II. Olav the Viking
When Olav was twelve years old, he boarded a ship of war for the first time. The soldiers gave Olav the name of king. But it was an experienced Viking named Rane who led the expedition for a long time.2
The Viking period lasted from c.790 to c. 1050. What were the reasons for the Viking expeditions? Most people incline today to the view that they were due to a lack of cultivable land. It was mostly from west Norway that they set out on their perilous journeys, and geography indicates that the lack of earth would have been greatest here. Initially, courageous Norwegians went on trade journeys to foreign lands - this activity later changed to pirate journeys. It was mostly big farmers and local chiefs, most of them from West Norway, who led these expeditions. They liked to live in great style at home in Norway, with luxurious banquets and sacrificial meals where many guests could eat and drink large quantities. But the resources to support this way of life became insufficient in the over-populated coastal villages. They did not possess enough of their own, so they added to their household resources by plundering in foreign lands. They could sail out on Viking raids in the summer and then live well on their farms in autumn, winter and spring. A chieftain's son who did not have the right of succession would look on a life as Viking as an acceptable alternative to running a farm. He got money for nothing through raids in foreign countries. Many Vikings became extremely rich on stolen goods. Beside this, one could win great renown at home in Norway through courageous fights with other Vikings or with the standing army of the country in question. This was just as important as possessions and gold. For others, who set on to the open sea, the real and most important goal of the journey was to get possessions of new lands.3
In the second half of the ninth century, Vikings from the northern lands organised what history calls «the great army». This ravaged France, Ireland and England. When enormous numbers of Norwegian, Danish and Swedish Vikings made their descent, they did not content themselves with just landing: they conquered new land and founded cities. Northern merchants and farmers hungry for land followed them. Thus Norwegian Vikings subdued Iceland, the Atlantic islands, and parts of England and Ireland.
When Icelandic family sagas and Snorre in his Heimskringla tell about the landings in foreign lands, they say very little about all the pagan wildness that accompanied their descent with fire and sword on peaceful villages: they describe with exuberance the courage and strength of the hero in the struggle against other Vikings. If one wants to discover something about the Viking's cruelty, one must search through foreign literary sources. Christian Europe was especially offended by the attacks on churches and monasteries. When the monasteries of Lindisfarne, Jarrow and Wearmouth on the east coast of England were plundered by Norwegian Vikings, a cry of distress went up over the whole of Europe. The English scholar Alcuin wrote a letter to the English king Ethelred about the attack: «We and our forefathers have lived in this sacred land for almost three hundred years now, and never has such distress been seen in Britain as that which now has come upon us from pagan people, and no one ever thought that such an attack could come across the sea. Picture St Cuthbert' s church soiled with the blood of God's priests and plundered of its ornaments. A place more holy than any other in Britain has become the booty of pagans.» In the eleventh century - contemporary with Olav Haraldsson - an author gives the following appalling account of Nordic Vikings' bloody attacks in England: «In the same year, pagans from the northern countries came like stinging wasps over the sea with military power, and spread to all parts like wild wolves, robbing and killing not only beasts of burden, sheep and oxen, but even priests and deacons and flocks of monks and nuns. And they came to the church in Lindisfarne and devastated everything with their cruel plunders, trampling on the holy places with their impure feet. They uprooted the altars and stole all the treasures in the sacred church. They killed some of the brethren and took others in chains with them. Some of them they chased away with mockery and contempt, and some they drowned in the sea.» An Irish chronicler makes a completely negative judgement of the conduct of Norwegian Vikings: «Before the sands of the sea or the grasses of the meadow or the stars of heaven have been counted, it will not be easy to describe... what the Irish have suffered because of them men and women, boys and girls, laypeople or priests, free men and slaves, old and young - disgrace, violence, injustice and attacks.» It was not without good reasons that Christian Europe added a new prayer to the Litany of the Saints: «A furore normanorum libera nos, Domine»: «Free us, o Lord, from the fury of the Norsemen.»
Norwegian historians at a later period have tried to soften the bad reputation of the Vikings: they say that we find similar methods of war in other Europeans at that period. For my own part, I would add that one cannot avoid admiring the enormous physical and psychological strength of the Vikings, their unquenchable audacity, their will to achieve a victory, their technical skill, and their organisational ability in all the places where they settled. But the medal has a reverse side too. Rivers of blood flowed where the Vikings moved. They became intoxicated with blood when they jumped on shore from their ships with the demonic dragons' heads on the prow. We have many accounts of their bloody conduct and their sovereign disdain for human life - as soon as it was a question of people to whom they were not related themselves.
We have now spent some time looking at the age of the Vikings so that we can understand more easily the circumstances in which the pagan Olav Haraldsson grew up and was a young man. I have already mentioned the negative qualities Olav inherited from the Hårfagre family -wildness, cruelty, greed, lack of sexual restraint. Modern psychology teaches us that bad qualities that are inherited can be kept in cheek by a good education in the milieu in which one grows up. But it was precisely this that did not happen in Olav's case. All his bad inclinations were permitted to develop freely in his years as a Viking. He never felt any pangs of a guilty conscience over his bloody conduct in this period of his youth, between the ages of twelve and nineteen. When he stole property from poor people, when he killed those who offered resistance, when he captured people and sold them as slaves, when he dishonoured women and burnt villages, it never occurred to him that he was acting badly. Here he had the whole of Norwegian society on his side, at least in the upper classes. His own mother encouraged him to behave like this. The crew on board ship praised the «tough guy». This was how things ought to be! Moral ideas were different then from our ideas today. I mention this now so that we can understand more easily later on in this story of Olav Haraldsson how enormously difficult it would be for the newly-converted young man to follow the Christian moral law in his conduct. Indeed, it is when we really think through what he experienced and believed as a young pagan Viking that we can more readily grasp how he fell back into pagan behaviour after he had accepted the Christian faith. It was not possible for his Viking attitude to become completely subordinate to «White Christ's» will in the course of a few years.
But this is to jump ahead of events in our story. In his teenage years, Olav went on Viking raids to the east. He raided first for a few years in the Baltic lands. In Denmark, he met a Viking from Jomsborg called Torkjell Høye, and the two joined company to go on raids in the west. They kept south-east England in a state of insecurity for three years. The Viking army made an unsuccessful attempt to capture London. Later, they raided along the Thames as far as Oxford, and defeated the English defences in Norfolk. In 1011, the Vikings captured Canterbury. Archbishop Alphege was taken as a hostage, so that king Ethelred would pay the «danegeld» to them. When the payment was slow in coming, some drunk Vikings killed the archbishop; but later on they received 48,000 pounds in gold anyway. Olav sailed south-east, immensely rich with the booty he had taken. He entered the military service of the duke of Normandy. Later he went on raids southwards along the Spanish coast, and planned to go into the Mediterranean. It was then that he had a strange dream: «A man came to him, a man one would notice - strong but also frightening. The man spoke to him and told him to abandon his plan and continue his journey: 'Go back to Norway, for you shall be king in Norway forever. 'He interpreted this dream to mean that he was to be king over the country and that his descendants would follow him for a long time.» Perhaps these were ideas that had lain for a long time in Olav's subconscious, and now found expression in this dream. Or was it Olav Trygvasson who spoke to him? (Olay Trygvasson was king 995-1000, and considered as the greatest king Norway ever had).
His ancestor Harald Hårfagre was the famous king who had gathered large areas of Norway into one kingdom. Now the country was divided into small kingdoms where earls, chieftains andforeign powers ruled. As a descendant of Harald Hårfagre, he now saw it as his vocation to return to Norway and take possession of his inheritance: thus he looked on Norway as his rightful inheritance, his ancestral land, bequeathed to him as king. It is not so easy for us today to understand his train of thought, but it was perfectly clear for Olav and his period. What is important for us is to know that from now on, the gathering of Norway under his kingship became a matter of conscience for the young Viking.
