Wayward Heroes Page 19
The newcomer said: “I lead a band of Vikings in the fleet of King Thorkell Strutharaldsson the Tall, and my name is Olaf, son of Harald Grenske of Vestfold in Norway. My great-grandfather was Harald Tanglehair, who subdued all of Norway. I wish to speak to you, King, in private.”
King Cnut sent the others out. He spread his mantle over his shoulders and bade the visitor sit at the table and drink. “Before you speak to us, Olaf,” says Cnut, “will you perhaps lift up one or two of those hoods that you have pulled over your hair, one on top of the other?”
Olaf the Stout turns bright red and says that he was raised aboard ships, and that it is therefore due more to his ignorance of the ways of courtesy than disrespect that he lets his hoods hang down while speaking with a man of such high estate as King Cnut. And now, having adjusted his hoods, he turns to the matter at hand and says:
“We, the Vikings of Thorkell the Tall, have sailed here in one hundred and forty-two ships, and have made our pledge to King Æthelred to defend this land against you. Though we Vikings always feel it an honor to battle doughty warriors, such as those in the army gathered here by you, King, I can tell you, in short, that I am weary of winning countries for other kings. I am eager to yield the ships under my command to you, and to become your man, if, in return, you concede us something that we should consider an honor to receive from you.”
King Cnut asks: “What is it you would have in exchange, comrade?”
“This I offer you,” says Olaf. “As I am considered to have a smooth tongue, I shall use it to persuade the men in Thorkell’s fleet, first discreetly, and then openly, of this my proposal: it is my desire that we abandon Æthelred and ally ourselves with you. I know there are many tried-and-true men in our band who would willingly become good friends of yours, if you were to grant them shires or towns for their bread-and-butter, although some would content themselves with silver or gold. We would prefer to win your favor with peace rather than war.”
Cnut asks what Thorkell Strutharaldsson’s position is in this matter, and whether he is willing to fight the Danish army in the hope of taking over Æthelred’s power and kingdom. “Or do you present yourself to me, Olaf, as a traitor to both of your overlords, Thorkell and Æthelred?”
“Thorkell,” says Olaf, “is quite intent upon battling you Danes. Should this happen, every single individual in England who believes his life worth fighting for will ally himself to us: countryfolk and townsfolk, young and old, women and men. I have personally witnessed that it is by no means child’s play for a royal army, whether foreign or native, to do battle with the common folk in England when they choose to defend themselves. If it comes to such a battle, many a valiant warrior will be laid low by ignoble weapons.”
“What reward do you ask, Olaf, for preventing Thorkell’s fleet from opposing us?” asks King Cnut.
“I am offering to make Thorkell’s entire fleet yours, and we shall pledge to defend you in England. I wager my life on its success. If this plan of ours works, everyone will be contented. For my part, I demand a reward of fifty light ships, to allow me to sail to Norway and take possession of my inheritance, and there become king.”
King Cnut springs from his seat and gives Olaf Haraldsson’s ale tankard such a whack with his own that it skids off the table onto the stone floor and breaks. He grips his sword by the hilt and says:
“What a foul monstrosity, when unmanly, beggarly sons of bumpkins from Norway presume to be born to reign. I find it hard to see whether your childish stupidity springs from recklessness, or your recklessness from stupidity, in bringing such business to me. Do you honestly consider me, Cnut Sweynsson, to be so degenerate as to make a present of the kingdom of Norway to a vagabond boy who is no kin of mine? The kingdom that my father, by his prowess, won from King Olaf Tryggvason – who, in terror of my father, leapt from his ship? What a great child you are, Olaf, to imagine that you can turn your fear of me into profit, and in reward for your cowardice, come off with fifty ships and the realm of Norway to boot.”
At this response, Olaf’s face loses whatever color it has, and he replies: “I do not propose these things to provoke your hostility, King, but rather, I stand before you because I wish sincerely to become your honorable friend. Nor have I spoken any word that might be taken as treacherous to you. Sire, I ask that you grant me the favor of looking magnanimously upon this errand of mine to you. Our fortunes may be dissimilar, but I beseech you never to believe that I tremble before any man …” – yet as he says this, Olaf Haraldsson is quivering like a leaf in the wind – “… and let us cease this talk, if you so please, and do not blame me for it – and let us not carry it beyond these walls.”
Olaf Haraldsson then bids King Cnut farewell, though the king’s hand remains resting on his sword-hilt. When this visitor is gone, he calls to his fellows to return and drink, along with the singing-girls.
Olaf Haraldsson’s tankard lies broken on the stone floor.
32
THE FORECASTLEMEN who had accompanied Olaf Haraldsson to meet Cnut Sweynsson return to their beds, but Olaf himself cannot sleep. He stands long by the bulwarks of his ship, watching little waves ripple and break against a land breeze at flood tide beneath the Lodestar. After lingering there for a time, lost in thought, he notices men in a little ferryboat rowing toward his ship. One of them hails the watchman and asks to speak to Olaf Haraldsson. As this newcomer greets Olaf, he tosses back the hood from his head and raises his eyes to heaven and his face to the moon. It is Bishop Grímkell. He says:
“A visitor sits in council with my foster-father Thorkell, and the topic is you.”
Olaf asks who the visitor is.
Bishop Grímkell replies: “An envoy of King Cnut Sweynsson.”
Olaf asks what message this envoy is delivering to Thorkell.
“The envoy has come with the news,” says the bishop, “that you have resolved to conspire against and betray my foster-father Thorkell – your scheme being to appropriate enough ships to sail back to Norway, and then seize the realm from Cnut and murder his jarls.”
Olaf asks whether Thorkell has made known any plans of his own.
Grímkell says: “The last I heard, my foster-father King Thorkell had resolved that you – ‘that little whelp,’ as he said – should be hung no later than daybreak, though even sooner would be better.”
At these tidings, Olaf Haraldsson sits speechless and still. Bishop Grímkell continues:
“It occurred to me,” says he, “that it was you, Olaf, who spared me when you Vikings clipped the ears and noses off Christ’s friends, and pelted the body of God’s blessed friend Ælfheah with joints and horns.”
As Bishop Grímkell stands there gazing toward heaven, per habit, with the moon shining on his face, Olaf the Stout grasps his hand and says:
“Tell your friend Christ, Grímkell, that now I entreat his aid alone. I will follow wherever he leads, and give myself entirely to his power, for we are in sore need.”
Grímkell gazes skyward, whispering. “One day,” says he, “I witnessed you inspecting your troops – among whom was an Icelander, deemed the most idiotic man in the fleet. He addressed you as King. I do not know what you yourself make of this matter, but I know that when Christ wishes to make prophecies, he chooses to speak through the mouths of fools rather than philosophers.”
“How am I, a sea-tossed farmboy from Vestfold – who has, however, a quantity of silver, though no other ships apart from these two flimsy old tubs, crewed by a few ragged vagrants that have flocked to me in their despair, seventy men in all – how am I to wrest Norway from the hands of so mighty a king as Cnut?”
In a quiet voice, Bishop Grímkell says: “When King Christ wishes to display his omnipotence, he always avails himself of a man frailer and paltrier than others, such as when he chose David, a little boy, to strike down the giant Goliath. Christ will assuredly make you king over Norway if you swear him your allegiance.”
Olaf asks what Christ will have him do now.<
br />
Grímkell replies, saying: “I am called the laughingstock of clerics and the most contemptible of bishops that anyone has ever known, possessing no benefice or bishopric apart from Thorkell the Tall’s bed and table. I have no spiritual father and am the apostolic successor to none but a drunken fool from Armenia who anointed me with water and chrism behind horse rumps at a market in Rouen. Yet none can repudiate my having been made, by this divine and indelible ordination, the equal of the aldermen who rule Christendom and the clergy ranking closest to the Pope, through the blessing of Christ and gift of the Holy Spirit. As I am least of the brothers bearing the name of bishop, Christ wishes, through prophecies and miracles, to make me the equal of those glorious Christian saints whose names will live as long as the world lasts. Now that we are both in desperate straits, Olaf, you must repent cutting off the noses and ears of holy men in England and pelting an old man with knucklebones – he who, in the eyes of Mary and Sunniva and Belinda and other beloved kinswomen of God, is regarded as one of the doughtiest of men since the beheading of John the Baptist, on which account he is now their invited guest in Heaven. This very hour, you must put to sea and sail to Norway to christen the rabble inhabiting that land – and I will act as your bishop, by the will of Christ, and thus shall we ransom ourselves from the eternal flames of Hell.”
33
JARL HAAKON ERICSSON ruled Norway as a vassal of the Danish king, Cnut Sweynsson, to whom he was nephew. Books state that he was one of the handsomest men in the North. He was much the same age as Olaf Haraldsson, who was now sailing to Norway. Neither ambition nor tyranny had anything to do with Haakon’s rise to power – rather, it was as if he were born for high office.
Norway is a desolate and sparsely populated land. Since time immemorial, petty kings had ruled small kingdoms scattered throughout it, and they still did so in name. Some of these kings were said to be of noble blood, while others had become vassals of the marauder from Estonia, Olaf Tryggvason, who had ravaged the land with fire for several summers and declared himself its monarch. Most of the kings had retained their titles and lands under the jarls that were appointed by the Danish kings to collect tribute from Norway after the Estonian reaver leapt into the sea. A pact made with these kinglets stipulated that they would retain their titles and estates only if they swore fealty to the Danish king. The petty kings were satisfied, and the commonfolk even more – for, as the old saying goes, “the farther away the king, the better off the people,” when the king is unable to unleash his noxious wraiths upon them: tax-extortion and confiscation of property, levying and quartering of troops, manslaughter and lechery. Every last resident of the land praised his own great fortune when King Cnut the Dane, who laid claim to the kingdom of Norway, abandoned the North entirely and betook himself to the British Isles, to vex the inhabitants there with his tyranny.
Haakon Ericsson, having few ties to the Norsemen and ruling the land for an even more distant overlord, as well as lacking the pretentiousness of native noblemen, enjoyed the high regard of the populace. Under him, everyone was free to do as he pleased in most things, and freedom of this sort naturally channeled the people’s conduct toward peaceability. Moreover, Haakon was lenient in his tax collection and paid only rare visits to the freemen – sparing them the burden of preparing him feasts – and never with a large retinue. Instead, he spent most of his time quietly in Viken, diverting himself with sports, the arts, or hunting, or chanting from hymnbooks with the clerics visiting on official business from the archiepiscopal see of Bremen – for in Viken, Christianity had long been fully and perfectly established. Haakon was so well-loved by the people of Norway that he had need for neither an army nor a naval fleet.
Jarl Haakon Ericsson of Norway was born to Christian parents and baptized as an infant, sparing him the distress suffered by some of those who accept the faith as adults, when they are overwhelmed by guilt for their former transgressions against the true God, and plague others so zealously with their pious turmoil that it would have been better if they had never repented. Nor was Haakon’s popularity diminished in any way among the peasants when he let each man believe in whatever god he wished, or in none at all, if he so preferred. Ever since the passing of Olaf Tryggvason, the men of Norway had not had their eyes gouged or their tongues torn out, nor had they been mutilated in any other way for their faith or had their houses burned down for the sake of their gods. Haakon was no less a friend to the heathens than the Christians, but all his friends desired to be Christian for love of this young man. Many noblemen had greater expectation of prosperity from Christ than from other gods, and ordered churches built for him or made donations of land and property, while German clerics from the archbishopric of Bremen journeyed all the way north to Rogaland to sponsor converts and sing Masses, taking back with them young men from the farms who were eager to study the clerical arts in the South.
Olaf Haraldsson thus made his way home to a prosperous, peaceful land, where folk were no less Christian than most of the populace of Europe at the time, not counting the residents of episcopal sees, monasteries, imperial cities, or the courts of sovereigns.
Books narrate that Olaf the Stout landed in the central part of Norway. Upon landing, he immediately set out for Ringerike to visit his stepfather Sigurd Syr Halfdanarson, accompanied by Bishop Grímkell, and leaving behind a contingent of nearly seventy men to guard his two ships.
Sigurd Halfdanarson was a fine husbandman and extremely hard worker. He owned one of the largest herds of cattle in Norway and was the greatest cultivator of his lands, which included many vast, profitable estates in numerous districts, and every petty king in Oppland and Gudbrandsdalen was indebted to him in some way or other. Sigurd Syr not only collected rents on tenancies, he also outfitted trading ships, and his merchants brought him home silver and valuable objects and useful wares from foreign lands. He had become Olaf Haraldsson’s stepfather by his marriage to Olaf’s mother Åsta Gudbrandsdatter, when Olaf was a young lad.
Olaf the Stout’s father, Harald Grenske, had been burnt alive as a consequence of wooing a woman. He was one of those Norse-speaking vagrants – men of uncertain pedigree – who flocked to Norway from distant lands with pretensions to its throne. All such men harped on the same claim: that they were descendants of Harald Tanglehair. A bully by this name had indeed surfaced in Norway six generations earlier, or a good hundred-and-fifty years ago. This thug had carried on murdering peasants and burning settlements in Norway for seventy consecutive years, and extorted wealth and property from most of the chieftains who did not flee westward across the sea or shift their households to remote skerries. He declared himself king following what was the prevailing custom in the North according to some scholars: namely, that the scoundrel who had the greatest stamina and best success in decimating the populace in a particular place should have that name. These agitators considered their agnate kinship to Tanglehair sufficient proof of their birthright to rule whatever little strip of Norway they could sequester, and they counted the entire country as their legitimate property as long as they could wrap their claws around it. Harald Grenske was one of these pretenders to the throne of Norway, though he diplayed little propensity for success in most respects. Olaf’s mother, Åsta, married the gentleman Sigurd Syr Halfdanarson for his wealth, and it was considered extravagant of Sigurd when he granted the boy an inheritance and built him two small ships, calling them his tooth-fee.
Sigurd Halfdanarson never claimed his dues by force, but dealt with every matter in a wily, cunning way. He was considered peaceable and conciliatory, but not high-minded. His family had deep roots throughout the country, and he remained on good terms with leading farmers in Gudbrandsdalen and Oppland, to whom he was tied by kinship. He felt it no unfair advantage on their part if their tenants allowed the local assembly to bestow the title of king on them, according to ancient custom, or for them to bestow the title on themselves if others did not want to, least of all if they conscientiously paid their rents on land
s that they leased from him.
Sigurd Syr had little inclination for novelties in religion and custom. He disliked Christianity, yet made no objection to his tenants or debtors practicing it. He worshipped the phallus of a stallion of his that he considered the best of all horses, the most divine, and had dedicated to the god Freyr. In honour of this horse’s phallus he had raised a tall standing stone on a slope of his homefield. He erected a wooden fence around the stone, offered sacrifices spring and fall to the phallus, and drank its health at Yule banquets. It is said that when Bishop Grímkell beheld this stone, he was stricken with profound grief on Christ’s behalf at such an abomination, and wept loudly.
When the twenty-year-old son of Sigurd Syr’s wife, Åsta, returned to her after eight years abroad on Viking expeditions, she had their home cleaned thoroughly and hung with tapestries, juniper burned and hogs slaughtered, making ready to receive him in the most magnificent manner possible. Upon his arrival, she bade King Olaf Haraldsson welcome and kissed his hand and foot, before leading him to the high-seat and sitting at his right hand, directing Bishop Grímkell to his seat at her son’s left. Squire Sigurd was taken somewhat aback when he was shown to an inferior seat in his own hall, and he laughed. After sitting at table for a time, mother and son declared their aim: that Olaf Haraldsson should be king of all Norway. At this, Squire Sigurd laughed even louder.