Hero Tales of the Far North

by Jacob A. Riis

For now had come the bishop’s chance of putting in practice the great abbot’s precepts. “Pray and fight” was the motto he had written into the Knights Templars’ rule, and Absalon had made it his own. Of what use was it to build up the church at home, when any day might see it raided by its enemies who were always watching their chance outside? The Danish waters swarmed with pirates, the very pagans against whom Abbot Bernard had preached his crusade. Of them all the Wends were the worst, as they were the most powerful of the Slav tribes that still resisted the efforts of their neighbors, the Christian Germans, to dislodge them from their old home on the Baltic. They lived in the island of Rügen, fairly in sight of the Danish shores. Every favoring wind blew them across the sea in shoals to burn and ravage. The Danes, once the terror of the seas, had given over roving when they accepted the White Christ in exchange for Thor and his hammer, and now, when they would be at peace, they were in turn beset by this relentless enemy, who burned their homes and their crops and dragged the peaceful husbandman away to make him a thrall or offer him up as a sacrifice to heathen idols. More than a third of all Denmark lay waste under their ferocious assault. Here was the blow to be struck if the country was to have peace and the church prosperity.

The chance to strike came speedily. Absalon had been bishop only a few months when, on the evening before Palm Sunday, word was brought that the enemy had landed, twenty-four ship-crews strong, and were burning and murdering as usual. Absalon marshalled his eighteen house-carles and such of the country folk as he could, and fell upon the Wends, routing them utterly. A bare handful escaped, the rest were killed, while the bishop lost but a single man. He said mass next morning, red-handed it is true, but one may well believe that for all that his Easter message reached hearts filled with a new, glad hope for their homes and for the country. That was a bishop they could understand. So the first blow Absalon struck for his people was at home. But he did not long wait for the enemy to come to him. Half his long and stirring life he lived on the seas, seeking them there. Saxo mentions, in speaking of his return from one of his cruises, that he had then been nine months on shipboard. And in a way he was shepherding his flock there, if it was with a scourge; for, many years before, a Danish king had punished the Wends in their own home and laid their lands under the See of Roskilde, though little good it did them or any one else then. But when Absalon had got his grip, there were days when he baptized as many as a thousand of them into the true faith.

He was not altogether alone in the stand he took. Here and there, from very necessity, the people had organized to resist the invaders, but as no one could tell where they would strike next, they were not often successful, and fear and discouragement sat heavy on the land. From his own city of Roskilde a little fleet of swift sailers under the bold Wedeman had for years waged relentless war upon the freebooters and had taken four times the number of their own ships. Their crews were organized into a brotherhood with vows like an order of fighting monks. Before setting out on a cruise they were shriven and absolved. Their vows bound them to unceasing vigilance, to live on the plainest of fare, to sleep on their arms, ready for instant attack, and to the rescue of Christians, wherever they were found in captivity. The Roskilde guild became the strong core of the King’s armaments in his score of campaigns against the Wends.

Perhaps it was not strange that Valdemar should be of two minds about venturing to attack so formidable an enemy in his own house. The nation was cowed and slow to move. In fact, from the first expedition, that started with 250 vessels, only seven returned with the standard, keeping up a running fight all the way across the Baltic with pursuing Wends. The rest had basely deserted. On the way over, the King, listening to their doubts and fears, turned back himself once, but Absalon, who always led in the attack and was the last on the homeward run, overtook him and gave him the talking to be deserved. Saxo, who was very likely there and heard, for there is little doubt that he accompanied his master on many of the campaigns he so vividly describes, gives us a verbatim report of the lecture:

“What wonder,” said the bishop, “if the words stick in our throats and are nigh to stifling us, when such grievous dole is ours! Grieve we must, indeed, to find in you such a turncoat that naught but dishonor can come of it. You follow where you should lead, and those you should rule over, you make your peers. There is nothing to stop us but our own craven souls, hunt as we may for excuses. Is it with such laurel you would bind your crown? with such high deed you would consecrate your reign?”

The King was hard hit, and showed it, but he walked away without a word. In the night a furious storm swept the sea and kept the fleet in shelter four whole days, during which Valdemar’s anger had time to cool. He owned then that Absalon was right, and the friends shook hands. The King gave order to make sail as soon as the gale abated. If there was still a small doubt in Absalon’s mind as he turned, on taking leave, and asked, “What now, if we must turn back once more?” Valdemar set it at rest:

“Then you write me from Wendland,” he laughed, “and tell me how things are there.”

If little glory or gain came to the Danes from this first expedition, at least they landed in the enemy’s country and made reprisal for past tort. The spirit of the people rose and shamed them for their cowardice. When the King’s summons went round again, as it did speedily, there were few laggards. Attacked at home, the Wends lost much of the terror they had inspired. Before many moons, the chronicle records, the Danes cut their spear-shafts short, that they might the more handily get at the foe. Scarce a year passed that did not see one or more of these crusades. Absalon preached them all, and his ship was ever first in landing. In battle he and the King fought shoulder to shoulder. In the spring of 1169, he had at last his wish: the heathen idols were destroyed and their temples burned.

The holy city of the Wends, Arcona, stood on a steep cliff, inaccessible save from the west, where a wall a hundred feet high defended it. While the sacred banner Stanitza waved over it the Danes might burn and kill, but the power of Svantevit was unbroken. Svantevit was the god of gods in whose presence his own priests dared not so much as breathe. When they had to, they must go to the door and breathe in the open, a good enough plan if Saxo’s disgust at the filth of the Wendish homes was justified. Svantevit was a horrid monster with four heads, and girt about with a huge sword. Up till then the Christian arms had always been stayed at his door, but this time the King laid siege to Arcona, determined to make an end of him. Some of the youngsters in his army, making a mock assault upon the strong walls, discovered an accidental hollow under the great tower over which the Stanitza flew and, seizing upon a load of straw that was handy, stuffed it in and set it on fire. It was done in a frolic, but when the tower caught fire and was burned and the holy standard fell, Absalon was quick to see his advantage, and got the King to order a general assault. The besieged Wends, having no water, tried to put out the fire with milk, but, says the chronicle, “it only fed the flames.” They fought desperately till, between fire and foe, they were seized with panic and, calling loudly upon Absalon in their extremity, offered to give up their city. The army clamored for the revenge that was at last within their grasp, and the King hesitated; but Absalon met the uproar firmly, reminding them that they had crossed the seas to convert the heathen, not to sack their towns.

The city was allowed to surrender and the people were spared, but Svantevit and his temple were destroyed. A great crowd of his followers had gathered to see him crush his enemies at the last, and Absalon cautioned the men who cut the idol down to be careful that he did not fall on them and so seem to justify their hopes. “He fell with so great a noise that it was a wonder,” says Saxo, naïvely; “and in the same moment the fiend ran out of the temple in a black shape with such speed that no eye could follow him or see where he went.” Svantevit was dragged out of the town and chopped into bits. That night he fed the fires of the camp. So fickle is popular favor that when the crowd saw that nothing happened, they spurned the god loudly before whom they had grovelled in the dust till then.