Early Kings of Norway(古挪威的国王)

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EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY.

EARLY KINGS OF

NORWAY.

by Thomas Carlyle

EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY.

The Icelanders, in their long winter, had a great habit of writing; and

were, and still are, excellent in penmanship, says Dahlmann. It is to this

fact, that any little history there is of the Norse Kings and their old

tragedies, crimes and heroisms, is almost all due. The Icelanders, it seems,

not only made beautiful letters on their paper or parchment, but were

laudably observant and desirous of accuracy; and have left us such a

collection of narratives (_Sagas_, literally "Says") as, for quantity and

quality, is unexampled among rude nations. Snorro Sturleson's History of

the Norse Kings is built out of these old Sagas; and has in it a great deal of

poetic fire, not a little faithful sagacity applied in sifting and adjusting

these old Sagas; and, in a word, deserves, were it once well edited,

furnished with accurate maps, chronological summaries, &c., to be

reckoned among the great history-books of the world. It is from these

sources, greatly aided by accurate, learned and unwearied Dahlmann,[1]

the German Professor, that the following rough notes of the early Norway

Kings are hastily thrown together. In Histories of England (Rapin's

excepted) next to nothing has been shown of the many and strong threads

of connection between English affairs and Norse.

EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY.

CHAPTER 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

EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY.

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?).[2]

Rolf, son of Rognwald,[3] 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

EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY.

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,"

EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY.

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),

EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY.

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.

EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY.

CHAPTER 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 _Blod-

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

EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY.

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 Harald'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

EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY.

needed again, to the astonishment of careless persons, before all is done!

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EARLYKINGSOFNORWAY.1EARLYKINGSOFNORWAY.byThomasCarlyleEARLYKINGSOFNORWAY.2TheIcelanders,intheirlongwinter,hadagreathabitofwriting;andwere,andstillare,excellentinpenmanship,saysDahlmann.Itistothisfact,thatanylittlehistorythereisoftheNorseKingsandtheiroldtragedies,crimesandheroisms,isalmostalldue.TheI...

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Early Kings of Norway(古挪威的国王)

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