off the south-eastern coast of Sweden, in the midst of the Baltic Sea. In
the time of Olaf it was a thickly peopled and wealthy district, and the
principal town, Wisby, at the northern end, was one of the busiest places
in all Europe. To this attractive island the boy viking sailed with all
his ships, looking for rich booty, but the Gotlanders met him with fair
words and offered him so great a "scatt," or tribute, that he agreed not
to molest them, and rested at the island, an unwelcome guest, through all
the long winter. Early in the spring he sailed eastward to the Gulf of
Riga and spread fear and terror along the coast of Finland. And the old
saga tells how the Finlanders "conjured up in the night, by their
witchcraft, a dreadful storm and bad weather; but the king ordered all
the anchors to be weighed and sail hoisted, and beat off all night to the
outside of the land. So the king's luck prevailed more than the
Finlanders' witchcraft."
Then away "through the wild sea" to Denmark sailed the young pirate king,
and here he met a brother viking, one Thorkell the Tall. The two chiefs
struck up a sort of partnership; and coasting southward along the western
shores of Denmark, they won a sea-fight in the Ringkiobing Fiord, among
the "sand hills of Jutland." And so business continued brisk with this
curiously matched pirate firm--a giant and a boy--until, under the cliffs
of Kinlimma, in Friesland, hasty word came to the boy viking that the
English king, Ethelred "The Unready," was calling for the help of all
sturdy fighters to win back his heritage and crown from young King Cnut,
or Canute the Dane, whose father had seized the throne of England. Quick
to respond to an appeal that promised plenty of hard knocks, and the
possibility of unlimited booty, Olaf, the ever ready, hoisted his blue and
crimson sails and steered his war-ships over sea to help King Ethelred,
the never ready. Up the Thames and straight for London town he rowed.
"Hail to the serpent banner! Hail to Olaf the Brave!" said King Ethelred,
as the war-horns sounded a welcome; and on the low shores of the Isle of
Dogs, just below the old city, the keels of the Norse war-ships grounded
swiftly, and the boy viking and his followers leaped ashore. "Thou dost
come in right good time with thy trusty dragon-ships, young King," said
King Ethelred; "for the Danish robbers are full well entrenched in London
town and in my father Edgar's castle."
And then he told Olaf how, "in the great trading place which is called
Southwark," the Danes had raised "a great work and dug large ditches, and
within had builded a bulwark of stone, timber and turf, where they had
stationed a large army."
"And we would fain have taken this bulwark," added the King, "and did in
sooth bear down upon it with a great assault; but indeed we could make
naught of it."
"And why so?" asked the young viking.
"Because," said King Ethelred, "upon the bridge betwixt the castle and
Southwark have the ravaging Danes raised towers and parapets, breast high,
and thence they did cast down stones and weapons upon us so that we could
not prevail. And now, Sea-King, what dost thou counsel? How may we avenge
ourselves of our enemies and win the town?"
Impetuous as ever, and impatient of obstacles, the young viking said:
"How? why, pull thou down this bridge, King, and then may ye have free
river-way to thy castle."
"Break down great London Bridge, young hero?" cried the amazed king. "How
may that be? Have we a Duke Samson among us to do so great a feat?"
"Lay me thy ships alongside mine, King, close to this barricaded bridge,"
said the valorous boy, "and I will vow to break it down, or ye may call me
caitiff and coward."
"Be it so," said Ethelred, the English king; and all the war-chiefs
echoed: "Be it so!" So Olaf and his trusty Rane made ready the war-forces
for the destruction of the bridge.
Old London Bridge was not what we should now call an imposing structure,
but our ancestors of nine centuries back esteemed it quite a bridge. The
chronicler says that it was "so broad that two wagons could pass each
other upon it," and "under the bridge were piles driven into the bottom of
the river."
So young Olaf and old Rane put their heads together, and decided to wreck
the bridge by a bold viking stroke. And this is how it is told in the
"Heimskringla," or Saga of King Olaf the Saint:
"King Olaf ordered great platforms of floating wood to be tied
together with hazal bands, and for this he took down old
houses; and with these, as a roof, he covered over his ships so
widely that it reached over the ships' sides. Under this screen
he set pillars, so high and stout that there both was room for
swinging their swords, and the roofs were strong enough to
withstand the stones cast down upon them."
"Now, out oars and pull for the bridge," young Olaf commanded; and the
roofed-over war-ships were rowed close up to London Bridge.
And as they came near the bridge, the chronicle says:
"There were cast upon them, by the Danes upon the bridge, so many stones
and missile weapons, such as arrows and spears, that neither helmet nor
shield could hold out against it; and the ships themselves were so greatly
damaged that many retreated out of it."
But the boy viking and his Norsemen were there for a purpose, and were not
to be driven back by stones or spears or arrows. Straight ahead they
rowed, "quite up under the bridge."
"Out cables, all, and lay them around the piles," the young sea-king
shouted; and the half-naked rowers, unshipping their oars, reached out
under the roofs and passed the stout cables twice around the wooden
supports of the bridge. The loose end was made fast at the stern of each
vessel, and then, turning and heading down stream, King Olaf's twenty
stout war-ships waited his word:
"Out oars!" he cried; "pull, war-birds! Pull all, as if ye were for
Norway!"
Forward and backward swayed the stout Norse rowers; tighter and tighter
pulled the cables; fast down upon the straining war-ships rained the
Danish spears and stones; but the wooden piles under the great bridge were
loosened by the steady tug of the cables, and soon with a sudden spurt the
Norse war-ships darted down the river, while the slackened cables towed
astern the captured piles of London Bridge. A great shout went up from the
besiegers, and "now," says the chronicle, "as the armed troops stood thick
upon the bridge, and there were likewise many heaps of stones and other
weapons upon it, the bridge gave way; and a great part of the men upon it
fell into the river, and all the others fled--some into the castle, some
into Southwark." And before King Ethelred, "The Unready," could pull his
ships to the attack, young Olaf's fighting-men had sprung ashore, and,
storming the Southwark earthworks, carried all before them, and the battle
of London Bridge was won.
And the young Olaf's saga-man sang triumphantly:
"London Bridge is broken down--
Gold is won and bright renown;
Shields resounding,
War-horns sounding,
Hildar shouting in the din!
Arrows singing,
Mail-coats ringing,
Odin makes our Olaf win!"
And perhaps, who knows, this wrecking of London Bridge so many hundred
years ago by Olaf, the boy viking of fifteen, may have been the origin of
the old song-game dear to so many generations of children:
"London Bridge is fallen down, fallen down, fallen down--
London Bridge is fallen down, my fair lady!"
So King Ethelred won back his kingdom, and the boy viking was honored
above all others. To him was given the chief command in perilous
expeditions against the Danes, and the whole defence of all the coast of
England. North and south along the coast he sailed with all his war-ships,
and the Danes and Englishmen long remembered the dashing but dubious ways
of this young sea-rover, who swept the English coast and claimed his dues
from friend and foe alike. For those were days of insecurity for merchant
and trader and farmer, and no man's wealth or life was safe except as he
paid ready tribute to the fierce Norse allies of King Ethelred. But soon
after this, King Ethelred died, and young Olaf, thirsting for new
adventures, sailed away to the south and fought his way all along the
French coast as far as the mouth of the river Garonne. Many castles he
captured; many rival vikings subdued; much spoil he gathered; until at
last his dragon-ships lay moored under the walls of old Bordeaux, waiting
for fair winds to take him around to the Straits of Gibraltar, and so on
"to the land of Jerusalem."
One day, in the booty-filled "fore-hold" of his dragon-ship, the young
sea-king lay asleep; and suddenly, says the old record, "he dreamt a
wondrous dream."
"Olaf, great stem of kings, attend!" he heard a deep voice call; and,
looking up, the dreamer seemed to see before him "a great and important
man, but of a terrible appearance withal."
"If that thou art Olaf the Brave, as men do call thee," said the vision,
"turn thyself to nobler deeds than vikings' ravaging and this wandering
cruise. Turn back, turn back from thy purposeless journey to the land of
Jerusalem, where neither honor nor fame awaits thee. Son of King Harald,
return thee to thy heritage; for thou shalt be King over all Norway."
Then the vision vanished and the young rover awoke to find himself alone,
save for the sleeping foot-boy across the cabin door-way. So he quickly
summoned old Rane, the helmsman, and told his dream.
"'T was for thy awakening, King," said his stout old follower. "'T was the
great Olaf, thine uncle, Olaf Tryggvesson the King, that didst call thee.
Win Norway, King, for the portent is that thou and thine shall rule thy
fatherland."
And the war-ships' prows were all turned northward again, as the boy
viking, following the promise of his dream, steered homeward for Norway
and a throne.
Now in Norway Earl Eric was dead. For thirteen years he had usurped the
throne that should have been filled by one of the great King Olaf's line;
and, at his death, his handsome young son, Earl Hakon the Fair, ruled in
his father's stead. And when young King Olaf heard this news, he shouted
for joy and cried to Rane:
"Now, home in haste, for Norway shall be either Hakon's heritage or mine!"
"'T is a fair match of youth 'gainst youth," said the trusty helmsman;
"and if but fair luck go with thee, Norway shall be thine!"
So, from "a place called Furovald," somewhere between the mouths of Humber
and of Tees, on the English coast, King Olaf, with but two stout war-ships
and two hundred and twenty "well-armed and chosen persons," shook out his
purple sails to the North Sea blasts, and steered straight for Norway.
As if in league against this bold young viking the storm winds came
rushing down from the mountains of Norway and the cold belt of the Arctic
Circle and caught the two war-ships tossing in a raging sea. The storm
burst upon them with terrific force, and the danger of shipwreck was
great. "But," says the old record, "as they had a chosen company and the
king's luck with them all went on well.
"Thou able chief!"
sings the faithful saga-man,
"With thy fearless crew
Thou meetest with skill and courage true
The wild sea's wrath
On thy ocean path.
Though waves mast-high were breaking round,
Thou findest the middle of Norway's ground,
With helm in hand
On Saelo's strand."
Now _Sael_ was Norse for "lucky" and Saelo's Island means the lucky
island.
"I'll be a lucky king for landing thus upon the Lucky Isle," said rash
young Olaf, with the only attempt at a joke we find recorded of him, as,
with a mighty leap, he sprang ashore where the sliding keel of his
war-ship ploughed the shore of Saelo's Isle.
"True, 't is a good omen, King," said old Rane the helmsman, following
close behind.
But the soil of the "lucky isle" was largely clay, moist and slippery,
and as the eager young viking climbed the bank his right foot slipped, and
he would have fallen had not he struck his left foot firmly in the clay
and thus saved himself. But to slip at all was a bad sign in those old,
half-pagan, and superstitious times, and he said, ruefully: "An omen; an
omen, Rane! The king falls!"
"Nay, 't is the king's luck," says ready and wise old Rane. "Thou didst
not fall, King. See; thou didst but set fast foot in this thy native soil
of Norway."
"Thou art a rare diviner, Rane," laughed the young king much relieved, and
then he added solemnly: "It may be so if God doth will it so."
And now news comes that Earl Hakon, with a single war-ship, is steering
north from Sogne Fiord; and Olaf, pressing on, lays his two ships on
either side of a narrow strait, or channel, in Sandunga Sound. Here he
stripped his ships of all their war-gear, and stretched a great cable deep
in the water, across the narrow strait. Then he wound the cable-ends
around the capstans, ordered all his fighting-men out of sight, and waited
for his rival. Soon Earl Hakon's war-ship, crowded with rowers and
fighting-men, entered the strait. Seeing, as he supposed, but two harmless
merchant-vessels lying on either side of the channel, the young earl bade
his rowers pull between the two. Suddenly there is a stir on the quiet
merchant-vessels. The capstan bars are manned; the sunken cable is drawn
taut. Up goes the stern of Earl Hakon's entrapped war-ship; down plunges
her prow into the waves, and the water pours into the doomed boat. A loud
shout is heard; the quiet merchant-vessels swarm with mail-clad men, and
the air is filled with a shower of stones, and spears, and arrows. The
surprise is complete. Tighter draws the cable; over topples Earl Hakon's
vessel, and he and all his men are among the billows struggling for life.
"So," says the record, "King Olaf took Earl Hakon and all his men whom
they could get hold of out of the water and made them prisoners; but some
were killed and some were drowned."
Into the "fore-hold" of the king's ship the captive earl was led a
prisoner, and there the young rivals for Norway's crown faced each other.
The two lads were of nearly the same age--between sixteen and
seventeen,--and young Earl Hakon was considered the handsomest youth in
all Norway. His helmet was gone, his sword was lost, his ring-steel suit
was sadly disarranged, and his long hair, "fine as silk," was "bound about
his head with a gold ornament." Fully expecting the fate of all captives
in those cruel days--instant death,--the young earl nevertheless faced his
boy conqueror proudly, resolved to meet his fate like a man.
"They speak truth who say of the house of Eric that ye be handsome men,"
said the King, studying his prisoner's face. "But now, Earl, even though
thou be fair to look upon, thy luck hath failed thee at last."
"Fortune changes," said the young earl. "We both be boys; and thou, king,
art perchance the shrewder youth. Yet, had we looked for such a trick as
thou hast played upon us, we had not thus been tripped upon thy sunken
cables. Better luck next time."
"Next time!" echoed the king; "dost thou not know, Earl, that as thou
standest there, a prisoner, there may be no 'next time' for thee?"
The young captive understood full well the meaning of the words. "Yes,
King," he said; "it must be only as thou mayst determine. Man can die but
once. Speak on; I am ready!" But Olaf said: "What wilt thou give me, Earl,
if at this time I do let thee go, whole and unhurt?"
"'T is not what I may give, but what thou mayst take, King," the earl made
answer. "I am thy prisoner; what wilt thou take to free me?"
"Nothing," said the generous young viking, advancing nearer to his
handsome rival. "As thou didst say, we both be boys, and life is all
before us. Earl, I give thee thy life, do thou but take oath before me to
leave this my realm of Norway, to give up thy kingdom, and never to do
battle against me hereafter."
The conquered earl bent his fair young head.
"Thou art a generous chief, King Olaf," he said. "I take my life as thou
dost give it, and all shall be as thou wilt."
So Earl Hakon took the oath, and King Olaf righted his rival's capsized
war-ship, refitted it from his own stores of booty, and thus the two lads
parted; the young earl sailing off to his uncle, King Canute, in England,
and the boy viking hastening eastward to Vigen, where lived his mother,
the Queen Aasta, whom he had not seen for full five years.
It is harvest-time in the year 1014. Without and within the long, low
house of Sigurd Syr, at Vigen, all is excitement; for word has come that
Olaf the sea-king has returned to his native land, and is even now on his
way to this, his mother's house. Gay stuffs decorate the dull walls of the
great-room, clean straw covers the earth-floor, and upon the long,
four-cornered tables is spread a mighty feast of mead and ale and coarse
but hearty food, such as the old Norse heroes drew their strength and
muscle from. At the door-way stands the Queen Aasta with her maidens,
while before the entrance, with thirty "well-clothed men," waits young
Olaf's stepfather, wise Sigurd Syr, gorgeous in a jewelled suit, a scarlet
cloak, and a glittering golden helmet. The watchers on the house-tops hear
a distant shout, now another and nearer one, and soon, down the highway,
they catch the gleam of steel and the waving of many banners; and now they
can distinguish the stalwart forms of Olaf's chosen hundred men, their
shining coats of ring-mail, their foreign helmets, and their crossleted
shields flashing in the sun. In the very front rides old Rane, the
helmsman, bearing the great white banner blazoned with the golden serpent,
and, behind him, cased in golden armor, his long brown hair flowing over
his sturdy shoulders, rides the boy viking, Olaf of Norway.
It was a brave home-coming; and as the stout young hero, leaping from his
horse, knelt to receive his mother's welcoming kiss, the people shouted
for joy, the banners waved, the war-horns played their loudest; and thus,
after five years of wandering, the boy comes back in triumph to the home
he left when but a wild and adventurous little fellow of twelve.
The hero of nine great sea-fights, and of many smaller ones, before he was
seventeen, young Olaf Haraldson was a remarkable boy, even in the days
when all boys aimed to be battle-tried heroes. Toughened in frame and
fibre by his five years of sea-roving, he had become strong and
self-reliant, a man in action though but a boy in years.
"I am come," he said to his mother and his stepfather, "to take the
heritage of my forefathers. But not from Danish nor from Swedish kings
will I supplicate that which is mine by right. I intend rather to seek my
patrimony with battle-ax and sword, and I will so lay hand to the work
that one of two things shall happen: Either I shall bring all this kingdom
of Norway under my rule, or I shall fall here upon my inheritance in the
land of my fathers."
These were bold words for a boy of seventeen. But they were not idle
boastings. Before a year had passed, young Olaf's pluck and courage had
won the day, and in harvest-time, in the year 1015, being then but little
more than eighteen years old, he was crowned King of Norway in the
Drontheim, or "Throne-home," of Nidaros, the royal city, now called on
your atlas the city of Drontheim. For fifteen years King Olaf the Second
ruled his realm of Norway. The old record says that he was "a good and
very gentle man"; but history shows his goodness and gentleness to have
been of a rough and savage kind. The wild and stern experiences of his
viking days lived again even in his attempts to reform and benefit his
land. When he who had himself been a pirate tried to put down piracy, and
he who had been a wild young robber sought to force all Norway to become
Christian, he did these things in so fierce and cruel a way that at last
his subjects rebelled, and King Canute came over with a great army to
wrest the throne from him. On the bloody field of Stiklestad, July 29,
1030, the stern king fell, says Sigvat, his saga-man,
"beneath the blows
By his own thoughtless people given."
So King Canute conquered Norway; but after his death, Olaf's son, Magnus
the Good, regained his father's throne. The people, sorrowful at their
rebellion against King Olaf, forgot his stern and cruel ways, and
magnified all his good deeds so mightily, that he was at last declared a
saint, and the shrine of Saint Olaf is still one of the glories of the old
cathedral in Drontheim. And, after King Magnus died, his descendants ruled
in Norway for nearly four hundred years; and thus was brought to pass the
promise of the dream that, in the "fore-hold" of the great dragon-ship,
under the walls of old Bordeaux, came so many years before to the daring
and sturdy young Olaf of Norway, the Boy Viking.
FOOTNOTES:
[F] "Hail and Health to the Viking!"
[G] So contemptuously did those fierce old sea-kings regard a peaceful
life, that they said of one who died quietly on his bed at home: "His was
but a straw-death."
[Illustration]
IV.
WILLIAM OF NORMANDY: THE BOY KNIGHT.
(_Afterward William the Conqueror, King of England._)
[A.D. 1040.]
It was a time of struggle in France. King and barons, lords and vassals,
were warring against each other for the mastery. Castles were besieged,
cities sacked, and fertile fields laid waste; and in that northern section
of France known as the Duchy of Normandy the clash and crush of conflict
raged the fiercest around the person of one brave-hearted but sorely
troubled little man of twelve--William, Lord of Rouen, of the Hiesmos and
of Falaise, and Duke of Normandy.
Left an orphan at eight by the death of his famous father--whom men called
Robert the Magnificent before his face and Robert the Devil behind his
back--the boyhood of the young duke had been full of danger and distress.
And now in his gloomy castle at Rouen--which his great-grandfather,
Richard the Fearless, had built nearly a hundred years before--new trouble
threatened him, as word came that King Henry of France, the "suzerain," or
overlord of Normandy, deeming his authority not sufficiently honored in
his Norman fief, had invaded the boy's territories, and with a strong
force was besieging the border castle of Tillieres,[H] scarce fifty miles
to the south.
The beleaguering hosts of France swarmed round the strong-walled castle,
and the herald of France demanded entrance. In the audience-hall the
warden of the marches, or borders of Normandy, received him.
"Gilbert of Crispin," said the herald, "thy master and suzerain, King
Henry of France, demands from thee the keys and possession of this his
fortress of Tillieres, granting therefor, to thee and thy followers,
pardon and safe conduct. But and if thou failest, then will he raze these
walls to the ground, and give to thee and thy followers the sure and
speedy death of traitors."
Bluff old Gilbert of Crispin, with scarcely restrained rage, made instant
answer:
"Sir herald," he said, "tell thy master, the King of France, that Gilbert
of Crispin defies and scorns him, and that he will hold this castle of
Tillieres for his liege and suzerain, Duke William of Normandy, though all
the carrion kites of France should flap their wings above it."
Defiance begets defiance, and both besiegers and besieged prepared for a
stubborn conflict. Suddenly the watcher from the donjon spied a flurry of
dust toward the north, out of the distance came hurrying forms, then the
sun played on shield and lance and banneret, and the joyful shout of the
watchman in the tower rang out: "Rescue! rescue and succor from our Duke!"
A band of knights rode from the French camp to intercept the new-comers.
Then came a halt and parley, and just as doughty Gilbert of Crispin was
preparing a sally for the support of his friends the parley ceased, the
Norman knights rode straight to the castle, and a loud trumpet-peal
summoned the warder to the gates. "Open; open in the name of the Duke!"
came the command.
The ponderous drawbridge slowly fell, the grim portcullis rose with creak
and rattle, the great gate swung open wide, and into the castle yard rode
Duke William himself.
A handsome, ruddy, stalwart lad of twelve; old-looking for his years, and
showing, even then, in muscle and in face, the effect of his stormy
boyhood. An open, manly brow, wavy chestnut hair, and a face that told of
thoughtful purpose and a strong will.