Athelstan and the Prince of Norway
HAUK and the boy Haakon duly landed in England, and on reaching London found the court of King Athelstan at feast. The Norsemen were made welcome, and Hauk took Haakon and set him on Athelstan’s knee. “Harald the King” Hauk announced to the wondering company “bids you foster his servant-girl’s child.”
Athelstan was beside himself with anger; in those days some said that only an inferior fosters another man’s child.* He caught up a sword. “By all means slay the boy” said Hauk carelessly; “but that will not make an end of all Harald’s sons.”* Hauk bowed himself out, and hastily took ship for Norway.
Unable to remain angry for long, Athelstan had Haakon baptised, and brought him up as his own. He made a warrior of him, and presented him with a mighty jewelled sword that men called Quernbiter, for it could slice through a millstone;* and after Harald died, Athelstan equipped Haakon with ships, and bade him claim his father’s throne.*
According to Sturluson, just before he died Harald handed control of his kingdom over to his son Eric Bloodaxe. It was a controversial move that led to instability in the kingdom, and sending Haakon to England was Harald’s way of keeping him safe from dynastic squabbles — as well as paying back Athelstan for his little joke.
A foolish prejudice, and one Athelstan evidently did not share, as the first King of all England fostered other children of minor royalty without apparently thinking it beneath his dignity. They included Alan II, Duke of Brittany, dispossessed by the Vikings, and Louis, son of his half-sister Eadgifu, whom he helped to claim the Kingdom of West Francia.
A ‘quern’ is a millstone. Metal-working at this time was an unpredictable business, and while some swords came out as little more than common iron others were almost steel, hard and sharp. It was in part from this that certain smiths came to be regarded as wizards, and certain swords as magical. For more information on the history of smith-work, see Oldfield Forge.
Haakon (aged about fifteen) drove out Eric Bloodaxe, his half-brother and Harald’s heir, by promising tax cuts to his nobles. Eric fled Norway and took refuge in the Orkneys and then at the Kingdom of Jorvik, with its capital at York, only to be murdered by a Northumbrian earl named Maccus near Stainmore in Westmorland in 954, together with Eric’s son Haeric.