Ármann Lindskold

Ármann Lindskold af Sauðarósi (1750-1817; 951-1017 ÁL) was thein of Móðalund from 1779 to 1813, and was the elected thár of Siurskeyti between 1802 and 1812. Commonly regarded as one of the most ineffective of the country’s thárir – and notorious as the only one to be forced from office – he presided over the growing dissent within Siurskeyti which ultimately gave rise to the Summer War and the break-up of the country, as five of its commonholds broke away from the Siursk union to form the country now known generally as Helminthasse.

Ármann Lindskold af Sauðarósi
Ármann Lindskold; portrait from c. 1805
15th thár of Siurskeyti
Reign	1802–1812
Predecessor	Björn Hret af Heilnesi
Successor	Eir Kaupland af Reylati
Born	26 Sation 1750 (4 Kúsmur 951 ÁL) Sauðarós, Móðalund, Siurskeyti
Died	10 Conservene 1817 (19 Ekunur 1017 ÁL) (aged 67) Keldarholt, Móðalund, Siurskeyti
Father	Garður Lindskold
Mother	Borgný Skaft

Early life and career

Lindskold was born on 26 Sation 1750 (4 Kúsmur 951 ÁL) in Sauðarós, the chief town of the commonhold of Móðalund and the theinic seat; he was the third of five children born to the then thein Garður Lindskold and his wife Borgný Skaft, of the thossic family of nearby Beinnvað. His elder brother, also named Garður, was seen as the favoured candidate to succeed to the theinship; while there are suggestions that this caused some friction between the brothers during their childhood and early adolescence, it also allowed Ármann some freedom to go his own way in adulthood as the weight of familial expectations did not settle upon him; and his decision to enter the Siursk navy on completion of his formal education in 1764 met with his family’s general approval.

Lindskold was undistinguished as a cadet, graduating 22nd in a class of 31. His first assignment as a naval cadet was aboard the frigate Hótun, which was then captained by Jónas Skaft, a relative through his mother’s family; he spent four years as a crewman aboard this vessel at the beginning of a career which would see him spend no more than three years in total living on land. He served in 1775–77 as part of the naval picket stationed at Pálmarfell in the Seranian Gæseyjar islands, where Agamar also made territorial claims.

On his return from the Gæseyjar, Lindskold was assigned to a landbound position, as a member of the management team at the Siursk naval dockyard at Hvíturflói, a district of Reylatur. Here he met Vona Sálarró, the daughter of his commanding officer at the yard; the couple established a close relationship very quickly, and Lindskold was sure enough of his ground to ask her father for permission to marry her in Floridy 1780. However, Örn Sálarró refused, anticipating that Lindskold would return to sea in due course and not wishing for his daughter the difficult life of a naval spouse. Lindskold was naturally disappointed, and considered resigning his commission, but ultimately acquiesced and broke off the relationship soon after, to the young woman’s great distress.

Lindskold was indeed reactivated in a sea-going command, taking charge of the ship of the line Glæsilegt in the autumn of 1782; during this period he and his crew were principally involved in patrol work and monitoring of naval traffic in the western Medius and southern Arcedian Seas. This was a particular concern in the period 1785–87, during which Odann and Zeppengeran faced off in the South Lestrian War; while neither side made serious efforts to intrude in each other’s home waters, the possibility was still a significant concern in the Siursk navy command.

Lindskold’s theinship

Lindskold was temporarily landbound in the winter of 1789–1790, having been stood down on half-pay while he recovered from malaria contracted during a period on station in Kisilland. He was thus present during the final illness of his father, who died due to complications after a bout of pneumonia in late Animare 1790; however, he was nonetheless surprised that his father’s last wish was that he succeed to the theinship. Lindskold had spent little time with his family since entering the navy; and his brother-in-law Oddmundur Dómari had led Garður Lindskold’s þeinsráð, had been a close confidant of the late thein and was thus excellently placed to carry on his work. After discussing the matter in detail with Dómari, Lindskold assented to the request, which may well have come at a fortuitous time for him; he had been out of favour with his navy chiefs for some years, and may well have seen his becoming thein as vindication for the “favouritism” shown to his late brother. He resigned his navy commission and was invested as thein of Móðalund at the beginning of Floridy 1790.

While Lindskold’s rule as thein was acceptable – the more so given that it was essentially with Dómari’s hand on the tiller for most of it – Lindskold himself was not well-respected. He had limited patience with people whom he saw as being his intellectual inferiors, which might have been acceptable as a flaw had his own intellect been of a high calibre; instead, he was far more likely to see his own approach as the best, and sometimes the only, solution to a given problem, and was far too ready to equate disagreement over a subject with personal criticism. Dómari, whose reserve and levels of patience would have done credit to a vonhald at times, was one of the few people whose counsel he was genuinely willing to accept, and at times even he broke back. A frequent criticism of him was that he could never really come to terms with the fact that, as a civilian – even one as highly-placed as a thein – he could not command unquestioning obedience as he had in the navy; one biography quotes an exasperated Dómari as yelling at Lindskold during one argument, “In the name of the All, man, step down from the bloody quarterdeck for once.”

Lindskold’s towering ego did not, in fairness, hamper him seriously during this period; he was assiduous in cultivating sharp-minded merchants in both Móðalund and Reylatur, Siurskeyti’s biggest city and one of its two economic dynamos, the better to further the commercial interests of his commonhold and hóf. While Móðalund was not a powerhouse on the same scale as Skjóll or Vonskil, it nonetheless prospered markedly in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The best option?

The death of Björn Hret in 1802 brought Lindskold forward as the new thár, despite some qualms among the Vísráð as to his suitability for the role; that he was chosen owed something to luck in that most of the probable candidates were thought to be either too old and settled, or too young and inexperienced. Lindskold thus came to the position with limited expectations being made of him; and he proceeded to live down even to these. Despite never having served in the Vísráð – his home fief in Sauðarós having been represented by a ljósendi since 1787 – he made concerted efforts to sideline Vona Suðurey, who as forráðsmaður was officially his chief advisor and the chamber’s spokesperson, and control council meetings himself. Suðurey enjoyed support enough in the chamber that her involvement in council could not be dispensed with entirely, but Lindskold invited her predecessor Ágengur Gryfjar to return to the position in 1804. Gryfjar was more akin to Lindskold in personality, and also shared much of the thár’s willingness to throw support behind Siurskeyti’s merchant community and the nýmenn who were a prominent faction within it – often to the detriment of the less commercialised inland commonholds, something which would become a more serious issue during Lindskold’s time in office.

However, Gryfjar was largely a spent force at this point, with his health weakening and his return a deliberate slight to Suðurey, whom he detested. His second period in office achieved nothing of substance, with petty bickering among Siurskeyti’s political factions increasing steadily. With Gryfjar’s death in 1806, Lindskold deliberately looked no further for a new forráðsmaður than Skær Skútaskál, Gryfjar’s main political ally.

The descent to war

The divergent course of the commonholds’ internal economies became an overarching concern for Siurskeyti as the decade continued; and opinion in the more prosperous coastal districts increasingly looked at the looseness of the Siursk union as created by the 1623 Sáttmáli, and wondered if it was still fit for purpose. Voices were rising in support of a stronger central union which would subsume the independence of the commonholds. Business interests favoured this stance, in the belief that it would lock in the commercial advantages which they already enjoyed, both at home and across Siurskeyti’s sprawling commercial empire; and a sizeable contingent viewed such a development as a natural progression from the Sáttmáli, and, indeed, a necessity if the Siur as a people were to truly be the exemplars to the world that Arlaturi philosophies called upon them to be, as Endurtendrandi thought would have it. Lindskold weighed in heavily in support, promoting business-friendly policies and intervening to force some occasionally embarrassing climbdowns from inland polities which had sought to redress the imbalances through internal tariffs.

The position in the hinterlands shifted steadily over the period from 1800 to 1810, during which time four of the five commonholds which would later secede saw new theinar rise to power. Kal Járnsmagi of Ærlasse was a contemporary (two years Lindskold’s junior), and leaned towards the union largely for fear of the consequences of secession for his relatively poor fief; Lindskold had respected his abilities in arguing the need for stronger defences in the north before his becoming thein in 1808, and saw him as an ally. The others were less congenial; Armæða Bani ruled a Sarevi commonhold which uneasily balanced the pro- and anti-split camps, and her erratic temperament was difficult for the thár to cope with, while the others – Stjárna Hvítthús of Æthelin, Valda Geigur of Vinhaxa and especially the threatening Hringur Slátrari of Helminthasse, a former pro-unionist who had reversed course on the question with alarming speed – all threw their considerable heft behind the secessionist stance, with Slátrari and others laying out the intellectual case for a split in the Skynsemi dissertations between 1808 and 1811. Geigur was at least open to discussion, and Lindskold visited Nárá in 1809 with a view to finding where her grievances lay (without great success), but the others would not be moved.

The matter finally came to a head on 12 Conservene 1811; with the tone of debate becoming increasingly rancorous and Lindskold's frustration with the seeming inability of Skútaskál to control the chamber prompting him to replace him as forráðsmaður by Ívar Seiðamaður, barely six weeks earlier, when Slátrari sought to exploit the disorder by putting forward a formal motion in the Vísráð for Lindskold to be removed as thár under the principle of moltalandi. This was, to some extent, a risky move on his part, as he was, even at this point, not wholly assured of adequate support. In the end, the delegates of five commonholds – Slátrari’s own Helminthasse, Sarevi (although narrowly), Vinhaxa, Ærlasse and Æthelin – backed the motion; however, the other five – Geirróð, Hélla, Móðalund, Skjóll and Vonskil – did not. Under the Vísráð’s rules of procedure, a tie meant that the motion failed; Lindskold was safe, and the country remained one – for the moment.

But this was hardly the end of the story; and a gathering in Virkið by Slátrari’s supporters at the beginning of Petrial 1812 resulted, unsurprisingly, in a decision to force the issue. Over the next few weeks, he and other pro-secession figures made plans for how their aims could be practically achieved, even in the face of what they already anticipated would be serious and forceful opposition. Even at this late stage, though, there were still significant voices in support of some kind of agreement which might forestall a split; and a delegation led by Galvaskur Tálgær, the rebels’ new treasurer, and the leading Virkið financier Réfur Háll travelled to Ostari to meet with Lindskold on 22 Petrial. However, the thár was in no mood to compromise, even if he would have been allowed to do so; instead he refused to meet with the visitors and dismissed their proposal out of hand, declaring that “what you seek to sever by soft words we will hold together, if need be, by the points of our swords.”

This curt statement effectively killed all hopes for a peaceful settlement; and all five rebel commonholds presented statements to confirm their formal withdrawal from the Siursk compact between late Petrial and mid-Animare 1812. As far as the rebels were concerned, though, this was no more than a legal formality; they neither sought acceptance nor considered it necessary to their secession.

The Summer War

The next month was filled with furious activity on both sides. The proclamation in the “rebel” commonholds of secession had jump-started public support; and already parts of the Siursk state apparatus were melting away as the rebels began building their own infrastructure. At the local and quotidian level, this proved not to be the major upheaval that might have been anticipated; but a more serious concern to Lindskold and those charged with stopping the break was not only that would-be combatants were coming forward in the hinterlands, but also that Siursk soldiers – individually and, on occasion, as entire units – were breaking their own allegiances and shifting sides, seeing their duties as being to their commonholds, rather than to a nebulous Siursk state. This even extended to the highest command levels, with Hraður Stórlind, probably Siurskeyti’s best general officer, defecting to Æthelin (of which his wife Stjárna Hvítthús was thein).

While some non-military efforts were made to bring the rebels to heel, they were few and generally ineffective. Efforts to remove Siursk coinage and banknotes from the rebel districts – an action pressed hard by Lindskold personally, in spite of advice as to its impracticality – failed dismally beyond a short distance across the new “border”, and even here the willingness of locals to accept the loforð, the Alliance’s interim currency – even as hastily-printed promissory notes – weakened its effectiveness. Blockades of trading vehicles along the border were somewhat more effective, especially in the more frequently-travelled roads in Helminthasse and Vinhaxa, but supply lines from the north in Mattänge, Árakan and elsewhere – and by sea through Lágskáli in rebel Sarevi – countered the worst effects of this. The month leading up to the beginning of open warfare in the Battle of Lágröð in Metrial 1812 thus passed in an atmosphere of sick inevitability, as both sides hunkered down in their positions.

Two centuries of analysis have produced a degree of received wisdom that, while the Siursk soldiery were, man for man, superior to the Alliance’s forces, the rebels possessed the better command cadre. This is perhaps unfair to the Siursk command, who may have been able to acquit themselves better if they had not been hampered by Lindskold’s insistence on involving himself in strategic decision-making, an area where he was plainly deficient.

Further humiliation would follow as a Savamese flotilla under the command of admiral Lionel de Versroche took advantage of the paralysis of the Siursk navy command to attack the country’s landholdings in the Medius Sea. Versroche’s fleet had no orders to intervene in a Siursk civil war and, had the attack failed, he and most of his junior commanders would have almost certainly been court-martialled. However, the opportune attack on a distracted and weakened Siursk force succeeded probably even beyond the expectations of its leader; and Quesailles, which had long sought a more permanent foothold in the Medius, was more than happy to approve Versroche’s actions as he lived up to his family’s motto, toujours l’audace (“boldness always”). The engagement concluded in Fabricad with the loss of Dórrey, in exchange for a Savamese promise to revert to a neutral stance. A furious Lindskold had to be persuaded not to order the imprisonment of Siursk fleet commander Þrálatur Fógur for dereliction of duty, although he was still forced to resign his commission.

The Siursk land forces, despite the thár’s “expertise”, held their own during the early parts of the war, driving into southern Helminthasse and making a close approach through southern Æthelin towards Hydrædsdalur, the commonhold’s capital – a matter of some acute embarrassment to Stórlind, whose home the city was. However, a well-executed feint near Mægunsváð allowed the rebel general Rétt Sandlóa to break the loyalists’ defence and drive hard for the Æthelflói coast near Beinnváð, cutting the commonhold of Hélla into two in the process. With his army now having smashed through to the sea, Sandlóa directed his forces into a siege of Hélla which extended through Dominy and into early Empery; but at what was undoubtedly a moment of high success for the Alliance, the seeds of a rapid end to the war were evidently being sown. Several studies in both Siurskeyti and Helminthasse have suggested that the failure of the Alliance’s siege of Hélla – a town of some strong significance to both sides as the claimed home of Ragna Hrafnamaður, the founder of Arlatur – marked a turning point in public sentiment towards the war, as support on both sides began to melt away.

The tenor of the public mood in the unionist commonholds was shifting rapidly against any further fighting; and the Siursk army now saw increasing depletion of its forces as soldiers deserted their posts and returned home. The Alliance’s army was also shrinking, for not dissimilar reasons, but had retained enough of its strength that the overall balance of forces had now shifted firmly in its favour. Stórlind, after consultation with his staff, came to the conclusion that a concerted strike towards Ostari – only 120 kilometres from the Alliance’s capital at Virkið – would definitively break the Siursk will to fight and bring the war to a rapid conclusion. The advance on Ostari began on 23 Ediface, and slowly gathered pace.

The capital was in uproar, with protestors blocking city-centre streets as they vented their fury against a leadership that had, it seemed, failed in its responsibility to act in the best interests of all of its people. Even now, Lindskold refused to listen; but others were not so deaf to the protests. Clandestine meetings between members of the Vísráð pieced together a coalition that was willing to take action; on the 28th Lindskold was placed under arrest by the commander of his personal guard and brought before the assembled Vísráð. Almost unanimously, the chamber voted to remove Lindskold as thár without further preamble, choosing Eir Kaupland, the thein of Skjóll, to succeed him. With the main obstacle on the unionist side now removed from the picture, Kaupland now acted as his counsellors advised, sending a messenger to meet Stórlind’s advance and requesting a cease-fire while a settlement which would end the war could be negotiated.

The aftermath of the war

The Summer War is still referred to on occasion as the Skammarstrið, the “War that Died of Shame”, as part of a wider modern narrative in which it is cast as a painful and unnecessary aberration by the stereotypically ordered and rational Siursk public consciousness. The peace which eventually emerged at Fensbrú has therefore been cast as something which both sides genuinely wanted. At the time, though, elements both inside and outside Siursk government circles sought recrimination against Lindskold, whose intransigence in the face of rebel demands was now increasingly seen as rank stupidity, when calm and rational discussion could have held the country together. There were, indeed, some wilder suggestions of placing him on trial for crimes against the Siursk state, which faded away as questions were raised as to what charges could actually be brought against him.

In the end, the arguments grew so paralysed that the entire matter was effectively shelved. Lindskold was subjected to a degree of shunning by his former peers and other members of government, as a form of ástand long familiar in the Siur country. This was not a practical option in his own Móðalund, where he was still thein, but Lindskold effectively closed off the issue by abdicating this office in favour of his eldest son Valur in Metrial 1813.

In his remaining years Lindskold was a markedly reclusive figure, and family remarked on his sense of bitterness and betrayal, and his belief that he had acted in what were seen as the country’s best interests, and was now being unfairly traduced because that cause had been lost, and because those who had held it were now seeking to rewrite recent history in their favour. He died, from what is understood to have been a cerebral aneurysm, on his familial estate near the town of Keldarholt, on 10 Conservene 1817 (19 Ekunur 1017 ÁL), at the age of 67 years; Valur Lindskold chose shortly afterwards to assume his mother’s surname of Dómari in deference to prevailing sentiment and the opprobrium which had been heaped on his father since the war’s end.

Criticisms

Most pre-Long War studies of Siursk politics and society in the lead-up to the war have criticised the fact that, at a time when the Siursk needed to display a willingness to calmly and dispassionately study their positions – something which generations have claimed to be a unique part of the Siur genius as a people – the two sides of the argument were led by two men who were, from all appearances, uniquely impervious to rational argument and so entrenched in their positions as to make the war unavoidable. While, in fairness, Lindskold did not argue that his status as thein and thár made his arguments unassailable, he was largely unwilling to hear contrary opinions on any subject once he had come to a decision; and this, to this extent, may have hindered the prosecution of the war from the Siursk loyalists’ side.

Since the early 1970s, however, a counter-argument has emerged refuting this position as overly simplistic. The first adumbrations of what would ultimately become the Industrial Revolution in Messenia brought with them the beginnings of the involvement in industry of both the Siursk state and the members of the nobility who at this time were its principal actors; a push towards closer union and greater central control – lessening or removing the ability of individual members of the union to slow or block changes which were not in their interest – represented a net benefit to them. While Lindskold’s own commonhold of Móðalund was not in the vanguard of these developments, the thár and his family nonetheless had responsibilities to their hóf to consider; he was therefore hardly either a passive observer or a pawn of other interests in these matters.

This being said, however, Lindskold probably did little to rein in some of the more aggressive trade practices of enterprises in the stronger commonholds – a stance which largely ran counter to historic Siursk practices in which some efforts were made to lend financial support to weaker economies, such as in Æthelin and Vinhaxa. While available data is of necessity incomplete, it has been suggested that the Vinhaxan treasury had debts to its Skjóll counterpart and business enterprises in that commonhold equivalent to about 40% of its gross domestic product by 1810.