At that time, England was ruled by a king named Æthelred, or Aðalráður in the Norse tongue. He did little to defend England from its enemies, and far more to collect taxes from his subjects. The English were not much convinced of the need for many of the taxes he imposed upon them, obliging him, like numerous other kings, to collect some through coercion and tyranny. When foreign belligerents threatened the country, Æthelred habitually bought them off, thus assuring bands of brigands from abroad – including armies – of booty in England. Æthelred loved his queen Emma above all others, and every moment that he did not spend collecting taxes, he spent sitting in his castle musing upon this woman, while carving birds from bone.
We lack the space between the covers of this book to recount all of the exchanges between Thorkell the Tall and Æthelred, which, for the longest time, hardly ever varied in nature. Thorkell never grew weary of showing up with his forces and challenging Æthelred to a fight. Each time they landed on England’s shores, they did so where its defenses were flimsiest. They would then take hostages and send Æthelred word that he had a choice: either ransom the hostages and pay tribute, or fight. If a foreign army presented terms to Æthelred, he would fall ill, seized with great fits of vomiting and terrible gripes, and not a word could be gotten from him but this: that he would willingly pay the tribute that his enemies demanded. Englishmen name this type of tribute Danegeld, or gafol.
By the time of this story, Æthelred had paid boundless sums in Danegeld. The English peasants, on their part, had had enough of counting out their money to Æthelred, and took it upon themselves both to defend their possessions against him and to muster forces to defend the lands and towns of England from the plunderers who tried to yoke their king with tributes. To King Æthelred, however, such acts constituted nothing less than breaches of the peace and high treason. He considered hostile foreign armies less of a threat than his own subjects, fearing that the peasants would overmaster him, take charge of his army, and deprive him of his throne and kingdom.
Now once again, Thorkell and his men demand an exorbitant sum in silver from Æthelred, landing an army on the banks of the Thames to show they mean business. As usual, Æthelred pledges to pay the tribute claimed, yet finds it difficult to fulfill his pledge. The Vikings, growing impatient for payment, accuse Æthelred of swindling them and lead their army to Canterbury, where both the king and the archbishop have their seats. Thorkell has gathered a great host from Ireland, the isles of Orkney and Shetland, and the lands of the North, and, as always, every man in the army expects great gain from this war with Æthelred. When Æthelred hears report of this army, and that it intends to take Canterbury, his old ailment rears its head: first, he vomits terribly, and then has trumpets blown to summon his troops to war. Yet he does not go to face his foes, Thorkell the Tall and the Norse Vikings, but rather, commences a campaign against his own subjects, the peasants in the territory of Wales, in an attempt to extort enough money from them to hand over to Thorkell as tribute. He personally commands this campaign – declaring, as was true, that the men of Wales are not staunch Christians, for which reason he will now appropriate their wealth – their pure silver, struck and unstruck, wrought and unwrought, and other valuables – and kill every one of them if they refuse to relinquish it.
As for Thorkell the Tall, he and his men grow weary of waiting idly for Æthelred’s tribute, and determine to pillage the neighboring shires and seize anything of monetary value they can lay their hands on, in addition to cattle and butter. Yet the yield of their plunder turns out to be less than they had hoped – the peasants have been fleeced many times over, leaving little but the bones in their necks. The longer they wait for Æthelred’s return with the tribute, the wearier the Vikings grow of plundering the poor, and they determine to besiege Canterbury. Having a rather scanty population, particularly for mounting a defense against a Viking fleet of two hundred and forty ships, the town is taken without a fight. The Vikings seize everything of value within it and burn the town’s churches and monasteries, as well as the king’s castle, to cinders. They take hostage great numbers of the town’s leading clerics, wellsprings of true doctrine and models of purity in England, both monks and nuns, and lay hold of Bishop Godwine, Abbess Leofrun, and numerous other noble men and women, as well as the king’s steward in the city, Earl Ælfweard, and many other aldermen. Finally, they take captive his lordship the archbishop, Ælfheah, one of the greatest aldermen and friends of Christ that has ever lived in England. He is eighty years old at this time.
English books record that the Norsemen then burnt every house in the town to cinders, and cut down any person unable to escape. Droves of dead bodies floated down the Stour River, says one book, and the town’s soil and water both ran red with blood. Women and youths they loaded onto ships, calling them their cargo. When Æthelred eventually returned from his campaign, bringing the money that he had squeezed from the Welsh while his castle burned and his monasteries were ransacked and destroyed, Thorkell and his men doubled the sum of the tribute that they had imposed upon him, and demanded ransom for each and every one of the hostages. Æthelred, distraught at the prospect of paying such a supplement to the huge amount previously stipulated, pleaded for mercy from Thorkell, but Thorkell retorted that he sailed for profit, not pleasure, and that his sole obligation to his men was to let them plunder freely wherever they had hope of gain. He proclaimed such to have been the proper purview of valiant adventurers since the beginning – not paying heed to the whines of those who lacked the mettle to hold onto their own. Æthelred, having already fleeced his own people, had no idea where to turn, and took to vomiting mightily. Once again, Thorkell grew weary of the delay in payment, and he called for an assembly outside the castle wall at daybreak on Palm Sunday. The hostages, he stated, were to be dragged thither from their dungeons. The district’s commoners were bidden to attend this assembly, and the king to send his stewards. Thorkell now summoned those in his fleet most skilled in the application of awls, tongs, shears, knives, and hatchets. In charge of them was a youth from Vestfold in Norway, pale of visage, short, and tremendously stout, with a broader rump than most men, so plump that he waddled more than walked. His name was Olaf Haraldsson, and the Vikings called him “the Stout.” He had very small hands and wore a ring on each finger – two or three on some, in fact – and two silver belts round his waist, one on top of the other, but because of his great girth, the belts had broken asunder, and were held together with bits of twine tied through and around the buckles.
The hostages were led out. A great crowd of men and women had gathered, most of them in clerical garb. Olaf Haraldsson said that the prisoners were to be tortured according to their equivalent worth in silver or butter, and in the order appropriate to their rank and excellence. Those least likely to earn the Vikings much money or butter, such as lay brothers or poor nuns, besides common clerics, were to be maimed first, and most leniently. Next would come the choir-brothers and canons, followed by abbesses, and finally abbots and bishops, as well as earls and aldermen and their wives. These were disfigured in various ways: some had their hands and feet severed, others had their noses or ears chopped off. People mutilated in this way were nicknamed “nubsy” or “stubsy” by the Vikings. No small number had their eyes gouged out. Numerous times that day, requests were sent to King Æthelred to pay the captives’ ransoms, yet his constant reply was that all the coffers in England were empty, as were the butter-larders. That day, Ælfweard, the king’s steward, and various other English aldermen, as well as Bishop Godwine and Abbess Leofrun, had their hands and noses chopped off or their eyes gouged out, and the same went for numerous others of the spiritual estate and clergy. After the hostages were tortured, they were led away and sent to Æthelred. From that day on, most folk of any mark in England fell under the designation “nubsy” or “stubsy”.
Last to be led forth was Ælfheah, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was doddering and blind. A pale young man walked at his right side, enrapture
d as he chanted shrilly from the Psalter. Thorkell the Tall said:
“We hardly see the need to gouge the eyes out of the head of a blind and grizzled gaffer such as this, and we would hope that Æthelred agrees with us. Go and tell the king that we shall set this man free unmutilated, provided he first hands over eighty hundreds in silver to redeem his head.”
The man acting as King Æthelred’s spokesman stepped forward, bowed to Thorkell the Tall and said:
“The venerable master standing there in chains is not only the spiritual father and patron of King Æthelred, but also brother and companion of none other than the apostle Peter in Rome, who speaks on behalf of Christ himself – and for this man, we shall pay whatever sum you name. This we declare by the king’s authority and that of Holy Church.”
The royal spokesman’s declaration was received joyfully by the Vikings, and all as one proclaimed Archbishop Ælfheah to be a truly sublime man of God. It seemed as if their shouts and applause would never come to an end. Yet when they finally quieted down, a single, weak voice, cracked and quivering, was heard asking for the crowd’s attention. The voice’s owner bade the envoys of King Æthelred tarry and listen to what he had to say. Addressing them was Master Ælfheah himself, in fetters:
“Convey this message,” he said, “to my son King Æthelred and my brother Pope Sergius: never shall any price be paid for my head apart from what Christ paid on the cross when he ransomed my soul from Hell. If my life is to be bought now for less, I shall never again lift my eyes to behold this world or the next.”
Thorkell the Tall’s cohorts were a sight less cheerful when they heard this reply from the archbishop’s lips, whereas Thorkell himself said that old Ælfheah was a man with a gallant heart. “For now,” he said, “naught else shall be done. Bring the old man back to his tower.”
At the conclusion of their day’s work, the Norsemen were not yet contented, and they ordered an abundant supply of ale-barrels brought and opened and a great quantity of meat boiled, and lit fires and held a grand feast there on the banks of the Thames.1 As they feasted, they declared old Ælfheah a true son of the Devil, meaning to deprive valiant warriors of eighty hundreds in silver for the sake of his own arrogance. They pronounced it a damned disgrace for craven monks to cower in the bosom of that gallows-carrion Christ and fleece doughty men of their livelihoods. The more they chewed this over, the more agitated they grew. Finally, most asserted that they would not put up with any more provocation from Christians who caused them to lose their share of ransoms or spoils. After eating and drinking for quite some time, and with the celebration at its height, various noble members of the fleet raised their voices above the crowd and proclaimed it utter madness to spare the old fool who, that day, had defied such champions as themselves. Their leaders ordered that Archbishop Ælfheah be brought out once more, and this was done. The old man was dressed in a red stole and had had his beard groomed respectably. The young man, Grímkell, stood by his side and chanted. They led Ælfheah to the middle of the square and pulled the stole off him. The old man stood there in nothing but his kirtle, woven of coarse tow and heavily knotted, and his wrists and ankles were shackled. The crowd began pelting the bishop with big knucklebones from oxen and other bones leftover from the boiled meat, as well as bulls’ horns and anything else handy. A voice in the crowd rang out – it was Olaf Haraldsson the Stout. He declared:
“They say that more sods can be found in a band of Vikings than anywhere else. But where are they now – when you hold your tongues as beef bones are flung at such a maidenly swain as the one standing there singing?”
At these words the men roared with laughter, pulled the boy from the archbishop’s side, and sat him down among them. The old man stood there alone on the square, in his shackles. He held himself upright at first, his eyes raised as though he were blind, muttering a few words that the other men could not catch. Yet, say English books, after being repeatedly pelted by ox-bones, the archbishop finally sank to the ground, his body and limbs covered in bruises and his skull broken. Thus did the Norsemen beat to death, on that day, Alphegum archiepiscopum venerabilem.
23
SOURCES SAY THAT Olaf Haraldsson had two small ships of his own in Thorkell Strutharaldsson’s fleet, having been given them as a tooth-fee at home in Vestfold.1 Olaf had been seafaring since he was a child, at first doing the tasks normally assigned to young boys, and later, after growing older, commanding his own men. He had sailed his ships far and wide and done battle from the Baltic to Spain, and many years later found skalds to sing the praises of his exploits in distant lands. The story went that he defeated the Gotlanders in battle when he was twelve years old, and then occupied the island and subjugated its inhabitants. He also claimed to have fought and defeated an army of innumerable knights in Kennemerland. Yet, if truth be told, no one had ever really heard of him until the day he joined Thorkell Strutharaldsson. Small bands of Vikings that sailed with few ships found it ever harder to subdue folk who inhabited the coasts of the Northern lands, lacking, as they did, the manpower to conduct raids where there was hope of plunder – such places were generally well defended. They were forced to settle for harrying where there were no defenses, the catch being that such places had no spoils either, and the youths that dwelt there were so emaciated and the women so spent that they were practically useless for selling or enslaving. Instead, the Vikings had to content themselves with plundering cows if there were any, or else goats, and salting them down in barrels – and it seemed to them a lucky day if they found anything at all to eat. Quite often, numerous men on the ships became incapacitated due to lack of provisions, and many died of scurvy. Few of them had any untattered garments to wear.
When Olaf the Stout and his men joined up with Thorkell the Tall, they were finally able to eat their fill. Within Thorkell’s company, the rule was that every Viking had the right to keep the possessions of any man he managed to fell, but when halls or churches were plundered, or town coffers were emptied, the chieftains were in charge of dividing the spoils. If the booty were plentiful, the chieftains first dealt out weapons and clothing to their troops, and afterward money.
Immediately following the capture of Canterbury, most of those in the Viking fleet arrayed themselves in the clothing that they had stripped from the townsfolk: many a hard-boiled Viking wore a monk’s cowl, while some sported lavish chasubles embroidered with gold or carried crosiers as staves. Killers with tangled locks and unkempt beards donned bishops’ miters, or adorned their heads with gold lace and other diadems of abbesses. When the chieftains could fit no more gold rings on their fingers, they threaded them onto ribbons and let them dangle from their belts.
One day, Olaf the Stout walked among his men to get a sense of their well-being, and had a good look at their clothing and weapons. Among the troops was one man who seemed less disheveled and bedraggled than most of the vagabonds and landlopers gathered there. This man had the look of a warrior and a fierce bearing, though he wore a plain tunic and carried inferior-looking weapons.
Olaf said: “Your clothing is poor, fellow, and your weapons are not what I would call formidable. Choose from my attire what you will.”
The man in the tunic replied: “I am no beggar. I did not come here to receive alms, but to win glory.”
“Then why did you not get yourself better clothes in Canterbury?” asked Olaf Haraldsson.
“Because,” said the man in the tunic, “the only men I encountered in that town worth taking a moment to swing a sword at – the ones we call monks – were more akin to women in their defenselessness. There were also a great many women, most of them with child, whereas the men that were capable of fighting were at work or away at war. It hardly beseems me to strip the clothing from monks and nuns, or pregnant women, and don it myself. I would rather wear my tunic, which I took from Farmer Gils Másson when I killed him on Hornstrandir – it was what I was wearing when I brought myself safely to Ireland.”
Olaf the Stout asked who t
his man was that spoke so boldly. It was clear he was no milksop.
“Þorgeir is my name, son of Hávar, and I am an Icelander,” he said. “Since you offer me finer attire, I must tell you what my mother and sworn brother Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld said: that the only gifts befitting a valiant warrior are those that a king grants him according to his worth at the conclusion of a battle. I will fight in this poor tunic of mine until I and my weapons win a cloak more suited to a doughty fighter, but if I am struck down by another man’s arms, then it is right that when it happens, I be wearing this simple tunic – nothing better. I hope that the next time we do battle, I encounter the sort of champions that my mother told me can be found waging war. It will then be revealed what sort of man I am, despite these poor clothes of mine.”
Olaf the Stout then said: “Strange men you are, you Icelanders, who submit to no king and trust only in yourselves. In this world, such a thing is rare indeed. Yet if you had the choice, what king would you submit to?”
Þorgeir Hávarsson said: “I pledge such troth to you that I will do only as you command.”
“This,” says Olaf, “is spoken valiantly – and no one has ever made such a pledge to me before. You will surely make a splendid king’s man. I bid you accept this gold ring from me, for I expect greater things of you than of other men.”
Now that the Norsemen had accomplished the great exploit of laying waste to Canterbury, their opinion of their own excellence grew to no small extent and they reckoned that all of England would be theirs for the taking. They held important councils on the banks of the Thames, and their leaders agreed that the time had come for them to pay better attention to London than they had until then. It was the richest and most populous place in England, and the only English town that had never been taken by a foreign army. The Vikings had heard that more wealth was amassed in that town than any other. Many a distinguished English alderman and lord dwelt there, as well as rich merchants who outfitted ships for long trading voyages. There were also numerous wrights and craftsman who produced manifold wares: weavers, tanners, goldsmiths, and other skilled artisans. The Norsemen looked on it as a desirable occupation to rob the locals of their valuables, weapons, and money, as well as their household belongings and other useful things. Thorkell ordered his army to whet and polish its weapons, to prepare its ships for battle and sail them up the river, declaring that he intended to attack London, and he promised each man ownership of all the spoils he couldc lay his hands on, yet no more than he could carry away himself. Everything that had to be borne on horseback, as well as carted off in wagons, would remain the undivided property of the army, under the control of King Thorkell. That was Viking law.
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