Harald Hardrada (21 page)

While the
Advice
denies Harald's promotion above the rank of
spatharokandidatos
, it fully confirms the high personal esteem in which he was held by the new imperial regime – in which the sister empresses were shortly to be joined by a co-emperor when Zoe took Constantine Monomachus as her new husband. This must have been a quite unexpected development and not only because both sisters were now in their sixties. The tall, thin Theodora was unlikely to abandon the chaste habit of a lifetime and while the same could never be said of her shorter, chubbier elder sister, Zoe had already had two husbands and third marriages were viewed with the sternest disapproval by the Orthodox Church. Nonetheless, the reputedly lascivious Zoe is said by Psellus to have wanted another husband if only to help guard against any reversal of her restored fortunes and her choice fell upon the charming and aristocratic Constantine Monomachus. Even while her second husband was still alive, Zoe had developed a close friendship with this Constantine, thus arousing the suspicion of the ever-watchful Orphanotrophus who ordered him into exile on the island of Lesbos and it was from there that he was summoned back to Constantinople in the early summer of 1042.

The Patriarch apparently found a way around his Church's disapproval so as to conduct their wedding on 11 June and afterwards to consecrate the empress's new husband as her co-emperor Constantine IX who was to reign for thirteen years until his death in 1055. In fact, the term ‘co-emperor' was soon to become no more than a formality, because within three months Zoe and Theodora had retired from public life leaving Constantine as the sole effective imperial figure and it must have been around this time that the emperor known in the saga as ‘Konstantinus Monomakus' made his genuinely historical entry into Harald's story.

Snorri Sturluson's confused account indicating Constantine Monomachus as the emperor mutilated by Harald has led at least one historian to discount the whole episode, and yet quite unjustly so in view of the impressively convincing and closely contemporary evidence provided by the two skalds. The emperor in question can only have been Michael Calaphates and so Snorri's unfortunate error is perhaps best explained as a confusion of two Constantines having led him to the assumption that the
nobilissimus
Constantine who suffered blinding on the same occasion as his nephew was the same Constantine who refused Harald permission to leave Constantinople. At least there can be no doubt as to the accuracy of Snorri's identification of the Constantine in that latter instance because it is fully confirmed by the reliable evidence of the Advice when it states that ‘Araltes wished in the reign of the emperor Monomachus to be given permission to return to his own land, but it was not forthcoming. Indeed, his way was obstructed and yet he slipped away by stealth . . .'

Unfortunately, the
Advice
supplies no further detail of just how Harald ‘slipped away by stealth' from Constantinople and so the saga preserves the only full account of the adventure which forms a characteristically bold finale to his career as a Varangian mercenary in Byzantine service. Yet the saga fails to offer any very convincing explanation as to the reason for his sudden and urgent departure. The simple desire to see his homeland once again cannot really be accepted as sufficient explanation and so there must have been a more pressing reason – and indeed there was, but it is one which will become more clearly apparent from the viewpoint of Kiev than from that of Constantinople. The tidings which did prompt Harald's request for leave to resign from imperial service assuredly reached him from Russia – possibly even under diplomatic cover if they came from the Grand Prince Jaroslav himself – and at some time in August when the annual trading fleet from Kiev came to harbour after its passage across the Black Sea.

That particular estimate of timing is fortuitous here, because it would also have been in August when imperial authority passed to the new emperor Constantine Monomachus and so it would have been to him that Harald brought his request for leave of departure. In the event, of course, it was refused – and for good reason in the light of subsequent developments – but Harald's own reason for departure was of the greatest urgency. Even in August, there was little enough time left to prepare for the crossing of the Black Sea and long journey up the Dnieper back to Kiev, which was indeed Harald's intended destination.

Snorri tells how Harald and a select company of his comrades took two of the Varangian galleys and rowed them out until they came to the iron chains slung across the entrance to the harbour. On approaching this obstacle, the oarsmen were commanded to pull with all strength while others of the crew, heavy-laden with their gear, were ordered to the stern of the ships as they ran up to the chains. At which point, as the craft lost momentum to hang over the chain barrier, the crewmen were ordered back to the bows, their weight tilting Harald's galley forward into a slide down from the chain and into open water. The same tactic was followed by those aboard the other galley, but without the same success because their keel stuck fast on the chain and the ship broke its back, allowing only some of its crew to be pulled to safety aboard Harald's galley while others were lost beneath the waves.

Thus Snorri tells of Harald's escape from Constantinople with no lesser authorities than Blöndal and Benedikz pronouncing the story ‘in all probability . . . correct in its essentials'. That credibility is only fractionally defrayed by the inclusion of ‘a silly, romantic fable' dragging the aforementioned ‘Maria' into the story when she is forcibly abducted, taken aboard one of the galleys and rowed out into the Black Sea before being set ashore with a retinue who were to escort her back to Zoe as proof of Harald's ability to do just as he chose.
¹²
When that unlikely element is set aside, the technical detail is certainly unusually convincing when compared with that found in many of the anecdotes included in Snorri's saga, as also is the specific reference to Harald's galley sailing ‘north to
Ellipalt
' (identified as a lagoon in the mouth of the Dnieper) and on from there ‘through the eastern realm' (meaning Russia). There certainly was a great iron chain supported on rafts across the Golden Horn (and another across the Bosporus, but that is not known to have been in use until a century after Harald's departure) floated out through the hours of darkness to provide a defence for the Harbour of Neorion where the imperial fleet was berthed beside its arsenal and store-houses, while the Varangian galleys were moored by the Tower of St Eugenius which also secured the southern end of the chain across the Golden Horn.

It should be said that at least one authority has suggested this episode as a ‘borrowed tale' akin to the siege stories (a similar escape from the harbour at Syracuse being known from Roman times), but the authenticity of the saga account is too well supported for such doubt. Not only does the
Advice
confirm Harald's departure from Constantinople by stealth, but Snorri illustrates that stealth with detail so convincing as to indicate his original source having been the first-hand recollection of Halldor Snorrason who was certainly aboard the galley which brought Harald to Kiev on this first passage of his long journey home to the northlands.

I
t was while on voyage up the Dnieper that Harald is believed to have composed sixteen strophes of verse recalling his Varangian exploits, each one ending with the same refrain: ‘Yet the bracelet-goddess in Gardar still refuses me'.
¹³
Although most of these
Gamanvísur
have long since been lost, Snorri Sturluson does preserve one complete strophe which is quoted in his
Harald's saga
by way of conclusion to his account of the escape from Constantinople – and with a note identifying ‘
Ellisif
, the daughter of King
Jarisleif
in
Holmgarð
' as the ‘goddess in Gardar' to whom all this poetry was addressed.

Whether or not these verses really were composed aboard ship – as they may well have been when they were evidently intended for presentation to the princess he was to marry shortly after his arrival at the Russian court – the lines preserved in the saga represent a fragment of immediately contemporary evidence containing more than one point of interest. First of all, they effectively discredit the earlier saga claim for his marital ambitions regarding the (presumably fictional) ‘Maria', and also carry a curious echo of his revered half-brother Olaf, whose one recorded attempt at the skaldic art comprised similarly intended verses written for Ingigerd, the Swedish princess who was later to become the bride of Jaroslav of Kiev and the mother of his daughter, the Elizaveta known in the sagas, and presumably also to Harald, by her Norse name-form of
Ellisif
.

Elizaveta had been little more than a child, of course, when Harald set out for Byzantium eight years earlier and the marriage of any daughter of a Russian Grand Prince to a mere Varangian mercenary would have been virtually unthinkable anyway, but now an eighteen-year-old Kievan princess would represent an eminently suitable prospective wife for a wealthy Scandinavian prince whose ambition was turning towards kingship in the northlands. Just such a possibility may have been long in Jaroslav's mind, because he was in the habit of arranging politically strategic marriages for his offspring. His younger son Vsevolod was to be wed to a daughter of the Byzantine Monomachus family, while Elizaveta's two sisters made still more impressive marriages when they became the queens of Hungary and France. If Jaroslav had already recognised Harald's potential as a warrior king and suspected – or actually known – something of his ultimate ambition while he was still in Constantinople, it is not at all unlikely that the prospect of so prestigious a bride might have been offered to lure him back to Russia. All of which might be perfectly plausible and yet still does not explain why Harald was so anxious to leave imperial service or why he should have been refused permission to do so.

The homesickness implied in Snorri's claim that Harald was eager to see Norway again hardly corresponds to the apparent urgency of the situation and the further claim for Harald ‘having heard' of his nephew Magnus adding the sovereignty over Denmark to his kingship in Norway clearly defies credibility. Magnus had remained in Russia while his father set out on the journey back to Norway which was to bring him to his death in battle at Stiklestad. Thereafter, the young prince stayed at Jaroslav's court until brought back to Norway as his father's successor in response to popular demand shortly before the death of Cnut in 1035. On the death of Cnut's son Hardacnut some seven years later, ‘Magnus the Good' extended his sovereignty to Denmark, once again by apparent popular acclaim, and yet Hardacnut died in England – where he was buried at Winchester on 8 June 1042 – so it is scarcely possible that news of Magnus' succession as king of Denmark could have reached Constantinople until very much later in that year, by which time Harald had already made his escape to Kiev. The factor of most ominous significance in the sphere of Russo-Byzantine affairs at just that time is nowhere mentioned in the sagas and yet could only have had its own crucial bearing on Harald's situation because, by the spring of 1042, Jaroslav was already advanced in building the warfleet with which he was planning to launch an expedition against Constantinople in the following year.

According to Michael Psellus, Byzantine military intelligence would seem to have known something of these suspicious developments in Kiev even while Michael IV was still alive, although the brief but disruptive reign of his successor and the cataclysm surrounding his deposition must have proved a serious distraction from the forward planning of imperial defence policy. Even so, there is every likelihood that anxious fears of impending Russian hostilities lay behind his successor emperor Constantine's refusal of permission for Harald to leave Constantinople, and especially so when he would surely make his way directly to Kiev. To allow a widely experienced officer of the Varangian Guard to share his inside knowledge of the deployment and weaknesses of Byzantine forces with a likely aggressor would have been incautious to the point of irresponsibility, so the emperor's response to Harald's request for leave cannot be considered either unreasonable or unjust. In fact, it was particularly astute because Harald must have maintained contact with Jaroslav throughout almost all his years in imperial service if – as the saga claims – he had been sending his plunder ‘in the care of trusted men to
Holmgarð
' and into the Grand Prince's safe-keeping. Such ‘trusted men' would have been accomplished in evading the scrutiny of Byzantine officialdom – not least when the export of gold and currency from Byzantium was forbidden – and thus equally qualified for service as trustworthy message-bearers.

So too, it would surely have been similarly ‘trusted men' arriving in Constantinople with the annual trading fleet in the summer of 1042 who brought Harald the tidings which called him back to Russia, and the most likely reason for that urgent summons would have been Jaroslav's requirement for detailed military intelligence to guide his planning of the intended assault on
Tsargrad
(as
Miklagarð
was called by the Rus). All historical opinion is agreed that Harald was gone from Constantinople by the time the Russian expeditionary force appeared in the Bosporus (presumably the later spring or early summer of 1043), so his date of departure is usually placed between the second half of 1042 and the earlier months of the following year – and yet, when other salient factors are brought into consideration, the date of his return to Russia might be fixed more precisely still. Not least among those factors is another threat which was about to be presented to the new emperor, and this one posed in the formidable form of Georgios Maniakes.