Thangbrand Of Saxony, Olaf Tryggvason’s Murderous Priest

King Olaf Tryggvason (r. 995-1000) was not a particularly patient or compromising monarch in his efforts to make Christianity the state religion of Norway. He often brought overwhelming military power to public assemblies and forced his people to convert at sword point, then took hostages to keep them in line, and smashed representations of the Norse gods for good measure before moving on to the next pagan region. As bad often attracts bad, it is not surprising that other violent church figures found their way into the court of Olaf Tryggvason. In particular, a priest named Thangbrand was known to have been a chaotic and turbulent figure.

Thangbrand’s early history has been lost to time, but he was said to have been of Saxon origin. Njal’s Saga (c. 13th century) even claimed that he was the son of a certain Count Willibald of Saxony. Whatever his origin story, Thangbrand eventually traveled to Norway and became a court priest of Olaf Tryggvason. In Norwegian circles, Thangbrand gained a reputation of being admirable in study, but abysmal in social settings. The Icelandic historian, Snorri Sturluson (c. 1179-1241), summed up Thangbrand’s reputation as, “He was a man of great overbearing and much inclined to violence, but otherwise a good cleric and a brave fellow” (Heimskringla, Oláfs saga Tryggvasonar, chapter 73). Although Thangbrand did have some positive qualities, his negative quirks were too much for some members of the Norwegian court to bear—the king included. Therefore, King Olaf Tryggvason apparently concluded that the brave and ruthless Thangbrand was the perfect candidate to send off on a missionary trip to Iceland.

To the relief of Norwegian courtiers, Thangbrand set sail for Iceland in 997. A warrior named Gudleif (or Gudlaug) Arason was the priest’s companion on the mission, and, according to Njal’s Saga, they sailed on a ship called the Bison. The missionaries eventually landed in Álptafjord of the Eastfjord District of Iceland. There, Thangbrand continued his educated, but belligerent, ways. The Laxdæla Saga claimed, “He preached the Christian faith with both fair words and dire punishments” (section 41). He did succeed in converting several significant figures in Iceland, such as Hall of Sida, Gizur the White and Hjalti Skeggjason, yet Thangbrand’s antics created more enemies than friends. The Saxon priest became an extremely unpopular figure on the island, and witty skalds in Iceland started to write unflattering verses at Thangbrand’s expense.

Unfortunately for the Icelanders, the priest was in no way a forgive-and-forget Christian, and he lashed out at the poets in an extremely unpriestly way—murder. Virtually every source on Thangbrand claims that he killed at least two people in his short stay on Iceland. The Islendingabók of Ari the Learned (c. 1068-1148) claimed that Thangbrand killed two or three of the people who lampooned him, while Snorri Sturluson proposed it was three, and the embellished Njal’s Saga alleged that the priest slew at least five people. The skalds, Thorvald Veili and Vetrlidi, were the two victims on which most sources agreed. About those two, Snorri Sturluson wrote, “Thorvald Veili and the skald Vetrlidi composed scurrilous verses about Thangbrand, and he killed both” (Heimskringla, Oláfs saga Tryggvasonar, chapter 73).

As soon as Thangbrand began murdering poets in Iceland—a land prone to bloody feuds at that time—it became no longer safe for him to remain on the island. Assassination plots began to form among the priest’s enemies, and, by 999, Thangbrand decided to flee back to Norway. The same year, Gizur the White and Hjalti Skeggason (both Icelandic converts of Thangbrand) also fled to Norway. The latter of the two Icelanders had outraged his countrymen with a crass poem of his own, one that called the gods Odin and Freyja a pair of dogs.

When Thangbrand reported his failure in Iceland to King Olaf Tryggvason, the monarch did not give up his quest to convert the Icelanders to Christianity. The king quickly sent a second wave of missionaries to Iceland, led by the aforementioned Icelandic exiles. About this second group of proselytizers, Snorri Sturluson wrote, “he [Olaf Tryggvason] sent Gizur the White and Hjalti Skeggjason to Iceland to proclaim Christianity there, and with them a priest called Thormod and several other ordained men, but kept with him as hostages four Icelanders that seemed to him noblest” (Heimskringla, Oláfs saga Tryggvasonar, chapter 95). This second party of missionaries was much more successful and, aided by the fact that the Norwegian king was holding the sons of four prominent chieftains captive, they convinced the Icelanders to accept Christianity by 1000. As for Thangbrand, he apparently did nothing of note after his peculiar trip to Iceland and faded into history.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (A scene depicting King Olaf Tryggvason of Norway, by Peter Nicolai Arbo (1831–1892), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Heimskringla, by Snorri Sturluson and translated by Lee Hollander. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964, 2018.
• The Book of Settlements (Sturlubók version) translated by Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1972, 2006. 
• Laxdæla saga by an unknown 13th century Icelander, translated by Keneva Kunz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008. 
• Íslendingabók (ed. Jakob Benediktsson) in The Viking Age: A Reader, edited by Angus A. Somerville and R. Andrew McDonald. Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 2010. 
• https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/njal100.html 
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Germanic-religion-and-mythology/Beliefs-practices-and-institutions#ref533322  

The Flamboyant Tale Of King Liu Duan Of Jiaoxi

Emperor Jing (r. 157-141 BCE) and the concubine Lady Cheng had three sons named Liu Yu, Liu Fei and Liu Duan. All three brothers were quickly appointed as kings after their father’s ascendance to the throne. Liu Yu and Liu Fei were given kingdoms in 155 BCE and Liu Duan followed close behind with his appointment as the King of Jiaoxi in 154 BCE. Lady Cheng’s sons were generally well behaved when it came to respecting the authority of the emperors—they never rebelled and they had largely tranquil reigns. Liu Yu and Liu Fei both died after twenty-five or twenty-six years of rule, which had been tame and peacefully absent of drama. Liu Duan, however, who lived to rule twice as long as his brothers, quickly became the oddball of the family.

Liu Duan set up his regime in Jiaoxi like any other king. He hired an entourage of ministers and attendants to help govern his kingdom, and he also took in several concubines who would hopefully provide him with an heir to the kingdom. Yet, Liu Duan and his ministers quickly began to feud. The main point of dissent, according to Han historian Sima Qian (c. 145-90 BCE), was the relationship between the king and his concubines—or lack thereof. Apparently, Liu Duan was strictly homosexual and used every trick in the book to avoid time with his palace women. His favorite ploy was to plead illness, a tactic that allowed him to escape his concubines for months at a time.

Although the king and his harem of women had a cold relationship, Liu Duan was quite affectionate toward a certain young man who worked in the palace. The attendant, left unnamed by Sima Qian, was either accepting of or nonresistant to the king’s interest and the two were alleged to have begun a passionate relationship. Yet, unlike Liu Duan, the palace attendant fancied women as much as he did men, and, when he became smitten with one of the king’s scorned concubines, a classic love triangle was formed.

While not attending the king, the handsome courtier found ways to spend time with the palace lady who had caught his eye. His advances were apparently reciprocated and the two began an affair behind the back of the king. Yet, the couple became horrified when the concubine entered that state which couples receive with both excitement and anxiety—she was pregnant. To the relief of the illicit lovers, Liu Duan liked to keep his palace women out of sight and out of mind. The king reportedly had so little interest in the women of his harem that he was totally oblivious to the pregnancy of the concubine. It was only after the child was born that gossip reached the ears of Liu Duan. When the truth was discovered, the heartbroken king reportedly had the palace attendant, the concubine and even their newborn child all executed.

During the time that King Liu Duan was not hiding from his palace women, he usually was immersed in legal intrigue against his ministers and other imperial officials. It was apparently a life-long battle, but the king proved himself to be a worthy and dangerous opponent. Sima Qian wrote,  “The chancellors and the 2,000 picul officials would no sooner attempt to bring charges against him than they would find that they themselves had become entangled in the Han Laws” (Shi Ji 59). It was a testament to Liu Duan’s political skill that he won most of his legal battles during his lengthy forty-seven-year reign as king of Jiaoxi. Yet, with the king and the officials distracted by a never-ending feud, the kingdom suffered from neglect. Sima Qian wrote, “His storehouses began to leak and fall into ruin, and the goods in them, valued at millions of cash, rotted away until they could not even be moved from the spot” (Shi Ji 59). Along with the storehouses, the kingdom’s tax collection system and the flow of payment to guards and the military also suffered from poor management. The officials used the tattered state of the kingdom to their advantage. Sima Qian stated, “The officials then requested that his kingdom be reduced in size, and he was deprived of over half of his domain” (Shi Ji 59).

As the king grew older, he apparently took his security much more seriously. Likely in consequence of the unstable pay of his guards and military, the king became more reclusive, reportedly spending most of his time holed up in his palace with those he trusted most. He may have also feared assassination, as he was said to have used disguises and false names whenever he traveled on roads that left him vulnerable to attack. Nevertheless, Liu Duan was a survivor and lived until his peaceful death in 107 BCE, after nearly a half-century of rule in Jiaoxi. At the time of his death, the king still had no children, and the kingdom was consequently brought under the direct jurisdiction of Emperor Wu’s central government.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (figures from a tomb mural of Prince Zhanguai (c. 706) and a woman from a Sung Dynasty tomb mural (c. 960-1279), both [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Records of the Grand Historian (Shi ji) by Sima Qian, translated by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.