The Vikings (42 page)

All of these traditions were challenged by Håkon at the
jól
feast that was held in the sixteenth year of his reign at Mære, near Trondheim,
⁹
when he addressed the assembly and proposed the end of the sacrificing, and the conversion of all to Christianity. His proposals caused outrage. The king’s role in these quarterly feasts was central and crucial. Kingship in the Heathen north was a sacral office. Kings were of divine descent and traced their ancestry back through the Swedish Yngling dynasty to the gods Frey and Njord. As such, they stood in a privileged relationship to the gods. The privilege was a two-edged sword, for a king remained accountable to his people through the qualities of the time in which he ruled. We noted earlier the extreme example of the pre-historical King Domaldi, sacrificed by his people at Uppsala in a last plea to the gods to end a period of famine and need. Håkon may not have liked it, but he belonged to this line of sacral kings and was duty-bound to lead his people in festive observations. Sacrificing and the law were inextricably intertwined, and a king who declined to lead his people in the rituals was no longer a king. Worse, there was no longer a valid law.

The conservatives in the Trøndelag were aware of Håkon’s reforming tendencies and were ready for him. Eight of the most important regional chieftains had divided the duty of resistance between them, says Snorri: ‘the four of the outer Tronds should destroy Christianity and the four of the inner Tronds should require the king to come to the offering’.
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At the feast Håkon was given a straight choice, either to ‘ratify the ancient laws’ or be driven from office. Earl Sigurd was the leading chieftain in the region and Håkon’s kingship, proclaimed in the Trøndelag in about 936, had been with his support. He conveyed to the people that Håkon had agreed to their demands and was prepared to drop his insistence on conversion to Christianity. This proved not enough. To remain as king he must play to the full the king’s part in the hallowing of the law. Snorri’s superbly dramatized account describes the king’s response, how he withdrew from the company and took his meals in the company only of a few of his closest Christian associates, until Sigurd persuaded him that he must take the high-seat and play his full part in the ceremonies. The unhappy king then enacted a fateful series of gestures, each more compromising of his Christian faith than the one before. He took the drinking horn, which Sigurd had already blessed in the name of Odin, and made the sign of the cross above it. People demanded to know what he was doing. Sigurd reassured them that their king was merely blessing the goblet in the name of Thor. Snorri’s literary embroidery played on the physical similarity, widely noted at the time, between the hammer of Thor and the cross of Christ, one which enterprising silversmiths of those syncretic times exploited in the creation of small ‘double’ symbols which could represent both gods simultaneously, depending on which way up it was held. Håkon was then driven to a second act of betrayal of his faith. When the flesh of the sacrificed horse was offered to him he rejected it. He likewise refused to drink the sacrificial stew. The people now turned against him and were ready to seize him, when Earl Sigurd came to his rescue:

Sigurd calmed things down, suggesting that the king hold his mouth over the handle of the kettle, on which the fat smoke of the boiled horse-flesh had settled; first the king wrapped a linen cloth over the handle, then he opened his mouth and inhaled over it before returning to the high-seat.

But, as Snorri concludes, this satisfied neither party. As the likelihood of violence increased, Håkon finally made his choice and without first making the sign of the cross above them ate the slice of horse’s liver and drank from the sacrificial broth.
¹¹

These pragmatic gestures marked the turning-point in his relationship with his people. While the author of the
Historia Norwegie
censored him for apostasy and for preferring mammon to god, Snorri eulogized him as a king who brought prosperity and good harvests to the land and called him ‘the most beloved of kings’.
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The length of Håkon’s reign is uncertain, with estimates ranging from fifteen years to twenty-seven.
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From about 955 onwards he was increasingly plagued by the harrying of Erik Bloodaxe’s sons in Norway, fighting with the support of men supplied by Harald Bluetooth. In about 960 at a battle at Fitjar, on the island of Stord, he was mortally wounded by an arrow, allegedly shot by a child. Some medieval historians attributed his death to the sorcery of his brother Erik’s wife, Gunnhild, always a baleful presence in the sources, whether plotting Egil Skallagrimsson’s downfall or urging her sons on against Håkon. To the author of
Historia Norwegie
, the shame of being killed by a low-born child made it ‘as clear as daylight to every bleary-eyed man and barber’ that this was Håkon’s divine punishment for having ‘dared to renounce the Christ-child’.
¹⁴
Inverting the thrust of a number of Viking Age stories of inter-faith marriages, in which the wife is usually Christian and the husband Heathen, the
Ágrip
, dated to about 1 1 90,
¹⁵
says that Håkon’s wife was a Heathen, and that it was for her sake that he abandoned Christianity. The author goes on to describe the contrition of the king’s final hours:

And when the king saw that he was near death, he deeply repented of his offences against God. His friends offered to carry his body west to England and give it church burial. ‘I am not worthy of that,’ said he. ‘In many ways I have lived like the Heathens, therefore I should be buried like the Heathens. In this way I could hope for greater mercy than I deserve at God’s hands.
¹⁶

His friends removed his body to Saeheim, in North Hordaland, and he was interred with conspicuously Heathen honours beneath a great mound. In what may have been a gesture of respect for his compromised Christianity, no grave-goods were buried with him.

Eyvind Skaldaspiller’s great poem in praise of him, ‘Håkonarmál’, was perhaps what gave the author of the
Ágrip
his cue in the prose account of Håkon’s death. Though steeped in the Heathen lore that was the staple and foundation of skaldic art, it manages to convey vividly the densely mixed nature of spiritual life in Norway at this time. After describing Håkon’s death in battle, Eyvind imagines the king’s unease at the prospect of meeting Odin in Valhalla, understandable in one who had been so reluctant in his Heathen devotions. Valkyries bring news of Håkon’s imminent arrival to Odin, and Odin sends two favoured sons to greet him:

Eyvind bestows a posthumous reassurance on Håkon, telling him that Odin would welcome him gratefully, for in having ‘spared the holy places’ he showed a tolerance that Heathens had learnt not to expect from kings who were Christians.

For Eyvind, it was this tolerance of the old ways, rather than any perceived Christian quality, that was the essence of Håkon’s ‘good ness’. The salutation in the final verse of the poem borrows from ‘The Sayings of the High One’, to which Eyvind adds his own comment on the bad ‘king’s luck’ that was to follow shortly with the rule of Håkon the Bad:

The Kuli stone gave us the first use of ‘Christendom’ in a native Norwegian source; Eyvind’s poem marked the first occurrence of the word ‘Heathen’ in Old Norse literature.
¹⁹
Heithin god
(‘Heathen gods’) was a Christian description of the Old Norse pantheon, derogatory in the same way as the Latin
pagani
, both implying that their worshippers were country bumpkins. A century earlier Eyvind would simply have said ‘the gods’, and his perhaps unthinking use of the term is a hint that the days of the old gods were fewer in number than he cared openly to admit.
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In Denmark Harald Bluetooth was keen to restore to the full Danish hegemony over Norway which had fallen into abeyance during the century of decline that lasted from the death of Horik in 854 until the revitalization process started by Harald’s father Gorm. After Håkon’s death he visited Norway and reintroduced the direct rule of a Danish king in the Vik and Østfold regions of the Oslo fjord. With his blessing, the sons of Erik, under the leadership of Harald
gráfeldr
, or ‘Greycloak’, ruled in the west of the country from Lindesnes and northward. They had been baptized in England with their parents, probably as part of the deal with Athelstan or one of his successors whereby Erik was recognized as ruler of York. But though they tried to introduce Christianity, ‘they could do nothing to make the men of the land Christians; but wherever they came they broke down temples and destroyed the sacrifice, and from that they got many foes,’ Snorri says.
²¹

Politically if not spiritually Erik’s sons built on the legacy of Harald Finehair and Håkon the Good and consolidated Norwegian power in Norway. With the defeat in battle of the earl of Lade, the Trøndelag region came under their control. Their authority seems to have been recognized in northern Norway as well, increasing until Harald found it inappropriately great. At some point he changed his allegiance and offered his support to their most bitter rival, the exiled Lade earl, Håkon, son of that Sigurd who had guided Håkon the Good through the earlier crisis. Harald Greycloak was killed in battle at Hals on Limfjord, Jylland, probably about 974. With his death the last, direct descendant of Harald Finehair to occupy the throne of Norway was gone, to make way for the last Heathen king to rule Norway. That Harald should have supported a Heathen claimant to the throne against its legitimate Christian rulers shows the significance in the ‘conversion moment’ of the act of baptismal sponsorship: Erik’s sons might have been Christians, but they were not ‘his’ Christians.

‘Vellekla’, a praise poem for Earl Håkon Sigurdsson by the Icelandic skald Einar Helgason, hailed him as lord over sixteen Norwegian earls. But he was himself subject to a Danish overlord, and during much of his reign Harald Bluetooth, too, had to acknowledge the overlordship of the German king and Holy Roman Emperor, Otto the Great, and of his son and successor Otto II. The emperor posed the same kind of threat in the name of expansionist Christianity as Charlemagne had done to Godfrid’s Denmark at the turn of the eighth century, and, as we noted earlier, this threat may have been a factor in Harald’s eventual acceptance of Christianity. But the privileges of membership of the club of Christian peoples remained obscure, and in 974, at least ten years after Harald had joined it, Otto II invaded Denmark in reprisal for Danish raids on Holstein.
²²

Håkon Sigurdsson paid Harald an annual tribute of twenty falcons. More importantly, he was bound to provide military assistance should Harald ever call upon him.
²³
‘Vellekla’ includes references to Håkon’s answering the summons from Harald to help him defend his territory against Otto, and of Håkon’s fighting Otto by the Danevirke.
²⁴
Before he returned to Norway, Harald sponsored his baptism and sent him back home with a number of missionary priests.
²⁵
As soon as he was able, Håkon compelled them ashore and renounced his conversion. With his intervention against Otto he seems to have regarded his debt to Harald as paid and to have conducted himself thereafter as sole ruler of Norway in the west.

Harald was as little pleased by this as he had been by the independent ways of the sons of Erik Bloodaxe, and in 986 he despatched a fleet up the west coast of Norway to bring Håkon to heel. The Danes were joined by over 100 ships of the Jomsvikings; but it was Håkon who triumphed on the day at the battle at Hjórungavág. Though none of the shorter historical works from the end of the twelfth century that deal with events in Norway mention Hjórungavág at all, the creative imagination of later skalds and sagamen turned the battle into a source of some of the most powerful myths associated with the Viking Age.
²⁶
The
Saga of the Jomsvikings
and Snorri’s
Saga of Olaf Tryggvason
both tell the tale of the line of Jomsviking prisoners being beheaded one by one, each man boldly disdaining to show fear as he is called forward. The
Saga of the Jomsvikings
contains a fuller account than does Snorri of the tradition referred to earlier concerning Håkon’s sacrifice of his seven-year-old son Erling for success in battle:

Now the earl goes ashore on the island called Prime Signed and into the trees. He faces north, goes down on his knees and prays. In his prayer he calls on his protector, Thorgerd Holgabrudr. But she is angry and will not hear his prayer. He offers her great sacrifices, but she remains unmoved. The situation begins to seem hopeless to him. Next he offers her a human sacrifice, but she will not accept it. Finally he offers her his son, whose name was Erling and who was seven years old. She agrees to accept the boy. The earl gives the boy to his slave Skofte, and he takes the boy away and kills him.
²⁷