with the French settlements on their banks being governed as a single region of France proper. With the Yser, due to its small size, this worked out well and French rule and ability to project power there is uncontested. The Scheldt, however, has been something more of a problem.
Due to the Scheldt's size and lack of Germany's population to assist, France was unable to achieve full control of the Scheldt before an number of Norse polities had become entrenched downstream of the French, and without either Germani (who overwhelmingly settled where Germany proper had influence) or the
Church of Baldr (who settled with the other Norse near the coast or along the more welcoming Rhine and Meuse river) there was no real neutral party on the Scheldt that could be used to broker a long term truce or agreement between the two parties. As a result, whilst a combination of the low populations involved and the comparatively small scale of the front has kept the conflict smaller and less intense than the rest of
les querelles it's nevertheless been far more difficult to de-escalate. The continuing issues France has the Scheldt has resulted in them becoming one of the main backers for the proposals of the
Low Countries Reconstruction Mandate for a "Little Belgium" settlement on Scheldt and for a Meuse to Scheldt canal, the former to provide a buffer zone between the French and Norse settlements [3] and the latter to allow for the easier transfer of German resources and population to the troubled region.
Church of Baldr: famously, the involvement of SERF in the Göterike civil war failed to produce a genuine socialist faction among the locals, but it did succeed in creating a religiously tinged slave and peasant revolt that was often compared by commentators to the Yellow Turban revolts in Han dynasty China. As the situation in Göterike stabilised however, participants in this revolt joined the more peaceful
SERF Remnants in leaving Scandinavia for Frisia, where they founded utopian [4] religious communities centred around the Church of Baldr. Far more open to the NCI than other Norse communities, the Church of Baldr has been a boon to NCI academics looking to study the society in the process of being formed, and in particular the Norse relationship to Frisia's mammoth population.
With the fame of the "Frysii Mammoth riders" of the intermingling Norse-Germani population, NCI academics were interested in studying the relationship as a demonstration of the process of taming in action, but after studies with the Church of Baldr there was fierce debate as to whether the term "taming" was appropriate in a lot of circumstances. To clarify this requires a discussion of the Baldrites history with mammoths. When the Baldrites first arrived in Frisia, they were unprepared for the conditions of a cold Serengeti, and were set upon by the predators there. While various creatures never seen by the Norse like Homotherium and Cave Lions did cause problems, they had particular trouble with the Glottiār hyena [5] which were found to be frighteningly adaptable to human presence and opportunistic when it came to treating humans as prey. Frisia's mammoth population however, was mostly unfamiliar with humans and in particular unfamiliar with the Norse, meaning that the Baldrites weren't viewed as a threat by the mammoths whilst the predators were: resulting in the Baldrites in Frisia often following the mammoth herds for safety whilst finding a place to settle down, even joining in defending the mammoth herd from predators. When the Baldrites did settle down, the mammoths by this point had developed some attachment to them and an understanding that they would protect them. This resulted in them visiting the Baldrite settlements, often stopping there to give birth or with those too old or sick to follow the herd often staying with and being looked after by the Baldrites, and with dying mammoths staying there knowing that they'd spend their last days comfortable and protected.
A number of NCI academics have suggested that, whilst the mammoths are acclimatised to human presence and whilst there are examples of mammoths doing tasks for the Baldrites in exchange for food, that the mammoths the Baldrites have embraced are not really tame, and instead the relationship between the two should be considered something like symbiosis or an entirely new animal-human relationship that doesn't really have a comparison.
Notably, the Baldrites and their communities are arguably more shaped by the mammoths than the other way around. The concept of "mammoth time", coined when the Baldrites interacted with industrial society's understanding of time and summarised by the Baldrite saying "What cares a mammoth for a watch?", is an example of this that NCI theorists have been fascinated by. Simply put, whereas pre-capitalist societies rely upon natural phenomena to track time such as sun rise and sun set, capitalism has relied upon abstract understandings of time (most obviously the 24 hour day) to allow for it's day to day operations to continue free from such natural phenomena, notably with there being historical examples of worker's strikes and riots that specifically destroyed workplace clocks for this reason, and disciplines those who don't abide by this abstract time. "Mammoth time", however, refers to the fact that the mammoths are free of such discipline and would be difficult to discipline in any meaningful way: mammoths can do things for food, but only if they want to or are willing to, and with mammoths at the centre of the Baldrite community it was inevitable that this attitude would spread to them. Of course, given that abstract understandings of time are something inherited by France and Germany from their capitalist predecessors, "mammoth time" has divided those studying it, with some believing it'll stymie infrastructure build up in Frisia and others arguing that a society free of the time/labour discipline France and Germany failed to abolish should be celebrated.
Of course it would be remiss to talk of the Church of Baldr without discussing their beliefs. Baldr is most famous for being a God who died, and his place in Baldrite theology reflects this. Recalling the homeland they can't go back to, their time lost to slavery and those who didn't survive to reach life in Frisia, Baldr is the god of loss and mourning who waits for the Baldrites with all that they have lost on the other side of death; with many Baldrite communities seeing the mammoths that choose to spend their last days among them as embodying the spirit of Baldr and much of their art depicting Baldr as a mammoth.
Whilst Baldr is the final destination of Baldrite theology, Baldr's son Forseti, god of justice and mediation, arguably has more relevance in their day to day lives. Considered the same god as Forsite of the old Frisians and frequently conflated with Jesus/Yeshua in his role as a peacemaker with a number of tales reminiscent of and possibly influenced by Jesus saving a woman from stoning (ironic given the common assumption that Baldr is the Jesus figure of Norse paganism); if Baldr is the god of what the Baldrites have lost then Forseti is the god of all they have and the good will needed to keep it, the god of Frisia itself and their lives in it where Baldr is the god of the homes and lives they had to leave behind. As polytheists without a strict canon of which gods can or can't be worshipped the Baldrites will usually have a "commons of the gods" where small shrines can be set up, but a shrine to Forseti will be at the centre of these commons so as to mediate between the various gods present, keeping them all in balance.
Les Querelles: originally known as "La Petite Guerres" (translation: the little war), les querelles (translation: the quarrels) was the euphemism used among Franco-German settlers for a series of low intensity conflicts between various factions of settler in Frisia that came into common usage when the subject became more taboo in the aftermath of Germany's reaction to the
Marie Lavelle Incident. Known to the Norse and Germani as "the many disagreements" or "the great disagreement", a number of activities from glorified pranks to paramilitary violence has been grouped under the umbrella of les querelles and the precise starting point of the conflict are hotly debated and deeply controversial, but consensus tends to place the conflict as crystallising around a series of kidnappings.
The kidnappings were prompted by the unintentional impact of the All Frisia Health Service (see
All Frisia Services). Due to a combination of the educational approach the AFHS took to health care and it's largely Franco-German makeup at the time, the Norse settlers in Frisia came away with the impression of the Franco-Germans as a deeply educated people and at the time as a kindly and deeply peaceful people. The "deeply peaceful" impression would be turned on it's head by the end of the year, and would be ironic at the time given the existence of SERF, but the differences in behaviour between the AFHS and SERF gave the impression of SERF being the exception and the fact that the NCI governments actually denounced SERF intervention in the Swedish civil war emphasised SERF as the outliers of the NCI. The practical upshot of all this was that the Norse came away impressed with the value of Franco-German knowledge (notably just knowledge of French and German would be valuable for trading whilst NCI secondary school geometry, physics and chemistry alone all had uses the Norse would interested in) whilst not thinking much of them as fighters even if their technology of war was impressive. To a people with a history of Vikingr piracy, the temptation was too great for some.
Whilst the kidnappings would almost always target young and educated French or German women, contrary to what contemporary propaganda would show the kidnappings would commonly be pushed for and sometimes masterminded by Norse women themselves. The Norse women were in charge of childcare as well as the production of material wealth in the form of the fermentation of alcohol and weaving among things: the former of course meant that they had an immediate interest in the education of the young in a way men didn't, whilst the latter often gave them a mind primed to spot an investment in future material wealth. Combined with them being less likely to have encountered the NCI at war than the Norse men and a certain degree of overwork among the Norse women due to the gender demographics of early Norse settlement in Frisia leaning towards men [6] and result there was a trend of Norse women demanding both an extra pair of hands for the household and someone to educate their children to adapt to life alongside the NCI whilst also being ignorant of how the badly the Franco-Germans would react. Whilst SERF had shown that the NCI was against slavery, few of the Norse had actually visited the NCI and seen a world without it and so it cannot be emphasised enough how both slavery and the violence used to acquire slaves was a fact of life; the notion that Franco-Germans would treat an attack on one as an attack on all had not yet penetrated Norse understandings of their new neighbours.
Whilst early kidnapping cases varied greatly, trial and error eventually created a "text book" kidnapping method. A Norse woman (used due to Franco-German fears of Norse men) would approach the victim, attempt to befriend them while assessing their education and skills, and once the woman had determined whether they were worth seizing the victim would be encouraged to an out of the way spot where the Norse men could seize her. The most famous example of this was in Sophia Koch's autobiographical "Ten Months in a Norse Village", which whilst it diverted in some ways from the standard case [7] nevertheless contains all these elements. Norse women would be responsible for those kidnapped in this way: Koch's book documenting both their attempts to acclimatise her to her 'new life', their actions used to discipline her, and the genuine but unequal affection some developed for her.
The kidnapping attempts would be met be retaliatory violence from the Franco-German settlers that would be aided by
SERF Remnants that had made a living among them. Where the kidnapped victim could be located, the standard response was either to raid the village to rescue the victim or to take hostages from the village to negotiate for the victim's return. When the victim couldn't be located however, the frustration of being unable to save them would commonly boil over into mob violence against Norse travellers or, as les querelles intensified, revenge attacks on any nearby Norse settlement. This would lead to an atmosphere of generalised "lawless" violence between settler factions, peaking with the
Marie Lavelle Incident.
With intervention from the German Socialist Räterepublik and it's greater interest in the region however, les querelles are agreed to be declining (albeit not quite over), a trend that appears cemented by the founding of the All Frisia Post and Messenger Service (see
All Frisia Services). Kidnappings still occasionally happen, normally done by a Norse settler group new to the region, but a combination of a formal demand sent by the AFPMS and stern advice and warnings from their fellow Norse on the matter usually result in the victim being sent back unharmed; instead what violence does occur tends to be based around land and resource disputes around the river Scheldt (see
Board(s) for Democratic Management). Cynics point out that this could be a temporary lull in the violence but without a larger incident to set it off all actors in the region are planning ahead for the general stabilisation of Frisia.
Low Countries Reconstruction Mandate: a remnant of the original NCI plans for the region, the Low Countries Reconstruction Mandate started in France's timeline as the Belgium and Netherlands Reconstruction Mandates meant to rebuild the Benelux region after the sheer amount of devastation it experienced during the previous period of general war in Europe. With France being both geographically close by and being the centre of both the Communard diplomatic alliance the International and military alliance INFOR, a substantial amount of the staff for both mandates was brought along with it when it was transported to Eden. With an interest in colonising Frisia and keeping Low Countries culture alive still there however, the two organisations were consolidated into the Low Countries Reconstruction Mandate which would later be joined by the ambassadorial and Rotfront associated staff of Spartacist Luxembourg that were brought along when Germany was transported to Eden.
Initially, the plan to rebuild the Benelux region was to start a "Little Netherlands" settlement on the Meuse, a "Little Belgium" settlement on the Scheldt, and a "Little Luxembourg" settlement on the Rhine that would exist in a political union with each other with Franco-German assistance, eventually growing into a loose federation that could keep Frisia under wraps so as to leave France and Germany free focus their attention on other matters. Of these 3 settlements, only the Little Netherlands has been built, with the arrival of Germani and Norse in Frisia and the start of
les querelles significantly complicating any attempt to resurrect Benelux culture.
The current make up of Frisia has made some skeptics question as to whether the Benelux cultural resurrection the Reconstruction Mandate hopes to achieve is even possible, with some calling it "defunct" or "partially defunct", but nevertheless the Mandate gets a good amount of support and from unexpected places.
The planned construction of the Meuse to Scheldt canal (ideally with a "Little Belgium" settlement where the canal meets the Scheldt) in particular has drawn a lot of support from all across Frisia. France is the biggest backer of course, but the project has had widespread if tentative support from the Norse and Germani as it would allow both allow for easier travel through the interior of Frisia and enable an easier colonisation of Frisia's still wild interior by creating a new, artificial river along which new settlements could be constructed. This combination of uncertainty for the future and broad support has made the Reconstruction Mandate invest more and more in it's canal projects, hoping to maintain relevance through the project's success.
Marie Lavelle Incident, The: agreed to be the turning point in
les querelles, the Marie Lavelle Incident is still a source of controversy across Frisia and the NCI, something further compounded by the sheer number of questions about the incident that remain unanswered. The facts that are known are as follows: it began with the kidnappings of a young French woman Marie Lavelle by the Norse of the nearby settlement Alfarrvin in a similar manner and for similar purposes as the other Norse kidnappings in the conflict. Marie's home settlement Nouveau Bruge was alerted to her location by a Germani pagan priest who was traveling in the area and had assumed that the town would negotiate for Marie's release or rescue her.
What instead happened is that the town militia, joined by more volunteers from the town itself, proceeded to bombard Alfarrvin with light artillery and incendaries before killing between 60 and 150 Norse settlers fleeing the destroyed settlement with small arms fire. The priest was understandably horrified by this, and rushed to contact representatives from the German Socialist Räterepublik. Here the "Alfarrvin Massacre" as it became known amongst the Norse and in many German circles became linked in the German political conscious to the attempted red imperialism of SERF and Reventlow's deranged Volksreich regime, prompting in the short term an initial crack down on the settlement of Nouveau Bruge with the settlement being occupied by the German army, it's militia being disarmed and public trials for all known participants in the attack, and in the long term it prompted a greater German involvement within Frisia that is often credited with the decline of
les querelles.
Even as the conflict declines however (ironically with Germany's crack down after the massacre having restored it's credibility among the Frisian Norse at least) there are a number of questions that remain unanswered, not helped by a number of participants in the attack arguably having motivation to lie. The most well known unanswered question being of course: why did the incident escalate so quickly compared to how the kidnappings normally did?
No definite answer has been found, though broadly the hypothetical answers are split into two camps: the emotional lashing out camp and the pre-meditated decision camp. Some of the former camp note the sheer pressure the Franco-German settlers had been under: the background of increasingly casual violence between settler factions combined with their fears of the Norse being more adapted to the wild lands of Frisia due to being used to living without modern conveniences, a general tension that exploded with the kidnapping of Marie. Another theory in the former camp emerged when it turned out that several of the participants in the attack were former members of SERF and that the weaponry used was almost certainly supplied by
SERF Remnants. Noting the failure of SERF and the participants' disownment by their home countries, they argue that the escalation was a result of the trying to restore the wounded honour and masculine pride of the men involved, trying to recapture the martial spirit they lost in Göterike by butchering their "enemy" in Frisia.
The latter camp meanwhile argues that far from an emotional lashing that the attack had a rational, if morally unthinkable, basis. The Franco-German settler response in past kidnapping cases often resulted in a slow escalation through tit for tat interactions, thus leading to the conclusion that the conventional response would have just led to more problems, but leaving the kidnapping unanswered would have resulted in the Norse treating Nouveau Bruge as at best a pushover and at worst as a convenient source of slaves. As such, the argument goes, the militia felt they had no option other than the total destruction of Alfarrvin.
The questions raised by militia's escalation are politically and emotionally charged and remain a point of contention between France and Germany to this day, with the official stance of the French government being much more sympathetic to the militia than Germany with many French political figures believing that the militia's crime was ultimately the result of being forced into an impossible situation and should be judged in light of that and some more hawkish or chauvenistic political figures even arguing that the attack was an inevitable reckoning against the violence the Norse had initiated against the French settlers in Frisia.
There is of course a second unanswered question: the fate of Marie Lavelle herself. Some have speculated she might have died in the bombardment of Alfarrvin but no body was ever located afterwards, and as has been pointed out if Marie survived she might not want much to do with the town that almost got her killed. Missing person notices for her are still distributed by the AFPMS (see
All Frisia Services) but given the lack of infrastructure in Frisia if she is alive it's likely she'll only be found if and when she wants to be.
SERF Remnants: the failed fillibuster in Göterike by rogue elements of the German and French armies had a number of long running consequences, not least of which was in where the rogue soldiers turned when they realised that their expedition had lost. Staying in Scandinavia wasn't an option and returning to their homelands would often mean being arrested. Moreover, even when there was no threat of arrest, a number of soldiers who linked the failures of SERF to the lack of either military intelligence to guide the filibuster and to a lack civilian administration to help govern the seized the territory would go on to blame the NCI's lack of support for the filibuster for its failure; meaning that a large number of SERF Remnants wanted nothing to do with the "traitors" back home.
As such, many of the ordinary soldiers in SERF instead moved to Frisia, using the "lawlessness" of the lands as a way to build their own lives away from the NCI, some quietly living among
Church of Baldr communities that they helped save from thralldom, some integrating into Franco-German settlements and some trying to put together their own settlements.
The most famous and romanticised example is the overlapping nest of heavily armed micropolities including the "Free Soldier's Communes" of the Rhine delta, the semi-nomadic "Lost Boy" and "Merry Men" brigades that roam the nearby forests and the "North Sea Free Engineer's Association" which helps maintain the coastline and reclaim land from the sea lost to erosion, all combining militant internationalist or anarchist philosophy with barracks discipline and the libertine social mores of a post Great War paramilitary. However, as much effort as they put into propagandising their cause to NCI populations, their relatively self contained nature combined with their countercultural lifestyle means that they're not really considered a problem to the NCI, especially when compared to the SERF Remnants that instead have quietly decided to infiltrate the Franco-German settlements.
One of the consequences of the
Marie Lavelle Incident was that it became clear that SERF Remnants were able to leverage their combination of military training, experience with the Norse, sympathy from the settlers and remaining military supplies to gain substantial power within the Franco-German settlements: sometimes acting as a militia or police force, sometimes acting as a mafia and sometimes as both at the same time. Attempts by NCI authorities to root them out or defang them have hit several issues. Many people within the settlements and even within parts of NCI bureaucracy have sympathies with them, enough to protect them or turn a blind eye to them even if they don't think the SERF filibuster was a wise decision. This is made all the more difficult by the fact that the SERF Remnants, as long as they're not causing too much trouble, are genuinely useful: the skills they got either in military training or on campaign in Scandinavia turning them into genuine pillars of their local community in Frisia. Even when the NCI authorities have caught up with them they usually retain contacts with other SERF Remnants in other settlements, meaning it's not uncommon for them to disappear into the night, spend some time in a friend's safe house in a different settlement until the authorities move on.
As such, whilst most SERF Remnants are criminals in the eyes of their respective homelands, and Germany in particular has an interest in bringing them to justice, the NCI as a whole currently has a policy of leaving them alone as long as they're not causing trouble, plotting against the NCI or it's member governments or otherwise "bringing further disgrace to their uniform".
[1] Few parties actually use the term "Frisia" for the region: the Norse and Germani settlers use "Frysii" whilst the Franco-German and other NCI settlers use "Low Countries". However, "Frisia" still has usage as a neutral term for the region among a number of official sources. "Benelux", meanwhile, is strictly used to either refer to the historical region as it existed in other time lines or to as a term for Belgian/Dutch/Luxembourg culture.
[2] For the purpose of clarity, NCI standard terminology is to refer to socialist/communist movements depending on which revolution after World War 1 they draw from. Movements that draw from a communist revolution in Russia are "Bolsheviks", from a revolution in France as "Communards", and from a revolution in Germany as "Spartacists", which neatly link up with the 3 timelines the European-Mediterranean members of the NCI came from. Some point out that this has the potential to become confusing should the Soviet remnants from Germany's timeline (nominally Bolshevik due to drawing from their failed Bolshevik revolution, but from the Spartacist timeline) are transported across to Eden, but this has yet to be a problem.
[3] Not mentioned out of courtesy is that the comparative success and flexibility of the Boards managing the Rhine and Meuse has led to France having an interest in creating one for the Scheldt (albeit one more strongly French controlled and influenced) and the creation of a Little Belgium settlement would be the impetus to create one whilst also allowing the French government to save face.
[4] utopian here is meant in the Marxist terminology sense to refer to communities that build socialism by moving to somewhere without capitalism and running their settlement along socialist lines (comparable to the word "hippie"), though broadly elements within the NCI have used it to mean attempting socialism without a history to draw from or just as a catch all for an unrealistic political project. Commonly derogatory due to the history of utopian communities being at best socialist islands in a capitalist sea that are inevitably eroded back into the sea and at worst glorified cults, it's usage here is unusual in that it's not really meant to be: the influence of Germany and France proper and the general context of Frisia being assumed to be enough to allow such communities to survive and develop freely.
[5] The new common name for the Cave Hyena, derived from the Norse word "Glotta" (To grin, to smile scornfully) and the old Frisian word "Diār" (Thing, animal, beast). This rechristening has spread out of Frisia and became so widespread it's in being used in official scientific papers through Europe, and will most likely replace the original term, such as with Cymru's label Fèidhmòr (Formerly the Irish Elk), though other animals have not received this treatment yet. This is one famous example of the developing "Frysii" pidgin language between the Nordic tongues and the various different dialects spoken by the Germani.
[6] Not mentioned partially for the sake of brevity, partially due to a lack of study on this reason and partially so as not to inflame tensions that could threaten the relative peace is the fact that this gender demographic difference often meant that Norse women also wanted to secure potential wives for family or friends, or as a way to secure potential allies with men within their own communities, though this was a secondary reason given that most Norse men would go back to Danmǫrk or Göterike to look for a wife.
[7] notably, the kidnapping occurred within a Franco-German settlement where normally it'd be on the outskirts of one or in a Germani settlement, and the kidnapper Asta appears to have plied Sophia with drink so she was unable to resist and so that Asta and her brother could pose as friends getting their drunken comrade home which is deeply unusual due to Norse taboos regarding hospitality and the offering of food and drink.
With thanks to @Klaesick for beta reading, editing suggestions, advice and contributing a lot to this side story. 
