The Story of Norway

by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

The legitimate heir to the throne after Haakon's death was his nephew, Guttorm Sigurdsson, a son of his brother, Sigurd Lavard. In spite of his tender age, the Birchlegs made haste to elect him, with the understanding that Haakon Galen, with the title of earl, should conduct the government. There were, however, some of the Birchlegs who were dissatisfied with this arrangement, partly because they were jealous of Haakon Galen, partly because they felt that, in such troublous times, a king was needed, who should be something more than a name or a figure-head. The Baglers, too, strange to say, were ill at ease, because they feared that, Haakon Sverresson's restraining influence being removed, the Birchleg chiefs would give free rein to their passions of avarice and vengeance. Half in self-defence they, therefore, reorganized their troop under the leadership of an impostor, calling himself Erling Stonewall (Steinvegg), who pretended to be a son of King Magnus Erlingsson. A pretender of this name had, during the reign of Sverre, made some little stir, and had been imprisoned by King Knut of Sweden in a tower, whence he had escaped by means of a rope, made out of his bed-clothes. The rope proved, however, to be too short, and in letting himself drop to the ground, Erling broke his hip. He was overtaken, on his flight, by Sverre's men and in all probability slain. Nevertheless, it required audacity rather than proof of royal birth, in those days, to figure as a pretender; and the second Erling Stonewall, though probably few at first believed in him, soon had a considerable following. It was of no use that Bishop Nicholas opposed him, and urged his own nephew, Philip, a grandson of Harold Gille's queen, Ingerid, for the chieftainship. When Erling demanded the right to prove his birth by the ordeal of fire, the bishop told him bluntly that the result was in his hands. Under such circumstances, the pretender found it more to his advantage to make terms with the bishop and receive his assurance that the ordeal should turn out successfully. Erling, on his side, promised, when he became king, to make Philip his earl, and in other respects satisfied the prelate's demands. The latter had, in the meanwhile, by conferences with his peasants, ascertained that Philip's candidacy was regarded with great disfavor, because he neither had nor pretended to have a drop of royal blood. The peasants utterly refused to recognize him, and threatened to rebel, in case he was elected. It was therefore to the bishop's advantage to keep faith with Erling. The ordeal accordingly took place with great solemnity in the presence of the Danish king, Valdemar the Victorious, and proved successful. Erling was then proclaimed king, and received as a present from Valdemar a fleet of thirty fine ships. In return he recognized him as his feudal overlord and gave him hostages. The party of the magnates was thus faithful to its traditions, in sacrificing patriotism to private interests. With the aid of the powerful Danish king the party had, indeed, a good prospect of crushing the disheartened and disunited Birchlegs, who just at that time received a fresh blow in the death of their newly elected king. Christina, Haakon Galen's mistress, could not allow so slight an obstacle, as the life of a child, to stand between her and the goal of her wishes. If Guttorm were dead, her lover would have the best chance of succeeding him, being on his mother's side a grandson of Sigurd Mouth. It was, therefore, no mere accident that Guttorm died; and with all the symptoms of poisoning. He said that the "Swedish woman" had taken him upon her lap and stroked him caressingly over his whole body. Soon after he felt, as if needles were piercing his flesh, and before long he expired in great agony. Though Christina's guilt was obvious, her lover had yet sufficient influence to have the matter hushed up; and in order to give her the full benefit of his protection, he married her soon after. A meeting was now called in Nidaros to elect a new king. Earl Haakon, who was a favorite with the army, seemed to have every chance in his favor; and he would probably have been the choice of the Birchlegs, if Archbishop Erik had not opposed him, on account of his relation to Christina. The guilt thus defeated its own object. Several candidates were discussed, some of whom were related to Sverre only on his mother's side and thus had no consanguinity with the royal house. The most prominent among these was Peter Steyper, who had the additional advantage of having married a daughter of King Magnus Erlingsson. After long deliberations, the chiefs finally decided to leave the choice to the peasants, who would then be sure to stand by the king whom they themselves elected. The peasants were according summoned to Oere-thing where they conferred the royal dignity upon Inge Baardsson, a younger half-brother of Haakon Galen and like him, on the maternal side, a grandson of Sigurd Mouth. No sooner did the Baglers hear that the Birchlegs had chosen a new king than they started northward from Tunsberg, in order to test his mettle. The caution of Bishop Nicholas prevailed, however, over the counsel of the more warlike chiefs, and after some unimportant fights in and about Bergen, the rebels betook themselves to Denmark, where they had always a safe place of refuge. King Inge and Earl Haakon, therefore, found no opposition, when they visited Viken, and the peasants, though the great majority of them sympathized with the Baglers, had no scruple in swearing them allegiance. In fact, the long war was having a demoralizing influence upon the people, and its barbarizing effects began to be visible in many ways. To save their lives, the yeomen were obliged to feign friendship for every pretender who came along with his band, and swear him fidelity, or fly to the woods, leaving their farms a prey to the marauders. Even the ties of blood which had been exceptionally strong among the Norsemen, began to be disregarded, as members of the same family were impelled, by diverging interests, to join different parties. It was no rare occurence that brother fought against brother, and father against son. Thus it is told of a Bagler that during the attack upon Nidaros in 1206, he was hotly pursuing a Birchleg whom he finally killed. As he stooped over the dying man, in order to deprive him of his arms and garments, he discovered that it was his own brother. A great laxity in all moral obligations resulted from this state of things. Kings and chieftains broke their words; enemies who had surrendered on promise of pardon were ruthlessly slain; murder and rapine filled the land.

Under these circumstances it was no great privilege for the young and inexperienced Inge to wear a crown which merely put a price upon his head. In the spring of 1206, while he was in Nidaros celebrating the wedding of his sister, the Baglers surprised him in the night and slew a large number of his men. The king himself escaped by pure chance, threw himself into the river, and swam, half-clad, in the icy water, out to a ship, and clung for a while to the anchor cable. More dead than alive he reached the shore, and would probably have perished from exposure, if the Birchleg, Reidulf, who was also fleeing, had not found him, wrapped him in his cloak, and carried him on his back to a place of safety. Yet Inge never overcame the effects of this terrible night. He grew morose and despondent, and never regained his former light-heartedness. It was not merely that he felt discredited as a chieftain by the disgrace of having been surprised by his enemies in a drunken sleep, in the house of his mistress; his health, too, had suffered a shock from which it was slow to recover.

On their return from Nidaros, the Baglers paid a visit to Bergen, where they expected to starve the Birchleg garrison in the block-house into surrender. But here they reckoned without their host. Earl Haakon, though he had not been present at the assault upon his brother in Nidaros, felt impelled to avenge it. He therefore sailed southward with a small fleet and about seven hundred men, overtook the rebels in Bergen and inflicted upon them a severe defeat. Thus blindly pursuing partisan advantage, Baglers and Birchlegs kept killing each other, forgetting that they were all Norsemen, who would, in the end, suffer by the devastation and exhaustion of their common country. Year after year they continued surprising each other in Nidaros, Bergen, Tunsberg, and Oslo, burning each other's ships, and robbing each other's treasures; but they appeared to avoid a decisive battle which would have given an overwhelming advantage to one party or the other, thereby securing peace to the land. The death of Erling Stonewall in 1207 enabled Bishop Nicholas to carry out his desire to make his nephew, Philip Simonsson, king of the Baglers. But Philip made no change in the policy of his predecessor, persevering in the same aimless marauding, which could scarcely be dignified by the name of war. The parties were, indeed, so evenly matched, that it seemed hopeless for the one to destroy the other, for which reason the political stake in the struggle was almost lost sight of, while immediate profit yet furnished a motive for continuing in arms.

It was while anarchy was thus rioting and despondency reigning throughout the land, that a hope suddenly sprang up, like a star out of the depth of night. It was well known that King Haakon Sverresson, during his visit to Sarpsborg in 1203, had become enamoured of the beautiful Inga of Varteig, and it had also been whispered that she had reciprocated his love. Soon after Haakon's death, she had borne a son, and though it was taken for granted that the king was his father, the matter had been hushed up, lest the Baglers, who were masters in Viken, should hear that an heir had been born to the throne. The priest, Thrond, in whose house Inga gave birth to the boy, baptized him and gave him the name Haakon, after his father; but advised the utmost secrecy, and let no one but his immediate family know of the child's existence. Such a secret is, however, hard to keep, and, after a while, the priest took Erlend of Huseby, a man of good repute and a friend of Sverre's house, into his confidence. Erlend rejoiced that King Sverre's race was not extinct; but found the boy's position, in the midst of the enemies' land, perilous. He therefore persuaded Thrond to send him and his mother to King Inge, and himself offered to take them across the mountains. The boy Haakon was then (December, 1205,) about a year and a half old. There must have been some imminent danger at hand which impelled the priest, after having waited so long, to choose the most inclement season of the year for the journey across the trackless, snow-covered wilderness. The two friends started northward with their precious charge and arrived, after infinite hardships, in Nidaros, where they were well received by King Inge. The boy now, for a while, sojourned with his mother at court and was kindly treated. The old Birchlegs came often to see him and playfully took him between them and pulled him by the arms and legs in order to make him grow faster. For they were impatient to serve, once more, a king of the old royal race. Haakon Galen, too, took a great fancy to his young kinsman, though his demonstrations of love were, no doubt, looked upon with fear by those who had the boy's welfare at heart. Nevertheless, it appears that the earl was actually sincere, and felt moved, perhaps, by the very helplessness of the boy to protect him. A kind Providence seemed to be watching over him; for though living in the midst of the intrigues and plottings of rival chiefs, all of whom must have seen in him their most dangerous rival, his life was preserved, and he escaped unharmed from many dangers. Even the Baglers refrained from killing him, when in 1206 he fell into their hands, at the surrender of the block-house in Bergen. It is perhaps not safe to assume that a half-latent consciousness asserted itself, that in this boy Norway's future was bound up; that upon him depended the country's deliverance from the scourge of civil war. More likely it is that his beauty and winning ways appealed to friends and foes alike, while on the other hand, the love of the Birchlegs was his best guard, because it convinced his ill-wishers that disaster would swiftly overwhelm any one who should venture to harm him.

Of the many small victories and defeats, sieges and surrenders, flights and pursuits, which filled the years 1206 and 1207, without according any decisive advantage to either party, it is not necessary to speak at length. They were a series of barren futilities, resulting in loss of life, and waste of the resources of the land, without lastingly benefiting any one. Under these circumstances, it is not strange that both Birchlegs and Baglers began to long for a reconciliation. Even to so bitter a partisan as Bishop Nicholas, it became evident that a continuance of the war would mean mutual destruction, and that the prize of victory would be a devastated land and a barbarized people. King Inge, too, was heartily tired of the aimless hostilities, and even his pugnacious brother, Haakon Galen, was not disinclined to listen to proposals of peace. The new archbishop, Thore, acted as mediator between the parties and used his influence and his eloquence to extort from both the necessary concessions. At last, when the conditions were well understood on both sides, a meeting of the Birchleg and Bagler chiefs was held at Hvitingsöe (1208), at which Philip Simonsson, the king of the Baglers, swore allegiance to Inge, and became his earl. In return he received Viken and the Oplands in fief, and was wedded to Sverre's daughter, Christina.

The restoration of peace was not hailed as an unmixed boon by many of those who had lost their property by the war, and could only hope to enrich themselves by the same means. Others had carried arms so long, as to have lost all inclination for peaceful industry. A great number of these, irrespective of parties, started on an old-fashioned Viking expedition to the Orkneys, Hebrides, and Man, ravaged and plundered, and compelled the earls of those isles, once more, to acknowledge the supremacy of the crown of Norway. In spite of this service which they had done to the king, they were severely censured on their return, and forced by the bishops to surrender their booty to the Church.

The last years of King Inge's reign were embittered by his strained relation to Earl Haakon. The latter, feeling his superiority to Inge in all the qualities that grace a king, could not reconcile himself to his subordinate position. He began intriguing behind his brother's back, and privately sounded the sentiments of the prominent peasants and chiefs, in regard to his pretensions. From many he received a favorable answer, and the plot was in a fair way to succeed, when it was unexpectedly discovered by the king. Inge, who had had perfect confidence in his older brother, was more shocked than angered by the proof of his treachery. He summoned all his men to a house-thing and called upon them to stand by him, declaring that he would tolerate no other king in the land, as long as he was alive. This speech won general approval and compelled Haakon henceforth to weave his plots with greater secrecy. Whether he was the instigator of the attempt upon the king's life, which was made a year later, is not known, but that either he or his wife Christina was in some way implicated in it, is evident from the king's unwillingness to have the would-be assassin tried or punished. When his brother, Skule Baardsson, urged him to make an example of the wretch, he promised to have the matter investigated, to exile the criminal, etc., but as nothing was done, Skule lost his patience and killed him on his own responsibility.

It was, on the whole, a laudable spirit on Inge's part which impelled him to avoid an open rupture with Earl Haakon, even at the cost of personal sacrifice. He knew the horrors of civil war and would not take the responsibility of precipitating a breach of the peace, as long as it was in his power to prevent it. The fact that his health was poor, and that there was a chance that Haakon might succeed him, may also have disinclined him to discredit the latter in the eyes of the people. Among Haakon's partisans was Archbishop Thore, to whose intervention it was chiefly due that the king and the earl in 1212 made a compact, in accordance with which illegitimate children were to be excluded from the succession, and the one of the brothers who survived the other should inherit the throne. This agreement, which was proclaimed at Oere-thing, and sanctioned by the bishops and the magnates of the land, was chiefly aimed against the young prince, Haakon Haakonsson, who, though a direct descendant in the male line of the old royal house, was of illegitimate birth. It excluded also, for the same reason, Inge's son Guttorm, and transferred the succession to Haakon Galen and his legitimate son, Knut. But in making this compact, they underestimated the strength of the sentiment which bound Sverre's veterans to the boy Haakon. One of them, Helge Hvasse, who was in the habit of going frequently to see the prince, and playing with him, grew very wroth when he heard of the agreement. When Haakon ran up to him to have his usual romp, he pushed him roughly away and bade him begone. The boy, unaccustomed to such treatment, looked reproachfully at him, and asked why he was angry.

"Begone," cried Helge; "to-day thy paternal heritage was taken from thee, and I don't care for thee any more."

"Where was that done, and who did it?" asked Haakon.