page_title: Battle of Svolder
section_title: King Olaf's death
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Svolder / King Olaf's death
context_page_description: The Battle of Svolder was a naval battle fought in September 999 or 1000 in the western Baltic Sea between King Olaf Tryggvason of Norway and an alliance of his enemies. The backdrop of the battle was the unification of Norway into a single state, long-standing Danish efforts to gain control of the country, and the spread of Christianity in Scandinavia.
  King Olaf was sailing home after an expedition to Wendland, when he was ambushed by an alliance of Svein Forkbeard, King of Denmark, Olof Skötkonung, King of Sweden, and Eirik Hákonarson, Jarl of Lade. Olaf had only 11 warships in the battle against a fleet of at least 70. His ships were captured one by one, last of all the Ormen Lange, which Jarl Eirik captured as Olaf threw himself into the sea. After the battle, Norway was ruled by the Jarls of Lade as a fief of Denmark and Sweden.
  The exact location of the battle is disputed, and depends on which group of sources is preferred: it is only Icelandic sources that place it near a place called Svolder, while Adam of Bremen places it in Øresund.
  The most detailed sources on the battle, the kings' sagas, were written approximately two centuries after it took place.
context_section_description: At last, the Long Serpent is overpowered and Olaf Tryggvason defeated. The Danish sources report that when all was lost he committed suicide by throwing himself into the sea, "the end befitting his life", according to Adam of Bremen. Saxo Grammaticus says that Olaf preferred suicide to death at the hands of the enemy and jumped overboard in full armour rather than see his foes victorious. The Norwegian and Icelandic accounts are more complex and more favourable to Olaf. Hallfreðr's memorial poem for his lord had already alluded to rumours that Olaf escaped death at Svolder. The sagas offer a variety of possibilities. Ágrip reports:
  "But of the fall of King Óláfr nothing was known. It was seen that as the fighting lessened he stood, still alive, on the high-deck astern on the Long Serpent, which had thirty-two rowing places. But when Eiríkr went to the stern of the ship in search of the king, a light flashed before him as though it were lightning, and when the light disappeared, the king himself was gone."
  Other sagas suggest that one way or another Olaf made his way to the shore; perhaps by swimming, perhaps with the help of angels, most likely rescued by one of the Wendish ships present. After his escape, Olaf supposedly sought salvation for his soul abroad, perhaps joining a monastery. Mesta describes a series of "sightings" of him in the Holy Land, the last in the 1040s.
  King Olaf, like Charlemagne, Frederick Barbarossa and Sebastian of Portugal, is one of those legendary heroic figures whose return was looked for by the people, their deaths never completely accepted. (See King asleep in mountain.)
caption: In the final stage of the battle, Eirik and his men board the Long Serpent.
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