The Kings of Norway
Sigurd the Crusader — to Jerusalem and Miklagard
The brother who would go
After Magnus Barefoot fell, his three sons — Eystein, Sigurd, and Olaf — took Norway between them.[1] But the kingdom could not hold Sigurd's restlessness. Where his brother Eystein was content to govern, build, and improve the law at home, Sigurd's eye turned outward, toward the great Christian enterprise of his age: the crusade to win and hold Jerusalem, which had fallen to the Latins a few years before.
So Norway, barely a lifetime Christian, produced something new under the northern sun: a king who would take the cross himself and lead his own fleet to the Holy Land. No king of England, France, or Germany had yet done such a thing in person. The settlement-and-saga world of this atlas, which began with chiefs fleeing Harald Fairhair to an empty island, now reaches its widest ambition — a Norwegian king sailing for the centre of the world.
The source text · 1
After King Magnus Barefoot's fall, his sons, Eystein, Sigurd, and Olaf, took the kingdom of Norway. Eystein got the northern, and Sigurd the southern part of the country. King Olaf was then four or five years old, and the third part of the country which he had was under the management of his two brothers. King Sigurd was chosen king when he was thirteen or fourteen years old, and Eystein was a year older. King Sigurd left west of the sea the Irish king's daughter. When King Magnus's sons were chosen kings, the men who had followed Skopte Ogmundson returned home. Some had been to Jerusalem, some to Constantinople; and there they had made themselves renowned, and they had many kinds of novelties to talk about. By these extraordinary tidings many men in Norway were incited to the same expedition; and it was also told that the Northmen who liked to go into the military service at Constantinople found many opportunities of getting property. Then these Northmen desired much that one of the two kings, either Eystein or Sigurd, should go as commander of the troop which was preparing for this expedition. The kings agreed to this, and carried on the equipment at their common expense. Many great men, both of the lendermen and bondes, took part in this enterprise; and when all was ready for the journey it was determined that Sigurd should go, and Eystein in the meantime, should rule the kingdom upon their joint account.— heimskringla
Magnus Barefoot's sons Eystein, Sigurd and Olaf take Norway (Laing).
Sixty ships from the north
Four years after his father's fall, in 1107, King Sigurd sailed from Norway with sixty ships — a fleet of crusaders gathered from the fjords of the far North.[1] He sailed first to England, where Henry, son of William the Conqueror, was king, and wintered there.[2]
The numbers and the route matter: this is no raiding band but a royal expedition, provisioned and led, setting out deliberately along the whole western edge of Europe. The saga tracks it stage by stage, year by year, like a logbook — and in doing so it carries the reader out of the familiar Norse seas entirely, down toward coasts no other journey in this atlas will ever touch. The voyage out is the longest single thread the corpus contains.
The source text · 2
Four years after the fall of King Magnus (A.D. 1107), King Sigurd sailed with his people from Norway. He had then sixty ships. So says Thorarin Stutfeld: --— heimskringla
Sigurd sails from Norway with sixty ships, 1107 (Laing).
King Sigurd sailed in autumn to England, where Henry, son of William the Bastard, was then king, and Sigurd remained with him all winter. So says Einar Skulason: --— heimskringla
Sigurd winters in England with King Henry.
Battles down through Spain
From England Sigurd sailed to Valland and wintered in Galicia, and then the fighting began. He stormed the castle of Sintre, held by heathens who would not be baptised, and took it; and then he came to Lisbon, a great city on the very dividing line of Christian and heathen Spain, all the lands west of it held by the heathens, and had his battle there and won great booty.[1]
The saga counts his battles like beads — the third here, the fourth at Alkasse — as Sigurd fought his way down the Iberian coast against the Moors. This is crusade as the age understood it: war on the heathen as an act of faith, and plunder as its reward, both at once. The Norwegian fleet, so far from home, was cutting a path of fire along a frontier the sagas had never seen, the edge where Christendom met al-Andalus.
The source text · 1
After this King Sigurd sailed with his fleet to Lisbon, which is a great city in Spain, half Christian and half heathen; for there lies the division between Christian Spain and heathen Spain, and all the districts which lie west of the city are occupied by heathens. There King Sigurd had his third battle with the heathens, and gained the victory, and with it a great booty. So says Haldor Skvaldre: --— heimskringla
Sigurd's battle at Lisbon, on the line between Christian and heathen Spain (Laing).
The Strait and the Moorish sea
Sigurd came to Norfasund — the narrow strait of Gibraltar, the gate of the Mediterranean — and there met a large viking force and gave them battle and won.[1] Then he sailed eastward along the coast of Serkland, the land of the Saracens, storming island strongholds where the Moors had gathered — Forminterra, Ivica, Minorca — battle after battle, victory after victory.
Here the corpus passes through a door it never opens elsewhere. Beyond Norfasund lies a sea with no other Norse story in it — the Mediterranean of Moors and Greeks and Latins, of cities older than the North could imagine. Sigurd's fleet, born in a world of turf farms and blood-feuds, is now a power moving through the warm centre of the medieval world. The boy-king's restlessness has carried Norway clean off the edge of its own map.
The source text · 1
King Sigurd then proceeded on his voyage, and came to Norfasund; and in the sound he was met by a large viking force, and the king gave them battle; and this was his fifth engagement with heathens since the time he left Norway. He gained the victory here also. So says Haldor Skvaldre: --— heimskringla
Sigurd battles a viking force at Norfasund, the Strait of Gibraltar (Laing).
Sicily and Duke Roger
In the spring Sigurd came to Sicily and stayed a long while, received kindly by Duke Roger — a very great ruler who had won all Apulia and many islands of the Greek sea.[1] The saga records, with northern pride, that King Sigurd gave Roger the title of king: as though the far-travelled Norwegian, passing through, conferred royalty on the lord of Sicily.
Whether or not it happened so, the detail tells us how the saga wants Sigurd seen — not as a supplicant at the courts of the south, but as a king among kings, dispensing honour as he goes. The crusade is also a progress, a showing-forth of Norway to the wider world; and the wider world, in the saga's telling, receives the northern king as an equal and more. From Sicily he turned at last toward the goal itself.
The source text · 1
In spring King Sigurd came to Sicily (A.D. 1109), and remained a long time there. There was then a Duke Roger in Sicily, who received the king kindly, and invited him to a feast. King Sigurd came to it with a great retinue, and was splendidly entertained. Every day Duke Roger stood at the company's table, doing service to the king; but the seventh day of the feast, when the people had come to table, and had wiped their hands, King Sigurd took the duke by the hand, led him up to the high-seat, and saluted him with the title of king; and gave the right that there should be always a king over the dominion of Sicily, although before there had only been earls or dukes over that country.— heimskringla
Sigurd received by Duke Roger of Sicily (Laing).
Jerusalem and the Jordan
In the summer of 1110 Sigurd sailed across the Greek sea to Palestine and went up to Jerusalem, where he met Baldwin, king of the holy city.[1] Baldwin received him with particular honour and rode with him all the way down to the river Jordan, and back again to Jerusalem.
This is the heart of the whole journey and the farthest point the corpus ever reaches: a king out of the Norse North standing at the Jordan, where John had baptised. In the brothers' boast told later, Sigurd says he swam across the river and twisted a knot of willows on the far bank, leaving it for Eystein to untie — the cheerful gesture of a man who has gone where his stay-at-home brother never will.[2] The settlers' descendants, who fled a king to an empty island, have a king of their own at the centre of the Christian world.
The source text · 2
In the summer (A.D. 1110) King Sigurd sailed across the Greek sea to Palestine, and thereupon went up to Jerusalem, where he met Baldwin, king of Palestine. King Baldwin received him particularly well, and rode with him all the way to the river Jordan, and then back to the city of Jerusalem. Einar Skulason speaks thus of it: --— heimskringla
Sigurd meets King Baldwin at Jerusalem; they ride to the Jordan (Laing).
King Sigurd said: "On this expedition I went all the way to Jordan and swam across the river. On the edge of the river there is a bush of willows, and there I twisted a knot of willows, and said this knot thou shouldst untie, brother, or take the curse thereto attached."— heimskringla
Sigurd's boast: he swam the Jordan and tied a knot of willows.
The splinter of the True Cross
King Baldwin made a magnificent feast for Sigurd and gave him many holy relics. By the orders of the king and the patriarch a splinter was taken from the True Cross — the very wood, both swore on oath, on which God Himself had been tortured — and given to Sigurd, on the condition that he and twelve others swear to promote Christianity with all their power.[1]
So the crusade brought home a fragment of the holiest object in Christendom, sworn over by two kings. It is the spiritual treasure that justified the whole vast voyage — the relic that made Sigurd Jórsalafari, the Jerusalem-farer, in the eyes of his people forever. Norway, so lately heathen, now possessed a piece of the Cross, carried back by its own king from the place of the Crucifixion: the conversion arc of the whole corpus brought, quite literally, to its source.
The source text · 1
King Baldwin made a magnificent feast for King Sigurd and many of his people, and gave him many holy relics. By the orders of King Baldwin and the patriarch, there was taken a splinter off the holy cross; and on this holy relic both made oath, that this wood was of the holy cross upon which God Himself had been tortured. Then this holy relic was given to King Sigurd; with the condition that he, and twelve other men with him, should swear to promote Christianity with all his power, and erect an archbishop's seat in Norway if he could; and also that the cross should be kept where the holy King Olaf reposed, and that he should introduce tithes, and also pay them himself. After this King Sigurd returned to his ships at Acre; and then King Baldwin prepared to go to Syria, to a heathen town called Saet. On this expedition King Sigurd accompanied him, and after the kings had besieged the town some time it surrendered, and they took possession of it, and of a great treasure of money; and their men found other booty. King Sigurd made a present of his share to King Baldwin. So say Haldor Skvaldre: --— heimskringla
Baldwin gives Sigurd a splinter of the True Cross, sworn upon (Laing).
Into the Great City
From Cyprus Sigurd sailed at last to Constantinople — Miklagarð, the Great City. He steered close in along the shore, and the land was one unbroken line of burghs and castles and towns; and the people turned out in throngs to see the northern king sail past, his fleet's sails standing so close they seemed one wall.[1] The Emperor Kirjalax had heard of his coming and prepared to receive him.
This is the eastern pole of the Norse world, the city the Varangians guarded and Harald Hardrada had served in two generations before. Where the road east through Russia led Olaf and Magnus, the road south through the Mediterranean led Sigurd — and both roads end here, at Miklagarð, the dazzling Greek capital that stood at the limit of the Norse imagination. Two journeys of this atlas, east and south, meet under the walls of one city.
The source text · 1
When King Sigurd sailed into Constantinople, he steered near the land. Over all the land there are burghs, castles, country towns, the one upon the other without interval. There from the land one could see into the bights of the sails; and the sails stood so close beside each other, that they seemed to form one enclosure. All the people turned out to see King Sigurd sailing past. The Emperor Kirjalax had also heard of King Sigurd's expedition, and ordered the city port of Constantinople to be opened, which is called the Gold Tower, through which the emperor rides when he has been long absent from Constantinople, or has made a campaign in which he has been victorious. The emperor had precious cloths spread out from the Gold Tower to Laktjarna, which is the name of the emperor's most splendid hall. King Sigurd ordered his men to ride in great state into the city, and not to regard all the new things they might see; and this they did. King Sigurd and his followers rode with this great splendour into Constantinople, and then came to the magnificent hall, where everything was in the grandest style.— heimskringla
Sigurd sails into Constantinople past unbroken burghs; crowds turn out (Laing).
Gold or the games
The Emperor Kirjalax sent to ask whether Sigurd would rather take six lispund of gold, or have the emperor stage for him the games of the Hippodrome — the Padreim — that the Greeks were famous for. Sigurd chose the games, though the messengers said the spectacle would cost the emperor no less than the gold.[1]
The choice is the whole man. Offered treasure or wonder, the Jerusalem-farer takes the wonder — the spectacle, the honour, the story to carry home. It is the crusade's logic in miniature: Sigurd did not sail to the ends of the earth to come back richer, but to come back having seen and done what no Norwegian had. The games in the Greek arena are the reward he actually wanted, and the saga knows it.
The source text · 1
King Sigurd remained here some time. The Emperor Kirjalax sent his men to him to ask if he would rather accept from the emperor six lispund of gold, or would have the emperor give the games in his honour which the emperor was used to have played at the Padreim. King Sigurd preferred the games, and the messengers said the spectacle would not cost the emperor less than the money offered. Then the emperor prepared for the games, which were held in the usual way; but this day everything went on better for the king than for the queen; for the queen has always the half part in the games, and their men, therefore, always strive against each other in all games. The Greeks accordingly think that when the king's men win more games at the Padreim than the queen's, the king will gain the victory when he goes into battle. People who have been in Constantinople tell that the Padreim is thus constructed: -- A high wall surrounds a flat plain, which may be compared to a round bare Thing-place, with earthen banks all around at the stone wall, on which banks the spectators sit; but the games themselves are in the flat plain. There are many sorts of old events represented concerning the Asas, Volsungs, and Giukungs, in these games; and all the figures are cast in copper, or metal, with so great art that they appear to be living things; and to the people it appears as if they were really present in the games. The games themselves are so artfully and cleverly managed, that people appear to be riding in the air; and at them also are used shot-fire,.mw-parser-output .wst-sup{font-size:66%;vertical-align:0.6em;line-height:0}1 and all kinds of harp-playing, singing, and music instruments.— heimskringla
Kirjalax offers Sigurd gold or the games; Sigurd chooses the games (Laing).
The fleet given, the road home
When Sigurd prepared to return, he gave the Emperor his entire fleet — and the splendid gilded figureheads of his ships were set up in a church of Constantinople, where they could long be seen.[1] The emperor gave him horses and guides, and Sigurd rode home overland, through Bulgaria and across Europe — while a great many of his Northmen stayed behind and went into the emperor's pay, into the ranks of the Varangian Guard.
The detail closes the eastern circle of the whole corpus. The men who do not sail home with Sigurd melt into the same Varangian service that Harald Hardrada had risen through — the standing Norse presence at the heart of Byzantium. Sigurd came by sea around half the world and went home by land across the other half, leaving his ships, his figureheads, and some of his men permanently in the Great City. The Norwegian Crusade ends with Norway woven, at last, into the farthest fabric of the world.
The source text · 1
King Sigurd soon after prepared for his return home. He gave the emperor all his ships; and the valuable figureheads which were on the king's ships were set up in Peter's church, where they have since been to be seen. The emperor gave the king many horses and guides to conduct him through all his dominions. Then King Sigurd left Constantinople; but a great many Northmen remained, and went into the emperor's pay. Then King Sigurd traveled from Bulgaria, and through Hungary, Pannonia. Suabia, and Bavaria, where he met the Roman emperor, Lotharius, who received him in the most friendly way, gave him guides through his dominions, and had markets established for him at which he could purchase all he required. When King Sigurd came to Slesvik in Denmark, Earl Eilif made a sumptuous feast for him; and it was then midsummer. In Heidaby he met the Danish king, Nikolas, who received him in the most friendly way, made a great entertainment for him, accompanied him north to Jutland, and gave him a ship provided with everything needful. From thence the king returned to Norway, and was joyfully welcomed on his return to his kingdom (A.D. 1110). It was the common talk among the people, that none had ever made so honourable a journey from Norway as this of King Sigurd. He was twenty years of age, and had been three years on these travels. His brother Olaf was then twelve years old.— heimskringla
Sigurd gives the emperor his ships, rides home overland; his men stay as Varangians (Laing).
The comparison of the kings
Home again, Sigurd and his brother Eystein, over the ale, fell to the most famous conversation in Heimskringla: the comparison of the two kings.[1] Sigurd boasted of his battles in the Saracens' land, his treasures, the respect he had won among the most gallant men — and named Eystein's reputation merely 'home-bred'.[2] But Eystein answered him point for point: while Sigurd was away, he had built churches and a monastery, made harbours and roads, improved the law, and ruled so that the people prospered.
He could not swim the Jordan, Eystein granted, nor fight the Moors — but he had kept the kingdom whole and just at home, which was the harder and more useful glory. The saga lets the debate end without a verdict, and that is its genius: the far-faring king and the home-keeping king are set side by side, the spectacular voyage against the patient governance, and the reader is left to weigh them. It is the corpus reflecting on its own deepest tension — adventure against law, the road against the hearth.
The source text · 2
Eystein says, "It is a common custom over the ale-table to compare one person with another, and now let us do so." Then Sigurd was silent.— heimskringla
Eystein opens the comparison of the two kings over the ale (Laing).
Sigurd: "You must have heard that on this expedition I was in many a battle in the Saracen's land, and gained the victory in all; and you must have heard of the many valuable articles I acquired, the like of which were never seen before in this country, and I was the most respected wherever the most gallant men were; and, on the other hand, you cannot conceal that you have only a home-bred reputation."— heimskringla
Sigurd boasts of his battles in the Saracens' land.
The Jerusalem-farer
Sigurd lived on as king, and the byname stuck to him for good — Jórsalafari, the Jerusalem-farer — the only one of all the kings in this atlas to carry the Holy Land in his very name.[1] The splinter of the Cross he had brought home, the figureheads in the Greek church, the willow-knot by the Jordan: these were Norway's claim on the wider world, made by a king who had simply refused to stay on his own map.
His crusade is the corpus at its fullest stretch. It began with chieftains fleeing to a bare island at the edge of the known world; it reaches here a Norwegian fleet at Jerusalem and Constantinople, a northern king choosing the games of Byzantium over Greek gold. From Harald Fairhair's tyranny to Sigurd's willow-knot on the Jordan is the whole arc of the Norse world — and the road east and the road south, through Russia and through the Mediterranean, both end in the same Great City, with Norsemen standing guard.
The source text · 1
He replied, "It would be vexatious to know that a gallant king, who has gained so much honour in the world, should so forget himself. When you rose up out of Jordan, after bathing in the same waters as God himself, with palm-leaves in your hands, and the cross upon your breast, it was something else you promised, sire, than to eat flesh-meat on a Friday. If a meaner man were to do so, he would merit a heavy punishment. This royal hall is not so beset as it should be, when it falls upon me, a mean man, to challenge such an act."— heimskringla
Sigurd's honour as the king who went to Jerusalem (Laing).
4 connection questions mark the end of this journey — and earn its keepable artifact.
More journeys → Follow a thread →