Transactions of the Royal Historical Society http://journals.cambridge.org/RHT Additional services for Transactions of the Royal Historical Society: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here The Conquest of Norway by the Ynglings Henry H. Howorth Transactions of the Royal Historical Society / Volume 1 / Issue 04 / December 1884, pp 309 - 363 DOI: 10.2307/3677976, Published online: 12 February 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/ abstract_S0080440100005727 How to cite this article: Henry H. Howorth (1884). The Conquest of Norway by the Ynglings. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1, pp 309-363 doi:10.2307/3677976 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/RHT, IP address: 144.32.128.70 on 09 Jul 2015 3O9 THE CONQUEST OF NORWAY BY THE YNGLINGS. BY HENRY H. HOWORTH, F.S.A., F.R. Hist. Soc. {Read June 1882.) HAVING by your favour in a former paper tried to dissect the early history of Sweden, I propose to do the same now for Norway. My purpose is not to enter into the region of very early tradition where there is no foothold for criticism, but rather to try and throw some light on that border-ground where history and fable meet, and which is lit up, when illuminated at all, by very dim twilight. Before we enter into the main part of our subject, we must lay down certain postulates which it i» necessary to remem- ber, and which, it is possible, may not meet with universal acquiescence. In the first place we hold that among the Norsemen such a thing as a parvenu ruler or chief was un- known. Among no race was loyal attachment to the sacred stock, to which alone the kings and chiefs belonged, more marked. The slaughter of particular chiefs was common enough, but the slaughter was followed by their being replaced by others of the same family and blood. The families which had this hereditary privilege were deemed to be the direct descendants of the famous companions of Odin, the Asirs, and to them, and them alone, belonged the privilege of ruling. In the next place we cannot help thinking that the amount of disintegration in the communities which held Scandinavia in early days has been a good deal exaggerated by the recent critical historians. It is true that before the end of the eighth century there was not the cohesion in the government that there was in later times, and that the 3IO TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETV. supreme chief was not the autocrat he afterwards became: that his authority was considerably distributed, and that there were a number of so-called district kings who divided the lands among them, each controlling his own patrimony ; but it seems to us that there was, nevertheless, a very distinct acceptance of the feudal and patriarchal notions by which the head of the house, the supreme high priest of the com- munity, was de facto, as well as de jure, the supreme ruler of all. We take it that the community was, in this respect, organised very much as a Scotch clan or an Irish sept was, with the senior chief and many subordinate and semi-inde- pendent ones. The district chiefs all belonged to the same race, as all the Campbells or Macleods theoretically do: all having a common ancestor, all obeying at critical times, and at all times acknowledging as their head, the Lord of Dunvagan or the Macallum Mor. Thus we find that when the great chief had a mortal struggle, the various branches of the house gathered round him at the summons, and joined their ships to his. The amount of independence exercised by the district kings no doubt varied with the locality. In districts like Western Norway, where every fiord is separated by difficult barriers from the rest, or where the intercourse either by land or water was difficult, and probably intermittent only, the maximum of independence would be reached. There the little community and, in many cases, the isolated farm would be practically independent. The same rule, caused by the same circumstances, held good in the Peloponnesus in ancient times and in the promontory of Sorento in mediaeval ones. In more fertile and thickly peopled districts, which were more accessible and better worth looking after, the authority of the supreme chief was doubtless more marked and his visits more frequent: the association of liberty with a rugged country being well explained in such instances at least. These postulates are reasonable, and generally accepted, and are both supported by ample evidence. Thus, if we turn to the earliest poetic literature of the North, the ' Traveller's Tale' and ' Beowulf we are struck by finding the Scandi- THE CONQUEST OF NORWAY BY THE YNGLINGS. 311 navian district divided into a number of so-called ' gaus,' or provinces, each one occupied by a separate clan, as in Ireland and Celtic Scotland in mediaeval times ; each clan subject to a royal stock, all belonging to the sacred caste tracing descent from Odin and his Asirs, and thus having, for its chiefs at least, a common pedigree. A few lines of the ' Traveller's Tale' well exhibit this division into communities, each with its royal caste. Thus, we take the following at haphazard:— Sigehere longest Ruled the Sea Danes. Hnaef the Hokings, Helm the Wulfings, Wald the Woings, Wod the Thyrings, Saeferth the Sycs, The Swedes Ongendtheov, Sceafthere the Ymbers, Sceafa the Longbeards, &c, &c. Thorpe edition of the Scap, 219. It is not our present purpose to examine these clans and their ruling stocks in detail. Our story begins at a much later stage, when the gaus, or petty communities, were being consolidated into larger kingdoms by the absorption of several by the more vigorous and ambitious among them. This consolidation had a very potent effect indeed on the social condition of the north of Europe. Denmark and Sweden were the first to feel its effects, and were presently followed by Norway. Norway's consolidation took place just at the beginning of its written history, and, in fact, its real history begins with this consolidation, and to describe it in part is the purpose of this paper. The consolidation took place under the leadership of the royal stock of the Ynglings, which, if we are to credit the very reasonable tradition to be presently referred to, was expelled from Sweden by the Scioldungs. This revolution is described for us in the last chapter of the Ynglinga Saga, the general truth of which we 312 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY. cannot see the smallest reason to doubt. This consolidation of power in the North, and especially the internecine struggle between the Scioldungs and the Ynglings just referred to, more than aught else caused, as we believe, the vast impulse given to piracy and foreign colonisation in the ninth and tenth centuries, and converted what had previously been, so far as our facts point, a peaceable, trading, stay-at-home folk into an army of plunderers which assailed every part of the European seaboard. It was as exiles and expatriated chieftains that many of the Norsemen emigrated from their rugged homes, and the migration only ceased when the rival stocks of sacred blood had settled down into what became their normal dis- tribution. Before we enter on our subject we must say some- thing about our authorities. In a previous paper of this series, on the Early History of Sweden, I urged that the Heimskringla and the Scioldung Saga, of which last we have fragments remaining, the most important being the well-known Sogubrot, were probably written by one person, and I suggested that this person was Snorri, the author of the Heimskringla. Since writing that paper I have had the advantage of reading the admirable prolegomena to the Sturlunga Saga, written by Professor Vigfusson, in which I find my main contention confirmed— namely, that the early part of the Heimskringla and the original draft of the Scioldunga were by one hand. Professor Vigfusson has, however, I think, shown very clearly that the author of the two in their early form was not Snorri, as I urged, but his predecessor, Ari Frode, who was born in 1067 and died in 1148, and who was doubtless the first Norse writer who wrote prose history. One of the books he is* known to have written was called the' Konunga-bok,1 or Book of Kings. In regard to it, Professor Vigfusson tells us,' The superscription of the Codex Frisianus has the words, '' Here beginneth the Book of Kings according to the records of Priest Ari the Historian : opening from the threefold division of the world, which is followed by the History of all the Kings of Norway." To this statement a short introduction THE CONQUEST OF NORWAY BY THE YNGLINGS. 313 containing a life of Ari is prefixed. The words quoted can only mean, either that the following Sagas are Ari's " Book of Kings," or that they are derived therefrom ; and the Ynglinga we take to be the very work of Ari, abridged here and there, but still preserving in many chapters (especially those which depict the life and rites of the heathen days) his characteristic style and words. The discrepancy between the mythology of the Ynglinga and the Prose Edda' may be noted as some slight confirmation of this view.'2 Dr. Vigfusson concludes that Ari's ' Konunga-bok ' probably ended with the death of King Harald Sigurdson, commonly called Harald Hardrada.