Norwegian history is full of gaps and myths

Not much is certain about kings and queens from the Viking Age.

You wouldn't think this was the case, because most Norwegians know the names of many of them. Norwegian children grew up with sagas about Harald Fairhair, Eric Bloodaxe, Gyda, Ragnhild, and many more.

Archaeological discoveries have provided a great deal of knowledge about the Viking Age: how people lived, died, where they lived, and travelled. But graves, swords, and brooches do not provide names or tell us who these Vikings were.

The sagas, on the other hand, are overflowing with stories about kings and warriors. They provide long family trees and allow us to read about what these kings and warriors did and what they said.

Researchers use five types of sources for the Viking Age – 800 to 1050. Click on a bubble to learn more about what each source can tell us – and what it can’t:

Harald Fairhair's royal manor?

Streets all over Norway are named after the kings from the sagas. They have been commemorated with monuments and statues. At tourist attractions, visitors encounter Viking history as it was told in the sagas.

Harald Fairhair had a royal manor at Avaldsnes, according to saga writer Snorri Sturluson. The Nordvegen History Centre, which presents this as an established fact, is located there.

Håkon Reiersen is an archaeologist and associate professor at the University of Stavanger. He led excavations in the harbour at Avaldsnes on the west coast of Norway.

“The story of Harald Fairhair uniting Norway is the royal dynasty's origin myth, which Snorri has revised and embellished. But if we try to remove all the noise, there may still be a core of historical truth to it,” he says.

15 years ago, archaeologists from the University of Oslo carried out a major excavation at Avaldsnes. Among other things, they were looking for archaeological evidence suggesting that the farm was a royal manor during the 9th or 10th century.

They did not find any.

Little evidence from the Viking Age at Avaldsnes

To identify the type of settlement – if it really was a royal manor – the researchers point to the need for evidence of, for example, a guild hall for entertaining guests and warriors, as well as imported luxury items that only the wealthiest groups in society could afford.

“It may be undercommunicated that very little from the Viking Age was found in the excavations at Avaldsnes. A possible explanation for the lack of finds is that a church and a royal manor were built on the same site in the Middle Ages. That may have destroyed older evidence,” says Reiersen.

“Was Avaldsnes a royal estate in the Viking Age?”

“It's difficult to answer that with certainty. If you look at all the charcoal datings together, there appears to have been an increase in activity at Avaldsnes between 850 and 900. This is the period when Harald Fairhair, according to Snorri, came to power and established himself there,” says Reiersen.

A centre of power before and after

Many archaeological discoveries show that Avaldsnes was a centre of power both before and after the Viking Age.

The fact that there was a royal manor at Avaldsnes in the 1200s and 1300s may indicate that it was a tradition for kings to have their seat there.

Two ship graves have been found a few kilometres north of Avaldsnes, dating from before and during the Viking Age, approximately 800 to 1050.

Archaeologists have found whetstones from Trøndelag and objects from the Frankish Kingdom and the Baltics in the ship burials.

“These are trade goods that formed the basis of power,” says Reiersen.

Fits with Snorri's account

These two graves were discovered more than 100 years ago, but in 2023 archaeologists from the University of Stavanger found a new ship burial.

“We used ground-penetrating radar and found traces of a ship that has not yet been dated. Nearby, we found ship rivets that may come from a fourth ship burial. Such a large collection of rich graves shows that Avaldsnes was a centre of power when the Viking Age began,” says Reiersen.

The graves do not confirm that a Harald Fairhair was king in the area.

“The ship burials fit well with Snorri's story of Hafrsfjord and Avaldsnes,” says Reiersen.

Difficult to present the academic version

Reiersen finds it difficult to balance the academic version of history against the traditional account of Norway's first king.

“These are stories that people have learned and have very strong feelings about, so we researchers don't quite dare throw everything overboard. Some things can be preserved, at least as good stories. Archaeology can then help us figure out what actually happened,” he says. 

Reiersen describes a lecture he attended where new analyses from an eastern Norwegian ship burial were presented. The results did not match the traditional stories.

“There was a reaction from the audience. People from the local historical society were almost in tears. This is about roots and local identity,” he says.

Professor Hans Jacob Orning at the University of Oslo says that medieval historians live with uncertainty.

“If we are only going to say things we are sure of, we might as well shut down the entire discipline,” Orning tells Science Norway.

“Unfortunately, we don't have a time machine, so we try to reconstruct the past as best we can,” says Reiersen.

Do we lose Gyda?

Professor Sverrir Jakobsson is a professor of medieval history at the University of Iceland. He says that Icelandic historians stopped believing the sagas a long time ago.

“But Norwegian historians still believe in the stories that were written in Iceland in the 12th and 13th centuries,” he says.

He finds it strange that the Heimskringla saga, written by Snorri Sturluson around 1220, is the one that has gained traction.

“These are not the sagas that are closest in time to the Viking Age. Heimskringla is copied from older sources that have completely different versions of people and events. But these are the stories people learned as children, and they have deep emotional roots among the population,” says Jakobsson.

If we abandon the Heimskringla, we lose Gyda, the woman who supposedly refused to marry Harald until he had united the country.

“It’s a good story, but Gyda does not appear in any other sagas,” says Jakobsson.

The history professor believes we must accept that the sagas cannot be used as historical sources.

“It’s like King Arthur in England. Many have tried to prove his existence, but it cannot be done. It's still a good origin myth. Instead, we can research and write about what we can actually know something about,” says Jakobsson.

Students are given both versions

Tourists at the Nordvegen History Centre in Avaldsnes are greeted by full-sized figures of Harald Fairhair and Gyda. They can watch a film about the history of Avaldsnes based on the sagas.

In the school programme, however, Cathrine Glette presents both the saga stories and the academic understanding of history.

Almost all students have heard of Harald Fairhair and that he united Norway into a single kingdom.

“I want students to understand history, not just get a lot of information. That's why it's important to talk about source criticism, but it has to be adapted to the students' age,” the museum educator tells Science Norway.

She talks about how archaeological finds show that Avaldsnes was a centre of power during the Viking Age, while also emphasising that we do not know for certain who lived there.

 “They didn't put up nameplates at the graves,” she says. “I use the saga of Fairhair to talk about power, conflict, and politics in the Viking Age. At the same time, I am open about everything we don't know.”

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Translated by Nancy Bazilchuk

Read the Norwegian version of this article on forskning.no

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