He was no king, and he never held a title that lifted him above his stretch of coast. Yet Rognvald Eysteinsson turns up at the edge of nearly every great story of the Viking Age: as a follower of Harald, as host at the famous haircutting scene, as father of Rollo, founder of Normandy, and of Torf-Einarr, who starts the line of the Orkney earls. This article sets the evidence side by side. It separates what a thirteenth-century saga tells from what can be supported elsewhere, and where necessary it says plainly: this cannot be clearly proven.
Rognvald Eysteinsson, in Old Norse Rǫgnvaldr Eysteinsson, is usually called "Earl of Møre" (Norwegian Mørejarl). In Norse usage an earl (jarl) is a high-ranking noble with his own sphere of power, standing under or beside a king. Møre is the coastal region of north-west Norway around Romsdal and Ålesund. Beyond that, little about his position is certain. Whether he had a fixed stronghold, a host in any modern sense or a clearly bounded territory, we do not know. The sagas draw him as a powerful man on his own land who allies himself with the rising Harald Fairhair and profits from it.
That picture is itself a reason for caution. Everything we "know" about Rognvald comes from texts written centuries after his life. I know of no inscription, rune stone, grave or contemporary charter that names him. Anyone who calls him a "ruler" or "King of Møre" goes beyond the sources. This article therefore calls him what the texts call him: an earl.
His importance lies elsewhere. He ties together strands that would otherwise run apart: Harald's rise, the settlement of the North Atlantic islands, the origin of the Orkney earls and the question of Rollo's parentage. Harald himself is covered in the piece on Harald Fairhair, the house on the islands in the one on the Earls of Orkney.
The key texts can be listed quickly, and none dates from Rognvald's time. Heimskringla, the history of the kings by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, is commonly dated to around 1230. Its saga of Harald Fairhair (Haralds saga ins hárfagra) treats Rognvald in several places. The Orkneyinga saga, the history of the Orkney earls, was written, according to most scholars, between about 1170 and 1220, also in Iceland. The Historia Norwegiae is a short Latin history of Norway, said to come from roughly the same period but to rest on a different source. By what I have seen, it confirms that Rognvald's family conquered the islands and leaves out the details. Then there is the Landnámabók, the Icelandic book of settlements.
For assessing them: both main sources are Icelandic texts of the early thirteenth century. I have not checked how far they depend on each other; where they agree, that is no proof of reliability, since they may draw on the same storytelling tradition.
Voices from other traditions are rare. According to an overview I consulted, Irish annals name a "Halfdan, king of Lochlann" as the father of a Rognvald, often read as a reference to Halfdan the Black. Whether the same Rognvald is meant stays open. I know of no secure identification.
A word on genre: sagas are not chronicles. They blend family memory, narrative art and political interest. Anyone who, like the Orkney earls, claimed rule over islands had reason to want a venerable ancestry that also created a bond with the Norwegian king. That colours the account. More on the genre in the piece on the Icelandic sagas.
In Heimskringla and the Orkneyinga saga, Rognvald's father is Eystein, nicknamed Glumra. The name is usually rendered "the Noisy" or "the Clatterer"; the interpretation is not certain. Tradition makes Eystein a petty king or great man on Norway's west coast. The standard English-language overview calls him such a ruler only "reputedly", and that restraint is justified: outside the sagas he cannot be grasped.
The Orkneyinga saga makes Eystein the son of an Ivar, called "earl of the Uplanders" (Upplendingajarl), and the grandson of Halfdan the Old. This is the kind of genealogy sagas like to supply: it reaches back into a period without evidence and attaches itself to a known royal family. I treat it as tradition, not finding. Whether Eystein had anything to do with the region of Møre, my sources do not say explicitly; Heimskringla calls Rognvald "earl of Møre", while for Eystein, as far as I saw, it names no region.
Rognvald had a brother, Sigurd, who appears in the Orkneyinga saga as the first earl of the islands. On Rognvald's marriage the accounts differ. Heimskringla (ch. 24) names his wife Hild, daughter of a Rolf Nefia; the Orkneyinga saga (in Anderson's translation) Ragnhild, daughter of a "Hrolf nosy" (Hrólfr nefja, "Nose"). The father agrees in both texts, the daughter's name does not. That the same woman is meant is likely but an assumption; which name is older cannot be decided.
The tradition becomes more specific with the children, discussed below. Already here it is notable that the sagas rank them: sons by the wife, sons by secondary women. The distinction serves the story. It explains why a son of an unfree mother, Einarr, ends up with the islands: whoever counts least in the house has most to gain.
In Heimskringla Rognvald enters in chapter 10 of the saga of Harald Fairhair (counting by Laing's English translation). He is "a son of Eystein Glumra" and has become "one of Harald's men" the summer before. Harald now marches against his opponents Hunthiof and Solve Klofe, and afterwards sets Rognvald over North Møre and Romsdal. The sentence on the byname stands there too.
"He was called Ragnvald the Mighty, or the Wise; and people say both names suited him well."
Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, Haralds saga hárfagra, ch. 10, English translation by Samuel Laing (19th century, public domain); wording of this sentence checked against a mirror of the online edition at sacred-texts.com.
Two points. First, the text describes a connection useful to both sides: Harald gains a follower on the coast, Rognvald a commission and a district. Second, "the Mighty or the Wise" is no office but a saga-style byname. It tells us about the standing later narrators gave him, not about any position he held. I have not checked the Old Norse wording of the bynames; translations differ slightly between editions.
Where Rognvald was at the time of the battle of Hafrsfjord remains open. In the account of the fight itself, which I saw via Laing's translation (ch. 19), he does not appear. That is remarkable, since Hafrsfjord is held in tradition to be the victory with which Harald took the coast. The saga lets Rognvald figure in the earlier campaigns in the north but not at Hafrsfjord. That may be an accident of presentation; I draw no conclusion from it. On the battle and its uncertain date see Harald Fairhair.
The best-known scene with Rognvald is narrative, not historical. According to Heimskringla (ch. 23 in Laing) Rognvald invites the king to a feast in Møre. There he cuts Harald's hair, and Harald receives the name "Fairhair" (hárfagri). The background is given as early as chapter 4: Harald swears there not to clip or comb his hair until he has subdued all Norway. In chapter 23 Rognvald cuts the hair, which according to the saga had gone uncut and uncombed for ten years, and gives him the name Harald Harfager ("Fairhair"). A beard is not mentioned in the passages I saw. The scene has the shape of a founding moment, in which an earl all but declares the king ruler of the land.
Whether it happened cannot be shown. The story of the vow is the kind of explanation sagas like to give for a striking byname. The scene is nevertheless often read as a sign of a close tie between Harald and Rognvald. It is no more than one reading.
Before Rognvald dies in a burning house himself, the saga shows him using the same method. According to Heimskringla (ch. 12) he burns a king named Vemund, with ninety men, in a house at Naustdal. The English edition I saw online puts the year 869 in brackets in the chapter's opening line; I do not adopt it, since it is probably an editor's addition rather than a statement of the text.
The numbers in such reports are typical: ninety, later sixty, round figures that mark the weight of an event. Burning a house together with its hall was a known form of feud in the north, and other sagas dwell on it at length. One example is the burning in Njál's saga, which belongs to a quite different period and genre. What stands out with Rognvald is the symmetry: the man who burns others in a house ends the same way. Whether the saga builds this mirroring deliberately or the chance of transmission produces it cannot be decided.
Heimskringla makes the link to Orkney in chapter 22. Harald sails west against vikings who raid the Norwegian coast from the islands. Rognvald's son Ivar falls in a battle in Scotland. As compensation Harald gives, in the text's words, Rognvald "the Orkney and Shetland isles". Rognvald, the passage continues, at once gives them to his brother Sigurd. Harald then confirms Sigurd as earl before sailing back east.
That is Heimskringla's version. The Orkneyinga saga tells it similarly: after Ivar's death Rognvald receives the islands, passes them to Sigurd, and Sigurd extends his rule south, together with a man called Thorstein the Red, onto the Scottish mainland, to Caithness and Sutherland. More on Thorstein in the piece on Thorstein the Red. Sigurd's death is famous in the saga: he had cut off the head of his opponent Máel Brigte and tied it to his saddle; the dead man's protruding tooth scratched his leg, the wound festered, and he died. That is saga material; archaeologically the scene cannot be tested.
One problem remains. The sagas speak of a campaign west by Harald, tied to the unification of the realm. For such a campaign by Harald to Scotland I know of no confirmation in contemporary sources. The question of when and from where Norse people reached and settled the islands is separate, and is examined with archaeological means. Finds such as the settlement layers at Jarlshof on Shetland show Norse settlement, but say nothing about Rognvald, Sigurd or Harald. Dating also stays blurred: one overview gives roughly 875 to 892 for Sigurd's rule, but these are approximate working values of research, not statements of the sources.
The Historia Norwegiae confirms, to my knowledge, only that the islands were conquered by relatives of Rognvald, without the details from Heimskringla and the Orkneyinga saga. I therefore see no independent witness for the grant. The development of the islands into an earldom is treated in the piece on the Earls of Orkney, the wider setting in Vikings in Scotland.
Rognvald's sons are the reason his name survived. According to Heimskringla (ch. 24) he had with his wife Hild the sons Rolf and Thorir, and with secondary women Hallad, Einar and Hrollaug; Ivar fell in the war in the west. Overviews count the children slightly differently; for our purposes the lines are enough.
Thorir the Silent (Þórir þegjandi) follows his father in Møre, per Heimskringla ch. 30. He represents the home district. Hallad goes to Orkney but gives up the earldom because Danish vikings make the islands ungovernable. Then, says the Orkneyinga saga, Rognvald asks his sons who wants the islands. Einarr, whose mother in the saga is the daughter of unfree parents, volunteers. Rognvald gives him a ship and a crew and, if the text is to be followed, hardly expects him back. Einarr defeats two opponents handed down as Thorir Treebeard and Kalf the Scurvy, and becomes lord of the islands. The sagas derive the byname Torf-Einarr from peat-cutting; one overview regards that explanation as doubtful, since peat was known in Scotland longer, and nobody knows the real origin of the name. Hrollaug, according to the Orkneyinga saga, is to go to Iceland; Rognvald foretells it in the scene. Whether this Hrollaug really reached Iceland I have not checked.
The best-known line remains the third: Hrólfr, "the Walker" because of his size, Göngu-Hrólfr. In the sagas he becomes an outlaw and goes west, in the end to Normandy. A section of its own follows.
That Rognvald's son Hrólfr is to be equated with Rollo, first lord of Normandy, stands in Heimskringla and the Orkneyinga saga. The counter-picture comes from Normandy itself. Dudo of Saint-Quentin wrote in the late tenth or early eleventh century for Rollo's grandson Richard I and calls Rollo a Dane from "Dacia", which he equates with Denmark. William of Jumièges and Orderic Vitalis largely follow him. Of the sources speaking for Norway, the Historia Norwegiae is, per one overview, the earliest to link Rollo with Hrólfr the Walker. The debate has its own history: the Danish historian Johannes Steenstrup argued for Danish origin in the nineteenth century. British, French and Norwegian historians lean toward the Norse-Icelandic tradition, Danish, Swedish and German ones toward Dudo.
Whether Rollo was Rognvald's son I cannot answer. The sagas arose three to four centuries after Rollo's life, and the oldest Norman accounts are court literature for his descendants. Whoever finds Norwegian origin more likely argues from the weight of the overall tradition; whoever holds to Danish origin considers Dudo closer in time, though also partisan. No proof of the equation exists. More, and on the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, in the piece on Rollo.
According to Heimskringla (ch. 30), one spring Halfdan Haleg ("Long-Leg") and Gudrod Ljome ("Gleam") set out with a large force. They fall on Earl Rognvald, surround the house in which he is staying, and burn him and sixty men inside. In the saga Halfdan and Gudrod are sons of Harald and Snæfrid (ch. 25). The Orkneyinga saga, in the version I saw, says only that the two fell on Rognvald and slew him; it does not mention fire. In Laing's wording the closing words are: "and burnt him and sixty men in it". The text gives no year; one overview says "around 890", and I do not know the basis of that figure. I treat it as an approximation.
That the saga lets Rognvald end this way binds him to Harald's family in a bitter arc: the man who made the king "Fairhair" is killed by the king's sons. The motif has narrative force. It also explains the feud that follows. According to Heimskringla (ch. 31) Halfdan later comes to Orkney, where Einarr takes him prisoner and kills him. Harald, who wants revenge, cannot get hold of the earl. In the end he condemns Einarr and the Orkney people to a fine of sixty marks of gold (ch. 32; the Orkneyinga saga gives the same sum). How the payment was shared out, and whether it is to be read as wergild or as recognition of the king's overlordship, I have not checked against sources or scholarship.
On the manner of Halfdan's death the sources diverge. Heimskringla (ch. 31) has Einarr cut an eagle into his back but does not name Odin. Only the Orkneyinga saga says Einarr gave him "to Odin" for the victory won; in its telling Halfdan had earlier leapt overboard at dusk. What the Historia Norwegiae says about Halfdan's death I have not checked against the text. That fits the critical line followed in the piece on the blood eagle.
Nothing has been found in the ground that could be assigned to Rognvald himself. For a man of the late ninth century that is hardly surprising, since names on objects are rare in this period. Archaeological traces of the settlement of the islands show houses, crafts and grave goods connected with Norse culture. They cannot be tied to persons. Whoever sees "Rognvald's settlers" in a farmstead on Shetland or Orkney assigns it to the saga, not to the find. For the ships with which such voyages were possible, see the piece on longships.
He is a junction. In his figure three traditions meet that need have nothing to do with one another: Norwegian royal history, the story of the islands in the west, and the question of the Normans. That he in particular is tied to all three says much about the Icelanders' interest in genealogy and little about his actual role. The honest position holds that the family appears in the sources, that some lines (Torf-Einarr, the Orkney earls) are taken seriously, and that the details of the burning, the haircut and the ancestral lines are narrative. For the wider line of Norwegian power-holders see the overview of the Nordic kings.
A note on the workshop: the Norse motifs we laser-engrave at Glanz & Gravur come from archaeological finds and manuscripts; no image of a figure like Rognvald survives, and we do not invent one.
Who was Rognvald Eysteinsson? An earl of Møre in north-west Norway who, according to Heimskringla and the Orkneyinga saga, was a follower of Harald, bore the byname "the Mighty or the Wise", and fathered several sons, among them Torf-Einarr and Hrólfr. He is attested only by sagas of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Was Rognvald Rollo's father? The Norse sagas claim so. Norman tradition from Dudo of Saint-Quentin on calls Rollo a Dane. The question has not been settled conclusively.
How did Rognvald die? According to Heimskringla, Halfdan Haleg and Gudrod Ljome burned him with sixty men in his house. It is saga tradition; I know of no contemporary confirmation.
Did Rognvald rule Orkney? The sagas have him receive the islands as compensation for the death of his son Ivar and give them at once to his brother Sigurd. No rule of his own there is reported.
Are there archaeological traces of him? None, as far as I know. Norse settlement traces on the islands are attested but cannot be assigned to any person.
Harald Fairhair – the first king of all Norway · Rollo of Normandy · The Earls of Orkney · The Earls of Lade · Norse Kings.
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