Harald Hardrada

by John Marsden

  Nonetheless, the Greeks did not have everything go their way. When Prince Vladimir’s own ship was crippled, he and some of his druzhina managed to escape to the Bulgarian shore aboard another, presumably one of those which had survived the initial maelstrom well enough to be capable of destroying four enemy vessels off the Thracian coast. Vyshata, however, was less fortunate, because it was he who took command of those warriors who had managed to get ashore and led their retreat overland until it was cut off by Byzantine troops. Those not slain were taken prisoner, many of them said to have been mutilated in captivity, and three years were to pass before negotiations secured the return of Vyshata and his fellow survivors to Russia. While Cedrenus’ claim for fifteen thousand Russian corpses washed up on the Bosporus shore is clearly a gross exaggeration, grievously heavy casualties must have been suffered when the Primary Chronicle admits barely six thousand survivors from a force which had set out with more than ten thousand fighting-men, of whom some number are said both by Russian and Byzantine sources to have been Varangian mercenaries. If so, then this was to be the last occasion on which Jaroslav is known to have employed the Varangians who had for so long been his principal source of mercenary recruitment, as they had for his father before him.

  This year of 1043 can be seen as a landmark in the military history of the Rus – and on two counts. Not only does it effectively represent the end of the long-standing tradition of Varjazi mercenaries serving as the sword-arm of Russian princes, but it also marks the end of an era in Russo-Byzantine relations because Jaroslav’s venture into the Bosporus was the last of a long history of Russian assaults on Tsargrad, of which the first is said to have been launched by Oleg, a kinsman of the founding dynast Rurik, in 860. Yet the question remains as to why Jaroslav made the attempt in the first place. His motive is said by the Byzantine sources to have been the death of a Rus merchant – ‘a barbarian nobleman’ according to Psellus – in a market brawl in Constantinople, which would seem to have been a mere pretext for an invasion which had been at least two years in the planning, even though Cedrenus tells of a demand for compensation in the sum of 3lb weight in gold for every man in the Russian fleet. Psellus, on the other hand, notices at least one Russian ship laden with a ‘rampart’, presumably meaning some structure intended for assault on city walls and yet those surrounding Constantinople had withstood such attempts by Persians, Avars and Arabs – as well as Rus – for more than half a millennium and it is almost inconceivable that Jaroslav actually intended the seizure of the city.

  No less puzzling is the fact of the expedition being launched at the same time as Jaroslav’s magnificent Hagia Sophia – the largest surviving Byzantine-style church of the eleventh century, even decorated with inscriptions in Greek rather than Church Slavonic, and unrivalled as the most visibly imposing feature of a far wider Russian cultural flowering – was under construction in Kiev. Interestingly, the authors of a highly respected recent history of early Russia have found no ‘necessary contradiction between the demonstratively Constantinopolitan style of Jaroslav’s public patronage and his campaign against Constantinople in 1043’, going on to suggest his entire cultural programme having been directed against Constantinople as an assertion of Kievan equality and a reaction against Byzantine ‘imperial pretensions’.15 In fact, there is much in Psellus’ account to support that explanation, especially when he refers to the expedition as the ‘rebellion’ inspired by the furious rage harboured by a ‘barbarian race for the hegemony of the Romans’.

  A closely similar view underlies the suggestion made by another historian, and one of pre-eminent authority, that ‘it is quite possible that Psellus was alluding to the traditional Byzantine claim to political sovereignty over Russia’.16 Thus Jaroslav’s enterprise of 1043 must be seen as an extravagant gesture in defiance of imperial influence north of the steppe, and its apparent contradictions as a reflection of the paradox attendant upon the man himself. The ‘Jaroslav the Wise’ surrounding himself with ‘the sweetness of books’ while ushering in the ‘Golden Age of Kiev’ was the same Jaroslav Vladimirovich who had succeeded his father, ‘Vladimir the Saint’, as supreme ruler of the Rus only after two decades of bitter internecine warfare which had left all but one of his brothers dead – usually in violent circumstances – and the one survivor consigned to incarceration. His first importance in these pages, though, lies in his far-reaching influence on a future king of Norway, because there will be a number of occasions throughout the course of Harald’s reign when the man called Jarisleif by the saga-makers can be recognised as his principal exemplar in the art and practice of kingship.

  It is unfortunate, then, that the saga record preserves so little detail of the three years Harald spent in Russia before making his return to Scandinavia. Snorri Sturluson records the marriage to the princess Elizaveta, of course, but he would seem to know nothing else of his activities through this period other than his gathering together all the gold and treasure he had sent ahead from Byzantium into the celebrated hoard ‘greater than had ever been seen in the north in one man’s possession’. Snorri makes so many references to Harald’s treasury that his claims cannot have been without a substantial core of truth – especially when they have been supported by archaeological evidence of coin finds in Scandinavia – and yet it is still curious that the Morkinskinna or Fagrskinna versions of the saga have nothing to say on the subject.

  While considering the saga accounts of Harald in Russia, it should be noted that they all identify Jaroslav’s capital as Holmgarð – by which, of course, is meant Novgorod and it is true that Novgorod had formerly been his preferred power base, even after the agreement with his brother Mstislav had granted him Kiev. On (or even shortly before) Mstislav’s death and most evidently after his own decisive defeat of the Pecheneg siege in 1036, Jaroslav moved to establish Kiev as his new capital. Thus it would have been to Kiev rather than Novgorod that Harald had sent his profits from the east into Jaroslav’s safe-keeping and in the orbit of the Kievan court that he would have spent the greater part of his stay in Russia after his return from Constantinople.

  Nonetheless, he eventually would have had to make his way to Holmgarð because Novgorod lay on the route to Staraja Ladoga from where he was to take a ship across the Baltic. In fact, Harald must have spent some time in the north of Russia because it was there that he would have assembled the ships and fighting-men to accompany his return to Scandinavia.

  There can be no doubt that news of his return from Byzantium would have been carried northwards long before he left Kiev, while stories of his exploits in the east had assuredly reached Russia long before he did and had already begun to build a reputation which was to attract some numbers of professional warriors seeking to share in such profitable battle-glory. Despite the doubtful authenticity of some of the saga stories, the fact of their being so numerous and so enthusiastically endorsed by the skalds can only confirm the genuine substance of a remarkable military record. So, too, their emphasis on Harald’s guile and resourcefulness would have had a particular appeal to the Scandinavian military mind-set, while a Russian warrior would have been most impressed by what he heard of Harald’s prominence in the imperial guard, his brushes with Maniakes and his part in the downfall of an emperor. There is every likelihood, then, of Slavic Rus, and perhaps even Finno-Ugrian, warriors having been included with Scandinavians in the force he was to raise in Novgorod where talk of his coming would have been abroad before the arrival of the man himself. Rumours of his looking to recruit mercenary forces and of the abundant treasury with which he would be ready to pay for them would have offered a welcome prospect in Varangian circles – and especially since Jaroslav’s relocation of his power base to the middle Dnieper had so diminished his formerly voracious appetite for northern mercenaries.

  However elaborated those rumours of Harald had become in the course of repeated and ever more enthusiastic retelling, the eventual arrival of the man himself can only have fulfilled their promise. If any in N
ovgorod still remembered the fifteen-year-old princeling of some fifteen years before, they would scarcely have recognised in him the full-grown man returned from the east with his own druzhina of battle-hardened veterans from the Varangian Guard at his back and a heavy purse of Byzantine gold at his belt. Now into his thirtieth year, Harald would have appeared very much as Snorri describes him in the saga: ‘Handsome and of distinguished bearing, with a fair beard and long moustaches [as was the Slav-influenced fashion among east-farers]. One eyebrow was slightly higher than the other. His hands and feet were large and well proportioned.’ Even though it is hardly possible that Harald was as tall as the five ells claimed by Snorri (a figure probably construed from the ‘seven feet of earth or as much more as he is taller than other men’ said to have been promised him by the English Harold before battle was joined at Stamford Bridge), he evidently was a man of towering physique, whose appearance would have been enhanced by the splendid Byzantine apparel and richly decorated weaponry and war-gear he had brought back from Grikaland.

  In Novgorod and Ladoga, he would also have been ideally placed to hear the latest word from around the Baltic and with especial interest when it bore on his nephew’s warfaring. Thus he would have already learned of Magnus’ devastating defeat of the Wends and of his having made Svein Estridsson his Danish jarl (‘just as Cnut the Great had set Jarl Ulf, his [Svein’s] father as chieftain over Denmark while he himself was in England’, according to Magnus’ saga in Heimskringla) – at least until Svein rose up in arms to assert his own claim to the kingship of Denmark.

  In the autumn of 1045 Magnus inflicted a decisive defeat on his Danish rival in battle off Helganess on the eastern coast of Jutland, Svein took flight to Sigtuna where he found refuge at the Swedish court and Harald evidently decided it was time to make his move. Snorri’s saga quotes a strophe from the skald Valgard of Voll who had been with Harald since Miklagard and now sailed with him across the Varangian Sea . . .

  Laden with the richest cargo, you

  launched your swift ship, Harald,

  carrying gold from Gardar –

  hard-won with honour – westward.

  Through storm and gale you steered,

  sturdy chieftain. Ships wallowed

  deep until at last, through thinning

  spindrift, you sighted Sigtuna.

  III

  Hardrada

  Scandinavia, 1045–1065

  Harald’s voyage from Russia to the Scandinavian mainland in the later autumn of 1045 was a sea-crossing of some 400 miles and little more than a week’s duration – even when allowance is made for the ‘storm and gale’ recalled in Valgard’s verse, yet it represents a passage of such significance in his warrior’s way as to be considered a ‘sea-change’ in the fullest sense of that term. Throughout the previous ten years ‘we can be sure he spent most of the time with harness on his back’ (to borrow Gwyn Jones’ evocative turn of phrase), ‘. . . [as] a professional who fought in any theatre of war to which his employer sent him’.1 Now he was a warlord in his own right, with a reputation and a treasury which were already assuming legendary proportions, and driven by the ruthless ambition for which history would remember him as Harald Hardrada.

  It can only have been that ambition – as yet, of course, cloaked with his characteristic guile – which had brought Harald to the court of the Swedish king Onund Olafsson at Sigtuna and to his first encounter with the man whom the saga calls by his patronymic name-form of Svein Ulfsson. ‘Harald and Svein were greatly pleased to meet as they were related by marriage’ – as, indeed, they were when Harald’s Russian wife was a daughter of Onund’s sister Ingigerd and Svein’s mother Estrid was half-sister to Onund’s father, Olaf.

  From this point onwards in the saga narrative great attention is paid to kinship by marriage, and necessarily so because it formed a complex network of relationships crucial to the course of political history in early medieval Scandinavia. Indeed, Svein’s own claim on the Danish kingship derived from his mother who was a full sister to the mighty Cnut (as well as half-sister to Olaf of Sweden), and his father, Ulf Thorgilsson, had been the jarl entrusted with his realm of Denmark while Cnut himself was most concerned with his new kingdom in England. By way of surety for his jarl’s good behaviour, Cnut kept Ulf’s two sons with him as hostage and so Svein passed his younger years at the English court. While his brother Beorn stayed on as an earl in England, Svein was drawn back to Scandinavia and, at some point after his father’s assassination at Roskilde around the year 1028, he returned north to spend some twelve years in the service of his cousin Onund in Sweden.

  Throughout most of those years, Svein must have been watching and waiting while kingship in Denmark passed first to Hardacnut (Cnut’s son by his Norman queen Emma) and then, after Hardacnut’s death, to the Norwegian Magnus Olafsson. Whether or not there really had been an agreement between Magnus and Hardacnut to the effect that whichever of them survived the other should succeed to his kingdom and Svein honoured that agreement when he submitted to Magnus and became his jarl in Denmark (as the sagas claim), the Danes were apparently content to accept the son of Olaf the Saint as their overlord. Yet Svein himself was not long to share such contentment and soon enough found sufficient support to challenge Magnus in arms. Saxo Grammaticus claims Magnus defeated Svein on land and at sea in Jutland, while Snorri tells of Svein’s defeat in three battles, the last of them fought off Helganess and resulting in Svein’s flight back to the court at Sigtuna shortly before the arrival there of Magnus’ uncle Harald, who was likewise in search of a kingdom.

  So it was that the two would have found themselves with rather more in common than kinship by marriage and their discussions through long winter nights at the Swedish court would seem to have been passed in formulating the plan of action they were to launch in the coming spring. Snorri tells of all the Swedes having been Svein’s friends by reason of his kinship to their royal house and of their becoming Harald’s friends too, although more probably attracted by the reputation of a wealthy and battle-glorious warlord, as is implied by the skald Thjodolf’s strophe quoted in the saga and telling of Harald’s ‘gold-laden ship from the east . . . oaken keel parting the billows; since that time, Olaf’s kinsman, all the Swedes did aid thee’. Thus the ‘large force’ with which Svein and Harald launched their raiding cruise around Denmark in the spring of 1046 would have mostly comprised Swedish ships crewed by Swedes of viking inclination when it sailed down the east coast of Sweden to bear west around the coast of Skaane and strike at the islands of Zealand and Fyn – as recorded, presumably again at first-hand, by the skald Valgard in his three strophes quoted in the saga.

  Valgard exults in wolves battening on the battle-slain in Zealand, bright fire burning houses and barns south of Roskilde, helmets tested and ornate shields shattered on Fyn island, and ‘chains chafing the flesh of chattel maidens’ as they are dragged to the ships. All of this was the stock-in-trade of the skald as war-poet, of course, and yet for Harald this ravaging of Denmark must have been his practical introduction to the viking raiding for which his countrymen had long been notorious at home as well as abroad. Unlike his sainted half-brother, who had been taken aboard his first viking cruise at the age of twelve, and for all his own wide-ranging education in the way of the warrior, Harald’s only comparable earlier experience would have been the attacks on corsair shore bases in which he had engaged as a newly recruited Varangian mercenary with the Byzantine fleet in the Mediterranean some twelve years before.

  For all the detail of plunder and slave-taking preserved in Valgard’s verse, the principal purpose of this campaign against the Danish islands in the spring of 1046 was intimidation, firstly of the islanders themselves, intending to cow them into submission to Svein’s claim to kingship, and secondly of Magnus, when it threw down a newly reinforced challenge to his sovereignty over Denmark. While that was clearly Svein’s motive, Harald’s interest in the expedition is less apparent because he had no claim on Danish kingship
in his own right or he would have been recognised by Svein as a rival rather than an ally. Harald’s sole claim to kingship at this time lay in Norway and so his purpose in terrorising Magnus’ Danish subjects can only have been a demonstration to his nephew of his return to the northlands as a force to be reckoned with.

  By 1046 Magnus Olafsson – said by Saxo Grammaticus to have been called ‘Magnus the Good’ by the grateful Danes, while Snorri credits the cognomen to the skald Sigvat – had been king of Norway for more than a decade. As a five-year-old child, he had been left in the care of Jaroslav in Novgorod when his father returned to Norway on the death-journey to Stiklestad in 1030, and was ‘not yet eleven’ (on the evidence of Arnor Jarlaskald) when he was brought back to Norway in 1035.

  Having earlier promised lordship of his new Norwegian kingdom to both Kalv Arnason and Einar Tambarskelve, Cnut had decided to place his own young son Svein in the kingship even before Olaf came back from Russia – and indeed, had told Einar as much in England, prompting Einar to delay his own return home until after the blood-fray at Stiklestad. Thus it was in the respective capacities of boy-king and regent that Svein Cnutsson and his mother Ælfgifu (Cnut’s English wife, called Alfifa in the Norse) came to Norway from Denmark in the later summer of 1030 at the beginning of a five-year reign remembered almost exclusively, at least in the saga histories, for the oppressive rule and penal taxation which were to become so intolerable that their Norse subjects eventually drove them out.

  There is widespread doubt among historians as to the reliability of the saga-makers’ claims, not least because such policies would have been ultimately self-defeating when they could only alienate a subject people who had recently shown themselves capable of disposing of their own legitimate king. The true situation was more probably one of powerful native lords increasingly resentful of the imposition of an Anglo-Danish child monarch (especially one accompanied by his English regent mother) when one of their own kind might be so easily called back from his Russian exile. Then there was also the sense of national and personal guilt surrounding the martyrdom of Olaf, whose cult had gained ground at an almost unprecedented pace, and so the recall of a son to reclaim the kingship torn from his sainted father might even be seen as an act of reparation – especially when Kalv Arnason accompanied Einar Tambarskelve to summon the young Magnus home from Novgorod.