GUTTORM SIGURDSSON (1204), AND INGE BAARDSSON (1204-1217).
The legitimate heir to the throne after Haakon's death was his nephew,
Guttorm Sigurdsson, a son of his brother, Sigurd Lavard. In spite of his
tender age, the Birchlegs made haste to elect him, with the
understanding that Haakon Galen, with the title of earl, should conduct
the government. There were, however, some of the Birchlegs who were
dissatisfied with this arrangement, partly because they were jealous of
Haakon Galen, partly because they felt that, in such troublous times, a
king was needed, who should be something more than a name or a
figure-head. The Baglers, too, strange to say, were ill at ease, because
they feared that, Haakon Sverresson's restraining influence being
removed, the Birchleg chiefs would give free rein to their passions of
avarice and vengeance. Half in self-defence they, therefore, reorganized
their troop under the leadership of an impostor, calling himself Erling
Stonewall (Steinvegg), who pretended to be a son of King Magnus
Erlingsson. A pretender of this name had, during the reign of Sverre,
made some little stir, and had been imprisoned by King Knut of Sweden in
a tower, whence he had escaped by means of a rope, made out of his
bed-clothes. The rope proved, however, to be too short, and in letting
himself drop to the ground, Erling broke his hip. He was overtaken, on
his flight, by Sverre's men and in all probability slain. Nevertheless,
it required audacity rather than proof of royal birth, in those days, to
figure as a pretender; and the second Erling Stonewall, though probably
few at first believed in him, soon had a considerable following. It was
of no use that Bishop Nicholas opposed him, and urged his own nephew,
Philip, a grandson of Harold Gille's queen, Ingerid, for the
chieftainship. When Erling demanded the right to prove his birth by the
ordeal of fire, the bishop told him bluntly that the result was in his
hands. Under such circumstances, the pretender found it more to his
advantage to make terms with the bishop and receive his assurance that
the ordeal should turn out successfully. Erling, on his side, promised,
when he became king, to make Philip his earl, and in other respects
satisfied the prelate's demands. The latter had, in the meanwhile, by
conferences with his peasants, ascertained that Philip's candidacy was
regarded with great disfavor, because he neither had nor pretended to
have a drop of royal blood. The peasants utterly refused to recognize
him, and threatened to rebel, in case he was elected. It was therefore
to the bishop's advantage to keep faith with Erling. The ordeal
accordingly took place with great solemnity in the presence of the
Danish king, Valdemar the Victorious, and proved successful. Erling was
then proclaimed king, and received as a present from Valdemar a fleet of
thirty fine ships. In return he recognized him as his feudal overlord
and gave him hostages. The party of the magnates was thus faithful to
its traditions, in sacrificing patriotism to private interests. With the
aid of the powerful Danish king the party had, indeed, a good prospect
of crushing the disheartened and disunited Birchlegs, who just at that
time received a fresh blow in the death of their newly elected king.
Christina, Haakon Galen's mistress, could not allow so slight an
obstacle, as the life of a child, to stand between her and the goal of
her wishes. If Guttorm were dead, her lover would have the best chance
of succeeding him, being on his mother's side a grandson of Sigurd
Mouth. It was, therefore, no mere accident that Guttorm died; and with
all the symptoms of poisoning. He said that the "Swedish woman" had
taken him upon her lap and stroked him caressingly over his whole body.
Soon after he felt, as if needles were piercing his flesh, and before
long he expired in great agony. Though Christina's guilt was obvious,
her lover had yet sufficient influence to have the matter hushed up; and
in order to give her the full benefit of his protection, he married her
soon after. A meeting was now called in Nidaros to elect a new king.
Earl Haakon, who was a favorite with the army, seemed to have every
chance in his favor; and he would probably have been the choice of the
Birchlegs, if Archbishop Erik had not opposed him, on account of his
relation to Christina. The guilt thus defeated its own object. Several
candidates were discussed, some of whom were related to Sverre only on
his mother's side and thus had no consanguinity with the royal house.
The most prominent among these was Peter Steyper, who had the additional
advantage of having married a daughter of King Magnus Erlingsson. After
long deliberations, the chiefs finally decided to leave the choice to
the peasants, who would then be sure to stand by the king whom they
themselves elected. The peasants were according summoned to Oere-_thing_
where they conferred the royal dignity upon Inge Baardsson, a younger
half-brother of Haakon Galen and like him, on the maternal side, a
grandson of Sigurd Mouth. No sooner did the Baglers hear that the
Birchlegs had chosen a new king than they started northward from
Tunsberg, in order to test his mettle. The caution of Bishop Nicholas
prevailed, however, over the counsel of the more warlike chiefs, and
after some unimportant fights in and about Bergen, the rebels betook
themselves to Denmark, where they had always a safe place of refuge.
King Inge and Earl Haakon, therefore, found no opposition, when they
visited Viken, and the peasants, though the great majority of them
sympathized with the Baglers, had no scruple in swearing them
allegiance. In fact, the long war was having a demoralizing influence
upon the people, and its barbarizing effects began to be visible in many
ways. To save their lives, the yeomen were obliged to feign friendship
for every pretender who came along with his band, and swear him
fidelity, or fly to the woods, leaving their farms a prey to the
marauders. Even the ties of blood which had been exceptionally strong
among the Norsemen, began to be disregarded, as members of the same
family were impelled, by diverging interests, to join different parties.
It was no rare occurence that brother fought against brother, and father
against son. Thus it is told of a Bagler that during the attack upon
Nidaros in 1206, he was hotly pursuing a Birchleg whom he finally
killed. As he stooped over the dying man, in order to deprive him of his
arms and garments, he discovered that it was his own brother. A great
laxity in all moral obligations resulted from this state of things.
Kings and chieftains broke their words; enemies who had surrendered on
promise of pardon were ruthlessly slain; murder and rapine filled the
land.
Under these circumstances it was no great privilege for the young and
inexperienced Inge to wear a crown which merely put a price upon his
head. In the spring of 1206, while he was in Nidaros celebrating the
wedding of his sister, the Baglers surprised him in the night and slew a
large number of his men. The king himself escaped by pure chance, threw
himself into the river, and swam, half-clad, in the icy water, out to a
ship, and clung for a while to the anchor cable. More dead than alive he
reached the shore, and would probably have perished from exposure, if
the Birchleg, Reidulf, who was also fleeing, had not found him, wrapped
him in his cloak, and carried him on his back to a place of safety. Yet
Inge never overcame the effects of this terrible night. He grew morose
and despondent, and never regained his former light-heartedness. It was
not merely that he felt discredited as a chieftain by the disgrace of
having been surprised by his enemies in a drunken sleep, in the house of
his mistress; his health, too, had suffered a shock from which it was
slow to recover.
On their return from Nidaros, the Baglers paid a visit to Bergen, where
they expected to starve the Birchleg garrison in the block-house into
surrender. But here they reckoned without their host. Earl Haakon,
though he had not been present at the assault upon his brother in
Nidaros, felt impelled to avenge it. He therefore sailed southward with
a small fleet and about seven hundred men, overtook the rebels in Bergen
and inflicted upon them a severe defeat. Thus blindly pursuing partisan
advantage, Baglers and Birchlegs kept killing each other, forgetting
that they were all Norsemen, who would, in the end, suffer by the
devastation and exhaustion of their common country. Year after year they
continued surprising each other in Nidaros, Bergen, Tunsberg, and Oslo,
burning each other's ships, and robbing each other's treasures; but they
appeared to avoid a decisive battle which would have given an
overwhelming advantage to one party or the other, thereby securing peace
to the land. The death of Erling Stonewall in 1207 enabled Bishop
Nicholas to carry out his desire to make his nephew, Philip Simonsson,
king of the Baglers. But Philip made no change in the policy of his
predecessor, persevering in the same aimless marauding, which could
scarcely be dignified by the name of war. The parties were, indeed, so
evenly matched, that it seemed hopeless for the one to destroy the
other, for which reason the political stake in the struggle was almost
lost sight of, while immediate profit yet furnished a motive for
continuing in arms.
It was while anarchy was thus rioting and despondency reigning
throughout the land, that a hope suddenly sprang up, like a star out of
the depth of night. It was well known that King Haakon Sverresson,
during his visit to Sarpsborg in 1203, had become enamoured of the
beautiful Inga of Varteig, and it had also been whispered that she had
reciprocated his love. Soon after Haakon's death, she had borne a son,
and though it was taken for granted that the king was his father, the
matter had been hushed up, lest the Baglers, who were masters in Viken,
should hear that an heir had been born to the throne. The priest,
Thrond, in whose house Inga gave birth to the boy, baptized him and gave
him the name Haakon, after his father; but advised the utmost secrecy,
and let no one but his immediate family know of the child's existence.
Such a secret is, however, hard to keep, and, after a while, the priest
took Erlend of Huseby, a man of good repute and a friend of Sverre's
house, into his confidence. Erlend rejoiced that King Sverre's race was
not extinct; but found the boy's position, in the midst of the enemies'
land, perilous. He therefore persuaded Thrond to send him and his mother
to King Inge, and himself offered to take them across the mountains. The
boy Haakon was then (December, 1205,) about a year and a half old. There
must have been some imminent danger at hand which impelled the priest,
after having waited so long, to choose the most inclement season of the
year for the journey across the trackless, snow-covered wilderness. The
two friends started northward with their precious charge and arrived,
after infinite hardships, in Nidaros, where they were well received by
King Inge. The boy now, for a while, sojourned with his mother at court
and was kindly treated. The old Birchlegs came often to see him and
playfully took him between them and pulled him by the arms and legs in
order to make him grow faster. For they were impatient to serve, once
more, a king of the old royal race. Haakon Galen, too, took a great
fancy to his young kinsman, though his demonstrations of love were, no
doubt, looked upon with fear by those who had the boy's welfare at
heart. Nevertheless, it appears that the earl was actually sincere, and
felt moved, perhaps, by the very helplessness of the boy to protect him.
A kind Providence seemed to be watching over him; for though living in
the midst of the intrigues and plottings of rival chiefs, all of whom
must have seen in him their most dangerous rival, his life was
preserved, and he escaped unharmed from many dangers. Even the Baglers
refrained from killing him, when in 1206 he fell into their hands, at
the surrender of the block-house in Bergen. It is perhaps not safe to
assume that a half-latent consciousness asserted itself, that in this
boy Norway's future was bound up; that upon him depended the country's
deliverance from the scourge of civil war. More likely it is that his
beauty and winning ways appealed to friends and foes alike, while on
the other hand, the love of the Birchlegs was his best guard, because it
convinced his ill-wishers that disaster would swiftly overwhelm any one
who should venture to harm him.
Of the many small victories and defeats, sieges and surrenders, flights
and pursuits, which filled the years 1206 and 1207, without according
any decisive advantage to either party, it is not necessary to speak at
length. They were a series of barren futilities, resulting in loss of
life, and waste of the resources of the land, without lastingly
benefiting any one. Under these circumstances, it is not strange that
both Birchlegs and Baglers began to long for a reconciliation. Even to
so bitter a partisan as Bishop Nicholas, it became evident that a
continuance of the war would mean mutual destruction, and that the prize
of victory would be a devastated land and a barbarized people. King
Inge, too, was heartily tired of the aimless hostilities, and even his
pugnacious brother, Haakon Galen, was not disinclined to listen to
proposals of peace. The new archbishop, Thore, acted as mediator between
the parties and used his influence and his eloquence to extort from both
the necessary concessions. At last, when the conditions were well
understood on both sides, a meeting of the Birchleg and Bagler chiefs
was held at Hvitingsoee (1208), at which Philip Simonsson, the king of
the Baglers, swore allegiance to Inge, and became his earl. In return he
received Viken and the Oplands in fief, and was wedded to Sverre's
daughter, Christina.
The restoration of peace was not hailed as an unmixed boon by many of
those who had lost their property by the war, and could only hope to
enrich themselves by the same means. Others had carried arms so long, as
to have lost all inclination for peaceful industry. A great number of
these, irrespective of parties, started on an old-fashioned Viking
expedition to the Orkneys, Hebrides, and Man, ravaged and plundered, and
compelled the earls of those isles, once more, to acknowledge the
supremacy of the crown of Norway. In spite of this service which they
had done to the king, they were severely censured on their return, and
forced by the bishops to surrender their booty to the Church.
The last years of King Inge's reign were embittered by his strained
relation to Earl Haakon. The latter, feeling his superiority to Inge in
all the qualities that grace a king, could not reconcile himself to his
subordinate position. He began intriguing behind his brother's back, and
privately sounded the sentiments of the prominent peasants and chiefs,
in regard to his pretensions. From many he received a favorable answer,
and the plot was in a fair way to succeed, when it was unexpectedly
discovered by the king. Inge, who had had perfect confidence in his
older brother, was more shocked than angered by the proof of his
treachery. He summoned all his men to a house-_thing_ and called upon
them to stand by him, declaring that he would tolerate no other king in
the land, as long as he was alive. This speech won general approval and
compelled Haakon henceforth to weave his plots with greater secrecy.
Whether he was the instigator of the attempt upon the king's life,
which was made a year later, is not known, but that either he or his
wife Christina was in some way implicated in it, is evident from the
king's unwillingness to have the would-be assassin tried or punished.
When his brother, Skule Baardsson, urged him to make an example of the
wretch, he promised to have the matter investigated, to exile the
criminal, etc., but as nothing was done, Skule lost his patience and
killed him on his own responsibility.
It was, on the whole, a laudable spirit on Inge's part which impelled
him to avoid an open rupture with Earl Haakon, even at the cost of
personal sacrifice. He knew the horrors of civil war and would not take
the responsibility of precipitating a breach of the peace, as long as it
was in his power to prevent it. The fact that his health was poor, and
that there was a chance that Haakon might succeed him, may also have
disinclined him to discredit the latter in the eyes of the people. Among
Haakon's partisans was Archbishop Thore, to whose intervention it was
chiefly due that the king and the earl in 1212 made a compact, in
accordance with which illegitimate children were to be excluded from the
succession, and the one of the brothers who survived the other should
inherit the throne. This agreement, which was proclaimed at
Oere-_thing_, and sanctioned by the bishops and the magnates of the
land, was chiefly aimed against the young prince, Haakon Haakonsson,
who, though a direct descendant in the male line of the old royal house,
was of illegitimate birth. It excluded also, for the same reason, Inge's
son Guttorm, and transferred the succession to Haakon Galen and his
legitimate son, Knut. But in making this compact, they underestimated
the strength of the sentiment which bound Sverre's veterans to the boy
Haakon. One of them, Helge Hvasse, who was in the habit of going
frequently to see the prince, and playing with him, grew very wroth when
he heard of the agreement. When Haakon ran up to him to have his usual
romp, he pushed him roughly away and bade him begone. The boy,
unaccustomed to such treatment, looked reproachfully at him, and asked
why he was angry.
"Begone," cried Helge; "to-day thy paternal heritage was taken from
thee, and I don't care for thee any more."
"Where was that done, and who did it?" asked Haakon.
"It was done at Oere-_thing_, and they who did it were the two brothers,
King Inge and Earl Haakon."
"Do not be angry with me, mine own Helge," said the boy; "and be not
troubled about this; their judgment cannot be valid, as my guardian was
not present to answer in my behalf."
"Who, then, is thy guardian?" inquired Helge.
"My guardians are God, and the Holy Virgin, and St. Olaf," exclaimed
Haakon solemnly; "into their keeping I have given my cause, and they
will guard my interests, both in the division of the country and in all
my welfare."
Much moved, the veteran seized the boy in his arms and kissed him.
"Thanks for those words, my prince," he said; "such words are better
spoken than unspoken."
[Illustration: HAAKON HAAKONSSON AND HELGE HVASSE.]
When this occurrence was reported to Christina, she scolded Haakon, and
henceforth treated him harshly. But she dared not show her evil
disposition toward him in the presence of her husband. For the earl,
though he had no scruples in barring the boy's way to the throne, was
yet attached to him, and would not allow him to come to harm. Haakon's
remarkable precocity amused him, as it did all his men. Several
anecdotes are preserved of his droll sayings and doings. Thus, when once
the weather was so cold that the bread could not be buttered, the little
prince took a piece of bread and bent it around the butter, saying: "Let
us tie the butter to the bread, Birchlegs."
This saying became a proverb in the camp of the Birchlegs.
The king's indulgence to his brother in the matter of the succession had
not quieted but rather stimulated the latter's ambition. By incessant
intriguing he succeeded in fomenting a peasant's rebellion in Troendelag
which was, however, quelled without serious loss of life. Soon after
this exploit, he was taken ill and died in Bergen 1214, aged
thirty-eight years. His wife, who knew that the Birchlegs had a long
score to settle with her, made haste to quit the country with her son.
Haakon Haakonsson, who had been fostered in the earl's house, was now
transferred to the court, where he was treated as became his rank. There
the Birchlegs flocked again about him, watching jealously every one who
approached him. They were in many ways discontented with King Inge, whom
they held to be an aristocrat, and by his poor health and peaceful
disposition unfitted for the chieftainship. Besides, his brother Skule
was openly intriguing to push Haakon aside and place himself in the line
of succession. The disaffection then became so great that a number of
Birchlegs under the leadership of Andres Skjaldarband endeavored to
persuade Haakon to place himself at the head of a rebellion. But Haakon
refused to give ear to such counsel.
As the king's health declined and he perceived that his death was
approaching, he loved to have the boy about him and to listen to his
droll and vivacious talk. All public business passed, during this time,
through the hands of Skule Baardsson, whom Inge made his earl, and the
guardian of his son. The king died in April, 1217, being but thirty
years old.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]