He never wore a crown, yet he held Norway together longer than many kings before and after him. Haakon Sigurdsson, Old Norse Hákon Sigurðarson, Earl of Hlaðir near Trondheim, ruled most of the country for about two decades according to our sources, first in the shadow of the Danish kings, then on his own account. An Icelandic poet praised him in a long poem; later sagas turned him into a devout heathen, a womaniser and a father who sacrifices his child. His end, killed by a slave in a pigsty, is one of the best-known scenes in the kings' sagas. This article separates what skaldic verse and near-contemporary evidence support from what was only told in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and says openly where the tradition breaks apart.
Haakon Sigurdsson is usually said to have been born between about 935 and 937 and to have died in 995. The figures vary in the literature, and no source gives an exact birth year. He belonged to the Earls of Lade, a family that governed from Trøndelag and, in the age of Harald Fairhair and his sons, grew into the real power in the north. An earl (Old Norse jarl) ranked below a king, often a regional magnate with his own retinue, ships and land. Haakon was one of these men, except that in the end he controlled more of Norway than any king of his day.
The period assigned to his rule over Norway is itself not uniform. Some accounts say about 970 to 995, others about 975 to 995, and still others start counting at his father's death around 962. It depends on what one calls rule. He is regarded as the effective lord of the country, free of Danish overlordship, only from the middle of the 970s. He bore no royal title, and whether he ever claimed one cannot be shown.
Do not confuse him with Haakon the Good, a son of Harald Fairhair who reigned as king decades earlier. The earl and the king share a name and little else, except that Haakon's father Sigurd served the older Haakon as an adviser.
Haakon is better attested than many other leaders of his age, but almost everything detailed comes from after his death. The evidence falls into three groups.
Contemporary poetry. Skaldic verse, praise poetry by Icelandic and Norwegian court poets, was composed in his lifetime or soon afterwards. The most important piece is the Vellekla by the Icelander Einarr skálaglamm ("Lack of Gold", a praise poem for Haakon). Add the Hákonardrápa of Tindr Hallkelsson, lines from the Háleygjatal of Eyvindr Finnsson, which traces Haakon's family back to the god Odin, and stanzas by other poets. All survive only in fragments, as quotations in later prose works. And they flatter: a poem that was paid for says what the patron wants to hear.
A runestone. The great Jelling stone does not mention Haakon, but it supports the frame: Harald Bluetooth of Denmark boasts there of having won "all of Denmark and Norway". More on that below.
Kings' sagas and chronicles. The Historia Norwegiae and the Ágrip (written around 1190 by an unknown Norwegian), Theodoricus monachus, and later the Fagrskinna, Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla (about 1230) and the Jómsvíkinga saga describe Haakon at length. Their authors wrote more than two centuries after the events. Adam of Bremen also mentions him briefly. As far as I can tell from the summaries I could read, the Ágrip and the Historia Norwegiae call him "Hákon illi", Haakon the Bad; more on that below.
These sources contradict one another at important points. On years, on sequences and on the question of whether Haakon was a Christian or was ever meant to become one, the accounts differ, and saga authors like to smooth things over. That applies above all to the years after his father's death.
Haakon's father was Sigurd Håkonsson, Earl of Lade (about 890 to about 962), his mother Bergljot, according to the sagas a daughter of Thorir Rögnvaldarson, Earl of Møre. Lade, Old Norse Hlaðir, lies on a peninsula on the Trondheim Fjord, already an important waterway in the Viking Age. Whoever sat there controlled access to the farming districts of Trøndelag and the coastal route north. The church of Lade dates only from about 1190, and I cannot document what survives of any tenth-century buildings. As far as I know, Haakon's seat is not archaeologically tangible. Everything said about his hall and his cult places comes from sagas.
The family traced itself to Odin's son Sæmingr. That pedigree stands in the Háleygjatal, composed for Haakon by Eyvindr; it is political poetry, not evidence of real descent. A second, soberer link: the sagas make Haakon a great-grandson of Harald Fairhair through a female line. That too is late genealogy. The Lade earls had an interest in a lofty family tree, and skalds supplied it. More on the dynasty in the article on the Earls of Lade.
The time after Haakon the Good was an age of brother kings in Norway. The family of Erik Bloodaxe had been driven out; his widow Gunnhild returned with her sons. One of them, Harald Greycloak, became king. Sigurd of Lade had worked with the kings until he fell around 961/962, according to the sagas through the doing of Harald Greycloak's men. A caveat again: the Norwegian encyclopedia Store norske leksikon says Sigurd was "probably" killed by Harald Greycloak; it is not certain.
What followed is told differently by the sources. Snorri describes many years of fighting: Haakon gathers men in Trøndelag, there are skirmishes and devastation, now one side wins, now the other. The Fagrskinna tells something quite different: Haakon left the country and fought in the east, on the Baltic. The Vellekla seems to support this second version, at least in the reading of the Store norske leksikon. Scholarship has not settled the matter, and it matters for the whole picture: if Snorri is right, Haakon spent a decade as an avenger fighting kings. If the Fagrskinna is right, he was simply away for a long time.
The outcome is secure enough: Haakon turned to the Danish king Harald Bluetooth, who had first backed Greycloak and then changed sides. According to the sagas, Greycloak fell around 970 or 971 in a battle in the Limfjord, with Danes and men of Trøndelag on one side. That is the version of the Store norske leksikon; other accounts date Greycloak's death "around 971". With it the family of Erik Bloodaxe lost its hold on Norway.
That Norway stood for a time under Danish influence in the late tenth century is proven by a monument that has survived: the great Jelling stone. Harald Bluetooth raised it for his parents and boasts on it of having made the Danes Christian and of having won "all of Denmark and Norway".
"King Harald ordered these monuments made in memory of Gorm, his father, and Thyra, his mother – that Harald who won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian."Large Jelling stone (DR 42), sides A–C, tenth century; own rendering following the reading of the inscription given in Wikipedia (rune text not checked against an edition)
What "won" meant in practice, the stone does not say. Scholars regard Harald's rule over Norway as weak and short; one English-language account speaks of a few years in the 970s. In this arrangement Haakon was the man on the spot: an earl who acknowledged Harald's overlordship and in return got a free hand in the north. According to the sagas he even received fiefs in Denmark. How reliable that detail is cannot be settled.
In 974 Emperor Otto II struck back after a Danish attack on Saxony and took, in the current account, the Danevirke rampart and Hedeby. In the Heimskringla Haakon is on the Danish side and helps Harald Bluetooth in this war. The sequel is one of the best-known scenes: Harald, says Snorri, had Haakon baptised and gave him priests to Christianise Norway. Hardly out of Denmark, Haakon sent the priests back, sacrificed to the old gods and stopped paying tribute.
The details of the story are usually placed "around 974/975". It does not count as proven. I know of no contemporary confirmation, and the Store norske leksikon does not mention a baptism in its Haakon article at all. Adam of Bremen, writing about 1076, tells a different conversion story in which Harald Bluetooth is baptised after a defeat by Otto I; the contemporary Widukind of Corvey knows nothing of it. More on that chronicler in the article on Adam of Bremen. A break between Haakon and Harald is plausible, since Danish overlordship over Norway disappeared. That the occasion was a forced baptism one may believe, but cannot prove.
Haakon's rule after the break can mainly be grasped through one poem. The Vellekla of Einarr skálaglamm is a drápa, a praise poem with a refrain. Finnur Jónsson, the editor of skaldic poetry, reconstructed 37 stanzas from it, 21 whole and 16 half-stanzas. The poem survives nowhere complete, only in quotations in the kings' sagas and in the Snorra Edda. Its title means roughly "lack of gold". Some stanzas addressing the earl directly were placed by Finnur at the beginning and end.
The Vellekla also yields a statement often cited in scholarship: Haakon "subdued seven fylki". A fylki was a district; according to the Store norske leksikon this passage is the earliest mention of the term in the sources. The skalds also say he ruled the land down to Agder. The last resistance came from the sons of Erik Bloodaxe, whose final fight reportedly took place in Sogn. Whether this came before or after the battle of Hjörungavágr is again not clear; the Store norske leksikon thinks it likely came before.
What did Haakon do as a ruler beyond waging war? We hardly know. Hjörungavágr is the first battle in the sources in which the naval levy (leiðangr) is mentioned. That is a hint, no more. Coins, laws or a named administration are not known from him. Nothing suggests an ordered state in the modern sense; it was rule by alliances, retinue and gifts.
Around 986 Haakon is supposed to have beaten a Danish fleet at Hjörungavágr on the coast of Sunnmøre. The Jómsvíkinga saga, which centres on the fortress of Jomsborg on the southern Baltic and its brotherhood of warriors, sends Sigvaldi, Búi the Stout and Vagn Ákason against Haakon after oaths sworn at a funeral feast of Sven Forkbeard. More on the brotherhood in the article on the Jomsvikings.
What can be verified is little but weighty. Two contemporary skalds mention the battle: Einarr in the Vellekla and Þórðr Kolbeinsson in his Eiríksdrápa. Add the Jómsvíkinga saga, Saxo Grammaticus and the Heimskringla. The date 986 is tradition. The battle must fall after 974, when Haakon still fought on Harald's side; the sagas tie it to Sven's funeral feast, which points to 985 or 986. Saxo has Harald Bluetooth still order the attack, and the Danish king died around 985/986. Whether Harald or his son Sven stood behind the attack cannot be decided.
Nobody knows where the battle was fought. The Jómsvíkinga saga itself describes the place in two contradictory ways. In 1897 the village of Liavåg in Hareid was given the name Hjørungavåg, but whether the site lies there at all is uncertain, and the name may go back to an Icelandic corruption of "Hareidlandet". A monument was raised at Ovraneset in 1986. The numbers are saga numbers too: the Fagrskinna gives the Jomsvikings 60 ships against a Norwegian fleet three times as large, other figures speak of about 180 ships on the Norwegian and roughly 100 on the Danish side. The historian Knut Helle asked in a 1992 article whether the Jomsviking battle material is rather Icelandic heroic poetry. Today the battle is regarded as probable and its elaboration as fiction.
After the battle, say the sagas, Haakon's son Eirik spared the captured Vagn Ákason, which supposedly angered Haakon. That is a scene for storytellers: it shows the son as magnanimous and the father as hard. As a historical source it is of limited use.
The most famous story about Haakon stands in the Jómsvíkinga saga (chapter 21). When the battle went badly for him, he is said to have gone ashore, called on his protectress Þorgerðr Hölgabrúðr and, when she refused every offering, finally given her his seven-year-old son Erlingr. A storm then broke over the Jomsvikings, hailstones are said to have weighed an ounce, and in the tempest men saw two women, Þorgerðr and her sister Irpa, shooting arrows from their fingers.
This is a legend; the Store norske leksikon classes the later stories about the battle largely as folk-tale motifs. No skaldic verse of the time mentions a child sacrifice. Þorgerðr herself, by contrast, is attested more widely as a cult figure: Njáls saga (chapter 87) has a man plunder the temple of Haakon and Gudbrand and take rings from the images of Þorgerðr, Thor and Irpa; the Saga of the Faroe Islanders has Haakon send a follower to Þorgerðr; a poem by Tindr Hallkelsson calls her "Gerðr". Scholars understand her as the guardian goddess of a lineage or as a giantess with a cult of her own. Opinions differ: Hilda Ellis Davidson saw a link to Freyja and the dísir, John McKinnell a "bride" role as the ruler's partner, Lotte Motz a giantess venerated in her own right. There is no secure interpretation. More on cult places in general in the article on sacrificial sites and the overview of votive bogs.
The timing is notable: the story is told as Christianity gained the upper hand in the north. The authors knew that Haakon's opponent Olaf was a Christian and drew the earl accordingly as a heathen antagonist. That makes the sacrifice scene literarily coherent and historically suspect.
According to the Store norske leksikon Haakon's wife was Tora Skagesdatter, a daughter of Skage Skoptesson. A son, Eirik, dated from before the marriage; there were also Svein and a daughter Bergljot, who later married Einar Tambarskjelve. The descendants matter in the eleventh century, among them Eirik as Earl of Northumbria under Cnut the Great and his son Haakon Eiriksson as the last Earl of Lade.
Snorri adds that Haakon took daughters of powerful men into his house for a short time and sent them back at will. This is given as a reason for the farmers' hatred. A few modern scholars link the story to a fertility cult of Þorgerðr; that is a hypothesis. What is probably true is that the sagas draw a ruler who finally fails through his own excess. Whether this hits the character of the man, we do not know. The Store norske leksikon suspects that the sagas may have drawn here on a lost local "earls' saga"; it has not survived.
In 995 Olaf Tryggvason returned to Norway, according to the sagas a baptised great-grandson of Harald Fairhair with years of raiding behind him. At the same time the farmers of Gauldal in Trøndelag rose against Haakon. In which order this happened is unclear. The historian Johan Schreiner held that the people of Trøndelag killed Haakon before Olaf even arrived. The sagas tell it differently: Olaf comes, and the earl is betrayed by his own people on the run.
Two versions of the death scene survive, that of the monk Oddr Snorrason (Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, about 1180–1200) and Snorri's. Both have Haakon take refuge with his slave Karker (Old Norse Karkr, or Þormóðr Karkr) in a pigsty at the farm Rimul in Melhus. In Oddr, Karker hears that Olaf has set a reward on the earl's head, has four dreams, waits until Haakon sleeps and cuts off his head. In Snorri, Haakon first goes to the Jarlshellir, the earl's cave; in the sty he asks Karker why he looks so pale and remarks that they were born on the same day and would die together if the slave betrayed him. At night Haakon thrashes in his sleep, Karker panics, cuts his throat and then severs the head.
Olaf has Karker hanged in Oddr's version, beheaded in Snorri's; both heads are said to have been displayed on Niðarhólmr (today Munkholmen). Both scenes are literarily shaped; whether the pigsty detail is true cannot be checked. The Store norske leksikon judges the saga version not historically credible and suggests that Snorri and his predecessors deliberately contrasted the heathen Haakon with the Christian King Olaf. For Haakon's death there is, as far as I could find, no archaeological evidence. What is secure: in 995 Haakon's rule ended, and he died a violent death. The rest is storytelling.
His sons Eirik and Svein fled and, according to tradition, found refuge with the Swedish king Olof.
Svolder is sometimes named in the same breath as Haakon's death, but it came later: the battle belongs to the year 1000. There Olaf Tryggvason fell to an alliance of Sven Forkbeard, the Swedish king Olof and Eirik Haakonsson. The site cannot be fixed with certainty, probably an island on the North German coast near Rügen. The sources give Eirik the decisive part. From 1000 to 1012 Eirik and Svein governed Norway as earls under Sven Forkbeard and the Swedish king; Haakon's grandson Haakon Eiriksson held on until 1015. For more on the consequences see the article on Sven Forkbeard, who later took the English throne.
Haakon's era lies between the sons of Harald Fairhair and the Christian kingship under Olaf the Holy. According to the sources Eirik and Svein themselves adopted Christianity later, probably for political reasons; later claims that they suppressed it are not corroborated. A fixed list of Nordic kings did not yet exist; for comparison see the overview of the Nordic kings.
On the internet and in some books Haakon is called "the Mighty", Norwegian "den mektige". That is a modern attribution whose earliest source I cannot name. Whether the sagas know such an epithet I could not verify. A different name is attested: the Historia Norwegiae and the Ágrip call him "Hákon illi", Haakon the Bad, according to the summary I could read. Both say more about the narrators than about the man: the poet Einarr praises, the monk blames. The name you use for him is itself a statement about your source.
In 1805 the Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger wrote a tragedy about Haakon Jarl. It later inspired an orchestral work by Bedřich Smetana. Both works narrate freely and belong to Romanticism, not to historiography. Anyone interested in Haakon will also meet him in novels and series; their portrayals are invented and are not adopted here.
Another misunderstanding persists: the so-called Hakon Jarl runestones in Sweden, in the view of most runologists, do not mean our Haakon. The stones (U 16, U 617, Sm 76) date from the time of Cnut the Great and name an Earl Haakon; the usual reading relates them to later bearers of the name, above all Haakon Eiriksson. There is no secure attribution.
Was Haakon Sigurdsson a king? No. He was an earl and bore no royal title, although he controlled most of Norway. Whether he aimed at the title, we do not know.
When and where did he die? In 995, according to the sagas at the farm Rimul in Melhus near Trondheim. The course of events is legendary.
Did the battle of Hjörungavágr really happen? Probably yes: contemporary skalds mention it. Place, numbers and course are uncertain, though, and the sacrifice scene is legend.
Was Haakon a Christian? The sagas portray him as a committed heathen and an opponent of priests. A baptism around 974/975 is reported only by Snorri; it is not certain.
Who succeeded him? At first Olaf Tryggvason as king; after his fall at Svolder (about 1000) Haakon's sons Eirik and Svein governed as earls.
The Earls of Lade · Vellekla · The Jomsvikings · Olaf Tryggvason · Harald Bluetooth · Sven Forkbeard · Haakon the Good · Nordic kings
The Earls of Lade · Olaf Tryggvason – missionary king and the fall at Svolder · Harald Bluetooth · The Jomsvikings · Vellekla – the Praise-Poem for Earl Hákon between Gold, Gods and Politics.
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