by Jan Guillou
It was not a difficult decision for King Sverker to make. With only a moment’s hesitation, he took the crown from his helmet, rode forward to Erik, and handed it to him.
But the marshal Ebbe Sunesson, who realized that now his life had little value, demanded in a loud voice and displaying no fear that he should be allowed to defend himself in a duel, preferably against the cowardly Folkung who hadn’t dared to fight him; the one whose brother he had already humbled.
King Erik and the Folkungs were all surprised when they understood that it was of Arn Magnusson the Danish marshal was speaking. They exchanged uncertain glances, as if they couldn’t have heard correctly.
‘It’s true,’ said Arn, ‘that I have previously refused to kill you as revenge because you murdered my brother for the sake of your own amusement. I had sworn an oath of loyalty to Sverker, but I have now been released from that vow. I thank God for choosing me to give you the reward that you deserve.’
With these words Arn rode off to the side and drew his sword. Then he bowed his head in prayer, which looked more like a prayer of thanksgiving than a plea for his own life.
Ebbe Sunesson was one of the few men present who had no idea of the reputation of the combatant he had chosen for the duel. With a triumphant expression he now drew his sword and galloped toward Arn. A moment later his head fell onto the snow.
Sverker Karlsson, his archbishop Valerius, and a few other men went back to Denmark. They were among the twenty-four who returned. The army that Valdemar the Victor had sent against the Swedes and Goths had been more than twelve thousand strong. The killing and plundering at Lena went on all night in the blaze of fires and continued into the next day.
King Erik, who now withdrew for the winter to his castle at Näs, had received the crown from Sverker’s own hand. Erik had been wise to handle the matter in this way, because not even the Holy Roman Church could contest that he was truly the new king of the Swedes and Goths.
But he had also spared Sverker Karlsson’s life, in spite of the fact that he easily could have killed him. That was a noble act, worthy of a king. But not a wise decision, as circumstances would show a few years later.
The victory at Lena was the greatest in man’s memory in the North, and it was given many heroes. For the Eriks, most of whom had found themselves cut off in the southern part of Western Götaland and unable get to Lena, the victory belonged without a doubt to King Erik alone. He had withstood a difficult trial and proved himself worthy of the king’s crown.
In the view of most of the Folkungs, it was the new Folkung cavalry that had been decisive. And if anyone objected that it was mostly the longbow archers who had crushed the Danes, every Folkung would reply that in that case it was their own house servants, thralls, caretakers, and peasants who had done what their masters ordered them to do.
Yet the strangest explanation for the remarkable victory at Lena came from the Swedes. It was during this time in Svealand that the saga spread about how the god Odin, after long absence, had reappeared. Many Swedish warriors said they had seen Odin with their own eyes; he was wearing a blue mantle and riding his steed Sleipner to lead the Swedes out to the battlefield.
This blasphemous explanation about the pagan god Odin as sire of the victory galled all the bishops in the three lands. As if with one voice and from Östra Aros, Strängnäs, and Örebro, to Skara and Linköping the bishops preached that God the Father, in His inscrutable mercy, had granted this victory to the Swedes and Goths and King Erik. There was one good thing about this conviction so loudly proclaimed by the bishops; it meant that King Erik had triumphed with God’s support and clearly demonstrated will. For this reason, the bishops all showed up to a man at the council meeting at Näs to assure everyone that Erik was now the incontestable king of the realm. But when he then asked them to set the crown on his head, they argued that such could be done only by the archbishop. And the one who would appoint a new archbishop to succeed Valerius would be the new Danish archbishop Andreas Sunesson in Lund. Yet no sign of good will could be expected from him; he was not only King Valdemar the Victor’s man, but he was also the brother of the felled Danish commanders Ebbe, Lars, Jakob, and Peder. The only one of them to be given a Christian burial back in Denmark was Ebbe Sunesson, although he had to travel home missing his head.
The fact that Denmark was to appoint the archbishop for the Swedes and Goths was certainly unreasonable, and a better arrangement would no doubt be made after a letter was sent to the Holy Father in Rome. Yet it was not something that could be accomplished quickly.
Nevertheless, it was reassuring for the young king to have the bishops of the realm on his side from the very beginning. This newly established goodwill on the part of the bishops was also of benefit to the Folkungs because the clerics now stopped their surly resistance toward consecrating the church at Forshem to God’s Grave. The church had been finished several years ago, but could not yet serve as the house of God. King Erik himself rode to Forshem to honour Arn Magnusson, his marshal and the one who commissioned this church, at the consecration.
The friendship between King Erik and Arn had grown even stronger. In Arn’s eyes, Erik had quickly changed from a youth greedy for simple pleasures into a man of great solemnity and dignity. For Erik, who had now seen his marshal in a war against overwhelming enemy forces, there was no doubt who was the true architect of this victory. And he didn’t hesitate to give full credit to Arn before the worldly members of his council, although in the presence of the bishops he found it wise to declare that the victory had been given to them by the hand of God.
Arn was not opposed to encouraging the bishops to talk of David versus Goliath, since every such more or less astute comparison from the prelates served to reinforce the idea that Erik had triumphed through God’s will and was thereby entitled to wear the crown.
But in his own heart Arn had more doubts. Earlier in his life he had seen far too many apparently inexplicable victories or defeats to be genuinely convinced of God’s intervention in every little human struggle on earth. In Arn’s experience, it was foolish commands on one side of the conflict that usually spelled victory for the other side.
And the Danes had been foolish in more ways than one, as well as arrogant. They had seriously underestimated their enemy, and they had depended almost exclusively on heavy cavalry, even though they should have realized that they would encounter snow. Their greatest mistake was not anticipating the longbow archers, and thus they had forced their entire army to ride to its death all at once. So many serious misjudgments could end only in defeat.
Yet as the marshal of the realm, Arn’s chief responsibility was to warn against pride. Such a great victory as occurred at Lena could never be repeated if the Danes decided to return. No doubt they wouldn’t come back soon, since it would take time to replace such a large army; so many riders, horses, weapons, and armour had been lost.
After the Swedes had finished their plundering of the battlefield at Lena, which went on for two days, all the equipment, saddles, and arrows collected were transported on fifteen fully loaded ox-carts to Forsvik. The plundered goods were more than enough to outfit two hundred new heavy riders.
They also obtained important information from the conquered armour. The Danes had a new way of protecting themselves against arrows and swords. Their helmets were stronger and offered better protection for the eyes. And some of their chain mail was not made of linked rings but rather from whole steel plates, like the scales on a fish; not even the long needle-sharp arrow points could penetrate such armour.
This information created many new tasks for the Wachtian brothers, prompting them to replicate the best of the Danish armour and also to think up new weapons that might work better than those they already had. One new weapon was the long war hammer, with a hammerhead on one side and a short, sharp pike on the other, which could puncture a hole in any type of helmet. Another weapon that they spent much time discussing with Arn was a light crossbow for riders that required
only one hand for shooting arrows. It took time to develop this weapon, since it had to combine seemingly incompatible traits. It had to be strong enough to pierce steel plates and yet light enough to shoot with one hand from horseback, since the rider’s other hand had to hold the reins and his shield.
After much effort the Wachtian brothers finally produced a weapon that would allow a light rider to move in close to a heavy enemy and slay him with a single, infallible shot.
The marshal of a realm needed to prepare for the worst. That was Arn’s firm conviction, and he was quick to say so whenever given the opportunity. Other councillors and kinsmen seemed convinced that they were now living in favourable times and with eternal peace, since the victory at Lena had been so monumental.
The worst that might happen would be for the Danes to return with just as many heavy riders in the summer; this time they would not underestimate the enemy or be enticed into the sun-dimming cloud of arrows shot by the longbow archers.
The Danes’ greatest weapon was the number of heavily armoured horsemen. An attack launched by a large group of such riders would strike like an iron fist through any army, provided they were sent into battle at the proper moment.
The lack of heavy riders was the greatest weakness of the Goths, but it was worse for the Swedes. This simple but grim conclusion brought about a thorough change in the exercises carried out at Forsvik during the next few years. All adult Folkung men were sent there to obtain new armour, both for themselves and their horses. Then they had to practice in the fields around Forsvik that had been turned into an arena, where no grass grew any longer. Arn’s own son, Magnus Månesköld, was among the many men who arrived to learn the methods required for this new way of waging war.
It was of course easier to train heavy riders. They needed to do little more than ride close together with lowered lance, but without hesitation when the battle started. The trick was not to send them into the wrong situation. For this reason Arn thought the young riders at Forsvik should take responsibility for them. But the foremost of the Folkungs thought this was an unreasonable demand. Men like Magnus Månesköld and Folke jarl couldn’t possibly take orders from youths young enough to be their own sons. Such an arrangement would never have worked in the lands of the Goths or the Swedes.
In the new knights’ hall at Forsvik, Arn had requested that a big box of sand be brought in. There he gathered the young knights and squadron commanders a couple of times each week, shaping in the sand hills and valleys, using pine cones and spruce cones to represent cavalry or phalanxes of foot-soldiers. By this simple device he tried to teach them what he knew of what had happened on the battlefield. But only the young men wanted to learn such things; all of the older Folkungs believed far more in their own courage and that of their kinsmen rather than in anything they could learn from pine cones.
Another way to prepare for the war that no one thought would come, not even Arn, was to establish new Forsvik schools. Sir Sigfrid Erlingsson had inherited his own estate on Kinnekulle, and there he began to train young men, as well as at least a hundred longbow archers from among the peasants and thralls. Sir Bengt Elinsson now had two estates, since he had inherited Ymseborg from his parents and Älgarås from his maternal grandfather. At Ymseborg he created his own school, and he sold Älgarås to Arn and Eskil. They in turn gave the estate to Sir Sune Folkesson, provided he took it upon himself to train at least three squadrons of light riders and two hundred longbow archers. Forsvik itself was becoming more and more a school and weapons smithy for heavy cavalry.
It was particularly hard for Sune Folkesson to part with Arn and Cecilia. In confidence he told them the whole story of the great love between himself and King Sverker’s daughter Helena, how their love could have cost them both their heads, and how he had sworn that one day he would take a squadron of Folkungs to fetch Helena from Vreta cloister. There she still sat, withering away, even though her father had fled with his tail between his legs to Denmark.
Cecilia and Arn were probably the two people in all of Western Götaland who would be most moved by such a tale. They had never betrayed their love for each other, nor had they ever lost hope, and their virtue had been rewarded.
Yet Arn responded with great harshness toward Sune’s hopes of gaining permission to ride at once to Vreta.
Abducting a maiden from a convent, and that was what it would be called no matter now willingly Helena came running, would provoke all of the bishops. And such internal strife was not something that the fragile new realm could tolerate. As long as Sverker, the former king, was still alive, he was the only one who could give her hand in marriage; that was a right that no one could take from him. And as long as that was so, taking Helena in such a fashion would be considered stealing her from the cloister. It didn’t matter how much the two young lovers wished to think otherwise.
Arn could see only one possibility for Sune, and that would be a great misfortune for others at the same time. If Sverker came back with another Danish army, if King Valdemar the Victor truly hadn’t had enough of seeing his men obliterated, then taking Helena from the cloister would be a different matter. Because then King Sverker would be dead.
Even Cecilia, who felt great sympathy for the love of these young people, could do nothing but dread what her husband had just described. Stealing a maiden from a cloister was a heinous deed and, in addition to upsetting all the bishops, it was an unforgivable sin.
Hence there was only one man in the realm who hoped for another big war, and that was the dejected Sir Sune, who now set off for Älgarås to start his life as a teacher of warriors on his own estate. Arn sent with him all the Saracen builders who still remained in order to build stone walls where the burned wooden walls had once stood.
On the mild spring day when Alde Arnsdotter turned seventeen, a feast bigger than any in a long time was held at Forsvik. Since there were fewer young noblemen in training than in previous years, there was room for all the Christians and even people of other faiths in the great hall. A joyous mood spread, as if everyone at Forsvik were of the same clan, even though they might not all speak the same tongue. Forsvik was not only the biggest weapons manufacturer in the realm but also a place where much wealth was created, and all the Forsvikers contributed to this endeavour. Smiths, glassmasters and coppersmiths, feltmakers and saddlemakers, hunters and millers all considered themselves just as much Forsvikers as the young noblemen or their teachers. Alde was also much loved by everyone because of her merry laugh and the interest that she showed in everyone’s particular skill.
Both she and young Birger Magnusson had now spent seven years studying with Brother Joseph; they had learned everything they could from him, and he had now started over with a small group of Christian children. Alde would one day inherit Forsvik, and the skills that she would need then could not be taught by Brother Joseph. Instead, Cecilia had started teaching her daughter the secrets of keeping account books, which were both the heart and soul of all the wealth that was created with one’s own hands and through the work of others. So that Alde might better understand what this accounting could reveal, she accompanied her mother to speak with all the workers and tried to find out about even the smallest details of every task.
For Birger Magnusson, his time with Brother Joseph was also over, and he was now in his third year of training with the young noblemen, with Sigurd in command. Since he was Arn’s grandson, Birger was favoured with something not bestowed on ordinary young noblemen. Arn’s lectionis in the knights’ hall regarding battlefield logistics was really only intended for the Forsvikers who had been knighted or who commanded a squadron. But from now on, Birger was invited to join these sessions.
Arn had more time for both the young people than ever before at Forsvik. His brother Gure took care of everything that had to do with the workshops and construction; Cecilia supervised all the trade by ship; and the young knights and commanders trained the new Folkung youths with regard to sword, lance, and horse. Arn had gained more
time in his daily life, or at least a new vision of how he could devote more hours to something that he had neglected for too long. Part of this had to do with his own daughter Alde and her cousin, Birger.
Arn had no doubt that Brother Joseph had taught them well the two most important languages of Latin and Frankish, for he was able to speak with them as easily in either of those tongues as in their own language. Nor did he doubt that Brother Joseph had pounded into their heads philosophy and logic, grammar and the Holy Scriptures.
But there was something else that a Cistercian, no matter how God-fearing and learned, could not know, something that was not found in books and could only be learned on the battlefield or at royal council meetings and from the mightiest men of the church. There was no word to describe this type of knowledge, but Arn called it learning about power. He began giving private lectionis for Alde and Birger on this topic.
According to Arn, the most important thing to learn about power was to understand that it could be both evil and good, and that only a well-trained eye could distinguish one from the other. Power could rot or wither just like the roses that grew in great abundance around the house where he and Cecilia lived, as well as in the gardens down by the lake. Cecilia’s gentle hands tended to these beloved roses from Varnhem, making use of both shears and water.
And it was not difficult to understand what the water of life was: it was God’s Word, the pure and unselfish belief that could make power grow as a force for good.
Strength was power, of course; many iron-clad knights represented strength, and hence power. But a God-fearing person had to use strength correctly, for as Paul said in the epistle to the Romans:
‘We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbour for his good, to build him up.’