Harald Fairhair

Harald Fairhair
Harald Fairhair (left) in an illustration from the fourteenth-century Flateyjarbók.
King of Norway
Reign	putatively 872–930
Successor	Eric Bloodaxe
Born	putatively c. 850 Leikanger in Sogn
Died	putatively c. 932 Rogaland, Norway
Burial	Haraldshaugen in Haugesund
Spouse	Ragnhild the Mighty Åsa Håkonsdotter Snjófríthr/Snæfrithr Svásadottir
Issue more	Guttorm Haraldsson Halfdan Haraldsson the Black Álof árbót Haraldsdóttir Bjorn Farmann Olaf Haraldsson Geirstadalf Halfdan Long-Leg Haakon the Good Eric Bloodaxe
Names Haraldr Hálfdanarson
Dynasty	Fairhair
Father	Halfdan the Black
Mother	Ragnhild Sigurdsdotter
Religion	Norse paganism

Harald Fairhair^[a] (Old Norse: Haraldr Hárfagri) (c. 850 – c. 932) was a Norwegian king. According to traditions current in Norway and Iceland in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, he reigned from c. 872 to 930 and was the first King of Norway.^[1][2] 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 tried to argue that Harald Fairhair did not exist as a historical figure.

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