Wayward Heroes

by Halldor Laxness

  Ingegerd Olafsdotter was a tall woman, fair-complexioned and haughty, like those other women of the race of swans, of whom but few are seen in the North, and none elsewhere. She paid repeated visits to her brother-in-law Olaf in the monastery to discuss the news from the North, where her thoughts were constantly fixed. She spoke candidly to Olaf, telling him apologetically that her kin had held the Uppsala domains for thirty generations in the male line and put little trust in men of dubious lineage who rose independently in Norway and claimed the title of king – there were too many examples of how quickly such kings were slain in Norway when someone stronger undertook to attack them. Nonetheless, she did not feel that her sister Astrid, born of a serving maid, had made a match any worse than her own. She said that it was certainly a kingly feat to dispatch one’s own brothers from the world, as her husband Yaroslav the Wise had done, but as knyaginya, she found it far less honorable for Yaroslav to have four wives in addition to herself, as well as seven concubines. She added that it was better to rise under one’s own power in a kingdom temporarily divided and to fall prematurely in battle, than to rule Kiev in name – without being allowed the title of king by the Byzantine Emperor, only that of knyaz. “And those black-browed, meddling slatterns of Constantinople, naked to the navel, mocked me, calling me a shieldmaiden of the race of trolls, suckled by a she-bear!”

  Around that time, monks were zealously gathering all the skulls of holy men and martyrs they could get their hands on from the company of the elect killed by the boyars and bogatyri in the fight against King Vladimir the Holy, when he set out to force the people of that land to take baptism. The monks’ plan was to entice the people of Russia, as well as Bulgaria the Great and other kingdoms, into making pilgrimages to Kiev to venerate these holy and blessed saints, whose skulls, by the mercy of God, bore such beneficial fruit. Any person who wished to bring these skulls a monetary offering for the sake of Holy Wisdom, was promised in return forgiveness of sins and mitigation of their pains in Purgatory. They could also expect their sores and boils to heal, their calves to fatten well, and excellent yields of turnips, as well as respite from crawling creatures and the Cumans, that vicious race that eats human flesh. Likewise, whenever paupers came across a comely man’s or woman’s head on their path, they could bring it to the monastery, and receive from the monks cabbage gruel with a scrap of meat in it as a reward.

  When this king from the North enters the monastery, destitute and weary, the monks ask how he means to employ himself between holy offices, since Satan, the Evil One, the rival of Christ as he is called, is particularly fond of assailing the idle, and with great cunning. King Olaf replies that he is in fact known to have expertise in many crafts, for instance in fashioning shrines or carving bone. “Yet when I was a Viking, I was best known for my surgeon’s hands,” says he – and true enough, he kept in his bag, which never left him, a set of small knives, supple pliers, and awls. With these tools, he said, he had earned a good reputation after joining the army to defend England, then France, and finally Norway, by gouging out eyes or tearing out rebels’ tongues, or torturing captives and hostages. Upon beholding these tools, the monks assign Olaf the task of removing the flesh from the bone on the heads of the martyrs and other holy men, digging out their eyes, pulling out their tongues, extracting the soft tissue from their palates and jaws, and then polishing their skulls. These venerable, fruitful skulls of saints, the sources of numerous outstanding miracles, were preserved in the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom in Kiev down to the days of Bishop Sigurgeir, and were seen by us, who, in our great poverty, have put together this little book.

  47

  LEARNED MEN have often noted how King Cnut Sweynsson granted his vassals in Norway more power and privileges than they had ever had before, making them feel much better equipped to control those districts that were a constant bone of contention between them and the Swedes – and how these vassals behaved like others who enjoy the protection of a mighty king, believing that his kingdom will last forever, and acting as if they have free reign under his aegis. Anund, king of the Swedes, began to feel that it was becoming too crowded on his doorstep. The Norwegians appeared to be growing too bold, now that they had an English king ruling them – one mightier and in command of more troops and ships than any king of Norway had ever had.

  King Anund Olafsson of Sweden, however, having wed Cnut’s sister, deemed it fitting to proceed cautiously in his dealings with the Norwegians – neither straightforwardness nor force would do any good. He pondered how he might get the better of the Norwegians in some way, or how much Cnut would give to retain control of Norway, or recover it, if it should be torn from his hands. He admitted that he had made an error in judgement the year before by providing Olaf the Stout too little support when the peasants closed in on him, especially since most of the peasant leaders had now sworn their obedience to Cnut. He considered it better to have a petty man for his neighbor in Norway than a sovereign in England.

  Now, as more and more of King Anund’s stewards complained to him about the Norwegian encroachments, Anund finally lost patience and convened a secret council with the lords whose advice he normally respected. Little of their plans was revealed to the populace. In the fall, however, King Anund sent men east to Russia with silver, with the aim of meeting Olaf Haraldsson the Stout and offering to buy him the horses and gear he would need in order to leave Russia that winter. A fleet would be awaiting him on the eastern shore of the Baltic, to sail with him to his wife Astrid. That fall marked a year since King Olaf had come to Kiev.

  On the day the Swedish envoys presented this offer to Grand Knyaz Yaroslav, Knyaginya Ingegerd paid her customary visit to the monastery to speak with her brother-in-law, King Olaf. He was at his assigned task, using pliers to pluck the soft tissue from a saint’s jawbone. A scent of incense filled the monastery, serving both to invigorate people’s hearts and to mask foul odors. The knyaginya took her seat opposite Olaf the Stout and watched for a while as the king dug dexterously at the saint’s jawbone. Then the knyaginya, who was somewhat downcast, said:

  “Visitors from out west in Sweden have come to our palace,” said she, “with the following message: you are to return home with them to my sister Astrid. First, though, you are to reconquer Norway, and for your campaign, my brother Anund in Uppsala will supply you with all the vagrants, beggars, and thieves that are to be found in the kingdom of Sweden, both east and west of the Baltic. Famine threatens my brother’s kingdom, making it easy in most areas to hire troops for war, whether in Estonia, Osel, and Gotland or in Sweden itself. These men are promised outstanding spoils in Norway.”

  Olaf Haraldsson immediately stopped working and set aside the saint’s skull, with the pliers between its jaws. He said:

  “As far as I can see, if what you say is true, these things will be of no small consequence – though your tone as you tell me is not particularly encouraging.”

  She replied: “How necessary do you feel it is to regain the hand of my sister Astrid?”

  “If we are called upon to re-establish the kingdom of Norway,” said he, “it is the will of Christ and not men, though, for the time being, I had thought to fill a different role for the examiner of monks. May I remind you, Ingegerd, that although I was but a man of little worth in your eyes when I ruled Norway, and you disgraced me by taking up instead with that inveterate adulterer, the Nidhogg of his family tree – despite your being promised to me by your own consent – that man will never bear the title of king. Why should you show more interest in me now, when I rule over no one, apart from these rotten heads?”

  She said: “You wish to punish me now for your own grudge against me, when you, a mere sailor, proposed to me, hardly more than a child, and a vain one at that – and I was led by my own childishness into a union with a man who had more might and renown. Now I have learned that the more mighty a king is, the less his wife has of his love. I would rather be the friend of a man who, for the monks, polishes the skulls of beggar-ki
n, or that murderers sell to bishops for a sup of cabbage gruel, than be wedded to a king who rules the land of his enemies. You and I share the same language and complexion, things that make compatriots of two persons in exile. My sister Astrid has our Norwegian jarls for chess and private conversation as she fancies, though she has always been easy to please, with a figure like a dairymaid working her churn and shaping butter pats, and grinning like a serving wench. If you go, I will be left here alone, with the earth beneath me scorched to its roots.”

  King Olaf then said: “What Christ wills, we must venture, and kingdoms are not purchased cheaply – but as far as women are concerned, we take things as they come. For a woman, there is more honor in being the friend of a king who hews heads off living men than one who polishes those of dead men, and Christ must certainly have great deeds in store for me if the news that you have brought me is true.”

  Knyaginya Ingegerd replied: “It may indeed turn out,” says she, “that you come to possess the one kingdom that Christ grants you, but Norway, never – and that you will enter the one bed that Christ selects for you, but that of Astrid, your spare horse, never. From now on, our destinies are entirely our own.”

  At these words, the knyaginya burst into tears; she rose and left the room without any other word of farewell, shutting the door behind her. Olaf Haraldsson the Stout wiped flesh and blood from his pliers and awl and small knives, and praised Christ the Lord.

  As for Anund, King of the Swedes, he assembled a fleet of ships from the lands that he ruled east of the Baltic, intending it for the use of Olaf Haraldsson the Stout when he reached the coast. That winter, Olaf headed westward with a fine retinue, harnessing draught-horses to sleighs and driving over the ice, accompanied by guards to protect the silver they carried. The Swedish jarls in charge of the expedition had given their pledge to their lord, the Swedish king, to address Olaf as king when speaking to him.

  When the company arrived at the coast, they found the fleet ready to sail, and the Swedes announced that King Olaf was to command it. Not everyone in the fleet was what might be called irreproachable: outlaws had been levied, and large numbers of slaves, whom powerful men could not be bothered to feed during famine, as well as all manner of riff-raff and knaves whose kind are hunted down in the woods like wolves. For their fare, these men were given hard stockfish one day and porridge the next. There was not a single Christian within the fleet, and hardly a man who spoke the Norse tongue. King Olaf was regaled by the Swedish king’s stewards on the mainland and isles with proper feasts and worthy gifts. His life had certainly changed since he had traveled east, not so long ago, as a passenger on a merchant vessel, leading his barefoot son by the hand and ignored by all.

  At that time, Christianity had gained only a small foothold east of the Baltic, and the Swedish stewards doggedly resisted gathering taxes for pope or patriarch. There were, however, some old merchants who had agreed to be prime-signed when they were abroad, and some built chapels to Saint Basil of Cappadocia after retiring from their trading ventures. Good Swedes were loyal to Þórr, while the commons, who did not speak Norse, put most faith in the god named Jumala, who holds a fine staff in his hand. Yet nothing further shall be told here of his excellence.

  As mentioned previously, King Olaf had become such a great friend of Christ after being expelled from his kingdom that it vexed him when he could not hear Holy Mass and chanting in Greek or Latin, or the sounds of bells ringing. Above all, he drew satisfaction from pondering the subtleties of Christ, who had entrusted his page with a heathen army to spread the true faith in Norway. Yet as glad as Olaf was of this fighting force, the lords in the east were no less gratified, in this time of famine, that the king of the Swedes should have thieves and paupers and other wicked rabble rounded up on the mainland and isles and shipped off to be slaughtered west of the Baltic.

  Gotlandic books tell of how King Olaf Haraldsson, during the course of this expedition, sailed his ships to that island and received a better welcome than when he had landed there during the Viking raids of his youth and been given a drubbing by the islanders, which, naturally, inspired nothing less than a special praise-poem later, lauding Olaf’s victory over the Gotlanders. In Gotland, folk were not yet Christian. King Olaf commanded every member of his fleet to donate a penny from his pay for a church on that island, and in return, the islanders gave Olaf twelve rams and promised to build a church and appoint a priest to it at the appropriate time. There, Olaf gathered more paupers and thieves, conscripting them with the same promise as in the east: that as soon as the army reached Norway, they would have all that the land produced at their disposal and be free to divide the spoils among themselves, according to Viking custom.

  Olaf Haraldsson sailed into Lake Mälaren with the force he brought from the East, and was met at the estuary by the king of the Swedes, who was affable and relaxed and had much to tell: first and foremost, that Cnut had abandoned the North entirely, while churls were making an impertinent show in Norway, claiming the land was theirs to rule. Yet there was a positive side to this: since Cnut had purchased the loyalty of the peasants’ leaders, they had hardly anyone at their head, and thus had little hope of victory against a hardened army. The Swedish king had also made inquiries concerning Olaf’s kinsfolk and friends in Norway who might be expected to support him, and secretly sent men to meet them. These, he learned, were entirely prepared to back Olaf if he came with an army capable of defending the land against the peasants. When the kings agreed that Olaf’s force was still too small to redeem Norway, he received his brother-in-law’s permission to levy as many troops as would follow him from throughout Sweden, and the king promised to help him with this levy. Sweden was then suffering a great famine – beggars roamed the country in bands or took to the woods or outlying islets. The kings dispatched envoys to conscript these people and send them to defend Norway, with the promise that this army could sieze all the treasure there that they could lay their hands on, and take the crofts of the Norwegian peasants for their own. Unsurprisingly, many men believed the Swedish rulers were offering them a most promising expedition. This force comprised more highwaymen, bark-eaters, and brigands than any before it. The rank and file were fed gruel, those above them lutefisk, and the captains meat. At first, the men were not given weapons, so that they would not kill each other – there was a great deal of quarreling among the ranks of this army, which was a mishmash of every sort of derelict and outlaw, none understanding the other’s tongue. The captains limited themselves to showing them the chests full of weapons to be used against the Norwegians. The men were poorly clad, and wrapped their feet in birch-bark until spring arrived with warmer air. Olaf found no Christian men among the forces that had been levied in Sweden to reinforce him. In fact, another generation was to pass before Sweden became Christian, apart from the kings in Uppsala who took up the faith in name only in order to establish relations with kings farther south and with foreign barons, as well as to be known as friends of the Lord Pope. In Uppsala stood a temple to Freyr, larger and more sumptuous than any church in the North at that time – and all learned men agree that the Uppsala kings did everything in their power to prevent Sweden from adopting the Christian faith. They wanted their land to preserve the peace and quiet that it had enjoyed since antiquity, and made only those concessions to rabble-rousers and foreigners that were strictly necessary for peace.

  After arriving in Sweden at the invitation of his wife’s kin, and in perfect friendship, King Olaf felt that things had taken a strange turn. He was put in charge of all the bandits of the kingdom, its tired and hungry crofters, louse-ridden tramps, foreigners, and plenty of other heathens, but was denied the service of priests. When he complained of this predicament to the king, he was told that the bishops had it on good authority that in Kiev, King Olaf had consorted with heresiarchs and reprobates who obeyed the Patriarch in Constantinople. That form of Christianity was subject to the Lord Pope’s lesser excommunication, while the Lord Pope was subject t
o the Patriarch’s greater excommunication. No cleric from Bremen would have dared risk his salvation to sing Mass for King Olaf without having the formal permission of the Lord Pope to do so. It should be noted, as well, that though he was given a friendlier reception by his queen’s kin than before, Olaf was not accorded the same by the queen herself – she did not ride to the ships to visit him. At the arrival of Midwinter Night, as the heathen Yule was called by the Swedes, the king in Uppsala sent large bull carcasses down to the coast, where Olaf Haraldsson’s tents were pitched, and with them barrels of mead – though Olaf was as far as ever from the lap of his lady, Queen Astrid. Olaf was expected to celebrate the Yule feast with his troops on the shore, and not in the royal castle in Uppsala, and the Swedish king’s men paid little heed when he attempted to protest. Being most dissatisfied with this arrangement, Olaf mounted and set out for the castle, taking several of his men with him. He hoped to meet with his queen Astrid before others could interfere, and when he arrived at the castle, he was told that she was in the mead-hall. Word was sent to her that a visitor had arrived and wished to speak to her, and she was informed of his manner and appearance. Queen Astrid ordered that the visitor be shown to a room distant from the hall, and went there to meet him. When she saw that it was Olaf, her husband, she was clearly quite astonished, but greeted him courteously and asked for news of the east, and what business he had here.

  King Olaf replied: “I would never have thought you would feel the need to ask your spouse and lord for news, or enquire on what business he had come, while you pass the evening in a mead-hall after your husband has returned home to you – he who was driven away from you, betrayed and in great distress.”