The latter part of Alfred’s reign was devoted to the affairs of his country. He gave his people good laws; dividing the kingdom into divisions called “hundreds” and “tythings,” which exercised a sort of internal jurisdiction over their own affairs. He rebuilt London, and over the whole of his kingdom he caused houses to be built, good and dignified beyond any that had hitherto been known in the land. He encouraged industries of all kinds, and had the artificers taught new and better methods of work in metals and gold. He encouraged religion and learning, inviting good and learned men from abroad or wherever he could hear of them, and richly rewarding their efforts. He devoted much time to prayer; but his wise and sane mind prevented him from becoming a bigot, as his activity in practical affairs prevented him from becoming a mere pedant. One of his most lasting works was the establishment of England’s first navy, to guard her shores against the attacks of foreigners. All these great reforms were carried out amid much personal suffering, for from his youth he had been afflicted with an internal complaint, beyond the surgical knowledge of his day to cure, and he was in constant pain of a kind so excruciating that Asser tells us the dread of its return tortured his mind even when his body was in comparative rest. There is in English history no character which combines so many great qualities as that of Alfred. Within and without he found his kingdom in peril and misery, crushed down, ignorant and without religion; he left it a flourishing and peaceful country, united and at rest. When his son, Edward the Elder, succeeded him on the throne, not only Wessex but the whole North of England, with the Scots, took him “for father and lord”; that is, they accepted him, for the first time in history, as king of a united England. This great change was the outcome of the many years of patient building up of his country which Alfred had brought about through wise rule. He was open-handed and liberal to all, dividing his revenue into two parts, one half of which he kept for his own necessities and the uses of the kingdom and for building noble edifices; the other for the poor, the encouragement of learning, and the support and foundation of monasteries. He took a keen interest in a school for the young nobles which he founded and endowed, determining that others should not, in their desire for learning, meet with the same difficulties that he had himself experienced. In his childhood it had not been thought necessary that even princes and men of rank should be taught to read; and the story is familiar to all that he was enticed to a longing for knowledge by the promise of his stepmother Judith, daughter of the King of the Franks, who had been educated abroad, that she would give a book of Saxon poetry which she had shown to him and his brother to whichever of them could first learn to read it and repeat the poetry by heart. Alfred seems to have learned Latin from Asser, for he translated several famous books into Saxon, so that his people might attain a knowledge of their contents without the labour through which he himself had gone. When we consider that he was also, as William of Malmesbury tells us, “present in every action against the enemy even up to the end of his life, ever daunting the invaders, and inspiring his subjects with the signal display of his courage,” we may well admire the indomitable energy of this man. In his old age he caused candles to be made with twenty-four divisions, to keep him aware of the lapse of time and help him to allot it to special duties. One of his attendants was always at hand to warn him how his candle was burning, and to remind him of the special duty he was accustomed to perform at any particular hour of the day or night.
The latter years of Alfred were comparatively free from incursions by the Danes or Norsemen; this was the period during which the attention of the Norse was attracted in other directions. The conquests of Rollo or Rolf the Ganger or “the Walker” in the North of France were attracting a large body of the more turbulent spirits to those shores which in after-times they were to call Normandy, or the land of the Northmen. After Gorm the Englishman’s submission to Alfred many of the Danes from England seem to have joined these fresh bands of marauders, advancing up the Seine to Paris, and devastating the country as far as the Meuse, the Scheldt, and the Marne on the east and Brittany on the west. In time to come, under Rollo’s descendant, William the Conqueror, these people were once more to pour down upon English shores and reconquer the land that their forefathers had lost through Alfred’s bravery and statesmanship. Rollo overran Normandy for the first time in the year 876,[11] and William the Conqueror landed at Pevensey in 1066, nearly two hundred years later. William’s genealogy was as follows:—He was son of Robert the Magnificent, second son of Richard the Good, son of Richard the Fearless, son of William Longsword, son of Rollo or Rolf the Walker—six generations. The direct connexion between the Anglo-Norman houses was through Emma, daughter of Richard the Fearless, who married first Ethelred the Unready, King of England, and afterwards his enemy and successor, Canute the Great. It was on account of this connexion that William the Conqueror laid claim to the Crown of England.
Chapter V
Harald Fairhair, First King of Norway, and the Settlements in the Orkneys
There were yet other directions toward which the Norse viking-hosts had already turned their eyes. Not far out from the coasts of Norway lay the Orkney and Shetland Islands, and beyond them again the Faröe Isles rose bleak and treeless from the waters of the northern sea. The shallow boats of the Norsemen, though they dreaded the open waters of the Atlantic, were yet able, in favourable weather, to push their way from one set of islands to another, and from the earliest times of which we know anything about them they had already made some settlements on these rocky shores. To the Norseman, accustomed to a hardy life and brought up to wring a scanty livelihood almost out of the barren cliff itself, even the Orkney and Shetland Isles had attractions. Those who have seen the tiny steadings of the Norwegian farmer to-day, perched up on what appears from below to be a perfectly inaccessible cliff, with only a few feet of soil on which to raise his scanty crop, solitary all the year round save for the occasional visit of a coasting steamer, will the less wonder that the islands on the Scottish coast proved attractive to his viking forefathers. Often, in crossing that stormy sea, the adventurous crew found a watery grave, or encountered such tempests that the viking boat was almost knocked to pieces; but on the whole these hardy seamen passed and repassed over the North Sea with a frequency that surprises us, especially when we remember that their single-sailed boats were open, covered in only at the stem or stern,[12] and rowed with oars. We hear of these settlers on our coasts before Norwegian history can be said to have begun; and from early times, also, they carried on a trade with Ireland; we hear of a merchant in the Icelandic “Book of the Settlements” named Hrafn, who was known as the “Limerick trader,” because he carried on a flourishing business with that town, which later grew into importance under the sons of Ivar, who settled there and built the chief part of the city.
But during the latter years of Alfred’s reign and for many years after his death a great impetus was given to the settlements in the North of Scotland by the coming to the throne of Norway of the first king who reigned over the whole country, Harald Fairhair. He established a new form of rule which was very unpopular among his great lords and landowners, and the consequence of this was that a large number of his most powerful earls or “jarls” left the country with their families and possessions and betook themselves to Iceland, the Orkneys and Hebrides, and to Ireland. They did not go as marauders, as those who went before them had done, but they went to settle, and establish new homes for themselves where they would be free from what they considered to be Harald Fairhair’s oppressive laws. Before his time each of these jarls had been his own master, ruling his own district as an independent lord, but paying a loose allegiance to the prince who chanced at the time to prove the most powerful. From time to time some more ambitious prince arose, who tried to subdue to his authority the men of consequence in his own part of the country, but hitherto it had not come into the mind of any one of them to try to make himself king over the whole land.
The idea of great kingdoms was not then a common one. In England up to this time no king had reigned over the whole country; there had been separate rulers for East Anglia, Wessex, Northumbria, etc., sometimes as many as seven kings reigning at the same time in different parts of the country, in what was called the “Heptarchy.” It was only when the need of a powerful and capable ruler was felt, and there chanced to be a man fitted to meet this need, as in Alfred’s time and that of his son, Edward the Elder, that the kingdoms drew together under one sovereign. But even then it was not supposed that things would remain permanently like this; under a weaker prince they might at any moment split up again into separate dynasties. In Ireland this system remained in force far longer, for centuries indeed, the country being broken up into independent and usually warring chiefdoms. Abroad, none of the Northern nations had united themselves into great kingdoms up to the time of Harald Fairhair, but about this date a desire began to show itself to consolidate the separate lordships under single dynasties, partly because it chanced that men of more than usual power and ambition happened to be found in them, and partly for protection from neighbouring States; in the case of Harald himself, his pride also led him to desire to take a place in the world as important as that of the neighbouring kings. In Sweden King Eirik and in Denmark King Gorm the Old were establishing themselves on the thrones of united kingdoms. The effort of Harald to accomplish the same task in Norway was so important in its effects, not only on the future history of his own country, but on that of portions of our own, that it is worth while to tell it more in detail.
Harald was son of Halfdan the Black, with whose reign authentic Norwegian history begins. Halfdan ruled over a good part of the country, which he had gained by conquest, and he was married to Ragnhild, a wise and intelligent woman, and a great dreamer of dreams. It is said that in one of her dreams she foretold the future greatness of her son Harald Fairhair. She thought she was in her herb-garden, her shift fastened with a thorn; she drew out the thorn with her hand and held it steadily while it began to grow downward, until it finally rooted itself firmly in the earth. The other end of it shot upward and became a great tree, blood-red about the root, but at the top branching white as snow. It spread until all Norway was covered by its branches. The dream came true when Harald, who was born soon afterwards, subdued all Norway to himself.
Harald grew up strong and remarkably handsome, very expert in all feats, and of good understanding. It did not enter his head to extend his dominions until some time after his father’s death, for he was only ten years old at that time, and his youth was troubled by dissensions among his nobles, who each wanted to possess himself of the conquests made by Halfdan the Black; but Harald subdued them to himself as far south as the river Raum. Then he set his affections on a girl of good position named Gyda, and sent messengers to ask her to be his wife. But she was a proud and ambitious girl, and declared that she would not marry any man, even though he were styled a king, who had no greater kingdom than a few districts. “It is wonderful to me that while in Sweden King Eirik has made himself master of the whole country and in Denmark Gorm the Old did the same, no prince in Norway has made the entire kingdom subject to himself. And tell Harald,” she added, “that when he has made himself sole King of Norway, then he may come and claim my hand; for only then will I go to him as his lawful wife.” The messengers, when they heard this haughty answer, were for inflicting some punishment upon her, or carrying her off by force; but they thought better of it and returned to Harald first, to learn what he would say. But the King looked at the matter in another light. “The girl,” he said, “has not spoken so much amiss as that she should be punished for it, but on the contrary I think she has said well, for she has put into my mind what it is wonderful that I never before thought of. And now I solemnly vow, and I take God, who rules over all things, to witness, that never will I clip or comb my hair until I have subdued Norway, with scat,[13] dues, and dominions to myself; or if I succeed not, I will die in the attempt.”
The messengers, hearing this, thanked the King, saying that “it was royal work to fulfil royal words.”
After this, Harald set about raising an army and ravaging the country, so that the people were forced to sue for peace or to submit to him; and he marched from place to place, fighting with all who resisted him, and adding one conquest after another to his crown; but many of the chiefs of Norway preferred death to subjection, and it is stated of one king named Herlaug that when he heard that Harald was coming he ordered a great quantity of meat and drink to be brought and placed in a burial-mound that he had erected for himself, and he went alive into the mound and ordered it to be covered up and closed. A mound answering to this description has been opened not far north of Trondhjem, near where King Herlaug lived, and in it were found two skeletons, one in a sitting posture, while in a second chamber were bones of animals. It is believed that this was Herlaug’s mound where he and a slave were entombed; it had been built for himself and his brother King Hrollaug, to be their tombs when they were dead, but it became the sepulchre of the living. As for Hrollaug, he determined to submit to Harald, and he erected a throne on the summit of a height on which he was wont to sit as king, and ordered soft beds to be placed below on the benches on which the earls were accustomed to sit when there was a royal council. Then he threw himself down from the king’s seat into the seat of the earls, in token that he would resign his sovereignty to Harald and accept an earldom under him; and he entered the service of Harald and gave his kingdom up to him, and Harald bound a shield to his neck and placed a sword in his belt and accepted his service; for it was his plan, when any chief submitted to him, to leave him his dominions, but to reduce him to the position of a jarl, holding his rights from himself and owning fealty to him.