Harald Fairhair (; – ) was a Norwegian king. According to traditions current in Norway and Iceland in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, he reigned from 872 to 930 and was the first King of Norway. Supposedly, two of his sons, Eric Bloodaxe and Haakon the Good, succeeded Harald to become kings after his death.
Much of Harald's biography is uncertain. A couple of praise poems by his court poet Þorbjörn Hornklofi survive in fragments, but the extant accounts of his life come from sagas set down in writing around three centuries after his lifetime. His life is described in several of the Kings' sagas, none of them older than the twelfth century. Their accounts of Harald and his life differ on many points, but it is clear that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Harald was regarded as having unified Norway into one kingdom.
Since the nineteenth century, when Norway was in a personal union with Sweden, Harald has become a national icon of Norway and a symbol of independence. Though the king's sagas and medieval accounts have been critically scrutinised during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Harald maintains a reputation as the father of the Norwegian nation. At the turn of the 21st century, a few historians have argued that Harald Fairhair did not exist as a historical figure.
Meaning of epithet Old Norse translates straightforwardly into English as 'hair', but , the adjective of which is a form, is trickier to render, since it means 'fair, fine, beautiful'Geir T. Zoëga, A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic (Oxford: Clarendon, 1910), s.v. . (but without the moral associations of English fair, as opposed to unfair).Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson, An Icelandic-English Dictionary, 2nd edn by William A. Craigie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), s.v. fagr. Although it is convenient and conventional to render in English as 'fair-hair(ed)',Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson, An Icelandic-English Dictionary, 2nd edn by William A. Craigie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), s.v. .Geir T. Zoëga, A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic (Oxford: Clarendon, 1910), s.v. hár-fagr. in English 'fair-haired' means 'blond', whereas the Old Norse fairly clearly means 'beautiful-haired' (in contrast to the epithet which, according to some sources, Haraldr previously bore: , '(thick) matted hair').Paul R. Peterson, 'Old Norse Nicknames' (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2015), pp. 39–40.Judith Jesch, 'Norse Historical Traditions and Historia Gruffud vab Kenan: Magnus Berfoettr and Haraldr Harfagri', in Gruffudd ap Cynan: A Collaborative Biography, edited by K. L. Maund (Cambridge: Boydell, 1996), pp. 117–47 (p. 139 n. 62). Accordingly, some translators prefer to render as 'the fine-haired' or 'fine-hair'E.g. Margaret Cormack, 'Fact and Fiction in the Icelandic Sagas, History Compass, 5/1 (2007), 201–17 (p. 203) .E.g. Carl Phelpstead, 'Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Hair Loss, the Tonsure, and Masculinity in Medieval Iceland', Scandinavian Studies, 85 (2013), 1–19 (p. 5), . (which, however, unhelpfully implies that Haraldr's hairs were thin) or even 'handsome-hair'.Edith Andersen, I Am from Iceland: A Memoir (Lulu, 2010), p. 4.
Historicity Through the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, historians broadly accepted the account of Harald Fairhair given by later Icelandic sagas. However, Peter Sawyer began to cast doubt on this in 1976,P. H. Sawyer, 'Harald Fairhair and the British Isles', in les Vikings et leur civilisation: problèmes actuelles, ed. by Régis Boyer (Paris, 1976), pp. 105–9. and the decades around 2000 saw a wave of revisionist research that suggested that Harald Fairhair did not exist, or at least not in a way resembling his appearance in sagas.Claus Krag, 'Norge som odel i Harald Hårfagres ætt. Et møte med en gjenganger', Historisk tidskrift, 3 (1989), 288–302.Alexandra Pesch, Brunaǫld, haugsǫld, kirkjuǫld: Untersuchungen zu den archäologisch uberprufbaren Aussagen in der Heimskringla des Snorri Sturluson (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1996).Judith Jesch, 'Norse Historical Traditions and Historia Gruffud vab Kenan: Magnus Berfoettr and Haraldr Harfagri', in Gruffudd ap Cynan: A Collaborative Biography, edited by K. L. Maund (Cambridge: Boydell, 1996), pp. 117–47 (pp. 137–47).Shami Ghosh, Kings' Sagas and Norwegian History: Problems and Perspectives, The Northern World, 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 66–70.Sverrir Jakobsson, 'Yfirstéttarmenning eða þjóðmenning? Um þjóðsögur og heimildargildi í íslenskum miðaldaritum', in Úr manna minnum: Greinar um íslenskar þjóðsögur, ed. by Baldur Hafstað og Haraldur Bessason (Reykjavík, 2002), pp. 449–61.Sayaka Matsumoto, 'A Foundation Myth of Iceland: Reflections on the tradition of Haraldr hárfagri', 日本アイスランド学会会報 (2011), 30: 1–22. The key arguments for this are as follows: There is no contemporary support for the claims of later sagas about Harald Fairhair. The first king of Norway recorded in near-contemporary sources is Harald Bluetooth (d. c. 985/986), who is claimed to be the king not only of Denmark but also Norway on the Jelling stones. The late ninth-century account of Norway provided by Ohthere to the court of Alfred the Great (about 890) and the history by Adam of Bremen written in 1075 record no King of Norway for the relevant period. Although sagas have Erik Bloodaxe, who does seem partly to correspond to a historical figure, as the son of Harald Fairhair, no independent evidence supports this genealogical connection.Clare Downham, "Eric Bloodaxe – axed? The Mystery of the Last Viking King of York", Mediaeval Scandinavia, 14 (2004), 51–77. The twelfth-century William of Malmesbury does describe a Norwegian king called Haraldus visiting King Æthelstan of England (d. 939), which is consistent with later saga-traditions in which Harald Fairhair fostered a son, Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri, on Æthelstan.Angela Marion Smith, 'King Æthelstan in the English, Continental and Scandinavian Traditions of the Tenth to the Thirteenth Centuries' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds, 2014), pp. 255–73. But William is a late source and Harald a far from uncommon name for a Scandinavian character,Sverrir Jakobsson, 'Var Haraldur hárfagri bara uppspuni Snorra Sturlusonar?', Vísindavefurinn (25 September 2006). and William does not give this Harald the epithet fairhair, whereas he does give that epithet to the later Norwegian king Haraldr Sigurðarson. Although Harald Fairhair appears in diverse Icelandic sagas, few if any of these are independent sources. It is plausible that all these were participating in a shared textual tradition begun by the earliest Icelandic prose account of Harald, Ari Þorgilsson's Íslendingabók. Dating from the early twelfth century, this was written over 250 years after Harald's supposed death. The saga evidence is potentially pre-dated by two skaldic poems, Haraldskvæði (also known as Hrafnsmál)R. D. Fulk 2012, 'Þorbjǫrn hornklofi, Haraldskvæði (Hrafnsmál)' in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings' Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 91 ff. and Glymdrápa,Edith Marold with the assistance of Vivian Busch, Jana Krüger, Ann-Dörte Kyas and Katharina Seidel, translated from German by John Foulks 2012, 'Þorbjǫrn hornklofi, Glymdrápa' in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings' Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 73 ff. which have been attributed to Þorbjörn hornklofi or alternatively (in the case of the first poem) to Þjóðólfr of Hvinir, and are according to the sagas about Harald Fairhair. Although only preserved in thirteenth-century Kings' sagas, they might have been transmitted orally (as the sagas claim) from the tenth century. The first describes life at the court of a king called Harald, mentions that he took a Danish wife, and that he won a battle at Hafrsfjord. The second poem relates a series of battles won by a king called Harald. However, the information supplied in these poems is inconsistent with the tales in the sagas in which they are transmitted, and the sagas themselves often disagree on the details of his background and biography. Meanwhile, the most reliable manuscripts of Haraldskvæði call the poem's honorand Haraldr Hálfdanarson rather than Haraldr hárfagri, and Glymdrápa offers no epithet at all. All the poems suggest is that there was once a king called Haraldr (Hálfdanarson). Sources from the British Isles which are independent of the Icelandic saga-tradition (and partly of each other), and are mostly earlier than the sagas, do attest to a king whose name corresponds to the Old Norse name Haraldr inn hárfagri—but they use this name of the well attested Haraldr Sigurðarson (d. 1066, often known in modern English as Harald Hardrada). These sources include manuscript D of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ('Harold Harfagera', under the year 1066) and the related histories by Orderic Vitalis ('Harafagh', re events in 1066), John of Worcester ('Harvagra', s.aa. 1066 and 1098), and William of Malmesbury (Gesta regum Anglorum, 'Harvagre', s.a. regarding 1066); Marianus Scotus of Mainz ('Arbach', d. 1082/1083); and the Life of Gruffydd ap Cynan ('Haraldum Harfagyr', later twelfth century, though this may refer to two different kings by this name).Judith Jesch, 'Norse Historical Traditions and Historia Gruffud vab Kenan: Magnus Berfoettr and Haraldr Harfagri', in Gruffudd ap Cynan: A Collaborative Biography, edited by K. L. Maund (Cambridge: Boydell, 1996), pp. 117–47 (pp. 139–47).Sverrir Jakobsson, 'The Early Kings of Norway, the Issue of Agnatic Succession, and the Settlement of Iceland', Viator, 47 (2016), 171–88 (pp. 1–18 in open-access text, at p. 7); .Vits Griffini Filii Conani: The Medieval Latin Life of Gruffydd ap Cynan, ed. and trans. by Paul Russell (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2005), pp. 54-57 (chs 4-5).
Scholarly consensus on Harald's historicity now falls into two camps. One suggests that the medieval Icelandic and Norwegian historiography of Harald Fairhair is part of an origin myth created to explain the settlement of Iceland, perhaps in which a cognomen of Haraldr Sigurðarson was transferred to a fictitious early king of all Norway.Gísli Sigurðsson, 'Constructing a Past to Suit the Present: Sturla Þórðarson on Conflicts and Alliances with King Haraldr hárfagri', in Minni and Muninn: Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture, ed. by Pernille Hermann, Stephen A. Mitchell, and Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir, AS 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 175–96 . Sverrir Jakobsson has suggested that the idea of Iceland being settled by people fleeing an overbearing Norwegian monarch actually reflects the anxieties of Iceland in the early thirteenth century, when the island was indeed coming under Norwegian dominance. He has also suggested that the legend of Harald Fairhair developed in the twelfth century to enable Norwegian kings, who were then promoting the idea of primogeniture over the older custom of agnatic succession, to claim that their ancestors had had a right to Norway by lineal descent from the country's supposed first king.Sverrir Jakobsson, 'The Early Kings of Norway, the Issue of Agnatic Succession, and the Settlement of Iceland', Viator, 47 (2016), 171–88; .