Ancient history

Sigurd I of Norway, the Viking who went on the First Crusade

If there is a people associated with a well-defined image, it is the Viking. The image of their drakkars arriving at a beach and its occupants disembarking sword in hand, protected by their shields and giving ferocious war cries constitutes an entire iconography of the Middle Ages, despite being very stereotyped. Much of the fascination that they still produce is based on their attractive pagan mythology, full of elements imitated a thousand times by current literary and cinematographic fantasy, which is why the story of Sigurd I of Norway, the first Viking who went to the crusades.

Christianity began to settle in Scandinavia from the 9th century by the action of the missionaries who visited the region since the previous century. It was not an easy conversion and if many of those preachers must have had the frustrating feeling of crying out in the desert, others had a worse time ending up enslaved or simply killed. But the seed was sown and it flourished around the year 965, when the Danish king Harald Blåtand embraced the new faith. His subjects did not follow his example and it was necessary to wait for the reign of his grandson Canute for Christianity to become generalized.

In Norway things were different, forced from top to bottom by the monarchs Olaf Tryggverson and Olaf Haraldsson. Sweden, on the other hand, was more reticent and the new religion was not official until the year 1008, when King Olaf Skötkonung converted; not so his people, who had to be "convinced" by destroying the statues of the ancient gods and cutting down the sacred forests. That drastic spiritual change in the Viking world marked the end of their traditional way of life; the human sacrifices, the elimination of weak children, the burials with trousseaus, the razzias decreased indiscriminately and beautiful wooden churches were erected, examples of which are still preserved.

And one of the most surprising things was the presence of a Viking sovereign in the Holy Land in defense of the faith of Christ, as the Heimskringla recounts. or Chronicle of the Kings of Norway , a collection of Norse sagas written by the Icelandic skald Snorri Sturluson, who negotiated with the Norwegian king Haakon IV to bring the island under his authority. His stay at the court allowed him to get to know the history of the country well and the result of this was the drafting of the aforementioned Heimskringla , one of whose sagas, the Magnússona , tells the story of the sons of Magnus (Sigurðar saga jórsalafara , Eysteins ok Ólafs ), Sigurd, Øystein and Olaf.

Sigurd Magnusson, born in Norway around the year 1090, was the second of the three sons of King Magnus III, after Øystein and before Olaf; the three of different mothers and, therefore, with the same right to succession, which is why on the death of his father they would govern together. But before that, a still-child Sigurd accompanied his father on an expedition to the northern archipelagos of Scotland and Ireland (Orkney, Hebrides, Mann), first receiving the title of jarl (Earl) of Orkney replacing the deposed Paul and Erlend Thorfinsson and later being crowned king of all the islands after overthrowing the local monarch, leaving that island territory linked to Norway for a long time.

These events occurred in the year 1098 and it is not clear whether Sigurd returned to his father or stayed. In any case, Magnus returned four years later and, with a view to striking an alliance, married a daughter of the Dalcassian Muirchertach Ua Briain (also known as Murtough O'Brien), son of the King of Munster (the southern province of the Irish island) and who had declared himself High King of Ireland. To strengthen the agreement and despite the fact that he was only fourteen years old, Sigurd married Bjaðmunjo, the daughter of Muirchertach, who was even younger. The new partners then undertook a military campaign that allowed them to control Ulster.

But when Magnus was preparing to return to his home in 1103 he was killed in an enemy ambush. That meant the breakdown of Sigurd's marriage, after all a simple teenager who would have to share power with his brothers. Indeed, that peculiar triumvirate was formed (only theoretical because Olaf was barely four years old), which was maintained by the affection they had for each other and because the kingdom lived in abundance thanks to the fact that the incursions of their deceased father provided wealth and domains. In fact, it is considered a Norwegian golden age, a cultural and political flourishing that was not affected by the fact that the Hebrides and Mann took advantage of the death of Magnus to become independent (by contrast, Orkney remained subject).

However, the most singular episode was still missing. In 1095, during the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II had called the First Crusade to help the Byzantine Empire and liberate the Holy Places, which had fallen into the hands of the Seljuks. The call was initially answered by what was known as the Crusade of the Poor, which, under the leadership of Pedro the Hermit , was easily defeated by the Turks. Then, in 1097, it was the turn of the Crusade of the Knights, which despite its internal struggles was successful and created a Christian kingdom in Jerusalem, taken in 1099 and with Godfrey de Bouillón as king, immediately succeeded by his brother Baldwin.

That did not mean that peace came because the disagreements between Christians left them at the mercy of a Muslim coalition, so troops from Europe continued to flow slowly but steadily into the Palestinian region. In this context, what has been called the Norwegian Crusade was framed. . It was decided by Sigurd and Øystein in 1107, agreeing -not without some dispute- that the former would lead it for having more war experience while the latter would remain governing the kingdom.

Sigurd, who had already turned eighteen, thus placed himself in command of a force of just over five thousand men (some of them slaves with the promise of being freed) who in the autumn of 1108 sailed from Bergen in about « sixty beautifully built warships» , narrates Sturluson, and "according to the will of God/from here out they sailed" . They headed for England, where they were taken in by Henry I for the winter.

In the spring of 1109 they set out again, leaving the English Channel behind, coasting around France and resting for a time in Santiago de Compostela to winter again; seasonal shortages in what they called Galizuland caused the local lord to refuse to supply them with provisions, so they seized and plundered his castle before leaving. Also in Hispanic waters there was a curious naval confrontation, when they ran into an Arab fleet dedicated to piracy that, after being defeated, joined Sigurd's ship with eight ships -who always fought alongside his own, as was the Viking custom- .

They reached Sintra, storming its fortress and putting the garrison to the sword for refusing to embrace Christianity. They also tried in Lisbon but it was well defended and they didn't go beyond the outskirts. The one that was not spared was Alcácer do Sal (where “the desperate lament of the widows of the pagans/ resounded in the empty houses/ for each man who fled or died” ), to later cross Norfasund (the Strait of Gibraltar), continuing their depredations in Formentera, Ibiza and Menorca; they avoided Majorca because it was well fortified and by now they had amassed fabulous loot.

They regained strength at Sikileyjar (Sicily), welcomed by Roger II, a young (thirteen-year-old) Norman count, and finally set foot in the Holy Land in the summer of 1110, landing at Akrsborg (Acre) and proceeding to Jorsalaland (Jerusalem), where Baldwin welcomed them warmly. The two kings became friends and visited the Jordan River, in whose waters Sigurd was said to have been baptized. Then the Viking supported Baldwin and the Duke of Venice Ordenato Faliero with his fleet in the conquest of Sidon, which was in the hands of the Fatimids and fell in December; As a special prize, Sigurd was given a splinter of the True Cross.

As everything was more or less pacified, the Norwegians moved to Cyprus and from there to Miklagard (Constantinople), where they stayed for a while. Sigurd terminated his crusade and undertook the return to his kingdom by land, leaving in the hands of the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I most of the obtained riches and the fleet.

In fact, only a hundred of his men accompanied him because the rest, apart from the casualties and others who were returning in small groups, preferred to remain in the service of the Byzantine Empire by joining the Varangian Guard. This was the escort of the emperors that Basil II had created in the year 988, after an agreement with Kievan Rus -once it was Christianized-, because the Varangians (Swedish Vikings established in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine) they were of proven loyalty against the Byzantines, tending to change sides if money was involved.

The return trip took three years and allowed Sigurd to see numerous Central European kingdoms until he reached Denmark, where King Niels gave him a ship to cross to Norway. It was 1111 and he was reunited with Øystein, who had become a very popular monarch, not only because of his remarkable personal gifts but also because of a profitable policy that had led to general prosperity and the strengthening of the Church. But his brother died in 1123 and as Olaf had also died in 1115, Sigurd was left alone to lead the country.

He established his capital at Konghelle, where he built a castle and erected a temple - now lost - to house the aforementioned relic gifted by Baldwin. Likewise, he continued the line of strengthening the Church by introducing the religious tithe and founding a diocese in Stavanger. And although he had a clash with her when the Bishop of Bergen refused to grant him a divorce from his wife Malmfred of kyiv (he had to appoint another more receptive than if he agreed), in 1123, the same year of Øystein's death, he demonstrated that he did not give up his support for the ecclesial establishment, leading an expedition against the Swedish Småland because its inhabitants had returned to paganism.

In 1130, at the age of forty and after reigning for twenty-seven, Sigurd fell ill and died in Oslo. He was buried in St. Hallvard's Cathedral and leaving no legitimate male heirs (only Cristina, a daughter he had with Malmfred), the throne was inherited by Magnus, a bastard conceived with his mistress Borghild Olavsdotter. The other Kindred and even his nephew Olaf the Unlucky , son of Øystein, claimed his rights (in the Viking tradition not only blood counted but also popularity) and Norway was plunged into a terrible civil war that would last more than a century, until 1240.

That Viking who was the first to fight in the Holy Land in the name of the Christian God went down in history as Sigurðr Jórsalafari , i.e. Sigurd he who has been to Jerusalem . Or the Crusader .