Harald Hardrada Read Free Page B

lavish greatest praise on those for whom the poems were composed’. Even so, he was still able to ‘regard as the truth everything which is found in those poems concerning their expeditions or their battles . . . because none would dare tell the king of deeds which everyone present would know to be nonsense and untruth. To do so would have been mockery, not praise.’ Clearly, then, the skald addressing his praise-poetry to the king in the company of a warrior nobility, at least some of whom could have witnessed the events he was celebrating, might be expected to aggrandise or exaggerate, but he certainly could not lie.
    The art of the skald was highly sophisticated in terms of poetic form as well as being a style of writing dominated by the kenning, a compound word-form found throughout the early medieval literatures of the northern world and characterised by idiomatic imagery often alluding to pagan tradition. While such allusions are often elaborate to the point of obscurity for the modern reader, there are more straightforward illustrative examples of the kenning such as the skald Thjodolf’s calling Harald Hardrada ‘feeder of ravens’ to signify his battle prowess and likewise referring to his warships as ‘ocean dragons’. Scarcely less complex than the most elaborate kennings were the strict forms of stanza, metre and rhyme which defined the structure of skaldic verse and also served to protect it from the corruption which afflicted the folk-tale and similar material preserved in oral tradition. Such was evidently Snorri’s own opinion expressed in his prologue to Heimskringla , where he suggests that ‘these poems are the least likely to be distorted, if properly composed and sensibly interpreted’.
    Interpretation was of crucial importance when skaldic verse was used as a source of history, as is demonstrated by examples of misconstrued skaldic references leading to erroneous conclusions found elsewhere in the saga literature. Snorri’s own extensive knowledge of the art of the skald is so impressively confirmed by his Edda that his interpretation of skaldic verse as historical record must be accounted more reliable than that of other saga-makers, and especially so in his meticulous identification of the skalds whose work he quotes and in his subtle indications as to the authority of their evidence. It is a sphere of expertise of most especial value for Harald’s saga , as Snorri himself implied when he wrote of ‘a great deal of information about King Harald found in the verses which Icelandic poets presented to him and to his sons. Because of his own great interest in poetry, he was one of their very best friends.’ Not only was Harald the patron of poets, but he was also a skald in his own right and some number of his verses are preserved in Snorri’s saga. ‘No king of Norway was a better poet’, in the opinion of the eminent authority Gabriel Turville-Petre, ‘and none showed a deeper appreciation of the art than Harald did, nor expressed his views in more forthright terms.’ 2
    While Snorri recognised the legacy of skaldic verse as the most reliable of his sources, he makes a point of emphasising his caution in selecting information about Harald from elsewhere in the oral tradition: ‘Although we have been told various tales and heard about other deeds . . . many of his feats and triumphs have not been included here, partly because of our lack of knowledge and partly because we are reluctant to place on record stories which are not substantiated.’
    As well as the evidence he had gleaned from the skalds and earlier saga-makers, Snorri Sturluson was singularly fortunate in his access to an important source bearing on Harald Hardrada within his own family, because he himself was directly descended from a daughter of Halldor Snorrason who had been one of Harald’s two principal lieutenants throughout his years as a Varangian