{"id":21149,"date":"2025-09-17T20:41:51","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T00:41:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21149"},"modified":"2025-09-17T20:41:51","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T00:41:51","slug":"the-saga-of-harald-hardrada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21149","title":{"rendered":"The saga of Harald Hardrada"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Monument to Harald Sigurdsson at Harald Hardr\u00e5des plass in Gamlebyen, Oslo, Norway. Relief by Lars Utne 1905.\u00a0Photo credit: Wolfmann. Creative Commons Attribution – Share Alike 4.0.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m in between book reviews. <\/strong>Of what shall I blog? The other day, somebody on Facebook asked what I had to say about King Harald Hardrada <\/a>of Norway. Well, there\u2019s plenty. Probably enough for a long post. I\u2019ve blogged before about Harald\u2019s death at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066, but I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever devoted a post to the man himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has much in common with Napoleon, whose biography I reviewed the other day. An important figure, and a fascinating personality. But in almost no way appealing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t feel that way when I was a kid. I read about him in David Howarth’s 1066<\/a><\/em>, and it fired my imagination. What a saga! This guy ranged all over Europe and the Mideast, fought scores of battles, amassed a fortune, and went home to be king of his homeland. A real-life Conan the Barbarian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019ve read my novel The Baldur Game<\/a><\/em> (you have read it, haven\u2019t you?), he shows up in 1030 at the Battle of Stiklestad, where Saint Olaf died. Harald\u2019s patronymic was Sigurdsson; he was half-brother to Olaf (same mother). He was about 15 at that time; I picture him as a reckless teenager, still growing into his height (he\u2019s supposed to have been unusually tall). He was wounded in the battle, but got away with the help of Ragnvald, later jarl of Orkney. I assume he must have hero-worshipped his older brother. Very likely he admired Olaf\u2019s autocratic policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then off to exile in Kiev, where he served at the court of Prince Jaroslav the Wise (who also appears in my novel). There Harald grew to maturity \u2013 and no doubt picked up Russ ideas about government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1042 he headed south for Constantinople, the goal of every enterprising young Viking in the east. The Byzantine emperors valued the tall Northmen as warriors, and Harald rose to become captain of the famous Varangian Guard, fighting in various campaigns in various places, including Sicily and (possibly) Jerusalem. We actually have outside corroboration for this service\u2013 a Greek book from the 1070s, the Strategikon of Kekaumenos<\/em>, describes a portion of his Byzantine career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harald seems to have been involved in the revolt against Emperor Michael V, and at some point (according to the saga) he was imprisoned and escaped. Somehow he managed to get out of the city with the enormous fortune he\u2019d amassed, and he made his way back to Kiev, where he won the hand of the princess Elisabeth, and set off for home, where his nephew, Olaf\u2019s illegitimate son Magnus the Good, now reigned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Continued on p. 2)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Harald joined forces with Svein, the king of Denmark, to attack Magnus, but eventually intermediaries worked out a settlement. Harald got to rule half of Norway, while Magnus got half of Harald\u2019s fortune. They reigned together in uneasy coexistence until Magnus\u2019 death in 1047. Then Harald became sole king, and devoted himself for many years to attacking his former ally Svein, in an attempt to reconstruct the old North Sea empire of Knut the Great. In the end, both sides wearied of that fighting, and made peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He married (or took as a concubine) Thora Thorbergsdatter, who was a granddaughter of Erling Skjalgsson, hero of my novels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then a new, bigger prospect appeared. Tostig, exiled brother of King Harold of England (we always vary the spellings of the two Harald\/Harolds, to help keep them straight), came to him, asking for his support against his brother Harold. He promised to support Harald of Norway as the new king of England. Harald of Norway had a (fairly thin) claim on the throne, based on inheritance from his nephew Magnus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so Harald sailed off to England, to die in an epic way in September, 1066 at Stamford Bridge, a battle you can read more about by doing a search in our archives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an epic biography, undeniably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is that, unfortunately for my teenaged hero-worship, Harald was a bloody monster. Even by the standards of the Viking Age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My particular complaint, as the author of the Saga of Erling Skjalgsson, is that Harald was a great opponent of the Norse Thing system, the democratic tradition that limited the power of the king. Harald spent many of his formative years in Kiev, where it appears the Russ had abandoned democracy almost completely. Then he went off to Constantinople, where he had a successful military career and meddled in politics. One did not learn small government principles in Constantinople.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in Norway, he immediately made a mortal enemy of Einar Tambarskjelvar <\/em>(Gut-Shaker), who is also a character in my Erling novels. Einar was old by then, but still vigorous, and after Erling\u2019s death he had become the leader of the Thing party. In 1050, after years of conflict, Harald murdered Einar and his son Eindridi on the same day, having shamelessly broken a promise of safe conduct to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the end of the heyday of Viking Age democracy in Norway,\u00a0 though the tradition never died out entirely (read Viking Legacy<\/a><\/em> for more details). This is why we call him \u201cHardrada,\u201d which is an anglicization of har\u00f0r\u00e1\u00f0i, <\/em>which means \u201chard-counseled.\u201d Often it\u2019s translated as \u201cruthless,\u201d which seems to me pretty reasonable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harald Hardrada was a big man, both in stature and in ambition. Also in achievement, though he always ends up as a footnote in the story of the Norman conquest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he\u2019s almost impossible to sympathize with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m in between book reviews. Of what shall I blog? The other day, somebody on Facebook asked what I had to say about King Harald Hardrada of Norway. Well, there\u2019s plenty. Probably enough for a long post. I\u2019ve blogged before about Harald\u2019s death at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066, but I don\u2019t think … Continue reading The saga of Harald Hardrada<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[3452],"class_list":["post-21149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-harald-hardrada"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21149"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21152,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21149\/revisions\/21152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}