Читать книгу Famous Sea Fights, from Salamis to Tsu-Shima - A. Hilliard Atteridge - Страница 7

a viking fleet

The writer of the "Saga" tells how in the centre of the fleet the "Long Serpent" lay, with the "Crane" and the "Short Serpent" to port and starboard. The sterns of the three ships were in line, and so the bow of the "Long Serpent" projected far in front of the rest. As the sailors secured the ships in position, Ulf the Red-haired, who commanded on the forecastle of the "Long Serpent," went aft and called out to the King that if the "Serpent" lay so far ahead he and his men would have tough work in the bow. "Are you afraid?" asked the King. "We are no more afraid forward than you are aft," replied Ulf, with a flash of anger. The King lost his temper and threatened Ulf with an arrow on his bowstring. "Put down your bow," said Ulf. "If you shoot me you wound your own hand," and then he went back to his post on the forecastle deck.

The allied fleet was now formed in line and bearing down on the Norwegians. Sigvald Jarl, who had lured the King into this ambush, hung back with his eleven ships, and Olaf with his sixty had to meet a threefold force. King Svend, with the Danish fleet, formed the enemy's centre. To his right Olaf's namesake, King Olaf Svensker, led the Swedish ships. On the left was Erik, with the rebel heathen Jarls of Norway. Olaf watched the enemy's approach and talked to Kolbiorn and the men of the Shield-burg. He did not reckon that the Danes or the Swedes would give much trouble, he said; the Danes were soft fellows, and the Swedes would be better "at home pickling fish" than risking themselves in fight with Norsemen, but Erik's attack would be dangerous. "These are Norwegians like ourselves. It will be hard against hard."

Perhaps we have here a touch of flattery for his countrymen from the poet of the "Saga," a Norseman telling the tale to men of his own race. However this may be, the words put into Olaf's mouth were true so far as the rebel Jarls were concerned, even if they did injustice to Dane and Swede.

Erik Jarl seems to have had some inventive talent and some idea of naval tactics. His ship was called the "Iron Beard," because her bows bristled with sharpened spikes of iron. She was to be herself a weapon, not merely a means of bringing fighting men to close quarters for a hand-to-hand struggle. It is remarkable that, though it proved useful at the battle of Svold, the armed bow found no regular place in Viking warfare. The "Iron Beard" also anticipated modern methods in another way. Her bulwarks were covered with iron-plating. It cannot have been of any serious thickness, for a Viking ship had not enough displacement to spare for carrying heavy armour; but the thin plates were strong enough to be a defence against arrows and spears, and as these would not penetrate a thick wooden bulwark it seems likely that the plating was fixed on a rail running along each side, thus giving a higher protection than the bulwark itself. Erik's ship was thus a primitive ironclad ram.

Though Olaf had spoken lightly of the Danes, it was King Svend's squadron that began the fight, rowing forward in advance of the rest and falling on the right and right centre of Olaf's fleet. The Swedes at first hung back. Svend himself on the left of the Danish attack steered straight for the projecting bows of the "Long Serpent." Red-haired Ulf grappled the Danish King's ship, boarded her, and after a fierce fight in which the Norwegian battle-axes did deadly work, cleared her from end to end. King Svend saved his life by clambering on board of another ship. Olaf and his men from the high stern of the "Long Serpent" shot their arrows with telling effect into the Danish ships. All along the centre the Norwegians held their own, and gradually the Danes began to give way. It was then only the Swedes worked their ships into the mêlée that raged in front of the line of Norwegian bows. To have swept round the line and attacked in flank and rear, while the Danes still grappled it in front, would have been a more effective method of attack, but the opponents thought only of meeting front to front like fighting bulls. It may be too that Olaf's fleet had so drifted that there was not much room to pass between its right wing on the land.

But however this may be, there was plenty of sea room on the left, and here Erik Jarl, in the "Iron Beard," led the attack and used his advantage to the full. Part of his squadron fell upon the Norwegian front; but the "Iron Beard" and several of her consorts swung round the end of the line, and concentrated their attack on the outside ship. Erik had grasped a cardinal principle of naval tactics, the importance of trying to crush a part of the hostile line by bringing a local superiority of force to bear upon it. It was "hard against hard"—Viking against Viking—but the Norwegians in the end ship were hopelessly outnumbered. They fought furiously and sold their lives dearly; but soon the armed bow of the "Iron Beard" drove between their ship and the next, the lashings were cut, and the Norwegian drifted out of the line, with her deck heaped with dead. Erik let her drift and attacked the next ship in the same way. He was eating up Olaf's left wing ship by ship, while the Danes and Swedes kept the centre and right busy.

It was the bloodiest fight that the North had ever seen, a fight to the death, for though there was now small hope of victory, the Norse battle madness was strong in Olaf and his men. As the day wore on the right held its own; but one by one every ship on the left had been cleared by Erik and the Jarls, and now the battle raged round the three great ships in the centre, the "Crane" and the two "Serpents." Erik came up and drove the bow of the "Iron Beard" into the "Long Serpent's" bulwarks. The rebel Jarl stood on the forecastle behind the bristling spikes, his blood-stained battle-axe in hand and his Shield-burg standing close around him.

They had now hard work to ward off the arrows that came whistling from the "Long Serpent," for at such close quarters Erik had been recognized, and more than one archer shot at him. The "Saga" tells how young Einar Tamberskelver, the best of the bowmen of Norway, so strong that he could send a blunt arrow through a bull's hide, had posted himself in the rigging of the "Long Serpent" and made the rebel Jarl his mark. His arrows rattled on the shields of Erik's guard. One of them grazed his helmet, whistled over the "Iron Beard's" deck and buried itself in her rudder-head. Crouching in the bow of the "Iron Beard" behind her armour plates was a Finnish archer, and the Finlanders were such good bowmen that men said sorcery aided their skill. Erik told him to shoot the man in the "Serpent's" rigging. The Finn, to show his marksmanship, aimed at Einar's bowstring and cut it with his arrow. The bow released from the string sprang open and broke with a loud report. "What is that sound?" asked Olaf. Einar sprang down from the rigging and answered, "It is the sound of the sceptre of Norway falling from your grasp." It was noticed that Olaf's hand was bleeding, "his gauntlet was full of blood," but he had given no sign when he was wounded. Arrows, javelins, and stones were falling in showers on the decks of the "Crane" and the "Serpents," for the Danes and Swedes worsted in the close fight had drawn off a little, and were helping Erik's attack by thus fighting at a safer distance.

Erik now boarded the "Long Serpent" amidships, but was beaten back. He brought up more of his ships and gathered a larger boarding-party. The Danish and Swedish arrows had thinned the ranks of Ulf's men in the "Long Serpent's" bows. When Erik led a second storming-party on board, Danes and Swedes too came clambering over the bow, and the "Long Serpent" attacked on all sides was cleared to the poop. Here Olaf fought with Kolbiorn, Einar and the men of the Shield-burg around him. He was somewhat disabled by his wounded hand, but he still used his battle-axe with deadly effect. The attacking party were not quite sure which of the tall men in gilded armour was the King, but at such close quarters some of them soon recognized him, and Erik called to his men not to kill Olaf, but to make him prisoner. Olaf knew well that if his life was spared for a while it would be only to put him to death finally with the cruelty the heathen Vikings delighted in inflicting on their enemies. As his men fell round him and his party was driven further and further astern, he must have seen that, outnumbered as his men were, and with himself wounded, he would soon be overmastered and made prisoner. There was just one chance of escape for the best swimmer in Norway. Holding up his shield he stepped on the bulwark, threw the shield at his enemies, and dived overboard. Kolbiorn tried to dive with him, but was seized and dragged back to the ship. When Erik found he was not the King he spared his life.

The few who remained of the Shield-burg sprang overboard. Some were killed by men who were waiting in boats to dispose of the fugitives, others escaped by diving and swimming, and reached Danish and Swedish ships where they asked for, and were given, quarter. Einar, the archer, was one of those thus saved, and he is heard of later in the Danish wars of England.

Olaf was never seen again. Sigvald's ships, after having watched the fight from afar, were rowing up to the victorious fleets, and for a long time there was a rumour that King Olaf had slipped out of his coat of mail as he swam under water, and then rose and eluded Erik's boats, and reached one of Sigvald's ships, where he was hidden. The tale ran that he had been taken back to Wendland, where he was waiting to reappear some day in Norway and claim his own. But years went on and there were no tidings of King Olaf Tryggveson. He had been drowned in his armour under the stern of the "Long Serpent."

King Olaf is still, after nine centuries, one of the popular heroes of the Norwegian people. He had a twofold fame, as the ideal of a sea-king, as the ruler who tried in his own wild untaught way to win the land of the Fiords to Christendom. Another Olaf, who completed this last work a few years later, and who, like Olaf Tryggveson, reigned over Norway in right of his prowess and his descent from Harold the Fair-haired, is remembered as St. Olaf, saint and martyr; but no exploit of either king lives in popular tradition so brightly as the story of Olaf Tryggveson's death-battle at Svold. "My life is in God's hands," he had said, "but flight would be shame for ever." His fight against desperate odds and ending in defeat and death won him fame for ever.