Baring-Gould’s sources: Necrologium Islando-Norvegicum, in Langebek, Script. Rer. Dan. ii. p. 517; Alban Butler. Not in the Roman Martyrology. Authorities: — Adam of Bremen, ii.; Heimskringla Sagas, iv. v. vi.; Knytlinga Saga, 1-4; Jomsvikinga Saga; Sogubrot, ii. xi.; the Olafs Tryggvasonar Saga; Agrip af Noregs Konimga-Sogum; Saxo Grammaticus, lib. ix. x. &c.] The results of the missions of S. Anskar and Rembert in Denmark were not very abiding. The converts left to themselves, without priests, either fell away, or did nothing to propagate their faith. Small communities of Christians in Denmark and Sweden, which had been founded with great labour, degenerated in their belief into a mixed superstition, which retained some elements of Christianity, united to a large body of heathen myth and practice. Unni of Hamburg (918-936) renewed the efforts of his predecessors to advance the kingdom of Christ in Denmark and Sweden, and political circumstances opened to him exceptional advantages.
In the interval between the missions of Anskar and Rembert, and the renewed efforts of Unni, important changes had taken place in the political constitution of Denmark. We have evidence that Denmark in the earliest period formed Harold Bluetooth.
one kingdom as little as did Sweden or Norway. Numerous small sovereignties, extending over an island, or a cluster of settlements, composed Denmark. Each petty king was independent of his neighbour, and often at war with him. Intermarriages, conquest, the necessity of association, gradually absorbed the smaller principalities, till Gorm the Old succeeded, like Harald Haarfager in Norway, and Egbert in England, in reducing the whole of these petty sovereignties under his own sway. Of the manner in which this was done we know nothing for certain; all that the old chroniclers say is that Gorm was the first sole king of Denmark, and that he crushed a King Gnupa in Jutland, and another called Silfraskalli, whose land reached to the Schlei. Some of these petty kings had befriended Christianity; and the acquisition of the supremacy by Gorm marked a reaction against the new religion, and against the influence of Germany on the politics as well as the faith of the nation. Gorm attacked with fury the Sclavonic peoples who occupied Prussia, Mecklenburg, and Pomerania, and swept over portions of Saxony and Friesland with sword and fire.1 Gorm married Thyra, daughter of Ethelred of England. She was a Christian, but her influence was not sufficient to prevent Gorm putting to death some priests he found in Jutland, and destroying a Christian church in Schleswig. Perhaps it was the hostility of Gorm to Christianity which furnished Henry I. of Germany with an excuse for invading Denmark in 934. We have few particulars of this campaign; but we know that it was conducted by the Emperor in person, and that it ended in a complete triumph. Denmark was subjected to the German empire; Gorm was obliged to do homage, pay tribute, and promise to admit German missionaries into his realm. Unni, Archbishop of Hamburg, at once took advantage of 1 Adam of Bremen confounds him sometimes with his father Hdrdaknut; Wittikind of Corbei calls him Chnubs^ perhaps mistaking him for Gnupa whom he conquered.
[Not. i. the opportunity. He went himself into Denmark, accompanied by several of his clergy and monks. He tried in vain to bring the wild Gorm to Christian baptism, but he succeeded in securing the good wishes of Harold, the king’s son, who, however, would not take the irrevocable step of being baptized. We may suppose that his mother’s influence counted for much with him. Favoured by Harold, who had been associated by his father with him in the sovereignty, Unni was able not only to restore some churches in Jutland, and supply them with priests, but to do what no missionary had previously attempted, viz., cross to the Danish isles, to console there Christian prisoners, and preach the Word of God to the heathen.1 If we may trust the Scandinavian authorities, he baptized Froda, under-king of Jutland, and founded the churches of Heidaby, Ripum, and Aross.2 Froda afterwards, in 948, sent a deputation to Pope Agapetus, and at his recommendation raised these three churches into bishoprics. Unni went forward, crossed to Birka, where he planted a church, and died in the midst of his apostolic labours, in Sweden (a.d. 936).
The strengthening and establishment of the newly-founded Church in Denmark was the work of the successors of Henry I., the two Othos, and of Adaldag, Archbishop of Harold Bluetooth, the second son of Gorm and Thyra, had been raised, as already said, to share the throne with his father. Knut, the eldest son, died fighting.in Ireland. He had been called Dansaast (Beloved of the Danes [Viking raiders from Scandinavia]). Knut, who had inherited the land of his grandfather, Harold, had been defeated in Friesland by Henry I., and forced to adopt, in profession at least, the religion of Christ. The old king, Gorm, was blind with age, but had lost none of his fire and fury. He was passionately attached to Knut, and died of 1 Adam of Bremen, i. c. 64. * The younger Olafs S. Tryggr. L c. 67. Not. i.] S. Harold Bluetooth* grief when he heard of his death. He had, says the story, threatened death to anyone who should bring him fatal news of his son. When Queen Thyna heard of the fall of Knut, she went to the old king, removed his royal apparel, and habited him in the deepest mourning. “ What is this for?” asked Gorm; “my son, Knut, is dead!” “Thou hast brought the news to thyself,” said the queen. “And it is my death-warrant,” answered the old man. He bowed his head, and died.1 Harold Bluetooth, otherwise called Nidski, or the “ mean in gifts,” favoured the advance of Christianity in his realm. From his mother he had derived a regard for the Church; and his friendly associations with the Norman ducal house 2 tended to draw him nearer to the Christian religion. He allowed churches to be built, encouraged missionaries, and was regarded by the grateful clergy, after his fall in battle with his son and the Jomsborg pirates, as a saint and a martyr. But his heart and his conscience were but little affected by the religion he encouraged and afterwards professed. From early youth to extreme old age he was an inveterate sea-rover, harrying, robbing, butchering, burning without compunction. His ambition was boundless, and for the satisfaction of this passion he stuck at no means, however infamous. He was as false and treacherous as he was daring and fearless. He sought to improve his people, to bring them to better order, to have them instructed in Christian morals; but of the laws which he promulgated to this effect he himself observed scarce one. The continual incursions of the Danes forced the Emperor 1 The Icelandic Annal gives 936 as the date; but Suhm thinks that the date should be 941. But if Harold died in 986, as is probable, and according to the Knytlinga Saga he reigned fifty years, then 936 was the year when his father died. The Annals give 985 as the date of Harold's death. K. Maurer, in a special article on the expeditions of Otho I. and II. against King Harold, accepts 936 as the date of Gonn’s death. [Nov. x.
Otho I. to take the field in 941, to chastise them. He gained such successes that King Harold was obliged to conclude a peace with him, one of the stipulations of which was, that he should recognize the Emperor as his liege lord, and another that he should afford every facility for the spread of the Christian faith in his lands.
In 965 he consented to be baptized, moved to a public profession of the Christian faith by a miracle which was performed in his presence. Widukind gives the particulars, and he was a contemporary (919-973): “A ceitain clerk," he wrote, “ named Poppo, a bishop, now, however, leading a monastic life, testified in a conclave before the king that there was one Father, and His only begotten Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, and that the idols were demons not gods. The Danes present denied this, saying that Christ was indeed God, but that their deities were far superior — able to work much greater signs. Then Harold, the king, who was fond of listening, but not much of a speaker, asked if Poppo were disposed to put this to the proof. He readily replied in the affirmative. The king, therefore, ordered him to be put in safe keeping till the morrow. Next day he ordered a great piece of iron to be heated red, and bade the clerk carry the glowing iron in proof of the Catholic faith. The confessor [in old usage, a saint who was not martyred, or who suffered for the faith without being killed] of Christ unhesitatingly took up the iron, and carried it till the king was satisfied, and so gave proof before all of the Catholic faith. By this the king was convinced. He decreed that Christ alone should be adored as God; ordered all idols in his realm to be cast away, and that thenceforth people's honour should be rendered to the priests and ministers of God."1 Eric Bloodyaxe, the favourite son of Harald Haarfager, was invested by his father with full sovereignty in Norway, 1 Widukind. Res gest. Saxon, iii. c. 65. Ruotger, in his Life of Bruno of Cologne, says the same, a.d. 966. Dietmar of Merseburg copies Widukind. S. Harold Bluetooth.
a.d» 933. The old king died three years after; and then Hakon, Athelstan’s foster-son, the son of Harald Haarfager by a servant girl, gathered an army at Drontheim, and drove Eric Bloodyaxe out of the country. He went to Orkney, plundered the coast of England, and fell in battle in 944, with three of his sons. His queen, Gunhild, and the rest of her sons, then fled in their ships to Denmark, and took refuge with King Harold Bluetooth, who was then highly incensed against King Hakon, Athelstan’s foster-son, for having ravaged the Danish coast.
“When Gunhild and her sons came from the West to Denmark, they were well received by King Harold. He gave them fiefs in his kingdom, so that they could maintain themselves and their men very well. He also took Harald, Eric’s son, to be his foster-son, set him on his knee,1 and had him brought up at his court. Some of Eric’s sons went out on viking expeditions as soon as they were old enough, and gathered property, ravaging all around in the Baltic. They grew up quickly to be handsome men, far beyond their years in strength and perfection.”2 King Harold gave Gunhild’s sons considerable forces, and they invaded Norway. A battle was fought at Fraedarborg, and Gamle, Eric and Gunhild’s eldest son, fell. In 963 Harald, now the eldest of the remaining sons of Eric Bloodyaxe, made another attack on the coasts of Norway, assisted by the King of Denmark’s men. Hakon again defeated the invaders; but an arrow, shot, it is thought, by Queen Gunhild’s shoe-boy, pierced an artery in his arm, and he bled to death. Harald Greyskin, son of Eric Bloodyaxe, then assumed the sovereignty of Norway.
Sigurd, Earl of Lade, who governed all the region of Drontheim, and was the most powerful noble in Norway, incurred the jealousy of Gunhild’s sons, because he had been faithful 1 A symbol of adoption. * Olafs S. Tryggv. c. 19; Heimskrmgla, S. iv. c. 10. VOL. XIII. 3 to King Hakon. He had married Bergliot, daughter of Earl Thorer the Silent, by Aolf, daughter of Harald Haarfager. Queen Gunhild and her sons devised a wicked plan. They bribed the brother of Sigurd to let them know when the earl could be fallen on unawares, promising the earldom if he would assist them in compassing the murder of his brother. One starry night, at a signal given by this traitor to his own flesh and blood, King Harald Greyskin surrounded the wooden house in which Earl Sigurd was sleeping, and burned it, with him and all his men in it. The son of the earl, named Hakon, was fortunately not within. He placed himself at the head of the Drontheim men, and for three years defied King Harald Greyskin, but was finally obliged to take refuge in Denmark with King Harold Bluetooth. That same winter there was at the court of the king, his nephew, called Gold Harald, son of his elder brother, Knut, who had died in Ireland.
Gold Harald fairly thought that he had a right to a part, at least, of the kingdom, and with astonishing simplicity he went to King Harold, and asked him to give him a share of Denmark, as he was the son of his elder brother. Harold Bluetooth was furious, and went to Earl Hakon to consult with him what was to be done, saying, “ If Gold Harald persists in his demand, I shall not hesitate to have him put to death.” Hakon advised the king not to murder his nephew, but to get possession of Norway, kill Harald Greyskin, and place Gold Harald on the throne. By this means Hakon would be restored to his earldom, and would serve the king, and pay him tribute. King Harold Bluetooth hesitated. The King of Norway was his adopted son; he had taken him on his knee, and had brought him up. But it was not the wickedness of the plot which made him recoil from it, he shrank only from what people would say about him. The plot contrived between the king and the earl was S. Harold Bluetooth.
indeed infamous enough to cause talk. Harold Bluetooth was to invite his foster-son to visit him in Denmark, to receive from him the lands and fiefs which had before been given to the sons of Gunhild and Eric. Then, when the Norwegian king came unsuspectingly, he was to be fallen upon and put to death. “ What will the people say to my deceiving to his death my own foster-son ?” asked the king. “ The Danes,” answered the earl, “ will rather say that it is better to kill a Norwegian pirate than a Danish one, who is your own brother’s son.”
The king consented; but the execution of the deed was to be committed to Gold Harald, who was to be incited to it with the prospect of receiving the crown of the man he was commissioned to kill.
But this was not the worst. It was arranged between the king and Earl Hakon that as soon as Gold Harald had killed the Norwegian king, Hakon, whom Gold Harald would not suspect, as being his intimate friend, was to turn suddenly on him, and murder him.
Thus this old kihg, aged about seventy-five, connived at the murder of his own nephew and his foster-son, after that nephew had first been set to take the life of the other.
The invitation was sent to Harald Greyskin to come to Denmark, and receive investiture of the fiefs he and his brothers before him had formerly held in Denmark, and appointing a meeting in Jutland. Harald agreed to go, though some sort of suspicion seems to have entered his mother’s brain that mischief might be meant However, she accompanied him, in the spring of 975, to the place appointed — a spit of land between the Lymfjord and the sea. Gold Harald was there to meet him. The king was absent on some excuse. The men of Gold Harald at once attacked those of King Harald Greyskin, and the king was cut down on the [Nov. x.
sea-shore. A little later Earl Hakon arrived, seized on the person of Gold Harald, and hung him on a gallows, as though punishing him, by the king’s orders, for having slain Harald Greyskin.
King Harold of Denmark then equipped a fleet of 600 ships, and sailed for Norway. He established Earl Hakon at Drontheim, dividing the rest of the land among others, and returned to Denmark.
No sooner was Earl Hakon established than he cast off the Christianity which he had been forced by King Harold to adopt, refused to pay tribute to Denmark, and began to harry the coasts of Harold’s realm. The Danish king sailed at once for Norway, and wasted the whole of the country over which Earl Hakon held rule, burning houses, canying off cattle, and massacring the people.
He was highly incensed at some lines which the Icelanders had made on him, likening him to a pony who kicks a shield — the point of which is not very dear. However, it was sharp enough to sting Harold to fury, and he wanted to sail to Iceland, and chastise the islanders for the lampoon they had made; but the length of the voyage, the dangers of the coast, and his own advanced age, obliged him reluctantly to abandon his design.
He had another war with the Germans in 974. He refused to pay tribute to the Emperor, and Otho II [German king and emperor, co-ruler with his father Otto I from 967 and sole ruler 973–983]. collected an army, marched into Sleswik, and a furious battle was waged on the Danevirke, a wall he had thrown up from the head of the Flensborg fjord to the North Sea. The Danes succeeded in repelling the Germans, but Otho put his troops on board ship, landed in Jutland above the Danevirke, and routed the forces of Harold. The Danes were obliged to come to terms, and the Emperor Otho stood sponsor to a bastard son of King Harold at the font. The boy was called Otto Sweyn, but the Danes speedily forgot the first name, Nov. i.] S. Harold Bluetooth.
and called him instead, in later years, Sweyn tjuguskegg (Forkbeard). This son, Sweyn, was the son of a farmer’s daughter named ^Esa, in Fyeen. The king had been driven by stress of weather ashore, and had accepted the hospitality of a farmer there, named Atli He seduced his daughter, and departed next day to a banquet, at which he was to meet a man famous in Saga, named Palnatoki.
JEsa. in due time became the mother of a boy, whom she called Sweyn. Three years after, the king came again to a banquet in Fyeen with Palnatoki. During the banquet, the girl came forward, leading her child, and showed it to Harold. He had forgotten her face, and did not know her again. But the publicity of the affair obliged him to own the child, after a vain attempt to drive the girl out with brutal insults. Palnatoki rose, and said, “ She is indeed a poor man’s daughter, and of no family, but a good woman, and not what you charge her with being.” The king, in a rage, refused to do more for the child than was absolutely necessary. Palnatoki took the little boy, and became his foster-father.1 He was grown up to man’s estate when baptized.
His foster-father was determined that Sweyn should be recognized, and he sent the youth repeatedly to his father to ask for ships and men, with which he could go on piratical expeditions. Harold reluctantly supplied him with them. He never liked the boy, and saw as little of him as he could. At last, in 986, Sweyn, when aged eighteen, had the audacity to ask his father to associate him with him in the kingdom, as Gorm the Old had associated Harold. The king was furious, and drove him away. Sweyn determined to gain by force of arms what was denied him as a favour. He collected ships of war, and gave out that he was going on a viking cruise. But when all his men were assembled, he [Not. z.
ran into Sealand, up the Isafjord, and there lighted on the king’s fleet.1 A battle ensued; but the king had fifty ships, and Sweyn probably not more than half that number. Ten of Harold’s vessels were sunk, and twelve of those of Sweyn. Sweyn fled in his ship up a creek as the night fell, and the king’s ships blocked the entrance, so as to prevent the possibility of escape, intending next morning to attack the vessel, and kill the young pretender and all his men. That night Palnatoki came up with twenty-four ships, and ran behind the ness on the other side of the fjord, so that he was not observed. The king, confident of taking his son in the morning, went ashore for the night into the pine wood with some of his men, Fjolner, the brother of Palnatoki, being of the number. They lighted a fire, as it was very dark in the wood. Palnatoki left his ship, and came up through the trees in the direction of the fire, till he came within earshot, and then stole unobserved to where he could see what was going on. The king being old was chilly, and he stood first with his back to the fire, and then knelt down and spread his arms out to warm his chest. The party were talking over the success of the day, and of the certainty of capturing the lad on the morrow, and cutting short his pretensions. Palnatoki drew an arrow from the quiver at his back, placed it on the string, stretched his bow, and struck the king in the mouth. He sank on the ground and died. Fjolner ran to the king, and drew out the arrow, and recognized his brother’s marks on the shaft Palnatoki returned to his vessel, and, without saying what he had done, went to the assistance of Sweyn, from whom also he concealed that he had killed his father, freed him from the embarrassing situation in which he found himself, and says that the king, moved by suspicion that the young man would rise in insurrection against him, collected a fleet with intent to disperse his followers, take and kill him. Nor. x.] S. Harold Bluetooth.
waited till morning, when the news spread that the king was dead. Palnatoki summoned a gathering of the people, and proposed Sweyn to be king in his father’s room. He was elected without opposition.1 King Harold Bluetooth was buried at Roskilde, and was the first Danish king to be laid in consecrated earth. Miracles were said to be wrought at his tomb, and he came to be regarded as a saint He had founded the church of Roskilde, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and erected it of wood. The second Sogubrot says that Sweyn was joined in his rebellion by all the chiefs whom Harold had forced to receive Christian baptism, and in their hearts turned to idols. But this testimony is late, and not to be trusted implicitly. Harold advanced Christianity only because, by the terms of his agreement with Otho I., and again with Otho II., he was obliged to do so. He was a bad Christian himself, and not very enthusiastic that others should become good ones. The revolt was organized by the powerful Palnatoki, in hopes of gaining power through his influence with the young Sweyn, his foster-son: the motive was private ambition, not religious fanaticism. Harold’s claims to be regarded as a martyr for the faith are about on a level with those for reverence as a saint One may feel thankful that he has not got into the Martyrology. 1 I have followed the minute narrative in the Jomsvilcinga Saga. Snoiro Sturlason only says that “ Harold received a wound which ended in his death; and Sweyn was chosen long of Denmark," s. vl c. 38. The Knytlinga Saga, “ In that battle Harold received his death wound from an arrow," c. 4. Stigubrot II., “ Harold fled from the battle wounded to Wendland, and died at Jomsborg on All Saints’ Day but this is certainly wrong. He died either on the spot or directly after at Roskilde, where he was buried. The Saga of Olaf Tryggv. c. 84, says that the king got his wound in the fight, and that Palnatoki is said to have dealt it him. [Not. i.
