Between History and Myth

Stories of Harald Fairhair and the Founding of the State

Bruce Lincoln

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780226140926
• eBook ISBN: 9780226141084
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: European History

All groups tell stories about their beginnings. Such tales are oft-repeated, finely wrought, and usually much beloved. Among those institutions most in need of an impressive creation account is the state: it's one of the primary ways states attempt to legitimate themselves. But such founding narratives invite revisionist retellings that modify details of the story in ways that undercut, ironize, and even ridicule the state's ideal self-representation. Medieval accounts of how Norway was unified by its first king provide a lively, revealing, and wonderfully entertaining example of this process.
           
Taking the story of how Harald Fairhair unified Norway in the ninth century as its central example, Bruce Lincoln illuminates the way a state's foundation story blurs the distinction between history and myth and how variant tellings of origin stories provide opportunities for dissidence and subversion as subtle—or not so subtle—modifications are introduced through details of character, incident, and plot structure. Lincoln reveals a pattern whereby texts written in Iceland were more critical and infinitely more subtle than those produced in Norway, reflecting the fact that the former had a dual audience: not just the Norwegian court, but also Icelanders of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whose ancestors had fled from Harald and founded the only non-monarchic, indeed anti-monarchic, state in medieval Europe.
           
Between History and Myth will appeal not only to specialists in Scandinavian literature and history but also to anyone interested in memory and narrative.

1

Introduction

I

All institutions, like all groups, tell stories about their beginnings. Such tales are oft repeated, finely wrought, and usually much beloved. They are also eminently useful and always more complicated than their audiences suspect. But were their complexities more evident, they would surely be less useful. And here one must ask: Less useful for what? Less useful to whom?

Sometimes such narratives style themselves “origin myths”; sometimes “histories of foundation.” Sometimes they advance no generic claims and defy easy categorization, blurring—indeed, defying—the distinction between history and myth. This interstitial status may produce confusion for analysts and others, but it adds to the stories’ fascination. What is more, it makes them more elusive and more effective still. (More effective for what? More effective on whom?)

Among those institutions most in need of an impressive creation account is the state, particularly as it tries to legitimate itself and to manage its inevitable tensions and contradictions by naturalizing itself and its operations, while representing its origins as somehow much greater than natural: heroic, miraculous, divinely graced or inspired. Examples of state-founding narratives on this model are easy to come by, and their close study is always instructive. One thinks of certain books in the Hebrew Bible, for instance (I and II Samuel, I and II Kings),¹ Vergil’s Aeneid,² or Bishop Weems’s Life of George Washington.³ The grade-school textbooks of most nations regularly play this role and fit this pattern.⁴

II

State-founding events supposedly lie behind state-founding stories, and if one could know the former directly, it would be instructive to compare history-as-lived to history-as-recounted so that one could gauge the degree of embellishment, erasure, distortion, and tendentious fantasy operative in the latter. Alas, such experiments are not easily staged, especially for events (and pseudoevents) of long ago, where one has access to the historical real only via the stories. In such terrain, critical method depends on close reading of texts, comparison of one variant to another, and consistently posing irreverent questions (Useful for what? Useful to whom?).

Their admitted limitations notwithstanding, such methods can be revealing, provided one understands what they can—and cannot—do. In general, they shift interest from the moment of action to that of narration (understanding that narration is also an action of sorts); also from the heroism of the actors to the subtlety, hidden interests, and consummate skill of the storytellers. From the gritty process of state formation to the well-polished stories of same.⁵

III

Seeking an example with which to explore these issues, I was drawn—no doubt, for idiosyncratic reasons—to the Old Norse sagas and, more particularly, to the subgenre of Konunga sögur (“Kings’ Sagas”), which treat the institution of the state as a series of royal lives.⁶ And most particularly of all to the stories of Hálfdan the Black (said to have ruled ca. 839–58) and his son, Harald Fairhair (ruled ca. 858–930, as king of a unified Norway from the mid-870s), for these two—and the space in between them—mark the transition from legendary prehistory to that which modern scholars regard as history proper.⁷ The distinction between the two figures is not made primarily on evidentiary or epistemological grounds, for we do not know much more of Harald than of his father. Rather, it is the sagas themselves that construe the difference as ontological, even cosmogonic, for they recount how Harald changed existence itself and created a new world by consolidating monarchic power, unifying the Norwegian nation, and establishing a modern state.

IV

Stories of Harald’s state-founding activities began to circulate more or less contemporarily with the events themselves. This was not a spontaneous reaction to the unfolding drama, however, for Harald employed a number of skalds as his propaganda corps. He is said to have valued them most highly among his retainers, and he placed them in positions of signal honor.⁸ In turn, they were expected to bestow still greater honor upon him, for it was their task to transform the king’s accomplishments into unforgettable verse and undying fame. Their poems circulated widely, as did other accounts of royal deeds that gradually took the shape of legends, tales (þættir, sing. þáttr), and sagas. One of the earliest of the Kings’ Sagas gestures toward the abundance of material in circulation, stating, “Many things and wondrous ones are remembered of [King Harald], but now it would take too long to narrate these individually.”⁹

All this was oral tradition, however, for literacy came to Scandinavia only with and through Christianity.¹⁰ The first literature produced in the North thus tended to be ecclesiastical and hagiographic. Lives of the saints were particularly popular, first those which originated elsewhere and were written in Latin, subsequently translated into the Old Norse vernacular.¹¹ In turn, these stimulated local production and lives of the monarch-saints responsible for Norway’s conversion start to be written in the twelfth century. Other kings then received attention, beginning with the monarchy’s founders.¹² Individual Kings’ Sagas and more comprehensive attempts to narrate dynastic history thus blossomed between 1180 and 1240, culminating in Heimskringla, a monument of medieval literature written about 1230–35 and usually attributed to Snorri Sturluson (1178–1241).¹³ These developments postdate Harald Fairhair’s founding of the Norwegian state, however, by a good three and a half centuries. While they are enormously revealing documents, what they reveal is not history “wie es eigentlich gewesen.”¹⁴

All told, we have fewer than a dozen variants of Harald’s story, and we will take these up in subsequent chapters. The chief surviving sources include Theodricus Monachus, Historia de Antiquitate Regum Norwagiensum Chapter 1, Historia Norwegiæ 10–11, Ágrip af Noregskonunga sögum 1–4, Fagrskinna 1–3, the “Tale of Hálfdan the Black” (Þáttr Hálfdanar svarta, in Flateyjarbók 1.561–67), the “Tale of Harald Fairhair” (Þáttr Haralds hárfagra, in Flateyjarbók 1.567–76), Hálfdan the Black’s Saga, and Harald Fairhair’s Saga (the second and third sagas included in Heimskringla). Pieces of the narrative and allusions to it are also scattered in other sagas, including Orkneyinga Saga, Egil’s Saga, Laxdæla Saga, Flóamanna Saga, Barð’s Saga, and others.¹⁵ We should not, however, mistake this dossier for the full body of evidence. As we have seen, all of these sources are relatively late and all drew on prior variants—written and oral, poetic and prose, learned and popular, Norwegian and Icelandic—some of which survive, some of which are known only by name, and many of which are lost altogether.¹⁶ What each version could assume, however, was an audience already familiar with the story and keenly interested in it. They could address themselves to readers (or hearers) who could recognize modifications to the conventional shape of the story and appreciate such nuances as these innovations conveyed. Putting it this way is too crude, however, for the extent of such knowledge, skills, and interest surely varied from one reader to another. Thus, as a given text introduced ever-more-subtle innovations to its version of the story, the fewer and more select would be the number of those who could recognize these shifts and understand their import. And a skillful narrator could make telling use of just such variations.

V

Their disparate sources notwithstanding, the Kings’ Sagas are not simple chronicles or haphazard in their organization. On the contrary, recent studies have identified certain typological concerns that motivated these texts and determined their structure. Grosso modo, they describe a gradual but inevitable progress toward realization of a transcendent ideal: an ideal that manifests itself in history via the establishment and integration of two key institutions: first the state, and then the church.¹⁷

To cite an early example, Theodricus Monachus’s Ancient History of the Norwegian Kings (written ca. 1180), inscribed this pattern in the nature of time itself. Thus, Theodricus expressed severe reservations about the accuracy of dating and generally preferred to give the length of a given king’s reign, without specifying the years in question. There are, however, a very small number of exceptional cases, where he does cite the year, always describing it as “the year [numbered X] from the incarnation of our Lord.” The first of these, mentioned in the very first line of the text, is the year of Harald Fairhair’s accession.¹⁸ The second is the death of St. Olaf, who accomplished the conversion of Norway.¹⁹ The first date thus marks the establishment of proper kingship, the second, that of the Christian faith, and the phrase ab incarnatione Domini identifies both as crucial moments in sacred history, when God’s plan for salvation takes large steps toward its fulfillment.

VI

Heimskringla makes a similar point, while expanding on the same structure. Thus, it begins with a race of Asian heroes who migrated from the center of the world to northern Europe (a frozen, uncivilized territory), bringing kingship with them.²⁰ The first section of the text, known as Ynglingasaga, describes how these invaders established themselves first in Sweden, then suffered defeats and were driven west in disorder. The next two sagas are named for Hálfdan the Black and Harald Fairhair, and they recount how these heroic figures founded a proper kingship in Norway. Subsequent sagas treat establishment of the True Religion (also ultimately imported from Asia, by way of Rome, England, and Germany) as a complement to the royal state, a process that began with two kings who adopted Christianity as their personal faith (Hákon the Good, r. 934–61, and Harald Graycloak, r. 961–70) and culminated in the two who waged aggressive campaigns to convert the Norwegian nation (Olaf Tryggvason, r. 995–1000, and St. Olaf, r. 1015–28).

Within this schema, Harald Fairhair occupies the crucial mediating position. On the one hand, he represents the fulfillment of the political process that produces the royal state. On the other hand, he anticipates the religious process that results in a Christian nation, for Heimskringla depicts him as having intuitively grasped religious truth, even while still a pagan. This is conveyed in a detail this text introduced when reworking earlier accounts of Harald’s accession.

Traditionally, these stories center on an oath Harald swore, pledging to make himself sole ruler of the nation or die in the attempt. All accounts of that oath describe the gestures at its center, as Harald vowed never to cut his hair until he realized his ambition. Heimskringla is the first variant, however, to include certain words that Harald spoke or, more precisely, it is the first to place these words in his mouth: “This vow I swear and therefore I appeal to God, he who created me and who rules over all.”²¹

This phrasing is meant to convey a simple but profound faith: a natural religiosity that follows when innate reason reflects on the world’s wonders, as perceived by the senses, yielding an intuitive understanding of the supreme deity as creator and ruler of the cosmos, and recognition of oneself as a dependent part of his glorious creation. A much more elaborate expression of this point occurs in one version of Fagrskinna. There, after swearing to conquer Norway, Harald goes on to swear a second oath in which he renounces pagan gods, idols, and sacrifices, while showing himself to have absorbed all the truths of natural religion.

“And I swear this also, that I will make sacrifice to no god whom men now worship, except the one who made the sun and who made and ordered the world. And since I plan that I will be sole king in Norway and will place under me all other kings, those who previously have been both powerful and mighty, I shall do all things with confidence in the one who is mightiest and rules all. And no one will be dear in friendship to me who worships another god than that one, because I believe I see the truth that a god who has no more power than a stone or a block of wood cannot help me or anyone else. I am only a man and I know that I will die, like other men, and I know I have an ambitious spirit. And if I knew that I would have a life as long as I know that a god lives, then I might not be happy until I had all the world under me and my control. Therefore, it is significant concerning these gods, that if they had any real divinity or power, then they would not have won so small a realm to rule as one stone or a small grove. Therefore shall every man with intelligence let himself be convinced,” said the king, “he who knows anything has grasped that the only true god is he who created all things and he alone can give full help to a man, because he has made the man, just as he made all else. Therefore, I will strive for that as long as I live, so that just as my mind strives for him who is mightiest of all, so I also hope that with his support I will become mightier than all the petty kings who now are in Norway.”²²

Even this is not yet the more perfect religiosity of faith in the salvific power of Christ, which requires revelation, scripture, the intervention of the church, and a transformation of the self through conversion. But it is a significant step toward that faith, and these texts assert that a rudimentary religious truth was already present in Harald before he started the process of state formation. Like its founder, the state is thus represented as always already having been rich in religious potential: a potential that awaits a fuller and richer development.

Such readings of the text are certainly accurate. Harald is a state-founding hero and a “Noble Heathen,” in Lars Lönnroth’s useful phrase.²³ Creation of the state is a monumental accomplishment of vision, political will, and military force. It is religiously informed and motivated ab origine, but it is also subject to a process of religious conversion,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Gyða
• 3. Rögnvald the Powerful
• 4. Snorri Sturluson
• 5. Commander Guthorm
• 6. Ragnhild
• 7. Dofri the Giant
• 8. Hálfdan the Black
• 9. Shaggy Harald
• 10. Ingjald the Wicked
• 11. Conclusions
• Coda: A Reader Reflects
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: Synoptic Tables
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index