Harald Hardrada

by John Marsden

  The timely introduction of this impressively contemporary evidence from the skalds at last enables the alignment of Snorri’s narrative with the more reliable historical record of events in Constantinople in the spring of 1042 when an emperor was blinded and deposed on 21 April after one of the bloodiest days in the capital’s history. That emperor could not have been the Constantine Monomachus named by Snorri, however, and neither could it have been he who committed Harald to prison because some seven more weeks were to pass before he made his formal entry into Byzantine history as the emperor Constantine IX when he became Zoe’s third husband in the second week of June. The emperor who suffered the mutilation described by the skalds can only have been Michael V Calaphates.

  Having disposed of his uncle the Orphanotrophus and cowed the courtier aristocracy – even emasculating dissenting members of his own family – Michael now believed himself sufficiently beloved of the people to proceed with the removal of his co-empress Zoe. Probably inspired to action by the sight of the cheering crowds lining his processional route to the great church of the Hagia Sophia on the first Sunday after Easter (18 April in 1042), Michael had Zoe arrested, arraigned in front of witnesses he had prepared earlier, and forcibly transported through the night – garbed in a nun’s habit and shorn of her hair – to a convent on the island of Prinkipo in the Sea of Marmara. It is, perhaps, tempting to wonder whether rumours associating Zoe with a Varangian spatharokandidatos might have prompted Harald’s arrest around this time, possibly to neutralise any potential military challenge before Michael addressed the Senate on the following morning to announce Zoe’s punishment for allegedly attempting to poison her co-emperor. While the senators had no realistic alternative to approval of the emperor’s action, a very different response greeted the proclamation made to the crowd on the street outside, where voices were immediately heard denouncing the caulker’s son as a blasphemer and demanding the return of the porphyrogenita.

  Those isolated calls soon swelled to the point where the sebastokrator (or ‘city prefect’) who had made the proclamation only just escaped with his life from an angry mob grown so huge that it seemed as if the whole city had risen in open revolt, especially when the Patriarch of Constantinople ordered all the bells to be rung calling the people to arms. A number of Varangians had apparently responded to the summoning bells, because Psellus makes mention of many axes wielded among the crowds surging to besiege the imperial palace and attack the mansions of the emperor’s family, with particular attention directed towards the palace of the nobilissimus Constantine. Some of those Varangians must have been those formerly in service with the imperial lifeguard – on the evidence of Psellus’ reference to discontented Tauro-Skuthai who departed the palace – but others of their kind, who had probably been long in Constantine’s service, remained loyal to the Grand Domestic as he fought his way through a mile and a half of crowded city streets before coming to the aid of his nephew under siege in the imperial palace.

  A man of genuine military experience and evident personal courage, Constantine first deployed his bowmen and ballistae on the high towers to drive the mob back from the gates with a hail of arrows and bolts, before despatching a boat across the Marmara to bring Zoe back from the island of Prinkipo with all possible speed. In the desperate hope that a personal appearance by his co-empress might just save Michael and his faction from their encircling doom, the old lady was brought ashore and hastily robed in the imperial purple before being taken through the palace to stand with her adopted son in the imperial box of the Hippodrome. It was now afternoon and the mob had been too angry for too long to be persuaded by any such charade. They saw Zoe still held in thrall by the son of a shipyard caulker and renewed their demand, now not only for the removal of Michael but for his replacement with the only other surviving porphyrogenita. Thus emissaries were sent forth to bring a reluctant Theodora out of the convent where she had spent the last fifteen years and bear her by force to the Hagia Sophia where she too was garbed in the purple before accepting the imperial crown.

  It must have been very late in the evening before a proclamation in the name of the two sister empresses declared the emperor deposed and the congregation moved out of the cathedral to join the crowd still besieging the palace where Michael and his uncle had now received reinforcements – probably including more Varangian mercenaries – brought back from a recent victory in Sicily. Crack front-line troops fresh from active service would have been gratefully welcomed by the beleaguered Grand Domestic and were to be desperately needed early in the following morning when the palace was attacked from three sides. One of the routes chosen for this three-pronged onslaught was by way of the great bronze gate known as the Chalke – and it may well have been some of the insurgents following this line of approach who paused to break Harald and his companions out of their dungeon.

  There has been more than one suggestion as to the prison in which Harald was held. The version of his saga in the Flateyjarbók places it on the same street as the ‘church of the Varangians’, of which the oldest is thought to have been that dedicated to St Mary near the Hagia Sophia, but the other and, perhaps, greater likeli-hood is of his being imprisoned in the Numera (its cells having been used at one time by the Numeri garrison) which lay in close proximity to the Varangian barracks and would have been most easily reached from the Chalke. The Patriarch had already directed the mob to break open the city’s prisons and release their inmates on the Monday, but the Numera would have been under military control and so was more likely to have been breached during the dark hours of Tuesday morning. Indeed, Snorri’s saga account indicates the rescue having been accomplished in the night-time and, unlikely as his story of the noblewoman may seem, Psellus remarks on the numbers of women and girls included in the mob so it is fully possible that one of these may have taken some part in releasing the three Varangians from their cell. It is still more likely that some prisoners of particular importance would have been located for urgent rescue by those directing the insurgency and Harald would surely have been one of these, and not only because his release would have encouraged the support of most of the Varangians. There were now those in high places who may already have known of him and, perhaps, even foreseen a particular role for his services.

  Whichever was the prison that held him, Harald would have been free of its confines in time for him and his men to take some part in the fighting which engulfed Constantinople throughout that Tuesday – because 20 April in the year 1042 was to go down in the annals with singular notoriety as the bloodiest day in the long history of the Byzantine capital. More than three thousand are said to have been slain before the palace finally fell in the early hours of the following morning when the forces around the emperor either surrendered or escaped, allowing the mob to overrun the whole vast complex, pillaging its treasures and paying especial attention to the imperial treasury, where the archives of the tax-collectors were destroyed. At least one Varangian might have had reason to see some treasury documents in shreds or aflame and he would not have been alone in so doing, although the more pressing concern of the mob was to find and kill the ex-emperor.

  For the moment, though, it was to be frustrated because Michael and his uncle Constantine had gone from the palace before the first light of dawn when they took a boat along the coast to seek sanctuary in the monastery of St John of the Studion. There they had taken the tonsure and been admitted as monks while Zoe, left alone in the palace, was raised up on the shoulders of the insurgents who bore her aloft and placed her on the imperial throne. If her delight and relief were soon to be tempered when she learned of the return and coronation of the sister she had hated for so long, the sound of cheering crowds around the Hagia Sophia left Zoe no other option than to acknowledge the decision of the people and accept Theodora as her co-empress. Meanwhile, the whereabouts of Michael and Constantine had been discovered and the mob was gathering outside the church of the Studion monastery, still bent upon their destruction but not yet prepar
ed to violate the sanctuary.

  Evening was approaching by the time one of the newly appointed officials arrived from the city with orders from Theodora to bring the ex-emperor and his uncle out of the church, but talk of public execution was already to be heard and the two fugitives clung ever more desperately to the altar. Despite assurances of their safe-conduct back to the city, the pair still refused to relinquish their sanctuary and so the official abandoned persuasion for violence, commanding some of the mob to drag them from the church and compel their progress back to the palace. All of this is described in detail by Michael Psellus, who had already reached the Studion before the arrival of the official party and was thus enabled to provide a first-hand account of the fearful course of subsequent events.

  Outside the monastery now, Michael and Constantine had been brought only a short distance along their route before they were confronted by a detachment of guards, apparently recognised by Psellus who describes them as ‘brave men who shrank from nothing’. These new arrivals bore with them further orders, officially authorised by the new sebastokrator of Constantinople and yet thought to have originally issued from the empress Theodora herself: the deposed emperor and his uncle the nobilissimus were to be blinded forthwith. Psellus tells how the captives were taken on to the Sigma, an open space outside the Studion, but pauses to pay genuine tribute to Constantine’s extraordinary bravery in offering himself as the first to suffer mutilation and lying down, unrestrained, as it was administered. His nephew was possessed of no such courage, howling with terror at the fate awaiting him and having to be held down by the guards before their orders could be carried out. Thereafter Michael was taken to a monastery to live out the rest of his days, as also was his uncle – although the nobilissimus Constantine was later brought out of his cell for interrogation as to the whereabouts of funds misappropriated during his nephew’s reign.

  When Psellus’ account is set beside the similarly contemporary evidence preserved by the skalds, there can be no doubt that the detachment of guards charged with the grim duty carried out on Wednesday 21 April 1042, was Harald and his troop of Varangians. Thjodolf’s lines bear their own clear testimony: ‘On both eyes blinded was then . . . Grikaland’s great lord by the destroyer of the wolf’s grief [meaning a renowned warrior, presumably Harald himself].’ Likewise, ‘Norway’s ruler [certainly meaning Harald] placed the grim mark on the brave man [apparently meaning Constantine]’. It is important to point out that neither skald suggests this as an act of personal revenge on Harald’s part, and indeed Thorarin provides the clearest description of a mercenary warrior paid for services rendered: ‘Our valiant chieftain gained still more of the glow-red gold; Grikaland’s king was made stone-blind as his chief suffering’.

  It is clear now that Snorri’s saga bears scarcely any correspondence to the most likely historical context of Harald’s escape from imprisonment and his mutilation of the emperor. There is no reason to believe that Harald acted other than as a mercenary officer under orders, although the source of those orders and the choice of Harald and his troop to carry them out prompt further consideration here. Psellus’ account of the background to what befell at the Studion and on the Sigma points directly to the newly consecrated empress who was well aware of Zoe’s hostility and feared she might yet prefer to restore Michael than share the imperium with her sister. Thus determined to extinguish any possibility of political recovery on the part or in the name of the deposed emperor and yet unwilling to have him slain, Theodora and her advisers apparently decided to command the traditional form of mutilation as the most effective means to that end. Duties of that type were customarily and conveniently assigned to Varangians, who were still known to the Greeks as ‘Tauro-Scythians’ and recognised as barbarians from the remote northlands for whom naked brutality was stock-in-trade.

  It is true, of course, that Harald and his troop were just one of many such mercenary units available in the ferment consuming Constantinople in those April days of 1042 and so it is fully possible that their selection for this task was either purely arbitrary or entirely accidental. Yet the empress Theodora – who had been a nun just days before she had been dragged out by the mob to share the imperial throne with the hostile sister who had once already incarcerated her in a convent – had urgent need of someone whom she knew to be not only utterly trustworthy but fully capable of the task assigned him. In such anxiety and so precarious a situation, she might very well have had some recollection of the name of the officer commanding the escort which brought her in safety through the dangerous deserts of the Holy Land on the pilgrimage to Jerusalem just six years before.

  None of which is more than speculation, of course, but Harald’s assignment to the gruesome duty outside the Studion must have greatly enhanced his prominence and authority in the Varangian Guard of the new regime. So much so that he might very well have been appointed judge and executioner in a purge of those who had found themselves on the losing side in the fighting which brought about the palace revolution. Varangians in Byzantine service had evidently long held the privilege of dealing with those within their own ranks accused of a crime or misdemeanour. That custom was very probably rooted in the rough justice meted out to those who had infringed the oaths sworn by members of the original Varangian companies. Some very similar discipline would have prevailed among Russo-Scandinavian mercenaries in imperial service prior to the establishment of the Varangian regiment by Basil II and continued thereafter as a special regimental privilege with particular application within the Varangian Guard. There would be good reason, then, to see this practice reflected in the half-strophe preserved in Fagrskinna and attributed to Valgard of Voll which tells of Harald having ‘commanded the half of them to hang then and there; so you have done and there are fewer Væringjar remaining’. Although this fragment has been variously interpreted, Valgard himself is thought to have served with Harald during this later period of his imperial service and there is no doubt that Varangians fighting for Michael and Constantine could have been justly accused of treason when they had broken a solemn oath to defend the legitimate porphyrogenita empresses. Judged guilty by their commander – in the person of Harald – they would quite certainly have been condemned to death by hanging.

  While the Advice denies Harald’s promotion above the rank of spatharokandidatos, it fully confirms the high personal esteem in which he was held by the new imperial regime – in which the sister empresses were shortly to be joined by a co-emperor when Zoe took Constantine Monomachus as her new husband. This must have been a quite unexpected development and not only because both sisters were now in their sixties. The tall, thin Theodora was unlikely to abandon the chaste habit of a lifetime and while the same could never be said of her shorter, chubbier elder sister, Zoe had already had two husbands and third marriages were viewed with the sternest disapproval by the Orthodox Church. Nonetheless, the reputedly lascivious Zoe is said by Psellus to have wanted another husband if only to help guard against any reversal of her restored fortunes and her choice fell upon the charming and aristocratic Constantine Monomachus. Even while her second husband was still alive, Zoe had developed a close friendship with this Constantine, thus arousing the suspicion of the ever-watchful Orphanotrophus who ordered him into exile on the island of Lesbos and it was from there that he was summoned back to Constantinople in the early summer of 1042.

  The Patriarch apparently found a way around his Church’s disapproval so as to conduct their wedding on 11 June and afterwards to consecrate the empress’s new husband as her co-emperor Constantine IX who was to reign for thirteen years until his death in 1055. In fact, the term ‘co-emperor’ was soon to become no more than a formality, because within three months Zoe and Theodora had retired from public life leaving Constantine as the sole effective imperial figure and it must have been around this time that the emperor known in the saga as ‘Konstantinus Monomakus’ made his genuinely historical entry into Harald’s story.

  Snorri Sturluson’s confused a
ccount indicating Constantine Monomachus as the emperor mutilated by Harald has led at least one historian to discount the whole episode, and yet quite unjustly so in view of the impressively convincing and closely contemporary evidence provided by the two skalds. The emperor in question can only have been Michael Calaphates and so Snorri’s unfortunate error is perhaps best explained as a confusion of two Constantines having led him to the assumption that the nobilissimus Constantine who suffered blinding on the same occasion as his nephew was the same Constantine who refused Harald permission to leave Constantinople. At least there can be no doubt as to the accuracy of Snorri’s identification of the Constantine in that latter instance because it is fully confirmed by the reliable evidence of the Advice when it states that ‘Araltes wished in the reign of the emperor Monomachus to be given permission to return to his own land, but it was not forthcoming. Indeed, his way was obstructed and yet he slipped away by stealth . . .’

  Unfortunately, the Advice supplies no further detail of just how Harald ‘slipped away by stealth’ from Constantinople and so the saga preserves the only full account of the adventure which forms a characteristically bold finale to his career as a Varangian mercenary in Byzantine service. Yet the saga fails to offer any very convincing explanation as to the reason for his sudden and urgent departure. The simple desire to see his homeland once again cannot really be accepted as sufficient explanation and so there must have been a more pressing reason – and indeed there was, but it is one which will become more clearly apparent from the viewpoint of Kiev than from that of Constantinople. The tidings which did prompt Harald’s request for leave to resign from imperial service assuredly reached him from Russia – possibly even under diplomatic cover if they came from the Grand Prince Jaroslav himself – and at some time in August when the annual trading fleet from Kiev came to harbour after its passage across the Black Sea.