Historical Tales Volume Ix Part 6

In those days it was easy to have men believe tales like that, but, witchcraft or not, the blood still ran and the king grew weaker. As night came death seemed at hand and one of his friends offered to take his body to England, after his death, that he might be laid in Christian soil.

"Not so," said Haakon. "Heathen are my people and I have lived among them like a heathen. See then that I am laid in the grave like a heathen."

Thus he died, and he was buried as he wished, while all men mourned his death, even his foes; for before breathing his last he bade his men to send a ship after the sons of Gunhild; asking them to come back and rule the kingdom. He had no sons, he said, and his daughter could not take the throne.

Thus death claimed the n.o.blest of the Nors.e.m.e.n, at once heathen and Christian, but in his life and deeds as in his death a great and good man.

_EARL HAAKON AND THE JOMSVIKINGS._

Chief among the n.o.bles of Haakon the Good, of Norway, was Earl Sigurd of Hlade; and first among those who followed him was Earl Haakon, Sigurd's son. After the death of Haakon the Good, the sons of Gunhild became the masters of Norway, where they ruled like tyrants, murdering Sigurd, whom they most feared. This made the young Earl Haakon their bitter foe.

A young man then, of twenty-five, handsome, able in mind and body, kindly in disposition, and a daring warrior, he was just the man to contend with the tyrant murderers. When he was born Haakon the Good had poured water on his head and named him after himself and he was destined to live to the level of the honor thus given him.

It is not our purpose to tell how, with the aid of the king of Denmark, he drove the sons of Gunhild from the realm, and how, as the sagas tell, the wicked old queen was enticed to Denmark by the king, under promise of marriage, and by his orders was drowned in a swamp. Her powers of sorcery did not avail her then, if this story is true.

Haakon ruled Norway as a va.s.sal of Harald Bluetooth, king of Denmark, to whom he agreed to pay tribute. He also consented to be baptized as a Christian and to introduce the Christian faith into Norway. But a heathen at heart and a Norseman in spirit, he did not intend to keep this promise. After a meeting with the Danish king in which his baptism took place, he sailed for his native land with his ship well laden with priests. But the heathen in him now broke out. With bold disdain of King Harald, he put the priests on sh.o.r.e, and sought to counteract the effect of his baptism by a great feast to the old G.o.ds, praying for their favor and their aid in the war that was sure to follow. He looked for an omen, and it came in the shape of two ravens, which followed his ships with loud clucking cries. These were the birds sacred to Odin and he hailed their coming with delight. The great deity of the Nors.e.m.e.n seemed to promise him favor and success.

Turning against the king to whom he had promised to act as a va.s.sal, he savagely ravaged the Danish coast lands. Then he landed on the sh.o.r.es of Sweden, burnt his ships, and left a track of fire and blood as he marched through that land. Even Viken, a province of Norway, was devastated by him, on the plea of its being under a Danish ruler. Then, having done his utmost to show defiance to Denmark and its king, he marched northward to Drontheim, where he ruled like a king, though still styling himself Earl Haakon.

Harald Bluetooth was not the man to be defied with impunity, and though he was too old to take the field himself, he sought means to punish his defiant va.s.sal. Men were to be had ready and able to fight, if the prize offered them was worth the risk, and men of this kind Harald knew where to seek.

[Ill.u.s.tration: From stereograph, copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N.Y. BUSY FARMERS IN A HILLSIDE FIELD, ABOVE ARE. SWEDEN.]

In the town of Jomsborg, on the island of Wollin, near the mouth of the Oder, dwelt a daring band of piratical warriors known as the Jomsvikings, who were famed for their indomitable courage. War was their trade, rapine their means of livelihood, and they were sworn to obey the orders of their chief, to aid each other to the utmost, to bear pain unflinchingly, dare the extremity of danger, and face death like heroes. They kept all women out of their community, lest their devotion to war might be weakened, and stood ready to sell their swords to the highest bidder.

To this band of plunderers Harald appealed and found them ready for the task. Their chief, Earl Sigvalde, brought together a great host of warriors at a funeral feast to his father, and there, while ale and mead flowed abundantly, he vowed, flagon in hand, that he would drive Earl Haakon from the Norse realm or perish in the attempt. His viking followers joined him in the vow. The strong liquor was in their veins and there was no enterprise they were not ready to undertake. When their sober senses returned with the next morning, they measured better the weight of the enterprise; but they had sworn to it and were not the men to retreat from a vow they had taken.

Erik, an unruly son of Earl Haakon, had fled from his father's court in disgrace and was now in Viken, and here the rumor of the vikings' oath reached his ears. At once, forgetting his quarrel with his father, he hastened north with all the men he could gather to Earl Haakon's aid, preceding the Jomsvikings, who were sailing slowly up the sh.o.r.es of Norway, plundering as they went in their usual fashion. They had a fleet of sixty ships and a force of over seven thousand well-trained warriors.

Haakon, warned by his son, met them with three times their number of ships, though these were smaller and lighter craft. On board were about ten thousand men. Such were the forces that met in what the sagas call the greatest battle that had ever been fought in Norway.

Soon the embattled ships met and the conflict grew fast and furious, hurtling weapons filling the air and men falling on all sides. Great was the carnage and blood flowed in streams on the fighting ships. Earl Haakon stood in the prow of his ship in the heat of the fight, arrows and spears whirling around him in such numbers that his shirt of mail became so torn and rent that he threw it off as useless. The high ships of the vikings gave them an advantage which told heavily against their antagonists, spears and arrows being poured down from their sides.

In the height of the battle Earl Haakon disappeared. As the legends tell he went ash.o.r.e with his youngest son Erling, whom he sacrificed to the heathen G.o.ds to win their aid in the battle. Hardly had he done this deed of blood when a dense black cloud arose and a violent hail-storm broke over the ships, the hail-stones weighing each two ounces and beating so fiercely in the faces of the Jomsvikings as nearly to blind them. Some say that the Valkyries, the daughters of Odin, were seen in the prow of the earl's ship, filling the air with their death-dealing arrows.

Despite the storm and the supernatural terrors that they conjured up, the Jomsvikings continued to fight, though their decks were slippery with blood and melting hail. Only one coward appeared among them, their chief Earl Sigvalde, who suddenly turned his ship and fled. When Vagn Aakesson, the most daring of the Jomsvikings, saw this recreant act he was frantic with rage.

"You ill-born hound," he cried, "why do you fly and leave your men in the lurch? Shame on you, and may shame cling to you to your death!"

A spear hurtled from his hand and pierced the man at the helm, where Sigvalde had stood a moment before. But the ship of the dastard earl kept on and a general panic succeeded, all the ships in the fleeing earl's line following his standard. Only Vagn Aakesson and Bue the Big were left to keep up the fight.

Yet they kept it up in a way to win them fame. When Earl Haakon's ship drew up beside that of Bue, two of the viking champions, Haavard the Hewer and Aslak Rock-skull, leaped on deck and made terrible havoc. In the end an Icelander picked up an anvil that was used to sharpen their spears and hurled it at Aslak, splitting his skull, while Haavard had both legs cut off. Yet the indomitable viking fought on, standing on his knees.

The onset of the Jomsvikings was so terrific in this last fierce fight that the earl's men gave back, and might have been all slain had not his son Erik boarded Bue's ship at this crisis and made an irresistible charge. A terrible cut across the face severed Bue's nose.

"Now," he cried, "the Danish maidens will kiss me no more."

Seeing that all was at an end, he seized two chests of gold to prevent their capture by the victors, and sprang with them into the sea, shouting:

"Overboard all Bue's men!"

On Vagn's ship a similar fierce fight was taking place, ending only when all but thirty of the vikings were slain.

Then a savage scene was enacted, one worthy only of those barbarous times. The captives were taken ash.o.r.e and seated on a long log, their feet bound, their hands free. At the funeral feast in Sigvalde's hall Vagn had boasted that he would kill Thorkill Laiva, one of Erik's chief warriors, and this threatened man was now chosen as executioner.

At the captives he rushed, with uplifted axe, and savagely struck off their heads, one after another. Vagn was to be left to the last, that he might suffer from fear, but instead of this he sat joking and laughing with his men. One of them sang and laughed so loudly that Erik asked him if he would like to live.

"That depends on who it is that asks me."

"He who offers has the power to grant. I am Earl Erik."

"Then I gladly accept."

Another made a pun which so pleased the earl that he, too, was set free.

One of the captives had long, beautiful hair, and as Thorkill came near him on his b.l.o.o.d.y errand he twisted his hair into a coil and asked the executioner not to soil it with his blood. To humor him Thorkill asked one of the bystanders to hold the coil while he struck. The man did so, but as the axe came down the captive jerked his head aside so that the axe fell on the wrists of the coil-holder, both his hands being cut off.

"Some of the Jomsvikings are still alive," laughed the captive.

"Who are you?" asked Erik.

"I am said to be a son of Bue."

"Do you wish to live?"

"What other choice have I?"

At Erik's command he, too, was released.

Angry at being thus robbed of his prey, Thorkill now sprang towards Vagn, determined that at least his special enemy should fall. As he came near, however, one of the men on the log threw himself forward in such a way that Thorkill stumbled over him and dropped his axe. In an instant Vagn was on his feet, seized the axe, and dealt Thorkill a deadly blow. His boast was kept; Thorkill had fallen by his hand.

Erik saw the bold feat with such admiration that he ordered Vagn to be freed, and the prisoners who remained alive were also set free at his order.

While this was going on Earl Haakon sat apart conversing with his chieftains. As they did so they heard a bow-string tw.a.n.g, and before a hand could be raised a keen-pointed arrow pierced the body of Gissur the White, one of the chiefs, and he fell over dead. The arrow had come from the ship of Bue the Big, and thither men ran in haste. What they saw was Haavard the Hewer, still standing on his knees, though his blood flowed freely.

"Tell me," he cried, "did any one fall at the tree yonder?"

"Yes; Gissur the White."

"Then luck failed me, for that arrow was aimed for Earl Haakon."

And he fell over on the deck, with death at his heart-strings. The viking had sent a herald on before, to announce his coming at Odin's court.

It was Haakon who had ordered the murder of the captives, and Erik his son who gave life to so many of them. The time was near at hand when the earl was to meet the b.l.o.o.d.y fate which he had dealt out to others. Though Erik had done so much to help him in the battle, he was furious with his son for sparing the life of Vagn Aakesson. As a result they parted in anger, Erik going south again. Here Vagn joined him and from that day forward the two were warm friends and comrades.