History of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, Vol. 2 (of 2)

by S. A. Dunham

|1136.|

Harald IV. was very different in character and manners from his colleague Magnus. He was mild as the latter was severe, and generous as the latter was penurious. He therefore became the favourite of the people. This circumstance probably roused the jealousy of Magnus, who at the head of many followers marched against him, conquered him, and compelled him to forsake the realm. Repairing to the court of Eric Emund, king of Denmark, he was well received by that monarch, “because they were brothers in arms.” With the supply of money and men furnished him by his generous host, he returned to Denmark, and surprised rather than defeated Magnus, whom he consigned to a monastery and deprived of eye-sight. He was now therefore monarch of Norway. But his reign was of short duration. The town of Konghella which Sigurd had fortified, and adorned with so magnificent a church, was taken by the Slavonic pirates: it was completely sacked, and the inhabitants led into captivity. For this disaster, Harald was censured: he was accused of inactivity in repelling the invaders; and was even forsaken by the great body of his supporters. In this condition he was assassinated. A melancholy illustration of the spirit of the times is afforded by the fact that the assassin, Sigurd, also claimed Magnus Barefoot for his father. From this deed of blood he derived no advantage. The nation would not admit his claim, but proclaimed two sons of the murdered king, Sigurd II. (1136–1155) and Inge I. (1136–1161). Both, however, were children; and their inability to defend themselves led to civil war. Sigurd, their reputed uncle, the assassin of their father, raised troops and laid waste the country. To strengthen his party he formed an alliance with Magnus the Blind, whom he drew from the monastery; but he was defeated and compelled to flee. Both soon obtained the aid of the Danish king Eric; but fortune was still unfavourable: in battle, Magnus lost his life; and the restless Sigurd too was made prisoner, and subsequently executed. Though two enemies were thus removed, the royal brothers, Sigurd and Inge, were often at discord; and a third firebrand was soon added in Eystein II. (1142–1157), a younger brother, who, returning from Scotland in 1142, was invested with a third portion of the realm. There was not, nor could there be, any tranquillity in the country. Complaints, recriminations, quarrels, treachery, bloodshed, succeeded each other, when the arrival of a papal legate, the cardinal Albano, suspended for a time the sanguinary proceedings of these princes.

|1152.|

This legate was Nicholas Breakspear, our countryman, who subsequently ascended the pontifical throne as Adrian IV. His mission was two-fold—to restore peace between the unnatural brothers, and to establish an archbishopric. The Norwegian monarchs had long demanded a primate of their own, instead of being dependent on the archbishops of Lund. In both objects he was successful. The three kings laid down their arms; united in showing the highest deference to the legate; and beheld with joy the creation of a metropolitan see at Trondheim, with a jurisdiction, not over Norway merely, but Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe islands, the Shetlands, the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and Man. In return, the chiefs and people readily agreed to pay the tribute of Peter’s Pence. Many were the reforms which this well-meaning dignitary endeavoured to carry. He introduced more decorum into the public worship; he enjoined the clergy to attend more to their proper functions, and to interfere less in secular matters; and impressed on the new archbishop the necessity of a rigorous control over the morals of his flock. In attempting to enforce clerical celibacy, he did not meet with so ready an acquiescence; but no one dared openly to resist him. To another of his measures we must award a much higher meed of praise. Seeing that bloodshed had for many reigns stained the proceedings of the Lands-Thing, or provincial assembly, he prevailed on the chiefs to promise that they would not in future attend with arms. Even the king was only to be accompanied by twelve armed men—an exception conceded less to his dignity than to the necessity under which he lay of enforcing the judicial sentences. To an Englishman the conduct of cardinal Albano on this mission is gratifying. It was no less esteemed by the Norwegians. “In several other respects,” observes Snorro, “he reformed the customs and manners of the people during his stay; so that never did stranger come to the land more honoured or more beloved by the princes and their subjects.”

|1153 to 1161.|

If the ascendancy of the cardinal had restored peace, his departure was immediately followed by new struggles between two of the brothers. Eystein had no share in them, because he absented himself on a piratical expedition. He is said to have ravaged the eastern coasts of our island, from the Orkneys to the Humber. Soon after his return, he entered into a plot with Sigurd to remove their brother Inge. In 1155, Sigurd and Inge met in the Thing held at Bergen, and though they could not fight for want of arms, both they and their followers regarded one another with deadly hatred. Scarcely was the assembly dissolved, when Inge, who had heard of the plot for removing him, determined to prevent it by assailing Sigurd, and after a sharp contest the latter fell. The following year Inge and Eystein, who were still hostile, met to agree on conditions of peace; but it was a truce rather than a peace, and in a few months it was broken by both parties. They marched towards each other with the resolution of deciding their quarrel by the sword; but Eystein, who was unpopular, was deserted by most of his followers, and compelled to seek an asylum in the mountains of Vikia. Thither he was pursued by Inge, was betrayed in a forest, and put to death by one of his brother’s myrmidons. By this deed therefore Inge was the monarch of the country. But he had soon a competitor in Hako III., son of Sigurd II., whom the party of Eystein proclaimed king (1157). The four succeeding years were years of civil war. Hako, a mere child, was driven into Gothland. The following season he returned and besieged Konghella; but he was again defeated and forced to re-enter Sweden. Yet early in 1159 he arrived at Drontheim, where he found adherents. With thirty vessels he laid waste the coasts which held for Inge; but in a great naval battle he was defeated by that king, though not without considerable loss to the victor. Repairing into Drontheim where he passed the winter, he prepared for the next campaign. It was not decisive; but, in 1161, Inge, betrayed by his own followers, fell in battle with Hako.

|1161 to 1164.|

By this event, Hako, it might be expected, would be left undisputed sovereign of Norway. But the Norwegians at this period seem to have had little wish for a monarchy; and Magnus V. (1162–1186) was raised by the party of the deceased Inge to the throne of the North. Magnus was the grandson of Sigurd I., and one of his duties in the opinion of the times was to revenge the murder of his kindred. As, however, he was but a child, the government was administered by his father Erling. Erling was, by marriage, a kinsman of the Danish monarch, from whom he obtained aid to resist the hostility of Hako. Through that aid he was victor; Hako fell (1162), and consequently Magnus was the only king left. A rival indeed, Sigurd, a son of Sigurd II., was opposed to him; but in little more than a year that rival was crushed by the indefatigable Erling. To confirm the authority of his son by religious sanction, Erling requested the primate to crown him. The archbishop consented on the condition that Norway should be regarded as a fief of St. Olaf; that on the death of every monarch, the crown was to be formally offered to the saint in the cathedral; that the saint’s representative, the archbishop of the time, should receive it; that from each diocese the bishop, the abbots, and twelve chiefs, should assemble to nominate a successor, and that the sanction of the primate should be necessary before any one could be lawful king of Norway. That a considerable reduction in the number of electors was politic cannot be disputed; and probably this was one of the reasons that induced the archbishop to introduce so extraordinary an innovation. But a greater no doubt was the superiority which the church would thereby acquire over the state. The proposal was accepted; and Magnus, then only eight years of age, was solemnly crowned by Eystein in presence of the papal legate.

|1164 to 1170.|

The aid furnished by the Danish king was not gratuitous. In return for it Erling had promised the province of Vikia (Vigen), and Valdemar (the first of that name) now demanded the fulfilment of that pledge. His position was a critical one. He had not power to transfer that province, and if he attempted that transfer, his own destruction and that of his son must be the result. Yet if he did nothing, he must expect an encounter with that formidable monarch. To escape from this dilemma, he convoked the states, and laid before them the proposition of Valdemar: they indignantly refused to receive the Danish yoke. Open war followed, but through the policy of Erling it was soon succeeded by peace. He secretly engaged to hold Vikia with the title of jarl as a fief of Denmark; and, in the event of a failure of issue in his son, to subject the whole kingdom to the same crown.