For a while Olaf, with his great ships, reigned victoriously over Norway, defeating more than one effort of the old pagan Vikings to shake his power. One of these defeated rivals, Erik Jarl (Earl Erik), took refuge in Sweden, gathered there a number of adherents who had like himself fled from Norway to avoid Olaf's strong-handed methods of reform and conversion, and with them sailed the Baltic, plundering its coasts in the old Viking fashion. King Svend of Denmark was jealous of the power of Norway, welcomed Erik at his Court, and gave him his daughter's hand. Svend's queen, Sigrid, was a Swedish princess, and Erik set to work to form a triple league against Norway of which the three branches would be his own following of Norwegian malcontents and the Swedes and Danes.
Olaf had spent the summer of the year 1000, with a fleet of sixty ships, in the South-Eastern Baltic. Autumn was coming, and the King was preparing to return home before the wintry weather began, when news arrived that hastened his departure. It was brought by one of his jarls, Earl Sigvald, who came with eleven ships, manned by his clansmen, and reported that the rebel Erik had been joined by the kings of Sweden and Denmark, and the three fleets of the allies were preparing to fall upon Olaf on his homeward voyage. But Sigvald assured the King that if he would allow him to pilot the Norwegian fleet he would take it safely through channels deep enough for even the "Long Serpent," and elude the hostile armada, which outnumbered Olaf's fleet three to one.
Sigvald, however, was a traitor. He had promised to lead Olaf into waters where the allied fleets would be waiting to attack him. And he knew they would be anchored inside the island of Rügen, near the islet of Svold.
So Olaf, trusting to his false friend, sailed westward from Wendland to his last battle. The "Saga" tells how on a bright morning, Erik Jarl and the two kings watched from Svold the approach of the Norwegian ships, and at first doubted if Olaf was with them, but when they saw the "Long Serpent" towering above the rest they doubted no longer, and gave orders for their 180 ships to clear for action, agreeing that Norway should be divided among them and the "Long Serpent" should be the prize of whoever first set foot on her deck, so sure were they that numbers would give them victory even against a champion of the seas like Olaf Tryggveson. The swift "Crane" and the "Short Serpent," taken from Raud of Salten Fiord, had sailed ahead of the fleet. They saw the ships of the allies crowding out of the channel between Svold and the mainland, and turned back to give the alarm. Thorkild, the half-brother of Olaf, who commanded the "Short Serpent," urged the King to bear out to sea and avoid a fight with such desperate odds. But Olaf's blood was up. Like the triremes of the Mediterranean, the "Serpents," "Dragons," and "Cranes" of the northern seas used only the oars in battle, and the King gave the order which meant fighting. "Down with the sails!" he said. "Who talks of running away? I never fled yet and never will. My life is in God's hands, but flight would be shame for ever."
The battle that followed is the most famous in Viking story. We know it chiefly through poetic records. But there is no doubt the "Saga" preserves for us much of the living tradition of the time, and if its writers yielded to the temptation of decorating their narrative with picturesque detail, it must be remembered that they told the tale of Olaf's last sea-fight to men who knew from experience what Northern war was like, so they give us what we chiefly want, a lifelike picture of a Viking battle.
Just as Shakespeare tells how at Shrewsbury "the King had many marching in his coats," and to this day in an Abyssinian army several nobles are dressed and armed like the King to divert personal attack from him, so, as he stood on the after-deck of the "Long Serpent," Olaf had beside him one of his best warriors, Kolbiorn Slatter, a man like himself in height and build, and wearing the same splendid armour, with gilded shield and helmet and crimson cloak. Round them were grouped the picked fighting men of the bodyguard, the "Shield-burg," so called because it was their duty to form a breastwork of their shields and ward off arrows and javelins from the King. On the poop also were the King's trumpeters bearing the "war horns"—long horns of the wild ox, which now sounded the signal for battle. The droning call was taken up by ship after ship, as the shouting sailors sent down sails and yards on deck. The ships closed on each other side by side, and drew in their oars, forming in close line abreast, and then under bare masts the long array of war galleys, with their high bows carved into heads of beasts and birds and dragons, drifted with the current towards the hostile fleet.
The sailors were lashing the ships together as they moved. Manœuvring appears to have had small part in most Viking fights. The fleet became one great floating fortress, and as the ships met bow to bow the best warriors fought hand to hand on the forecastle decks.
