Hi, my name is Jack Rackam, and today we’re
back on the Northern and Eastern European
Family Trees Chart. We’ve already taken
a look at the royal families of Denmark and
Sweden on this channel, so today we’re looking
at the kings and queens of Norway starting
all the way from the 9th century down to today
[Intro]
We begin with the legendary first king of
Norway, Harald Fairhair. If you’ve seen
the recent video about which figures from
the Bible are historical, you’ll remember
that legendary means he was probably a real
person who really did rule in Norway. But
much of the things we read about him have
probably been greatly exaggerated over the
years, since most of our records come from
the Icelandic sagas, written hundreds of years
later. Think of it like how if you’re watching
the show Vikings, there’s a lot you can
learn about all the different characters,
but you can’t take everything that happens
in the show at face value.
According to the Icelandic Sagas, Harald was
rejected by a princess who told him she would
only marry him if he became king over all
Norway. Harald then took a vow not only to
become King of Norway, but not to cut or comb
his hair until then, giving him the name “Tanglehair”.
But ten years later, after the battle of Hafrsfjord,
he united Norway into a single kingdom, married
the princess, and now that he could come his
hair again he took on the name “Fairhair”.
In reality, while there are many details we
don’t know for certain, it’s likely Harald
was a king of one of the many petty kingdoms
in Norway at the time. Sort of like how Alfred
the Great is an English folk hero and the
ancestor of the first kings of England, but
he was only the king of a much smaller kingdom
called Wessex. The Battle of Hafrsfjord was
a real event that led to Harald expanding
his influence over other kingdoms in the region,
but the unification of Norway didn’t happen
overnight.
Unification also wasn’t a one-way street.
After Harald’s death, his kingdom was splintered
between several of his sons and his earls.
But about a lifetime later, there was a king
named Olaf II. You can see with these dotted
lines here that he claimed descent from Harald
Fairhair, but that claim is a bit, well, spotty.
There are a few sagas describing him adventuring
around the Baltic as a young man, but the
important thing is that Olaf II is the one
who united Norway for good, by gaining the
support of multiple petty kings and defeating
the earl Sweyn Haakonsson in the North. He
aimed to extend his power further by allying
himself with Sweden and invading Denmark while
Cnut the Great was preoccupied in England,
but his army was crushed. A bunch of unhappy
nobles then supported a counter-invasion by
Cnut, who took over Norway in 1028. Olaf II
made one last attempt to reclaim the kingdom
in 1030, but was killed in the war.
Olaf II was then canonized by one of his advisors,
who held an important position in the church,
and has since been credited for the Christianization
of Norway. Though he had converted to Christianity,
he actually didn’t do that much proselytizing
in life, but after his death he became the
patron saint of the kingdom as well as a popular
saint in both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox
churches. And future kings worked to make
him even more popular so they could point
to their saintly ancestry.
After Cnut’s death in 1035, Norwegian lords
with the help of Sweden placed Olaf’s son
Magnus I on the throne when he was just 11.
When he was 16, he declared war with Denmark
with plans to reunite the two kingdoms, but
the war was costlier than expected. In the
end, he met with the Danish king, another
one of Cnut’s sons Harthacnut or Cnut III,
and they decided whoever died first would
be succeeded by the other. Only two years
later, Harthacnut died suddenly at a wedding,
likely due to a stroke brought on by excessive
drinking.
Magnus then attempted to completely recreate
Cnut's North Sea Empire by taking over England,
but he never got the chance. His uncle Harald,
who had been exiled in 1030 after fighting
on behalf of Saint Olaf, had returned to Norway
and threatened to work together with Cnut’s
nephew in Denmark if Magnus didn’t agree
to share the Norwegian crown. Magnus then
died suddenly in 1047 at the age of 23. So
Denmark passed into the hands of Sweyn II,
and Norway into the hands of Harald Hardrada.
That name might sound familiar, and we’ll
look at why in just a second. Like I mentioned
earlier, Harald had been exiled from Norway,
in which time he served in the army of the
Kievan Rus under Yaroslav the Wise and then
in the Varangian Guard under Michael IV of
the Eastern Roman Empire. When he became king,
he took his own shot at recreating the North
Sea Empire, but after almost twenty years
of claiming Denmark, he never was able to
take control.
So instead he invaded England instead, landing
up in the North. The year was 1066. He fought
the English at the battle of Stamford Bridge
in September and lost, just three days before
William the Conqueror landed in the South
of England. Hardrada’s invasion is often
seen as an important factor in William’s
victory at the Battle of Hastings and it just
goes to show that timing is everything.
Hardrada was killed at Stamford Bridge, marking
the unofficial end of the Viking Age, but
his son Olaf was able to return to Norway,
where he quickly became king and swore off
his father’s aggressive foreign policy,
entering into an extended period of peace.
He negotiated with England and Denmark and
faced invasion from neither, and also managed
to put an end to his father’s feud with
certain members of the church.
After Olaf III, his son Magnus III picked
up a more aggressive outlook, this time projecting
power across the Irish Sea, and then we have
Sigurd I, known as Sigurd the Crusader. Sigurd
was king along with his half-brothers Olav
and Eystein and led Norway through a golden
age. Since he was so well-travelled and versed
in combat as a result of accompanying his
father through the British Isles, he became
the first European king to personally lead
a Crusade in 1107. He brought his army all
the way down to the Eastern Mediterranean
to support the new Christian kingdom of Jerusalem,
where he conquered Sidon, then travelled around
meeting the Doge of Venice and the famous
Byzantine Emperor Alexios I while he was on
his way back home. But that golden age came
to an abrupt end when Sigurd died in 1130,
as the country was plunged into civil war
for over a hundred years.
You see, Norway at the time did not have a
clear law of succession. By default, all the
king’s sons, regardless of age, whether
legitimate or not, were considered to have
an equal claim. Hence Olaf III was originally
a co-ruler with his half-brother, and Sigurd
I was a co-ruler with his half-brothers, and
surprisingly this had worked out thus far.
But all these gaps in the line represent illegitimate
children, and those are just the ones who
successfully claimed power at one point, so
by the 12th century there were a lot of possible
kings all competing for power and eventually
coalescing into two factions. Imagine England’s
War of the Roses but nearly four times as
long.
Unsurprisingly, we won’t be trying to untangle
all of that today, but we’ll touch briefly
on the highlights. Just when the war seemed
to be winding down with one party in power,
a young man named Sverre came in from the
Faroes, claiming to be the son of a former
king. Miraculously, he managed to drill the
opposing party’s ragtag soldiers into a
fierce and professional army and created a
huge navy including the largest ship on the
water at the time. And after a long campaign
he managed to take over the kingdom.
But while he was a powerful general, he struggled
to rule as king. He faced continued opposition
from within Norway and got entangled in a
power struggle with the Church, resulting
in his excommunication. Though he had support
from England and Sweden, that didn’t stop
an army led by Norwegian nobles from rising
up against him. Sverre was able to put down
the rebellion, but died very shortly after,
and the period of civil war continued until
more than half-way through the rule of Haakon
IV, which is saying something since he ruled
for 46 years.
But because Haakon spent so long emerging
from civil war, he ended up with a powerful
army, and expanded Norway to its greatest
territorial extent yet by taking over Greenland
and Iceland. Yet he also managed to make friends
with most major European powers, even on both
sides of conflict. He Christianized peoples
pushed west by the Mongols, the Pope wanted
him to be Holy Roman Emperor, the French king
wanted him to lead the French crusader fleet,
and he opened up Bergen to the Hanseatic League.
The only exception to this exceptional friendliness
was towards Scotland and the British Isles,
where he continued to push his power.
His son Magnus the law-mender, like his name
suggests, worked to make sure the new golden
age started by his father wouldn’t end like
the last one. He wrote new codes for the entire
kingdom, including a law on succession making
it very clear which of his sons would succeed
him as king and which would be given the title
of a duke. He also introduced the idea that
crime wasn’t just an offense against individuals
but against the state and society as a whole,
which is reflected in justice systems today
with the distinction between civil and criminal
courts.
Very quickly we have his sons, first Eric
II who took up the old Norwegian tradition
of trying to take over Denmark, along with
Scotland, and who also fell out with the Church,
earning him the name “priest hater”. After
him came his younger brother Haakon V, who
continued to strengthen the position of king
and whose reign saw Oslo begin to eclipse
Bergen as the center of power in Norway.
And then Norway runs into the opposite problem
it had all those years ago in the civil war:
this time there aren’t any sons to take
the throne. But with clear rules in place,
Haakon’s grandson takes the throne. Incidentally,
he was also the king of Sweden. But he was
never very popular in Norway, so it was agreed
that his son would rule independently in Norway
when he came of age.
But then things get complicated again. Haakon
VI marries a princess of Denmark named Margaret.
So when Haakon died, their son Olaf ruled
over Denmark and Norway. But then he died
and Margaret became queen of both kingdoms.
And then there was a rebellion in Sweden,
and the rebellious lords told Margaret that
if she helped them depose Albert she could
rule Sweden, at least temporarily, until she
provided them with a suitable king.
She obliged, and Albert was successfully deposed,
and thus Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were
all joined together in what’s called the
Kalmar Union. The next several hundred years
have all been covered in the Denmark video,
so I encourage you to watch that one if you
haven’t already, as we won’t be repeating
everything here.
There was a quick exception with Charles VIII,
who broke Sweden and Norway apart from Denmark,
but they were both brought back into the fold
by Christian I of Denmark. This kept the Kalmar
Union together until Sweden broke away for
good in 1523 with king Gustav I.
Norway, however, continued to exist in a personal
union with Denmark for three more centuries
until the end of the Napoleonic Wars. In those
wars, Denmark-Norway had joined the Second
League of Armed Neutrality. But Britain took
this as an offense and attacked, which forced
Denmark-Norway into an alliance with France,
meaning they ultimately lost the war.
As part of the terms of peace, the Danish
king had to renounce all claims to Norway
in favor of the Swedish monarchy. Norway briefly
declared independence, with the crown prince
Christian VIII as king, but Sweden invaded
and put an end to that. Norway still had its
own legal system and currency, but it was
controlled by the Swedish monarch who dictated
all foreign policy.
But over time it became clear that Norway
had different interests than Sweden when it
came to foreign policy, wanting more international
trade and different allies. The people of
Norway wanted overwhelmingly to be independent
and in 1905 discussions with the Swedish monarch
Oscar II resulted in Norway going out on its
own for the first time in over 500 years.
Then came the matter of who its new king would
be. At first there were talks that perhaps
Norway wouldn’t have a king at all and become
a Republic, but having a monarch was seen
as a way for the new government to be legitimate
and non-radical in the eyes of Europe and
to ensure a peaceful transition. There was
an initial offer to make Oscar II’s son
Prince Carl the new king, but this was not
only contentious in parliament, Oscar himself
declined the offer.
Ultimately they settled on the Danish Prince
Carl. His mother had connections to the Swedish
royal family and his father had connections
all the way back to the medieval Norwegian
kings.
He accepted the offer and assumed the throne
as King Haakon VII.
Haakon VII was really a modern ceremonial
monarch. Technically he was given executive
authority, but he allowed the Norwegian government
to exercise that authority on his behalf.
He reigned through both world wars, including
the German occupation of Norway in World War
Two. Hitler gave him an ultimatum to accept
a new government or face harsh reprisals.
Haakon refused, and led the government from
exile in Britain.
His son Olav V was also incredibly popular
with the people of Norway for his very down-to-earth
attitude. He frequently went out in public
without bodyguards and made a point to lead
by example during the 1973 energy crisis by
taking public transportation despite the privileges
afforded to him as a monarch. He married his
first cousin, just like his father had done,
and they had three children including one
son: Harald V, the current king of Norway.
Harald V, conversely, married a commoner,
but the most interesting thing about him is
that he’s actually a world-class sailor.
He competed at three Olympic games and continued
to compete at an international level well
into his 70’s. Perhaps it’s an interest
he shares in common with Harald Fairhair.
He has two children, crown prince Haakon and
the self-proclaimed clairvoyant Princess Martha,
as well as five grandchildren.
Okay, that was the Norwegian royal family
tree, a line traceable all the way to the
800’s. If you’re interested in some of
the other royal families we talked about in
this episode, including those 500 years of
Danish rule, you can find other videos on
this channel that cover them in detail. And
if you want to pick up a copy of this chart
for yourself or for your classroom, you can
purchase a poster from usefulcharts.com. Thanks
for watching.
