by John Marsden
The alternative version of the story is found in Snorri’s Heimskringla and independently in Fagrskinna, suggesting its likely origin in Norwegian (as distinct from Icelandic) tradition. The tale itself is of some more convincing character too, telling of a man in Einar’s service, and standing high in his favour, caught thieving in Nidaros. When the accused was brought to face justice, Einar accompanied him with a heavily armed retinue to take the fellow away from the court by force. Confrontation with the king was becoming unavoidable now and mutual friends sought to arrange a conciliatory meeting between the two. Trusting in his son’s kinship by marriage to the king’s family as his own safe conduct, Einar arrived at the royal residence, but left Eindridi outside in the courtyard with others of his company while he entered alone, only to find himself trapped in a darkened chamber where Harald’s warriors fell upon him and hacked him to death. Hearing the sound of weaponry, Eindridi rushed in to his father’s aid, but was likewise struck down and fell dead beside Einar’s body. Harald’s housecarls formed up outside the entrance to forestall any attack by Einar’s retinue, but there was no such attempt now that the Trondelag men were without a leader, so the king marched with his retinue to a ship moored on the river and was rowed away down the fjord.
When the news was brought to Einar’s wife, Bergljot, she cried out for vengeance: ‘Were Hakon here, those who killed my son would not now be pulling in safety downriver.’ Hakon was the son of Ivar the White, a lenderman in the Upplands whose mother was also a daughter of the great Jarl Hakon and thus sister to Bergljot. If there was a man most able, and even obliged, to avenge Bergljot’s husband and son it was this Hakon, a direct descendant of the jarls of Lade and said by the saga to have surpassed all others in Norway at that time in his courage, strength and accomplishment. Even while Einar and Eindridi were buried near to the tomb of Magnus in St Olaf’s church in Nidaros, so great a hostility to Harald was abroad among the men of the Trondelag that there was already talk of armed revolt.
The king’s form of response on this occasion was to be diplomacy, so he was in need of an emissary well placed to deal on his behalf and the man he chose was Finn Arnason. Second son of the powerful lenderman Arne Armodsson, Finn had remained staunchly loyal to King Olaf, following him to Russia and returning to stand in the front rank of his forces at Stiklestad. Whether or not he had fled back to Russia after the battle and afterwards returned to Norway with Magnus is left unclear by the saga record, but now, almost thirty years after Stiklestad, he was established as a lenderman in Austratt (north-west of Trondheimfjord) and as a figure of great standing in Harald’s kingdom. Snorri tells of the king’s great affection for Finn and his brothers and (with just one significant exception) there is no reason to doubt him, not least by reason of the bonds of marital kinship. Not only was Finn’s wife the daughter of Harald’s brother, Halfdan, but Harald had himself recently formed a close relationship with Finn’s niece.
According to Snorri, Harald had been ‘married again’ in the winter of 1047/8, this time to Thora, a daughter of Finn’s younger brother, Thorberg Arnason. There is no question of the historicity nor, indeed, the intimacy of Harald’s association with Thora because she was to become the mother of his two sons – and ultimate successors – Magnus and Olaf, but its legitimacy as a ‘marriage’ is utterly suspect when there is nowhere any indication that Harald’s marriage to his Russian queen had been dissolved and when Ellisif was not only still alive but was to outlive her husband. The true situation, then, can only have been that Thora had become Harald’s concubine within months of his full accession as king of Norway. Again it might be possible to detect a Byzantine exemplar because Harald would surely have known of the tripartite arrangement between Constantine Monomachus, the empress Zoe and the Sclerena, and yet the one highly probable reason for his taking a second ‘wife’ may well have been the hope of securing a male successor.
The precise dates of birth of his offspring are nowhere recorded, but his two children fathered upon Ellisif were both daughters – Maria and Ingigerd – and it is fully possible that both had been born before his ‘second marriage’ to Thora, by which time Harald had been married to Ellisif for some five years and the urgency of producing a male successor must have been a matter of increasing concern to him, because longevity was not commonly characteristic of warrior kings. His half-brother Olaf had been just thirty-five when he was killed in battle, Olaf Tryggvason only about thirty when he fell to his death at Svold and even Cnut had not yet reached the age of forty at the time of his death. Harald was now already a year or two into his thirties and evidently lost no time in fathering male offspring upon Thora when his first-born son, Magnus, was old enough to go to war with his father in the year 1062. Neither was formal legitimacy of birth any essential qualification for succession in Norway in those times, if only on the evidence of his predecessor, Magnus, having been born to Olaf not by his queen, but by his ‘hand-maid’.
Thus all the Arnason brothers were bonded to the king by ties of marital kinship, but Finn was by far the best placed to negotiate on his behalf with current dissident elements, firstly by reason of his own and his family’s standing in the Trondelag, but also because of his old acquaintance with Hakon Ivarsson who had sailed with him on viking ventures west-over-sea several summers past. When Harald came to Austratt, the saga tells of Finn having welcomed him in good humour, although with the least formality when he chided the king as a ‘great scoundrel’. If Finn were to go into the Trondelag and the Upplands as Harald’s ambassador and there pacify men who hated the king so bitterly, he would want a reward for his service. Harald was prepared to grant any favour he chose and Finn asked that his brother Kalv be restored to his lands in Norway and given a safe conduct and the king’s peace when he returned to live there again.
With whatever ultimate motive already in his own mind, Harald granted the favour requested and Finn went forth to accomplish his embassy with quite remarkable success. Accompanied by a retinue nearly eighty strong, he came to the Trondelag men and reminded them of the evil consequences which had befallen the land the last time they had risen in arms against their king. Warning against letting their hatred of Harald push them into the same mistake again, his oratory – and the king’s promise to pay compensation for the killing of Einar and Eindridi – persuaded them to take no further action, at least until they heard of Hakon Ivarsson’s response to the appeal made to him by Einar’s widow, Bergljot.
Finn travelled on over the Dovre mountains into the Upplands where he first sought the advice of his own son-in-law, the jarl Orm Eilifsson, who was himself the son of a daughter of the mighty Jarl Hakon of Lade. Jarl Orm accompanied Finn to his meeting with Hakon Ivarsson and together they negotiated an agreement: Hakon would be reconciled with the king in exchange for being given King Magnus’ daughter, Ragnhild, in marriage and with a dowry befitting a princess. Finn agreed to the proposal on Harald’s behalf and returned to the Trondelag where the former unrest and rebellion had by now apparently subsided.
All of which would have amounted to precisely the outcome intended, had it not been for the proud Ragnhild’s response to Hakon’s suit and her insistence that a king’s daughter could not accept a husband of lesser rank than that of jarl. Hakon could only bring his case to Harald who refused the request, because there had never been more than one jarl in the land at any one time since Olaf’s reign and there would be no new jarl appointed while Orm still lived. Accusing the king of breaking his agreement, the furious Hakon stormed out of the court and took ship to Denmark where he was welcomed as a kinsman by Svein Estridsson (Svein’s wife and Hakon’s father both being Jarl Hakon’s grandchildren) and placed in command of Danish coastal defences. Although generously endowed with estates, Hakon nonetheless chose to live aboard his warships the whole year round keeping guard against Baltic pirates. Meanwhile, Finn Arnason is said himself to have been angered because Harald had broken his own agreement made in good faith with Hakon, but it was to be a far
greater grievance against the king which would very shortly drive Finn also into exile in Denmark.
It might be helpful at this point to attempt a cautious alignment of the saga narrative with more reliable historical chronology, because Snorri provides very few indications of the date of events and tends, as on earlier occasions, towards misleading compression of the time-scale. In this instance, Orkneyinga saga supplies the most useful framework of reference, because it is from the orbit of Jarl Thorfinn that the infamous Kalv Arnason returns to make his first entry into Harald’s saga. Kalv was last mentioned here when he travelled with Einar Tambarskelve to bring Magnus home from Russia in 1035. According to Orkneyinga saga, he had confessed his guilty part in the martyrdom of Olaf to Rognvald Brusason at that time and yet Snorri Sturluson’s Magnus’ saga appears to suggest that the young Magnus was not apprised of that confession and held both Kalv and Einar in high regard after his return to Norway. Indeed, the earlier years of Magnus’ reign represented a new ascendancy for Kalv, who even assumed the role of foster-father to the young king, until a man from Værdal had occasion to inform him of Kalv’s part in the battle of Stiklestad. When Magnus next met with Kalv it was at a feast held at the farm of Haug close by the battlefield and he took the opportunity to invite his foster-father to ride with him to the place of martyrdom and ‘see the marks of what befell there’. Kalv was apparently expecting the worst, because he had already ordered his servant to load his ship in readiness for a swift departure, and he flushed deep red at Magnus’ suggestion, but the king would accept no prevarication, even issuing a command. Having ridden to the place of martyrdom, the two dismounted and Magnus asked Kalv to point to the exact spot where Olaf had been slain. So he did with his spear-point and Magnus next asked where exactly he himself had stood at that moment. When he admitted to having stood then where he stood now, Magnus saw how the dying Olaf would have been within range of Kalv’s axe. Challenged face to face at the very spot, Kalv still denied his guilt before leaping to his horse and riding away. By nightfall, he was aboard ship and sailing out of the fjord under cover of darkness on voyage to find refuge in Orkney with his kinsman Jarl Thorfinn (whose wife, Ingibjorg, was a daughter of Finn Arnason).
It is at this point that the Orkneyinga saga narrative can supply its evidence as to dating, because it claims that the cost to the jarl’s household of accommodating Kalv and his retinue was the reason why Thorfinn demanded a greater share of the jarldom. Expecting imminent armed conflict with his uncle who was already assembling forces from Caithness and the Hebrides, Rognvald sailed for Norway to seek assistance from King Magnus. On his return to Orkney he brought with him a substantial and well-equipped army provided by Magnus and also a message for Kalv Arnason, promising him the king’s pardon if he would support Rognvald against Thorfinn. When the dispute came to battle at sea in the Pentland Firth, Kalv’s six large warships stood off from the action, but only until Rognvald began to get the upper hand and Thorfinn called out for assistance. Presumably, Kalv could hardly refuse his kinsman in such extremis and brought his ships against the smaller craft in Rognvald’s fleet, swiftly clearing their decks. At which point the Norwegian crews cut their vessels loose from the lashings and took flight, thus depriving Rognvald of the greater part of his forces and ensuring certain victory for Thorfinn.
‘That same night’, according to the saga, Rognvald again sailed east to Norway and there told Magnus of the outcome of the battle. He is said by the saga to have stayed only a short while in Norway before sailing back west-over-sea with a retinue of Norwegian housecarls. On landfall in Shetland he learned that Thorfinn was in Orkney in company with only a small force and so Rognvald seized the opportunity for a surprise attack. Although caught quite unawares and finding his house aflame, Thorfinn broke his way through a wooden wall, carrying his wife Ingibjorg out of the burning building in one of the saga’s most famously celebrated escapes. His chance for revenge came early in the Yuletide season when Rognvald, believing Thorfinn to have been killed in the fire, was on the small isle of Papa Stronsay collecting malt for the winter feasting. Thorfinn’s reciprocal surprise attack put yet another house to the torch and slew Rognvald’s Norsemen and yet Rognvald himself managed to get away, but only to be caught and killed while hiding among the rocks by the shore.
When Thorfinn sailed to Norway in the following spring in an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt at reconciliation with Magnus, he found the king ruling jointly with Harald, so his visit can be securely dated to the earlier months of 1047. Thus Rognvald’s death, his own two voyages to Norway and the intervening sea-battle in the Pentland Firth must all be similarly assigned to the year 1046, which would place Kalv Arnason’s confrontation with Magnus and his flight from Norway to Orkney fairly safely in the year 1045, or just possibly in the previous autumn, when Magnus would have been at the peak of his ascendancy and well placed to confront the man who had slain his father.
The demise of Rognvald Brusason left Thorfinn with supreme power over the jarldom and Orkneyinga saga tells how ‘Kalv Arnason never left his side’. Indeed, Kalv had already been placed in lordship over the Hebrides by Thorfinn ‘to ensure his authority there’ and there is every reason to believe he was so assigned because these Suðreyjar (as the Western Isles are called in the saga) were most often governed by the Orkney jarls throughout the first half of the eleventh century. Yet it would seem that his former land-holdings in Norway represented the more attractive prospect for Kalv, because Snorri tells how ‘he made ready to leave at once and sailed east’ as soon as he had news of the favour granted to his brother Finn by Harald. On his return and as promised, Kalv was restored to all the estates and revenues he had enjoyed under Magnus and bound himself ‘to perform all services required of him by King Harald for the good of the kingdom’.
Just such a service was to fall due in the following spring when the king raised a levy for his annual raiding expedition around Denmark and assigned Kalv to command of the ship’s crew which was to make the first landing on Fyn island. With the assurance that Harald would swiftly bring his main force up in support, Kalv led his men ashore into the attack, but encountered such fierce resistance that they were swiftly overwhelmed and he was just one of the many Norwegians cut down by pursuing Danes as they fled back to their ships. Presumably having seen Kalv slain on the sand, Harald’s purpose was accomplished and he brought the main force ashore to advance inland for the serious business of plundering with fire and sword.
While a half-strophe by the skald Arnor and quoted by Snorri must be accepted as closely contemporary evidence for Harald having ‘dyed crimson his flashing blade on Funen [Fyn]’, the incident is nonetheless strikingly reminiscent of that siege where the Varangian officer held back while Halldor’s company suffered the heat of the fray (and Halldor himself that famous wound to his face), only coming up in support when the plundering was at hand. This would seem to have been a tactic long favoured by Harald and here deployed again to take his ultimate revenge on the man he may actually have seen deliver Olaf’s death-wound at Stiklestad more than twenty years before. Kalv’s brother Finn certainly believed it so and is said by the saga to have been filled with hatred for the king, convinced that Harald had ‘not only contrived Kalv’s death, but also deliberately deceived Finn into tempting his brother back to Norway so as to bring him within the king’s power’.
Harald let people say whatever they would, while refusing to confirm or deny any allegations – and yet ‘the king was very pleased with the outcome of events’, according to the saga and fully confirmed by the strophe which he composed at the time:
Now I have done to death,
– driven to it was I – and
laid low two of my liegemen,
eleven and two I remember.
Men must guard against
the guileful toil of traitors;
great oaks are said to grow
up out of acorns small.
So bitterly angry was Finn Arnason that he too
k his leave of the kingdom and sailed south to Denmark where he was welcomed by Svein Estridsson who eventually appointed him jarl of Halland and charged him with the defence of that border country against Norwegian attack.
The two subsequent chapters in Snorri’s saga have less bearing on Harald himself, being concerned with the viking adventures of his nephew Guthorm whose sphere of activity lay around the Irish Sea with its base in the city of Dublin, but they nonetheless supply a valuable point of chronological reference. Of key importance in that respect is Guthorm’s expedition with Margad which led to a falling-out over shares of plunder and culminated in the killing of his fellow raider, because the ‘Margad’ of the saga has been identified as Eachmargach, the Hiberno-Norse king of Dublin known to have been killed in 1052. Thus when Snorri places the death of ‘Margad’ in the summer following Kalv’s death, the attack on Fyn island can be safely assigned to the year 1051 and Kalv’s return to Norway to the previous year, 1050. The saga tells of Kalv’s returning as soon as he learned of the favour his brother had secured from Harald, so Finn’s embassy to the Trondelag and to Hakon Ivarsson in the Upplands can be similarly dated to 1050 and the killings of Einar Tambarskelve and Eindridi placed earlier in that same year or, just possibly, in the latter months of 1049. Within that same time-frame, Hakon Ivarsson’s angry departure to Denmark and entry into Svein Estridsson’s service must also be placed in 1050.
While the true date of Hakon’s return to Norway is left uncertain in the saga narrative, the circumstances which brought it about provide the subject of a colourful anecdote. Although endowed with fine estates by Svein, Hakon still chose to live ‘both winter and summer’ aboard his warships as, indeed, befitted the man charged with defence against Baltic piracy. In the event, however, it was upon this policing duty that his career in Denmark was to founder when Svein’s delinquent foster-son and his warband launched a campaign of viking brigandage which created havoc around the country. Protests brought to the king by victims of these predations were referred on to Hakon who hunted the fellow down, cleared his ships in a fierce sea-fight and delivered his head to the king at dinner as evidence of his own efficiency. Shortly afterwards, Hakon received a message assuring him that while Svein wished him no harm, the same could not be said of his victim’s kinsfolk and he would be best advised to leave the country at once. So it was that Hakon Ivarsson came home to Norway – and with fortuitous timing because Jarl Orm had recently died, thus leaving a vacancy for a new jarl in the Upplands to which Hakon was duly appointed, Harald proving as good as his word on this occasion at least and the princess Ragnhild likewise when she consented to become Jarl Hakon’s wife at last.