AFTER the fall of King Inge in the battle at Oslo, Haakon Herdebred (the Broad-shouldered) took possession of the whole country. He distributed all the offices, in the towns and in the country, among his own friends. As he was only about fourteen years old, he could not, of course, be expected to attend personally to the affairs of the government; but his liegemen governed in his name.

Many of the adherents of the late King Inge refused to acknowledge King Haakon. Among them was the powerful and wily chieftain Erling Skakke. He was of a distinguished family, which resided on the Studla estate in SÖndhordland. In his youth he had made a crusade to the Holy Land. On his way back through the Mediterranean he had a fight with pirates and was wounded in the neck, which compelled him afterward to carry his head on one side; hence his surname (skakke, wry). By the assistance of King Inge he obtained in marriage Kristina, a daughter of King Sigurd the Crusader and Queen Malmfrid. A year after their marriage she bore him a son, who was named Magnus.

Erling Skakke called together in Bergen all the chiefs who had been attached to King Inge, and all his court-men, and the house-men of the late Gregorius Dagson. When they met they discussed the situation, and resolved to keep up their party and to elect a king in opposition to Haakon. Erling proposed to make the boy Nicholas, a son of Simon Skalp and Harald Gille’s daughter Maria, king; but the others objected to this, and, after some discussion, Erling was persuaded to do what had probably been his intention from the beginning, namely, to let his own son, Magnus, be proclaimed king, although this was against the law of the country, the boy not being of royal birth on his father’s side. A Thing was held in the town, and here Magnus Erlingson, then five years old, was proclaimed king of the whole country.

Erling did not consider himself strong enough to immediately take up the fight with King Haakon. He therefore proceeded to Denmark, accompanied by his son and a large party. The Danish king, Valdemar the Great, received them hospitably and promised to furnish the necessary help to win and retain Norway, on condition that King Valdemar was to get that part of Norway which his ancestors, Harald Gormson and Svein Tjuguskeg, had possessed. With the help obtained in Denmark, Erling crossed over from Jutland to Agder, and thence sailed northward to Bergen, where he punished those who had given allegiance to Haakon. Then he returned along the coast, and attacked and defeated Haakon at Tunsberg. Haakon proceeded to Throndhjem, where he had most of his friends, and Erling returned to Bergen, after having reduced the whole of Viken in obedience to King Magnus.

In the spring King Haakon started southward with quite a fleet. By a stratagem Erling succeeded in surprising him, when his forces were divided, at Sekken, in Raumsdal, where a battle was fought. Haakon was defeated, and the young king himself was killed (1162). Haakon’s body was buried in Raumsdal; but afterward his brother, King Sverre, had the body removed to Nidaros and laid in the stone wall in Christ Church south of the choir.