Chapter 3
104
of Norway, and to describe a struggle top achieve unity of rule that had begun in that country nearly a full hundred years before Harald Gormsson's death. It is a fortunate thing that this welding of Norway into a single state was an event that had a special personal interest for the Icelandic historians, and it is in a sudden and unexpected flood of light from early northern literature that the winning of the sovereignty of all Norway can be watched.
The story is concerned principally with he adventures of the redoubtable Harald Fairhair (hárfagri), who reigned in the last half of the ninth century and in the first half of the tenth. But the reason why the Icelanders had memorized with such care the events of this period was not only because the glamour attaching to the king's deeds required the constant repetition of his saga ; rather was it because they believed that Harald's conquests and confiscations in Norway had caused the emigration of some of the proud Norwegians who would not bear his yoke, and that a number of these, sailing away with their families and possessions, had founded the republic of Iceland.
Before the time of Harald's great achievement, Norway was divided into districts, or states, variously governed and independent of one another. The Tröndelag was one of the most important of these. The lands around the modern Trondhjem (Nidaros) are geographically favoured as a centre of population, and here dwelt eight 'folks', each with its own chieftain and its own thing, but united in the observance of a common code of laws; a corporate religious life also bound the people together, for in this district there were two principal places of public worship, one for each group of four folks. To the north of the Tröndelag lay Halogaland and Namdal, famous for their rich fisheries and prosperous skin-trade, where a notably adventurous population was likewise divided into folks governed by chiefs or petty kings. South of the Tröndelag were the poorer districts of Nordmör, Romsdal, and Söndmör, where there were also small independent kingdoms, but further down the coast lived the three great peoples of Vestland, the folks of Nordfjord and Sogn, and the renowned vikings of Hordaland, all three folks observing a common law that was administered at the Gulathing. South again lay Rogaland, the seat of another powerful folk, and in eastern Norway was an important confederacy of petty kingdoms established in the Hedemark, Romerike, Hadeland, and Ringerike.
It was not, however any of these folks who were destined to assume dominion over the whole of Norway. Vestfold was
105
the seat of Harald Fairhair's conquering dynasty. Here on the west of the Oslo fjord was a kingdom that had shared in the long-established prosperity of the Vik, being closely connected with Denmark and knowing something of the advantages of a continental trade. Even at an early time, as far back as the period from the fourth to the sixth
century, there is archaeological warrant for the existence of a rich and independent Vestfold state occupying the province between Brevik and Tönsberg, and it seems a natural thing that in this territory should dwell the royal line that aspired to control the destinies of all Norway.
106
But this was not achieved by the scions of the most ancient dynasties of the Vestfold kings, for the history of the country opens with the passing of their realm into the hands of a royal family who were foreigners to the land.
It was the purpose of that much-discussed poem the Ynglingatal (p. 78) to declare the descent of these new Vestfold kings from the ancient Yngling dynasty of Svitjod. According to the poem, the first of the foreign Vestfold line was Halfdan Hvitbein, the son of Olof Tretelgja who was the son of the Svitjod king Ingjald Illradi (p. 79). Olof had been an exile in Vermland after the death of his father and had married a woman of Solör, a district north of Vermland and on the eastern boundary of Norway; the son of this marriage was Halfdan Hvitbein (1) who eventually became lord of the Vestfold kingdom; it is related of him that he fell at Toten in the Hedamark and was buried at Skiringssal, so it may well be that he was the conqueror not only of Vestfold but of Ringerike and Hadeland, and was engaged in an attempt to extend his conquests further to the east when he died.
Eystein Halfdansson succeeded his father and, after his death, was likewise buried in Skiringssal. (2) He was followed on the throne by Halfdan Eysteinsson. This third king had his capital at Holtar, the present Holtan in Borre, and he was buried at Borre.
The fourth king in Vestfold was Gudröd. (3) He began his reign just about A.D. 800 and was murdered by a retainer of his second wife Asa (the queen who was buried in the Oseberg ship) somewhere about A.D. 840.
The next king, Olof Geirstada-alf, is said to have been the son of Gudröd by his first marriage. He is praised in the Ynglingatal for having ruled firmly over the wide land of Vestmar,
1. But the ancestry of Halfdan, in spite of this account, is necessarily dubious, for his name constitutes a break in the alliterative series of names in the Yngling royal stem--Egil, Ottar, Adils, Eystein, Yngvar, Anund, Ingjald, Olav: Halfdan. See A. W. Brřgger, Vestfoldminne, I ( 1925-6), p. 15.
2. A much-disputed point, for Snorri in the Ynglingasaga says he was buried at Borre; but see the essay on this subject by O. A. Johnsen, Festkrift til F. Jónsson, Copenhagen, 1928, p. 121. A. W. Brogger, however, upholds Snorri's version, op. cit.
3. His name breaks the alliterative line of his three predecessors and has decidedly a Danish sound, so that it is open to question whether this Vestfold Gudröd was really in the direct Yngling line and not an usurper. This Gudröd has been fancifully, and probably incorrectly, identified with the Danish king Godfred (p. 91) who was the opponent of Charles the Great.
107
and the verses about him begin so proudly that he seems to be emphasized as the brightest ornament of the Yngling line in Norway (1) ; but Vestmar is only the southern portion of Vestfold, and Snorri in the Ynglingasaga, though he calls Olof a bold and mighty man, reveals him as a king who lost a great part of his father's possessions, and who was forced in the end to divide what remained of his kingdom with his half-brother Halfdan. Olof died in the middle of the ninth century and was buried at Geirstad. (2) He was succeeded by his son, Ragnvald Heidum-har, the king in whose honour the Ynglingatal is said to have been written. Of all the kings of Vestfold, however, he is the least known to history. This curious circumstance is not easy to explain, but it may be that the king was a busy viking who gained his honours on the high seas and in far-off lands, (3) thus playing but little part in the affairs of Vestfold. This would to some extent explain why it is that the manner of the king's death and the place of his burial are now unknown.
Halfdan the Black, said to have been a son of Gudröd and his second wife Asa, meanwhile ruled in his allotted portion of the Vestfold kingdom. His first exploit was a reconquest of part of the Vingulmark, and he followed up this success with a series of wars whereby he won back the lost possessions in Romerike, Hadaland, Toten, and the Hademark. Nor did his conquests end here, for he is said to have extended his kingdom into the west of Norway, this being largely the result of his marriage with the daughter of the king of Sogn, since at this king's death Sogn fell easily into his hands.
At what period and by what means he took all Vestfold for himself history does not record, but it is clear that the partition of the kingdom ended in his reign. At his death, therefore, which took place about the year 880, he was undeniably a great and powerful king ruling over a very large dominion in southern Norway. His hold over Sogn seems to have been a temporary
1. H. Schück, Studier i Ynglingatal, Uppsala, 1905-10, pp. 38, 52. suggested that these verses in reality applied not to Olof Geirstada-alf but to Olof Tretelgja. Cf., however, A. Noreen, Ynglingatal, K. V. Ant. Akad. Handl., 28 : 2 ( 1925), 251.
2. This has been identified, naturally enough, with the existing Gjerstad near Tjölling and close to Skiringssal. But there is a possibility that it was really Gjekstad, close to Gokstad on the Sande fjord, and there is accordingly a further possibility that the renowned Gokstad ship-burial was the grave of Olof Geirstada-alf. The highly ingenious argument for this identification, first discussed by N. Nicolaysen ( Vikingship discovered at Gokstad, Oslo, 1882, p. 70), has been restated by A. W. Brřgger , Vestfoldminne, I, 1925-6, p. 175, and Borrefundet, 1916, p. 55.
108
affair, for the Sogn people were an independent folk again in the early years of his son's rule, but even without Sogn Halfdan's realm was of vast extent and there can be no doubt that he was a great king. Thus in the Heimskringla he is the first monarch to have a whole saga to himself, and in the Fagrskinna, another thirteenth-century history of Norway, his reign is the starting-point of the country's story. (1) Moreover, he is remembered as a just man and a wise law-maker, honoured especially for his system of assessing weregilds (blood-money).
Halfdan's achievement in winning his vast dominion in the south-east was, as the medieval historians knew, the direct prelude to the formation of the united kingdom of Norway. Whether by a wise administration he had imposed a more stable constitution upon his realm than any conqueror before him, whether the sanction of his might enforced a greater solidarity than as yet had been obtained, there are no means of telling. But not all the credit for the winning of a united Norway belongs to his splendid and adventurous son, for Harald Fairhair built his larger kingdom upon the foundations laid by Black Halfdan.
The date at which Harald came to the throne is usually said to be about A.D. 860. According to one group of northern histories his reign lasted from 852 to 923, but, following the better chronology of Ari Frode, Harald was king from 862 to 932. A new dating, however, has been proposed by Professor Halfdan Koht, (2) who, after computing the probable length of the generations between Harald and the later kings whose date is certain, arrives at the conclusion that Harald's birth must be set as late as A.D. 865-70, and his reign must therefore be defined as lasting from 875-80 to 940-45. This chronology depends principally upon the date given in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle for the arrival of Harald's successor, Eric Bloodaxe, in England (p. 254), and although it is in the highest degree doubtful whether the dead-reckoning employed in this method of calculating by generations is a sufficiently delicate instrument to prove an error in the chronological reckoning of so careful an historian as Ari, (3) yet it is certainly true that
1. Ágrip, another early history of Norway, also begins in the reign of Halfdan the Black, but the opening passages of the book are missing.
2. Innhogg og utsyn i norsk historie, Oslo, 1921, p. 34; Norske Historisk Tidskrift, 5 R. VI ( 1924), p. 146, also XXVIII ( 1929), p. 425. Cf. an earlier attempt to discredit the traditional chronology by G. Vigfússon, Corpus Poeticum Boreale, Oxford, 1883, II, p. 487.
3. See Johan Schreiner's criticism of Koht's chronology, Norske Historisk Tidskrift, 5 R. Vii ( 1928), p. 161 ff., and F. Jónsson, ib., 5 R. VI ( 1924), p. 1.
109
this new dating is better in accord with the facts of outside history than was Ari's; therefore it seems that in respect of Harald's reign the new chronological system, though perhaps open to certain misgivings, may for the present hold the field.
Harald Fairhair was the son of Halfdan and Ragnhild, daughter of a petty king of Ringerike and said to be related to the Danish royal family; he was a mere boy, probably only ten years old when he came to the throne. Immediately upon the great king's death, the jealousy and envy of the small princes outside and within his father's realm threatened the safety of his throne. The first to attack was Gandalf of Ranrike, but the chieftains of Vestfold not only repulsed Gandalf, but later drove the war into this king's country, slew him, and took possession of all his realm. Thus at the outset of his reign Harald acquired the great stretch of country on the east side of the Skagerak that extended southward almost to the modern town of Göteborg in Sweden, a valuable length of coast long coveted by the Swedish kings. In the meantime, a group of Opland chiefs had rebelled, but Harald's generals invaded Opland, took the rebels by surprise, and burnt them to death in the house where they were lodging. The Toten district, the Hedemark, and Romerike lay thenceforth under the young king's power.
It is at this stage in the saga of Harald that Snorri relates that often-repeated story of how the king was first fired with the determination to conquer all Norway. He had fallen in love with a girl, Gyda, daughter of a king in Hordaland, but when he sued for her hand the girl replied contemptuously to Harald's envoys that she would not waste her maidenhood on a king who ruled over but a few peoples. 'Marvellous it seems to me', she said, 'that there is no king who will make Norway his own, and be sole ruler thereof, as King Gorm has done in Denmark, and Eric in Uppsala.' When this answer was told to Harald, he said that the girl had spoken well. It seemed to him strange, indeed, that he had not already thought upon the conquest of all Norway, and he vowed there and then that he would neither cut nor comb his hair until this end was achieved. Thus his splendid golden hair was allowed to grow to great length and earned for him the nickname 'Fairhair'.
The story of Gyda and her taunt is assuredly fictitious, but the time had come when the great ambition was formed in Harald's mind. Whether the whispers of his councillors inspired him, whether the enthusiasm of his own people or the friendly overtures of the chieftains of northern Norway supplied the
<< Previous Page Next Page >>
© 2004-2007 Northvegr.
Most of the material on this site is in the public domain. However, many people have worked very hard to bring these texts to you so if you do use the work, we would appreciate it if you could give credit to both the Northvegr site and to the individuals who worked to bring you these texts. A small number of texts are copyrighted and cannot be used without the author's permission. Any text that is copyrighted will have a clear notation of such on the main index page for that text. Inquiries can be sent to info@northvegr.org. Northvegr™ and the Northvegr symbol are trademarks and service marks of the Northvegr Foundation.
|