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THE NORTHMEN IN BRITAIN
THE NORTHMEN IN BRITAIN
“ There is no man so high-hearted over earth, nor so good in gifts, nor so keen in youth, nor so brave in deeds, nor so loyal to his lord, that he may not have always sad yearning towards the sea-faring, for what the Lord will give him there. “ His heart is not for the harp, nor receiving of rings, nor delight in a wife, nor the joy of the world, nor about anything else but the rolling of the waves. And he hath ever longing who wisheth for the Sea. ” “ The Seafarer ” (Old English Poem)....
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Foreword
Foreword
Two great streams of Northern immigration met on the shores of Britain during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. The Norsemen from the deep fiords of Western Norway, fishing and raiding along the coasts, pushed out their adventurous boats into the Atlantic, and in the dawn of Northern history we find them already settled in the Orkney and Shetland Isles, whence they raided and settled southward to Caithness, Fife, and Northumbria on the east, and to the Hebrides, Galloway, and Man on the
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Authorities
Authorities
For the Sagas of the Norwegian Kings: Snorri Sturleson’s Heimskringla, or Sagas of the Kings of Norway . Translated by S. Laing and by W. Morris and E. Magnüsson For Ragnar Lodbrog: Saxo Grammaticus and Lodbrog’s Saga For Ragnar Lodbrog’s Death Song: Corpus Poeticum Boreale . Vigfusson and York Powell For the Orkneys: Orkneyinga Saga For the Battle of Brunanburh: Egil Skallagrimson’s Saga . Translated by W. C. Green For the Story of Olaf the Peacock and Unn the Deep-minded: Laxdæla Saga . Transl
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The Northmen in Britain THE AGE OF THE VIKINGS Chapter I The First Coming of the Northmen
The Northmen in Britain THE AGE OF THE VIKINGS Chapter I The First Coming of the Northmen
The first actual descent of the Northmen is chronicled in England under the year 787, and in Ireland, upon which country they commenced their descents about the same time, under the year 795; but it is likely, not only that they had visited and raided the coasts before this, but had actually made some settlements in both countries. The Ynglinga Saga tells us that Ivar Vidfadme or “Widefathom” had taken possession of a fifth part of England, i.e. Northumbria, before Harald Fairhair ruled in Norwa
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Chapter II The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrog, or “Hairy-breeks”
Chapter II The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrog, or “Hairy-breeks”
According to the Danish and Norse accounts, the leader of the armies of the Northmen on the occasion we have just referred to was the famous Ragnar Lodbrog, one of the earliest and most terrible of the Northern vikings. The story of Ragnar stands just on the borderland between mythology and history, and it is difficult to tell how much of it is true, but in some of its main outlines it accords with the rather scanty information we get at this time from the English annals. An old tradition relate
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Chapter III The Call for Help
Chapter III The Call for Help
It seemed, toward the close of the ninth century, that England would gradually pass into the power of the Danes and cease to be an independent country. They had established themselves not only in Northumbria, but in East Anglia and parts of Mercia. We have to think of England at this period not as one united kingdom, but as a number of separate principalities, ruled by different kings. The most powerful of these principalities was Mercia, which occupied the whole central district of England, fro
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Chapter IV Alfred the Great (BORN 849; REIGNED 871–901)
Chapter IV Alfred the Great (BORN 849; REIGNED 871–901)
It was in the midst of incessant warfare that Alfred ascended the throne of Wessex. Ethelred, his brother, died a few months after the battle of Ashdune, and in the same year, that in which Alfred came to the throne, no less than nine general battles were fought between Wessex and the Danes. Both armies were exhausted, and a peace was patched up between them, the Danish army withdrawing to the east and north, and leaving Wessex for a short time in peace. But they drove King Burhred out of Mercia
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Chapter V Harald Fairhair, First King of Norway, and the Settlements in the Orkneys
Chapter V Harald Fairhair, First King of Norway, and the Settlements in the Orkneys
There were yet other directions toward which the Norse viking-hosts had already turned their eyes. Not far out from the coasts of Norway lay the Orkney and Shetland Islands, and beyond them again the Faröe Isles rose bleak and treeless from the waters of the northern sea. The shallow boats of the Norsemen, though they dreaded the open waters of the Atlantic, were yet able, in favourable weather, to push their way from one set of islands to another, and from the earliest times of which we know an
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Chapter VI The Northmen in Ireland
Chapter VI The Northmen in Ireland
There is yet another direction to which we must turn our attention, if we would understand the grip that the Northmen at this time had taken on the British Islands, and the general trend of Norse and Danish history outside their own country. Their conquests and influence in Ireland were even more widespread and equally lasting with those in England. We find them from the beginning of the ninth century (from about A.D. 800 onward) making investigations all round the coast of Ireland, and pushing
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Chapter VII The Expansion of England
Chapter VII The Expansion of England
While Harald Fairhair was occupied in settling the Hebrides and Orkneys with inhabitants from Norway, and Rollo and his successors were possessing themselves of the larger part of the North of France, England and Ireland were enjoying a period of comparative repose. The twenty-three years of Edward the Elder’s reign were devoted largely to building up the great kingdom which his father, Alfred, had founded, but not consolidated; he brought Mercia more immediately into his power, and subdued East
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Chapter VIII King Athelstan the Great (925–940)
Chapter VIII King Athelstan the Great (925–940)
England was fortunate in having three great kings in succession at this critical period, all alike bent upon strengthening and advancing the prosperity of the kingdom. Athelstan, who came to the throne on the death of his father Edward, had been a favourite grandson of Alfred, and people said that he resembled his grandfather in many ways. When he was only a little fellow, Alfred, delighted with his beauty and graceful manners, had affectionately embraced him, and prayed for the happiness of his
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Chapter IX The Battle of Brunanburh
Chapter IX The Battle of Brunanburh
The account of the battle of Brunanburh in Egil’s Saga begins by describing the strong combination made against Athelstan by the princes of the north of England with the Scots and Welsh and the Irish Danes, of whom we have already spoken. They thought to take advantage of Athelstan’s youth and inexperience, for he was at this time only thirty years old. Olaf o’ the Sandal is here called Olaf the Red, which may have been the title by which he was known in Norway. He marched into Northumbria, “adv
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Chapter X Two Great Kings trick each other
Chapter X Two Great Kings trick each other
It was, as we saw, part of Athelstan’s policy of consolidation to ally his family with foreign princes. After marrying one sister to Sitric Gale, King of the Danes of Northumbria, and another sister to Otto, who became Emperor of the West in 962, his next thought was how he could mingle his country to his country’s advantage with the affairs of Norway, which under Harald Fairhair was growing into a powerful kingdom. An opportunity soon occurred, and Athelstan was not slow to make use of it. King
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Chapter XI King Hakon the Good
Chapter XI King Hakon the Good
When he was fifteen years old news came to Hakon in England that his father Harald Fairhair had died. He had resigned his crown three years before his death, for he had become feeble and heavy and unable to travel through the country or carry out the duties of a king. So he had parted the kingdom between his sons and lived in retirement on one of his great farms. He was eighty-three years of age when he died, and he was buried under a mound in Kormsund with a gravestone thirteen and a half feet
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Chapter XII King Hakon forces his People to become Christians
Chapter XII King Hakon forces his People to become Christians
It seemed that all would have gone well in Norway with King Hakon the Good after King Eric Bloodaxe left the country, but that he had it in his mind to make the people Christians whether they would or no. Hitherto they had sacrificed to Odin, or Woden, who gives his name to our Wednesday— i.e. Woden’s Day; and they had other gods and goddesses, such as Thor, the God of Thunder, from whom we get the name Thursday, or Thor’s Day, and Freya, a goddess, who gives her name to our Friday. They had man
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Chapter XIII The Saga of Olaf Trygveson
Chapter XIII The Saga of Olaf Trygveson
One of the greatest Kings of Norway was named Olaf Trygveson ( i.e. the son of Trygve), who became King of Norway in 995. He had an adventurous career, part of it being connected with the British Isles, where he spent ten years in hiding in his youth, only returning to his native country when his people called on him to take the crown. His father, Trygve, had been treacherously put to death shortly before he was born, and his mother had fled away with a few faithful followers, and had taken refu
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Chapter XIV King Olaf’s Dragon-ships
Chapter XIV King Olaf’s Dragon-ships
It does not concern us here to follow the story of Olaf Trygveson point by point. Much of his history is taken up with attempts to force Christianity upon his people, as King Hakon had done. Having learned the doctrines of Christianity in England and been baptized there, he was determined that all his people should follow his example and be baptized also. But the chief doctrine of Christianity, the love of all men as brothers and the forgiveness of foes, he had not learned; and when he proclaime
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Chapter XV Wild Tales from the Orkneys
Chapter XV Wild Tales from the Orkneys
The wildest of all the vikings were those who settled in the Orkney Isles and carried on their raids from there. After Ragnvald had given up his possessions in the Isles to Earl Sigurd, the earl made himself a mighty chief; he joined with Thorstein the Red, son of Olaf the White of Dublin and Unn the Deep-minded, and together they harried and won, as we have seen, all Caithness, and Moray and Ross, 23 so that they united the northern part of Scotland to the Orkney and Shetland Isles. The Scottis
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Chapter XVI Murtough of the Leather Cloaks
Chapter XVI Murtough of the Leather Cloaks
Ireland as well as Norway and the Orkneys had her saga-tales of the events of the viking period. About the middle of the tenth century two princes, one in the north of Ireland and one in the south, are noted for their wars against the Norse. Both had strange and romantic careers, and of both we have full details told by their own poets or chroniclers. These two contemporary princes were Murtough of the Leather Cloaks, in Ulster, and Callaghan of Cashel, in Munster. The career of the former conce
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Chapter XVII The Story of Olaf the Peacock (From Laxdæla Saga)
Chapter XVII The Story of Olaf the Peacock (From Laxdæla Saga)
Slavery was commonly practised in the days of which we are writing, and slaves taken in war were often carried from the British Isles to Iceland or Norway. There are many accounts of slaves with Irish or Scottish names in the Icelandic “Book of the Settlements”; they appear often to have given great trouble to their foreign masters. But it is less common to find a lady of high rank, an Irish princess, carried off from her people and sold as a slave in open market. The lady was named Melkorka, an
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Chapter XVIII The Battle of Clontarf
Chapter XVIII The Battle of Clontarf
We now come to a battle that is famous alike in Norse and in Irish story. It was the final effort made by the Norsemen to assert their supremacy over Ireland, and the last of several disastrous defeats which they encountered at the hands of the Irish. Both the story-tellers of the North and the historians and bards of Ireland wrote long accounts of it, so that we know the details of the battle of Clontarf perhaps better than we know those of any other ancient battle fought in the British Isles.
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Chapter XIX Yule in the Orkneys, 1014
Chapter XIX Yule in the Orkneys, 1014
We will now turn to the Orkneys and see what was happening there. It is Yule or Christmas, and at Earl Sigurd the Stout’s Court a splendid feast is in progress. The long hall is filled with guests, seated between double rows of pillars, and on the hearth in the centre of the hall the Yule-log is blazing. King Sitric Silken-beard, but newly arrived from Ireland, is placed in the high seat in the centre of the tables, with Earl Sigurd and Earl Gille on either hand. The guests are ranged round the
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Chapter XX The Story of the Burning (Nial’s Saga)
Chapter XX The Story of the Burning (Nial’s Saga)
What was the Story of the Burning that Gunnar was telling to Earl Sigurd, and for his share in which he lost his head by Kari’s stroke? Of all the sagas of Iceland the most famous and the best known is the saga of Njal, or, as it is sometimes called, the Story of the Burning. Njal or Nial is an Irish name, and there may have been some Irish mixture in his descent, though this is not proved from his genealogy. He was well known to be the wisest and best of Icelanders, and he was so learned a lawy
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Chapter XXI Things draw on to an End
Chapter XXI Things draw on to an End
But Nial’s enemies were loth to wait for his clearing at law, and they planned to bring about his death and the death of his sons. A man Flosi was at the head of these conspirators, and he it was who gathered together the party of men who had agreed to kill Nial. They all met together in Flosi’s house, Grani, Gunnar’s son, and Gunnar, Lambi’s son, and others with them. Now about that time strange portents were seen at Bergthors-knoll, Nial’s home, and from that Nial and Bergthora his wife guesse
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Chapter XXII The Reign of Sweyn Forkbeard
Chapter XXII The Reign of Sweyn Forkbeard
Denmark became consolidated into a kingdom at a slightly earlier period than Norway, and there was constant strife between the two young nations. The first king of all Denmark was named Gorm the Old (b. 830), but it is rather with the reigns of his grandson, Sweyn Forkbeard, and his great grandson, Canute the Great, that we have to do, for it was in their time that England was conquered by Denmark, and became for the space of twenty-nine years, from Sweyn to Hardacanute (1013–1042), a portion of
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Chapter XXIII The Battle of London Bridge “London Bridge is broken down”
Chapter XXIII The Battle of London Bridge “London Bridge is broken down”
When it became known that Sweyn was dead, it was agreed at a meeting of the Angles to send for Ethelred out of Normandy; for the people thought it would be wiser to have their own lord, if only he could conduct himself better, rather than another foreigner for their king; so they sent messengers to invite him to return. Ethelred was, however, as little trustful of his own subjects as he was of the Danes; and he first sent over his young son Edward to sound the English and see if they were really
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Chapter XXIV Canute the Great (1017–1035)
Chapter XXIV Canute the Great (1017–1035)
Canute, or Knut, the son of Sweyn, was in England when his father died. The Danes immediately elected him king, and he lay at Lindsey with his fleet when Ethelred returned to claim the kingdom. Canute was one of the greatest kings who ever ruled in England. Though he began his reign with an exhibition of ruthless cruelty by mutilating the high-born young nobles whom Sweyn had placed in his charge, cutting off their ears and noses, and afterwards boasting of his act, which made the English fear t
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Chapter XXV Canute lays Claim to Norway
Chapter XXV Canute lays Claim to Norway
For the first nine or ten years of his reign, Canute remained in England, only occasionally going over to Denmark to see that all was going on well there. He spent this time in bringing back the English nation to obedience to their own laws, the old laws of Edgar, for the first time insisting that, as parts of the same nation, Dane and Englishman were alike before the law and that no difference should be made between them. He repaired throughout England the churches and monasteries that had been
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Chapter XXVI Hardacanute
Chapter XXVI Hardacanute
We need not give much attention to the reign of Harald, the son and successor of Canute. Though he reigned for over four years, there is no good act told of him. The unfortunate son of Ethelred, Alfred the Ætheling, came over to England about this time to try to recover his kingdom, but he was seized by Earl Godwin, his eyes put out, and most of his companions killed or mutilated. The young prince was sent to Ely, where he lingered for a time, living a miserable existence on insufficient food, a
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Chapter XXVII Edward the Confessor (1042–1066)
Chapter XXVII Edward the Confessor (1042–1066)
We need not linger over the reign of Edward the Confessor, the weak and womanish king who came to the throne of England on the death of Hardacanute; in fact, the country can hardly be said to have been governed by Edward, for he placed himself almost entirely in the hands of Earl Godwin, who now with rapid strides advanced to be the first man in the kingdom and the real ruler of England. Edward was more fitted to be a monk than a king. The mournful circumstances of his life had no doubt helped t
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Chapter XXVIII King Harold, Godwin’s Son, and the Battle of Stamford Bridge (1066)
Chapter XXVIII King Harold, Godwin’s Son, and the Battle of Stamford Bridge (1066)
The king who succeeded Edward was in every way unlike him. The fair hair and beard and blue eyes of Edward, described by our chroniclers, his long, feminine fingers, his florid complexion and thin form, belonged to quite a different type from the strong, able man who succeeded him. Harold had, in fact, been the real ruler of the kingdom since his father died; and he seems to have inherited much of his father’s genius for administration. He, like all his family, was strongly opposed to the Norman
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Chapter XXIX King Magnus Barelegs falls in Ireland
Chapter XXIX King Magnus Barelegs falls in Ireland
Harald Hardrada was not the last King of Norway to visit these countries. Long after this the Norwegian kings tried at times to assert their rights over the Orkneys and other parts of Scotland, and came over to enforce their claim. King Magnus, who reigned after the death of Olaf Kyrre (1094–1103), made several descents upon Britain and Ireland; he stayed so long, and grew so fond of the latter country, that he adopted the kilt, and was called in consequence by his own people “Magnus Barelegs.”
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Chapter XXX The Last of the Vikings
Chapter XXX The Last of the Vikings
Though the viking period is generally spoken of as ending about A.D. 1100, it went on, as a matter of fact, long after that. The last of the great vikings—that is, of those whose entire life was spent in marauding expeditions—was Sweyn of Orkney, called Sweyn, Asleif’s son, from his mother’s name, because his father had been burnt in his house when he was entertaining a party at Yule. He was a wise man, and far-seeing in many things, but so dreaded that when it was heard that he was in any part
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Chronology
Chronology
1 Ethelwerd’s Chronicle, A.D. 786 ( recté 787). 2 Saxo’s Danish annals speak of Hame, the father of Ælla, as King of Northumbria (see p. 18 ), but he is unknown to the English Chronicles. 3 This is the account of Saxo; the Norse accounts differ from him as to the district over which Ragnar ruled. 4 The Northern chronicles here throw much light on the internal affairs of Northumbria, which are only briefly dealt with in the English chronicles. But the general outline of events fits well into
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