Eirik King of Hordaland (Old Norse: Eiríkr Konungr á Hǫrðalandi) was a king of Hordaland, then a petty kingdom in western Norway, in the late 9th century. Eirik was the father of Gyda. Eirik lead the first attack against Harald Fairhair at the Battle of Hafrsfjord. Defeated by Harald, Eirik fell; many of his allies were also killed in the battle.
Eirik is featured in the 2010 game Mount and Blade: Warband's Viking Conquest expansion as the lord of Hordaland.
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Harald Fairhair was a Norwegian king. According to traditions current in Norway and Iceland in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, he reigned from c. 872 to 930 and was the first King of Norway. Supposedly, two of his sons, Eric Bloodaxe and Haakon the Good, succeeded Harald to become kings after his death.
Haakon Haraldsson, also Haakon the Good and Haakon Adalsteinfostre, was the king of Norway from 934 to 961. He was noted for his attempts to introduce Christianity into Norway.
Halfdan the Old was an ancient, legendary king from whom descended many of the most notable lineages of legend. A second Halfdan the Old is the purported great-grandfather of Ragnvald Eysteinsson.
Egill's Saga or Egil's saga is an Icelandic saga on the lives of the clan of Egill Skallagrímsson, an Icelandic farmer, viking and skald. The saga spans the years c. 850–1000 and traces the family's history from Egill's grandfather to his offspring.
The Battle of Svolder was a large naval battle during the Viking age, fought in September 999 or 1000 in the western Baltic Sea between King Olaf of Norway and an alliance of the Kings of Denmark and Sweden and Olaf's enemies in Norway. The backdrop of the battle was the unification of Norway into a single independent state after longstanding Danish efforts to control the country, combined with the spread of Christianity in Scandinavia.
The Ynglings were a dynasty of kings, first in Sweden and later in Norway, primarily attested through the poem Ynglingatal. The dynasty also appears as Scylfings in Beowulf. When Beowulf and Ynglingatal were composed sometime in the eighth to tenth centuries, the respective scop and skald (poet) expected his audience to have a great deal of background information about these kings, which is shown in the allusiveness of the references.
The Battle of Fitjar took place in 961 in Fitjar at Stord in the county of Hordaland, Norway.
Starkad was either an eight-armed giant or the human grandson of the aforementioned giant in Norse mythology.
Víkar was a legendary Norwegian king who found himself and his ships becalmed for a long period. To raise a wind, a human blood sacrifice was needed, and the lots fell on King Víkar himself. Starkad (Starkaðr), Víkar's counselor urged a mock hanging from a tree instead, but in giving this advice Starkad had been prompted by the god Odin, who desired Víkar's death. According to the account in Gautreks saga, when Starkad let loose the branch, the apparent reed-stalk with which Starkad stabbed at the king was seen to be a real spear, the stump under Víkar's feet fell away, and the calf guts which had been used instead of rope turned into a strong withy. Víkar died. Saxo Grammaticus in Gesta Danorum refers to a similar version relating a magic transformation, but prefers or invents a more rational account in which Starkad tied the osier very tightly so that Víkar could hardly breathe and then stabbed Víkar with his sword. This was the first of Starkad's three great crimes.
Tryggve Olafsson was king of Viken, Norway.
The Battle of Hafrsfjord was a great naval battle fought in Hafrsfjord sometime between 872 and 900 that resulted in the unification of Norway, later known as the Kingdom of Norway. After the battle, the victorious Viking chief Harald Fairhair proclaimed himself the first king of the Norwegians, merging several petty kingdoms under a single monarch for the first time.
The Battle of Rastarkalv took place in 955 on the southern part of the island of Frei in the present-day Kristiansund Municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway.
Bjørn Farmann was a king of Vestfold. Bjørn was one of the sons of King Harald Fairhair of Norway. In late tradition, Bjørn Farmann was made the great-grandfather of Olaf II of Norway, through a son Gudrød Bjørnsson.
The petty kingdoms of Norway were the entities from which the later Kingdom of Norway was founded. Before the unification of Norway in 872 and during the period of fragmentation after King Harald Fairhair's death, Norway was divided in several small kingdoms. Some could have been as small as a cluster of villages, and others comprised several of today's counties.
Harald Eiríksson , also known as Harald the Young, was joint Earl of Orkney with Harald Maddadsson. He was the son of Orkney chief Eirik Stagbrell and Ingerid Ragnvaldsdotter, the daughter of Rögnvald Kali Kolsson, the former Earl of Orkney.
Gunnhildr konungamóðir or Gunnhildr Gormsdóttir, whose name is often Anglicised as Gunnhild is a quasi-historical figure who appears in the Icelandic Sagas, according to which she was the wife of Eric Bloodaxe. She appears prominently in sagas such as Fagrskinna, Egils saga, Njáls saga, and Heimskringla.
Gyda Eiriksdottir of Hordaland was a semi-legendary Norwegian concubine during the Viking Era. She appears in the Saga of Harald Fairhair in Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla. The story is not mentioned in any other source.
The Unification of Norway is the process by which Norway merged from several petty kingdoms into a single kingdom, predecessor to modern Kingdom of Norway.
The Saga of Harald Fairhair is the third of the sagas in Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla, after Ynglinga saga and the saga of Halfdan the Black. Snorri sagas were written in Iceland in the 1220s. This saga is about the Norwegian king Harald Fairhair.