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

by S. A. Dunham

|1207.|

There now remained only one male descendant of this dynasty—Hako, a natural son of Swerro. After his father’s death, and during the struggles between the old and the new dynasty for the supreme power, this prince was secreted in the mountains. Fortunately for him, the companions of his father, the devoted Birkibeinar, the bandit soldiers, still remained: they espoused his cause, and procured his election to the throne. Before the church, however, would ratify the election, the mother, Inga, was required to undergo the ordeal of hot-iron, in proof of her having truly sworn to the paternity of her son. She consented; was shut up in a church to prepare by fasting and prayer for the trial; was guarded night and day by twelve armed men; and the burning-iron left no wound on her fair hand. Whoever doubted that the ordeal was a fair one, that Hako was the offspring of Swerro, was menaced with excommunication.

|1208 to 1241.|

Hako IV. was thus the recognised monarch of the country; but he had still to sustain the hostility of the faction which adhered to the former dynasty. The most inveterate as well as the most powerful of his enemies was Skule the jarl, half-brother of Inge II. To pacify this ambitious noble, he was admitted to a share in the government; and his daughter became a wife of Hako. This union, in effecting which the church had a great share, was expected to combine the hearts of both factions. But the hope was vain: other pretenders to the legitimate or illegitimate honour of royal descent appeared in succession to claim a portion of their birthright. So distracted was the country by these conflicting claims, that a great council of the nation was convoked at Bergen. The decision was, that Hako was the only lawful king. Yet through the advice of the primate, whose object was evidently to avert a civil war, the northern provinces were confided to Skule; and by the king he was soon adorned with the ducal title—a title which had been in disuse ever since the ninth century. But this ambitious noble was not to be silenced by benefits. On a memorable day (1240) he convoked the states of his own government to assemble in the cathedral: his descent from the martyr Olaf was then attested by oath on the relics of that saint; and by his party, amidst the silence of the spectators, he was declared the lawful heir to the crown, as the successor of Inge II. Constrained by the example, the rest did homage to him after he had sworn to administer the laws in righteousness, as his holy predecessor had administered them. Thus the northern provinces were again dissevered from the monarchy. But Hako was true to his own rights and the interests of his people. Assembling his faithful Birkibeinar, and all who valued the interests of his order, he marched towards Drontheim. At his approach, the usurper fled into the interior, but only to collect new forces, with which he obtained some advantages over those of Hako. When spring returned, however, and the latter marched against the rebels, fortune declared for him. Skule was signally defeated, compelled to flee, overtaken, and killed.

|1242 to 1260.|

Released from the scourge of civil war, Hako now applied his attention to the internal government of his kingdom. He made new treaties of commerce with the neighbouring powers: he fortified his sea-ports; he improved the laws; he made salutary changes in the local administration. But he was not yet fully at peace with the church; and he requested Innocent IV. to mediate between him and them, and to cause the crown to be placed on his brow. Innocent dispatched a legate, the cardinal bishop of Sabina, for this purpose. At first the king was desired to comply with the law of his predecessor Magnus V.—that Norway should hereafter be regarded as a fief of St. Olaf: but he had the patriotism to refuse: he would protect, he observed, the just rights of the church, but he would never sanction this usurpation of the ecclesiastical over the secular state. His firmness was respected, and at the cardinal’s instance he was crowned without subscribing to the obnoxious compact. He had gratified that churchman by promising to go on the crusade; but though he made preparations circumstances prevented his departure. His kingdom indeed could not safely be left at such a crisis. His frontiers were still subject to ravage from the licentious bands who infested the western provinces of Sweden, and who took refuge in either territory when pursued by the injured inhabitants of the other. Without a cordial union between the two governments, there could be no hope of extirpating these predatory bands. Fortunately Birger, the regent of Sweden, concurred with him in his object. To create a good understanding between the two countries, a marriage was negotiated between the daughter of Birger, whose son was on the throne of Sweden, and Magnus, the eldest son of Hako. But this union was never effected: the subsequent conduct of Birger was not agreeable to the monarch; and Magnus married the daughter of Christopher, king of Denmark. The clemency of Hako led to this connection. He had many causes of complaint against Denmark; and he did not recur to hostilities until he had long and vainly sued for redress. He soon reduced Christopher to long for peace; but with a generosity of which there are few records among kings, he forgot his wrongs in sympathy for his brother monarch, and became the friend of the man whom he had left Norway to chastise.

|1263.|

The last and by far the most memorable expedition of Hako was against the Scots. The chief incentive to this war was the attempt of Alexander III. to recover the Hebrides, which, as we have before observed[^[165]], had been subdued by Magnus Barefoot. Not that they were then subdued for the first time. The truth is, that they had frequently been reduced to the Norwegian yoke as far back as the ninth century, and from that time had, at intervals, paid tribute to that power. More frequently, however, they had asserted their independence. Colonies, too, from the mother-countries, had assisted to people those islands, which Harald Harfagre and his successors had regarded as no less a dependency than the Shetlands or the Orkneys. In the time of Magnus the number of those colonists increased; and there were not a few nobles of the isles who could trace their pedigree to the royal line of Norway. But their position drew them into the sphere of Scottish influence: to Scotland, and not to the distant North, they must look for allies in their frequent wars with one another; and the eagerness of the Scottish monarchs to establish their feudal superiority over them brought the two parties into continual communication. In 1244, two bishops arrived in Norway to induce Hako to renounce all claim to the Hebrides. They told him that he could have no just right to them, since Magnus Barefoot had only gained possession of them by violence—by forcibly wresting them from Malcolm Canmore. The king replied with more truth that Magnus had not wrested them from the Scottish king, but from the Norwegian Gudred, who had thrown off the allegiance due to the mother-country. Defeated in their historical arguments, they had recourse to one which with a poor monarch they hoped would be more convincing—the pecuniary argument. They besought him to say what sum he would demand for their entire cession. “I am not so poor that I will sell my birthright!” was the reply, and the prelates returned. Alexander III., however, would not abandon the hope of annexing these islands to his crown; and he commenced a series of intrigues among the Highland chieftains. The vassals of Hako began to complain of the vexatious hostilities to which they were subject, especially from the thane of Ross, and to beg immediate aid. The atrocities which they detailed, we should scarcely expect to find in a Christian people, and in the thirteenth century: we should rather assign them to the period when the pagan Northmen ravaged the coasts of these islands. In great anger Hako convened a diet at Bergen, and it resolved that the aid required should be immediately furnished.

|1263.|

Leaving his son, prince Magnus, regent of the kingdom, Hako sailed for the Hebrides. In the Orkneys he was joined by the jarls and by the king of Man. On the western coast of Scotland, many of the Highland chieftains submitted to his arms. But though he took Arran and Bute, and laid waste many of the western districts of the continent with fire and sword, his expedition was a disastrous one. At the mouth of the Clyde, while landing his troops, a tempest arose and forced him from the shore; and those who were landed were overpowered by the superior number of the enemy. In vain did Hako endeavour to lead the rest of his forces with the view of saving the brave men who were thus overwhelmed: the storm was too powerful for him; some of his ships were lost; more were dispersed; and in great anguish of mind he repaired to the Orkneys where he intended to winter, and invade Scotland the ensuing spring. That spring he was never to see. A fever, the result of anxiety no less than of fatigue, laid him on the bed from which he was no more to rise. The activity of his mind, however, was not arrested even by fatal disease: he caused the Bible and the old Sagas to be read to him night and day. When convinced that there was no hope of his recovery, he dictated his last instructions to his son; made liberal presents to his followers; confessed and received the sacrament; and “at midnight Almighty God called him from this world, to the exceeding grief of all present and of all who heard of his death.” His body was first interred in the cathedral of St. Magnus, Kirkwall, but subsequently removed to Bergen, and laid with those of his royal ancestors.