Northmen, The Viking Saga 793-1241 AD

Chapter 10: Hedeby, Jelling and Stiklestad. The Scandinavian kingdoms to 1100

Histories of the Vikings tend to concentrate on their impact on Europe and the wider world. The untold story of the Vikings is the impact that Europe had on them. At the beginning of the Viking Age, Scandinavians were still prehistoric, pagan barbarians: by its end, they were fully integrated into the cultural mainstream of Roman Catholic Christian Europe. For all their energy and aggression, the Vikings did not Scandinavianise Europe; Europe Europeanised the Vikings. This process of assimilating Scandinavia into Christian Europe, which mirrors on a much larger scale the assimilation of Scandinavian settlers into their European host communities, was inextricably linked to the culmination of the state formation process, which saw the emergence of stable kingdoms in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Just as it was the emergence of states in these countries that triggered Viking exploration and raiding, it was the end of the state-building process, not more effective defences by the Vikings’ victims, that led to the decline of their freebooting ways. Once kings had built effective governments, they could prevent their subjects from causing diplomatic problems with neighbouring states, and they could also offer them alternative routes to social advancement through royal service, so reducing the incentive to go on Viking raids. And because they now had other forms of income from taxation and trade, kings did not have the same pressures to lead plundering raids themselves. As was the case in the Viking colonies, conversion to Christianity was the main vehicle of cultural assimilation.

Because it was blessed with the greatest area of good arable land, Denmark was the wealthiest and most populated country of Viking Age Scandinavia. It was also the smallest and most compact, with good internal communications. The two largest regions of Viking Age Denmark were the Jutland peninsula in the west and the two provinces of Skåne and Blekinge in the east (both of which came under Swedish rule in the seventeenth century). In between them lay a scatter of dozens of low-lying islands, linked rather than separated by shallow, sheltered channels of the sea. Because there were no large forests or high mountains as there were in Norway and Sweden, there were few obstacles to travel on land. Because of its land border with Germany in the south, Denmark was also the Scandinavian country in closest contact with Christian Europe. These geographical circumstances alone made it likely that Denmark would be the first of the Scandinavian countries to be welded into a unified kingdom, but there was also an important external factor driving the Danes towards unity: their powerful Christian neighbour, the Frankish empire.

According to the Frankish Royal Annals, the king of the Danes at the time of the earliest Viking raids was Sigfred, who probably ruled from around 770 to 800. The first recorded Danish king since the time of Angantyr, little more is known about Sigfred than his name. Nothing is known about his ancestry – was he a descendent of Angantyr or did he belong to another dynasty? – nor is it known if he ruled all of the Danes or just those who lived in Jutland. Despite that, it is not unreasonable to imagine that the steady expansion of the Frankish Empire towards the Danes’ southern borders caused Sigfred great unease. In 734, the Franks had begun to spread east along the North Sea coast and had conquered Frisia. Then, in 773, the Frankish king Charlemagne began the conquest and conversion to Christianity of the pagan Saxons, whose territory bordered directly on Denmark in the south. The Danevirke, which guarded the Danes’ border with the Saxons, would not have been built if relations between the two peoples had always been friendly. It must have been clear to Sigfred, however, that the mighty Franks would make altogether more dangerous enemies, so he supported the Saxons in their struggle to preserve their independence and provided a refuge for their leader Widukind.

Sigfred’s support was not enough to stop the Frankish steamroller and by the time he was last heard of, in 798, Charlemagne had subjugated all the Saxons who lived west of the Elbe river. Saxon resistance continued north of the Elbe until 804, when Charlemagne finally secured their submission, bringing the Frankish empire to the Danish border. That Charlemagne gave the newly conquered lands to the Abodrites, a Wendish tribe allied to the Franks, rather than incorporate them into his empire (the Wends were a group of Slav tribes whose lands extended along the Baltic coast from the neck of the Jutland peninsula east to the river Vistula), suggests that he had no immediate plans to conquer the Danes but their new king, Godfred, could hardly be sure about that. Charlemagne invited Godfred to a meeting, perhaps to reassure him about his intentions, perhaps not. Godfred brought his fleet and army to the border as a show of strength but came no further. Charlemagne was a militant Christian and he had justified his conquest of the Saxons on the grounds of their paganism as well as their raids on Frankish territory. The Danes were pagans too: would Charlemagne demand Godfred’s baptism and co-operation in evangelising his subjects? If Godfred refused, would Charlemagne see this as a sufficient casus belli, especially as his subjects were now launching pirate raids on the Frankish empire? Godfred had good cause to be suspicious of Charlemagne.

In 808, Godfred led a fleet to attack the Abodrites in alliance with one of their Wendish rivals, the Wiltzians. Godfred captured and sacked many of the Abodrites’ fortified towns, levied tribute, and captured and hanged one of their chiefs. It’s very likely that Godfred sacrificed this chief to Odin as hanging was the usual way that the god’s sacrificial victims were killed. Before sailing for home, Godfred destroyed the town of Reric, which was one end of an overland trade route between the Baltic and the North Sea. Reric’s location is not known for certain, but it was most likely at Groß Strömkendorf on Wismar Bucht, where the remains of a substantial planned Slavic settlement of the eighth century have been discovered. Reric was under Godfred’s control, and it provided him with substantial income from tolls and taxes, but it was now no longer secure. Godfred ensured that Reric would be of no benefit to the Abodrites by rounding up its merchants and craftsmen and taking them back to Denmark with him: he had plans for them.

Anticipating Frankish reprisals for his attack on their ally, Godfred set about refurbishing the Danevirke rampart when he returned home. At the same time, Godfred resettled Reric’s merchants and craftsmen at Hedeby (‘heath-town’), at the eastern end of the Danevirke, by the head of the Schlei Fjord, a narrow, reed-fringed, 15-mile long inlet of the Baltic. The feared reprisals fell upon the Wiltzians rather than the Danes and Hedeby quickly began to flourish, becoming the most important town in Viking Age Scandinavia. Hedeby’s location, right at the neck of the Jutland peninsula, made it the natural focus for trade between the southern North Sea and Baltic Sea regions. Merchants could avoid the long and dangerous voyage around Jutland by offloading their cargoes at Hedeby and carting them 9 miles overland to Hollingstedt on the River Treene. Here, cargoes could be transferred to another ship and sailed down the Treene, into the River Eider and so into the North Sea. Some historians have suggested that the ships themselves might have been portaged from one sea to the other, much as the Rus carried their boats from one river system to another in Russia, but there is no hard evidence for this. Hedeby also lay on the Hærvej (the ‘Army Road’), an ancient north-south route running from Viborg in north Jutland to Hamburg on the River Elbe. Despite its name, the road was mainly a trade and cattle droving route.

At its peak in the tenth century, Hedeby covered an area of about 15 acres (6 hectares) and had a population of around 1,000 to 1,500 people. The town was protected from attack by land by a semi-circular earth and timber rampart, which was 1,400 yards (1,280 m) long and is still over 10 feet (3 m) high. Today, this rampart is the only visible evidence of Hedeby’s existence. The waterfront was open but the entrance into the harbour was protected by a barrier of wooden stakes that had been driven into the bed of the shallow fjord. A channel through the barrier could be closed off in wartime with chains or floating logs. Such barriers were a common precaution against pirate raids in Viking Age Denmark and Sweden. The Schlei Fjord also gave the town a measure of protection – no pirate fleet would be able sail down its 15-mile length unseen and launch a surprise attack.

On its low-lying site by the fjord, Hedeby was probably a damp and muddy place to live. The small town was laid out in an orderly way on either side of a small stream using a grid of narrow fenced rectangular building plots along two main streets running roughly parallel to the waterfront. Like many other Viking Age towns, the streets were paved with split logs to stop them becoming completely impassable in wet weather. The town’s single-storey houses were built with timber posts, walls of lattices of branches made windproof with a coating of clay, and thatched roofs. A typical house had a single room, which functioned as both family dwelling and workshop. Inside, the houses were dark, with the doorway being the only source of daylight, and smoky. Families lived and worked around a hearth in the centre of the floor and, as there were no chimneys, smoke had to find its way out under the eaves or through the thatched roof. The houses had small enclosed yards containing wells and latrines in close proximity to one another. Many of the buildings were German or Slavonic in style, suggesting that the town had an international population. Hedeby’s houses were not built to last – most would have needed to be completely rebuilt every ten to thirty years. The town’s waterfront was lined with timber quays, some of which extended almost 200 feet (60 m) out into the fjord. The quays were strongly built and many had warehouses and other structures built on top of them. There is archaeological evidence of craft activities, including metal-, bone- and amber-working, glass-making, pottery, weaving and ship repair. By around 825, Hedeby also had a mint, which produced imitations of Frankish silver deniers bearing representations of Viking longships and trading knarrs.

Apart from a possible toll house near the harbour and a meeting hall, no administrative buildings have been identified in Hedeby. The town was probably governed from the high-status settlement at Flüsing, about 2½ miles away on the north shore of Schlei Fjord, not far from Schleswig. This settlement, which was only about one-fifth the size of Hedeby, focused on a great feasting hall and had a mainly military character. It was probably here that Godfred gathered his forces in 804. The site continued to be occupied until the middle of the tenth century, when the hall burned down. Iron arrowheads embedded in burned timbers show that this was no accident but the result of a violent attack.

Hedeby’s main trade links were with the eastern Baltic and Norway, and with England and the Rhineland. Two merchants who are known to have visited Hedeby were Ottar and Wulfstan. Both men visited King Alfred’s court in England, where scribes wrote down their accounts of the trade routes they followed. Wulfstan, who was probably English, used Hedeby as his base for trading voyages to the Wendish ports along the Baltic’s southern coast. Ottar was from Hålogaland in Arctic Norway and he spent his summers hunting walrus in the White Sea, heading south to Hedeby to sell their ivory teeth. It was a lucrative trade because disruption to Mediterranean trade routes meant that the better quality elephant ivory was almost unobtainable in early Medieval Europe. Some merchants came from much further afield, however. A Jewish merchant from Córdoba, al-Tartushi, who visited around the middle of the tenth century, thought Hedeby a poor and squalid place and he hated the singing of the townsfolk, which he thought was ‘worse than the barking of dogs’. Around this time, his home town of Córdoba was one of the world’s largest cities, with great mosques, palaces, libraries and universities so Hedeby was little more than a farming village in comparison.

Godfred did not live long enough to see his new town flourish. Charlemagne’s response to Godfred’s attack on the Abodrites was to build a fort at Itzehoe, north of the Elbe and less than 40 miles from the Danish border. In 810, Godfred retaliated by raiding Frisia with a fleet of 200 ships. The raid was successful: Godfred extracted 100 pounds (45 kg) of silver in tribute and long before Charlemagne’s forces arrived on the scene he was back home. And then, apparently at the peak of his power, Godfred was murdered by one of his retainers. Events of the next few years fully demonstrated the fragility of the early Danish kingdom. Godfred’s successor, a nephew called Hemming, survived two years and was succeeded by two brothers Harald Klak and Reginfred after a brief civil war that left two other claimants dead. Such arrangements were not uncommon in Viking Age Scandinavia: joint kingship was a practical way of resolving competing claims where two or more claimants had equal support. In 813, a third brother, another Hemming, turned up to share the throne. Hemming had been in the service of Charlemagne and this seems to have made him suspect in the eyes of the Danes, who transferred their allegiance to four of Godfred’s sons, who had been in exile in Sweden. Hemming fled back to the Frankish court, where he was promised help to regain the Danish throne. A long struggle between the two fraternal factions followed until by around 834 all the rivals were dead or permanently exiled bar one, Horik, the last of Godfred’s sons.

At first Horik maintained friendly relations with Charlemagne’s successor Louis the Pious and on occasion even captured and executed pirate leaders who had raided Frankia. Horik’s main concern was to consolidate his own authority and he did not want his subjects provoking Frankish interventions. The civil war that broke out in the Frankish empire after Louis’ death in 840 emboldened Horik. In 845, he sent a large fleet to sack Hamburg and two years later Horik refused demands by the emperor Lothar that he prevent his subjects raiding the Frankish lands. Horik was in any case far too insecure to enforce any such prohibition. In 850, Horik was forced to share his kingdom with two nephews. Then, in 854, a third nephew, Gudurm, turned up to claim a share of the kingdom too. Gudurm was every Viking Age Scandinavian king’s worst nightmare – a successful pirate leader with royal blood, a hoard of plunder and a large and loyal warrior band to back him up. Gudurm’s arrival threw the kingdom into a vicious civil war in which Horik and most of the rest of the extended royal family, including his three nephews, all perished. Stability did not return to Denmark for nearly a century.

Virtually nothing is known about events in Denmark in the second half of the ninth century. Writing in his Deeds of the Bishops of the Church of Hamburg, our best informed source for the early Danish kingdom, the German ecclesiastical historian Adam of Bremen summed up the confusion: ‘How many Danish kings, or rather tyrants, there were indeed, and whether some of them ruled at the same time or lived for a short time one after the other, is uncertain.’ Adam was commissioned to write his history by archbishop Adalbert of Hamburg (d. 1072) and had access to a wide range of sources, including the archives of the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen, which had led efforts to evangelise Scandinavia. Adam even visited Denmark himself in 1068 – 9 and met King Svein Estrithson (r. 1047 – 74), whom he cites as a major informant for his work. If Adam had no idea what was going on, probably no one else did either.

By around 890, part of Denmark, at least, had come under the control of a Swedish king called Olof. Two runestones commemorating Olof’s grandson Sigtrygg have been found at Hedeby, suggesting that the town was the dynasty’s main powerbase. Hedeby returned to Danish control in the mid-930s when Sigtrygg was overthrown by another obscure ruler called Harthacnut Sveinsson. In saga traditions, Harthacnut was said to be a grandson of the legendary Viking Ragnar Lodbrok, but Adam of Bremen says he came from Nortmannia, by which he probably meant Normandy or maybe northern Jutland. Harthacnut’s main claim to fame is that he was the father of the man Danes regard as the as the real founder of their kingdom, Gorm the Old (d. c. 958). Gorm most likely earned his nickname not because he was particularly long-lived – it is not known when he was born – but because he was the ancestor of the medieval Danish kings. The actual extent of Gorm’s kingdom is not known but he certainly did not rule all the Danes; the first king to do that would be his son Harald Bluetooth (r. c. 958 – 87), who succeeded him after his death in 958.

Outside their own private lands, the early Danish kings exercised authority indirectly through subordinate chieftains. This meant that royal authority was inherently weak and in many parts of Denmark completely non-existent. Whatever the claims of rulers to be kings of the Danes, chiefs in areas remote from the royal power centres ruled in effective independence. Harald’s achievement was to make royal authority real throughout the whole of Denmark. It is unlikely that this was a peaceful process because the most obvious physical evidence of Harald’s authority is a chain of six or seven forts that he built right across the country, at Fyrkat and Aggersborg in north Jutland, at Nonnebakken on Fyn, Trelleborg and Borrering (also known as Vallø Borgring) on Sjælland, and at Trelleborg and (probably) at Borgeby in Skåne. There was no fort in southern Jutland, where Harald’s authority was strongest.

Harald’s forts show clear evidence of central planning in their near identical design. All the forts are precisely circular with four equally spaced covered gateways placed on the four points of the compass. Axial streets divide the interiors into four equally sized quadrants. At Fyrkat and Trelleborg (Sjælland) each quadrant contained four three-roomed bow-sided wooden buildings arranged in a square, at Aggersborg, which at over 260 yards (240 m) was twice the diameter of the other forts, there were twelve buildings arranged in three squares. At the centre of each square was a smaller wooden building. A ring road ran around the inside of the earth ramparts, which were faced with timber to make them more difficult to climb. All the forts were encircled by a ditch. There are no exact parallels to Harald’s forts anywhere in Europe but it is possible that they were modelled on circular forts built by the Franks to protect the Low Countries from Viking raids in the ninth century. Investigation of the buildings at Fyrkat has shown that while some were used as dwellings, most were workshops, stables and stores. Women and children, as well as adult males, were found buried in a cemetery outside the ramparts, which suggests that the forts were centres for royal administration, where taxes were collected, as well as strongpoints for controlling the local population. Dendrochronology shows that the timbers used for the buildings at Fyrkat and Trelleborg were felled in c. 980, that is, quite late in Harald’s reign. The forts were occupied for no more than twenty or thirty years: once the Danes had accepted centralised royal government, they were no longer needed.

Harald also began the cultural transformation of Denmark by converting to Christianity in 965. According to later stories, Poppo, a German missionary, probably from Würzburg, persuaded Harald to convert after he demonstrated the superior power of the Christian god by carrying red hot irons in his bare hands without suffering any injury. This missionary success had been a long time coming. Willibrord’s fruitless mission to King Angantyr in the 720s was not followed-up until 822, when Louis the Pious sent Ebo, the archbishop of Reims, on the first of three missions to Denmark. Ebo was as conspicuously unsuccessful as Willibrord had been. In 826, the Danish king Harald Klak converted to Christianity while visiting the Frankish court in order to curry favour with Louis, whose support he was seeking against Godfred’s sons. When Harald returned to Denmark, Louis sent the monk Ansgar to accompany him. When Godfred’s pagan sons forced Harald into exile a year later, Ansgar went to Sweden where King Björn allowed him to found a church at the trade centre of Birka on Lake Mälaren. Ansgar entrusted the mission in Sweden to his kinsman Gautbert, so that he could concentrate on Denmark. In 831, he became the first bishop of Hamburg and, the following year, he was appointed papal legate for the Scandinavian and Slavonic missions. Ansgar’s mission suffered severe setbacks. Gautbert was expelled from Birka a few years after his arrival and the Danish attack on Hamburg in 845 severely disrupted missionary activity. In 851 – 2, Ansgar led a second mission to Scandinavia, founding churches at Hedeby and Ribe in Denmark and re-establishing the church at Birka. Ansgar became known as ‘the Apostle of the North’ for his efforts but for all that he failed to establish any enduring Christian communities in either Denmark or Sweden. Missionary activity languished again until the German king Henry the Fowler invaded Denmark and defeated King Gorm soon after he won power. Henry’s victory created the opportunity for Unni, the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, to launch a new mission to Denmark. Gorm gave Unni a hostile reception but, according to Adam of Bremen, young Harald was more sympathetic: ‘Unni made him so faithful to Christ that, although he himself had not received the sacrament of baptism, he permitted the public profession of Christianity, which his father had always hated.’ By 948 there were enough Christians in Jutland to justify its division into three bishoprics, at Hedeby, Ribe and Århus, under the control of the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen. When Harald finally took the plunge and was baptised in 965, along with his wife and son, Svein Forkbeard, he showed that his conversion was sincere by actively encouraging his people to adopt the new faith.

Whatever the spiritual attractions of the new faith – and it certainly offered greater doctrinal clarity than Norse paganism – an astute ruler like Harald must have been aware of the many political advantages that would come from conversion. The immediate pay-off for Harald was the prospect of better relations with his powerful southern neighbour, the German Holy Roman Emperor Otto I. Harald would have known from the experience of previous generations of Viking leaders overseas in Frankia, England and Ireland, that there could be no normal diplomatic relations with Christian rulers unless he too became a Christian. There must also have been many aspects of Christian teaching that were attractive to a state-building monarch. The many Old Testament stories of righteous kings who defeated their enemies thanks to the support of God must have given Christianity considerable appeal to a warrior king. The potential of the Christian doctrine of divinely ordained kingship for raising the status of the monarchy must have been quite obvious too. The church also brought with it literate personnel with administrative expertise, who could help a king build a government for his kingdom. While jealous of its spiritual authority, the church recognised that strong government made its own task of conversion easier and could help protect its personnel and property, so kings could usually count on ecclesiastical support. The international culture of Catholic Europe, including Romanesque art and architecture, the Latin language and alphabet and the classical literature of ancient Rome came as part of the Christian package. As the new religion spread and put down deeper roots, this gradually became the elite culture, displacing indigenous cultural traditions tainted with paganism.

Gorm and Harald ruled Denmark from their manor at Jelling, now a large village, in the gently rolling countryside of mid Jutland about 80 miles north of Hedeby on the old Hærvej. Jelling may have been chosen as a royal residence because it was already marked as a place of ancient power by a Bronze Age burial mound. By the second half of the tenth century, Gorm and Harald between them had provided Jelling with a remarkable collection of monuments: a massive 1,100 foot (335 m) long ship-setting, by far the largest known, two large mounds, two runestones, a wooden church and several large halls, all of which stood within a palisaded enclosure covering nearly 30 acres (12 hectares). Between them, these monuments tell the story of Denmark’s transition from paganism to Christianity and its emergence as a stable territorial kingdom.

Standing nearly 30 feet (9 m) tall, the two mounds dominate Jelling even today. Traditionally they were believed to be the burial mounds of King Gorm (the south mound) and his wife Thyre (the north mound), but archaeological investigations have revealed a more complicated history. The north mound was built exactly in the middle of the huge ship-setting, so it is likely that they were built at the same time. The mound was built over the earlier Bronze Age tumulus: a large timber-lined burial chamber at its centre was partly dug into the older mound. Dendrochronological analysis shows that the timbers were felled in the autumn of 958. However, the burial chamber itself was empty. Excavations showed that the mound had been dug into around the time of Harald’s conversion to Christianity and the bodies in the chamber had been removed along with any grave goods. One of the few artefacts left behind was part of a wooden wagon. These were commonly used as coffins for high status women. This supports the traditional association of the mound with Queen Thyre, who died some time before Gorm. The southern mound associated with Gorm, however, turned out never to have contained any bodies at all. If Gorm was buried at Jelling, he must have been buried in the north mound. The southern mound was built over a pile of rocks that may have been a hørg, where sacrificial offerings were made. Despite its pagan nature, the mound was probably not built until after Harald’s baptism and its purpose remains unclear: perhaps the mound was a respectful burial for the old pagan ways that the new religion was consigning to oblivion.

A twelfth-century stone church now stands between the two mounds but excavations in the 1970s showed that it was built on the site of a substantial tenth-century timber church. A burial found within the church contained the partially preserved skeleton of a well-built man. In life, he was a little over five feet six inches (1.67 m) tall and was suffering from osteoarthritis of the lower back when he died, probably still in his forties. Only a very important man would have been buried inside a royal church but his identity is unknown. It has generally been assumed that the skeleton is that of Gorm, the theory being that after his conversion Harald had his parents exhumed from the north mound and reburied in consecrated ground, though if that was the case there is no sign of Thyre’s skeleton. However, burying pagans in a church would have been against Christian doctrine, which did not allow posthumous conversions. If Gorm and Thyre really were buried in the northern mound, Harald may have exhumed them simply because he did not want pagans buried so close to his new Christian centre.

South of the church stand Jelling’s two runestones. The smaller and older of the stones was erected by King Gorm as a memorial to Queen Thyre. Gorm was evidently fond of Thyre as he described her as ‘Denmark’s adornment’. The inscription has more than sentimental value because this is the earliest recorded use of the word Denmark (‘tannmarkaR’) to describe the country of the Danes. Old engravings of the monuments at Jelling suggest that this runestone may originally have stood on top of the northern mound, only being moved to its present location in relatively modern times. The second and larger of the runestones is an assertively Christian monument erected by King Harald to commemorate both his parents and his own achievements in uniting and Christianising the Danes. One face of the stone carries the runic inscription: ‘King Harald ordered this monument made in memory of Gorm, his father, and in memory of Thyre, his mother; that Harald who won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian.’ A second face shows a vigorously carved lion fighting a serpent and the third, a figure of the crucified Christ on a cross entwined with branches and leaves. By depicting the crucifixion this way, the stone carver may have intended to draw a deliberate parallel between Christ and Odin, who hanged himself from the world-tree Yggdrasil to learn the secret of runes. Small traces of paint show that the runestone was originally brightly coloured. Jelling’s time as a pre-eminent centre of power was brief. Now in the far west of his unified kingdom, Jelling was no longer a convenient base for Harald’s rule, so in the 980s he moved to Roskilde, only a few miles from the ancient power centre at Lejre, on the more centrally situated island of Sjælland.

Harald’s authority was not confined to Denmark. Through an alliance with Håkon Sigurdsson, jarl of Lade (now a suburb of Trondheim), Harald overthrew Norway’s King Harald Greycloak c. 970, taking the south of the country for himself and giving the north to Håkon. Harald also won control of a Wendish port called Jumne or Jomsborg, which is probably the modern Polish port of Wolin near the mouth of the Oder River. In the tenth century, Wolin was a strongly fortified trading and manufacturing centre with a large and well-constructed harbour. The well-travelled Córdoban merchant, al-Tartushi, thought it a more impressive place than Hedeby. Significant numbers of typically Scandinavian artefacts, such as Thor’s hammer amulets, Norwegian soapstone bowls and runic inscriptions, point to the presence of a permanent Scandinavian community in the Slavic town. This may have given rise to the legend of the Jomsvikings, an elite band of Viking mercenaries who, according to romantic Icelandic saga traditions, used Jomsborg as their base.

Despite his achievements Harald’s reign ended badly. Harald suffered his first setback in 975 when he lost control of Hedeby to the Germans. The previous year, Danish Vikings had raided northern Germany and, rightly or wrongly, the new emperor, Otto II, held Harald responsible and invaded Denmark in response. Harald, aided by jarl Håkon, tried to hold the Germans at the Danevirke, but was eventually forced back. Harald surrendered Hedeby, and its revenues, to Otto, who built and garrisoned a fort at nearby Schleswig to guard it. Under pressure from Otto, Harald tried to introduce Christianity to Norway. Unfortunately for Harald, this alienated jarl Håkon, a devout pagan, who rebelled and seized control of the whole of Norway.

In 982, Otto II suffered a severe defeat while campaigning in Italy. This was too good an opportunity to let pass and a Danish army under Svein Forkbeard recaptured Hedeby from the Germans, while Harald’s father-in-law Mistivoj burned Hamburg. By now, however, Harald had made himself many enemies at home. Local chieftains had seen their traditional autonomy curtailed as Harald tightened royal authority and devout pagans resented the imposition of Christianity. In 987, Svein overthrew his father, who fled across the Baltic to Jomsborg, where he died soon after from wounds inflicted during the fighting. According to Adam of Bremen, Svein had never taken his baptism seriously and he was able to win power with the support of disgruntled pagans. While Svein may well have benefited from such disaffection, it is unlikely that he ever renounced Christianity. There is strong evidence that he continued his father’s Christianisation policy, founding many churches during his reign, and had he really been hostile to Christianity he would hardly have allowed his father’s retainers to bring his body back from Jomsborg and bury it in the church he had founded at Roskilde.

The real reason for Adam’s hostility was probably that Svein rejected the authority of the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen. In medieval Europe, the modern distinction between church and state did not exist. Kings relied heavily on bishops to help them govern their kingdoms and always sought to influence appointments to bishoprics. The Danish church and its bishops in Harald’s time were ultimately responsible to the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, who were appointed by the German emperors. No medieval king would have liked this situation as it represented a limitation on his sovereignty. And it was often the case that where the church led, secular authority followed. Harald was probably willing to put up with this situation because it kept the emperors off his back while he consolidated royal authority in Denmark. Svein may have overthrown his father because he saw all too clearly that a German claim to rule the Danish church might ultimately be used to support a German claim to sovereignty over the state. Throughout his reign, Svein avoided contacts with Hamburg-Bremen and when he needed priests he brought them over from England.

Svein seized power at a time of resurgent Viking raiding, mainly against England, now seen as a soft target thanks to the weak rule of Æthelred the Unready. Svein knew that returning Viking leaders, with their newly won wealth and status, could challenge royal authority so he kept them in the shade by leading his own tribute-gathering raids (see ch. 9). Two Viking leaders who must have caused Svein much anxiety were the exiled Norwegian sea-king Olaf Tryggvason and the Danish nobleman Thorkell the Tall. According to saga traditions, Thorkell was the son of Strút Harald, jarl of Sjælland, and the brother of Sigvaldi, the supposed leader of the Jomsvikings. In other words, he was a member of the class that had lost most from Harald’s centralisation of royal authority. In 1011, Thorkell received the enormous payment of 48,000 pounds (21,772 kg) of silver from Æthelred, whose service he later entered, fighting for him against Svein. Thanks to his lack of royal blood, Thorkell’s threat to Svein was limited. Thorkell might be an overmighty subject but it would have been hard for him to replace Svein on the throne, and he was eventually found a role in the new order (by Svein’s son Cnut). The same was not true of Olaf Tryggvason. Olaf used the proceeds of his raids on England in 991 – 4 to fund a successful attempt to win control of Norway in 995. However, Svein claimed to be Norway’s true ruler by right of inheritance from his father Harald. This made conflict inevitable.

Danish ambitions to rule Norway were nothing new. Back in 813 the Frankish annals recorded that kings Harald Klak and Reginfred were fighting in Vestfold, west of Oslo Fjord, trying to impose their rule on an unwilling population. The outcome of the struggle is not recorded but they probably failed to subjugate the area for long. Two decades later two high-status women, one elderly, the other middle aged, were buried with lavish grave goods in a richly decorated longship under a barrow at Oseberg, in the heart of Vestfold. As such a burial would only have been afforded to a powerful queen, it is clear that Vestfold was at the heart of an independent kingdom. It is not known which of the two women buried in the barrow was the queen and which the sacrificial companion to join her in the afterlife – both were well-dressed – but local traditions had a name for her: Åsa, known from saga traditions as the grandmother of Harald Fairhair, the first king to rule all of Norway.

Despite Harald’s importance in Norwegian history, it is not known for certain when he actually lived. The fullest account of Harald’s life is his saga in Heimskringla (‘The Circle of the World’), an epic saga history of the kings of Norway by the thirteenth-century Icelander Snorri Sturluson, but this certainly contains much legendary material. According to Snorri, Harald was a descendent of the proto-historical Swedish Yngling dynasty and through them of the fertility god Freyr. Harald’s father, Halfdan the Black, was the son of Åsa and her husband King Gudrød of Vestfold. Harald inherited the kingship of Vestfold at the age of ten after his father drowned accidentally by falling through a hole in a frozen lake. It is unlikely that this could have happened much before c. 870. Harald’s ambition was to rule all of Norway and he vowed not to cut or comb his hair until he had achieved his goal, hence his nickname ‘fairhair’ (hárfagri).

Unity was never going to come easily to Norway. The country’s rugged topography and long coastline made internal communications difficult, promoting localism: at the beginning of the Viking Age almost every valley had its chief or petty king. Two areas, however, were particularly favourable for the development of regional power centres. One of these was Viken, the sheltered Oslo Fjord region in the south-east of the country, which included Harald’s kingdom of Vestfold. Lying in the rain shadow of Norway’s central spine of mountains, Viken has a relatively dry and sunny climate favourable to arable farming. The other was the Trøndelag, the fertile region around Trondheim Fjord, over 300 miles away across the mountains to the north. This region was dominated by Håkon Grjotgardsson, the jarl of Lade, whose pedigree was no less illustrious than Harald’s. After some indecisive hostilities, Harald and Håkon became allies, the king recognising the jarl’s autonomy in the north in return for his support fighting the dozens of other local kings. Harald’s campaign ended with his victory around 885 (it is hard to be precise) over a coalition of seven local kings and jarls at the sea battle of Hafrsfjord, near modern Stavanger, after which opposition to his rule collapsed. Icelandic traditions claim that some of the survivors from Hafrsfjord fled to the Scottish isles from where they raided Norway. Harald led an expedition west to bring the area under Norwegian control, establishing the Earldom of Orkney under his ally Rognvald of Møre.

Icelandic historical traditions, epitomised by Snorri, present Harald Fairhair as a tyrannical ruler. After his victory at Hafrsfjord, Harald is said to have confiscated all the óðal land from the bonders (free peasant farmers), forcing them to become royal tenants, and to have imposed heavy taxation. It was to escape this oppression that medieval Icelanders like Snorri believed that their ancestors had emigrated to Iceland. However, there is no evidence that Harald attempted any such expropriation of óðal land: the reduction of most free peasants to tenant status seems actually to have been a phenomenon of Snorri’s own age. It is also certain that the settlement of Iceland began before the Battle of Hafrsfjord is likely to have taken place. Some historians also doubt that Harald ever made an expedition to the isles because the Earldom of Orkney was established before Harald became king (see ch. 4). It is, therefore, likely that the Icelanders invented the story in order to explain why so many of the first settlers came not from Norway but from the Scottish isles. In reality, Harald’s rule was much less than absolute. The jarls of Lade ruled in Trøndelag and Hålogaland in virtual independence and it is only in their title that they were anything less than kings. Harald certainly did reduce many local kingdoms to jarldoms but there were still dozens of ‘valley kings’ in Norway even a century later. Nor did such unity as Harald imposed survive his death some time between 930 and 940.

During his long life, he is supposed to have been eighty when he died, Harald fathered over twenty sons by at least eight different women. According to Snorri, Harald divided the kingdom between his sons three years before his death, appointing his favourite son Erik Bloodaxe as high king over them all. This did not go down well with Erik’s brothers, who all believed, as possessors of royal blood, that they were entitled to the dignity of full kingship. No sooner was Harald dead than his sons, predictably enough, sought power for themselves in the many local kingdoms their father had controlled. Thanks to his lurid nickname – earned because of his brutal rulership rather than his prowess in battle – Erik Bloodaxe is probably the most famous of all Viking leaders. Scarcely less notorious, in saga traditions at least, was Erik’s wife Gunnhild, who was reputed to be a völva or seeress. Even before Harald died, she had been accused of encompassing the death of Erik’s half-brother Halfdan by magic. No statesman, Erik tried to maintain the unity of the kingdom by violence. Egged on by Gunnhild, Erik seriously depleted the numbers of his brothers before the Norwegians tired of him and invited his younger half-brother Håkon the Good (d. 960) to come home from England, where he had been fostered by king Æthelstan, and take the throne. With the support of Sigurd Håkonarson, the jarl of Lade, Håkon was proclaimed king in the Trøndelag. When Håkon began to advance on Viken, Erik’s support evaporated and he fled to Orkney. From there Erik embarked on a career as a Viking raider, which won him the kingship of York in 948 and a violent death on Stainmore six years later (see ch. 2).

Håkon could have known little about his kingdom when he arrived home. He was still an infant when his father had sent him to England, and he had never been back to Norway. Håkon’s position in Norway was never strong because he lacked the local connections, friendships and prestige that would have accrued to him naturally if he had been brought up there. In most respects he was a weak ruler who exercised direct authority only in the west of the country. His nephews Gudrød Bjørnsson and Tryggvi Olafsson ruled as kings in Vestfold and Østfold, while jarl Sigurd ruled in complete autonomy in Trøndelag and Halogaland. Æthelstan had brought Håkon up as a Christian and he began his reign hoping to spread the faith in Norway. Although there had been no recorded missionary activity, many Norwegians must have been familiar with Christianity by this time thanks to their long-standing contacts with Britain and Ireland. There are likely to have been considerable numbers of Christian slaves living in Norway and many Norwegians will have had Christian relations living in the Viking colonies in Britain and Ireland. Many a homecoming warrior may have been a nominal Christian after accepting baptism for pragmatic reasons while serving Christian rulers as a mercenary or to smooth negotiations of tribute payments. However, apart from a few inscribed crosses, there is no archaeological evidence of any Christian communities in Norway before Håkon’s reign.

To help him spread the faith, Håkon invited missionaries to come over from England. While a few of Håkon’s personal retinue did accept baptism, they did so more out of loyalty than conviction, and most Norwegians were willing to tolerate their king’s Christianity only as long as he kept his worship private. The issue came to a head when Håkon announced at the Frostathing assembly in the Trøndelag that he wished the people to be baptised and to end pagan sacrifices. This provoked an immediate rebellion by the bonders, who sincerely feared for the prosperity of the land if they were not able to perform the traditional sacrifices. Most chieftains also opposed Christianity, partly, at least, because they feared a loss of status and authority: the Norse pagan religion had no priesthood and it was the chieftains who conducted the sacrificial rituals. Supported, it seems, by jarl Sigurd, the bonders threatened that if the king did not perform the sacrifices as his father had done they would choose another king. At the harvest festival at Lade later that year, Håkon attempted a compromise by placing a linen cloth between his mouth and the sacrificial horse flesh he had been offered, but this satisfied no one. Four local chiefs in the district of Møre began killing priests and burning the churches Håkon had founded, while another group of chiefs resolved to force him to take part in the midwinter Yule sacrifice, threatening violence if he refused. Under this intense pressure Håkon finally gave in and ate some small pieces of horse liver. This token sacrifice seems to have satisfied the pagans and, after this humiliation, Håkon gave up his attempt to make the Norwegians Christian.

Håkon soon faced a greater challenge to his throne. After their father’s death in 954, Erik Bloodaxe’s sons had gone to Denmark and won Harald Bluetooth’s support for a campaign to try to drive Håkon from the Norwegian throne. Håkon proved to be a capable warrior, inflicting a succession of defeats on Erik’s sons. In 960, three of Erik’s sons, Harald Greycloak, Gamle and Sigurd, landed secretly in Hordaland and surprised Håkon in his hall at Fitjar. Håkon fought off the brothers, who fled back to their ships, but it was his last victory: during the battle he received an arrow wound to his arm and he died of blood loss soon afterwards. Although Snorri says that he was still a Christian at the end of his life, Håkon may, at least publicly, have converted to paganism, if only to keep the peace. Certainly Håkon’s followers gave him a traditional pagan burial in a barrow and in his funeral lay Hákonamál, Håkon’s skald Eyvind Skaldaspillir described his welcome in Valhalla as befitting a pagan warrior who fell in battle. Despite all the opposition to his religious policies, Håkon was remembered in saga traditions as a just ruler who brought peace and good harvests and whose legal reforms made the district things more representative and easier to consult.

As Håkon had no male heirs, Harald Greycloak, the eldest of Erik’s sons, succeeded to the throne with the support of Harald Bluetooth. Harald and his brothers had been baptised while they were in England and, unlike their uncle, they were prepared to use violence against those who opposed Christianity. They destroyed many pagan temples and overthrew the idols to demonstrate their powerlessness, but few Norwegians converted despite the intimidation. Harald aspired to exercise direct authority throughout Norway and dealt ruthlessly with opposition. It was clear to Harald that the most serious obstacle to achieving this was jarl Sigurd. Harald courted Sigurd’s malcontent brother Grjotgard and came to a secret agreement: in return for helping to overthrow Sigurd, Harald would make Grjotgard jarl in his place. After the harvest in 962, Grjotgard sent word to Harald that Sigurd was gathered with very few followers in a hall at Aglo in north Trøndelag. Guided by Grjotgard, Harald sailed up Trondheim Fjord by starlight arriving at Aglo undetected late at night. Harald’s men set fire to the hall while Sigurd was feasting with his followers. Trapped inside, the jarl and his men were all burned to death. Harald also engineered the murders of Gudrød Bjørnsson and Tryggvi Olafsson soon afterwards, but the violent elimination of his main rivals did not make Harald’s position secure.

Rising popular discontent with Harald’s activities created an opportunity for Harald Bluetooth to intervene in Norway. Jarl Sigurd had been a popular ruler and after his killing the folk of Trøndelag rallied to his son Håkon Sigurdsson. After three years of desultory warfare, Harald was forced to accept Håkon as jarl of Lade, with the same autonomy his father had enjoyed. The peace did not last and in 968 Håkon went into exile in Denmark, where he hatched a conspiracy with Harald Bluetooth to overthrow Harald Greycloak and share Norway between them. Danish Harald lured Norwegian Harald to Denmark with offers of land, only to ambush and kill him when he landed at Hals on Limfjord in north Jutland. After the killing Håkon and Harald Bluetooth took a large fleet to Viken and divided the country between them. Håkon received back his ancestral jarldom in the north, which he ruled in complete autonomy, and the west coast districts of Rogaland, Hordaland, Sogn, Møre and Romsdal, which he ruled as Harald’s vassal. Harald took control of the rest of the country except for Vestfold and Agder, which he gave to Harald Grenske, the son of the murdered king Gudrød Bjørnsson.

At first Håkon was true to his arrangement with Harald and loyally brought ships and men to defend Denmark against the emperor Otto II’s attack in 975. While Håkon was in Denmark, Harald forced him to accept baptism and agree to take a party of priests with him to Norway to begin missionary work. A devout pagan, Håkon’s conversion was insincere and he had no intention of helping Harald Christianise Norway. Håkon took the priests onboard his ship as Harald demanded but, as soon as he got a favourable wind for home, he disembarked the priests and made good his escape, plundering Danish territory on the way. Preoccupied with the threat from Germany, Harald was unable to prevent Håkon seizing control of all of Norway on his return and for the next ten years or so he enjoyed undisturbed possession of the country. Late in Harald’s reign or early in Svein Forkbeard’s – the sources are contradictory and none can be considered to be really reliable – the Danes attempted to win back control of Norway by sending a fleet of sixty ships to attack Lade. According to saga traditions the fleet was led by the elite Jomsvikings, but it never reached its destination. Deliberately misled by a captured herdsman, the Danes blundered unwittingly into a much larger Norwegian fleet under jarl Håkon and his son Erik at Hjørungavåg in Sunnmøre and was crushingly defeated in a battle fought in a heavy hailstorm. Only about half the Danish fleet escaped.

According to the saga traditions, Håkon became increasingly overbearing after his victory at Hjørungavåg and began to tax the bonders so heavily that his support ebbed away. So unpopular had Håkon become that when Olaf Tryggvason unexpectedly arrived in Norway in 995, fresh from his triumphs in England, he was immediately accepted as king. Håkon fled but was murdered soon after by one of his retainers while he was hiding in a pigsty: when Olaf later displayed his severed head, it was pelted with stones by a mob of angry bonders. Håkon’s son Erik Håkonarson escaped however, and, like many an exile before him, became a Viking leader.

Olaf’s rapturous welcome soon began to turn sour. Olaf’s upbringing had made him ruthless even by the standards of a ruthless age. Olaf was still a young child when his father, King Tryggve Olafsson, was murdered, forcing him into exile with his mother. Crossing the Baltic Sea on their way to Russia, their ship was captured by Estonian Vikings and Olaf fell into the hands of a slave dealer called Klerkon. Luckily for Olaf, he was sold to kind-hearted owners who looked after him well as he grew up (Klerkon exchanged him for a good cloak). When Olaf was eight, he was found by his cousin Sigurd who bought his freedom and took him to Novgorod. It was there that the then nine-year-old Olaf ran into Klerkon again and promptly split his head in two with a small axe. As a teenager Olaf became a warrior in Vladimir the Great’s druzhina, but left when he was eighteen to begin a career of Viking raiding. As a man of royal blood, Olaf easily raised a warrior band despite his youth and, as was still the custom, this entitled him to call himself a king. All he needed to do now was to win a kingdom. Eight years of ceaseless raiding in the Baltic and England provided him with the wealth, the reputation and the loyal warrior band to do just that: he was still only about twenty-seven years old.

While Olaf had been in England in 994, he had been baptised by Ælfheah, the archbishop of Canterbury, who was later martyred by the Danes in 1012, and he was determined to break pagan resistance to Christianity once and for all. Olaf was not a patient man and he seems to have concluded from the start that force would bring quicker results than argument. Olaf began his campaign of Christianisation in Viken, where he could count on the support of his father’s family. Olaf treated those who opposed him harshly, killing some, mutilating others, and driving some into exile. Olaf tied practitioners of traditional pagan seiðr magic to rocks by the sea at low tide and left them to drown. The folk of Viken found Olaf’s approach persuasive and by early 997 most had been baptised. That summer Olaf moved to the west of the country, taking a large army with him to quell any opposition. There was none, in part thanks to Olaf’s maternal family, which used its influence in the area to soften up the opposition to Christianity. In the autumn, Olaf moved to the still staunchly pagan Trøndelag and burned the temple at Lade. This was a step too far for the locals and they rose in arms forcing Olaf to withdraw to Viken for the winter. This was only a temporary setback. The following year Olaf returned to the Trøndelag. At first Olaf adopted a conciliatory approach, offering to learn about pagan customs, but this was only to lull his opponents into a false sense of security. At the district thing, Olaf and his men killed the leader of the pagan faction, Járn-Skeggi, in the temple of Thor. Though the pagans had come well-armed, the loss of their leader broke their resistance and they tamely agreed to baptism.

To better consolidate his authority in the all-too independent Trøndelag, Olaf built a palace and a missionary church on a peninsula by the mouth of the Nidelva river, with the river on one side and Trondheim Fjord on the other. As it was almost completely surrounded by water, the site was easy to defend and had good access to sea. It was also only 2 miles from Lade: so closely associated with local independence but now very obviously under royal control. Olaf called the place Kaupangen (‘trading place’), perhaps to attract merchants and the taxes and tolls they could be made to pay, but it soon became known as Nidaros (‘mouth of the Nidelva’). Since the nineteenth century, however, it has been known as Trondheim, now Norway’s third largest city. Olaf also tried to strengthen his authority in the region by marrying Járn-Skeggi’s daughter Gudrun. This turned out to be an almost fatal error of judgment on Olaf’s part: Gudrun did not have a forgiving nature and she tried to stab him to death on their wedding night. After that the saga notes laconically: ‘Gudrun never came into the king’s bed again.’ In spring 999, Olaf completed the conversion of Norway’s coastal districts when he sailed to Halogaland, north of the Arctic Circle, but only after he had defeated the Halogalanders in a sea battle. Around the same time, the Icelandic Althing bowed to Olaf’s pressure and adopted Christianity as the island’s official religion.

Christianisation was only one means by which Olaf hoped to strengthen royal authority. Coinage was an important way that medieval monarchs promoted their image and authority: Olaf opened a mint at Trondheim and issued Norway’s first coinage. He also introduced the office of district governor. However, Olaf’s reign was destined to be a short one. After several years of successful raiding in the Baltic, Erik Håkonarson went to Denmark, where he was welcomed by Svein Forkbeard. In alliance with the Swedish king Olof Skötkonung (r. c. 995 – 1022), who had his own designs on Norwegian territory, the pair began to plot Olaf’s downfall. Their opportunity came in 1000, when Olaf sailed south, through Danish waters, to raid the Wendish lands on the south coast of the Baltic.

According to saga traditions Olaf was goaded into the raid by his new wife Thyre, Svein Forkbeard’s sister. This was no diplomatic marriage: against her brother’s wishes, Thyre had abandoned her pagan husband, a Wendish king, and married Olaf instead. Thyre demanded that Olaf go to Wendland to recover property she had been forced to abandon when she fled from her husband. Against his counsellors’ advice, Olaf is alleged to have agreed. A more plausible scenario is that Olaf believed that a profitable raiding expedition would help heal the wounds of his forced Christianisation and bind the warrior aristocracy in loyalty to him. And as pagans, the Wends were fair game.

Olaf’s expedition went well enough but King Svein’s spies observed his movements closely. As Olaf sailed home that September, Svein and his allies ambushed him at Svöld with a superior force. Svöld has never been identified: some historians favour the German Baltic island of Rügen, others the Øresund, the narrow channel that separates Denmark and Sweden. With sixty-four oars Olaf’s gilded flagship, the drakkar Long Serpent, was one of the largest longships ever built but Olaf had eleven ships, his opponents over seventy and the result was never in doubt.

The exact course of the battle is not known for certain but it probably did not involve individual ship-to-ship actions. Viking Age sea battles were usually fought in much the same way as land battles, but with the ships themselves forming the battlefield. The opposing fleets formed up in line, bows-on to the other. The largest ships were always stationed in the centre. Masts and sails were taken down before battle to clear the decks for action and all manoeuvring was done under oars alone. The defending fleet, as Olaf’s fleet did at Svöld, often used the masts and spars to lash its ships together so that they formed a solid fighting platform on which warriors could move quickly from ship to ship to where they were most needed. The attacking fleet could also do this but only after it had made contact with the enemy. Tactics were simple. The first step was to fasten onto the enemy ships with grappling hooks and anchors, and then board them. Once the deck had been cleared in hand-to-hand fighting, the ship would be cut loose and rowed away. Size was always more important in sea battles than speed and manoeuvrability. The larger a ship was, the more men it carried and the taller it was. A high-sided ship offered better protection from missiles for its crew and it was harder for attackers to board. Its crew could in turn rain missiles down onto the crew of a smaller ship and they were also more easily able to board it.

At Svöld Erik Håkonarson took the lead in the fighting on his own flagship, the Iron Beard, which rivalled Olaf’s Long Serpent in size and splendour. According to Snorri’s account of the battle in his saga of the king’s life in Heimskringla, Erik laid his ship:

‘alongside the outermost of King Olaf’s ships, thinned it of men, cut the cables, and let it drift free. Then he laid alongside the next, and fought until he had cleared it of men too. Now all the people who were in the smaller ships began to run into the larger and the jarl cut them loose as soon as he cleared them of men... At last it came to this, that all King Olaf’s ships were cleared of men except the Long Serpent, on board of which gathered all who could still use their weapons. Then Iron Beard lay side to side with the Serpent and the fight went on with battle axe and sword.’

Numbers told and eventually Olaf made a last stand at the stern of Long Serpent. Seeing that death or capture were inevitable Olaf, in full armour, jumped over the side of his ship and sank without trace. Norwegians proved reluctant to accept their king’s death and Olaf became a ‘king in the mountain’ like Arthur, Frederick Barbarossa and many others who are still awaiting the right moment to reclaim their kingdoms. Soon after his death stories began to circulate that Olaf had swum underwater to another ship and sailed to Wendland, and from there travelled on to the Holy Land. But, as Snorri put it, whatever the truth of the stories ‘King Olaf Tryggvason never came back again to his kingdom of Norway’.

With Olaf dead, Norway was divided between Svein Forkbeard, Erik and King Olof. Svein took Viken as his share, while Erik, now jarl of Lade, ruled most of the north and west as his vassal. King Olof received inland districts in central Norway but gave these to his son-in-law, Erik’s brother Svein Håkonarson, to rule as his vassal. Erik and his brother may have converted to Christianity during their exile but if they did they did not try to impose it on their subjects and many Norwegians relapsed to paganism. Danish domination of Norway restored, Svein spent the remainder of his reign plundering England to finance his state-building, ultimately conquering the country in 1014. In Denmark Svein was succeed by his elder son Harald II (r. 1014 – 18) and his younger son Cnut inherited his claim to England. Cnut had to fight for his inheritance but England was such a prize that he attracted the backing of both his father’s old enemy Thorkell the Tall, and jarl Erik of Lade, who made his lands over to his son Håkon. Erik’s absence provided the opportunity for another exiled Norwegian royal, Olaf Haraldsson (r. 1016 – 28), to return home, restore his country’s independence, and complete Olaf Tryggvason’s Christianisation of his people.

Olaf Haraldsson’s ultimate fate was to become a martyr and a saint and, thanks to this, he is without doubt the best documented of all Viking Age Scandinavian kings, a popular subject for hagiographers and royal biographers alike. Dozens of skaldic poems, composed during his lifetime, and within a few years of death, have been preserved in later sagas of his life. However, Olaf’s perceived sanctity also means that objectivity is in short supply: who could criticise a saint in the Middle Ages? When he came to write the Saga of St Olaf, the longest of the kings’ sagas in Heimskringla, Snorri Sturluson drew on a wide range of earlier sources and deliberately omitted sources he considered too fanciful, but he was a product of his age and even this relatively sober saga comes close to hagiography at times.

Born around 995, Olaf was the posthumous son of Harald Grenske, the king of Vestfold and Agder and a direct descendant of Harald Fairhair. Olaf was probably baptised, with his mother Åsta and step-father Sigurd Syr, the king of Ringerike, as a child during Olaf Tryggvason’s Christianisation campaign, but the Norman writer William of Jumièges (died c. 1070) states that he was baptised in 1013 by the bishop of Rouen during a visit to Normandy. Olaf was as precocious as Olaf Tryggvason had been and at the age of twelve his step-father gave him a ship and warrior band so that he could embark on a career as a Viking raider. This made Olaf a king even though he as yet had no kingdom. It is hard today to imagine that grown men would follow a twelve-year-old boy into battle, but that was how strong the charisma of royal blood was. In a Viking career that took him from the Baltic to Spain, Olaf more than justified his men’s faith in him. Olaf spent much of his time in England, fighting in alliance with Thorkell the Tall some of the time, at others serving King Æthelred, earning a fortune in the process from tribute and payment for mercenary service.

Soon after jarl Erik left to join Cnut in England, Olaf returned to southern Norway and was proclaimed king with the support of his step-father and a coalition of petty kings. On learning of Olaf’s arrival in Norway, Svein Håkonarson raised a fleet in the Trøndelag and set off south to confront him. Olaf and Svein met in a sea battle at Nesjar in Oslo Fjord on Palm Sunday 25 March 1016. Svein was defeated and fled to take refuge with his father-in-law in Sweden, where he died soon afterwards. When he learned about his uncle’s defeat, Håkon too took flight, going to England where Cnut, now king, welcomed him and made him Earl of Worcester. His power now unchallenged in Norway, Olaf resumed Olaf Tryggvason’s Christianisation and state-building policies and, like him, he based himself at Nidaros, so that he could keep a close eye on this, the most independent-minded part of his kingdom. Despite some reversion to paganism under the rule of the jarls of Lade, Christianity remained firmly established in coastal areas, so Olaf focused his efforts on the uplands, where there were as yet few Christians. Olaf’s approach to evangelisation was, if anything, even more brutal than his predecessor’s. Those who converted enjoyed royal favour, those who resisted suffered death, torture, mutilation or blinding. Many of the petty valley kings lost their little kingdoms and were exiled from Norway, not always retaining all their body parts.

Advised by an English bishop called Grimketel or Grimkell, Olaf made the first steps towards giving Norway an established ecclesiastical structure and in Christianising Norway’s pagan laws. At the Moster thing in western Norway in 1024, he proclaimed new laws on religious observance. Observance of Christian fast and feast days was made compulsory as was baptism of all healthy infants. Christian laws of marriage were imposed. The whole community was made responsible for paying for the upkeep of churches and the clergy. The introduction of the Christian calendar ensured that the practices of the church began to dictate the rhythms of daily life. Copies of the Moster Law, as it became known, were read out at all the local things, which were ordered to approve them.

Olaf inevitably made enemies, especially among the chieftain class, who probably objected to the centralisation of royal authority as much as his religious revolution. Many of them yearned for a return to the days of weak, indirect rule when their king lived far away. After some early conflicts, Olaf made an ally of the Swedish king Olof Sköttkonung by marrying his daughter Astrid, but Cnut, who had added Denmark to his domains when his brother died in 1018, was not so easily out-maneouvred. Cnut believed that Norway was his by right and he sent letters to Olaf telling him that, if he wanted to avoid conflict, he should travel to England and submit to him as his overlord. Olaf refused and, to pre-empt any attempt by Cnut to invade Norway, he allied with his brother-in-law, the new Swedish king Önund Jacob (r. 1022 – c. 1050) in an attack on Denmark. The allies awaited Cnut’s inevitable retaliation on the Helgeå (‘Holy River’) in Skåne. When Cnut sailed into the river, his large Anglo-Danish fleet was thrown into disarray when Olaf and Önund broke down an earth and timber dam they had constructed upstream, releasing a violent torrent of water that overturned ships and drowned hundreds of his men. Somehow, Cnut managed to regain control of his forces and prevent the battle turning into a rout, but at the end of the day he had to abandon the battlefield to the Swedes and Danes. As it turned out, Helgeå proved to be a hollow victory for Olaf and Önund: they had suffered such severe casualties that they could not continue their campaign and their alliance broke up as each hurried home, fearful that Cnut might get there before them.

Their fears were justified. Within four years Önund was Cnut’s vassal and Olaf was dead. When Olaf returned to Norway after his Danish campaign, he found that his support was evaporating and he felt that of the leading chieftains there were only four he could be sure of. That proved to be over optimistic. When Cnut arrived off the coast of Viken with an Anglo-Danish fleet of fifty ships in 1028, the whole country rose against Olaf, who fled with a few loyal retainers first to Sweden and from there to the court of King Yaroslav in Russia. In Olaf’s place, Cnut restored Håkon Eriksson to his family’s jarldom of Lade and appointed him regent of Norway. The arrangement was not destined to last. In 1029, Håkon was lost at sea returning to Norway from a trip to England to visit Cnut. News of jarl Håkon’s disappearance quickly reached Olaf and in spring 1030 he set out to reclaim his throne, leaving his five-year-old illegitimate son Magnus the Good in Yaroslav’s care.

Olaf returned to Norway through Sweden, where he gathered an army of, according to Snorri, around 3,600 men, crossing the Kjølen Mountains into the Trøndelag. With the benefit of hindsight, Olaf’s court skald, Sigvat Tordsson, thought that if the king had been freer with his wealth he could have raised a larger army. However, it might have proved difficult to feed a larger force on its long march through the sparsely populated mountains on the way to Norway. News travelled fast along the Viking trade routes, giving Olaf’s enemies in Norway ample time to prepare for his arrival. As he descended the valley of the Verdalselva river towards Trondheim Fjord he met a much larger army of bonders near the farm of Stiklestad. While Olaf’s army probably included a high proportion of professional warriors, including the housecarls of his personal retinue, the peasant farmers he faced were not fighting with scythes and pitchforks. All freemen in Viking Age Scandinavia had to be equipped for military service so all would have had at least a shield and spear, and known how to use them, while the wealthier bonders would have been a great deal better equipped than that. The battle probably took place on 29 July 1030, and did not start until the day was well advanced. Olaf attempted to seize the initiative with a headlong downhill charge against the bonders’ army, hoping that if he broke their shield wall the bonders would lose confidence and run. The bonders gave ground but they did not break and run – too many of them remembered Olaf’s brutal rule to want to give in easily – and their superior numbers quickly began to tell. In desperate hand-to-hand fighting, Olaf was, we are told by Snorri, disabled by a wound to the leg, then speared in the guts by Thore Hund, the leader of the bonder army, and finally finished off by a blow to the neck. Now that Olaf was dead his army began to break up and flee: the battle had lasted about an hour and a half. Among the fugitives was Olaf’s fifteen-year-old half-brother Harald Hardrada. Though wounded, the young man was given refuge and treated by a sympathetic peasant, who helped him escape to Sweden once he recovered. Harald travelled on to Russia and then Constantinople, where he joined the Varangian Guard.

After the battle, some loyal peasants hid Olaf’s body from his enemies and secretly buried it on the banks of the Verdalselva. But though Olaf had lost his life and kingdom, he did in a real sense win the peace. Olaf had broken the back of pagan resistance to Christianity. When Olaf fled into exile in 1028, there was no return to paganism under Cnut’s equally militant Christian regime. The bonder army at Stiklestad was given spiritual encouragement by a Danish bishop: if anyone prayed to Odin for victory they did so privately. Olaf’s achievements were irreversible and Norway was now set in its course to become an integral part of Roman Catholic Christendom.

Miracles were soon reported at Olaf’s burial place and increasing numbers of people claimed that prayers addressed to him had been answered. A year after Olaf’s death, bishop Grimkell exhumed his body and reburied it in or near St Clement’s church in Nidaros. Olaf’s body was found to be uncorrupted, an incontrovertible sign of sanctity to the medieval Christian mind, and Grimkell declared him to be a saint on the spot. Even though the papacy never officially recognised Olaf as a saint, his cult spread rapidly, aided by the unpopularity of Danish rule and a series of bad harvests, which were widely interpreted as a sign of divine anger over Olaf’s killing. This does not mean that Norway was now deeply Christian. Pagan beliefs and sentiments persisted for generations. The church expected this – it was the case with all newly converted populations – and, where it could, it adopted or adapted earlier beliefs to Christian practices to make it easier for converts to engage with the new religion. As a saint, Olaf acquired many of the characteristics of the fertility god Freyr and the popular giant-slaying thunder god Thor. Farmers prayed to St Olaf for a good harvest as they would once have prayed to Freyr, while folk tales proliferated about his battles with malevolent trolls and giants.

The bonders had expected Cnut to rule them with a lighter hand but they were soon disillusioned. There was no magnate of comparable status to replace the drowned jarl Håkon, so Cnut had little choice but to try to rule Norway more directly, rather than relying on informal power-sharing as his father and grandfather had done. To this end, Cnut sent his teenage son Svein to rule Norway under the regency of his English mother Ælfgifu of Northampton. Ælfgifu proved such a harsh ruler that ‘Alfiva’s time’, as her regency was remembered in Norway, became a byword for oppressive government. Olaf’s own brutality was soon forgotten and he became instead a symbol of national unity. In 1034, two Norwegian chiefs who had taken Cnut’s side against Olaf, Kalv Arneson and Einar Tambarskjelve, became so disenchanted with Danish rule that they travelled to Russia to bring back Olaf’s son Magnus. When he arrived in Norway, a popular uprising broke out, forcing Ælfgifu and Svein to flee to Denmark. Svein died there soon afterwards.

Cnut passed away in 1035 and his Anglo-Scandinavian empire fell apart. Harold Harefoot, Cnut’s second son by Ælfgifu, became king of England, while Harthacnut, his son by Emma of Normandy, became king of Denmark. Harthacnut immediately recognised Magnus as king of Norway and the two kings agreed that whoever outlived the other would rule both Denmark and Norway. Accordingly, when Harthacnut died in 1042, Magnus became king of Denmark, appointing Cnut’s nephew Svein Estrithson to rule as his regent. Unusually, Svein took his surname from his mother, Cnut’s sister Estrith, to emphasise his connection to the royal house and to disassociate himself from his father jarl Ulf, who Cnut had executed for treason. Svein had a credible claim on the Danish throne through his mother and rebelled against Magnus and at the Viborg thing in northern Jutland the Danes paid him the homage due to a king. Magnus reacted swiftly and when he arrived in Denmark with a large fleet Svein fled into exile with King Önund in Sweden.

The Danes stayed loyal to Magnus because he proved himself to be a good defender of Denmark. For two centuries and more, Scandinavians had sailed out to plunder the Wendish tribes of the southern Baltic with complete impunity. By the early eleventh century, however, the Wends had learned Viking shipbuilding methods and were launching pirate raids of their own on Scandinavia, and the Danish islands proved particularly vulnerable. In summer 1043, Magnus led a fleet across the Baltic and sacked the Wendish stronghold of Jumne – Viking Jomsborg – in retaliation. Later in the year, he crushed a Wendish invasion of Jutland at the battle of Lyrskov Heath, to the north of Hedeby. An anonymous history of Norway known as Ágrip, written around 1190, tells the story that the night before the battle Magnus’s father appeared to him in a vision, reassured him of victory over the pagan Wends, and instructed how to deploy his army for battle. Being the son of a saint only added to Magnus’s lustre.

While Svein Estrithson was in Sweden, contemplating his next move, Harald Hardrada turned up, fresh from his service with the Varangians, with a claim to the Norwegian throne, a chest full of money, and a fearsome reputation as a war leader. Svein and Harald immediately formed an alliance but Magnus just as quickly broke it up by offering Harald a share of Norway. Magnus fell ill and died in Sjælland in 1047 aged only twenty-four: he had no male heirs. On his deathbed he expressed the wish that Harald should inherit Norway but that Svein should have Denmark. Svein was delighted but Harald’s ambition was not satisfied with Norway alone. For the next four years Harald fought to dislodge Svein from Denmark, launching great Viking raids every summer, culminating with the sacking of Hedeby in 1050. This was intended to strike a blow to Svein’s revenues, but Hedeby was not as important as it had been. The larger ships that were coming into use in the eleventh century found it increasingly difficult to reach Hedeby and after it was sacked again in 1066, this time by the Wends, it was abandoned in favour of Schleswig, which was built near deeper water across the Schlei Fjord.

Harald won every battle he fought against Svein but a decisive victory eluded him. Defeat never discouraged Svein, whose humane spirit endeared him to his subjects. In 1050, Svein went so far as to throw away a military advantage during a sea chase when he stopped to rescue drowning captives who Harald had thrown into the sea even though he knew this would allow his mortal enemy to escape. To fund his wars, Harald imposed a heavy burden of tax on the Norwegians and it was the ruthless way he dealt with opposition that earned him his nickname Hardrada, meaning ‘hard-ruler’. Harald gave Denmark ten years of peace while he fought over Norway’s border with Sweden, but he returned to the attack again in 1060. At the River Niså (now the River Nissan), near Halmstadt in Halland, Harald destroyed the Danish fleet in a night-long sea battle. Svein was lucky to escape with his life but even this disaster did not break Danish resistance. By now Harald’s subjects were getting restive and in 1064 he finally made peace and recognised Svein as king of Denmark. This was a decisive moment for both kingdoms, a parting of the ways. By the time dynastic marriages reunited the two kingdoms under a common ruler in 1380, each had acquired its own indelible national consciousness.

After his setback in Denmark, Harald Hardrada did not opt for the quieter life his subjects so obviously wished for. When King Edward the Confessor died in 1066, Harald gathered an army and sailed to England to pursue the tenuous claim to the English throne he had inherited from Magnus the Good only to meet with defeat and death at Stamford Bridge. Harald was succeeded jointly by his two sons Magnus II and Olaf III (r. 1067 – 93). Magnus died young in 1069 leaving as sole king Olaf, who gave up his father’s aggressive foreign policy, made peace with England and Denmark, and spent the remainder of his long reign in Norway improving the administration of his kingdom. His grateful people remembered him as Olaf Kyrre, Olaf the Peaceful. It was in Olaf’s time that Norwegian laws were first committed to writing and it was he who introduced the system of trade guilds to Norway, which formed such an important feature of urban life in medieval Western Europe. Since St Olaf’s time, bishops had been part of the royal household: Olaf gave Norway a regular diocesan structure, with bishoprics at Nidaros, Oslo and the newly founded town of Bergen. By the time Olaf fell ill and died in 1093, Norway was, to all intents and purposes, a regular medieval European kingdom.

The same could also be said of Denmark by the time Svein Estrithson died around 1074. Not the least sign of Svein’s own personal assimilation to Christian European culture was that he was the first Scandinavian king who could read and write. Although Svein pursued, in a halfhearted way, his claim to the English throne, supporting the English rebellion against the Normans in 1069 – 70, his reign after the end of the conflict with Harald Hardrada was mostly peaceful and dominated by efforts to build friendly relations with the Holy Roman Emperor Henry III and with the papacy. In his dealings with the popes, Svein, a prolific church-builder, had two main objectives, both of which would ultimately be achieved by his sons. Firstly, he pressed for the Danish church to have its own archbishop so that it would be independent of the German archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen. This ambition was finally fulfilled under his son Erik the Evergood (r. 1095 – 1103) in 1103, with the elevation of the bishopric of Lund to an archbishopric with responsibility for all of Scandinavia (Norway and Sweden got their own archbishoprics in 1152 and 1164). A second ambition was to have his great-grandfather Harald Bluetooth canonised for his role in converting the Danes, so that the Danish monarchy would have its own royal saint to bolster its authority. This would be fulfilled rather too literally by Svein’s son Cnut the Holy (r. 1080 – 86).

Cnut succeeded after the brief reign of his brother Harald III (1074/6 – ​1080). A popular ruler who was remembered as a legal reformer, Harald brought the end of the Viking Age a step closer by making piracy effectively a licensed activity, permissible only if the crown was given a share of the plunder. As a youth, Cnut had led Viking raids against the Wends, and led two invasions of England in 1069 and 1074 in support of his father’s claim to the English throne. Cnut ended the crown’s dependency on war booty by increasing the royal revenues from taxes and tolls, and enforced the payment of tithes (one tenth of income) to support the church. Cnut also cracked down on freelance Viking raiding, hanging Egil Ragnarsen, the jarl of Bornholm, for piracy. Not surprisingly, Cnut’s reforms made him unpopular with his subjects. Their discontent was magnified in 1085, when Cnut introduced a poll tax to pay for a planned invasion of England to pursue his claim to the throne. The fleet gathered in Limfjord but the threat of a German invasion kept Cnut in Schleswig, and in late summer his army broke up as his discontented warriors went home to see to the harvest. When Cnut ordered the fleet to gather again in 1086, a rebellion broke out in Jutland. Cnut fled to Odense where, on 10 July, the rebels killed him, together with his brother Benedict and seventeen of his followers, in front of the altar of St Alban’s priory. No Danish king would ever again raise a fleet to invade England.

Denmark had been officially Christian for 120 years when Cnut was killed, yet the aftermath of his death hints that pagan sentiments were not entirely extinguished. Cnut was succeeded by his brother Olaf Hunger (r. 1086 – 1095). Under Olaf, Denmark suffered several consecutive years of crop failures, widespread famine and starvation, earning him his unenviable nickname. To the Danes, it was all too obvious that the disaster was an expression of God’s anger over the sacrilegious killing of Cnut on consecrated ground. When Olaf died in August 1095, it was in very strange circumstances. According to the chronicler Saxo Grammaticus, Olaf ‘willingly gave himself to rid the land of its bad luck and begged that all of the guilt [of Olaf’s killing] would fall upon his head alone. So he offered his life for his country-men.’ This mysterious explanation of Olaf’s death has clear echoes of the fate of the semi-legendary Swedish king Domalde, who was sacrificed to appease the gods after two years of failed harvests (see ch. 1). Could it be that Olaf was sacrificed as a scapegoat for the guilt of the Danes? Or might Olaf have tried to atone for their sins by committing suicide (a very un-Christian act in itself)? Saxo’s statement certainly implies that Olaf met his death voluntarily and that he was neither murdered nor died of natural causes. It only adds to the mystery that Olaf’s burial place is unknown. It has been suggested that his body was cut up and distributed throughout Denmark in the belief that in some way this would help restore the fertility of the land. The sequel to Olaf’s death was, however, unambiguously Christian. His successor Erik the Evergood lobbied the papacy to have their brother Cnut recognised as a martyr and he was canonised in 1102. Erik had already begun to build a cathedral, in the pan-European Romanesque style, to house Cnut’s remains, close to the site of his martyrdom. Cnut’s skeleton, and that of his brother Benedict, can still be seen in the cathedral’s crypt: the bones show only too clearly evidence of the violent death of Denmark’s last Viking king.

Sweden was the last of the Scandinavian kingdoms to emerge as a unified state and, compared to Norway and Denmark, relatively little is known about its early development. Swedes did not participate in any great numbers in the settlement of Iceland, so their history was of peripheral interest to medieval Icelandic historians and saga writers who had so much to say about the kings of Norway. Nor do the Swedes feature much in contemporary annals from Western Europe because their main field of activity was in the east.

The earliest Swedish king we know much about was Erik the Victorious (r. c. 970 – 95). Erik’s own ancestry is difficult to trace because the sources are confused and contradictory. There is no evidence that either he or his immediate successors claimed to be members of the Yngling dynasty and the semi-legendary saga traditions hold him to be a descendent of Sigurd Ring, the victor of Bråvalla, who founded a new dynasty at Uppsala around the middle of the eighth century. Erik earned fame for his victory over his nephew Styrbjorn Starki and his Danish allies at the Battle of Fyrisvellir, a marshy plain near Uppsala, some time in the 980s. No truly reliable account of the battle exists but it is described in several Icelandic sagas and in the Danish history of Saxo Grammaticus. In addition, two late tenth-century runestones in Skåne (now in Sweden but then in Denmark) commemorating men ‘who did not flee at Uppsala’ probably refer to this battle, as may a contemporary runestone on the island of Öland, commemorating a Danish chief who was buried there, perhaps after dying on his way home from wounds suffered in the battle. Even more convincing is a runestone at Högby in Östergötland that commemorates Asmund, ‘who fell at Fœri’ (i.e. Fyris), perhaps on Erik’s side.

The exact boundaries of Erik’s kingdom are still hazy. In the Viking Age, Sweden ‘proper’ consisted roughly of the modern Swedish province of Svealand, with its heartland around Uppsala and Lake Mälaren, and the far southern part of Norrland (roughly the modern provinces of Gästrikland and Hälsingland). The area to the north, extending up beyond the Arctic Circle was populated mainly by Sami reindeer hunters and only became incorporated into Sweden later in the Middle Ages. The Swedes traded with the Sami and also raided them to collect tribute in furs. Between Sweden and the Danish provinces of Skåne and Blekinge was Götaland, the homeland of the Götar (the Geats of ‘Beowulf’). Despite inhabiting a large area and being an apparently numerous people, virtually nothing is known about the Götar in the Viking Age. There is no archaeological evidence of political centralisation to compare with the royal centres at Jelling or Uppsala, so they were probably divided into many local chiefdoms or petty kingdoms. The Götar do not feature prominently in saga traditions, are not mentioned in contemporary literary sources as taking part in any Viking raids, and even those who actually visited the Baltic, such as Rimbert (the biographer of St Ansgar) and the merchant Wulfstan, had almost nothing to say about them. This may simply be a result of confusion over identities – the Götar were not culturally or linguistically distinct from the Swedes – or, more likely, that they were under the political domination of the Swedes. Legendary traditions, like those preserved in ‘Beowulf’, certainly refer to wars between the Swedes and the Götar; and some kings of the Götar, such as Alrik, who, according to the Sparlösa runestone, ruled in Västergötland c. 800, were members of Swedish royal dynasties. Also in a loose association with Sweden was the large Baltic island of Gotland, whose inhabitants were independent but paid tribute to the Swedish kings in return for rights of free travel and free trade. Gotland would not be fully incorporated into Sweden until the thirteenth century, by which time the Viking Age was over.

Viking Age Sweden benefited from its proximity to the important trade routes across the Baltic to Russia and beyond to the Islamic world and the Byzantine Empire. While Uppsala was the kingdom’s main political and religious centre, its main trading centre was Birka on the island of Björkö near the mouth of Lake Mälaren about 20 miles west of Stockholm. Birka developed around 800, replacing the earlier Vendel period trading place at Helgö, about 5 miles to the south-east. Birka covered around 17 acres (7 hectares) and probably had a permanent population of between 700 and 1,000 people. In the tenth century, Birka was protected by a rampart and a small hillfort, and a row of wooden stakes restricted access to the main harbour. Further barriers of wooden stakes and rocks were used to obstruct access channels to prevent pirate fleets making quick attacks on the town. Such defences were necessary as the many islands and inlets along the approaches to Birka were notorious hiding places for pirates. Among their victims was the missionary St Ansgar, who was robbed of all his belongings while sailing to Birka in 829.

The organically-rich occupation deposits at Birka, known as Svarta Jorden (‘Black Earth’), are up to 6 feet thick and have produced abundant information about the buildings and daily life of the town. It was divided into plots of land, delineated by passageways flanked by ditches. Each plot contained one or two houses and several outbuildings used as workshops and stores. The buildings were timber-framed with walls of wattle-and-daub and roofs of thatch, wood and, occasionally, turf. Many of the inhabitants were merchants but there were also craftsmen in metals, jewellery, bone and antler, and furs, and even some warriors, perhaps a small permanent garrison to protect the town and keep order. Considerable quantities of Arab coins confirm that Birka’s most important trade links were with the east, especially after c. 900, but there was also Rhineland pottery and glass and scraps of Frisian woollen cloth. Birka is surrounded by cemeteries containing over 3,000 graves, of which about 1,100 have been excavated. The graves indicate that Birka had a mixed population of Scandinavians and foreigners. Native graves, the majority, were cremations under small mounds or in stone settings shaped like ships or triangles. The rich grave goods found in these burials are unparalleled for quality and include large quantities of imported glass, weapons, jewellery and pottery. The foreign graves were inhumations in coffins or stone chambers without grave goods. These were on the outer edges of the cemeteries and are thought to have belonged to Christian and Muslim merchants and craftsmen and their families. Adam of Bremen said that Danish, Norwegian, Wendish and ‘Scythian’ (probably Rus) ships sailed to Birka annually for commerce. Some of the inhumations might also belong to native converts to Christianity, of whom there were a few at Birka.

The missionary St Ansgar met Swedish kings at Birka when he visited in 829 – 30 and 851 – 2, but there is no evidence of a royal residence on the island. Birka was probably administered from a royal estate at Hovgården on the neighbouring island of Adelsö, a couple of miles away, rather as Hedeby was administered from the royal estate at Flüsing. One of the five large burial mounds at Hovgården, known collectively as the Kungshögar (‘the kings’ barrows’), was excavated a century ago and was found to contain the remains of a high status male who had been cremated in a boat along with horses, cattle and dogs some time around 900. Birka seems to have been abandoned quite abruptly during the reign of Erik the Victorious. A complete absence of Anglo-Saxon coins suggests that this must have happened before Æthelred II began paying enormous sums in Danegeld to the Vikings in the 990s: thousands of his coins have been found in Scandinavia and some of them, at least, would have found their way to Birka had it still been occupied. There is no evidence that Birka met a violent end so it is likely that trade simply shifted to the new town, founded by Erik c. 980, of Sigtuna on the northern shore of Lake Mälaren about 15 miles south of Uppsala.

Sweden comes more fully into the light of recorded history during the reign of Erik’s son Olof Skötkonung (‘treasure king’) (r. 995 – 1022). Olof’s reign is enormously significant both because he was Sweden’s first Christian king and because he was the first king who is known to have ruled both the Swedes and the Götar, so laying the foundations of the medieval Swedish kingdom. However, those foundations were very shaky and it was well into the twelfth century before Sweden was a fully Christianised, unified kingdom. The paucity of sources for Viking Age Sweden makes it impossible to know how Olof actually came to rule over both the Swedes and the Götar. Presumably dynastic connections between the two peoples already existed and there may have been earlier kings who ruled over both areas: there is certainly no reason to assume that Olof’s achievement was unprecedented or that he came to rule the Götar by conquest rather than by election at the regional things held annually in Västergötland and Östergötland. However, Olof’s union of the two people was also not final because many of his successors did not exercise authority over the Götar. Sometimes, the Götar elected different kings to the Swedes, on other occasions they did without a king altogether and were ruled by their own chiefs and lawspeakers. The achievement of stable dynastic rule was made more difficult in Sweden because, unlike in Denmark and Norway, it was not necessary to have royal blood to be chosen as a king. The Viking Age was a distant memory when the Swedes and Götar were at last permanently united in 1173 by Knut Eriksson (r. 1167 – 96).

The fragility of the Swedish kingdom contributed to the slow acceptance of Christianity. In Denmark and Norway forceful action by kings overcame pagan opposition to Christianity, but Swedish kings had to act with greater circumspection. Pagan Swedish kings did not actively oppose missionary activity. The kings who Ansgar met at Birka gave him permission to preach after consulting the local thing, but they showed no interest in converting themselves and, without royal backing, he failed to found lasting Christian communities. The missionary effort was renewed by Unni, like Ansgar an archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, but he died at Birka in 936 with little to show for his efforts. The conversion of the Danes under Harald Bluetooth gave missionary efforts in Sweden a new impetus. During Erik’s reign a Danish missionary, Bishop Odinkar Hvite the Elder, began the conversion of the Götar from his base at Skara in Västergötland. Adam of Bremen believed that Odinkar enjoyed so much success because, as a Dane, ‘he could easily convince the barbarians of everything about our religion’. Erik was himself baptised when he was in Denmark in the 980s or early 990s, but Adam says that he renounced Christianity as soon as he returned to Sweden. The traditional story of Olof Skötkonung’s conversion is that he was baptised by St Sigfrid, an English missionary from Glastonbury, in 1008 at Husaby, not far from Skara. This date is probably too late: Olof used Christian imagery on the coins issued at the new town of Sigtuna right from the beginning of his reign, so he may really have been baptised before he became king. It is possible that the young Olof was baptised at the same time as his father, but was more receptive to the new religion. ‘God’s Sigtuna’, as Olof called the town on his coins, seems to have had a largely Christian population right from its foundation, because few pagan burials have been discovered in its extensive cemeteries. It was probably Olof’s intention that Sigtuna would be a Christian counter-balance to the nearby pagan cult centre at Uppsala and he founded several churches there. Olof began to give Sweden a formal ecclesiastical organisation, founding a bishopric at Skara in 1014, but the strength of pagan sentiment was such that he never risked trying to convert the Swedes by force. Olof’s softly-softly approach to promoting Christianity was still too much for devout pagans and towards the end of his reign he was forced to share power with his son Jacob, who succeeded him after his death in 1022. The pagans detested Jacob’s biblical name and they forced him to adopt the proper Swedish name Önund when he became king.

Changing his name was about the limit of Önund’s compromise with the pagans. He and his immediate successors continued to co-operate with the church, encourage missionary activity, and extend the country’s diocesan structure. By around 1080, paganism was dying out among the Götar, and missionaries were travelling the countryside destroying the last temples and pagan idols. The Swedes, however, stubbornly resisted conversion. Missionary bishops believed that paganism would never collapse unless the temple at Uppsala was destroyed, but Swedish kings refused to sanction the use of force. Önund did not retaliate when an over-enthusiastic English missionary called Wilfrid was hacked to pieces by a pagan mob after he provocatively destroyed an idol of Thor at Uppsala in the 1030s. Thirty years later, king Stenkil (r. 1060 – 66) refused to allow Adalvard, the newly appointed bishop of Sigtuna, to destroy the temple at Uppsala, fearing that this would provoke a pagan uprising. He was right to be wary. Stenkil’s son Inge the Elder, who became king around 1080, was a more militant Christian, but when he tried to outlaw paganism at the thing at Uppsala, he was pelted with stones and had to flee into exile in Västergötland. In Inge’s place, the Swedes chose his brother-in-law Blót-Sven (‘sacrifice-Sven’), who agreed to reinstate paganism and perform the traditional sacrifices. Immediately, a horse was brought and cut into pieces for eating and a sacred tree was smeared with its blood. Sven reigned only for about three years. In exile, Inge raised a small mounted force and invaded Svealand, taking Sven by surprise in the early hours of the morning in his hall. After surrounding the place, Inge’s men set the hall on fire. The few who managed to get out of the burning building were butchered by Inge’s men. Sven’s death broke pagan resistance to Christianity. Restored to the throne, Inge resumed his anti-pagan crusade and soon afterwards the cult centre at Uppsala was destroyed and replaced with a church. By the time Inge died in 1105, Sweden was mainly Christian. The death of the old gods, so long prophesised, had finally come to pass.