Harald Hardrada THE LAST VIKING
The warrior king is infamous for his defeat at the hands of Harold II, but Don Hollway says there’s more to him than just 1066
On the 25 September 1066 the leader of the viking invasion force, Harald Hardrada, was killed by an arrow to the throat fired by the armies of King Harold II. A mere three weeks later the Battle of Hastings would see the destiny of Britain changed forever, overshadowing the earlier conflict. In doing so, the life and legend of Harald Hardrada would be consigned to a footnote in the history classrooms of the United Kingdom, his successful competitor, William of Normandy, instead becoming the new ruler of Britain. Hardrada’s life, however, is not one which should be overlooked because of a single defeat. He was a brutal warrior, with scores of victories and conquests to his name. Don Hollway tells us Hardrada’s story and why he considers him to be ‘The Last Viking’.
Who was Harald Hardrada?
His full name was Harald Sigurdsson, or in Old Norse Sigurdarson. In later years he was nicknamed Hardrada, ‘Hard Ruler’, but nobody dared to call him that to his face. He was a real-life fantasy hero who travelled and fought all over the medieval world, from Scandinavia to Russia, Byzantium and the Holy Lands, before making himself King of Norway. He launched the last great Viking invasion of England.
Why do you refer to Harald as ‘The Last Viking?’
Historians generally regard Harald’s death in 1066 as the end of the Viking Age. In those days the Norsemen, who for centuries had been such great explorers and conquerors, had been reduced to squabbling among themselves. The
North Sea Empire of Cnut the Great had fallen to pieces. England and Scandinavia had gone their own ways. As King of Norway, Harald conducted a bloody 15-year war against Denmark, which he considered a rebel province, before invading England. He really was the last of the great Vikings.
How did he become King of Norway?
When Harald was 15 his elder halfbrother King Olaf was killed at the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030. Harald was badly wounded, but escaped and went to Kiev in Russia, serving its king, Yaroslav the Wise. He even aspired to marry Yaroslav’s daughter Elisaveta. His ultminate goal, though, was to return to Norway and reclaim his brother’s crown. To do that, he needed money and manpower, but in Kiev he would never be anything more than a glorified bodyguard. So he became a soldier of
fortune, selling his sword to the highest bidder. After years of warfare, conquest and looting he returned as the richest man in Northern Europe, with an army at his back. By that time his kinsman, Olaf’s son Magnus, was on the Norwegian throne. Harald basically offered to buy half the kingdom or go to war, winner take all. Magnus wisely decided to share. It wasn’t until Magnus died a few years later that Harald really fought to re-establish Cnut’s North Sea Empire, against the Danes and later against his own people and the English.
Tell us about his life as a mercenary…
When still a young man, Harald journeyed from Kiev down to Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. At the time, it was the new Rome, one of the world’s greatest cities and certainly the greatest in Christendom. Yet it was continually at war, with the Saracens in Sicily and the Holy Land, and always contending with usurpers and rebels. There was plenty of work for a mercenary. Harald enlisted in the Varangian Guard, an elite warrior unit composed of Viking exiles. He served as an imperial escort on one of the first Byzantine diplomatic missions to Jerusalem and the Holy Land. There he fought off Arab bandits and even bathed in the River Jordan, though he was religious only to the extent that it served his personal goals.
Harald effectively became commander of the Varangians, bodyguard to the Empress Zoe. In fact, they became lovers. It was even rumored that she might make Harald himself the next Byzantine emperor. Zoe was already suspected of killing two husbands to put her favorites on the throne. She was much older than Harald, however, and when he found a new, younger flame she turned spiteful. Harald barely got away with his life.
What were some of Harald’s most memorable conquests and battles?
Wow, it’s hard to choose! He spent his whole life fighting. Muslims, Christians, pagans, other Vikings, even other Varangians. The Battle of Stiklestad in 1030 was notable for being partly fought in darkness, under a total eclipse of the sun. You can imagine how people of that time would have taken this as an omen. The pagan warriors, seeing the ring of fire in the sky, would naturally have thought of one-eyed Odin looking down on them. The Christians, since the battle was almost exactly 1,000 years after the crucifixion of Christ, would have recalled how the sky was said to have darkened on that day. Everyone involved would have believed they were in a fight of ultimate good versus evil, the final battle at the end of time – for the Christians, Armageddon, and for the pagans, Ragnarok. Then Harald’s brother King Olaf was killed and his kingdom – Harald’s kingdom – fell to Cnut’s son Svein, a terrible ruler. So men on either side could have claimed that the prophecy played out.
Harald was also involved in several sea battles. One of his first was in Byzantine service, against the Saracens in the so-called Battle of the Cyclades in the southern Aegean. Not much is known about this fight, though it was important and decisive. It’s mentioned only briefly in Byzantine accounts, and the Norse sagas only say that Harald fought against pirates, which is how the Byzantines
thought of Saracen raiders. Knowing the outcome, and by heavily researching the ships and naval tactics of the day, I was able to recreate the battle. Navies still used galleys, but not the triremes of Roman times, and they didn’t ram each other. The ships were now so solidly built that the ram was obsolete. The idea was to peel the oars off each other, grapple and board. And of course the Byzantines had what was called Greek Fire, medieval napalm. Harald had never before experienced anything like that.
Late in his career, Harald led the Norwegians against the Danes in the Battle of the Nisa, off what is now the Swedish coast. Viking sea battles were totally different from the Roman or Byzantine. The idea there was not to sink or burn ships, which were extremely valuable, but simply to kill or chase off their crews. The Norse lashed their fleets together and basically fought a land battle at sea. In contrast to their fights on land, which were quick hit-and-run surprise raids, their sea battles were long, drawn-out, bloody affairs. The Battle of the Nisa went on all night – though that far north in summertime, the sun only goes down for a few hours – and although Harald’s ships were outnumbered two-toone, he managed to achieve victory.
When researching your book, what were some of the most interesting things you discovered?
I mentioned that Harald offended Empress Zoe by taking up with a younger woman. This Maria was also the mistress of the Byzantine emperor Constantine IX, Zoe’s husband and Harald’s overlord. As you can imagine, the four of them had a somewhat complex relationship so they had to be very discreet in carrying on their affair. Harald was once almost caught in Maria’s boudoir and only escaped by diving out the window. At the same time, the beginnings of medieval chivalric romance – knights serving their lady loves, secret unrequited passion and all that – came out of the East right about this time. Harald, by now a polished courtier, may have been one of its earliest practitioners. He had a very different relationship with Maria than he had with Zoe. They didn’t end up together, but when he eventually married Elisaveta of Kiev, he named their youngest daughter after his lost love, Maria.
Harald, like many Vikings, was a fan of poetry. He supported some of the most famous Norse poets in his court and was a bit of a poet himself. A number of his verses have survived, and I made the most of them. It let me get inside his head a bit. Harald didn’t shirk from fighting and was often boastful of his prowess in war, but he could also be petulant and sulky at times, vengeful and tyrannical too. He really earned that nickname, ‘Hard Ruler’. In the book I show all sides of him, good and bad.
One unexpected thing was that he had a really smutty sense of humour.
Not too surprising in a Viking, I suppose, but his later biographers totally leave that out of his story. Too shocking for Victorian readers, I suppose, maybe even some modern ones. When you go back to the original sagas, though, the Norse chroniclers kind of revelled in it. It’s part of who Harald was, and as his biographer I felt it essential to show that side of him as well. He was a Viking after all, a robber and a killer. Off-colour humour was the least of his sins.
How did Harald Hardrada die?
Do we need a spoiler alert here? I suppose it’s no secret that he died, what’s important is how he died. Having failed to conquer Denmark, Harald was coaxed into invading England by Tostig Godwinson, the brother of King Harold II, England’s final Anglo-saxon king. This was the last great Viking invasion, actually one of the largest.
The Norwegians laid waste much of England’s North Sea coast, defeated the Northumbrians in battle and forced York to surrender. To answer the Norwegian King Harald, the English King Harold, was forced to march all the way up from the south, where he’d spent the summer guarding against an invasion by Duke William of Normandy. Of course, after the Battle of Stamford Bridge, where the Anglo-saxons surprised and defeated the Norwegians, the Normans invaded anyway, and then they had to forcemarch all the way back down, which many historians think is one of the reasons they were themselves defeated at Hastings that October of 1066. If not for Harald Hardrada, English history might have turned out very differently.
What matters to our story is that Harald Hardrada died the way a Viking was supposed to, the way we think of Vikings dying – in battle, laughing, sword in hand. I remember first reading about him as a boy and thinking, wow, what a life that guy led! All these years later, I’m happy and proud to retell it in The Last Viking. Harald was a Viking’s Viking.
“Harald Hardrada died the way a Viking was supposed to – in battle, laughing, sword in hand”