The year of Erling’s birth is uncertain, but the day of his death is known: December 21, 1028. Most who have written about him believe that he was between 60 and 70 years old when he died. P.A. Munch says that he was 63.(9) It is probably impossible to know the exact year of his birth -- which must have been about 970. On the other hand, we know a great deal about his family and clan.(10) His father was Torolv Skjalg, who was said to have been the grandson, on his father’s side, of Horda-Kåre.(11) Horda-Kåre was a powerful minor king who is believed to have come from Stord in southwestern Hordaland. He probably supported Harald Fairhair in Harald’s late 9th century struggle for royal power. In return, Harald gave Horda large estates that had belonged to his defeated enemies. In addition Horda acquired control over large sections of the southwestern Norwegian coast. Through dealings with Harald’s clan, Horda-Kåre’s family, up through the time of Erling’s birth, solidified its power. During the same period, Harald’s descendants became weaker. It also seems that the number of dominant clans in western Norway decreased after the Battle of Hafrsfjord, partially because many of them had opposed Harald. Therefore, the clan of Horda-Kåre found itself in a unique situation. It is said that Agmund, Kåre’s son, was the first who settled in Jaer. To strengthen his position, he married a daughter of Gyrd, who was, in turn, the daughter of one of the old kings of Rogaland and Agder.(12)
Sola and Europe
We do not know why the powerful Horda clan settled in Sola in Rogaland. Here, we must guess. One reason might have been that Harald, who probably was headquartered at Avaldsnes, on the island of Karmøy, wanted to consolidate his power over the Karmsund, the strait that separates Karmøy from the mainland. Not without reason, Avaldsnes has been called “Norway’s oldest royal seat.”(13) A series of archeological excavations, for example, point to this.(14) Today there seems to be reasonable evidence to support the hypothesis that, at least until the close of the 9th century, Karmsund was the most strategic point on “the North Way.” Karmsund can be seen as “A window on Norway,” that is, as the cradle of the modern Norwegian nation state.(15) Harald Fairhair might have positioned his allies, the Horda-Kåre clan, south at Sola while he held on to the Karmsund. But, after Harald’s death, the Karmsund lost its importance -- to the advantage of the new Sola clan. The causes for such a shift in power are uncertain. One possible explanation might be advances in naval technology. As the sail came into greater use, passage through the Karmsund became less necessary. Ships in that case would sail around Karmøy. When that happened, the Karmsund lost much of its function as a source of income and as a naval strategic control point. However, it could also be that the chieftains of Avaldsnes could not hold onto their earlier dominance because they played the cards of power less well than did the lords of Sola. Often the leading clans of the time held onto their power and leadership for, at most, four generations. After that the “potential to lead” or “the strength” in the clan was “used up.”
Even as the Avaldsnes region was important to early Norway, so Sola, situated on the north Jaer coast, was no less strategic in connection with passage to the Baltic, the Continent and to England. Today it is generally believed that at that time there was active communication both to the east and to the south and west. Grave findings indicate that Rogaland, as far back as 3,500 years ago, was part of the northern European cultural area, and reacted quickly to new impulses from abroad.(16) Towards the close of Roman imperial dominance (300-400 AD), Rogalanders were trading with the Romans via the Germans in Hamburg.(17) The archeologist Odmund Møllerop writes that “A probable ripple effect, generated by Imperial Rome’s need for wares and services, made itself most clearly felt in Rogaland.”(18) The archeologist Per Hernæs concludes that contact across the North Sea was largely peaceful -- “until Christianity was introduced to Norway. . .”(19) During Horda-Kåre’s lifetime, conditions on the continent were turbulent. The Vikings, with their forays, were, in part, responsible for the upheaval.(20) However, the earlier, one-sided, continental European view, in which the Vikings were blamed for initiating the unrest, seems, today, to be largely abandoned. The leading Spanish historian, Joseph Fontana, writes in a recent work that it is “a distorted image” to portray the Vikings as a people dependent only on pillage and piracy.(21) Another recent European work states, for example, that the Vikings took advantage of the “anarchy of the period.”(22) Fontana presents a similar view, when he says that, for the Vikings, trade gradually shifted over to piracy when the ruling Caliphate collapsed.(23) Probably, Charlemagne’s battles (ca. 747-814) had a destabilizing effect on the heart of Europe that, in turn, provoked violence on the periphery of the Continent. But because the Vikings were pagans, Christian Europe labeled them as the cause for all the adversity. Herein lies, without doubt, an important point -- which also bears examination. Ideologically it was not the Vikings who attacked. The Christian Church evangelized -- often with sword in hand; “Sword Christianizing,” as the church historian and former bishop of Stavanger, Fridtjov Birkeli, calls it. Using murder and arson, the Church forced baptism upon non-Christians. Charlemagne set the standard for this procedure. After having encircled 4,500 heathen Saxons near the city of Verden, he beheaded all of them in one single day.24 But first he baptized them so that their souls would be saved. The Danish historian Thorkild Ramskou calls this atrocity “one of history’s most shocking mass murders” and writes: “These kinds of actions can make it difficult to distinguish between who was and who was not the barbarian.”(25) Ramskou goes on to say that torture and abuse as punishment came to the north with the attempt to introduce Christianity by force -- following the model of continental Christianity. Scandinavians encountered a religious intolerance to which they were not accustomed. The pagan religion offered equal status to the White-Christ. But the pope in Rome seemed to share the psychology of so many other authoritarian rulers: he considered whatever lay beyond his power and control as a threat. The Scandinavians noted, too, a connection between the church and the concept of a single king. For a decentralized society such as was found particularly in Norway, the new, aggressive religion was a provocation that some of the chieftains believed had to be dealt with before it was too late. The archeologists Bjørn Myhre and Per Hernæs believe that an ideological and military strategy lay behind Viking attacks on Christian cloisters.(26) Hernæs writes:(27)
Would it not, then, be logical to try to eliminate the Christian provocations there, at their source?
Seem from this perspective, there is nothing puzzling about the raid against Lindisfarne. The Vikings were not a gang of ragged thieves who accidentally discovered a rich monastery on the west coast of England. On the contrary, theirs was a carefully planned military action led by Norwegian commanders who wished to eliminate Christian influence across the North Sea.
Hernæs explains the outrage that the British priests expressed when they experienced the attack on Lindisfarne in 793, by pointing out that: “For years they been accustomed to amiable contacts with the peaceful traders and friendly chieftains from across the North Sea. Religious faith had been excluded as a possible point of contention [A quotation mark is missing in the Norwegian]: “And then an invasion fleet arrived and methodically destroyed one of the largest and richest cloisters in that part of the Christian world...”(28) New research indicates that, in the attack on Lindisfarne, the Vikings did not plunder the monastery to the degree claimed by the propagandistic Christian sources of the time.(29) This fact supports the thesis of Myhre and Hernæs that this was a preemptive, military campaign.
In connection with our inquiry, then, Sola was important as a military base. It is possible that men from Jaer were part of the fleet that invaded Lindisfarne. But perhaps there was, as well, another significant factor that might explain the dominance of the Horda clan. Jaer was an important Norwegian agricultural area. At that time agriculture was a more important source of wealth than it is today. Rogaland agriculture probably provided the Horda-Kåre clan with a firmer base of power than they would have had if Horda-Kåre has not moved from his original center in the area of Bergen. Whatever happened, Harald Fairhair turned over to Horda-Kåre the land he had confiscated from his adversaries, the chieftains from Hafrsfjord.
As Erling was growing up, he acquired the cultural values natural for the son of a high ranking chieftain. He probably also realized that a large part of southwestern Norway belonged to his family: when he was an adult he, too, would govern the same realm as had his father, his grandfather and, before them, his great-grandfather, Horda-Kåre. Bjørn Myhre endorses the hypothesis that a royal family in Jaer had consolidated power over what he calls a minor kingdom from Sogn to West Agder. He supports this view with archeological findings from the 9th century.(30)
Let us look at the term, cultural values(31) By this we mean the ideas, beliefs, attitudes and views that a child absorbs before reaching the age of 12 or 14.(32) We carry these cultural values within us, and they often control our behavior, for the most part without our realizing why we behave in one way or another. Throughout life we encounter new cultural values which compete with the original ones. Understood in this way, life becomes not a more or less straight and consistent line, but a dynamic movement between rival cultural values. Accidental and shifting situations -- commerce with other individuals and their personal networks -- influence how we deal with our own cultural values. Some values we affirm in our dealings with others. Sometimes the result is conflict. At other times we develop fresh cultural values that resemble those of our new associates. Commerce, of itself, affects us in this way. By borrowing this socio-anthropological analysis method of Carl Cato Wadel, one can achieve a wider view of history than can be attained through historical method based only on written sources. It must, however, be said that this method of analysis does not preclude the possibility that strong personalities might, to a greater degree than others, choose the way they act, and are therefore not to be considered mere reflections of differing, rival values.
We have no precise knowledge about the childhood of Erling. There is an anecdote, a short saga, about how, during a slave uprising, his father was burned to death inside his home. The background for this uprising is uncertain. It might have been dissatisfaction with slavery Or, perhaps, as the historian Halvdan Koht believes, Erling’s father, after killing his friend, Lodin, married the widow. Later, when one of Lodin’s sons saw the opportunity, he avenged his father’s death.(33) We assume that Erling was a child when this happened. Although death and murder were not rare events for a youth in that period, the loss of a father would, nevertheless, have forced Erling early to assume the responsibilities of a grown man. These would include the “educational” practice of sending young boys of 12 on Viking expeditions to test their manhood. We can assume that Erling also participated in this kind of experience at a young age.
Erling might have been better equipped than many others for this kind of test of manhood. When Snorre pictures him as an unusually handsome, large and strong man, he is not resorting to poetic embroidery.(34) For a chieftain, physical beauty was no disadvantage.(35) It was a part of the charisma that was necessary to win followers -- and power.(36) From early childhood, prospective chieftains were trained to fight in battle. A central cultural value of the time seems to have been that any deed that brought honor was right. Deeds that brought shame were wrong.(37) We can assume that this kind of attitude was especially important for a young future chieftain like Erling. Erling seems not to have squandered his innate strength. Snorre describes him as the greatest of warriors. In sports he was comparable to another contemporary champion: King Olav Tryggvason.(38) When an “official” writer of sagas, such as Snorre, identifies the “the betrayer of the king,” Erling, with the hero king, Olav Tryggvason, he is not spinning a casual comparison out of thin air.
The first meeting with Erling -- a meeting with the judicial and legislative system.
Erling enters the royal sagas with his appearance at the Gula Thing in 996. He is mentioned in connection with Olav Tryggvason’s demand to be recognized as king and to have the right to Christianize the Norwegians. At that time there were, in Norway, no so-called kings by the Grace of God as there were in Europe. In so far as there was one single kingdom, kingship was acquired through the
This concept of justice, as expressed in the laws, suggests a relatively well-organized society that was not dependent on the supremacy of any one single individual. Changes at the top did not lead to the kind of collapse of civilization that we have seen in modern superstates such as Russia (after 1917), Germany (1933-45) and China during the Cultural Revolution. True enough there was no governmental apparatus to administer the law in Norse Norway. That, in principal, free men -- and, sometimes, women -- gathered at the Thing and attempted, through discussion, to solve their problems, indicates a fertile seed for so-called civil society. Politically, the Thing, despite limitations caused by trusting powerful chieftains, represented an advanced, decentralized social administration.(41) Because power was decentralized and lacked a formal state apparatus, and because, as well, religion was not centralized, this society provided more opportunity for political and religious freedom than would that which replaced it. Women, too, enjoyed more freedom than they would under Christianity. This greater equality was reflected, in part, in the central role that a number of female gods played in the old religion. With the introduction of Christianity, women were set aside.(42)
Up until the time of Olav Tryggvason, the few kings of a united Norway had to accommodate themselves to the power of the Thing. The Thing protected the local political and judicial society from arbitrary external interference. Halvdan Koht, the historian, suggests that those who owned large tracks of land had more power in the Thing than did ordinary farmers. Nevertheless, he believes that the Norwegian people were less subservient to men of high rank than were their European counterparts. Under the law, the Norwegian farmer was free to determine his own affairs.(43) Koht believes that the difficult Norwegian climate --along with the fact that farmers lived on separate holdings --“helped foster an independent mode of living and of thinking.”(44)
Koht is not the only one to employ nature as one of many approaches to understanding how societies develop. The modern American historian Richard Pipes cites climate, topography and geographic isolation as central factors in explaining Russia’s unique development since the 11th century.(45) The folklorist Svale Solheim(46) emphasizes that in Norway, with its long distances between settlements and with its barren landscape, survival depended on a greater contribution from every individual than was the case in more southerly and warmer lands. Nature, according to Solheim, imposed critical limits on the work process in early Norwegian society. The fact that the work process required close local cooperation played a significant role in the development of ethical norms: “The old customs and ceremonies connected with the work process encouraged creative labor, protected from all the harmful forces that were antithetical to existence, and secured, as much as was possible, the agricultural yield. To achieve a good yield from domestic animals was the basic condition for survival. For those who lived in the past, the requirements of productive labor determined, thus, the most significant ethical division between good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, etc. And this basis for moral evaluation is easily detected beneath all kinds of reciprocal arrangements and in all areas of life within the old, agricultural society...”(47) In reviewing the positions of especially Koht and Solheim on this subject, we see that they are in agreement. The harsh Norwegian nature, the climate, the landscape, the great distances, and the pattern of settlement established a framework within which the rights of the isolated individual were assured. The work process, then, laid the foundation for ethical and cultural values. Such an assertion is not alien to modern research into why the political insights of various groups of workers differ. We can conclude, then, that, in Norway, emphasis on the role of the separate individual was a central cultural value for farmers. This is why a general respect for the individual developed here at an earlier period than was usual in Middle and Southern Europe.
Can we speak of a political system and philosophy in the Norway of Erling’s time?
Since written sources date only as far back as the 13th century, we must be cautious in discussing the organization of the Thing.(48) It probably was not static, but developed in response to external and internal pressure depending on shifting situations. For example, it is reasonable to assume that the possible “democratic character” of the Thing was weak during periods when single kings tried to gain power. In order to meet challenges from a central force, the Thing probably had to delegate more power than usual to the great chieftains. Otherwise they would not be able to counter the king’s power with an effective military force. This possible “de-democratizing” might lie behind the position of great power that Erling inherited and further strengthened. We cannot exclude the possibility that the political leaders in his society considered such a relinquishing of power as temporary. However, it might also be that this way of looking at the Thing is somewhat “Norse romanticism” Perhaps it is more accurate to say that powerful chieftains, through various alliances among themselves, controlled the Thing as a matter of principle. External pressure forced them to grasp more personal power than was granted by traditional cultural values.
Remnants of the formal legal system which lay behind Norse judicial and parliamentary rulings have functioned, without interruption, down to the present day in Iceland and on the Isle of Man. It is therefore likely that Norway, also, had an advanced political philosophy and politicians who were no less capable of principled thinking than those of modern times. Our problem is that the Norwegian “politicians” left no written record of their conception of a political system as did, for example, the Greeks. Through the political conflicts that are described in the sagas, we can, in any case, try to arrive at an understanding of the
To a certain degree people can be frightened into obedience, and a ruler must be prepared to use harsh methods. But in the long run it is not possible to rule by force. One must gather friends by making a personal impression, but, most of all, through generosity and an appeal to the interests of the people. To win a military victory is one means of gaining adherents. Afterwards, if the victory is not to be lost again, one has to build up alliances and hold on to them.
Because of the federal policy or, in principle, the bent towards freedom of citizens in this society, supporters could betray a chieftain if he violated their interests. They might, then, go directly over to another chieftain, but with the inherent risk that the “betrayal” might be answered with a life-threatening blow from an axe. This absence of a “lid” on the citizens, provided room for political multiplicity. We can call this a pluralistic political system. Bagge goes on to describe an Iceland where open competition for power prevailed; something that did not exclude “covert” competition and, to use a modern term, “lobbying.” The
Although Bagge describes and discusses this political game, he denies that political behavior depended on conflict over dissimilar political ideologies or viewpoints. He sees it more nearly as a struggle for personal gain among leading members of the elite, rather than a conflict over the principles governing the division of power in the society.(53) Bagge’s assertion on this subject has been criticized.(54) The American historian, Elisabeth A. Rowe, speaking of Bagge’s interpretations, says: “This view seems somewhat simplistic....”(55) Despite Bagge’s otherwise interesting interpretation of Snorre, the critical objections on precisely this point seem reasonable to the author of this book.
Even if we lack eloquent descriptions of the political ideologies and the principles of power in Norway during this period, the deficiency need not necessarily imply an absence of such thinking. The survivability of the laws in Iceland and on the Isle of Man demonstrates the great strength of “democratic” government based on law, a concept that had its sources in the Norse way of thinking. These laws can be seen as traces or remnants of a complicated political thought process that probably had its source in earlier, Germanic, central Europe. It has, in fact, survived with greater continuity than Greece’s “democratic” way of thinking. Recent research has, moreover, a tendency to consider democracy in Greece as having been romanticized in much the same way as were Viking times by the Scandinavians of an earlier generation. Farmers, as well as women, were discriminated against in Greek “democracy” -- which probably included, in reality, 10% of the population in Athens.(56) Thus it is fictional to claim that modern democracy arose in Greece. One result of new research and new methods of interpretation might, then, be an assertion that the Norse Thing system was of central significance in the later development of political democracy and government under the law as we know it today in Scandinavia. One of the “cradles” of this system was the Norwegian coastal kingdoms. Similar processes could have taken place in other parts of southern Scandinavia as well. It is relevant to this study that many of those who formulated Norse laws, apparently, might have been residents of Rogaland and Hafrsfjord. Except in the story of Erling, we know neither their names nor their faces. There was less material wealth here than in Greece and Rome, so no statues remain. But, on the other hand, it seems that these lawgivers left their traces, down through the centuries, in the legal thinking which has marked Scandinavia as Europe’s temple of freedom,
The single king comes and wants to put the cover on the pot.
When Olav Tryggvason came to the Gula Thing, he brought a powerful military force with him. He had a reputation for being a brutal warrior who did not shy away from any means of forcing people to convert to Christianity, as he understood it from his experience in Ireland and England. Snorre tells how Olav attacked a chieftain named Raud and “Christianized” him:(58)
“King Olav and his men went straight up to the farm, and they attacked the loft in which Raud was sleeping, and forced entrance. They rushed in and took Raud prisoner and tied him up, and the others who were in with him were killed, and some taken prisoner... Then the king had Raud brought before him, and he asked Raud to let himself be baptized... Raud shouted his refusal and said that he would never believe in Christ, and mocked God foully. Then the king was angry, and said that Raud should suffer the worst kind of death. Then the king had him taken and tied him so that he was lying flat on a beam and had a stick put between his teeth to hold his mouth open; then the king had them bring a ling snake and put it to Raud’s mouth; but the snake would not go into the mouth and twisted away. Then the king had them bring a hollow stalk of angelica and put it in Raud’s mouth; but some say that the king had his horn put in Raud’s mouth, and stuck the snake in it, and held red-hot iron outside. Then the snake crept into Raud’s mouth and down his throat and broke through his side. Then Raud lost his life.”
After Olav killed Raud, he stole all the goods and gold that he could find. Those who would still not consent to baptism “he had killed or tortured...” It is difficult to determine whether all the horror stories about Olav are true. The historian, Alexander Bugge, without attempting to be more precise, considers some of them to be “poetry and legend.”(59) Nevertheless he feels it necessary to add that he believes there to be “certainly some truth in the sagas’ words concerning how Olav Tryggvason was the cruelest of men when he was enraged, and that he frequently tortured his enemies: some he burned in fire, some he had pulled apart by vicious dogs, some were maimed or thrown off high mountains.”(60) The later historian Andreas Holmsen says that Olav did not flinch in spreading Christianity. Those who did not submit, he killed “without mercy.”(61) It is not surprising that, the first time Olav approached them at the Thing, the spokesmen for the farmers in Rogaland, when called upon to criticize Olav’s missionary activities, were dumbfounded .(62) Even if the saga of Raud did originate after the Thing meeting in Rogaland, Olav’s reputation would still have been all too familiar. Birkeli is one of those who is skeptical, wondering if Snorre’s account of Olav Tryggvason’s “introduction” of Christianity into Rogaland “has any connection with reality.” He writes that if it were true, “then the Thing hill in the center of Jær was a rather obvious place” for these negotiations.(63)
The resistance to Olav, as described in Snorre, does not mean that all the farmers were heathens. Grave finds suggest that Christianity was known in Norway since the 6th century.(64) It is likely that Christian ideas spread slowly but surely in Norse society -- in harmony with the more pragmatic and tolerant faith in the Aasa gods.
New cultural values -- the submission of the individual to church and state
What was new was the introduction of a state church and religion that was firmly centered in England (Wessex) -- a religion that was to be forced upon the people. The church historian Torstein Jørgensen says that it is reasonable to believe that a planned strategy, political as well as spiritual, lay behind the missionary offensive from Wessex.(65) The foreign “royal religion” introduced and supported new
Olav Tryggvason and Erling
The king’s confrontational attitude and the introduction of new cultural values must have occasioned a painful struggle The Vestland chieftains, after their dishonorable meeting with Olav in Rogaland, understood this. They requested a meeting with the king at their traditional political center, the Gula Thing, in farthest Sognefjord, so that they might discuss, more thoroughly, the case for Christianity. Olmod the Old, of the family of Horda-Kåre, addressed Olav face to face. He said that he and his clan had spoken about this issue among themselves. They had decided “to be of one counsel.”(76)
“If you, the king, intend to force us kinsmen in this way, and want to break our laws, and, in any way, enslave us, then we will stand against you with all our strength. . .”
But, on the other hand, if Olav were to comply with “the wishes of the clan,” the Vestlanders would follow the king and serve him. Olav Tryggvason then asked what he could do to be reconciled with them. They replied that he would have to give his sister, Astrid, in marriage to Erling Skjalgsson, “our kinsman, whom we hold to be the most promising youth in Norway.” The king, acknowledging that Erling was of good family and seemed to be “a fine young man,” looked upon the proposal favorably, but thought it best to consult his half sister first.(77)
That Olav agreed to this initiative,(78) indicates that he could not simply brush aside the resistance in Vestland. He was well aware that Harald Fairhair fought his last great battle at Hafrsfjord, close to the seat of Erling’s power. Therefore, when the leaders at the Gula Thing named the chieftain of Sola, it was a symbolic reminder of Hafrsfjord. Olav, then, would probably have understood that the cultural values of decentralization were so strong that he had to accommodate them. As Birkeli writes: “Certainly not all the chieftains in Rogaland were united in agreeing to convert to Christianity, especially if it meant violating the law.”(79)
Marriage, as a form of political alliance, was common at that time. Through clan relationships the partners in an agreement bound themselves with age-old ties. It was customary to seek the consent of the women of powerful clans. Snorre confirms this tradition, when he reports that Astrid was furious with Olav about the proposal. As a member of the royal family, she considered Erling to be of lower rank, and, therefore, did not want to marry him. Olav had to use his powers of persuasion. In the end he sent her one of her hunting falcons -- plucked bare He wanted to demonstrate his anger over her reluctance and to warn her that the situation was serious for him. He needed the
Erling’s acceptance of Olav’s Christianizing activities can be justified on many levels. The king’s military superiority could not be ignored. Moreover, Christianity gave the chieftains greater power than did the more pragmatic Aasa religion. It might be that Erling was already influenced by Christian values, and was not simply a Christian for reasons of pure power politics. Perhaps the
Our opinion of Erling and of Christianity must remain speculative. We have to agree with A.W. Brøgger that we actually