Cutting Room Floor is a series where I share pieces I originally wrote for my book, The Medieval Crossbow: A Weapon Fit To Kill a King, that for whatever reason didn’t make it into the final text. You can read the first part, on the crossbow in the English garrison of Calais here: https://www.stuartellisgorman.com/blog/cutting-room-floor-the-calais-garrison.
This time the writing is about thirteenth century Norway and the military career of King Sverre. I found this anecdote around Sverre and the crossbow, which first came to my attention in Josef Alm’s excellent book European Crossbows: A Survey, really interesting. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much else to say about it except “this is kind of cool” and anything I did have to add to it was already covered by discussions of Richard I and Philip II using crossbows during the Third Crusade. Still, I think it’s an interesting little anecdote and so I’m sharing it here with you! I hope you enjoy.
The Norwegian Civil Wars were a period of near continuous unrest that lasted for over a century, from1130 until 1240, and saw over twenty kings, pretenders, and claimants battling for control of the kingdom. Amidst this turmoil the reign of Sverre Sigurdson, who claimed the Norwegian throne in 1177 but only ruled as Sverre I from 1184 until his death in 1202, contains an interesting anecdote in the history of the crossbow.[i]
Sverre’s rule was one marked by near constant conflict. He had originated as a pretender to the throne before eventually achieving legitimacy through warfare. An account of his reign was provided by the Sverris Saga, a poetic account of his life probably written by Karl Jónsson, abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Munkaþverá in Northern Iceland. Jónsson died in 1213, meaning that the saga must have been written nearly contemporary to Sverre’s life. The saga says that Sverre’s initial group of followers consisted mainly of “vagrants, outcasts, and robbers who are primarily interested in plundering farmers.”[ii]
The incident during Sverre’s life of interest in crossbow history comes later in his reign, however, after he had risen to the throne and become king of Norway. In 1196 a group of nobles gathered to form the Bagler faction to oppose King Sverre and his Birkebeiner faction, with the following civil war known as the Bagler War. The Bagler War would endure past Sverre’s death in 1202, with its conclusion in 1240 marking the end of this period of civil war that had plagued Norway for so long.
The Bagler War saw many skirmishes and battles fought between the two opposed factions, each of which is dramatically recounted in Sverris Saga. In early June 1199 Sverre was in pursuit of the Baglers. Both factions had taken to their ships and Sverre was following the Baglers around Norway’s many fjords. On the 18th of June Sverre finally cornered the Baglers and engaged them in battle, a battle that is alternatively known as the Battle on the Strind-sea or the Battle of Trondheim Fjord. Sverris Saga records many individual great deeds performed by Sverre’s commanders, as well as his son, the future King Hakon. Of Sverre himself it says “King Sverri shot all day from a crossbow, and so also Earl Philippus.” Lest we believe that this was performed from a position of relative safety, the next line says “The Earl was struck in the arm under his mail-sleeve, but did not pluck the arrow out until evening.”[iii] The saga tells us that there were grappling hooks thrown between ships to facilitate boarding as well as incidents of ships ramming each other, so shooting a crossbow was not the only option for participating in the battle available to the king, but it does seem to be the one he chose.
This incident places King Sverre among the handful of monarchs known to have used a crossbow in war. Two other illustrious members of this group are Philip II of France and Richard I of England, both of whom used crossbows during the Third Crusade. These three were probably not the lone monarchs to use crossbows, and these incidents are unlikely to be the only times they did so. There is other evidence of Norwegian kings having a fondness for the crossbow, albeit not necessarily in battle explicitly. During an incident that took place right before the Norwegian Civil Wars, King Sigurd Jorsalafar (r. 1103 – 1130) reportedly boasted to his brother, and co-ruler, Östen (r. 1103 – 1123): ‘You could not span my bow, even were you to brace yourself against it with both feet.’[iv] This is clearly a reference to a crossbow despite the vagueness of the term, nobody spans a longbow using their feet, but in the context of the exchange it could very well have been a reference to a hunting weapon rather than one for war.
The two anecdotes, both of King Sigurd and King Sverre, suggest a particular fondness for the crossbow among the Norwegian kings, one which probably was reflected in the Norwegian nobility more generally given Sverre’s initial status as pretender rather than member of the royal family. Sverre was not the only member of the Norwegian elite to use a crossbow at Trondheim, Earl Philip was right there beside him shooting and being shot in turn and very likely they were not alone in that. We often assume that crossbows were the weapons of the common soldier – maybe too expensive for a peasant but certainly not the weapon of the social elite unless it was in a sporting context. The story of King Sverre and his fellow Norwegians show that this was very much not the case. If for no other reason, the abundance of naval engagements to be found in Norwegian history would encourage a familiarity with missile weapons among warriors of all social ranks.
[i] Josef Alm, European Crossbows: A Survey, pp. 23-4; Jonas Wellendorf ‘“Ancient Traditions” in Sverris saga: The Background of an Episode in Sverris saga and a Note on the Dating of Rómverja saga’ The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 113, No. 1 (2014), pp. 1-17; David Brégaint, ‘Kings and aristocratic elites: communicating power and status in medieval Norway’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 46:1, (2021). pp. 1-20
[ii] Jonas Wellendorf ‘“Ancient Traditions” in Sverris saga: The Background of an Episode in Sverris saga and a Note on the Dating of Rómverja saga’, p. 7
[iii] Sverris Saga: http://jillian.rootaction.net/~jillian/world_faiths/www.northvegr.org/lore/sverri/022.html
[iv] Josef Alm, European Crossbows, p. 23-4