Eysteinn Magnússon

Eystein Magnusson is the home-keeping king set against his far-faring brother in the sagas' great debate on what a king is for. While his brother Sigurd sailed to Jerusalem on the famous crusade, Eystein stayed in Norway and ruled — and ruled superbly: he built churches and a monastery, made harbours and roads and mountain refuges for travellers, improved the law, and kept the country prosperous and at peace. In the famous 'comparison of the kings', when Sigurd boasts of his battles in the Saracens' land and his swim across the Jordan, Eystein answers him point for point — granting that he could not slay Moors or swim the holy river, but that he kept the kingdom whole and just at home, the harder and more useful glory. The saga lets the debate end without a verdict. Eystein is its image of the unglamorous greatness of good governance — the king remembered not for a dazzling voyage but for the patient, durable work of ruling well.