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.