Sverre Sigurdsson (1151-1202): The Brothers’ Civil War and Faroese Boy Destined to be Norway’s King
Sometime after his victory at the Battle of Kalvskinnet in 1179, near Trondheim, Norway, King Sverre Sigurdsson (1151-1202), in the second year of his tenuous reign, beckoned an Icelandic abbot named Karl Jonssen, of the Tingeyre (Þingeyri) monastery, in the windswept coast of northwest Iceland, to chronicle his life and ensure his story would prevail through the ages.
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King Harald Fairhair Unifies and Scatters Norway at the Battle of Hafrsfjord, 872
Harald I Fairhair (Harald Hårfagre, c. 850-c.932) the legendary and handsome heir to the Vestfold (Oslo) branch of the long-lasting Yngling dynasty, was ten years old when he became king following his father Halfdan the Black’s accidental death.
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Birger Jarl, Treaty of Lödöse, and the Swedish Crusade in Finland, 1249
The twelfth-century Gesta Danorum (Deeds of the Danes) by Zealand scribe Saxo Grammaticus chronicles ancient hostilities between Vikings and Finnish tribes living between the Arctic and Baltic seas. However, the earliest relatively verifiable account of the Second Swedish Crusade against the Tavastians – a people who lived beyond the southwest Finns proper (Egentliga Finnar) region of Turku – appears in the anonymous fourteenth-century Erik Chronicle (Erikskrönikan).
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The Defeat that Made William Conqueror: Harald Hardrada’s Fall at Stamford Bridge, 1066 (Part II)
After Harald Hardrada’s many years in exile working for the Byzantine emperor as chief of the Varangian Guard he returned to Norway a wealthy man seeking the throne his half-brother Olaf died in battle attempting to seize in 1030. Rather than fight his uncle, his nephew King Magnus the Good of Norway and Denmark offered Harald co-kingship of Norway, which was agreed upon in 1046. In return, Harald gifted Magnus much of the wealth he had accumulated in the east.
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