In 1110 the city of Sidon, partway between Beirut and Tyre, was prized away from its Muslim rulers by an army that included a party of Norwegian Vikings, who had sailed to the Holy Land from Scandinavia led by their intrepid teenage king, Sigurd I “Jerusalemfarer.”18 Sigurd helped reduce Sidon, then returned to Scandinavia with a splinter of Christ’s True Cross, the holiest relic in Jerusalem, as reward for his service.
