Emund the Old

• 1. Introduction

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  Emund the Old ruled Sweden for roughly a decade, from about 1050 until his death around 1060. A rune carver named Åsmund Kåresson left behind a line that may refer to him: "Åsmund Kåresson carved runes right. Then sat Emund." Scholars have speculated that the word sat means sitting on the throne, but the inscription does not say so outright. That uncertainty runs through the whole reign. The king left almost no voice of his own, and the writers who describe him lived far away or generations later. Why do the surviving accounts judge him so harshly? What happened to the army his son led across the sea? And did a line of boundary stones really mark the edge of Sweden in his time?

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• 2. Path To The Throne

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  Olof Skötkonung, the first Christian ruler of Sweden, fathered Emund with a co-wife named Edla. She was the daughter of a Slavic chief from the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. Emund had two sisters by the same mother, Astrid and Holmfrid.

  Olof's legitimate queen, Estrid of the Obotrites, bore him Anund Jacob and Ingegerd. The 13th-century historian Snorri Sturluson describes Estrid as ill-tempered and unkind to her stepchildren. Olof later sent Emund away to be raised among his mother's Slavic relatives. While he lived there, the boy failed to hold on to the Christian religion.

  Anund Jacob succeeded Olof, and he left no known sons of his own. Snorri says Emund was already ruling in Sigtuna, an important centre of the Swedish realm, by 1035. Other sources contradict this, because Anund Jacob was still alive then. The similar names Anund and Emund may simply have been confused.

  The German chronicler Adam of Bremen wrote the Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, or Deeds of Bishops of the Hamburg Church. He reports that Anund Jacob died in or shortly after 1049 and that Emund followed him. Nothing suggests the succession was irregular. Adam would also be the one to give the new king his reputation.

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• 3. Conflict With Bremen

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  Adam of Bremen is the only near-contemporary source for Emund's reign, and his portrait is bleak. Much of the hostility comes from the king's self-willed stance toward the Archdiocese of Bremen. Adam grants that Emund was baptised but says he cared very little for the faith. He also gave the king the Latin nickname pessimus, meaning worst. A short chronicle of the Westrogothic law, written around 1240, echoes this by calling him Slemme, the bad. It adds that he was a disagreeable man when set on a goal.

  The quarrel centred on a bishop named Osmundus, whom Emund refused to give up. Osmundus began as a protégé of Sigfrid, a missionary based in Norway, and was raised at a school in Bremen. The Pope never ordained him as a bishop. The Polish archbishop of Gniezno did instead, and Osmundus then travelled to Sweden and won Emund's confidence.

  In the mid-1050s the Archbishop of Bremen sent envoys to Sweden. Their leader, Adalvard the Elder, was meant to become the new bishop. The delegation was deeply offended to find Osmundus wearing the dress of an archbishop. In their view he had "seduced the still recently converted wild peoples through incorrect education in our faith". At Osmundus' insistence, Emund turned the envoys away from an assembly. A Swedish magnate named Stenkil, a relation of the king, still escorted the delegation on its way back. His name would return when the king's line came to its end.

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• 4. Time Of Calamities

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  Not long after the break with Bremen, Emund sent his son Anund out with an army, in Adam's words "in order to expand the realm". The Viking expedition crossed the sea and reached Terra Feminarum, the Land of Women, which Adam places somewhere in Scythia. Modern scholars read the name as a reference to Kvenland, probably east of the Gulf of Bothnia in present-day Finland. The word Kven may have been confused with the Nordic word kvinna, meaning woman.

  The women, says Adam, "immediately mixed poison in the springwater, and in that way brought death to the king himself and his army." Calling Anund a king implies that he bore the title together with his father.

  A severe drought and failed harvests followed the military disaster. Other sources date this crop failure to 1056. The calamities allegedly drove the Swedes to ask the Archbishop of Bremen to send Adalvard back as their bishop. Adalvard duly came and devoted his efforts to converting Värmland, near the border with Norway.

  Osmundus appears to have submitted to Adalvard in the end. He left Sweden for England some time before 1066. On very loose grounds, some have identified him with Åsmund Kåresson, a prominent carver of runic inscriptions in Uppland. Border matters, meanwhile, left a different trail in the sources, one marked out in stone.

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• 5. The Border Memorandum

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  Sweyn Estridsen of Denmark and Harald Hardrada of Norway were the neighbours Emund had to reckon with, yet little is known of his dealings with them. He may have continued his brother Anund Jacob's support for Sweyn against Harald.

  A memorandum about an early border between Sweden and Denmark survives in a large number of medieval Swedish manuscripts. It opens: "Emund Slemme was the King in Uppsala, and Sweyn Forkbeard in Denmark." It then names men such as Ragnvalde of Tiundaland, Botvid of Hälsingland and Grimulf of Grimeton in Halland.

  Six stones, the text says, were placed between the two kingdoms. The first stands in Snutruase and the second in Danabäck. The third is Kinna sten, the fourth stands in Uraksnaes, and the fifth is Vita sten. The sixth, Brömse sten, lies between Blekinge and Möre.

  A story follows about three Nordic kings meeting on Danaholmen. The Danish king held the bridle of the Swedish king's horse, while the Norwegian king held the stirrups. This seems to acknowledge that the king at Uppsala ranked first.

  Older historians usually assumed that the province of Blekinge passed from Sweden to Denmark on this occasion. A late 9th-century source says Blekinge belonged to the Swedes, while medieval sources make clear it belonged to Denmark. Modern scholars question the whole picture, since it is doubtful that Blekinge counted as Danish even in the 1060s.

  Peter Sawyer has challenged the memorandum on several grounds. Emund and Sweyn Forkbeard were not contemporaries, because the Danish king of the time was another Sweyn, Sweyn Estridsen, who reigned 1047-1074. Some details also fit the High Middle Ages better. Sawyer suggests Danes may have written the text in the first half of the 13th century, to show their claims to Halland and Blekinge were old. Other historians defend the text as genuine and date it to about 1050. While scholars argue over the stones, the king's own family tree is just as thinly documented.

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• 6. Last Of His House

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  Astrid Njalsdotter of Skjalgaätten, who died in 1060, is the woman often assumed to have been Emund's wife. No source names the wife outright. The guess comes from combining the Hervarar saga with Adam of Bremen. Astrid's father was the Norwegian nobleman Nial Finnsson, who died in 1011. He was the son of Gunhild Halvdansdotter of the Skjalga family in Hålogaland.

  Inge I and Halsten, both later kings of Sweden, were Emund's grandsons through a daughter whose name is not recorded. She became queen consort of Stenkil. Emund's other known child with his consort was Anund, who died before his father.

  The nickname Gamle comes from Adam of Bremen, who mistook it for a proper name. In one episode he mentions a "King Gamle" when he actually means Emund. The word means old. It could signify that Emund was old when he became king, or that he was the older brother of his predecessor Anund Jacob.

  Emund was the last king of the ancient royal house of the Swedes, sometimes called the House of Munsö in modern writing. He is known to have been alive in the summer of 1060 and probably died shortly afterward. The 13th-century Hervarar saga says he was king for only a short time. It adds that the Swedes neglected the Christian religion in his days.

  Adam names Emund's successor as his "nephew or stepson", a description that scholars correct to a probable son-in-law. That man was Stenkil, and with him began a new dynasty that lasted until the 1120s.

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