Haakon the Good Battles the Sons of His Brother, Eric Bloodaxe, 953-961
Around the year 934, shortly after the death of the Norway’s legendary King Harald Fairhair, his youngest son Haakon – raised in Northumbria by King Athelstan (Æthelstan) – returned to usurp the throne bequeathed to Harald’s beloved but unpopular son Eric Bloodaxe.
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Eric Bloodaxe (1): The Last King of Northumbria’s Ouster from Norway
Eric “Bloodaxe” Haraldsson (c. 885-954), the last king of Northumbria – a realm the Vikings usurped after the invasion and conquest of much of England by the Great Heathen Army between the years 867 and 872AD, was one of Norwegian king Harald Fairhair’s many sons sired from nine wives.
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Earl Rognvald’s Sons: Einar of the Orkneys and Rolf, Conqueror of Normandy
According to the thirteenth-century Icelandic Heimskringla, before the Viking Rollo became the first ruler of Normandy and of the Normans – the people who later conquered much of England, Ireland, and Sicily – he was known as Hrolf Ganger, or Rolf the Walker. Why the son of Earl Rognvald (Eysteinsson) – the legendary Norwegian nobleman and friend of King Harald Fairhair – ended up creating a powerful ducal dynasty in the early tenth century on the coast of modern-day France is less known because it may have involved his older brother Einar – who at the behest of their father sailed to the Orkneys from their home in Møre (western Norway) and established his own dynastic earldom enduring centuries.
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