Harald Bluetooth
The Danish king whose monument is his own press release, and whose name is on every phone in the world. Harald Gormsson ruled Denmark from about 958 until 986, and the reason his reign is legible at all is that he raised a runestone at Jelling and wrote his claims on it. The inscription says he made the monument for his father Gorm and his mother Thyra, and that he was the Harald who won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian. It is the first written use of the name Denmark inside the country. The conversion is dated to about 965 and the traditional account gives the credit to a cleric named Poppo, who is supposed to have carried red-hot iron unburned to prove the point. What is certain is that Harald chose Christianity while the Ottonian empire pressed on his southern border, and that adopting it removed a standing pretext for invasion. He built. The ring fortresses at Trelleborg, Fyrkat, Aggersborg and Nonnebakken are laid out to the same geometric plan, with timber dated by dendrochronology to around 980, and the bridge at Ravning Enge ran seven hundred metres across a valley. That level of standardisation implies a state that could command labour across the whole country. It did not save him. His son Sweyn Forkbeard rebelled, and Harald died of his wounds around 986 or 987. The Jelling complex is a World Heritage site and the larger stone is often called Denmark's birth certificate. The Bluetooth wireless standard is named after him, for uniting things that would not otherwise talk to each other, and its logo is his initials in runes bound together. It is the only case here of a tenth-century king becoming a trademark.
- Lived: 910 CE – 986 CE
- Nationality: Danish
- Roles: ruler, monarch
