Harald Hardrada (27 page)

Finn travelled on over the Dovre mountains into the Upplands where he first sought the advice of his own son-in-law, the jarl Orm Eilifsson, who was himself the son of a daughter of the mighty Jarl Hakon of Lade. Jarl Orm accompanied Finn to his meeting with Hakon Ivarsson and together they negotiated an agreement: Hakon would be reconciled with the king in exchange for being given King Magnus' daughter, Ragnhild, in marriage and with a dowry befitting a princess. Finn agreed to the proposal on Harald's behalf and returned to the Trondelag where the former unrest and rebellion had by now apparently subsided.

All of which would have amounted to precisely the outcome intended, had it not been for the proud Ragnhild's response to Hakon's suit and her insistence that a king's daughter could not accept a husband of lesser rank than that of jarl. Hakon could only bring his case to Harald who refused the request, because there had never been more than one jarl in the land at any one time since Olaf's reign and there would be no new jarl appointed while Orm still lived. Accusing the king of breaking his agreement, the furious Hakon stormed out of the court and took ship to Denmark where he was welcomed as a kinsman by Svein Estridsson (Svein's wife and Hakon's father both being Jarl Hakon's grandchildren) and placed in command of Danish coastal defences. Although generously endowed with estates, Hakon nonetheless chose to live aboard his warships the whole year round keeping guard against Baltic pirates. Meanwhile, Finn Arnason is said himself to have been angered because Harald had broken his own agreement made in good faith with Hakon, but it was to be a far greater grievance against the king which would very shortly drive Finn also into exile in Denmark.

It might be helpful at this point to attempt a cautious alignment of the saga narrative with more reliable historical chronology, because Snorri provides very few indications of the date of events and tends, as on earlier occasions, towards misleading compression of the time-scale. In this instance,
Orkneyinga saga
supplies the most useful framework of reference, because it is from the orbit of Jarl Thorfinn that the infamous Kalv Arnason returns to make his first entry into Harald's saga. Kalv was last mentioned here when he travelled with Einar Tambarskelve to bring Magnus home from Russia in 1035. According to
Orkneyinga saga
, he had confessed his guilty part in the martyrdom of Olaf to Rognvald Brusason at that time and yet Snorri Sturluson's
Magnus' saga
appears to suggest that the young Magnus was not apprised of that confession and held both Kalv and Einar in high regard after his return to Norway. Indeed, the earlier years of Magnus' reign represented a new ascendancy for Kalv, who even assumed the role of foster-father to the young king, until a man from Værdal had occasion to inform him of Kalv's part in the battle of Stiklestad. When Magnus next met with Kalv it was at a feast held at the farm of Haug close by the battlefield and he took the opportunity to invite his foster-father to ride with him to the place of martyrdom and ‘see the marks of what befell there'. Kalv was apparently expecting the worst, because he had already ordered his servant to load his ship in readiness for a swift departure, and he flushed deep red at Magnus' suggestion, but the king would accept no prevarication, even issuing a command. Having ridden to the place of martyrdom, the two dismounted and Magnus asked Kalv to point to the exact spot where Olaf had been slain. So he did with his spear-point and Magnus next asked where exactly he himself had stood at that moment. When he admitted to having stood then where he stood now, Magnus saw how the dying Olaf would have been within range of Kalv's axe. Challenged face to face at the very spot, Kalv still denied his guilt before leaping to his horse and riding away. By nightfall, he was aboard ship and sailing out of the fjord under cover of darkness on voyage to find refuge in Orkney with his kinsman Jarl Thorfinn (whose wife, Ingibjorg, was a daughter of Finn Arnason).

It is at this point that the
Orkneyinga saga
narrative can supply its evidence as to dating, because it claims that the cost to the jarl's household of accommodating Kalv and his retinue was the reason why Thorfinn demanded a greater share of the jarldom. Expecting imminent armed conflict with his uncle who was already assembling forces from Caithness and the Hebrides, Rognvald sailed for Norway to seek assistance from King Magnus. On his return to Orkney he brought with him a substantial and well-equipped army provided by Magnus and also a message for Kalv Arnason, promising him the king's pardon if he would support Rognvald against Thorfinn. When the dispute came to battle at sea in the Pentland Firth, Kalv's six large warships stood off from the action, but only until Rognvald began to get the upper hand and Thorfinn called out for assistance. Presumably, Kalv could hardly refuse his kinsman in such extremis and brought his ships against the smaller craft in Rognvald's fleet, swiftly clearing their decks. At which point the Norwegian crews cut their vessels loose from the lashings and took flight, thus depriving Rognvald of the greater part of his forces and ensuring certain victory for Thorfinn.

‘That same night', according to the saga, Rognvald again sailed east to Norway and there told Magnus of the outcome of the battle. He is said by the saga to have stayed only a short while in Norway before sailing back west-over-sea with a retinue of Norwegian housecarls. On landfall in Shetland he learned that Thorfinn was in Orkney in company with only a small force and so Rognvald seized the opportunity for a surprise attack. Although caught quite unawares and finding his house aflame, Thorfinn broke his way through a wooden wall, carrying his wife Ingibjorg out of the burning building in one of the saga's most famously celebrated escapes. His chance for revenge came early in the Yuletide season when Rognvald, believing Thorfinn to have been killed in the fire, was on the small isle of Papa Stronsay collecting malt for the winter feasting. Thorfinn's reciprocal surprise attack put yet another house to the torch and slew Rognvald's Norsemen and yet Rognvald himself managed to get away, but only to be caught and killed while hiding among the rocks by the shore.

When Thorfinn sailed to Norway in the following spring in an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt at reconciliation with Magnus, he found the king ruling jointly with Harald, so his visit can be securely dated to the earlier months of 1047. Thus Rognvald's death, his own two voyages to Norway and the intervening sea-battle in the Pentland Firth must all be similarly assigned to the year 1046, which would place Kalv Arnason's confrontation with Magnus and his flight from Norway to Orkney fairly safely in the year 1045, or just possibly in the previous autumn, when Magnus would have been at the peak of his ascendancy and well placed to confront the man who had slain his father.

The demise of Rognvald Brusason left Thorfinn with supreme power over the jarldom and
Orkneyinga saga
tells how ‘Kalv Arnason never left his side'. Indeed, Kalv had already been placed in lordship over the Hebrides by Thorfinn ‘to ensure his authority there' and there is every reason to believe he was so assigned because these
Suðreyjar
(as the Western Isles are called in the saga) were most often governed by the Orkney jarls throughout the first half of the eleventh century. Yet it would seem that his former land-holdings in Norway represented the more attractive prospect for Kalv, because Snorri tells how ‘he made ready to leave at once and sailed east' as soon as he had news of the favour granted to his brother Finn by Harald. On his return and as promised, Kalv was restored to all the estates and revenues he had enjoyed under Magnus and bound himself ‘to perform all services required of him by King Harald for the good of the kingdom'.

Just such a service was to fall due in the following spring when the king raised a levy for his annual raiding expedition around Denmark and assigned Kalv to command of the ship's crew which was to make the first landing on Fyn island. With the assurance that Harald would swiftly bring his main force up in support, Kalv led his men ashore into the attack, but encountered such fierce resistance that they were swiftly overwhelmed and he was just one of the many Norwegians cut down by pursuing Danes as they fled back to their ships. Presumably having seen Kalv slain on the sand, Harald's purpose was accomplished and he brought the main force ashore to advance inland for the serious business of plundering with fire and sword.

While a half-strophe by the skald Arnor and quoted by Snorri must be accepted as closely contemporary evidence for Harald having ‘dyed crimson his flashing blade on
Funen
[Fyn]', the incident is nonetheless strikingly reminiscent of that siege where the Varangian officer held back while Halldor's company suffered the heat of the fray (and Halldor himself that famous wound to his face), only coming up in support when the plundering was at hand. This would seem to have been a tactic long favoured by Harald and here deployed again to take his ultimate revenge on the man he may actually have seen deliver Olaf's death-wound at Stiklestad more than twenty years before. Kalv's brother Finn certainly believed it so and is said by the saga to have been filled with hatred for the king, convinced that Harald had ‘not only contrived Kalv's death, but also deliberately deceived Finn into tempting his brother back to Norway so as to bring him within the king's power'.

Harald let people say whatever they would, while refusing to confirm or deny any allegations – and yet ‘the king was very pleased with the outcome of events', according to the saga and fully confirmed by the strophe which he composed at the time:

Now I have done to death,
– driven to it was I – and
laid low two of my liegemen,
eleven and two I remember.
Men must guard against
the guileful toil of traitors;
great oaks are said to grow
up out of acorns small.

So bitterly angry was Finn Arnason that he took his leave of the kingdom and sailed south to Denmark where he was welcomed by Svein Estridsson who eventually appointed him jarl of Halland and charged him with the defence of that border country against Norwegian attack.

The two subsequent chapters in Snorri's saga have less bearing on Harald himself, being concerned with the viking adventures of his nephew Guthorm whose sphere of activity lay around the Irish Sea with its base in the city of Dublin, but they nonetheless supply a valuable point of chronological reference. Of key importance in that respect is Guthorm's expedition with
Margad
which led to a falling-out over shares of plunder and culminated in the killing of his fellow raider, because the ‘Margad' of the saga has been identified as Eachmargach, the Hiberno-Norse king of Dublin known to have been killed in 1052. Thus when Snorri places the death of ‘Margad' in the summer following Kalv's death, the attack on Fyn island can be safely assigned to the year 1051 and Kalv's return to Norway to the previous year, 1050. The saga tells of Kalv's returning as soon as he learned of the favour his brother had secured from Harald, so Finn's embassy to the Trondelag and to Hakon Ivarsson in the Upplands can be similarly dated to 1050 and the killings of Einar Tambarskelve and Eindridi placed earlier in that same year or, just possibly, in the latter months of 1049. Within that same time-frame, Hakon Ivarsson's angry departure to Denmark and entry into Svein Estridsson's service must also be placed in 1050.

While the true date of Hakon's return to Norway is left uncertain in the saga narrative, the circumstances which brought it about provide the subject of a colourful anecdote. Although endowed with fine estates by Svein, Hakon still chose to live ‘both winter and summer' aboard his warships as, indeed, befitted the man charged with defence against Baltic piracy. In the event, however, it was upon this policing duty that his career in Denmark was to founder when Svein's delinquent foster-son and his warband launched a campaign of viking brigandage which created havoc around the country. Protests brought to the king by victims of these predations were referred on to Hakon who hunted the fellow down, cleared his ships in a fierce sea-fight and delivered his head to the king at dinner as evidence of his own efficiency. Shortly afterwards, Hakon received a message assuring him that while Svein wished him no harm, the same could not be said of his victim's kinsfolk and he would be best advised to leave the country at once. So it was that Hakon Ivarsson came home to Norway – and with fortuitous timing because Jarl Orm had recently died, thus leaving a vacancy for a new jarl in the Upplands to which Hakon was duly appointed, Harald proving as good as his word on this occasion at least and the princess Ragnhild likewise when she consented to become Jarl Hakon's wife at last.

The compressed chronology of Snorri's saga narrative places the full story of Hakon's Danish exile and homecoming before the account of Kalv Arnason's return and demise, thus distorting a more realistic sequence of events. If Hakon truly had stayed aboard his warships ‘winter and summer', it is hardly possible that he could have left Norway in umbrage before Kalv's arrival in the later months of 1050, become established in Svein's service and then overreached himself in time to return to Norway before Kalv was killed on Fyn some time in the summer of 1051. It would be more reasonable, then, to sacrifice the convenience of the saga-maker's storytelling and propose Hakon's homecoming, appointment as jarl of the Upplands and marriage to Ragnhild somewhat later in the 1050s – although quite certainly before the year 1062 when he makes his next and most significant appearance in the saga as the hero of the great battle on the River Nissa.

Although Snorri claims that Harald continued his raiding of Denmark ‘every summer' after his succession to the kingship, the saga describes no further raids through a full decade after the attack on Fyn island in 1051. Exactly ten years, in fact, because the next account of such an expedition is quite firmly placed in the summer of 1061 and after Harald's ‘founding' of the town of Oslo on the northernmost shore of the Vik estuary (now Oslofjord). The key importance of Oslo – at least, as suggested by the saga – would seem to have been as a forward base for the assembly and provisioning of the fleets about to sail for Denmark or held in ready proximity against Danish attack. The fleet of 1061, however, was made up of lighter craft manned by very much smaller forces than the full battle-fleet levied in 1049. The reason for this more modest operation would appear to have been the expectation of little, if any, resistance – even though fairly effective opposition had evidently been ready to resist the landing on Fyn island in 1051. It is, of course, possible that the raid on Fyn was planned in full knowledge of the hostile reception it was to encounter and with the deliberate purpose of committing Kalv Arnason to a suicide mission, and yet the expedition of 1061 would seem to have been caught unawares on Jutland where ‘the inhabitants mustered forces and defended their homeland'.