Harold Fair-haired Founds The Kingdom Of Norway


To the far-off island of Iceland we must go for the story of the early

days of Norway. In that frosty isle, not torn by war or rent by tumult,

the people, sitting before their winter fires, had much time to think and

write, and it is to Iceland we owe the story of the gods of the north and

of the Scandinavian kings of heathen times. One of these writers, Snorri

Sturlasson by name, has left us a famous book, "The Sagas of the Kings
f

Norway," in which he tells of a long line of ancient kings, who were

descended from the gods. Here are some of their names, Aun the Old,

Ingjald Ill-Ruler, Olaf the Wood-Cutter, Halfdan Whiteleg, and Halfdan

the Swarthy. There were others whom we need not name, and of these

mentioned the names must suffice, for all we know of them is legend, not

truth.



In those times there was no kingdom of Norway, but a number of petty

provinces, ruled over by warriors who are spoken of as kings, but whose

rule was not very wide. Most powerful among them was Halfdan the Swarthy,

who was only a year old in 810 when his father was killed in battle.



He lived for many years, and he and his wife Ragnhild had strange dreams.

The queen dreamed that a thorn which she took out of her clothes grew in

her hands until one end of it took root in the ground and the other shot

up into the air. It kept on growing until it was a great tree, so high

that she could barely see its top. The lower part of it was blood-red,

higher up it was bright green, and the spreading branches were white as

snow. So widely they spread that they seemed to shade the whole country

of Norway.



King Halfdan did not like it that his wife had such strange dreams and he

had none. He asked a sage why this was so, and was told that if he wanted

to have dreams as strange he must sleep in a pig-sty. A queer recipe for

dreams, one would think, but the king tried it, and dreamed that his hair

grew long and beautiful and hung in bright locks over his shoulders, some

of them down to his waist, and one, the brightest and most beautiful of

all, still farther down.



When he told the sage of this dream, the wise man said it meant that from

him was to come a mighty race of kings, one of whom should be the

greatest and most glorious of them all. This great hero, Snorri tells us,

was supposed to be Olaf the Saint, who reigned two hundred years later,

and under whom Christianity first flourished in Norway.



Soon after these dreams a son was born to the queen, who was named

Harold. A bright, handsome lad he grew to be, wise of mind and strong of

body and winning the favor of all who knew him. Many tales which we

cannot believe are told of his boyhood. Here is one of them. Once when

the king was seated at the Yuletide feast all the meats and the ale

disappeared from the table, leaving an empty board for the monarch and

his guests. There was present a Finn who was said to be a sorceror, and

him the king put to the torture, to find out who had done this thing.

Young Harold, displeased with his father's act, rescued the Finn from his

tormentors and went with him to the mountains.



On they went, miles and leagues away, until they came to a place where a

Finnish chief was holding a great feast. Harold stayed there until

spring, when he told his host that he must return to his father's halls.

Then the chief said:



"King Halfdan was very angry when I took his meat and ale from him last

winter, and now I will reward you with good tidings for what you did.

Your father is dead and his kingdom waits for you to inherit. And some

day you will rule over all Norway."



Harold found it to be as the Finn had said, and thus in 860, when he was

only ten years old, he came to the throne. He was young to be at the head

of a turbulent people and some ambitious men there were who sought to

take advantage of his youth, but his uncle guardian fought for him and

put them all down. Harold was now the greatest among the petty kings of

Norway and a wish to be ruler of the whole land grew up in his soul.



Here comes in a story which may not be all true, but is pretty enough to

tell. It is to the effect that love drove Harold to strive for the

kingdom. Old Snorri tells the story, which runs this way.



King Erik of Hoerdaland had a fair daughter named Gyda, the fame of whose

beauty reached Harold's ears and he sent messengers to win her for

himself. But the maid was proud and haughty and sent back word:



"Tell your master that I will not yield myself to any man who has only a

few districts for his kingdom. Is there no king in the land who can

conquer all Norway, as King Erik has conquered Sweden and King Gorm

Denmark?"



This was all the answer she had for the heralds, though they pleaded for

a better answer, saying that King Harold was surely great enough for any

maid in the land.



"This is my answer to King Harold," she said. "I will promise to become

his wife if for my sake he shall conquer all Norway and rule it as freely

as King Erik and King Gorm rule their kingdoms. Only when he has done

this can he be called the king of a people."



When the heralds returned they told the king of their ill success and

advised him to take the girl by force.



"Not so," Harold replied. "The girl has spoken well and deserves thanks

instead of injury. She has put a new thought into my mind which had not

come to me before. This I now solemnly vow and call God to witness, that

I will not cut or comb my hair until the day when I shall have made

myself king of all Norway. If I fail in this, I shall die in the

attempt."






Such is the legend of Gyda and the vow. What history tells us is that the

young king set out to bring all Norway under his rule and prospered in

the great enterprise. One after another, the small kings yielded to his

power, and were made earls or governors under him. They collected taxes

and administered justice in his name. All the land of the peasants was

declared to be the property of the king, and those who had been free

proprietors were now made the king's tenants and were obliged to pay

taxes if they wished to hold their lands. These changes angered many and

there were frequent rebellions against the king, but he put them all

down, and year after year came nearer the goal of his ambition. And his

hair continued to grow uncut and uncombed, and got to be such a tangled

mass that men called him Harold Lufa, or Frowsy-Head.



There was one great and proud family, the Rafnistas, who were not easily

to be won. To one of them, Kveld-Ulf, or Night-Wolf, Harold sent envoys,

asking him to enter his service, but the chief sent back word that he was

too old to change. Then he offered Bald Grim, old Night-Wolf's son, high

honors if he would become his vassal. Bald Grim replied that he would

take no honors that would give him rank over his father.



Harold grew angry at this, and was ready to use force where good words

would not prevail, but in the end the old chief agreed that his second

son Thorolf might be the king's man if he saw fit. This he agreed to do,

and as he was handsome, intelligent and courtly the king set much store

by him.



Not only with the Norway chiefs, but with the king of Sweden, Harold had

trouble. While he was busy in the south King Erik invaded the north, and

Harold had to march in haste to regain his dominions. But the greatest

danger in his career came in 872, when a number of chiefs combined

against him and gathered a great fleet, which attacked Harold's fleet in

Halfrs-Fjord. Then came the greatest and hottest fight known to that day

in Norway. Loudly the war-horns sounded and the ships were driven

fiercely to the fray, Harold's ship being in the front wherever the fight

waxed hottest. Thorolf, the son of Night-Wolf, stood in its prow,

fighting with viking fury, and beside him stood two of his brothers,

matching him blow with blow.



Yet the opposing chiefs and their men were stout fighters and the contest

long seemed doubtful, many brave and able men falling on both sides.

Arrows hissed in swift flight through the air, spears hurtled after them,

stones were hurled by strong hands, and those who came hand to hand

fought like giants. At length Harold's berserkers--men who fought without

armor, replacing it with fury of onslaught--rushed forward and boarded

the hostile ships, cutting down all who opposed them. Blood ran like

water and the chieftains and their men fell or fled before this wild

assault. The day was won for Harold, and with it the kingdom, for after

that fatal fray none dared to stand up before him.



His vow accomplished, all Norway now his, Harold at last consented to the

cutting of his hair, this being done by Ragnvald, the earl of Moere. The

tangled strands being cut and the hair deftly combed, those who saw it

marvelled at its beauty, and from that day the king was known as Harold

the Fair-Haired. As for Gyda, the maid, the great task she set having

been accomplished, she gave her hand to Harold, a splendid marriage

completing the love romance of their lives.



This romance, however, is somewhat spoiled by the fact that Harold

already had a wife, Aasa, the daughter of Earl Haakon, and that he

afterwards married other wives. He had his faults and weaknesses, one of

these being that he was not faithful to women and he was jealous of men

who were growing in greatness. One of the men whom he began to fear or

hate was Thorolf, who had aided him so mightily in battle and long stood

highest in his favor.



Thorolf married a rich wife and grew very wealthy, living like a prince,

and becoming profuse in his hospitality. He was gracious and liberal and

won hosts of friends, while he aided the king greatly in collecting taxes

from the Finns, who were not very willing to part with their money.

Despite this service Harold grew to distrust Thorolf, or to hate him for

other reasons, and the time came when this feeling led to a tragedy.



Thorolf had been made bailiff of Haalogaland, and when Harold came to

this province his bailiff entertained him with a splendid feast, to which

eight hundred guests were invited, three hundred of them being the king's

attendants.



Yet, through all the hilarity of the feast, Harold sat dark and brooding,

much to his host's surprise. He unbent a little at the end and seemed

well pleased when Thorolf presented him with a large dragon ship, fully

equipped. Yet not long afterwards he took from him his office of bailiff,

and soon showed himself his deadly foe, slandering him as a pretext for

attacking him on his estate.



The assailants set fire to Thorolf's house and met him with a shower of

spears when he broke out from the burning mansion. Seeing the king among

them Thorolf rushed furiously towards him, cut down his banner-bearer

with a sword blow, and was almost within touch of the king when he fell

from his many wounds, crying: "By three steps only I failed."



It is said that Harold himself gave the death blow, yet he looked sadly

on the warrior as he lay dead at his feet, saying, as he saw a man

bandaging a slight wound: "That wound Thorolf did not give. Differently

did weapons bite in his hand. It is a pity that such men must die."



This would indicate that King Harold had other reasons than appears from

the narrative for the slaughter of his former friend. It must be borne

in mind that he was engaged in founding a state, and had many disorderly

and turbulent elements with which to deal, and that before he had ended

his work he was forced to banish from the kingdom many of those who stood

in his way. We do not know what secret peril to his plans led him to

remove Thorolf from his path.



However that be, the killing of the chief sent his father to his bed sick

with grief, and he grew content only when he heard that the king's hand

had slain him and that he had fallen on his face at his slayer's feet.

For when a dying man fell thus it was a sign that he would be avenged.



But the old man was far too weak to attack Harold openly, and was not

willing to dwell in the same kingdom with him; so he, with his son Bald

Grim and all his family and wealth, took ship and set sail for Iceland.

But long he lingered on Norway's coast, hoping for revenge on some of

Harold's blood, and chance threw in his way a ship containing two cousins

of the king. This he attacked, killed the king's cousins, and captured

the ship. Then Bald Grim, full of exultation, sang a song of triumph on

the ship's prow, beginning with:



"Now is the Hersir's vengeance

On the king fulfilled;

Wolf and eagle tread on

Yngling's children."



There were other chieftains who sought refuge abroad from Harold's rule,

men who were bitterly opposed to the new government he founded, with its

system of taxation and its strict laws. They could not see why the old

system of robbing and plundering within Norway's confines should be

interfered with or their other ancient privileges curtailed, and several

thousand sailed away to found new homes in the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and

Iceland.



One of the chief of these, Rolf, or Rollo, son of the king's friend,

Ragnvald of Moere, defied Harold's laws and was declared an outlaw. His

high birth made the king more determined to punish him, as an example to

others, and no influence could win forgiveness for Rolf the Walker, as

men called him, saying that he was so tall and heavy that no horse could

carry him.



We must follow the outlaw in his journey, for it was one destined to lead

to great events. Setting sail with a fleet and a large number of

followers, he made his way to the coast of France, and fixed himself

there, plundering the people for several years. Charles the Simple, king

of France, finding that he could not drive the bold Norseman off, at

length gave him a large province on condition that he would become a

Christian, and hold his land as a vassal of the king. The province was

given the name of Normandy, and from Rollo descended that sturdy race of

kings one of whom conquered England in the following century. Thus the

exile of Rollo led to events of world-wide importance.



When the proud Norseman was asked to kiss King Charles's foot in token of

fealty to him, he answered: "I will never bend my knee before any man,

nor will I kiss any man's foot."



He could hardly be persuaded to let one of his men kiss the king's foot

as a proxy for him. The man chosen strode sturdily forward, seized the

foot of the king, who was on horseback, and lifted it to his lips so

roughly that the poor king turned a somersault from his horse. The

Norsemen laughed in derision while the king's followers stood by grim and

silent.



But despite his unruliness at home, Rollo, when he got a kingdom of his

own, ruled it with all the sternness of King Harold, hanging all robbers

that fell into his hands, and making his kingdom so secure that the

peasants could leave their tools in the fields at night without fear of

loss. Five generations after him came to the throne William the

Conqueror, who won himself the kingdom of England.



To go back to Harold, the builder of the kingdom of Norway, we shall only

say in conclusion that he built his rule on sure foundations and kept a

court of high splendor, and died without a rebel in his realm in 933,

seventy-three years after he succeeded his father as ruler of a

province.



More

;