Harald Hardrada (12 page)

In fact, there is a question mark over authorship of this strophe when Snorri ascribes it to Bolverk Arnorsson and the same lines quoted in
Fagrskinna
are attributed to Valgard of Voll. Less is known of Valgard than of Bolverk, who is thought to have been a brother of the more famous Thjodolf, but both are reliably included in the list of Harald's court-poets and so the historical authority of the lines in no way depends on the precise identity of their author. Their implication for the duration of Harald's stay in Russia would seem to pose a problem, though, because, as Sigfús Blöndal observed in his study of the Varangians, the reference could be taken to mean that Harald spent no more than the two years after Stiklestad in Russia, although neither Snorri nor the
Fagrskinna
author reads it that way. Indeed, Snorri claims that Harald spent ‘several years in Gardariki and made expeditions east of the Baltic', a statement convincingly interpreted by Blöndal as evidence for his being ‘employed on the arduous
pólútasvarf
'.
³
By this term
pólútasvarf
(which will occur again at a crucial point in Harald's Varangian service) is meant the winter round of tribute-gathering from subject peoples conducted by the
druzhina
, which would have been accompanied by Varangian mercenaries. These expeditions, conducted on horseback and by sled along frozen rivers in the depth of the northern winter, would have been an arduous duty indeed and probably a dangerous one too, when the least welcome could be expected from hosts confronted with the demands of heavily armed representatives of a distant overlord.

As to the dating problem implied by ‘the next, and the next after year . . . in Gardar', Blöndal's suggestion that the reference may have applied only to the period of Harald's stay with Eilif in Novgorod would seem to provide the most plausible explanation – and one with further bearing on Harald's Russian service when it makes all the more apparent the liberties taken by Snorri Sturluson with the source material he had drawn from the Orkney
Jarls' saga
. Assuming, of course, that the
Jarls' saga
account has been accurately preserved in
Orkneyinga saga
(and there is no reason to think otherwise), then Snorri stands accused of gross exaggeration in his claim for Harald having shared command of Russian forces with Eilif Rognvaldsson. What
Orkneyinga saga
actually says is that all the Norwegians who had come to Novgorod with Rognvald Brusason joined Eilif's forces, and presumably in the capacity of Varangian mercenaries. Thus their taking over the ‘defences of Gardariki' only makes sense if ‘Gardariki' is understood to mean Jaroslav's northern dominions centred upon Novgorod, which would also correspond to Eilif's sphere of command as Jaroslav's
voevoda
but still falls a long way short of responsibility for defence of all the lands of the Rus.

So too, the skaldic reference to Harald fighting beside Eilif – ‘in phalanx tight with Rognvald's son' being the literal translation – need mean nothing more than his having been in action with Eilif's forces, even though his personal qualities and royal kinship would have very probably have afforded him a status beyond that of a rank-and-file warrior, even placing him in some capacity of command, if only over the new Norwegian Varangian recruits to whom he would already have been a familiar comrade-in–arms. While Rognvald Brusason was almost certainly admitted to Jaroslav's
druzhina
, there cannot be said to be any real evidence for Harald's serving in Russia in any other capacity than that of a Varangian mercenary, albeit one recognised for his remarkable qualities even by the Grand Prince Jaroslav himself. A couplet attributed to the skald Thjodolf, although preserved only in
Flateyjarbók
and not quoted by Snorri, would seem to allude to just this point in Harald's career when it tells how ‘Jarisleif saw the way in which the king [Harald] was developing; the fame grew of the holy king's [Olaf's] brother'.

The relationship between Harald and Jaroslav, founded on genuine mutual respect and sustained over more than a decade, was certainly formed before Harald left for Byzantium. His military qualities might even have come to Jaroslav's notice during the Polish campaign, but the skald's reference to his growing fame would seem to suggest a later date for Jaroslav's recognition of the true potential of this unusually ambitious seventeen-year-old Varangian. At some point between his service with Eilif and his departure for Byzantium, Harald had evidently gravitated southward from Novgorod to Kiev which served as the focal point of assembly for Russian trading fleets bound down the Dnieper route to the Black Sea and the beckoning marketplaces of
Grikaland
(literally the ‘land of the Greeks'), as the empire of the Byzantines was known to the northmen.

Kiev's key location along the east-way to Byzantium was the reason for its displacement of Novgorod as the new capital centre of the Rus towards the end of the ninth century. The earlier prominence of Novgorod derived from its proximity to the northern source of furs and its access to the Volga route along which they could be traded for silver from the east. But the progress of the Rus in that direction was so constrained by the might of the Bulgars on the middle Volga and the power of the Khazars (a highly sophisticated people of Turkic origin) along its lower reaches that they were rarely able to venture further south than the great marketplace of Bulghar. So it was that their trade with the Arabs was largely conducted through powerful ‘middle men' in an arrangement demanding great outlay of effort in return for suspiciously chiselled profits, whereas the Dnieper route to Constantinople promised direct dealing with the famously wealthy Greeks in a market ever eager for the most exotic and luxurious of merchandise.

The Rus were still northmen in character and culture throughout the ninth century, and so it was only to be expected that their first contact with Byzantium – launched from Novgorod in 860 – was as viking raiders, but the mighty walls of Constantinople (or
Miklagarð
as it was called in the Norse) and the fire-breathing warships of the imperial fleet had driven off the raid of 860 as they were to do again on occasions through the following two centuries. Trading, rather than raiding, was clearly going to be the safer and more profitable approach to the Greeks, as would be confirmed by the generous trade treaties (of which the texts, terms and names of signatories still survive) made by the Byzantines with the Rus in 907 and 911.

Hence the new importance of Kiev, standing high above the point where the northern riverways flow into the broad stream of the Dnieper and already established not only as a Slav settlement but apparently also as a tribute-collection point for officials of the Khazar khans. The
Primary Chronicle
tells of the Rus seizure of Kiev during the infancy of Rurik's son Igor – the first reliably historical prince of the Rus and great-grandfather of Jaroslav – but only in the form of folk-tales which would be of little value were it not for the apparent authenticity of its claim that the Slavs, who themselves had only been on the Dnieper since the seventh century, were happy to welcome the Rus as their overlords instead of the displaced Khazars. Indeed, the Slavs were to have a key role in the annual supply of the vessels – called
monoxyla
and of typically Slav design as a single hollowed-out tree trunk, much like a giant dug-out canoe before it was built up and widened with planking – which formed the merchant fleets for the voyage from Kiev down the Dnieper to the Black Sea and Constantinople. It is unlikely, however, that Harald would have gone directly from Novgorod to Byzantium by way of Kiev in 1034 and much more probable that he had been earlier drawn south by the demand for mercenary forces in the region of the middle Dnieper.

There is evidence in the saga record for the custom of the Rus in Jaroslav's time having been to hire their Varangians on a contractual basis, providing their maintenance over a twelve month period and, upon its completion, rewarding their services either in coin or in kind, usually in the form of furs which had been rendered as tribute or taken as plunder. If such had been the case with Harald and the other Norwegians recruited by Eilif in the summer of 1031, a twelve months' contract would not only have covered their service on the Polish campaign and the winter round of
pólútasvarf
, but possibly also on the expedition of 1032 from Novgorod to the ‘Iron Gates', by which is meant the domain of the Ob-Ugrian tribes in the far north-eastern region of the Pechora river under the Urals. The most remote of all the Finno-Ugrian peoples, these were considered so terrifying that Russian tradition believed them to have been locked behind iron (or copper) gates until the Day of Judgement and, indeed, a similar expedition to the Ob river beyond the Urals disappeared entirely without trace in 1079.

Whether or not Harald and his Varangians were engaged on so daunting an enterprise before their contract expired, they evidently survived the experience to be rewarded with their payment due from the proceeds of tribute collected through the winter. By the later summer of 1032, then, they would have been free to enter mercenary service elsewhere and the most promising opportunity is indicated by the entry under that year in the
Primary Chronicle
which notices that ‘Jaroslav began to found towns along the Ros'. Jaroslav's intended policy of re-settlement of his Polish captives along the Ros river had already been mentioned in the chronicle entry under the previous year and this new entry confirms its implementation.

Something more needs to be said about this, however, because the foundation of townships along the Ros was just one component of a wider policy for defence of the middle Dnieper which had come under increasing pressure from incursions by Pecheneg raiders. These Pechenegs were just one of a long sequence of Turkic-speaking nomad warrior tribes, which had begun with the Huns and was to culminate in the Mongol invasion, who swept westward across the vast swathe of grassland known as the steppe which extended over some five thousand miles of Eurasia from Manchuria in the east to the Hungarian plain.

This steppe provided the natural domain of a people who were constantly on the move, settling only in tent encampments, and whose livelihood depended upon their livestock, cattle and sheep bred for meat, fleece and hide, and most importantly upon the hardy ponies which served as well for following flocks and herds across great distances as for lightning raids upon the more sedentary peoples whose lands were overrun by the nomad warriors. ‘We cannot fight them,' replied the Magyars of Hungary to a Byzantine suggestion that they should rise against the Pechenegs, ‘because their land is vast, their people are numerous, and they are the devil's brats!' Such, then, was the new presence faced by the Rus in the last decades of the ninth century when, having only recently broken the power of the Khazars to gain control over the trade route to Byzantium, the Pechenegs irrupted on to the steppe north of the Black Sea in their drive towards the fertile plains of Hungary.

Ferocious raiders who fought with lance and spear, sabre and hand-axe, their most characteristic weapon was the composite bow formed of a light wood (or, better still, bamboo) core strengthened with horn and bound with sinew, painstakingly bonded with glues and skilfully shaped into a curved weapon, much smaller than the northern self-bow (such as the traditional English longbow) and yet of equal power, more efficient and perfectly designed to fill every requirement of the mounted archer. Whether as friend, at least of a sort, or more often as foe, the influence of the Pecheneg steppe warrior had a dramatic impact on the character of the Rus, and not exclusively in terms of military practice, although it was probably first apparent in the urgent adoption of cavalry warfare by a people whose ancestors had always fought on foot.

While the first Scandinavian venturers into Russia, who would have crossed the Baltic after the spring thaw, found their ships perfectly suited to a system of rivers up to half a mile wide and linked by overland portages across which clinker-built craft were easily carried or rolled on logs by their crews, they would soon have discovered that the same routes, when hard-frozen through the winter, could serve equally well as thoroughfares between impenetrable forest for warriors travelling on horseback or by horse-drawn sled. Horse travel is one thing, of course, and cavalry warfare quite another, so the Rus on the Dnieper must have lost no time in adapting to the new presence of fighting-men who spent virtually their entire lives, whether at work or at war, in the saddle. The influence of the steppe warrior culture on the Rus becomes most vividly apparent in the second half of the tenth century and in the person of Jaroslav's grandfather, the warlike Sviatoslav of Kiev who inflicted a number of defeats on the Pechenegs and yet is known – most graphically from a first-hand Byzantine account – to have adopted the style and appearance of a steppe khan. Ironically enough, when he had included a Pecheneg contingent (as allies or as mercenaries) in the host he led on his last campaign to the lower Danube, Sviatoslav was making his desolate homeward retreat, following his surrender to the Byzantines, when he was slain by Pechenegs as he passed up the same Dnieper rapids where Rus convoys heavy-laden with goods for Constantinople faced the choice of paying off a Pecheneg ambush or hiring a Varangian escort to fight it off.

By contrast to the devastating sweep of later Mongol hordes, the effectiveness of the Pecheneg incursions lay in repeated raiding until the social order of the afflicted territory collapsed under the unrelenting strain. Such was the character of their campaign against the middle Dnieper where it made agricultural settlement almost impossibly difficult, and to oppose it Sviatoslav's son and eventual successor Vladimir devised a system of earthworks some 3 or 4 metres in height, their interiors reinforced by logs laid parallel to the rampart which was fronted by ditches up to three times as wide.