HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY |
READING HALL DOORS OF WISDOM |
Early kings
of Norway
860-1397
By
Thomas Carlyle
I
HARALD HAARFAGR
Till about
the Year of Grace 860 there were no kings in Norway, nothing but numerous
jarls,--essentially kinglets, each presiding over a kind of republican or
parliamentary little territory; generally striving each to be on some terms of
human neighborhood with those about him, but,--in spite of Fylke Things (Folk
Things, little parish parliaments), and small combinations of these, which had
gradually formed themselves,--often reduced to the unhappy state of quarrel
with them. Harald Haarfagr was the first to put an
end to this state of things, and become memorable and profitable to his country
by uniting it under one head and making a kingdom of it; which it has continued
to be ever since. His father, Halfdan the Black, had already begun this rough
but salutary process,--inspired by the cupidities and
instincts, by the faculties and opportunities, which the good genius of this
world, beneficent often enough under savage forms, and diligent at all times to
diminish anarchy as the world`s worst savagery, usually appoints in such
cases,--conquest, hard fighting, followed by wise guidance of the
conquered;--but it was Harald the Fairhaired, his
son, who conspicuously carried it on and completed it. Harald`s birth-year,
death-year, and chronology in general, are known only by inference and
computation; but, by the latest reckoning, he died about the year 933 of our
era, a man of eighty-three.
The
business of conquest lasted Harald about twelve years (A.D. 860-872?), in which
he subdued also the vikings of the out-islands, Orkneys, Shetlands, Hebrides,
and Man. Sixty more years were given him to consolidate and regulate what he
had conquered, which he did with great judgment, industry and success. His
reign altogether is counted to have been of over seventy years.
The
beginning of his great adventure was of a romantic character.--youthful love
for the beautiful Gyda, a then glorious and famous young lady of those regions,
whom the young Harald aspired to marry. Gyda answered his embassy and prayer in
a distant, lofty manner: “Her it would not beseem to wed any Jarl or poor
creature of that kind; let him do as Gorm of Denmark, Eric of Sweden, Egbert of
England, and others had done,--subdue into peace and regulation the confused,
contentious bits of jarls round him, and become a king; then, perhaps, she
might think of his proposal: till then, not”. Harald was struck with this proud
answer, which rendered Gyda tenfold more desirable to him. He vowed to let his
hair grow, never to cut or even to comb it till this feat were done, and the
peerless Gyda his own. He proceeded accordingly to conquer, in fierce battle, a
Jarl or two every year, and, at the end of twelve years, had his unkempt (and
almost unimaginable) head of hair clipt off,--Jarl Rognwald (Reginald) of More, the most valued and
valuable of all his subject-jarls, being promoted to this sublime barber
function;--after which King Harald, with head thoroughly cleaned, and hair
grown, or growing again to the luxuriant beauty that had no equal in his day,
brought home his Gyda, and made her the brightest queen in all the north. He
had after her, in succession, or perhaps even simultaneously in some cases, at
least six other wives; and by Gyda herself one daughter and four sons.
Harald was
not to be considered a strict-living man, and he had a great deal of trouble,
as we shall see, with the tumultuous ambition of his sons; but he managed his
government, aided by Jarl Rognwald and others, in a
large, quietly potent, and successful manner; and it lasted in this royal form
till his death, after sixty years of it.
These were
the times of Norse colonization; proud Norsemen flying into other lands, to
freer scenes,--to Iceland, to the Faroe Islands, which were hitherto quite
vacant (tenanted only by some mournful hermit, Irish Christian _fakir_, or so);
still more copiously to the Orkney and Shetland Isles, the Hebrides and other
countries where Norse squatters and settlers already were. Settlement of
Iceland, we say; settlement of the Faroe Islands, and, by far the notablest of all, settlement of Normandy by Rolf the Ganger
(A.D. 876?).
Rolf, son
of Rognwald, was lord of three little islets far
north, near the Fjord of Folden, called the Three Vigten Islands; but his chief means of living was that of sea robbery; which, or at
least Rolf`s conduct in which, Harald did not approve of. In the Court of
Harald, sea-robbery was strictly forbidden as between Harald`s own countries,
but as against foreign countries it continued to be the one profession for a
gentleman; thus, I read, Harald’s own chief son, King Eric that afterwards was,
had been at sea in such employments ever since his twelfth year. Rolf`s crime,
however, was that in coming home from one of these expeditions, his crew having
fallen short of victual, Rolf landed with them on the shore of Norway, and in
his strait, drove in some cattle there (a crime by law) and proceeded to kill
and eat; which, in a little while, he heard that King Harald was on foot to
inquire into and punish; whereupon Rolf the Ganger speedily got into his ships
again, got to the coast of France with his sea-robbers, got infeftment by the poor King of France in the fruitful, shaggy desert which is since called
Normandy, land of the Northmen; and there, gradually felling the forests,
banking the rivers, tilling the fields, became, during the next two centuries,
Wilhelmus Conquaestor, the man famous to England, and
momentous at this day, not to England alone, but to all speakers of the English
tongue, now spread from side to side of the world in a wonderful degree.
Tancred of Hauteville and his Italian Normans, though important too, in Italy,
are not worth naming in comparison. This is a feracious earth, and the grain of
mustard-seed will grow to miraculous extent in some cases.
Harald’s
chief helper, counsellor, and lieutenant was the above-mentioned Jarl Rognwald of More, who had the honor to cut Harald’s
dreadful head of hair. This Rognwald was father of
Turf-Einar, who first invented peat in the Orkneys, finding the wood all gone
there; and is remembered to this day. Einar, being come to these islands by
King Harald’s permission, to see what he could do in them,--islands inhabited
by what miscellany of Picts, Scots, Norse squatters we do not know,--found the
indispensable fuel all wasted. Turf-Einar too may be regarded as a benefactor
to his kind. He was, it appears, a bastard; and got no coddling from his
father, who disliked him, partly perhaps, because “he was ugly and blind of an
eye”,--got no flattering even on his conquest of the Orkneys and invention of
peat. Here is the parting speech his father made to him on fitting him out with
a "long-ship" (ship of war, "dragon-ship," ancient
seventy-four), and sending him forth to make a living for himself in the world:
“It were best if thou never camest back, for I have
small hope that thy people will have honor by thee; thy mother`s kin throughout
is slavish”.
Harald Haarfagr had a good many sons and daughters; the daughters
he married mostly to jarls of due merit who were loyal to him; with the sons,
as remarked above, he had a great deal of trouble. They were ambitious,
stirring fellows, and grudged at their finding so little promotion from a
father so kind to his jarls; sea-robbery by no means an adequate career for the
sons of a great king, two of them, Halfdan Haaleg (Long-leg), and Gudrod Ljome (Gleam), jealous of the favors won by the great Jarl Rognwald.
surrounded him in his house one night, and burnt him and sixty men to death
there. That was the end of Rognwald, the invaluable
jarl, always true to Haarfagr; and distinguished in
world history by producing Rolf the Ganger, author of the Norman Conquest of
England, and Turf-Einar, who invented peat in the Orkneys. Whether Rolf had
left Norway at this time there is no chronology to tell me. As to Rolf`s surname,
"Ganger," there are various hypotheses; the likeliest, perhaps, that
Rolf was so weighty a man no horse (small Norwegian horses, big ponies rather)
could carry him, and that he usually walked, having a mighty stride withal, and
great velocity on foot.
One of
these murderers of Jarl Rognwald quietly set himself
in Rognwald’s place, the other making for Orkney to
serve Turf-Einar in like fashion. Turf-Einar, taken by surprise, fled to the
mainland; but returned, days or perhaps weeks after, ready for battle, fought
with Halfdan, put his party to flight, and at next morning`s light searched the
island and slew all the men he found. As to Halfdan Long-leg himself, in fierce
memory of his own murdered father, Turf-Einar “cut an eagle on his back”, that
is to say, hewed the ribs from each side of the spine and turned them out like
the wings of a spread-eagle: a mode of Norse vengeance fashionable at that time
in extremely aggravated cases!
Harald Haarfagr, in the mean time, had descended upon the Rognwald scene, not in mild mood towards the new jarl
there; indignantly dismissed said jarl, and appointed a brother of Rognwald (brother, notes Dahlmann), though Rognwald had left other sons. Which done, Haarfagr sailed with all speed to the Orkneys, there to
avenge that cutting of an eagle on the human back on Turf-Einar’s part.
Turf-Einar did not resist; submissively met the angry Haarfagr,
said he left it all, what had been done, what provocation there had been, to Haarfagr’s own equity and greatness of mind. Magnanimous Haarfagr inflicted a fine of sixty marks in gold, which was
paid in ready money by Turf-Einar, and so the matter ended.
II
ERIC BLOOD-AXE AND BROTHERS
In such
violent courses Haarfagr’s sons, I know not how many
of them, had come to an untimely end; only Eric, the accomplished sea-rover,
and three others remained to him. Among these four sons, rather impatient for
property and authority of their own, King Harald, in his old days, tried to
part his kingdom in some eligible and equitable way, and retire from the
constant press of business, now becoming burdensome to him. To each of them he
gave a kind of kingdom; Eric, his eldest son, to be head king, and the others
to be feudatory under him, and pay a certain yearly contribution; an
arrangement which did not answer well at all. Head-King Eric insisted on his
tribute; quarrels arose as to the payment, considerable fighting and
disturbance, bringing fierce destruction from King Eric upon many valiant but
too stubborn Norse spirits, and among the rest upon all his three brothers,
which got him from the Norse populations the surname of Blood-axe, “Eric
Blood-axe”, his title in history. One of his brothers he had killed in battle
before his old father`s life ended; this brother was Bjorn, a peaceable,
improving, trading economic Under-king, whom the others mockingly called “Bjorn
the Chapman”. The great-grandson of this Bjorn became extremely distinguished
by and by as Saint Olaf. Head-King Eric seems to have had a violent wife, too.
She was thought to have poisoned one of her other brothers-in-law. Eric
Blood-axe had by no means a gentle life of it in this world, trained to
sea-robbery on the coasts of England, Scotland, Ireland and France, since his
twelfth year.
Old King Fairhair, at the age of seventy, had another son, to whom
was given the name of Hakon. His mother was a slave in Fairhair’s house; slave by ill-luck of war, though nobly enough born. A strange adventure
connects this Hakon with England and King Athelstan, who was then entering upon
his great career there. Short while after this Hakon came into the world, there
entered Fairhair’s palace, one evening as Fairhair sat Feasting, an English ambassador or messenger,
bearing in his hand, as gift from King Athelstan, a magnificent sword, with
gold hilt and other fine trimmings, to the great Harald, King of Norway. Harald
took the sword, drew it, or was half drawing it, admiringly from the scabbard,
when the English excellency broke into a scornful laugh, “Ha, ha; thou art now
the feudatory of my English king; thou hast accepted the sword from him, and
art now his man!” (acceptance of a sword in that manner being the symbol of
investiture in those days.) Harald looked a trifle flurried, it is probable;
but held in his wrath, and did no damage to the tricksy Englishman. He kept the
matter in his mind, however, and next summer little Hakon, having got his
weaning done,--one of the prettiest, healthiest little creatures,--Harald sent
him off, under charge of "Hauk" (Hawk so called), one of his
Principal, warriors, with order, “Take him to England”, and instructions what
to do with him there. And accordingly, one evening, Hauk, with thirty men
escorting, strode into Athelstan`s high dwelling (where situated, how built,
whether with logs like Haral’`s, I cannot specifically say), into Athelstan`s
high presence, and silently set the wild little cherub upon Athelstan`s knee.
"What is this?" asked Athelstan, looking at the little cherub.
"This is King Harald’s son, whom a serving-maid bore to him, and whom he
now gives thee as foster-child!" Indignant Athelstan drew his sword, as if
to do the gift a mischief; but Hauk said, “Thou hast taken him on thy knee
[common symbol of adoption]; thou canst kill him if thou wilt; but thou dost
not thereby kill all the sons of Harald”. Athelstan straightway took milder
thoughts; brought up, and carefully educated Hakon; from whom, and this
singular adventure, came, before very long, the first tidings of Christianity
into Norway.
Harald Haarfagr, latterly withdrawn from all kinds of business,
died at the age of eighty-three--about A.D. 933, as is computed; nearly
contemporary in death with the first Danish King, Gorm the Old, who had done a
corresponding feat in reducing Denmark under one head. Remarkable old men,
these two first kings; and possessed of gifts for bringing Chaos a little
nearer to the form of Cosmos; possessed, in fact, of loyalties to Cosmos, that
is to say, of authentic virtues in the savage state, such as have been needed
in all societies at their incipience in this world; a kind of
"virtues" hugely in discredit at present, but not unlikely to be
needed again, to the astonishment of careless persons, before all is done!
III
HAKON THE GOOD
Eric
Blood-axe, whose practical reign is counted to have begun about A.D. 930, had
by this time, or within a year or so of this time, pretty much extinguished all
his brother kings, and crushed down recalcitrant spirits, in his violent way;
but had naturally become entirely unpopular in Norway, and filled it with
silent discontent and even rage against him. Hakon Fairhair’s last son, the little foster-child of Athelstan in England, who had been
baptized and carefully educated, was come to his fourteenth or fifteenth year
at his father’s death; a very shining youth, as Athelstan saw with just
pleasure. So soon as the few preliminary preparations had been settled, Hakon,
furnished with a ship or two by Athelstan, suddenly appeared in Norway got
acknowledged by the Peasant Thing in Trondhjem “the
news of which flew over Norway, like fire through dried grass”, says an old
chronicler. So that Eric, with his Queen Gunhild, and seven small children, had
to run; no other shift for Eric. They went to the Orkneys first of all, then to
England, and he “got Northumberland as earldom”, I vaguely hear, from
Athelstan. But Eric soon died, and his queen, with her children, went back to
the Orkneys in search of refuge or help; to little purpose there or elsewhere.
From Orkney she went to Denmark, where Harald Blue-tooth took her poor eldest
boy as foster-child; but I fear did not very faithfully keep that promise. The
Danes had been robbing extensively during the late tumults in Norway; this the
Christian Hakon, now established there, paid in kind, and the two countries
were at war; so that Gunhild’s little boy was a welcome card in the hand of
Blue-tooth.
Hakon
proved a brilliant and successful king; regulated many things, public law among
others (Gule-Thing Law, Frost-Thing Law: these are
little codes of his accepted by their respective Things, and had a salutary
effect in their time); with prompt dexterity he drove back the Blue-tooth
foster-son invasions every time they came; and on the whole gained for himself
the name of Hakon the Good. These Danish invasions were a frequent source of
trouble to him, but his greatest and continual trouble was that of extirpating
heathen idolatry from Norway, and introducing the Christian Evangel in its
stead. His transcendent anxiety to achieve this salutary enterprise was all
along his grand difficulty and stumbling-block; the heathen opposition to it
being also rooted and great. Bishops and priests from England Hakon had,
preaching and baptizing what they could, but making only slow progress; much
too slow for Hakon’s zeal. On the other hand, every Yule-tide, when the chief
heathen were assembled in his own palace on their grand sacrificial festival,
there was great pressure put upon Hakon, as to sprinkling with horse-blood,
drinking Yule-beer, eating horse-flesh, and the other distressing rites; the
whole of which Hakon abhorred, and with all his steadfastness strove to reject
utterly. Sigurd, Jarl of Lade (Trondhjem), a liberal
heathen, not openly a Christian, was ever a wise counsellor and conciliator in
such affairs; and proved of great help to Hakon. Once, for example, there
having risen at a Yule-feast, loud, almost stormful demand that Hakon, like a true man and brother, should drink Yule-beer with
them in their sacred hightide, Sigurd persuaded him to comply, for peace’s
sake, at least, in form. Hakon took the cup in his left hand (excellent
hot beer), and with his right cut the sign of the cross above it,
then drank a draught. “Yes; but what is this with the king’s right hand?” cried
the company. “Don’t you see?” answered shifty Sigurd; “he makes the sign of
Thor’s hammer before drinking!” which quenched the matter for the time.
Horse-flesh,
horse-broth, and the horse ingredient generally, Hakon all but inexorably
declined. By Sigurd`s pressing exhortation and entreaty, he did once take a
kettle of horse broth by the handle, with a good deal of linen-quilt or towel
interposed, and did open his lips for what of steam could insinuate itself. At
another time he consented to a particle of horse-liver, intending privately, I
guess, to keep it outside the gullet, and smuggle it away without swallowing;
but farther than this not even Sigurd could persuade him to go. At the Things
held in regard to this matter Hakon’s success was always incomplete; now and
then it was plain failure, and Hakon had to draw back till a better time. Here
is one specimen of the response he got on such an occasion; curious specimen,
withal, of antique parliamentary eloquence from an Anti-Christian Thing.
At a Thing
of all the Fylkes of Trondhjem,
Thing held at Froste in that region, King Hakon, with
all the eloquence he had, signified that it was imperatively necessary that all
Bonders and sub-Bonders should become Christians, and believe in one God,
Christ the Son of Mary; renouncing entirely blood sacrifices and heathen idols;
should keep every seventh day holy, abstain from labor that day, and even from
food, devoting the day to fasting and sacred meditation. Whereupon, by way of
universal answer, arose a confused universal murmur of entire dissent.
"Take away from us our old belief, and also our time for labor!"
murmured they in angry astonishment; “how can even the land be got tilled in
that way?”. “We cannot work if we don’t get food”, said the hand laborers and
slaves. “It lies in King Hakon’s blood”, remarked others; “his father and all
his kindred were apt to be stingy about food, though liberal enough with
money”. At length, one Osbjorn (or Bear of the Asen
or Gods, what we now call Osborne), one Osbjorn of Medalhusin Gulathal, stept forward, and said, in a distinct manner, “We Bonders
(peasant proprietors)thought, King Hakon, when thou heldest thy first Thing-day here in Trondhjem, and we took
thee for our king, and received our hereditary lands from thee again that we
had got heaven itself. But now we know not how it is, whether we have won
freedom, or whether thou intendest anew to make us
slaves, with this wonderful proposal that we should renounce our faith, which
our fathers before us have held, and all our ancestors as well, first in the
age of burial by burning, and now in that of earth burial; and yet these
departed ones were much our superiors, and their faith, too, has brought
prosperity to us. Thee, at the same time, we have loved so much that we raised
thee to manage all the laws of the land, and speak as their voice to us all.
And even now it is our will and the vote of all Bonders to keep that paction
which thou gavest us here on the Thing at Froste, and to maintain thee as king so long as any of us
Bonders who are here upon the Thing has life left, provided thou, king, wilt go
fairly to work, and demand of us only such things as are not impossible. But if
thou wilt fix upon this thing with so great obstinacy, and employ force and
power, in that case, we Bonders have taken the resolution, all of us, to fall
away from thee, and to take for ourselves another head, who will so behave that
we may enjoy in freedom the belief which is agreeable to us. Now shalt thou,
king, choose one of these two courses before the Thing disperse”. “Whereupon”,
adds the Chronicle, “all the Bonders raised a mighty shout, ‘Yes, we will have
it so, as has been said’.” So that Jarl Sigurd had to intervene, and King Hakon
to choose for the moment the milder branch of the alternative. At other Things
Hakon was more or less successful. All his days, by such methods as there were,
he kept pressing forward with this great enterprise; and on the whole did
thoroughly shake asunder the old edifice of heathendom, and fairly introduce
some foundation for the new and better rule of faith and life among his people.
Sigurd, Jarl of Lade, his wise counsellor in all these matters, is also a man
worthy of notice.
Hakon’s
arrangements against the continual invasions of Eric’s sons, with Danish
Blue-tooth backing them, were manifold, and for a long time successful. He
appointed, after consultation and consent in the various Things, so many
war-ships, fully manned and ready, to be furnished instantly on the King`s
demand by each province or fjord; watch-fires, on fit places, from hill to hill
all along the coast, were to be carefully set up, carefully maintained in
readiness, and kindled on any alarm of war. By such methods Blue-tooth and
Co.`s invasions were for a long while triumphantly, and even rapidly, one and
all of them, beaten back, till at length they seemed as if intending to cease
altogether, and leave Hakon alone of them. But such was not their issue after
all. The sons of Eric had only abated under constant discouragement, had not
finally left off from what seemed their one great feasibility in life. Gunhild,
their mother, was still with them: a most contriving, fierce-minded,
irreconcilable woman, diligent and urgent on them, in season and out of season;
and as for King Blue-tooth, he was at all times ready to help, with his
good-will at least.
That of the
alarm-fires on Hakon’s part was found troublesome by his people; sometimes it
was even hurtful and provoking (lighting your alarm-fires and rousing the whole
coast and population, when it was nothing but some paltry viking with a couple
of ships); in short, the alarm-signal system fell into disuse, and good King
Hakon himself, in the first place, paid the penalty. It is counted, by the
latest commentators, to have been about A.D. 961, sixteenth or seventeenth year
of Hakon’s pious, valiant, and worthy reign. Being at a feast one day, with
many guests, on the Island of Stord, sudden announcement came to him that ships
from the south were approaching in quantity, and evidently ships of war. This
was the biggest of all the Blue-tooth foster-son invasions; and it was fatal to
Hakon the Good that night. Eyvind the Skaldaspillir (annihilator of all other Skalds), in his famed Hakon’s Song, gives
account, and, still more pertinently, the always practical Snorro.
Danes in great multitude, six to one, as people afterwards computed, springing
swiftly to land, and ranking themselves; Hakon, nevertheless, at once deciding
not to take to his ships and run, but to fight there, one to six; fighting,
accordingly, in his most splendid manner, and at last gloriously prevailing;
routing and scattering back to their ships and flight homeward these six-to-one
Danes. “During the struggle of the fight”, says Snorro,
“he was very conspicuous among other men; and while the sun shone, his bright
gilded helmet glanced, and thereby many weapons were directed at him. One of
his henchmen, Eyvind Finnson (i.e. Skaldaspillir, the poet), took a hat, and put it over the
king’s helmet. Now, among the hostile first leaders were two uncles of the
Ericsons, brothers of Gunhild, great champions both; Skreya,
the elder of them, on the disappearance of the glittering helmet, shouted
boastfully, ‘Does the king of the Norsemen hide himself, then, or has he fled?
Where now is the golden helmet?’ And so saying, Skreya,
and his brother Alf with him, pushed on like fools or madmen. The king said,
‘Come on in that way, and you shall find the king of the Norsemen’.” And in a
short space of time braggart Skreya did come up,
swinging his sword, and made a cut at the king; but Thoralf the Strong, an
Icelander, who fought at the king’s side, dashed his shield so hard against Skreya, that he tottered with the shock. On the same
instant the king takes his sword “quernbiter”(able to
cut querns or millstones) with both hands, and hews Skreya through helm and head, cleaving him down to the
shoulders. Thoralf also slew Alf. That was what they got by such over-hasty
search for the king of the Norsemen.
Snorro considers the fall of these two champion uncles
as the crisis of the fight; the Danish force being much disheartened by such a
sight, and King Hakon now pressing on so hard that all men gave way before him,
the battle on the Ericson part became a whirl of recoil; and in a few minutes
more a torrent of mere flight and haste to get on board their ships, and put to
sea again; in which operation many of them were drowned, says Snorro; survivors making instant sail for Denmark in that
sad condition.
This seems
to have been King Hakon’s finest battle, and the most conspicuous of his
victories, due not a little to his own grand qualities shown on the occasion.
But, alas! it was his last also. He was still zealously directing the chase of
that mad Danish flight, or whirl of recoil towards their ships, when an arrow,
shot Most likely at a venture, hit him under the left armpit; and this proved
his death.
He was
helped into his ship, and made sail for Alrekstad,
where his chief residence in those parts was; but had to stop at a smaller
place of his (which had been his mother’s, and where he himself was born)--a
place called Hella (the Flat Rock), still known as “Hakon’s Hella”, faint from
loss of blood, and crushed down as he had never before felt. Having no son and
only one daughter, he appointed these invasive sons of Eric to be sent for, and
if he died to become king; but to “spare his friends and kindred”. “If a longer
life be granted me”, he said, “I will go out of this land to Christian men, and
do penance for what I have committed against God. But if I die in the country
of the heathen, let me have such burial as you yourselves think fittest”. These
are his last recorded words. And in heathen fashion he was buried, and besung by Eyvind and the Skalds, though himself a zealously
Christian king. Hakon the Good; so one still finds him worthy of
being called. The sorrow on Hakon’s death, Snorro tells us, was so great and universal, “that he was lamented both by friends and
enemies; and they said that never again would Norway see such a king”.
IV
HARALD GREYFELL AND BROTHERS
Eric’s
sons, four or five of them, with a Harald at the top, now at once got Norway in
hand, all of it but Trondhjem, as king and
under-kings; and made a severe time of it for those who had been, or seemed to
be, their enemies. Excellent Jarl Sigurd, always so useful to Hakon and his
country, was killed by them; and they came to repent that before very long. The
slain Sigurd left a son, Hakon, as Jarl, who became famous in the northern
world by and by. This Hakon, and him only, would the Trondhjemers accept as sovereign. "Death to him, then," said the sons of Eric, but
only in secret, till they had got their hands free and were ready; which was
not yet for some years. Nay, Hakon, when actually attacked, made good
resistance, and threatened to cause trouble. Nor did he by any means get his
death from these sons of Eric at this time, or till long afterwards at all,
from one of their kin, as it chanced. On the contrary, he fled to Denmark now,
and by and by managed to come back, to their cost.
Among their
other chief victims were two cousins of their own, Tryggve and Gudrod, who had been honest under-kings to the late
head-king, Hakon the Good; but were now become suspect, and had to fight for
their lives, and lose them in a tragic manner. Tryggve had a son, whom we shall
hear of. Gudrod, son of worthy Bjorn the Chapman, was
grandfather of Saint Olaf, whom all men have heard of,--who has a church in
Southwark even, and another in Old Jewry, to this hour. In all these violences,
Gunhild, widow of the late king Eric, was understood to have a principal hand.
She had come back to Norway with her sons; and naturally passed for the secret
adviser and Maternal President in whatever of violence went on; always reckoned
a fell, vehement, relentless personage where her own interests were concerned.
Probably as things settled, her influence on affairs grew less. At least one
hopes so; and, in the Sagas, hears less and less of her, and before long
nothing.
Harald, the
head-king in this Eric fraternity, does not seem to have been a bad man,--the
contrary indeed; but his position was untowardly, full of difficulty and
contradictions. Whatever Harald could accomplish for behoof of Christianity, or
real benefit to Norway, in these cross circumstances, he seems to have done in
a modest and honest manner. He got the name of Greyfell from
his people on a very trivial account, but seemingly with perfect good humor on
their part. Some Iceland trader had brought a cargo of furs to Trondhjem (Lade) for sale; sale being slacker than the
Icelander wished, he presented a chosen specimen, cloak, doublet, or whatever
it was, to Harald; who wore it with acceptance in public, and rapidly brought
disposal of the Icelander`s stock, and the surname of Greyfell to
himself. His under-kings and he were certainly not popular, though I almost
think Greyfell himself, in absence
of his mother and the under-kings, might have been so. But here they all were,
and had wrought great trouble in Norway. “Too many of them”, said everybody;
“too many of these courts and court people, eating up any substance that there
is”. For the seasons withal, two or three of them in succession, were bad for
grass, much more for grain; no herring came either; very
cleanness of teeth was like to come in Eyvind Skaldaspillir’s opinion. This scarcity became at last their share of the great Famine Of A.D.
975, which desolated Western Europe (see the poem in the Saxon Chronicle). And
all this by Eyvind Skaldaspillir, and the heathen
Norse in general, was ascribed to anger of the heathen gods. Discontent in
Norway, and especially in Eyvind Skaldaspillir, seems
to have been very great.
Whereupon
exile Hakon, Jarl Sigurd’s son, bestirs himself in Denmark, backed by old King
Blue-tooth, and begins invading and encroaching in a miscellaneous way;
especially intriguing and contriving plots all round him. An unfathomably
cunning kind of fellow, as well as an audacious and strong-handed! Intriguing
in Trondhjem, where he gets the under-king, Greyfell’s brother, fallen upon and murdered; intriguing
with Gold Harald, a distinguished cousin or nephew of King Blue-tooth’s, who
had done fine viking work, and gained, such wealth that he got the epithet of
“Gold”, and who now was infinitely desirous of a share in Blue-tooth`s kingdom
as the proper finish to these sea-rovings. He even
ventured one day to make publicly a distinct proposal that way to King Harald
Blue-tooth himself; who flew into thunder and lightning at the mere mention of
it; so that none durst speak to him for several days afterwards. Of both these
Haralds Hakon was confidential friend; and needed all his skill to walk without
immediate annihilation between such a pair of dragons, and work out Norway for
himself withal. In the end he found he must take solidly to Blue-tooth`s side
of the question; and that they two must provide a recipe for Gold Harald and
Norway both at once.
“It is as
much as your life is worth to speak again of sharing this Danish kingdom”, said
Hakon very privately to Gold Harald; “but could not you, my golden friend, be
content with Norway for a kingdom, if one helped you to it?”
“That could
I well”, answered Harald.
“Then keep
me those nine war-ships you have just been rigging for a new viking cruise;
have these in readiness when I lift my finger!”
That was
the recipe contrived for Gold Harald; recipe for King Greyfell goes into the same vial, and is also ready.
Hitherto
the Hakon-Blue-tooth disturbances in Norway had amounted to but little. King Greyfell, a very active and valiant man, has constantly,
without much difficulty, repelled these sporadic bits of troubles; but Greyfell, all the same, would willingly have peace with
dangerous old Blue-tooth (ever anxious to get his clutches over Norway on any
terms) if peace with him could be had. Blue-tooth, too, professes every
willingness; inveigles Greyfell, he and Hakon do; to
have a friendly meeting on the Danish borders, and not only settle all these
quarrels, but generously settle Greyfell in certain
fiefs which he claimed in Denmark itself; and so swear everlasting friendship. Greyfell joyfully complies, punctually appears at the
appointed day in Lymfjord Sound, the appointed place.
Whereupon Hakon gives signal to Gold Harald, “To Lymfjord with these nine ships of yours, swift!”. Gold Harald flies to Lymfjord with his ships, challenges King Harald Greyfell to land and fight; which the undaunted Greyfell, though so far outnumbered, does; and, fighting
his very best, perishes there, he and almost all his people. Which done, Jarl
Hakon, who is in readiness, attacks Gold Harald, the victorious but the
wearied; easily beats Gold Harald, takes him prisoner, and instantly hangs and
ends him, to the huge joy of King Blue-tooth and Hakon; who now make instant
voyage to Norway; drive all the brother under-kings into rapid flight to the
Orkneys, to any readiest shelter; and so, under the patronage of Blue-tooth,
Hakon, with the title of Jarl, becomes ruler of Norway. This foul treachery
done on the brave and honest Harald Greyfell is by
some dated about A.D. 969, by Munch, 965, by others, computing out of Snorro only, A.D. 975. For there is always an uncertainty
in these Icelandic dates (say rather, rare and rude attempts at dating, without
even an “A.D.” or other fixed “year one” to go upon in Iceland), though seldom,
I think, so large a discrepancy as here.
V
HAKON JARL
Hakon Jarl,
such the style he took, had engaged to pay some kind of tribute to King
Blue-tooth, “if he could”; but he never did pay any, pleading always the
necessity of his own affairs; with which excuse, joined to Hakon`s readiness in
things less important, King Blue-tooth managed to content himself, Hakon being
always his good neighbor, at least, and the two mutually dependent. In Norway,
Hakon, without the title of king, did in a strong-handed, steadfast, and at
length, successful way, the office of one; governed Norway (some count) for
above twenty years; and, both at home and abroad, had much consideration
through most of that time; specially amongst the heathen orthodox, for Hakon
Jarl himself was a zealous heathen, fixed in his mind against these chimerical
Christian innovations and unsalutary changes of creed, and would have gladly
trampled out all traces of what the last two kings (for Greyfell,
also, was an English Christian after his sort) had done in this respect. But he
wisely discerned that it was not possible, and that, for peace`s sake, he must
not even attempt it, but must strike preferably into “perfect toleration”, and
“that of every one getting to heaven or even to the other goal in his own way”.
He himself, it is well known, repaired many heathen temples (a great “church
builder” in his way!), manufactured many splendid idols, with much gilding and
such artistic ornament as there was,--in particular, one huge image of Thor,
not forgetting the hammer and appendages, and such a collar (supposed of solid
gold, which it was not quite, as we shall hear in time) round the neck of him
as was never seen in all the North. How he did his own Yule festivals, with
what magnificent solemnity, the horse-eatings,
blood-sprinklings, and other sacred rites, need not be told. Something of a
“Ritualist”, one may perceive; perhaps had Scandinavian Puseyisms in him, and other desperate heathen notions. He was universally believed to
have gone into magic, for one thing, and to have dangerous potencies derived
from the Devil himself. The dark heathen mind of him struggling vehemently in
that strange element, not altogether so unlike our own in some points.
For the
rest, he was evidently, in practical matters, a man of sharp, clear insight, of
steadfast resolution, diligence, promptitude; and managed his secular matters
uncommonly well. Had sixteen Jarls under him, though himself only Hakon Jarl by
title; and got obedience from them stricter than any king since Haarfagr had done. Add to which that the country had years
excellent for grass and crop, and that the herrings came in exuberance; tokens,
to the thinking mind, that Hakon Jarl was a favorite of Heaven.
His fight
with the far-famed Jomsvikings was his grandest
exploit in public rumor. Jomsburg, a locality not now
known, except that it was near the mouth of the River Oder, denoted in those
ages the impregnable castle of a certain hotly corporate, or "Sea Robbery
Association (limited)," which, for some generations, held the Baltic in terror,
and plundered far beyond the Belt,--in the ocean itself, in Flanders and the
opulent trading havens there,--above all, in opulent anarchic England, which,
for forty years from about this time, was the pirates` Goshen; and yielded,
regularly every summer, slaves, Danegelt, and
miscellaneous plunder, like no other country Jomsburg or the viking-world had ever known. Palnatoke, Bue, and the other quasi-heroic
heads of this establishment are still remembered in the northern parts. Palnatoke is
the title of a tragedy by Oehlenschlager, which had its run of immortality in
Copenhagen some sixty or seventy years ago.
I judge the
institution to have been in its floweriest state, probably now in Hakon Jarl`s
time. Hakon Jarl and these pirates, robbing Hakon’s subjects and merchants that
frequented him, were naturally in quarrel; and frequent fightings had fallen out, not generally to the profit of the Jomsburgers,
who at last determined on revenge, and the rooting out of this obstructive
Hakon Jarl. They assembled in force at the Cape of Stad,--in
the Firda Fylke; and the fight was dreadful in the
extreme, noise of it filling all the north for long afterwards. Hakon, fighting
like a lion, could scarcely hold his own,--Death or Victory, the word on both
sides; when suddenly, the heavens grew black, and there broke out a terrific
storm of thunder and hail, appalling to the human mind,--universe swallowed
wholly in black night; only the momentary forked-blazes, the thunder-pealing as
of Ragnarok, and the battering hail-torrents,
hailstones about the size of an egg. Thor with his hammer evidently acting; but
in behalf of whom? The Jomsburgers in the hideous
darkness, broken only by flashing thunder-bolts, had a dismal apprehension that
it was probably not on their behalf (Thor having a sense of justice in him);
and before the storm ended, thirty-five of their seventy ships sheered away,
leaving gallant Bue, with the other thirty-five, to follow as they liked, who
reproachfully hailed these fugitives, and continued the now hopeless battle.
Bue’s nose and lips were smashed or cut away; Bue managed, half-articulately,
to exclaim, “Ha! the maids (‘mays’) of Funen will never kiss me more.
Overboard, all ye Bue’s men!”. And taking his two sea-chests, with all the gold
he had gained in such life-struggle from of old, sprang overboard accordingly,
and finished the affair. Hakon Jarl’s renown rose naturally to the transcendent
pitch after this exploit. His people, I suppose chiefly the Christian part of
them, whispered one to another, with a shudder, “That in the blackest of the
thunder-storm, he had taken his youngest little boy, and made away with him;
sacrificed him to Thor or some devil, and gained his victory by art-magic, or
something worse”. Jarl Eric, Hakon’s eldest son, without suspicion of
art-magic, but already a distinguished viking, became thrice distinguished by
his style of sea-fighting in this battle; and awakened great expectations in
the viking public; of him we shall hear again.
The Jomsburgers, one might fancy, after this sad clap went
visibly down in the world; but the fact is not altogether so. Old King
Blue-tooth was now dead, died of a wound got in battle with his unnatural
(so-called ‘natural’) son and successor, Otto Svein of the Forked Beard,
afterwards king and conqueror of England for a little while; and seldom,
perhaps never, had vikingism been in such flower as
now. This man’s name is Sven in Swedish, Svend in German, and means boy or
lad,--the English “swain”. It was at old “Father Bluetooth’s funeral-ale”
(drunken burial-feast), that Svein, carousing with his Jomsburg chiefs and other choice spirits, generally of the robber class, all risen into
height of highest robber enthusiasm, pledged the vow to one another; Svein that
he would conquer England (which, in a sense, he, after long struggling, did);
and the Jomsburgers that they would ruin and root out
Hakon Jarl (which, as we have just seen, they could by no means do), and other
guests other foolish things which proved equally unfeasible. Sea-robber
volunteers so especially abounding in that time, one perceives how easily the Jomsburgers could recruit themselves, build or refit new
robber fleets, man them with the pick of crews, and steer for opulent, fruitful
England; where, under Ethelred the Unready, was such a field for profitable
enterprise as the viking public never had before or since.
An idle
question sometimes rises on me,--idle enough, for it never can be answered in
the affirmative or the negative, Whether it was not these same refitted Jomsburgers who appeared some while after this at Red Head
Point, on the shore of Angus, and sustained a new severe beating, in what the
Scotch still faintly remember as their “Battle of Loncarty”?
Beyond doubt a powerful Norse-pirate armament dropt anchor at the Red Head, to the alarm of peaceable mortals, about that time. It
was thought and hoped to be on its way for England, but it visibly hung on for
several days, deliberating (as was thought) whether they would do this poorer
coast the honor to land on it before going farther. Did land, and vigorously
plunder and burn south-westward as far as Perth; laid siege to Perth; but
brought out King Kenneth on them, and produced that "Battle of Loncarty" which still dwells in vague memory among the
Scots. Perhaps it might be the Jomsburgers; perhaps
also not; for there were many pirate associations, lasting not from century to
century like the Jomsburgers, but only for very
limited periods, or from year to year; indeed, it was mainly by such that the
splendid thief-harvest of England was reaped in this disastrous time. No
Scottish chronicler gives the least of exact date to their famed victory of Loncarty, only that it was achieved by Kenneth III., which
will mean some time between A.D. 975 and 994; and, by the order they put it in,
probably soon after A.D. 975, or the beginning of this Kenneth`s reign. Buchanan`s
narrative, carefully distilled from all the ancient Scottish sources, is of
admirable quality for style and otherwise quiet, brief, with perfect clearness,
perfect credibility even, except that semi-miraculous appendage of the
Ploughmen, Hay and Sons, always hanging to the tail of it; the grain of
possible truth in which can now never be extracted by man`s art![6] In brief,
what we know is, fragments of ancient human bones and armor have occasionally
been ploughed up in this locality, proof positive of ancient fighting here; and
the fight fell out not long after Hakon`s beating of the Jomsburgers at the Cape of Stad. And in such dim glimmer of
wavering twilight, the question whether these of Loncarty were refitted Jomsburgers or not, must be left
hanging. Loncarty is now the biggest bleach-field in
Queen Victoria`s dominions; no village or hamlet there, only the huge
bleaching-house and a beautiful field, some six or seven miles northwest of
Perth, bordered by the beautiful Tay river on the one side, and by its
beautiful tributary Almond on the other; a Loncarty fitted either for bleaching linen, or for a bit of fair duel between nations,
in those simple times.
Whether our
refitted Jomsburgers had the least thing to do with
it is only matter of fancy, but if it were they who here again got a good
beating, fancy would be glad to find herself fact. The old piratical kings of
Denmark had been at the founding of Jomsburg, and to
Svein of the Forked Beard it was still vitally important, but not so to the
great Knut, or any king that followed; all of whom had better business than
mere thieving; and it was Magnus the Good, of Norway, a man of still higher
anti-anarchic qualities, that annihilated it, about a century later.
Hakon Jarl,
his chief labors in the world being over, is said to have become very dissolute
in his elder days, especially in the matter of women; the wretched old fool,
led away by idleness and fulness of bread, which to all of us are well said to
be the parents of mischief. Having absolute power, he got into the habit of
openly plundering men`s pretty daughters and wives from them, and, after a few
weeks, sending them back; greatly to the rage of the fierce Norse heart, had
there been any means of resisting or revenging. It did, after a little while,
prove the ruin and destruction of Hakon the Rich, as he was then called. It
opened the door, namely, for entry of Olaf Tryggveson upon the scene,--a very much grander man; in regard to whom the wiles and traps
of Hakon proved to be a recipe, not on Tryggveson,
but on the wily Hakon himself, as shall now be seen straightway.
VI
OLAF TRYGGVESON
Hakon, in
late times, had heard of a famous stirring person, victorious in various lands
and seas, latterly united in sea-robbery with Svein, Prince Royal of Denmark,
afterwards King Svein of the Double-beard (“Zvae Skiaeg”, Twa Shag) or fork-beard, both of whom had already done transcendent feats in
the viking way during this copartnery. The fame of
Svein, and this stirring personage, whose name was “Ole”, and, recently, their
stupendous feats in plunder of England, siege of London, and other wonders and
splendors of viking glory and success, had gone over all the North, awakening
the attention of Hakon and everybody there. The name of “Ole” was enigmatic,
mysterious, and even dangerous-looking to Hakon Jarl; who at length sent out a confidential
spy to investigate this “Ole”; a feat which the confidential spy did completely
accomplish,--by no means to Hakon’s profit! The mysterious “Ole” proved to be
no other than Olaf, son of Tryggve, destined to blow Hakon Jarl suddenly into
destruction, and become famous among the heroes of the Norse world.
Of Olaf Tryggveson one always hopes there might, one day, some real
outline of a biography be written; fished from the abysses where (as usual) it
welters deep in foul neighborhood for the present. Farther on we intend a few
words more upon the matter. But in this place all that concerns us in it limits
itself to the two following facts first, that Hakon’s confidential spy “found
Ole in Dublin”; picked acquaintance with him, got him to confess that he was
actually Olaf, son of Tryggve (the Tryggve, whom Blood-axe’s fierce widow and
her sons had murdered); got him gradually to own that perhaps an expedition
into Norway might have its chances; and finally that, under such a wise and
loyal guidance as his (the confidential spy’s, whose friendship for Tryggveson was so indubitable), he (Tryggveson)
would actually try it upon Hakon Jarl, the dissolute old scoundrel. Fact second
is, that about the time they two set sail from Dublin on their Norway
expedition, Hakon Jarl removed to Trondhjem, then
called Lade; intending to pass some months there.
Now just
about the time when Tryggveson, spy, and party had
landed in Norway, and were advancing upon Lade, with what support from the
public could be got, dissolute old Hakon Jarl had heard of one Gudrun, a
Bonder’s wife, unparalleled in beauty, who was called in those parts, “Sunbeam
of the Grove” (so inexpressibly lovely); and sent off a couple of thralls to
bring her to him. “Never”, answered Gudrun; “never”, her indignant husband; in
a tone dangerous and displeasing to these Court thralls; who had to leave
rapidly, but threatened to return in better strength before long. Whereupon,
instantly, the indignant Bonder and his Sunbeam of the Grove sent out their
war-arrow, rousing all the country into angry promptitude, and more than one
perhaps into greedy hope of revenge for their own injuries. The rest of Hakon’s
history now rushes on with extreme rapidity.
Sunbeam of
the Grove, when next demanded of her Bonder, has the whole neighborhood
assembled in arms round her; rumor of Tryggveson is
fast making it the whole country. Hakon’s insolent messengers are cut in
pieces; Hakon finds he cannot fly under cover too soon. With a single slave he
flies that same night;--but whitherward? Can think of no safe place, except to
some old mistress of his, who lives retired in that neighborhood, and has some
pity or regard for the wicked old Hakon. Old mistress does receive him, pities
him, will do all she can to protect and hide him. But how, by what uttermost
stretch of female artifice hide him here; every one will search here first of
all! Old mistress, by the slave`s help, extemporizes a cellar under the floor
of her pig-house; sticks Hakon and slave into that, as the one safe seclusion
she can contrive. Hakon and slave, begrunted by the
pigs above them, tortured by the devils within and about them, passed two days
in circumstances more and more horrible. For they heard, through their
light-slit and breathing-slit, the triumph of Tryggveson proclaiming itself by Tryggveson`s own lips, who had
mounted a big boulder near by and was victoriously speaking to the people,
winding up with a promise of honors and rewards to whoever should bring him
wicked old Hakon’s head. Wretched Hakon, justly suspecting his slave, tried to
at least keep himself awake. Slave did keep himself awake till Hakon dozed or
slept, then swiftly cut off Hakon’s head, and plunged out with it to the
presence of Tryggveson. Tryggveson,
detesting the traitor, useful as the treachery was, cut off the slave`s head
too, had it hung up along with Hakon’s on the pinnacle of the Lade Gallows,
where the populace pelted both heads with stones and many curses, especially
the more important of the two. “Hakon the Bad” ever henceforth, instead of
Hakon the Rich.
This was
the end of Hakon Jarl, the last support of heathenry in Norway, among other
characteristics he had: a stronghanded, hard-headed, very relentless, greedy
and wicked being. He is reckoned to have ruled in Norway, or mainly ruled,
either in the struggling or triumphant state, for about thirty years
(965-995?). He and his seemed to have formed, by chance rather than design, the
chief opposition which the Haarfagr posterity
throughout its whole course experienced in Norway. Such the cost to them of
killing good Jarl Sigurd, in Greyfell’s time! For
“curses, like chickens”, do sometimes visibly “come home to feed”, as they
always, either visibly or else invisibly, are punctually sure to do.
Hakon Jarl
is considerably connected with the Faroer Saga often mentioned there, and comes out perfectly in character; an
altogether worldly-wise man of the roughest type, not without a turn for
practicality of kindness to those who would really be of use to him. His
tendencies to magic also are not forgotten.
Hakon left
two sons, Eric and Svein, often also mentioned in this Saga. On their father’s
death they fled to Sweden, to Denmark, and were busy stirring up troubles in
those countries against Olaf Tryggveson; till at
length, by a favorable combination, under their auspices chiefly, they got his
brief and noble reign put an end to. Nay, furthermore, Jarl Eric left sons,
especially an elder son, named also Eric, who proved a sore affliction, and a
continual stone of stumbling to a new generation of Haarfagrs,
and so continued the curse of Sigurd`s murder upon them.
Towards the
end of this Hakon’s reign it was that the discovery of America took place
(985). Actual discovery, it appears, by Eric the Red, an Icelander; concerning
which there has been abundant investigation and discussion in our time. Ginnungagap (Roaring
Abyss) is thought to be the mouth of Behring`s Straits in Baffin`s Bay; Big Helloland, the coast from Cape Walsingham to near
Newfoundland; Little Helloland,
Newfoundland itself. Markland was Lower Canada, New Brunswick,
and Nova Scotia. Southward thence to Chesapeake Bay was called Wine
Land (wild grapes still grow in Rhode Island, and more luxuriantly
further south). White Man’s Land, called also Great Ireland,
is supposed to mean the two Carolinas, down to the Southern Cape of Florida. In
Dahlmann’s opinion, the Irish themselves might even pretend to have probably
been the first discoverers of America; they had evidently got to Iceland itself
before the Norse exiles found it out. It appears to be certain that, from the
end of the tenth century to the early part of the fourteenth, there was a dim
knowledge of those distant shores extant in the Norse mind, and even some
straggling series of visits thither by roving Norsemen; though, as only danger,
difficulty, and no profit resulted, the visits ceased, and the whole matter
sank into oblivion, and, but for the Icelandic talent of writing in the long
winter nights, would never have been heard of by posterity at all.
VII
REIGN OF OLAF TRYGGVESON
Olaf Tryggveson (A.D. 995-1000) also makes a great figure in
the Faroer Saga, and recounts
there his early troubles, which were strange and many. He is still reckoned a
grand hero of the North, though his vates now
is only Snorro Sturleson of
Iceland. Tryggveson had indeed many adventures in the
world. His poor mother, Astrid, was obliged to fly, on murder of her husband by
Gunhild,--to fly for life, three months before he, her little Olaf, was born.
She lay concealed in reedy islands, fled through trackless forests; reached her
father’s with the little baby in her arms, and lay deep-hidden there, tended
only by her father himself; Gunhild’s pursuit being so incessant, and keen as
with sleuth-hounds. Poor Astrid had to fly again, deviously to Sweden, to Esthland (Esthonia), to Russia.
In Esthland she was sold as a slave, quite parted
from her boy,--who also was sold, and again sold; but did at last fall in with
a kinsman high in the Russian service; did from him find redemption and help,
and so rose, in a distinguished manner, to manhood, victorious self-help, and
recovery of his kingdom at last. He even met his mother again, he as king of
Norway, she as one wonderfully lifted out of darkness into new life and happiness
still in store.
Grown to
manhood, Tryggveson,--now become acquainted with his
birth, and with his, alas, hopeless claims,--left Russia for the one profession
open to him, that of sea-robbery; and did feats without number in that
questionable line in many seas and scenes,--in England latterly, and most
conspicuously of all. In one of his courses thither, after long labors in the
Hebrides, Man, Wales, and down the western shores to the very Land`s End and
farther, he paused at the Scilly Islands for a little while. He was told of a
wonderful Christian hermit living strangely in these sea-solitudes; had the
curiosity to seek him out, examine, question, and discourse with him; and,
after some reflection, accepted Christian baptism from the venerable man. In Snorro the story is involved in miracle, rumor, and fable;
but the fact itself seems certain, and is very interesting; the great, wild,
noble soul of fierce Olaf opening to this wonderful gospel of tidings from
beyond the world, tidings which infinitely transcended all else he had ever
heard or dreamt of! It seems certain he was baptized here; date not fixable;
shortly before poor heart-broken Dunstan`s death, or shortly after; most
English churches, monasteries especially, lying burnt, under continual
visitation of the Danes. Olaf such baptism notwithstanding, did not quit his
viking profession; indeed, what other was there for him in the world as yet?
We
mentioned his occasional copartneries with Svein of
the Double-beard, now become King of Denmark, but the greatest of these, and
the alone interesting at this time, is their joint invasion of England, and Tryggveson’s exploits and fortunes there some years after
that adventure of baptism in the Scilly Isles. Svein and he “were above a year
in England together”, this time: they steered up the Thames with three hundred
ships and many fighters; siege, or at least furious assault, of London was
their first or main enterprise, but it did not succeed. The Saxon Chronicle
gives date to it, A.D. 994, and names expressly, as Svein’s co-partner, “Olaus,
king of Norway”,--which he was as yet far from being; but in regard to the Year
of Grace the Saxon Chronicle is to be held indisputable, and, indeed, has the
field to itself in this matter. Famed Olaf Tryggveson,
seen visibly at the siege of London, year 994, it throws a kind of momentary
light to us over that disastrous whirlpool of miseries and confusions, all dark
and painful to the fancy otherwise! This big voyage and furious siege of London
is Svein Double-beard`s first real attempt to fulfil that vow of his at Father
Blue-tooth’s “funeral ale”, and conquer England,--which it is a pity he could
not yet do. Had London now fallen to him, it is pretty evident all England must
have followed, and poor England, with Svein as king over it, been delivered
from immeasurable woes, which had to last some two-and-twenty years farther,
before this result could be arrived at. But finding London impregnable for the
moment (no ship able to get athwart the bridge, and many Danes perishing in the
attempt to do it by swimming), Svein and Olaf turned to other enterprises; all
England in a manner lying open to them, turn which way they liked. They burnt
and plundered over Kent, over Hampshire, Sussex; they stormed far and wide;
world lying all before them where to choose. Wretched Ethelred, as the one
invention he could fall upon, offered them Danegelt (16,000 pounds of silver this year, but it rose in other years as high as
48,000 pounds); the desperate Ethelred, a clear method of quenching fire by
pouring oil on it! Svein and Olaf accepted; withdrew to Southampton,--Olaf at
least did,--till the money was got ready. Strange to think of, fierce Svein of
the Double-beard, and conquest of England by him; this had at last become the
one salutary result which remained for that distracted, down-trodden, now
utterly chaotic and anarchic country. A conquering Svein, followed by an ably
and earnestly administrative, as well as conquering, Knut (whom Dahlmann
compares to Charlemagne), were thus by the mysterious destinies appointed the
effective saviors of England.
Tryggveson, on this occasion, was a good
while at Southampton; and roamed extensively about, easily victorious over
everything, if resistance were attempted, but finding little or none; and
acting now in a peaceable or even friendly capacity. In the Southampton country
he came in contact with the then Bishop of Winchester, afterwards Archbishop of
Canterbury, excellent Elphegus, still dimly
decipherable to us as a man of great natural discernment, piety, and inborn
veracity; a hero-soul, probably of real brotherhood with Olaf`s own. He even
made court visits to King Ethelred; one visit to him at Andover of a very
serious nature. By Elphegus, as we can discover, he
was introduced into the real depths of the Christian faith. Elphegus,
with due solemnity of apparatus, in presence of the king, at Andover, baptized
Olaf anew, and to him Olaf engaged that he would never plunder in England any
more; which promise, too, he kept. In fact, not long after, Svein`s conquest of
England being in an evidently forward state, Tryggveson (having made, withal, a great English or Irish marriage,--a dowager Princess,
who had voluntarily fallen in love with him,--see Snorro for this fine romantic fact!) mainly resided in our island for two or three
years, or else in Dublin, in the precincts of the Danish Court there in the
Sister Isle. Accordingly it was in Dublin, as above noted, that Hakon’s spy
found him; and from the Liffey that his squadron sailed, through the Hebrides,
through the Orkneys, plundering and baptizing in their strange way, towards
such success as we have seen.
Tryggveson made a stout, and, in effect,
victorious and glorious struggle for himself as king. Daily and hourly vigilant
to do so, often enough by soft and even merry methods, for he was a witty,
jocund man, and had a fine ringing laugh in him, and clear pregnant words ever
ready,--or if soft methods would not serve, then by hard and even hardest he
put down a great deal of miscellaneous anarchy in Norway; was especially busy
against heathenism (devil-worship and its rites): this, indeed, may be called
the focus and heart of all his royal endeavor in Norway, and of all the
troubles he now had with his people there. For this was a serious, vital,
all-comprehending matter; devil-worship, a thing not to be tolerated one moment
longer than you could by any method help! Olaf`s success was intermittent, of
varying complexion; but his effort, swift or slow, was strong and continual;
and on the whole he did succeed. Take a sample or two of that wonderful
conversion process:--
At one of
his first Things he found the Bonders all assembled in arms; resolute to the
death seemingly, against his proposal and him. Tryggveson said little; waited impassive, “What your reasons are, good men?”. One zealous
Bonder started up in passionate parliamentary eloquence; but after a sentence
or two, broke down; one, and then another, and still another, and remained all
three staring in open-mouthed silence there! The peasant-proprietors accepted
the phenomenon as ludicrous, perhaps partly as miraculous withal, and consented
to baptism this time.
On another
occasion of a Thing, which had assembled near some heathen temple to meet
him,--temple where Hakon Jarl had done much repairing, and set up many idol
figures and sumptuous ornaments, regardless of expense, especially a very big
and splendid Thor, with massive gold collar round the neck of him, not the like
of it in Norway,--King Olaf Tryggveson was
clamorously invited by the Bonders to step in there, enlighten his eyes, and
partake of the sacred rites. Instead of which he rushed into the temple with
his armed men; smashed down, with his own battle-axe, the god Thor, prostrate
on the ground at one stroke, to set an example; and, in a few minutes, had the
whole Hakon Pantheon wrecked; packing up meanwhile all the gold and
preciosities accumulated there (not forgetting Thor`s illustrious gold collar,
of which we shall hear again), and victoriously took the plunder home with him
for his own royal uses and behoof of the state. In other cases, though a friend
to strong measures, he had to hold in, and await the favorable moment. Thus
once, in beginning a parliamentary address, so soon as he came to touch upon
Christianity, the Bonders rose in murmurs, in vociferations and jingling of
arms, which quite drowned the royal voice; declared, they had taken arms
against king Hakon the Good to compel him to desist from his Christian
proposals; and they did not think King Olaf a higher man than him (Hakon the
Good). The king then said, “He purposed coming to them next Yule to their great
sacrificial feast, to see for himself what their customs were”, which pacified
the Bonders for this time. The appointed place of meeting was again a
Hakon-Jarl Temple, not yet done to ruin; chief shrine in those Trondhjem parts, I believe : there should Tryggveson appear at Yule. Well, but before Yule came, Tryggveson made a great banquet in his palace at Trondhjem, and invited far and wide, all manner of
important persons out of the district as guests there. Banquet hardly done, Tryggveson gave some slight signal, upon which armed men
strode in, seized eleven of these principal persons, and the king said:
"Since he himself was to become a heathen again, and do sacrifice, it was
his purpose to do it in the highest form, namely, that of Human Sacrifice; and
this time not of slaves and malefactors, but of the best men in the
country!" In which stringent circumstances the eleven seized persons, and
company at large, gave unanimous consent to baptism; straightway received the
same, and abjured their idols; but were not permitted to go home till they had
left, in sons, brothers, and other precious relatives, sufficient hostages in
the king`s hands.
By
unwearied industry of this and better kinds, Tryggveson had trampled down idolatry, so far as form went,--how far in substance may be
greatly doubted. But it is to be remembered withal, that always on the back of
these compulsory adventures there followed English bishops, priests and
preachers; whereby to the open-minded, conviction, to all degrees of it, was
attainable, while silence and passivity became the duty or necessity of the
unconvinced party.
In about
two years Norway was all gone over with a rough harrow of conversion.
Heathenism at least constrained to be silent and outwardly conformable. Tryggveson, next turned his attention to Iceland, sent one Thangbrand, priest from Saxony, of wonderful qualities,
military as well as theological, to try and convert Iceland. Thangbrand made a few converts; for Olaf had already many
estimable Iceland friends, whom he liked much, and was much liked by; and
conversion was the ready road to his favor. Thangbrand,
I find, lodged with Hall of Sida (familiar
acquaintance of “Burnt Njal”, whose Saga has its admirers among us even now). Thangbrand converted Hall and one or two other leading
men,; but in general he was reckoned quarrelsome and blusterous rather than
eloquent and piously convincing. Two skalds of repute made biting lampoons upon Thangbrand, whom Thangbrand,
by two opportunities that offered, cut down and did to death because of their
skaldic quality. Another he killed with his own hand, I know not for what
reason. In brief, after about a year, Thangbrand returned to Norway and king Olaf; declaring the Icelanders to be a perverse,
satirical, and inconvertible people, having himself, the record says,
"been the death of three men there." King Olaf was in high rage at
this result; but was persuaded by the Icelanders about him to try farther, and
by a wilder instrument. He accordingly chose one Thormod, a pious, patient, and
kindly man, who, within the next year or so, did actually accomplish the
matter; namely, get Christianity, by open vote, declared at Thingvalla by the general Thing of Iceland there; the roar of a big thunder-clap at the
right moment rather helping the conclusion, if I recollect. Whereupon Olaf`s
joy was no doubt great.
One general
result of these successful operations was the discontent, to all manner of
degrees, on the part of many Norse individuals, against this glorious and
victorious, but peremptory and terrible king of theirs. Tryggveson,
I fancy, did not much regard all that; a man of joyful, cheery temper,
habitually contemptuous of danger. Another trivial misfortune that befell in
these conversion operations, and became important to him, he did not even know
of, and would have much despised if he had. It was this: Sigrid, queen dowager
of Sweden, thought to be amongst the most shining women of the world, was also
known for one of the most imperious, revengeful, and relentless, and had got
for herself the name of Sigrid the Proud. In her high widowhood she had naturally
many wooers; but treated them in a manner unexampled. Two of her suitors, a
simultaneous Two, were, King Harald Graenske (a
cousin of King Tryggveson’s, and kind of king in some
district, by sufferance of the late Hakon’s),--this luckless Graenske and the then Russian Sovereign as well, name not
worth mentioning, were zealous suitors of Queen Dowager Sigrid, and were
perversely slow to accept the negative, which in her heart was inexorable for
both, though the expression of it could not be quite so emphatic. By ill-luck
for them they came once,--from the far West, Graenske;
from the far East, the Russian;--and arrived both together at Sigrid`s court,
to prosecute their importunate, and to her odious and tiresome suit; much, how
very much, to her impatience and disdain. She lodged them both in some old
mansion, which she had contiguous, and got compendiously furnished for them;
and there, I know not whether on the first or on the second, or on what
following night, this unparalleled Queen Sigrid had the house surrounded, set
on fire, and the two suitors and their people burnt to ashes! No more of bother
from these two at least! This appears to be a fact; and it could not be unknown
to Tryggveson.
In spite of
which, however, there went from Tryggveson, who was
now a widower, some incipient marriage proposals to this proud widow; by whom
they were favorably received; as from the brightest man in all the world, they
might seem worth being. Now, in one of these anti-heathen onslaughts of King
Olaf`s on the idol temples of Hakon--(I think it was that case where Olaf`s own
battle-axe struck down the monstrous refulgent Thor, and conquered an immense
gold ring from the neck of him, or from the door of his temple),--a huge gold
ring, at any rate, had come into Olaf`s hands; and this he bethought him might
be a pretty present to Queen Sigrid, the now favorable, though the proud.
Sigrid received the ring with joy; fancied what a collar it would make for her own
fair neck; but noticed that her two goldsmiths, weighing it on their fingers,
exchanged a glance. “What is that?” exclaimed Queen Sigrid. “Nothing”, answered
they, or endeavored to answer, dreading mischief. But Sigrid compelled them to
break open the ring; and there was found, all along the inside of it, an occult
ring of copper, not a heart of gold at all! “Ha”, said the proud Queen,
flinging it away, “he that could deceive in this matter can deceive in many
others!” And was in hot wrath with Olaf; though, by degrees, again she took
milder thoughts.
Milder
thoughts, we say; and consented to a meeting next autumn, at some half-way
station, where their great business might be brought to a happy settlement and
betrothment. Both Olaf Tryggveson and the high
dowager appear to have been tolerably of willing mind at this meeting; but Olaf
interposed, what was always one condition with him, “Thou must consent to
baptism, and give up thy idol-gods”. “They are the gods of all my forefathers”,
answered the lady, “choose thou what gods thou pleasest,
but leave me mine”. Whereupon an altercation; and Tryggveson,
as was his wont, towered up into shining wrath, and exclaimed at last, “Why
should I care about thee then, old faded heathen creature?” And impatiently
wagging his glove, hit her, or slightly switched her, on the face with it, and
contemptuously turning away, walked out of the adventure. “This is a feat that
may cost thee dear one day”, said Sigrid. And in the end it came to do so,
little as the magnificent Olaf deigned to think of it at the moment.
One of the
last scuffles I remember of Olaf’s having with his refractory heathens, was at
a Thing in Hordaland or Rogaland, far in the North, where the chief opposition
hero was one Jaernskaegg (“ironbeard”) Scottice (“Airn-shag”, as it were!). Here again was a
grand heathen temple, Hakon Jarl`s building, with a splendid Thor in it and
much idol furniture. The king stated what was his constant wish here as
elsewhere, but had no sooner entered upon the subject of Christianity than
universal murmur, rising into clangor and violent dissent, interrupted him, and Ironbeard took up the discourse in reply. Ironbeard did not break down; on the contrary, he, with
great brevity, emphasis, and clearness, signified “that the proposal to reject
their old gods was in the highest degree unacceptable to this Thing; that it
was contrary to bargain, withal; so that if it were insisted on, they would
have to fight with the king about it; and in fact were now ready to do so”. In
reply to this, Olaf, without word uttered, but merely with some signal to the
trusty armed men he had with him, rushed off to the temple close at hand; burst
into it, shutting the door behind him; smashed Thor and Co. to destruction;
then reappearing victorious, found much confusion outside, and, in particular,
what was a most important item, the rugged Ironbeard done to death by Olaf`s men in the interim. Which entirely disheartened the
Thing from fighting at that moment; having now no leader who dared to head them
in so dangerous an enterprise. So that every one departed to digest his rage in
silence as he could.
Matters
having cooled for a week or two, there was another Thing held; in which King
Olaf testified regret for the quarrel that had fallen out, readiness to pay
what mulct was due by law for that unlucky homicide of Ironbeard by his people; and, withal, to take the fair
daughter of Ironbeard to wife, if all would comply
and be friends with him in other matters; which was the course resolved on as
most convenient: accept baptism, we; marry Jaernskaegg’s daughter, you. This bargain held on both sides. The wedding, too, was
celebrated, but that took rather a strange turn. On the morning of the
bride-night, Olaf, who had not been sleeping, though his fair partner thought
he had, opened his eyes, and saw, with astonishment, the fair partner aiming a
long knife ready to strike home upon him! Which at once ended their wedded
life; poor Demoiselle Ironbeard immediately bundling
off with her attendants home again; King Olaf into the apartment of his
servants, mentioning there what had happened, and forbidding any of them to
follow her.
Olaf Tryggveson, though his kingdom was the smallest of the
Norse Three, had risen to a renown over all the Norse world, which neither he
of Denmark nor he of Sweden could pretend to rival. A magnificent, far-shining
man; more expert in all “bodily exercises” as the Norse call them, than any man
had ever been before him, or after was. Could keep five daggers in the air,
always catching the proper fifth by its handle, and sending it aloft again;
could shoot supremely, throw a javelin with either hand; and, in fact, in
battle usually throw two together. These, with swimming, climbing, leaping,
were the then admirable Fine Arts of the North; in all which Tryggveson appears to have been the Raphael and the Michael
Angelo at once. Essentially definable, too, if we look well into him, as a wild
bit of real heroism, in such rude guise and environment; a high, true, and
great human soul. A jovial burst of laughter in him, withal; a bright, airy,
wise way of speech; dressed beautifully and with care; a man admired and loved
exceedingly by those he liked; dreaded as death by those he did not like.
“Hardly any king”, says Snorro, “was ever so well
obeyed; by one class out of zeal and love, by the rest out of dread”. His
glorious course, however, was not to last long.
King Svein
of the Double-Beard had not yet completed his conquest of England,--by no means
yet, some thirteen horrid years of that still before him!--when, over in
Denmark, he found that complaints against him and intricacies had arisen, on
the part principally of one Burislav, King of the
Wends (far up the Baltic), and in a less degree with the King of Sweden and
other minor individuals. Svein earnestly applied himself to settle these, and
have his hands free. Burislav, an aged heathen
gentleman, proved reasonable and conciliatory; so, too, the King of Sweden, and
Dowager Queen Sigrid, his managing mother. Bargain in both these cases got
sealed and crowned by marriage. Svein, who had become a widower lately, now
wedded Sigrid; and might think, possibly enough, he had got a proud bargain,
though a heathen one. Burislav also insisted on
marriage with Princess Thyri, the Double-Beard`s sister. Thyri, inexpressibly
disinclined to wed an aged heathen of that stamp, pleaded hard with her
brother; but the Double-Bearded was inexorable; Thyri`s wailings and entreaties
went for nothing. With some guardian foster-brother, and a serving-maid or two,
she had to go on this hated journey. Old Burislav, at
sight of her, blazed out into marriage-feast of supreme magnificence, and was
charmed to see her; but Thyri would not join the marriage party; refused to eat
with it or sit with it at all. Day after day, for six days, flatly refused; and
after nightfall of the sixth, glided out with her foster-brother into the
woods, into by-paths and inconceivable wanderings; and, in effect, got home to
Denmark. Brother Svein was not for the moment there; probably enough gone to
England again. But Thyri knew too well he would not allow her to stay here, or
anywhere that he could help, except with the old heathen she had just fled
from.
Thyri,
looking round the world, saw no likely road for her, but to Olaf Tryggveson in Norway; to beg protection from the most
heroic man she knew of in the world. Olaf, except by renown, was not known to
her; but by renown he well was. Olaf, at sight of her, promised protection and
asylum against all mortals. Nay, in discoursing with Thyri Olaf perceived more
and more clearly what a fine handsome being, soul and body, Thyri was; and in a
short space of time winded up by proposing marriage to Thyri; who, humbly, and
we may fancy with what secret joy, consented to say yes, and become Queen of
Norway. In the due months they had a little son, Harald; who, it is credibly
recorded, was the joy of both his parents; but who, to their inexpressible
sorrow, in about a year died, and vanished from them. This, and one other fact
now to be mentioned, is all the wedded history we have of Thyri.
The other
fact is, that Thyri had, by inheritance or covenant, not depending on her
marriage with old Burislav, considerable properties
in Wendland; which, she often reflected, might be not a little behooveful to her here in Norway, where her civil-list was
probably but straitened. She spoke of this to her husband; but her husband
would take no hold, merely made her gifts, and said, "Pooh, pooh, can’t we
live without old Burislav and his Wendland
properties?" So that the lady sank into ever deeper anxiety and eagerness
about this Wendland object; took to weeping; sat weeping whole days; and when
Olaf asked, “What ails thee, then?” would answer, or did answer once, “What a
different man my father Harald Gormson was [vulgarly
called Blue-tooth], compared with some that are now kings! For no King Svein in
the world would Harald Gormson have given up his own
or his wife’s just rights!”. Whereupon Tryggveson started up, exclaiming in some heat, “Of thy brother Svein I never was afraid;
if Svein and I meet in contest, it will not be Svein, I believe, that
conquers”; and went off in a towering fume. Consented, however, at last, had to
consent, to get his fine fleet equipped and armed, and decide to sail with it
to Wendland to have speech and settlement with King Burislav.
Tryggveson had already ships and navies
that were the wonder of the North. Especially in building war ships, the Crane,
the Serpent, last of all the Long Serpent,--he had, for size, for outward
beauty, and inward perfection of equipment, transcended all example.
This new
sea expedition became an object of attention to all neighbors; especially Queen
Sigrid the Proud and Svein Double-Beard, her now king, were attentive to it.
“This
insolent Tryggveson”, Queen Sigrid would often say,
and had long been saying, to her Svein, “to marry thy sister without leave had
or asked of thee; and now flaunting forth his war navies, as if he, king only
of paltry Norway, were the big hero of the North! Why do you suffer it, you
kings really great?”
By such
persuasions and reiterations, King Svein of Denmark, King Olaf of Sweden, and
Jarl Eric, now a great man there, grown rich by prosperous sea robbery and
other good management, were brought to take the matter up, and combine
strenuously for destruction of King Olaf Tryggveson on this grand Wendland expedition of his. Fleets and forces were with best
diligence got ready; and, withal, a certain Jarl Sigwald, of Jomsburg, chieftain of the Jomsvikings,
a powerful, plausible, and cunning man, was appointed to find means of joining
himself to Tryggveson’s grand voyage, of getting into Tryggveson’s confidence, and keeping Svein
Double-Beard, Eric, and the Swedish King aware of all his movements.
King Olaf Tryggveson, unacquainted with all this, sailed away in
summer, with his splendid fleet; went through the Belts with prosperous winds,
under bright skies, to the admiration of both shores. Such a fleet, with its
shining Serpents, long and short, and perfection of equipment and appearance,
the Baltic never saw before. Jarl Sigwald joined with new ships by the way:
“Had”, he too, “a visit to King Burislav to pay; how
could he ever do it in better company?” and studiously and skilfully ingratiated himself with King Olaf. Old Burislav,
when they arrived, proved altogether courteous, handsome, and amenable; agreed
at once to Olaf`s claims for his now queen, did the rites of hospitality with a
generous plenitude to Olaf; who cheerily renewed acquaintance with that
country, known to him in early days (the cradle of his fortunes in the viking
line), and found old friends there still surviving, joyful to meet him again.
Jarl Sigwald encouraged these delays, King Svein and Co. not being yet quite
ready. “Get ready!” Sigwald directed them, and they diligently did. Olaf`s men,
their business now done, were impatient to be home; and grudged every day of
loitering there; but, till Sigwald pleased, such his power of flattering and
cajoling Tryggveson, they could not get away.
At length,
Sigwald’s secret messengers reporting all ready on the part of Svein and Co.,
Olaf took farewell of Burislav and Wendland, and all
gladly sailed away. Svein, Eric, and the Swedish king, with their combined
fleets, lay in wait behind some cape in a safe little bay of some island, then
called Svolde, but not in our time to be found; the
Baltic tumults in the fourteenth century having swallowed it, as some think,
and leaving us uncertain whether it was in the neighborhood of Rugen Island or
in the Sound of Elsinore. There lay Svein, Eric, and Co. waiting till Tryggveson and his fleet came up, Sigwald’s spy messengers
daily reporting what progress he and it had made. At length, one bright summer
morning, the fleet made appearance, sailing in loose order, Sigwald, as one
acquainted with the shoal places, steering ahead, and showing them the way.
Snorro rises into one of his pictorial fits, seized
with enthusiasm at the thought of such a fleet, and reports to us largely in
what order Tryggveson`s winged Coursers of the Deep,
in long series, for perhaps an hour or more, came on, and what the three
potentates, from their knoll of vantage, said of each as it hove in sight,
Svein thrice over guessed this and the other noble vessel to be the Long Serpent;
Eric, always correcting him, “No, that is not the Long Serpent yet” (and aside
always), “Nor shall you be lord of it, king, when it does come”. The Long
Serpent itself did make appearance. Eric, Svein, and the Swedish king hurried
on board, and pushed out of their hiding-place into the open sea. Treacherous
Sigwald, at the beginning of all this, had suddenly doubled that cape of
theirs, and struck into the bay out of sight, leaving the foremost Tryggveson ships astonished, and uncertain what to do, if
it were not simply to strike sail and wait till Olaf himself with the Long
Serpent arrived.
Olaf`s
chief captains, seeing the enemy`s huge fleet come out, and how the matter lay,
strongly advised King Olaf to elude this stroke of treachery, and, with all
sail, hold on his course, fight being now on so unequal terms. Snorro says, the king, high on the quarter-deck where he
stood, replied, “Strike the sails; never shall men of mine think of flight. I
never fled from battle. Let God dispose of my life; but flight I will never
take”. And so the battle arrangements immediately began, and the battle with
all fury went loose; and lasted hour after hour, till almost sunset, if I well
recollect. “Olaf stood on the Serpent’s quarter-deck”, says Snorro,
“high over the others. He had a gilt shield and a helmet inlaid with gold; over
his armor he had a short red coat, and was easily distinguished from other
men”. Snorro’s account of the battle is altogether
animated, graphic, and so minute that antiquaries gather from it, if so
disposed (which we but little are), what the methods of Norse sea-fighting
were; their shooting of arrows, casting of javelins, pitching of big stones,
ultimately boarding, and mutual clashing and smashing, which it would not avail
us to speak of here. Olaf stood conspicuous all day, throwing javelins, of
deadly aim, with both hands at once; encouraging, fighting and commanding like
a highest sea-king.
The Danish
fleet, the Swedish fleet, were, both of them, quickly dealt with, and
successively withdrew out of shot-range. And then Jarl Eric came up, and
fiercely grappled with the Long Serpent, or, rather, with her surrounding
comrades; and gradually, as they were beaten empty of men, with the Long
Serpent herself. The fight grew ever fiercer, more furious. Eric was supplied
with new men from the Swedes and Danes; Olaf had no such resource, except from
the crews of his own beaten ships, and at length this also failed him; all his
ships, except the Long Serpent, being beaten and emptied. Olaf fought on
unyielding. Eric twice boarded him, was twice repulsed. Olaf kept his
quarterdeck; unconquerable, though left now more and more hopeless, fatally
short of help. A tall young man, called Einar Tamberskelver,
very celebrated and important afterwards in Norway, and already the best archer
known, kept busy with his bow. Twice he nearly shot Jarl Eric in his ship.
"Shoot me that man," said Jarl Eric to a bowman near him; and, just
as Tamberskelver was drawing his bow the third time,
an arrow hit it in the middle and broke it in two. "What is this that has
broken?" asked King Olaf. "Norway from thy hand, king," answered Tamberskelver. Tryggveson’s men, he observed with surprise, were striking violently on Eric`s; but to no
purpose: nobody fell. “How is this?” asked Tryggveson.
“Our swords are notched and blunted, king; they do not cut”. Olaf stept down to his arm-chest; delivered out new swords; and
it was observed as he did it, blood ran trickling from his wrist; but none knew
where the wound was. Eric boarded a third time. Olaf, left with hardly more
than one man, sprang overboard (one sees that red coat of his still glancing in
the evening sun), and sank in the deep waters to his long rest.
Rumor ran
among his people that he still was not dead; grounding on some movement by the
ships of that traitorous Sigwald, they fancied Olaf had dived beneath the keels
of his enemies, and got away with Sigwald, as Sigwald himself evidently did.
“Much was hoped, supposed, spoken”, says one old mourning Skald; “but the truth
was, Olaf Tryggveson was never seen in Norseland more”. Strangely he remains still a shining
figure to us; the wildly beautifulest man, in body
and in soul, that one has ever heard of in the North.
VIII
JARL ERIC AND SVEIN
Jarl Eric,
splendent with this victory, not to speak of that over the Jomsburgers with his father long ago, was now made Governor of Norway: Governor or
quasi-sovereign, with his brother, Jarl. Svein, as partner, who, however, took
but little hand in governing;--and, under the patronage of Svein Double-Beard
and the then Swedish king (Olaf his name, Sigrid the Proud, his mother’s),
administered it, they say, with skill and prudence for above fourteen years. Tryggveson’s death is understood and laboriously computed
to have happened in the year 1000; but there is no exact chronology in these
things, but a continual uncertain guessing after such; so that one eye in
History as regards them is as if put out;--neither indeed have I yet had the
luck to find any decipherable and intelligible map of Norway: so that the other
eye of History is much blinded withal, and her path through those wild regions
and epochs is an extremely dim and chaotic one. An evil that much demands
remedying, and especially wants some first attempt at remedying, by inquirers
into English History; the whole period from Egbert, the first Saxon King of
England, on to Edward the Confessor, the last, being everywhere completely
interwoven with that of their mysterious, continually invasive "Danes,"
as they call them, and inextricably unintelligible till these also get to be a
little understood, and cease to be utterly dark, hideous, and mythical to us as
they now are.
King Olaf Tryggveson is the first Norseman who is expressly mentioned
to have been in England by our English History books, new or old; and of him it
is merely said that he had an interview with King Ethelred II. at Andover, of a
pacific and friendly nature,--though it is absurdly added that the noble Olaf
was converted to Christianity by that extremely stupid Royal Person. Greater
contrast in an interview than in this at Andover, between heroic Olaf Tryggveson and Ethelred the forever Unready, was not perhaps
seen in the terrestrial Planet that day. Olaf or “Olaus”, or “Anlaf”, as they
name him, did “engage on oath to Ethelred not to invade England any more”"
and kept his promise, they farther say. Essentially a truth, as we already
know, though the circumstances were all different; and the promise was to a
devout High Priest, not to a crowned Blockhead and cowardly Do-nothing. One
other “Olaus” I find mentioned in our Books, two or three centuries before, at
a time when there existed no such individual; not to speak of several Anlafs, who sometimes seem to mean Olaf and still oftener
to mean nobody possible. Which occasions not a little obscurity in our early
History, says the learned Selden. A thing remediable, too, in which, if any
Englishman of due genius (or even capacity for standing labor), who understood
the Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon languages, would engage in it, he might do a
great deal of good, and bring the matter into a comparatively lucid state. Vain
aspirations,--or perhaps not altogether vain.
At the time
of Olaf Tryggveson’s death, and indeed long before,
King Svein Double-Beard had always for chief enterprise the Conquest of
England, and followed it by fits with extreme violence and impetus; often
advancing largely towards a successful conclusion; but never, for thirteen years
yet, getting it concluded. He possessed long since all England north of Watling
Street. That is to say, Northumberland, East Anglia (naturally full of Danish
settlers by this time), were fixedly his; Mercia, his oftener than not; Wessex
itself, with all the coasts, he was free to visit, and to burn and rob in at
discretion. There or elsewhere, Ethelred the Unready had no battle in him
whatever; and, for a forty years after the beginning of his reign, England
excelled in anarchic stupidity, murderous devastation, utter misery, platitude,
and sluggish contemptibility, all the countries one has read of. Apparently a
very opulent country, too; a ready skill in such arts and fine arts as there
were; Svei’s very ships, they say, had their gold
dragons, top-mast pennons, and other metallic splendors generally wrought for
them in England. "Unexampled prosperity" in the manufacture way not
unknown there, it would seem! But co-existing with such spiritual bankruptcy as
was also unexampled, one would hope. Read Lupus (Wulfstan), Archbishop of
York’s amazing Sermon on the subject, addressed to
contemporary audiences; setting forth such a state of things,--sons selling
their fathers, mothers, and sisters as Slaves to the Danish robber; themselves
living in debauchery, blusterous gluttony, and depravity; the details of which
are well-nigh incredible, though clearly stated as things generally known,--the
humor of these poor wretches sunk to a state of what we may call greasy
desperation, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”. The manner in which
they treated their own English nuns, if young, good-looking, and captive to the
Danes; buying them on a kind of brutish or subter-brutish
“Greatest Happiness Principle” (for the moment), and by a Joint-Stock
arrangement, far transcends all human speech or imagination, and awakens in one
the momentary red-hot thought, The Danes have served you right, ye accursed!
The so-called soldiers, one finds, made not the least fight anywhere; could
make none, led and guided as they were, and the "Generals" often
enough traitors, always ignorant, and blockheads, were in the habit, when
expressly commanded to fight, of taking physic, and declaring that nature was
incapable of castor-oil and battle both at once. This ought to be explained a
little to the modern English and their War-Secretaries, who undertake the
conduct of armies. The undeniable fact is, defeat on defeat was the constant
fate of the English; during these forty years not one battle in which they were
not beaten. No gleam of victory or real resistance till the noble Edmund Ironside
(whom it is always strange to me how such an Ethelred could produce for son)
made his appearance and ran his brief course, like a great and far-seen meteor,
soon extinguished without result. No remedy for England in that base time, but
yearly asking the victorious, plundering, burning and murdering Danes, “How
much money will you take to go away?”. Thirty thousand pounds in silver, which
the annual Danegelt soon rose to, continued
to be about the average yearly sum, though generally on the increasing hand; in
the last year I think it had risen to seventy-two thousand pounds in silver,
raised yearly by a tax (Income-tax of its kind, rudely levied), the worst of
all remedies, good for the day only. Nay, there was one remedy still worse,
which the miserable Ethelred once tried: that of massacring “all the Danes
settled in England” (practically, of a few thousands or hundreds of them), by
treachery and a kind of Sicilian Vespers. Which issued, as such things usually
do, in terrible monition to you not to try the like again! Issued, namely, in
redoubled fury on the Danish part; new fiercer invasion by Svein’s Jarl
Thorkel; then by Svein himself; which latter drove the miserable Ethelred, with
wife and family, into Normandy, to wife`s brother, the then Duke there; and
ended that miserable struggle by Svein`s becoming King of England himself. Of
this disgraceful massacre, which it would appear has been immensely exaggerated
in the English books, we can happily give the exact date (A.D. 1002); and also
of Svein’s victorious accession (A.D. 1013),--pretty much the only benefit one
gets out of contemplating such a set of objects.
King
Svein’s first act was to levy a terribly increased Income-Tax for the payment
of his army. Svein was levying it with a stronghanded diligence, but had not
yet done levying it, when, at Gainsborough one night, he suddenly died; smitten
dead, once used to be said, by St. Edmund, whilom murdered King of the East
Angles; who could not bear to see his shrine and monastery of St. Edmundsbury
plundered by the Tyrant`s tax-collectors, as they were on the point of being.
In all ways impossible, however,--Edmund`s own death did not occur till two
years after Svein`s. Svein`s death, by whatever cause, befell 1014; his fleet,
then lying in the Humber; and only Knut, his eldest son (hardly yet eighteen,
count some), in charge of it; who, on short counsel, and arrangement about this
questionable kingdom of his, lifted anchor; made for Sandwich, a safer station
at the moment; "cut off the feet and noses" (one shudders, and hopes
not, there being some discrepancy about it!) of his numerous hostages that had
been delivered to King Svein; set them ashore;--and made for Denmark, his
natural storehouse and stronghold, as the hopefulest first thing he could do.
Knut soon
returned from Denmark, with increase of force sufficient for the English
problem; which latter he now ended in a victorious, and essentially, for
himself and chaotic England, beneficent manner. Became widely known by and by,
there and elsewhere, as Knut the Great; and is thought by judges of our day to
have really merited that title. A most nimble, sharp-striking, clear-thinking,
prudent and effective man, who regulated this dismembered and distracted
England in its Church matters, in its State matters, like a real King. Had a
Standing Army (_House Carles_), who were well paid, well drilled and
disciplined, capable of instantly quenching insurrection or breakage of the
peace; and piously endeavored (with a signal earnestness, and even devoutness,
if we look well) to do justice to all men, and to make all men rest satisfied
with justice. In a word, he successfully strapped up, by every true method and
regulation, this miserable, dislocated, and dissevered mass of bleeding Anarchy
into something worthy to be called an England again;--only that he died too
soon, and a second "Conqueror" of us, still weightier of structure,
and under improved auspices, became possible, and was needed here! To
appearance, Knut himself was capable of being a Charlemagne of England and the
North (as has been already said or quoted), had he only lived twice as long as
he did. But his whole sum of years seems not to have exceeded forty. His father
Svein of the Forkbeard is reckoned to have been fifty to sixty when St. Edmund
finished him at Gainsborough. We now return to Norway, ashamed of this long
circuit which has been a truancy more or less.
IX
KING OLAF THE THICK-SET’S
VIKING DAYS
King Harald Graenske, who, with another from Russia accidentally
lodging beside him, got burned to death in Sweden, courting that unspeakable
Sigrid the Proud,--was third cousin or so to Tryggve, father of our heroic
Olaf. Accurately counted, he is great-grandson of Bjorn the Chapman, first of Haarfagr’s sons whom Eric Bloodaxe made away with. His little “kingdom”, as he called it, was a district named the
Greenland (Graeneland); he himself was one of those
little Haarfagr kinglets whom Hakon Jarl, much more
Olaf Tryggveson, was content to leave reigning, since
they would keep the peace with him. Harald had a loving wife of his own, Aasta
the name of her, soon expecting the birth of her and his pretty babe, named
Olaf,--at the time he went on that deplorable Swedish adventure, the foolish,
fated creature, and ended self and kingdom altogether. Aasta was greatly
shocked; composed herself however; married a new husband, Sigurd Syr, a
kinglet, and a great-grandson of Harald Fairhair, a
man of great wealth, prudence, and influence in those countries; in whose
house, as favorite and well-beloved stepson, little Olaf was wholesomely and skilfully brought up. In Sigurd’s house he had, withal, a
special tutor entertained for him, one Rane, known as Rane the Far-travelled,
by whom he could be trained, from the earliest basis, in Norse accomplishments
and arts. New children came, one or two; but Olaf, from his mother, seems
always to have known that he was the distinguished and royal article there. One
day his Foster-father, hurrying to leave home on business, hastily bade Olaf,
no other being by, saddle his horse for him. Olaf went out with the saddle,
chose the biggest he-goat about, saddled that, and brought it to the door by
way of horse. Old Sigurd, a most grave man, grinned sardonically at the sight.
"Hah, I see thou hast no mind to take commands from me; thou art of too
high a humor to take commands." To which, says Snorro,
Boy Olaf answered little except by laughing, till Sigurd saddled for himself,
and rode away. His mother Aasta appears to have been a thoughtful, prudent
woman, though always with a fierce royalism at the bottom of her memory, and a
secret implacability on that head.
At the age
of twelve Olaf went to sea; furnished with a little fleet, and skilful sea-counsellor, expert old Rane, by his
Foster-father, and set out to push his fortune in the world. Rane was a
steersman and counsellor in these incipient times; but the crew always called
Olaf "King," though at first, as Snorro thinks, except it were in the hour of battle, he merely pulled an oar. He
cruised and fought in this capacity on many seas and shores; passed several
years, perhaps till the age of nineteen or twenty, in this wild element and way
of life; fighting always in a glorious and distinguished manner. In the hour of
battle, diligent enough “to amass property”, as the Vikings termed it; and in
the long days and nights of sailing, given over, it is likely, to his own
thoughts and the unfathomable dialogue with the ever-moaning Sea; not the worst
High School a man could have, and indeed infinitely preferable to the most that
are going even now, for a high and deep young soul.
His first
distinguished expedition was to Sweden: natural to go thither first, to avenge
his poor father`s death, were it nothing more. Which he did, the Skalds say, in
a distinguished manner; making victorious and handsome battle for himself, in
entering Maelare Lake; and in getting out of it
again, after being frozen there all winter, showing still more surprising,
almost miraculous contrivance and dexterity. This was the first of his glorious
victories, of which the Skalds reckon up some fourteen or thirteen very
glorious indeed, mostly in the Western and Southern countries, most of all in
England; till the name of Olaf Haraldson became quite famous in the Viking and
strategic world. He seems really to have learned the secrets of his trade, and
to have been, then and afterwards, for vigilance, contrivance, valor, and
promptitude of execution, a superior fighter. Several exploits recorded of him
betoken, in simple forms, what may be called a military genius.
The
principal, and to us the alone interesting, of his exploits seem to have lain
in England, and, what is further notable, always on the anti-Svein side.
English books do not mention him at all that I can find; but it is fairly
credible that, as the Norse records report, in the end of Ethelred`s reign, he
was the ally or hired general of Ethelred, and did a great deal of
sea-fighting, watching, sailing, and sieging for this miserable king and Edmund
Ironside, his son. Snorro says expressly, London, the
impregnable city, had to be besieged again for Ethelred’s behoof (in the
interval between Svein’s death and young Knut`s getting back from Denmark), and
that our Olaf Haraldson was the great engineer and victorious captor of London
on that singular occasion,--London captured for the first time. The Bridge, as
usual, Snorro says, offered almost insuperable
obstacles. But the engineering genius of Olaf contrived huge "platforms of
wainscoting [old walls of wooden houses, in fact], bound together by
withes;" these, carried steadily aloft above the ships, will (thinks Olaf)
considerably secure them and us from the destructive missiles, big boulder
stones, and other, mischief profusely showered down on us, till we get under
the Bridge with axes and cables, and do some good upon it. Olaf`s plan was
tried; most of the other ships, in spite of their wainscoting and withes,
recoiled on reaching the Bridge, so destructive were the boulder and other
missile showers. But Olaf’s ships and self got actually under the Bridge; fixed
all manner of cables there; and then, with the river current in their favor,
and the frightened ships rallying to help in this safer part of the enterprise,
tore out the important piles and props, and fairly broke the poor Bridge,
wholly or partly, down into the river, and its Danish defenders into immediate
surrender. That is Snorro’s account.
On a
previous occasion, Olaf had been deep in a hopeful combination with Ethelred`s
two younger sons, Alfred and Edward, afterwards King Edward the Confessor: That
they two should sally out from Normandy in strong force, unite with Olaf in
ditto, and, landing on the Thames, do something effectual for themselves. But
impediments, bad weather or the like, disheartened the poor Princes, and it
came to nothing. Olaf was much in Normandy, what they then called Walland; a
man held in honor by those Norman Dukes.
What amount
of “property” he had amassed I do not know, but could prove, were it necessary,
that he had acquired some tactical or even strategic faculty and real talent
for war. At Lymfjord, in Jutland, but some years
after this (A.D. 1027), he had a sea-battle with the great Knut himself,--ships
combined with flood-gates, with roaring, artificial deluges; right well managed
by King Olaf; which were within a hair`s-breadth of destroying Knut, now become
a King and Great; and did in effect send him instantly running. But of this
more particularly by and by.
What still
more surprises me is the mystery, where Olaf, in this wandering, fighting,
sea-roving life, acquired his deeply religious feeling, his intense adherence
to the Christian Faith. I suppose it had been in England, where many pious
persons, priestly and other, were still to be met with, that Olaf had gathered
these doctrines; and that in those his unfathomable dialogues with the
ever-moaning Ocean, they had struck root downwards in the soul of him, and
borne fruit upwards to the degree so conspicuous afterwards. It is certain he
became a deeply pious man during these long Viking cruises; and directed all
his strength, when strength and authority were lent him, to establishing the
Christian religion in his country, and suppressing and abolishing Vikingism there; both of which objects, and their
respective worth and unworth, he, must himself have
long known so well.
It was well
on in A.D. 1016 that Knut gained his last victory, at Ashdon, in Essex, where
the earth pyramids and antique church near by still testify the thankful piety
of Knut,--or, at lowest his joy at having won instead of lost
and perished, as he was near doing there. And it was still this same year when
the noble Edmund Ironside, after forced partition-treaty “in the Isle of Alney”, got scandalously murdered, and Knut became
indisputable sole King of England, and decisively settled himself to his work
of governing there. In the year before either of which events, while all still
hung uncertain for Knut, and even Eric Jarl of Norway had to be summoned in aid
of him, in that year 1015, as one might naturally guess and as all Icelandic
hints and indications lead us to date the thing, Olaf had decided to give up Vikingism in all its forms; to return to Norway, and try
whether he could not assert the place and career that belonged to him there.
Jarl Eric had vanished with all his war forces towards England, leaving only a
boy, Hakon, as successor, and Svein, his own brother,--a quiet man, who had
always avoided war. Olaf landed in Norway without obstacle; but decided to be
quiet till he had himself examined and consulted friends.
His
reception by his mother Aasta was of the kindest and proudest, and is lovingly
described by Snorro. A pretty idyllic, or epic piece,
of Norse Homeric type: How Aasta, hearing of her son`s advent,
set all her maids and menials to work at the top of their speed; despatched a runner to the harvest-field, where her husband
Sigurd was, to warn him to come home and dress. How Sigurd was standing among
his harvest folk, reapers and binders; and what he had on,--broad slouch hat,
with veil (against the midges), blue kirtle, hose of I forget what color, with
laced boots; and in his hand a stick with silver head and ditto ring upon
it;--a personable old gentleman, of the eleventh century, in those parts.
Sigurd was cautious, prudentially cunctatory, though heartily friendly in his
counsel to Olaf as to the King question. Aasta had a Spartan tone in her wild
maternal heart; and assures Olaf that she, with a half-reproachful glance at
Sigurd, will stand by him to the death in this his just and noble enterprise.
Sigurd promises to consult farther in his neighborhood, and to correspond by
messages; the result is, Olaf resolutely pushing forward himself, resolves to
call a Thing, and openly claim his kingship there. The Thing itself was willing
enough: opposition parties do here and there bestir themselves; but Olaf is
always swifter than they. Five kinglets somewhere in the Uplands,[11]--all
descendants of Haarfagr; but averse to break the
peace, which Jarl Eric and Hakon Jarl both have always willingly allowed to
peaceable people,--seem to be the main opposition party. These five take the
field against Olaf with what force they have; Olaf, one night, by beautiful
celerity and strategic practice which a Friedrich or a Turenne might have
approved, surrounds these Five; and when morning breaks, there is nothing for
them but either death, or else instant surrender, and swearing of fealty to
King Olaf. Which latter branch of the alternative they gladly accept, the whole
five of them, and go home again.
This was a
beautiful bit of war-practice by King Olaf on land. By another stroke still
more compendious at sea, he had already settled poor young Hakon, and made him
peaceable for a long while. Olaf by diligent quest and spy-messaging, had
ascertained that Hakon, just returning from Denmark and farewell to Papa and
Knut, both now under way for England, was coasting north towards Trondhjem; and intended on or about such a day to land in
such and such a fjord towards the end of this Trondhjem voyage. Olaf at once mans two big ships, steers through the narrow mouth of the
said fjord, moors one ship on the north shore, another on the south; fixes a
strong cable, well sunk under water, to the capstans of these two; and in all
quietness waits for Hakon. Before many hours, Hakon’s royal or quasi-royal
barge steers gaily into this fjord; is a little surprised, perhaps, to see
within the jaws of it two big ships at anchor, but steers gallantly along,
nothing doubting. Olaf with a signal of “All hands”, works his two capstans;
has the cable up high enough at the right moment, catches with it the keel of
poor Hako’`s barge, upsets it, empties it wholly into
the sea. Wholly into the sea; saves Hakon, however, and his people from
drowning, and brings them on board. His dialogue with poor young Hakon,
especially poor young Hakon’s responses, is very pretty. Shall I give it, out
of Snorro, and let the reader take it for as
authentic as he can? It is at least the true image of it in authentic Snorro’s head, little more than two centuries later.
“Jarl Hakon
was led up to the king’s ship. He was the handsomest man that could be seen. He
had long hair as fine as silk, bound about his head with a gold ornament. When
he sat down in the forehold the king said to him:
King. It is not
false, what is said of your family, that ye are handsome people to look at; but
now your luck has deserted you.
Hakon. It has
always been the case that success is changeable; and there is no luck in the
matter. It has gone with your family as with mine to have by turns the better
lot. I am little beyond childhood in years; and at any rate we could not have
defended ourselves, as we did not expect any attack on the way. It may turn out
better with us another time.
King. Dost thou
not apprehend that thou art in such a condition that, hereafter, there can be
neither victory nor defeat for thee?
Hakon. That is
what only thou canst determine, King, according to thy pleasure.
King. What wilt
thou give me, Jarl, if, for this time, I let thee go, whole and unhurt?
Hakon. What wilt
thou take, King?`
King. Nothing,
except that thou shalt leave the country; give up thy kingdom; and take an oath
that thou wilt never go into battle against me.
Jarl Hakon
accepted the generous terms; went to England and King Knut, and kept his
bargain for a good few years; though he was at last driven, by pressure of King
Knut, to violate it,--little to his profit, as we shall see. One victorious
naval battle with Jarl Svein, Hakon’s uncle, and his adherents, who fled to
Sweden, after his beating,--battle not difficult to a skilful,
hard-hitting king,--was pretty much all the actual fighting Olaf had to do in
this enterprise. He various times met angry Bonders and refractory Things with
arms in their hand; but by skilful, firm
management,--perfectly patient, but also perfectly ready to be active,--he
mostly managed without coming to strokes; and was universally recognized by
Norway as its real king. A promising young man, and fit to be a king, thinks Snorro. Only of middle stature, almost rather shortish; but
firm-standing, and stout-built; so that they got to call him Olaf the Thick
(meaning Olaf the Thick-set, or Stout-built), though his final epithet among
them was infinitely higher. For the rest, “a comely, earnest, prepossessing
look; beautiful yellow hair in quantity; broad, honest face, of a complexion
pure as snow and rose”; and finally (or firstly) "the brightest eyes in
the world; such that, in his anger, no man could stand them." He had a
heavy task ahead, and needed all his qualities and fine gifts to get it done.
X
REIGN OF KING OLAF THE SAINT
The late
two Jarls, now gone about their business, had both been baptized, and called
themselves Christians. But during their government they did nothing in the
conversion way; left every man to choose his own God or Gods; so that some had
actually two, the Christian God by land, and at sea Thor, whom they considered
safer in that element. And in effect the mass of the people had fallen back
into a sluggish heathenism or half-heathenism, the life-labor of Olaf Tryggveson lying ruinous or almost quite overset. The new
Olaf, son of Harald, set himself with all his strength to mend such a state of
matters; and stood by his enterprise to the end, as the one highest interest,
including all others, for his People and him. His method was by no means soft;
on the contrary, it was hard, rapid, severe,--somewhat on the model of Tryggveson’s, though with more of bishoping and
preaching superadded. Yet still there was a great deal of mauling, vigorous
punishing, and an entire intolerance of these two things: Heathenism and
Sea-robbery, at least of Sea-robbery in the old style; whether in the style we
moderns still practise, and call privateering, I do
not quite know. But Vikingism proper had to cease in
Norway; still more, Heathenism, under penalties too severe to be borne; death,
mutilation of limb, not to mention forfeiture and less rigorous coercion. Olaf
was inexorable against violation of the law. “Too severe”, cried many; to whom
one answers, “Perhaps in part yes, perhaps also in great part no;
depends altogether on the previous question, How far the law was the eternal
one of God Almighty in the universe, How far the law merely of Olaf (destitute
of right inspiration) left to his own passions and whims?”
Many were
the jangles Olaf had with the refractory Heathen Things and Ironbeards of a new generation: very curious to see. Scarcely ever did it come to fighting
between King and Thing, though often enough near it; but the Thing discerning,
as it usually did in time, that the King was stronger in men, seemed to say
unanimously to itself, “We have lost, then; baptize us, we must burn our old
gods and conform”. One new feature we do slightly discern: here and there a
touch of theological argument on the heathen side. At one wild Thing, far up in
the Dovrefjeld, of a very heathen temper, there was
much of that; not to be quenched by King Olaf at the moment; so that it had to
be adjourned till the morrow, and again till the next day. Here are some traits
of it, much abridged from Snorro (who gives a highly
punctual account), which vividly represent Olaf`s posture and manner of
proceeding in such intricacies.
The chief Ironbeard on this occasion was one Gudbrand, a very rugged
peasant; who, says Snorro, was like a king in that
district. Some days before, King Olaf, intending a religious Thing in those
deeply heathen parts, with alternative of Christianity or conflagration, is
reported, on looking down into the valley and the beautiful village of Loar standing
there, to have said wistfully, “What a pity it is that so beautiful a village
should be burnt!”. Olaf sent out his message-token all the, same, however, and
met Gudbrand and an immense assemblage, whose humor towards him was uncompliant
to a high degree indeed. Judge by this preliminary speech of Gudbrand to his
Thing-people, while Olaf was not yet arrived, but only advancing, hardly got to
Breeden on the other side of the hill: “A man has come to Loar who is called
Olaf”, said Gudbrand, “and will force upon us another faith than we had before,
and will break in pieces all our Gods. He says he has a much greater and more
powerful God; and it is wonderful that the earth does not burst asunder under
him, or that our God lets him go about unpunished when he dares to talk such
things. I know this for certain, that if we carry Thor, who has always stood by
us, out of our Temple that is standing upon this farm, Olaf`s God will melt
away, and he and his men be made nothing as soon as Thor looks upon them”.
Whereupon the Bonders all shouted as one man, “Yea!”
Which
tremendous message they even forwarded to Olaf, by Gudbrand’s younger son at
the head of 700 armed men; but did not terrify Olaf with it, who, on the
contrary, drew up his troops, rode himself at the head of them, and began a
speech to the Bonders, in which he invited them to adopt Christianity, as the
one true faith for mortals.
Far from
consenting to this, the Bonders raised a general shout, smiting at the same
time their shields with their weapons; but Olaf`s men advancing on them
swiftly, and flinging spears, they turned and ran, leaving Gudbrand’s son
behind, a prisoner, to whom Olaf gave his life: “Go home now to thy father, and
tell him I mean to be with him soon”. The son goes accordingly, and advises his
father not to face Olaf; but Gudbrand angrily replies: “Ha, coward! I see thou,
too, art taken by the folly that man is going about with”; and is resolved to
fight. That night, however, Gudbrand has a most remarkable Dream, or Vision: a
Man surrounded by light, bringing great terror with him, who warns Gudbrand
against doing battle with Olaf. “If thou dost, thou and all thy people will
fall; wolves will drag away thee and thine; ravens will tear thee in stripes!”.
And lo, in telling this to Thord Potbelly, a sturdy neighbor of his and
henchman in the Thing, it is found that to Thord also has come the self same
terrible Apparition! Better propose truce to Olaf (who seems to have these
dreadful Ghostly Powers on his side), and the holding of a Thing, to discuss
matters between us. Thing assembles, on a day of heavy rain. Being all seated,
uprises King Olaf, and informs them: "The people of Lesso, Loar, and
Vaage, have accepted Christianity, and broken down their idol-houses: they
believe now in the True God, who has made heaven and earth, and knows all
things;" and sits down again without more words.
Gudbrand
replies, “We know nothing about him of whom thou speakest.
Dost thou call him God, whom neither thou nor any one else can see? But we have
a God who can be seen every day, although he is not out to-day because the
weather is wet; and he will appear to thee terrible and very grand; and I
expect that fear will mix with thy very blood when he comes into the Thing. But
since thou sayest thy God is so great, let him make it so that to-morrow we
have a cloudy day, but without rain, and then let us meet again”.
The king
accordingly returned home to his lodging, taking Gudbrand’s son as a hostage;
but he gave them a man as hostage in exchange. In the evening the king asked
Gudbrand’s son What their God was like? He replied that he bore the likeness of
Thor; had a hammer in his hand; was of great size, but hollow within; and had a
high stand, upon which he stood when he was out. “Neither gold nor silver are
wanting about him, and every day he receives four cakes of bread, besides
meat”. They then went to bed; but the king watched all night in prayer. When
day dawned the king went to mass; then to table, and from thence to the Thing.
The weather was such as Gudbrand desired. Now the Bishop stood up in his
choir-robes, with bishop’s coif on his head, and bishop’s crosier in his hand.
He spoke to the Bonders of the true faith, told the many wonderful acts of God,
and concluded his speech well.
Thord
Potbelly replies, “Many things we are told of by this learned man with the
staff in his hand, crooked at the top like a ram`s horn. But since you say,
comrades, that your God is so powerful, and can do so many wonders, tell him to
make it clear sunshine to-morrow forenoon, and then we shall meet here again,
and do one of two things,--either agree with you about this business, or fight
you”. And they separated for the day.
Overnight
the king instructed Kolbein the Strong, an immense fellow, the same who killed
Gunhild’s two brothers, that he, Kolbein, must stand next him to-morrow; people
must go down to where the ships of the Bonders lay, and punctually bore holes
in every one of them; item, to the farms where their horses wore, and
punctually unhalter the whole of them, and let them
loose: all which was done. Snorro continues:--
“Now the
king was in prayer all night, beseeching God of his goodness and mercy to
release him from evil. When mass was ended, and morning was gray, the king went
to the Thing. When he came thither, some Bonders had already arrived, and they
saw a great crowd coming along, and bearing among them a huge man’s image,
glancing with gold and silver. When the Bonders who were at the Thing saw it,
they started up, and bowed themselves down before the ugly idol. Thereupon it
was set down upon the Thing field; and on the one side of it sat the Bonders,
and on the other the King and his people.
Then Dale
Gudbrand stood up and said, “Where now, king, is thy God? I think he will now
carry his head lower; and neither thou, nor the man with the horn, sitting
beside thee there, whom thou callest Bishop, are so
bold to-day as on the former days. For now our God, who rules over all, is
come, and looks on you with an angry eye; and now I see well enough that you
are terrified, and scarcely dare raise your eyes. Throw away now all your
opposition, and believe in the God who has your fate wholly in his hands”.
The king
now whispers to Kolbein the Strong, without the Bonders perceiving it, “If it
come so in the course of my speech that the Bonders look another way than
towards their idol, strike him as hard as thou canst with thy club”.
The king
then stood up and spoke. “Much hast thou talked to us this morning, and greatly
hast thou wondered that thou canst not see our God; but we expect that he will
soon come to us. Thou wouldst frighten us with thy God, who is both blind and
deaf, and cannot even move about without being carried; but now I expect it
will be but a short time before he meets his fate: for turn your eyes towards
the east,--behold our God advancing in great light”.
The sun was
rising, and all turned to look. At that moment Kolbein gave their God a stroke,
so that he quite burst asunder; and there ran out of him mice as big almost as
cats, and reptiles and adders. The Bonders were so terrified that some fled to
their ships; but when they sprang out upon them the ships filled with water,
and could not get away. Others ran to their horses, but could not find them.
The king then ordered the Bonders to be called together, saying he wanted to
speak with them; on which the Bonders came back, and the Thing was again
seated.
The king
rose up and said, “I do not understand what your noise and running mean. You
yourselves see what your God can do,--the idol you adorned with gold and
silver, and brought meat and provisions to. You see now that the protecting
powers, who used and got good of all that, were the mice and adders, the
reptiles and lizards; and surely they do ill who trust to such, and will not
abandon this folly. Take now your gold and ornaments that are lying strewed on
the grass, and give them to your wives and daughters, but never hang them
hereafter upon stocks and stones. Here are two conditions between us to choose
upon: either accept Christianity, or fight this very day, and the victory be to
them to whom the God we worship gives it”.
Then Dale
Gudbrand stood up and said, “We have sustained great damage upon our God; but
since he will not help us, we will believe in the God whom thou believest in”.
Then all
received Christianity. The Bishop baptized Gudbrand and his son. King Olaf and
Bishop Sigurd left behind them teachers; and they who met as enemies parted as
friends. And afterwards Gudbrand built a church in the valley.
Olaf was by
no means an unmerciful man,--much the reverse where he saw good cause. There
was a wicked old King Raerik, for example, one of
those five kinglets whom, with their bits of armaments, Olaf by stratagem had
surrounded one night, and at once bagged and subjected when morning rose, all
of them consenting; all of them except this Raerik,
whom Olaf, as the readiest sure course, took home with him; blinded, and kept
in his own house; finding there was no alternative but that or death to the
obstinate old dog, who was a kind of distant cousin withal, and could not
conscientiously be killed. Stone-blind old Raerik was
not always in murderous humor. Indeed, for most part he wore a placid,
conciliatory aspect, and said shrewd amusing things; but had thrice over tried,
with amazing cunning of contrivance, though stone-blind, to thrust a dagger
into Olaf and the last time had all but succeeded. So that, as Olaf still
refused to have him killed, it had become a problem what was to be done with
him. Olaf`s good humor, as well as his quiet, ready sense and
practicality, are manifested in his final settlement of this Raerik problem. Olaf`s laugh, I can perceive, was not so
loud as Tryggveson’s but equally hearty, coming from
the bright mind of him!
Besides
blind Raerik, Olaf had in his household one Thorarin, an Icelander; a remarkably ugly man, says Snorro, but a far-travelled, shrewdly observant,
loyal-minded, and good-humored person, whom Olaf liked to talk with.
“Remarkably ugly”, says Snorro, “especially in his
hands and feet, which were large and ill-shaped to a degree”. One morning Thorarin, who, with other trusted ones, slept in Olaf`s
apartment, was lazily dozing and yawning, and had stretched one of his feet out
of the bed before the king awoke. The foot was still there when Olaf did open
his bright eyes, which instantly lighted on this foot.
“Well, here
is a foot”, says Olaf, gayly, “which one seldom sees the match of; I durst
venture there is not another so ugly in this city of Nidaros”.
“Hah,
king!” said Thorarin, “there are few things one
cannot match if one seek long and take pains. I would bet, with thy permission,
King, to find an uglier”.
“Done!”
cried Olaf. Upon which Thorarin stretched out the
other foot.
“A still
uglier”, cried he; “for it has lost the little toe”.
“Ho, ho!”
said Olaf; “but it is I who have gained the bet. The less of
an ugly thing the less ugly, not the more!”
Loyal Thorarin respectfully submitted.
“What is to
be my penalty, then? The king it is that must decide”.
“To take me
that wicked old Raerik to Leif Ericson in Greenland”.
Which the
Icelander did; leaving two vacant seats henceforth at Olaf`s table. Leif
Ericson, son of Eric discoverer of America, quietly managed Raerik henceforth; sent him to Iceland,--I think to father Eric himself; certainly to
some safe hand there, in whose house, or in some still quieter neighboring
lodging, at his own choice, old Raerik spent the last
three years of his life in a perfectly quiescent manner.
Olaf`s
struggles in the matter of religion had actually settled that question in
Norway. By these rough methods of his, whatever we may think of them,
Heathenism had got itself smashed dead; and was no more heard of in that
country. Olaf himself was evidently a highly devout and pious man;--whosoever
is born with Olaf`s temper now will still find, as Olaf did, new and infinite
field for it! Christianity in Norway had the like fertility as in other
countries; or even rose to a higher, and what Dahlmann thinks, exuberant pitch,
in the course of the two centuries which followed that of Olaf. Him all
testimony represents to us as a most righteous no less than most religious
king. Continually vigilant, just, and rigorous was Olaf`s administration of the
laws; repression of robbery, punishment of injustice, stern repayment of
evil-doers, wherever he could lay hold of them.
Among the
Bonder or opulent class, and indeed everywhere, for the poor too can be sinners
and need punishment, Olaf had, by this course of conduct, naturally made
enemies. His severity so visible to all, and the justice and infinite
beneficence of it so invisible except to a very few. But, at any rate, his
reign for the first ten years was victorious; and might have been so to the
end, had it not been intersected, and interfered with, by King Knut in his far
bigger orbit and current of affairs and interests. Knut’s English affairs and
Danish being all settled to his mind, he seems, especially after that year of
pilgrimage to Rome, and association with the Pontiffs and Kaisers of the world
on that occasion, to have turned his more particular attention upon Norway, and
the claims he himself had there. Jarl Hakon, too, sister’s son of Knut, and
always well seen by him, had long been busy in this direction, much forgetful
of that oath to Olaf when his barge got canted over by the cable of two
capstans, and his life was given him, not without conditions altogether!
About the
year 1026 there arrived two splendid persons out of England, bearing King Knut
the Great`s letter and seal, with a message, likely enough to be far from
welcome to Olaf. For some days Olaf refused to see them or their letter,
shrewdly guessing what the purport would be. Which indeed was couched in mild
language, but of sharp meaning enough: a notice to King Olaf namely, That
Norway was properly, by just heritage, Knut the Great’s; and that Olaf must
become the great Knut’s liegeman, and pay tribute to him, or worse would
follow. King Olaf listening to these two splendid persons and their letter, in
indignant silence till they quite ended, made answer: “I have heard say, by old
accounts there are, that King Gorm of Denmark [Blue-tooth’s father, Knut’s
great-grandfather] was considered but a small king; having Denmark only and few
people to rule over. But the kings who succeeded him thought that insufficient
for them; and it has since come so far that King Knut rules over both Denmark
and England, and has conquered for himself a part of Scotland. And now he
claims also my paternal bit of heritage; cannot be contented without that too.
Does he wish to rule over all the countries of the North? Can he eat up all the
kale in England itself, this Knut the Great? He shall do that, and reduce his
England to a desert, before I lay my head in his hands, or show him any other
kind of vassalage. And so I bid you tell him these my words: I will defend
Norway with battle-axe and sword as long as life is given me, and will pay tax
to no man for my kingdom”. Words which naturally irritated Knut to a high
degree.
Next year
accordingly (year 1027), tenth or eleventh year of Olaf`s reign, there came bad
rumors out of England: That Knut was equipping an immense army,--land-army, and
such a fleet as had never sailed before; Knut’s own ship in it,--a Gold Dragon
with no fewer than sixty benches of oars. Olaf and Onund King of Sweden, whose sister he had married, well guessed whither this armament
was bound. They were friends withal, they recognized their common peril in this
imminence; and had, in repeated consultations, taken measures the best that
their united skill (which I find was mainly Olaf’s but loyally accepted by the
other) could suggest. It was in this year that Olaf (with his Swedish king
assisting) did his grand feat upon Knut in Lymfjord of Jutland, which was already spoken of. The special circumstances of which
were these:
Knut`s big
armament arriving on the Jutish coasts too late in the season, and the coast
country lying all plundered into temporary wreck by the two Norse kings, who
shrank away on sight of Knut, there was nothing could be done upon them by Knut
this year,--or, if anything, what? Knut’s ships ran into Lymfjord,
the safe-sheltered frith, or intricate long straggle
of friths and straits, which almost cuts Jutland in
two in that region; and lay safe, idly rocking on the waters there, uncertain
what to do farther. At last he steered in his big ship and some others, deeper
into the interior of Lymfjord, deeper and deeper
onwards to the mouth of a big river called the Helge (Helge-aa, the Holy
River, not discoverable in my poor maps, but certainly enough still existing
and still flowing somewhere among those intricate straits and friths), towards the bottom of which Helge river lay, in
some safe nook, the small combined Swedish and Norse fleet, under the charge of Onund, the Swedish king, while at the top or source,
which is a biggish mountain lake, King Olaf had been doing considerable
engineering works, well suited to such an occasion, and was now ready at a
moment`s notice. Knut’s fleet having idly taken station here, notice from the
Swedish king was instantly sent; instantly Olaf`s well-engineered flood-gates
were thrown open; from the swollen lake a huge deluge of water was let loose;
Olaf himself with all his people hastening down to join his Swedish friend, and
get on board in time; Helge river all the while alongside of him, with
ever-increasing roar, and wider-spreading deluge, hastening down the steeps in
the night-watches. So that, along with Olaf or some way ahead of him, came
immeasurable roaring waste of waters upon Knut`s negligent fleet; shattered,
broke, and stranded many of his ships, and was within a trifle of destroying
the Golden Dragon herself, with Knut on board. Olaf and Onund,
we need not say, were promptly there in person, doing their very best; the
railings of the Golden Dragon, however, were too high for their little ships;
and Jarl Ulf, husband of Knut`s sister, at the top of his speed, courageously
intervening, spoiled their stratagem, and saved Knut from this very dangerous
pass.
Knut did
nothing more this winter. The two Norse kings, quite unequal to attack such an
armament, except by ambush and engineering, sailed away; again plundering at
discretion on the Danish coast; carrying into Sweden great booties and many
prisoners; but obliged to lie fixed all winter; and indeed to leave their
fleets there for a series of winters,--Knut’s fleet, posted at Elsinore on both
sides of the Sound, rendering all egress from the Baltic impossible, except at
his pleasure. Ulf`s opportune deliverance of his royal brother-in-law did not
much bestead poor Ulf himself. He had been in disfavor before, pardoned with
difficulty, by Queen Emma`s intercession; an ambitious, officious, pushing,
stirring, and, both in England and Denmark, almost dangerous man; and this
conspicuous accidental merit only awoke new jealousy in Knut. Knut, finding
nothing pass the Sound worth much blockading, went ashore; “and the day before
Michaelmas”, says Snorro, “rode with a great retinue
to Roeskilde”. Snorro continues his tragic narrative of what befell there:
“There
Knut’s brother-in-law, Jarl Ulf, had prepared a great feast for him. The Jarl
was the most agreeable of hosts; but the King was silent and sullen. The Jarl
talked to him in every way to make him cheerful, and brought forward everything
he could think of to amuse him; but the King remained stern, and speaking
little. At last the Jarl proposed a game of chess, which he agreed to. A
chess-board was produced, and they played together. Jarl Ulf was hasty in
temper, stiff, and in nothing yielding; but everything he managed went on well
in his hands: and he was a great warrior, about whom there are many stories. He
was the most powerful man in Denmark next to the King. Jarl Ulf`s sister, Gyda,
was married to Jarl Gudin (Godwin) Ulfnadson; and
their sons were, Harald King of England, and Jarl Tosti, Jarl Walthiof, Jarl Mauro-Kaare, and Jarl Svein. Gyda was the
name of their daughter, who was married to the English King Edward, the Good
(whom we call the Confessor).
“When they
had played a while, the King made a false move; on which the Jarl took a knight
from him; but the King set the piece on the board again, and told the Jarl to
make another move. But the Jarl flew angry, tumbled the chess-board over, rose,
and went away. The King said, “Run thy ways, Ulf the Fearful”. The Jarl turned
round at the door and said, “Thou wouldst have run farther at Helge river hadst
thou been left to battle there. Thou didst not call me Ulf the Fearful when I
hastened to thy help while the Swedes were beating thee like a dog”. The Jarl
then went out, and went to bed.
The
following morning, while the King was putting on his clothes, he said to his
footboy, “Go thou to Jarl Ulf and kill him”. The lad went, was away a while,
and then came back. The King said, “Hast thou killed the Jarl?”. “I did not
kill him, for he was gone to St. Lucius’s church”. There was a man called Ivar
the White, a Norwegian by birth, who was the King’s courtman and chamberlain. The King said to him, “Go thou and kill the Jarl”. Ivar went
to the church, and in at the choir, and thrust his sword through the Jarl, who
died on the spot. Then Ivar went to the King, with the bloody sword in his
hand.
The King
said, “Hast thou killed the Jarl?” “I have killed him”, said he. “Thou hast
done well”, answered the King." I
From a man
who built so many churches (one on each battlefield where he had fought, to say
nothing of the others), and who had in him such depths of real devotion and
other fine cosmic quality, this does seem rather strong! But it is
characteristic, withal,--of the man, and perhaps of the times still more. In
any case, it is an event worth noting, the slain Jarl Ulf and his connections
being of importance in the history of Denmark and of England also. Ulf`s wife
was Astrid, sister of Knut, and their only child was Svein, styled afterwards
"Svein Estrithson" ("Astrid-son")
when he became noted in the world,--at this time a beardless youth, who, on the
back of this tragedy, fled hastily to Sweden, where were friends of Ulf. After
some ten years` eclipse there, Knut and both his sons being now dead, Svein
reappeared in Denmark under a new and eminent figure, "Jarl of
Denmark," highest Liegeman to the then sovereign there. Broke his oath to
said sovereign, declared himself, Svein Estrithson,
to be real King of Denmark; and, after much preliminary trouble, and many
beatings and disastrous flights to and fro, became in
effect such,--to the wonder of mankind; for he had not had one victory to cheer
him on, or any good luck or merit that one sees, except that of surviving
longer than some others. Nevertheless he came to be the Restorer, so called, of
Danish independence; sole remaining representative of Knut (or Knut`s sister),
of Fork-beard, Blue-tooth, and Old Gorm; and ancestor of all the subsequent
kings of Denmark for some 400 years; himself coming, as we see, only by the
Distaff side, all of the Sword or male side having died so soon. Early death,
it has been observed, was the Great Knut`s allotment, and all his posterity’s
as well;--fatal limit (had there been no others, which we see there were) to
his becoming “Charlemagne of the North” in any considerable degree! Jarl Ulf,
as we have seen, had a sister, Gyda by name, wife to Earl Godwin (“Gudin Ulfnadsson”, as Snorro calls him)
a very memorable Englishman, whose son and hers, King Harald, Harold in
English books, is the memorablest of all. These
things ought to be better known to English antiquaries, and will perhaps be
alluded to again.
This pretty
little victory or affront, gained over Knut in Lymfjord,
was among the last successes of Olaf against that mighty man. Olaf, the skilful captain he was, need not have despaired to defend
his Norway against Knut and all the world. But he learned henceforth, month by
month ever more tragically, that his own people, seeing softer prospects under
Knut, and in particular the chiefs of them, industriously bribed by Knut for
years past, had fallen away from him; and that his means of defence were gone. Next summer, Knut`s grand fleet sailed, unopposed, along the coast
of Norway; Knut summoning a Thing every here and there, and in all of them
meeting nothing but sky-high acclamation and acceptance. Olaf, with some twelve
little ships, all he now had, lay quiet in some safe fjord, near Lindenaes, what we now call the Naze, behind some little
solitary isles on the southeast of Norway there; till triumphant Knut had
streamed home again. Home to England again "Sovereign of Norway" now,
with nephew Hakon appointed Jarl and Vice-regent under him! This was the news
Olaf met on venturing out; and that his worst anticipations were not beyond the
sad truth all, or almost all, the chief Bonders and men of weight in Norway had
declared against him, and stood with triumphant Knut.
Olaf, with
his twelve poor ships, steered vigorously along the coast to collect money and
force,--if such could now anywhere be had. He himself was resolute to hold out,
and try. “Sailing swiftly with a fair wind, morning cloudy with some showers”,
he passed the coast of Jedderen, which was Erling Skjalgson’s country, when he got sure notice of an endless
multitude of ships, war-ships, armed merchant ships, all kinds of
shipping-craft, down to fishermen’s boats, just getting under way against him,
under the command of Erling Skjalgson,-- the powerfulest of his subjects, once much a friend of Olaf`s
but now gone against him to this length, thanks to Olaf`s severity of justice,
and Knut’s abundance in gold and promises for years back. To that complexion
had it come with Erling; sailing with this immense assemblage of the naval
people and populace of Norway to seize King Olaf, and bring him to the great
Knut dead or alive.
Erling had
a grand new ship of his own, which far outsailed the general miscellany of
rebel ships, and was visibly fast gaining distance on Olaf himself,--who well
understood what Erling’s puzzle was, between the tail of his game (the
miscellany of rebel ships, namely) that could not come up, and the head or
general prize of the game which was crowding all sail to get away; and Olaf
took advantage of the same. “Lower your sails!” said Olaf to his men (though we
must go slower).
“Ho you, we
have lost sight of them!” said Erling to his, and put on all his speed; Olaf
going, soon after this, altogether invisible,--behind a little island that he
knew of, whence into a certain fjord or bay (Bay of Fungen on the maps), which he thought would suit him. “Halt here, and get out your
arms”, said Olaf, and had not to wait long till Erling came bounding in, past
the rocky promontory, and with astonishment beheld Olaf`s fleet of twelve with
their battle-axes and their grappling-irons all in perfect readiness. These
fell on him, the unready Erling, simultaneous, like a cluster of angry bees;
and in a few minutes cleared his ship of men altogether, except Erling himself.
Nobody asked his life, nor probably would have got it if he had. Only Erling
still stood erect on a high place on the poop, fiercely defensive, and very
difficult to get at. “Could not be reached at all”, says Snorro,
“except by spears or arrows, and these he warded off with untiring dexterity;
no man in Norway, it was said, had ever defended himself so long alone against
many”,--an almost invincible Erling, had his cause been good. Olaf himself
noticed Erling’s behavior, and said to him, from the foredeck below, “Thou hast
turned against me today, Erling”. “The eagles fight breast to breast”, answers
he. This was a speech of the king’s to Erling once long ago, while they stood
fighting, not as now, but side by side. The king, with some transient thought
of possibility going through his head, rejoins, “Wilt thou surrender, Erling?”.
“That will I”, answered he; took the helmet off his head; laid down sword and
shield; and went forward to the forecastle deck. The king pricked, I think not
very harshly, into Erling’s chin or beard with the point of his battle-axe,
saying, "I must mark thee as traitor to thy Sovereign, though."
Whereupon one of the bystanders, Aslak Fitiaskalle,
stupidly and fiercely burst up; smote Erling on the head with his axe; so that
it struck fast in his brain and was instantly the death of Erling. “Ill-luck
attend thee for that stroke; thou hast struck Norway out of my hand by it!”
cried the king to Aslak; but forgave the poor fellow, who had done it meaning
well. The insurrectionary Bonder fleet arriving soon after, as if for certain
victory, was struck with astonishment at this Erling catastrophe; and being now
without any leader of authority, made not the least attempt at battle; but,
full of discouragement and consternation, thankfully allowed Olaf to sail away
on his northward voyage, at discretion; and themselves went off lamenting, with
Erling’s dead body.
This small
victory was the last that Olaf had over his many enemies at present. He sailed
along, still northward, day after day; several important people joined him; but
the news from landward grew daily more ominous: Bonders busily arming to rear
of him; and ahead, Hakon still more busily at Trondhjem,
now near by, —“and he will end thy days, King, if he have strength enough!”.
Olaf paused; sent scouts to a hill-top: “Hakon’s armament visible enough, and
under way hitherward, about the Isle of Bjarno, yonder!”. Soon after, Olaf
himself saw the Bonder armament of twenty-five ships, from the southward, sail
past in the distance to join that of Hakon; and, worse still, his own ships,
one and another (seven in all), were slipping off on a like errand! He made for
the Fjord of Fodrar, mouth of the rugged strath
called Valdal,--which I think still knows Olaf and has now an “Olaf’s Highway”,
where, nine centuries ago, it scarcely had a path. Olaf entered this fjord, had
his land-tent set up, and a cross beside it, on the small level green behind
the promontory there. Finding that his twelve poor ships were now reduced to
five, against a world all risen upon him, he could not but see and admit to
himself that there was no chance left; and that he must withdraw across the
mountains and wait for a better time.
His journey
through that wild country, in these forlorn and straitened circumstances, has a
mournful dignity and homely pathos, as described by Snorro:
how he drew up his five poor ships upon the beach, packed all their furniture
away, and with his hundred or so of attendants and their journey-baggage, under
guidance of some friendly Bonder, rode up into the desert and foot of the
mountains; scaled, after three days` effort (as if by miracle, thought his
attendants and thought Snorro), the well-nigh precipitous
slope that led across, never without miraculous aid from Heaven and Olaf could
baggage-wagons have ascended that path! In short, How he fared along, beset by
difficulties and the mournfulest thoughts; but
patiently persisted, steadfastly trusted in God; and was fixed to return, and
by God`s help try again. An evidently very pious and devout man; a good man
struggling with adversity, such as the gods, we may still imagine with the
ancients, do look down upon as their noblest sight.
He got to
Sweden, to the court of his brother-in-law; kindly and nobly enough received
there, though gradually, perhaps, ill-seen by the now authorities of Norway. So
that, before long, he quitted Sweden; left his queen there with her only
daughter, his and hers, the only child they had; he himself had an only son,
“by a bondwoman”, Magnus by name, who came to great things afterwards; of whom,
and of which, by and by. With this bright little boy, and a selected escort of
attendants, he moved away to Russia, to King Jarroslav;
where he might wait secure against all risk of hurting kind friends by his
presence. He seems to have been an exile altogether some two years,--such is
one`s vague notion; for there is no chronology in Snorro or his Sagas, and one is reduced to guessing and inferring. He had reigned over
Norway, reckoning from the first days of his landing there to those last of his
leaving it across the Dovrefjeld, about fifteen
years, ten of them shiningly victorious.
The news
from Norway were naturally agitating to King Olaf and, in the fluctuation of
events there, his purposes and prospects varied much. He sometimes thought of
pilgriming to Jerusalem, and a henceforth exclusively religious life; but for
most part his pious thoughts themselves gravitated towards Norway, and a stroke
for his old place and task there, which he steadily considered to have been
committed to him by God. Norway, by the rumors, was evidently not at rest. Jarl
Hakon, under the high patronage of his uncle, had lasted there but a little
while. I know not that his government was especially unpopular, nor whether he
himself much remembered his broken oath. It appears, however, he had left in
England a beautiful bride; and considering farther that in England only could
bridal ornaments and other wedding outfit of a sufficiently royal kind be
found, he set sail thither, to fetch her and them himself. One evening of
wildish-looking weather he was seen about the northeast corner of the Pentland
Frith; the night rose to be tempestuous; Hakon or any timber of his fleet was
never seen more. Had all gone down,--broken oaths, bridal hopes, and all else;
mouse and man,--into the roaring waters. There was no farther Opposition-line;
the like of which had lasted ever since old heathen Hakon Jarl, down to this
his grandson Hakon’s finis in the
Pentland Frith. With this Hakon’s disappearance it now disappeared.
Indeed Knut
himself, though of an empire suddenly so great, was but a temporary phenomenon.
Fate had decided that the grand and wise Knut was to be short-lived; and to
leave nothing as successors but an ineffectual young Harald Harefoot,
who soon perished, and a still stupider fiercely-drinking Harda-Knut, who
rushed down of apoplexy (here in London City, as I guess), with the goblet at
his mouth, drinking health and happiness at a wedding-feast, also before long.
Hakon
having vanished in this dark way, there ensued a pause, both on Knut`s part and
on Norway`s. Pause or interregnum of some months, till it became certain,
first, whether Hakon were actually dead, secondly, till Norway, and especially
till King Knut himself, could decide what to do. Knut, to the deep
disappointment, which had to keep itself silent, of three or four chief Norway
men, named none of these three or four Jarl of Norway; but bethought him of a
certain Svein, a bastard son of his own,--who, and almost still more his
English mother, much desired a career in the world fitter for him, thought they
indignantly, than that of captain over Jomsburg,
where alone the father had been able to provide for him hitherto. Svein was
sent to Norway as king or vice-king for Father Knut; and along with him his
fond and vehement mother. Neither of whom gained any favor from the Norse
people by the kind of management they ultimately came to show.
Olaf on
news of this change, and such uncertainty prevailing everywhere in Norway as to
the future course of things, whether Svein would come, as was rumored of at
last, and be able to maintain himself if he did,--thought there might be
something in it of a chance for himself and his rights. And, after lengthened
hesitation, much prayer, pious invocation, and consideration, decided to go and
try it. The final grain that had turned the balance, it appears, was a
half-waking morning dream, or almost ocular vision he had of his glorious
cousin Olaf Tryggveson, who severely admonished,
exhorted, and encouraged him; and disappeared grandly, just in the instant of
Olaf’s awakening; so that Olaf almost fancied he had seen the very figure of
him, as it melted into air. “Let us on, let us on!” thought Olaf always after
that. He left his son, not in Russia, but in Sweden with the Queen, who proved
very good and carefully helpful in wise ways to him:--in Russia Olaf had now
nothing more to do but give his grateful adieus, and get ready.
His march
towards Sweden, and from that towards Norway and the passes of the mountains,
down Vaerdal, towards Stickelstad,
and the crisis that awaited, is beautifully depicted by Snorro.
It has, all of it, the description (and we see clearly, the fact itself had), a
kind of pathetic grandeur, simplicity, and rude nobleness; something Epic or
Homeric, without the metre or the singing of Homer,
but with all the sincerity, rugged truth to nature, and much more of piety,
devoutness, reverence for what is forever High in this Universe, than meets us
in those old Greek Ballad-mongers. Singularly visual all of it, too, brought
home in every particular to one`s imagination, so that it stands out almost as
a thing one actually saw.
Olaf had
about three thousand men with him; gathered mostly as he fared along through
Norway. Four hundred, raised by one Dag, a kinsman whom he had found in Sweden
and persuaded to come with him, marched usually in a separate body; and were,
or might have been, rather an important element. Learning that the Bonders were
all arming, especially in Trondhjem country, Olaf
streamed down towards them in the closest order he could. By no means very
close, subsistence even for three thousand being difficult in such a country.
His speech was almost always free and cheerful, though his thoughts always
naturally were of a high and earnest, almost sacred tone; devout above all. Stickelstad, a small poor hamlet still standing where the
valley ends, was seen by Olaf, and tacitly by the Bonders as well, to be the
natural place for offering battle. There Olaf issued out from the hills one
morning: drew himself up according to the best rules of Norse tactics, rules of
little complexity, but perspicuously true to the facts. I think he had a clear
open ground still rather raised above the plain in front; he could see how the
Bonder army had not yet quite arrived, but was pouring forward, in spontaneous
rows or groups, copiously by every path. This was thought to be the biggest
army that ever met in Norway; “certainly not much fewer than a hundred times a
hundred men”, according to Snorro; great Bonders
several of them, small Bonders very many,--all of willing mind, animated with a
hot sense of intolerable injuries. “King Olaf had punished great and small with
equal rigor”, says Snorro; “which appeared to the
chief people of the country too severe; and animosity rose to the highest when
they lost relatives by the King’s just sentence, although they were in reality
guilty. He again would rather renounce his dignity than omit righteous judgment.
The accusation against him, of being stingy with his money, was not just, for
he was a most generous man towards his friends. But that alone was the cause of
the discontent raised against him, that he appeared hard and severe in his
retributions. Besides, King Knut offered large sums of money, and the great
chiefs were corrupted by this, and by his offering them greater dignities than
they had possessed before”. On these grounds, against the intolerable man,
great and small were now pouring along by every path.
Olaf
perceived it would still be some time before the Bonder army was in rank. His
own Dag of Sweden, too, was not yet come up; he was to have the right banner;
King Olaf’s own being the middle or grand one; some other person the third or
left banner. All which being perfectly ranked and settled, according to the
best rules, and waiting only the arrival of Dag, Olaf bade his men sit down,
and freshen themselves with a little rest. There were religious services gone
through: a matins-worship such as there have been few; sternly earnest to the
heart of it, and deep as death and eternity, at least on Olaf’s own part. For
the rest Thormod sang a stave of the fiercest Skaldic poetry that was in him;
all the army straightway sang it in chorus with fiery mind. The Bonder of the
nearest farm came up, to tell Olaf that he also wished to fight for him “Thanks
to thee; but don’t”, said Olaf; “stay at home rather, that the wounded may have
some shelter”. To this Bonder, Olaf delivered all the money he had, with solemn
order to lay out the whole of it in masses and prayers for the souls of such of
his enemies as fell. “Such of thy enemies, King?”. “Yes, surely”, said Olaf,
“my friends will all either conquer, or go whither I also am going”.
At last the
Bonder army too was got ranked; three commanders, one of them with a kind of
loose chief command, having settled to take charge of it; and began to shake
itself towards actual advance. Olaf, in the mean while, had laid his head on
the knees of Finn Arneson, his trustiest man, and fallen fast asleep. Finn’s
brother, Kalf Arneson, once a warm friend of Olaf, was chief of the three
commanders on the opposite side. Finn and he addressed angry speech to one
another from the opposite ranks, when they came near enough. Finn, seeing the
enemy fairly approach, stirred Olaf from his sleep. “Oh, why hast thou wakened
me from such a dream?” said Olaf, in a deeply solemn tone. “What dream was it,
then?” asked Finn. “I dreamt that there rose a ladder here reaching up to very
Heaven”, said Olaf; “I had climbed and climbed, and got to the very last step,
and should have entered there hadst thou given me another moment”. “King, I
doubt thou art fey; I do not quite like that dream”.
The actual
fight began about one of the clock in a most bright last day of July, and was
very fierce and hot, especially on the part of Olaf`s men, who shook the others
back a little, though fierce enough they too; and had Dag been on the ground,
which he wasn’t yet, it was thought victory might have been won. Soon after
battle joined, the sky grew of a ghastly brass or copper color, darker and
darker, till thick night involved all things; and did not clear away again till
battle was near ending. Dag, with his four hundred, arrived in the darkness,
and made a furious charge, what was afterwards, in the speech of the people,
called “Dag’s storm”. Which had nearly prevailed, but could not quite; victory
again inclining to the so vastly larger party. It is uncertain still how the
matter would have gone; for Olaf himself was now fighting with his own hand,
and doing deadly execution on his busiest enemies to right and to left. But one
of these chief rebels, Thorer Hund (thought to have learnt magic from the Laplanders,
whom he long traded with, and made money by), mysteriously would not fall for
Olaf’s best strokes. Best strokes brought only dust from the (enchanted)
deer-skin coat of the fellow, to Olaf’s surprise,--when another of the rebel
chiefs rushed forward, struck Olaf with his battle-axe, a wild slashing wound,
and miserably broke his thigh, so that he staggered or was supported back to
the nearest stone; and there sat down, lamentably calling on God to help him in
this bad hour. Another rebel of note (the name of him long memorable in Norway)
slashed or stabbed Olaf a second time, as did then a third. Upon which the
noble Olaf sank dead; and forever quitted this doghole of a world,--little
worthy of such men as Olaf one sometimes thinks. But that too is a mistake, and
even an important one, should we persist in it.
With Olaf’s
death the sky cleared again. Battle, now near done, ended with complete victory
to the rebels, and next to no pursuit or result, except the death of Olaf
everybody hastening home, as soon as the big Duel had decided itself. Olaf`s
body was secretly carried, after dark, to some out-house on the farm near the
spot; whither a poor blind beggar, creeping in for shelter that very evening,
was miraculously restored to sight. And, truly with a notable, almost
miraculous, speed, the feelings of all Norway for King Olaf changed themselves,
and were turned upside down, “within a year”, or almost within a day.
Superlative example of Extinctus amabitur idem. Not “Olaf the Thick-set” any longer, but
“Olaf the Blessed” or Saint, now clearly in Heaven; such the name and character
of him from that time to this. Two churches dedicated to him (out of four that
once stood) stand in London at this moment. And the miracles that have been
done there, not to speak of Norway and Christendom elsewhere, in his name, were
numerous and great for long centuries afterwards. Visibly a Saint Olaf ever
since; and, indeed, in Bollandus or
elsewhere, I have seldom met with better stuff to make a Saint of, or a true
World-Hero in all good senses.
Speaking of
the London Olaf Churches, I should have added that from one of these the
thrice-famous Tooley Street gets its name,--where those Three Tailors,
addressing Parliament and the Universe, sublimely styled themselves, “We, the
People of England”. Saint Olave Street, Saint Oley Street, Stooley Street, Tooley Street; such are the metamorphoses of human fame in the world!
The
battle-day of Stickelstad, King Olaf’s death-day, is
generally believed to have been Wednesday, July 31, 1033. But on investigation,
it turns out that there was no total eclipse of the sun visible in Norway that
year; though three years before, there was one; but on the 29th instead of the
31st. So that the exact date still remains uncertain; Dahlmann, the latest
critic, inclining for 1030, and its indisputable eclipse.
XI
MAGNUS THE GOOD AND OTHERS
St. Olaf is
the highest of these Norway Kings, and is the last that much attracts us. For
this reason, if a reason were not superfluous, we might here end our poor
reminiscences of those dim Sovereigns. But we will, nevertheless, for the sake
of their connection with bits of English History, still hastily mention the
Dames of one or two who follow, and who throw a momentary gleam of life and
illumination on events and epochs that have fallen so extinct among ourselves
at present, though once they were so momentous and memorable.
The new
King Svein from Jomsburg, Knut’s natural son, had no
success in Norway, nor seems to have deserved any. His English mother and he
were found to be grasping, oppressive persons; and awoke, almost from the
instant that Olaf was suppressed and crushed away from Norway into Heaven,
universal odium more and more in that country. Well-deservedly, as still
appears; for their taxings and extortions of malt, of
herring, of meal, smithwork and every article taxable
in Norway, were extreme; and their service to the country otherwise nearly
imperceptible. In brief their one basis there was the power of Knut the Great;
and that, like all earthly things, was liable to sudden collapse,--and it
suffered such in a notable degree. King Knut, hardly yet of middle age, and the
greatest King in the then world, died at Shaftesbury, in 1035, as Dahlmann
thinks[,--leaving two legitimate sons and a busy, intriguing widow (Norman
Emma, widow of Ethelred the Unready), mother of the younger of these two;
neither of whom proved to have any talent or any continuance. In spite of
Emma`s utmost efforts, Harald, the elder son of Knut, not hers, got England for
his kingdom; Emma and her Harda-Knut had to be content with Denmark, and go
thither, much against their will. Harald in England,--light-going little figure
like his father before him,--got the name of Harefoot here; and might have done good work among his now orderly and settled people;
but he died almost within year and day; and has left no trace among us, except
that of “Harefoot”, from his swift mode of walking.
Emma and her Harda-Knut now returned joyful to England. But the violent, idle,
and drunken Harda-Knut did no good there; and, happily for England and him,
soon suddenly ended, by stroke of apoplexy at a marriage festival, as mentioned
above. In Denmark he had done still less good. And indeed,--under him, in a
year or two, the grand imperial edifice, laboriously built by Knut`s valor and
wisdom, had already tumbled all to the ground, in a most unexpected and
remarkable way. As we are now to indicate with all brevity.
Svein’s
tyrannies in Norway had wrought such fruit that, within the four years after
Olaf`s death, the chief men in Norway, the very slayers of King Olaf, Kalf
Arneson at the head of them, met secretly once or twice; and unanimously agreed
that Kalf Arneson must go to Sweden, or to Russia itself; seek young Magnus,
son of Olaf home: excellent Magnus, to be king over all Norway and them,
instead of this intolerable Svein. Which was at once done,--Magnus brought home
in a kind of triumph, all Norway waiting for him. Intolerable Svein had already
been rebelled against: some years before this, a certain young Tryggve out of
Ireland, authentic son of Olaf Tryggveson, and of
that fine Irish Princess who chose him in his low habiliments and low estate,
and took him over to her own Green Island,--this royal young Tryggve Olafson
had invaded the usurper Svein, in a fierce, valiant, and determined manner; and
though with too small a party, showed excellent fight for some time; till
Svein, zealously bestirring himself, managed to get him beaten and killed. But
that was a couple of years ago; the party still too small, not including one
and all as now! Svein, without stroke of sword this time, moved off towards
Denmark; never showing face in Norway again. His drunken brother, Harda-Knut,
received him brother-like; even gave him some territory to rule over and
subsist upon. But he lived only a short while; was gone before Harda-Knut
himself; and we will mention him no more.
Magnus was
a fine bright young fellow, and proved a valiant, wise, and successful King,
known among his people as Magnus the Good. He was only natural son of King Olaf
but that made little difference in those times and there. His strange-looking,
unexpected Latin name he got in this way: Alfhild, his mother, a slave through
ill-luck of war, though nobly born, was seen to be in a hopeful way; and it was
known in the King`s house how intimately Olaf was connected with that
occurrence, and how much he loved this “King’s serving-maid”, as she was
commonly designated. Alfhild was brought to bed late at night; and all the
world, especially King Olaf was asleep; Olaf’s strict rule, then and always,
being, Don’t awaken me:--seemingly a man sensitive about his sleep. The child
was a boy, of rather weakly aspect; no important person present, except Sigvat, the King’s Icelandic Skald, who happened to be
still awake; and the Bishop of Norway, who, I suppose, had been sent for in
hurry. “What is to be done?” said the Bishop: “here is an infant in pressing
need of baptism; and we know not what the name is: go, Sigvat,
awaken the King, and ask”. “I dare not for my life”, answered Sigvat; “King’s orders are rigorous on that point”. “But if
the child die unbaptized”, said the Bishop, shuddering; too certain, he and
everybody, where the child would go in that case! “I will myself give him a
name”, said Sigvat, with a desperate concentration of
all his faculties; “he shall be namesake of the greatest of mankind,--imperial
Carolus Magnus; let us call the infant Magnus!”. King Olaf, on the morrow,
asked rather sharply how Sigvat had dared take such a
liberty; but excused Sigvat, seeing what the perilous
alternative was. And Magnus, by such accident, this boy was called; and he, not
another, is the prime origin and introducer of that name Magnus, which occurs
rather frequently, not among the Norman Kings only, but by and by among the
Danish and Swedish; and, among the Scandinavian populations, appears to be
rather frequent to this day.
Magnus, a
youth of great spirit, whose own, and standing at his beck, all Norway now was,
immediately smote home on Denmark; desirous naturally of vengeance for what it
had done to Norway, and the sacred kindred of Magnus. Denmark, its great Knut
gone, and nothing but a drunken Harda-Knut, fugitive Svein and Co., there in
his stead, was become a weak dislocated Country. And Magnus plundered in it,
burnt it, beat it, as often as he pleased; Harda-Knut struggling what he could
to make resistance or reprisals, but never once getting any victory over
Magnus. Magnus, I perceive, was, like his Father, a skilful as well as valiant fighter by sea and land; Magnus, with good battalions, and
probably backed by immediate alliance with Heaven and St. Olaf, as was then the
general belief or surmise about him, could not easily be beaten. And the truth
is, he never was, by Harda-Knut or any other. Harda-Knut’s last transaction
with him was, To make a firm Peace and even Family-treaty sanctioned by all the
grandees of both countries, who did indeed mainly themselves make it; their two
Kings assenting: That there should be perpetual Peace, and no thought of war
more, between Denmark and Norway; and that, if either of the Kings died
childless while the other was reigning, the other should succeed him in both
Kingdoms. A magnificent arrangement, such as has several times been made in the
world`s history; but which in this instance, what is very singular, took actual
effect; drunken Harda- Knut dying so speedily, and Magnus being the man he was.
One would like to give the date of this remarkable Treaty; but cannot with
precision. Guess somewhere about 1040: actual fruition of it came to Magnus,
beyond question, in 1042, when Harda-Knut drank that wassail bowl at the
wedding in Lambeth, and fell down dead; which in the Saxon Chronicle is dated
3d June of that year. Magnus at once went to Denmark on hearing this event; was
joyfully received by the headmen there, who indeed, with their fellows in
Norway, had been main contrivers of the Treaty; both Countries longing for
mutual peace, and the end of such incessant broils.
Magnus was
triumphantly received as King in Denmark. The only unfortunate thing was, that
Svein Estrithson, the exile son of Ulf, Knut’s
Brother-in-law, whom Knut, as we saw, had summarily killed twelve years before,
emerged from his exile in Sweden in a flattering form; and proposed that Magnus
should make him Jarl of Denmark, and general administrator there, in his own
stead. To which the sanguine Magnus, in spite of advice to the contrary,
insisted on acceding. “Too powerful a Jarl”, said Einar Tamberskelver--the
same Einar whose bow was heard to break in Olaf Tryggveson’s last battle (“Norway breaking from thy hand, King!”), who had now become
Magnus’s chief man, and had long been among the highest chiefs in Norway; “too
powerful a Jarl”, said Einar earnestly. But Magnus disregarded it; and a
troublesome experience had to teach him that it was true. In about a year,
crafty Svein, bringing ends to meet, got himself declared King of Denmark for
his own behoof, instead of Jarl for another’s: and had to be beaten and driven
out by Magnus. Beaten every year; but almost always returned next year, for a
new beating,--almost, though not altogether; having at length got one dreadful
smashing-down and half-killing, which held him quiet for a while,--so long as
Magnus lived. Nay in the end, he made good his point, as if by mere patience in
being beaten; and did become King himself, and progenitor of all the Kings that
followed. King Svein Estrithson; so called from
Astrid or Estrith, his mother, the great Knut’s sister, daughter of Svein
Forkbeard by that amazing Sigrid the Proud, who burnt those
two ineligible suitors of hers both at once, and got a switch on the face from
Olaf Tryggveson, which proved the death of that high
man.
But all
this fine fortune of the often beaten Estrithson was
posterior to Magnus`s death; who never would have suffered it, had he been
alive. Magnus was a mighty fighter; a fiery man; very proud and positive, among
other qualities, and had such luck as was never seen before. Luck invariably
good, said everybody; never once was beaten,--which proves, continued
everybody, that his Father Olaf and the miraculous power of Heaven were with
him always. Magnus, I believe, did put down a great deal of anarchy in those
countries. One of his earliest enterprises was to abolish Jomsburg,
and trample out that nest of pirates. Which he managed so completely that Jomsburg remained a mere reminiscence thenceforth; and its
place is not now known to any mortal.
One
perverse thing did at last turn up in the course of Magnus: a new Claimant for
the Crown of Norway, and he a formidable person withal. This was Harald,
half-brother of the late Saint Olaf; uncle or half-uncle, therefore, of Magnus
himself. Indisputable son of the Saint’s mother by St. Olaf`s stepfather, who
was, himself descended straight from Harald Haarfagr.
This new Harald was already much heard of in the world. As an ardent Boy of
fifteen he had fought at King Olaf`s side at Stickelstad;
would not be admonished by the Saint to go away. Got smitten down there, not
killed; was smuggled away that night from the field by friendly help; got cured
of his wounds, forwarded to Russia, where he grew to man`s estate, under bright
auspices and successes. Fell in love with the Russian Princess, but could not
get her to wife; went off thereupon to Constantinople as Vaeringer (Life-Guardsman of the Greek Kaiser);
became Chief Captain of the Vaeringers, invincible
champion of the poor Kaisers that then were, and filled all the East with the
shine and noise of his exploits. An authentic Waring or Baring,
such the surname we now have derived from these people; who were an important
institution in those Greek countries for several ages: Vaeringer Life-Guard, consisting of Norsemen, with sometimes a few English among them.
Harald had innumerable adventures, nearly always successful, sing the Skalds;
gained a great deal of wealth, gold ornaments, and gold coin; had even Queen
Zoe (so they sing, though falsely) enamored of him at one time; and was himself
a Skald of eminence; some of whose verses, by no means the worst of their kind,
remain to this day.
This
character of Waring much distinguishes Harald to me; the only Vaeringer of whom I could ever get the least biography,
true or half-true. It seems the Greek History-books but indifferently
correspond with these Saga records; and scholars say there could have been no
considerable romance between Zoe and him, Zoe at that date being 60 years of
age! Harald’s own lays say nothing of any Zoe, but are still full of longing
for his Russian Princess far away.
At last,
what with Zoes, what with Greek perversities and perfidies, and troubles that
could not fail, he determined on quitting Greece; packed up his immensities of
wealth in succinct shape, and actually returned to Russia, where new honors and
favors awaited him from old friends, and especially, if I mistake not, the hand
of that adorable Princess, crown of all his wishes for the time being. Before
long, however, he decided farther to look after his Norway Royal heritages;
and, for that purpose, sailed in force to the Jarl or quasi-King of Denmark,
the often-beaten Svein, who was now in Sweden on his usual winter exile after
beating. Svein and he had evidently interests in common. Svein was charmed to
see him, so warlike, glorious and renowned a man, with masses of money about
him, too. Svein did by and by become treacherous; and even attempted, one
night, to assassinate Harald in his bed on board ship: but Harald, vigilant of
Svein, and a man of quick and sure insight, had providently gone to sleep elsewhere,
leaving a log instead of himself among the blankets. In which log, next
morning, treacherous Svein’s battle-axe was found deeply sticking: and could
not be removed without difficulty! But this was after Harald and King Magnus
himself bad begun treating; with the fairest prospects,--which this of the
$vein battle-axe naturally tended to forward, as it altogether ended the other copartnery.
Magnus, on
first hearing of Vaeringer Harald and his intentions,
made instant equipment, and determination to fight his uttermost against the
same. But wise persons of influence round him, as did the like sort round Vaeringer Harald, earnestly advised compromise and
peaceable agreement. Which, soon after that of Svein’s nocturnal battle-axe,
was the course adopted; and, to the joy of all parties, did prove a successful
solution. Magnus agreed to part his kingdom with Uncle Harald; uncle parting
his treasures, or uniting them with Magnus`s poverty. Each was to be an
independent king, but they were to govern in common; Magnus rather presiding.
He, to sit, for example, in the High Seat alone; King Harald opposite him in a
seat not quite so high, though if a stranger King came on a visit, both the
Norse Kings were to sit in the High Seat. With various other punctilious
regulations; which the fiery Magnus was extremely strict with; rendering the
mutual relation a very dangerous one, had not both the Kings been honest men,
and Harald a much more prudent and tolerant one than Magnus. They, on the
whole, never had any weighty quarrel, thanks now and then rather to Harald than
to Magnus. Magnus too was very noble; and Harald, with his wide experience and
greater length of years, carefully held his heat of temper well covered in.
Prior to
Uncle Harald`s coming, Magnus had distinguished himself as a Lawgiver. His Code
of Laws for the Trondhjem Province was considered a
pretty piece of legislation; and in subsequent times got the name of Gray-goose (Gragas);
one of the wonderfulest names ever given to a wise
Book. Some say it came from the gray color of the parchment, some give other
incredible origins; the last guess I have heard is, that the name merely
denotes antiquity; the witty name in Norway for a man growing old having been,
in those times, that he was now “becoming a gray-goose”. Very fantastic indeed;
certain, however, that Gray-goose is the name of that venerable Law Book; nay,
there is another, still more famous, belonging to Iceland, and not far from a
century younger, the Iceland Gray-goose. The Norway one is perhaps
of date about 1037, the other of about 1118; peace be with them both! Or, if
anybody is inclined to such matters let him go to Dahlmann, for the amplest
information and such minuteness of detail as might almost enable him to be an
Advocate, with Silk Gown, in any Court depending on these Gray-geese.
Magnus did
not live long. He had a dream one night of his Father Olaf`s coming to him in
shining presence, and announcing, That a magnificent fortune and world-great
renown was now possible for him; but that perhaps it was his duty to refuse it;
in which case his earthly life would be short. "Which way wilt thou do,
then?" said the shining presence. "Thou shalt decide for me, Father,
thou, not I!" and told his Uncle Harald on the morrow, adding that he
thought he should now soon die; which proved to be the fact. The magnificent
fortune, so questionable otherwise, has reference, no doubt, to the Conquest of
England; to which country Magnus, as rightful and actual King of Denmark, as
well as undisputed heir to drunken Harda-Knut, by treaty long ago, had now some
evident claim. The enterprise itself was reserved to the patient, gay, and
prudent Uncle Harald; and to him it did prove fatal,--and merely paved the way
for Another, luckier, not likelier!
Svein Estrithson, always beaten during Magnus`s life, by and by
got an agreement from the prudent Harald to be King of
Denmark, then; and end these wearisome and ineffectual brabbles; Harald having
other work to do. But in the autumn of 1066, Tosti, a younger son of our
English Earl Godwin, came to Svein’s court with a most important announcement;
namely, that King Edward the Confessor, so called, was dead, and that Harold,
as the English write it, his eldest brother would give him, Tosti, no
sufficient share in the kingship. Which state of matters, if Svein would go
ahead with him to rectify it, would be greatly to the advantage of Svein.
Svein, taught by many beatings, was too wise for this proposal; refused Tosti,
who indignantly stepped over into Norway, and proposed it to King Harald there.
Svein really had acquired considerable teaching, I should guess, from his much
beating and hard experience in the world; one finds him afterwards the esteemed
friend of the famous Historian Adam of Bremen, who reports various wise
humanities, and pleasant discoursings with Svein Estrithson.
As for
Harald Hardrade, “Harald the Hard or Severe”, as he
was now called, Tosti’s proposal awakened in him all his old Vaeringer ambitious and cupidities into blazing vehemence. He zealously consented; and at once, with his whole
strength, embarked in the adventure. Fitted out two hundred ships, and the
biggest army he could carry in them; and sailed with Tosti towards the
dangerous Promised Land. Got into the Tyne and took booty; got into the Humber,
thence into the Ouse; easily subdued any opposition the official people or
their populations could make; victoriously scattered these, victoriously took
the City of York in a day; and even got himself homaged there, “King of Northumberland”, as per covenant,--Tosti proving
honorable,--Tosti and he going with faithful strict copartnery,
and all things looking prosperous and glorious. Except only (an important
exception!) that they learnt for certain, English Harold was advancing with all
his strength; and, in a measurable space of hours, unless care were taken, would
be in York himself. Harald and Tosti hastened off to seize the post of Stamford
Bridge on Derwent River, six or seven miles east of York City, and there bar
this dangerous advent. Their own ships lay not far off in Ouse River, in case
of the worst. The battle that ensued the next day, September 20, 1066, is
forever memorable in English history.
Snorro gives vividly enough his view of it from the
Icelandic side: A ring of stalwart Norsemen, close ranked, with their steel
tools in hand; English Harold’s Army, mostly cavalry, prancing and pricking all
around; trying to find or make some opening in that ring. For a long time
trying in vain, till at length, getting them enticed to burst out somewhere in
pursuit, they quickly turned round, and quickly made an end, of that matter. Snorro represents English Harold, with a first party of
these horse coming up, and, with preliminary salutations, asking if Tosti were
there, and if Harald were; making generous proposals to Tosti; but, in regard
to Harald and what share of England was to be his, answering Tosti with the
words, “Seven feet of English earth, or more if he require it, for a grave”.
Upon which Tosti, like an honorable man and copartner, said, “No, never; let us
fight you rather till we all die”. “Who is this that spoke to you?” inquired
Harald, when the cavaliers had withdrawn. “My brother Harold”, answers Tosti;
which looks rather like a Saga, but may be historical after all. Snorro’s history of the battle is intelligible only after
you have premised to it, what he never hints at, that the scene was on the east
side of the bridge and of the Derwent; the great struggle for the bridge, one
at last finds, was after the fall of Harald; and to the English Chroniclers,
said struggle, which was abundantly severe, is all they know of the battle.
Enraged at
that breaking loose of his steel ring of infantry, Norse Harald blazed up into
true Norse fury, all the old Vaeringer and Berserkir rage awakening in him; sprang forth into the
front of the fight, and mauled and cut and smashed down, on both hands of him,
everything he met, irresistible by any horse or man, till an arrow cut him
through the windpipe, and laid him low forever. That was the end of King Harald
and of his workings in this world. The circumstance that he was a Waring or
Baring and had smitten to pieces so many Oriental cohorts or crowds, and had
made love-verses (kind of iron madrigals) to his Russian Princess, and caught
the fancy of questionable Greek queens, and had amassed such heaps of money,
while poor nephew Magnus had only one gold ring (which had been his father`s,
and even his father’s mother’s, as Uncle Harald noticed), and
nothing more whatever of that precious metal to combine with Harald’s
treasures:--all this is new to me, naturally no hint of it in any English book;
and lends some gleam of romantic splendor to that dim business of Stamford
Bridge, now fallen so dull and torpid to most English minds, transcendently
important as it once was to all Englishmen. Adam of Bremen says, the English
got as much gold plunder from Harald’s people as was a heavy burden for twelve
men; a thing evidently impossible, which nobody need try to believe. Young
Olaf, Harald’s son, age about sixteen, steering down the Ouse at the top of his
speed, escaped home to Norway with all his ships, and subsequently reigned
there with Magnus, his brother. Harald’s body did lie in English earth for
about a year; but was then brought to Norway for burial. He needed more than
seven feet of grave, say some; Laing, interpreting Snorro’s measurements, makes Harald eight feet in stature,--I do hope, with some error
in excess!
XII
OLAF THE TRANQUIL, MAGNUS
BAREFOOT, AND SIGURD THE CRUSADER
The new
King Olaf, his brother Magnus having soon died, bore rule in Norway for some
five-and-twenty years. Rule soft and gentle, not like his father`s, and
inclining rather to improvement in the arts and elegancies than to anything
severe or dangerously laborious. A slim-built, witty-talking, popular and
pretty man, with uncommonly bright eyes, and hair like floss silk: they called
him Olaf Kyrre (the Tranquil or Easygoing).
The
ceremonials of the palace were much improved by him. Palace still continued to
be built of huge logs pyramidally sloping upwards, with fireplace in the middle
of the floor, and no egress for smoke or ingress for light except right
overhead, which, in bad weather, you could shut, or all but shut, with a lid.
Lid originally made of mere opaque board, but changed latterly into a light
frame, covered (glazed, so to speak) with entrails of animals, clarified
into something of pellucidity. All this Olaf, I hope, further perfected, as he
did the placing of the court ladies, court officials, and the like; but I doubt
if the luxury of a glass window were ever known to him, or a cup to drink from
that was not made of metal or horn. In fact it is chiefly for his son`s sake I
mention him here; and with the son, too, I have little real concern, but only a
kind of fantastic.
This son
bears the name of Magnus Barfod (Barefoot, or Bareleg); and if you ask why so, the answer is: He was used
to appear in the streets of Nidaros (Trondhjem) now
and then in complete Scotch Highland dress. Authentic tartan plaid and
philibeg, at that epoch,--to the wonder of Trondhjem and us! The truth is, he had a mighty fancy for those Hebrides and other Scotch
possessions of his; and seeing England now quite impossible, eagerly speculated
on some conquest in Ireland as next best. He did, in fact, go diligently
voyaging and inspecting among those Orkney and Hebridian Isles; putting everything straight there, appointing stringent authorities,
jarls,--nay, a king, “Kingdom of the Suderoer” (Southern Isles, now
called Sodor),--and, as first king, Sigurd, his pretty little boy
of nine years. All which done, and some quarrel with Sweden fought out, he
seriously applied himself to visiting in a still more emphatic manner; namely,
to invading, with his best skill and strength, the considerable virtual or
actual kingdom he had in Ireland, intending fully to enlarge it to the utmost
limits of the Island if possible. He got prosperously into Dublin (guess A.D.
1102). Considerable authority he already had, even among those poor Irish
Kings, or kinglets, in their glibs and yellow-saffron
gowns; still more, I suppose, among the numerous Norse Principalities there.
“King Murdog, King of Ireland”, says the Chronicle of
Man, “had obliged himself, every Yule-day, to take a pair of shoes, hang them
over his shoulder, as your servant does on a journey, and walk across his
court, at bidding and in presence of Magnus Barefoot’s messenger, by way of
homage to the said “King”. Murdog on this greater
occasion did whatever homage could be required of him; but that, though
comfortable, was far from satisfying the great King’s ambitious mind. The great
King left Murdog; left his own Dublin; marched off
westward on a general conquest of Ireland. Marched easily victorious for a
time; and got, some say, into the wilds of Connaught, but there saw himself
beset by ambuscades and wild Irish countenances intent on mischief; and had, on
the sudden, to draw up for battle;--place, I regret to say, altogether
undiscoverable to me; known only that it was boggy in the extreme. Certain
enough, too certain and evident, Magnus Barefoot, searching eagerly, could find
no firm footing there; nor, fighting furiously up to the knees or deeper, any
result but honorable death! Date is confidently marked “24 August, 1103”,--as
if people knew the very day of the month. The natives did humanely give King
Magnus Christian burial. The remnants of his force, without further
molestation, found their ships on the Coast of Ulster; and sailed
home,--without conquest of Ireland; nay perhaps, leaving royal Murdog disposed to be relieved of his procession with the
pair of shoes.
Magnus
Barefoot left three sons, all kings at once, reigning peaceably together. But
to us, at present, the only noteworthy one of them was Sigurd; who, finding
nothing special to do at home, left his brothers to manage for him, and went
off on a far Voyage, which has rendered him distinguishable in the crowd.
Voyage through the Straits of Gibraltar, on to Jerusalem, thence to
Constantinople; and so home through Russia, shining with such renown as filled
all Norway for the time being. A King called Sigurd Jorsalafarer (Jerusalemer) or Sigurd the Crusader henceforth. His
voyage had been only partially of the Viking type; in general it was of the
Royal-Progress kind rather; Vikingism only
intervening in cases of incivility or the like. His reception in the Courts of
Portugal, Spain, Sicily, Italy, had been honorable and sumptuous. The King of
Jerusalem broke out into utmost splendor and effusion at sight of such a
pilgrim; and Constantinople did its highest honors to such a Prince of Vaeringers. And the truth is, Sigurd intrinsically was a
wise, able, and prudent man; who, surviving both his brothers, reigned a good
while alone in a solid and successful way. He shows features of an original,
independent-thinking man; something of ruggedly strong, sincere, and honest,
with peculiarities that are amiable and even pathetic in the character and
temperament of him; as certainly, the course of life he took was of his own
choosing, and peculiar enough. He happens furthermore to be, what he least of
all could have chosen or expected, the last of the Haarfagr Genealogy that had any success, or much deserved any, in this world. The last
of the Haarfagrs, or as good as the last! So that,
singular to say, it is in reality, for one thing only that Sigurd, after all
his crusadings and wonderful adventures, is memorable
to us here: the advent of an Irish gentleman called “Gylle Krist” (Gil-christ, Servant of Christ), who,--not over welcome, I
should think, but (unconsciously) big with the above result,--appeared in
Norway, while King Sigurd was supreme. Let us explain a little.
This Gylle
Krist, the unconsciously fatal individual, who “spoke Norse imperfectly”,
declared himself to be the natural son of whilom Magnus Barefoot; born to him
there while engaged in that unfortunate “Conquest of Ireland”. “Here is my
mother come with me”, said Gilchrist, “who declares my real baptismal name to
have been Harald, given me by that great King; and who will carry the red-hot
ploughshares or do any reasonable ordeal in testimony of these facts. I am King
Sigurd’s veritable half-brother: what will King Sigurd think it fair to do with
me?”. Sigurd clearly seems to have believed the man to be speaking truth; and
indeed nobody to have doubted but he was. Sigurd said, “Honorable sustenance
shalt thou have from me here. But, under pain of extirpation, swear that,
neither in my time, nor in that of my young son Magnus, wilt thou ever claim
any share in this Government”. Gylle swore; and punctually kept his promise
during Sigurd’s reign. But during Magnus’s, he conspicuously broke it; and, in
result, through many reigns, and during three or four generations afterwards,
produced unspeakable contentions, massacrings,
confusions in the country he had adopted. There are reckoned, from the time of
Sigurd’s death (A.D. 1130), about a hundred years of civil war: no king allowed
to distinguish himself by a solid reign of well-doing, or by any continuing
reign at all,--sometimes as many as four kings simultaneously fighting;--and in
Norway, from sire to son, nothing but sanguinary anarchy, disaster and
bewilderment; a Country sinking steadily as if towards absolute ruin. Of all
which frightful misery and discord Irish Gylle, styled afterwards King Harald
Gylle, was, by ill destiny and otherwise, the visible origin: an illegitimate
Irish Haarfagr who proved to be his own destruction,
and that of the Haarfagr kindred altogether!
Sigurd
himself seems always to have rather favored Gylle, who was a cheerful, shrewd,
patient, witty, and effective fellow; and had at first much quizzing to endure,
from the younger kind, on account of his Irish way of speaking Norse, and for
other reasons. One evening, for example, while the drink was going round, Gylle
mentioned that the Irish had a wonderful talent of swift running and that there
were among them people who could keep up with the swiftest horse. At which,
especially from young Magnus, there were peals of laughter; and a declaration
from the latter that Gylle and he would have it tried to-morrow morning! Gylle
in vain urged that he had not himself professed to be so swift a runner as to
keep up with the Prince’s horses; but only that there were men in Ireland who
could. Magnus was positive; and, early next morning, Gylle had to be on the
ground; and the race, naturally under heavy bet, actually went off. Gylle
started parallel to Magnus`s stirrup; ran like a very roe, and was clearly ahead
at the goal. “Unfair”, said Magnus; “thou must have had hold of my
stirrup-leather, and helped thyself along; we must try it again”. Gylle ran
behind the horse this second time; then at the end, sprang forward; and again
was fairly in ahead. “Thou must have held by the tail”, said Magnus; “not by
fair running was this possible; we must try a third time!”. Gylle started ahead
of Magnus and his horse, this third time; kept ahead with increasing distance,
Magnus galloping his very best; and reached the goal more palpably foremost
than ever. So that Magnus had to pay his bet, and other damage and humiliation.
And got from his father, who heard of it soon afterwards, scoffing rebuke as a
silly fellow, who did not know the worth of men, but only the clothes and rank
of them, and well deserved what he had got from Gylle. All the time King Sigurd
lived, Gylle seems to have had good recognition and protection from that famous
man; and, indeed, to have gained favor all round, by his quiet social demeanor
and the qualities he showed.
XIII
MAGNUS THE BLIND, HARALD
GYLLE, AND MUTUAL EXTINCTION OF THE HAARFAGRS.
On Sigurd
the Crusader’s death, Magnus naturally came to the throne; Gylle keeping
silence and a cheerful face for the time. But it was not long till claim arose
on Gylle’s part, till war and fight arose between Magnus and him, till the skilful, popular, ever-active and shifty Gylle had entirely
beaten Magnus; put out his eyes, mutilated the poor body of him in a horrid and
unnamable manner, and shut him up in a convent as out of the game henceforth.
There in his dark misery Magnus lived now as a monk; called “Magnus the Blind”
by those Norse populations; King Harald Gylle reigning victoriously in his
stead. But this also was only for a time. There arose avenging kinsfolk of
Magnus, who had no Irish accent in their Norse, and were themselves eager
enough to bear rule in their native country. By one of these,--a terribly
stronghanded, fighting, violent, and regardless fellow, who also was a Bastard
of Magnus Barefoot’s, and had been made a Priest, but liked it unbearably ill,
and had broken loose from it into the wildest courses at home and abroad; so
that his current name got to be “Slembi-diakn”, Slim
or Ill Deacon, under which he is much noised of in Snorro and the Sagas: by this Slim-Deacon, Gylle was put an end to (murdered by night,
drunk in his sleep); and poor blind Magnus was brought out, and again set to
act as King, or King’s Cloak, in hopes Gylle’s posterity would never rise to
victory more. But Gylle’s posterity did, to victory and also to defeat, and
were the death of Magnus and of Slim-Deacon too, in a frightful way; and all
got their own death by and by in a ditto. In brief, these two kindreds
(reckoned to be authentic enough Haarfagr people,
both kinds of them) proved now to have become a veritable crop of dragon`s
teeth; who mutually fought, plotted, struggled, as if it had been their life`s
business; never ended fighting and seldom long intermitted it, till they had
exterminated one another, and did at last all rest in death. One of these later
Gylle temporary Kings I remember by the name of Harald Herdebred,
Harald of the Broad Shoulders. The very last of them I think was Harald Mund
(Harald of the Wry-Mouth), who gave rise to two Impostors,
pretending to be Sons of his, a good while after the poor Wry-Mouth itself and
all its troublesome belongings were quietly underground. What Norway suffered
during that sad century may be imagined.
XIV
SVERRIR AND DESCENDANTS, TO
HAKON THE OLD.
The end of
it was, or rather the first abatement, and beginnings of the
end. That, when all this had gone on ever worsening for some forty years or so,
one Sverrir (A.D. 1177), at the head of an armed mob of poor people
called Birkebeins, came upon the scene. A
strange enough figure in History, this Sverrir and his Birkebeins!
At first a mere mockery and dismal laughing-stock to the enlightened Norway
public. Nevertheless by unheard-of fighting, hungering, exertion, and
endurance, Sverrir, after ten years of such a death-wrestle against men and
things, got himself accepted as King; and by wonderful expenditure of
ingenuity, common cunning, unctuous Parliamentary Eloquence or almost Popular
Preaching, and (it must be owned) general human faculty and valor (or value) in
the over-clouded and distorted state, did victoriously continue such. And
founded a new Dynasty in Norway, which ended only with Norway`s separate
existence, after near three hundred years.
This
Sverrir called himself a Son of Harald Wry-Mouth; but was in reality the son of
a poor Comb-maker in some little town of Norway; nothing heard of Sonship to
Wry-Mouth till after good success otherwise. His Birkebeins (that is to say, Birchlegs; the poor
rebellious wretches having taken to the woods; and been obliged, besides their
intolerable scarcity of food, to thatch their bodies from the cold with
whatever covering could be got, and their legs especially with birch bark; sad
species of fleecy hosiery; whence their nickname),--his Birkebeins I guess always to have been a kind of Norse Jacquerie: desperate
rising of thralls and indigent people, driven mad by their unendurable
sufferings and famishings,--theirs the deepest stratum
of misery, and the densest and heaviest, in this the general misery of Norway,
which had lasted towards the third generation and looked as if it would last
forever:--whereupon they had risen proclaiming, in this furious dumb manner,
unintelligible except to Heaven, that the same could not, nor would not, be
endured any longer! And, by their Sverrir, strange to say, they did attain a
kind of permanent success; and, from being a dismal laughing-stock in Norway,
came to be important, and for a time all-important there. Their opposition
nicknames, “Baglers (from Bagall, baculus, bishop’s staff; Bishop
Nicholas being chief Leader)”, “Gold-legs”, and the like obscure terms
(for there was still a considerable course of counter-fighting ahead, and
especially of counter-nicknaming), I take to have meant in Norse prefigurement seven centuries ago, “bloated Aristocracy”,
“tyrannous-Bourgeoisie”,--till, in the next century, these rents were
closed again!
King
Sverrir, not himself bred to comb-making, had, in his fifth year, gone to an
uncle, Bishop in the Faroe Islands; and got some considerable education from
him, with a view to Priesthood on the part of Sverrir. But, not liking that
career, Sverrir had fled and smuggled himself over to the Birkebeins;
who, noticing the learned tongue, and other miraculous qualities of the man,
proposed to make him Captain of them; and even threatened to kill him if he
would not accept,--which thus at the sword’s point, as Sverrir says, he was
obliged to do. It was after this that he thought of becoming son of Wry-Mouth
and other higher things.
His Birkebeins and he had certainly a talent of campaigning
which has hardly ever been equalled. They fought like
devils against any odds of number; and before battle they have been known to
march six days together without food, except, perhaps, the inner barks of
trees, and in such clothing and shoeing as mere birch bark:--at one time,
somewhere in the Dovrefjeld, there was serious
counsel held among them whether they should not all, as one man, leap down into
the frozen gulfs and precipices, or at once massacre one another wholly, and so
finish. Of their conduct in battle, fiercer than that of Baresarks,
where was there ever seen the parallel? In truth they are a dim strange object
to one, in that black time; wondrously bringing light into it withal; and
proved to be, under such unexpected circumstances, the beginning of better
days!
Of
Sverrir’s public speeches there still exist authentic specimens; wonderful
indeed, and much characteristic of such a Sverrir. A comb-maker King, evidently
meaning several good and solid things; and effecting them too, athwart such an
element of Norwegian chaos-come-again. His descendants and successors were a
comparatively respectable kin. The last and greatest of them I shall mention is
Hakon VII, or Hakon the Old; whose fame is still lively among us, from the
Battle of Largs at least.
XV
HAKON THE OLD AT LARGS
In the
Norse annals our famous Battle of Largs makes small figure, or almost none at
all among Hakon’s battles and feats. They do say indeed, these Norse annalists,
that the King of Scotland, Alexander III (who had such a fate among the crags
about Kinghorn in time coming), was very anxious to purchase from King Hakon
his sovereignty of the Western Isles, but that Hakon pointedly refused; and at
length, being again importuned and bothered on the business, decided on giving
a refusal that could not be mistaken. Decided, namely, to go with a big
expedition, and look thoroughly into that wing of his Dominions; where no doubt
much has fallen awry since Magnus Barefoot’s grand visit thither, and seems to
be inviting the cupidity of bad neighbors! “All this we will put right again”,
thinks Hakon, “and gird it up into a safe and defensive posture”. Hakon sailed
accordingly, with a strong fleet; adjusting and rectifying among his Hebrides
as he went long, and landing withal on the Scotch coast to plunder and punish as
he thought fit. The Scots say he had claimed of them Arran, Bute, and the Two Cumbraes ("given my ancestors by Donald Bain,"
said Hakon, to the amazement of the Scots) “as part of the Sudoer”
(Southern Isles): --so far from selling that fine kingdom!--and that it was
after taking both Arran and Bute that he made his descent at Largs.
Of Largs
there is no mention whatever in Norse books. But beyond any doubt, such is the
other evidence, Hakon did land there; land and fight, not conquering, probably
rather beaten; and very certainly “retiring to his ships”, as in either case he
behooved to do! It is further certain he was dreadfully maltreated by the
weather on those wild coasts; and altogether credible, as the Scotch records
bear, that he was so at Largs very specially. The Norse Records or Sagas say
merely, he lost many of his ships by the tempests, and many of his men by land
fighting in various parts,--tacitly including Largs, no doubt, which was the
last of these misfortunes to him. “In the battle here he lost 15,000 men, say
the Scots, we 5,000!”. Divide these numbers by ten, and the excellently brief
and lucid Scottish summary by Buchanan may be taken as the approximately true
and exact. Date of the battle is A.D. 1263.
To this
day, on a little plain to the south of the village, now town, of Largs, in
Ayrshire, there are seen stone cairns and monumental heaps, and, until within a
century ago, one huge, solitary, upright stone; still mutely testifying to a
battle there,--altogether clearly, to this battle of King Hakon’s; who by the
Norse records, too, was in these neighborhoods at that same date, and evidently
in an aggressive, high kind of humor. For “while his ships and army were
doubling the Mull of Cantire, he had his own boat set
on wheels, and therein, splendidly enough, had himself drawn across the
Promontory at a flatter part”, no doubt with horns sounding, banners waving.
“All to the left of me is mine and Norway’s”, exclaimed Hakon in his triumphant
boat progress, which such disasters soon followed.
Hakon
gathered his wrecks together, and sorrowfully made for Orkney. It is possible
enough, as our Guide Books now say, he may have gone by Iona, Mull, and the
narrow seas inside of Skye; and that the Kyle-Akin, favorably known
to sea-bathers in that region, may actually mean the Kyle (narrow strait) of
Hakon, where Hakon may have dropped anchor, and rested for a little while in
smooth water and beautiful environment, safe from equinoctial storms. But poor
Hakon’s heart was now broken. He went to Orkney; died there in the winter;
never beholding Norway more.
He it was
who got Iceland, which had been a Republic for four centuries, united to his
kingdom of Norway: a long and intricate operation,--much presided over by our Snorro Sturleson, so often quoted
here, who indeed lost his life (by assassination from his sons-in-law) and out
of great wealth sank at once into poverty of zero,--one midnight in his own
cellar, in the course of that bad business. Hakon was a great Politician in his
time; and succeeded in many things before he lost Largs. Snorro’s death by murder had happened about twenty years before Hakon’s by broken heart.
He is called Hakon the Old, though one finds his age was but fifty-nine,
probably a longish life for a Norway King. Snorro’s narrative ceases when Snorro himself was born; that
is to say, at the threshold of King Sverrir; of whose exploits and doubtful
birth it is guessed by some that Snorro willingly
forbore to speak in the hearing of such a Hakon.
XVI
EPILOGUE
Haarfagr’s kindred lasted some three
centuries in Norway; Sverrir’s lasted into its third century there; how long
after this, among the neighboring kinships, I did not inquire. For, by regal
affinities, consanguinities, and unexpected chances and changes, the three
Scandinavian kingdoms fell all peaceably together under Queen Margaret, of the
Calmar Union (A.D. 1397); and Norway, incorporated now with Denmark, needed no
more kings.
The History
of these Haarfagrs has awakened in me many thoughts:
Of Despotism and Democracy, arbitrary government by one and self-government
(which means no government, or anarchy) by all; of Dictatorship with many
faults, and Universal Suffrage with little possibility of any virtue. For the
contrast between Olaf Tryggveson, and a
Universal-Suffrage Parliament or an “Imperial” Copper Captain has, in these
nine centuries, grown to be very great. And the eternal Providence that guides
all this, and produces alike these entities with their epochs, is not its
course still through the great deep? Does not it still speak to us, if we have
ears? Here, clothed in stormy enough passions and instincts, unconscious of any
aim but their own satisfaction, is the blessed beginning of Human Order,
Regulation, and real Government; there, clothed in a highly different, but
again suitable garniture of passions, instincts, and equally unconscious as to
real aim, is the accursed-looking ending (temporary ending) of Order, Regulation,
and Government;--very dismal to the sane onlooker for the time being; not
dismal to him otherwise, his hope, too, being steadfast! But here, at any rate,
in this poor Norse theatre, one looks with interest on the first
transformation, so mysterious and abstruse, of human Chaos into something of
articulate Cosmos; witnesses the wild and strange birth-pangs of Human Society,
and reflects that without something similar (little as men expect such now), no
Cosmos of human society ever was got into existence, nor can ever again be.
The
violences, fightings, crimes--ah yes, these seldom
fail, and they are very lamentable. But always, too, among those old
populations, there was one saving element; the now want of which, especially
the unlamented want, transcends all lamentation. Here is one of those strange,
piercing, winged-words of Ruskin, which has in it a terrible truth for us in
these epochs now come:--
My friends,
the follies of modern Liberalism, many and great though they be, are
practically summed in this denial or neglect of the quality and intrinsic value
of things. Its rectangular beatitudes, and spherical benevolences,--theology of
universal indulgence, and jurisprudence which will hang no rogues, mean, one
and all of them, in the root, incapacity of discerning, or refusal to discern,
worth and unworth in anything, and least of all in
man; whereas Nature and Heaven command you, at your peril, to discern worth
from unworth in everything, and most of all in man.
Your main problem is that ancient and trite one, “Who is best man?” and the
Fates forgive much,--forgive the wildest, fiercest, cruelest experiments,--if
fairly made for the determination of that.
Theft and
blood-guiltiness are not pleasing in their sight; yet the favoring powers of
the spiritual and material world will confirm to you your stolen goods, and
their noblest voices applaud the lifting of Your spear, and rehearse the
sculpture of your shield, if only your robbing and slaying have been in fair
arbitrament of that question, “Who is best man?” But if you refuse such
inquiry, and maintain every man for his neighbor`s match,--if you give vote to
the simple and liberty to the vile, the powers of those spiritual and material
worlds in due time present you inevitably with the same problem, soluble now
only wrong side upwards; and your robbing and slaying must be done then to find
out, “Who is worst man?” Which, in so wide an order of merit, is, indeed, not
easy; but a complete Tammany Ring, and lowest circle in the Inferno of Worst,
you are sure to find, and to be governed by.
All readers
will admit that there was something naturally royal in these Haarfagr Kings. A wildly great kind of kindred; counts in
it two Heroes of a high, or almost highest, type: the first two Olafs, Tryggveson and the Saint. And the view of them, withal, as
we chance to have it, I have often thought, how essentially Homeric it
was:--indeed what is "Homer" himself but the Rhapsody of five
centuries of Greek Skalds and wandering Ballad-singers, done (i.e.
“stitched together”) by somebody more musical than Snorro was? Olaf Tryggveson and Olaf Saint please me quite
as well in their prosaic form; offering me the truth of them as if seen in
their real lineaments by some marvellous opening
(through the art of Snorro) across the black strata
of the ages. Two high, almost among the highest sons of Nature, seen as they
veritably were; fairly comparable or superior to god-like Achilleus,
goddess-wounding Diomedes, much more to the two Atreidai,
Regulators of the Peoples.
I have also
thought often what a Book might be made of Snorro,
did there but arise a man furnished with due literary insight, and
indefatigable diligence; who, faithfully acquainting himself with the
topography, the monumental relies and illustrative actualities of Norway,
carefully scanning the best testimonies as to place and time which that country
can still give him, carefully the best collateral records and chronologies of
other countries, and who, himself possessing the highest faculty of a Poet,
could, abridging, arranging, elucidating, reduce Snorro to a polished Cosmic state, unweariedly purging away his much chaotic matter! A
modern “highest kind of Poet”, capable of unlimited slavish labor withal;--who,
I fear, is not soon to be expected in this world, or likely to find his task in
the Heimskringla if he did appear here.
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