THE HOMELANDS
Chapter 19
Viking Kings
“Our ravens croak to have their fill… the wolf howls from the distant hill”
- King Harald’s Saga
The Viking Age is often judged by its impact on other cultures. It’s remembered as a time of destruction – the brutal sacking of monasteries, the ruin of much of Anglo-Saxon England, Ireland, and the Frankish Empire – but there was creation too. Colonies were founded in Iceland and Greenland, a Duchy was created in Normandy, great trading cities like Dublin and York flourished, and Russia gained its first centralized state. All of this, however, is focused outwards, and neglects the effect the Viking Age had on the Norse homelands.
The most obvious impact can be seen from the mind-boggling amounts of loot – coins, silver, plate, and slaves. According to the various Frankish chronicles, in the ninth century alone, roughly forty-five thousand pounds of silver was handed over in payments to the Vikings, an amount representing perhaps a third of the total that was carried off.
The tenth century was even more lucrative. In Anglo-Saxon England, King Athelred the Unready paid a hundred and eighty thousand pounds of silver in bribes. This was something on the order of forty million English silver pennies, an amount that contributed greatly to the king’s unpopularity.164
The flood of silver coming from England was increased by plunder from Ireland and the two Frankish kingdoms, as well as trade from markets ranging from Greenland to Byzantium. The availability of precious metals led to the development of a coin based economy instead of a barter system, and further integrated Scandinavia into the wider European marketplace. In the great Viking trading towns like Hedeby and Birka, the Vikings even began to mint their own coins based on Frankish, Byzantine, or Anglo-Saxon models.
Most of this wealth flooded into lands dominated by a warrior culture that prized individual prowess. Great figures built halls and gave generously to their followers. They were described as ‘ring-givers’ and passed out bracelets (or torcs) for the arms and neck, weapons and armor, and ingots of gold, silver, or iron. Plunder was used as personal ornamentation or buried in hoards to burnish reputations. The constant demand spurred the growth of luxury markets, which in turn drove the Vikings to exploit ever more extensive routes of trade.
This exploration sparked a second, more profound change. During the two and a half centuries of the Viking age, the Norse probably had contact with a wider variety of cultures than any other single people on earth. From Anglo-Saxon England and imperial Byzantium in particular, they picked up models of a centralized form of government, which they brought back to Scandinavia. Returning sea-kings found that their vast resources could be used not only for personal adornment, but to support armed companies of men. These slowly coalesced into royal armies which – supported by a Byzantine style administration – further centralized power. As their wealth increased, so did their ability to do kingly things, like constructing stone buildings, raising walls, and decorating their palaces.
By the close of the tenth century, this process was nearing completion. Strongmen were being transformed into petty kings who vied for control of the wealthy market towns of Scandinavia. The old Viking dream of the sea-kings – dominance at sea – was vanishing, replaced by men who wanted to gain territory on land.
Surprisingly, given the size of its coasts, the first to unify was Norway. Unlike the origin stories of most countries, Norway’s founding myth is a love story. Around the year 860, Halfdan the Black, the petty king of an area in the southeast around modern Oslo died, leaving his kingdom to his ten-year old son, Harald Fairhair. According to the Heimskringla, an Icelandic account of the history of Norway, the boy fell in love with a nearby princess, but she refused to marry him until he was king over all of Norway. Harald took an oath not to cut or comb his hair until the job was done, and proceeded to slowly expand his territory.
A more likely scenario is that the ambitious Harald was simply continuing a process that had been going on for several decades. His particular genius was to use fleets to do so. Each petty sea-king that he conquered boosted the power of his own navy and made it harder to resist. The climactic battle occurred at Hafrsfjord, where the king crushed an alliance of petty kings and jarls and brought western Norway under his control. Although he probably only controlled the southern and western coasts, for the first time it is possible to talk about a kingdom of Norway.165
It was in Harald’s best interests to suppress the old Viking traditions of sailing out for plunder in the summers, because this in turn created the very sea-kings that he had struggled so long to overcome. Any raiding that took place would have to be either by his authority or permission, a fact that must have rankled many grizzled sea-wolves. Many of them chose to leave Norway for freer lands in Iceland, the Orkneys or the Faeroes, forced out by Harald’s uncompromising control.
If he had really won Norway for a woman’s love, it was the highest dowry Harald ever paid. Over the course of his fifty years he allegedly collected two hundred wives and had more sons than he knew what to do with. Even three generations later, nearly every jarl in Norway could credibly claim to be related to the first king.
This tremendous fecundity, however, undid most of Harald Fairhair’s hard work. He chose his favorite son Erik Bloodaxe to replace him and even ruled jointly with him for a few years. This might have proved effective if there had been fewer claimants to the throne, or if his heir had behaved with more restraint. Erik, however, did his best to thin the family ranks – a good amount of the blood on his axe belonged to half-brothers – and lopped off the heads of countless jarls who resisted him as well.166 When a younger half-brother named Håkon the Good, who had been raised in England safely out of reach of Erik’s hatchet, arrived with an English army at his back, Erik gave in without a fight. He was as tired of Norway as they were of him, and left for greener pastures in England.
Håkon was the baby of the family, and had been born when his father was already an old man. He proved to be a far more competent administrator than this brother, and an innovative general to boot. When the sons of Erik Bloodaxe invaded, he crushed them at a hill which was later named the ‘Blood Heights’ due to all the carnage. When Erik’s nephews tried again two years later, he positioned his army around ten standards spread a massive distance apart along a ridge. This created the illusion that his force was much larger than it in fact was, and the unnerved invaders turned and ran.
In addition to his martial abilities, Håkon is also responsible for attempting to introduce Christianity to Norway, a religion which would thoroughly change Scandinavia, as it did other lands. The new faith, to which Håkon had probably converted in England, had much to recommend it. Not only did it provide a model of centralized power – as Vladimir had realized, God brooked no challengers to his authority in heaven – but it brought with it literacy as a free gift. A literate king, or at least one who employed literate men, could make his wishes known without face-to-face contact. The old system of personal charisma extended only as far as the king could physically go, but his writ could extend much farther. Literacy meant contracts, uniform laws, and official documents, the glue with which a kingdom was held together.
Unfortunately for Håkon, and subsequent Norwegian history, the population was firmly pagan and the king’s attempt to impose Christianity only managed to alienate most of his subjects. Perhaps over time he would have had been successful, but in 961 the royal nephews invaded again, and although Håkon’s army was victorious, he was mortally wounded in the struggle.
Erik’s oldest son Harald Greycloak was chosen as the new king, but he had little real authority. While Norway had been plagued by infighting, powerful kings had risen to the south and united the kingdom of Denmark. It was to these rulers that the sons of Erik Bloodaxe had appealed, and when they invaded Norway it was at the head of a Danish army. Harald Greycloak had won his throne, but the price for Danish aid had been to accept the Danish king as an overlord. After less than a century of independence, Norway had slipped back into chaos.