The Story of Norway

by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

From that day Sverre's peace of mind was gone. Great thoughts tossed and whirled about in his soul and his life seemed poor and meaningless. His ambition kept him awake in the night and bright vistas of future achievements beckoned him from afar.

"If I am born to a crown," he said to his mother, "then I will strive to win it, whatever it may cost me. Life has no more joy for me without it, and therefore I will stake life on it."

Disregarding the warnings of the bishop he embarked for Norway, and, without revealing who he was, spent some time in investigating the sentiments of the people toward King Magnus. This is highly characteristic of Sverre. He made no leap in the dark, but computed carefully the strength of the enemy whom he was to combat. What he learned was, however, far from encouraging. The people seemed everywhere devoted to King Magnus and well contented with his rule. Sverre also made the acquaintance of Erling Skakke, studied him thoroughly, and talked with his men-at-arms, who found the priest from the Faeroe Isles a droll and entertaining fellow, and freely told him all the gossip of the royal household. To enter the lists, alone and penniless, against a power so formidable as this, seemed madness. Sverre was too shrewd not to see that such an undertaking was hopeless. At the same time, he was not minded to return, after his dream of royalty, to his obscure priesthood on the bleak isles in the North Sea. He knew that Earl Birger in Sweden was married to a sister of Sigurd Mouth, and, as a forlorn hope, he crossed the frontier, revealed his origin to the earl, and begged him for aid. The earl, it appears, who had reaped no glory from his alliance with Eystein Meyla, did not receive Sverre's request graciously, suspecting that he had been sent by Erling to mock him. Sverre, then, betook himself to his half-sister, Cecilia, who was the mistress of Folkvid the Lawman, and met here with a better reception. The rumor that a son of Sigurd Mouth had made his appearance in Sweden had, in the meanwhile, gone abroad and had reached the remnants of the Birchleg band. They made haste to find Sverre and requested him to be their chief; but Sverre, seeing what condition they were in, declined. He made them a little speech, in which he remarked that the only thing he had in common with them was poverty; and advised them, in conclusion, to select as their chief one of Earl Birger's sons, who were, like himself, descendants of Harold Gille. The Birchlegs acted upon this advice, but received no encouragement from the earl.

He told them, perhaps not without a humorous intention, that Sverre was their man, and advised them, in case he persisted in his refusal, to threaten him with death. Back they went, accordingly, to Sverre, and this time he yielded to their persuasions. He must then have been twenty-four or twenty-five years old. And thus, with two empty hands and seventy ragged and badly armed men, he began the fight for the crown of Norway. He started from Vermeland southward for Viken, and so many gathered about him on the way, that by the time he arrived in the Saurbygd, he had 420 men. These proclaimed him, in spite of his protest, king, and touched his sword in token of allegiance. But when he forbade them to rob and plunder the peasants, the majority grew discontented and left him. In order to test them he ordered them back to Vermeland, but by the time he reached the Eidskog, his band had shrunk to the original seventy. Sverre was now in a serious dilemma. He had announced himself as a claimant to the throne, thereby making himself fair game for any one who could slay him. And to wage war against King Magnus and Erling Skakke with seventy men was too absurd to be considered. In his extremity he sent messengers to Thelemark, where he had heard that some Birchlegs had sought refuge after the battle of Ree, and where there was said to be much dissatisfaction with King Magnus. Wherever he appeared, the peasants met him with hostile demonstrations, and many were those who wished to earn the gratitude of Earl Erling by destroying the runaway priest and his robber band. But it was in these desperate emergencies that the wonderful resources of Sverre's mind became apparent. Though he often had to live on bark and frozen berries, which were dug up from under the snow, his courage never failed him. Though in his journeys through pathless mountain wildernesses, his men dropped dead about him from exposure and hunger, and he had to cover himself with his shield and allow himself to be snowed down, he kept a stout heart in his bosom and rebuked those who talked of suicide. It is told of him that during his march from Sweden to Nidaros, he came to a large mountain lake which it was necessary to cross. Rafts were made, but the men were so exhausted, that it took them a good while to fell the logs. One by one the rafts were launched and rowed across. Sverre himself boarded the last, but it was already so heavily loaded, that the water reached above his ankle. One man, however, who was half dead with weariness, had been left. He crawled down to the edge of the water and begged the king to take him along, as otherwise he must perish. The Birchlegs grumbled loudly, but Sverre commanded them to lay to and take the man aboard. The raft then sank still deeper and the king stood in the icy water up to his knees. It looked for awhile as if they would go to the bottom. But Sverre did not change a mien. They reached, at last, the further shore, where an enormous pine had fallen into the water. The men, eager for safety, scrambled over into the tree, and Sverre was the last to leave the raft, which, the moment his foot was off it, sank. This incident was regarded by the Birchlegs as a miracle, and strengthened their faith in Sverre's mission.

HORNELEN; A CLIFF ON THE ISLAND BREMANGERLAND AT THE MOUTH OF THE NORDFJORD.

At last, after incredible hardships, Sverre arrived early in June, 1177, at the goal of his journey. He had then 120 men, but fortunately his message to Thelemark brought him a reinforcement of eighty more. With these he performed the most amazing manœuvres—dodging a force of fourteen hundred men which the partisans of Erling had sent against him. He anticipated with ease what his enemies would do, while they never could form the remotest conception of what he meant to do. Therefore the peasant army scattered in its search for him, and was easily beaten in separate detachments. It seems incredible that with his 200 or 250 warriors he could have beaten six or seven times their number, and the explanation lies near, that many of the Trönders in secret sympathized with him, though fear of Erling deterred them from openly espousing his cause. Their success now gave the Birchlegs courage, and they thronged joyously out to Oere-thing, whither Sverre had summoned twelve representatives from each of the eight shires of Tröndelag. Here he was proclaimed king of Norway (1177).

The rejoicings of the Birchlegs were however, a little premature. Erling Skakke was, by no means, dead yet, and he had no sooner heard of Sverre's performances in Tröndelag than he gathered a large fleet and sailed northward to have a reckoning with him. Sverre did not care to meet the relentless earl just then, and he therefore sought refuge again in the mountains. For two years he led, most of the time, a life which no dog would have envied him; now descending into the valleys on foraging expeditions, now again retiring into the wilderness and suffering untold privations. Occasionally hunger drove him to play a practical joke on the peasants, surprising them as an uninvited guest at their Yule-tide feasts, sitting down with his Birchlegs at the banqueting boards and devouring their holiday fare. Altogether his hardships were not unrelieved by humor. Like Robin Hood and his Merry Men, he had pity on the small, and often dispensed a kind of rough justice to the great. His name was cursed from one end of the kingdom to the other; as he himself remarked, many believed him to be the devil incarnate. Nurses scared naughty children with the threat that Sverre would come and take them, and the girls when they pounded the wet clothes at the river brink never failed to wish that Sverre's head was under the pounder. At the same time, a certain admiration for the power of the man and his undauntable spirit can scarcely have failed to affect those who had not directly suffered by his depredations. His many battles and guerilla fights with King Magnus and his liegemen, his second and unsuccessful attempt to capture Nidaros, and his skirmishing with the peasants cannot here be described in detail, though the saga, which was prepared under his own supervision, enables us to follow all his movements with tolerable accuracy. It was not until June, 1179, that he fought a battle which gave a decisive turn to his future. Then, he made a sudden descent from Gauldale upon Erling, who was feasting in Nidaros.

"Would that it were true," said the earl, when the approach of the Birchlegs was announced to him; "they shall then get their deserts, but for that matter, we may sleep soundly to-night, for I have been told that they have already retired into the mountains, and Sverre will not venture to attack us, when we are watching for him, as we are doing now."