A Brief History of the Vikings (25 page)

More worryingly for Olaf, two closer regions refused to acknowledge him as their king. Jamtaland and Helsingaland, founded several generations earlier by Norwegian exiles, had long been nominally parts of Norway. They had paid tributes to previous Norwegian rulers, and maintained relationships with the Norwegians across the Keel mountains. Now, in the mid-1020s, the people of Jamtaland and Helsingaland changed their minds. Instead of acknowledging the rule of a man over the mountains, they preferred to pledge allegiance to Onund Jacob.

Canute seemed ready to accept Olaf the Stout as the ruler of Norway, on the condition that he came to England, swore allegiance, and acknowledged that Canute was the rightful owner of Norway, and that he was merely looking after it. Efectively, Canute was demanding a form of
danegeld
from Norway itself, since Olaf would be obliged to collect taxes on his ruler’s behalf. A more pragmatic man might have seen it as a good opportunity to avoid conflict, but it wasn’t good enough for Olaf, who may have also regarded Canute’s offer of a treaty with healthy suspicion – was Canute really intending to ignore the claims of the earls of Trondheim, or was the offer simply a ruse to lure Olaf to his death?

Olaf told the ambassadors that Denmark belonged to the Danes, and Norway to the Norwegians, and that Canute should be more than pleased with the extension of his lands
to include England and large parts of Scotland. According to Snorri, Olaf even laughed that Canute should surely be happy with all the cabbage he was getting – England’s vegetable produce being something of a joke in medieval Europe. But Olaf would not send any portion of his revenues to any other king. Norway belonged to him, and he was prepared to fight for it.
²⁰

Canute began preparing a fleet to retake Norway and reinstall the earls of Trondheim. It is likely that this was his plan all along, but a ship of ambassadors, a ship to carry Olaf to England, and then an assassin’s dagger in the dark were an altogether cheaper means that he had been prepared to try first.

Knowing that Canute was on his way, Olaf sent word to his brother-in-law Onund Jacob, the king of Sweden. He urged the ruler of the Swedes to consider the implications of an Anglo-Danish attack on Norway, and that Canute’s ambition was unlikely to stop at the Swedish border. Onund Jacob sent his reply that he was prepared to agree a treaty with Olaf, stating that each would send aid to the other in the event of an assault by Canute. Canute had himself already sent an embassy of his own to Sweden, laden with gifts for Onund Jacob, and assurances that Sweden would be quite safe from Denmark, and that only Norway and her allies need be concerned by his plans for war. Onund Jacob treated the ambassadors to an icy reception, and made it plain that he placed greater value on the simple, homespun aims of Olaf the Stout than he did on the imperial ambitions of Canute the Great.

With an attack by Canute seemingly inevitable, the kings of Norway and Sweden decided it was time for a pre-emptive strike, and led a double-pronged assault on Denmark. They may have also attempted a more diplomatic form of attack, since Canute’s regent, his sister’s husband Ulf, may have
switched sides at least once during the conflict. Canute’s long-awaited fleet caught up with the raiders on the Baltic coast of southern Sweden. Onund Jacob escaped with his life and dignity intact, while Olaf the Stout was forced to abandon his ships. Remembering the unhappy end of his predecessor Crowbone, he preferred to walk home rather than risk a further encounter with the Anglo-Danish fleet.

Olaf the Stout’s golden age was coming to an end, largely because Canute cut a much more impressive figure. Olaf the Stout spoke of an independent Norway and the benefits of Western civilization, but even as he limped home with his supporters, Canute was doing everything in his power to win the Norwegians over with similar promises. And Canute was not an old war hero, returning with booty and tales of raids in the west, he was an acknowledged king of several countries, bolstered with the wealth and prestige of his adopted English home. Where Olaf the Stout spoke of Christ’s power, Canute could brag of his pilgrimage to Rome itself – his trip there had won him the Pope’s approval, and also secured Denmark’s German border with the betrothal of his daughter Gunnhild to Henry III, son of the emperor Conrad.

Olaf’s talk of ‘Norwegian independence’ meant little at the grass-roots level, merely that he wished to hang on to more of the tax revenues himself. To farmers in Trondheim, it mattered little
who
was collecting the taxes, as long as they were left to themselves. Although Olaf had done what he could to promote the idea that Canute was evil incarnate, the Danish king’s arrival in Norway killed many of those rumours for good. Canute was conspicuously generous with his gifts and grants and soon had won the people of Norway over.
²¹
In 1028, with supporters deserting him in droves, Olaf the Stout was forced to admit that Canute had the upper hand. The Trondheimers proclaimed Canute a fitting person to be their king, and Olaf
the Stout may have sneaked away to Russia, where he hoped to impose on the hospitality of Princess Ingigerd, his former betrothed, and her husband Jaroslav the Wise.

Canute turned out to be almost as wily as Olaf had painted him. News drifted in from the Pentland Firth that Earl Hakon, the strongest of the Trondheim rulers, had met with an unfortunate accident. The Trondheimers Kalf Arnarson and Einar Paunch-Shaker both now put themselves forward as possible replacements – and each believed himself to have the support of Canute. Imagine, then, their surprise when Canute favoured neither, and instead announced that the vassal-king of Norway would be his own son, Svein, in spite of promises he had initially made for home-rule in Trondheim.

The Trondheimers did not greet the news with much relish, particularly when it transpired that the newly arrived King Svein was only a child, and that the reins of power would actually be in the hands of his mother. To make matters worse, King Svein’s mother was not even Canute’s acknowledged wife before Christ, Queen Emma, the widow of Aethelred Unraed. Instead the new
de facto
ruler of Norway was Aelfgifu (Álfífa), regarded by the Norwegians as a highly unwelcome, interfering floozy who was not even Scandinavian, but instead from Northampton in England.

Canute had his reasons for keeping Aelfgifu at arm’s length – he intended to eventually leave England and Denmark to Harthacanute, his son by Queen Emma, and thereby pre-empt any succession wrangles among the Anglo-Saxons. Since he already had two elder children by Aelfgifu, they would need to be packed off somewhere out of the way, and Norway must have seemed ideal. Some sources claimed that Canute and Aelfgifu were ‘hand-fasted’, or married in the pagan sense. This, of course, was of little concern to the people of Norway, converts, however grudgingly, to the Christian faith.

News of all this eventually reached the court of Jaroslav the Wise, where Olaf the Stout was in exile. Leaving his infant son Magnus (named after
Carolus Magnus
, Charlemagne) in the care of his in-laws, Olaf gathered his war-band once more and prepared to take back his kingdom. He was eager enough to have begun his travels in the dead of winter, traversing the frozen rivers of Russia and waiting at the Baltic coast for the ice to break up. His initial band of only a couple of hundred men was doubled in size upon his arrival at the court of his sometime ally, Onund Jacob of Sweden. He marched into southern Norway, offering the unhappy locals a choice between a foreign mistress or a Norwegian master. By the time he faced his enemies on 29 July 1030 at the Battle of Stiklastad, he had perhaps 3,600 men in his retinue, including Norwegians, Swedes, Russians and Finns. Unfortunately for Olaf, he faced an army in excess of 14,000. By the end of the day he was dead, although the legends of ‘Saint Olaf’, patron of all Scandinavia, were only beginning.

Olaf the Stout’s half-brother, Harald, would be known in later life as Harald
Hardraada
– if Aethelred had been
Unraed
, ‘ill-advised’ then Harald was ‘severe in counsel’, ‘hard-ruling’ or simply Ruthless. His life was the pinnacle of the Viking Age, his infamous defeat the beginning of its end. Harald’s story also unites many of the separate strands of the Viking experience. Although his main area of interest was Norway, his travels took him throughout the world known to the Vikings, as far south as the coast of North Africa. One source even claimed, however doubtfully, that he ventured in search of Vinland, and even beyond, to the ‘dark failing boundaries of the savage world’.
¹
Although a man of ‘noble birth’, he spent much of his life as a mercenary, and much of his reign in a ‘war’ with Denmark that often seemed little more than a succession of pirate raids. Although he was one of the most
well-travelled of Vikings, his raids and battles for a dozen years were fought not against foreigners, but against fellow Scandinavians. His last campaign united his destiny firmly with that of England.

We are fortunate in that Harald’s remarkable life has been recounted in several works, most notably Snorri Sturluson’s saga, which itself records poems about his deeds that had been sung in his presence. Snorri wrote about all Norway’s early kings, but on Harald he is particularly rich in detail and anecdotes. Two of Harald’s closest companions, Halldor Snorrason and Ulf Ospaksson, who fought at his side and even shared his brief incarceration in a Byzantine jail, were the descendants of notable Icelandic families. In later life, Halldor would return to his native land and insist on regaling the assembly there with tales of his time with King Harald, a habit that fixed many of Harald’s adventures firmly in the mind of other skalds. Snorri Sturluson was one of Halldor’s descendants, and much of his biography of Harald in
Heimskringla
draws, we may assume, on tales told and retold in his own family.

Harald grew up in Norway, and was occasionally visited by his half-brother Olaf. By the time Olaf commenced his campaign against Canute in 1030, Harald was 15 years old, still quite young by Viking standards, and certainly not expected to serve in Olaf’s army. Harald, however, accompanied Olaf’s forces, perhaps as an observer.
Heimskringla
reports his argument with Olaf on the eve of the battle of Stilkastad, with Olaf suggesting that he was too young to fight, and Harald protesting that he was old enough to lift a sword, even if the hilt had to be tied to his wrist.

Olaf relented, and Harald was among the men to hear Olaf’s pre-battle address, a reminder that the bulk of his forces comprised hardened soldiers, while the Canute loyalists they faced were primarily conscripted farmers. Although Olaf was
outnumbered, he was still confident that he could win, and called upon almighty God to ensure an outcome ‘that He deems right for me.’
²
Despite predictable pleas to the Christian god for aid, Olaf’s pre-Stilkastad speech shows the Viking mind still very much in evidence – he advocated a quick and terrifying charge, hoping to cause the less seasoned enemy soldiers to flee before they realized the inferior numbers of their attackers. His speech also made it clear that his grab for the crown was inspired by the traditional desire for more land – when all the talk of God had passed, he assured his men that their true rewards would not be in heaven, but paid in land and chattels taken from the vanquished.

Heimskringla
reports Olaf’s final moments, as he and his henchmen were approached by Thorir the Hound, a warrior supposedly shielded from harm by ‘the mighty magic of Finns.’
³
As Olaf’s henchmen fell, the king stood alone against a crowd of enemies, notably Thorir, Thorstein Shipbuilder and Finn Arnarson, who between them hacked him down. Thorir reported that contact with Olaf’s blood caused his own wounds to heal. It was the first of several miraculous events associated with Olaf in the afterlife, leading to his later canonization.

The boy Harald, grievously wounded in the battle, was borne to safety by Rognavald Brusason from the distant Orkneys. Rognavald managed to smuggle the injured boy away to a remote house in the forests, and ensure that he was tended until he was able to travel farther afield. Needless to say, Harald’s saga stresses that he
did not
run away, but had to be dragged from the battlefield by his associates,
gravely
wounded. Such behaviour befits a glorious hero, although a poem supposedly written at the time by Harald himself is notably lower key, makes no reference to wounds, and instead mentions Olaf’s brother creeping ‘. . . from wood to wood with little honour now.’
⁴

Whatever the circumstances surrounding his escape, the fugitive Harald rejoined Rognavald and a handful of other men by picking his way across the mountains that formed the spine between Norway and modern Sweden. With Scandinavia closed to them and their fortunes in decline, the last supporters of Olaf sought refuge with their relatives in Russia.

Saga sources are suspiciously reticent concerning the next three or four years. Although there are hints of wars and campaigns, and glories won, even Snorri whisks through the Russian years in barely a page. The
Russian Primary Chronicle
, however, fills the period with a series of internal and external conflicts among the Rus, into which a band of job-seeking Vikings would have fitted quite snugly.

Vladimir, the son of Saint Olga, had died in the year of Harald’s birth, and his domain was now ruled by his son Jaroslav the Wise. Jaroslav’s rise to power had been precarious, involving conflicts with several of his siblings, but he had secured his position with the aid of Viking mercenaries. Now he shared power with a handful of his surviving brothers, and already plotted to seize their lands when the opportunity arose. With Pecheneg tribesmen on the offensive again, Jaroslav was more than willing to take on new recruits, particularly those with whom he had a family connection – his wife Ingigerd was Olaf’s sister-in-law. Dates are difficult to match, but it would seem that the arrival of Harald and his fellow exiles was contemporary with the final moves in Jaroslav’s grab for sole rulership of the region. By 1036, with the help of his new recruits, Jaroslav was the sole master of the Rus domains.