 CHAPTER XII. Olof the Tranquil, Magnus Barefoot, and Sigurd the Crusader. The new King Olof, his brother Magnus, having soon died, bore Rul in Norway for some five and twenty years. Rul soft and gentle, not like his father's, and inclining rather to improvement in the arts and elegancies than to anything severe or dangerously laborious. A slim-built, witty-talking, popular and pretty man, with uncommonly bright eyes and hair like floss silk. They called him Olof Kier, the tranquil or easygoing. The ceremonials of the palace were much improved by him. Palace still continued to be built of huge logs pyramidically sloping upwards, with fireplace in the middle of the floor, and no egress for smoke or ingress for light except overhead, which in bad weather you could shut, or all but shut, with a lid. Lid originally made of mere opaque board, but changed laterally into a light frame, covered, glazed, so to speak, with entrails of animals, clarified into something of pelucidity. All this, Olof, I hope, further perfected, as he did the placing of the court-lady's court-officials and the like, but I doubt if the luxury of a glass window were ever known to him, or a cup to drink from that was not made of metal or horn. In fact it is chiefly for his son's sake I mention him here, and with the son, too, I have little real concern, but only a kind of fantastic. This son bears the name of Magnus Barford, barefoot, or bare leg, and if you ask why so, the answer is, he was used to appear in the streets of Niteros, Trondheim, now and then in complete Scotch Highland dress. Authentic tartan plaid and filibeg, at that epoch, to the wonder of Trondheim and us. The truth is he had a mighty fancy for those Hebrides and other Scotch possessions of his, and seeing England now quite impossible, eagerly speculated on some conquest in Ireland his next best. He did, in fact, go diligently voyaging and inspecting among those Orkney and Hebridean Isles, putting everything straight there, including stringent authorities, Yarls, Ney, a king, kingdom of the Söderor, southern Isles, now called Söder, and as first king, Sigurd, his pretty little boy of nine years. All which done, and some quarrel with Sweden fought out, he seriously applied himself to visiting in a more emphatic manner, namely, to invading, with his best skill and strength, the considerable virtual or actual kingdom he had in Ireland, intending fully to enlarge it to the utmost limits of the island, if possible. He got prosperously into Dublin, guess AD 1102, considerable authority he already had, even among those poor Irish kings, or kinglets, in their glibs and yellow saffron gowns, still more, I suppose, among the numerous Norse principalities there. King Murdog, king of Ireland, says the chronicle of man, had obliged himself, every yule day, to take a pair of shoes, hang them over his shoulder, as your servant does on a journey, and walk across his court, at bidding and in presence of Magnus Barefoot's messenger, by way of homage to the said king. Murdog, on this greater occasion, did whatever homage could be required of him, but that, though comfortable, was far from satisfying the great king's ambitious mind. The great king left Murdog, left his own Dublin, marched off westward on a general conquest of Ireland, marched easily victorious for a time, and got, some say, into the wilds of Canot. But there saw himself beset by ambush guards and wild Irish countenances intent on mischief, and had, on the sudden, to draw it for battle, place, I regret to say, altogether undiscoverable to me, known only that it was boggy in the extreme. Certain enough, too certain and evident, Magnus Barefoot, searching eagerly, could find no firm footing there, nor, fighting furiously up to the knees or deeper, any result but honourable death. Date is confidently marked, 24th August 1103, as if people knew the very day of the month. The natives did humanely give King Magnus Christian burial. The remnants of his force, without further molestation, found their ships on the coast of Ulster, and sailed home, without conquest of Ireland, nay, perhaps, leaving royal Murdog disposed to be relieved of his procession with the pair of shoes. Magnus Barefoot left three sons, all kings at once, reigning peaceably together. But to us at present the only noteworthy one of them was Sigurd, who, finding nothing special to do at home, left his brothers to manage for him, and went off on a far voyage, which has rendered him distinguishable in the crowd. Voyage, through the Straits of Gibraltar, on to Jerusalem, thence to Constantinople, and so home, through Russia, shining with such renown as filled all Norway for the time being. A king called Sigurd Yorosvar, Jerusalemer, or Sigurd the Crusader, henceforth. His voyage had been only partially of the Viking type. In general it was of the royal progress kind, rather, Vikingism only intervening in cases of incivility or the like. His reception in the courts of Portugal, Spain, Sicily, and Italy, had been honorable and sumptuous. The king of Jerusalem broke out into utmost splendor and effusion at sight of such a pilgrim, and Constantinople did its highest honors to such a prince of verringers. And the truth is, Sigurd intrinsically was a wise, able, and prudent man, who, surviving both his brothers, reigned a good while alone in a solid and successful way. He shows features of an original, independent-thinking man, something of ruggedly strong, sincere, and honest, with peculiarities that are amiable and even pathetic in the character and temperament of him, as, certainly, the course of life he took was of his own choosing, and peculiar enough. He happens, furthermore, to be, what he least of all could have chosen or expected, the last of the harfogger genealogy that had any success or much deserved any in this world. The last of the harfoggers, or as good as the last, so that, singular to say, it is in reality, for one thing only that Sigurd, after all his crusadings and wonderful adventures, is memorable to us here—the advent of an Irish gentleman called Gilchrist, Gilchrist, advent of Christ, who, not over-welcome, I should think, but unconsciously big with the above result, appeared in Norway, while King Sigurd was supreme. Let us explain a little. This Gilchrist, the unconsciously fatal individual, who spoke Norse imperfectly, declared himself to be the natural son of Willem Magnus Barefoot, born to him there while engaged in that unfortunate conquest of Ireland. Here is my mother come with me, said Gilchrist, who declares my real baptismal name to have been herald, given me by that great king, and who will carry the red-hot plowshares or do any reasonable ordeal in testimony of these facts. I am King Sigurd's veritable half-brother. What will King Sigurd think it fair to do with me? Sigurd clearly seems to have believed the man was speaking the truth, and indeed nobody to have doubted but he was. Sigurd said, Honourable Substitutes, shalt thou have from me here, but under pain of extirpation swear that, neither in my time nor in that of my young son Magnus, wilt thou ever claim any share in this government. Gil swore and punctually kept his promise during Sigurd's reign, but during Magnus's he conspicuously broke it, and in result, through many reigns, and during three or four generations afterwards, produced unspeakable contentions, massacrings, confusions in the country he had adopted. There are reckoned from the time of Sigurd's death, A.D. 1130, about a hundred years of civil war, no king allowed to distinguish himself by a solid reign of well-doing, or by any continuing reign at all, sometimes as many as four kings simultaneously fighting, and in Norway, from sire to son, nothing but sanguinary anarchy, disaster and bewilderment, a country seeking steadily as if towards absolute ruin. Of all of which frightful misery and discord Irish Gil, styled afterwards King Harold Gil, was, by ill destiny and otherwise, the visible origin, an illegitimate Irish harfager who proved to be his own destruction and that of the harfager kindred altogether. Sigurd himself seems always to have rather favored Gil, who was a cheerful, shrewd, patient, witty and effective fellow, and had at first much quizzing to endure, from the younger kind, on account of his Irish way of speaking Norse, and for other reasons. One evening, for example, while the drink was going round, Gil mentioned that the Irish had a wonderful talent of swift running, and that there were among them people who could keep up with the swiftest horse. At which, especially from young Magnus, there were peals of laughter, and a declaration from the latter that Gil and he would have tried it to-morrow morning. Gil in vain urged that he had not himself professed to be so swift a runner as to keep up with the prince's horses, but only that there were men in Ireland who could. Magnus was positive, and early next morning Gil had to be on the ground, and the race, naturally under heavy bet, actually went off. Gil started parallel to Magnus's stirrup, ran like a very row, and was clearly ahead at the goal. "'Unfair,' said Magnus, thou must have had a hold of my stirrup leather, and helped thyself along. We must try it again.' Gil ran behind the horse this second time, and then at the end sprang forward, and again was fairly in ahead. "'Thou must have held by the tail,' said Magnus, not by fair running, was this possible. We must try a third time.' Gil started ahead of Magnus and his horse this third time, kept ahead with increasing distance, Magnus galloping his very best, and reached the goal more palpably foremost than ever, so that Magnus had to pay his bet, and other damage and humiliation, and got from his father, who heard of it soon afterwards, scoffing rebuke as a silly fellow, who did not know the worth of men, but only the clothes and rank of them, and well deserved what he had got from Gil. All the time King Sigurd lived, Gil seems to have had good recognition and protection from that famous man, and indeed to have gained favor all around, by his quiet social demeanor and the qualities he showed. CHAPTER XIII. Magnus the Blind, Harold Gil, and Mutual Extinction of the Harfhuggers. On Sigurd the Crusader's death, Magnus naturally came to the throne, Gil keeping silence and a cheerful face for the time. But it was not long till claim arose on Gil's part, till war and fight arose between Magnus and him, till the skillful, popular, ever-active and shifty Gil had entirely beaten Magnus, put out his eyes, mutilated the poor body of him in a horrible and unnamed manner, and shut him up in a convent as out of the game henceforth. There, in his dark misery, Magnus lived now as a monk, called Magnus the Blind by those Norse populations, King Harold Gil reigning victoriously in his stead. But this also was only for a time. There arose avenging Kinsfolk of Magnus, who had no Irish accent in their Norse, and were themselves eager enough to bear rule in their native country. By one of these, a terribly strong-handed, fighting, violent and regardless fellow, who was also a bastard of Magnus barefoot, and had been made a priest, but liked it unbearably ill, and had broken loose from it into the wildest courses at home and abroad, so that his current name got to be Slimy Deacon, or Slim and Ill Deacon, under which he is much noisest of in Snorro and the sagas. By this Slim Deacon, Gil was put an end to, murdered by night, drunk in his sleep, and poor, blind Magnus was brought out, and again set to act as King, or King's cloak, in hopes Gil's posterity would never rise to victory more. But Gil's posterity did, to victory and also to defeat, and were the death of Magnus and of Slim Deacon, too, in a frightful way, and all got their own death by and by in a ditto. In brief, these two kindreds, reckoned to be authentic enough, harfugger people, both kinds of them, proved now to have become a veritable crop of dragon's teeth, whom mutually fought, plotted, struggled, as if it had been their life's business, never ended fighting and seldom long intermitted it, till they had exterminated one another, and did at last all rest in death. One of these later Gil temporary kings I remember by the name of Harold Hurdbred, Harold of the Broad Shoulders. The very last of them, I think, was Harold Munn, Harold of the Rhymouth, who gave rise to two impostors, pretending to be sons of his, a good while after the poor Rhymouth itself and all its troublesome belongings were quietly underground. What Norway suffered during that sad century may be imagined. EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY CHAPTER XIV SPHERER AND DESCENDANCE TO HACK ON THE OLD The end of it was, or rather the first abatement, and beginnings of the end, that when all this had gone on ever worsening for some forty years or so, one spherer, A.D. 1177, at the head of an armed mob of poor people called Birkebinds, came upon the scene, a strange enough figure in history, this spherer and his Birkebinds, at first a mere mockery and dismal laughing-stop to the enlightened Norway public. Nevertheless, by unheard of fighting, hungering, exertion, and endurance, spherer, after ten years of such a death-wrestle against men and things, got himself accepted as king, and by wonderful expenditure of ingenuity, common cunning, unctuous parliamentary eloquence, or almost popular preaching, and it must be owned, general human faculty in valor, or value, in the over-clouded and distorted state, did victoriously continue such, and founded a new dynasty in Norway, which ended only with Norway's separate existence after near three hundred years. This spherer called himself a son of Harold Rymouth, but was, in reality, the son of a poor comb-maker in some little town of Norway, nothing heard of sonship to Rymouth till after good success otherwise. His Birkebinds, that is to say, birch-legs, the poor rebellious wretches having taken to the woods, and been obliged, besides their intolerable scarcity of food, to thatch their bodies from the cold with whatever covering could be got, and their legs especially with birch-bark, sad species of fleecy hosary, whence their nickname. His Birkebinds, I guess, always to have been a kind of Norse jackery, desperate rising of thralls and indigent people, driven mad by their unendurable sufferings and famishings, there's the deepest stratum of misery, and the densest and heaviest in this general misery of Norway, which had lasted towards the third generation, and looked as if it would last forever, whereupon they had risen, proclaiming in this famous dumb manner, unintelligible except to heaven, that the same could not, nor would not, be endured any longer. And by their spherer, strange to say, they did attain a kind of permanent success, and, from being a dismal laughing-stock in Norway, came to be important, and, for a time, all important there. Their opposition nicknames, Bagglers, from Baggall, Buckalus, Bishop Staff, Bishop Nicholas being chief leader, Goldlegs, and the like obscure terms, for there was still a considerable course of counter-fighting ahead, and especially of counter-nicknaming, I take to have meant in Norse prefigurement seven centuries ago, bloated aristocracy, tyrannous bourgeoisie, till in the next century these rents were closed again. King's spherer, not himself bred to come-making, had, in his fifth year, gone to an uncle, bishop in the Faroe Islands, and got some considerable education from him, with a view to priesthood on the part of spherer. But, not liking that career, spherer had fled and smuggled himself over to the Berkabinds, who noticing the learned tongue and other miraculous qualities of the man, proposed to make him captain of them, and even threatened to kill him if he would not accept, which, thus at the sword's point, as spherer says, he was obliged to do. It was after this that he thought of becoming son of Rhymouth and other high things. His Berkabinds, when he certainly had a talent of campaigning, which has hardly ever been equaled. They fought like devils against any odds of number, and before battle they have been known to march six days together without food, except, perhaps, the inner barks of trees, and in such clothing ensuing as mere birch bark. At one time, somewhere in the Doberfield, there was serious counsel held among them whether they should not all, as one man, leap down into the frozen gulfs and precipices, or at once massacre one another wholly, and so finish. Of their conduct in battle, fiercer than that of barrisarks, where was there ever seen the parallel? In truth they are a dim, strange object to me, in that black time, wondrously bringing light into it with all, and proved to be, under such unexpected circumstances, the beginning of better days. Of spherer's public speeches there still exist authentic specimens, wonderful indeed, and much characteristic of such a spherer. A comemaker king, evidently meaning several good and solid things, and affecting them too, a thwart such an element of Norwegian chaos come again. His descendants and successors were a comparatively respectable kin. The last and greatest of them I shall mention is Hakon the Seventh, or Hakon the Old, whose fame is still lively among us, from the battle of larchs at least. Hakon the Old at Larchs. In the Norse annals our famous battle of larchs makes small figure, or almost none at all, among Hakon's battles and feats. They do say, indeed, those Norse annals, that the King of Scotland, Alexander the Third, who had such a fate among the crags about King Horn in time coming, was very anxious to purchase from King Hakon his sovereignty of the Western Isles, but that Hakon pointedly refused, and at length, being again importuned and bothered on the business, decided on giving a refusal that could not be mistaken. Decided, namely, to go with the big expedition and look thoroughly into that wing of his dominions, where no doubt much has fallen awry since Magnus Barefoot's grand visit dither, and seems to be inviting the cupidity of bad neighbors. All this we will put right again, thinks Hakon, and gird it up into a safe and defensive posture, resting and rectifying among his Hebrides as he went along, and landing with all on the Scotch coast to plunder and punish as he thought fit. The Scots say he had claimed of them Aaron, Bute, and the two Cumbres, given my ancestors by Donald Bain, said Hakon, to the amazement of the Scots, as a part of the Sudoro, Southern Isles, so far from selling that fine kingdom, and that it was, after the taking, both Aaron and Bute that he made his descent at Largs. Of Largs there is no mention, whatever, in Norse books. But beyond any doubt, such is the other evidence, Hakon did land there, land and fight, not conquering, probably rather beaten, and very certainly retiring to his ships, as in either case he behooved to do. It is further certain he was dreadfully maltreated by the weather on those wild coasts, and altogether creditable, as the Scotch records bear, that he was so at Largs very especially. The Norse records, or sagas, say merely he lost many of his ships by the Tempus, and many of his men by landing, fighting in various ports, tacitly including Largs, no doubt, which was the last of these misfortunes to him. In the battle here he lost fifteen thousand men, say the Scots, we five thousand. Divide these numbers by ten, and the excellently brief and lucid Scottish summary by Buchanan may be taken as the approximately true and exact. Date of the battle is A.D. 1263. To this day, on a little plain to the south of the village, now town of Largs in Ayrshire, there are seen stone carns and monumental heaps, and, until within a century to go, one huge solitary upright stone, still mutely testifying to a battle there, altogether clearly to this battle of King Hakon's, who by the Norse records, too, was in these neighborhoods at that same date, and evidently in an aggressive, high kind of humor. For while his ships and army were doubling the Mall of Cantire, he had his own boat set on wheels, and, therein, splendidly enough, had himself drawn across the promontory at a flatter part, no doubt with horns sounding, banners waving, all to the left of me as mine in Norway's, exclaimed Hakon in his triumphant boat progress, which such disasters soon followed. Hakon gathered his wrecks together, and sorrowfully made for Orteny. It is possible enough, as our guide-books now say, he may have gone by Ionia, Mull, and the narrow seas inside of Skye, and that the Kyle Akan, favorably known to sea-bathers in that region, may actually mean the Kyle narrow strait of Hakon, where Hakon may have dropped anchor and rested for a little while in smooth water and beautiful environment, safe from equinoctical storms. But poor Hakon's heart was now broken. He went to Orteny, died there in the winter, never beholding Norway more. He it was who got to Iceland, which had been a republic for four centuries, united to his kingdom of Norway, a long and intricate operation, much presided over by our Snorro Sturluson, so often quoted here, who indeed lost his life by assassination from his sons-in-law, and out of great wealth sank at once into poverty of zero, one midnight in his own cellar in the course of that bad business. Hakon was a great politician in his time, and succeeded in many things before he lost lords. Snorro's death by murder had happened about twenty years before Hakon's by broken heart. He is called Hakon the old, though one finds his age was but fifty-nine, probably a longish life for a Norway king. Snorro's narrative ceases when Snorro himself was born at the threshold of king's fairer, of whose exploits and doubtful birth it is guessed by some that Snorro willingly forebore to speak in the hearing of such a Hakon. CHAPTER XVI. EPILOGUE. Harfuggers kindred, lasted some three centuries in Norway. Sfarres lasted into its third century there. How long after this, among the neighboring kinships, I did not inquire? Four, by regal affinities, consequenties, and unexpected chances and changes, the three Scandinavian kingdoms fell all pleasably together under Queen Margaret of the Kalmar Union, A.D. 1397, and Norway, incorporated now with Denmark, needed no more kings. The history of these harfuggers has awakened in me many thoughts, of despotism and democracy, arbitrary government by one and self-government, which means no government or anarchy by all, of dictatorship with many faults, and universal suffrage with little possibility of any virtue. For the contrast between Olaf Trigveson and a universal suffrage parliament or an imperial copper captain has, in these nine centuries, grown to be very great, and the eternal providence that guides all this, and produces alike these entities with their epics, is not its course still through the great deep? Does it not speak to us if we have ears? Here, clothed in stormy enough passage and instincts, unconscious of any aim but their own satisfaction, is the blessed beginning of human order, regulation, and real government. There, clothed in a highly different, but again suitable garniture of passions, instincts, and equally unconscious as to real aim, is the accursed-looking ending, temporary ending, of order, regulation, and government, very dismal to the sane onlooker for the time being, not dismal to him otherwise, his hope, too, being steadfast. But here, at any rate, in this poor Norse theatre, one looks with interest on the first transformation, so mysterious and abstruse, of human chaos into something of articulate cosmos, witnesses the wild and strange birth-pangs of human society, and reflects that without something similar, little as men expect such now, no cosmos of human society ever was got into existence, nor can ever again be. The violences, fightings, crimes, ah yes, these seldom fail, and they are very lamentable. But always, too, among those old populations there was one saving element, the now want of which, especially the unlamented want, and sends all lamentation. Here is one of these strange, piercing, winged words of Ruskin, which has in it a terrible truth for us in these epics now come. My friends, the follies of modern liberalism, many and great though they be, are practically summed in this denial or neglect of the quality and intrinsic value of things, its rectangular beatitudes and spherical benevolences, theology of universal indulgence, and jurisprudence which will hang no rogues, mean one and all of them in the root, incapacity of discerning or refusal to discern, worth and unworth in anything, and least of all in man, whereas nature and heaven command you at your peril to discern worth from unworth in everything, and most of all in man. Your main problem is that ancient and trite one, who is best man, and the fates forgive much, forgive the wildest, fiercest, cruelest experiments, if fairly made for the determination of that. Theft and blood-guiltiness are not pleasing in their sight, yet the favoring powers of the spiritual and material world will confirm to you your stolen goods, and their noblest voices will applaud the lifting of your spear, and rehearse the sculpture of your shield, if only your robbing and slaying have been in fair arbitrariment of that question, who is best man. But if you refuse such an inquiry, and maintain every man for his neighbor's match, if you give vote to the simple and liberty to the vile, the powers of those spiritual and material worlds in due time present you inevitably with the same problem, soluble now only wrong side upwards, and your robbing and slaying must be done then to find out who is worst man, which in so wide an order of merit is indeed not easy, but a complete tamony ring and lowest circle in the inferno of worst you are sure to find and be governed by. All readers will admit that there was something naturally royal in these harfogger kings. A wildly great kind of kindred counts in it two heroes of a high, or almost highest, type, the first two olofs, Trigvison and the Saint. And the view of them with all as we chance to have it, I have often thought, how essentially Homeric it was. Indeed, what is Homer himself but the rhapsody of five centuries of Greek skulls and wandering ballad-singers, done, i.e., stitched together, by somebody more musical than Snorow was. Olof Trigvison and Olof Saint please me quite as well in their prosaic form, offering me the truth of them as if seen in their real liniments by some marvelous opening, through the art of Snorow, across the black strata of the ages. Too high, almost among the highest sons of nature, seen as they veritably were, fairly comparable or superior to Godlike Achilles, goddess-wounding Diomedes, much more to the two Atreidae, regulators of the peoples. I have also thought often what a book might be made of Snorow, did there but arise a man furnished with due literary insight, and indefatagable diligence, who faithfully acquainting himself with the topography, the monumental relics and illustrative actualities of Norway, carefully scanning the best testimonies as to place and time which that country can still give him, carefully the best collateral records and chronologies of other countries, and who, himself possessing the highest faculty of a poet, could, abridging, arranging, elucidating, reduce Snorow to a polished cosmic state, unwirryedly purging away his much chaotic matter, a modern highest kind of poet, capable of unlimited slavish labor with all, who, I fear, is not soon to be expected in this world, or likely to find his task in the heimskringla if he did appear here.