It was a century in turmoil.
Over a hundred years of war, the land was ravaged.
The monarch was little more than a figurehead and military leaders held a tight grip on
power.
Families are torn apart and rival clans dream of the day they might be the ones to reunite
the kingdom under their rule.
Except this isn’t medieval Japan, or ancient China… it’s Norway.
[intro]
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Yeah Norway had a 100-year-long civil war period, who knew!
Yeah yeah, we’re gonna get to Haakon eventually, but trust me the context here is…
I mean let’s be honest not that necessary but it’s too funny to ignore.
Okay so the year is 1120-something, right?
Norway has one king, all is well and good, but it should be noted that the official rules
for succession in Norway were, shall we say, primed for disaster.
Every single son, legitimate or not, equal claim to the throne.
So Sigurd was sharing the throne with his brothers Oystein and Olav, but both died childless
so hey, crisis averted, he can pass his crown to the next generation and let them duke it
out.
UNTIL one day, out of the blue, this random Irish dude comes knocking on the king’s
door.
Sigurd the Crusader: “Who the hell are you?”
Harald: “Don’t you recognize me?
I’m your long-lost half-brother Harald!
Papa went to war and got it on with an Irish gal and, well, here I am!
Just in time to inherit the crown!”
Of course these were the days before there was any way to prove something like this,
but that didn’t stop medieval Christians.
No, there was one way to suss out the truth: trial by fire.
If this Harald guy was really the king’s half-brother, then he should be able to walk
over burning coals and, y’know, not get burned or at least heal in like three days
or something.
And uh, he actually does it?
Like I don’t know if they changed it so he just had to make it from one end of coals
to the other without jumping off, or if this was actually some kind of miracle, like if
God was up there in heaven with his angels asking
“Okay, give me the agenda for the next few centuries.
We’ve got the Mongol conquest?”
“Yes sir” “Then the plague’s coming back, gonna
kill about...”
“200 million people, sir” “Excellent.
Still on track for the holocaust?”
“According to my calculations” “Sir!
We’ve got a huge problem!
The king of Norway doesn’t believe he has a half-brother!”
“He fucking what!?”
So Sigurd concedes that fine, whatever, he’s got a brother, but the only way he gets his
hands on the throne are if Sigurd and his son die first.
So Sigurd dies and Harald takes the throne by force.
As for Sigurd’s son…
Soldier: “Your majesty, we’ve captured the rightful ki- I mean the pretender.
What should we do with him?”
Harald: “Hm…
I’ll be gracious enough to spare him, but we need a way to make sure he’ll never be
eligible for the throne again” Soldier: “For sure, uh, we could castrate
him, or blind him, or mutilate him, or just send him to a monastery”
Harald: “Por que no los todos?”
So they mutilated him and blinded him and castrated him and sent him to a monastery.
So okay, it was messy, but hey, Norway has one king.
UNTIL….
*knock knock* Harald: “Who the hell are you?”
Sigurd Slembe: “You don’t recognize me?
I’m your long-lost half-brother Sigurd!”
Harald: “..... suuuure.
I’ll set up a special trial by fire just for you”
Sigurd Slembe: “Oh, no need!
I already went through a trial by fire in Denmark, so I’m legit.”
Harald: “Okay buddy”
King Harald sends him packing, but it doesn’t matter because Sigurd murders Harald in his
sleep and makes himself king.
And everybody was okay with that.
Kidding, there’s another civil war!
Harald’s two sons on one side, Sigurd on the other with his unexpected ally: Magnus
the Blind!
Magnus is killed in battle because, he is blind, and Sigurd gets captured and tortured
to death.
So, all is well and good, because once again there’s one king in Norway - ah shit, wait,
there’s still two, that can’t be good.
Wait no, make that three because their long-lost half-brother Oystein comes sailing in from
the west!
And he takes a third of the kingdom, they just give it to him!
Good God, is this what things were like before the Internet?
You just said things no one could prove wrong so they all just believed you?
Well if the kingdom wasn’t big enough for two, it definitely ain’t big enough for
three, and two of the brothers team up to remove the third.
No, not the strange man who appeared out of nowhere to claim over 30% of Norway, he and
Sigurd Munn actually team up to get rid of Inge.
Or at least that’s what Inge claims because he killed Sigurd first and then he and the
strange man from across the sea try to pretend that didn’t just happen, but fratricide
is a lot like cheating, if you catch somebody doing it you’re not just gonna unsee it.
Inge and Oystein goes to war, Inge wins, all is well, there’s one king in Norway.
Oh except for Inge’s nephew.
And this is the point where the civil war period really stops being about the kings,
his nephew was a child, this kid wasn’t claiming the throne for himself, it was a
bunch of people who were pissed off at Inge for all the regicide who needed a prop.
Likewise, they finally kill Inge and so his followers make their leader a 5-year-old.
And he’s not even the son of a king, he’s the OG Sigurd’s grandson through his daughter
who married the guy who’s now in charge of the “make my son the new king” party.
And hey for what it’s worth, he followed through on his campaign promises, his son
did indeed become king.
At least at this point the two sides get names.
First you’ve got the birkebeiner, who were named for being so poor they wore birch bark
instead of shoes, they rose up in revolt against this child king and their first choice of
a ruler is the son of the mysterious drifter from the sea who claimed to be the son of
the mysterious drifter from Ireland who claimed to be the son of the king.
Not to be confused with their next candidate, the mysterious drifter from the Faroe Islands!
Birkebeiner: “Who the hell are you?”
Sverre: “Why I’m a traveller from the Faroe Islands who recently discovered I’m
the long-lost grandson of the long-lost half-brother to the guy who was, like, half a dozen kings
ago” Birkebeiner: “Your majesty!
Please, take this crown”
And then the other side were the people known by this name (Bagler), which is already plural
and pronounced in Norwegian, but I just wanted to make this image so I’m calling them Baglers.
Their whole thing was that they wanted their kings to be legitimate, which is dumb and
boring so that’s all I’m saying about them.
We’re like 70 years into these back-to-back civil wars by this point and lo and behold,
a child is born named Haakon Haakonson, son of Haakon, who was one of the birkebeiner
kings.
King Haakon was already dead by the time his son was born and they replaced him with a
new guy named Inge Bardsson.
Baby Haakon, meanwhile, is born in the middle of Bagler territory, so they’ve gotta deliver
him with their best skiers out into the cold blizzardy night over a mountain and hope the
kid doesn’t freeze to death before the Baglers find them.
They safely deposit him in the court of king Inge, and Haakon grows up to be an unnaturally
magnanimous kid who’s just beaming with kingly vibes.
Doesn’t matter cause King Inge and his brother Haakon the Crazy cut him out from succession,
and he’s all “Yes, well, my attorney wasn’t present, so your decision is invalid, good
day”.
But then when he’s 11 a bunch of his friends demand the king give Haakon a province to
govern and out of the woodwork here comes a bunch of grown men flocking around Haakon
saying “Yes my boy, let us fight for you!” and noble young Haakon has the wherewithal
to say it would be morally wrong to divide the birkebeiner, and also “I am eleven.”
Instead he’s gonna pray that he’ll get his inheritance when the time is right.
And hey, it should come as no surprise that strategy worked out for him given God’s
affection for medieval Norwegian kings.
When Inge dies, it’s down between his half-brother Skule and Haakon, and Skule’s falling behind
in the polls so to speak so his supporters tell everybody: Haakon?
You know that kid’s not really royalty, right?
Haakon’s mother: “He is too!”
Skule: “Oh yeah?
Prove it”
Angel: “The Norwegians are doubting their royal ancestry again!”
God: “How many miracles do these people need?!”
So yeah, somehow she survives the trial by ordeal, and Skule decides this kid is right,
splitting up the party would be bad, he’ll be the kid’s regent instead.
The last Bagler king dies in 1217, Skule reconciles the shoe people and the bagel people and reunites
the kingdom.
Haakon: “Uh oh” Skule: “What’s the matter, your majesty?”
Haakon: “It’s 1217 yeah?
Calendar says the civil war era doesn’t end until 1240.
But that’s weird, I mean the Baglers are defeated, I don’t know who I could possibly
be fighting for 23 more years.”
“Uh oh.”
Skule and Haakon end up passive-aggressively ruling separate parts of the kingdom, both
signing off as the ruler of Norway.
There is another Bagler pretender that pops up, but y’know Skule arrests him when he’s
in his kingdom - I mean where he’s exercising his uh more direct jurisdiction, but when
the pretender escapes and fights Haakon, Skule’s doing as little as he can possibly get away
with, but it’s all put to rest by 1227.
Haakon: “So… we’re cool, right?”
Skule: “As cucumbers” Haakon: “[what the] Hell’s a cucumber,
is that like a French thing?”
Haakon marries Skule’s daughter, but the two men’s relationship gets worse and worse.
Then suddenly it gets better!
Maybe they had a sleepover, played a few rounds of Mario Party, oh and then it got way worse,
people start spreading rumors to each one about the other until Skule finally names
himself king… and gets his ass kicked in 1240, there we go, hundred years of civil
war done and dusted!
Haakon goes on to become the coolest bestest Norwegian king ever, the French ask him to
take their men on a crusade, the pope loves him even though he sided with the semi-literal
antichrist, more on that over here, at one point he suggests he be the new Holy Roman
Emperor, the Irish try to make him their high king, Haakon is just the man.
Swedes and the Danes don’t like him as much, but it’s whatever.
Norway’s in a golden age, the kingdom is bigger than ever before, and life is good.
However: one of the places that made the kingdom so big and juicy was the Scottish Isles, but
the king of Scotland, um, he wants the Scottish isles to be uh, you know, Scottish.
But he was a gentleman, so he offered to buy the isles from Haakon.
Or else.
Haakon goes “Hahahaha, he’s - he’s seen my navy right?” and sails to Scotland with
a hundred and twenty ships -- and these are just the ones he brought for negotiations.
The Scottish king is sweating until he comes up with a brilliant idea - stall!
The negotiations that should have been a matter of weeks become a matter of months, with the
Scottish king hemming and hawing until son of a gun it’s October and the ocean is too
rough to sail.
You can have as many ships as you want, doesn’t mean squat if they’re crashing into the
shore in a storm.
Haakon’s rightly peeved now, and sets up his camp for the winter.
The King of Scotland can play his games today, but the spring will come.
And when it does, the wind on Haakon’s sails will be a thunder heard across Scotland!
The Scots will rue the day they thought they could - and Haakon caught a fever and died.
“Jack, that was anticlimactic” “Why if it isn’t my long lost brother,
Mr. Bett from Drawn of History!
Yes it was!”
“But what if the people wanted more about Scandinavian history and epic tales of adventure
across the sea!”
“Well they’d have to watch your video about the adventures of Lief Erikson wouldn’t
they!”
“I suppose they would!”
“Well then I reckon it’s a good thing there’s a link in this here end card!
Hint hint”