It was a beautiful day today in Minneapolis. Not too hot, and we had some afternoon showers, which makes three days in a row with rain. We needed the rain.

I also need my car back, but that’s not happened yet. Tomorrow is the day they said they’d get the cables; but I’ve already known so much disappointment in that regard that I’ve kind of resigned myself to a life of perpetual longing and disappointment, not unlike my erstwhile dreams of marriage.

So I’m giving you the music above – a piece from Grieg that I’m quite fond of. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson wrote a play called “Sigurd Jorsalfar” about King Sigurd the Crusader of Norway. Edvard Grieg wrote the incidental music. This is the most famous of those pieces, the “Tribute March.” I seem to recall Garrison Keillor was fond of using it for parody purposes.

Sigurd is one of the most renowned kings in Norwegian history. He was remembered not only for leading a crusade to the Holy Land (he was the first European king to lead a crusade), but for being part of the last relatively peaceful reign in Norway in the Middle Ages.

The ancient laws of Norway made all of a king’s sons – legitimate or not – eligible for the crown. In Sigurd’s case, he himself shared the monarchy with two brothers with no violence, outliving them both. But after him came a string of pretenders whose claims carried varying credibility. All they needed was a story that their mothers had slept with a king of Norway, and a willingness to undergo the Iron Ordeal (you read about it in The Year of the Warrior) in some form. The result was a long period of civil wars, picturesque in their bloodshed and cruelty.

At the end of his life, King Sigurd (according to the saga) began to lose his mental faculties. He shocked the country by asking the bishop of Bergen to give him a divorce from his queen, who was much beloved by the people, so he could marry a younger woman. The bishop of Bergen refused – painfully aware that the king was sometimes losing control these days, and could kill him. The king did not kill him, however, but did an end run on him by establishing a new diocese in Stavanger and installing a new bishop there, an Englishman named Reinald. Reinald was happy to do the king a favor in return for a large monetary contribution. The bishop paid for his simony in the end, however – King Harald Gille hanged him in 1135 on suspicion of withholding royal treasure.

They played hardball in old Norway.