553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)

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Visit Washington.org to plan your trip. Long had the snake lived in the dungeon, coiled in the black and filthy water, bloated from feasting on the Empress's prisoners.
It was a colossal, greedy, pitiless thing, a creature of nightmares. Already it had sensed their presence, and even now it was rising for the kill.
Its cruel head loomed from the shadows, its yellow eyes glittereded with hatred Its fangs glistened with beads of poison Its forked tongue flickered with pleasure Harold moved fast Groping among the corpses, scrabbling through the filth His fingers found a broken piece of wood But But the monster was faster. Suddenly it was on him, its horrible coils winding around his chest, pulling him down towards the water, squeezing the very last breaths from his lungs.
So that was J.R.R. Tolkien in his brilliant book, Adventures in Time, Fury of the Vikings, chapter entitled The Return of the King.
And obviously, Dominic, it wasn't really J.R.R. Tolkien, was it? It was you! It was an even better writer.
It was an even better writer. Yeah.
And you are describing there one of the countless thrilling scenes in the epic life of Harold Hardrada. Fugitive from Norway.
Mercenary captain for the Grand Prince of Kiev. And now he has come to the golden city of Caesar, Constantinople, and he is a recruit in the Varangian Guard.
And we will be finding out how giant serpents feature in the story later on. But for now, we are in 1035.
And what is going on? we left harold in the last episode at the point in which he has just enlisted in the varangian guard this kind of special forces unit of largely scandinavian mercenaries very baggy trousers with with great silk trousers exactly now no sooner has he enlisted tom the news reaches the imperial city that Arab corsairs have sailed into the Aegean, raiding the towns of the Greek islands and carrying the men, women and children off into slavery. And so for Harold Hardrada, the adventure begins.
Brilliant. Very exciting.
So actually, he's now going to be on campaign for the next six or seven years. Can't be sure exactly how long, but let's say roughly six or seven years.
As that Adventures in Time book, which I recommend to our listeners, describes, his life is a blur of action. Racing into battle on the deck of a war galley, storming ashore on an island at dawn, scaling the walls of an enemy castle, dealing out death with a sweep of his sword.
Now, actually, the truth is we're getting most of this from the Icelandic sagas, which, as we said last time, were written down at least 200 years later by people living in a different world. I mean, living in Iceland, I couldn't really be further away from Constantinople and still be in Europe.
That's right. And they're also much more obviously Christian.
And they are doing an awful lot of projection. There's a lot of fictionalization.
And there is a lot of use of literary formulae, which means it is very difficult for us to be certain, to have any degree of certainty about what he did. However, we have what people at the time would have called Roman sources, what we would call Byzantine sources, that give a sense of the kind of campaigns the empire was fighting.
So we can sketch out a very tentative narrative, I think. We do know that they did fight pirates in the spring of 1035.
So Snorri Sturluson's saga, King Harold's saga, which is part of the cycle called Heimskringler, that tallies with

the account of a Greek chronicler called John Skylitzes, who talks about ships from North Africa

attacking the Cyclades. So there probably was a bit of action in the Aegean.
And then probably

later that summer, 1035, the Varangians are sent to the far eastern borderlands of the empire,

so Armenia, where the imperial army is besieging a city called burkri on the shores of lake van now this is a world that is very kind of fragmented and confusing because the abated caliphate is largely broken up and there's all kinds of rival emirates across the the middle east kind of arab turkic kurdish and so on so it's sort of all very confusing the roman army is besieging this city their vikings normally hate sieges they're no good at them they don't really enjoy them because they don't obviously have many towns and castles in scandinavia so sieges aren't really their thing but this one goes very well and the sagas say oh that's harold harold's just a brilliant man and he's responsible but in reality the overall commander who plays a bit of a part in harold's story was a greek general called george maniarches he was another giant like harold hardrada so harold hardrada i think we established in the last episode was he seven and a half feet tall seven and a half feet yes maniarches i'm going to read you the description by the monk and courtier Michael Psellus. Michael Psellus said, Maniarches was a wrathful man, fully nine feet tall, and possessed of a violent temper, a fiery whirlwind with a voice of thunder and hands strong enough to make walls totter and shake gates of brass.
He had the quick movement of a lion, and the scowl on his face was terrible to behold. But Michael sellas says that all basically all varangians are i mean at least nine ten feet tall yeah you sometimes you just have to trust the sources don't you you do an air of skepticism you could carry skepticism too far well there's kind of hint of samson there i think in his description they're shaking the gates of brass making walls totter exactly so maniarches and harold didn't get on at all and the sagas say the varangians demanded the harold be put in command said this maniarchies has got to go but actually maniarchies had harold recalled to constantinople but that worked out well for him because if this story is even remotely accurate he then got sent on a very exciting expedition so we do know that the emperor had concluded a deal with the Fatimids in Egypt to rebuild the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which had been semi-destroyed by a mad caliph in 1009.
So Al-Hakim, who features in my thrilling vampire novel, The Sleeper in the Sands. Really? Yeah.
Is he a vampire? No, Al-Hakim isn't. But vampires are present.
Vampires are definitely present. But also, Dominic, just to say that the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which had been built by Constantine and was pretty, you know, I mean, it's the great focus of Christian devotion.
It has a massive impact, not just on Byzantium, but on Latin Christendom.

And the news of it going back to Latin Christendom stirs up all kinds of millennial anxiety. So it's

part of this kind of swirl of apocalyptic dread that in the long run will feed into the First

Crusade. So Urban II, when he does his great sermon, kind of summoning the First Crusade,

he makes mention of exactly this, the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. And it may not surprise Jewish listeners to discover who a lot of Christians in Latin Christendom blamed for this.
And it wasn't Al-Hakim. Oh, really? So does this give rise to a lot of pogroms and stuff? It gives rise to one of the first kind of big outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence in Latin Christendom, yeah.
So it really reverberates. Right.
So anyway, the emperor has concluded this deal to go and rebuild it. And he sends a team of architects and carpenters and stuff and bishops and monks and Roman bigwigs who want to go and see the church.
And a Varangian escort was with them and the sagas say Harold was one of them Jerusalem is a bit of a building site when they get there if he does genuinely go it had been very badly smashed up by this mad caliph and by the Fatimids generally but there'd also been a series of earthquakes in the 1030s so if they got there a lot of the stuff was in ruins the sagas say that Harold is there as part of this escort and he, and I quote, generously gave donations so much gold that no one knows the amount. The sagas also say he'd left all his gold in Constantinople before he left.
So those things can't both be true. And given that he's saving all this money in his saver account, I think it's highly unlikely that he traveled with enormous quantities of gold uh snorri sterleson and king harold saga says harold went to the jordan and bathed in the water in the manner of all pilgrims might be true yeah there's absolutely no reason to believe that wouldn't be true that's exactly what he would do but his longest posting so probably after this was to sicily and this seems to have been from about 1038 to 1041 and sicily of course as you will know tom is the you know one of the great strategic prizes in the mediterranean and we did the series about carthage versus rome remember you were taking it through all the battles there i mean basically that hasn't changed at all sicily is very fertile it's very rich it's perfectly placed it's It's been under Islamic rule for, what, 140 years, something like that.
The Calbid emirs, who are based in Palermo, and they're the people who introduced oranges, lemons, sugar, silk, and all sorts of exciting irrigation systems. We do love an irrigation system on the rest of its history, do we not? Oh, I love it.
I love it. Can't get it.
I mean, history is basically the story of irrigation systems isn't it a very large real sense yes yes so the roman army landed probably about 10 000 troops under george maniaki's nine feet tall must have been very displeased to see harold hard yeah i know now this is where the sagas really get stuck in they have some great fun with all this so to give you a sense of the stories they tell, we've got bird action. So Harold gets the Varangians to collect birds.
They fix bits of burning sulfur to their feet and send them out over the town. You know, they land on all the thatched roofs, the grace of a flame.
The slight drawback with this story is that it's been told about every commander in history. Well, but more specifically, Domin been told about saint olga of kiev of kiev who's the grandmother of lodomir and she was the very first kievan ruler to be baptized right and she played exactly that trick didn't she on i think it was the drevlians it was it was the drevlians so i think you can see a certain influence there i would say well hold on you could say.
You could say, therefore, the story is clearly made up. This is just the Olga of Kiev story.
Or you could say he's been influenced because he's been in Kiev and he's picked up these important military techniques involving birds. You could say that.
Then there's tunnel drama. So this is outside a town near Mount Etna.
And the sagas, which always paint Maniakis with his nine feet of flesh as an absolute fool,

he says, oh, we can never take this town.

And Harold says, no, if you allow me the loot

when I get in, I shall show you.

And he and the Varangians dig a tunnel

all the way from a nearby ravine.

They burst out of the tunnel

into the great hall of the defenders

while they're having a feast. Who would have thought it? Slaughter them all, throw open the gate.
That was good killing that day. And my favorite one is the coffin ploy.
Oh, this is brilliant. This is the Syracuse one.
This is in Syracuse. So they can't take this town.
The Romans don't know how to take this town. He says, I've got a brilliant wheeze.
They spread the word. Harold is very seriously ill.
Then the word spreads. He's dead.
And the Varangians send messengers into the city where there are Christian churches as well as mosques. And they say, look, we'd love to give a commander a church funeral.
I know we've been besieging you, but would it be okay if we came in? And the local churchmen, very kindly people, say, oh, yes, okay,

as long as you can only bring 12 men in to bury this guy.

But, Tom, it would astound you to know this is all a cunning trick.

And actually, Harold is not dead.

He's one of the 12 pallbearers, and they're all slightly implausibly wearing armor and carrying swords under their silk mourning clothes.

And they're all 12 foot.

Yeah.

So at this point, actually, his great

friends in the Varangians,

they're also part of the Paul Bearers.

And these are two splendid men called Ulf

and Haldor. They're both from

Iceland. They are described

as men of exceeding strength

and superb warriors.

And the amazing thing is the three of them map

perfectly onto Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli from the Lord of the Rings. So Ulf, we are told a man of great understanding, clever in conversation, active and brave, and with all true and sincere.
So he's clearly Legolas. Whereas Haldor, very stout and strong.
He was not a man of many words, but short in conversation, told his opinion bluntly and was obstinate and hard. So he's Gimli.
Yeah, he's a dwarf. So Dominic, so they're both from Iceland.
Yeah. Do you think that this makes the story less or more plausible? So in other words, is Snorri Stellarsson kind of making it up and making them be Iceland because he's an Icelander? Or is it preserving authentic memories handed down by the people of Iceland? There's no doubt in my mind that this is preserving authentic memories that have never been embellished and are scrupulously accurate.
So the story that follows is true. They get inside the gatehouse with this coffin and then apparently they drop the coffin, they blow a trumpet the coffin blocks the gate so then the rest of the army can pile in after them there's incredibly fierce fighting all three of them are wounded harold's standard bearer is killed and harold says to haldor pick up the standard pick up the standard but haldor is fighting off a dozen men at that point and he says to his to harold let the devil carry the standard for you you coward and harold do you want to do Harold's laugh? He gives a great belly laugh, doesn't he? He does.
You are talkative today, Halder, but fearless all the same. And then he smacks off another head with his axe.
This is exactly what happened. I'm afraid I might have broken the microphone with that mighty laugh yeah i think you've broken the sound barrier with that off so um now the sagas say that as a result of all these wheezes they managed to take sicily and people can gauge the accuracy of the sagas by the fact that in fact they don't sicily was never taken and the romans ended up with just a pitiful foothold in the northeast and actually sicily didn't here's the irony sicily didn't fall till the end of the century and it fell to the normans because it does fall to people of scandinavian descent yeah but not these guys so we've we've been um we've been talking about this in our previous series about the normans who adventurers who've been going to the south of italy at the beginning of the 11th century and building their castles there, employing their armor, their horses in the way, a kind of predatory manner.
And they start looking at Sicily and amazingly, they launch an invasion. And there is another famous bird related story in this.
So in 1066, Roger de Oatville, the great who will become the ruler of Sicily, he defeats

a Muslim army, and the Muslims have brought along carrier pigeons.

And Roger takes these carrier pigeons, and he orders the paper that they'd been carrying

to be dipped in the blood of the Muslim dead, given back to the carrier pigeons, who then

fly back to Palermo with news of the great Muslim defeat. And the Normans then capture Palermo.
Wow. So there's a lot of bird-related action in this episode.
People of Scandinavian descent interfering with birds for military purposes. Yes, it's the theme.
So they don't take Sicily, but everyone says that Harold has done brilliantly. And when he gets back to Constantinople, he is, we are told,

promoted to an elite bodyguard of the

emperor. Manglavites, as it's called, he has

a special golden sword. And then the

emperor, Michael IV, who you may remember

from the previous episode, was

the Empress Zoe's toy boy,

who has basically strangled

his predecessor to become emperor.

He's going off to fight the Bulgars

in 1040. And we know, we really do know that he takes Harold Hardrada with him because serving alongside them was a soldier called Kakaumanos, who later wrote a military manual.
And in this manual, he wrote, Araltes campaigned with the emperor and performed great deeds of valor against the enemy as was fitting for one of his noble race and personal ability aralte's harold and it's fascinating because that suggests that there are people in constantinople now who are aware of harold's noble descent so though i think they see the manual is probably written after he's become king so after he has spoiler alert after he's returned to norway anyway they they smashed the bulgars they captured the bulgar king they cut off his nose they gouged out his eyes they led him back in chains to constantinople and kakamonos says the emperor rewarded oraltes for his valor and gave him the title of spatharocandidatos which is a court rank not a military one. So a of a rank at court very prestigious for any foreigner let alone a barbarian from the wilds of the north so he now gets an even fancier sword and he gets a special golden talk called the maniachion which he gets to wear it's a bit like um the uh the ottomans giving nelson that massive great jewel yeah and harold's only 25 this point.
So he's clearly made a name for himself and he's done extremely well and it's all very exciting. But now this is where the sort of Game of Thrones side replaces the Lord of the Rings.
So the Emperor Michael, he's Michael IV, he's called Michael the Paphlagonian. He's from the Black Sea coast of Anatolia.
And his brother John, who was the eunuch kind of Lord Chamberlain, had got him a job at the court. He's got all his brothers a job, hasn't he? And basically all his cousins and stuff.
So there's one called Antony the Fat. He becomes the Bishop of Nicomedia, thanks to john's string pulling and john is essentially the kind

of prime minister isn't he he is he's um little finger his little finger or varus he's a eunuch so he's lord yeah from game of thrones so this guy michael he had seduced zoe he'd possibly murdered her husband in his bath he's now been emperor for six years he's in his late 20s michael Sellers says he was as fresh as a blossom, bright-eyed and apple-cheeked.

Nice.

So that's nice. Unfortunately, Michael's good looks are starting to curdle because he's always suffered from epilepsy and it's getting much worse.
And when he has fits, this is hidden from visitors to the court behind a series of elaborate curtains, which can be deployed at any moment.

But he's now suffering from edema, dropsy,

which means that his body is being grotesquely swollen with fluid.

And by late 1041, it's pretty obvious that he's dying of this.

There's no cure.

They don't know what to do.

Although I suppose they could try and drain him, but that doesn't work.

Now, John, the eunuch, says to him, look, you're going to're gonna have to name a successor and ideally from our family because we want to stay on top and as luck would have it they have another Michael who is uh their sister's son it's brilliant isn't it how everyone is called Michael got loads of Michaels or Harold he says why don't you adopt this Michael you and Zoe adopt him as your son he'll be named Caesar and we'll put him in a

townhouse in the suburbs and you know he can hang around and when you die he'll come in as Michael

the fifth so we come to the 10th of December 1041 Michael the fourth is bloated he's swollen fluid

everywhere shambles so his loving days are over his loving days are over he's taken to the monastery

of St. Cosmos and St.
Damien and there there he's given holy orders, actually. It's not just kind of confession.
He's given holy orders. He's tonsured like a monk.
And then he dies. Meanwhile, Michael V, he's brought to the palace.
It's really smooth succession. It works perfectly.
So everything looks great. However, there is a twist.
So we've mentioned only in passing Zoe. Zoe is now in her late 50s.
She is the one person in the palace who has the blood of the Macedonian dynasty. I kind of imagine her as looking like Diana Dawes.
Yes. Who would she be played by now? She's quite sort of...
Blousy. I was going to say blousy well i can tell you what michael sellis says zoe was

well-rounded though not very tall she had hair of gold and her entire body glowed with the paleness

of her skin there was little sign of her age in fact if you noticed the perfect proportions of

her limbs and did not know her you would have thought she was a young woman for her skin was

unwrinkled glossy and smooth with no lines anywhere i think it's fair to say michael

sellis is slightly objectifying zoe he is isn't he he's behaved poorly he's let himself down

Thank you. was unwrinkled, glossy and smooth with no lines anywhere.
I think it's fair to say Michael Sellers is slightly objectifying Zoe. He is, isn't he?

He's behaved poorly, he's let himself down.

Or he's paying compliment to the power of

the unguent merchants of Constantinople.

He is, because as we'd established

last time, she loves a potion or

cream. So hence wrinkle-free?

Wrinkle-free. Ointments.
She's basically

massively into ointments. She is,

Michael Sellers seller says a woman

of passionate desires prepared equally for life or death now she had placed a bet on michael the fourth and actually that had gone horribly wrong because once he'd i mean you say his loving days were over when he became swollen with dropsy but actually his loving days had ceased before that because as soon as he became emperor he basically locked her in the women's quarters and said i've had enough of you don't come out so now she's back and she's got this michael v who's her adoptive son do things work out better with michael v they do not he is determined to have a break with his predecessor and bring in all his own people sithian eunuchs so these are kind So these may well be Slavs or Pechenegs,

and he'd get rid of the old guards.

But the person he really hates with an absolute passion is Zoe.

What Michael Sellers says, once he had addressed her as mistress,

but now the very idea made him want to bite off his own tongue

and spit it away in disgust.

So we'll put him down as undecided. Yeah, he's not a fan.
And he waits for a few months till Easter 1042, and then he makes his move. So on Easter Sunday, these Scythian eunuchs burst into her chamber and they drag her out and they drag her before him.
And he says, I know you've been trying to poison me. You're clearly as guilty as hell.
You're going to be sent off to the Prince's Islands in the Sea of Marmara, just off Constantinople, and you'll be sent to a nunnery. Get thee to a nunnery.
I mean, literally. So very reminiscent of what's going to happen to Edith a few years later when Edward the Confessor packs her off to a nunnery.
I mean, nunneries are obviously very useful if you want to get, you know, an unwanted queen. Exactly.
So we're told she was immediately put on a ship along with certain men who were given free hand to insult her. She stripped of her purple robes and her head was shaved and I quote, as though she was a common whore.
That's very harsh. Very harsh.
And I imagine her hair. Golden hair.
Golden hair and much treated again with all kinds of ointments and salves and pomades. And now casually thrown aside, very poor.
Now, Michael has clearly made a massive miscalculation here because Michael Sellers, the chronicler who knows a lot about kind of court politics, says, you know, everyone despised him. He was regarded as a slave to his emotions, erratic and all this.
And Zoe was very popular in the city. So she has been the most glamorous person in the life of Constantinople since she was basically born in 978.
She'd been born in the purple. Her father was an emperor.
Her uncle was an emperor. Her grandfather was an emperor.
She's part of the furniture and she's a great favorite of the crowds. So on Easter Monday, the next day, the word to the city everyone was worried about the empress deep down men knew matters had got out of hand and they were not afraid to speak up about it says michael sellas the emperor michael the fifth he sends the city's prefect to read out a statement in the in the forum to explain what he's done and the crowd go absolutely berserk smashing everything up rioting and whatnot they end up breaking into the cathedral haggia sophia they get the patriarch to start ringing the bells they rouse the city there's general sort of chaos and fighting and looting and stuff there's actually a fragment in the sagas by a guy called valguard who was a guardsman a varangian guard from iceland

who ended up becoming a scalder poet who says the flames licked the stones crackling embers

shot from the soot and columns of smoke rose vertically from the tumbling houses you see i think that's brilliant and i was saying earlier how i prefer kind of blank verse to rhyming verse when it's Vikings. Also, Dominic, just to say about the patriarch, Alexios, that John the eunuch, the Varys of Constantinople, he had tried to get rid of him and replace him.
And there's all kinds of weird political currents that we can only vaguely glimpse, I think, that are going on, including the Varangians. So the Varangians, their loyalty is pledged to the imperial family.
They are mercenaries working for the imperial family. And I think it's a fair assumption that they feel very put out about the arrival of these Scythian eunuchs, the Pechenegs.
And there's some form of power struggle, I think, between the two of them. And my guess is that they are probably in on this riot, and it's all being planned, and it's actually a little bit more of a counter coup than it is really a riot anyway by the monday afternoon it's become a massive street battle it's michael and his scythians against the mob and the varangians and on the tuesday i mean this would be in a superb kind of hbo series or something because on tuesday the attackers break into the palace partly through the emperor's the Hippodrome, which has a tunnel leading through to the palace or corridor.
They kind of fight their way into the imperial quarters. And guess what? Michael has escaped.
He's gone off with his uncle Constantine. They've gone down to the dock.
The palace has its own dock. They've rushed down to the dock.
They grab an imperial yacht. I love it that they have they have yachts they have imperial yachts i know a lot and then they they head off in this yacht but it's obviously not an ocean going yacht because they can only go so far so actually they just go down they don't even really get out of the city they dock by the studios monastery which is near the city walls and they get out and they go to find sanctuary in the monastery.
Now, in the meantime, the rioters have got hold of Zoe.

She's been brought back from the island, shaven head, which is sad.

They've also dug out her sister, Theodora, who's been in a nunnery for eight years.

She's been in a nunnery for ages.

Willingly or?

No, I think slightly unwillingly.

Yeah, okay.

So they dug her out.

They've got the two of them and they say, right, we want you to rule as co-empresses. Let's just get rid of this Michael bloke.
We hate him. So what to do with him? A load of rioters and Varangian guards break into this monastery, totally ignoring all the stuff about sanctuary.
They drag him and his uncle outside. Now at this point, I have to say, Michael, who's behaved poorly, I think, throughout, he completely shames himself.

He does not react as a Viking would react. A Viking would meet his death with a quip and a poem.
So how would you react in this situation? With a quip and a poem. I've already told you.
Yes, I think I would. Okay.
There's no doubt in my mind. I hope the opportunity doesn't come about for me to hold you to that.
Well, if I'm ever taking sanctuary in a monastery in present day Istanbul and rioters and Scandinavians drag me out, I hope I don't do what he does, which is he clings to the altar sobbing like a baby. Then he clings to the pillars, weeping, praying to God, and worse, saying it was all my uncle's fault.
I never wanted to do it. That's low.
I would do that. That would be me.
So they take him outside. They hold him down.
This is a bit that younger listeners will very much enjoy. He's screaming and shouting, and they gouge out his eyes.
So the point of doing that is if you're mutilated, you can't continue to be emperor. Right.
As with kings. So it's what Godwin has done to Alfred back in England, gouging out the eyes.
As with that, there's always the risk that you may end up killing the person you blinded. Well, risk.
Is that a risk or is that an added bonus, Tom? Well, yes, I suppose. I suppose.
So listeners may be wondering more about Harold Hardrada. The sagas say the person who does the eye gouging is Harold.
He's the person who did it. So this is in King Harold's saga.
It's a scald called Theodulf. He wrote this, the warrior who fed the wolves ripped out both the eyes of the emperor of the Greeks.
The warrior king of Norway marked his cruel revenge on the emperor of the east. And Snorri, the chronicler, writing two centuries later, he says, in these songs and many others it is said that harold himself blinded the greek emperor and they would surely have named some duke count or other great man if they had not known this to be the true account and king harold himself and other men who were with him spread this account so the historical method in operation there so there is the historical method at the heart of the islandic sagas men said it numerous sources we've we've sifted the sources and it's very clear that harold hardrada did this gouging so you may well say all's well that ends well michael sans eyes he dies of his wounds a few months later there may also have been some castration involved the sources differ on that i don.
I don't know if Harold was also responsible for that. Let's say he was.
So he didn't write a poem about that? No. He's scattered the genitals far.
Yeah. If listeners want to send in their own poems, don't you imagine what that poem would be like? Harry in for the ravens.
Address them please to Tom Holland, courtesy of Goalhanger. Zoe and Theodora reign briefly as co-empresses, and then Zoe marries a nobleman and he becomes Constantine IX.
Now, clearly, the Varangians have really benefited from this. They regain their old position at the top of the tree.
Harold is their commander. We're told that a lot of gold changes hands, so Michael Sellis.
The revenues budgeted for the military were set aside for the use of others a cluster of sycophants and those who were appointed to guard the empresses so that's harold harold and the varangian guards so things appear to have worked out brilliantly for him he's now very rich he's more powerful than ever he's the right hand of the empress a genuine player in the politics of europe's most glittering empire all looks good and then tom one day he is woken by a ferocious hammering on his door when he opens it he sees guards outside and their faces are cold and admirers of Dominic's

Adventures in Time series

will know that when guards

with cold faces appear

on the scene, excitement

is bound to follow

a giant snake is never far away

and so adventure will follow

in the second part of this

super soar away episode we'll see you then hello welcome back to the rest is history so dominic uh cold-faced guards have intruded on harold absolute cliffhanger what's going on well this is a good point to stop and ask ourselves how true any of this story is so as we said in the first episode any biography of harold hardrada has to rely on these very colorful sagas that have three massive problems number one they're written down centuries later number two they often wildly contradict each other and the stuff in constantinople is often incredibly confused and contradictory and number three as've said before, many of the elements of them are clearly fantastical. So for the stuff we would have been describing, effectively what biographers of Harold are doing is trying to stitch together a plausible narrative out of disparate elements in the sagas.
And that is assuming that any of it might be true. That any of it.
But we know that some of it clearly is true because of the for example the stuff about our realities right but his involvement in what was clearly a very celebrated episode yeah if he's your hero you would want to intrude him into something like that i mean it would be like you know kind of flashman or something yeah the eye gouging there's a bit of a flashman quality isn't there to harold of life? Slightly. So there are three elements that we haven't fitted in that appear in the sagas that historians and biographers have sort of grappled with.
Number one, at some point, Harold is imprisoned, possibly by Zoe. Number two, there is some kind of love affair, possibly with Zoe, but probably not, probably with an aristocrat called maria and number three

there is a death defying escape by ship from constantinople and they could be completely made up but they might not be can i just ask dominic i mean the the key thing for harold has been to get gold yes and so the question hanging over all of this if there is you know he does get locked up and escapes and makes a death defying escape on a ship, as we will explore. Where is his gold? How is he getting his gold out? Has he sent it back already or what is happening there? The answer to that is very straightforward.
He has already been sending it back because we are told in the sagas, quote, all the gold he had sent ahead from Constantinople, a treasure hoard so immense that no one in northern Europe could recall ever seeing so much wealth in one man's possession, and sent ahead to Kiev, to Yaroslav, to his prospective father-in-law. And you may say, well, why didn't Yaroslav just steal it? The answer is, if he's going to get it anyway as a bride price for his daughter Elisif, he doesn't need to steal it.
And also, clearly, Harold isn't the kind of person you want to get on the wrong side of. So to return to these three elements that we haven't fitted in, different historians and different biographers propose different combinations.
There's a really fun one in the most recent biography of Harold Hardrada, which is a book called The Last Viking by the American writer Don Holway. And it kind of makes some sense, so let's go with that.
The sagas say Zoe had always had a great fondness for harold there is this i think probably made up story that at one point she said to him i'd love a lock of your fair hair and he said to her let us make an even trade of it majesty you give me one of your nether hairs so very lord byron behavior very lord byron i don't believe a verangian guard would have spoken like that to the emp. Seems just very implausible.
Anyway, maybe she did have a fondness for him. And clearly, if he was involved in the counter coup against Michael V, she would owe him a debt and she would feel they had a relationship of some kind.
Now, King Harold's saga says, at this point, he falls in love. There was a young and beautiful girl called Maria, a brother's daughter of the Empress Zoe, and Harold asked for her hand in marriage, but the Empress gave him refusal.
The Varangians then in Constantinople have told people here in the north that it was said by well-informed people that the Empress Zoe herself wanted Harold for her husband, although another reason was given out to the public. So what's going on here? There actually is a woman called Maria hanging around at the court at this time.
She's not Zoe's niece, but she is her husband Constantine's niece. This is like the beginning of a very bad play.
And what is more, she is Constantine's mistress. So this person does definitely exist, Maria Sclerina.
In looks michael cellar sclerina was nothing special but by her character and wit she could charm a heart of stone her voice was musical in conversation she had a natural lilt an indescribable style of telling a story at any rate says the chronicler she certainly bewitched me you know that is a passage entirely left from plutarch's life of cleopatra i mean a life of anthony exactly that's the interesting thing about it it's a portrait she's not great looking but her voice is musical she can speak all these different tongues she has it when she tells a story all of this kind of thing so again a literary formula within a source anyway she exists we know that she was constantine's mistress they conducted their affair very openly

is it possible that harold also carried on with her i would say personally very unlikely but the sagas do insist different sagas insist that he had taken a fancy to somebody called maria and that zoe didn't like it so this is another saga called the morgenskina nordbricht and maria continued their affair, and at this time, Empress Zoe developed a burning hatred for Nordbricht. Remember, that was his alias.
So eventually, if the sagas had been to believe, Zoe snapped. She accused him of being familiar with the maiden Maria.
The emperor had Nordbricht seized and bound and taken to a dungeon. The King Harald saga has great fun with this.
The prison was a high open-topped tower with the cell door at street level. Harald was shoved through this door together with Haldor and Ulf.
So that's Legolas and Gimli. Legolas and Gimli.
So Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli are in this flipping prison. It's dark, it's damp, it's full of bodies, just like you'd want a Tolkien-esque prison to to be and haldor is in the circus has given this excellent line he says it's not brilliant but i suppose it could be worse and then it does turn out worse and then they see this snake rises from from the water there was a huge venomous serpent that slept by the stream trickling through the cell the serpent fed on the corpses of men who crossed the emperor or his lords and was subsequently thrown down there that's the morkinskinner saga so some sagas say a serpent dragon i mean it is possible there was a snake in this prison and that it existed of course it's more likely if this is all mad it's going to be a wolf star fantasy anyway in the sagas as we just as you described in that beautiful reading tom yeah harold gets a stick and finally he manages to jab the stick in this snake's mouth and then stabs it in the heart with a knife this kind of lord of the rings style action now if you think that's bonkers and a bit implausible what then happens he has a vision his dead brother olaf he's been off the stage for a while but he's back he appears to harold in a vision and says look lings look bleak for you but don't worry i will get you out they stay in this prison for two nights and then they hear a woman's voice at the door would you like to be rescued and she says i'm a noble woman she never gives her name she always wears a hood and is kind of very mysterious when they say well who are you she says your brother king olaf appeared to me in a dream and told me to come and rescue you and she lowers a rope to them she and her servants haul them up about this rope and then a massive game of thrones scene they run through the night back to the varangian barracks they get their weapons they wake their mates back into the night through the darkness down to the harbor they get down to the harbor they seize two galleys they row out into the golden horn and then a total disaster the golden horn is blocked as it always was by a huge chain, a barrier chain, sealing it off from the Bosphorus.
And so Harold comes up with a brilliant scheme. He says, listen, everybody pile down to the back of the galley.
So weigh it down. So it kind of, with your mighty weight, is a great weight.
Well, they're 10 feet tall, all of these people. And Gimli's a dwarf, isn't he? So jump up and down.
and down they weigh these boats down so there's they're angled out of the water and then they sort of like i don't know like roger moore and the man with the golden gun or something they're able to kind of rock over the chain harold harold's eyebrow is going even higher than it normally is exactly and definitely he likes a quip you know? So there must be some, I wish I could think of some Roger Moore style quip that he makes. You'll never chain me up again.
I don't know, who knows? Anyway, they get out. One boat breaks up.
A lot of the people drown, but they manage to haul the others onto their Harold's boat. Great cheers.
As day breaks over the Bossorus, they turn north towards the Black Sea and safety.

Unbelievable.

They've escaped.

What an amazing scene.

And the question that may be in some listeners' minds,

has the rest of history degenerated into mad fan fiction?

And the answer is probably yes.

I would guess there are some elements of this. A feud at court, an internal power struggle,

Harold wanting to get the remainder of his gold out of Constantinople. Well, you mentioned this book, which I haven't read, Don Holloway, The Last Viking.
What is his suggestion? He just loves this story and tells it in great detail. I mean, does he have some perspective on? Well, I think he says it's possible that you know it's possible that there was some that there's a dragon not the giant snake but there could be an internal feud zoe is you know she's i think it's fair to say quite high maintenance yeah and okay you know that there's a lot of politics she has got a new husband who maybe resents the influence of the varangian commander okay maybe harold says i, I want to go now.
I've had enough. And they say, we don't want you to go.
You're the head of the guard. You know, what do you want to go back to Norway for? Okay.
Anyway, he gets away. Yeah.
There's an alternative explanation, which is there is going to be another Kievan Rus attack on Constantinople in the next few years. Yes.
Because Yaroslav sends that, doesn't he? Yaroslav sends one. So there is an alternative explanation, explanation which is he leaves because he's had word get out because we're planning to attack and there may be vengeance against varangians in the city which is again plausible the truth of the matter tom we don't know we just don't know yeah what we do know is that probably by about 1043 he gets back to kiev it's 10 years now since he went he He is 28 years old.
He's an extremely rich man. He has enough money for the bride price.
Elisif, who is now 19. So that age gap that was a bit preposterous 10 years ago looks slightly less alarming now that she's 19 years old.
The fame of his deeds, which obviously are massively amplified by the time that Snorri's D'Ellison sits down to write them up. But even at this point, presumably his renown is percolating northwards from Constantinople, do you think? I think definitely.
I think commander of the Varangian Guard, at that point, the most celebrated military unit probably in the Christian world. And the Roman Emperor's Guard, that that's a that's not nothing that's a serious thing he's very well established he's obviously got loads of contacts he is it makes complete sense that yaroslav would be very keen to marry him to his daughter because you know what if he does get back with all his gold scandinavia and gets his throne back he could be a useful ally in the the kind of geopolitics of the northern world.
But also the fact that he has made it in Constantinople, presumably also people who know him are proud of that. Yeah, of course.
It's like a kind of local striker going to some massively glamorous overseas club and then coming back kind of garlanded with awards and exactly right here's a man who you want to know here's a celebrity here's a man who will have no problem raising recruits because to serve as that as well yeah so they're married probably in the cathedral of saint sophia in kiev according almost certainly to the orthodox rights there's a lot of smashing of glasses and binding of hands and kind of crowns and stuff. But the thing is, a thing that's interesting about Harold is you might think that all the glamour is in the South and all the money is in the South.
But actually, the Norwegian side of him clearly matters enormously. He's desperate to get back to Norway to reclaim what he sees as his throne and to avenge his brother.
So Sonori Sturluson, in his description of the marriage, says he gained a princess, not to mention a hoard of treasure. Yeah.
And that's always kind of uppermost, and that sounds quite authentic. Yeah, I think so.
Absolutely. But he wants the treasure for a reason, and the reason is the crown matters a lot to him.
Now, in the 15 years, 15 years that he's been away, because remember he left as a teenager, a lot has changed. And this takes us back away from the realm of fantasy to the realm of history.
Cnut, his brother's great rival, is dead. He's been dead for 10 years and his North Sea empire has fallen apart.
England is now ruled by Edward the Confessor. Norway is ruled by Harold's nephew, Magnus, the illegitimate son of his late brother, Olaf.
And Denmark is sort of trying to break away from the Norwegian kingdom. There's an interminable war between Norway and Denmark.
And the guy in Denmark is a Jarl called Svein,

who is Knut's nephew.

So it's still a family kind of row, really, isn't it?

And one of the things that I always thought was intriguing

is that Ellis, if so, Harold Hardrada's wife,

one of her sisters has married Edward the Exile,

who is the half-brother of Edward the Confessor.

So even England is part of this snarl of Cleveland-Scandinavian matrimonial alliances.

I mean, it's so odd, isn't it?

Theo and Tabby were telling me about a series called Vikings Valhalla, which I've never

seen, which has some of this in it.

Oh, really?

But I think this should be like a much bigger budget and more exciting thing. Because I think all of this stuff is this makes game of thrones look kind of footling and trivial so um just on the north norway and denmark have been locked in this long-running struggle magnus in norway svein in denmark and for harold this offers an opportunity but also a threat if he can get back to scandinavia quickly he can profit from this and become a third player and profit from the uncertainty but if he waits too long and Magnus of Norway wins and rules both then it'll be much harder for him to get a foothold so perhaps early 1045 late 1044 hard to say around about this time he makes his move and he goes north and we do know that in about 10.45 he late 10.44, hard to say.
Around about this time, he makes his move and he goes north. And we do know that in about 10.45, he arrives in Sweden in a place called Sig Tuna, and there he receives very bad news.
Magnus has got the upper hand. He's left it too late.
Magnus has been crowned king of both Norway and Denmark, and Svein has agreed to be his jarl, basically his deputy in Denmark. Now Magnus is a serious player.
He's half English, always a good sign. His mother was an English slave and he'd become king of Norway at the age of just 11, but he proved really good at it.
He was brilliant at winning support. He's actually an incredibly skillful politician and he got this this nickname, Magnus the Good.
And this is in part, it's not because he's kind. Yeah, he's good at politics.
He was well-spoken and quick to make up his mind, noble in character, most generous, a great and valiant warrior, says the Heimskringler sagas. So Harold has got all this cash, but he's the underdog.
And they finally meet uncle and nephew in skurna which was then in denmark and now is of course in southern sweden that autumn 1045 and the sagas describe how magnus is there with his fleet and he sees this ship coming from the east with gilded dragon's head you know covered in gold and jewels and this huge messenger in this story in 1066 generally there are always these messengers who actually turn out not to be that you know the sort of mouth of sauron who turn out to be sauron this messenger comes and says to magnus would your uncle harold be welcome and magnus says yeah sure and then the messenger says i am uncle harold good fooling and harold says you know hello nephew how would you like to divide the kingdom between us oh not really well we're told magnus gave his uncle a friendly answer saying he would take the advice of his chieftains and the wishes of his subjects he gives him a diplomatic answer i said he was good at politics and they part on they part on quite good terms. But it's pretty obvious to Harold that Magnus is going to give him nothing.
So Harold sends a messenger to this bloke, Svein, in Denmark and says, let's restart that war. Let's divide Norway and Denmark between us.
Now, Magnus, he doesn't fancy the war starting again because Norway is not a rich country.

You know, it doesn't have many towns and markets.

It doesn't have especially rich farmland.

I mean, that's one reason they've got involved in the whole Viking business.

But Dominic, it is rich in giant men with double axes.

It is, but they require payment.

And he struggles.

It's a big problem for Norwegian kings to raise tax because they don't really have the same infrastructure as somewhere like England. So Magnus thinks, I can't compete with all this gold.
I just don't fancy a war. So eventually he sends a message to Harold and he says, look, actually I will share the kingdom if you will share your gold.
And Harold thinks, well, fair enough, because I don't really have many Norwegian contacts and it would be a massive hassle fighting this war. So they have this meeting, this very entertaining meeting to share the gold.
Harold makes a huge display of all the gold. He gets a huge ox hide and he pours all the chests out, massive parts of gold.
And he says very loudly, I have traveled to many lands and taken many risks in order to earn all this gold.

And then they're going to get their men to weigh and divide all the gold equally. But the point is they've both got to put in what they've got.
And he says, nephew, what gold have you to add to all this? And Magnus says, oh, well, I've actually spent all my money on these wars. I've got one thing, which is a golden arm ring, one ring.
And he puts it in. Harold, this is not much for a king of two kingdoms, and some would say it is not rightfully yours.
And Magda says, my father Olaf gave it to me the last time I saw him. True, but only after he took it from my father for no good reason.
Massive tension in the air. Yeah.
Harold is dissing. He's dissing Olaf, actually.
He's a brother, and saying thatlaf had taken it from his own father sigurd the sow so everybody's very anxious about this and everybody says oh this this clearly is not going to last like it clearly at some point harold is going to turn on magnus or vice versa one of them's going to go but we never get to that point because you remember in the road to 1066 series, so the last couple of weeks, people were always dropping dead unexpectedly. Yeah, convenient moments.
Convenient points when their acting contract had come to an end. Well, in 1047, end of 1047, Magnus is off the coast of Denmark fighting Svein.
And he has a dream in which Olaf appears, his father. And Olaf says, look, you've got a choice.
you can live to a ripe old age but you will commit a crime that will damn you to hell or you can die young now and join me in the afterlife and Magnus I think foolishly says well I'll die young I'll join I'd like to join you in the afterlife do you think that's foolish I think that you don't know what the nature of the crime. I mean, I'd want to know more about the crime, I think.
But this is happening, what, a thousand years ago, and he'd still be in hell now if he'd gone for that, with no prospect of release. It's like those experiments they do on toddlers.
Do you want instant gratification now? Yeah. Or you get two cakes later.
I'd probably take the cake now. I'd opt for death and heaven.
Well, in that case, you would have exactly the same fate as Magnus. He wakes, immediately comes down with a fever, and on the 25th of October, 1047, he dies.
And in one of the sagas, there's a lovely bedtime scene, deathbed scene, bedtime scene. I mean, I suppose it is bedtime in a sense.
Harold comes in to see Magnus. Ah, nephew, I see you'reus says um leave demarc alone i leave it to svain let him let them go in peace the danes harold obviously has no intention of doing that he's now one he's king of norway it's all he ever wanted it's all he ever wanted everything has been the fighting with, the gouging out of eyes.
And do you know what?

Yeah.

You've written these Adventures in Time books to inspire your young readers to follow their dreams. And Harold has followed his dream.
And now he's king of Norway. So there's a lesson there, isn't there? But do you know what the real lesson is? It hasn't made him happy.
Because his time as king of Norway is a little bit sad, I think. because it's basically 20 years of really boring war against the danes in which nothing ever happens just constant raiding and i imagine quite a lot of stuff involving cow buyers and that kind of thing yeah yeah kind of burning people's cottages and stuff in a desultory way yeah bad weather.
He just fights for so long. He's got a massive warship.
I mean, the best thing about it is this warship called the Great Serpent. I mean, Freud would love this.
So Olaf Tryggvason had had a ship called the Long Serpent, but Harold Hardrada insists on having a ship called the Great Serpent. And he commands this ship.
There's one battle, a battle at a place called Nysor, which is off Western Sweden between the Norwegians and the Danes. The Norwegians win, but they're all just miserable and cold.
And they're both massive losses. No one's ever going to win this war.
But the Great Serpent is still erect and proud. It is.
It is. But there's just a sense of joylessness to it at this point, I think it's fair to say.
So basically, this war has gone on for, what, 15 years or something. And eventually, Harold gives up his ambitions.
He says, fine, Svein can have Denmark. I've had enough.
And all this has been very, very expensive. Now, during all this, Harold has clearly been trying to turn Norway into a more centralized, kind of nationalized, tax-paying kingdom like, dare I say, England or to some degree, I guess, in future Denmark.
Or, more obviously, I'd have thought Constantinople. Or Constantinople, which he's seen.
Yeah, but it's going to look more like England, I suppose, in the long run. Yeah.
Because he's also doing other modernizing things. He tries to develop a national coinage.
And although he himself is clearly not a, you know, if he is pious, he's definitely not a turning the other cheek kind of man. He does encourage Christianity and he brings in priests and monks from Kiev and Rus.
And of course, you can see why he would do that. He likes the idea of one God, one ruler, one church, state power.
He's got his brother, hasn't he? Olaf, who is well on the way to becoming Saint Olaf, who gets enshrined in the Great Cathedral. And it's interesting, a lot of the kingdoms that are formed at about this point in time have patron saints who are from the ruling family.
You know, Olaf is the paradigmatic example, who are just massively, massively important to the regime because they give divine legitimacy to the to the dynasty but it's a difficult process in norway i mean norway the terrain isn't ideal for trying to impose a kind of a nationalizing regime there's constant tension with the landowners in the in the north and in the center of norway it's not hanging out with glamorous blonde empresses is is it? It really is a bit miserable. And also, I think there's an element of Harald is becoming possibly a little bit insufferable.
Snorri Sturluson, who writes this very admiring biography of him in the saga, says, King Harald was an absolute monarch, and the more secure he felt on the throne, the more imperious he became, so that hardly anyone dared to differ with him. And the big issue, as always, is money.

It's tax.

He has been trying to raise taxes to pay for this incredibly boring war with the Danes.

In 1064, the last full year of the war, the farmers of Norway's uplands basically refused

to pay their taxes.

It was a tax revolt.

So it's like he's turned into Keir Starmer.

He's having to deal with angry farmers. Angry farmers.
It's the same old story. Well, definitely angry farmers had killed his brother.
Angry farmers and people in reindeer magic cloaks had killed his father. We seem a long way now from magic reindeer cloaks.
And I have to say, we're slightly the poorer for it. Yeah, we are the poorer for it.
There's no doubt in my mind. Things have got worse, and this is the point at which they do.
So 1065, when the war was over, Harold launched a savage harrying campaign against the Uplanders that in some way actually anticipates William of Normand's harrying campaign.

I mean, this is what, there's a definite similarity here that when you have kind of, these are very, very ferocious, merciless monarchs who, when they are challenged by provincial, perhaps more small-c conservative interests that are resisting the modernizing efforts of the monarchy, they react with lethal and terrifying force. Snorri Sturluson, the king ordered farmers seized, some of them maimed, others slain, and most of them robbed of everything they owned.
The peasantsaded for mercy but his verdict came with fire so again advice a lesson there from history for kirstama his scald thiodolf no scald can find words for the royal vengeance that left the op lands ravaged and empty king harold's deeds will be remembered forever and exactly that as you said tom this is the origin of the nickname hard rada which at school i can remember being told it was hard ruler it's kind of severe isn't it that's the the translation now or even tyrannical or i mean some people might say robust if you admire a strong leader as i do you would say robust like our own uh greatest ruler in the uh

1650s but anyway that's that's by the by we've got to the end now of 1065 harold is now probably 50 years old ellis eve has borne him two daughters but she has pretty much vanished from the sources we know he has a second wife called torah who has had two sons but we know virtually nothing else about her. I think there's a slight

sense of Harold of

I don't know, ambitions unfulfilled or frustration. Yeah, it's a very powerful scene, isn't it? And I guess it would require not just a great historian, but a great historian with an incredible command of the English language, fully to evoke the mingled glory and pathos of the scene.
And I wonder, Dominic, if you can think of such a writer and whether perhaps you have a passage of his prose to hand. Do you know, Tom, it's extraordinary that you ask that question because by a remarkable coincidence, I can think of such a person.
Should I read it? Yeah yeah why don't you because you i think you'd give these readings the power and the the majesty that they deserve yeah and um and when i finish it people can try and work out who they think wrote it yeah and maybe order the book the golden sheen in his hair had long since faded and he could feel a stiffness creeping into his bones. Though Harold would never have admitted it, he seemed a figure out of time, waiting for the end.
Sometimes he wondered if he would ever again know the thrill of adventure, the joy of battle. And then, one cloudless day, a ship rounded the headland and turned into the fjord.
And Dominic, that author is, of course, yourself, your thrilling book about the Vikings, available from all good bookshops. And we know it's a cloudless day.
We know this ship has rounded the headland and turned into the fjord. And I think it's fair to say that with that ship and the advent of the year 1066, everything will change, won't it? It will change, Tom.
So to give people a little preview of what is coming, 1066 is upon us. And next week we'll begin our climactic series on the epic events of that year.
The death in England of Edward the Confessor and the accession of harold godwinson harold hardrada invades england and the great showdown at stamford bridge and then the invasion of william of normandy and the battle to end all battles at hastings and tom there's some amazing news isn't there for members of the rest Would you like to share that news with them? Yeah, incredible news. You'll never have heard anything like it before, ever, while listening to this podcast.
But just to break it to you, if you're a member, you will hear all four episodes immediately. And Dominic, more stunning news that again will come as a total revelation to listeners, that if you're not a member of the Rest is History Club, there is a website where you can sign up and that is therestishistory.com.

It's what Howard Hardrada would have wanted, isn't it?

Yeah, it is.

I mean, he would definitely be, he'd be one of the elite Varangian guard of the Rest is History

Club. Of that, there is no doubt.
All right, on that bombshell, we'll return next time with 1066.

Goodbye.

Bye-bye.