I do not give Ivar enough credit for what he did.
I routinely lose my phone when it's three feet away, and have to sadly crawl over to Google to ask it to call it for me.
Ivar followed a guy out of his castle, across his kingdom, to the coast, onto a boat, onto probably another boat and another coast, rinse and repeat until he made it to Ireland, all with THIS information to help him:
- white dude (stops being useful once you hit most of Europe)
- Scar on his forehead
- Carrying a silver, jewelled-studded chalice (which is more than likely hidden in a bag or box or under a coat or something)
And he found the guy!!! He's stuck at trying to get the chalice back, but Ivar knows where it is! Technically, he could ask his kingdom to send some dudes to do a surgical strike on the castse and get it back, but he's decided to up the challenge by getting it himself. Good for him, but wow, the work it would've taken to even get to that point...!
How many times was he on a boat hoping he was headed in the right direction?
How many times did he hope he described everything right, and didn't end up in a completely different country?
How many times did he land in the wrong place and have to double-back, hoping he'd find someone who'd still remember where Torc went?
Did he have anything leading him to Ireland? Because even if someone specifically said, "Yes, the guy was going to Ireland," that is a HUGE territory to have to cover.
Which only now makes me realize Ivar had a secret weapon: he knew exactly what and where Tir Na Nog was.
Sorry if literally everyone else figured this out before me (🫠). But yeah, based on how he did know where the fairy stones were when Rohan asked, he must have had as much information as Rohan. Maybe a bit more, to lead him there were precisely. He wouldn't have believed in it as much - in fact, I know he didn't, because he didn't even know it could be used as a fairy portal to the dark realm - but he wouldn't have had a choice. Where else was he supposed to look?
What's funny is that for Ivar to lead Rohan and Angus to the fairy stones, he would've already gone there once. And Fin Varra did not let him in. 🤣 Or maybe he didn't think to use the jewel in the middle of it, because "that's dumb, why would that even work." Garrett didn't believe it either, so Ivar wouldn't have much reason to.
So someone in his kingdom (their version of Cathbad with version of an ancient scroll) must have said, "Hey, this is who made the chalice, or at least this is where a similar source of magic can be found. Go to Ireland, go to these fairy stones, and you might get help to point you in the chalice's true direction." It makes me wonder if his land has its own type of fairies. 🤔 Was the chalice brought to his kingdom as a gift of some kind, or actually made there?
How long has he actually been searching for this thing anyway? They would've had to exhaust searching everywhere else in his kingdom, right? They wouldn't just immediately send one of the princes in the land off to Ireland if they could've caught the thief before he set sail.
Damn. That would've been interesting thing to explore: more things from Ivar's land being sent over to Ireland, especially if there weren't any other mystic weapons left.