page_title: Ormurin Langi
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Ormurin Langi / Description
context_page_description: Ormurin Langi is a ballad type song in the Faroe Islands. It was written ca. 1830 by Jens Christian Djurhuus.
  The song has 86 verses and is in Faeroese, and deals with the Norwegian king Olaf Tryggvason. The title Ormurin Langi refers to Olaf Tryggvason's ship with the same name.
context_section_description: Ormurin Langi takes its subject matter from the account well given in Heimskringla of the famous sea battle off the island of Svolder in 1000, when the Swedish and Danish kings, together with the Norwegian Eiríkr Hákonarson, attacked the Norwegian king, Olaf Tryggvason, while he was on his way home from Wendland to Norway on his ship, the Long Serpent, accompanied by his fleet.
  They attack in turn and King Olaf repulses the assaults of the two kings, but is defeated by his countryman Eiríkr Hákonarson.
  The outcome of the battle is known; when Olaf realises that the battle is lost, he leaps overboard together with his surviving men. It is not known where this battle took place, with it being doubtful whether there ever was an island called Svolder.
  In the ballad the poet has Olaf sailing from the Baltic into the Oresund between Denmark and Sweden, where he imagines the island to be located, and the battle takes place in the straits between the island and the mainland.
caption: The battle, as depicted in a Faroese stamp commemorating the ballad
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