Harald Hardrada by John Marsden Read Free Book Online

campaign, and of their suffering heavy casualties in the hail of spears and arrows which invariably opened such hostilities, leaving them with no option other than withdrawal in the face of insuperable odds. What can be said as to the outcome of the conflict is that it was not crushingly decisive, if only because none of the principals were slain, and yet the skaldic verses of Ottar the Black, a nephew of Olaf’s Sigvat, have no hesitation in declaring Cnut the victor. His closely contemporary evidence must be recognised as the most convincing, especially in the light of its correspondence to the subsequent course of events.
    Worthy of mention here, by way of a footnote to the conflict, is the shadowy figure of Ulf Thorgilsson, appointed by Cnut as his jarl in Denmark sometime around 1023 but who appears to have retreated to Jutland when Olaf and Onund launched their onslaught. Most of the sources ascribe a decisive role to Ulf in the battle of Holy River and yet cannot agree as to which side he was fighting for, although his murder in Roskilde church on Cnut’s orders at some point after the battle must point to disloyalty, if not to outright treachery. His principal importance here, though, rests upon kinship by marriage, because both his son and his nephew will feature prominently among the enemies of Harald Hardrada. Ulf’s sister Gyda became the wife of Earl Godwin in England and thus mother to the Harold Godwinson who was to triumph at Stamford Bridge, while Ulf himself was married to Cnut’s sister Estrid from whom their son Svein (called ‘Ulfsson’ in Heimskringla , but usually ‘Estridsson’ elsewhere) inherited his claim on the kingship of Denmark, in pursuit and possession of which he was to become briefly Harald’s ally and for many years afterwards his relentless foe.
    Whatever really did befall at Holy River, the outcome of the engagement clearly left Cnut in the ascendant and the Norse– Swedish alliance dissolved. Onund sailed back to Sweden with as much as remained of his fleet, while Olaf – perhaps mindful of the fate suffered in just those same waters by Olaf Tryggvason at Svold – abandoned his ships to make his way home overland. In the following year of 1027, Cnut was on pilgrimage in Rome, where he is known to have attended the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor, and would surely not have entertained the idea of such a journey had he been in any doubt as to the security of his kingdoms. Indeed, in his letter addressed to the English people in that same year, Cnut is styled ‘king of all of England and of Denmark and part of Suavorum [by which is probably meant Skaane on the Swedish mainland]’.
    Norway was to enjoy a short spell of peace in the aftermath of Holy River, but, on the evidence of English and Icelandic sources, it would not be long before Cnut’s agents were active in the western and northern provinces such as the Trondelag and Halogaland where the rising tide of discontent with Olaf was to be most usefully encouraged by the gold, silver and promises they brought with them. Now returned to England from Rome, Cnut had apparently decided that Olaf’s kingship was to be most effectively – and bloodlessly – undermined by bribery of Norwegian magnates greedy for wealth and esteem. ‘Money will make men break their faith,’ observed Sigvat the skald, and his verses record ‘enemies about with open purses; men offering heavy metal for the priceless head of the king’.
    The saga tells of Olaf’s commanding the execution of one young man who had accepted Cnut’s bribe in the form of a golden arm-ring and thus provoking the hostility of his kinsmen. Although just one among numerous examples of draconian retribution for disloyalty, this particular instigation of blood-feud was to prove of especially ominous significance when the victim’s stepfather was the powerful Kalv Arnason and his uncle Thore