Harald Hardrada

I
N MEMORY OF
K
NAP

JOHN MARSDEN

First published in 2007

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire,
GL
5 2
QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2012

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© John Marsden, 2007, 2012

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EPUB ISBN
978 0 7524 7444 1

MOBI ISBN
978 0 7524 7443 4

Original typesetting by The History Press

Author's Note and Acknowledgements

Maps

Sagas, Skalds and Soldiering

An introduction to a military biography

I     Stiklestad

Norway, 1030

II    Varangian

Russia, 1031–1034

Byzantine Empire, 1034–1041

Constantinople, 1041–1042

Russia, 1042–1045

III   Hardrada

Scandinavia, 1045–1065

IV   Stamford Bridge

England, 1066

Land-ravager

An afterword from west-over-sea

Genealogies

Notes and References

Select Bibliography

A
book written in English for a non-academic readership and yet drawing on source material originally set down in Old Norse, Byzantine Greek, Russian, Anglo-Saxon and Latin does require a note as to its policy in the naming of names. As there appears to be no standard form of English spelling of early Scandinavian names, I have used whichever form seems the most appropriate in the historical context and the least intimidating for an English reader. Similarly, the title of ‘earl' is spelled in that English form where it occurs in England, but in its original Old Norse form as
jarl
in a Scandinavian context. Sometimes names and terms are also given in their original spelling – set in italics and usually in parentheses – so it might be helpful to explain that the Norse character ð is pronounced ‘th' (as in ra
ther
). I should also mention my specific use of the term
viking
in its original sense of ‘sea-raider' as distinct from the modern usage of ‘Viking' as a generic term for anyone (or anything) associated with early medieval Scandinavia.

Notes have been kept to a minimum and most often used to acknowledge references to or quotations from the work of others, but there are two such authors to whom I owe a more prominent acknowledgement because Sigfús Blöndal's
The Varangians of Byzantium
in the English edition revised and translated by Benedikt S. Benedikz was the work which played a greater part than any other in developing my interest in the man who forms the subject of this book. A more personal acknowledgement is due to my friend John Hamburg of Carrollton, Kentucky, whose unfailing enthusiasm for the same subject played its own part in encouraging this attempt at a biography of Harald Hardrada.

J.M.

1    Harald Hardrada's World

2    Scandinavia

3    Russia

4    Byzantine Empire

5    Constantinople

6    Stiklestad

7    Stamford Bridge

 

MAP 1

 

MAP 2

 

MAP 3

 

MAP 4

 

MAP 5

 

MAP 6

 

MAP 7

AN INTRODUCTION TO A MILITARY BIOGRAPHY

W
hen he is remembered only as a Norwegian king slain in battle at Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire, where his invading army was crushed just three days before the arrival of the conquering Normans, the place of Harald Hardrada in the mainstream of English history amounts to little more than that of the ‘third man' of the undeniably memorable year 1066. He spent no more than eighteen days on English soil, after all, and the subsequent events of that fateful autumn have left him overshadowed, first by the English Harold and ultimately by William the Norman, thus obscuring his reputation – acknowledged by historians ancient and modern – as the most feared warrior of his world and time.

If Stamford Bridge is set into a wider context than that of Anglo-Saxon England, however, it comes into a very different focus as the last of innumerable conflicts fought out along a warrior's way that had ranged across most of Scandinavia and eastward by way of Russia to the far-flung empire of Byzantium through the three and a half decades since a sturdy youngster stood with his half-brother, the king and future saint Olaf, in the blood-fray at Stiklestad in the west of Norway. The most comprehensive accounts of that great arc of warfaring are found in the thirteenth-century collections of sagas of the Norwegian kings, of which the most respected is the one known as
Heimskringla
and reliably attributed to the Icelander Snorri Sturluson. His version of Harald's saga is described by the editors of its standard modern English translation as ‘a biography which in Snorri's hands becomes the story of a warrior's progress. Essentially it is the life and career of a professional soldier, starting with a battle – the battle of Stiklestad where Harald, aged fifteen, is wounded and his brother the king killed – and ending in battle, thirty-six years later, at Stamford Bridge.'
¹