Harald Hardrada Read Online Free PDF Page B

recognise his half-brother Olaf as casting his long shadow across the whole subsequent course of Harald’s life. While it was surely a determined loyalty to a brother and boyhood hero which brought Harald to fight his first battle under Olaf’s banner at Stiklestad, something still deeper might be needed to explain why, thirty-six years later, it was to Olaf’s shrine at Nidaros that Harald paid his parting homage just before he embarked upon the invasion that would lead him to his last battle at Stamford Bridge. It is almost as if the ghost of his half-brother can be sensed at Harald’s shoulder on very many occasions throughout those intervening years and most especially after he himself had succeeded to the kingship of Norway. As Olaf is said to have foretold at their very first meeting, Harald was indeed to become a vengeful man: so much so that it might almost be possible to recognise his entire reign as a warrior king in terms of a twenty-year pursuit of blood-feud in vengeance for the kinsman laid low on the field of Stiklestad.
    None of which is intended to suggest there was anything religious in Harald’s respect for his half-brother’s memory, because whatever presence might be sensed at his shoulder is assuredly the ghost of the man he remembered rather than the spirit of the martyred saint whose cult had become firmly established even within Harald’s lifetime. Indeed, the alacrity with which a king slain in battle by his own people was transformed into his nation’s martyred patron saint is remarkable even by medieval standards. The sagas tell of wounds healed by his blood almost before his corpse was cold and such miracle stories can be traced all the way back to the eleventh century, some of them even to men who had actually known Olaf. His body had lain buried for only a few days more than the twelvemonth when it was exhumed and found to be uncorrupted, thus enabling the bishop at Nidaros to immediately proclaim him a saint.
    Recognition of his sanctity evidently spread widely and with extraordinary speed. Adam of Bremen, who was at work on his History scarcely forty years after Stiklestad, confirms Olaf’s feast already being celebrated throughout Scandinavia, just as William of Jumièges, who was writing in Normandy at much the same time, recognised him as a martyr. One version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , set down some twenty years earlier still, reflects the Scandinavian seam of northern English culture when it styles Olaf halig (or ‘holy’). However, even when due allowance is made for the very different values of that world and time, what is known of the personality of the historical Olaf Haraldsson is not easily reconciled with any of the more familiar manifestations of Christian sanctity.
    The later saga stories of his having been baptised in infancy by Olaf Tryggvason can be set aside in the light of William of Jumièges’ account of the baptism at Rouen, and so it would be reasonable to assume his early life as steeped in the pagan culture of the viking warrior which, indeed, he himself was to become at the age of twelve. Having adopted the Christian faith, however, Olaf was determined to impose it upon the kingdom he was soon to claim in Norway – and, if needs be, at sword-point. Those who refused conversion, or accepted under pressure the man-god whom the northmen called the ‘White Christ’ and afterwards reverted to pagan practice, faced banishment, maiming, or even death at royal command.
    Disloyalty to the king himself was punished with no less severity, of which the most notorious example is the saga story of five Uppland kings who first supported Olaf’s bid for the kingship but shortly afterwards become so disenchanted as to conspire together for his overthrow. When word of their conspiracy was brought to Olaf, an armed force 400 strong was sent to make them captive and bring them to face his wrath. Three of the kings