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the life of Anskar relates, that he undertook an
expedition against the Curians who had thrown off
the Swedish yoke, and reduced their country again
to pay tribute. Within this period also fall the
conquests of the Swedish king Eric Edmundson in
the East, where he is said to have subjugated
Finnland, Carelia, Estland, and Courland (Kurland),
which were in aftertimes called the old dependencies
of Sweden [1]. These statements coincide
with Nestor’s account of the foundation of Varangian
rule among the Slavons and Finns. Thus
these recollections illustrate each other, and stand
in undoubted connexion. For although the names
neither of Ruric nor his brothers are known to
northern poetry, the sagas afford no exact catalogue
of the Swedish kings, in a period when royal birth
and a warlike retinue conferred the title on every
leader, and the sea-kings swarmed in all waters.
We find ourselves now in the middle of the
ninth century, which forms in several respects a
new epoch. The first seeds of Christianity in the
north were sown amidst the tempest of the northern
invasions, which at this time raged most fiercely, and
made the conversion of the Northmen the common
interest of all Christendom. The Danish monarchy
was founded by Gorm, who united Denmark under
one head. The royalty of the old Upsala kings,
originally resting on their sacerdotal character,
now appears more firmly established over both
Swedes and Goths, for the powerful Eric Edmundson
is mentioned as the undisputed sovereign of
both nations. Harald the Fair-haired, a
descendant of the Yngling line which had been overthrown
in Sweden, broke the power of the inferior princes
in Norway, and first raised himself to the
masterdom over its entire territory. The new sway
produced an extensive emigration of malcontents and
fugitives, one division of whom, under Rolf’s
command, established themselves in Normandy, whence
England was conquered and the throne of Naples
erected. To Britain, Ireland, and the islands of
the Western Sea, fresh bands of warlike adventurers
streamed forth upon the well-known track.
Swedish Norrland received new settlers; Iceland,
one of whose discoverers was a Swede, and to
which several sons of Swedish princes removed,
was colonized, and the coasts of Greenland and
North America were soon visited from this point
by maritime adventurers. Among Icelandic fires
and snows a new focus of northern poetry was
kindled, while the number of contemporary
witnesses from the time of Harald the Fair-haired
imparts greater certitude to the testimony of the
sagas. Snorro Sturleson, who observes a long
silence regarding Sweden subsequently to the fall
of the Yngling line, now sometimes removes his
narrative to Swedish ground, and for the
history of the north we begin to obtain a
determinate chronology. Eric Edmundson, having
subjected to his power that part of Norway which
formerly made part of Ragnar’s dominions, was
stripped of it by Harald the Fair-haired, and
continued at war with him to his death for the
possession of Vermeland; he died, says Snorro, when
Harald had been for ten years sovereign of
Norway. If we reckon from the year in which the
latter acquired the whole of Norway [2], the decease
of Eric Edmundson will fall in 885.
He was succeeded by his son Biörn, whose whole
history is contained in the honourable testimony
which, eighty years after his death, the Speaker
(Taleman) of the Swedish commonalty bore to his
memory in the assembly of the general diet, that
it had fared well with the realm of Sweden while
king Biörn lived. He is surnamed the old, and as
the Icelanders give him a reign of fifty years, we
may conclude that he died in 935. Eric and Olave
were his sons and successors; since the former was
alive in 993, they were probably in early youth at
their father’s demise. This is also the time in
which Ring, with his sons, is said to have reigned
over Sweden. As their names are not mentioned
in the contest which afterwards arose within the
royal family, he must either be placed as regent
under the minority of the legitimate heirs to the
throne, or both he and his sons belong to the class
of petty kings which, notwithstanding the attempt
of Ingiald to suppress them, we find long afterwards
subsisting in Sweden.
Eric and Olave, after they had assumed the
government, reigned conjointly until the latter’s
death. He left a son who is known under the
name of Styrbiörn the Strong. When the young
prince had reached his twelfth year, he refused all
further attendance at his uncle’s board, and placed
himself on the barrow wherein the ashes of his
father were deposited, for a token that he
challenged his inheritance. Eric promised that upon
attaining his sixteenth year, he should have
possession of that part of the kingdom which fell to
him by right; meanwhile, as he did not cease to
instigate his friends to revolt, sixty ships with their
crews were given to him, that he might practise
himself in warlike and distant enterprizes. Thus
furnished, Styrbiörn distinguished himself as a rover
by the extent of his devastations, and became at
length captain of Jomsburg, on the Pomeranian
coast. This was the most notorious seat of the
northern Vikings, forming a completely military
republic, the constitution of which reminds us of
the West Indian buccaneers of the seventeenth
century. Thence he sailed with a great fleet to
Sweden, compelling Harald Gormson, king of Denmark,
to attend him, who therefore afterwards abandoned
him in the hour of danger. But Styrbiörn caused
all his ships to be burned, in order to exclude every
hope but that of victory, and marched towards
Upsala. At Fyrisvall (a plain on the stream of
Fyris, in the environs of Upsala), was fought the
famous battle of three days’ duration, which gave
king Eric his surname of the Victorious. Styrbiörn
sacrificed to Thor; Eric went in the night to the
temple of Odin, and devoted himself to the god,
after an interval of ten years should have elapsed.
Styrbiörn and almost all his followers fell in the
conflict. When the victory was won, Eric ascended
an eminence by Upsala, and made enquiry whether
any man would recite an ode of triumph for a
guerdon from the king’s own hand. Then
Thorward Hialteson stepped forward, poured forth the
song, and received from his sovereign a golden
ring. It is remarked that he endited no poetry
either previously or subsequently; but the two
strophes rehearsed in the presence of the king and
the army have been preserved to our own days [3].
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