Harald Hardrada: The Ideal King of Thirteenth Century Iceland

The Portrait of Harald

Harald Hardrada
Image Credit: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons; History Hit

According to Snorri Sturluson, Harald was a handsome man of noble bearing with a fine head of blonde hair and a carefully tended beard and moustache. One of his eyebrows naturally rested slightly higher than its counterpart, giving him something of a roguish air. He was, according to Snorri, five ells tall, which would make him a titanic seven feet and six inches by today’s reckoning. Other sources comment upon Harald’s great height, but not to this degree.

This portrait of the great reaver king does not end at the physical; we are told that he was an exceptionally shrewd ruler and commander. While personally brave, he never turned down an advantage, no matter how unfair, or hesitated to pursue further leverage through clever strategies and subterfuge. He was unabashedly greedy for treasure, brooked little in the way of challenge, and was exceptionally ruthless, even brutal, towards his enemies. Yet he could be generous to his friends and allies. He was also plainly lucky and had a habit of landing on his feet.

Campaigns, Legends, and Distortions

Depiction of the Varangian Guard (above) in the 11th-century chronicle of John Skylitzes

Snorri claims that during the Byzantine invasion of Africa, Harald, who served in the campaign as a commander of the legendary Varangian Guard, oversaw the sacking of eighty enemy towns, many of which were extensively fortified. This campaign is almost certainly a distortion and misunderstanding of Emperor Michael IV’s 1035 offensive into Asia Minor and the Levant.

Snorri and other thirteenth-century saga sources maintain that Harald visited Jerusalem during his time in the Mediterranean and state that this trip took place around 1041, after the lengthy campaign in Sicily. Most historians now advocate that this trip, if it happened at all, took place in the immediate aftermath of this earlier campaign, with some speculating that Harald may have been part of a force that accompanied the emperor and his family to the city and oversaw repairs to the Holy Sepulchre, which had been a condition of the peace treaty with the Fatimid Caliph.

While this is a very neat theory and may well be true, we once again run into a lack of reliable or corroborating evidence. Snorri very much suggests that Harald’s journey to Jerusalem had a martial component and that the region’s cities surrendered before his advance. Upon arrival, he is depicted as bathing in the Jordan, donating generously to the city’s holy sites, and forcibly clearing the area of bandits. It is highly unlikely that the Fatimids were content to entrust the enforcement of law and order to Harald Hardrada. On top of this, Harald’s activities in the Holy Lands, as presented by Snorri, suspiciously mirror the preoccupations which formed amongst later Christian crusaders and pilgrims. It seems likely that Snorri wanted to further inflate Harald’s reputation in the eyes of his Christian audience by imposing recognisable and laudable near-contemporary modes of behaviour onto an excursion to Jerusalem, which may or may not have happened.

Sicily and the Theatre of Kingship

The Heimskringla’s account of the Byzantine invasion of Sicily sees the future king’s personality push its way to the fore of the narrative. Of course, while these sagas claim to be based on more contemporary oral traditions, there is no way to ascertain their fidelity. Written in thirteenth-century Iceland, the Heimskringla and many of its accompanying works were commissioned to fashion a political pedigree and glorious past for Iceland’s new Norwegian overlords. This means that while the Heimskringla probably contains narrative elements drawn from older stories, its characterisation of Harald inevitably reflects qualities and social mores admired in a thirteenth-century ruler.

Interestingly, the qualities most consistently expressed within the Heimskringla’s account of Harald’s involvement in Sicily are intelligence and sheer gall. The saga relegates George Maniakes, the Byzantine general who actually presided over the invasion, from being Harald’s military superior to a mere rival and more or less positions the Varangians as the main force involved in the invasion of Sicily and Harald as their sole leader, the controlling mind behind the operation. A frustrating but sensible affectation when considering that the purpose of the saga was to present the gilded legend of a powerful Scandinavian monarch. The saga structures the exiled prince turned mercenary commander’s time in Sicily around the escalating sieges of four increasingly fortified towns.

Stratagems and Ideals of Rule

In the first town, Harald burns the inhabitants out of their fortification by attaching burning tapers to captured birds and then releasing them to return to their roosts in the eaves of the town’s buildings. In the second town, Harald opts to tunnel under its walls before leading his warriors out of a cellar they had broken into. The third town falls after Harald cunningly lulls the enemy into a false sense of security by directing his men to stage sporting matches and other games before the town’s walls. Using these games as a pretext to inch closer, they suddenly storm the fortifications, taking the defenders by surprise.

Most bizarrely of all, the final town is taken after the seriously ill Harald fakes his own death, causing the prominent citizens of the town to flood out of the gates in the hope of claiming the body of such an august individual for the monasteries they patronised. Again, this reflects cultural mores which would have been more familiar to its thirteenth-century audience than its eleventh-century subject.

Monasteries proliferated in Western Europe during the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries under the enthusiastic auspices of royal and aristocratic sponsors. Such foundations were often eager to acquire either saintly relics or the remains of important secular personages, since such connections all but guaranteed that their families would support and patronise the monastery in return for prayers for their deceased relative.

The varied and underhanded ploys that Harald deploys to capture these towns demonstrate both his intelligence and ruthlessness, traits evidently prized by the sagas’ audience. Strong, decisive rulers were to be admired and valued, not only because they protected their subjects from the attentions of predatory neighbours but also because they represented a court of appeal which allowed the nobility to settle their internal disputes without resorting to costly private wars. Harald’s scheming and often flagrantly treacherous stratagems were lauded because, rather than a sign of weakness, audiences saw them as a continuation of the king’s role in containing and monopolising violence.

Power, Politics, and Legacy

Harald had originally fled Norway in 1030 following the death of his half-brother, King Olaf II. While Harald was busy in Byzantine service, a group of Norwegian aristocrats had successfully used his nephew, Magnus the Good, as a figurehead in the struggle to overthrow Danish hegemony. By 1042, the now-adult Magnus had declared himself king of both Norway and Denmark, invading his homeland’s former oppressors. Leaving Byzantine service in late 1043, Harald allied with the Swedish king Anund Jacob and the leader of Danish resistance, Prince Sweyn, against his nephew. In 1046, the increasingly hard-pressed Magnus agreed to accept Harald as his co-ruler, leading to the dissolution of this alliance.

As always, the Heimskringla presents an aggrandising and idiosyncratic version of events. According to the saga, Sweyn and Harald were feasting together when they fell to arguing about whether Harald’s prized standard, Land-Waster, possessed magical qualities. That night, the ever-canny Harald, fearing the worst, fashioned a decoy from a tree stump which he placed underneath the blankets of his bed while he himself lay in wait elsewhere. Sure enough, the Danish warlord came creeping into Harald’s quarters and buried his axe in Harald’s hastily assembled wooden simulacrum. With Sweyn’s treachery and knavish character fully exposed, Harald abandoned their partnership, instead seeking out Magnus, who happily reconciled with his uncle.

While both carried the title of king, the sources make clear that, of the two, Magnus retained seniority. At least he did until his sudden death in the autumn of 1047. Many of the examples that the Heimskringla later cites to signify Magnus’ higher status, such as precedence in seating arrangements and use of the royal jetty, primarily reflect the status symbols and concerns of thirteenth-century Scandinavian kingship. The monarchies of mid-eleventh-century Europe tended to derive their authority and efficacy from the personal qualities and connections of their incumbents, rather than offices and institutions with predefined remits and responsibilities.

This was particularly the case in Norway, where royal authority had to be constructed from scratch by Olaf II and then pieced back together by Magnus and his cabal of aristocratic supporters. The royal rights and privileges with which the Heimskringla credits Magnus were created in an attempt by later monarchs to distinguish themselves more thoroughly from their foremost followers and build institutional authority to bulwark their often variable personal authority.

It was the sagas, of which the Heimskringla is but the most famous, that awarded Harald his famous epithet Hardrada, which means something along the lines of ‘the hard ruler’. It was a name which was borne out by his behaviour following Magnus’ death and the commencement of his solo rule. Yet, as we have seen, the image of Harald, the brutally cunning authoritarian, can tell us much about the expectations and preferences of the Heimskringla’s thirteenth-century Icelandic audience. Harald and his fellow kings are towering figures whose hegemonic efforts conceal a carefully disguised assertion of Icelandic identity and sense of self.