Harald Hardrada: The Last Great Viking King

Harald Hardrada (Harald Sigurdsson, c. 1015 to 1066) was king of Norway from 1046 until his death at the Battle of Stamford Bridge on September 25, 1066. Wounded at Stiklestad at fifteen, he served in the Byzantine Varangian Guard, bought half a kingdom with the fortune he brought home, and his death conventionally marks the end of the Viking Age.

No other Viking left a paper trail like Harald's. An Icelandic saga written around 1230, a Byzantine officer's handbook from the 1070s, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle all describe the same man from three different directions. They do not always agree, so part of the job below is sorting out which claims rest on near-contemporary sources and which are saga polish added generations later.

Who Was Harald Hardrada?

Harald Sigurdsson was born around 1015 in Ringerike in eastern Norway, a younger half-brother of King Olaf II through their mother Asta. Olaf, later canonized as St. Olaf, had lost Norway to Cnut the Great of Denmark and returned in 1030 to take it back. Harald, about fifteen years old, marched with him.

It went badly. At Stiklestad on July 29, 1030, Olaf's army was broken and Olaf was killed. Harald was wounded severely enough that he had to be hidden on a remote farm until he could travel. When he could, he did not go home. There was no home to go to; Norway belonged to Cnut. He went east instead and stayed away for fifteen years.

From Stiklestad to Kyiv: The Escape East

Harald crossed into Sweden and made his way to Kyiv, where Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise took the wounded teenager into his service. Yaroslav had sheltered Olaf before him and had marriage ties across Scandinavia, so the court was a natural refuge for a Norwegian royal exile. Harald spent the next several years fighting in Yaroslav's campaigns and learning the trade of war on someone else's payroll.

He also found a reason to come back. The sagas say Harald wanted Yaroslav's daughter Elisaveta and was turned down as a landless exile with no fortune to his name. His answer was to go and get one. Around 1034 he took his retinue south down the river routes to Constantinople, the largest and richest city any Norseman had ever seen.

Was Harald Really in the Varangian Guard?

Yes, and this is the rare saga chapter with independent confirmation. A Byzantine advice manual written in the 1070s, attributed to the general Kekaumenos, describes a northern prince it calls Araltes: a king's kinsman from the far north who served Emperor Michael IV, campaigned in Sicily and against the Bulgarian uprising of 1041, and was rewarded with the court ranks of manglabites and spatharokandidatos. Araltes is Harald, written about within living memory by someone on the Byzantine side.

The Varangian Guard was the emperor's Norse and Rus bodyguard, the long axes that stood closest to the throne. The pay was excellent and the campaign plunder was better, and Kekaumenos adds a detail the sagas love: when Harald asked leave to go home, he was refused, and left anyway.

Then there is the saga layer on top. Snorri Sturluson credits Harald with taking eighty towns in Africa, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and a Constantinople prison break that ends with Harald personally blinding an emperor. Some of it may echo real campaigns, and Byzantine politics really did blind the deposed Michael V in 1042, but no Byzantine source puts Harald's hand on it. Treat the outline as history and the flourishes as after-dinner stories, which is what they were for a century and a half before anyone wrote them down.

How Did Harald Become King of Norway?

He mostly bought it. Harald came back north around 1045 as perhaps the richest private man in Scandinavia, marrying Elisaveta on the way. Norway now belonged to his nephew Magnus the Good, who had no intention of sharing, so Harald opened talks with Magnus's Danish enemies until sharing began to look cheaper than fighting. In 1046 they struck the deal: half the kingdom for half of Harald's treasure. A year later Magnus died, and Harald was sole king of Norway, a crown bought with Byzantine gold.

The next two decades were less glorious. Harald spent most of them trying and failing to take Denmark from Svein Estridsson, burning the trading town of Hedeby in 1050 and winning the sea battle of Nisa in 1062 without ever winning the war; the two kings made peace in 1064. At home he crushed regional opposition hard enough to earn his byname, and Norwegian tradition credits him with founding the market town that grew into Oslo.

What Does Hardrada Mean?

Hardrada is the English form of Old Norse Haraldr harðráði, usually translated "hard ruler" or "severe in counsel." It was not a compliment. The name comes from later Icelandic tradition rather than from his own lifetime, and it summarizes how his subjects experienced him: a king who taxed hard, answered defiance with burned farms, and did not negotiate twice. The sagas balance it with real respect for his generalship and his skill as a poet, but "hard" is the word that stuck.

Why Did Harald Invade England in 1066?

Because 1066 was the year everyone did. Edward the Confessor died childless in January, Harold Godwinson took the English crown, and William of Normandy announced his own claim. Harald's legal argument was the thinnest of the three: an old pact under which Magnus and the Anglo-Danish king Harthacnut had supposedly named each other heir, a claim Harald held only by inheriting Magnus. Thin, but claims were pretexts. What mattered was a fleet, and Harald raised a great one, around 300 ships by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's count, stiffened by Tostig Godwinson, Harold's exiled and vengeful brother.

The campaign opened well. The fleet came up the Ouse and landed at Riccall, and on September 20 Harald destroyed the northern English army under earls Edwin and Morcar at Fulford, outside York. The city agreed to terms, and hostages were to be handed over a few miles away, at a river crossing called Stamford Bridge, on September 25.

What Happened at Stamford Bridge?

Harold Godwinson was supposed to be in the south, watching the Channel for William. Instead he force-marched his army roughly 185 miles from London and reached York in under a week, faster than anyone believed an army could move. On the morning of September 25 he came through the city and straight on toward the Derwent, where the Norwegians were waiting for hostages, not a battle.

The day was hot. Snorri says the Norwegians had left their mail behind at the ships because of the sun, coming ashore with shields, helmets, and weapons but no byrnies, and that a third of the army was still at Riccall with the fleet, a dozen miles away. Snorri also lovingly describes Harald's own famous mail coat, so long it reached mid-leg and so trusted it had a name, Emma. We cover byrnies like her, and the long axes carried that day, in our guide to Viking weapons and armor. None of it helped. By Snorri's account, written some 160 years later, an arrow took Harald in the throat early in the fighting; the English sources record only that he was killed. Tostig fell after him, the exhausted troops from Riccall arrived in mail and died in it, and the Chronicle says the survivors needed only 24 of the roughly 300 ships to carry them home.

One correction to the battle's most famous image. The lone Norwegian axeman who held the bridge alone against the English army, finally speared from below through the planks, is the only description of the battle's actual fighting anywhere in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. And it sits on an added leaf in the C manuscript, written in a hand roughly a century younger than the rest of the annal. It is a great story. It is also late evidence, and honesty requires saying so.

Why Is Harald Called the Last Viking?

By convention. Historians like clean bookends, and "Lindisfarne 793 to Stamford Bridge 1066" is the tidiest frame the Viking Age has; you can see where both ends sit on our full Viking Age timeline. The label is not literal. Norse fleets raided England again within a few years, and Norwegian kings campaigned in the Irish Sea into the 1100s. But no Norse king ever again came that close to taking England, and Harald's whole career, Norway to Kyiv to Constantinople to Yorkshire, reads like the entire age compressed into one lifetime.

His defeat also picked England's next king. Nineteen days after Stamford Bridge, Harold Godwinson's twice-marched, battle-worn army met a fresh Norman one at Hastings and lost. Harald lost his war, and by losing it, he decided who would win someone else's.

FAQ: Harald Hardrada

Why is Harald Hardrada called the last Viking?

Because his death at Stamford Bridge on September 25, 1066 is the conventional endpoint of the Viking Age, and his invasion of England was the last full-scale attempt by a Norse king to conquer the country. The label is a historians' convention, not a fact: Norse raids and campaigns continued for decades afterward, just never again on that scale.

What does Hardrada mean?

Hardrada comes from Old Norse harðráði, usually translated as "hard ruler" or "severe in counsel." It was earned, not flattering: Harald taxed heavily, burned districts that defied him, and ruled Norway for twenty years without tolerating rivals. The byname comes from later Icelandic tradition rather than from documents written during his own lifetime.

Was Harald Hardrada in the Varangian Guard?

Yes. Besides the sagas, a Byzantine advice manual from the 1070s attributed to Kekaumenos describes him as Araltes: a northern king's kinsman who served Emperor Michael IV, fought in Sicily and against the Bulgarian uprising of 1041, and held the court ranks of manglabites and spatharokandidatos. It is one of the few Viking careers confirmed from the Byzantine side.

How did Harald Hardrada die?

He was killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire on September 25, 1066, aged about fifty-one. Snorri Sturluson, writing around 1230, says an arrow struck him in the throat early in the fighting; the near-contemporary English sources simply record that he fell. His army had left its mail at the ships because of the heat.

Did Harald almost become king of England?

He came closer than most. He destroyed the northern English army at Fulford on September 20, 1066 and took York's surrender, and only Harold Godwinson's astonishing forced march ended the campaign five days later. His real effect was indirect: the weakened English army that beat him lost to William of Normandy at Hastings nineteen days afterward.

Sources

• Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla: the Saga of Harald Sigurdsson (Harald Hardrada), written c. 1230, trans. Samuel Laing.
• Kekaumenos, Advice and Anecdotes (the so-called Strategikon of Kekaumenos), c. 1075-1078, containing the near-contemporary "Araltes" passage on Harald's Byzantine service.
• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entries for 1066; the bridge-defender episode is a later addition to the C manuscript.

Keep exploring: trace the age Harald ended back to its start in where the Vikings came from, see how clashes like Fulford and Stamford Bridge were fought in our guide to Viking battles, or hold the weapon of the age with the long-hafted Dane axes and battle axes in our collection.