Hardrada

This is a story, not just of a king, but of an entire era.
In the summer of 1030, the Viking king Olav Haraldsson was killed in the Battle of Stiklestad, during a failed attempt to recapture his kingdom. Among those fighting on the losing side was Olav’s fifteen-year-old half-brother, Harald Sigurdsson. Badly wounded, he fled the battlefield. And Norway.

Fifteen years later he returned home. With him he had a Slavic prince’s daughter, a loyal warrior retinue, and so much wealth that his ships listed beneath the weight of silver. He had traveled to the farthest reaches of the known world and back. He had served Byzantine emperors and empresses, seen Constantinople and Jerusalem, survived wars and palace revolutions. And he had gained invaluable insight into how the machinery of power operated in the world’s most sophisticated and brutal regime. The will to put his experiences into practice as the king of the Norwegians earned him the name Harald Hardrada — Harald the Harsh. For the next two decades he attempted to build a great kingdom consisting of present-day Norway, Denmark and England. He almost succeeded.

Tore Skeie tells the story of Harald Hardrada as it has never been told before. Through a deep dive into sources from many countries and kingdoms, Harald’s life story is contextualized within a broad representation of the world he lived in. This is a story, not just of a king, but of an entire era.