Chapter 32
Chapter 32 of History of the Norwegian People, Volume 1 by Knut Gierschit. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 32. Errik Bloodaxe. To rule successfully as overking over a number of jealous and ambitious kings of inferior rank, who had an equally good claim to the throne, would probably have been beyond the power of
the wisest and most moderate of sovereigns. For Errik Bloodaxe, even a less difficult task might have been impossible. The Fogushina describes him as follows. King Erik was tall and well-built, courageous and good-looking. He was surly and taciturn, covetous and reckless, but a great and very successful warrior. These are traits which would have been more commendable in a Viking chieftain than in the King of Norway.
He married Gunnhild, daughter of King Gorm of Denmark. The sagists say that she was beautiful and dignified, though not very tall. She was cunning, talkative, and evil-minded. Tradition has made her a veritable Lady Macbeth in Norwegian history. A crafty and ambitious woman, a daughter of Asertote of Holagaland, reared among the Finns, who are masters of witchcraft.
History places her in a different light. She appears as the faithful wife and good mother, a gifted and heroic woman, who clung to her husband in evil days as in good. She governed her sons. She was their constant advisor and kept them united under all difficulties. So great an influence did she exercise over them that they were always known as the sons of Gunnhild. But it is more than likely that a woman so gifted and energetic, a princess of an old royal family,
might be haughty and overbearing as Queen of Norway, and that, when trouble came, she would fight for her throne, her husband, and her sons with all the intrigues and secret weapons which she, as a woman, could command. Errik tried to continue the system of government established by Harald, but his brothers refused to submit to him.
Hafdan, king in Tryndelagen, severed all connections with him, and Olaf became independent king in Viken. Hofton died soon, and people claimed that Queen Gunnhild had hired a sorceress to poison him. He was succeeded by Siegfried, another son of Harald, who formed an alliance with King Olaf against Erich, but they were defeated and slain. Sigurd, the son of Jarl Håkon Björkgardson, was now Jarl in Tryndelaggen, residing at Lada.
He did not wish to submit to King Erich, but sent for Håkon, a younger son of Harald, to come to Norway. Halkon, who was reared at the court of King Æthelstan in England, is known as Halkon Adelstansforstra, and also as Halkon the Good. He promised to restore to the people their right of Odal, i.e. to do away with that feature of Harald's system of government which was regarded as especially oppressive. This aroused the greatest enthusiasm, and he was hailed as king at the Irithing in Trindelagen. Opplenene and Wieken joined him, and the following spring he advanced southward with a large fleet.
Few remained faithful to the unpopular Erik, and he left Norway without even attempting to resist his successful rival. Håkon was made king over all Norway, and became the real successor of King Harald. After Erik left Norway, he spent several years on Viking expeditions. The skald Guttorm Sindra says that he was a great sea king, who won gold with the sword in Scotland and elsewhere. In 948 he came to Northumbria, where he was made king, but the people who feared the wrath of King
Eodred, the successor of Edmund, forced him to leave and chose Olaf Kvaran as king. He ruled till 952, when he was driven away, and Eirik again became king of York. Coins had been found bearing on the front side the inscription Eirikus Rex, and on the back side the name of the city of York. These had, evidently, been coined by Eirik while he was king of York. He extended his sway over a great part of Northumbria, and it appears that he was baptized and that he acknowledged
King Eadred as his overlord. An incident occurred while Eirik ruled at York, which gives some ground for the opinion that he was probably better than his reputation. The Egil saga tells us that the great-scald Egil Skollgrimsson and King Eirik were bitter enemies. Once when Egil came sailing from Iceland, he was shipwrecked on the coast of Northumbria and was taken prisoner by King Eirik, who, according to custom, would have had him executed.
But during the night, Egil composed a song in praise of the king. The next morning, Egil was allowed to recite his song before Erik, who was so moved that he granted the Skald his life and permitted him to depart unharmed. The poem is called Hafuthlazan, The Ransom of the Head.
In 954, King Erik was driven from Northumbria. He again turned Viking, gathering an army in Ireland, in the Orkneys and the Hebrides, and attempted to regain his throne. But in Westmoreland he met an army under Oswulf of Bambro and Marcus Olofson. A fierce battle was fought in which Eirik fell, and York ceased to be a distinct Viking kingdom.
Jarls continued, however, to rule in York in Northumbria, and they often owed but slight submission to the kings of England. In the 10th century, a stream of Norse emigrants from Ireland and the Hebrides poured into England. These new settlers were especially numerous in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Northumbria. Anglesey, on the coast of Wales, was settled by Norsemen and bears still its Norse name. Chester, which had long been in ruins, was seized and rebuilt and became an important commercial town.
The Danes and Norsemen, at first two distinct peoples, rapidly merged on English soil into one foreign element. In the 12th century they still spoke their own northern tongue, the Norse laws were still in use in the districts where they had settled, and the people maintained a democratic government. All freeborn men able to bear arms meant at the thing,
where they elected the king or ruler and adopted the laws which were proposed. The Allsherjar Mot, or Meeting of the Armed Host, was the general thing, but there were also local things in each shire, triding, wapentake, and hundred. In the division of the country into smaller administrative districts, northern England still shows traces of Viking influence.
Yorkshire and York are still divided into ridings, a later corruption of the old Danish or old Norse thriving, or triding, as each thing lag in Iceland and elsewhere in the north was divided into three tridings or districts, each with its own goda. Personal liberty was highly prized by the Vikings,
and although they kept slaves and were great slave traders in early days, slavery died out earlier in the Danalag than elsewhere in England. In the Domesday book, only 2,524 slaves are recorded for the Danalag, while southern England had 25,156 male and 467 female slaves, or ten times as many. In Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, there was not a single slave at the time of the Domesday survey.
A. Bugha says, As soon as the Vikings settled in England, they began to give their freed slaves land to till. In the Treaty of Peace between Guttorm and King Alfred, the Viking freedmen, Leisinger, were considered equal to the Anglo-Saxon churls, or peasants, who were renters. That the two classes, the freedmen and the churls, were considered equal shows the contrast between Viking and Anglo-Saxon society.
The freedman had been a slave, but he rose to personal freedom and a better social condition. The Cuorell was a freeborn man whose ancestors had wielded a sword in the conquest of Britain, but gradually his condition grew worse. He had ceased to own lands, and he was about to lose his personal freedom. Then came the Viking period and arrested the development of large estates
and planted in the conquered districts a large class of freemen. What difference is there not in the Domes Day book between Cornwall with its 1160 slaves, its more or less dependent 2,355 bordari and its 1,730 villani, who in the records are placed even below the slaves, or Devonshire, where there were 4,847 bordari, 3,294 slaves, servi, and 8,070 villani, named after the slaves, and no freemen save the citizens of the towns, the vassals,
and the sub-vassals, and Lincolnshire, with 11,503 freeborn sociomani, freeholders, as against 4,024 Bordari and 7,723 Villani, or Norfolk with its 4,277 freemen, Libri-Guménez, and 4,571 Soshamani, as against 9,537 Bordari, 4,656 Villani, and not more than 995 slaves, and Suffolk, where one half of the rural population were freeholders. When the condition of the rural population in England, even in the darkest days of the Middle Ages, was better than in France and
Germany, it was due to the Danes and Norsemen, who brought with them to England their love of personal rights and liberty, and to their kinsmen the Christian and French-speaking Normans.
