The A to Z of the Vikings 29 pps

Svein and his mother were installed as Cnut’s representatives in Norway following the Battle of Stiklestad and were driven out of Norway by the rebellion that followed the growth of the

also evidence that repairs to ships and boats were made in Staraja

Ladoga

By the middle of the ninth century, a new trading center in north-ern Russia had been established farther up the River Volkhov at Novogorod Part of the reason for this move may have been the vul-nerability of Ladoga to Viking raids—excavations have revealed that

a large part of the town was burned down in the 860s, although the precise cause of the fire is unknown Nevertheless, Ladoga still re-tained some importance as the first port-of-call on the long route south from Scandinavia to the Black Sea and east to Baghdad in pres-ent-day Iraq By the 10th century, Ladoga had been fortified and had its own royal palace After the official conversion of Vladimir I (d

1015) to Christianity in 988, eight churches and monasteries were

built in and around Staraja Ladoga

The most important evidence for a Scandinavian presence in Staraja Ladoga comes from one of its cemeteries, at Plakun on the right bank of the Volkhov, which contains what appear to be

exclu-sively Scandinavian graves Some 60 burial mounds can be found at

Plakun, and seven or eight of these contained boat graves with cre-mations A further mound, some distance from the main cemetery, contained a boat grave and an inhumation It seems from this

evi-dence that Scandinavian women as well as men were living in Staraja

Ladoga As well as finds from the cemeteries, Scandinavian artifacts have also been recovered from the trading center itself, including, for example, an eighth-century hoard of smith’s tools, which also

con-tained a bronze amulet that may represent the Norse god, Odin; a

rune-inscribed (see rune) wooden stick from the ninth century; and

Scandinavian-style combs and brooches from the 8th to the 10th cen-tury

STIKLESTAD, BATTLE OF (ON Stiklastaððir) Stiklestad is

approx-imately 80 kilometers northeast of present-day Trondheim in Nor-way A battle was fought there by Olaf Haraldsson and some 3,000

supporters against an army of approximately 14,000 men, led by

Nor-wegian chieftains and backed by Cnut I the Great, on 29 July 1030.

Before the battle, Olaf had been in exile for two years, during which time Cnut was recognized as the country’s king by all the most

pow-erful chieftains However, Cnut’s nephew and governor, Earl Hákon,

258 • STIKLESTAD, BATTLE OF

died in 1029, and Olaf decided to launch an attempt to win back the

Norwegian throne with the help of the Swedish king, Anund Jakob Olaf’s half brother, Harald Hard-Ruler, fought alongside him in the

battle An account of the battle can be found in the 13th-century

Heimskringla, which is in turn based upon skaldic poetry that is

be-lieved to have been composed shortly after the battle Olaf died in the battle and is said to have been killed by wounds inflicted by þórir

hundr (“Hound”) and Kálfr Árnason Heimskringla describes how a

wound that þórir had received to his hand on the battlefield was then healed by Olaf’s blood, and as a result þórir was one of the first to spread the news of the dead Olaf’s sanctity Following Olaf’s defeat

and death, Cnut installed Svein Cnutsson, his own son by Ælfgifu

of Northampton, as king of Norway However, his rule was

unpop-ular, and Kálfr Árnason was subsequently instrumental in the

recall-ing of Olaf’s son, Magnus I the Good, from his exile in Sweden STÖNG Late Viking-Age farmstead in the Thjórsársalur valley, south-ern Iceland, which was buried in volcanic debris or tephra following

the eruption of Mount Hekla It was previously thought that the erup-tion of 1104 led to the abandonment of the farm, but it may be that occupation continued there some hundred years after this date, and the decisive eruption was therefore considerably later than 1104 The

Stöng house was first excavated in 1939, and subsequent excavations

revealed two further, earlier occupation levels below the Late Viking-Age remains The tephra had helped preserve the turf roof and the long, low turf walls of the main house, which rested on a stone foun-dation The turf provided good insulation, as did the extremely thick walls, and the use of turf also meant that the comparatively small sup-plies of wood available on Iceland could be conserved There were wooden panels lining the inside of the hall to keep out the damp There were no windows—the single external doorway and the smoke hole would provide the only source of light—which also minimized heat loss

The house, just over 12 meters long, consisted of a main hall, with wide benches that could be used for sleeping, and a smaller living room Two further small rooms were located on one side of the house, conventionally described as a dairy and lavatory but probably used for the processing of wool (urine was used to prepare the fleeces)

STÖNG • 259

Three outbuildings, a cattle byre, what may have been a barn, and smithy, lay near to the farmhouse Very few artifacts were found

in the buildings, suggesting that its inhabitants had time to evacuate the farmstead before the eruption A full-size reconstruction of the Stöng farmstead was built near the original buildings in 1974

SUD – REYJAR (“Southern Islands”) Norse name for the Hebrides, which lie off the western coast of Scotland.

SVAD– ILFARI See ASGARD.

SVEALAND East Swedish province and kingdom, centered on the

modern counties of Uppland, Södermanland, and Västmanland

(which surround the present-day capital, Stockholm) Gamla Upp-sala was the burial place of the Svear kings and the site of a pagan

ritual that may still have been performed as late as the second half of

the 11th century Adam of Bremen describes Svealand as being “rich

in fruits and honey besides excelling all others in cattle raising [ .] the whole region everywhere full of merchandise from foreign parts”

in his History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen.

The Svear people gave their name to the country of Sweden (ON

Svea rike or Sverige in modern Swedish), and traditionally the origins

of a unified kingdom of Sweden were sought in Svealand However,

more recently, scholars have emphasized the importance of Göta-land in the emergence of a united Sweden Certainly, the Svear were converted to Christianity later than the Götar and resisted attempts

at political unification by their kings

SVEIN CNUTSSON (d 1035) Son of Cnut I the Great and Ælfgifu

of Northampton King of Norway between 1030 and 1035, under

Ælfgifu’s wardship and, for that reason, also known as Svein Álfífu-son Svein and his mother were installed as Cnut’s representatives in

Norway following the Battle of Stiklestad and were driven out

of Norway by the rebellion that followed the growth of the cult of

Olaf Haraldsson of Norway A skaldic poem by the poet þórarinn

loftunga (“Praise-Tongue”), called Glælognskviða (“Calm-Sea

Lay”), advises Svein to support the worship of the dead king Olaf Svein and Ælfgifu’s short rule was harsh, with heavy taxation, and

260 • SUD – REYJAR

unpopular, and one of Svein’s most prominent supporters, Kálfr

Ár-nason, was instrumental in replacing him with Olaf’s son, Magnus I

the Good According to Heimskringla, after being driven from

Nor-way, Svein went to the court of his brother, Harthacnut, in Denmark,

and they agreed to divide that kingdom between them However, Svein is said to have died in Denmark shortly afterward, in the same winter that his father, Cnut, died

SVEIN ESTRITHSSON (ON Sveinn Estriððsson) (d 1074) King of

Denmark 1047–1074 Svein’s claim to the Danish throne came from

his mother, Estrith, who was the sister of Cnut I the Great, and

hence he is normally known by his mother’s name rather than his patronymic, Ulfsson His father, Earl Ulf þorgilsson (also

Sprakalegsson), was made earl of Denmark by Cnut but was later

killed by him at Roskilde Svein was described in the Roskilde Chronicle (c 1140) as Svein the Great, for his reorganization of the

Danish church into eight regular bishoprics and for his work in bring-ing the kbring-ingdom of Denmark into the religious and political commu-nity of western Europe Svein worked to strengthen links between the papacy and the Danish church, to reduce the influence of the German church in Denmark, and ultimately to establish an independent arch-bishopric in Denmark (this was finally achieved in 1104, with the

el-evation of Lund) Svein was one of the main informants used by

Adam of Bremen for his History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, and Adam praised the king for his learning, piety, and

re-spect for Church law; a letter from Pope Gregory VII to Svein also mentions his superior “book-learning.”

Politically, much of Svein’s reign was spent in conflict with

the kings of Norway Since the death of Harthacnut, Magnus I the

Good had been recognized as king of Denmark The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that, in 1047, Svein asked for English help against

Magnus, requesting some 50 ships This was refused, and Svein was

defeated in battle by Magnus shortly before the Norwegian king died

According to Heimskringla, Svein had allied himself with Magnus’s

uncle, Harald Hard-Ruler, but Harald was bought off by Magnus

with the offer of half the kingdom of Norway After Harald’s acces-sion to Magnus’s kingdom in 1047, conflict continued with Norwe-gian attacks on Denmark in 1048, 1050, 1060 and a confrontation at

SVEIN ESTRITHSSON (d 1074) • 261

Nisås, off the Swedish coast, in 1062 In 1048, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records another appeal to Edward the Confessor (d 1065)

of England to send ships to support Svein; again this was refused Svein was driven out of his kingdom at some point in this conflict, and according to Adam of Bremen spent twelve years in exile at the

court of King Anund Jakob of Sweden However, Svein and Harald

came to terms in 1064, and Svein was finally recognized as king of Denmark Secure in Denmark, Svein was keen to re-establish his un-cle’s North-Sea empire, and he planned an invasion of England in

1069 Although the people of Northumbria welcomed Svein and

joined his army in a rebellion against William the Conqueror, the re-volt was brutally crushed and Svein’s ambitions came to nothing Svein married Gunnhild, the widow of Anund of Sweden, but ac-cording to Adam he agreed to the annulment of the marriage after Archbishop Adalbart of Hamburg-Bremen protested that they were too closely related Svein, however, seems rather to have been forced into conformity by the intervention of the pope Despite Adam’s praise of the Danish king, he did also recognize Svein’s weaknesses,

described as gluttony and women Indeed, Svein is known to have

had at least 14 sons by a number of different mothers, and he was succeeded by five of these sons in turn: Harald Hén “Soft Whetstone”

(d 1080), St Knut II Sveinsson, Olaf Hunger (d 1095), Erik

Eje-god “Ever-Good” (d 1103), and Niels (d 1134)

SVEIN FORKBEARD HARALDSSON (ON Sveinn tvéskegg) (d 1014) King of Denmark c 987–1014 Son of Harald

Blue-Tooth, Svein deposed his father in what Adam of Bremen describes

as a pagan backlash against Harald’s rule However, there is no other evidence that Svein was a pagan He campaigned extensively in Eng-land during the late 10th and early 11th century, sometimes (in 991?

and 994) in alliance with Olaf Tryggvason of Norway According to Adam of Bremen, Svein was driven out of his kingdom by Erik the Victorious of Sweden and spent fourteen years in exile While there

is evidence of conflict, no other source refers to this long period of exile and it seems that Adam had misunderstood his informants Svein later challenged Olaf Tryggvason’s rule of Norway, and

formed an alliance with the Svear (see Svealand), marrying the

widow of their king, Erik the Victorious Together with his stepson,

262 • SVEIN FORKBEARD HARALDSSON (d 1014)

Olof Skötkonung of Sweden, Svein defeated Olaf at the Battle of Svöld and restored Danish control of Norway.

There is, however, some confusion over Svein’s marriages In

Heimskringla, Snorri writes that he was married twice His first wife

was called Gunnhild, who is described as the daughter of the Polish

ruler, Boleslav, and the mother of Svein’s sons, Harald and Cnut I the Great She is said to have later died and Svein to have remarried His second wife, Sigrid the Proud, is described as the mother of Olof Skötkonung by Snorri Sturluson However, in Adam of

Bre-men, Gunnhild and Sigrid are amalgamated, and Svein is said to have only one (unnamed) wife, who was the mother of Olof, the sister of

Boleslav, and the widow of Erik Thietmar of Merseburg has the

same information as Adam, but adds that Svein divorced his wife and

sent her home to Poland (Wendland) This picture is further

compli-cated by the fact that Svein also had a sister called Gunnhild and a sister called Thyre Thyre is said to have been married to Boleslav of Poland, whom she left, and then subsequently to Olaf Tryggvason Svein was therefore related by marriage to the Swedish, Norwegian, and Polish royal houses; his daughter, Gytha, was married to Erik,

son of Hákon Jarl of Lade, and his other daughter, Estrith, to the Anglo-Saxon noble, Wulfsige (in Danish tradition, Earl Ulf).

Svein’s sister, Gunnhild, and her husband, Pallig, were killed in the

St Brice’s Day massacre of 1002, and it is possible that Svein’s cam-paigns in Wessex and East Anglia in 1003–1004 were to avenge their

deaths The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle does not mention Svein’s name in

connection with the raids of 1006–1007 and 1009–1012, led by

Thorkell the Tall, and it is not until August 1013 that he is said to have returned to England After sailing up the Humber and down the River Trent to Gainsborough, Svein received the submission of Northum-bria, Lindsey (north Lincolnshire), the Five Boroughs, and “all the raiding army to the north of Watling Street.” Moving south, he

re-ceived the submission of Oxford, Winchester, and the southwest, and

fi-nally London At Christmas 1013, King Æthelred II left England to join his wife and children in exile in Normandy However, Svein

died in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, on 3 February 1014 Svein was buried in England, but later his body was taken to the church he had

built at Roskilde in Denmark and reburied His son, Cnut I the Great,

succeeded him, first as king of England and then as king of Denmark

SVEIN FORKBEARD HARALDSSON (d 1014) • 263

SVEN AGGESEN (b c 1140–1150) The author of Brevis Historia Regum Dacie, Sven Aggeson was a Danish nobleman, whose family

included two archbishops of Lund and a bishop of Viborg Sven

ap-pears to have studied in France and wrote at a time when Danish in-dependence was threatened by German expansion Sven was also a contemporary of the author of the most famous of Danish histories,

Saxo Grammaticus.

SVÖLD, BATTLE OF (ON Svölððr) Sea battle fought at uncertain

lo-cation by a Scandinavian coalition of Svein Forkbeard, Olof Skötkonung, and Earl Erik of Lade against Olaf Tryggvason

Ac-cording to Snorri’s Heimskringla, Olaf Tryggvason was tricked and

ambushed by Sigvaldi Strút-Haraldsson, the leader of the

Jomsvikings Olaf Tryggvason was subsequently killed and

de-feated, and the victors are said in Heimskringla to have divided

Nor-way between them As a result of the battle, NorNor-way was ruled by Svein Forkbeard and the Earls of Lade for 15 years, until the throne

was claimed by Olaf Haraldsson.

– T – TARA, BATTLE OF Battle fought in Meath, to the northwest of Dublin, in 980 In this battle, the king of the southern Uí Néill, Máel Sechnaill II, defeated the Vikings of Dublin and the Isles (Hebrides) under their king, Olaf Cúarán This “very great slaughter,” which is

recorded in the Annals of Ulster, was followed by Olaf’s departure

for the holy island of Iona, where he died as a monk in the following

year Máel Sechnaill was recognized as overlord of Dublin, ruling it

through Olaf’s son, Glún Iairn (Irish) or Járnkné (Norse) “Iron knee”

(d 989) After the defeat at Tara, the political independence of Dublin was never regained

THANGBRAND (ON þþangbrandr) A Flemish or Saxon priest who,

according to the Book of the Icelanders, was sent to Iceland by Olaf

Tryggvason to teach the islanders Christianity Despite converting

a number of chieftains, including Hall þorsteinsson of Sida and his household, Thangbrand apparently spent just a year or two in Iceland,

264 • SVEN AGGESEN (b c 1140–1150)

before concluding that his efforts were in vain The missionary priest

is characterized as a militant preacher and is said to have killed two

or three men for mocking him before leaving Iceland Snorri’s Saga

of King Olaf Tryggvason in Heimskringla adds some more details,

describing Thangbrand as a “passionate, ungovernable man, and a great man-slayer; but he was a good scholar, and a clever man.”

Ac-cording to Snorri Sturluson, Thangbrand killed Thorvald Veile and

Veterliði the Skald for composing a satire about him, as well as one other man, in his two-year stay

Both Snorri and Ari Thorgilsson write that recent Icelandic

con-verts, Gizurr the White and Hjalti Skeggjason, dissuaded the angry Olaf Tryggvason from killing all the Icelanders in Norway They claimed that the Icelanders would convert to Christianity but, in Snorri’s words, “Thangbrand proceeded [ .] with violence and manslaughter and such conduct the people there would not submit to.” Approximately one year after Thangbrand’s return to Norway,

the Althing accepted Christianity.

THEGN (ON þþegn) Term of rank, the meaning of which is much

de-bated The semantic range of the Old Norse word þegn has certainly

been influenced by its use in Anglo-Saxon England, where thegns were royal servants in the 11th century However, the evidence of

rune-stones and skaldic poetry suggests that in Viking-Age

Scandi-navia, a thegn was simply a free man, a landholder, or a warrior

Al-though often linked with drengs, the runic evidence suggests that

thegns were probably older as they tend to be commemorated by their children and wives rather than by their parents There have been a number of attempts to portray the Scandinavian thegns (and drengs)

as members of the royal retinue or administration, but although some thegns may have been in the service of kings, there is no Viking-Age evidence to support the idea that all thegns were royal servants

THEODORICUS See HISTORIA DE ANTIQUITATE REGUM

NOR-WAGENSIUM.

THING (ON þþing) Old Norse word for an open-air assembly or

meet-ing where law and justice were discussed Thmeet-ings were held at regu-lar intervals and existed at local, regional, and national level The

THING • 265

thing about which the most is known is the Icelandic Althing, but

re-gional assemblies are known from Norway and Denmark Things were also established in Scandinavian colonies abroad, such as the

Isle of Man (see Tynwald), and place-names, such as Dingwall

(Sutherland, northeastern Scotland) and Thingwall (Cheshire,

north-western England), show that Scandinavian settlers had things in many parts of the British Isles

THINGAMANNALID – (ON þþingamannaliðð) Also known as the þ

in-galið Medieval sources, such as Sven Aggesen’s version of Vederlov (see Hird), uses this word for the bodyguard employed by Cnut I the

Great in England A rune-stone from Kålsta, Häggeby in Uppland

(U 668), Sweden, commemorates a warrior called Gere, who is said

to have served in the west in the þingalið, and there are a few

refer-ences in skaldic poetry to þingamaðr (plural þingamenn), which is

generally translated as “a man who served in the þingalið.” The ex-act meaning of these compounds is unclear, although it has recently been suggested that they may derive from the verb þinga and mean

“contracted” man or men See also LID–

THINGVELLIR (ON þþingvöllr “assembly plain”) Location of the

Icelandic Althing Thingvellir lies in the valley of the River Öxára,

some 50 kilometers east of Reykjavik

THOR (ON þþórr) God of the Æsir family and said to be the brother of

Odin Thor lived in a hall called Bilskírnir in þrúðheimr or þ

rú-ðvangr and was said to ride across the sky in a chariot drawn by two male goats, Tanngrísnir and Tanngnóstr He was married to Sif, whose

hair was made of gold In mythological literature, Thor appears as the defender of the gods’ home, Asgard, and there are several tales that

relate how he defeated the gods’ enemies, the giants, with his mighty

hammer, Mjöllnir As well as this hammer, Thor also possessed a

magic belt that doubled his strength and a pair of iron gloves A

well-known myth about Thor, preserved in both the Prose Edda and the Eddic poem Hymiskviða, relates to his fishing trip with the giant

Hymir, during which Thor hooked the Midgard serpent using an ox head as bait At Ragnarök, Thor is said to kill the Midgard serpent,

but in doing so, is fatally poisoned by the serpent’s venom

266 • THINGAMANNALID –

Despite his strength, many of the myths about Thor depict the god

in rather comical circumstances, such as the time he lost Mjöllnir to the giant þrymr (see þþrymskviðða) Indeed, while Odin appears to have

been the god of the aristocracy, the common man worshiped Thor and the discovery of Thor’s hammer amulets in Viking-Age graves testifies

to his importance He was the god of thunder and the weather and his association with the weather meant that he determined the fate of crops

and sea voyages In his account of the pagan ritual at Gamla Uppsala, Adam of Bremen describes Thor as the most important of the three

gods (the other two are Odin and Frey) According to Lokasenna, Thor

was the only god able to stop Loki’s abuse of the Æsir Thor gave his

name to Thursday, and there are many Scandinavian personal and

place-names containing the name Thor See also HELGITHELEAN.

THORFINN KARLSEFNI (ON þþorfinnr karlsefni) A wealthy

mer-chant from Reynisnes in northern Iceland who, according to the Saga

of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red, undertook an

ex-pedition to colonize Vinland in the early 11th century Thorfinn de-cided to travel to Vinland after spending the winter at Brattahlíð,

Erik the Red’s farmstead in Greenland According to the Saga of Erik

the Red, he took with him three ships and some 160 people, including

his new wife, Gudrid, who was the widow of Thorstein, one of Erik’s

sons However, the Saga of the Greenlanders says that the expedition

consisted of 60 men and five women The two Vinland sagas also

differ in their account of Thorfinn’s expedition to the Vinland While

the Saga of the Greenlanders relates how Thorfinn simply settled at Leifsbuðir “Leif’s houses,” the Saga of Erik the Red describes a long

exploratory voyage around the coast of North America, apparently

going as far south as Hóp or “Tidal Pool,” which has been identified with New York However, both sagas agree that Thorfinn and

Gu-drid’s son, Snorri, was born in Vinland (he is said in Erik’s Saga to be three years old when they left, but in the Saga of the Greenlanders,

the expedition lasted only two winters in its entirety); they also both describe (in rather different terms) how Thorfinn’s attempt to colonize Vinland was ultimately abandoned because of hostile relations with

the native skrælings The Saga of the Greenlanders relates that

Thorfinn, “a man of great distinction and nobility,” Gudrid, and Snorri later settled in north Iceland, at Glumbæjarland The very last

THORFINN KARLSEFNI • 267