Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 793-1241 (44 page)

At first Horik maintained friendly relations with Charlemagne’s successor Louis the Pious and on occasion even captured and executed pirate leaders who had raided Frankia. Horik’s main concern was to consolidate his own authority and he did not want his subjects provoking Frankish interventions. The civil war that broke out in the Frankish empire after Louis’ death in 840 emboldened Horik. In 845, he sent a large fleet to sack Hamburg and two years later Horik refused demands by the emperor Lothar that he prevent his subjects raiding the Frankish lands. Horik was in any case far too insecure to enforce any such prohibition. In 850, Horik was forced to share his kingdom with two nephews. Then, in 854, a third nephew, Gudurm, turned up to claim a share of the kingdom too. Gudurm was every Viking Age Scandinavian king’s worst nightmare – a successful pirate leader with royal blood, a hoard of plunder and a large and loyal warrior band to back him up. Gudurm’s arrival threw the kingdom into a vicious civil war in which Horik and most of the rest of the extended royal family, including his three nephews, all perished. Stability did not return to Denmark for nearly a century.

Virtually nothing is known about events in Denmark in the second half of the ninth century. Writing in his
Deeds of the Bishops of the Church of Hamburg
, our best informed source for the early Danish kingdom, the German ecclesiastical historian Adam of Bremen summed up the confusion: ‘How many Danish kings, or rather tyrants, there were indeed, and whether some of them ruled at the same time or lived for a short time one after the other, is uncertain.’ Adam was commissioned to write his history by archbishop Adalbert of Hamburg (d. 1072) and had access to a wide range of sources, including the archives of the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen, which had led efforts to evangelise Scandinavia. Adam even visited Denmark himself in 1068 – 9 and met King Svein Estrithson (r. 1047 – 74), whom he cites as a major informant for his work. If Adam had no idea what was going on, probably no one else did either.

By around 890, part of Denmark, at least, had come under the control of a Swedish king called Olof. Two runestones commemorating Olof’s grandson Sigtrygg have been found at Hedeby, suggesting that the town was the dynasty’s main powerbase. Hedeby returned to Danish control in the mid-930s when Sigtrygg was overthrown by another obscure ruler called Harthacnut Sveinsson. In saga traditions, Harthacnut was said to be a grandson of the legendary Viking Ragnar Lodbrok, but Adam of Bremen says he came from
Nortmannia
, by which he probably meant Normandy or maybe northern Jutland. Harthacnut’s main claim to fame is that he was the father of the man Danes regard as the as the real founder of their kingdom, Gorm the Old (d.
c.
958). Gorm most likely earned his nickname not because he was particularly long-lived – it is not known when he was born – but because he was the ancestor of the medieval Danish kings. The actual extent of Gorm’s kingdom is not known but he certainly did not rule all the Danes; the first king to do that would be his son Harald Bluetooth (r.
c.
958 – 87), who succeeded him after his death in 958.

Consolidating royal authority

Outside their own private lands, the early Danish kings exercised authority indirectly through subordinate chieftains. This meant that royal authority was inherently weak and in many parts of Denmark completely non-existent. Whatever the claims of rulers to be kings of the Danes, chiefs in areas remote from the royal power centres ruled in effective independence. Harald’s achievement was to make royal authority real throughout the whole of Denmark. It is unlikely that this was a peaceful process because the most obvious physical evidence of Harald’s authority is a chain of six or seven forts that he built right across the country, at Fyrkat and Aggersborg in north Jutland, at Nonnebakken on Fyn, Trelleborg and Borrering (also known as Vallø Borgring) on Sjælland, and at Trelleborg and (probably) at Borgeby in Skåne. There was no fort in southern Jutland, where Harald’s authority was strongest.

Harald’s forts show clear evidence of central planning in their near identical design. All the forts are precisely circular with four equally spaced covered gateways placed on the four points of the compass. Axial streets divide the interiors into four equally sized quadrants. At Fyrkat and Trelleborg (Sjælland) each quadrant contained four three-roomed bow-sided wooden buildings arranged in a square, at Aggersborg, which at over 260 yards (240 m) was twice the diameter of the other forts, there were twelve buildings arranged in three squares. At the centre of each square was a smaller wooden building. A ring road ran around the inside of the earth ramparts, which were faced with timber to make them more difficult to climb. All the forts were encircled by a ditch. There are no exact parallels to Harald’s forts anywhere in Europe but it is possible that they were modelled on circular forts built by the Franks to protect the Low Countries from Viking raids in the ninth century. Investigation of the buildings at Fyrkat has shown that while some were used as dwellings, most were workshops, stables and stores. Women and children, as well as adult males, were found buried in a cemetery outside the ramparts, which suggests that the forts were centres for royal administration, where taxes were collected, as well as strongpoints for controlling the local population. Dendrochronology shows that the timbers used for the buildings at Fyrkat and Trelleborg were felled in
c.
980, that is, quite late in Harald’s reign. The forts were occupied for no more than twenty or thirty years: once the Danes had accepted centralised royal government, they were no longer needed.

Denmark becomes Christian

Harald also began the cultural transformation of Denmark by converting to Christianity in 965. According to later stories, Poppo, a German missionary, probably from Würzburg, persuaded Harald to convert after he demonstrated the superior power of the Christian god by carrying red hot irons in his bare hands without suffering any injury. This missionary success had been a long time coming. Willibrord’s fruitless mission to King Angantyr in the 720s was not followed-up until 822, when Louis the Pious sent Ebo, the archbishop of Reims, on the first of three missions to Denmark. Ebo was as conspicuously unsuccessful as Willibrord had been. In 826, the Danish king Harald Klak converted to Christianity while visiting the Frankish court in order to curry favour with Louis, whose support he was seeking against Godfred’s sons. When Harald returned to Denmark, Louis sent the monk Ansgar to accompany him. When Godfred’s pagan sons forced Harald into exile a year later, Ansgar went to Sweden where King Björn allowed him to found a church at the trade centre of Birka on Lake Mälaren. Ansgar entrusted the mission in Sweden to his kinsman Gautbert, so that he could concentrate on Denmark. In 831, he became the first bishop of Hamburg and, the following year, he was appointed papal legate for the Scandinavian and Slavonic missions. Ansgar’s mission suffered severe setbacks. Gautbert was expelled from Birka a few years after his arrival and the Danish attack on Hamburg in 845 severely disrupted missionary activity. In 851 – 2, Ansgar led a second mission to Scandinavia, founding churches at Hedeby and Ribe in Denmark and re-establishing the church at Birka. Ansgar became known as ‘the Apostle of the North’ for his efforts but for all that he failed to establish any enduring Christian communities in either Denmark or Sweden. Missionary activity languished again until the German king Henry the Fowler invaded Denmark and defeated King Gorm soon after he won power. Henry’s victory created the opportunity for Unni, the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, to launch a new mission to Denmark. Gorm gave Unni a hostile reception but, according to Adam of Bremen, young Harald was more sympathetic: ‘Unni made him so faithful to Christ that, although he himself had not received the sacrament of baptism, he permitted the public profession of Christianity, which his father had always hated.’ By 948 there were enough Christians in Jutland to justify its division into three bishoprics, at Hedeby, Ribe and Århus, under the control of the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen. When Harald finally took the plunge and was baptised in 965, along with his wife and son, Svein Forkbeard, he showed that his conversion was sincere by actively encouraging his people to adopt the new faith.

Whatever the spiritual attractions of the new faith – and it certainly offered greater doctrinal clarity than Norse paganism – an astute ruler like Harald must have been aware of the many political advantages that would come from conversion. The immediate pay-off for Harald was the prospect of better relations with his powerful southern neighbour, the German Holy Roman Emperor Otto I. Harald would have known from the experience of previous generations of Viking leaders overseas in Frankia, England and Ireland, that there could be no normal diplomatic relations with Christian rulers unless he too became a Christian. There must also have been many aspects of Christian teaching that were attractive to a state-building monarch. The many Old Testament stories of righteous kings who defeated their enemies thanks to the support of God must have given Christianity considerable appeal to a warrior king. The potential of the Christian doctrine of divinely ordained kingship for raising the status of the monarchy must have been quite obvious too. The church also brought with it literate personnel with administrative expertise, who could help a king build a government for his kingdom. While jealous of its spiritual authority, the church recognised that strong government made its own task of conversion easier and could help protect its personnel and property, so kings could usually count on ecclesiastical support. The international culture of Catholic Europe, including Romanesque art and architecture, the Latin language and alphabet and the classical literature of ancient Rome came as part of the Christian package. As the new religion spread and put down deeper roots, this gradually became the elite culture, displacing indigenous cultural traditions tainted with paganism.

Royal Jelling

Gorm and Harald ruled Denmark from their manor at Jelling, now a large village, in the gently rolling countryside of mid Jutland about 80 miles north of Hedeby on the old
Hærvej
. Jelling may have been chosen as a royal residence because it was already marked as a place of ancient power by a Bronze Age burial mound. By the second half of the tenth century, Gorm and Harald between them had provided Jelling with a remarkable collection of monuments: a massive 1,100 foot (335 m) long ship-setting, by far the largest known, two large mounds, two runestones, a wooden church and several large halls, all of which stood within a palisaded enclosure covering nearly 30 acres (12 hectares). Between them, these monuments tell the story of Denmark’s transition from paganism to Christianity and its emergence as a stable territorial kingdom.

Standing nearly 30 feet (9 m) tall, the two mounds dominate Jelling even today. Traditionally they were believed to be the burial mounds of King Gorm (the south mound) and his wife Thyre (the north mound), but archaeological investigations have revealed a more complicated history. The north mound was built exactly in the middle of the huge ship-setting, so it is likely that they were built at the same time. The mound was built over the earlier Bronze Age tumulus: a large timber-lined burial chamber at its centre was partly dug into the older mound. Dendrochronological analysis shows that the timbers were felled in the autumn of 958. However, the burial chamber itself was empty. Excavations showed that the mound had been dug into around the time of Harald’s conversion to Christianity and the bodies in the chamber had been removed along with any grave goods. One of the few artefacts left behind was part of a wooden wagon. These were commonly used as coffins for high status women. This supports the traditional association of the mound with Queen Thyre, who died some time before Gorm. The southern mound associated with Gorm, however, turned out never to have contained any bodies at all. If Gorm was buried at Jelling, he must have been buried in the north mound. The southern mound was built over a pile of rocks that may have been a
hørg,
where sacrificial offerings were made. Despite its pagan nature, the mound was probably not built until after Harald’s baptism and its purpose remains unclear: perhaps the mound was a respectful burial for the old pagan ways that the new religion was consigning to oblivion.

A twelfth-century stone church now stands between the two mounds but excavations in the 1970s showed that it was built on the site of a substantial tenth-century timber church. A burial found within the church contained the partially preserved skeleton of a well-built man. In life, he was a little over five feet six inches (1.67 m) tall and was suffering from osteoarthritis of the lower back when he died, probably still in his forties. Only a very important man would have been buried inside a royal church but his identity is unknown. It has generally been assumed that the skeleton is that of Gorm, the theory being that after his conversion Harald had his parents exhumed from the north mound and reburied in consecrated ground, though if that was the case there is no sign of Thyre’s skeleton. However, burying pagans in a church would have been against Christian doctrine, which did not allow posthumous conversions. If Gorm and Thyre really were buried in the northern mound, Harald may have exhumed them simply because he did not want pagans buried so close to his new Christian centre.

South of the church stand Jelling’s two runestones. The smaller and older of the stones was erected by King Gorm as a memorial to Queen Thyre. Gorm was evidently fond of Thyre as he described her as ‘Denmark’s adornment’. The inscription has more than sentimental value because this is the earliest recorded use of the word Denmark (‘tannmarkaR’) to describe the country of the Danes. Old engravings of the monuments at Jelling suggest that this runestone may originally have stood on top of the northern mound, only being moved to its present location in relatively modern times. The second and larger of the runestones is an assertively Christian monument erected by King Harald to commemorate both his parents and his own achievements in uniting and Christianising the Danes. One face of the stone carries the runic inscription: ‘King Harald ordered this monument made in memory of Gorm, his father, and in memory of Thyre, his mother; that Harald who won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian.’ A second face shows a vigorously carved lion fighting a serpent and the third, a figure of the crucified Christ on a cross entwined with branches and leaves. By depicting the crucifixion this way, the stone carver may have intended to draw a deliberate parallel between Christ and Odin, who hanged himself from the world-tree Yggdrasil to learn the secret of runes. Small traces of paint show that the runestone was originally brightly coloured. Jelling’s time as a pre-eminent centre of power was brief. Now in the far west of his unified kingdom, Jelling was no longer a convenient base for Harald’s rule, so in the 980s he moved to Roskilde, only a few miles from the ancient power centre at Lejre, on the more centrally situated island of Sjælland.