Nineteen days before Hastings, a Viking king invaded England. He died in a Yorkshire field.

In the saga

“Harald Escapes from the Battle of Stiklestad”

On the map

770 kmat least, through the places named

One detail

wounded, he was hidden by a peasant in the forest until he healed

Harald was fifteen in the summer of 1030, when his half-brother, King Olaf II, fell at Stiklestad, in a battle against his own rebellious subjects. Harald fought at his side and was wounded. Ragnvald Brusason carried him from the field, and the night after the battle took him to a peasant who lived far off, in the forest.

The peasant took him in and kept him hidden until his wounds healed. The peasant's son then went with him east, over the mountain ridge, keeping off the main road, without knowing who his companion was. On the way his wounds bled in the saddle, while below, on the plain, peasants were killing the wounded stragglers, men of their rightful king. He would later tell the story himself, in verse.

He crossed Jamtaland and Helsingjaland and reached Svithjod, Sweden, where he found Ragnvald Brusason and many other of King Olaf's men, fugitives from Stiklestad like himself. They stayed there until winter was over. The poem that tells of the flight already calls him, at fifteen, “Bulgaria's conqueror”: the poet Thiodolf wrote it years later, once Harald's Byzantine fame was known, and folded it back into the scene of the flight. The story of Bulgaria belongs to someone else, not to this saga.

What the saga says

“At Haug the fire-sparks from his shield / Flew round the king's head on the field, / As blow for blow, for Olaf's sake, / His sword and shield would give and take. / Bulgaria's conqueror, I ween, / Had scarcely fifteen winters seen, / When from his murdered brother's side / His unhelmed head he had to hide.”

In the saga

“Harald's Journey to Constantinople”

On the map

1,860 kmat least, through the places named

One detail

every ounce of gold he later sent from Byzantium was kept safe here, at Novgorod

In the spring of 1031, Harald and Ragnvald took ships and sailed east to Prince Yaroslav, named Jarisleif in the saga, at Novgorod. The prince received them warmly and made Harald and Ellif, the son of Earl Ragnvald, commanders of the country's defence troops.

Under their command, the verses of the time say, the troops drove back “the eastern Vindland men” and subdued neighbouring peoples who resisted. The saga does not make clear exactly who these peoples were: the names come from a court poem, not a chronicle.

The saga says only this of the following years: “Harald remained several years in Russia, and travelled far and wide in the Eastern land.” It gives no year for his departure to Constantinople. Historians usually place that around 1034, but the figure comes from later calculation, not from the text.

What the saga says

“The king's sharp sword lies clean and bright, / Prepared in foreign lands to fight: / Our ravens croak to have their fill, / The wolf howls from the distant hill. / Our brave king is to Russia gone, -- / Braver than he on earth there's none; / His sharp sword will carve many feast / To wolf and raven in the East.”

In the saga

“Of Harald”

On the map

1,450 kmat least, through the places named

One detail

he saw the city from shipboard before he ever set foot in it

The saga does not describe the road from Novgorod to Constantinople: it says only that Harald “began his expedition out to Greece, and had a great suite of men with him.” The likeliest route followed the well-documented trade road of that century, down the Dnieper, over its rapids, then along the west coast of the Black Sea to the strait. The dashed line on the map follows that known road, not the saga, which says nothing about it.

The ship approached the city from the sea. The poet Bolverk, who was there, wrote of the metal glow of its roofs and towers, seen from the bow, among the painted sails in the harbour.

At Constantinople, Harald presented himself to the Empress Zoe and went into her pay. The empire was then ruled by Zoe and Michael, called “Catalactus” in the saga, Michael IV the Paphlagonian. That same autumn Harald sailed out on the galleys manned with troops for the Aegean. Before long every Varangian in the city had gathered around him, and that is how he became their commander.

What the saga says

“Before the cold sea-curling blast / The cutter from the land flew past, / Her black yards swinging to and fro, / Her shield-hung gunwale dipping low. / The king saw glancing o'er the bow / Constantinople's metal glow / From tower and roof, and painted sails / Gliding past towns and wooded vales.”

In the saga

“Harald's Expedition in the Land of the Saracens (Serkland)”; “Battle in Sicily”

On the map

6,590 kmat least, through the places named

One detail

eighteen regular battles, a court poem says

The Varangian Guard at Constantinople answered to a Greek commander the saga calls “Gyrger,” a relation of the empress: historians usually identify him with the general George Maniakes. Before their first campaign together, Harald and Gyrger quarrelled over the best camping ground; the dispute was settled by drawing lots, and Harald cheated, snatching the winning lot and throwing it into the sea, then pointing out that the one left in the box carried Gyrger's own mark. It is how the saga opens its portrait of a man who got his way by cunning as readily as by the sword.

Through the summer campaign, the troops noticed that whenever Harald commanded they won, while Gyrger “could do nothing.” Harald then took his men west into Africa, which the Varangians called Serkland, where the saga says he took eighty castles. He moved on to Sicily, where he besieged a castle he could not break by direct assault: he had small birds trapped, birds that nested under the castle's thatched roofs, tied burning wood-shavings to their backs, and let them fly home. The roofs caught fire, house by house, until the garrison begged for mercy.

At another castle he dug a tunnel from a streambed hidden from view, coming up through the floor of a hall where the defenders sat eating. At a third, his men played at unarmed games on the plain outside, day after day, until the garrison's guard slackened, then drew swords hidden under their cloaks and stormed the gate. In all these campaigns, the saga says, Harald fought eighteen regular battles.

He returned to Constantinople but stayed only briefly before setting out for Jerusalem. There, the saga says, every town and stronghold surrendered to him without a fight; he bathed in the Jordan, as pilgrims did, and gave rich gifts at the Holy Sepulchre. No Byzantine or Arab source confirms this journey, and Jerusalem in those years lay under Fatimid, not Byzantine, rule, reason enough to treat the episode as a story told at a northern court rather than a real conquest.

What the saga says

“He went, the warrior bold and brave, / Jerusalem, the holy grave, / And the interior of the land, / To bring under the Greeks' command; / And by the terror of his name / Under his power the country came, / Nor needed wasting fire and sword / To yield obediance to his word.”

In the saga

“Harald Put in Prison”; “King Olaf's Miracle and Blinding the Greek Emperor”

On the map

1,450 kmat least, through the places named

One detail

one galley split apart right on the chain; Harald's crossed it by shifting the crew's weight fore and aft

When Harald heard that his brother's son Magnus had become king of both Norway and Denmark, he wished to go home and gave up his Greek command. The Empress Zoe grew angry and accused him of misappropriating the wealth gathered on campaign. The saga adds a love story too: Harald had asked for Maria, Zoe's niece, and been refused; among the Varangians it was even rumoured that Zoe wanted Harald for herself, and that this was the real reason for her anger at his leaving. Constantine Monomachus now ruled beside her as emperor. On his order Harald was arrested and taken to prison.

The saga tells that on the way to the prison Saint Olaf appeared to Harald and promised his help. The following night a noblewoman, once cured of a sickness by that same Saint Olaf, let down a rope and drew Harald and his two companions, Haldor and Ulf, up out of the cell. Once free, Harald and his men armed themselves, went to where the emperor slept, took him prisoner, and put out both his eyes. The poets who wrote of it credit the act to Harald himself, not to some unnamed general or count.

That same night, Harald and his men went to the house where Maria slept and carried her off by force, then made for the Varangian galleys. They reached the place where an iron chain was drawn across the strait to stop ships. Harald ordered the rowers to pull hard and everyone else to run to the stern of each galley. The ships rode up onto the chain; when they could go no farther, Harald ordered everyone forward to the bow. His galley rolled over the chain and through; the other, left stuck fast on it, split in two. Before he left the coast, Harald sent Maria back to Constantinople, with a message for her aunt the empress: to see how little power she had ever had over him.

What the saga says

“Of glowing gold that decks the hand / The king got plenty in this land; / But it's great emperor in the strife / Was made stone-blind for all his life.”

In the saga

“King Harald's Marriage”; “Treaty Between Harald and Svein Broken”

On the map

2,290 kmat least, through the places named

One detail

an axe was found buried in the log where Harald should have been sleeping

He sailed out of Constantinople into the Black Sea, then north along the coast, composing sixteen songs on the way, each ending the same: that however much gold he wore, he was still not dear to the Russian queen's heart. He meant Elisabeth, Yaroslav's daughter, whom he had not yet asked to marry. At Novgorod, Yaroslav welcomed him again and kept for him all the wealth Harald had sent from Constantinople, a fortune, the saga says, “as no man in the Northern lands ever saw the like of it.”

That same winter, Yaroslav gave Harald his daughter Elisabeth, called Ellisif by the Norse, in marriage. In spring Harald left Novgorod for Aldeigjuborg, took ship, and sailed on to Sweden, reaching Sigtuna. There he found Svein Ulfson, who had fled King Magnus of Norway the year before; the two bound themselves to each other by oath.

Together, Harald and Svein laid waste to Zealand and Funen with their fleets, burned Roskilde, and carried women off to the ships in chains. King Magnus gathered an army against them, but Harald's own men secretly proposed a settlement: half of Norway, and half of each man's movable wealth, in exchange for peace with Magnus.

One evening at table, Svein asked Harald what he valued above all his property. His banner, Land-waster, Harald answered: it was said that whoever carried it before him always won. Svein replied sharply that he would believe that only after three battles won against Magnus, then let it be understood that Harald kept only the agreements that suited him. That night Harald moved where he slept on instinct, leaving a log of wood in his place. At midnight a boat drew up to the ship, a man came aboard and struck with an axe exactly where the king should have been sleeping. Harald and his men struck camp in silence and rowed through the night to Magnus, with whom he made peace.

What the saga says

“The fairest cargo ship e'er bore, / From Russia's distant eastern shore / The gallant Harald homeward brings -- / Gold, and a fame that skald still sings.”

In the saga

“Of King Harald Sigurdson”; “King Magnus the Good's Death”

On the map

400 kmat least, through the places named

One detail

close to twenty years at war with Denmark, and he never conquered it

Harald and Magnus ruled together for a single winter. Magnus dreamed that his father, Saint Olaf, appeared and asked whether he would follow him in death or become a powerful king and commit a deed he could never make right. Magnus answered that he left the choice to his father, who chose death for him. He died soon after, in 1047, mourned by the whole people. One of his men, Einar Tambaskelfer, refused to follow Harald into a fight for Denmark, judging it his greater duty to carry the dead king's body home to Nidaros, beside Saint Olaf's grave. Harald returned to Norway, where he was proclaimed king over the whole country.

For nearly twenty years he fought King Svein Ulfson of Denmark, his own ally from a few years before: raids on both sides, a great battle on the river Nissan, truces broken and remade. He never conquered Denmark. That failure would weigh in his decision of 1066: a visitor from England reminded him he had fought fifteen years for a neighbouring country and would not take a crown that, the visitor said, “lies open” before him.

In Norway, Harald forced his authority on the great chieftains, including that same Einar Tambaskelfer, later killed on his order. His own people called him harsh, “Hardrada,” hard in counsel, a name that has outlasted his baptismal one by nine hundred years. The saga does its own arithmetic on his age: fifty years old when he fell, it says, thirty-five of them lived since Stiklestad, “never free from care and war.”

What the saga says

“King Harald never fled from battle, but often tried cunning ways to escape when he had to do with great superiority of forces.”

In the saga

“Battle at Scarborough”; “The Battle at the Humber”

On the map

1,560 kmat least, through the places named

One detail

he fell from his horse at the review of his own army, right in front of the rival who did not recognise him

King Edward the Confessor died in January 1066, and his brother-in-law Harold Godwinson was crowned king of England. Harold's brother, Earl Tostig, exiled from office, reached Harald Sigurdson's court at Viken and talked him into an attempt on England: “thou hast been fighting for fifteen years for Denmark, and wilt not take England that lies open to thee?” Harald called out half the fighting men of Norway.

The fleet gathered at the Solunds, nearly two hundred ships, by the reckoning of the people of the time. Before they sailed, several of his men had dark dreams: a witch riding the fleet westward, another feeding a wolf with human bodies, and to Harald himself his brother Saint Olaf appeared, singing that his death was near.

The fleet passed through Shetland and Orkney, where Harald left Queen Ellisif and their two daughters behind. He landed at Cleveland, then at Scarborough, which refused to submit: his men lit a bonfire on a hill above the town and pitched the burning wood down onto its thatched roofs, house after house, until the whole town was ablaze.

The fleet moved up the Humber and the Ouse, and south of York, Earl Morcar and his brother Earl Waltheof came out to meet them with a large force. Harald deliberately thinned his line near a ditch, and when the English pressed forward thinking the Norwegians were giving way, the banner Land-waster signalled the charge. The ditch filled so full of dead that the Norwegians crossed it dry-shod. Earl Morcar fell there.

What the saga says

“He has also spoken of this; and will give him seven feet of English ground, or as much more as he may be taller than other men.”

In the saga

“Fall of King Harald”; “Fall of King Harald Godwinson”

On the map

10 kmat least, through the places named

One detail

one lone Norseman held the bridge by himself, until he was killed by a spear thrust up from a boat below

After the victory, York surrendered, and the Norwegians were promised hostages on Sunday. That same evening, without their knowledge, Harold Godwinson slipped into the city with his whole army, come from the south by forced march.

On Monday, an unusually hot, clear day, the Norwegians went ashore leaving their armour on the ships, armed only with shields, helmets and spears. A cloud of dust appeared on the road from York. Harald asked Tostig who it might be; the earl answered it might be kinsmen come to sue for peace. A rider approached and offered Tostig a third of the kingdom, beside his brother; for Harald Sigurdson, only seven feet of English ground. Tostig refused. Only after the rider had gone did Tostig tell Harald that the man had been Harold Godwinson himself.

The Norwegians formed a long ring, shields locked, and the English cavalry broke against it wave after wave without breaking it. When part of the line pursued what looked like a retreat, the ring opened, and the English horsemen surrounded the exposed men. Harald threw himself into the thick of the fighting bareheaded, striking with both hands, until an arrow took him in the throat. He died on the spot. The fighting paused; Harold Godwinson offered peace to his brother Tostig and quarter to the surviving Norwegians, who refused to surrender. Towards evening Eystein Orre arrived at a run from the ships with reinforcements worn out by the march, who fought until they threw off their coats of mail, too exhausted to defend themselves, and died without a wound, from weariness alone.

Harald's son Olaf was allowed to sail home with the surviving ships. Nineteen days later, at Hastings, Harold Godwinson himself fell, fighting Duke William of Normandy. The saga ties the two deaths together in a single sentence.

What the saga says

“This was the nineteenth day after the fall of King Harald Sigurdson.”