The Sagas of the Icelanders (14 page)

15
Hildirid’s sons had spent the winter with King Harald, taking the men from their farm and their neighbours with them. There were twelve men there in all. The brothers spoke a lot to the king, always presenting Thorolf in the same light.

‘Were you pleased with the tribute from the Lapps that Thorolf sent you?’ Harek asked the king.

‘Very pleased,’ replied the king.

‘You would have been even more impressed if you had received everything due to you,’ Harek said, ‘but it turned out quite differently. Thorolf kept a much larger share for himself. He sent you a gift of three beaver skins, but I know for certain that he kept thirty for himself that were rightfully yours, and I think the same happened with other items. It’s quite true that my brother and I would bring you much more wealth if you entrust collection of the tribute to us.’

Their companions corroborated everything they said about Thorolf, and in the end, the king was furious with him.

16
In the summer Thorolf went to Trondheim to see King Harald, taking all the tribute with him and much more wealth besides, along with a band of ninety men, all well equipped. When he reached the king, they were shown into the guests’ quarters and lavishly provided for.

Later that day Olvir Hump went to talk with his kinsman Thorolf. Olvir told Thorolf that heavy slanders had been put around against him, and that the king had listened to these accusations.

Thorolf asked Olvir to speak to the king on his behalf, ‘because I will not be granted a very long audience with the king if he prefers to believe the slanders of evil men instead of the truth and honesty which he will hear from me’.

The next day Olvir met Thorolf and told him he had discussed his affairs with the king.

‘I am hardly the wiser now about what sort of a mood he is in,’ he said

‘Then I will go to him myself,’ Thorolf said.

He did so; he went to see the king when he was at the dinner table and greeted him when he entered. The king returned his greeting and ordered someone to fetch Thorolf something to drink.

Thorolf told the king that he had brought him his tribute from Finnmark, ‘and I have brought you even more things to honour you. I know that whatever I do in gratitude towards you is always in my best interest.’

The king said that he expected nothing but good from Thorolf, ‘because I deserve no less. But there are conflicting stories about how careful you are about pleasing me.’

‘If anyone says I have shown you disloyalty, then I have been wronged,’ said Thorolf. ‘I think people who make such claims to you are less your friends than I am. It is obvious that they aim to be my greatest enemies. But they can also expect to pay dearly for it if we clash.’

Then Thorolf went away again, and the next day he handed over the tribute in the king’s presence. When it had all been made over, Thorolf produced several beaver skins and sables, saying that he wanted to give them to the king.

Many of the people there said this was a noble gesture, well deserving to be repaid with friendship. The king said that Thorolf had already taken his reward for himself.

Thorolf answered that he had loyally done everything he could to please the king: ‘There is nothing I can do about it if he is still not satisfied. The king knew the way I treated him when I was staying with him as one of his men, and it strikes me as strange if he considers me a different character now from the one I proved to be then.’

‘You dispatched yourself well when you were with me, Thorolf,’ said the king. ‘I think the best course is for you to join my men. Serve as my standard-bearer and defend yourself against the other men of mine, and no one will slander you if I can see for myself, day and night, the way you conduct yourself.’

Thorolf looked to either side where his own men were standing.

‘I am reluctant to relinquish this band of men,’ he said. ‘You will decide my title and the privileges you grant me, King, but I will not hand over my band of men for as long as I can provide for them, even if I have to live by my own resources alone. I want you, I implore you, to visit me and hear the testimony given about me by people whom you trust, and then do what you feel is appropriate.’

The king replied that he would never again accept Thorolf’s hospitality. Thorolf went away and prepared to travel home.

When he had left, the king granted Hildirid’s sons the agencies in Halogaland that Thorolf had previously held, and collection of tribute from
the Lapps. The king seized possession of the farm on Torgar Island and all Brynjolf’s former property, and entrusted it all to Hildirid’s sons.

The king sent messengers to Thorolf with his tokens, to inform him about the arrangements he had made. Thorolf took the ships that he owned and filled them with all the possessions he could, and took all his men, slaves and freed slaves alike, and went north to his farm in Sandnes, where he lived just as lavishly with just as large a household as before.

17
Hildirid’s sons took charge of the king’s tax-collection in Halogaland. For fear of the king’s power, no one spoke out against the changeover, although many of Thorolf’s kinsmen and friends disapproved strongly. In the winter the brothers went up into the mountains, taking thirty men with them. The Lapps were far less impressed by these agents of the king’s than they had been by Thorolf, and the tribute they were supposed to pay proved much more difficult to collect.

The same winter, Thorolf went to the mountains with a hundred men, and straight to Kvenland to meet King Faravid. They made their plans and decided to go up into the mountains as they had the previous winter, with four hundred men, and they came down in Karelia, where they attacked settlements that they felt they had sufficient numbers to handle. After raiding there and winning much booty, they returned to Finnmark as winter progressed.

Thorolf went home to his farm in the spring, sending men to Vagan to fish cod and others to catch herring, and he stocked up with all manner of provisions.

Thorolf owned a big ocean-going ship, which was lavishly equipped, richly painted above the plumbline and fitted with a black-and-red striped sail. All the riggings were well designed. Thorolf had the ship made ready to sail and sent his men to look after it, loading it with stockfish, hides and ermine, and a great quantity of squirrel skins and other furs from his expedition to the mountains, a very valuable cargo. He told Thorgils Boomer to take the ship to England to buy cloth and other goods that he needed. They skirted the coast to the south, then put out to sea and landed in England, where they did plenty of trading. After that they loaded the ship with wheat, honey, wine and cloth, and set off for Norway again in the autumn. They had favourable winds and landed at Hordaland.

The same autumn Hildirid’s sons went with the tribute to hand it over to the king. He watched as they did so.

‘Have you handed over all the tribute you took in Finnmark, then?’ he asked.

‘That’s right,’ they said.

‘This tribute is both much less and much poorer than Thorolf used to collect. And you told me that he managed it badly.’

‘It’s a good thing you have considered how much tribute usually comes from Finnmark, King,’ said Harek, ‘because then you have a clear idea how much you will lose if Thorolf ruins it for you entirely. There were thirty of us in Finnmark last winter, as has been the custom among tribute collectors. Then Thorolf arrived with a hundred men. We heard he had said he was planning to kill my brother and me and all the men with us, on the grounds that you, the king, had granted to us the office he wanted for himself. We saw no option but to avoid a confrontation with him and leave, which is why we only went up into the mountains a short way from the settlements, while Thorolf travelled over the whole territory with his band of men. He took all the trade there and the Finns paid him tribute, and he gave them a guarantee that your collectors wouldn’t enter the territory. He intends to proclaim himself king of the northern territories, both Finnmark and Halogaland, and it is astonishing that you let him get away with everything he does. As outright proof of the riches Thorolf has taken away from the mountain regions: the largest knorr in Halogaland was loaded at Sandnes this spring and Thorolf was said to be sole owner of all the cargo on board. I think it was more or less full of skins and there were more beaver and sable skins there than Thorolf let you have. Thorgils Boomer took the ship and I would guess he sailed it to England. If you want to find out the truth, you should spy on Thorgils’ movements when he comes back, because I can’t imagine that so rich a cargo has ever been loaded on any trading ship in our day. I think, if the truth is told, every penny on board was yours.’

Harek’s companions corroborated that every word he had said was true, and there was no one there to speak out against him.

18
There were two brothers called Sigtrygg Travel-quick and Hallvard Travel-hard, who came from Vik and were among King Harald’s men. Their mother’s family came from Vestfold and they were related to the king. Their father had relatives on both sides of the river Gota. He had been a wealthy farmer in Hising, and they had inherited from him. In all there were four brothers, and the younger two, Thord and Thorgeir, stayed at home and looked after the farm. Sigtrygg and Hallvard handled all the king’s
missions, both in Norway and outside it, and had made many dangerous voyages, both to execute people and confiscate property from people whose homes the king had ordered to be attacked. They took a large band of men with them everywhere and were not popular among the common people, but the king respected them highly. They were outstanding runners and skiers, capable of outsailing other men, and strong and shrewd in most respects.

They were with the king when all this happened. In the autumn he went: to some feasts in Hordaland.

One day he had the brothers Hallvard and Sigtrygg called in, and when they came he told them to take their band of men and spy on the ship that Thorgils Boomer was sailing: ‘He took the ship over to England in the summer. Bring it and everything on board to me, except the crew. Let them go in peace if they do not try to defend their ship.’

The brothers readily agreed and took a longship each, then went to look for Thorgils and his men. They heard that he had returned from England and had sailed northwards along the coast. The brothers set off north in pursuit of Thorgils and his men, and came across them in Fura Sound. Recognizing the ship, they attacked its seaward side, while some of their men went ashore and boarded it from the gangways. Thorgils and his men were not expecting trouble and had not mounted a guard. Before they knew it, there were fully armed men all over their ship, and they were all captured there and taken ashore, where they were left with no weapons and only the clothes they were wearing. Hallvard and his men threw the gangways off the ship, undid the moorings and towed it out to sea, then veered south until they reached the king. They presented him with the ship and everything on it.

When the cargo was unloaded, the king saw that it was very valuable, and that Harek had not been lying.

Thorgils and his companions found transport for themselves and went to see Kveldulf and Grim, whom they told of their ordeal. They were given a warm welcome all the same.

Kveldulf said everything was turning out as he had predicted: Thorolf would not enjoy the good fortune of the king’s friendship indefinitely.

‘And I would not bother much about the loss that Thorolf has just sustained, if there were not more to follow,’ he said. ‘I suspect once again that Thorolf will fail to realize his limitations in the face of the overwhelming force he has to deal with.’

He asked Thorgils to tell Thorolf that ‘my only advice is to leave the country, because he may be able to do better for himself serving the king of England or Denmark or Sweden’.

Then he gave Thorgils a fully rigged boat, and tents and provisions and everything they needed for their journey. They set off without stopping until they reached Thorolf in the north and told him what had happened.

Thorolf took his loss well, saying that he would not go short of money: ‘It’s good to have a king to share your money with.’

Then Thorolf bought some meal and malt and other provisions he needed to keep his men, and said his farmhands would not be dressed as smartly as he had planned for a while.

Thorolf sold some of his lands and mortgaged others, but maintained the same style of living as before. He had no fewer men with him than the previous winters – rather more, in fact – and he was more extravagant in feasts and invitations to his friends. He spent all the winter at home.

19
Once spring arrived and the snow and ice melted, Thorolf had a great longship that he owned brought out, and had it prepared to sail and manned with more than one hundred of his men in all, an impressive and well-armed band.

When the wind was favourable, Thorolf sailed the ship south hugging the shore, then when he reached Byrda they headed out to sea beyond all the islands, sometimes so far that they could only see the top half of the mountains. They continued south and did not hear any news of anybody until they arrived in Vik. There they were told that the king was in Vik and would be going to Oppland in the summer. No one on land knew of Thorolf’s whereabouts. With a favourable wind in his sails, he headed for Denmark, and from there into the Baltic, where he plundered during the summer without gaining much booty.

In the autumn he headed back to Denmark, around the time that the big Norwegian fleet pulled out from Oyr, after being stationed there as usual during the summer. Thorolf let them all sail past without being noticed, then sailed to Mostrarsund one evening. A large knorr had called there on its way from Oyr, skippered by Thorir Thruma, one of King Harald’s agents. He was in charge of the king’s land at Thruma, a large estate where the king spent much time when he was in Vik. Since a lot of provisions were needed for that estate, Thorir had gone to Oyr to buy cargo, malt
and flour and honey, and spent a great amount of the king’s money on it.

Thorolf and his men attacked the ship and gave Thorir’s crew the option of defending it, but lacking the manpower to keep such a large force at bay, Thorir surrendered. Thorolf seized the ship and all its cargo, and put Thorir ashore, then sailed both ships north along the coast.

On reaching the river Gota they anchored and waited for nightfall. When it was dark they rowed the longship up the river and attacked the farm which Hallvard and Sigtrygg owned there. They arrived before daybreak, surrounded the farmhouse and shouted a war-cry. The people inside woke up and snatched up their weapons. Thorgeir fled out of the sleeping quarters, ran to the wooden fence surrounding the farm, grabbed one of the posts and vaulted over it. Thorgils Boomer, standing nearby, swung his sword at Thorgeir and chopped off the hand that was holding on to the post. Thorgeir ran off into the woods, while his brother Thord was killed and more than twenty men with him. Afterwards, the raiders took all the valuables and burned the farmhouse, then went back down the river to the sea, where they sailed on to Vik with a favourable wind. Once again they encountered a large ship owned by people from Vik, loaded with malt and meal. Thorolf and his band attacked the ship, and the crew surrendered, feeling that they had no chance of warding off the assault. They went ashore with nothing, while Thorolf and his men took the ship and its cargo and continued on their way. So Thorolf had three ships when he sailed into Fold from the east. He and his men followed the main sailing route to Lindesnes, travelling as quickly as possible but coming ashore at the headlands to plunder where they could. On the route north from Lindesnes they kept farther out to sea, but plundered where they went ashore.

North of Fjordane, Thorolf headed for land and went to see his father Kveldulf, who welcomed him. Thorolf told his father what happened on his travels in the summer. He spent a short time there, and his father and brother accompanied him back to his ship.

Before they parted, Thorolf and his father spoke together.

Kveldulf said, ‘What I told you when you went to join King Harald’s men was not wide of the mark: that the way things would turn out for you would not bring good fortune to any of us. Now you have taken the course that I cautioned you against most of all, by challenging King Harald. For all your prowess and accomplishments, you lack the good fortune to prove a match for King Harald. No one else has managed that in this country, whatever their power and force of numbers. I have an intuition that this
will be our last meeting. Considering our ages, you should be destined to live longer, but I feel it will not turn out that way.’

Then Thorolf boarded his ship and continued on his way. Nothing eventful is said to have happened on his voyage until he arrived home at Sandnes, had all the booty he had taken carried up to his farmhouse and laid up the ships. He had no lack of provisions to keep his men through that winter. Thorolf remained at home all the time and kept no fewer men than the previous winters.