AT the death of King Magnus only two of his children were alive, Erik, who had already been proclaimed king, and Haakon, who had been made duke at the same time. Erik was twelve, and Haakon ten years old. The royal counsellors, among whom were the barons Hallkell Agmundson, Audun Hugleikson, and Biarne Erlingson of Biarkoe and Giske, thought that King Magnus had made too great concessions to the church and attempted to curtail the power of the bishops. On account of their activity against the clergy they were put in the ban of the church; but they did not seem to pay much attention to this; and, as a result of the struggle, Archbishop Jon the Red and two other bishops were outlawed and compelled to leave the country (1282).

The epithet “Priest-Hater,” which, after this, was given King Erik, does not seem to have been well deserved; for he always sought to mediate in the conflicts with the archbishop, and he himself had no ill-feeling toward the bishops, but rather seemed to be too kindly disposed toward them.

King Erik was only a very young man when he commenced a war with Denmark, which lasted for twenty years, and was not terminated until in the time of his successor. His mother, the queen-dowager Ingeborg, was the daughter of the Danish king, Erik Plowpenny, and as her inheritance, consisting of landed estates, had not been turned over to the Norwegian king according to agreement, she induced her son to make war on Denmark. The war was principally a naval war. One who especially distinguished himself was the Norwegian baron, Alf Erlingson of Tornberg (now Tanberg, Ringerike), a great favorite of the queen-dowager. He captured a number of the enemy’s ships, and preyed upon the commerce in Danish waters. But the principal sufferers by this warfare were the Hanseatic League, whose members, by the concessions of King Magnus Lawmender, had practically a monopoly of the foreign trade of Norway. Many ditties were composed about Alf Erlingson, and one verse reads thus:

The conflict with the Hanseatic towns came to an end, through the arbitration of the Swedish king, by the peace of Kalmar (1285), by which the privileges of the Hansa towns were considerably extended.

The hostilities with Denmark were continued, and the queen-dowager was so well pleased with Alf Erlingson’s piratical conduct of the war that she had him created an earl, and induced the king to send him as special ambassador to England. In 1286 a conspiracy was formed in Denmark against King Erik Glipping, and he was murdered during a hunting trip by Marshal Stig, Count Jacob of Halland and others. The murderers, who were outlawed in Denmark, were well received by the Norwegian king, and afterward accompanied him on his campaigns against Denmark.

By the death of Queen Ingeborg (1287), Earl Alf Erlingson lost his special protector, and when he had committed extraordinary outrages in Viken and murdered the commander of Oslo Castle, Baron Hallkell Agmundson, he was sentenced as an outlaw and compelled to flee to Sweden, where, for some time, he took refuge in a cloister. Later he attempted piracy on his own account in Danish waters, but was captured, and, by the command of Queen Agnes, executed on the rack (1290).

King Erik made several successful cruises to Denmark, and that country might have fared badly if his attention had not been drawn in other directions. At an early age he had been married to Margaret of Scotland, a daughter of his grandfather’s enemy, King Alexander III. This young queen died a year after the marriage, after having given birth to a daughter, who was christened Margaret. When Alexander III. died in 1286, without leaving any sons, the Scotch leaders acknowledged King Erik’s young daughter, Margaret, as the rightful heir to the throne. In 1290 she was proclaimed queen of Scotland, and the young princess—the “Maid from Norway,” as she was called—accompanied by the bishops of Bergen and other prominent persons, sailed for Scotland. She was taken sick on the voyage, however, and died at the Orkneys. King Erik afterward claimed the crown of Scotland as the heir of his daughter, but was compelled to abandon the claim upon the armed intervention of King Edward I. of England.

King Erik died July 13, 1299, at the age of thirty-one years.