Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/644

Rh occupied in foreign expeditions, and at last fell in Ireland in 1103.

The three sons of Magnus succeeded to the kingdom at his death. One of them died in youth, but Sigurd and Eystein reigned long together, Eystein being a king like Olaf Kyrre, while Sigurd inherited to the full the warlike qualities of his family. The great external event of the reign is Sigurd's expedition to the East, from which he gained the name of Jorsalafari (the traveller to Jerusalem). The account given by the saga of the origin of that expedition is characteristic and probably enough true. Many men had already been to Jerusalem and to Constantinople, and there they had got renown, and had all kinds of news to tell when they came home, and those who had taken service at Constantinople had the best luck in the way of gain; so the people bade one of the kings undertake the expedition. Sigurd went with a great force, fought many battles by the way, gained much plunder in heathen lands, and visited Jerusalem and Constantinople. Sigurd survived Eystein, and died in 1130. In his last year he showed traces of insanity. He was the last true representative of Harold Fairhair's great race, and with him the classical period of Norwegian history may almost be said to come to an end.

With the death of Sigurd commences a long period of internal strife. His son Magnus was forced to share the sovereignty with a colleague, Harold Gilchrist, who professed to be a natural son of Magnus Barefoot, and who in a short time succeeded in deposing his colleague. Harold was slain in 1136 by another pretender. Parties had formed themselves amongst the lendermenn aristocracy, who took as their nominal heads the sons and grandsons of Harold Gilchrist, often mere children; the church hierarchy, now growing powerful, interfered in the struggle, and the whole land was divided by bitter feuds. The disorganization of the country was shown by the appearance of bands of armed disorderly men, generally at first on the Swedish frontier. Unity at last seemed likely to be secured by an innovation in the succession. A powerful chief named Erling Skakke

managed to get his son Magnus, who by his mother's side was a grandson of Sigurd Jorsalafari, accepted as king, first by the leading party and then practically by the whole country. He came to terms with the hierarchy; an agreement was entered into in 1164, by which various privileges were secured to the church, and a definite rule of succession was adopted. The kingdom was to be held as a fief of St Olaf, and the church dignitaries were to have a powerful voice in the succession. In return for these concessions Magnus was solemnly crowned by the archbishop of Throndhjem, and his defective claim was thus strengthened by a new form of legitimation.

There seemed every reason to suppose that the kingdom would now rest firmly on the united support of the aristocracy and the church, but in reality the basis proved to be an insecure one. The aristocracy stood no longer as formerly in close connexion with the mass of the free people, and they had not yet become welded together in a

separate organized order. One of the troops of adventurers which had appeared in the previous state of confusion, and had been the followers of one of the various claimants to the throne, was known as the Birkebeinar. They were on the verge of extinction when they secured a

leader of no common type. Sverri was a Faroe Islander. He seems to have been well enough aware himself that he had no claims to royal birth, but he gave himself out as the son of Sigurd, the son of Harold Gilchrist, and as such was accepted by the Birkebeinar. In a little while it became clear that his talents for command were of the first order, and the little troop of disorderly men became in his hands a disciplined military force. A fierce struggle

ensued with Magnus, who in the end was defeated and slain in 1184 at Fimreite on Nord Fjord. Sverri became king, and represented himself as maintaining the old law of succession and the old order of things as against the arrangement of 1164. But in reality his reign was the commencement of a new phase. The older kings were within very narrow limits absolute, and claimed the kingdom as an odal right; but they were confronted and controlled by the mass of free landowners under their local aristocratic chiefs. A change had gradually taken place, and it seemed as if a separate aristocracy were to detach themselves from the people, and, with the help of the church, take the administration into their own hands. Sverri struck the hardest blows at both. He effectually prevented the formation of a powerful nobility, and he wholly repudiated the domination of the church. He had hammered out for himself a theory of church and state not unlike that of Henry VIII., and held that the king derived his title from God, and was entitled to an equal supremacy over both. The church retaliated by excommunication, for which, however, Sverri and his followers cared nothing, and by which their position does not seem to have been in the least affected. New officials appear in the administration of local affairs who were appointed and directly controlled by the king, and if his plans had been fully carried out it seems likely that the whole power would have been centralized under his hands. He had to fight, however, for his kingdom to the very end, and at his death in 1202 it seemed doubtful what turn affairs would take.

The party strife continued with scarcely an intermission until long after Sverri's death. The party of the Birkebeinar, however, kept well together and were on the whole the stronger. Their rivals had their chief seat in the south, and were closely connected with Denmark. At

last Hakon, a grandson of Sverri, was placed on the throne in 1217, and in 1240 the last of the rival claimants to the throne fell, and the whole country was once more at peace under one king. The stormy times of Norway's history appear suddenly to pass away, and the stillness that ensues is likened by one of its historians to “the stillness on a battlefield after the battle.” Hakon died in 1263. There are only two external events of note in his long reign. The one is the acquisition of Iceland, which, like the parent country, had been thoroughly worn out by the struggles of its chiefs. The other is Hakon's Scotch expedition in 1261, which was put an end to by a storm and by the not very important battle of Largs, and which showed conclusively how much the seamanship and fighting power of

Norway had declined. Hakon's son Magnus surrendered the Hebrides to Scotland by the treaty of Perth in 1268. There is some dispute whether or not this was done under condition of a tribute, but there seems to be no doubt that the tribute, if due, was at all events never paid. Magnus was known by the surname of Lagabætr (law reformer), a designation which indicates the chief work of his reign. The great changes that had taken place during the long period of the civil wars must have rendered some alteration of the old law imperatively necessary; and, while something had been done in Hakon's reign, the work was completed under Magnus. In place of the old provincial laws a new law book was prepared for the whole kingdom, compiled from the older laws with the changes that seemed necessary. Many of these changes relate to customs and rights which had their origin in heathen times. Others show the altered relation of classes. A conspicuous feature is the new importance of the king's

officials and the increased power and position of the king himself. Magnus died in 1280 and was succeeded by his son Erik, whose only child, the Maid of Norway,