Olaf Tryggvason: life of the week

Introduction to Olaf Tryggvason

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Olaf's Early Life

2:23He was a major figure in the Christianization of the Vikings, and a towering figure in the second half of the Viking Age. But what do we really know about the life of Olaf Tryggvason? In this episode of the History Extra podcast, Don Holway guides James Osborne through the thrilling story of the Norse warlord and asks, where does he sit among the Vikings' most legendary figures?

2:53Today, I'm joined by Don Holway, author and historian whose new book, Hammer of the Gods, King Olaf's Viking Conquest, pulls together the story of Olaf Tryggvason from across multiple sources. Don, I feel like every time I speak to a historian about the Viking Age, the conversation at some point ends up on Olaf Tryggvason. Can you explain for listeners why he's such an important figure within the broader Viking story? He's what I would call sort of the instigator of the second Viking Age.

3:27If you look at the Viking Age in total, you have this prelude to it from the raid on Lindisfarne up in Northumbria, starts up there, goes into the great pagan conquests and, you know, where the Vikings came up against Alfred the Great. And that went on until ultimately the Vikings were pushed out of England. Eric Bloodaxe was killed and all his, you know, Vikings retreated. Now, some of the Danes lived on, stayed as English subjects.

3:57But, you know, they weren't totally Viking anymore. They were English subjects. So there was a kind of pause where the Anglo-Saxons were ruling England and the Vikings were over in Denmark and Norway, basically fighting among themselves and everything and not mounting any real challenge to England again. And then later on, around the 990s, Olaf Tryggvason reappears on the scene. And he's described in the book, he's more or less of a world traveler as far as Vikings go. So most of these guys were farmers most of the year and jumped on a ship and went raiding,

4:32you know, once a year or something like that. Whereas he was more of a professional raider at that point and had built up such a reputation as a successful Viking that he was able to recruit an entire army and reinvade England. And that sort of set off a whole new, what they call the second Viking age. So he's not just an important figure within the story of Anglo-Scandinavian relations, though he is that. He also has this incredibly textured, fascinating story.

5:04So he has both. He's both really important and really interesting, isn't he? Yes, he is. I mean, he's another one. He's like Harold Hadrata, who crops up much later in history, but their lives had so many parallels. World traveler went all over the medieval world and came back. And ultimately, I think most famous for Christianizing Norway when he became king of Norway. So had a great effect on European history, not just English history, but European history. I guess before we really get into his life and his story,

5:36I do think it's important to look at the sources that you were drawing from when you were creating this picture of him. It's interesting because the Vikings, they didn't really record their own stories in their own time. This was a mostly oral culture who preserved their history through oral traditions. So how do we know about him? And how certain can we be about what we think we know about his life? Yeah, the sources, like you say, we're a thousand years after the fact here. And, you know, the stories kind of get built up over that time.

6:08He did have what were called scowls, which were like court poets. And one or two of his did write down his story just in snippets. And so those initial accounts survived in, you know, little snippets and everything. It wasn't really until 200 years later that some of the Christian monks in Iceland put these things all down into king sagas. And Olaf's saga is supposedly the first full-length Norwegian king saga. And it went through several versions because it was like a legend keep getting modified and amplified.

6:44And I think the latest total version was done around the 1300s. And it's almost to that time, the legend is outgrown itself that it's verging on elements of fantasy in it where, you know, Olaf is talking to the gods and everything like that. So, I mean, you have to take that, you know, that's not reality. But in a sense, I'm not really shooting for the reality. I'm trying to retell the legend. I trust my readers are going to be able to figure out, well, that's hokey.

7:14But, you know, I leave that up to them. They can tell that, you know, I'm retelling the legend as it's been told for over a millennium now. And that's what's in the book. So this is clearly history that's been infused with legend over really generations. And it's had, yeah, elements of fantasy infused into it. But we really do know that there is at least a kernel of historical, literal truth at the basis of this. Yeah, sure. Because there are the early accounts that don't get quite so flowery about him.

7:48They document what he's been doing. And now some of them conflict and you have to sort of figure out what's going on. But there's enough contemporary stuff that, yeah, I mean, he's not a made-up character. I mean, he really, he was in England and, you know, went to Norway and Christianized Norway. So there's some parts in there that are obvious fiction, but still part of the story.

Astrid's Story

8:08Okay. Well, let's get into that story. I think something that's interesting about Olaf Tregverson is that his story begins before he's born. Right. It actually begins with the death of his father. And his father dies while Olaf Tregverson's mother is still pregnant with him. Can you explain the story behind this family background and his father's death? Yeah, Olaf was born from a royal line. His great-grandfather was Harald Fairhair, which is usually taken to be one of the first great kings of Norway,

8:42even though he really only ruled a small part down in the southwestern coast down there. Now, his big problem, as with a lot of Vikings, was he had a lot of wives and girlfriends and a lot of sons. And, you know, it's always the way the emperor, he sets up the kingdom and then he dies and the sons all start fighting and betraying each other. And that's where it sort of ended up with Olaf's father. He and his cousins had been fighting back and forth for years. And finally, some of his cousins decided to lay a trap for Olaf's father.

9:18Olaf's father was named Trigvi, which means trusting. And that was his downfall. One of his cousins came to him and said, let's put all this aside. Let's go raiding again. If you bring one-third of the ships to the fleet, you know, I'll bring two-thirds, but we'll split the take evenly. You put in a third, you'll get a half. And Trigvi thought, well, that's, you know, that's not a bad deal and it'll do me good to make peace with my cousins. So they went to the rendezvous.

9:48His cousin shows up with twice as many ships and twice as many men and killed Olaf's father at the rendezvous to get him out of the way. And at this point, this was a distance from Olaf's home. But Olaf's mother was pregnant with him. And she knew that because of the way they did things, there was blood vengeance back there, that the cousins who were also kings, they would look at her and she would need to die because her family would try and exert blood vengeance.

10:19So they were kind of come after her. Okay, there's so much to unpack there. I guess the first point I kind of want to drill down into is that like so many, so many of the Viking sagas, so many of these Norse sagas, it begins with conflict between family members. And in this case, this is a large fractured family of chieftains in a large fractured kingdom. So there is this internecine violence that is all about jostling for power and about trying to control the line of descent and ascendancy.

10:55That's about right, isn't it? That's how, that's the world that Olaf is born into, isn't it? Everybody wants to be the one who found or continues the dynasty. You know, they all want to get the other guys out of the picture. Yeah. Okay. So as you said, Olaf's father is killed, his mother, Astrid, she's pregnant. She gives birth to Olaf in around the year 960. 963. Great. So these early years, I think this is really Astrid's story, actually, isn't it? During those early years. Can you just take us into her shoes and explore that moment a little bit deeper?

11:29So her husband has just been murdered and she's pregnant. So she knows that she has to leave because her newborn son is in great danger, isn't it? Correct. Yeah. She's actually not of royal blood. She was a commoner, which spoke pretty high of their relationship, her and her husband, that, you know, he married a commoner. So there's almost like a romantic aspect to the story there. And they made it about halfway across Norway before being pregnant. She just couldn't go on. And she had to stop and give birth.

12:00So they basically hid out along sort of like a hut or something on the lakeside, a finger lake in Norway, stayed there all summer until they were able to escape over to her father in the fall. And all this time, I think probably what saved her was that, yeah, the uncles wanted to kill her. Her husband's brothers and cousins wanted to kill her. But they were busy, again, still fighting among all themselves. They were going to get around to her eventually, but she was still just a minor thing.

12:31So she had some time to get away. She lived at her father's farm on the Norwegian coast for a little while. And they found out that she was there and she just barely got out of there ahead of being captured. And the same thing, she went over to Sweden and stayed there for three years until they found out she was there. And then they sent people over there to try and kill her and kill Olaf as well and get them both out of the picture. So she was not going to be safe in Scandinavia at all. That's why she ended up going across the Baltic.

13:02And as you say, they decide to move into Eastern Europe. I think so often when we think about Viking expansion, we think about how they went westwards towards the British kingdoms and the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and Iceland, et cetera, et cetera. But also there is this massive contingent that heads east and this is where they go. And this is the story of the Rus people, isn't it? So they're heading east into the lands of the Rus and this is where they get captured and

13:33sold into these slave networks. Can you tell us about the Rus people and how they were different to the Viking compatriots in the West? Sure. Well, you think, you know, just geographically, if you look at the map, it makes more sense for the Danes and the Norwegians to head west. I mean, that's sort of the way they're facing across the water. But on the east side, the Swedes are looking across the Baltic. They're looking east. And so they went exploring that way. And there's a network of rivers and lakes that go across into northern Russia and then

14:06down the rivers into the heart of Russia. And over decades, these Swedish Vikings did that, pressed down. That's how they ended up moving into Russia. Yeah. And this is the space that Astrid and her very young son, Olaf, move into as they're trying to escape family and the threat that they're posing. They get separated, as you said. They get separated and they each get sold into these Baltic slave networks. So, Olaf, from his perspective, he's now in these strange lands.

14:38He's been separated from his mother, his family, trying to kill him. And he's only three years old. Right. So this isn't really the best start to life.

Olaf's Experience in Slavery

14:45Do we know what his early experience was like growing up in this Eastern European Rus environment? Do we know how hard and how difficult these years were for him and what he learned and things like that? Well, the sagas don't tell, from his perspective, what was happening to him. And I sort of had to flesh it out. You know, he's here. What was that like? So you research what the people were doing there at that time. And, you know, that's and then you put him back in the story. And this is what he must have experienced.

15:17If the sagas don't tell you that, this is what would have been happening to him. And you have to look at a slaver buying a three-year-old boy. I mean, it's not like he's going to go to work in the fields or anything. But I think what they did was basically look at it as an investment. It's like putting money in the bank and and letting it accumulate interest until, you know, he he's big enough to do field work or something like that. And I think that's what happened to him. Because, again, according to the legends, he changed owners a couple of times.

15:48He was sold and resold. I think he was sold for like a cloak and for a goat. So he was handed on down the line. And his last owner, again, this is a typical story, treated him. Roy liked him and treated him more or less as a son and, you know, didn't work him all that hard and saw something in him. So I think he was in for six years. I think it was he was like nine when he was released. His his uncle, the brother that that his mother was originally trying to reach, just happened to stumble across the farm where where Olaf was working and said, oh, you know, what's your story?

16:26And Olaf started telling him and the uncle Sigurd suddenly realized this is my nephew. You know, what are the odds? And so he bought him from his current owner to sat down and negotiated with him and bought him and then took him back to Russia proper, where the uncle Sigurd was actually way high up in the power structure. He was serving what they call the prince, who was the ruler in Novgorod at the time. So he goes from this lowest rung of society back up to the really the highest point, really, that you could achieve at this time, back into the kind of levels of aristocracy that really he should have been born into.

17:09So what's his experience at this moment in time?

Olaf in the Royal Court

17:12Now he now he's involved in this Eastern European Viking Russian court. What's that like for him? Well, that's a whole different experience. I mean, they find out his uncle Sigurd explains that Olaf is of royal blood and, you know, we've we've rescued him here and they treat him that way. He's really raised in the royal court and taught the princely duties. I mean, he learns all the things that a that a royal person would have learned, you know, the the hunting and the how to how to make war and how to negotiate with your the underlings and the things that were necessary to turn him into a leader.

17:49And as he grew older in the court, he really became the prince's, I would say, like a right hand man or almost an adopted son and played an important role there in the royal court. Right. So I think at this point where we're talking about Olaf now in his middle to kind of late teens, I think it's really interesting to note that already at this point in his life, he's gone through, he's fled from his home country at a very young age.

Olaf's Path to Leadership

18:17He's experienced immense hardship, slavery, and then that has been combined with royal style education, elite military experience with the Varangians. So really, he has this immensely well-rounded background, really, that has that goes on to shape the rest of his life, doesn't it? He hasn't just been raised in a rich, wealthy environment with no hardship, and he hasn't just experienced the hardship. He's had both. I think that's really important, isn't it? He's a fairly well-rounded Viking.

18:49As you say, I mean, he's seen all aspects of medieval life, and he sort of gets thrust back in the same way that the chieftains are fighting over in Scandinavia. The royal brothers in Russia are fighting among themselves. You have one grand prince in Novgorod up in the north where Olaf is, and you have another royal brother down in the south, and they're all fighting. The southern brother comes up and actually chases Olaf's prince out of the country again, and they actually go back to Sweden for a little while.

19:20And I think Olaf was probably at risk of being discovered, but I think by that time, a lot of the old antagonists that he had over there were dead, and it didn't matter. So his prince recruits a whole army, goes back over into Novgorod and makes war on his brother. And this is where Olaf really learns fighting. I mean, I described in the book, I mean, you know, this is where you're killing a guy right up close with a sword and cutting him into pieces and trying not to get cut into pieces yourself.

19:51I mean, definitely an eye-opening and maturing experience for him. Yeah, it's absolutely brutal, isn't it? It's not just, like, learning about warfare theoretically and being told about it and learning it through stories. It's this really first-hand experience of the most violent kind of warfare, and that's actually going to set him in very good stead, given that he's living in the Viking Age. Right. Yeah, he's been coming up and he's learning how to lead, but now he is a leader that other men will follow, and he's still very young at this point.

20:25I mean, he's maybe 20, but if you have the royal blood, for one thing, people were trained back in those days to think that royal people were better people because of their royal blood, you know? And we take that these days, we forget all about that, but in those days, yeah, if you had royal blood, even if you had been a slave, you were still somebody that was due respect. And if you could demonstrate, as Olaf did, that you could lead in battle, then you're somebody that people are going to follow, and you can form your own power structure off of that.

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Olaf's New Path

23:15So I think this is now a good moment to move into what I guess is really like the third phase of his life. So I guess if the first two phases are him fleeing from Norway, and him being pursued, and him being sold into slavery, and then if the second phase is him growing up in this courtly context in the Rus regions,

23:48this third phase now is he leaves, and he decides to create his own path, doesn't he? Yeah, while he was in Russia, he took the opportunity, as many of the Vikings there did, to go down to Byzantium and experience Constantinople was the largest city in the world. I mean, it made every village that Olaf had ever known, you could put them all together, and they wouldn't even count as a suburb of Constantinople. I mean, it was a huge city. So it really opened his eyes to how great things could be, and also opened his eyes to Christianity, because the Byzantines were Christian.

24:25And I think that's where he got his first experience of the Christian god, and didn't have an immediate conversion or anything like that, but just took note of it, that we have our own gods. Speaking from his viewpoint, we have our own Viking gods, Odin and Thor, and the Slavs that were there. They had Slavic gods, but the Christian god had made Constantinople, and at that point, you're starting to think, maybe this god is the real thing, you know? And so, as I say, he wasn't sold on the concept at that point, but when he went back to Russia, I think they saw the change in him,

25:03and he decided at this point that, you know, I am due for, I'm destined for bigger things. I'm not going to get it being the prince's right-hand man here. I need to go home and start working on my own future. So he went back up the river route and back into the Baltic and started heading over to the west. So he's left. He's gathered this amazing education and experience, and he's really had the full spectrum of life at this point. Then he leaves. What is the next chapter in the story for him?

Olaf in Jomsburg

25:33Well, he goes into the Baltic Sea and goes down towards the southern part of that and ends up in Jomsburg, which is a legendary city. It depends on which historian you ask. Some of them say it's total fiction because it wasn't written about at the time, and others say, yeah, it was definitely there. If you read the contemporary tales about it, one of the German writers described Jomsburg as being, compared it to like London and Paris, said it was a great city. Now, great cities in Europe at that point are relative terms.

26:07You know, it's not like Constantinople. It's just a big, big town with wooden walls around it and everything. But they do have a trading network the same way that the Rus do because the rivers from the southern part of the Baltic there, northern Germany, northern Poland, lead down into the center of the continent where the Holy Roman Empire is. So there's a river route, and people along it are getting rich. And as Olaf moves in, the queen there, Gera, they meet each other, and it dawns on them that she needs a husband.

26:41Her husband had passed away. It was out of the picture. And Olaf, of course, he's never been married. He's this young, studly Viking guy. And they just sort of think this could work out. And she invites him in, and they're married. And he's a ruler in Jamsburg for a while. So this is the region that Olaf has stepped into now, coming from Eastern Europe. And he's married into aristocracy, into European royalty. He's back in that picture where, you know, before he was born, that's where you always would have expected him to be.

27:14How does he begin to emerge as a real significant leader in his own right? Is this that moment? Yeah, I think so, because just by coincidence, he arrives there at the time of the Great Slavic Revolt. And I realized that he was there at that time. And I think that the writers of his saga, they didn't refer to it as the Great Slavic Revolt, as we do in hindsight. They just pictured him doing this fighting in his neighborhood there. But as I looked it up, I was like, oh, well, he's involved in this Great Slavic Revolt when the German peoples, the Saxons, who were in the Holy Roman Empire, were coming up against the Slavs, who were living in Poland and towards the east.

27:56And they had been pushing on the Poles for decades, decades. And finally, the Poles just decided, enough, we've got our backs to the wall here. And they revolted, and there was a huge war there for a little while. And it's not something that comes up in a lot of Western history. I really knew little about it until I started researching the book. But as I say, you know, I realized that Olaf was taking part in this. His saga writers just didn't describe it that way. They just described the fighting that he was in. So he's really fighting as the king of his Polish kingdom and, again, learns more about the warfare and everything.

28:33And I think he's a good king, brings a lot of the territory that was lost to the Saxons, brings that back into the kingdom for his queen. So at what point does he become enmeshed again in the story of the Western Viking sphere back in Norway and Denmark and the Anglo-Saxon area?

Olaf's Return to Norway

28:53At what point is he drawn back into the orbit of those goings-on? Well, what happened was his wife died. And you have to sort of figure out what happened to her. I mean, death was so common back then. I make the point in the book that most people didn't live to your age. When his wife died, they don't state it that way in the sagas because you don't write that way about a Viking even back then. But, I mean, it was pretty obvious his heart was broken and he just didn't want to stay there.

29:23He didn't want to be king anymore. And he handed it off to some guys who later turned it into the headquarters of the Jams Vikings and went his own way. He collected some men, threw them on a ship and went up around Denmark and started raiding down the European coast into the channel. So this is the moment where he kind of becomes a Viking again, doesn't he? Like he really takes on this mantle that his father and his family would have had. He finds a lot of success with these raids, doesn't he?

29:55Having such a hugely rounded background, is that what makes him so successful? Yeah, he's a successful Viking. I mean, he raids down the European coast into what's now Holland and even touches on like northern France, sails up around the northern part of England, around Scotland. The sagas mention that, that he's raiding up there, sails down into the Irish Sea and fighting there. And that's like total anarchy down there. I mean, there's you go raiding and find a little secluded nook to hide your ships for a little while, drink the beer you've captured and, you know, spend your money and go right back to it again.

30:33I mean, it's like the pirate age over there in the Irish Sea. But I think that he's aimless. He spends, I think it's three or four years doing that to no real purpose. I mean, he's not he's not trying to form a kingdom or take somebody else's kingdom. He's just sort of biding time. I think that he's kind of given up on the idea of ever being ever being a king. And, you know, the prophets, he's still out there. And I think that's what ultimately brings him around, because he hears word of another prophet who's living down in the Silly Isles.

31:06But anyway, they're way down there in the southwestern part off the southwestern coast. And he hears about a prophet who lives down there, a Christian monk, but, you know, who supposedly has the powers of prophecy. And Olaf goes down there and visits him. And this guy basically says, yeah, you're going to be a king, but first you're going to be nearly killed. And on the spot, Olaf's men basically mutiny against him or else he's attacked. The sagas are a little unclear. And he has a near-death experience.

31:39And when he comes out of it, just as the prophet predicted, he thinks there is something to this. This Christian god knows what he's talking about, and he undergoes baptism and becomes a Christian. And I guess it's also important to remember that this isn't his first experience of Christianity, because, as you said, he has previously spent time in Constantinople. And I think I'm right in saying that the Rus kingdoms were Christianizing as well around the same time, and he's lived there. So he's encountered Christianity before, hasn't he? Yeah, yeah.

32:09A lot of the Vikings' Christianity was spreading up through into Russia at that time. And, yeah, he was not a Christian before this, but he was Christian curious. I mean, he had seen—he had seen—you look at the Byzantine Empire, they're Christians. You look at the Holy Roman Empire, who had bounced the Vikings out, they're Christians. You look at the English kingdoms, they're Christians. I mean, any Viking of that age has to be looking around and saying, you know, this Christian god is a powerful god,

32:40where Odin and Thor are getting pushed out wherever we come up against him. So I think a lot of them, they weren't so opposed to becoming Christians. The Christian god was almost a god of war to them, a victorious god of war. Okay, so at this moment, Olaf has Christianized, and he has this new kind of sense of purpose and motivation, and he's looking now defiantly to reclaim his throne and try and find some way to do that. That, I think, is a good point to bring us to the Battle of Maldon.

The Battle of Maldon

33:14Olaf appears really prominently in this resurgence of Viking raids that happens in the 990s. What brings him into this story? This is, again, when the second Viking Age is beginning. There's a question. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refers to Olaf at Maldon, but his King Sagas don't even refer to the battle. I think as far as they were concerned, it was just another battle. It wasn't any big deal. We know the battle mostly because of the poem, the Battle of Maldon, which was written right around the same time and gives the English account.

33:50That doesn't even mention Olaf because that writer had no idea who he was, but it was some of the English monks who were writing the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle said that these Vikings were led by Olaf. Olaf was the way they wrote his name in Anglo-Saxon Old English. So at this point, Olaf has a fleet of almost 100 ships, and this is the biggest fleet to hit England in decades. I mean, there have been scattered little raids, but it's like three ships at a time or something like that. It's like I said before, a couple of farmers jumping in their dragon ships and going chicken thieving.

34:24But this is a real invasion, and the English are worried that it's going to be a real invasion. So they try to get their forces together. The Vikings are hitting hard and fast. They hit one town and take whatever they want and then move up the coast, and the English are trying to catch up to him. But Olaf moves up the coast and turns back and comes down again to Maldon, a little town in the river there. And that's where the English catch up to him because they've been coming up and he came back down, and that's where they catch up to him.

34:55And this is where they have this standoff then, isn't it? And as you say, this is the Battle of Maldon. This is one of the most famous clashes of the Viking Age, I think, certainly from the Anglo-Saxon perspective. And as you say, that's because it's preserved in Old English literature as a poem. And I have to confess, it is one of my absolute favorite pieces of Old English literature. It's also how you open your book, and you recount it really evocatively. Can you tell us what happens at the Battle of Maldon? Olaf's Vikings come up the river, and they come to an island, Northe Island, which is in the estuary of the river, in the river mouth.

35:28Vikings, when they were raiding, they loved to beach on islands because that's a natural moat, water all around. You can have your base there, and even you can be in the heart of enemy country, and they can't come across the water to you. Now, Northe is connected to the river bank, the southern river bank, by this little, maybe like 300-yard-wide causeway that was built back in the Roman age. The problem is that the tides there are very variable. At low tide, the causeway is a road leading to the island.

36:01At high tide, it's about 10 feet underwater. So, when the English arrive on the river bank, they're looking across to the island, and it's like, holy smokes, look at all these Vikings over here. You know, this is a serious invasion force. But the tide is up, and they're cut off. They can't do anything about it. So, you have this almost funny situation where you have the—and they're within shouting distance. I mean, it's just a little distance across the water where you have all the Vikings on the island and all the English on the river bank, more or less, shouting curses at each other.

36:35And the Vikings are saying, you better pay us, or we're going to come over and fight. And the English are saying, no! And nobody can do anything because the causeway is underwater. And they decide that the Vikings know that they can't cross the causeway and have a battle because you can only send—you know, it's only two lanes wide. It's still there. I mean, you can see it at low tide. And you would not be able to send your full force across. You would only be able to send a few men in the front of your full force, where as soon as they get to the other side, they're just going to get swallowed up by the English.

37:10And the Vikings know that, you know, this isn't such a—this island is a great spot for defense, but not so hot for offense. You know, we can't just go across there. So they call over to the English commander and ask him, hey, will you let us come over and fight? And he says, yes, I will. And most of the historians just cannot figure out why he would do that. I mean, the Vikings are sealed off. They don't necessarily have to fight, but he knows that he has to defeat them right now.

37:43If he lets it go, they're just going to hop on their ships, sail off, and start raiding again, and he's going to be playing the catch-up game. He wants to have a decisive battle then and there. So he calls across to him and says, the tide's going out. The road's soon going to be open. Come over and let's do it. And I think it's that element of the story that makes it so memorable and so tragic, isn't it? And as I said, you recount it absolutely brilliantly in the book. And I would also recommend that anyone reads the original poem itself as well in addition to that.

38:15So the outcome of that battle is that the Vikings win, don't they? Olaf's Vikings win specifically. And I think this is one of the major military victories that can be chalked up to him. I guess after this, how does he ultimately make the leap from warlord, war leader, to becoming the king of Norway? Because this is quite soon after now, isn't it? It's only a handful of years. Yeah. As you said, it's all the local forces on the English eastern part of England. They're basically wiped out at the Battle of Malden. And so the Vikings, they're just running roughshod over the whole part there of England.

38:51And finally, King Æthelred, who is known as the Unready, which is not really accurate, his nickname actually meant ill-advised. And part of the bad advice that he got was a lot of his advisors said, we have no army to fight these Vikings, but let's just pay them off. Let's just pay them to go away. And they make that deal, and Olaf does go away. But it dawns on him that, you know, there's a lot more money back there. Let's go bluff them into giving us some more.

39:22And this really sets a trend through Æthelred's reign of paying off Vikings. The Vikings show up, and it's like a protection racket. The Vikings are like, nice kingdom you got there. Shame if something happened to it. And he pays them. And finally, this gets to the point where he's having a hard time paying them off anymore. He's starting to run out of money. And it dawns on him that the best way to fight a Viking is with a Viking. And he goes to Olaf, who is a Christian, and says, I will be your godfather.

39:55And that has a lot more meaning then than it did now. I mean, it was really like an adoption thing. It sort of made Olaf into something like an English prince. And Olaf agreed to do that and not fight in England anymore. And he stuck to that promise. But he went back to his little earl or kingdom on the Irish Sea. And at this point, he's starting to catch the attention of the Norwegian earl, Earl Hakon. So Hakon, Jarl Hakon, the evil, knows that, oh, this is the Olaf that I was supposed to have killed way back all those years ago.

40:29I need to trick him into coming over here in Norway before he comes over with an army and tries to take over. Hakon's problem was that he was such a malicious ruler. He had a habit of bedding the wives of all his nobles that by the time that Olaf did come over, Hakon had been overthrown. And there was really not that much of a war. And Olaf is looking at this as God's doing. He eliminated the resistance to me taking over as king. The Norwegians, who are more or less united by this time, but are pagan, they say to Olaf, be our king.

41:03And Olaf becomes king. There's so much more detail in this story that we're not getting into. We skipped a chunk there. We have skipped chunks. We've skipped several chunks because this is such a long and detailed story. And yeah, it's all in your book. Brilliantly told. Once he becomes the king of Norway, he is most remembered for his role in converting the country in a quite iron-fisted way to Christianity. Can you take us through that?

Olaf's Conversion to Christianity

41:31And can you also take us through how that starts to lead us towards the Battle of Svalda, which is the end of Olaf's story? Climax of the story. Yeah, I said that Norway was united, but it was mostly still pagan when Hakon, the evil, was ruling there. He was pagan, and most of the people went back to worshiping the old gods. Now that Olaf is king, a king by God's grace, as he sees it, he forcibly converts everybody to Christianity. And he doesn't care who he's going to kill or cripple or maim or blind.

42:05He goes ahead and does that and converts all of that, all of Norway into Christian. But he makes a lot of enemies when he does that. Earl Hakon's sons have fled into exile, and they sort of strike up a deal with the Swedish king and also with Olaf's old friend, Svein Forkbeard, who had been fighting with him and was actually with him in England at a certain point. But Earl Hakon's sons go to the Swedish king and Svein Forkbeard and say, if we can get Olaf out of there and we go back to Norway, we will be your vassals.

42:38We will make Norway, we'll cut it up, we'll make part of it part of Sweden, and the rest of it can be part of Denmark. And, of course, Svein Forkbeard and the Swedish king, they immediately agree that they will combine all their forces and lay a trap for Olaf and get him out of the way. And the perfect opportunity arises. They sort of trick him into coming down to visit his ex-in-laws down in Poland at Jamsburg, where Olaf spends basically a whole summer there visiting with his in-laws. And his men, you know, falls starting to come on, they want to get home and get the harvest in and everything.

43:15So they say, we want to go. And he's like, okay, you know, you're that anxious, take off. I'll be along, I'm going to follow up with you. You know, we'll leave the same day, but you guys can go on ahead. So the fleet sort of trails out in a long, long line as the lead ships are sailing home. The enemy fleets, which are combined at this point, are all hidden behind an island as the fleet is going past. Svein Forkbeard and the Sons of Hakon are all standing on a promontory watching most of the Viking fleet go past.

43:47And Olaf is down to, I think they say, like 11 ships at the very end. And that's when the enemy fleet comes out to attack him because the ships that are way out in front don't even know that there's going to be a battle back here behind them. And they won't find out what's going on. Olaf is hugely outnumbered. The enemy fleets just basically surround him at the islander's folder. And by most accounts, that's the end of his story. Yeah, there's a degree of ambiguity, isn't there? Because I don't think anyone actually gets the credit for killing him.

44:18I believe that he kind of vanishes in a mysterious way. Well, there's a couple versions of it. Everybody thinks that he jumped overboard and drowned because he was wearing full armor and everything. But as I was researching it, first I had to find out where his folder was because nobody knows that for certain. But I came up with what I thought is probably the most likely candidate, an island off the north German coast. And some other historians agree with that, that the battle probably was there. Most historians think that he died there.

44:49But as I was researching the location, I think that I think he could have survived because these ships were all, they were very shallow draft. They only took up like two or three feet of water. And if you went overboard, you could be underwater, but standing on the bottom in water shallow enough that you could get your head up and take a breath. Most people think not. The more I researched it, the more I think this could have been done. It could have been done. I guess either way, it's the end of his story as we know it for certain, really.

45:21I think it's a really interesting ending because he has had this long, by Viking standards, fascinating life, all pointing him towards becoming king. But actually, he only has a very short rule. And during his rule, he makes a lot of enemies. Yeah, it's only about five years in. Yeah. And it feels like actually most of his life, it's not really about his kingship. Really, his life is about the story up to it. I guess his lasting impact really is on the Christianization of Norway. I guess that is his biggest lasting impact.

45:53When we're thinking about Olaf Tryggvason's legacy and his role in the Viking Age, how do you think we should think of him as compared to other great Viking figures? You mentioned Harold Hardrada as being very similar in lots of ways. Do you think they're comparable figures? Yeah, well, for one thing, if you look at their two lives, Harold Hardrada and Olaf Tryggvason, there are so many similarities in their lives. So that's one thing. But you mentioned Harold Hardrada, who died in 1066. And there's almost a direct line between the two of them.

46:23I mean, Olaf was the one who really started the second Viking Age. When he died, Svein Forkbeard, who had been his compatriot, sort of continued it, went back over and conquered England. And his son, Knut the Great, made England part of his North Sea Empire with Denmark and Norway. And Harold Hardrada, when he came on the scene, his idea was to recreate that North Sea Empire. And for that, he needed to go back over to England and conquer it, which he ultimately failed to do.

46:55But as I say, there's almost a direct line. And so I think that the last decades of the Viking Age really start again with Olaf Tryggvason.

47:05That was historian and author Don Holway speaking to James Osborne. His new book, Hammer of the Gods, shares more about the life of Olaf Tryggvason and the surrounding context of the Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age.

47:35The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age. The Viking Age.