Chapter III: Part I: Historical (2)

In his first Report[49] to the Danish Chancellor, dated September 17, 1612, the Norwegian Stadtholder stated that when Lauritz Hage, Lensmand of Vaage in Gudbrandsdalen, heard of the arrival of the Scots in Romsdalen, "he at once roused the Bönder and peasantry in the two parishes of Lessje and Vaage, and went forth against the said Scots and foreign troops. And when he perceived they were too strong for him, he advanced for two or three days and kept before them along the road, without, however, engaging in any skirmish or fight. Meanwhile, he sent messengers to the peasantry in the two adjoining parishes, called Froen and Ringeböe, who quickly came to his assistance; and when they were in this manner gathered they were 405 men strong. Thus he advanced in front" (of the Scots) "along the road until he saw his advantage at a fjeld called Kringelen, situated in Vaage parish, which they were obliged to pass. Thus he hemmed them in between the rock on one side and a large river close by on the other side, in which advantageous position he quietly encamped in the woods, and there lay with his men until the foreign soldiers arrived there, without, however, supposing or knowing aught but that the Norwegian troops were still withdrawing along the road before them. The above-mentioned Lauritz Hage, having made his arrangements and perceived his advantage, attacked, together with another lensmand, Peter Rankleff of Ringeböe, and with all their men together they fired upon the foreign troops and shot them to death during an hour and a half. Those who were not shot jumped into the river to save themselves, but were there drowned; and those of them who got alive over the river were quickly killed by the Bönder on that side; all of which happened and occurred on the 26th of August last. From the Bönder who were themselves present at the battle, and who buried and counted the dead and the defeated, we learn that the foreign soldiers must no doubt have numbered at the least 550 men, although the Scots who remained alive, and of whom there are altogether 18, will not admit that they were more than 350 men strong at the utmost. On the day the battle took place 134 Scots were taken prisoners, who were straightway the next day killed and shot by the Bönder, with the exception of the above-mentioned 18, the Bönder saying to each other that His Majesty had enough to feed in those same 18. Some of these were, however, wounded, and some had bullets in their bodies, when they arrived here. Of the above-mentioned 18 soldiers we now send to you the three principal ones" (mentioning their names--Alexander Ramsay, James Moneypenny, and Henry Bruce). "As regards the remaining 15 persons, some of them have straightway taken service among good folk here in the country; some of them who will willingly serve your Royal Majesty in Jörgen Lunge's Regiment, I sent at once to Elfsborg."

Reference is made at the end of the Report to the written statements of the prisoners, and to letters found on them, and which the Bönder had kept.

From Envold Kruse's second Report, dated October 3, 1612,[50] we learn that the letters in question were ultimately recovered by the Bailie of Gudbrandsdalen, and transmitted by Kruse to Copenhagen, where, however, they have so far not been available to the historian.

The bullet holes are still visible in the north wall, marking the
spot where 116 of them were shot or cut down the day after the
fight.--_Page 54._]

The latter Report contains the following striking passage, which destroys so entirely the accusations made against the Scots in the Norwegian Sagas and in Edvard Storm's poem:--

"We have also since ascertained that those Scots who were defeated and captured on their march through this country have absolutely neither burned, murdered, nor destroyed anything on their march through this country, either in Romsdalen or in Gudbrandsdalen."

Only one Dane, of the name of Sören Setnæs, had complained that the Scots had taken from him a box or chest of silver objects, such as tankards, belts, etc.; but even this booty the Bönder would not acknowledge having found on the killed or captured Scots.

The end of this valuable document is somewhat damaged, but so far as the injured part can be deciphered, Kruse stated that six[51] of the Norwegian men were killed, and ten or twelve wounded, in the fight at Kringelen.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] For complete text, see page 180.

[50] See full text, p. 184.

[51] The same number of killed is given in the "Ballad of the Valley," collected by Dean Krag.

VIII.

THE COMBAT AT KRINGELEN.

We have seen that the historical facts are as follows:--A detachment of about three hundred Scots, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Ramsay and five other Scottish officers, marched safely, and without committing any acts of murder, pillage, or incendiarism, through Romsdalen and Gudbrandsdalen, as far as Kringelen, where it had opposed to it four hundred and five Bönder and peasants, under the leadership of two civil, not military, officers. Further, that one hundred and thirty-four of the Scots were taken prisoners, and were all killed the next day,[52] except eighteen, who reached Aggershuus, now the fort of Christiania,--the loss of the victorious Norwegians being only six killed and ten or twelve wounded.

Such a remarkable result could certainly only have been attained under very advantageous circumstances, and as existing documents give only the barest outline of the fight at Kringelen, we can only form an hypothesis upon them.

The following conjecture is deduced from an attentive study of all that is so far known or established on the subject.

It must be acknowledged that four hundred Bönder, only partly or imperfectly armed, could not have been an equal match, even in the early part of the seventeenth century, for the smallest admissible number of Scots--namely, three hundred--that documentary evidence will allow us to admit, and especially if they had been well-armed, trained soldiers. Some of those Scots, those raised by Sinclair, were apparently Caithness men, whose principal occupation had no doubt been warfare.[53] Many of them were in all probability descendants of Norsemen who had conquered and held a great part of their country. They were, to say the least, as brave and as ready to defend their lives as the Bönder and peasants of Gudbrandsdal, a province which had moreover been to some extent drained of its younger and more able-bodied men for the purposes of the war of Denmark against Sweden. We have also seen that the attempts made to destroy Mönnichhofen's force of about one thousand men by a levy of one thousand five hundred peasants, mounted and on foot, supported by some soldiers and commanded by three military officers, were quite unsuccessful.

What then were the exceptional circumstances that rendered possible the easy and utter defeat of the Scots at Kringelen?

In traditional accounts of the affair, reproduced by almost every historian, much stress is laid on the deadly effect of the hurling down of rocks, or of what is known in Norway as a "tömmervælte," on the heads of the invaders while they were passing unsuspectingly through a ravine, pass, or defile at Kringelen. To those who have not visited the locality in question such an explanation would perhaps be quite satisfactory; for there have been instances, both in ancient and modern history, of troops being destroyed by such means in mountain passes by an enemy inferior in number and untrained in skilled warfare.

But an inspection of Kringelen, or a study of the accompanying plan prepared for this work from actual survey by Lieutenant Arneberg of the Norwegian army, renders impossible the acceptance of such an explanation. The present road, on which stands the stone pillar that marks the vicinity of the spot where the fighting occurred, dates from the beginning of this century. It is about forty feet below the old road, where it sinks into the "Sinclair Dokka" or hollow, in which the Scots are popularly believed to have been overwhelmed by huge masses of rock, and where human bones, supposed to be those of the Scots, have been dug up.

In an account[54] of a journey from Christiania to Trondhjem in 1733 by King Christian VI. and Queen Sophia the road through Gudbrandsdalen is described as follows:--"Froen Præstegaard (vicarage). About here the road begins to show the difficulties travellers in Norway have to encounter." After passing Zell "is a road called Kringelen, on the side of a fjeld, and so narrow that every precaution is necessary on the part of travellers and drivers." Dr. Yngvar Nielsen states in his interesting work on the "Development of Roads in Norway,"[55] that "in 1766 Kringelen was the worst bit of road in Gudbrandsdalen, as it was so narrow that a carriole could scarcely pass." In fact, it was only a bridle-path on the edge of a precipice fifty to one hundred feet above the Laugen river. This track, which was all that the condition of the country required when produce was transported chiefly in winter on sledges, was quite open and exposed; while above it the almost precipitous cliffs, averaging seven hundred feet in height, left at their base a sloping ledge of about one hundred and fifty feet in breadth. It was neither a pass nor a ravine, and has sometimes been described as a "defile," probably because not more than two men could have walked abreast along it, and certainly only a single file of men could have used it with convenience.

_A_ Old bridle-path along which Scots marched.
_B_ Present road.
_C_ Logs and stones partly concealed by wood.
_D_ Stone monument marking site of combat.

_Page 59._]

The Bönder concealed themselves on the sloping ledge between the precipitous cliff and the path. The ledge was somewhat thickly covered with wood, which is said to have been washed away by a memorable rainstorm in 1789. At the same time there must have been a clear space in front both of the "tömmervælte" and of the intrenchments which tradition says the Bönder erected there, although Envold Kruse makes no mention of them.

The military officer who carefully surveyed the ground in the autumn of 1884 has shown on the plan the probable position of the celebrated "tömmervælte." It is supposed to have been an accumulation of rocks piled on round beams or trunks of trees, arranged in such a manner as to roll down in a mass as soon as the ropes which held the structure in position were cut.

The depression in the old road known as the "Sinclair Dokka" has a length of about two hundred and seventy English feet between the highest points at its two extremities. It is reasonable to suppose that the object of the Bönder was to hurl down the rocks at the deepest or centre part of the depression, which would be about one hundred feet in length at the utmost, and that the length of the "tömmervælte" was in proportion with the size of the hollow into which it was destined to descend. It could not possibly have been even half as long as the deepest part of the hollow itself; for an artificial structure a hundred feet in length, with a clear space in front of it, would certainly have been observed by the Scots, however unsuspecting they may have been, and however lax their military precautions. Moreover, it would have been strategically unwise on the part of the Bönder to have attacked the invaders until a good part of them had descended into the hollow and were passing through it. It has therefore been assumed on the plan that the "tömmervælte" could not have been more than thirty feet in length, whilst its height above the deepest part of the "Sinclair Dokka" has been fixed at about one hundred and twenty feet, partly as a result of a thorough examination of the configuration of the slope on which it stood, and partly on the conjecture that the structure required elevation in order to attain a sufficient impetus on being let loose, and in order also that it should be as much concealed as possible from the Scots proceeding along the road.

A mathematical question here presents itself. If we assume that the Scots on whom the "tömmervælte" descended occupied the path in the "Sinclair Dokka" along an approximate length of even one hundred feet, how many could possibly have stood there? Giving only three feet to each man, the number could not have been more than thirty-three men if they marched in single file, or about sixty-seven if two abreast, along a path so rugged, narrow, and dangerous. But considering that the rocks must have taken several seconds to roll down the declivity, which could not have had a steeper gradient than forty to forty-five degrees, the men at the extremities of the threatened group must have had time to rush back at one end and forward at the other; and allowing for further chances of escape, we cannot possibly account for the destruction of more than twenty-five or thirty men (even if they walked two abreast) by the sudden descent of an avalanche of rocks and timbers.

How then were the remainder disposed of?

As soon as the "tömmervælte" had been cast loose, it may be taken for granted that the concealed Bönder rushed down on the startled foe, and that a hand-to-hand fight ensued. In fact, we know there was a combat of an hour and a half, in which Sinclair fell, and that six of the Bönder were killed and ten or twelve wounded. A few of the muskets alleged to have been carried by the Scots have been preserved, the arsenal at Christiania possessing five,[56] Horton arsenal one, the descendants of Dean Krag parts of two or three more, and Consul Heftye of Christiania a lock. The earliest English travellers in Norway mention having seen only a few remnants of those arms in Gudbrandsdalen. From the smallness of the number of such muskets that have been preserved or heard of, it must be supposed that the Scots had not many such weapons. Nor could those few have been of much use at close quarters on a sudden emergency such as that at Kringelen, since from the great length of their barrels (about seventy inches) they had to be fired from a rest.

The traditional or popular account of the mode of attack bears on its face a considerable amount of probability. It is to the effect that the "tömmervælte" was not cast loose until the "vanguard" of the Scots had passed.

On the strength of all these facts and considerations we arrive, in all humility, at the conjecture that the three hundred Scots were not all armed, and that the body of men described in the Sagas as the "vanguard" was most likely the contingent of "honest men's bairns and servants," and some of the men out of jails, forcibly pressed by Lieutenant-Colonel Ramsay, and who were being driven captive into Sweden by Caithness men under Sinclair and Hay, armed, it may be conjectured, principally with swords, the officers perhaps wearing armour and carrying pistols as well as swords.[57]

Representing some of the Scots of Mackay's regiment, landed at
Stettin, 1630. (_Original in British Museum._)
_Page 65._]

It has been already shown that Mönnichhofen was to have supplied arms for the Scottish levies, with which he failed to combine. Moreover, the Swedish agent at Amsterdam reported that he feared the projects of General Halkett (one of Ramsay's confederates) would fail, "because of the lateness of the season, and because the men had no weapons, while everywhere in Norway the people were up in arms."[58] The deposition, taken at Copenhagen, of Alexander Ramsay, the leader of the expedition, also shows that Mönnichhofen was to have supplied the Scots with arms from Holland. We have moreover seen that in its acts and proclamations against the proceedings of the Ramsays and others, the Scottish Privy Council made no mention of _disarming_ the men who were to be sent home under precautions that were in other respects so careful. Nor is it likely that the men who had been forcibly seized and kept on board the ships would at once have been supplied with arms by their oppressors. The remarkable fact that the Scots committed no depredations in the valleys through which they passed--a forbearance out of keeping with the custom of that age, either in Scotland or in Scandinavia--suggests that the troops under Ramsay were subject to strict discipline on so daring and dangerous a march. This task probably devolved more especially on Captain Sinclair and Captain Hay, who, while in command of the armed men employed in guarding and driving before them the captive "honest men's bairns and servants," were the only officers killed;[59] and this may account for the popular belief that Sinclair was the chief of the expedition.

If therefore the conjecture be correct, that none but the Caithness men were armed at all, and they chiefly with swords, the almost entire annihilation of the three hundred men by four hundred Bönder is seen to have been easy enough under the circumstances that have been described.

Such is the conclusion that results from the premises here submitted; and remembering how important it is that national history should be correctly known, it is to be hoped that the researches already made will lead to the lifting of the cloud confessedly hanging over this episode of the distant past, and that some historian in time to come may be helped by them, however slightly, in directing the light of truth upon the mists that still remain to be dispelled on the subject of the disastrous expedition of the Scots to Norway in 1612.

_Page 121._]

FOOTNOTES:

[52] It is only right to mention, not in exoneration, but in extenuation of the atrocious conduct of the Bönder, that some of their countrymen had met with a similar fate only a few months before. Duke John of Sweden sent Colonel Kruus to wrest from the Danes the town of Nylödelse and destroy its fortifications. The commandant was forced to surrender at discretion on the 26th February 1612, after the foreign troops in the garrison had mutinied. But while the foreign officers obtained service in the Swedish army, the Danish leaders, including many armed Bönder and a party of Norwegian riflemen, were locked up in a church and all shot down singly.--F. H. Jahn, "Hist. om Calmarkrigen," p. 175.

[53] Almost the entire reign of James I. was occupied in suppressing the anarchy that existed on the Borders, in the Highlands, and even in the more civilized parts of Scotland.

[54] "Journal og Beskrivelse over Hans Kongl. Majestet Kong Christian VI.," etc. Kjöbenhavn.

[55] "Det Norske Vejvæsens Udvikling. Xtia, 1876." The first ordinance for the general improvement of roads was issued in 1636, and renewed in 1648. Little was, however, done in that direction, for in 1740 the roads even about Christiania were in a frightful state.--_Ibid._

[56] Through the kindness of his excellency O. R. Kjerulf, Master of the Ordnance, one of those muskets, and a broadsword with the cypher of Mary Queen of Scots, were exhibited at the lecture that has given rise to this little book. The author is likewise under deep obligations to Consul Heftye of Christiania, and to his son, Mr. Johannes Heftye of Östraat, the fortunate possessor of the "Viik collection" of Scottish relics mentioned by all the earlier English travellers in Norway. They were good enough to allow their collections to be exhibited on the same occasion, and to be photographed for the purpose of illustrating this work.

[57] An illustration of the pair of pistols preserved at Copenhagen, and certified to have belonged to Sinclair, is given at p. 126. Although undoubtedly Scotch, and of the period, the initials A. S. engraved on them are most probably those of Sir Andrew Sinclair. (See note, p. 126.) The swords, of which so many are still offered for sale as relics of the expedition, are mostly of doubtful origin. The author is, however, in possession of a rusty short sword, with the Scottish crown and the letters V. R. very distinct on the blade, on the broken-off edge of which there would have been room for the letter J., making J. V. R., or Jacobus V. Rex. It was found at Kringelen, and is almost exactly like the sword carried by the third figure in the accompanying illustration, representing some of the "Irishmen,"--_i.e._, the Scots of Mackay's regiment,--who were landed at Stettin in 1630. The illustration has been taken from an interesting work published in 1885, by W. Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London, entitled, "An Old Scots Brigade: being the History of Mackay's Regiment, now incorporated with the Royal Scots." The author, Mr. John Mackay, late of Herriesdale, has generously allowed the block to be used for the purposes of this little work.

Another sword, in a wooden sheath covered with leather, and which had evidently been used as a walking-stick by some Bonde, was purchased by the author as an authentic relic of the Scots, and presented by him to His Majesty King Oscar II., as a weapon that had in all probability been used in the service of His Majesty's great predecessor, Gustavus Adolphus. The motto, "Honni soit qui mal y pense," engraved on the long straight blade of the sword, made it all the more appropriate that His Majesty, as a Knight of the Garter, should be the possessor of so interesting a relic.

[58] Under the Danish law of that period every able-bodied Bonde was compelled to provide himself with a musket or arquebuse; but it is most probable that the men who had not been taken away to fight the Swedes remained, to a great extent, armed only with pikes, crossbows, and axes, of which an illustration is given at page 106.

[59] That Captain Hay was killed is not stated either in the official documents or in the Sagas; but as he was not amongst the prisoners forwarded to Aggershuus, he must have shared the fate of George Sinclair. It is also not improbable that in order to save their own lives when taken prisoners, the surviving officers pointed to the body of Sinclair as that of their commander.