Battle of the Hafrsfjord

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The Battle of Hafrsfjord , which is ascribed to the year 872, was the decisive battle in the beginning of the Norwegian Empire. With the victory of Harald Hårfagre in this battle at Hafrsfjord , the unification process of Norway began.

The Hafrsfjord is the inland waterway connected to the sea southwest of the contrail.

The history

It is said of Harald's father Halvdan Svarte that he was king in the Opplanden, which included the area of Ringerike , Romerike , Hadeland , Toten and Hedmark , i.e. the inner eastern part of Norway. By marrying the daughter of Harald Gullskegg, King of Sogn , he was the first minor king to establish an east-west axis through Norway as a domain. Halvdan drowned around the year 863. His son Harald was then about ten years old. An uprising of the subjugated Ostland petty kings on the occasion of this situation failed. At that time Denmark was in control of the Oslofjord, an area called " Viken ", and thus prevented the development of an independent Norwegian kingdom. When Denmark was weakened by a civil war over Horik I , Harald saw his opportunity to expand his power. In establishing his power in the west, according to credible and plausible tradition, he began to bind Trøndelag to himself so as not to be exposed to a two-front war from the north and south. Then he turned to the south. There was one of the richest areas in Norway, Jæren , not only because of the agricultural area and rich fishing grounds, but also because of the links to the Setesdalen trade network . It was easier to get to Jæren from there than to today's Kristiansand . Nordjæren with the Stavanger Peninsula has long been an important control station for the shipping route to England and Ireland, as the archaeological finds show that there was a high concentration of looted loot from England in this area.

In the political culture of that time, the armed struggle was the last resort in the pursuit of interests. At first they tried to protect their interests in a peaceful way. The comparison was therefore of the greatest importance, as was the politically motivated marriage, which had already opened the way to the west for Harald's father. Much, in particular the relatively low number of emigrants from Rogaland after Harald came to power, suggests that he had brought Rogaland on his side in a peaceful way before the battle of Hafrsfjord, possibly through such a political comparison marriage with a daughter of the Little King of Rogaland. The resulting expansion of his dominion to the Stavanger peninsula and the sea fortress in Hafrsfjord directly threatened the interests of the petty kings in the southern area and the Danes. Because from the Hafrsfjord base, a fleet around Lindesnes could attack Danish area of ​​interest on the Oslofjord. Even traffic to the power centers of the kings in England and Ireland was at risk. Now the Danes were not in a position to carry out decisive operations in western Norway because, on the one hand, disputes about the succession to the throne and, on the other hand, the great campaigns to England tied up forces. The petty kings along the coast had to deal with the problem themselves.

Time of battle

There is no clear information about the timing of the battle. The chosen date July 18, 872 does not come from any tradition. Rather, the dating attempts are based on calculations. Ari inn froði writes that Harald lived 80 years and was king for 70 years. The sixth stanza of Haraldskvæði says: “Ungr leiddisk eldvelli” ([from a young age he despised the hearth fire), which means that he was given a command and moved out as a teenager, probably to the south. At the age of 14 you were already of age at that time. Furthermore, it can be assumed that a number of battles had already taken place before the Battle of Hafrsfjord. At the time of this battle he was a mature man with a lot of experience in sea combat. The Icelandic annals, which began to write their yearbooks in the 13th century, also noted important events in the sagas for the preceding period, especially the life and government dates of rulers. Some annals put Harald's year of birth at 852, others at 848. The anonymous Historia Norwegiæ , Ágrip , Theodoricus Monachus , Fagrskinna and Snorri Sturluson are based on the lost Konungaævi . For the Icelandic calculations, the death of Olav the Saint at the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030 and the death of Olav Tryggvason in 999 or 1000 was the starting point of their relative chronology. The years of reign between Halvdan Svarte (860) and Olav the Holy were known. Therefore, the calculation for the year of the battle had to come to 868. However, Þormóður Torfason mentions the year 875 in his Latin history of Norway. Gerhard Schøning came to the year 885. Rudolf Keyser and the "Norske historiske skole" (Norwegian historical school) suggested the year 872. Harald should have been 30 years old at the battle. Guðbrandur Vigfússon used generation counting as a chronological method and thus came to the year 900 as the most likely point in time. Halvdan Koht rejected all messages from the classic Icelandic historians 40 years later, set three generations to 100 years and came up with a time window between 890 and 900. The latest studies have shown that the classical historians were based on Beda's chronological system . Building on this, the time window 868 and 875 is considered the most likely today.

The tradition

On this Bregning stone from Lolland in the Museum of Copenhagen a Tore Haklang is named.

The battle occupies a central position in the skaldic poetry . The Glymdrápa in particular deals with this battle. "Glym" means noise and is a kenning for the gun noise in Harald's fight. Fagrskinna quotes three stanzas from this poem. Most of the information comes from Haraldskvæði . After that, the opponents were Haralds Kjåtve (= the fat one) and Haklang (= the tall one with the harelip). This does not necessarily have to be a later reduction in the context of a price poem. The name Haklang also appears on the Bregninge stone on Lolland, which has led to the assumption that it is the same person. On the other hand, support for Harald's opponents from Jutland is considered unlikely for the 9th century.

The Landnámabók does not describe the battle itself, but gives other information. In addition to Kjåtve, who is called “the rich” here, Eirik, the king of Hordaland and Sulke, the king of Rogaland , are counted among his opponents. Landnámsmenn who emigrated to Iceland are also mentioned as participants in the battle. On the losing side were Hallvard Sugande and Önund Ofeigsson, a central figure in the first part of the Grettis saga . On Harald's side, Ingimund the old from an old family of Hersen in Namdalen is mentioned in particular , who later received the illegitimate daughter Jarl Tores the Silent as his wife.

In addition to the Heimskringla, there are also descriptions in the Vatnsdœla saga and the Grettis saga.

The battle

It is believed today that Harald was attacked from the hinterland of Jæren by the Hafrsfjord. The main argument is that the defeated enemies fled to Haraldskvad, which is believed to be more credible in this context than the Landnámabók, which leads to the conclusion that they came from there. But there are other considerations as well. They are based on a remark in the Grettis saga that people from all over the country but also from other countries and a lot of Vikings came to this battle. This remark was linked to the powerful Norwegian king Amlaib = Olav Kvite = Olav the White, who ruled Dublin from 851–871. The Irish annals record for 871 that Olav moved to Lochlainn to help his father Gudrød. Lochlainn has been identified with Norway. At the end of the 19th century, Norwegian historians came to the conclusion that Olav the White had taken part in the Battle of Hafrsfjord in 872 in response to an urgent request for help from his father, who was thought to be a petty king in Vestfold . At the beginning of the 20th century, Lochlainn was assumed to be in Scotland and the dating of the Battle of 900, which is now predominant among researchers, completely nullified this theory. When, with Ólavia Einarsdóttir, the year 872 moved back into the center of attention, Olav's participation became possible again. The question is not resolved. In any case, Harald seems to have been aware of the dangerous development for him, because according to the sources he decided to battle at a time when the Viking trains and the journey across the North Sea had already ceased, i.e. August / September. After the Heimskringla , Harald found out that enemy forces were joining in the south, and he immediately moved south. He seems to have taken the enemy fleet by surprise, for the text goes on to say that the enemy fleet commander drove south when he saw Harald's fleet, where he expected the support of a fleet from the east. After the merger of the two fleets, they entered the Hafrsfjord, where Harald's fleet was already located. A withdrawal would have been disgraceful, and waiting because of the necessary food, especially for foreign ships, would have been barely possible.

According to the sources, Harald had positioned his fleet in the north of the fjord. If the preparations for the battle proceeded as was the tradition, the modalities, i.e. time and place, were negotiated beforehand. Apparently the subject of the agreement here seems to have been the unmolested entry of the opposing fleet into the fjord. Harald waits for the opposing ships to be properly set up and does not take advantage of the fact that the ships can only enter one after the other. The sound in Hafrsfjord is narrow, and when the tide comes in it is difficult to break the current even by sailing and rowing. Nothing is known about the strength of the fleet and the crew. A rough estimate, which counts back from later known conditions, comes to about 110 ships with 5,500 men. Using the same method, the opponents from the Norwegian areas would have calculated at most 54 ships with 2,700 men. This difference in strength is so great that entering a battle would have been suicidal for Harald's opponents. This makes it likely that the difference was filled by Norwegian ships from the Norwegian areas west of the North Sea, so that an approximate tie was reached. The arrangement traditionally looked like that the ships lay in line next to each other, the king's ship in the middle. The other fleet commanders were also in the middle of their departments. The lead ship of the opponents under Tore Haklang was opposite Harald's ship.

The actual battle was preceded by the war cry, which was intensified by the swords striking the shields.


Grenjuðu berserkir,
guðr var á sinnum,
emjuðu úlfhéðnar
ok ísarn glumdu.


Then the berserkers roared
Los broke the feud.
Wolfskins
waved javelins, howling wildly .

The Vatnsdœla saga narrates the beginning of the battle as follows:

"Eftir þetta kváðu við lúðrar um allan herinn og bjuggust menn til, hver eftir sínum efnum. Þenna bardaga átti Haraldur konungur mestan. Þá var með honum Rögnvaldur af Mæri og margir aðrir stórir Höfðingjar og þeir berserkir er úlfhéðnar voru kallaðir. Þeir Höfðu vargstakka fyrir brynjur og vörðu framstafn á konungsskipinu en konungur sjálfur varði lyftingina með hinni mestu prýði og karlmennsku. Mátti þar sjá mörg högg bæði og stór. Nú gerðust brátt mörg tíðindi og stór á skammri stundu í Höggum and spjótalögum með grimmlegri grjótflaug. Gerðist nú skjótt mikið mannfall af hvorumtveggjum. "

“Then the horns called through the whole army, and the men prepared themselves, each according to his ability. This was King Harald's greatest battle; there stood with him Rögnvald von Möre and many other great chiefs, as well as berserkers who were called wolfskins; they wore wolf skins instead of fountains and shielded the bow of the king's ship. But the king himself shielded the stern brilliantly and bravely. You could see blows there, thick and heavy. Many great deeds now happened in a short time, blows and javelins in the storm of the stone hail. Soon many fell on both sides. "

- Vatnsdæla saga chap. 9, translated by WH Vogt and Franz Fischer.

Even if the legend was written around 400 years later, it can be assumed that the course of a sea battle has not changed significantly during this time, so that the assumption that the author was based on contemporary battles does not justify to reject the description as unhistorical.

When Harald was victorious, the enemies fled, after Heimskringla partly by ship, partly by land via Jæren to the south, according to the Grettis saga only by ship to the west, at Skalden Thorbjörn only by land to the south. Since Thorbjörn was an eyewitness to the battle, the escape over land is considered the most credible, especially since the exit from the fjord was too narrow for a mass escape.

After the battle it was very important to reward one's own followers, which is described in several reports. Ragnvald von Møre, who had lost in battle, was awarded the Jarl title and the Orkneys .

The importance of the battle

Swords in the mountain

Jæren lay open without protection if the breakthrough and conquest of this area succeeded here. The battle was the conquest of the Boknafjord with the rich islands and the rule over Jæren and Agder to the border with Telemark and the inland settlements northwest of today's Arendal . Throughout the Middle Ages and in the post-Reformation period, a tax was levied on the entire area, which was called "utskyld" (= tax). This suggests that the area conquered in the battle of Hafrsfjord was a contiguous domain that goes back to before Harald. That would explain why a battle in Hafrsfjord led to the subjugation of landscapes in the southeast. According to current knowledge, it was Harald's last battle of conquest.

The swords in the mountain memorial erected in 1983 at the site of the battle commemorates the battle . Another monument was the Harald Tower , built in 1895 , of which 16 memorial stones are still preserved.

Footnotes

  1. Titlestad p. 16.
  2. Titlestad p. 21.
  3. Haug p. 62.
  4. Ólavia Einarsdóttir's dissertation from 1964 and Svend Ellehøj: Studier over den ældste norrøne historieskrivning (1965)
  5. Haug p. 63.
  6. Titlestad p. 22 with further references.
  7. Haug p. 59.
  8. See 1983 pp. 51-54.
  9. Titlestad p. 27.
  10. A detailed discussion of the estimate can be found in Titlestad pp. 28–30.
  11. Harald's saga towards hárfagra. Cape. 19th
  12. Heimskringla, The story of Harald Schönhaar, Chapter 18. Exercise by Felix Nidner.
  13. Titlestad p. 40.
  14. Haug p. 60.
  15. Haug p. 61.

literature

  • Eldbjørg Haug: Kongsgårdstid . In: Eldbjørg Haug (ed.): Utstein Kloster - og Klosterøys historie. Stiftelsen Utstein Kloster, Klosterøy 2005, ISBN 82-30-30536-6 , pp. 55–86.
  • Kim Hjardar: Harald Hårfagre og slaget ved Hafrsfjord . In: Per Erik Olsen (Ed.) Norges Kriger . Pp. 10-17.
  • Per Erik Olsen (Ed.): Norges Kriger. Fra Hafrsfjord to Afghanistan . Oslo 2011. ISBN 978-82-8211-107-2 .
  • Klaus von See : Haraldskvedet and Snorre Sturlason . In: Claus Krag, Jørn Sandnes (ed.): Nye middelalderstudier. Kongedømme, kirke, stat. Universitetsforlaget, Oslo 1983, ISBN 82-00-06529-4 , ( Norske historikere i utvalg 6), pp. 51-54.
  • Torgrim Titlestad: Slaget i Hafrsfjord. Årsak, Hendelse and Virkning. Om Norges Tilblivelse . Saga bok, Stavanger 2006, ISBN 82-91640-25-4 .