THE BATTLE OF SVOLD ISLAND

A.D. 1000

In the story of the battles of Salamis and Actium we have seen what naval warfare was like in Greek and Roman times. It would be easy to add other examples, but they would be only repetitions of much the same story, for during the centuries of the Roman power there was no marked change in naval architecture or the tactics of warfare on the sea.

We pass, then, over a thousand years to a record of naval war waged in the beginning of the Middle Ages by northern races people who had, independently of Greek or Roman, evolved somewhat similar types of ships, but who were better sailors, though for all that they still used the ship not so much as an engine of war as the floating platform on which warriors might meet in hand-to-hand conflict. Norseman, Dane, and Swede were all of kindred blood. The land-locked Baltic, the deep fiords of the Scandinavian Peninsula, the straits and inlets of the archipelago that fringes its North Sea coast, were the waters on which they learned such skill in seamanship that they soon launched out upon the open sea, and made daring voyages, not only to the Orkneys and the Hebrides, and the Atlantic seaboard of Ireland, but the Faroes, and to still more distant Iceland and Greenland, and then southward to “Vineland,” the mainland of America, long after rediscovered by the navigators of the fifteenth century.

There is a considerable intermixture of Norse blood in the peoples of Great Britain and Ireland, and perhaps from this sea-loving race comes some of the spirit of adventure that has helped so much to build up our own naval power. When Nelson destroyed and captured the Danish fleet at Copenhagen, the Danes consoled themselves by saying that only a leader of their own blood could have conquered them, and that Nelson’s name showed he came of the Viking line.

A chronicler tells how Charlemagne in his old age once came to a village on the North Sea shore, and camped beside it. Looking to seaward he saw far out some long low ships, with gaily painted oars, dragon-shaped bows, and sails made of brightly coloured lengths of stuff sewn together and adorned with embroidery along the yard. Tears came to his eyes as he said: “These sea-dragons will tear asunder the empire I have made.”

They were Viking cruisers, on their way to plunder some coast town; and the old Emperor’s prophecy was verified when the Norman, who was a civilized Norseman, became for a while the conquering race of Europe. Even before the death of Charlemagne the Norse and Danish sea-kings were raiding, plundering, and burning along the coasts of his Empire. Two hundred years of our own history is made up of the story of their incursions. England and Ireland bore the first brunt of their onset, when they found the ways of the sea. But they ravaged all the western coasts of Europe, and even showed themselves in the Mediterranean. From the end of the eighth till the beginning of the eleventh century they were the terror of the western world, and early in that dark and stormy period their raids had grown into great expeditions; they landed armies that marched far inland, and they carved out principalities for themselves.

Western Europe had a brief respite at times when the Vikings fought amongst themselves. In early days there were frequent struggles for supremacy in Norway, between local kinglets and ambitious chiefs. Fighting was in the blood of the Northmen. Two sea-roving squadrons would sometimes challenge each other to battle for the mere sake of a fight. As Norway coalesced into a single kingdom, and as the first teachers of Christianity induced the kings to suppress piracy, there was more of peace and order on the Northern Seas. But in this transition period there was more than one struggle between the Scandinavian kingdoms, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. One of the most famous battles of these northern wars of the sea-kings was fought in this period, when the old wild days of sea-roving were drawing to an end, and its picturesque story may well be told as that of a typical Norse battle, for its hero, King Olaf Tryggveson, was the ideal of a northern sea-king.

Olaf was a descendant of the race of Harold Haarfager, “Fair-haired Harold,” the warrior who had united the kingdom of Norway, and made himself its chief king at the close of the ninth century. But Olaf came of a branch of the royal house that civil war had reduced to desperate straits. He was born when his mother, Astrid, was a fugitive in a lonely island of the Baltic. As a boy he was sold into slavery in Russia. There, one day, in the marketplace of an Esthonian town, he was recognized by a relative, Sigurd, the brother of Astrid, and was freed from bondage and trained to arms as a page at the Court of the Norse adventurers who ruled the land. The “Saga” tells how Olaf, the son of Tryggva, grew to be tall of stature, and strong of limb, and skilled in every art of land and sea, of peace and war. None swifter than he on the snow-shoes in winter, no bolder swimmer when the summer had cleared the ice from the waters. He could throw darts with both hands, he could toss up two swords, catching them like a juggler, and keeping one always in the air. He could climb rocks and peaks like a mountain goat. He could row and sail, and had been known to display his daring skill as an athlete by running along the moving oars outside the ship. He could ride a horse, and fight, mounted or on foot, with axe or sword, with spear or bow.

In early manhood he came back to Norway to avenge the death of his father Tryggva, and then took to sea-roving, for piracy was still the Norseman’s trade. He raided the shores of the Continent from Friesland to Northern France, but most of his piratical voyages were to the shores of our own islands, and many a seaboard town in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland saw Olaf’s plundering squadron of swift ships. Five was the number of them with which he visited the Orkneys.

The Viking warships were small vessels. The ship dug out of the great grave mound at Sandefjord, in Norway, and now shown at Christiania, is seventy-seven feet long, with a beam of seventeen amidships, and a depth of just under six feet. Her draught of water would be only four feet, and she would lie very low in the water, but her lines are those of a good sea boat. She had one mast, forty feet high, to carry a crossyard and a square sail, and she had thirty-two oars, sixteen on each side. It says something for the seamanship of the Northmen that it was with ships like this they sailed the Atlantic waves off the west coast of Ireland, and made their way by the North Sea and the verge of the Arctic to the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, and the mysterious “Vineland."

Raiding in the Irish Sea, Olaf Tryggveson made a stay in a harbour of the Scilly Islands, and there he became a convert to Christianity. On the same voyage he married the Countess Gyde, sister of his namesake, Olaf Kvaran, the Danish King of Dublin. It was while he was staying in Ireland with the Dublin Danes that he heard news from Norway that opened larger ambitions to him. The land was divided among many chiefs, and the most powerful of them was hated as an oppressor by the people, who, he was told, would gladly welcome as their king a leader as famed as Olaf Tryggveson, and representing the line of Harold the Fair-haired. Helped by the Danes of Ireland, he sailed back to Norway, to win its crown for himself, and to cast down the worship of Thor and Odin, and make the land part of Christendom.

In the first enterprise he was quickly successful, and in 995 he was recognized as King of Norway at Trondhjem. During the five years that he reigned he devoted much of his energy to the second part of his mission, and made among his countrymen many real converts, and found still more ready to accept external conformity. Sometimes he would argue, exhort, appeal to the reason and the goodwill of chiefs and people. But often the old Viking spirit of his pagan days would master him, and he would hack down with his battle-axe the emblems and the altars of Thor and Odin, and challenge the old gods to avenge the insult if they had the power, and then tell the startled onlookers that if they were to be loyal to him and live in peace they must accept the new and better creed.

The open sea and the deep fiords running far into the hills were the best highways of his kingdom, and Olaf spared no effort to maintain a good fighting fleet, the best ships of which lay anchored before his great hall at Trondhjem when he was at home. When he went out to war his path was by the sea. He hunted down the pirates and destroyed their strongholds in the northern fiords, with none the less zeal because these places were also the last refuge of the old paganism and its Berserker magicians.

He had built for his own use a ship called the “Crane” (Tränen), longer than ships were usually made at the time, and also of narrower beam. Her additional length enabled more oars to be used, and her sharp bow, carved into a bird’s head, and her graceful lines made her the fastest ship in the fiords when a good crew of rowers was swinging to the oars. A good rowing-boat is generally a bad sailer, but Olaf had made the “Crane” swift enough under canvas, or to speak more accurately, when her sails of brightly dyed wool were spread. She was given high bulwarks, and must have had more than the usual four-foot draught of water, for she carried plenty of heavy stone ballast to stiffen her under sail. With the “Crane” as his flagship, Olaf sailed northward to attack the Viking Raud, pirate and magician, who held out for the old gods and the old wild ways. Raud had another exceptionally large ship, the longest in Norway, and till the “Crane” was built the swiftest also. The bow, carved into a dragon’s head and covered with brazen scales, gave Raud’s ship the name of the “Serpent” (Ormen). As Olaf sailed northward Raud and his allies met him in a skirmish at sea, but soon gave way to superior numbers, and Raud, when he steered the “Serpent” into the recesses of Salten Fiord, thought he had shaken off pursuit, especially as the weather had broken, and wild winds, stormy seas, and driving mists and rain squalls might well make the fiord inaccessible to Olaf’s fleet. Raud sat late feasting and drinking, and in the early morning he still lay in a drunken sleep when the “Crane” slipped into the fiord despite mist and storm, and Olaf seized the dragon ship and made Raud a prisoner almost without striking a blow.

When the King returned to Trondhjem he had the two finest ships of the north, the “Crane” and the “Serpent,” the latter the largest, the former the swiftest vessel that had yet been launched on the northern seas. Proud of such weapons, he wondered if he could not build a warship longer than the “Serpent” and swifter than the “Crane,” and he consulted his best shipbuilder, Thorberg Haarklover, i.e. the “Hair-splitter,” so named from his deftness with the sharp adze, the shipwright’s characteristic tool in the days of wooden walls. Thorberg was given a free hand, and promised to build a ship that would be famous for centuries. This was the “Lang Ormen,” or “Long Serpent,” a “Dreadnought” of those old Viking days. She was 150 feet long, and her sides rose high out of the water, but she had also a deep draught. The bow, strengthened with a cut-water of steel, was fashioned like the head of a huge dragon, the stern carved into a dragon’s tail, and bow and stern were covered with scales of gold. She had sixty oars, and her crew was made up of no less than six hundred picked men, among them warriors whose names live in history.

For a while Olaf, with his great ships, reigned victoriously over Norway, defeating more than one effort of the old pagan Vikings to shake his power. One of these defeated rivals, Erik Jarl (Earl Erik), took refuge in Sweden, gathered there a number of adherents who had like himself fled from Norway to avoid Olaf’s strong-handed methods of reform and conversion, and with them sailed the Baltic, plundering its coasts in the old Viking fashion. King Svend of Denmark was jealous of the power of Norway, welcomed Erik at his Court, and gave him his daughter’s hand. Svend’s queen, Sigrid, was a Swedish princess, and Erik set to work to form a triple league against Norway of which the three branches would be his own following of Norwegian malcontents and the Swedes and Danes.

Olaf had spent the summer of the year 1000, with a fleet of sixty ships, in the South-Eastern Baltic. Autumn was coming, and the King was preparing to return home before the wintry weather began, when news arrived that hastened his departure. It was brought by one of his jarls, Earl Sigvald, who came with eleven ships, manned by his clansmen, and reported that the rebel Erik had been joined by the kings of Sweden and Denmark, and the three fleets of the allies were preparing to fall upon Olaf on his homeward voyage. But Sigvald assured the King that if he would allow him to pilot the Norwegian fleet he would take it safely through channels deep enough for even the “Long Serpent,” and elude the hostile armada, which outnumbered Olaf’s fleet three to one.

Sigvald, however, was a traitor. He had promised to lead Olaf into waters where the allied fleets would be waiting to attack him. And he knew they would be anchored inside the island of Ruegen, near the islet of Svold.

So Olaf, trusting to his false friend, sailed westward from Wendland to his last battle. The “Saga” tells how on a bright morning, Erik Jarl and the two kings watched from Svold the approach of the Norwegian ships, and at first doubted if Olaf was with them, but when they saw the “Long Serpent” towering above the rest they doubted no longer, and gave orders for their 180 ships to clear for action, agreeing that Norway should be divided among them and the “Long Serpent” should be the prize of whoever first set foot on her deck, so sure were they that numbers would give them victory even against a champion of the seas like Olaf Tryggveson. The swift “Crane” and the “Short Serpent,” taken from Raud of Salten Fiord, had sailed ahead of the fleet. They saw the ships of the allies crowding out of the channel between Svold and the mainland, and turned back to give the alarm. Thorkild, the half-brother of Olaf, who commanded the “Short Serpent,” urged the King to bear out to sea and avoid a fight with such desperate odds. But Olaf’s blood was up. Like the trirèmes of the Mediterranean, the “Serpents,” “Dragons,” and “Cranes” of the northern seas used only the oars in battle, and the King gave the order which meant fighting. “Down with the sails!” he said. “Who talks of running away? I never fled yet and never will. My life is in God’s hands, but flight would be shame for ever.”

The battle that followed is the most famous in Viking story. We know it chiefly through poetic records. But there is no doubt the “Saga” preserves for us much of the living tradition of the time, and if its writers yielded to the temptation of decorating their narrative with picturesque detail, it must be remembered that they told the tale of Olaf’s last sea-fight to men who knew from experience what Northern war was like, so they give us what we chiefly want, a lifelike picture of a Viking battle.

Just as Shakespeare tells how at Shrewsbury “the King had many marching in his coats,” and to this day in an Abyssinian army several nobles are dressed and armed like the King to divert personal attack from him, so, as he stood on the after-deck of the “Long Serpent,” Olaf had beside him one of his best warriors, Kolbiorn Slatter, a man like himself in height and build, and wearing the same splendid armour, with gilded shield and helmet and crimson cloak. Round them were grouped the picked fighting men of the bodyguard, the “Shield-burg,” so called because it was their duty to form a breastwork of their shields and ward off arrows and javelins from the King. On the poop also were the King’s trumpeters bearing the “war horns” long horns of the wild ox, which now sounded the signal for battle. The droning call was taken up by ship after ship, as the shouting sailors sent down sails and yards on deck. The ships closed on each other side by side, and drew in their oars, forming in close line abreast, and then under bare masts the long array of war galleys, with their high bows carved into heads of beasts and birds and dragons, drifted with the current towards the hostile fleet.

The sailors were lashing the ships together as they moved. Manoeuvring appears to have had small part in most Viking fights. The fleet became one great floating fortress, and as the ships met bow to bow the best warriors fought hand to hand on the forecastle decks.

The writer of the “Saga” tells how in the centre of the fleet the “Long Serpent” lay, with the “Crane” and the “Short Serpent” to port and starboard. The sterns of the three ships were in line, and so the bow of the “Long Serpent” projected far in front of the rest. As the sailors secured the ships in position, Ulf the Red-haired, who commanded on the forecastle of the “Long Serpent,” went aft and called out to the King that if the “Serpent” lay so far ahead he and his men would have tough work in the bow. “Are you afraid?” asked the King. “We are no more afraid forward than you are aft,” replied Ulf, with a flash of anger. The King lost his temper and threatened Ulf with an arrow on his bowstring. “Put down your bow,” said Ulf. “If you shoot me you wound your own hand,” and then he went back to his post on the forecastle deck.

The allied fleet was now formed in line and bearing down on the Norwegians. Sigvald Jarl, who had lured the King into this ambush, hung back with his eleven ships, and Olaf with his sixty had to meet a threefold force. King Svend, with the Danish fleet, formed the enemy’s centre. To his right Olaf’s namesake, King Olaf Svensker, led the Swedish ships. On the left was Erik, with the rebel heathen Jarls of Norway. Olaf watched the enemy’s approach and talked to Kolbiorn and the men of the Shield-burg. He did not reckon that the Danes or the Swedes would give much trouble, he said; the Danes were soft fellows, and the Swedes would be better “at home pickling fish” than risking themselves in fight with Norsemen, but Erik’s attack would be dangerous. “These are Norwegians like ourselves. It will be hard against hard.”

Perhaps we have here a touch of flattery for his countrymen from the poet of the “Saga,” a Norseman telling the tale to men of his own race. However this may be, the words put into Olaf’s mouth were true so far as the rebel Jarls were concerned, even if they did injustice to Dane and Swede.

Erik Jarl seems to have had some inventive talent and some idea of naval tactics. His ship was called the “Iron Beard,” because her bows bristled with sharpened spikes of iron. She was to be herself a weapon, not merely a means of bringing fighting men to close quarters for a hand-to-hand struggle. It is remarkable that, though it proved useful at the battle of Svold, the armed bow found no regular place in Viking warfare. The “Iron Beard” also anticipated modern methods in another way. Her bulwarks were covered with iron-plating. It cannot have been of any serious thickness, for a Viking ship had not enough displacement to spare for carrying heavy armour; but the thin plates were strong enough to be a defence against arrows and spears, and as these would not penetrate a thick wooden bulwark it seems likely that the plating was fixed on a rail running along each side, thus giving a higher protection than the bulwark itself. Erik’s ship was thus a primitive ironclad ram.

Though Olaf had spoken lightly of the Danes, it was King Svend’s squadron that began the fight, rowing forward in advance of the rest and falling on the right and right centre of Olaf’s fleet. The Swedes at first hung back. Svend himself on the left of the Danish attack steered straight for the projecting bows of the “Long Serpent.” Red-haired Ulf grappled the Danish King’s ship, boarded her, and after a fierce fight in which the Norwegian battle-axes did deadly work, cleared her from end to end. King Svend saved his life by clambering on board of another ship. Olaf and his men from the high stern of the “Long Serpent” shot their arrows with telling effect into the Danish ships. All along the centre the Norwegians held their own, and gradually the Danes began to give way. It was then only the Swedes worked their ships into the melee that raged in front of the line of Norwegian bows. To have swept round the line and attacked in flank and rear, while the Danes still grappled it in front, would have been a more effective method of attack, but the opponents thought only of meeting front to front like fighting bulls. It may be too that Olaf’s fleet had so drifted that there was not much room to pass between its right wing on the land.

But however this may be, there was plenty of sea room on the left, and here Erik Jarl, in the “Iron Beard,” led the attack and used his advantage to the full. Part of his squadron fell upon the Norwegian front; but the “Iron Beard” and several of her consorts swung round the end of the line, and concentrated their attack on the outside ship. Erik had grasped a cardinal principle of naval tactics, the importance of trying to crush a part of the hostile line by bringing a local superiority of force to bear upon it. It was “hard against hard” Viking against Viking but the Norwegians in the end ship were hopelessly outnumbered. They fought furiously and sold their lives dearly; but soon the armed bow of the “Iron Beard” drove between their ship and the next, the lashings were cut, and the Norwegian drifted out of the line, with her deck heaped with dead. Erik let her drift and attacked the next ship in the same way. He was eating up Olaf’s left wing ship by ship, while the Danes and Swedes kept the centre and right busy.

It was the bloodiest fight that the North had ever seen, a fight to the death, for though there was now small hope of victory, the Norse battle madness was strong in Olaf and his men. As the day wore on the right held its own; but one by one every ship on the left had been cleared by Erik and the Jarls, and now the battle raged round the three great ships in the centre, the “Crane” and the two “Serpents.” Erik came up and drove the bow of the “Iron Beard” into the “Long Serpent’s” bulwarks. The rebel Jarl stood on the forecastle behind the bristling spikes, his blood-stained battle-axe in hand and his Shield-burg standing close around him.

They had now hard work to ward off the arrows that came whistling from the “Long Serpent,” for at such close quarters Erik had been recognized, and more than one archer shot at him. The “Saga” tells how young Einar Tamberskelver, the best of the bowmen of Norway, so strong that he could send a blunt arrow through a bull’s hide, had posted himself in the rigging of the “Long Serpent” and made the rebel Jarl his mark. His arrows rattled on the shields of Erik’s guard. One of them grazed his helmet, whistled over the “Iron Beard’s” deck and buried itself in her rudder-head. Crouching in the bow of the “Iron Beard” behind her armour plates was a Finnish archer, and the Finlanders were such good bowmen that men said sorcery aided their skill. Erik told him to shoot the man in the “Serpent’s” rigging. The Finn, to show his marksmanship, aimed at Einar’s bowstring and cut it with his arrow. The bow released from the string sprang open and broke with a loud report. “What is that sound?” asked Olaf. Einar sprang down from the rigging and answered, “It is the sound of the sceptre of Norway falling from your grasp.” It was noticed that Olaf’s hand was bleeding, “his gauntlet was full of blood,” but he had given no sign when he was wounded. Arrows, javelins, and stones were falling in showers on the decks of the “Crane” and the “Serpents,” for the Danes and Swedes worsted in the close fight had drawn off a little, and were helping Erik’s attack by thus fighting at a safer distance.

Erik now boarded the “Long Serpent” amidships, but was beaten back. He brought up more of his ships and gathered a larger boarding-party. The Danish and Swedish arrows had thinned the ranks of Ulf’s men in the “Long Serpent’s” bows. When Erik led a second storming-party on board, Danes and Swedes too came clambering over the bow, and the “Long Serpent” attacked on all sides was cleared to the poop. Here Olaf fought with Kolbiorn, Einar and the men of the Shield-burg around him. He was somewhat disabled by his wounded hand, but he still used his battle-axe with deadly effect. The attacking party were not quite sure which of the tall men in gilded armour was the King, but at such close quarters some of them soon recognized him, and Erik called to his men not to kill Olaf, but to make him prisoner. Olaf knew well that if his life was spared for a while it would be only to put him to death finally with the cruelty the heathen Vikings delighted in inflicting on their enemies. As his men fell round him and his party was driven further and further astern, he must have seen that, outnumbered as his men were, and with himself wounded, he would soon be overmastered and made prisoner. There was just one chance of escape for the best swimmer in Norway. Holding up his shield he stepped on the bulwark, threw the shield at his enemies, and dived overboard. Kolbiorn tried to dive with him, but was seized and dragged back to the ship. When Erik found he was not the King he spared his life.

The few who remained of the Shield-burg sprang overboard. Some were killed by men who were waiting in boats to dispose of the fugitives, others escaped by diving and swimming, and reached Danish and Swedish ships where they asked for, and were given, quarter. Einar, the archer, was one of those thus saved, and he is heard of later in the Danish wars of England.

Olaf was never seen again. Sigvald’s ships, after having watched the fight from afar, were rowing up to the victorious fleets, and for a long time there was a rumour that King Olaf had slipped out of his coat of mail as he swam under water, and then rose and eluded Erik’s boats, and reached one of Sigvald’s ships, where he was hidden. The tale ran that he had been taken back to Wendland, where he was waiting to reappear some day in Norway and claim his own. But years went on and there were no tidings of King Olaf Tryggveson. He had been drowned in his armour under the stern of the “Long Serpent.”

King Olaf is still, after nine centuries, one of the popular heroes of the Norwegian people. He had a twofold fame, as the ideal of a sea-king, as the ruler who tried in his own wild untaught way to win the land of the Fiords to Christendom. Another Olaf, who completed this last work a few years later, and who, like Olaf Tryggveson, reigned over Norway in right of his prowess and his descent from Harold the Fair-haired, is remembered as St. Olaf, saint and martyr; but no exploit of either king lives in popular tradition so brightly as the story of Olaf Tryggveson’s death-battle at Svold. “My life is in God’s hands,” he had said, “but flight would be shame for ever.” His fight against desperate odds and ending in defeat and death won him fame for ever.