Olaf Tryggvason: Viking Warlord or Christian King?

Matt Lewis and guest Dr Eleanor Barraclough as they dive into the turbulent world of late 10th-century Scandinavia and the extraordinary life of Olaf Tryggvason. Exiled, enslaved, raider, and eventually king of Norway, Olaf was a force of nature in an age of shifting loyalties, pagan beliefs, and rising Christianity. From Kievan Rus to the British Isles, this episode traces his violent rise and his brutal drive to convert Norway and beyond. MORE Erik Bloodaxe Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/eric-bloodaxe/id1564113746?i=1000701044436 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/24Zi2LCcehZN75MZQQtaze?si=VdaPoOJ7ScGWLJudWxhqbg Leif Erikson Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/leif-erikson/id1564113746?i=1000685178037 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/53UrC2Y28KXwUr540he5WX?si=l-NLhwwMS3uMh9Cj6EyNCQ Norse Mythology: How to Reach Valhalla Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-reach-valhalla/id1564113746?i=1000731174040 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/6k1TFNPfiIzip0RahQk2Be?si=ddd0IosHQVC3mZB69f2QfA Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week, PLUS early access ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:42Speaker 01

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• 1:21Matt Lewis?

  Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots, and murders, to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.

• 1:58Matt Lewis?

  In the late 10th century, the sea is the road, the fjords are the boundaries, and power belongs to the men who can command both. Norway is a world of hard winters, rival chieftains, shifting loyalties, and kings whose authority is still being stitched together, one alliance, one battle, and one marriage at a time. Into that world comes Olaf Trigverson, a royal claimant, an exile, warrior, and future king, whose story begins in uncertainty and ends in legend. Born into a tangled dynastic landscape, he grows up in a North Atlantic world where ships carry not only warriors and traders, but religion, ambition, and news of distant cause.

• 2:43Matt Lewis?

  This is a society where Old Norse beliefs still shape daily life, but Christianity is beginning to press in from abroad, offering rulers a whole new language of power. Olaf will seize on that change with extraordinary force, using conversion as both conviction and strategy, and testing how far a king can go in trying to remake his realm. But to understand Olaf, you first have to understand the world that made him, rough, restless, and always on the edge of transformation. Welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis, and to guide us through this harsh world is the fantastic Dr Eleanor Baraklov, who's been with us on Gone Medieval several times before,

• 3:28Matt Lewis?

  most recently telling the stories and real history behind Norse mythology. But today, we tackle something slightly more tangible and far more brutal.

• 3:40Matt Lewis?

  Eleanor, welcome back. It's great to see you again.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  Oh, it is so good to be here. This is fabulous. And yeah, a big king today.

• 3:48Matt Lewis?

  Big name, big name, but we're going to try and get into why he's important. So we've got Olaf Trigverson today. Can you give us like a one-minute sales pitch for Olaf Trigverson? Why should people care about him? Why is he important?

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Okay, well, I don't think I'm going to go for the sales pitch because I don't think he was a very nice character a lot of the time. And we'll come on to that. We've got snakes, we've got burning bowls of coals that like split people's tummies open. So, but we can, we can give the basics. So he is born sort of maybe in the 960s, something like that, in Norway. He's got a mother called, if we're going to be Norse, we'd say Austrid Eriksdottir, but we could say Astrid Eriksdottir. And she comes from western Norway. We've got a father, Trigvi Olafson, and he comes from sort of southeast Norway, somewhere close to the border between now what's Norway and Denmark and Sweden. And he's really interesting

• 4:42Speaker 02

  because we are talking a story from, in some ways, rags to riches that takes us on this like international world all the way to Kievan Ruswe. At some point, we'll probably end up in East Anglia, all the way to Iceland, and in sort of religious spirit at least, until we get to this big final showdown where he's up against a coalition of very pissed-off kings.

• 5:07Matt Lewis?

  I think that works as a sales pitch. I mean, if you're talking to a medieval audience, hot coals that make people's stomachs burst open, you're in the right place for that kind of thing.

• 5:18Matt Lewis?

  So you've told us who Olaf's parents were. What's the kind of his family background, political background? Is he born into a line of kings?

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Yep, possibly, depending. And this is a really important thing to say up top, that our textual sources are, shall we say, a little bit dodgy, like most textual sources from the period. We're talking predominantly about saga narratives. And that means already we're inhabiting those hazy borderlands between fact and fantasy. We also have to think, if he's born middle of the 10th century, the sagas aren't being written down until the 13th century. We've got a few slightly earlier sources, you know, 12th century, for example. We've got the history of Norway that's written in Norway, Historie norwegaise. We've got Augrip, which is this summary of the lives of Norwegian kings, also 12th century Norway.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  So it's important to get that sort of slightly techie stuff up top because in terms of what we think we know, or a lot of what we're going to say, shall we say, we need to do a little bit of us covering to make sure that, you know, it's like, this is possibly true is going to feature, I suspect, quite heavily. So in terms of, does he come from a line of kings? This is our first possibly. In that, his father, Trigvi Olafson, is said in the sagas to be the great grandson of a very famous Norwegian king called Harald Fairheir, or Haor Fagri, who is said to be, once again, a little bit of us covering, the first king of the whole of Norway. And we can talk a little bit about him

• 6:55Speaker 02

  because he's, he's a really interesting figure and his life very much joins up to what we think we know about the life of Olafur Trigverson. So possibly, we have some kingship. Certainly, we have kind of more petty kingship going on. Trigvi is said to have been king of Viking, which is, yeah, as I say, southeast Norway. And he certainly is operating in a very interconnected, very international world from, well, sort of literally the time before his birth, really, because it all gets pretty dramatic pretty early on.

• 7:30Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. And so what kind of world is Olaf born into? If we think about Norway and the wider North Atlantic world in the middle of the 10th century, what does that look like?

• 7:43Speaker 02

  So we are talking in some ways that the few centuries that are the height of the Viking Age, and therefore in terms of the international connections, this is a time when, you know, Norway has, has already sort of, people have gone out from Norway, from Sweden, from Denmark, east and south, and north to some extent, and certainly west across the North Atlantic. We've already had the settlement of much of the British Isles and Ireland by the Norse, just to give one example. We've got the settlement of Iceland. We're gearing up for the settlement of Greenland, which is going to hit when Olafur is sort of a young man. So it's already a very international world in many ways. That doesn't mean that life for everyone living in the Viking Age was international,

• 8:26Speaker 02

  but certainly by however many degrees of separation it might be, it is internationally connected. If you come from the sort of family with the sort of political wheelings and dealings and intrigues that Olafur comes from, then certainly internationally, it's a very important part of his story. So sagas, once again, tell us that Olafur is born just after the murder of his father. And it's worth thinking a little bit about the political background to that murder because it matters and it'll keep looping back. So he's probably killed in the 960s, possibly 963, according to some sagas. And Olafur flees with his mother,

• 9:10Speaker 02

  or rather, his mother flees because in some versions, he's not even born yet. In a few of the sources, he ends up on Orkney, and that's where he's born. Other sagas, Heimskringler, which is this big, important collection of Old Norse kings sagas written in 13th century Iceland. Heimskringler, the Heimskringler version tells us that he ends up being born on this little Norwegian islet in Fjarlen's vatna, which is like western Norway. And so Heimskringler tells us that his dad has been killed by Harald Greycloak, who is the son of Eric Bladaks. We are also in the, in the time of great nicknames.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  And if people know Eric Bladaks is because he possibly rules York for a time, or Jorvik as it's known. And this is basically, it gets really confusing. So, so we've got Harald Greycloak, who is the son of Eric Bladaks, has taken the throne from King Hulk on the good of Norway. So Astrid is like, get out of here. She flees. She ends up in Sweden. And then she's making her way to what the Norse called Garde Riki, which is basically the, is the kingdom of fortifications. It's Kievan Rus. So we're now sort of out on the Eurasian waterways and steppes, that sort of territory, where we've got this Scandinavian or Nordic polity that's developing out there.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Now, the important thing is Astrid, his brother, or Sigurd, and he is in service to Vladimir the Great, who is like a great prince of Kievan Rus. He's, he rules Novgorod at this point. But little baby toddler Olaf Trigverson is captured by Estonian Vikings in the middle of the Baltic Sea. He's then enslaved and he's sold on again and again. At one point, I think he's exchanged for a cloak. And then six years later, his uncle, who's with, he's in the service of Vladimir the Great, travels to Estonia. I think he's there to collect taxes. He sees Olafur. He thinks, hmm, that kid looks familiar. He asks him, well, who's your mum? Who's your dad's?

• 11:25Speaker 02

  And he finds out that actually this is in fact his nephew. So he rescues him and then he takes him to Novgorod. Now, that's a very nice, neat story, but as we can see, I mean, there's plenty of fairy tale versions of this story that we could probably point to throughout time, throughout all sorts of different cultures. So whether or not that is precisely what happened, we can't be sure. But he then ends up in Novgorod, under the protection of Vladimir the Great, who is at that point the prince of Novgorod. So we're now in the 970s. Now, it's worth saying, because this is important, when you're saying sort of, you know, the international connections, Vladimir the Great, and I promise we won't, I won't be throwing like a million different names at you,

• 12:09Speaker 02

  but Vladimir is a really interesting figure because he himself is of Nordic descent. His grandparents are Igor and Olga. Now, they may seem like really Slavic names, but actually Igor is Ingvar, which is an Old Norse name. And Olga is Helga, which is another Norse name, which tells us about the Nordic origins of Kievan Rus. And so they rule Kievan Rus at the start of the 10th century. What's interesting is when they have a son, who's Vladimir's dad, they give him a Slavic name. They called him Sviataslav. And you know, Sviataslav is very much sort of, he worships Perun and Volos,

• 12:52Speaker 02

  who are the sort of Slavic gods of the thunder and the lightning and the underworld and the herds and all sorts of things. And so we might think of this whole situation as being Olaf Trigverson, little sort of child now. Olaf Trigverson has gone off into this Slavic, very different culture world. But no, this is a world that is full of Nordic connections already. And that's a really important part of his story. His story is such an international story.

• 13:20Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. And should we think about him during this period then? Kind of learning lessons, picking up things that will impact and affect the way that he deals with, with things later in his life? Is he learning his trade in Kievan Rus?

• 13:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think to some extent, he's certainly learning the art of international politics. And I would say diplomacy, and sometimes that's true, but also very much when you need to be heavy-handed and do some nasty things to get your own way. He's also learning the advantage of different cultures, different religions, different ways of interacting with people, you know, different ways of trading with people and sort of getting advantages and building up contacts and building up allies. So from that point of view, it's all very important.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  But having said that, eventually, the sagas tell us that Vladimir gets a bit twitchy about Olaf because he's clearly sort of a big thing. He's the up and coming young buck. And so Olafur has to leave and he goes off and he ends up raiding. You know, he's very much doing this kind of like, young Viking Age Nordic male goes on his gap year going raiding.

• 14:41Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, some of the Viking gap year around Europe, yeah.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Exactly. He's on his Viking gap year around Europe and he ends up raiding in places like Wendland. And so really, and this is something, again, because when we think of kings, and in the case of Olaf Trigverson, the part of the story that people are most likely to be familiar with is the fact that he is this big, Christian king of conversion. But actually, he's also a raider. He's a Viking. He's a pirate. He does all sorts of things. Some of those even reach the shores of the British Isles.

• 15:13Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. Do we get any sense, even from the sagas, which we would take with a pinch of salt, of any measure of his personality while he's growing up during this period? Are there any of the stories that, that give us a sense of what kind of man he was growing into?

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, a good and important and potentially dangerous one, I think, is what we'd say from the sagas. But the sagas are kings sagas, you know, they are, this is written with Olaf very much in mind as a good thing for the most part, but certainly the fact that Vladimir starts to feel a little bit worried about how powerful he might become says something about who he probably is. So it's, it's really interesting because he then, yeah, he ends up, and this is, this is where we start to see him as a youth coming into that full flowering of what he is going to become. He ends up being, when, when he's off on these raids, right?

• 16:11Speaker 02

  So we're now, I think we're about sort of 982, something like that. So we've got to think, he's now in his early twenties. He's caught up in a storm at sea and he ends up in Wendland. Now, again, Slavic region, it's now North East Germany, but you know, it's very much within that sort of Polish context as well. He meets Geira, who's the daughter of the king there. And the king himself, you know, we've, we've got various candidates. There's a few options of which we might think of as Polish king, he might be, but he's called Burislov. And then as a result of that, the sagas tell us that he ends up being part of this coalition that's assembled by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto the Second.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  It's this coalition of like Saxons and Franks and Frisians and Wends. And the point is that they're there to fight the Danes who are led by King Harald Bluetooth. And if we know any name from Viking Age history, we know Bluetooth because we've got it in our phones. And if anyone looks at the sign for Bluetooth, that's actually two runes shoved together. That's the HB rune for Harald Bluetooth. And so, and of course, Olaf is there because he is the son-in-law of the King of the Wends and they're all there. So he's already coming into that point where he is remarkable on an international stage and he's involved in these, these big international coalitions. Eventually, as we will see, those will come to bite him on the arse, but right now it's a good thing.

• 17:40Matt Lewis?

  Sounds a little bit like he's involved in some kind of medieval Avengers against the, the Danes.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is definitely. It's, yeah, it's Avengers assemble, but the Danes are not in any way pleased about this. And Harald Bluetooth is a very interesting figure because part of this, and we'll see this, this is sort of, what do we call it? Foreshadowing of what's going to happen with Olaf himself. Harald Bluetooth is pagan and suddenly you've got all these rulers very much being like, we want you to become Christian. And Harald Bluetooth's way of doing this is to say, right, well, no, I'm doing it by myself. No one's going to take part. I chose by myself to become Christian and I am going to convert the whole of Denmark. And he's in control of a lot of Norway at this point, part of Sweden. I'm going to do it. And we see that on the very famous yelling stone, yelling with a J, not like, but yelling.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  That's me yelling by the sun, like a bird squawking, but you know what I mean? Where he's, there's a picture of Christ on there and there's a rune of inscriptions that says Harald Bluetooth, who converted everyone's Christianity. So he's getting in there first. So we have to remember this, that when it comes to Olaf, we've got a similar version of what we're seeing already in his youth, which is Christianity is an important political tool. Depending on what side you're on, you can still do things with it. And that's another thing that he's learning at this point.

• 18:57Matt Lewis?

  Everywhere. And, and you've obviously mentioned religion is going to be a big part of, of Olaf's story. So before Christianity really takes hold, what does religion look like in terms of particularly of, of everyday life? You know, how, how visible are those Old Norse beliefs to us now?

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a really good question. So we've got to remember for a start that the Norse sphere of influence, you know, the Nordic world at this time is broad. We're all the way from certainly Iceland. We're getting to the edge of Greenland almost at this point, you know, all the way. We've already talked about Kievan Rus is part of that Norse sphere. We're up in the Arctic. We're certainly in the British Isles and Ireland. So it's not that it's going to look the same everywhere. That's really important. And by the time we get to the ninth century, we've got to remember they, as I say, this is sort of part of the high point of the Viking Age with these international connections. And so although they're not Technically Christian, people who are not necessarily sort of on a royal level,

• 19:59Speaker 02

  on a ruler level like this, but sort of if you're a trader, for example, from the Nordic world and you want to trade with, for example, Christian Franks or Christian Anglo Saxons, whatever it might be, you have to go to a certain extent, you have to, you have to sort of, well, sometimes it's described as baptism light is like Coke Zero or something like that. It's called prime signing. And basically it's, you can become a little bit Christian and then you're allowed to, you're allowed to trade with them as far as they're concerned. People now by this point, very much of mixed faith. For example, in Iceland itself, a lot of Iceland is settled, not only from mostly pagans from Norway at the

• 20:39Speaker 02

  sort of last quarter of the, of the, of the ninth century, but also from people from the British Isles and Ireland who are mostly Christian. And so you see that very early on, you see people who have Christian faith, and particularly the women, because there's more women from the British Isles and Ireland and who are passing that on. So, you know, there's that, there's sometimes there's a belief in the pagan gods, but with the pagan gods, you have the white Christ as well. And you might pray to the white Christ in one situation, but then you pray to, you know, red bearded Thor when you're at sea and you need protection from the storms. And so for many people, they're quite happy

• 21:18Speaker 02

  to incorporate that into their sort of pantheistic beliefs, not unlike the Romans did to some extent. But what's really interesting is the ninth century is also the point where we start to see very famous sort of uber Norse pagan symbol appearing, which is the Thor's hammer. It's not that it doesn't exist beforehand, but when we start to see those amulets, the pendants that go around people's neck, it possibly is no coincidence that's happening at a time when Christianity is becoming increasingly visible in the Norse world as well. And so, you know, a Norse pagan hammer, it doesn't look that dissimilar

• 21:58Speaker 02

  to a Christian crucifix around your neck. And there are these lovely soapstone moulds from around this area. You find them sometimes in, particularly in sort of international trading sites, places like Hedevy on the Danish German border, where you've got soapstone moulds, where people have got, you know, the indentations for making either Christian crosses or Thor's hammers. And basically it's a case of, well, you pay me the money. I don't care which one you want. I'll make it for you. So we're already, we're not, we're seeing this really interesting period of religious flux that comes very much from existing within this international context.

• 22:39Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking as you were talking, it sounds an awful lot like the Roman Empire in that Christianity begins to look like it was always inevitable because polytheists are very happy to, to accept and add particularly a god who looks successful to their pantheon. But then once a monotheistic belief is in there, it starts to kind of push everybody else out.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. It's, I always think of it's like a party. It's like all the cool gods. And it's like, all right, you can come in. And then the second that Christ in his, in his like, right, well, I think I would like this to be my party now and everyone else can go sit outside and wait. Thank you very much. Yeah, exactly that.

• 23:14Matt Lewis?

  It sounds like Olaf is existing in a world that we ought to think of as being way more connected than we often think of the, particularly the early medieval world being, where you've got these kind of kings, raiders, merchants, religious missionaries, kind of all crossing paths. So Olaf is encountering all of these different aspects that presumably he can learn something from and bring it to bear later in his career.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly that. And even the story of his, and I say story advisedly, but you know, there are various versions, depending on which text you're looking at. But the stories, maybe is a better way of putting it, of his conversion to Christianity also are within that international context, which makes complete sense. So there's one example, I think, which is, you know, he's, he's doing more plundering. He ends up on the silly Isles. There's a hermit there who predicts that he's going to become a great Christian conversion figure. And so he's like, well, fair enough. I will convert. There's another version that says that he's baptized, I think it's like near Andover in 994 or something like that. But again, what's interesting there is that we're looking at, again, so

• 24:22Speaker 02

  with early 990s, the area in which all this is happening, it is no coincidence that we're around the shores of the British Isles, because things are very much connecting up at this point. There's even, very famously, the Battle of Maldon is fought in 991 in Kingdom of East Anglia on this causeway that goes over the river Blackwater to an island. And the reason it's so well known is Anglo Saxons under Berkhnoth versus what seemed to be unnamed Viking forces. But the reason that it's so well known is there's an Old English partial version of a poem that survives about this battle and how sort of there's

• 25:03Speaker 02

  this glorious last stand and Berkhnoth is killed and the Vikings win and sort of blah, blah, blah. But it has been suggested that the, the leader of the Vikings or a leader of the Vikings at this point, who are very much in the poem characterized as pagan baddies, that leader is Olaf himself. Certainly there's one version of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle that mentions Anlaaf, which is the way that Olaf is rendered in, in Old English as the leader. And so again, we have to think, all right, yeah, but he's, he's in this context where once again, it is in his interests to plug himself into these high level international

• 25:46Speaker 02

  connections with all the goodies that come from that. And being Christian is a very important part of that story. Doesn't mean he didn't have belief underlying it. We just don't know. And certainly sort of what he then goes on to do suggests that he is, should we say, sort of, he might be described in some circles as sort of fanatical, but it's what underlies that fanaticism is less clear about. Is it belief? Is it power?

• 26:11Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. Just hopping back a little bit. I always love those stories of the hermits who make those predictions because you kind of imagine that hermit is probably seeing 20 people a day and just going, oh, if you convert to Christianity, you'll be one of the greatest people in history. Next. Whoa, if you convert to Christianity.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly that. And I always imagine they probably haven't had a bath for six months and, and they're just like absolutely wild looking, do what leaves in their hair. And everyone's like, well, you know, I mean, if he's that mad, he must be right. Let's go and do it.

• 26:40Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. But also submitting his monthly figures in competition with John in the next Cave Along to see who can get the most Christians.

• 26:48Matt Lewis?

  Who's got the best story to tell?

• 27:03Matt Lewis?

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• 29:41Matt Lewis?

  Okay, so we've got Olaf then, having been a wanderer, an exile, an enslaved person for a while, a Viking raider, involved in fighting all over Europe, converted to Christianity, quite possibly somewhere in the British Isles. How on earth does this man end up as a king of Norway?

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Okay, right. So to understand that, to some extent, we need to understand what power looked like in Norway at this time. So I mentioned Harald Fairheir, and it's worth talking about him a little bit, because this is his alleged great-great-grandfather, I think. But we need to look at what power looks like then, to understand how Olaf himself ends up on the throne. So Harald Fairheir possibly lives somewhere between 850, 930, something like that. So roughly a century before our Olaf Trigefson, okay. And the story goes here, that he is the great uniter of Norway. He becomes the first king of all

• 30:41Speaker 02

  of Norway. Now, what we have to think of is, this might be true, but in reality, whatever that actually looked like at the time, and it's possible, no, he wasn't a real figure, you know, we just don't know. We have to remember that, on the ground, we are talking about, even after this point, a network of powerful regional chieftains, and petty kings, and jarls, which is the same word as earl, but I think has slightly different connotations. And, you know, as far as his uniting of Norway under rulership is concerned, a lot of what we're talking about here is, you know, these are people who will swear allegiance to him, and they'll collect taxes, and they'll sort of govern locally, and they will maintain

• 31:24Speaker 02

  order, and so on. Now, really famously, we have a group of jarls from the far north of Norway. They're called the Jarls of Chlathir, sometimes known as the Jarls of Chladde, or Chlad, or Chleid even, but Chlathir. They rule the northern part of Norway. They're based in what is now Trondheim, but then it's sort of up from there. And according to Hames Kringle, this compilation of king sagas, written in 13th century Iceland, probably by a very famous Icelandic called Snorri Sturtleson, who's a politician, and a poet, and all sorts of things. Snorri says that they are key to Harald Fairheir getting

• 32:05Speaker 02

  control, because they have a fleet. And so King Harald Fairheir is able to make an alliance with them, and they help him rise to power. But there's always an issue there, which is that kingship is not the only form of power that we see in Norway. And they actually represent an alternative power base. They have their own mythical origins. They're said in some sources to be descended from frost giants, and all sorts of things. So there, with the alleged great-great-grandfather, that works in Harald Fairheir's favour. Problem

• 32:43Speaker 02

  is, when we're talking about Olaf Trigefson, the jarls of Chlathir are definitely not on his side. So we have, at this point, Jarl Haukon is one of these jarls. And he is essentially ruling as the, whatever we call it, sort of the under-king, the petty king, to Harald Bluetooth, who we've already heard, he's king of Denmark at this point, and he controls a lot of Norway. And actually, there's quite an interesting backstory here. They're really, Olaf Trigefson and Jarl Haukon are really closely connected. Jarl Haukon's dad is also said to have been killed by Harald Greycloak. Remember, he's the son

• 33:26Speaker 02

  of Erik Bloodaxe, also in the 960s. So as part of this, this power struggle, this sort of coup, he's also, again, if we're going to believe some of the sagas, he's there on Harald Bluetooth's side, when Olaf is on the side of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto the Second, who's sort of assembling his Avenger forces. So they're there already, as sort of, if we're going to extend that, the sort of Avengers, Hollywood film mix up, that they're already enemies from their youth. There's already something going on. So we've got the tensions there, in that they've got the same tragic origin story in a way. But now we've got pagan versus Christian. We've got, you know, loyal to

• 34:08Speaker 02

  the Danish king versus trying to kick the shit out of the Danish king. We've got, you know, we've already got that set up, and that's really important. In Norway, Jarl Haukon is in charge, but a rebellion has broken out. And this is the point where Olaf Trigefson arrives in Norway, and the rebels are like, right, we are getting behind you. We want you to be our king. Haukon, the sagas say, hides in a pigsty, and he's killed by his slave, Karker. And again, the sagas say that Karker then takes off Jarl Haukon's head, and brings it to Olaf, basically to say, look, I did this good thing. I would now like very much to be your friend. But Olaf Trigefson sees this as a very ignoble

• 34:52Speaker 02

  thing to do, and so he has Karker killed as a result. But with the support of the rebels, Olaf becomes king. He travels Norway. He gets everyone, all these sort of under-kings that we've talked about, to swear allegiance. And very importantly, he makes them get baptised to Christianity. That is crucial. So it's like, that is my brand of rulership. You will be Christian. Something we see over and over and over again. You know, it's not, this isn't just the Viking world. This is, you know, getting someone to convert to Christianity is really powerful. You know, we see it very famously, even sort of Alfred the Great versus Gudrun. You know, they sign their pact after the Battle of Eddington. What does Alfred make Gudrun do? Convert to Christianity with him as the sponsor, him

• 35:37Speaker 02

  as the godfather. So it's always like, the one who makes you convert to Christianity has the upper hand. And so there he goes. And there, and now he is king of Norway. So the sagas tell us.

• 35:49Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And it's always interesting, isn't it, that when people might be using Christianity for much more political means, maybe not apart from religious reasons, but if you add in the political dimension, Christianity becomes useful, because would it be fair to say that Christianity has this sense of, it empowers leaders and rulers. God appoints kings. God chooses and anoints kings. Whereas if you're more in the pagan kind of multiverse of gods, their favour can be withdrawn at any moment. You know, one of them might turn against you. So it actually makes it look like the king is ruling with God, rather than having to worry about what God thinks of them.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly that. Christianity is a type of religion that rewards rulers, rewards top dogs, because it's monotheistic, essentially, and it's sort of very patriarchal. And it's very much so, so you know, there's always this image of kings piggyback, I love, I mean, there must be a cartoon out there, kings piggybacking on the cloaks of missionaries as missionaries head off into the sort of pagan wilds. Carolingians are absolutely top at doing this. This is what we saw with Harald Bluetooth. This is what they're trying to do. Get that nasty pagan Danish ruler, who has way too much power for our liking, to convert to Christianity. And that's why Harald's yelling stone is so important. He's

• 37:11Speaker 02

  saying, I did this by myself. No one else can be in charge. I did this. I'm the ruler. You can all bugger off south of the border now, thank you very much. So politically, Christianity is crucial for kings.

• 37:24Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. You're not a Christian, I'm a Christian. And it's also, I guess, it's selecting a religious structure that recognizes kind of one person in charge, which suits a king, doesn't it? Because there's one person in charge. And it's no longer a plethora of petty kings and jarls with more power than a king might think they ought to have. Religion and politics are now working together to say that there is one monolithic authority in this kingdom. It's the king and it's God.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  Exactly that. And with that come other tools of control. So writing, for example, is a really big one. You know, as soon as you're able to write things down, you have control of what is being written down, and therefore what becomes true. You know, as soon as you're like shoving your churches and your dioceses all over the place, like much later on. But, you know, again, you are, you are controlling nodes of access. You're controlling sort of everything from local authority, and sort of, like, everything from sort of, you're controlling inside people's minds, and you're controlling everything that's going on around them. It's incredibly potent, and yeah, quite scary, really.

• 38:33Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. Do you think then, here's a really unfair question that you might want to answer. Should we think of Olaf, is he a Viking warlord, or is he a Christian monarch?

• 38:45Speaker 02

  He's both. He's absolutely both. I'm fine with that. But it's not even a cop-out answer. It's like, he's absolutely started as Viking warlord in precisely the sense of that word that is literal, you know, vikingur. He's a pirate, he's a raider. But he also is a Christian monarch. And I think he would be delighted to have both those labels. I think that, you know, he's, he's covering sort of both ends of the spectrum, and therefore everything in between as well.

• 39:14Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And then what type of king is Olaf? Does he manage to kind of unify Norway? Is he using Christianity now as a tool of control for his kingdom?

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, so again, we're talking about the sagas here, but the sagas have some really horrible stories about those who oppose him. They're not always powerful people, but they often are locally powerful, which again tells us everything. So there's one, oh, it's horrible, it's Ræður in Rami, which is a great name. Ræður just means red and Rami means strong. So red's the strong. I can't remember.

• 39:51Matt Lewis?

  What a cool name.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  It's a great name, isn't it?

• 39:52Matt Lewis?

  It's a bit of a brand, isn't it?

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, haha, yes, literally, because Olaf tries to convert him by basically having a snake forced down his throat with a red hot iron, literally. He's got this bran going. Obviously, it kills, you know, this is a form of torture. There's another one, Avender Kinrifi, which is mean like Avend split cheek. And I'm trying to remember if he's the one, there's one, and I think it's him, that it's really interesting because actually he says, I can't convert to Christianity. I'm a, I'm basically a pagan spirit. I wasn't, my parents weren't able to have children and so they went to, I think it's like a Sami magic maker, you know, from the Arctic.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  And it's, it's telling that a lot of this resistance happens far north. Because we've got to remember that's where the power base of the Yarls of Fladir also were. And it's further away from Olaf's natural power centers. So remember, his parents came from southeast and southwest Norway. That's where he has his support. The further away you get from that, the more pagan it is, the more people don't feel any connection. Again, plus change, this is absolutely, you know, this still happens absolutely everywhere. But Avender says, yeah, I am part spirit, you know, these, these Sami magical practitioners helped form me for my parents out of sort of spirits. So again, he can't convert.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  And so I think what happens to him is this is the bowl of burning coals that are placed on his belly until his belly bursts. And again, this isn't, okay, we'll do this until you convert. This is a shock and awe, basically. This is much more about control. And what's interesting is this doesn't just apply to Norway. So we've also got, the reason Olaf Trigforsen is so well known within this sort of broader Norse diaspora, particularly across the North Atlantic, is because he's hugely influential, or at least his story is hugely influential on what he is said to have done, because legend is just as important in the conversions to Christianity of Iceland and also Greenland.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  So in the case of Iceland, again, this is sagas, so Kristni Saga, the saga of sort of Christianity, literally, how the saga of the conversion, we might call it. Mjál's Saga, very famous saga of the beardless lawyer Mjál, who, if people have read a saga, it may well be that one. We have this very much set in this period around 1000, where we see the conversion being forced because Olaf is basically forcing their hand. He is the powerful partner. And this is where it's important to remember that we, that he may be the purported great, great grandchild, or he is said to be the great, great grandchild of Harald Fairheir.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  Because as far as the Icelanders are concerned, and this is a big part of their saga narratives, they go to Iceland to escape Harald Fairheir as he is attempting to unify Norway and take all their land. So that is part of their origin myth of settling Iceland. And so what Olaf is trying to do at this point in terms of force that conversion to Christianity and therefore force them to basically bend the knee in a way, is a sort of repeat of what happened back in sort of the 870s or so. So the sagas tell us that Olaf Trigforsen sends missionaries out to Iceland. And these are not nice missionaries. The first one is someone called Stefniðr.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  He's an Icelandic and he goes around smashing up pagan shrines and smashing gods up and having a, you know, lovely time and pissing absolutely everyone off. And eventually they outlaw him and make him leave. Then it gets worse because he sends Thangbrander, who is this really unpleasant, very violent, very abrasive character. And at this point, people start being killed, you know, this is really ratcheting up. This still doesn't work, but there's certainly a Christian community in Iceland. And we, as I said, remember, from, we're around the year 1000, but from those early decades of settlement, back in sort of 870s and so on, we have lots of Christians coming from the British Isles and Ireland.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  And so you've already got a Christian population. They're getting really pissed off at this point. And there's all sorts of tension starting to brew between the Christians and the pagans who are actually Icelanders. At this point, Olaf Trigforsen puts an embargo on Icelandic ships coming backwards and forwards, which is bad because this, it's a really important trading partner. Once again, this is Olaf Trigforsen flexing his international muscles, which we've seen from the very start of his story. And he then, the sagas tell us, starts to hold the sons of prominent Icelandic chieftains hostage back in Norway.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  And so he's basically turning those, those screws and he's trying to get to them to convert. But again, remember Harald Bluetooth in Norway, it is much worse to be forced to convert. You want to do it yourself, then you have the upper hand, you keep the power. And so this reaches a boiling point, either 999 or 1000, the Althingi, the national parliament where everyone comes from all four quarters of the country. And if anyone's visited Iceland, or if anyone's even just a fan of geology, they'll know where the Althingi took place because the Althingi takes place on Thingvetlir, these, the parliament plains. And it's this flat, flat land, not far from Reykjavik, where the tectonic plates are literally pulling apart.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  This is the oldest continuous parliament that we know of anywhere in the world. And so things are going down here. At one point, a volcano starts erupting and the Christians are saying, oh, it's because God pissed off with you. And the pagans are saying, yeah, well, you know, what about when other volcanoes went off? And there were no Christians telling us that God was pissed off, that we caused them then. And they're gearing up for a fight and they've all got their weapons drawn and it's all got really nasty. And this chieftain, or gudin, called Thorger Thorketlsson, basically shouts, stop! All right, this is too much, we can't do this anymore. He's a pagan, but the most important thing that he knows is that everyone comes together. And Olaf Trigforsen is not going to be the reason they come together. They're not going to be forced to do so.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  So in the end, he decides that they are going to be made Christian, but pagans can continue worshipping in secret. They can continue eating horse meat, which is not allowed and under the Christian regime. They can continue exposing infants, which again, not allowed under the Christian regime. My favorite bit about this conversion is that when people are leaving the Althingi to go home, they say, yeah, yeah, we will baptize, it's fine, we will be baptized, but we're not doing it until we reach the hot springs. We're not doing it in this nasty cold water. We've got very nice baths on the way home, thank you very much. So they convert. And so the important thing about this, within the context of Olaf Trigforsen, is that it's not just about him trying to bring Christianity to Iceland.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  It's him trying to exert political authority, political control over the Icelanders who very famously don't have a king. And one final point, which is we've talked about the sagas and how sort of like dodgy they are in some ways. These sagas start to be written down in the 13th century. They've got older oral traditions, but this is when they're written down. And part of the reason they're written down is because by the 13th century, Iceland is embroiled in a really terrible civil war. And the person who is again stirring the pot is the Norwegian king, the sort of, you know, however many times removed Norwegian king after Olaf Trigforsen.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  And this time he succeeds. And in fact, Snorri Stodhlesson, who is the Icelandic poet, politician, saga writer, who writes Hameskringla, which is, you know, this collection of king sagas. It's part of the reason we know so much about Olaf Trigforsen's life. Snorri gets so caught up in this civil war with Norway and Iceland, that he is eventually murdered in his own basement in Iceland on the orders of the Norwegian king, who very soon afterwards actually, you know, the Norwegian crown then does take over and Iceland ceases to become a Commonwealth. So we also have to think that Olaf Trigforsen's story very much, he's almost like,

• 48:27Speaker 02

  I don't know, he's, there's two, because there's another King Olaf, who's very important, who comes a couple of decades later, Olaf Haraldsson. So we've got sort of, they are the, there's probably a third one I can think of, but like they're the BLT, basically, in the middle of the sandwich. We've got King Harald Fairheir, he's one piece of bread. We've got Halkon and, you know, we've got the kings who end up in control of Iceland in the 13th century. And then we've got this sort of middle section around the year 1000. And Olaf Trigforsen is right in the middle of that story, which is also why he's so important within this context.

• 49:17Speaker 01

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• 50:38Matt Lewis?

  And we've talked a lot about Olaf's use of Christianity as a political tool. And I guess that makes it easy to be skeptical about his own commitment to the religion. But should we, should we at least allow that that sits somewhere on a sliding scale, that he could be devout but also using it for political means? And it might be harder to measure his own personal commitment, because we, what we can see is his political use of it.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. All of that. I think that's a really, really important thing to bear in mind. This isn't someone who is, he's not cynically using Christianity as a political tool with no, nothing sort of underlying it. It isn't that. This is a Christian. And we always, yeah, have to remember that it is much easier to see these sort of political threads, and the stories of coercion, as well as conversion, and sort of, you know, the, everyone sort of ganging up on so-and-so, or sort of taking power there, or like chopping off someone's head, whatever it is. But we have to remember that belief absolutely underlines so much of what we're talking about as well. It's just we can't access that so easily.

• 51:41Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. I mean, Olaf then has lived a pretty incredible life. We've got him there as a Christian king of Norway, trying to expand his influence. How does, how does his life come to an end? Because that's kind of almost an equally famous story.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it really is. And it's sort of, it's the culmination of so many things that we've been talking about, you know, in terms of alliances and, and sort of enemies and sort of, it's, his death plays out on precisely this sort of epic international scale that we would expect, given his life. He's not killed in a pigsty by, by a slave who chops off his head. It's not that sort of thing. So this is the Battle of Svalder, which is September 1000. So very soon after, you know, we've talked about the conversion of Iceland, for example, you know, this is, you would in a way expect this story to play out for longer, but this is a very violent world. And it's, the Battle of Svalder takes place somewhere in the Baltic Sea. Once again, we've got an alliance of kings. He is up

• 52:39Speaker 02

  against an alliance of the King of Denmark, who by this time is Svein of Forkbeard, who's the son of Harald Bluetooth, and the King of Sweden, who is sort of Olaf Skottkunen, like kind of treasure king, tax king, something like that. And then, surprise, surprise, our old friends, the Jaals of Flavir, these sort of, this alternative power base possibly descended from frost giants up in the far north of Norway. And they come together. And this sets the scene for what happened. So he might be, we remember he was like blown off course in his youth to Wendland, and that's where he meets his first wife. He may have been on the way there, on the way back, we're not sure, but somewhere in the

• 53:21Speaker 02

  Baltic, he's ambushed. Again, the sagas of, it's sort of, it's notoriously tricky to bin down things like numbers, but it says there are 60 warships, plus a few that he's picked up from his allies, the Jomsvee kings, very famously, sort of in and out what's Poland. But they're picked off one by one. And all that's left is his own. And the name of his ship is Ormen Langa, so the long serpent, the long worm, something like that. And this is where sort of the final showdown, again, we're sort of Hollywood Avengers territory here, really. So this is where the final showdown takes place, and he's boarded, and it's all going horribly wrong. And it's said that he throws himself into the sea. It's not said that anyone kills him. This is really important, because the

• 54:05Speaker 02

  uncertainty of his death becomes every bit as important as the fact that he died. It's almost like, you know, there are so many rumors that he survived. Odair Snorðursson writes a version, Icelandic, he writes a version of Olaf's life that Snorri then draws on in Hæmneskringla. And I think he's, I think it's him that talks a lot about these sightings. And it is a sort of, I don't know, it's sort of like Scarlet Pimpernel or Lord Lucan, you know, whatever we might, you know, Loch Ness monster, I don't know. He's, there were sightings in Rome, and Jerusalem, and sort of across the Mediterranean. And it's said that Olaf's sister is sent presents, and the King of England, I think it's Ethel Reddy Unready at this point, you know, he's also sent mysterious presents by someone

• 54:49Speaker 02

  who could possibly be Olaf Trigferson. And so there's this idea that, I mean, I think the last sighting is said to be like 1046. So it's like, you imagine how old he'd be by that time, if that's when that's happening. But the point is, that it's this afterlife that means that he becomes this sort of semi legendary figure, who becomes so much more by the sums, but so much more than the sums of his already considerable parts.

• 55:20Matt Lewis?

  I quite like the idea that he's on the ship at the battle, realising he's about to lose, and just kind of stands at the side and thinks, well, this'll mess with them a bit, and jumps off.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Yeah, maybe he's just like clinging on below, and then he's like, you know, I guess I'm staying here for a while. Exactly. I mean, this is the wonderful thing about it, that we don't, not knowing gives us so much room to have fun with what might have actually happened. And even, and there's also, although, I mean, the sagas, as you know, says, we have to be quite careful with how we use them as evidence. The fact remains, they are fabulous evidence that we have these stories. We also have poetry about him. And one of the most famous poems, it's, I can't remember how many stanzas, it's like, it's maybe nearly 30, like a good couple of dozen stanzas, written by an Icelandic poet called

• 56:12Speaker 02

  Hattelfræður Van Dreyðaskjáld, which means basically troublesome poet, because he's always getting into trouble. And he attaches himself to Olaf Trigferson. And I can, I can read you a little bit of one of the verses, if you like, because again, the lovely thing-

• 56:28Matt Lewis?

  Yes, please.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, the sag, the sagas are great. And they often embed the poems, which is why they often survive. But the lovely thing about the poems is that because skuldig verse, which is this type of poetry, and Hattelfræður is a skuld, a poet, it's really complicated stuff. So it's harder to mess with it in the oral tradition as it's passed down the generations. And so our poetry is probably the nearest thing we've got to something that is near contemporary, in terms of written evidence for him.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  So that means something like, "There, I certainly believe," and again, it's always this, "So I have heard, this is what I believe, but who knows if it's true." The prince, that's Olaf Trigferson, who promoted battle, you know, in other words, comes back to that question that you said, is he a warlord, or is he a sort of Christian ruler? The prince who promoted battle missed too much the support of warriors from Trondile. So basically, someone didn't turn up for battle, as he was hoping. Many abandoned, took to flight. Everyone ran away. The adept, mighty ruler, again, that's Olafur, fought alone against two bold princes, those are the kings of Denmark and Sweden, and the jaal as the

• 58:01Speaker 02

  third, of course, that's the jaal of Flavir. It is a famous custom to tell of such a thing. So again, it's, the fame for Olaf is the crucial point. This is, it's his legacy living on. It's the reputation of a great man surviving. And part of the wonderful thing about his story is all these interwoven parts, where it's almost like, sort of, it's not Chinese whispers, it's, it's sort of Nordic whispers, Icelandic whispers sometimes, you know, Norwegian whispers maybe, but this sense of, well, this is what I heard, well, this is what I heard. And that's how we have the figure of Olaf Trigferson as, as he comes down to us today.

• 58:44Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, incredible. And does he have a legacy as well? Should we consider him as kind of a unifier of Norway, a big converter to Christianity in that region? Does he have kind of a lasting legacy for his reign?

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think yes. But then the problem is that everything then goes tits up again, because then we have this move back to paganism. And then we have, I mentioned there's a second King Olaf of Norway, King Olaf Haraldsson, who comes in later and in some ways has quite a similar trajectory, very much an international career, very much christianising again. But I need to look at the sources to be completely sure of making this statement, but possibly less violently. There is something very violent about Olaf Tryggvason's conversion story, both in Norway itself and further afield. And I think that's

• 59:36Speaker 02

  something we really have to remember. This isn't a straightforward legacy, and it's certainly a point on the road to a Christian Norway, a unified Norway, yeah, for sure. But it's a point, and there's lots of sort of ups and downs. So I think, again, it comes back to, we need to think of a better way, you know, BLT is one way of putting it. But I think his story is important within the context of other stories that together make this sort of greater, more lasting legacy. But I always find it uncomfortable to talk about legacy in that sense, when we are dealing with something that is so violent in so

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  many ways. You know, this is not, this is not a straightforward narrative. This is not a straightforward heroic narrative. This is a very complex person who lived in an extremely complex world.

• 1:00:31Matt Lewis?

  Well, thank you for painting such an incredible picture of this complex person and the complex world that he existed in and did so much to try to change. This has been absolutely fascinating. He sounds like, yeah, difficult to like him, isn't it? But easy to be fascinated by him.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  I think exactly that. Difficult to like, easy to, yeah, you just, you want to keep coming back to him. But I don't know, you just occasionally, you've got to close your eyes. When it gets to the red hot pokers and the snakes and all the rest of it, you just think, ooh, you know, there's, there's a lot. But I think this is a, this is the next Avengers film, surely. Olaf Tryggvason there on the great

• 1:01:06Matt Lewis?

  We've half written it already.

• 1:01:09Matt Lewis?

  We need to pitch this to someone. Right. Yes. Let's get busy. Thank you very much, Eleanor. This has been fantastic. Let's go and write a script.

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  Pleasure. Let's go do it.

• 1:01:18Matt Lewis?

  Thank you.

• 1:01:21Matt Lewis?

  Well, I'm not sure I'd like to meet Olaf, but I think Eleanor has done his story proud for us. You can find episodes in our back catalogue on plenty of Viking stories, including our series on Norse mythology, which features Eleanor too, as well as Eleanor's visit to talk all about another huge Viking name in Leif Eriksson. There are new instalments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can also sign up for History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week at historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 1:02:06Matt Lewis?

  Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hit.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

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