The Legendary Rise of Harald Fairhair

this video is about the legendary meteoric rise to power that was achieved by Viking king huddle Fair hair so you all know him as the first king of Norway most people don't care too much about that but that's because most people don't understand the significance of what had up fairhair did and how he shaped the world at this time he unified Norway under one Throne when it had previously been a small competing tribes for thousands of years and the uniting of Norway and forming its relationships with foreign kingdoms actually helped shape the history of Europe and the world for many generations to come arguably even today more than a thousand years later our world would have been very different if it weren't for a hot elves bear hair so buckle up while I take you on a tour through Norway and the first chapter of adult fairhair's life where he came to power so our Story begins in the start of the Viking age and the early 800s as I mentioned Scandinavia was still at this time living more tribally as opposed to the large unified kingdoms that were in place in the rest of Europe by now Norway was split up into many different territories led by smaller Chieftains and Petty Kings two of these kings that ruled in Norway at the time were named half done the black and his brother ullav gooderson so what was so special about them there were a bunch of Kings in Norway well it's because these two kings were the last surviving members of the England Dynasty at the time the lineage that ruled all over Scandinavia for hundreds of years that were considered to be descendants of the god Odin himself and the brothers ulav and halftam were the last to confirm descendants this is important to remember because there were many kings in Norway at the time but only these two were considered to have lineage to the gods and that divine right to lead Who Loved guderson ruled in the westfold region of Norway right near my home where you can actually find his sacred burial mound just outside of San lefield and his brother halved on the black sources are a bit conflicting where his kingdom was but he is also attested as being a king in westfold or if not vessel than it was all of Beacon which includes this area of Norway here quite a wide area so this is where half done the black's son would have spent his early years that was a son named Harold fairhair so this is where we start our journey this is cheating solid or as they called it an Old Norse skeeting solid titled Fair here we don't actually know where he ruled from it would have been somewhere in vegan which is quite a large area but here used to be one of the main Royal Halls of the whole Viking age he definitely would have frequented this area or his father would have ruling from this place so this is where the journey starts and then we go on to Stavanger so lucky for you all this area is actually home for me and many of the farms in this exact area have been known for my family as far back as we have records um there's not much here now as it was abandoned in the mid-viking age but at the time of hudld fair air there was a great Royal Hall here that we think was first established by the England Dynasty where various Chieftains and Kings ruled from this is also just a 10 minute walk from the major trading town of kopong at the time and also a very sacred Temple was right nearby where all of this area of Norway and Sweden would come to practice their holidays and sacrifices so helped on the black and his young son Heidel fairhair would have spent a lot of his childhood here in the very steps that I am walking however after an accident of falling through the ice the father King half done the black dive and his body was separate and buried in different areas of his kingdom his head actually was buried in a burial mound around here somewhere the throne though was left to his young son huddled when he was just 10 years old he was at this point just one of many kings who ruled the different regions of Norway nothing special but Harold was a young boy with big Ambitions as we travel along the coast of Norway here along to be his soon conquered lands we have some amazing history to cover the first significant part was the Battle of hakadar in the year 860 just a month or two after the young adult came to a Brule he was attacked by two rival Kings an attempt to capitalize over the young new ruler and take over his kingdom but the young heidel's forces also with the help of his uncle fought these challenges off Harold continued and he ruled along throughout his teenage years but at some point in his testosterone-filled adolescence he came across a beautiful princess named Gita that he wanted to plow this is the legendary story you have all heard about Heidel was feeling a bit horny and he wanted to marry Gita she refused to marry hudld and she said she would only marry him if he had become king over all Norway at the time this was more of a joke because this was thought to be an impossible task you couldn't just conquer all the small tribes and Kingdoms in Norway no one had even come close to doing a part of that but Harold took this seriously and huddled is where he took his famous vow not to cut or comb his hair until he was the sole king of all Norway this is actually where Harold's first nickname came from which was actually Harold meaning thick or tangle hair because he didn't cut or comb his hair for many years it wasn't until later in life once he became king and cut and combed his hair that he received the nickname Heidel Fair hair but he was originally so right after this around heidel's late teens early 20s that's when a fire got lit under his ass when his real campaign started to gain the rule over all Norway the first major battle was the Battle of oyuktal he conquered the areas around the thrillheim area and all the Chieftains there swore in allegiance to him and that was really the most popular uh powerful area of Norway throughout the whole Viking age he also had two battles at sunshine the two kings of noise Dahl had joined forces to stop the fleet of the young king hudld who was sailing South but Harold was Victorious against them and later on to other kingdoms from the area of sunmurda and firda also United to fight against hudld and they also lost a battle to this young king while Hideout was away on these conquests these swedes decided to attack heidel's home Kingdom of Westfield while he was away the swedes you should know better than to challenge a Norwegian so huddled of course retaliated when he got back and went on a series of conquests into Sweden these were called the campaigns in by adult and he won against every Swedish King even if he was outnumbered most of the time and he took a large part of Sweden under his rule too Hideout fairhair simply could not be beat in battle obviously this would have been very frustrating to all the other Viking Kings of the time that a 19 year old kid was coming in and whooping their asses so the older generation was a bit butt hurt by heidel's success but to all the young fighting age men at the time they looked up to heidelt they flocked to him from all over the country all over Scandinavia because of his legendary status and reputation of never losing a battle and remember Harold was the last in a line that was descended from the all father Odom so Harold was on top of the world but his hardest and most important battle was still yet to come so the next up on our journey is right here and this is fuel Heidel Fair here had quite a few battles that he fought on his way up to Glory but this is regarded as the main one which kind of solidified his rule as the first king of Norway or at least the first uh recognized king of Norway under the places that people care about and these swords were built in the 1980s these are not so old but they signify this battle where HUD up their hair came to rule and this one symbolizes him and the other two symbolize the other powerful kings that he defeated so this was The Next Step On His path to Glory so Huff's fuel was one of the great battles in Scandinavian history this battle may have well been the largest in Norway up until that point and for a substantial time afterwards and to do it justice I will read from our oldest and most detailed Source we have on this battle coming from heim's King news came in from the Southland that the people of hudalam and Taylor Mike were gathering and they were bringing together ships and weapons and a great body of men the leaders of this were Isaac and his brother the rich king of uggedid and his son from Taylor Mike along with his two brothers also uh Jewel can have the heart so when Harold got certain news of this that they were assembling a massive Force to beat him huddled also assembled his forces he set his ships out onto the water made himself ready with all of his men and set Southward along the coast Gathering many people from every District King idic heard of this when he came south of stub having assembled all the men he could expect and then he proceeded to meet to the force with which he knew it was coming to help from the East the whole met together north of yadod and went into Huff's Hewitt where King huddled was waiting with his forces and you can see this Feud right here along the video The Great Battle began which was both hard and long but at Last King hudld gained the day and there King idic fell King with his brother hakland who was a great Berserker and also laid his ship against King hudlds and there was above all a measure of desperate attack until Tui haklang fell and the whole ship was cleared of men and then King fled to a little Isle outside on which there was a good place of strength but after that his men fled as well some to their ships some onto the land and then later ran southwards over the county of yadar so this is all right here where you're seeing right now one of the greatest battles that was ever fought in Norway and the most significant when Harold won he declared himself king of all Norway but really he wasn't king of all Norway the correct word to refer to him is a call the people's king of Norway because there were still many parts of Norway that were not under his rule like in the North or up in the mountain areas for example these places could not be conquered even many hundreds of years after this just because of the difficulty accessing these places it's very hard to bring a big arm into these areas to conquer them but we're talking about basically all the accessible and significant areas of Norway is where hudld ruled over and unified and he did it ruling from this area right here so the next stop on our journey brings us here to aval's Nest so one child Fair here solidified his rule in the Norwegian Throne this is where he set up to rule from this would be where his Royal Hall was and he did this for many reasons but one of the main one was that this narrow seast right here a lot of ships passed through so any ruler that control this control a lot of the trade going further into the fuelers in the west coast of Norway but what people don't know is starting with titled Fair hair and some later Kings including Olaf trigvason they had decided to rule from here too but avalonas has actually a much more ancient history than that with royal Chieftains going back to the Bronze Age and even some history with the Ice Age so we're about to check out some of that history now so the history of avaldness is a very interesting one going all the way back to the Stone Age actually this was a place of great wealth and power for any Chieftain ruling there because of its strategic location like I mentioned uh Hideout decided to rule from there among other places such as olynykstad and durhamheim 2 but definitely aval's Nest was the top choice for him and even for future kings descendants of Harald such as Hulk and the good and also ruled from here and what I'm showing in this video here is a full Museum dedicated to Hideout fairhair The Chieftains who ruled from there before him and The Descendants and Kings who ruled there after him and by the way Heidel had many many descendants he had about 30 children and not all from one woman of course no he needed many women to Bear him strong Sons worthy of the throne and remember Gita yeah the princess he wouldn't marry him when he was just a young Petty King uh well now the titled was an all-powerful King oh look she comes crawling back and Harold says okay you can have the D you can still have me but I'm not gonna marry you you are going to be my mistress it has side chicks my favorite so Harold did get married to a few other women had many kids and did many other great things he annexed the orkneys and shetlands which were a really bad place where a lot of bad Vikings raided from Heidel traveled to England amongst other places and that actually made friends with these places too he was great friends with King ethelstan of England his son Eric bloodax was actually a king in northumbria in England and so many other of hadel's descendants went on to do great things and help form European history as we all know it today and here finishing our journey we have titles have again so this is where we think he was buried he lived a long healthy age he died in his 80s and of course did all the great things that we hear about fought many more battles um some of them good some of them bad and he did some bad things too not gonna lie but he overall had a great life and this is where he was buried finishing off our journey but in this video all we did was speak about his journey to the rule but there is much more history coming on the next one thank you [Music] foreign foreign

Channel: Norse Magic and Beliefs

Views: 11,410

Keywords: harald, fairhair, harfagri, harvakre, viking, king, history, norway, ancestry, norse

Id: j7nHF0wL0Kw

Length: 16min 12sec (972 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2023