In many ways the lords were richer and better off than before, not only because they had less cause to fight among themselves, being all Harald’s men, but because they were made collectors of the land dues and fines for the King, and out of all dues collected the earl received a third part for himself; and these dues had been so much increased by Harald that the earls had greater revenues than before; only each earl was bound to raise and support sixty men-at-arms for the King’s service, while the chief men under them had also to bring into the field their quota of armed men. Thus Harald endeavoured to establish a feudal system in Norway similar to that introduced into England by William the Conqueror, and in time the whole country was subdued outwardly to his service, and Harald won his bride. But although he cut off or subdued his opponents and there was outward peace, a fierce discontent smouldered in the minds of many of the nobles who hitherto had been independent lords, and they would not brook the authority of Harald, but fled oversea, or joined the viking cruisers, so that the seas swarmed with their vessels and every land was infested with their raids. It was at this time that Iceland and the Faröe Islands were colonized by people driven out of Norway, and others went to Shetland and the Orkneys and Hebrides and joined their countrymen there; others settled in Ireland, and others, again, lived a roving life, marauding on the coasts of their own country in the summer, and in other lands in the winter season; so that Norway itself was not free from their raids. King Harald fitted out a fleet and searched all the islands and wild rocks along the coast to clear them of the vikings. This he did during three summers, and wherever he came the vikings took to flight, steering out into the open sea; but no sooner was the King gone home again than they gathered as thickly as before, devastating up into the heart of Norway to the north; until Harald grew tired of this sort of work, and one summer he sailed out into the western ocean, following them to Shetland and the Orkneys, and slaying every viking who could not save himself by flight. Then he pushed his way southward along the Hebrides, which were called the Sudreys[14] then, and slew many vikings who had been great lords in their time at home in Norway; and he pursued them down to the Isle of Man; but the news of his coming had gone before him and he found all the inhabitants fled and the island left entirely bare of people and property. So he turned north again, himself plundering far and wide in Scotland, and leaving little behind him but the hungry wolves gathering on the desolate sea-shore. He returned to the Orkneys, and offered the earldom of those islands to Ragnvald, one of his companions, the Lord of More, who had lost a son in the war; but Ragnvald preferred to return with Harald to Norway, so he handed the earldom of Orkney and the Isles over to his brother Sigurd. King Harald agreed to this and confirmed Sigurd in the earldom before he departed for Norway.
Harald Fairhair
When King Harald had returned home again, and was feasting one day in the house of Ragnvald, Earl of More, he went to a bath and had his hair combed and dressed in fulfilment of his vow. For ten years his hair had been uncut, so that the people called him Lufa or “Shockhead”; but when he came in with his hair shining and combed after the bath, Ragnvald called him Harfager, or “Fair Hair,” and all agreed that it was a fitting name for him, and it clung to him thenceforward, so that he is known as Harald Harfager to this day.
Chapter VI
The Northmen in Ireland
There is yet another direction to which we must turn our attention, if we would understand the grip that the Northmen at this time had taken on the British Islands, and the general trend of Norse and Danish history outside their own country. Their conquests and influence in Ireland were even more widespread and equally lasting with those in England. We find them from the beginning of the ninth century (from about A.D. 800 onward) making investigations all round the coast of Ireland, and pushing their way up the rivers in different directions. The Norse, many of whom probably reached Ireland by way of the Western Isles and Scotland, consolidated their conquests in the north under a leader named Turgesius (perhaps a Latinized form of Thorgils), who ruled from the then capital of Ireland and the ecclesiastical city of St Patrick, Armagh. Thorgils was a fierce pagan, and he established himself as high-priest of Thor, the Northman’s god of thunder, in the sacred church of St Patrick, desecrating it with heathen practices; while he placed his wife Ota as priestess in another of the sacred spots of Ireland, the ancient city of Clonmacnois, on the Shannon, with its seven churches and its high crosses, from the chief church of which she gave forth her oracles.
Soon after this there arrived in Ireland another chief, named Olaf the White, who chose Dublin, then a small town on the river Liffey, as his capital, building there a fortress, and establishing a “Thing-mote,” or place of meeting and lawgiving, such as he was accustomed to at home. From this date the importance of Armagh waned, and Dublin became not only the Norse capital of Ireland and an important city, but also the centre from which many Norse and Danish kings ruled over Dublin and Northumbria at once. We shall see when we come to the time of Athelstan, and the story of Olaf Cuaran, or Olaf o’ the Sandal, who claimed kingship over both Ireland and Northumbria, how close was the connexion between the two.
The Danes, who succeeded the Norwegians, first came to Ireland in the year 847, probably crossing over from England. They had heard much of the successes of the Northmen or Norwegians in Ireland, and they came over to dispute their conquests with them and try to take from them the fruit of their victories. They did not at first think of warring with the Irish themselves, but only with their old foes, the Norsemen, whom they were ready to fight wherever they could find them; but as time went on we find them fighting sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other, mixing themselves up in the private quarrels of the Irish chiefs and kings, often for their own advantage. On the other hand, the Irish chiefs were often ready enough to take advantage of their presence in the country to get their help in fighting with their neighbours.
The Kings of Dublin in the later time were Danish princes, who passed on to other parts of Ireland, building forts in places which had good harbours and could easily be fortified, such as Limerick and Waterford, which were for long Danish towns, ruled by Danish chiefs, most of them of the family of Ivar of Northumbria. Though their hold on their settlements was at all times precarious, and they met with many reverses, and several decisive defeats from the Irish, the Danes gradually succeeded in building up their Irish and Northumbrian kingdom. The official title of these rulers was “King of the Northmen of all Ireland and Northumbria.”
The story we have now to tell is connected with a prince who probably was not a Dane, but a Norseman, or a “Fair-foreigner,” as the Irish called them, to distinguish them from the Danes, or “Dark-foreigners.” This was Olaf the White, who came to Ireland in 853. In the course of a warring life he succeeded in making himself King of the Norse in Dublin. He seems to have been of royal descent, and he was married to Aud, or Unn, daughter of Ketill Flatnose, a mighty and high-born lord in Norway. Aud is her usual name, but in the Laxdæla Saga, where we get most of her history, she is named Unn the Deep-minded or Unn the Very-wealthy. All this great family left their native shores after King Harald Fairhair came to the throne, and they settled in different places, Ketill himself in the Orkney Isles, where some of his sons accompanied him; but his son Biorn the Eastman and Helgi, another son, said they would go to Iceland and settle there. Sailing up the west coast, they entered a firth which they called Broadfirth. They went on shore with a few men, and found a narrow strip of land between the foreshore and the hills, where Biorn thought he would find a place of habitation. He had brought with him the pillars of his temple from his home in Norway, as many of the Icelandic settlers did, and he flung them overboard, as was the custom with voyagers, to see where they would come ashore. When they were washed up in a little creek he said that this must be the place where he should build his house; and he took for himself all the land between Staff River and Lava Firth, and dwelt there. Ever after it was called after him Biorn Haven.