In the summer of 1098 a Norwegian fleet appears off Orkney, deposes the two earls, sweeps through the Hebrides, takes the Isle of Man and kills a Norman earl off Anglesey. Five years later the man who led it lies dead in a bog in Ulster. Magnus Barefoot, in Old Norse Magnús berfœttr, ruled for only ten years and did not reach thirty. Icelandic sagas, Irish annals, a chronicle from the Isle of Man and Anglo-Norman historians all speak of him, and they do not always agree. This article sets the witnesses side by side, separates the terse annal entry from the saga story and tests the best-known tales: the kilt, the ship dragged across the isthmus at Kintyre and the grave near Downpatrick.
Magnus III Olafsson, called Barefoot, was king of Norway from 1093 to 1103. He was the only son of King Olaf Kyrre, "the Quiet", and a grandson of Harald Hardrada, who had fallen at Stamford Bridge in 1066. Where the father kept the peace for two decades, the son went to war almost every year: into Halland, against rebels in Trøndelag, twice west across the North Sea and against Sweden on the Göta river. The sagas therefore give him a second nickname besides Barefoot: Styrjaldar-Magnús, "War-Magnus" or "Strife-Magnus".
Modern accounts like to call him "the last Viking king". That label came later. Magnus was a Christian king who made alliances and negotiated treaties. What ties him to the older Viking Age is the target of his campaigns: the islands in the west settled by Scandinavians since the ninth century, from Orkney through the Hebrides to Man and Dublin.
Apart from the verses of his court poets, not a single text about Magnus dates from his lifetime. The fullest narratives are Icelandic kings' sagas. The oldest Norwegian overviews are the Latin Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium by the monk Theodoricus and the Old Norwegian Ágrip, both from the late twelfth century and both brief. Detail arrives only with the three great compilations of the 1220s and 1230s: Morkinskinna ("mouldy parchment", after the state of the manuscript), Fagrskinna ("fair parchment") and the Heimskringla of Snorri Sturluson. Snorri's is the best told, written more than a century after the events.
The sagas quote skaldic verse, intricate court poetry often composed close to the events. In the saga of Magnus most of it comes from Bjǫrn krepphendi ("Crooked-hand"), Þorkell hamarskáld and the Icelander Eldjárn: the oldest narrative witnesses, but praise poetry without dates.
Other voices come from outside. Orkneyinga saga tells the story from the point of view of the Orkney earls. The Irish annals, above all the Annals of Ulster and of Inisfallen, record Magnus in a few lines. The Chronicle of the Kings of Man and the Isles, written in the thirteenth century at Rushen Abbey on the Isle of Man, reports his time on the island. Add the Anglo-Norman historian Orderic Vitalis and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which notes an Earl Hugh's death on Anglesey under 1098.
Magnus was born around 1073; the year follows from Snorri's remark that he was "nearly thirty" when he died. Sources differ on his mother: Morkinskinna and Fagrskinna name a Tora Arnesdatter, Heimskringla a Tora Joansdatter. The Norwegian reference work Store norske leksikon follows the first; the question cannot be settled for certain.
When Olaf Kyrre died in September 1093, Magnus was proclaimed king in Viken, the region around the Oslofjord. In Trøndelag and the Uplands, however, the farmers chose his cousin Håkon Magnusson, known as "Toresfostre" after his foster-father Tore. Håkon won the farmers over by remitting dues. In February 1095 Håkon died, according to Snorri after chasing ptarmigan on the Dovrefjell, at about twenty-five.
Håkon's supporters did not give up. His foster-father Tore of Steig, Steigar-Tore, put forward a claimant named Svein Haraldsson. The sagas call Svein a Dane; some historians think he was an illegitimate son of Harald Hardrada. Magnus crushed the rising and hanged Tore and his ally Egil Aslaksson; Svein escaped to Denmark. From 1095 Magnus ruled alone.
On the Isle of Man, Guðrøðr Crovan, Godred Crovan in English, had built a Kingdom of the Isles covering Man and the Hebrides and at times Dublin as well. He died in 1095. His sons were young, and the island fell into strife. The Manx chronicle says that around 1097 Magnus sent a man named Ingimund to take over the Isles. Ingimund established himself on Lewis but was burned in his house by the leading islanders. Only the Manx chronicle knows this episode.
On Orkney the brothers Paul and Erlend Thorfinnsson ruled jointly as jarls, earls under Norwegian overlordship; their background is covered in the article on the Orkney earls. The most powerful Irish king was Muirchertach Ua Briain of Munster, a great-grandson of Brian Boru, whose victory at Clontarf in 1014 still shapes how Ireland remembers the Vikings. And to the south, in North Wales, Norman earls had only recently subdued Gwynedd and Anglesey.
Why Magnus claimed this island world, the sources do not say. Historians point to old Norwegian rights, his grandfather's example, plunder and control of the sea lanes around Dublin.
In 1098 Magnus sailed across the North Sea with a large fleet. Its size cannot be stated with confidence: Orderic Vitalis speaks of sixty ships, the Manx chronicle of a hundred and sixty. Several historians regard the higher figure as exaggerated.
On Orkney Magnus seized the two earls, Paul and Erlend, and sent them to Norway. Neither came back: according to the saga Erlend died at Nidaros and Paul at Bergen. Magnus set his son Sigurd, then a child of about eight or nine, over the islands with advisers at his side. The earls' sons, Håkon Paulsson and Magnus Erlendsson, had to accompany the king, probably also as hostages.
The fleet then moved through the Hebrides. The verses of Bjǫrn krepphendi quoted by Snorri list the stations: Lewis, Uist, Skye, Tiree, Mull, Islay. On Iona, St Columba's island, Magnus behaved differently according to the saga: he granted peace to the people there, had the little church locked and forbade anyone to enter.
On the Isle of Man Magnus found a land just emerging from civil war. For the same period the Manx chronicle reports a battle at Santwat between the men of the north and the south of the island. Lǫgmaðr, Lagman in English, a son of Godred Crovan, was captured and put in chains, says the saga. The chronicle adds that Magnus had fortifications built on Man; later accounts connect this with timber the men of Galloway were made to supply. What the Norse left on the island, from rune-inscribed crosses to Tynwald, is described in the article on the Isle of Man.
From Man Magnus sailed south into the strait between Anglesey and the Welsh mainland, the Menai Strait. Two Norman earls stood there with their men: Hugh of Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury, and Hugh d'Avranches, earl of Chester, whom contemporaries called "the Fat". They had recently driven the Welsh king Gruffudd ap Cynan into exile in Ireland.
The sources tell what happened next in different ways. In Snorri's account the Norwegians fought from their ships and the Normans from the shore, and when an arrow struck Hugh of Montgomery in the eye the fight was decided. The saga leaves open whether Magnus or a man from Hålogaland loosed it; both shot at once. Sources from outside Scandinavia credit the shot to Magnus. The earl, in armour that left only his eyes free, fell into the shallow sea. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes under 1098 only that Earl Hugh was slain on Anglesey by foreign sea-raiders. I know this entry only from secondary accounts.
Orkneyinga saga and the saga of St Magnus Erlendsson add a scene of their own. The young Magnus Erlendsson, son of the deposed earl, refused to fight because he had no quarrel with anyone there. He sat on deck with a psalter and sang psalms throughout the battle, without shielding himself, and yet he was not wounded. The king called him a coward. Later he jumped overboard by night and fled to the Scottish court. The scene belongs to the hagiography of the future Orkney saint, not to battle reporting.
The Normans withdrew, and Magnus took possession of Anglesey. Snorri stresses that no Norwegian king had ever come so far south; no lasting occupation followed. Gruffudd ap Cynan returned from Ireland in 1099 and regained his land; according to Welsh tradition he showed his gratitude to Magnus.
The most famous story about Magnus is set on the Kintyre peninsula in western Scotland. According to Snorri, Magnus made peace with the king of Scots: all the islands west of Scotland between which a ship with its rudder shipped could pass should belong to Norway. Magnus then had a small ship drawn across the narrow isthmus at Tarbert, sitting at the helm himself, and so declared Kintyre an island and therefore his. Orkneyinga saga knows the story too and praises Kintyre as better than the best of the Hebrides, Man excepted.
This is where the difficulties begin. Snorri names the Scottish king Malcolm, Old Norse Melkólfr. But Malcolm III had fallen in 1093. In 1098 the king was Edgar, one of Malcolm's sons, who had taken the throne in 1097 with English backing. Modern accounts therefore speak of an agreement with Edgar. Whether there was a formal treaty at all is disputed: the Scottish historian Richard Oram regards it as a later construction, while others such as Rosemary Power and Seán Duffy think an agreement likely. What is certain is that the Hebrides and Man remained under Norwegian overlordship after 1098 into the thirteenth century; only after the battle of Largs in 1263 and the Treaty of Perth in 1266 did they pass to Scotland.
The ship across the isthmus remains a story, shaped like a legal anecdote: a form of words is taken literally, and the cleverer party wins. It shows how thirteenth-century Iceland thought about Norwegian claims more than what happened in 1098. After about a year Magnus went home; Sigurd stayed in the islands.
Between the two western campaigns lay a war with Sweden. Magnus claimed the lands west of Lake Vänern, today's Dalsland and parts of Västergötland, arguing that the old border between Norway and Sweden had run there. He marched into Götaland, plundered, and had a stronghold built and garrisoned on the island of Kållandsö in Lake Vänern, called Kvaldinsey in the saga. The Swedish king Inge Stenkilsson came across the ice in winter, besieged the garrison and forced it to surrender; recent accounts say the fort was burned.
A second thrust ended badly for Magnus. At Foxerne near the Göta river his army was surprised and beaten. According to the saga a retainer, Ögmund Skoptason, put on the king's conspicuous cloak and drew off the pursuers. Dates for these fights vary; most accounts give 1099 to 1101.
In 1101 three kings met at Konghelle on the Göta river, today's Kungälv north of Gothenburg, also known in Swedish as Kungahälla: Magnus of Norway, Inge of Sweden and Erik Ejegod of Denmark, who mediated. They made peace, and Magnus married Inge's daughter Margaret. She was called Fredkulla, "peace-maiden"; Laing's translation renders it "Peace-offering". Several modern accounts say Dalsland was to be her dowry; it did not become Norwegian for good. The marriage was childless.
In 1102 Magnus sailed west again. The Annals of Ulster record it in a single sentence: Magnus, king of Lochlann, came with a great fleet to Man, and a year's peace was made between him and the men of Ireland. Lochlann is the Irish word for Scandinavia, here for Norway.
This time Magnus sought an alliance. His partner was Muirchertach Ua Briain, king of Munster, who was fighting for supremacy over all Ireland. Snorri calls him Myrkjartan. According to modern accounts Muirchertach recognised Magnus's rule over Dublin and its hinterland, Fingal, and Magnus's son Sigurd married Muirchertach's daughter, called Biadmynja in the saga, probably Bláthmín in Irish. Sigurd thereby gained the rank of king alongside his father.
Snorri says Magnus spent the winter of 1102–03 in Connacht in the west of Ireland. Historians consider this a mistake in the saga and place the stay with Muirchertach at Kincora in Munster. In the summer of 1103 the alliance backfired: on 5 August 1103 Muirchertach lost a battle near Ard Macha, today's Armagh, to his northern rival Domnall Ua Lochlainn. The dead included men of Dublin. Magnus himself did not fight there.
The voyage home was prepared. According to Snorri, Magnus waited with his ships on the coast of Ulster for cattle that Muirchertach was to send as provisions. When the cattle did not arrive on the agreed day, the king went ashore with most of his men on St Bartholomew's day, 24 August. A cloud of dust raises fears of treachery, then turns out to be the drovers, and only after that do Irishmen burst from the thickets as the Norwegians cross boggy ground back to the ships. Over his mail, Snorri says, Magnus wore a red silk tunic embroidered with a lion.
In the fighting the king was wounded through both thighs and then struck in the neck by an Irish axe. That was the fatal wound. A retainer, Vidkun Jonsson, killed the man who had struck the blow and carried the king's banner and his sword, Leggbitr ("Leg-biter"), back to the ships. Another, Thorgrim Skinnhuva, is said to have fled early with his men; whether there was more behind it is conjecture.
The Irish annals are drier. The Annals of Ulster say under 1103 that Magnus, king of Lochlann, was killed on a raid in Ulaid. The Annals of Inisfallen say he was slain when the Ulaid took him unawares. The Annals of the Four Masters, a seventeenth-century compilation, call him king of Lochlann and the Isles. Ulaid is the people and kingdom in the east of today's Ulster, roughly Down and Antrim.
A crucial tension lies between saga and annals. For Snorri the landing was a precaution while waiting for supplies; for the Irish scribes it was a raid. Historians offer three explanations: a careless cattle raid, a misunderstanding by the Ulaid, who feared an attack, or a plan by Muirchertach to rid himself of an ally who had grown too powerful. Which is right cannot be established with certainty.
The saga closes with an assessment. Magnus was loved by his men, it says, but the farmers found him harsh because he demanded heavy levies for his campaigns. When reproached for risking his life too lightly, he is said to have answered:
"The kings are made for honour, not for long life."Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, Magnúss saga berfœtts, final chapter (ch. 28 in Laing's numbering); public-domain English translation by Samuel Laing (1844).
Several Norwegian nobles fell with him. Sigurd sailed home and left his Irish bride behind.
Where Magnus is buried is uncertain. The Manx chronicle says he was buried near the church of St Patrick in Down, that is in Downpatrick, where tradition also places the grave of Ireland's patron saint. A mound on Horse Island, about two miles south of Downpatrick cathedral, has been called "Magnus's Grave" since a map of 1859. That attribution is modern. The archaeologist Finbar McCormick points out that the Ulaid did not necessarily grant their enemy a Christian burial. In 2003, the 900th anniversary, a runestone-style memorial was set up there. I know of no excavation that settles the question.
Magnus is considered the last Norwegian king to fall in battle outside Norway. To the Irish of his day he was a line in the annals between the wars of their own kings.
In Old Norse he is berfœttr, "barefoot", in some texts berbeinn, "bare-legged". Snorri explains the name like this: when Magnus and his men came back from the west, they had adopted the dress of the western lands. They walked the streets with bare legs and wore short tunics and over-cloaks, and so his men called him Magnus Barefoot or Bareleg. What is meant are short tunics in the Gaelic manner that left the knee free.
Modern retellings like to turn this passage into a kilt. That goes too far. The belted plaid from which the kilt developed is attested in Scotland only centuries later, and Snorri speaks of short tunics, not of a wrapped length of cloth. There are other explanations as well. Saxo Grammaticus, the Danish historian writing around 1200, tells, according to secondary accounts, that Magnus fled barefoot from a Swedish attack; a third tradition says he rode without shoes after the Irish fashion. Which explanation is right cannot be decided. For what Viking-Age people actually wore, see Viking clothing.
Snorri records a third nickname too: Magnus the Tall. And he preserves verses Magnus himself is said to have composed about a woman across the sea, an "emperor's daughter" named Matilda. Who is meant is uncertain; Matilda of Scotland, daughter of Malcolm III and later wife of Henry I of England, is often suggested.
Magnus left three sons by different mothers, none by his wife: Eystein, Sigurd and Olaf. All three became kings together in 1103. Olaf died in 1115, Eystein in 1123. Sigurd reigned until 1130 and went down in history as Jórsalafari, "Jerusalem-farer", because in the years after 1107 he sailed with a fleet by way of Spain and the Mediterranean to the Holy Land.
Long after his death further sons came forward. Harald Gille, who had grown up in Ireland, came to Norway around 1127 and claimed that Magnus had fathered him on the last western campaign. According to Snorri he passed an ordeal, walking over red-hot iron, and Sigurd acknowledged him. After Sigurd's death in 1130 this led to a struggle for the throne that opened the Norwegian civil wars.
Politically, more remained of the western campaign than of the fighting in Sweden. The islands in the west stayed under Norwegian overlordship into the thirteenth century, and the Orkney earls remained vassals of the Norwegian king. On Man the descendants of Godred Crovan returned after 1103. In Ireland, by contrast, Magnus's death ended the last attempt by a Scandinavian king to intervene in the power struggles of the Irish kings.
Why is Magnus called "Barefoot"? Snorri Sturluson explains it with western dress: short tunics and bare legs, worn by Magnus and his men after the first western campaign. Saxo Grammaticus and another tradition offer different explanations.
When and where did Magnus Barefoot die? On 24 August 1103, St Bartholomew's day, in Ulaid in the east of today's Ulster. The day comes from the saga; the Irish annals confirm the year and the place.
What is Magnus's connection with the Isle of Man? He took Man in 1098, built fortifications there according to the Manx chronicle and returned with a great fleet in 1102.
Who was Sigurd the Crusader? Magnus's son Sigurd, set over Orkney as a child in 1098, king of Norway with his brothers from 1103 and later leader of a voyage to the Holy Land, hence his byname "Jerusalem-farer".
Is there a grave of Magnus? The Manx chronicle names the church of St Patrick in Down. A mound on Horse Island near Downpatrick has been called "Magnus's Grave" since the nineteenth century; that is not proven.
The Earls of Orkney · Harald Hardrada · Olaf the Saint · Norse Kings · Largs 1263.
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