Nizarorustu: A Textual Analysis of the Battle of Niså

Abstract

In a night of brutal carnage on the choppy, windswept waves of the Kattegat off the coast of modern-day Sweden, two great Viking navies lashed their ships together and crashed into each other in a winner-take-all bloodbath. Fought on August 9, 1062, at the mouth of the River Niså in Halland, north of Skåne, the Battle of Niså was the culmination of 15 years of warfare between King Haraldr Sigurðarson1 of Norway and King Sveinn Úlfsson2 of Denmark. Intended to finally resolve the long-standing feud between the two kings over the possession of Denmark, the Battle of Niså was decisively won by Haraldr; it also proved to be ultimately inconclusive and resulted in confirmation of an effective stalemate between Haraldr and Sveinn. In many ways, the Battle of Niså followed the same pattern as most of the warfare between Haraldr and Sveinn between the years 1047 and 1062. Though Haraldr constantly attacked and raided Denmark, winning virtually every encounter and defeating Sveinn at almost every turn, the Danish king had “an uncanny knack of surviving all setbacks, having great toughness and persistence” (Brøndsted 1965, 99). In the end, the hours of grueling combat at the mouth of the River Niså finally proved to Haraldr what 15 years of warfare had not: that Norway and Denmark were evenly matched powers and that, despite his many successes over the years, he could never conquer Denmark.So much is known of the general course of the war and the final battle between Haraldr and Sveinn, gathered from Morkinskinna, Fagrskinna, and Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla,3 as well as occasional references in other sources such as Ágrip af Nóregskonunga sǫgum and Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum. Is that all that these sources can tell us about the Battle of Niså and the campaign that led up to it, or is there more to glean from them than these bare facts? Whenever one attempts to use sagas, or any medieval historical records, for that matter, it is always necessary to approach the sources with caution. Even where an author's knowledge was relatively current, there is still the matter of personal bias, both on the part of the author as well as on the part of those on whom he based his accounts. Motive and purpose are other complications (i.e., literary vs. historical) as are temporal distance. In the case of Heimskringla, we know that Snorri wrote it c. 1220–1230, roughly 160–170 years after the Battle of Niså, which raises the question of how accurate his account could be and how much of it is based on his reading of life from his time onto the events of the past. While the authors of Morkinskinna, Fagrskinna, and other sagas referencing this battle is not known, Morkinskinna was composed perhaps 10 years earlier than Heimskringla, putting it at nearly the same temporal distance, and Fagrskinna was set down somewhere between those two. All of these concerns have been raised by modern scholars and hold merit. However, taking due caution, I argue that a close reading of the primary sources for the Battle of Niså may well contain an essentially historical account that reveals intriguing aspects of Viking warfare, such as campaign operations and naval tactics, and also raises questions about the frequent, modern scholarly dismissal of the historicity of these sources as a whole. Other accounts, such as Ágrip af Nóregskonunga sǫgum, give only the briefest of mentions of the battle and are therefore not especially useful in attempting to reconstruct the Battle of Niså (Ágrip af Nóregskonunga sǫgum1985, 38). Likewise, Knýtlinga saga only touches on the battle, noting that at the Battle of Niså, “þar hafði Haraldr konungr sigr, en Sveinn konungr flýði” (Knýtlinga saga1982, 133) [there King Haraldr had the victory and King Sveinn fled]. Other works contain only passing references to the conflict at all, such as Ágrip af sögu Danakonunga, which says that “Sveinn . . . hafði lengi ófrið ok stríð við Harald konung harðráða af Nóregi” (Ágrip af sǫgu Danakonunga1982, 331) [Sveinn . . . had a long war and strife with King Haraldr of Norway]. In a similar vein, Theodoricus Monachus's history merely records that Haraldr “plurima bella cum Sueinone gessit, ut ei auferret regnum Daciæ” (Monachus 1880, 56) [waged many wars against Sveinn in order to seize Denmark] before moving on to Haraldr's attempt to conquer England after his failure to defeat Sveinn.4 Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum contains some helpful information, though it is not without its own issues. It does, however, provide some information from the Danish perspective.Certainly, the early sections of Heimskringla deploy elements of myth and legend combined with a little truth, and it is likewise true that Snorri wrote over a century-and-a-half after the events he describes of this battle and likely had motives of his own regarding his treatment of his subjects. Magnús Fjalldal argues that Snorri had a “curiously ambivalent love/hate attitude toward the Norwegian crown” and that Snorri's principal theme in Heimskringla was intended as a “warning to stay clear of Norwegian royal tyrants” (Fjalldal 2013, 468). Fjalldal also points out that many “scholars have lavished praise on Snorri for his objectivity and avoidance of bias or propaganda of any kind” (2013, 457). However, objectivity and knowledge of events are not the same thing, and Lars Lönnroth warns: “Many scholars nowadays agree that you cannot trust the sagas as sources about major events and developments of the Viking Age,” noting that particular items in the sagas regarding the settlement of Iceland, conversion of Scandinavia, and the Danish invasion of England have been shown to be faulty on particular points compared to independently written or archaeological data, and contends that “the sagas are often good sources concerning mentality, ideas, social structure, farmlife and everyday customs in Old Norse society” due to the relatively static nature of that society apart from religion (Lönnroth 2008, 309). This is, of course, a legitimate concern. Nonetheless, we should not eschew the king's sagas as wholly lacking in factual evidence on this account, especially since much good historical information exists in them, and the accounts of the Battle of Niså are an excellent case in point. For example, where the Niså campaign is concerned, Morkinskinna, Fagrskinna, and Heimskringla are replete with stanzas written by known skalds, such as Þjóðólfr Arnórsson and Steinn Herdísarson, who were present during the Niså Campaign, as well as Arnórr jarlaskáld Þórðarson, who was a contemporary, though not an eyewitness. These serve as the backbone and principal sources that Snorri and others drew upon for their descriptions of the battle. This analysis intends to examine the Niså Campaign, relying primarily on the textual sources, combined with some geographical and climatic data.Before moving on, it is worth assessing some of the arguments opposed to the historical validity of the sagas writ large as well as the arguments in favor of historical truths within the sagas, and here we are concerned principally with the king's sagas. Errors in details in some cases, as noted by Lönnroth, notwithstanding, many scholars are of the Icelandic School of thought on this subject, which largely considers the “creative and literary” role of the sagas as works of literature essentially divorced from history in the modern, or even chronicle, sense (Andersson 2012, 35–6). Whaley notes other issues with Heimskringla as history, such as the apocryphal story of Haraldr setting a city on fire using birds carrying lit tinder (1991, 2015). Oral traditions that Snorri relied on for Heimskringla are inherently fraught with difficulty of veracity, and even skaldic verse, which forms the core of much of his writing, has its problems as well. For example, skaldic verse, even when composed contemporary to events, was often not set in writing until the twelfth or early thirteenth centuries for the topic at hand, giving light to concerns about errors in transmission during the oral stages or at the time of writing. In addition, contemporaneous verse has been shown to have been misapplied to the wrong event, such as the burning of a hundred Normans in a wood following the Battle of Hastings, quoted in a verse by Þorkell Skallason. However, that event actually occurred 3 years later (Whaley 1991, 122). More relevant to the skaldic sources used in Morkinskinna and Heimskringla by a skald writing about the Battle of Niså, Þjóðólfr Arnórsson, are verses that relate to events that cannot be precisely ordered. In this case, Þjóðólfr composed six out of thirty-two stanzas in his Sexstefja about a rebellion against Haraldr in Upplǫnd. However, Morkinskinna places the uprising before the Battle of Niså and Heimskringla after the battle; Fagrskinna places the uprising before the battle; while the Icelandic Annals locate it 3 years afterward—with no clear way to determine which of the sources is correct in the chronology (Whaley 2009, 111). While these stanzas do not bear directly on the Battle of Niså itself, they do provide a note of caution on the use of skaldic material as a source.Other concerns have been raised as well about the essential veracity of the skaldic verses and, especially, the prose content of the sagas. Shami Ghosh's analysis would largely discount the reliability of any skaldic verse as a historical source on the grounds that “while ancient poems did exist and were transmitted up to the period when the sagas began to be written, the bearers of this transmission—twelfth- and thirteenth-century scribes and saga authors, as well as poets and storytellers of these and preceding generations—were capable of altering ancient verse without necessarily making it appear modern to their contemporaries, or to us” (Ghosh 2011, 59).5 In essence, he argues that because we cannot know what changes to any given verse(s) may have occurred prior to (and perhaps even after) the time when they were set to paper, we cannot rely on them as historical evidence. While addressing the possibility that such changes may have occurred, however, this argument essentially excludes the probability that most of the skaldic verses within Heimskringla and Fagrskinna were unlikely to have been altered much during their oral transmission period due to the complexity of the verse, which he notes before dismissing the idea of stability in oral transmission through time.While Morkinskinna contained many instances of simpler verse, Heimskringla and Fagrskinna used the most complex verse form, dróttkvætt (court meter) as its skaldic source material, and even Morkinskinna relied on that form to a great extent. A dróttkvætt stanza consists of eight lines of six metrical positions each; the odd-numbered lines have two alliterating syllables while the first stressed syllable of the even-numbered lines has an alliteration with the line preceding it. While this is normal to many forms of early Germanic poetry, dróttkvætt stanzas contain other features wherein there must be internal non-vocalic rhyme in two instances and a slightly different internal rhyming scheme for the even-numbered lines. Finally, there are specific rules regarding the cadence at the end of each line whereby they must contain both a long and a short syllable with particular metrical locations (Gade 2009, xcviii). With regard to the reliability of the verses related to the Battle of Niså, this is a much narrower topic. As noted, the skaldic verses derive almost exclusively from two eyewitness accounts with Morkinskinna including a greater number of stanzas from a contemporary of the events. The source verses are in dróttkvætt, which is less prone to alteration due to the complexity of its meter and rhyme scheme. There can never be absolute certainty that no change has occurred over time, a point that Rolf Stavnem makes about Hallar-Steinn's Rekstefja (split refrain) verses describing the life of King Óláfr Tryggvason, in which he concludes that flawed rhymes within the verses indicate error in transmission over time but that the “composition and content” of the verses are close to the original (Stavnem 2014, 98).On the authenticity of skaldic verse, Roberta Frank wrote that while “none of the verse in the family sagas is considered secure; poetry in the kings’ sagas still commands credence, for it has not yet seemed likely that these verses are fabrications, falsely attributed to the early skalds” (1985, 172–3). While she acknowledges that some variance in meaning might be possible while maintaining the appropriate meter, she also notes specifically that “most extant verse was probably composed orally and privately by professionals and memorized for delivery. The composition and recall of skaldic verse must have been greatly assisted by its complex metrical form; pairs of alliterating and rhyming syllables tend to hang together in the memory” (Frank 1985, 182).6 More to the point, this factor would also help in the stable transmission of skaldic verse from peer-to-peer or skald-to-student. While this does not preclude alteration over time, the incidence of this must have been far less with skaldic verse composed for and/or about kings, as the original would have been known from court presentations and alterations readily noted. This constraint on modification would be considerably loosened in the case of the family sagas where descendants of the principals might indeed feel freer to alter verse regarding their own family history. Contrary to Ghosh's concerns regarding the dating of skaldic verse, Kari Ellen Gade has argued on metrical and linguistic grounds that the “lausavísur in Kormáks saga and Hallfreðar saga bear all the marks of having been composed prior to 1014. . . . We must conclude that the poetry in the oldest skald saga was not composed by its thirteenth-century author” (Gade 2000, 73–4). Somewhat separate from the topic at hand, her conclusions demonstrate that skaldic verse was not always the invention of the later saga authors, but rather could be transmitted from skald to skald over centuries until set to parchment much later.In Snorri's prologue to Heimskringla, he writes: Tókum vér þar mest dœmi af, þat er sagt er í þeim kvæðum, er kveðin váru fyrir sjálfum hǫfðingjunum eða sonum þeira. Tǫkum vér þat allt fyrir satt, er i þeim kvæðum finnsk um ferðir þeira eða orrostur. En þat er háttr skálda at lofa þann mest, er þa eru þeir fyrir, en engi myndi þat þora at segja sjálfum honum þau verk hans, er allir þeir, er heyrði, vissi, at hégómi væri ok skrǫk, ok svá sjálfr hann. Þat væri þá háð, en eigi lof. . . . En kvæðin þykkja mér sízt ór stað fœrð, ef þau eru rétt kveðin ok skynsamliga upp tekin. (Prologus1941, 5; emphasis added)(We find the best evidence in the poems which were offered to the kings or to their sons; we take everything for true which is found in their poems about their journeys or battles. It is the way of skalds, of course, to give most praise to him for whom they composed, but no one would dare tell the king himself such deeds of his as all listeners and the king himself knew to be lies and loose talk; that would be mockery, but not praise. . . . But the poems, I think, are most trustworthy if they are rightly interpreted and are read with understanding.)Modern scholars have rightly criticized Snorri's claim for the veracity of skaldic verse based on the simple fact that these poems were composed for a king and his court and are perhaps therefore prone to a certain amount of positive bias. In addition, Snorri begins his passage with a comment regarding the purpose of some skaldic verse: “Sumt er ritat eptir fornum kvæðum eða sǫguljóðum, er menn hafa haft til skemmtanar sér” (Prologus1941, 5) [Some are written according to old songs or lays, which men have had for their amusement]. However, this should not necessarily be taken to imply that the verses are essentially fiction for pure amusement. In a warrior society, such as that which embodied the Norwegian court, verses about particular battles or those related to a king's life or contemporary events would be as much history as amusement—the retelling of war stories or great events that the court would be familiar with and enjoy hearing again. The italicized sentence in the passage above, however, is more the key to Snorri's meaning in the authority that he gives to skaldic verse: namely, those concerning journeys and battles. Unlike other verse encapsulated in the family sagas, and so forth, Snorri is really implying that skaldic verse written about specific, clear, and notable events can be relied upon. This is not to say that we should take all of these even at face value, if for no other reason than the caution Snorri himself gives regarding the correctness of recitation over time and the ability to interpret the verses properly.7Of the key sources in question, Morkinskinna, Fagrskinna, and Heimskringla, the first is in some respects the most problematic. While it is the earliest saga of the three and served to a greater or lesser extent as a source for the other two, Morkinskinna tends somewhat more toward the narrative of a good story rather than history. In the introduction to the recent English translation of Morkinskinna, the translators conclude that the author of Morkinskinna was “more of a storyteller than a critical historian like Snorri and the author of Fagrskinna. He was at home in the traditions of prose and of poetry, but his interest seems to lie in the stories and the stanzas themselves rather than in their historical value” (Andersson and Gade 2000, 57). By contrast, “both Snorri and the author of Fagrskinna . . . exclude verses in simpler metres such as fornyrðislag [law of ancient words], and in Snorri's case to substitute for these verses in the more rigid and incorruptible dróttkvæt metre” (Finlay 2004, 31). Even with the concern regarding Morkinskinna just noted, all three sources focus very narrowly on the same three principal skalds for their source material for the Battle of Niså (with the notable exception of Fagrskinna, which excludes the non-eyewitness contemporary skald Arnórr), combined with varying amounts of oral sources, with Morkinskinna including the most of that element by far. Fagrskinna and Morkinskinna overlap very closely regarding their coverage of this battle. While all three sources are used here, Heimskringla is leaned upon a little more due to the greater potential for bias and/or storytelling in Morkinskinna and the relatively sparser, and often overlapping, content of Fagrskinna.Finally, and with especial respect to the sagas as they survive today, even where the dróttkvæt verses can be taken as eyewitness accounts regarding the Battle of Niså, there is still the question of the prose narrative that accompanies those verses in the sagas. To a large extent, they are prose reworkings and explanations of the verses, but they also add some additional details. A key question then is: How much can these prose passages be trusted as factual, even where the skaldic verses are taken as essentially authentic? This paper does not seek to answer that question in its broader context, but will seek to address it within the narrow confines of the battle herein examined. To begin with, the account of the Battle of Niså in all three sources has significant prose content leading up to and following the battle. However, for the actual description and analysis of the battle itself, all three sources rely very heavily on the skaldic accounts, and the prose content is fairly minimal, though, as mentioned, it does include some additional information. From what source does that explanatory prose originate is an important question. At its surface, it could be little more than a reading or interpretation of the saga authors based on their understanding of the skaldic verse. It could also be effectively prosaic “infill” on the part of the saga authors to make a good story complete. However, there is also the distinct probability that these prose passages, especially within the confines of explanatory material in heavily sourced skaldic verse, are based on oral tradition and understanding of the events.This is by no means a certainty, and there is room for doubt as to the function and derivation of the prose content as well as its potential effect on the authenticating verses. Stavnem cautions that “even if the verses are authentic, they have been removed from their original oral context and function, and edited into a prose context that will no doubt have a significant effect on their interpretation, from both medieval and modern perspectives.” He also points to instances where the saga author may even alter the meaning of the verses through his own prose (Stavnem 2014, 87, 101). More critically, Ghosh argues that “while verse was memorized, composed and cultivated in Norway as an aristocratic pastime, perhaps with bare details about the figures in the verse . . . the Norwegian poets were not also storytellers, and did not thus bring forth a saga tradition” (Ghosh 2011, 81). Although no written saga tradition is known to have existed in Norway, this conclusion seems unlikely and without good foundation.Since these skalds were capable of composing complex and lengthy dróttkvætt stanzas about historical events, it would be highly unusual if these same skalds were not also competent at telling prose narratives as introductions, denouements, and even interstitial content explanatory to their verses, especially where shifts in the historical events of the stanzas occur. That evidence of this does not survive in Norway is hardly conclusive, because much of the skaldic verse itself also does not survive but rather was transmitted to Iceland where it was eventually incorporated into the sagas. It is more reasonable to suggest that prose narratives from an oral tradition were transmitted with the verse. Contrary to Ghosh, and partly prompting his critique, Whaley states the more obvious solution that “Norwegians must surely have handed their traditions to Icelanders in at least a semi-coherent narrative form” (Whaley 1993, 48). Moving beyond this, Theodore Andersson argues strongly in favor of oral kings’ sagas, perhaps even complete ones as well as shorter narratives and þættir, prior to their recording in the extant forms that have survived (Andersson 2012, 37–9). Frank further points to two essential models in the combination of skaldic verse and prose, one model assuming an oral prose context composed coeval with the verse (with or without correct interpretation and with possible changes over time), while the second model assumes that the verses were inserted into the saga authors’ prose narrative at the written stage and concludes that both methods of transmission may be equally likely and could well be complementary approaches (Frank 1985, 177). While neither of these is mutually exclusive, they also do not exclude the possibility that the verse and prose compositions were developed contemporaneously with each other. The prose portion of such a composition would be perhaps more susceptible to change over time than the dróttkvætt verse, but it serves as the logical contextual accompaniment to the verse for an oral audience, perhaps especially among Icelanders for whom a keen interest in the lives of Norwegian kings is self-evident by the existence of the konungasögur.Concerning the Battle of Niså specifically, this portion of the extant sources is well-grounded in dróttkvætt stanzas, especially in Heimskringla and Fagrskinna, with relatively little expository composition surrounding and contextualizing the authenticating verse. While this portion of the sagas does contain extensive prose in the aftermath of the battle, there is very little interposition with the battle itself, and what prose there is regarding the battle tends to be more explanatory rather than strictly additive, though some of that exists as well. As noted, however, the context of the verse as a whole was very likely conveyed along with the poems themselves, and while the expository segments may have altered somewhat over time, and even at the point of writing, there is little in the prose content for the Battle of Niså that does not relate directly to, if not derive from, the stanzas. It is this foundation in the authenticating verses, especially by the eyewitnesses Þjóðólfr and Steinn, that lends weight and credence to the argument that the sagas may contain effectually accurate accounts of the Battle of Niså sufficient to serve as the basis for an analysis of the campaign of 1062 that culminated in the Battle of Niså and the subsequent peace accord between Norway and Denmark.As the skalds Þjóðólfr, Steinn, and Arnórr are the key skaldic sources for this battle, their contributions are worth discussing in some detail. Of the eighteen skaldic stanzas relating to the Battle of Niså in Heimskringla, twelve were composed by Þjóðólfr, five by Steinn, and one by Arnórr. In Morkinskinna, there are eleven stanzas, four by Þjóðólfr, four by Steinn, and three by Arnórr. While incorporating fewer stanzas, Morkinskinna presents a more balanced mix of the three skalds. Fagrskinna has nine skaldic stanzas, four of which were composed by Þjóðólfr and five by Steinn; Fagrskinna did not include any stanzas by Arnórr. Þjóðólfr was Haraldr's chief poet and had previously served Haraldr's half-brother Magnús inn góði (the good) Óláfsson as well. Probably about fifty years old at the time of the Battle of Niså, Þjóðólfr was an eyewitness to many of the events in Haraldr's life after Haraldr returned to Norway and was probably killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge along with his king. Þjóðólfr wrote a major dróttkvætt poem for each of his patrons; the one concerning Haraldr was known as Sexstefja for its six refrains. Within Þjóðólfr's oeuvre are thirteen stanzas related to the Battle of Niså, twelve of which are included in Heimskringla, and the other (dealing with the flight of King Sveinn and the deaths of his men) is included in Morkinskinna. There is some question as to whether the first seven of these belong to Sexstefja or if they are more properly categorized as lausavísur that may have been composed extemporaneously over the course of Haraldr's journey on campaign (Poole 1988, 166).8 Regardless of their inclusion as part of Sexstefja, these stanzas and the Sexstefja stanzas formed the core skaldic interpretation of the Niså campaign in Heimskringla. Present at the Battle of Niså, Þjóðólfr would likely have been with Haraldr on his ship during the campaign and battle, as he was the king's principal skald.Another of Haraldr's court poets, Steinn Herdísarson, was also present at the battle aboard the ship of his kinsman, Úlfr stallari (the Marshal) Óspaksson. Steinn composed Nizarvísur about the Battle of Niså. The first four stanzas of Nizarvísur are incorporated in Heimskringla along with a stand-alone stanza: Úlfsflokkr. Morkinskinna contains stanzas one, two, and five from Nizarvísur as well as Úlfsflokkr. For Arnórr jarlaskáld, Heimskringla incorporates a single stanza from Haraldsdrápa, while Morkinskinna contains the second, third, and fourth stanzas from Haraldsdrápa. While Arnórr had spent time in Norway during the joint rule of Magnús and Haraldr, there is no indication that he was present during the Niså Campaign, and Haraldsdrápa is more of a memorial poem written sometime after Haraldr's death.9In all three sources, the stanzas composed by eyewitnesses take precedence, with only a single non-eyewitness stanza in Heimskringla; three out of the eleven stanzas in Morkinskinna are by Arnórr; and Fagrskinna only includes eyewitness accounts. The breakdown of stanzas also makes clear that while Snorri had access to Morkinskinna and Fagrskinna, he did not rely on those sources entirely and incorporated more than twice the number of eyewitness stanzas contained in Morkinskinna and nearly twice the number in Fagrskinna, insofar as his account of the Battle of Niså is concerned. Each of these works includes prose passages between the stanzas used as the authority of the events described and, in each case, these passages are generally supportive of the authenticating verse, though the author of Morkinskinna appears to take greater license in favor of a good story over history, whereas the authors of Fagrskinna and Heimskringla are more interested in history, especially in the case of Fagrskinna, which reads almost like a chronicle. Especially in the latter two sources, the prose accounts appear to demonstrate the oral tradition of the events that contextualize the authenticating verses. Granted that the verses are more certainly authentic and contemporary to the events than the prose, there is little in the prose accounts of the battle that raise significant issues of doubt for the events of the campaign and the battle. The key exception to this lies in the extended prose that follows the conclusion of the battle and specifically incorporates passages of dialogue that may or may not be consistent with the events. While those passages may reflect oral tradition to a greater or lesser degree of accuracy, they are not specifically treated here, as they are outside the scope of this analysis.While Morkinskinna begins its account of the Niså Campaign much later, and Fagrskinna only refers to Haraldr as calling out his leiðangr (levy) and raiding in Denmark, Snorri's account begins in the Winter of 1061/1062 when Haraldr sent a challenge to Sveinn to meet in a set-piece naval battle: “Haraldr konungr gerði boð um vetrinn suðr til Danmerkr Sveini konungi, at hann skyldi eptir um várit koma sunnan til Elbar til móts við sik ok berjask, svá at þeir skiptu þá lǫndum ok hafi annarr hvárr bæði konungsríkin” (Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar1951, 141) [King Haraldr sent word in winter south to King Svei