Harald Fairhair

His father was King Sigurd Syr, a relatively minor ruler of Ringerike in the region of Buskerud in the Norwegian uplands.

He is believed to have been a great-grandson of King Harald Fairhair, the first ruler of a united kingdom of Norway who is believed to have ruled for several decades in the late 9th and early 10th centuries.

Thus, young Harald was born as the great-great-grandson of the first ruler of a unified Norwegian kingdom.

Harald's mother was Aasta Gudbrandsdatter.

And in addition to having Olaf as a half-brother, Harald had several older, full biological siblings, specifically three brothers, Gutorm, Halfdan, and Ingjald, and a sister named Gunnhild.

In recent years, the paternal lineage of Harald's father has been questioned by some historians, as it is thought that his family tree may have been altered sometime after his death to further legitimize his descendants' claims to the Norwegian throne, which was a practice that was not uncommon at the time.

According to the Icelandic sagas, both Harald and his half-brother Olaf were descended from the supposed first King of Norway, King Harald I, or Harald Fairhair, and it is said that Harald's great-grandfather was Sigurd Hryse, who was the son of Fairhair.

However, as no definitive evidence exists to verify the accuracy of many of the Norse sagas, the accuracy of Hardrada's family lineage is still debated.

They used the islands as a base, launching raids on the Scottish and Norwegian mainlands.

To stop this happening, King Harald Hårfagre, or Fairhair, annexed the islands in 875.

The Orkney and Shetland Islands were effectively Norwegian colonies, and the culture that developed was more Scandinavian than Scottish.

Norse-speaking communities lived much as they had at home.

But I wanna record this fun episode, as it is more in line with the time of the Dark Ages in Europe I have primarily focused on in this podcast, Europe in a post-Roman world.

And as I mentioned with the, quote, "Northern islands of the world" and the Tuatha Dé Danann that resided there for a bit, there is a link to some of the Norse world, specifically with Iceland, the island in the North Atlantic that we primarily have discussed as being the destination of many of the Norwegians who fled King Harald Fairhair's rule in Norway, with the actual Norse settlement in Iceland being described in the Landnámabók, or the Book of Settlements.

On top of that, we have sagas, specifically the Saga of the Greenlanders and the Vinland sagas, which gives us legendary, but also maybe historical accounts of the settling of Greenland and then North America, accounts which in the last couple of centuries have been corroborated via archeological finds.

But to avoid going back to the Norse fully and stick with our Tales of Ireland series, today I'm gonna be just discussing an Irishman who, according to Irish tradition, was a monk, an abbot, and he would become a saint, and perhaps one of the most famous explorers that Ireland has ever produced, potentially sailing the North Atlantic centuries before the Norse would have on their longships.

Enter the key figures.

Men like Rollo, a towering Viking chieftain who besieged Paris so relentlessly that the West Frankish king struck a deal, land in exchange for loyalty, or Halfdan Ragnarsson, who carved out territory in northern England and began distributing farms to his followers, or Harald Fairhair, who united Norway not through plunder but by consolidating coastal clans under one crown.

These men weren't just lucky.

They understood a simple truth.

The sagas too remember such burials.

Before Harald Fairhair united Norway beneath one crown, he waged war against the kings of the land.

In the Heimskringla, Snorri Sturluson tells of King Herlug, who refused submission.

Rather than kneel, Herilog ordered his burial mound to be filled with treasure and sealed himself inside along with eleven loyal men, choosing death beneath the earth over life and obedience.

Some Norse traditions believed that the goddess Freyja received half of the slain warriors into her own realm, Folkvangr.

Norse beliefs about the afterlife were complex and varied, but Valhalla remained the most legendary destination because it represented eternal glory and remembrance.

One of the clearest references to Valhalla in Norse literature appears in the saga of Hakon the Good, who was the son of Harald Fairhair, the first King of Norway.

In chapter 32, after Hakon is killed in battle, he is given a pagan burial despite his Christian beliefs, and the saga describes his death as a journey to Valhalla itself.

We're still a very long way away from the famous Norse kings that unified entire realms, the ones we know today.

Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway.

Gorm the Old, the first king of Denmark, at least the first one we can reliably historically attest anyway these fellows they came along in the 10th century but all the same back in the earlier years of the 9th century previously isolated in separate settlements and communities they began to come under a larger authority as as i say these these lords these these uh these these powerful leaders began to uh spread and and conquer and and and expand their political and military influence small petty kingdoms emerged or indeed larger ones in places like jutland in denmark where these powerful rulers exerted authority over sizable realms.

And you might hear that and go, okay, well, sure, fine.

Then a stranger came from Norway.

His name was Erik Bloodaxe, the son of Harald Fairhair, the king whom later tradition remembered as the first ruler to unite Norway beneath a single crown.

Erik was born not into peace.

but into a royal house crowded with ambitious sons, each possessing blood enough to claim power and warriors enough to pursue it.

Much of Erik's early life survives through sagas written centuries after his death.

Those tales transformed him into one of the darkest princes of the Viking Age, a sea raider from boyhood, a killer of brothers, the husband of a feared and cunning queen, and a king whose axe opened the road before him.

According to later Norse tradition, Erik was favoured among the sons of Harald Fairhair.

His mother was said to have been Ranghild the Mighty, a woman of royal Danish blood, though even this ancestry belongs to traditions recorded long after Erik's lifetime.

From eight hundred and seventy-five, following the Treaty of Wedmore, the North Sea King, a Viking, ruled from this very spot and governed a stretch of Eastern England under Norse law, an arrangement that lasted until Norman conquest.

Rulers like Harald Fairhair had no direct control over York, but later Scandinavian monarchs such as Sweyn Forkbeard or Cnut the Great used Jorvik as a stepping stone in their campaigns across northern Britain.

In fact, it was Cnut's residence here before he crowned himself King of England in ten sixteen, a clear demonstration of how pivotal this city was for Scandinavian ambition.

Even earlier, Viking raiders and settlers under leaders like the Great Heathen Army established themselves in Jorvik following raids on nearby monasteries.

Like many Icelandic sagas, it preserves old genealogies, poems, family traditions, and stories that may contain genuine memories.

According to the saga, the Viking transformation of the Northern Isles became tied to the rise of Harald Fairhair.

Harald was remembered as the king who brought much of Norway under his rule, forcing rival chieftains either to submit or to flee.

Some of those exiles supposedly sailed west and settled in Orkney, Shetland and the Hebrides.

The saga claims Harald launched a great western expedition, sailing across the sea to attack the Vikings of Orkney, Shetland and farther south.

During this campaign, one of his closest allies was Roggenvald Eisteinsson, the Jarl of Moher.

The sagas portray Roggenvald as a powerful aristocrat and trusted supporter of Harald Fairhair.

During the Western Campaign, one of his sons was supposedly killed, and in compensation, Harald granted him Orkney and Shetland.