Tag Archives: Haakon the Good

Non-fiction, Writing

Taking a stand for Athelstan

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The YouTube video above concerns my current study, King Athelstan of England, who is described in the Icelandic sagas as “the Mighty,” though he never attained the popular status of “the Great” in his own country. Today he’s generally acknowledged to have been the first monarch of all England – of all the English. This is because he unified Wessex with Mercia, and the other little kingdoms the Vikings had left tottering had little choice but to tag along.

I’m re-reading Paul Hill’s book, The Age of Athelstan, in preparation for my Haakon the Good book. Haakon is one of those saga characters whose very existence is frequently questioned by historians. Scholars these days tend to be so skeptical of saga accounts that they actually treat a saga mention as evidence against a person’s existence – as if people are more likely to tell stories about people they made up than ones who actually existed. As if nothing ever happened in prehistory, so all the stories had to be invented.

Haakon is not mentioned in any contemporary document we possess. Although we’re told he was raised in Athelstan’s court, no record of his presence has survived. We know of several exiled princes who were raised by Athelstan, but Haakon gets no ink.

I need hardly say that I do believe he existed, and what I read about Athelstan’s court seems to me an excellent place for a king like him to be educated. Athelstan was interested in writing and education (despite the fact that not much record of his rule survives). Young Haakon may or may not have been interested in reading and writing Latin himself (though I figure I’ll make him literate). But there was also much to be learned there about running a kingdom, and (especially) organizing national defense – a field in which the sagas say Haakon made innovations in Norway. Athelstan carried out legal reforms – for instance, he raised the minimum age for capital punishment to fifteen, which was pretty soft by the standards of the time. Haakon also took an interest in revising the law.

There is also reason to connect him with Glastonbury Abbey, and with Saint Dunstan. The sagas say Egil Skallagrimsson fought for Athelstan as a mercenary at the Battle of Brunanburh, though Haakon doesn’t take to him.

Also not implausible. Egil was an easy guy to dislike.

Writing

Back to Haakon

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I am now officially on my own again, work-wise. For the last few weeks I’ve been working on the magazine I edit for the Valdres Samband (an organization of descendants from a particular region of Norway), but I sent that to the printers yesterday. This means I can devote my powers once again to my Work In Progress, my novel about King Haakon the Good of Norway. That’s him on top of the column in the picture above. I’m on the ground, on your right, while my friend Einar is on the left. The photo was taken on my last trip to the Center of the Universe, at Fitjar, where Haakon died.

I’m still mostly doing research, going through books and noting down ideas and intriguing facts. For instance, I discovered in Bishop Fridtjof Birkeli’s book, Tolv År Hadde Kristendommen Vært i Norge (Twelve Years Had Christianity been in Norway, sadly out of print now, but I have a copy), that Haakon had a heathen wife, according to one very old source.

This is great. There’s all sorts of things I can do with the situation of a Christian king married to a heathen. It also addresses the issue of Haakon’s sexuality, which was insulted by Poul Anderson in his novel, Mother of Kings (which I do not choose to link). Anderson made Haakon a homosexual — one assumes because Haakon left no heir, and the sagas don’t mention his marriage. Needless to say, I don’t intend to take Anderson’s lead.

I came up with a great scene, pleasingly offensive, which I plan to incorporate somewhere in my account of Haakon’s childhood. It’ll be something like this:

“Let me tell you something about women, lad. Something you’ll need to understand. You should listen to women when they talk. Listen carefully. Give them your full attention. Then do the exact other way round from what they say. If she says she wants to be handled roughly, to be grabbed up, carried off and ravished, then pick flowers for her. Sing her songs of love. Tickle her knees like a little girl.

“And if she says she wants a kind man in whom she can confide her deepest thoughts and hopes, well, then take hold of her, push her up against a wall, and hump her on the spot.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because none of them knows what she wants. We men are always complaining that we don’t understand women. Let me tell you – they don’t understand themselves any better.”

“So they always say they want what they don’t really want?”

“Always. Most of the time. Seven times out of ten. Or six. Maybe five. As often as not, anyway.”

My working title at the moment is That Was a Good King, a quotation from Beowulf. But I’m not married to it.

Reviews, Writing

Netflix review and writing update: ‘The Last Kingdom’

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Harry Gilby as Aethelstan in ‘The Last Kingdom’

Okay, I’ve capped my superhuman achievement of watching the Vikings series all the way through, by watching all 5 seasons – plus the final 2-hour movie – of the Netflix series, The Last Kingdom.

As I opined in a previous post, The Last Kingdom benefits from a previous viewing of Vikings, because it looks better by that comparison. But, as is the way of this world, things deteriorated as they went on.

The first two seasons followed Bernard Cornwell’s original novels fairly well – or so I’m told. (I haven’t read the books myself.)

Starting with Season 3, one seems to discern the influence of the Vikings series. One imagines studio executives gathering the writers in a shadowy dungeon, threatening them with racks, iron maidens, and thumbscrews, and telling them, “Make it more like Vikings. Which means more like Game of Thrones. Give us more treachery. More betrayal. The shortest distance between any two points ought to be through a knife wound in the back.”

Thus (aside from the obvious – such as the hero Uhtred’s adoption of Ragnar Lothbrok’s ahistorical rooster’s comb haircut), we see characters changing their personalities abruptly, for no particular reason. They make unreasonable demands, tell lies for the fun of it, and choose suicidal policies guaranteed to make enemies out of friends. The point is not realism, but the maximum possible treachery. I said that it’s Uhtred’s idiotic life choices that propel the plot in the early seasons. Later on, Uhtred becomes the voice of reason, restraining a succession of kings from one disastrous, counterintuitive caprice after another.

I was particularly disappointed, in the later seasons and the final movie, of the treatment of King Athelstan, one of my personal favorites. I’m fond of Athelstan because he raised Norway’s King Haakon the Good at his court, and made him a Christian.

[Spoiler alert] In the final movie, Seven Kings Must Die, Athelstan, who’s been a decent fellow up to now, suddenly murders his brother treacherously (something that absolutely did not happen in real life), and is also portrayed as a homosexual.

Yeah, I should have seen that coming. Athelstan never married or fathered a child, so obviously he must have been homosexual. As you can probably understand, I take that canard personally.

Interestingly, Paul Anderson, in his novel, Mother of Kings, makes Athelstan’s foster son, Haakon, a homosexual.

Fictioneers have treated this admirable pair very shabbily.

And it occurred to me then that somebody ought to write a good novel about Haakon’s life, emphasizing his education (there’s a good chance he might even have been literate) at Athelstan’s court.

Eric Schumacher has written a series of books on Haakon, but I read the first one and didn’t like his treatment.

And then I thought of a Bridge Character for a Haakon story. Which means I’ll have to write the book now.

I’ve mentioned more than once that I attribute the success of my Erling books (success as literary works, not financial success, obviously) to the insertion of Father Ailill as a bridge character. A bridge character is a character with a relatable enough personality that he can explain a very alien, antique culture to modern readers. (Hobbits are the classic bridge characters in Tolkien, which is why The Lord of the Rings is so much more accessible than the Silmarillion.)

This bridge character came to me almost in a moment. He won’t be anything like Father Ailill. In fact, he’ll be a Viking himself.

How can a Viking be a bridge character to the Viking Age?

This will not be your ordinary Viking.

Watch this space for the next couple years, for more information.

Authors, Fiction, Reading

The Lighting of the Beacons

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhRFaY8A9cA

I’m sure you recognize this clip from The Two Towers, in which the beacons are lit in Gondor, to call for help from Rohan.

I believe (I could be wrong) that the inspiration for this plot element in The Lord of the Rings was the following passage from Heimskringla (here in Lee Hollander’s translation) and the Saga of King Haakon the Good:

After this battle King Haakon incorporated into the laws for all the land along the seas, and as far inland as the salmon goes upstream, that all districts were divided into “ship-levies”; and these he parcelled out among the districts…. Along with this it was ordered that whenever there was a general levy, beacons were to be lit on high mountains, so that one could be seen from the other. It is said that news of the levy travelled from the southern-most beacon to the northernmost borough in seven nights.

If anyone knows of an earlier example of such a beacon signalling system, which might have inspired Tolkien, let me know.