Harald Hardrada by John Marsden Read Free Book Online Page A

Hund (‘the Hound’), both of whom were ultimately to confront the king in battle at Stiklestad where Kalv himself would be accused of having delivered Olaf’s death-wound.
    While this episode and other similar stories in the saga show how effectively Cnut’s policy of destabilisation gained ground, the situation is convincingly summarised by the modern historian Gwyn Jones. He suggests that Olaf ‘had more support in parts of the country, in Uppland and the Vik for example, than Snorri allows for, and that his opponents were not so much politically allied against their sovereign as disaffected for more personal reasons, including loss of land or status, change of religion, family grievances, and private quarrels with the king’. 2 The core territory of Olaf’s remaining support would seem to have lain around the Vik (now Oslofjord) and, indeed, he is said by the saga to have been in that region when he heard news of Cnut’s arrival in Denmark with a fleet of fifty ships from England in 1028. His immediate response was to summon a levy in defence of his kingdom and some numbers of the local people rallied to his banner, but very few came to join them from other parts of Norway and his warfleet was only such waterlogged hulks as could be salvaged from what remained of the fleet he had abandoned in Holy River two years before. Such a force hardly represented any credible resistance to the fleet of more than 1,400 ships which Cnut had assembled in Denmark and was now sailing up the west coast of Norway.
    Accepting submission and taking hostages as surety wherever he touched land, Cnut sailed on until he reached the Trondelag and put in at Nidaros where a great assembly (or thing ) of chieftains and bonders was summoned to acclaim him as king of all Norway. The great men of the north and west who swore allegiance were duly rewarded, some as his ‘lendermen’ (or lendr maðr , literally ‘landed-men’, effectively ‘barons’), and the same Hakon Eriksson of Lade who had surrendered to Olaf on his homecoming some fourteen years before was now appointed Cnut’s jarl to rule on his behalf over Olaf’s kingdom.
    Only when Cnut’s fleet had set sail back to Denmark did Olaf bring his few ships out of the Vik, but his progress up the west coast served merely to confirm his dwindling support. The saga tells of his confrontation with Erling Skjalgsson, one of the most powerful of the chiefs who had made submission to Cnut. Defeated in battle by one of Olaf’s ruses, Erling stood alone with no choice but to yield and yet was struck dead by a warrior’s axe moments after he had agreed to return to Olaf’s service. The saga describes that axe-blow as having struck Norway ‘out of Olaf’s hand’, and as the royal fleet of just a dozen ships sailed north the sons of Erling were already summoning the bonders of the south-west to rise in pursuit of yet another blood-feud against the king.
    Even as Olaf sailed north of Stad and learned of the great warfleet assembled against him by Jarl Hakon in the Trondelag, his desperate situation had become virtually irretrievable. The warrior who had killed Erling Skjalgsson went ashore and was slain before he could return to his vessel, while the Erlingssons had twenty-five ships in close pursuit and Jarl Hakon’s great force was seen in the distance by watchers sent to look north from the hilltops. When Olaf’s fleet put into Aalesund, Kalv Arnason joined with others of the few remaining lendermen and shipmasters in defecting to Hakon, leaving the king with just five ships which he drew on to the shore. Clearly, all was lost to him now and his only available course was to take flight overland, first by way of Gudbrandsdal into Hedemark where he granted his warriors leave to return home if they chose so to do.
    Accompanied by his young son Magnus, his queen Astrid and their daughter Ulfhild, Olaf still had