July 25, 2025 • 26 mins
Immerse yourself in the rich tapestry of Norse history as composed by the Icelanders during their long winters. Their meticulous record-keeping and exquisite penmanship have preserved the sagas of the early Norwegian Kings, filled with drama, valor, and intrigue. Drawing from these sagas, Snorro Sturlesons History of the Norse Kings stands as a testament to the poetic fervor and historical accuracy of these narratives. This podcast is a compilation of these narratives, offering a fascinating glance into a world that was. These notes, adapted from Thomas Carlyles preface by Karen Merline, invite you to delve into the world of the early Norse Kings.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section five of Early Kings of Norway. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Early Kings of Norway by Thomas Carlyle, Section five, Chapters
eight and nine. Chapter eight Yarles Eirik and Spain. Yarl
(00:22):
Eirik resplendent with this victory, not to speak of that
over the Yamsburgers, with his father long ago, was now
made Governor of Norway, governor or quasi sovereign, with his
brother Yarle Spain as a partner, who however, took but
little hand in governing, and under the patronage of Spain
Double Beard and the then Swedish King Olaf his name
(00:43):
Sigrid the Proud his mother's administered it, they say, with
skill and prudence for above fourteen years. Triggveson's death is
understood and laboriously computed to have happened in the year
one thousand. But there is no exact chronology in these things,
but a continual, uncertain guessing after such so that one
eye in history as regards them, as if put out.
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Neither indeed have I yet had the luck to find
any decipherable and intelligent map of Norway, so that the
other eye of history is much blinded withal and her
path through these wild regions and epochs is an extremely
dim and chaotic one, and evil that much demands remedying,
and especially wants some first attempt at remedying by inquirers
into English history, the whole period from Egbert the first
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Saxon King of England on to Edward the Confessor, the
last being everywhere completely interwoven with that of their mysterious,
continually invasive Danes, as they call them, and inextricably unintelligible
till these also get to be a little understood and
cease to be utterly dark, hideous, and mythical to us,
as they now are. King Olaf Trigson is the first
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Norseman who is expressly mentioned to have been in England
by our English history books, new or old, and of
him it is merely said that he had an interview
with King ethel Read the second d andover of a
pacific and friendly nature, though it is absurdly added that
the noble Olaf was converted to Christianity by that extremely
stupid royal person. Greater contrast in an interview than this
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at andover between heroic Olaf Trigmsen and Ethelred, the forever
unready was not perhaps seen in the terrestrial planet that day.
Olaf or Olas or Anlof or Anlof, as they name him,
did engage an oath to Ethelred not to invade England
any more, and kept his promise, they farther say, essentially
a truth, as we already know, though the circumstances were
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all different, and the promise was to a devout high priest,
not to a crowned blockhead and cowardly do nothing. One
other Olias I found mentioned in our books two or
three centuries before, at a time when there existed no
such individual, not to speak of several Anlafs who sometimes
seemed to mean Olof and still oftener to mean nobody possible,
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which occasions not a little obscurity in our early history,
says the learned Selden, a thing remediable too, in which
if any Englishman of due genius or even capacity for
standing labor, who understood the Icelandic and Anglo Saxon languages
would engage in it, he might do a great deal
of good and bring the matter to a comparatively lucid
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state vain aspirations, or perhaps not altogether vain. At the
time of Olaf Triggvison's death, and indeed long before King's
fen Double Beard had always for chief enterprise the conquest
of England, and followed it by fits with extreme violence
and impetus, often advancing largely towards a successful conclusion, but
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never for thirteen years yet getting it concluded. He possessed
long since all England north of Watling Street, that is
to say, Northumberland. East Anglia, naturally full of Danish settlers
by this time, were fixedly his Mercia, his oftener, than
not Wessex itself, with all the coasts he was free
to visit and to burn and rob in at discretion
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there or elsewhere. Ethelworthy unready had no battle in him whatever,
And for a forty years after the beginning of his reign,
England excelled in anarchic's stupidity, murderous devastation, utter misery, platitude,
and sluggish contemptibility. All the countries one has read of,
apparently a very opulent country too, A ready skill in
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such arts and fine arts, as there were spends. Very ships,
they say, had their gold dragons, top masted pennons, and
other metallic splendors generally wrought for them. In England unexampled.
Prosperity in the manufacture way was not unknown there, it
would seem, but coexisting with such spiritual bankruptcy as was
also unexampled. One would hope reed Lupus Wulfstan, Archbishop of
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York's amazing sermon on the subject, addressed to contemporary audiences,
setting forth such a state of things, sons selling their fathers, mothers,
and sisters as slaves to the Danish, robber themselves living
in debauchery, blustrous gluttony into pravity, the details of which
are well nigh and credible, though clearly stated as things
generally known, the humor of these poor wretches sunk to
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a state of what we may call greasy desperation. Let
us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. The manner
in which they treated their own English nuns, if young,
good looking and captive to the Danes, buying them on
a kind of brutish or subter brutish Greatest Happiness principle
for the moment, and by a joint stock arrangement far
transcends all human speech or imagination, and awakens in one
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the momentary red hot thought. The Danes served you right,
ye accursed. The so called soldiers, one finds, made not
the least fight anywhere, could make none, Led and guided
as they were, and the generals were often enough traitors,
always ignorant, and blockheads were in the habit when expressly
commanded to fight, of taking physic and declaring that nature
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was incapable of castor oil and battle both at once.
This ought to be laned a little to the modern
English and their war secretaries who undertake the conduct of armies.
The undeniable fact is defeat on defeat was the constant
fate of the English during these forty years. Not one
battle in which they were not beaten, no gleam of
victory or real resistance, till the noble Edmund ironside, whom
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it is always strange to me how such an ethelred
could produce. For a son made his appearance and ran
his brief course like a great and far seen meteor,
soon extinguished without result. No remedy for England in that
base time. But yearly asking the victorious plundering, burning and
murdering Danes, how much money will you take to go away?
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Thirty thousand pounds in silver, which the annual danegelt soon
rose to, continued to be about the average yearly sum,
though generally on the increasing hand. In the last year,
I think it had risen to seventy two thousand pounds
in silver, raised yearly by a tax income tax of
its kind, rudely levied the worst of all remedies good
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for the day. Only Nay, there was one remedy still worse,
which the miserable Ethelred once tried, that of massacring all
the Danes settled in England, practically of a few thousand
or hundreds of them, by treachery in a kind of
Sicilian vespers, which issued, as such things usually do, in
terrible monotion to you not to try the like again,
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issued namely in redoubled fury on the Danish part, new
fiercer invasion by Spain's yarro Thorkel than by Spain himself,
which latter drove the miserable Ethelred with wife and family
into Normandy to wife's brother, the then Duke there and
ended that miserable struggle by Sven's becoming King of England himself.
Of this disgraceful measure, which it would appear, has been
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immensely exaggerated in the English books, we can happily give
the exact date a D. One thousand two, and also
of Sven's victorious accession a D. Ten thirteen. Pretty much
the only benefit one gets out of contemplation such a
set of objects. King Spen's first act was to levy
a terribly increased income tax for the payment of his army.
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Spen was levying it with a strong handed diligence, but
had not yet done levying it when at Gainsborough one
night he suddenly died. Once used to be said by
Saint Edmund murdered king of the East Angles, who could
not bear to see his shrine and monastery of Saint
Edmundsbury plundered by the tyrant's tax collectors, as they were
on the point of being in all ways impossible. However,
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Edmund's own death did not occur till two years after Spenn's.
Sveen's death by whatever cause befell ten fourteen, his fleet
then lying in the Humber, and only cannut his eldest
son hardly yet eighteen count some charge of it, who,
on short council arrangement about this questionable kingdom of his
lifted anchor, made for Sandwich a safer station. At the
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moment cut off the feet and noses, one shutters and
hopes not there being some discrepancy about it. Of his
numerous hostages that had been delivered to King, Spin set
them ashore, and made for Denmark, his natural storehouse and stronghold,
as the hopefullest first thing he could do. Connutt soon
returned from Denmark with increase of force sufficient for the
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English problem, which latter he now ended in a victorious
and essentially for himself and chaotic England beneficial manner became
widely known by and by there and elsewhere as Kunneth
the Great, and is thought by judges of our day
to have really merited that title. A most nimble, sharp, striking,
clear thinking, prudent and effective man who regulated this dismembered
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and distracted England in its church matters, in its state matters.
Like a real king had a standing army house carls
who were well paid, well drilled, and disciplined capable of
instantly quenching insurrection or breakage of the peace, and piously
endeavored with a signal earnestness and even devoutness, if we
look well to do justice to all men, and to
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make all all men rest satisfied with justice. In a word,
he successfully strapped up by every true method and regulation,
this miserable, dislocated and dissevered mass of bleeding anarchy into
something worthy to be called in England. Again, only that
he died too soon, and a second conqueror of us,
all still weightier of structure and under improved auspices, became
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possible and was needed here two appearance, Connett himself was
capable of being a Charlemagne of England and the North,
as has been already said or quoted, had he only
lived twice as long as he did, but his whole
sum of years seems not to have exceeded forty. His
father's fend of the Forkbeard is reckoned to have been
fifty or sixty when Saint Edmund finished him at Gainsborough.
(10:43):
We now returned to Norway, ashamed of this long circuit,
which has been a truancy. More or less. Chapter nine,
King Olaf the thick sets Viking days. King Harold Grindske, who,
with another from Russia accidentally lodging beside him, got burned
to death in Sweden courting that unspeakable Sigrid the Proud
was third cousin, or so to Trigve, father of our
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heroic Olaf accurately counted. He is great grandson of Biorn
the Chapman, first of Hagfargar's sons, whom Erik blood Axe
made away with his little kingdom, as he called it,
was a district named the Greenland Grainland. He himself was
one of those little Harfogar kinglets whom Hakon Yaro much
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more Olaf Trigmassen was content to leave reigning since they
would keep the peace with him. Harold had a loving
wife of his own, Asta, the name of her soon
expecting the birth of her and his pretty babe named Olaf.
At the time he went on that deplorable Swedish adventure,
the foolish faded creature and ended self and kingdom altogether.
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Osta was greatly shocked. Composed herself, however, married a new husband,
Sigur Seir, a kinglet and a great grandson of Harold Fairhair,
a man of great wealth, prudence, and influence in those countries,
in whose house, as favorite and well beloved step son,
little Olaf was wholesomely and skillfully brought up. In Sigurd's house,
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he had withal a special tutor entertained for him one Rain,
known as Rain the far Traveled, by whom he could
be trained from the earliest basis in Norse accomplishments and arts.
New children came one or two, but Olaf, from his
mother seems always to have known that he was the
distinguished and royal article there. One day, his foster father,
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hurrying to leave home on business, hastily bad Olof no
other being by saddle his horse for him. Olaf went
out with the saddle, chose the biggest he goat about,
saddled at, and brought it to the door by way
of a horse. Old Sigard, a most grave man, grinned
sardonically at the sight. Ha I see thou hast no
mind to take commands for me. Thou art of too
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high a humor to take commands, to which says snorro Boy,
Olof answered little except by laughing till Sigurd saddled for
himself and rode away his His mother, Osta appears to
have been a thoughtful, prudent woman, though always with fierce
royalism at the bottom of her memory and a secret
implacability on that head. At the age of twelve, Olaf
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went to sea, furnished with a little fleet and skillful
sea councilor expert Old Rain by his foster father, and
set out to push his fortune in the world. Rain
was a steersman and counselor in those incipient times, but
the crew always called Olaf king, though at first snorro
thinks except it were in the hour of battle he
merely pulled an oar. He cruised and fought in this
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capacity on many seas and shores, passed several years, perhaps
till the age of nineteen o twenty, in this wild
element and way of life, fighting always in a glorious
and most distinguished manner, in the hour of battle, diligent
enough to amass property, as the Vikings termed it, and
in the long days and nights of sailing given over
it is likely to his own thoughts and the unfathomable
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dialog with the ever moaning sea. Not the worst high
school a man could have, and indeed infinitely preferable to
most that are going on even now for a high
and deep young soul. His first distinguished expedition was to Sweden,
natural to go thither first to avenge his poor father's death.
Were it nothing more, which he did, the Skalds say
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in a distinguished manner, making victorious and handsome battle for
himself in entering Morrel Lake, and in getting out of
it again after being frozen there all winter, showing still
more surprising, almost miraculous contrivance and dexterity. This was the
first of his glorious victories, of which the Skulds reckon
up some fourteen or thirteen very glorious, indeed, mostly in
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the western and southern countries, most of all in England,
till the name of Olaf Haraldson became quite famous in
the Viking and strategic world. He seems really to have
learned the secrets of his trade, and to have been
then and afterwards, for vigilance, contrivance, valor, and promptitude of
execution a superior fighter. Several exploits recorded of him token
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in simple forms what may be called military genius, the principle,
and to us the alone interesting of his exploits seemed
to have lain in England, and what is further notable,
always on the anti spain side. English books do not
mention him at all that I can find, but it
is fairly creditable that, as the North records report in
the end of Ethelred's reign, he was the ally or
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hired general of Ethelred, and did a great deal of
sea fighting, watching, sailing and sieging for this miserable king
and Edmund ironside his son. Snorro says expressively, London, the
impregnable city, had to be besieged again for Ethelred's behoof
in the interval between Spen's death and young Konuts getting
back from Denmark, and that our Oloff Haraldson was the
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great engineer and victorious captor of London. On that singular occasion,
London captured for the first time the bridge, as usual,
Snorro says, offered almost insuperable obstacles, but the engineering genius
of Oloff contrived huge platforms of wainscotting, old walls of
wooden houses, in fact bound together by withes. These carried
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steadily aloft above the ships. Will thinks Oloff considerably secure
them and us from the destructive missiles, big Boulder stones
and other mischief profusially showered down on us till we
get under the bridge with axes and cables and do
some good upon it. Olof's plan was tried. Most of
the other ships, in spite of their wainscoting and withs
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recoiled on reaching the bridge, so destructive were the Boulder
and other missile showers. But Olof's ships himself got actually
under the bridge, fixed all manner of cables there, and then,
with the river current in their favor, and the frightened
ships rallying to help in this safer part of the enterprise,
tore out the important piles and props and fairly broke
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the poor bridge wholly or partly down into the river
and its Danish defenders into immediate surrender. That is Snorro's account.
On a previous occasion, Olof had been deep in a
hopeful combination with Ethelred's two younger sons, Alfred and Edward. Afterwards,
King Edward the Confessor that they should sally out from
Normandy in strong force, unite with Olof in ditto, and
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landing on the Thames do something effectual for themselves. But impediments,
bad weather or the like disheartened the poor princes, and
it came to nothing. Olaf was much in Normandy, what
they then called walland a man held in honor by
those Norman dukes. What amount of property he had amassed
I do not know, but could prove were it necessary,
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that he had acquired some tactical or even strategic faculty
and real talent for war at Limfiord in Jutland. But
some years after this a d. Ten twenty seven, he
had a sea battle with the Great Knut himself. Ships
combined with floodgates, with roaring artificial deluges, right well managed
by King Olaf, which were within a hair's breadth of
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destroying Connut now become a king and great, and did
in effect send him instantly running. But of this, more
particularly by and by what still surprises me is the
mystery where Olaf, in this wandering, fighting, sea roving life,
acquired his deeply religious feeling, his intense adherents to the
Christian faith. I suppose it had been in England, where
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many pious persons, Priestley and other were still to be
met with that Olaf had gathered these doctrines, and that
in those his unfathomable dialogs with the ever moaning ocean,
they had struck root downwards in the soul of him,
and borne fruit upwards, to the degree so conspicuous afterwards.
It is certain he became a deeply pious man during
these long Viking cruises, and directed all his strength, when
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strength and authority were lent him, to establish the Christian
religion in his country, and suppressing and abolishing Vikingism there,
both of which objects and their respective worth and unworth,
he must himself have long known so well. It was
in a d Ten sixteen that Cannut gained his last
victory at Ashton in Essex, where the earth pyramids and
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an nae antique church near by still testified the thankful
piety of Cannut, or at lowest his joy at having
won instead of lost and perished, as he was near
doing there. And it was still this same year when
the noble Edmund Ironside, after forced partition treaty in the
Isle of Alney, got scandalously murdered, and Connut became indisputable
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sole King of England and decisively settled himself to his
work of governing there in the year before, either of
which events, while all still hung uncertain for Kannut and
even Eirik, Yarl of Norway, had to be summoned in
aid of him. In that year ten fifteen, as one
might naturally guess, and as all Icelandic hints and indications
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lead us to date the thing, Olaf had decided to
give up Vikingism in all its forms, to return to
Norway and try whether he could not assert the place
and career that belonged to him there. Yarl Eirik had
vanished with all his war forces towards England, leaving only
a boy Hakkan as successor and sp then his own brother,
a quiet man who had always avoided war, Olaf landed
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in Norway without obstacle, but decided to be quiet till
he had himself examined and consulted friends. His reception by
his mother Osta was of the kindest and proudest, and
is lovingly described by Snorrol a pretty idyllic or epic
piece of Norse Homeric type. How Osta, hearing of her
son's advent, set all her maids and menials to work
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at the top of their speed despatched a runner to
the harvest field where her husband Sigurd was, to warn
him to come home and dress. How Sigurd was standing
among his harvest folk, reapers and binders, and what he
had on broad slouch hat with veil against the midges,
blue kirtle, hose of I forget what color, with laced boots,
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and in his hand a stick with a silver head
and ditto ring upon it. A personable old gentleman of
the eleventh century. In those parts, Sigurd was cautious, prudently cunctiatory,
though wordily friendly in his counsel to Olof as to
the king question. Osta had a spartan tone in her
wild maternal heart and assures Olof that she, with a
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half reproachful glance at Sigurd, will stand by him to
the death. In this his just and noble enterprise. Sigurd
promises to consult farther in his neighborhood and to correspond
by messages. The result is Olaf, resolutely pushing forward himself,
resolves to call a thing and openly claim his kingship.
There the thing itself was willing enough. Opposition parties do
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here and there bestir themselves, but Olof is always swifter
than they. Five kinglets somewhere in the uplands, all descendants
of Harfoger, but averse to break the peace which Yarl
Erik and Hakan Yarl both have always willingly allowed to
peaceable people, seem to be the main opposition party. These
five take the field against Olaf with what force they have.
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Olaf one night, by beautiful celerity and strategic practice which
a Friedrich or a Turin might have proved, surrounds these five,
and when morning breaks there is nothing for them but
either death or else instant surrender and swearing a fealty
to King Olaf, which latter branch of the alternative, they
gladly accept the whole five of them and go home again.
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This was a beautiful bit of war practice by King
Olaf on land. By another stroke, still more compendious at sea,
he had already settled poor young Hakkan and made him
peaceable for a long while. Olaf, by diligent quest and
spy messaging, had ascertained that Hakkan, just returning from Denmark
in farewell to Papa and Canoud, both now under way
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for England, was coasting north towards Trondheim, and intended on
or about such a day to land in such and
such a fiord. Towards the end of this Trondheim voyage,
Olaf at once man's two big ships steers it through
the narrow mouth of the said fjord moors one ship
on the north shore, another on the south fixes a
strong cable well sunk under water to the capstans of
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these two, and in all quietness waits for Hacken. Before
many hours, Hakan's royal or quasi royal barge steers gaily
into this fiord, is a little surprised, perhaps to see
within the jaws of it two big ships at anchor,
but steers gallantly along nothing doubting Olaff, with a signal
of all hands works, has two capstans, has this cable
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up high enough at the right moment, catches with it
the keel of poor Hakun's barge, upsets it, empties it
wholly into the sea. Wholly into the sea, saves Hakan, however,
and his people from drowning, and brings them on board.
His dialog with poor young Hakan, especially poor Young Hakun's responses,
is very pretty. Shall I give it out of snorrow,
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and let the reader take it for as authentic as
he can. It is, at least the true image of
it in authentic Snorro's head. Little more than two centuries later,
Yarl Hacken was led up to the King's ship. He
was the handsomest man that could be seen. He had
long hair as fine as silk, bound about his head
with a gold ornil. When he sat down in the forehold,
the king said to him, King, it is not false
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what is said of your family, that you are handsome
people to look at. But now your luck has deserted
you Hacken. It has always been the case that success
is changeable, and there is no luck in the matter.
It has gone with your family as with mine, to
have by turns the better lot. I am little beyond
childhood in years, and at any rate we could not
have defended ourselves, as we did not expect any attack.
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On the way. It may turn out better with us
another time. King, dost thou not apprehend that thou art
in such a condition that hereafter there can be neither
victory nor defeat for thee Hacken. That is what only
thou canst determined, King, According to thy pleasure, King, what
wilt thou give me, Yarl, if for this time I
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let thee go whole and unhurt Hacken, What wilt thou take, King, King,
Nothing except thou shalt leave the country, give up thy kingdom,
and take an oath that thou wilt never go in
to battle against me. Yarl Hacken accepted the generous terms,
went to England and King Canut, and kept his bargain
for a good few years, though he was at last
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driven by pressure of King Cannut to violate it, little
to his profit, as we shall see one victorious naval
battle with Yarle Spain and his adherents, who fled to
Sweden after his beating. Battle, not difficult to a skillful,
hard hitting king, was pretty much all the actual fighting
Olof had to do in this enterprise. He various times
met angry bounders and refractory things with arms in their hand,
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but by skillful firm management, perfectly patient but also perfectly
ready to be active, he mostly managed without coming to strokes,
and was universally recognized by Norway as its real king.
A promising young man and fit to be a king,
thinks Snorro. Only of middle stature, almost rather shortish but
firm standing, and stout built, so that they got to
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call him Olaf the thick, meaning Olaf the thick set
or stout built, though his final epithet among them was
infinitely higher for the rest, a comely, earnest, prepossessing look, beautiful,
yellow hair in quantity, broad honest face of a complexion
purest snow and rose. And finally, or firstly, the brightest
eyes in the world, such that in his anger no
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man could stand them. He had a heavy task ahead
and needed all his qualities and fine gifts to get
it done. End of Section five Early Kings of Norway,
Chapters eight and nine,
Section five of Early Kings of Norway. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Early Kings of Norway by Thomas Carlyle, Section five, Chapters
eight and nine. Chapter eight Yarles Eirik and Spain. Yarl
(00:22):
Eirik resplendent with this victory, not to speak of that
over the Yamsburgers, with his father long ago, was now
made Governor of Norway, governor or quasi sovereign, with his
brother Yarle Spain as a partner, who however, took but
little hand in governing, and under the patronage of Spain
Double Beard and the then Swedish King Olaf his name
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Sigrid the Proud his mother's administered it, they say, with
skill and prudence for above fourteen years. Triggveson's death is
understood and laboriously computed to have happened in the year
one thousand. But there is no exact chronology in these things,
but a continual, uncertain guessing after such so that one
eye in history as regards them, as if put out.
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Neither indeed have I yet had the luck to find
any decipherable and intelligent map of Norway, so that the
other eye of history is much blinded withal and her
path through these wild regions and epochs is an extremely
dim and chaotic one, and evil that much demands remedying,
and especially wants some first attempt at remedying by inquirers
into English history, the whole period from Egbert the first
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Saxon King of England on to Edward the Confessor, the
last being everywhere completely interwoven with that of their mysterious,
continually invasive Danes, as they call them, and inextricably unintelligible
till these also get to be a little understood and
cease to be utterly dark, hideous, and mythical to us,
as they now are. King Olaf Trigson is the first
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Norseman who is expressly mentioned to have been in England
by our English history books, new or old, and of
him it is merely said that he had an interview
with King ethel Read the second d andover of a
pacific and friendly nature, though it is absurdly added that
the noble Olaf was converted to Christianity by that extremely
stupid royal person. Greater contrast in an interview than this
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at andover between heroic Olaf Trigmsen and Ethelred, the forever
unready was not perhaps seen in the terrestrial planet that day.
Olaf or Olas or Anlof or Anlof, as they name him,
did engage an oath to Ethelred not to invade England
any more, and kept his promise, they farther say, essentially
a truth, as we already know, though the circumstances were
(02:35):
all different, and the promise was to a devout high priest,
not to a crowned blockhead and cowardly do nothing. One
other Olias I found mentioned in our books two or
three centuries before, at a time when there existed no
such individual, not to speak of several Anlafs who sometimes
seemed to mean Olof and still oftener to mean nobody possible,
(02:56):
which occasions not a little obscurity in our early history,
says the learned Selden, a thing remediable too, in which
if any Englishman of due genius or even capacity for
standing labor, who understood the Icelandic and Anglo Saxon languages
would engage in it, he might do a great deal
of good and bring the matter to a comparatively lucid
(03:16):
state vain aspirations, or perhaps not altogether vain. At the
time of Olaf Triggvison's death, and indeed long before King's
fen Double Beard had always for chief enterprise the conquest
of England, and followed it by fits with extreme violence
and impetus, often advancing largely towards a successful conclusion, but
(03:37):
never for thirteen years yet getting it concluded. He possessed
long since all England north of Watling Street, that is
to say, Northumberland. East Anglia, naturally full of Danish settlers
by this time, were fixedly his Mercia, his oftener, than
not Wessex itself, with all the coasts he was free
to visit and to burn and rob in at discretion
(04:01):
there or elsewhere. Ethelworthy unready had no battle in him whatever,
And for a forty years after the beginning of his reign,
England excelled in anarchic's stupidity, murderous devastation, utter misery, platitude,
and sluggish contemptibility. All the countries one has read of,
apparently a very opulent country too, A ready skill in
(04:22):
such arts and fine arts, as there were spends. Very ships,
they say, had their gold dragons, top masted pennons, and
other metallic splendors generally wrought for them. In England unexampled.
Prosperity in the manufacture way was not unknown there, it
would seem, but coexisting with such spiritual bankruptcy as was
also unexampled. One would hope reed Lupus Wulfstan, Archbishop of
(04:46):
York's amazing sermon on the subject, addressed to contemporary audiences,
setting forth such a state of things, sons selling their fathers, mothers,
and sisters as slaves to the Danish, robber themselves living
in debauchery, blustrous gluttony into pravity, the details of which
are well nigh and credible, though clearly stated as things
generally known, the humor of these poor wretches sunk to
(05:09):
a state of what we may call greasy desperation. Let
us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. The manner
in which they treated their own English nuns, if young,
good looking and captive to the Danes, buying them on
a kind of brutish or subter brutish Greatest Happiness principle
for the moment, and by a joint stock arrangement far
transcends all human speech or imagination, and awakens in one
(05:33):
the momentary red hot thought. The Danes served you right,
ye accursed. The so called soldiers, one finds, made not
the least fight anywhere, could make none, Led and guided
as they were, and the generals were often enough traitors,
always ignorant, and blockheads were in the habit when expressly
commanded to fight, of taking physic and declaring that nature
(05:55):
was incapable of castor oil and battle both at once.
This ought to be laned a little to the modern
English and their war secretaries who undertake the conduct of armies.
The undeniable fact is defeat on defeat was the constant
fate of the English during these forty years. Not one
battle in which they were not beaten, no gleam of
victory or real resistance, till the noble Edmund ironside, whom
(06:19):
it is always strange to me how such an ethelred
could produce. For a son made his appearance and ran
his brief course like a great and far seen meteor,
soon extinguished without result. No remedy for England in that
base time. But yearly asking the victorious plundering, burning and
murdering Danes, how much money will you take to go away?
(06:40):
Thirty thousand pounds in silver, which the annual danegelt soon
rose to, continued to be about the average yearly sum,
though generally on the increasing hand. In the last year,
I think it had risen to seventy two thousand pounds
in silver, raised yearly by a tax income tax of
its kind, rudely levied the worst of all remedies good
(07:00):
for the day. Only Nay, there was one remedy still worse,
which the miserable Ethelred once tried, that of massacring all
the Danes settled in England, practically of a few thousand
or hundreds of them, by treachery in a kind of
Sicilian vespers, which issued, as such things usually do, in
terrible monotion to you not to try the like again,
(07:23):
issued namely in redoubled fury on the Danish part, new
fiercer invasion by Spain's yarro Thorkel than by Spain himself,
which latter drove the miserable Ethelred with wife and family
into Normandy to wife's brother, the then Duke there and
ended that miserable struggle by Sven's becoming King of England himself.
Of this disgraceful measure, which it would appear, has been
(07:46):
immensely exaggerated in the English books, we can happily give
the exact date a D. One thousand two, and also
of Sven's victorious accession a D. Ten thirteen. Pretty much
the only benefit one gets out of contemplation such a
set of objects. King Spen's first act was to levy
a terribly increased income tax for the payment of his army.
(08:08):
Spen was levying it with a strong handed diligence, but
had not yet done levying it when at Gainsborough one
night he suddenly died. Once used to be said by
Saint Edmund murdered king of the East Angles, who could
not bear to see his shrine and monastery of Saint
Edmundsbury plundered by the tyrant's tax collectors, as they were
on the point of being in all ways impossible. However,
(08:31):
Edmund's own death did not occur till two years after Spenn's.
Sveen's death by whatever cause befell ten fourteen, his fleet
then lying in the Humber, and only cannut his eldest
son hardly yet eighteen count some charge of it, who,
on short council arrangement about this questionable kingdom of his
lifted anchor, made for Sandwich a safer station. At the
(08:54):
moment cut off the feet and noses, one shutters and
hopes not there being some discrepancy about it. Of his
numerous hostages that had been delivered to King, Spin set
them ashore, and made for Denmark, his natural storehouse and stronghold,
as the hopefullest first thing he could do. Connutt soon
returned from Denmark with increase of force sufficient for the
(09:15):
English problem, which latter he now ended in a victorious
and essentially for himself and chaotic England beneficial manner became
widely known by and by there and elsewhere as Kunneth
the Great, and is thought by judges of our day
to have really merited that title. A most nimble, sharp, striking,
clear thinking, prudent and effective man who regulated this dismembered
(09:37):
and distracted England in its church matters, in its state matters.
Like a real king had a standing army house carls
who were well paid, well drilled, and disciplined capable of
instantly quenching insurrection or breakage of the peace, and piously
endeavored with a signal earnestness and even devoutness, if we
look well to do justice to all men, and to
(09:59):
make all all men rest satisfied with justice. In a word,
he successfully strapped up by every true method and regulation,
this miserable, dislocated and dissevered mass of bleeding anarchy into
something worthy to be called in England. Again, only that
he died too soon, and a second conqueror of us,
all still weightier of structure and under improved auspices, became
(10:21):
possible and was needed here two appearance, Connett himself was
capable of being a Charlemagne of England and the North,
as has been already said or quoted, had he only
lived twice as long as he did, but his whole
sum of years seems not to have exceeded forty. His
father's fend of the Forkbeard is reckoned to have been
fifty or sixty when Saint Edmund finished him at Gainsborough.
(10:43):
We now returned to Norway, ashamed of this long circuit,
which has been a truancy. More or less. Chapter nine,
King Olaf the thick sets Viking days. King Harold Grindske, who,
with another from Russia accidentally lodging beside him, got burned
to death in Sweden courting that unspeakable Sigrid the Proud
was third cousin, or so to Trigve, father of our
(11:06):
heroic Olaf accurately counted. He is great grandson of Biorn
the Chapman, first of Hagfargar's sons, whom Erik blood Axe
made away with his little kingdom, as he called it,
was a district named the Greenland Grainland. He himself was
one of those little Harfogar kinglets whom Hakon Yaro much
(11:26):
more Olaf Trigmassen was content to leave reigning since they
would keep the peace with him. Harold had a loving
wife of his own, Asta, the name of her soon
expecting the birth of her and his pretty babe named Olaf.
At the time he went on that deplorable Swedish adventure,
the foolish faded creature and ended self and kingdom altogether.
(11:47):
Osta was greatly shocked. Composed herself, however, married a new husband,
Sigur Seir, a kinglet and a great grandson of Harold Fairhair,
a man of great wealth, prudence, and influence in those countries,
in whose house, as favorite and well beloved step son,
little Olaf was wholesomely and skillfully brought up. In Sigurd's house,
(12:07):
he had withal a special tutor entertained for him one Rain,
known as Rain the far Traveled, by whom he could
be trained from the earliest basis in Norse accomplishments and arts.
New children came one or two, but Olaf, from his
mother seems always to have known that he was the
distinguished and royal article there. One day, his foster father,
(12:29):
hurrying to leave home on business, hastily bad Olof no
other being by saddle his horse for him. Olaf went
out with the saddle, chose the biggest he goat about,
saddled at, and brought it to the door by way
of a horse. Old Sigard, a most grave man, grinned
sardonically at the sight. Ha I see thou hast no
mind to take commands for me. Thou art of too
(12:50):
high a humor to take commands, to which says snorro Boy,
Olof answered little except by laughing till Sigurd saddled for
himself and rode away his His mother, Osta appears to
have been a thoughtful, prudent woman, though always with fierce
royalism at the bottom of her memory and a secret
implacability on that head. At the age of twelve, Olaf
(13:11):
went to sea, furnished with a little fleet and skillful
sea councilor expert Old Rain by his foster father, and
set out to push his fortune in the world. Rain
was a steersman and counselor in those incipient times, but
the crew always called Olaf king, though at first snorro
thinks except it were in the hour of battle he
merely pulled an oar. He cruised and fought in this
(13:33):
capacity on many seas and shores, passed several years, perhaps
till the age of nineteen o twenty, in this wild
element and way of life, fighting always in a glorious
and most distinguished manner, in the hour of battle, diligent
enough to amass property, as the Vikings termed it, and
in the long days and nights of sailing given over
it is likely to his own thoughts and the unfathomable
(13:55):
dialog with the ever moaning sea. Not the worst high
school a man could have, and indeed infinitely preferable to
most that are going on even now for a high
and deep young soul. His first distinguished expedition was to Sweden,
natural to go thither first to avenge his poor father's death.
Were it nothing more, which he did, the Skalds say
(14:16):
in a distinguished manner, making victorious and handsome battle for
himself in entering Morrel Lake, and in getting out of
it again after being frozen there all winter, showing still
more surprising, almost miraculous contrivance and dexterity. This was the
first of his glorious victories, of which the Skulds reckon
up some fourteen or thirteen very glorious, indeed, mostly in
(14:38):
the western and southern countries, most of all in England,
till the name of Olaf Haraldson became quite famous in
the Viking and strategic world. He seems really to have
learned the secrets of his trade, and to have been
then and afterwards, for vigilance, contrivance, valor, and promptitude of
execution a superior fighter. Several exploits recorded of him token
(15:00):
in simple forms what may be called military genius, the principle,
and to us the alone interesting of his exploits seemed
to have lain in England, and what is further notable,
always on the anti spain side. English books do not
mention him at all that I can find, but it
is fairly creditable that, as the North records report in
the end of Ethelred's reign, he was the ally or
(15:23):
hired general of Ethelred, and did a great deal of
sea fighting, watching, sailing and sieging for this miserable king
and Edmund ironside his son. Snorro says expressively, London, the
impregnable city, had to be besieged again for Ethelred's behoof
in the interval between Spen's death and young Konuts getting
back from Denmark, and that our Oloff Haraldson was the
(15:44):
great engineer and victorious captor of London. On that singular occasion,
London captured for the first time the bridge, as usual,
Snorro says, offered almost insuperable obstacles, but the engineering genius
of Oloff contrived huge platforms of wainscotting, old walls of
wooden houses, in fact bound together by withes. These carried
(16:06):
steadily aloft above the ships. Will thinks Oloff considerably secure
them and us from the destructive missiles, big Boulder stones
and other mischief profusially showered down on us till we
get under the bridge with axes and cables and do
some good upon it. Olof's plan was tried. Most of
the other ships, in spite of their wainscoting and withs
(16:27):
recoiled on reaching the bridge, so destructive were the Boulder
and other missile showers. But Olof's ships himself got actually
under the bridge, fixed all manner of cables there, and then,
with the river current in their favor, and the frightened
ships rallying to help in this safer part of the enterprise,
tore out the important piles and props and fairly broke
(16:48):
the poor bridge wholly or partly down into the river
and its Danish defenders into immediate surrender. That is Snorro's account.
On a previous occasion, Olof had been deep in a
hopeful combination with Ethelred's two younger sons, Alfred and Edward. Afterwards,
King Edward the Confessor that they should sally out from
Normandy in strong force, unite with Olof in ditto, and
(17:11):
landing on the Thames do something effectual for themselves. But impediments,
bad weather or the like disheartened the poor princes, and
it came to nothing. Olaf was much in Normandy, what
they then called walland a man held in honor by
those Norman dukes. What amount of property he had amassed
I do not know, but could prove were it necessary,
(17:31):
that he had acquired some tactical or even strategic faculty
and real talent for war at Limfiord in Jutland. But
some years after this a d. Ten twenty seven, he
had a sea battle with the Great Knut himself. Ships
combined with floodgates, with roaring artificial deluges, right well managed
by King Olaf, which were within a hair's breadth of
(17:52):
destroying Connut now become a king and great, and did
in effect send him instantly running. But of this, more
particularly by and by what still surprises me is the
mystery where Olaf, in this wandering, fighting, sea roving life,
acquired his deeply religious feeling, his intense adherents to the
Christian faith. I suppose it had been in England, where
(18:15):
many pious persons, Priestley and other were still to be
met with that Olaf had gathered these doctrines, and that
in those his unfathomable dialogs with the ever moaning ocean,
they had struck root downwards in the soul of him,
and borne fruit upwards, to the degree so conspicuous afterwards.
It is certain he became a deeply pious man during
these long Viking cruises, and directed all his strength, when
(18:38):
strength and authority were lent him, to establish the Christian
religion in his country, and suppressing and abolishing Vikingism there,
both of which objects and their respective worth and unworth,
he must himself have long known so well. It was
in a d Ten sixteen that Cannut gained his last
victory at Ashton in Essex, where the earth pyramids and
(18:59):
an nae antique church near by still testified the thankful
piety of Cannut, or at lowest his joy at having
won instead of lost and perished, as he was near
doing there. And it was still this same year when
the noble Edmund Ironside, after forced partition treaty in the
Isle of Alney, got scandalously murdered, and Connut became indisputable
(19:21):
sole King of England and decisively settled himself to his
work of governing there in the year before, either of
which events, while all still hung uncertain for Kannut and
even Eirik, Yarl of Norway, had to be summoned in
aid of him. In that year ten fifteen, as one
might naturally guess, and as all Icelandic hints and indications
(19:42):
lead us to date the thing, Olaf had decided to
give up Vikingism in all its forms, to return to
Norway and try whether he could not assert the place
and career that belonged to him there. Yarl Eirik had
vanished with all his war forces towards England, leaving only
a boy Hakkan as successor and sp then his own brother,
a quiet man who had always avoided war, Olaf landed
(20:05):
in Norway without obstacle, but decided to be quiet till
he had himself examined and consulted friends. His reception by
his mother Osta was of the kindest and proudest, and
is lovingly described by Snorrol a pretty idyllic or epic
piece of Norse Homeric type. How Osta, hearing of her
son's advent, set all her maids and menials to work
(20:27):
at the top of their speed despatched a runner to
the harvest field where her husband Sigurd was, to warn
him to come home and dress. How Sigurd was standing
among his harvest folk, reapers and binders, and what he
had on broad slouch hat with veil against the midges,
blue kirtle, hose of I forget what color, with laced boots,
(20:48):
and in his hand a stick with a silver head
and ditto ring upon it. A personable old gentleman of
the eleventh century. In those parts, Sigurd was cautious, prudently cunctiatory,
though wordily friendly in his counsel to Olof as to
the king question. Osta had a spartan tone in her
wild maternal heart and assures Olof that she, with a
(21:09):
half reproachful glance at Sigurd, will stand by him to
the death. In this his just and noble enterprise. Sigurd
promises to consult farther in his neighborhood and to correspond
by messages. The result is Olaf, resolutely pushing forward himself,
resolves to call a thing and openly claim his kingship.
There the thing itself was willing enough. Opposition parties do
(21:31):
here and there bestir themselves, but Olof is always swifter
than they. Five kinglets somewhere in the uplands, all descendants
of Harfoger, but averse to break the peace which Yarl
Erik and Hakan Yarl both have always willingly allowed to
peaceable people, seem to be the main opposition party. These
five take the field against Olaf with what force they have.
(21:54):
Olaf one night, by beautiful celerity and strategic practice which
a Friedrich or a Turin might have proved, surrounds these five,
and when morning breaks there is nothing for them but
either death or else instant surrender and swearing a fealty
to King Olaf, which latter branch of the alternative, they
gladly accept the whole five of them and go home again.
(22:16):
This was a beautiful bit of war practice by King
Olaf on land. By another stroke, still more compendious at sea,
he had already settled poor young Hakkan and made him
peaceable for a long while. Olaf, by diligent quest and
spy messaging, had ascertained that Hakkan, just returning from Denmark
in farewell to Papa and Canoud, both now under way
(22:36):
for England, was coasting north towards Trondheim, and intended on
or about such a day to land in such and
such a fiord. Towards the end of this Trondheim voyage,
Olaf at once man's two big ships steers it through
the narrow mouth of the said fjord moors one ship
on the north shore, another on the south fixes a
strong cable well sunk under water to the capstans of
(22:59):
these two, and in all quietness waits for Hacken. Before
many hours, Hakan's royal or quasi royal barge steers gaily
into this fiord, is a little surprised, perhaps to see
within the jaws of it two big ships at anchor,
but steers gallantly along nothing doubting Olaff, with a signal
of all hands works, has two capstans, has this cable
(23:21):
up high enough at the right moment, catches with it
the keel of poor Hakun's barge, upsets it, empties it
wholly into the sea. Wholly into the sea, saves Hakan, however,
and his people from drowning, and brings them on board.
His dialog with poor young Hakan, especially poor Young Hakun's responses,
is very pretty. Shall I give it out of snorrow,
(23:42):
and let the reader take it for as authentic as
he can. It is, at least the true image of
it in authentic Snorro's head. Little more than two centuries later,
Yarl Hacken was led up to the King's ship. He
was the handsomest man that could be seen. He had
long hair as fine as silk, bound about his head
with a gold ornil. When he sat down in the forehold,
the king said to him, King, it is not false
(24:05):
what is said of your family, that you are handsome
people to look at. But now your luck has deserted
you Hacken. It has always been the case that success
is changeable, and there is no luck in the matter.
It has gone with your family as with mine, to
have by turns the better lot. I am little beyond
childhood in years, and at any rate we could not
have defended ourselves, as we did not expect any attack.
(24:28):
On the way. It may turn out better with us
another time. King, dost thou not apprehend that thou art
in such a condition that hereafter there can be neither
victory nor defeat for thee Hacken. That is what only
thou canst determined, King, According to thy pleasure, King, what
wilt thou give me, Yarl, if for this time I
(24:48):
let thee go whole and unhurt Hacken, What wilt thou take, King, King,
Nothing except thou shalt leave the country, give up thy kingdom,
and take an oath that thou wilt never go in
to battle against me. Yarl Hacken accepted the generous terms,
went to England and King Canut, and kept his bargain
for a good few years, though he was at last
(25:09):
driven by pressure of King Cannut to violate it, little
to his profit, as we shall see one victorious naval
battle with Yarle Spain and his adherents, who fled to
Sweden after his beating. Battle, not difficult to a skillful,
hard hitting king, was pretty much all the actual fighting
Olof had to do in this enterprise. He various times
met angry bounders and refractory things with arms in their hand,
(25:33):
but by skillful firm management, perfectly patient but also perfectly
ready to be active, he mostly managed without coming to strokes,
and was universally recognized by Norway as its real king.
A promising young man and fit to be a king,
thinks Snorro. Only of middle stature, almost rather shortish but
firm standing, and stout built, so that they got to
(25:54):
call him Olaf the thick, meaning Olaf the thick set
or stout built, though his final epithet among them was
infinitely higher for the rest, a comely, earnest, prepossessing look, beautiful,
yellow hair in quantity, broad honest face of a complexion
purest snow and rose. And finally, or firstly, the brightest
eyes in the world, such that in his anger no
(26:16):
man could stand them. He had a heavy task ahead
and needed all his qualities and fine gifts to get
it done. End of Section five Early Kings of Norway,
Chapters eight and nine,
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