A Brief History of the Vikings (14 page)

But Denmark, like Norway, was no longer a cluster of semi-independent states. It was now largely united, with its fortresses and the Christian allies of its Christian King Harald Bluetooth. Now that both Norway and Denmark had strong rulers of their own, what would have once been a local squabble, between a couple of dozen ships and their belligerent crews, stood a chance of escalating into a national conflict. The Danes raiding Norway were no longer mere Vikings, but presumed subjects of the King of Denmark. The same applied in reverse to the punitive raids on the coast. Meanwhile, the Danes themselves could argue that Hakon the Good was not a king at all, but a Norwegian rebel against Danish authority.

Many of the ‘Danes’ raiding the Vik were probably not Danes at all, but an assortment of Vikings under the command of Norwegians. Gunnhild Kingsmother, widow of Erik Bloodaxe, had wasted no time in setting up alliances of her own. Erik’s daughter Ragnild was now a wife of Thorfinn Skull-cleaver, the ruler of the Orkneys. Erik’s sons were now back in the region, first at the Danish homeland of Gunnhild, then raiding along the Baltic coasts, then finally leading parties of their men in raids against their native Denmark.

Despite such annoyances, the rule of Hakon the Good was relatively trouble-free – his nickname does not appear to have been intended ironically. But although Hakon reached manhood and took power to some degree for himself, he was still heavily reliant on his Trondheim supporters. Sectors of Norway were ruled in his name by his two nephews, Tryggvi and Olaf. Other parts were simply beyond his control. There is talk in the sagas of Eystein the Bad, a ruler in the hinterland who so annoyed his subjects that many set out across the mountains that divide Norway from Sweden, in search of new territories in the east – what would become Jamtaland in central Sweden and Helsingaland on Sweden’s Baltic coast.

One of Hakon’s major achievements was an unforeseen consequence of his formative years spent in England. Like the king of Denmark to the south, Hakon had been raised with full appreciation of events elsewhere in Europe, and of the increasing power of Christianity. Hakon the Good was a Christian himself and, according to later legend, now sought to impose his religion upon his pagan subjects. His supporters remember him for trying in the first place, while his opponents remember him for not trying hard enough.
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His decision would have made some sense in the light of events elsewhere, but Hakon was also a practical man, and his main supporters in the Trondheim region were not likely to give up the old gods in a hurry. Hakon made some small attempt to move the pagan Yule celebrations so that they occupied the same slot as Christmas (i.e. that the chief celebration should now be on 25 December, rather than the winter solstice) but otherwise kept his religious beliefs largely to himself. Eventually, believing his position to be secure, he sent for bishops and missionaries from his English allies, only to discover that his subjects were behaving in an irritatingly democratic manner.

There was no divine right of kings in Norway, no heavenly mandate that instructed the people to obey the earthly representative of a god. Particularly in the independent Trondheim region, kings were
permitted
to rule by their assemblies, and woe betide the monarch who did not give orders that had been approved by his subjects. Consequently, when Hakon’s missionaries arrived in Møre and Raumsdale to the south of Trondheim, the locals immediately submitted the topic to the regional assembly for discussion.

Of all the places to debate the adoption of a foreign religion, Trondheim was probably the worst. Sigurd, the most powerful local earl, was a staunch supporter of the pagan gods, who proudly cited his many sacrifices to Odin as the source of his power. He was a host in the Odinic tradition, generous with his beer and roast meat to his subjects. He was, quite obviously, not going to submit quietly.

Neither, for that matter, were the farmers who formed the bulk of the Trondheim assembly. How ludicrous it must have sounded to them, that the king they had so willingly chosen would appear before them and reveal alien beliefs that, to the average Trondheim farmer, would have sounded quite unhinged. Hakon the Good, in whom the farmers had placed their trust, now wanted them to submit to a single God, to stop worshipping their old gods, value humility, and (this was the last straw)
abstain from meat and stop working for one day a week
. The farmers refused to believe that a day off was possible, and even the slaves complained at the thought of a day without ample food. Clearly something was being lost in translation.

According to Snorri (although his account is unsupported and probably fictional), the farmers voted to keep their old religion, and
Heimskringla
reports Hakon the Good enduring their decision in an immensely unregal sulk. Perhaps realizing
that their ruler was unhappy with their decision, representatives from the assembly even tried to console him with a sacrifice to Odin. Hakon refused to eat or drink the sacrificial foods, and even made the sign of the Cross over his drinking cup, causing Sigurd to hurriedly claim he was making the hammer-sign of
Thor
.
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That winter, when Hakon’s Yuletide reforms were due to be instituted, a cabal of Trondheim leaders murdered several priests, burned down three churches, and forced Hakon himself to eat some pieces of horse liver (sacred to Frey) at what must have been an intensely unpleasant Christmas dinner. Hakon’s anger with the locals’ attitude towards Christianity threatened to break into open conflict, and perhaps would have done, had he not faced other threats to the south.

The sons of Erik Bloodaxe continued to plague Hakon throughout his reign, sailing with the open support of their mother’s Danish relatives. Hakon the Good approached middle age with no sons of his own, and a single daughter, Thora. His luck ran out in 961, in a battle in which his loyal forces were outnumbered six-to-one by the sons of Erik and their Danish allies. He was wounded in the shoulder, supposedly by the pageboy of Gunnhild Kingsmother, and died later from his injury. His loyal subjects, in a final irony, buried him with full Odinic rites, hoping to ensure their king’s place in Valhalla.
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Inland from the Swedish coast, amid a network of lakes and rivers, sits Björkö, ‘birch island’ on Lake Mälar. During the Viking Age, when sea levels were higher, a wide channel led straight from Mälar to the Baltic Sea, affording easy passage for seaborne goods deep into Swedish territory. Around 800, the island became the site of a trading town, founded to replace an earlier settlement that proved to be too small for the needs of Sweden’s rising population. The settlement became known as Birka, and it became a magnet for trade from all over the Viking world, from Hedeby, Skiringssal, and points beyond. To the south of Birka, off the eastern coast of Sweden, lies the island of Gotland, another trading centre. Thanks to their positions on the ends of trade routes, these two islands form the centre of the Viking world – Gotland in particular has more Viking treasure than anywhere else. Archaeologists have unearthed the graves of
many a fortune-seeker, buried with his hoard of silver coins and the swords that helped him win it.

Not all of the treasures of Birka and Gotland are below the ground. Rune stones dot the landscape, carved with memorials of journeys to far places – Semgall and Courland (Latvia), Wendland (Poland), Virland (Estonia), Gardariki (Russia), Greekland (more particularly, the Byzantine Empire centred on Constantinople), and Serkland, the land of the Saracens. Although some Swedes followed Danish and Norwegian voyages to the British Isles and beyond, Sweden’s interest has always lain in the Baltic, not the North Sea. For the Vikings of Sweden, the road to fortune lay not to the west, but to the east.

Early Swedish explorations followed a model similar to that of the Norwegians and Danes. Hopping from island to island, vessels first reached Åland in the middle of the Baltic, then the southern coast of what is now Finland. One saga refers to the region as
Balagard
(Meadow-fort?), implying at least one settlement, and probably more.
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In Finland, they roamed an archipelago of a thousand islands, and penetrated inland. For those in search of secure, unforested farmland to till, Finland did not offer much, but its lakes were teeming with fish, and its forests with game. Traders were able to meet with the same Sámi who also traded with the Norwegians on the Arctic coast, but also with new peoples, the Suomi (Finns), the Kainuans and the Karelians, whose lands bordered on what is now Russia. The local people asked them what they were, and they replied that they were
rothr
, ‘bands of rowers’. The locals called them
Ruotsi
, the Finnish word for Sweden to this day.
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In Finland, they discovered an unexpected benefit of the longship. A Viking boat was light enough to be hefted by its crew and dragged out of the water, this much was already known. But in Finland, with hundreds of interconnected
navigable lakes, it became possible to sail many miles inland, pulling the ship out of the water and across separating isthmuses of land. The name of Birca had become synonymous with trade, it lent its name to Pirkkala, the ‘Birka place’ near Tampere in modern Finland.
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There, the Swedes traded with the locals, mainly in the furs of animals trapped by hunters in Finland’s endless forests. To this day, the Finnish word for money is
raha
, ‘pelt’.

The Swedes, however, did not keep pushing eastwards. They ran into the Kainu people along Finland’s eastern borders, a warlike race who excelled at dragging their own boats across the land to the Arctic Sea, and raiding against the Sámi. The Kainuans were already causing trouble for the Norwegians in the far north, and the Swedes preferred to steer clear. They turned instead to the south-east, and Norse sagas would eventually mangle the Kainu region into
kvenna-land
– the land of the Amazons.
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The Swedes found other things to occupy them further to the south. The ‘Eastland’, southern Baltic countries, Poland and Russia, represented prime raiding territory for early Swedish explorers, whom the locals called
Rootsi
. The legendary King Ivar the Wide-Grasper supposedly conquered an area corresponding to parts of north Germany and the European Baltic states sometime around the seventh century. Whether Ivar really existed, figures like him certainly explored the rivers and estuaries of the southern and eastern Baltic, and at some point, discovered the largest lake in Europe. Lake Ladoga, in the southernmost part of the Finnish peninsula, is today part of Russian territory, about 25 miles east of St Petersburg. This body of water, occupying some 6,700 square miles, was a vital location on the trade routes. It not only made it possible to sail over a hundred miles into the hinterland, it also brought the light ships within transfer or portage-distance of a series of
other rivers and lakes. As they had done in Finland, the Swedes were able to sail from one to the other, negotiating a series of minor barriers until they found themselves on much larger rivers that led to the south – the Dnieper and the mighty Volga. Ladoga takes its name from the Finnish
alode-joki
, ‘lower river’, a root that was also corrupted to form the name of its original settlement, Aldeigjuborg.
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But the Finnish inhabitants shared the region with Swedes from the earliest days – what archaeologists once assumed to be the Finns’ temple is now thought to be a longhouse that sheltered a sizeable community of Norse traders.

Ladoga archaeologists have yet to find any swords, except for several toy ones fashioned from wood in imitation of Norse originals. The area also revealed a significant amount of Norse jewellery, although who wore it is still open to debate. A Rus cemetery on the other side of the river seems to have been used between 850 and 950. Of the 18 identified graves many are female and wearing Norse jewellery, although it is undetermined whether they are local girls or women from the homeland. Linguistic evidence suggests that even if there were an early population of Scandinavian women with the men, their genes were soon crowded out by those of local people.

Ladoga has yielded no inscriptions apart from a few runes scratched on coins and indistinct runic carvings on a stick, the meaning of which still splits scholars – it has been variously described as an elf-summoning wand, a tribute to a fallen Swede, or perhaps even a poem about an arrow or shield.
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Tree-ring data on the Ladoga buildings tells us that the first Norse settlement was destroyed between 863 and 870, and replaced a few years later with a stronger stone building. This tallies with a description in the early twelfth century
Russian Primary Chronicle
of a local revolt, in which the new settlers were briefly overthrown, before being invited back:

The Varangians came from beyond the sea and demanded tribute from the Finnish and Slav peoples. They were driven off, but in due course dissension broke out among the people and became so acute that they said ‘Let us find a prince who will rule us and judge justly.’ So they went across the sea to the Varangians, to the Rus, (for the Varangians were called Rus as others were called Swedes, [Northmen], Angles and Goths), and they said to the Rus ‘Our land is large and fruitful, but lacks order. Come over and rule us.’ Three brothers were chosen as rulers, and these three agreed to go over, taking all their family and all the Rus people with them. It is further related that the eldest brother, Rurik, came to Ladoga and built there the town of Aldeigjuborg [Old Ladoga]. The second, Sineus settled near the White Sea [at Byelosersk], and the third, Truvor, at Isborsk in southern Estonia. Two years later, the younger brothers died and Rurik assumed full power, after which he went south and build on the shore of Lake Volkhov the town of Novgorod [Holmgard]. From here, the Rus people spread south . . .
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