Prince Erik was always close to his older brother, and he knew the dreadful defeat he had suffered was a source of constant shame; the whispers of ‘runner’ at his coronation were deeply hurtful and untrue. His brother deserved a better epitaph than that. To that end he resolved, as heir to the Danish throne, to restore lustre to the family name. He had few troops, a single unit of archers was all he had with him, but that didn’t matter. He marched out that day. Courtiers smirked that he had inherited his father’s hot-headedness!

The battle was long. He was fully aware of the danger of the Norsemen in hand-to-hand combat and he was determined not to befall the same fate as his brother. Unwilling to risk direct combat he settled instead for a battle of movement. Bravely and repeatedly riding behind the enemy he distracted their attention long enough for his archers to pelt the undefended backs of the Vikings. Before long the field was a bloody mess as Norseman after Norseman fell with an arrow in his back. Consequently, when he finally allowed his guard to engage the enemy they were easily able to rout the Vikings and pursue them until, in the words of his Chronicler, Not one Norse remained alive for miles and miles and miles. The few prisoners that were taken, including the aging rebel leader and orchestrater of the attack on Olaf’s home so many years ago, were brutally slaughtered. Finally, his father could sleep easy in his grave and his grandmother had been avenged.

However, capturing Norway was one thing. Pacifying it was another. The Norse had grown used to independence and resented the imposition of a new sovereign. Within a year they had rebelled and quickly made progress from their heartlands among the impenetrable fjords. Prince Erik’s army was too small to effectively keep control over the entire country and until he could gain assistance from Lord Jarl in Sweden he was helpless. Eventually though, Sweyn Jarl, a hardy soldier arrived with his landsmen and Erik was finally ready to give battle. Taking advantage of his opponent’s military naivety, he skilfully manoeuvred his men into a strong defensive position, on a steep hill at the end of a valley. Predictably, the carnage was immense. On their approach the rebels’ Men-at-Arms were decimated by sustained arrow fire and when the Jarls’ landsmen and Erik’s few knights charged the tired, scared rebels panic soon set in, panic which quickly spread to the entire army. Soon the rebels were in full flight and made easy pickings for the now adrenaline-filled knights. Once again the prisoners were executed in the square of the capital, which seemed to bring peace to this fractious land. For the loss of only 14 men, Norway had been secured once more for the Danes.

With Scandinavia secured, Olaf I’s dream of a safe, secure, isolationist Danish kingdom could be pursued. Olaf II might have failed as a military leader; he was determined to succeed as a modern, European king.


Everyone agreed the bride looked beautiful, and if she was nervous she didn’t show it. As always in these times, a wedding involving royal blood was a political event. The Poles were eager to secure their place on the Baltic coast; a blood alliance with the Danes would secure this, while the Danes needed Polish support if the Holy Roman Empire ever turned its greedy eyes northward. Prince Sweyn, the eldest son of Olaf II, and therefore heir to the throne, stood at the altar in the recently finished Church, supposedly the finest in the North. To stave off the anxiety caused from an impending marriage to a woman he had never met, his let his mind wander to the state of the kingdom he would one day inherit.

Truth be told, the years since the pacification of Norway had been quiet. Aside from the sailing of the first Danish fleet into the Baltic, which provided security for traders to peddle their wares to the pagans in the East, little had occurred in the Danish kingdom. Continued trade had brought enough taxes to finance a permanent standing army in the Jutland peninsula which in turn allowed King Olaf II to continuously travel his realm with his brothers, constantly checking on the performance of his subordinates, secure in the knowledge that his homeland would be protected. However, not all was well in the Danish kingdom. The royal court had become bloated and overly extravagant, and complaints from the merchant class could not be suppressed for ever, while across the ocean the French were consolidating their control over mainland Britain. It surely couldn’t be long until they turned their attention east to Scandinavia.

Still, Sweyn thought, these problems could wait. Tonight he would have his new bride to ravish. All the perversions that he had attempted to bottle up would be finally allowed expression. This Polish whore would soon learn the duties inherent in being the wife of a true Dane; and one day he would be King!

Death of King Olaf II (The Runner) 1113-1139