Harald Fairhair

Harald Fairhair (Old Norse: Haraldr Hárfagri; c. 850 – c. 932) is remembered as a Norwegian king. Stories from Norway and Iceland in the 11th and 12th centuries say he ruled from about 872 to 930 and was the first person to be king of all Norway. After his death, two of his sons—Eric Bloodaxe and Haakon the Good—are said to have taken the throne. But most of what we know about him is shaky. The main accounts of his life come from sagas written down roughly three hundred years after he lived. A few fragments of praise poems by his court poet, Þorbjörn Hornklofi, survive, but the sagas themselves disagree on many details.

The meaning of his nickname, *hárfagri*, is tricky to translate. The Old Norse *hár* simply means "hair," while *fagr* means "fair, fine, beautiful"—but without the moral sense of the English word "fair." So *hárfagri* likely means "beautiful-haired," not "blond-haired" (which is what "fair-haired" suggests in English). Some sources say he was earlier called *lúfa*, meaning "thick matted hair," which makes the contrast clearer. For this reason, some translators prefer "the fine-haired" or "handsome-hair," though these have their own problems.

Historians in the 19th and most of the 20th centuries largely accepted the saga version of Harald. But doubts began in 1976 with Peter Sawyer, and around the turn of the 21st century a wave of revisionist research questioned whether Harald Fairhair existed at all—or at least in the form the sagas describe. The arguments are these: No contemporary evidence backs up the sagas. The first king of Norway recorded in near-contemporary sources is Harald Bluetooth (d. c. 985/986), named on the Jelling stones as king of both Denmark and Norway. The late 9th-century account of Norway given by Ohthere to King Alfred the Great (around 890) and Adam of Bremen’s history from 1075 mention no Norwegian king for that period. Although the sagas make Eric Bloodaxe the son of Harald Fairhair, no independent evidence confirms that link. The 12th-century writer William of Malmesbury does mention a Norwegian king called Haraldus visiting King Æthelstan of England (d. 939), which matches saga stories about Harald sending his son Hákon to be fostered by Æthelstan. But William wrote late, Harald was a common name, and he does not give this Harald the epithet "fairhair"—he uses that name for the later king Harald Sigurðarson (Harald Hardrada).

The sagas that mention Harald Fairhair are not independent of each other. They likely all draw on a shared tradition that began with Ari Þorgilsson’s *Íslendingabók*, written in the early 12th century—more than 250 years after Harald supposedly died. Two skaldic poems, *Haraldskvæði* (also called *Hrafnsmál*) and *Glymdrápa*, are said to be about him and attributed to Þorbjörn hornklofi (or, for the first, to Þjóðólfr of Hvinir). They survive only in 13th-century sagas but may have been passed down orally from the 10th century. The first poem describes life at the court of a king named Harald, says he took a Danish wife, and won a battle at Hafrsfjord. The second lists battles won by a king named Harald. But the poems don’t match the saga stories well, and the sagas themselves often disagree on details. The most reliable manuscripts of *Haraldskvæði* call the king Harald Hálfdanarson, not Harald hárfagri, and *Glymdrápa* gives no epithet at all. All the poems really show is that there was once a king named Harald (Hálfdanarson).

Sources from the British Isles, independent of the Icelandic saga tradition and mostly older, do mention a king whose name matches Old Norse *Haraldr inn hárfagri*—but they use it for the well-documented Harald Sigurðarson (d. 1066, often called Harald Hardrada). These include manuscript D of the *Anglo-Saxon Chronicle* ("Harold Harfagera," under 1066), and histories by Orderic Vitalis ("Harafagh"), John of Worcester ("Harvagra"), William of Malmesbury ("Harvagre"), Marianus Scotus of Mainz ("Arbach"), and the *Life of Gruffudd*.