Bergen’s Blessings
In the days of Henry II, relations with our cross-Channel neighbours were fractious, but we were fast friends with the people of Norway.
872-988
King Henry II 1154-1189
In the days of Henry II, relations with our cross-Channel neighbours were fractious, but we were fast friends with the people of Norway.
872-988
King Henry II 1154-1189
Charles Isaac Elton, QC (1839-1900) was a distinguished barrister, antiquary and Somersetshire MP. Following a tour of Norway in 1862-3, he recorded some of his experiences in a little traveller’s guide, Norway, the Road and the Fell, (1864) in which he celebrated Britain’s natural affinity with her northern neighbour.
abridged
BERGEN owed its first greatness to trading with England, a ship having been sent (according to tradition) so early as the reign of Harald Fairhair,* laden with furs and fish, to barter for honey, cloth, and corn. Haakon Haakonsson* made a treaty with England, which is said to have been the first made by us with any nation. The English and Scotch are also said to have evangelised Norway.* It is certain that they settled in considerable numbers in Bergen and Christiansand. King Olaf Tryggvason certainly owed his conversion to us, being talked over and baptized by a certain hermit of the Scilly Islands, whom he visited, thinking to find a wizard.*
* Harald I Fairhair, whom tradition names as the first King of Norway, ruling from about 872 to 930. He was a contemporary of Alfred the Great (871-899), Edward the Elder (899-924) and Athelstan (924-939).
* Haakon IV Haakonsson (1204-1263), who ruled Norway from 1217 until his death, a contemporary of Henry III (1216-1272).
* See The Conversion of Norway. It is preferable today to refer to the people of Scotland as Scots, not Scotch.
* Olaf Tryggvason (963-1000), Viking raider and subsequently King of Norway from 995 to 1000. He was baptised in the Isles of Scilly (the preferred way of saying the name today) in 988. See The Baptism of Olaf Tryggvason.