Produced by Ron Burkey
EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY.
by Thomas Carlyle
Transcriber's Note: The text has been taken from volume 19 of the
"Sterling Edition" of Carlyle's complete works. All footnotes have been
collected as endnotes. The pound (currency) symbol has been replaced by
the word "pounds".
The Icelanders, in their long winter, had a great habit of writing; and
were, and still are, excellent in penmanship, says Dahlmann. It is to
this fact, that any little history there is of the Norse Kings and their
old tragedies, crimes and heroisms, is almost all due. The Icelanders,
it seems, not only made beautiful letters on their paper or parchment,
but were laudably observant and desirous of accuracy; and have left
us such a collection of narratives (_Sagas_, literally "Says") as,
for quantity and quality, is unexampled among rude nations. Snorro
Sturleson's History of the Norse Kings is built out of these old
Sagas; and has in it a great deal of poetic fire, not a little faithful
sagacity applied in sifting and adjusting these old Sagas; and, in a
word, deserves, were it once well edited, furnished with accurate
maps, chronological summaries, &c., to be reckoned among the great
history-books of the world. It is from these sources, greatly aided by
accurate, learned and unwearied Dahlmann, [1] the German Professor, that
the following rough notes of the early Norway Kings are hastily thrown
together. In Histories of England (Rapin's excepted) next to nothing has
been shown of the many and strong threads of connection between English
affairs and Norse.
CHAPTER I. HARALD HAARFAGR.
Till about the Year of Grace 860 there were no kings in Norway, nothing
but numerous jarls,--essentially kinglets, each presiding over a kind of
republican or parliamentary little territory; generally striving each
to be on some terms of human neighborhood with those about him, but,--in
spite of "_Fylke Things_" (Folk Things, little parish parliaments),
and small combinations of these, which had gradually formed
themselves,--often reduced to the unhappy state of quarrel with them.
Harald Haarfagr was the first to put an end to this state of things, and
become memorable and profitable to his country by uniting it under
one head and making a kingdom of it; which it has continued to be ever
since. His father, Halfdan the Black, had already begun this rough but
salutary process,--inspired by the cupidities and instincts, by the
faculties and opportunities, which the good genius of this world,
beneficent often enough under savage forms, and diligent at all times to
diminish anarchy as the world's worst savagery, usually appoints in
such cases,--conquest, hard fighting, followed by wise guidance of the
conquered;--but it was Harald the Fairhaired, his son, who conspicuously
carried it on and completed it. Harald's birth-year, death-year, and
chronology in general, are known only by inference and computation; but,
by the latest reckoning, he died about the year 933 of our era, a man of
eighty-three.
The business of conquest lasted Harald about twelve years (A.D.
860-872?), in which he subdued also the vikings of the out-islands,
Orkneys, Shetlands, Hebrides, and Man. Sixty more years were given him
to consolidate and regulate what he had conquered, which he did with
great judgment, industry and success. His reign altogether is counted to
have been of over seventy years.
The beginning of his great adventure was of a romantic
character.--youthful love for the beautiful Gyda, a then glorious and
famous young lady of those regions, whom the young Harald aspired to
marry. Gyda answered his embassy and prayer in a distant, lofty manner:
"Her it would not beseem to wed any Jarl or poor creature of that kind;
let him do as Gorm of Denmark, Eric of Sweden, Egbert of England,
and others had done,--subdue into peace and regulation the confused,
contentious bits of jarls round him, and become a king; then, perhaps,
she might think of his proposal: till then, not." Harald was struck with
this proud answer, which rendered Gyda tenfold more desirable to him.
He vowed to let his hair grow, never to cut or even to comb it till this
feat were done, and the peerless Gyda his own. He proceeded accordingly
to conquer, in fierce battle, a Jarl or two every year, and, at the end
of twelve years, had his unkempt (and almost unimaginable) head of hair
clipt off,--Jarl Rognwald (_Reginald_) of More, the most valued and
valuable of all his subject-jarls, being promoted to this sublime barber
function;--after which King Harald, with head thoroughly cleaned, and
hair grown, or growing again to the luxuriant beauty that had no equal
in his day, brought home his Gyda, and made her the brightest queen
in all the north. He had after her, in succession, or perhaps even
simultaneously in some cases, at least six other wives; and by Gyda
herself one daughter and four sons.
Harald was not to be considered a strict-living man, and he had a great
deal of trouble, as we shall see, with the tumultuous ambition of his
sons; but he managed his government, aided by Jarl Rognwald and others,
in a large, quietly potent, and successful manner; and it lasted in this
royal form till his death, after sixty years of it.
These were the times of Norse colonization; proud Norsemen flying into
other lands, to freer scenes,--to Iceland, to the Faroe Islands, which
were hitherto quite vacant (tenanted only by some mournful hermit,
Irish Christian _fakir_, or so); still more copiously to the Orkney and
Shetland Isles, the Hebrides and other countries where Norse squatters
and settlers already were. Settlement of Iceland, we say; settlement
of the Faroe Islands, and, by far the notablest of all, settlement of
Normandy by Rolf the Ganger (A.D. 876?). [2]
Rolf, son of Rognwald, [3] was lord of three little islets far north,
near the Fjord of Folden, called the Three Vigten Islands; but his
chief means of living was that of sea robbery; which, or at least Rolf's
conduct in which, Harald did not approve of. In the Court of Harald,
sea-robbery was strictly forbidden as between Harald's own countries,
but as against foreign countries it continued to be the one profession
for a gentleman; thus, I read, Harald's own chief son, King Eric that
afterwards was, had been at sea in such employments ever since his
twelfth year. Rolf's crime, however, was that in coming home from one of
these expeditions, his crew having fallen short of victual, Rolf landed
with them on the shore of Norway, and in his strait, drove in some
cattle there (a crime by law) and proceeded to kill and eat; which, in a
little while, he heard that King Harald was on foot to inquire into and
punish; whereupon Rolf the Ganger speedily got into his ships again, got
to the coast of France with his sea-robbers, got infestment by the poor
King of France in the fruitful, shaggy desert which is since called
Normandy, land of the Northmen; and there, gradually felling the
forests, banking the rivers, tilling the fields, became, during the next
two centuries, Wilhelmus Conquaestor, the man famous to England, and
momentous at this day, not to England alone, but to all speakers of the
English tongue, now spread from side to side of the world in a wonderful
degree. Tancred of Hauteville and his Italian Normans, though important
too, in Italy, are not worth naming in comparison. This is a feracious
earth, and the grain of mustard-seed will grow to miraculous extent in
some cases.
Harald's chief helper, counsellor, and lieutenant was the
above-mentioned Jarl Rognwald of More, who had the honor to cut Harald's
dreadful head of hair. This Rognwald was father of Turf-Einar, who first
invented peat in the Orkneys, finding the wood all gone there; and
is remembered to this day. Einar, being come to these islands by King
Harald's permission, to see what he could do in them,--islands
inhabited by what miscellany of Picts, Scots, Norse squatters we do not
know,--found the indispensable fuel all wasted. Turf-Einar too may be
regarded as a benefactor to his kind. He was, it appears, a bastard;
and got no coddling from his father, who disliked him, partly perhaps,
because "he was ugly and blind of an eye,"--got no flattering even on
his conquest of the Orkneys and invention of peat. Here is the parting
speech his father made to him on fitting him out with a "long-ship"
(ship of war, "dragon-ship," ancient seventy-four), and sending him
forth to make a living for himself in the world: "It were best if thou
never camest back, for I have small hope that thy people will have honor
by thee; thy mother's kin throughout is slavish."
Harald Haarfagr had a good many sons and daughters; the daughters he
married mostly to jarls of due merit who were loyal to him; with the
sons, as remarked above, he had a great deal of trouble. They were
ambitious, stirring fellows, and grudged at their finding so little
promotion from a father so kind to his jarls; sea-robbery by no means
an adequate career for the sons of a great king, two of them, Halfdan
Haaleg (Long-leg), and Gudrod Ljome (Gleam), jealous of the favors won
by the great Jarl Rognwald, surrounded him in his house one night, and
burnt him and sixty men to death there. That was the end of Rognwald,
the invaluable jarl, always true to Haarfagr; and distinguished in world
history by producing Rolf the Ganger, author of the Norman Conquest of
England, and Turf-Einar, who invented peat in the Orkneys. Whether Rolf
had left Norway at this time there is no chronology to tell me. As to
Rolf's surname, "Ganger," there are various hypotheses; the likeliest,
perhaps, that Rolf was so weighty a man no horse (small Norwegian
horses, big ponies rather) could carry him, and that he usually walked,
having a mighty stride withal, and great velocity on foot.
One of these murderers of Jarl Rognwald quietly set himself in
Rognwald's place, the other making for Orkney to serve Turf-Einar in
like fashion. Turf-Einar, taken by surprise, fled to the mainland; but
returned, days or perhaps weeks after, ready for battle, fought with
Halfdan, put his party to flight, and at next morning's light searched
the island and slew all the men he found. As to Halfdan Long-leg
himself, in fierce memory of his own murdered father, Turf-Einar "cut an
eagle on his back," that is to say, hewed the ribs from each side of the
spine and turned them out like the wings of a spread-eagle: a mode of
Norse vengeance fashionable at that time in extremely aggravated cases!
Harald Haarfagr, in the mean time, had descended upon the Rognwald
scene, not in mild mood towards the new jarl there; indignantly
dismissed said jarl, and appointed a brother of Rognwald (brother, notes
Dahlmann), though Rognwald had left other sons. Which done, Haarfagr
sailed with all speed to the Orkneys, there to avenge that cutting of an
eagle on the human back on Turf-Einar's part. Turf-Einar did not resist;
submissively met the angry Haarfagr, said he left it all, what had been
done, what provocation there had been, to Haarfagr's own equity and
greatness of mind. Magnanimous Haarfagr inflicted a fine of sixty marks
in gold, which was paid in ready money by Turf-Einar, and so the matter
ended.