The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings

by Lars Brownworth

  The last years of Gorm’s life were not happy ones. His wife died before he did, and the grieving king raised a great stone in her honor, with deeply carved runes that called her ‘the ornament of Denmark’.169 His own end was clouded by treason. As he aged, Gorm began to fear for his favorite son’s life. He vowed to kill anyone who threatened Canute’s life – or even informed the king of his death. When word reached the court that Canute had actually been killed while attempting to take Dublin, there was an understandable reluctance to go tell the king. Finally, Thyra thought of an ingenious solution.170 While Gorm was away, she had the throne room hung in black for mourning. When the king returned, he realized immediately what had happened and cried out ‘My son is dead!‘ Since he had blurted it out himself, there were no executions, but death was still given its due. Two days later Gorm was dead of a broken heart.

  That at least is the legend, but there are some hints that foul play may have been involved. Canute had been shot in the back by an arrow while he was watching some games, hardly a likely death for a Viking. The two brothers had been together when it happened, and there were many who whispered that Canute’s blood stained Harald’s hands.

  Tenth century Scandinavia was a violent place, however, and such unpleasantries could easily be forgiven if the new king provided effective leadership. The first thing that needed to be done was to take care of Gorm’s corpse. Harald gave it a magnificent funeral, raising a huge mound of rough stones over his father’s body. In the center was an ornate wooden chamber filled with the valuables of Denmark’s first true king. He then raised a second rune stone with an inscription informing posterity that he had made it to honor his parents.

  Having taken care of his predecessor’s remains, Harald Bluetooth could now turn to the business of stamping his own authority over the kingdom. He did so in a way that thoroughly eclipsed his father. If Gorm the Old created the kingdom of Denmark, it was his son, Harald Bluetooth, that created the Danish nation. He joined together the disparate tribes of the Jutland peninsula into a single people, joining them temporarily with parts of southern Norway and Sweden.

  Harald Bluetooth needed a unifying idea to tie his people together, something larger than just a shared king or common laws. He found it in Christianity, and in 965 he officially converted. Much deliberation seems to have gone into his decision – the contemporary Saxon historian Widikund describes Bluetooth as a man who was ‘eager to listen but late to speak.’

  The chronicler goes on to describe the colorful argument that led to Harald Bluetooth’s conversion. As expected, the abandonment of the old gods was hotly debated, culminating in a furious exchange between several members of the court and a German missionary named Poppo. The Danish nobility was willing to admit that Christ was a god, but held that he was not nearly as powerful as Thor or Odin. Poppo retorted that the latter two were in fact nothing but trolls and that Christ was the only God. Throughout the exchange Harald Bluetooth had remained quiet, but now as swords were being drawn, he broke in, wondering aloud if Poppo was willing to back up his claims with a test.

  The cleric unhesitatingly agreed. A bar of iron was heated in a fire until it was glowing red, and the king commanded the monk to grab it with his bare hand. Poppo, declaring his faith in the power of his God, reached into the coals and seized it, holding it up before the assembled court until Harald begged him to put it down. He did so calmly, showing the various notables his undamaged hand. The impressed king converted on the spot.

  Another compelling reason for baptism was just south of Harald Bluetooth’s borders. Henry the Fowler’s son, Otto I, had traveled to Rome and been crowned emperor of a new ‘Roman Empire’. In addition to his German lands he owned northern Italy, the Low Countries, parts of France, and much of central Europe. He was still relatively young, and was well on the way to earning his epithet ‘the Great’.171 Such a man would always be looking to expand his territory, and there was every reason to believe that Denmark would be the next course on the imperial plate. Bringing the gospel to the heathen Danes was precisely what a conscientious emperor should be doing.

  By accepting baptism, Harald Bluetooth deftly took away the major pretext for invasion. Christian monarchs did not go to war with each other – at least not with the blessing of the pope – and Harald made sure that everyone knew that he and his dynasty were Christian. At his capital of Jelling, where the great pagan burial mounds were, he built a wooden church and exhumed his father’s body. Gorm’s bones were carefully wrapped in a rich cloth woven with threads of gold and transferred to the crypt of the new church.

  On the stone he raised to commemorate his father, he carved a figure of Christ emerging from the twisting thorns and the snake’s coils of the pagan religion.172 The image encapsulates Harald Bluetooth’s vision for his reign. This was to be a new era for Denmark, liberated from the clutter of the past, led by the faith of the future and a glorious new dynasty.

  Top down conversions are never really quick; the old religion lingered on for decades, but Harald’s adoption of Christianity marked a turning point for Denmark and all of Scandinavia.173 Unlike Håkon the Good in Norway, Harald Bluetooth’s conversion stuck, and he succeeded in overcoming much of the pagan resistance.

  Perhaps he was able to do this because of his frequent demonstrations of raw power. The rest of his reign was spent churning out massive public works that overawed potential usurpers. The ancient Hævejen –’army road‘ – which followed the watershed of the Jutland peninsula and led down to the markets of Hamburg was bisected by the Vejle Fjord, roughly six miles south of Jelling. To allow his armies to cross, Harald Bluetooth built a great bridge over the river and marshy ground. Its scale was mind-boggling. Over half a mile long, and more than twenty feet wide, it could support a weight of nearly six tons. More than a thousand huge posts – for which whole oak forests had to be cut down to provide the timber – were driven into the ground to provide support

  Just attempting such a structure was a statement of raw power. Even the densest woods would rot quickly in the marshy ground, and the entire thing would need to be rebuilt. This was not made to last the ages or be a permanent legacy. It was a message of strength for the here and now. No one else in Denmark – in the past or in Harald’s time – could have made such a thing, or done it so lightly.

  Harald Bluetooth’s rise was noticed by the surrounding states. When Rollo’s grandson, Duke Richard the Fearless was temporarily driven from Normandy in the middle of the tenth century, he appealed to Harald for help. Harald not only helped him recover his territory, but repeated his aid two decades later when one of Richard’s neighbors invaded Normandy.

  The most profitable request for aid, however, came from Norway. Years before, Bluetooth had married off his sister to Erik Bloodaxe, and when the latter had been overthrown, his son Harald Greycloak had come to Denmark to request aid. Bluetooth cannily gave his nephew some troops in exchange for an oath of loyalty. In 961, after the hard work of usurpation had been accomplished, he traveled to Norway and forced the reluctant Greycloak to recognize him as a superior.

  His nephew turned out to be a more effective king than Harald Bluetooth had realized or wanted. By seizing control of the eastern coastal trade routes, Greycloak extended his power into modern Finland and Russia, lessening his dependence on his uncle. Such a situation could obviously not be tolerated, so in 970, Harald Bluetooth had his ambitious nephew assassinated, and took control of western Norway, appointing a more pliant vassal to manage things while he was in Denmark.

  Harald Bluetooth’s triumph in the north was the high water mark of his reign. There were rumblings of danger from the south, where the aging Otto the Great had noticed the growing threat, but he died in 973 and the threat passed. Unfortunately, it was Harald Bluetooth himself who undermined his own reign. For years he had carefully appeased his southern neighbor by sending tribute to Germany, but the combination of Otto’s death and the victory in Norway seem to have gone to his head. When am
bassadors from the youthful Otto II arrived asking for the customary payment, he refused outright.

  Harald Bluetooth had badly misjudged his man. The German emperor had resources far beyond Harald’s young kingdom, and a more disciplined and cohesive army. Although the first battles went well for the Vikings, the imperial army pushed them back to the Danevirke and Bluetooth was forced to sue for peace.

  The loss should not have been particularly crushing since Harald had kept the empire out of Denmark, but he had demonstrated the cardinal sin of the Viking world – weakness. The Norwegian king, a fervent supporter of Thor who resented both Harald’s religion and political control, rebelled, and Norway slipped out of Danish control.

  Everything seemed to crumble at once. Harald managed to keep his hold on Denmark, but just as he was preparing to push south against the Germans, his oldest son, Svein Forkbeard, who had been chafing under his father’s authority, rebelled. Caught by surprise, the king fled to his stronghold at Jomsborg on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea.

  He could not have chosen a better sanctuary. The Jomsvikings were Scandinavia’s most famous company of warriors. They were a fiercely loyal group between the ages of eighteen and fifty, handpicked for their bravery.174 They took strong oaths to live by a unique code of honor, and although staunchly pagan, would faithfully serve whoever paid them. Their fortress, situated on a harbor with easy access to the sea, was virtually impregnable.

  Harald Bluetooth was safe behind Jomsborg’s walls, but he didn’t get the chance to use it as a rallying point. In a skirmish outside the gates he was wounded, and died a few days later. The body was taken back to Jelling and interred in his church. He had written his own epitaph long before when he had raised the great Jelling stone during his years of triumph. Like many things he did, the carving – ostensibly to show filial devotion – was in reality a canvas to proclaim his own greatness. “This stone“, he wrote, “was raised by the Harald who conquered for himself the whole of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian.”

  Both claims are highly dubious. Norway was only partially held – and rather tenuously at that – and the old gods had hardly loosened their grip on Danish hearts, but it shows how Harald Bluetooth wanted to be remembered. Conquest and conversion, the two ways he built the nation of Denmark were copied by his contemporaries in Sweden and Norway. As Harald Bluetooth lay dying, a Swedish minor king named Eric the Victorious was already consolidating the land around what is present day Stockholm. He and his son and successor, Olof Skötkonung, were accepted by the various sub-rulers as the first Swedish kings, and they duplicated the Danish model by converting to Christianity and using it to unite the main tribes.175

  Ironically, the success of Harald Bluetooth and people like him was evidence that the Viking Age was beginning to wane. The days of untethered sea-wolves roaming the waves were gone, and much of the old energy in Scandinavia was dissipating as well. The summers were just as likely to see royal tax collectors arriving as footloose young men slipping their longboats into the fjords. The three Viking kingdoms were joining the rest of Europe, slowly congealing into centralized monarchies. There were still wild parts – Norway in particular had not accepted either Christianity or the concept of autocratic kings – but the sun was nevertheless setting.

  Chapter 21

  The Lure of English Silver

  “Whim rules the child, the weather, and the field.”

  - Edda of Sæmund the Wise

  Harald Bluetooth had been hurried to his grave by his son, and now that the old man was safely out of the way, Svein Forkbeard was crowned. The new king was ostensibly Christian like his father, but already had a reputation as a redoubtable warrior, largely acquired by his frequent summer raids into neighboring Christian kingdoms.

  There was more to this than continuing long-standing Viking traditions. The physical achievements of Harald Bluetooth – the fortifying of the Danevirke, building fortresses and bridges, and handing out vast sums of money to his lieutenants – were made possible by the enormous amounts of silver that had been pouring into the Danish peninsula. By the tenth century, Vikings had become connoisseurs of the metal, being able to compare examples from the Islamic, Byzantine, and western worlds. The highest quality, both in amount and purity were Arabic dirhams. The millions of these coins flooding into the Jutland peninsula enabled first Gorm and then Harald Bluetooth to establish themselves as gift-givers on a royal scale. In many ways, the kingdom of Denmark was built on Arab silver.

  In the mid tenth century, however, the Arab supply began to dry up. Even worse, what little came from the eastern routes became seriously degraded in quality. When the Vikings first started trading with the Arabs, dirhams were roughly ninety percent silver; by the eleventh century that had plummeted to five percent. If Svein wanted to continue to act as his father and grandfather had, a new source of silver had to be found. Fortunately for the Danish king, there was a ready supply in a very familiar place.

  England’s recovery from the ravages of the Great Heathen Army, had been nothing short of remarkable. Alfred the Great had been followed by a brilliant son and grandson who built up the kingdom and briefly forced even the Scots to acknowledge them as overlords. In the process, they transformed themselves from kings of Wessex to kings of England. Their success in creating a stable, prosperous state is illuminated by the nicknames the English gave them. Edmund the Just was followed by Eadwig the Fair, who was followed in turn by Edgar the Peaceful.

  England was among the most prosperous kingdoms of western Europe, far surpassing the crumbling remains of the Carolingian Empire.176 Four generations of rule by Alfred’s family had given it a rare sense of security, and had overseen the golden age of Anglo-Saxon England. Unfortunately, this stability started to collapse just as the Viking kingdoms were looking to exploit new revenue streams.

  The trouble started when Edgar the Peaceful died, leaving two young sons behind. The older of the pair, the thirteen-year old Edward the Martyr, was crowned, but since he may have been illegitimate, he wasn’t accepted by large parts of the north. After a short but turbulent reign he was assassinated under cloudy circumstances, and his ten-year old half-brother Athelred the Unready became king.177

  There were suspicions from the start that Athelred’s men were involved – although seemingly without his consent – and the slain king’s body was unceremoniously dumped in a grave ‘without royal honors’. What is clear, is that neither brother had control of government, but was surrounded – as all kings generally are – by grasping, ambitious courtiers acting in their name. Direction of the government began to founder, and power began to devolve to the nobility.

  Athelred the Unready has one of the more unfortunate nicknames in English history. The Anglo-Saxon word ‘ræd‘ means ‘counsel’ or ‘advice’, and so the king’s name ‘Athelred’ would translate as ‘noble-counsel’. ‘Unræd’ or ‘Unready’, therefore, would mean ‘without-counsel’, probably referring to the low quality of advice the king got, not his state of preparation. It’s also a pun on the king’s name: “Noble-counsel un-counseled.” Ironically, this may have been because he was showing signs of actually becoming a strong king. In the first decade of his reign, he managed to break the power of the great magnates and centralize power in his own hands. The king wanted to keep his own counsel.

  Unfortunately for Athelred, however, just as he was getting to grips with the machinery of government, the Vikings returned. The second great wave of Viking attacks was, like the first, launched by Norwegians. In 991, a fleet of more than ninety ships arrived, led by the adventurer Olaf Tryggvasson.178 The local forces proved hopelessly inadequate to stop them, and the Vikings plundered Essex at will. Finally, in August an Anglo-Saxon army under the command of a seasoned veteran named Byrhtnoth, stood up to them. The English commander gallantly, but rather foolishly, allowed the Vikings to cross from the island they were on to the mainland, but fell early in the fighting. Those who stayed and fought were slaughtered
to a man, the rest fled in a panic.

  The disaster convinced Athelred that his army wasn’t dependable, so he elected instead to buy the Norwegians off as a short-term solution. This led to a hemorrhaging of silver which illustrates both the wealth of England and the ineffectiveness of the strategy. Athelred paid the Vikings ten thousand pounds of silver, but after collecting it, Olaf Tryggvasson continued to raid, this time with the newly crowned Svein Forkbeard and his Danes along for the ride.

  The two plundered the south, taking all major towns except for London where they were bloodily repulsed. Despite this little victory, Athelred again turned to the Danegeld, paying the two Vikings sixteen thousand more pounds of silver to leave. This time, the king attached the usual condition of baptism. When it was awkwardly discovered that both were already baptized Christians, the ceremony was switched to confirmation, with Athelred standing in as a sponsor for Olaf.

  Both Vikings were satisfied, and each returned home to their respective countries soon after. In Olaf’s case, this had less to do with the ceremony than it did with the thousands of pounds of silver that came with it. Olaf intended to make himself king of Norway, and now he had the resources to do it.

  Svein Forkbeard watched these developments with interest. Olaf Tryggvasson was slightly older, and the two were close allies, but he probably watched his colleague’s career with mounting tension. In 997 Olaf successfully seized the throne from Svein, and set about founding a new capital at Trondheim. One of his first building projects was a church – Norway’s first – which he used as a propaganda tool in his goal of forcibly converting the Norwegians to Christianity.