Perhaps it is just on this account, because of its greater stability of interests and more conservative animus, that the traffic of this region responds with greater alacrity to the pressure of excessive competition and political interference, and so enters on a policy of larger and closer coalition. It may be added that many of the great captains of adventure in this region are men of good family and substantial standing in the community. As may often happen in a like conjuncture, when the irksomeness of this competitive situation in the Baltic was fast becoming intolerable, there arose a man of far-seeing sagacity and settled principles, of executive ability and businesslike integrity, who saw the needs of the hour and the available remedy, and who saw at the same glance his own opportunity of gain. This man was Pálnatoki, the descendant of an honorable line of country gentlemen in the island of Funen, whose family had from time immemorial borne an active and prudent part in the trade, and had been well seen at court and in society. He was a man of mature experience, with a large investment in the traffic, and with a body of "good-will" that gave him perhaps his most decisive advantage.

During the reign of Harald Gormsson, about the middle of the tenth century, Pálnatoki seems to have cast about for a basis on which to promote an international coalition of vikings, such as would put an end to headlong competition in the trade and would at the same time be placed above the accidents of national politics. To this end it was necessary to find a neutral ground on which to establish the home office of the concern. Such a mediæval-Scandinavian New Jersey was the Wendish kingdom at the south of the Baltic.

Jómsborg (on the island of Wollin, at the mouth of the Oder) seems to have been a resort of vikings before Pálnatoki organised his company there and strengthened the harbor, which may have been fortified by those who held it before him. Here the new company was incorporated under a special franchise from the Wendish crown, with the stipulation that it was to do business only outside the Wendish territories. The tangible assets of the corporation were the harbor and fortified town of Jómsborg, together with the ships and other equipment of such vikings as were admitted to fellowship; its intangible assets were its franchise and the good-will of the promoter and the underlying companies. Its by-laws were very strict, both as to the discipline of the personnel and as to the distribution of earnings. The promoter, who was the first president of the corporation, was given extreme powers for the enforcement of the by-laws, and throughout his long incumbency of office he exercised his powers with the greatest discretion and with a most salutary effect.

This neutral, international corporation of piracy rapidly won a great prestige. In modern phrase, its intangible assets grew rapidly larger. Backed by the competitive pressure which the new corporation was able to bring upon the smaller companies and syndicates, this prestige of the Jómsvikings brought a steady run of applications for admission into the trust. The trust's policy was substantially the same as has since become familiar in other lines of enterprise, with the difference that in those early days the competitive struggle took a less sophisticated form. Outstanding syndicates and private firms were given the alternative of submission to the trust's terms or retirement from the traffic. There was great hardship among the outstanding concerns, especially among that large proportion of them that were unable to meet the scale of requirements imposed on applicants for admission into the trust. The qualifications both as to equipment and personnel were extremely strict, so that a large percentage of the applicants were excluded; and the unfortunates who failed of admission found themselves in a doubtful position that grew more precarious with every year that passed. Practically, such concerns were either frozen out of the business or forced into a liquidation which permanently wound up their affairs and terminated their corporate existence.

The accounts extant are of course not reliable in minute details, being not strictly contemporary, nor are they cast in such modern terms as would give an easy comparison with present-day facts. The chief documents in the case are Jómsvikingasaga, Saxo Grammaticus, Heimskringla, and Olafssaga Tryggvasonar; but nearly the whole of the saga literature bears on the development of the viking trade, and characteristic references to the Jómsviking trust occur throughout. The evidence afforded by these accounts converges to the conclusion that toward the close of the tenth century the trust stood in a high state of prosperity and was in a position virtually to dictate the course of the traffic for all that portion of the viking trade that centered in the Baltic. Its prestige and influence were strong wherever the traffic extended, even in the region of the western isles and in the fjord country of Norway. It had even come to be a factor of first-rate consequence in international politics, and its power was feared and courted by those two sovereigns who established the Danish rule in England, as well as by their Swedish, Norwegian, and Russian contemporaries. It is probably not an overstatement to say that the Danish conquest of England would not have been practicable except for the alliance of the trust with Svend, which enabled him to turn his attention from the complications of Scandinavian politics to his English interests.

The extent of the trust's material equipment at the height of its prosperity is a matter of surmise rather than of statistical information. Some notion of its strength may be gathered from the statement that the fortified harbor of Jómsborg included within its castellated sea-wall an inclosed basin capable of floating three hundred ships at anchor. In the great raid against the kingdom of Norway, whose failure inaugurated the disintegration of the trust, the number of ships sent out is variously given by different authorities. The Jómsvikingasaga says that they numbered one long hundred. This fleet, however, was made up of craft selected from among the ships that were under the immediate command of four of the great captains of adventure. The fleet, as it lay in the Sound before the final selection, is said to have numbered 185, but the context shows that this fleet was but a fraction of the aggregate Jómsviking tonnage. Of this disastrous expedition but a fraction returned; yet various later expeditions of the Jómsvikings are mentioned in which some scores of their ships took part.

The trust having become an international power, it undertook to shape the destiny of nations and dynasties, and it broke under the strain. It, or its directors, took a contract to bring Norway into subjection to the Danish crown. Partly through untoward accidents, partly through miscalculation and hurried preparations, it failed in this undertaking, which brought the affairs of the trust to a spectacular crisis. From this disaster it never recovered. With the opening of the eleventh century the viking trust fell into abeyance, and in a few years it disappeared from the field. There are several good reasons for its failure. On the death of its founder the management had passed into the hands of Sigvaldi, a man of less sagacity and less integrity as well as of more unprincipled personal ambition, and somewhat given to flighty ventures in the field of politics. It was Sigvaldi's overweening personal ambition that committed the corporation to the ill-advised expedition against Norway. The trust, moreover, being supreme within its field, the discipline grew lax and its exactions grew arbitrary, sometimes going to unprovoked excesses. As one might say, too little thought was given to "economies of production," and the charges were pushed beyond "what the traffic would bear." But for all that, in spite of its meddling in politics, and in spite of jobbery and corruption in its management, the trust still had a fair outlook for continued success, except that the bottom dropped out of the trade. For better or worse, the slave-trade in the north of Europe collapsed on the introduction of Christianity, at least so far as regards the trade in Christians; and without a slave market the viking enterprise had no chance of reasonable earnings. At the same time, the risk and hardships of the traffic—the "cost of production"—grew heavier as the countries to the south became better able to defend their shores. The passenger traffic failed almost entirely, and the goods traffic was in a disorganised and unprofitable state. The costs were fast becoming prohibitive, even to men so enterprising and necessitous as the Norwegian freebooters. The situation changed in such a way as to leave the trust out.

Some show of corporate existence was still maintained for a short period after the trust's great crisis, but there was an end of discipline and authoritative control. The minor concerns and private establishments that had once formed part of the trust continued in the trade on an independent footing, but with decreasing regularity and with diminishing strength. As the equipment wore out it was not replaced, and the trade lapsed. The great captains of the industry, like Sigvaldi, Thorkel Haraldson, Sigurd Kápa, and Vagn Akason, turned their holdings to the service of the dynastic politics which were then engaging the attention of the northern countries. Much of this body of enterprise and wealth was exhausted in working out the imperialistic schemes of expansion of Svend and Knut the Great; and what was left over shared the fortunes of the other available forces of the Scandinavian countries, being dissipated in political dissensions, extortionate government organisations, and the establishment of a church and a nobility.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Reprinted by permission from The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. XII, March, 1904.