Vikings (40 page)

Claiming, as he had, descent from Ragnar Lodbrok, father of Ivarr the Boneless, Gorm was himself a near-legendary figure. By as early as the middle of the tenth century those names suggested nothing less than a dynasty. It is precisely because the modern Danish royal family claims descent from Harald Bluetooth that he and Gorm are recognised as the fathers of the monarchy.

The coming-together of Denmark as a recognisable entity, however, had been a long and complicated process played out over centuries. Putative ‘kings’ – those named before Gorm and Harald in the sources – had come and gone. One of them, Godfred, had stood up to Charlemagne himself during the early years of the ninth century.

By then the attempts to mark out Denmark as somewhere,
something
, separate were already old. Parts of the Danevirke were in place, as well as the Kanhave Canal. Created in the early decades of the eighth century, it was a cleverly designed and built waterway, cut through the narrowest part of the Island of Samsø. It is two-thirds of a mile long and nearly 40 feet wide – a stunning feat demonstrating both engineering know-how and control of manpower. The Kanhave Canal would have allowed shallow-draught ships to pass swiftly from one side of the island to the other, so that whoever controlled it also controlled the seaways east and west. Dated to around
AD
726, it too is evidence of the presence of powerful men in Denmark long before the coming of Gorm and Harald.

According to the sources, Christian missionaries were also at work in Denmark in the years before Harald’s conversion around 965. The first of them was Willibrord, known as the ‘Apostle of the Frisians’, who had tried and failed to convert the Danish ‘king’ Ongendus around the turn of the eighth century. Greater headway was made a century or so later by a Frankish churchman called Ansgar. From the late 820s onwards he was periodically active in parts of Denmark and also Sweden – with varying degrees of success. When he travelled to the Swedish town of Birka he was robbed on the way, of all the gifts he had brought to help him win favour with the locals. But in 850 he managed to get on the right side of Horik, Godfred’s son. Although Horik was a confirmed pagan, he did at least allow Ansgar to build churches in the Danish towns of Hedeby and Ribe – and to ring the bells there.

Just as the unification of Denmark was a drawn-out process, so the coming of Christianity was more a creeping tide than a crashing wave.

When Gorm died in 958 he was granted a lavish pagan burial by his son, and a spectacular memorial. His capital had been at Jelling, in southern Denmark, and it was there that some powerful individual, possibly Gorm himself, had earlier built a massive stone monument. Likely a ship setting, it was originally around 560 feet long, making it one of the largest of its kind, and if it was Gorm’s creation then it may well have been constructed as a memorial to his queen, Thyre. The mound’s northern end abutted a small Bronze Age burial cairn. Some decades after the building of the ship setting, a colossal mound of turf – the largest in the country – was heaped up over the northern end, also completely covering the ancient cairn.

When the mound was excavated during the 1820s, it was found to contain an elaborately constructed stone and timber burial chamber, which had originally been dug into the Bronze
Age cairn. Yet, for all its apparent grandeur, it was empty. There were a few small artefacts, including an elaborately decorated silver cup, but no human remains. There was, however, clear evidence that the tomb had been re-entered at some point in the ancient past and then carefully sealed once more.

A few tens of yards from the ‘North Mound’ at Jelling is the ‘South Mound’, almost as large and every bit as impressive. This one, built slightly later, covers the southern end of the earlier ship setting. But it proved to be empty too. While the North Mound at least held an empty burial chamber, the South Mound is, and apparently always was, nothing more than a huge pile of turf and stone. If it ever had a function – beyond that of being an eye-catching monument to a person or persons unknown – then it may have been simply to obliterate the remaining part of the pagan ship setting. It is all wonderfully mysterious but the answers to the riddle are in fact to be found safely sheltering between the two mounds, like eggs in a nest – two carved rune stones and a white-painted medieval church.

The quiet market town of Jelling has long been central to the Danish sense of nationhood and a steady flow of pilgrims eddies around the monuments there, now a Unesco World Heritage Site. While it undoubtedly mattered both before and during Harald’s time, its position at the centre of Danish political life did not long outlive him. It is precisely because the focus of power moved elsewhere, turning Jelling into a backwater, that the monuments have survived as well as they have.

Archaeologists excavated beneath the floor of the church during the 1970s and uncovered the remains of several earlier church buildings. In the floor of the oldest foundations on the site, a burial. Early in the life of that first church a wooden chamber or cist had been incorporated into the floor, and a bag of bones placed inside it. The bag had been made of a material woven with gold threads and the burial was accompanied by
grave goods similar in style to the silver cup found in the North Mound in the nineteenth century.

Everything about it suggested someone of great importance – someone worthy of a second burial in front of the altar of the new church and wrapped in golden cloth. It is even possible the ‘bag’ had once been the rich burial clothes of the deceased. Archaeologists believe the bones are those of Gorm the Old, originally buried as a pagan inside the elaborate chamber at the heart of the North Mound and then removed when his son accepted baptism.

Having converted to Christianity – and joined the most fashionable club in town – Harald wanted membership for his father as well. Undeterred by the fact that the old man was already mouldering in his pagan grave, Harald had him carefully exhumed and then installed in a place of honour in his newly built church. The symbolism of it all is overwhelming, and its meaning obvious. The new king fully understood the importance of heritage and lineage. In order to underline his authority, he wanted his father’s memory blessed with the same eternal protection he had secured for himself. If Harald was now a Christian king, it was vital that his father should be seen to have come inside the fold as well.

(The followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have for many years been conducting retrospective conversions to their faith. Mormons alive today believe it is unfair that so many people lived and died before their own version of the truth was revealed in the 1820s. They therefore perform ‘baptism for the dead’ so that the opportunity to enter heaven is extended to those who died without ever knowing about or accepting the Mormon faith. The idea of bringing the dead into the Church is not a new one.)

Timber from the burial chamber inside the mound has been dated precisely to 958, the supposed year of Gorm’s death. The
church and the little burial chamber in its floor may even have been built at the same time – so that the whole thing might have been designed to serve, in part, as a mausoleum. That first church was destroyed by fire, as were several others in the years to come – but always rebuilt.

The building on the site today was erected sometime around the year 1100. The interior has a surprisingly modern feel, the result of a renovation to mark the turn of the millennium in 2000. The floor of the central aisle and in front of the altar is dominated by a representation of a Cross, drawn in a single unbroken line of black Swedish granite. Gorm’s bones were absent from the church for a long time while scientists from the National Museum subjected them to various tests. But on 30 August 2000 they were returned amid great ceremony and then buried, for a third time, in a metal box inside a concrete chamber in front of the chancel. The precise location is marked by a zigzag of sterling silver incorporated into the design of the Cross.

The Jelling rune stones are in the churchyard, protected now by specially designed reinforced glass cases. The lesser of the pair was put up by Gorm himself, to honour his late wife. It bears runes declaring: ‘King Gorm made this monument in memory of Thyre, his wife, Denmark’s grace.’ Here, then, is the first mention of Denmark as a nation.

I was granted the peculiar privilege of stepping inside the larger case, so as to get up close to the larger stone, the one raised by Harald. (I say stepping inside, but in fact it was more a case of crawling through a tiny bronze hatch in one side-wall of the compartment before taking my place, albeit briefly, as part of the exhibit.) Centuries of exposure to the Danish elements have not been kind to the carvings. Once brightly painted – probably in red, white and blue to emphasise the designs – the surfaces seem almost worn smooth now. It is only from certain
angles that the work of the sculptor can be discerned, far less appreciated, but once your eyes adjust to what they are supposed to be seeing, the effect is mesmerising.

The stone itself is an unshaped block much the same size as a small car and on one face are the runes, dedicated to Harald’s parents: ‘King Harald ordered this monument to be built in memory of Gorm, his father, and Thyre, his mother.’

On another large facet of the boulder is a second statement in runes, this one altogether more boastful and more significant: ‘The Harald who conquered for himself the whole of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian.’

Above that single line of runes is what is regarded by many as the oldest depiction of Jesus Christ in northern Europe. He is in the familiar posture of crucifixion, but rather than appearing on a Cross he seems rather to be spread-eagled among looping swirls of ribbon, or rope. These bindings are usually interpreted as the tangled branches of a thorn bush – so that here Christ is emerging from the snares and entrapments of the pagan religion. He is therefore triumphant over the old faith.

It is a wonderful carving, full of life and imagination despite the erosion of a thousand and more winters. That it still has real resonance for modern Danes is demonstrated by the inclusion of the design on the first, inside page of the Danish Passport – so that their twenty-first-century nationhood is symbolised by the work of a Viking artist. The Jelling monuments – mounds, stones and the church – made clear to all who saw them that there, and in Harald’s name, religion and power came together to legitimise the rule of the king. The large stone is known today as ‘Denmark’s birth certificate’.

For a man born and raised as a pagan, Harald Bluetooth was at great pains to declare his conversion to Christianity to all and sundry. If he was proud of uniting Denmark and Norway under his rule, then his conversion of his people mattered just as
much, or perhaps more. But while he clearly wanted the world to believe the ‘Christianising’ of the Danes was all his own work, the truth was quite different, and rather more interesting.

In his
Res Gestae Saxonicae Sive Annalium Libri Tres
– ‘The Deeds of the Saxons, or the Three Books of Annals’ – the Saxon historian and chronicler Widukind described Harald Bluetooth as ‘eager to listen but late to speak’. He was referring to a key moment in the legendary story of the advent of Christianity to Denmark, when Harald witnessed a lively debate among his subjects. ‘Once at a gathering, where the king was present, an argument broke out,’ wrote Widukind. ‘The Danes did not deny that Christ was a god. But they claimed that there were other gods which were mightier than him and showed mortals bigger signs and wonders.’

Hearing this, Harald kept his own counsel and simply watched as a priest, named Poppo, stepped forward to declare that there was ‘only one true God with His son, our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, and that all other gods were only trolls and not gods’. Finally moved to speak, Harald asked the priest if he was willing to risk his life to prove what he had said. As might be expected of a priest with a starring role in an important moment in European history, Poppo swiftly said yes.

There are two slightly different versions of what happened next, one from Widukind and another from the eleventh-century German scholar Adam of Bremen. According to Widukind, Harald ordered his men to heat an iron bar in a fire. Once it was glowing red, Harald told the priest to demonstrate both his faith, and the power of his god, by plucking the iron from the coals with his bare hands. In Adam’s account it was an iron gauntlet that was heated, but in both versions the outcome is the same: Poppo calmly picks up the metal and holds it until the king tells him to put it down. His hands are unmarked
and he has suffered no discomfort. Harald is so impressed he accepts baptism on the spot.

The story of Harald and Poppo is told in pictorial form on a set of gilt plaques on display in the medieval church of Tamdrup, in Jutland. Lost for centuries, they were rediscovered in the 1900s, nailed around the sides of the pulpit but long since painted over and forgotten. The originals, made no earlier than 1200 and possibly older, have been restored now, and are on display in the National Museum. Today a set of carefully crafted replicas decorates the front of the church altar. On one of the plaques, Poppo peacefully endures the ordeal by fire (while wearing what must be the iron gauntlet described by Adam of Bremen but which looks, for all the world, like an oven glove). Another depicts Harald, naked to the waist and standing inside a large barrel, while Poppo performs his baptism.

Harald’s claims have clearly mattered to many Danes for centuries, and the story would have been both exciting and comforting for generations of the faithful. But there were other factors at play during Harald’s rule and one or two of those are likely to have had greater bearing on his decisions than any miraculous priest.

The fact is that while Harald Bluetooth reigned in Denmark, the land beyond his southern border, Saxony, was ruled by the Christian Otto the Great, son of Henry the Fowler who had troubled and threatened Gorm the Old. Otto I was King of Germany and Italy and, just like Charlemagne before him, was made emperor by the Pope. His coronation in Rome, in
AD
962 by Pope John XII, marked the founding of the Holy Roman Empire. By any stretch of the imagination, he was a challenging opponent to have and Harald was right to suspect Denmark was high on his list of likely additions to the Empire.