Harald Hardrada
Harald Hardrada fought in Byzantine service from Sicily to Jerusalem, took Norway, and died in England three weeks before the man who beat him did. He was fifteen at Stiklestad in 1030, where his half-brother Olaf was killed trying to recover the Norwegian throne, and he fled east through Sweden to Kiev. From there he went to Constantinople and joined the Varangian Guard, the emperor's Norse bodyguard, and spent about ten years campaigning - in Sicily against the Arabs, in Bulgaria, and on the Euphrates - rising to command and amassing a fortune that the sagas describe in the terms usually reserved for dragon hoards. He left in 1042 under a cloud, having been imprisoned and, by his own account, having blinded an emperor on the way out. He married Yaroslav's daughter in Kiev and came home with enough money to buy half of Norway from his nephew Magnus, who obligingly died the next year and left him the whole of it. The byname means hard ruler and was earned: he fought Denmark for fifteen years, founded Oslo, and dealt with internal opposition by burning it out. In 1066 he claimed England on a treaty between two dead kings, landed in Yorkshire with some three hundred ships and the exiled Tostig Godwinson, won at Fulford, and was caught by Harold's forced march at Stamford Bridge on 25 September. He was killed by an arrow in the throat, and the survivors filled twenty-four ships. Harold marched south to meet William nineteen days later and lost, with an army that had just marched the length of England twice. His death is conventionally taken as the end of the Viking age.
- Lived: 1015 CE – 1066 CE
- Nationality: Norwegian
- Roles: head_of_state, military
