A fifteen-year-old stands in the battle line. Beside him fights his half-brother Olaf, a king who will later be canonized. The year is 1030, the place is called Stiklestad. By the end of the day, Olaf lies dead on the field. The boy survives\u2013and yet loses everything he ever knew.<\/p>\n
His name: Harald Sigurdsson. Later he will be called Hardrada\u2013the hard ruler. But that\u2019s still a long way off.<\/p>\n
Harald flees. He travels through Kievan Rus, hiring himself out as a mercenary. Then he commands the Varangian Guard in Byzantium\u2013the emperor\u2019s bodyguard, feared and respected alike. Under Emperor Michael IV he fights in Sicily. He fights in Bulgaria. The exiled king\u2019s son becomes a man with gold in his pocket and a name that travels far. The chronicler Adam of Bremen later calls him the \u201cThunderbolt of the North.\u201d<\/p>\n
This life in exile lasts fifteen years. Fifteen years that forge a loser into a warrior of rank.<\/p>\n
During his time in Kievan Rus, Harald married Elisaveta, daughter of Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise\u2013a match that helped secure his return to Norway politically. In Norway he later also took Tora Torbergsdatter as his wife; the sagas mention both marriages side by side without clearly settling their exact legal standing. Around 1048, Harald founded a new trading settlement on the coast of the Oslofjord, out of which the city of Oslo developed\u2013to this day he is regarded in Norwegian tradition as its founder.<\/p>\n
In 1045 or 1046, Harald returns to Norway. At first he shares the throne with his nephew Magnus. From 1047 he rules alone. And now it becomes clear where his epithet comes from: har\u00f0r\u00e1\u00f0i, the hard ruler. He means it. For fifteen more years he fights for Denmark\u2013until he finally settles with King Sweyn in 1062.<\/p>\n
But the peace doesn\u2019t last long.<\/p>\n
In 1066 the last great opportunity beckons: England. At Fulford he wins the battle. Five days later, at Stamford Bridge, he meets Harold Godwinson. This time Harald loses\u2013his life.<\/p>\n
A note on the sources:<\/strong> The picture we have of Harald comes chiefly from Icelandic sagas. Only a single Byzantine source confirms his time there: the chronicler Kekaumenos. The title \u201clast Viking,\u201d often given to Harald, is also a modern label. The old sources don\u2019t know it.<\/p>\n Whoever loses everything doesn\u2019t stand at the end. He stands at the beginning of a new road. Harald\u2019s life shows this vividly. But the same hardness that builds a man up can, in the end, swallow him too.<\/p>\n The main source for Harald’s life is Snorri Sturluson’s Haralds saga Sigur\u00f0arsonar in the Heimskringla (c. 1230), written roughly 165 years after his death. For his time in Byzantium, only a single contemporary, non-Scandinavian source exists: Kekaumenos’s Strategikon (c. 1078). Because Snorri’s account was composed well after the events it describes and draws on oral tradition, historical fact blends with literary shaping, which is why individual episodes\u2013such as details of his campaigns in Sicily and Bulgaria\u2013cannot be conclusively verified by scholars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A fifteen-year-old stands in the battle line. Beside him fights his half-brother Olaf, a king who will later be canonized. The year is 1030, the place is called\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1849,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hrafn_pipeline_status":"","hrafn_quelle":"","hrafn_flags_offen":0,"hrafn_kritik":"","hrafn_master_hash":"","hrafn_notion_id":"","hrafn_bibliothek":"","hrafn_fakten":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrafn-wikinger.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrafn-wikinger.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrafn-wikinger.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrafn-wikinger.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrafn-wikinger.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/hrafn-wikinger.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1980,"href":"https:\/\/hrafn-wikinger.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/1980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrafn-wikinger.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrafn-wikinger.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrafn-wikinger.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrafn-wikinger.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Sources<\/h2>\n