Talk:Battle of Svolder

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[edit] Tryggvesson vs Tryggvason

Why the insistence on using Olaf Trygvesson contra Olaf Tryggvason? Fornadan (t) 12:33, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, may have been too trigger happy there. When I checked his edits, and clicked on the link Olaf Tryggvason, it lead to a double redirect, i.e. no redirect. Since I think it is on the verge of vandalism to rename links so that they don't work, I reverted it. However, when I tested the old link, I am ashamed to say, it was also a dead redirect. Too bad there is no re-reverting tool.--Wiglaf 12:43, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Doesn't surprise me, the whole naming situation is a complete mess. Seems like someone moved Olaf I of Norway to Olav I of Norway without changing the redirects. Fornadan (t) 13:22, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeah I'm new at this, so I apologize if I have done something incorrectly. No hard feelings- I'm just learning still.

Well, you're welcome at Wikipedia! I hope that you learn the ropes and feel comfortable in spite of my brusque revert.--Wiglaf 12:48, 16 August 2005 (UTC)


Heh, nah. I dont take it to heart. I work nights as a NOC analyst for a large company. Sometimes its quiet, so hopefully I will get a chance to read up a bit on techniques and applications of various functions in wiki. --Opes

[edit] Article name

The title of this article annoys me slightly as it's used in none of my English language sources. Admittedly Britannica uses Svolder but in the same articles they have such weirdness as calling Hákon Sigurðarson King Haakon the Great. I'm wondering if Battle of Svold would be a better title. Google Books suggests that it may be slightly more common. Haukur 11:19, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chronology links

The chronology is bugging me, here are some links.

Haukur 12:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Hm, I've always heard that the battle of Svolder was the first secure date in Scandinavian chronology. I guess you could try counting the years between Svolder and Stiklestad. Fornadan (t) 17:11, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Manga

It seems that there's a manga on Óláfr Tryggvason! This sample shows scenes from the Battle of Svöldr with Óláfr throwing himself into the sea. [1] Haukur 15:16, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

See further here: [2] and I've now written a short article on the author, Ryō Azumi. Haukur 12:25, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
And here [3]. I'm torn on whether this is significant/interesting enough to mention in the article. It seems quite jarring to go from Longfellow to Azumi in a single jump. I'm sure there are some other works worth mentioning as well if we go up to the 20th century. Are there some significant Norwegian literary or artistic works on the battle? Haukur 22:09, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, there's this. Should it be mentioned? Does anyone (Fornadan?) know about the historiography of the battle in Norway? This link has: "Where is the ship, Ormen Lange? Is Olav Tryggvason not coming?" The cry that resounded in the Viking Age and in National-Romantic poetry" suggesting that there's some story to tell here. How did Norwegians in the Romantic period view the battle? Haukur 22:14, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Name forms

I've been pondering the name forms used in the article. Normally I'm not a big fan of Anglicized forms but I'm willing to use them where they exist for royalty and in the case of this article it might make sense to extend that to the Jarls.

It bothers me to me to use the modern "Olof Skötkonung" for the Swedish king. It creates an artificial distinction betwen Olaf and Olof, not present in any of the primary sources. I think Olaf the Swede is a clearer choice and one derived directly from his (West) Norse name.

So, the Anglicization I'm suggesting here is to drop consonantal nominative endings and diacritics from the first names of the royalty and kings as well as rendering 'þ' as 'th':

  • King Olaf the Swede (Óláfr sœnski)
  • King Olaf Tryggvason (Óláfr Tryggvason)
  • King Svein Forkbeard (Sveinn tjúguskegg)
  • Queen Sigrid (Sigríðr)
  • Queen Thyri (Þyri)
  • Jarl Eirik Hákonarson (Eiríkr Hákonarson)
  • Jarl Svein Hákonarson (Sveinn Hákonarson)
  • Jarl Sigvaldi (Sigvaldi)

The other names can be kept in their standardized Old Norse forms, thus Oddr Snorrason, Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld, Kolbjörn. Alternatively we could Anglicize everything but then I'd prefer to give the standardized Old Norse spelling at each name's first occurrence, as in Grœnlendinga saga. That's a bit cumbersome. Haukur 12:22, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Not verified

Ive added the not verified template to this article. The thing is that most modern historians doubt that the battle of Svolder ever took place. The different sources give different places and dates for the battle, and none of them are really reliable. Until the 1920's historians treated the battle as a de facto historical event, but after the two historians Curt Weibull and Lauritz Weibulls work this was questioned. (This was only a part of a bigger fight in swedish history writing.) Since the 1950's Weibulls version has been videly accepted.

So, this article needs a big rewrite. New sources has to be used, nothing printed for more than 50 years ago is usefull, and even after that one has to be a bit carfull as well.

The use of Adam of Bremens work in the reference list violates the guidline Wikipedia:No original research. One cant use that source as a facutal base when writing an article on an historical event. It simply isnt reliable.

The article is well written, long, and well organized. Its a greate work, if it wasnt for the factual inaccuracy. I dont want to offend anyone, whoever wrote this is a good writer whos contribution I hope we will continue to enjoy on Wikipedia. Its just that this article needs some factual corrections.

--Screensaver 21:15, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments and your kind words about the article. The kind of radical sagakritik you allude to isn't so big outside of Sweden. Every single non-Swedish source I know of treats the battle as a real historical event, though its time and location have been much debated. Here are a couple of quotes from The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, a reasonably authoritative mainstream work:
“ A determining factor was a battle in 1000 (or 999) when Sven fought together with the Swedish king Olof Skötkonung, probably already his man, against Olaf Tryggvason who had now become king of Norway. The location of this sea battle has been much discussed among modern historians. According to Adam it took place in Öresund 'where kings used to fight' whereas the Icelandic sources place it at the isle of 'Svoldr' near the Slavonic coast. At any rate, King Olaf was killed and two Norwegian earls were installed by Sven to rule Norway. (p. 176) ”
“ The main factor in bringing about Olaf's downfall after a reign of only a few years was the growing enmity between him and King Sven Forkbeard, who was also influenced by Earl Eirik, son of Earl Håkon Sigurdsson. Håkon had been killed when Olaf seized power and Eirik had formed close ties with King Sven, marrying his daughter Gyda. The final clash was most likely provoked by Olaf's aggressive policy when he interfered in the struggle for Baltic supremacy between the Polish ruler Boleslav and Sven. According to the sagas Olaf assembled a large fleet in Norway with which he sailed south to Danish waters and from there into the Baltic. The king himself was on board the Ormrinn langi ('the Long Serpent'), said to be the largest ship ever seen in the north.

All that we really know about the final battle is that it was fought in the year 1000 (or 999), at 'Svoldr' or in Öresund (cf. Chapter 8(b)), and that Olaf fell after having fought against 'two kings and an earl'. Sven Forkbeard now succeeded Olaf as king of Norway. The rule over Vestlandet and Trøndelag was transferred to Eirik Håkonsson in his capacity of Sven's earl, possibly together with his brother Svein. In Viken petty kings seem to have continued their rule under Danish overlordship. (p. 193).

 ”
Of course most of the account presented in the article can be regarded as fiction by Oddr Snorrason and indeed I view the Battle of Svolder as mostly a literary subject, but the basic facts (There was a sea battle around the year 1000 between Olaf Tryggvason and Svein Forkbeard and his allies. Svein won.) are widely regarded as true. The article lays out what the primary sources are and what their nature is, repeatedly pointing out the unreliability and literary nature of the story; the reader can make up her own mind on how much of the narrative she wants to believe. Haukur 22:07, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
It is true that the view on how the sagas should be used differ. Ive studied history in Sweden, and what they teach on all Universities here is that there might have been a battle. The litterature that is used (H. Gustaffson, Nordens historia - En europeisk region i 1200 år) refere to the battle in terms as "acording to the legens" and "clouded with myth".
I think we need to come to some kind of compromise, that shows both sides in the article. A beginning paragraph witch debates the issue might be a good idea (I can do some work on it, but not right now, its in the middle of the night :-) ). I think it might be a good idea to delete statistics such as the number of ships from the battle template at the top. This is certainly not reliable information. There is no way we can be sure about how Adam von Bremen knew all that 80 years after the battle...
Ill delete the primary sources template. As you point out, there are secondary sources used, and the use of the primay ones are illustrative. Could we keep the other template until we got at least a beginning to a section discussing the credibility of the facts, as I mentioned above?
--Screensaver 22:34, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
I think the article already gives quite some room to doubt; right in the introduction it is stated that the sagas "cannot be taken at face value as historically accurate". In the section on the sources it is said that Oddr Snorrason used "mostly his own imagination" when writing about the battle. Later sections have sentences like "The location of the battle cannot be identified with any certainty" and "It is unlikely that the saga writers had accurate information on details of the battle".
As you can see from the history I've been working on this article for a long time and just today I've made a lot of changes and additions. I've been thinking of adding more on the historiography of the battle and I'd not be adverse to adding more information on the scholarly debate on the reliability and historicity of the battle.
I'm somewhat disinclined to remove information like the number of ships. I agree that we can never be certain whether Olaf had exactly 11 ships and the alliance had 70+ ships but it is what all the extant sources say so it is a part of the story about the Battle of Svolder, which is what this article mostly deals with. If we were to remove everything which may not have happened then we would have a much poorer article. The legendary details are important, they are what romantic 19th century authors were concerned about and they are what form the popular conception of an event like this. And legends can move history. Any article on an 11th century historical topic should be approached with a degree of skepticism as we are always forced to rely on imperfect sources. Our readers would be ill-served by a hypercritical approach strictly concerned with the most definitive facts. This is not to say that we shouldn't try to distinguish fact and fiction as best we can but when it comes to sagas and legendary history one blends seamlessly into the other and there is no line to be drawn in the sand. Sometimes all we can do is to explain the nature of the sources and point out what is probable and what is not.
Note that no:Slaget ved Svolder (a featured article on the Norwegian bokmål Wikipedia) is to a large extent a translation of an earlier version of this English article. I'm sure they'd appreciate your comments over there as well. Haukur 23:26, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Sources composed two centuries after the event are worthless, whatever the history writer's need for a good story. The table with ship-counts in the article is ridiculous, as well as original research, WP:OR. /Pieter Kuiper 20:59, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I think the article makes the nature of the sources very clear. There's certainly at least as much literature to the surviving accounts as there is history and the article clearly states this. Here are a couple of quotes:

"It is unlikely that the saga writers had accurate information on details of the battle beyond the sparse accounts in the surviving poems. Nevertheless, starting with Oddr Snorrason, they present an elaborate literary account"

"The most important historical sources on the battle, the kings' sagas, were written approximately two centuries after it took place. They cannot be taken at face value as historically accurate but offer an extended literary account"

"There are no detailed contemporary sources. Information such as the number of ships should be taken with some skepticism." (I think I'll even reword this a bit, stay tuned.)

Of course the historical parts and the literary parts are hard to disentangle but in sections where scholars agree that the narrative should be regarded as purely literary the present tense is used to emphasize this. I see no reason to remove the table on number of ships according to various sources, it is carefully cited and scholars have certainly written on the subject, comparing the original sources. If anything I should think it helps to make clear that the sources are not reliable since they diverge so greatly on such an important point. Haukur 21:28, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

The article says: "While historians value contemporary skaldic poetry highly as the most accurate source available, it must be remembered that the poems are not preserved independently but as quotations in the kings' sagas. After two centuries of oral preservation, there is often doubt that a verse was accurately remembered and correctly attributed. Furthermore, skaldic poetry did not primarily aim at giving information but at artistically rendering facts already known to the hearers.[8] Historians are therefore obliged to fall back on the less reliable but more detailed accounts in the sagas."
Historians are not att all obliged to fall back on detailed accounts. This kind of detail is sheer fiction. It is the juicy detail of soap operas. It is much better to exclude the Icelandic storytelling, as there are plenty of problems with the 11th-century sources. You just cannot resolve such problems by "more detailed" later accounts, that are most likely litterary dependent on the earlier sources anyway. You took away the in-universe tag - I do not believe that it is the principal contributor's business to do that. /Pieter Kuiper 21:41, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
There's just no way to use the poems without the sagas because they are only preserved in fragments quoted in the sagas. At the very least you have to know the context of the verse and the way it was understood by the saga writer. And in reality no-one has written an early history of Scandinavia while throwing away all the prose accounts as useless. Historians do fall back on the less reliable but more detailed accounts of the sagas. Nevertheless I'm not particularly attached to this sentence and I'm sure it can be replaced with something more to your liking. Haukur 21:59, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
No, as you are resisting very reasonable edits, I think it should be left in, as a clear statement about the methodology of this article. /Pieter Kuiper 22:13, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
What reasonable edits? You've made one edit to the text, saying that Adam of Bremen is the most important historical source. Do you have a citation for that? It certainly wasn't the impression I got when doing research for this article. Many historians seem to feel that the Norwegian-Icelandic sources are more important/reliable. (And by that I mean the combination of the sagas and the skaldic poetry preserved in them.) Haukur 22:24, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
OK, I forgot about the scaldic verse. The lead has improved, thank you. /Pieter Kuiper 22:46, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
It has indeed. Thank you. Haukur 22:48, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Further reading

Here's a list of some relevant works in chronological order, starting with Weibull's work. I'll try to give them a read once I have the chance. Feel free to add to the list. Haukur 15:11, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

  • L. Weibull, Kritiska undersökningar i Nordens historia omkring år 1000, 1911.
  • F. Jónsson, "Hvor faldt Olaf Tryggvason?" , Hist. tidsskr., ser. 8, III, 1911.
  • J. Schreiner, "Olav Trygvasons siste kamp" in Festskrift til Hj. Falk, 1927, 54-77.
  • O. Moberg, "Slaget vid Svolder eller slaget i Öresund", Hist. tidsskr. 32, 1940-42, 1-26.
  • W. Baetke, "Christliches Lehngut in der Sagareligion, Das Svoldr-Problem: Zwei Beiträge zur Sagakritik. Berichte über die Verhandlungen der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig", phil.-hist. Kl., Bd. 98, Heft 6., 1951.
  • S. Ellehøj, "Olav Tryggvesons fald og Venderne', Historisk tidsskrift, II: 4, 1953-6, 1-51.
  • S. Bagge, "Helgen, helt og statsbygger. Olav Tryggvason i norsk historieskrivning gjennom 700 år" in Kongsmenn og krossmenn, 1992, 21-38.

[edit] "In-universe" and the map of Norway

The lead has improved, making it much clearer that most of the stuff in this article did not actually happen. But then, at the end, there is a map, which pulls the myths back into the actual world. I suspect that this map is original research. The description only refers to Heimskringla, and the Heimskringla manuscripts do not contain maps (but maybe some translations do). In this article, the caption makes it clear that the map is based on Heimskringla, and that is good. Still, the casual reader will probably get the impression that all this is real, even though the lord of the yellow areas (half-brother Svein Hákonarson) probably never existed. /Pieter Kuiper 16:04, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the non-existence of Sveinn Hákonarson can be described as probable, can you give citations to historians agreeing with Hellberg's theory? The map is based on Heimskringla and displayed alongside a section on what the sources say about how Norway was divided. Heimskringla says this, Fagrskinna says something quite different and other sources don't really say much. I don't know what more information the reader could be given. I certainly don't think the map is a reliable guide to the political divisions of Norway in the 1000s. Most likely it's basically the educated guess of a 13th century historian.
I think providing the map helps the reader make sense of the Aftermath section. Not everyone knows where Trondheim', Møre, Romsdal etc. are. I'm sure an even better map could be made, incorporating more of the places mentioned in the article (e.g. Öresund, Hlaðir, Vindland) but until then I don't see any reason to drop the map we have. Haukur 17:32, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
The objections raised by Pieter Kuiper are very interesting, and it is a good thing that someone is raising these questions on wikipedia, as there is clearly a tendency in many articles to, incorrectly, accept later sagas as reliable sources in many articles, e.g. the many legendary kings of Sweden-articles. However, Pieter Kuiper should be aware that he himself represents the other extreme in these questions. Kuiper accepts Hellberg(who is not a historian)'s theory that Svein Hakonarson never existed, this can hardly be said to be the historical consensus. Many historians, especially in Sweden, have on principle rejected all saga material, but many other current, respected medieval historians, for instance in Norway, continue to use sagas as sources, with all the sensible precautions and caveats of reasonable source criticism. Saying that "most of the stuff in this article did not actually happen" is not reasonable. The logic seems to be that, because the source is late, it has to be wrong. It would be fair to say we can't accept the minute details of the battle, the quotes attributed to individual participants, etc. as accurate. But it's equally far-fetched to say that everything in, for instance, Heimskringla is pure fiction, without any historical basis. And it certainly isn't the historical consensus to say so.--Barend 14:40, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
What historians are positive about Svein's existence? And does anyone believe the stories about troubled marriages being the background to all of these myths (from Helen of Troy onwards)? /Pieter Kuiper 14:45, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
It is unreasonable to take as your starting point that anyone mentioned in 12th and 13th century sagas did not exist unless their existence can be otherwise confirmed. You are then in fact saying, that everything written down in the 12th and 13th centuries was pure fiction, invented there and then. Where is your 13th source telling you that? Where is your proof that there were no oral tales handed down through the generations, alongside the skald's poems? Where is your proof that the people who lived in the 12th and 13th centuries lived in a historical vacuum, with no conception of their own past? We cannot be positive about Svein's existence, but then we cannot be positive about the existence of anyone else either, that is not how history works. Svein is mentioned in sources from the 12th century. That is a fact. This fact may have two explanations: 1. Someone in the 12th century invented him, and got others to believe that he existed. 2. Stories of his existence were handed down orally through a period of approximately 150 years, and then written down. The extreme Weibull school would go for explanation 1, simply because they cannot prove that there have been any oral traditions. But this is, in my opinion, a logical fallacy. The absence of proof is not in itself a proof. More importantly, this is not just my opinion, it is the opinion of many well-respected medieval historians of today. --Barend 15:07, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Names of these historians please? The sagas were a kind of historical novels about a land far away. This was Icelandic infotainment on long winter nights, where side characters were invented when the story required some family connection. If there is no contemporary evidence of a jarl in Norway, Icelandic stories about a half-brother Svein a century-and-a-half later are no reason to assume that such a character actually existed. /Pieter Kuiper 16:22, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Start with Kåre Lunden, Knut Helle, Sverre Bagge, Claus Krag, Per Sveaas Andersen. Anyway, your last posting appears to be mainly provocative, and you are betraying a lack of knowledge about the topic. If you claim that the sagas were "Icelandic infotainment", that is "original research" on your behalf, and the burden of proof lies on you. Also, you seem oblivious to the fact that several of the sagas, like Ágrip and Fagrskinna were written in Norway, not in Iceland. --Barend 16:47, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Nesjavísur are conventionally understood to speak of a battle between a king coming from the east and a jarl called Sveinn coming from the north. Hellberg reinterprets the relevant verses so that the Sveinn in question is Sveinn tjúguskegg - I don't know what he makes of the jarl from the north, I haven't read his article. Saying that there are no contemporary sources for Sveinn strikes me as strange - that's only true in one particular interpretation. And it's certainly true that many of the kings' sagas were written in Norway. Haukur 19:52, 2 October 2007 (UTC)