If there was war in Norway for 110 years, how many people were killed in the battles?
And how severely did the Norwegian civil wars affect the civilian population?
More than 40 battles were fought during the Norwegian civil wars. But how many people were killed in these battles?(Image: Erik Werenskiold / Public Domain)
The Norwegian civil wars are generally considered to have lasted from 1130 to 1240.
They began with the death of King Sigurd the Crusader. His death was followed by disputes over the throne. Kings’ sons fought one another, as well as rivals who claimed to be of royal descent.
The most serious conflict was between King Magnus, a grandson of Sigurd the Crusader through his daughter, and King Sverre, who was related through the male line.
Historians Hans Jacob Orning and Jon Vidar Sigurdsson at the University of Oslo have spent almost ten years researching this period. They believe that ties of kinship, friendship, and marriage bound the elite so closely together that the level of conflict remained relatively low – even when there was a struggle for the throne.
Historian Lars Kjær at Northeastern University London studies the High Middle Ages in Europe. He believes that a violent civil war took place in Norway, characterised by intense hostility and many deaths.
Historians agree that numerous battles were fought during these 110 years.
In the century before 1130, not a single battle was fought within Norway, and there were no battles in the period after 1240 either, Orning and Sigurdsson state in an article in Historisk tidsskrift.
From that perspective, this was clearly a dramatic period in Norwegian history. But just how violent and deadly were the conflicts, they ask.
Jon Vidar Sigurdsson is a professor of history at the University of Oslo. He believes that the Norwegian civil wars were not particularly violent or bloody at all.(Photo: Nina Kristiansen)
'Many’ were killed
One way to determine whether Norway was truly at war is to count the number of people who died. This is an issue on which historians today disagree considerably.
They have to rely on estimates because the sagas do not provide exact casualty figures for the battles. Most often, they simply state that ‘many’ fell. The victors also tended to exaggerate how successfully they fought and how many enemies they defeated.
Orning and Sigurdsson therefore see little reason to accept the figures in the sagas at face value.
In their research project, they estimate that between 4,000 and 5,000 people were killed over the course of the 110-year period.
42 battles and several smaller skirmishes
Kjær took a thorough approach. He went through all available sources and sagas to find references to battles. He found 42. He also counted smaller skirmishes between the opposing sides.
When no death toll was provided, Kjær estimated 100 deaths per battle. For the bloodiest battles, he used the figures given in the sagas, including the Battle of Fimreite in 1184, where 2,000 men were killed; Nordnes in 1181, where 700 died; and the battle for Oslo in 1240, where 300 were killed.
For smaller skirmishes, the sagas often state that 'some' were killed. Kjær interprets this as five deaths. When a source says that a ship was captured and its crew killed, he estimates ten deaths.
Annonse
This brings him to a considerably higher death toll than the other two historians.
"10,000 people were killed in the Norwegian civil wars," says Kjær.
High mortality
Lars Kjær is an associate professor of history at Northeastern University London. He believes that the wars were fought as the sagas and sources describe.(Photo: Northeastern University London)
During this period, Norway had a population of no more than 350,000. People did not live as long, so generations turned over more quickly than they do today. Sigurdsson therefore estimates that around one million people lived in Norway at some point between 1130 and 1240.
"Even if 10,000 people died, this was not an intense civil war. The total annual war losses amount to 90 men killed per year, which represents 0.045 per cent of the population. That's probably about the same number of people who drowned in the country each year," says Sigurdsson.
Lars Kjær believes it is misleading to spread the death toll evenly across the entire 110-year period.
"Most of the battles took place during shorter, intense periods of warfare. That means that mortality was very high, comparable to what we see in civil wars in other countries," says Kjær.
But what about the civilian population?
The sagas say little about ordinary people
The king and his rivals for the throne fought one another. They had a retinue of warriors and recruited and ordered farmers to serve as new soldiers whenever they needed a larger army.
They fought both at sea and on land in battles described in the sagas.
But did the civilian population suffer?
Historians disagree on this point as well.
Hans Jacob Orning is a professor of history at the University of Oslo. He believes that the king would not have risked putting too much pressure on the farmers.(Photo: Nina Kristiansen)
They do agree, however, that the sagas provide little information about the experiences of ordinary people during the civil wars. The saga writers were primarily interested in the elite, professional warriors, and military victories and defeats.
But historians interpret this silence in very different ways.
Stayed on the outskirts of the battles
Ordinary people were drawn into the conflicts.
"Farmers were conscripted into what was known as the leidang, and they had no choice. But they had little interest in risking their lives or health, so leidang forces often remained on the outskirts of the battles. The sources rarely mention farmers being killed," says Hans Jacob Orning.
The armies also did not fight everywhere.
"The fighting took place mainly in the areas around Oslo, Trondheim, and Bergen. In large parts of Norway, there was never any war, and the farmers continued running their farms as before," says Sigurdsson.
Plundering and pressure on farmers
Lars Kjær believes civilians were affected by plundering and acts of revenge when farms and towns were captured.
"As far as we can tell from the sagas, the armies in the Norwegian civil wars behaved much as armies normally do in wartime. They obtained or seized food wherever they went. They intimidated, plundered, and killed supporters of their enemies and pressured the farming population into supporting them instead," he says.
Kjær notes that he cannot give a precise figure for civilian casualties.
"The sources repeatedly mention the plundering and killing of civilians, but they provide no exact numbers. Even so, there is no reason to believe that this civil war was any different from those in other countries. All the sources point in the same direction," he says.
Kjær points to the monk Theodoricus Monachus, who wrote about crimes, killings, and the abduction of women. Sverre’s son, King Håkon Sverresson, also described a country troubled by unrest, danger, and hardship in one of his letters.
"Both describe lawless conditions involving plundering and violence against women. I take these sources seriously," says Kjær.
Orning and Sigurdsson, however, do not consider Theodoricus a reliable source. As a man of the Church, he was a party to the conflict and had an interest in portraying the situation as negatively as possible.
The two historians at the University of Oslo believe that the sagas’ depiction of a group of mercenaries provides an indication of what was normal practice in Norway. They were sent to Sverre by King John of England.
The English soldiers went on a violent rampage. Sverris saga describes their actions: 'Wherever they went, they killed everyone, young and old, women and men; they also killed all the livestock they came across, dogs and cats and every living creature they encountered. They burned the settlements wherever they went.'
"These mercenaries had no social networks in Norway, which meant they could do whatever they wanted," says Sigurdsson.
"The saga writers are clearly shocked by the mercenaries' behaviour – the killings, rape, and destruction. That's strong evidence that this was not normal practice among Norwegian troops," says Orning.
Marks from axes and swords
Kjær also argues that archaeological evidence can shed light on the extent of the violence. One example comes from skeletons dating to the civil-war period that were excavated from cemeteries in Oslo. The remains of women and children showed injuries caused by swords and axes.
"The archaeologists link these injuries to the period of civil war and to Sverre’s attack on Oslo in 1197," he says.
The other two historians strongly disagree.
"Archaeology cannot contribute anything useful here. One or two finds prove absolutely nothing," says Sigurdsson.
"Using violence against farmers and townspeople would have been an extremely risky strategy. A king would lose their support if he pushed them too hard. He gained their support by behaving reasonably," says Orning.
Orning, H.J. & Sigurdsson, J.V. Hvor voldelige var de norske borgerkrigene? (How violent were the Norwegian civil wars?), Historisk tidsskrift, 2026. DOI: 10.18261/ht.105.2.7
