As of yesterday, I’m three weeks into my 30 Days of Biographies. The results of that third week are here.
The fourth “week” will be 10 days long — I’ve found that’s the best way to handle trying to divide 30 (or 31) by 4, rather than doing “Hey, here’s Week 4. And now here’s 3 additional days.”
30 Days of Biographies:
Jarl Eysteinn Iron-Brow
Original image via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
The mountainous geography of the island of Hrimfax facilitated the emergence of numerous fragmented independent petty kingdoms and fiefdoms across the island and ensured that the unification of the island under a single king would be a long time coming.
One of the most prominent figures in the history of Hrimfaxi in the period immediately before its unification is Jarl Eysteinn, who ruled over a comparatively large and wealthy domain on the west of the island. Eysteinn made one of the first serious pushes towards unifying Hrimfax, leading to a rival jarl based in the east, Magni White-Raven to conspire to have Eysteinn assassinated.
It was in the course of defending himself from the assassin the Eysteinn earned his famous byname. Although he was caught by surprise by the assassin leaping out of the crowd of supplicants at a meeting of his court, Eysteinn responded by instinctively headbutting him as he lunged at Eysteinn. Although the assassin was felled instantly, the sheer force with which he struck did not seem to affect Eysteinn himself in any appreciable way.
Words of this exploit spread quickly across Hrimfax and Eysteinn came to be called “Iron-Brow.” These reports quickly became exaggerated in the retelling, with Eysteinn himself being described as twelve feet tall, the son of a Troll, charmed to be immune to all mortal weapons, or any number of other unlikely features. Several other the jarls of Hrimfaxi peacefully submitted to Eysteinn’s lordship rather than risk his apparently terrible wrath and impossible strength.
Magni White-Raven remained Eysteinn’s most bitter foe and was undissuaded in his attempts to have Eysteinn assassinated. Although all further assassination attempts ending in failure, none was foiled in such spectacular fashion as the incident which earned Eysteinn his byname. However, one of these assassination attempts did at least succeed in gravely injuring Eysteinn — the most common version of the story is that the assassin used a poisoned dagger, but the truth is not known.
The wound would trouble Eysteinn for the rest of his life. When the armies of Eysteinn and Magni finally met in open battle, it is said that the lingering wound prevented Eysteinn from fighting at his full capability, allowing his army to be overwhelmed by Magni’s army and Eysteinn himself to be slain. In light of the fierce independence of the local Hrimfaxi leaders, the domain he had carved out on the island almost immediately collapsed, with most of his erstwhile vassals either reasserting their independence or defecting to Magni’s side. However, in honour of their loyalty to Eysteinn, those clans that declared for his successor were rewarded with expansive lands and prominent positions in the newly-unified Hrimfax.
The unification of Hrimfax would be consummated by the childless Eysteinn’s nephew, Sigurd Splendid-Mane, who is set to have sworn an inviolable oath to avenge his uncle, declaring that he would not comb out his long hair until he had fulfilled his oath. In the period before his unification of Hrimfax, Sigurd came to be known as Tangle-Mane.Notably, Sigurd avenged his uncle’s death by slaying Magni in single combat.
Despite the reputation of the Hrimfaxi as violent, filthy savages, the importance placed by Hrimfaxi on hygiene and personal grooming is actually well-attested, with hair combs being one of the most common artifacts found in Hrimfaxi warrior graves. It is said that Sigurd used one of Magni’s own combs to comb out his hair for the first time in years after he was acclaimed first King of Hrimfax.
Although Eysteinn is not a direct ancestor of the Hrimfaxi royal line, he has since been posthumously declared the first King of Hrimfax.
So, since the upcoming War of the Rohirrim movie is an anime, I’ve actually been able to write several articles about it for the freelance work I’m doing for Anime Away. In light of that, my main inspiration here isn’t any real monarch, it’s actually King of Rohan Helm Hammerhand, so named for his propensity for punching the enemies of Rohan to death.
Incidentally, Games Workshop has announced a new version of the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game, with a starter set based on War of the Rohirrim and the War of the Rohirrim line of miniatures in general being the showpieces of the new version. They’ve since revealed the miniature for Helm. His special gameplay rule is that since he punches people so hard, he’s always considered to be wielding a weapon, even if he’d otherwise to considered unarmed.
Short version, headbutting enemies to death seems more impressive to me than punching them, given that I feel like it’s more probable you’d also really hurt yourself trying to do so…
I picture I used is a painting of King of Norway Haakon the Good, but I haven’t been able to find any context for what’s actually happening in the painting. I think the dude on the right is trying to hit him with the metal-looking thing he’s holding, so I figured it works well enough to illustrate the attemptated assassination of Jarl Eysteinn.
Incidentally, combs actually are incredibly common finds in excavations of Viking graves and that whole thing about Sigurd not combing his hair until he made himself king is taken from the stories about Harald Fairhair, the first King of Norway — like many weird historical tidbits, it may not actually be true (and Wikipedia itself is pretty big on the fact that Harald himself might not be a historically-verifiable figure), but the story itself is attested to.
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