The Golden Age — A North Atlantic empire … reaching farther than you think

In the autumn of 1256, a delegation from the court of King Alfonso X of Castile Alfonso X of Castile × Alfonso X's scriptorium, Libro de los juegos (1283), public domain About this image ▸ King of Castile and León 1252–1284, bynamed El Sabio — Alfonso the Wise — for his patronage of law, learning, and translation. Compiled the Siete Partidas legal code, sponsored the Cantigas de Santa María and the Alfonsine astronomical tables, and ran the famous translation school at Toledo where Arabic scientific and philosophical texts were rendered into Castilian and Latin for the wider Western Christian world. Negotiated the marriage of his younger brother Infante Felipe to Kristina Hákonsdatter of Norway in 1256-1258 as part of his diplomatic campaign for election as Holy Roman Emperor — the candidacy ultimately failed. Died at Seville in 1284. and León (modern-day central and northwestern Spain) came north to Tønsberg Tønsberg × Mittet & Co., photograph of Tønsberg (c. 1939-1949), National Library of Norway About this image ▸ City in Vestfold County, often cited as Norway's oldest town; attested in the Heimskringla as a royal seat from the late ninth century. Site of the medieval Premonstratensian monastery of St. Olav, founded in the late twelfth century, and of the royal fortress of Tunsberghus on the rocky hill above the town. About fifty thousand people today; one of the principal recreational and historical centres of the inner Oslofjord region, with the Borre Mound Cemetery (the Yngling royal mounds) just north of the city. Tønsberg, Vestfold Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churches on the Oslofjord Oslofjord × Thomas Fearnley, Utsikt over Oslofjorden (1839), Nasjonalmuseet About this image ▸ The hundred-kilometre fjord cutting north into southeastern Norway from the Skagerrak to the present-day capital Oslo. In the petty-kingdom era its western shore was Vestfold and its eastern shore Østfold; the fjord controlled access to the Baltic trade routes. The royal family fled south through it in April 1940 when the Germans attacked Oslo, and the fortress at Oscarsborg sank the German cruiser Blücher at its narrow Drøbak passage on the morning of the invasion. Oslofjord Also discussed in Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in Norway . They had come to negotiate the hand of the Norwegian king’s eldest daughter for one of Alfonso’s brothers. The princess was twenty-two. Her name was Kristina Kristina Hákonsdatter × Ecelan, tomb of Kristina of Norway, Colegiata de Covarrubias (CC BY-SA 4.0) About this image ▸ Norwegian princess (1234–1262), eldest daughter of King Hákon IV Hákonarson and Queen Margrete Skulesdatter. Sent to Castile in 1257 to marry into the royal house there as part of Alfonso X's imperial diplomatic strategy. Married Infante Felipe of Castile at the collegiate church of Santa María at Valladolid on 31 March 1258. Moved south with him to Seville and died there childless in 1262, four years after the wedding. Felipe had her body buried at the collegiate church of San Cosme y San Damián in Covarrubias, north of Burgos. The sarcophagus, opened inadvertently in 1952 and formally examined in 1958, still contained her remains and her funerary dress; the tomb is now a joint Norwegian-Castilian cultural-historic site. . Within two years she would be married into the Castilian royal house in a church at Valladolid Valladolid × Georg Braun & Frans Hogenberg, Valladolid, Civitates Orbis Terrarum (1572) About this image ▸ City on the Pisuerga River in north-central Castile, in modern Castile and León. A favoured residence of the Castilian court in the medieval and early-modern centuries; effective Spanish capital under Philip II and Philip III. The marriage of Infante Felipe of Castile to the Norwegian princess Kristina Hákonsdatter was celebrated at the collegiate church of Santa María in Valladolid on 31 March 1258. Modern Valladolid is the capital of the autonomous community of Castile and León, with around three hundred thousand people in the municipality. , dead childless in Seville Seville (medieval Castilian) × Georg Braun & Frans Hogenberg, Sevilla, Civitates Orbis Terrarum (1588) About this image ▸ Major city in southern Spain on the Guadalquivir River, taken from its Almohad Muslim rulers by King Ferdinand III of Castile in 1248 — twelve years before Kristina Hákonsdatter of Norway moved south with her husband Infante Felipe to live there. Through the second half of the thirteenth century Seville was the southern capital of the Castilian crown and the wealthiest city in Western Christendom outside Italy. Alfonso X kept his court at Seville for substantial parts of his reign. Kristina died there in 1262 four years after the wedding; Felipe brought her body north and buried her at Covarrubias near Burgos. four years after that, and buried in a small Castilian collegiate church whose tomb would lie undisturbed in a side chapel for seven centuries.

A medieval kingdom whose princess could be sent to Castile Castile × Jean Laurent, El Alcázar visto desde la cuesta de los Hoyos (c. 1870), Library of Congress About this image ▸ The largest of the medieval Christian kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula, centred on the high plateau of the central Iberian meseta around the city of Burgos. United with the kingdom of León in 1230 to form the Crown of Castile and León, which remained the dominant Christian power on the peninsula through the late medieval period. Under King Alfonso X (1252–1284), in the years when his brother Felipe married Kristina Hákonsdatter of Norway, Castile was at its peak as a centre of legal, scientific, and literary translation. Joined with Aragon in 1469 by the marriage of Isabella of Castile to Ferdinand of Aragon to form the kingdom that became modern Spain. to marry into the royal house there, on terms negotiated as between peers, was not the marginal northern country most general histories of Norway describe. By the middle of the thirteenth century, Norway held a maritime realm that ran the length of the Norse North Atlantic from the Hebrides Sudreyjar × William Miller after William Leighton Leitch, Peel Castle, Isle of Man (1845), Waverley Novels (Abbotsford Edition) About this image ▸ Old Norse for "southern isles" — the diocese encompassing the southern Hebrides off the western coast of Scotland and the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. One of the suffragan dioceses under the new Norwegian archdiocese of Nidaros from 1152 to 1266, when Norwegian sovereignty over the Hebrides and Man was ceded to Scotland under the Treaty of Perth. The diocese (the modern Diocese of Sodor and Man) survives in the Church of England as one of its smallest, comprising the Isle of Man alone. Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churches to Greenland Greenland × Grønlands historiske Mindesmærker vol. 3 (1845), plate VIII, British Library About this image ▸ The world's largest island, lying between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans west of Iceland. Colonised by Norse settlers led by Erik the Red beginning in 985 — the name "Greenland" was Erik's marketing, chosen to attract colonists to a marginally agricultural land. The Norse Eastern and Western Settlements on the southwestern coast sustained perhaps two or three thousand people at peak across four centuries before steadily diminishing in the cooling climate of the Little Ice Age and disappearing by around 1450. Today a self- governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. Also discussed in The Viking Age — longships, legends, and the first "Norway"The King Who Became a Saint — how the Nordmen came to ChristA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormant . Its king held metropolitan ecclesiastical authority across that same arc through his archbishop at Nidaros Nidaros Cathedral × Unknown photographer, Nidaros Cathedral from the northeast (1857), Wikimedia Commons About this image ▸ The principal cathedral of Norway and the burial place of Saint Olav, on the bank of the Nid River in Trondheim. Built and rebuilt in stages from the late eleventh through the early fourteenth centuries around the shrine site at the cathedral's east end. The octagonal east end, raised directly over Olav's grave, was the devotional core of the medieval building. Substantially damaged by fires and the 1531 lightning strike, then by neglect across the Lutheran centuries. The west front a visitor sees today is a nineteenth- and twentieth-century reconstruction, completed only in 1983. The cathedral is the coronation and consecration church of Norwegian kings; Haakon VII was crowned there in 1906, Olav V consecrated in 1958, Harald V in 1991. On the trip Day 3 of the trip brings the Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) to Nidaros Cathedral. The shrine is gone but the spot is marked on the cathedral floor in the octagonal east end. The west front is the twentieth-century reconstruction of the face the medieval pilgrims saw. The pilgrim road comes in past the south door — the same door medieval pilgrims walked through. Nidaros Cathedral, Trondheim Also discussed in The King Who Became a Saint — how the Nordmen came to ChristA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy LandThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantThe Reformation, 1537 — one church eradicated and another imposedLutheran Norway and Pietism — a farmer named Hans Nielsen Hauge and a lay revival that could not be silencedThe Quiet Revolution — how Norway won its independence without a warTradisjoner — celebrations across the Norwegian year . Its court at Bergen Bergen × Photochrom print, General view from Fjeldveien, Bergen (c. 1890–1900), Library of Congress About this image ▸ Norway's western trading capital, founded around 1070 on the inner Byfjorden. For four centuries the largest city in the country and the wharf through which the entire western export economy ran — dried cod from the Lofoten fisheries, stockpiled and traded by the Hanseatic merchants at Bryggen from 1360 to 1754. Norway's commercial and intellectual heart through the Hanseatic period; overtaken in size by Christiania (Oslo) in the 1830s. The painted wooden Bryggen wharf is on the UNESCO World Heritage list and substantially what it was in the late seventeenth century. In this article The royal court of Hákon IV operated from Bergen through most of the thirteenth century. The Bergenhus fortress (begun in the 1240s) housed the king's hall; the cathedral school produced the Konungs skuggsjá. On the trip The Ungdommene (the Youngsters) reach Bergen late on Day 3 via the Norway-in-a-Nutshell train-and-ferry route from Oslo. On the Day 4 morning they walk Bryggen and ride the funicular up Mount Fløyen before flying back to Oslo and driving on to Lillehammer that evening — a day ahead of the Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters), who spend the split days north in Trondheim and the heritage country of Stjørdal, Hegra, and Kylloplass and come south on Day 5. Bergen Also discussed in The Germans Who "Ruled" Bergen — the Hanseatic merchants on Bryggen WharfBefore There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldThe King Who Became a Saint — how the Nordmen came to ChristA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantThe Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy LandThe Reformation, 1537 — one church eradicated and another imposedWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in NorwayKraken — the island-sized beast, logged as factSjøormer — the serpents in the deep lakes and fjordsPesta — an old woman walking from farm to farmFossegrimen — the waterfall fiddler who teaches you to playAlcohol and Vinmonopolet — when and where to buy a drinkEveryday etiquette — quiet voices, wide space, no smilingFood and dining customs — having patience, free water, brunost on everything🚨 Emergencies - important numbers, hospitals, and what you can doLanguage basics — just enough Norwegian to be politeWhat to wear — the layering system, on the ground sat in active conversation with the literary world of medieval Europe. The Norwegian state in the high Middle Ages was at the peak of its institutional and diplomatic development. The century roughly between 1217 and 1319 is what Norwegian historians call the storhetstiden Storhetstiden × Mittet & Co., Bergen. Haakonshallen (postcard, early 20th century), National Library of Norway About this image ▸ The age of greatness — the Norwegian historiographical term for the thirteenth-century high point of the medieval Norwegian kingdom, roughly the reigns of Hákon IV (1217–1263) and his son Magnus VI Lagabøte (1263–1280). The period combines maximum territorial extent (Norgesveldet), the codification of national law in the Landslov of 1274, the regulation of royal succession (Tronfølgeloven of 1260), flourishing court culture (translated Arthurian romance, Sturla Þórðarson's Hákonar saga), the high diplomacy of the Castilian marriage, and the building of Bergen as a Hanseatic-tied European city. The phrase frames the medieval kingdom as a peer of contemporary European powers — the reference point Norwegians return to after the long centuries under Denmark. — the time of greatness. “Golden Age” is an English gloss of the term.

The Norgesveldet

The Norway of Hákon IV Hákonarson Hákon IV Hákonarson × Drawing by Hakon Thorsen after the 1247/48 seal of Håkon IV, in Chr. Brinchmann, Norske Konge-sigiller (1924) About this image ▸ King of Norway 1217–1263, bynamed Hákon the Old in later tradition. His reign opened the Golden Age of medieval Norway — the country's last sustained period as an independent international power before the dynastic absorption into Denmark a century later. Brought the long civil war period to an end, extended Norwegian sovereignty to Iceland (which acknowledged him as king in 1262) and the Hebrides and Isle of Man, codified Norwegian law, and presided over the literary court that produced the Konungs skuggsjá (The King's Mirror) around 1250. Died on Orkney in December 1263 returning from his unsuccessful Scottish campaign. Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverThe Germans Who "Ruled" Bergen — the Hanseatic merchants on Bryggen Wharf at mid-century held, in various forms of sovereignty, the entire Norse-speaking North Atlantic. Iceland Iceland × Frederick W. W. Howell, Þingvellir from Almannagjá (c. 1900), Fiske Icelandic Collection, Cornell University Library About this image ▸ The North Atlantic island settled from Norway in the ninth and tenth centuries by chieftains and their followings who refused to accept Harald Fairhair's authority on the Norwegian mainland and emigrated rather than submit. They built a country without a king, governed by an annual open-air assembly at Þingvellir called the Alþing — the oldest parliament in the world by date of founding. Three centuries after the migration, their descendants (notably Snorri Sturluson) composed the prose sagas that became almost the only literary memory of the Norwegian petty kingdoms. Also discussed in Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldThe Viking Age — longships, legends, and the first "Norway"Worshiping Odin and Thor — the lived religion of pre-Christian NorwayThe King Who Became a Saint — how the Nordmen came to ChristA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormant in the west submitted to the Norwegian crown in 1262 by treaty, the Old Covenant Gamli sáttmáli × The Old Covenant — the treaty by which the Icelandic Commonwealth voluntarily submitted to the Norwegian crown, ratified at the Althing in stages between 1262 and 1264. After decades of internal feuding (the Sturlung Age), Iceland's chieftains agreed to recognise Hákon IV as king in exchange for guaranteed shipping connections, fixed tax obligations, and the right to repudiate the agreement if the king broke his side. The Covenant ended three centuries of Icelandic independence and incorporated Iceland into the Norwegian realm. With the Kalmar Union (1397) and the union with Denmark, Iceland passed under Danish rule until 1944. that ended the Icelandic commonwealth — by then more than three centuries old. Greenland had been paying tribute to Norway since 1261. The Faroe Islands Faroe Islands × O. Schulz, Thorshavn, from A. Baumgartner, Nordische Fahrten: Island und die Färöer (1889), British Library About this image ▸ Archipelago of eighteen volcanic islands in the North Atlantic between Norway, Iceland, and Scotland. Settled by Norse colonists beginning in the early ninth century, the Faroes were under Norwegian sovereignty by 1035; passed with Norway to Denmark in 1380 and remained under Danish rule after Norway's independence in 1814. Today a self-governing nation within the Kingdom of Denmark, with about fifty-three thousand people speaking Faroese (a North Germanic language closely related to Icelandic and to the western Norwegian dialects of Old Norse). The devotion to Saint Olav was carried across the Faroes by the medieval Norwegian archbishopric of Nidaros, and Olsok is still observed there. Also discussed in The King Who Became a Saint — how the Nordmen came to ChristA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormant had been a dependent province since the early eleventh century. Orkney Orkney × William Daniell, The Cathedral of St Magnus, Kirkwall (1821), A Voyage Round Great Britain About this image ▸ Archipelago of around seventy islands off the northeastern coast of Scotland, settled heavily by Norse from the ninth century onward and ruled as the Earldom of Orkney under the Norwegian crown until 1468, when the islands were pledged to Scotland as surety for the dowry of a Norwegian princess and never redeemed. The diocese of Orkney was one of the suffragan dioceses under the Norwegian archdiocese of Nidaros from 1152 onward, with the cathedral at Kirkwall — St. Magnus Cathedral, founded 1137 by Earl Rognvald in honour of his martyred uncle Magnus Erlendsson — one of the most northerly Romanesque cathedrals in Europe. Hákon IV of Norway died at the Bishop's Palace in Kirkwall in December 1263 after the unsuccessful Scottish campaign. Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churches was an earldom held by jarls who swore homage to Bergen; Shetland Shetland × Joan Blaeu, Orcades and Schetlandia, Atlas of Scotland (1654), National Library of Scotland About this image ▸ Archipelago of around a hundred islands off the northeastern coast of Scotland, about a hundred kilometres north of Orkney. Settled heavily by Norse from the late ninth century onward and ruled as crown land directly under the Norwegian royal administration through the medieval period. Pledged to Scotland in 1469 alongside Orkney as surety for the unpaid dowry of Margaret of Denmark, daughter of King Christian I — never redeemed; the islands have been Scottish ever since. The Norn language (a North Germanic dialect descended from Old Norse) was spoken there until the eighteenth century; Norse-derived place-names dominate the islands today. was crown land more directly under royal administration; the Hebrides off the western Scottish coast and the Isle of Man Isle of Man × William Miller after William L. Leitch, Castle Rushen (1845), Waverley Novels About this image ▸ Island in the Irish Sea between Britain and Ireland, about fifty-two kilometres long. Settled heavily by Norse from the ninth century onward and ruled through the medieval period by Norse-Gaelic kings (the Kingdom of Mann and the Isles) in suzerainty under the Norwegian crown. Ceded to Scotland with the Hebrides in 1266 by the Treaty of Perth. The Isle of Man's Tynwald, a Norse-derived open-air parliament meeting annually on Tynwald Hill since the medieval period, is one of the oldest continuously functioning legislatures in the world. Today a self-governing British Crown Dependency, neither part of the United Kingdom nor of the European Union. in the Irish Sea were held in suzerainty through the local Norse-Gaelic kings. (Today the Faroes are an autonomous Danish territory; Orkney, Shetland, and the Hebrides are part of Scotland; the Isle of Man is a self-governing British dependency in the sea between Britain and Ireland; Iceland and Greenland are independent or autonomous in their own right.) The Norwegian term for the whole arc is the Norgesveldet Norgesveldet × OnWikiNo, Norway About 1265 (2016), Wikimedia Commons About this image ▸ The Norwegian realm — the modern Norwegian term for the thirteenth-century maximum extent of Norwegian royal suzerainty: the Kingdom of Norway proper plus its tributary lands in the North Atlantic and the Irish Sea. At its greatest under Hákon IV (r. 1217–1263) the realm included mainland Norway, Iceland (incorporated 1262–1264), Greenland (incorporated 1261), the Faroes, Shetland, Orkney, the Hebrides, and the Isle of Man — the largest North Atlantic polity of the high Middle Ages. Most of the overseas possessions were lost piecemeal: the Hebrides and Man in 1266, Shetland and Orkney in 1469. Iceland and the Faroes remained until the modern era. — the Norwegian realm — and at its widest it stretched roughly four thousand kilometres of saltwater. From the archbishopric at Nidaros the metropolitan see held authority over every Norwegian diocese and over the sees of Iceland, Greenland, the Faroes, Orkney, and the Sudreyjar. Few European monarchies of the period held a single oceanic arc of comparable length.

The realm was held thinly. Medieval Norway in the middle of the thirteenth century had perhaps three to five hundred thousand people; Bergen, the capital, perhaps seven to ten thousand; Norse Greenland two or three thousand at its peak. The arc was vast, the population thin, and what carried the realm across it was not coercive power so much as institutional reach: an archbishopric, a customs system, a single law code, a court translating Chrétien de Troyes.

The boy-king who built it

Hákon IV Hákonarson was born in 1204 to a low-born concubine named Inga of Varteig Inga of Varteig × Inga fra Varteig: Den lille Håkon Håkonsson hos Helge Vasse (undated engraving) About this image ▸ Norwegian mother of King Hákon IV Hákonarson (c. 1185–1234). A woman of low birth from the Varteig parish in Østfold, southeastern Norway; mother of the future king through her relationship with King Hákon III Sverresson, who died in 1204 before the child was born. Carried by Birkebeiner partisans with her infant son across the central Norwegian highland in the winter of 1205–06 to bring him to safety at Nidaros — the ski-rescue commemorated by the modern Birkebeinerrennet race. In 1218 at Bergen, with her son acclaimed king, Inga submitted to the iron ordeal — carrying red-hot iron unharmed before the assembled court — to establish her son's paternity and his legitimate right to the throne. and a king, Hákon III Sverresson Hákon III Sverresson × C. I. Schive, Norges Mynter i Middelalderen (Christiania, 1865), plate drawing About this image ▸ King of Norway 1202–1204 (Hákon III), son of King Sverre Sigurdsson of the Birkebeiner faction. Reigned only two years before dying at Bergen on 1 January 1204, possibly poisoned by his stepmother Margrete according to suspicion that produced a formal trial. Fathered the future Hákon IV Hákonarson with a low-born concubine named Inga of Varteig; the child was born later in 1204 and inherited the Birkebeiner claim to the throne amid the ongoing civil wars. , who died the same year. In the winter of 1205–06, two of the surviving Birkebeiner Birkebeiner × Knud Bergslien, Birkebeinerne på Ski over Fjeldet med Kongsbarnet (1869), Skimuseet, Holmenkollen About this image ▸ The birch-leggers — the rebel faction that emerged in Norway in 1174 from the rural districts of inland Trøndelag and the upland valleys, named in mockery (their poverty was such that they wrapped birch bark around their legs in place of proper leg-wraps). Initially a disorganised peasant rising, the movement found a leader in the priest-turned-king Sverre Sigurdsson, who took the kingship in 1184 and founded the dynasty that would rule Norway through the thirteenth- century Golden Age. The Birkebeiners' iconic moment is the 1206 midwinter rescue of the infant Hákon Hákonsson — future Hákon IV — skied across the mountains from Lillehammer to safety. partisans — the rival faction the new king’s family had led — carried the two-year-old Hákon on skis across the mountains of central Norway in a snowstorm to bring him safely to Nidaros. The Birkebeinerrennet Birkebeinerrennet × Torstein Frogner, Birkebeinerrennet race near Midtfjellet (2010), CC BY-SA 3.0 About this image ▸ Modern long-distance cross-country ski race held annually in March from Rena to Lillehammer — a 54-kilometre course over the Birkebeiner mountain ridge, with each skier carrying a 3.5-kilogram pack symbolising the infant Hákon Hákonsson. The race commemorates the legendary midwinter rescue of the two-year-old future King Hákon IV in 1206, when the Birkebeiner warriors Torstein Skevla and Skjervald Skrukka skied him across the mountains from Lillehammer to Østerdalen to escape the rival Bagler faction during the Norwegian civil wars. Founded in 1932, the race grew into one of the largest participation ski events in the world. On the trip The race finishes in Lillehammer each March — the same town where the trip's two family groups reunite on Day 5. , the long-distance Norwegian ski race held each March between Rena and Lillehammer, commemorates the rescue. In 1218, at Bergen, the boy’s mother Inga submitted to the iron ordeal — carrying red-hot iron unharmed before the assembled court — to establish her son’s legitimacy as the rightful heir. The child had already been acclaimed king at the Øyrating Øyrating × The medieval thing (assembly) that met at the mouth of the Nidelva river in Trondheim, on the sand-bar (Norse eyrr) at Øra where the river opens to the fjord. From the Viking Age onward Øyrating served as the place of acclamation for new Norwegian kings — the king-making assembly of Trøndelag, parallel to the Mostertinget at Moster and the regional law-things. Hákon IV was acclaimed there as a thirteen-year-old in 1217 after his father's death, beginning the long reign that would steady the Sverre dynasty and open the Norwegian Golden Age. assembly outside Trondheim Trondheim × Knud Knudsen, Parti af Havnen i Trondhjem (1888-1894), National Library of Norway About this image ▸ Norway's third-largest city, founded by Olav Tryggvason in 997 as Nidaros at the mouth of the Nid River on the inner Trondheim Fjord. Capital of the Norwegian kingdom for much of the medieval period; seat of the Norwegian archbishopric from 1153 and of the Olav cult that anchored medieval Norwegian Christianity. Renamed Trondheim in 1931 — after a controversial one-year spell officially named Nidaros from 1930 — replacing the Danish-era spelling Trondhjem and reviving the medieval Old Norse district name (Þrándheimr). About two hundred thousand people in the municipality today. Home to Nidaros Cathedral, NTNU (the Norwegian University of Science and Technology), and the Trondheim Fjord harbour. On the trip Day 3 of the trip routes the Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) through Trondheim. The visit centres on Nidaros Cathedral — the building the Olav devotion raised, and the architectural inheritance of Bishop Grimkell's pronouncement on a summer day in 1031. Trondheim Also discussed in The King Who Became a Saint — how the Nordmen came to ChristA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy LandThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantThe Reformation, 1537 — one church eradicated and another imposedLutheran Norway and Pietism — a farmer named Hans Nielsen Hauge and a lay revival that could not be silencedWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in NorwayBefore There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldDriving in Norway — tolls, ferries, and a near-zero alcohol limitEveryday etiquette — quiet voices, wide space, no smiling🚨 Emergencies - important numbers, hospitals, and what you can doLanguage basics — just enough Norwegian to be polite in June 1217, at thirteen years old. He spent the first decade of his reign navigating the surviving factions of the civil-war century Norwegian Civil Wars × Wilhelm Wetlesen, "Slaget ved Minne", illustration for Haraldssønnenes saga, Snorre 1899-edition About this image ▸ The hundred-year period of intermittent civil war over the Norwegian throne (c. 1130–1240) that followed the contested succession at the death of Sigurd Jorsalfar in 1130. Multiple pretenders and pretender-factions — the Birkebeinar (the "Birch-Legs," supporters of the pretender Sverre Sigurdsson), the Baglar (church-supported rivals), and various claimants through legitimate and contested descent — fought across Norway in shifting coalitions. The civil wars were finally brought to an end by the kings of the thirteenth-century Golden Age, particularly Hákon IV Hákonarson, whose long reign (1217–1263) established the stable royal succession that Norway had lacked for over a century. Also discussed in The Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy Land that Sigurd Jorsalfar Sigurd Jorsalfar × Andreas Bloch, Sigurd Entering Constantinople, in Noregs soge i bilete og ord (Mittet & Co., 1926) About this image ▸ Sigurd I Magnusson (c. 1090 – 26 March 1130), king of Norway 1103–1130, bynamed Jorsalfar — "the Jerusalem-farer" — for leading the Norwegian Crusade of 1107–1111. The first reigning European monarch ever to lead a crusade to the Holy Land in person. Ruled jointly with his brothers Eystein I (until 1123) and Olav (until 1115), then alone for his last seven years. Brought a splinter of the True Cross back from the siege of Sidon and kept it at his border town of Konungahella; after the 1135 Wendish sack of the town the relic disappears from the record. His contested succession at his death in 1130 opened the century of the Norwegian civil wars. Also discussed in The Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy Land ’s death in 1130 had set in motion, and by 1240 the last serious rebellion against him had been put down. The hundred-year fight over the throne was over.

In 1247 the papal legate William of Sabina William of Sabina × Seal of William of Sabina (1247), reproduced in Ilmari Salomies, Suomen kirkon historia I (1944) About this image ▸ Italian cardinal-bishop (c. 1184–1251), Bishop of Sabina from 1244, papal legate to Northern Europe under Popes Gregory IX, Innocent IV, and others. Crowned King Hákon IV Hákonarson at Bergen in 1247 — the first Norwegian king consecrated by a papal legate in person and the first formal royal coronation in Norway since the saga-tradition rite for Magnus Erlingsson in 1163. The ceremony at Bergen formalised the international recognition of Hákon's rule and brought the medieval Norwegian monarchy into ritual alignment with the European norm. William died at Lyon in 1251 on his way to a papal council. crowned Hákon at Bergen — the first Norwegian king consecrated by a papal legate in person. His forty-six-year reign on the throne was the longest any Norwegian king had reigned since Harald Fairhair Harald Fairhair × Flateyjarbók illumination, Harald Fairhair receives the kingdom (c. 1387–1394), Árni Magnússon Institute About this image ▸ Traditionally remembered as the first king of a unified Norway, reigning ca. 872 to ca. 933. Inherited the small kingdom of Vestfold at ten on the death of his father Halfdan the Black; over two decades subdued the petty kingdoms of the western coast, climaxing at the sea-battle of Hafrsfjord. His court poet's Haraldskvæði calls him lúfa ("shock-head"); Hárfagri ("Fairhair") appears in verse of debated authenticity attributed to his skalds, and is first securely attested in twelfth-century prose (Íslendingabók). The famous oath not to cut his hair until he had subjected every petty king is later saga construction. His actual authority stopped short of the Arctic north and the inland mountains, but he established the durable idea of a single Norwegian crown. Also discussed in Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldThe Viking Age — longships, legends, and the first "Norway"The Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone forever .

A kingdom paid for in fish

The realm was paid for by a single export commodity. The Atlantic cod that spawned every February off the Lofoten Lofoten × Gunnar Berg, Vinter i Lofoten (before 1893), via Wikimedia Commons About this image ▸ Archipelago in Nordland County in northern Norway, lying north of the Arctic Circle and stretching about a hundred and seventy kilometres off the mainland coast. Famous for dramatic peaks rising directly out of the sea, traditional fishing villages built on stilts (rorbuer), and the centuries-old winter cod-fishing industry that supplied the dried-stockfish trade Bergen ran during the Hanseatic era. Site of the reconstructed Viking-Age chieftain's hall at Borg — the largest known Viking-Age building in Scandinavia. Lofoten Islands Also discussed in The Viking Age — longships, legends, and the first "Norway"The Germans Who "Ruled" Bergen — the Hanseatic merchants on Bryggen WharfDraugen — the drowned man who never came home archipelago, above the Arctic Circle, was caught by Norwegian fishermen, split and gutted on the wharves, and hung in pairs on wooden drying racks in the polar winter wind. By spring the fish had become stockfish Stockfish × Anders Beer Wilse, Reine, Moskenes (1924), National Library of Norway About this image ▸ Air-dried cod, the principal Norwegian export through the high and late Middle Ages and the commodity that built Bergen. Whole gutted cod from the Lofoten winter fishery are hung on wooden racks (hjell) in the open February air; in three months the fish loses about three-quarters of its weight and becomes a hard, lightweight, almost indefinitely keeping protein source. The Catholic Church's fast-day rules — meat forbidden on Fridays, during Lent, and on the vigils of major feasts (roughly a third of the days of the year) — created a continent-wide market. The Hanseatic Bergen kontor controlled the export from the fourteenth century onward. Norwegian stockfish (tørrfisk) is still produced in Lofoten today. Also discussed in The Germans Who "Ruled" Bergen — the Hanseatic merchants on Bryggen WharfMat og Drikke — Norwegian food and drink — hard and light and edible for years without salt — the perfect protein for a Christian Europe whose religious calendar banned meat on more than a hundred days a year. The dried cod travelled south from Lofoten to Bergen, where it was graded, packed, and sold to merchants from the north German Hanseatic cities, from English ports like Hull and King’s Lynn, and from Bruges Bruges × Georg Braun & Frans Hogenberg, Bruges, Civitates Orbis Terrarum (1st ed. 1572, this print 1635) About this image ▸ Medieval Flemish port city, today the capital of West Flanders in modern Belgium. One of the leading commercial centres of northern Europe through the high and late Middle Ages — the pre-eminent northern outpost of the international Italian banking houses and one of the principal terminals of the Hanseatic trade. The Bergen stockfish trade reached Bruges through the Hanseatic merchant networks, and the city was the main market through which Norwegian dried cod entered the Catholic European fast-day economy. Modern Bruges preserves its medieval centre largely intact and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Also discussed in The Germans Who "Ruled" Bergen — the Hanseatic merchants on Bryggen Wharf in Flanders (modern-day northern Belgium). Through the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the trade dominated the Norwegian export economy: at its peak, by the reconstruction modern historians make from the Bergen customs records, more than eighty per cent of Norway’s exports by value moved through it. The crown’s customs revenue on the trade was the largest single source of royal income in the country. The cathedral at Nidaros, the royal court at Bergen, the diplomatic missions to the European courts, and the fleets that kept the Atlantic dependencies in the realm were all paid for in dried fish.

The court at Bergen

The court that Hákon IV gathered at Bergen sustained an active literary culture in Old Norwegian. The Konungs skuggsjá Konungs skuggsjá × Konungs skuggsjá manuscript leaf, reproduced in Kristian Kålund, Palæografisk Atlas (1905) About this image ▸ The King's Mirror — the richest single Old Norwegian literary document of the medieval Norwegian church period. Composed anonymously around 1250 during the reign of Hákon IV as a long conversation between father and son, the Konungs skuggsjá covers law, courtly manners, geography, natural science, and theology in a single sustained voice — a Norwegian contribution to the medieval European mirror-for-princes genre. Particularly important as one of the few medieval Scandinavian sources containing detailed observations of the Atlantic — including the earliest known European descriptions of Greenland's ice floes, the aurora borealis, and the natural history of the northern seas. Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churches — the King’s Mirror — was composed in or around 1250 as a long didactic dialogue between a father and a son covering courtly conduct, naval navigation, polar geography, mercantile law, theology, and the proper relation between royal authority and divine law. It is the single richest document the medieval Norwegian court produced. Alongside the original work, Hákon’s court sponsored a major translation movement: continental chivalric romance was rendered into Old Norwegian for the king’s reading — the courtly poems of Chrétien de Troyes Chrétien de Troyes × Ivory casket panel, Gauvain au lit périlleux (Paris, c. 1340-1350), Musée du Louvre; photo Tangopaso About this image ▸ French courtly poet of the late twelfth century (c. 1135 – c. 1190), the founding author of medieval Arthurian romance. Composed five major romances in Old French — Erec et Enide, Cligès, Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, and the unfinished Perceval, the Story of the Grail. Established several of the most enduring Arthurian narrative motifs: the affair of Lancelot and Guinevere, the Grail quest, the knight's identity-and-honour quest. His works were translated into Old Norwegian at the Bergen court of Hákon IV in the thirteenth century as part of the Norwegian royal sponsorship of continental chivalric romance. , the Arthurian cycle, and Thomas of Britain’s Tristan (translated as Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar in 1226 at Hákon’s commission) all rendered into the king’s tongue. The intellectual reach of the Bergen court in the middle of the thirteenth century was the most extensive in the medieval North.

The Icelandic historian and saga-writer Snorri Sturluson Snorri Sturluson × Christian Krohg, Snorre Sturlason (1899), from Norges Kongesagaer; scan: National Library of Norway About this image ▸ Thirteenth-century Icelandic chieftain, poet, and historian. Composed the Heimskringla and the Prose Edda in the 1220s from oral tradition and skaldic verse — three hundred years after the Viking-age events he describes. The single richest source for Norway's pre-conversion centuries and also the most aware Christian-Icelandic editor of them. Modern scholarship accepts what other sources independently confirm and treats his richest expansions as the work of a poet writing about a kingdom he had never seen. Assassinated at Reykholt on 23 September 1241 by agents of King Hákon IV after a falling-out at court. In this article Snorri served briefly as a courtier at Hákon IV's court before falling out with the king and being assassinated by Hákon's agents at Reykholt on 23 September 1241. The saga of Hákon's own reign was written after the king's death by Snorri's nephew, Sturla Thordarson. Also discussed in The Viking Age — longships, legends, and the first "Norway"Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldWorshiping Odin and Thor — the lived religion of pre-Christian NorwayThe King Who Became a Saint — how the Nordmen came to ChristA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy LandNordisk Mytologi — Odin, the giants, and Ragnarok was briefly a courtier at Hákon’s court before falling out with the king. In September 1241 Hákon’s agents assassinated him in his cellar at Reykholt Reykholt × W. G. Collingwood, Snorri's Bathhouse at Reykholt (1899), Pilgrimage to the Saga-Steads of Iceland About this image ▸ Small farming settlement in Borgarfjörður, western Iceland, about a hundred kilometres north of Reykjavík. Home of Snorri Sturluson — Iceland's pre-eminent saga-writer and chieftain — through the height of his power in the early thirteenth century. Snorri composed the Prose Edda and Heimskringla at Reykholt and was killed there on the night of 22–23 September 1241 in his own cellar by retainers of his son-in-law Gissur Þorvaldsson, acting under orders from King Hákon IV. The geothermal pool Snorralaug, where Snorri is recorded as bathing, survives at the site and is one of Iceland's oldest preserved built structures. in western Iceland; the saga tradition records his last words as Eigi skal höggva! — do not strike. After Hákon’s death two decades later, his son Magnus VI Magnus VI Lagabøte × Stone head of Magnus VI Lagabøte (13th c.), Stavanger Cathedral; photo: Gunleiv Hadland (CC BY-SA 3.0) About this image ▸ King of Norway 1263-1280, bynamed Lagabøte ("Law-mender") in recognition of his promulgation in 1274 of the Landslov, the Code of National Law that unified the four regional thing-law traditions (Gulating, Frostating, Borgarting, Eidsivating) into a single national code. The Landslov remained the law of Norway for more than four hundred years and made Norway one of the first European kingdoms with a unified national legal code. Also discussed in Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverThe Germans Who "Ruled" Bergen — the Hanseatic merchants on Bryggen WharfThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantAllemannsretten — the right to roam commissioned Snorri’s nephew Sturla Þórðarson Sturla Þórðarson × Íslendinga saga within Sturlunga saga, composed by Sturla Þórðarson; National Museum of Iceland, photo by Szilas About this image ▸ Icelandic saga-writer, lawman, and politician (1214–1284), nephew of Snorri Sturluson. Among the most prolific of thirteenth-century Icelandic historians. Commissioned by King Magnus VI Lagabøte shortly after the death of Hákon IV in 1263 to write the saga of the dead king's reign — the Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar, completed within a year or two and the longest medieval royal saga ever composed about a Norwegian king. Also authored the Íslendinga saga (the principal chronicle of the late Icelandic commonwealth and the political crisis that ended in submission to Norway in 1262) and a saga of King Magnus VI's own reign. Served briefly as Magnus VI's lawman in Iceland after the Old Covenant submission. — an Icelander like his uncle — to write the saga of the dead king’s reign. The result, the Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar × Eirspennill (AM 47 fol), folio 2r (c. 1300–25), Arnamagnæan Institute / handrit.is About this image ▸ The Saga of Hákon Hákonsson — the contemporary biography of King Hákon IV of Norway, written in Old Norse by the Icelandic chieftain and historian Sturla Þórðarson at the commission of Hákon's son Magnus VI immediately after Hákon's death in 1263. Sturla — nephew of Snorri Sturluson — drew on royal records, the testimony of the king's retainers, and his own visits to the Norwegian court. The saga is the fullest narrative source for the Norwegian Golden Age: the child-king's rescue and acclamation, the long reign, the building of Bergen, the Castilian marriage, and the final voyage west to Orkney. Survives in Icelandic manuscripts of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. , completed within a year or two of Hákon’s death in 1263, is the longest medieval royal saga ever composed about a Norwegian king and the principal narrative source for everything the modern reader knows about his reign.

Kristina to Castile

The marriage that brought the Castilian delegation to Tønsberg in 1256 was the clearest external acknowledgment of Norway’s standing among the medieval European monarchies. Alfonso X — remembered in Castile as Alfonso the Wise for his patronage of law and learning — was searching for royal marriages for his younger brothers as part of his diplomatic case for election as Holy Roman Emperor. He sent his emissaries to Norway, among other places, and Hákon agreed to send his eldest daughter south. Kristina’s mother was Margrete Skulesdatter, daughter of Duke Skule Bårdsson Skule Bårdsson × Flateyjarbók miniature of Håkon the Old and Skule Bårdsson (c. 1387–94) About this image ▸ Norwegian noble (1189–1240), the principal rival to King Hákon IV through the first two decades of Hákon's reign. Duke (the first man to hold that title in Norway) from 1237; his daughter Margrete Skulesdatter married Hákon in 1225 as part of the initial settlement between the two men. The settlement broke down through the 1230s, and Skule had himself acclaimed king at the Øyrating at Trondheim in 1239 in open revolt. Defeated by Hákon's forces at Oslo in May 1240; killed shortly afterward at Elgeseter Abbey outside Trondheim. His death ended the last serious challenge of the century-long Norwegian civil wars. Henrik Ibsen's 1863 play The Pretenders dramatises the conflict. — the rival whose revolt of 1239–40 against Hákon had been the last serious challenge of the civil wars, and whose defeat had ended them. The woman whose father’s defeat had ended the war and the woman sent abroad to confirm the realm’s standing were mother and daughter.

Kristina sailed from Tønsberg in the summer of 1257 with a Norwegian retinue, made the slow voyage by sea and land through France and Aragon (modern-day eastern Spain), reached Burgos Burgos × Six / R. de Launay, in Alexandre de Laborde, Voyage pittoresque et historique de l'Espagne (1820) About this image ▸ Historic capital city of medieval Castile, in modern northern Spain. Royal capital of the unified Castile-León from the thirteenth century onward. Site of the Romanesque-Gothic Burgos Cathedral, begun in 1221 and a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1984. Kristina Hákonsdatter and her Norwegian retinue reached Burgos by Christmas 1257 on the long voyage south from Norway, and were received with ceremony at the Castilian court before continuing to Valladolid for the wedding in March 1258. Covarrubias, where Kristina is buried, is about forty kilometres southeast. (in modern-day northern Spain) by Christmas, and was received with ceremony at the Castilian court. The following spring, on the thirty-first of March 1258, she was married to the Infante Felipe Infante Felipe of Castile × Tiberioclaudio99, tomb of Infante Felipe of Castile, Villalcázar de Sirga (CC0) About this image ▸ Younger brother of King Alfonso X of Castile (1231–1274). Held the collegiate church of San Cosme y San Damián at Covarrubias as a clerical benefice in his youth, with the prospect of becoming Archbishop of Seville; renounced the church career to marry the Norwegian princess Kristina Hákonsdatter on 31 March 1258 at the collegiate church of Santa María in Valladolid. Kristina had been offered the choice among Alfonso's brothers and chose Felipe. Moved with her to Seville, where Kristina died childless in 1262. Felipe transported her body north and buried her at Covarrubias, the church he had once held. Later rebelled against his brother Alfonso in the noble revolt of 1272–73 before being reconciled to the crown. Died in 1274. at the collegiate church of Santa María in Valladolid. She had been offered the choice among Alfonso’s brothers and had chosen Felipe; the chronicle tradition records that she preferred his bearing. She moved with her new husband to Seville, the southern city the Castilian crown had taken from its Muslim rulers a decade before. She died there in 1262, childless, four years after the wedding. Felipe transported her body north and had it buried at the collegiate church of San Cosme y San Damián in Covarrubias Covarrubias × "España pintoresca. Covarrubias," Semanario Pintoresco Español (11 April 1847) About this image ▸ Small medieval town in Burgos province of northern Castile, about forty kilometres southeast of Burgos. Site of the collegiate church of San Cosme y San Damián, where the Norwegian princess Kristina Hákonsdatter has been buried since her husband Infante Felipe of Castile transported her body north from Seville in 1262. The stone sarcophagus stood in a side chapel for nearly seven centuries until it was opened accidentally during a 1952 restoration and formally examined in 1958 — Kristina's remains and funerary dress were intact inside. The tomb is now a joint Norwegian-Castilian cultural- historic site, with a small modern exhibition on her marriage. — a church he himself had held as a clerical benefice before renouncing it to marry her. The marriage produced no heirs and no continuing dynastic union. But it confirmed in a way that no document could match what the Norwegian kingdom was: a country whose princess could be married, on terms negotiated as between equals, into the royal house of one of the most powerful kingdoms in Europe.

The succession law and the Landslov

The structural foundation for what came next had been laid by Hákon himself, three years before his death. In 1260 he promulgated the Tronfølgeloven Tronfølgeloven × The Norwegian Law of Royal Succession enacted in 1260 under King Hákon IV. It replaced the old system of joint kingship and elective acclamation — which had fuelled the civil-war century — with strict male-line primogeniture: the eldest legitimate son inherits, undivided, with the succession of younger brothers only if the elder line fails. The law was a precondition for the orderly transitions of Magnus VI (1263), Eirik II (1280), and Hákon V (1299), and it ended a hundred and ten years of dynastic civil war. It was the kind of structural reform that defines the Sverre-dynasty Golden Age — bureaucratic state-building rather than military expansion. , a new law of royal succession that replaced the older combination of inheritance and election with strict primogeniture: the throne would pass, from this point forward, to the eldest legitimate son of the reigning king. The civil-war century the country had endured before the 1240s had been driven, more than by any other single cause, by the old system’s habit of producing competing claimants and contested elections among them. The 1260 law made hereditary monarchy the constitutional principle of medieval Norway. It is the single institutional act of the period most often missed in general histories.

The work of Hákon’s son Magnus VI — called Magnus Lagabøte, Magnus the Lawmender — followed in 1274. Before his reign, Norway had operated under four separate regional codes, one for each of the great assemblies at Gulating Gulating × Jeblad, Steinkorset ved porten til Eivindvik kirke (2008), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 About this image ▸ The regional thing-law assembly of southwestern Norway, meeting traditionally at Gulen in present-day Sogn og Fjordane. One of the four great medieval Norwegian regional law traditions; its jurisdiction covered the western coast from Agder to Sunnmøre and produced the Gulatingslova, recorded in writing by the twelfth century. The Gulating tradition was rolled into Magnus Lagabøte's Landslov of 1274. The modern Gulating Court of Appeal in Bergen inherits the name. Also discussed in Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldThe King Who Became a Saint — how the Nordmen came to ChristA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churches in the west, Frostating Frostating × Frostatingslova fragment (c. 1260), National Archives of Norway (Riksarkivet), CC BY-SA 4.0 About this image ▸ The regional thing-law assembly of central Norway, meeting at Frosta on the Trondheim Fjord. Jurisdiction covered Trøndelag and the surrounding northern districts. Its codification, the Frostatingslova, dates to the twelfth century in its surviving form but preserves substantially older customary law. Rolled into Magnus Lagabøte's Landslov of 1274. The modern Frostating Court of Appeal in Trondheim carries the name. Also discussed in Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldWorshiping Odin and Thor — the lived religion of pre-Christian NorwayThe King Who Became a Saint — how the Nordmen came to ChristA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churches in Trøndelag, Borgarting Borgarting × Christian August Lorentzen, The Waterfall Sarpsfossen (1795), Nasjonalmuseet About this image ▸ The regional thing-law assembly of southeastern Norway, meeting at Borg (modern Sarpsborg). Jurisdiction covered the southeast including Vestfold and Østfold. Its surviving Borgartingslova preserves the regional legal tradition of the southeastern petty kingdoms; rolled into Magnus Lagabøte's Landslov of 1274. The modern Borgarting Court of Appeal in Oslo carries the name. Also discussed in Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churches in the southeast, and Eidsivating Eidsivating × Photo: Harry Wad, Eidsivating memorial stone at Eidsvoll (2007), CC BY 2.5 About this image ▸ The regional thing-law assembly of the inland east of Norway, meeting traditionally at Eidsvoll — the same Eidsvoll where, eight centuries later, the Norwegian Constitution was written and signed in 1814. Jurisdiction covered the inland districts of Hedmark, Romerike, and the surrounding interior. Its Eidsivatingslova was rolled into Magnus Lagabøte's Landslov of 1274. The modern Eidsivating Court of Appeal carries the name; its seat is at Hamar. Also discussed in Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churches in the inland. Over the decade after his accession in 1263, Magnus and the lawmen of his court unified the four into a single national code in Old Norwegian. The Landslov Landslov (1274) × Magnus Lagabøtes landslov, AM 305 fol., fol. 10v (13th-14th c.), via Wikimedia Commons About this image ▸ Norwegian Magnus Lagabøtes landslov — the Code of National Law promulgated by King Magnus VI Lagabøte in 1274. Unified the four separate regional thing-law traditions (Gulating, Frostating, Borgarting, Eidsivating) into a single code applying across the whole Norwegian kingdom. Made Norway one of the first European kingdoms with a unified national legal code, decades ahead of similar developments in England or France. Remained the law of Norway for more than four hundred years, until Christian V's Norske Lov superseded it in 1687. Also discussed in Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantAllemannsretten — the right to roam — the Law of the Land — was among the earliest unified national codes written in any European vernacular, and among the most durable: it remained the law of Norway, with revisions, for more than four hundred years, until its replacement by Christian V’s Norwegian Law in 1687.

Several of its provisions were striking by the legal standards of medieval Europe. It expanded women’s inheritance rights beyond what the older regional codes had recognised. It treated theft from necessity — food taken by the destitute who could not otherwise feed themselves — as a lesser offence than ordinary theft. It established a single uniform standard of justice across what had been four distinct jurisdictions. A separate Town’s-Law followed in 1276 for the urban districts. By the close of Magnus VI’s reign — in 1280, when he died at forty-two — the Norwegian kingdom held a unified national law in its own vernacular, a hereditary succession secured by Hákon’s 1260 statute, an institutional church under its own archbishop, a maritime realm across the Norse-speaking North Atlantic, marriage ties to Castile, and a literary culture both producing original work and translating continental work into the same Old Norwegian tongue. It was, by the institutional and diplomatic standards of its century, a successful medium-rank European monarchy.

Largs, Perth, and the slide

The first piece of the realm to fall away came while Hákon was still on the throne. The Hebrides and the Isle of Man, Norwegian since the eleventh century, were under increasing pressure through the early 1260s from the Scottish king Alexander III Alexander III of Scotland × Benjamin West, Alexander III Rescued from a Stag (1786), National Galleries of Scotland About this image ▸ King of Scots 1249–1286, son of Alexander II. Acceded at age seven and consolidated royal authority across his long reign. Pressed Norwegian sovereignty over the Hebrides and the Isle of Man through the early 1260s, provoking King Hákon IV's last campaign and the inconclusive Battle of Largs on 2 October 1263. Three years later, by the Treaty of Perth (1266), Alexander purchased Norwegian sovereignty over the Hebrides and Man from Hákon's son Magnus VI for four thousand marks and a hundred-mark annual tribute in perpetuity. His own death in a riding accident in 1286 left the Scottish throne in a succession crisis — eventually leading to the Wars of Scottish Independence against the Plantagenet English crown. . In the summer of 1263 Hákon assembled a large fleet at Bergen, sailed south to the western Scottish coast to defend the southern frontier of the realm, and fought an inconclusive engagement at Largs Battle of Largs × William Hole, The Battle of Largs, Scottish National Portrait Gallery mural About this image ▸ Inconclusive but strategically decisive engagement on 2 October 1263 between the Norwegian fleet of King Hákon IV and Scottish forces under Alexander III at Largs on the Firth of Clyde. Hákon had sailed west to enforce Norwegian suzerainty over the Hebrides; an autumn storm scattered his ships, the landing party was driven back from the beach, and the king withdrew north to Orkney, where he died in Kirkwall that December. The battle ended Norwegian military power in the Irish Sea. Three years later, Hákon's son Magnus VI ceded the Hebrides and the Isle of Man to Scotland in the Treaty of Perth (1266) in exchange for an annual payment that was rarely paid. on the second of October. He withdrew to Orkney for the winter and died at the bishop’s palace at Kirkwall Kirkwall × G. W. Wilson & Co. (attrib.), Kirkwall Harbour (c. 1850-80), Rijksmuseum About this image ▸ Principal town of the Orkney Islands, on the largest island (Mainland), about a kilometre inland from the harbour. Founded by the Norse and remained the seat of the Earls of Orkney — ruled in suzerainty under the Norwegian crown — through the medieval period. Site of St Magnus Cathedral, begun in 1137 in honour of the martyred Earl Magnus Erlendsson, and the Bishop's Palace, where King Hákon IV of Norway died on the night of 15–16 December 1263 after his withdrawal from the Scottish coast. Orkney passed to Scotland in 1469. The name Kirkjuvágr — "church bay" — is Norse. on the sixteenth of December, never having returned to Norway. The saga tradition records that on his last evenings he had Latin books read aloud to him, tired of them, and asked instead for the kings’ sagas of his own dynasty — the histories of the line he came from, in the language of the country he had reigned over for forty-six years. He died, the saga says, to a recitation of the Saga of his grandfather, King Sverre King Sverre Sigurdsson × Peter Nicolai Arbo, Kong Sverres flukt (1862), KODE Art Museums, Bergen About this image ▸ King of Norway 1184–1202 (Sverre I), founder of the Birkebeiner dynasty and grandfather of Hákon IV. Born in the Faroes around 1151; emerged in the 1170s as leader of the Birkebeinar (the "Birch-Legs"), a faction of poor and propertyless Norwegians named for the birch-bark they wrapped their feet in when their boots wore out. Took the Norwegian throne in 1184 after defeating King Magnus V Erlingsson at the sea-battle of Fimreite. His own saga — Sverris saga, written under his supervision by the Icelandic abbot Karl Jónsson — is one of the great medieval Norwegian biographical works, the recitation of which the dying Hákon IV asked for at Kirkwall in December 1263. Excommunicated by Pope Innocent III in 1198; reconciled with the church only posthumously. .

Three years later his son Magnus signed the Treaty of Perth Treaty of Perth × Semhur, Kingdom of Mann and the Isles (2007), Wikimedia Commons About this image ▸ The 1266 treaty by which King Magnus VI of Norway ceded the Hebrides and the Isle of Man to King Alexander III of Scotland in exchange for 4,000 marks paid in four annual instalments and an annual rent of 100 marks in perpetuity (the latter rarely paid in practice). Orkney and Shetland remained under Norwegian sovereignty. The treaty followed the Norwegian withdrawal after the Battle of Largs (1263) and the death of Hákon IV in Kirkwall that December — it ended Norwegian military involvement in the Irish Sea and formally drew the western boundary of Norgesveldet. Scotland recognised Norwegian sovereignty over Orkney and Shetland in the same document — those islands were not ceded until 1469 as surety for an unpaid royal dowry. : Norway received four thousand marks in four annual installments and a hundred-mark annual tribute in perpetuity, and ceded sovereignty over the Hebrides and the Isle of Man to the Scottish crown. The realm kept Orkney and Shetland, Iceland and Greenland, the Faroes and the rest intact. But its southern reach had been negotiated away.

The slide that began at Largs accelerated through the decades that followed. The Hanseatic merchants of Lübeck Lübeck × Georg Braun & Frans Hogenberg, Lübeck, Civitates Orbis Terrarum (16th c.) About this image ▸ North German port city on the Baltic, founded in 1143 and granted imperial-free-city status in 1226. Capital of the Hanseatic League, the merchant confederation that dominated northern European trade from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries. From Lübeck the Hansa established its great trading kontor at Bergen — the Bryggen wharf — and controlled the stockfish export trade that linked Norway to the Catholic fast-day economy of Europe. The "Queen of the Hansa." Lübeck's medieval old town, dominated by the twin spires of the Marienkirche, is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Also discussed in The Germans Who "Ruled" Bergen — the Hanseatic merchants on Bryggen Wharf and Hamburg Hamburg × Georg Braun & Frans Hogenberg, Hamburgum, Civitates Orbis Terrarum (1588 ed.) About this image ▸ Major North German port city at the head of the Elbe estuary, about a hundred kilometres from the open North Sea. Founded as an archbishopric in 831 by Louis the Pious. Together with Lübeck a co-founder of the Hanseatic League and one of its principal western terminals — the Hansa connection that linked it to the Norwegian stockfish trade through Bergen. An imperial free city from 1189. Today the second-largest city in modern Germany and one of the world's great container ports. secured progressively larger commercial privileges at Bergen, beginning with a grant from Magnus VI in 1278 and a renewal under Eirik II in 1294, and through the early fourteenth century they came to take a growing share of the western North Sea trade in stockfish out of Norwegian hands. The terms of trade slowly turned against Norwegian sellers as the Hanseatic share grew. Greenlandic tribute became inconsistent. Iceland and the Faroes managed their own affairs at greater distance from the Norwegian crown. The line itself ran out. When Hákon V Hákon V Magnusson × Drawing by Hakon Thorsen after Håkon V's 1300–02 seal, in Chr. Brinchmann, Norske Konge-sigiller (1924) About this image ▸ King of Norway 1299–1319, the last king of the Sverre dynasty. Younger son of Magnus VI Lagabøte. Moved the de facto capital from Bergen to Oslo (then a smaller eastern town), began the construction of Akershus Fortress to defend it, and worked to rebuild the central royal administration against the growing Hanseatic dominance of the Bergen-centred export economy. Died at Tønsberg on 8 May 1319 without a male heir. The throne passed to his three-year-old grandson Magnus Eriksson (also elected King of Sweden two months later), beginning the long series of personal unions that would, in one form or another, hold the Norwegian crown for the next five centuries. Also discussed in The Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone forever died in May 1319 without a male heir, the throne passed to his three-year-old grandson Magnus Eriksson Magnus Eriksson × King Magnus Eriksson's judicial seal, Sigillum ad causas (14th century) About this image ▸ Magnus IV (in Sweden) or Magnus VII (in Norway), born 1316, reigned in Sweden 1319–1364 and in Norway 1319–1355. Grandson of King Hákon V Magnusson of Norway; acceded to the Norwegian throne in May 1319 at age three when his grandfather died without a male heir, and was elected King of Sweden two months later. The dual kingship inaugurated the long series of Scandinavian personal unions that would hold the Norwegian crown almost continuously until 1905. Ruled both kingdoms through regency until 1331; deposed in Sweden in 1364 and in Norway (in favour of his son Hákon VI) earlier. Died in a boating accident on Bømlo island in Norway in 1374. Also discussed in The Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone forever ; two months later Magnus was elected king of Sweden as well, and the medieval Norwegian state entered the long series of personal unions that would, in one form or another, hold it for the next five centuries.

What survived

In a small collegiate church at Covarrubias in northern Castile, the stone sarcophagus that Felipe had brought back from Seville in 1262 stood in a side chapel for nearly seven centuries. During a 1952 restoration of the church, craftsmen opened the sarcophagus by accident and found a written parchment inside. Six years later, in 1958 — timed to the seven-hundredth anniversary of the Castile marriage — the tomb was officially opened and examined, and the woman inside was identified as Kristina Hákonsdatter, still in the funerary dress she had been buried in seven centuries before. The tomb is now a Norwegian-Castilian cultural site, kept up jointly by both countries.

The Landslov remained the law of Norway for more than four hundred years. The wharf at Bryggen Bryggen × Knud Knudsen, Bryggen in Bergen (1865), University of Bergen Library About this image ▸ The Hanseatic wharf at Bergen — a long row of narrow gable-fronted wooden warehouses and trading houses lining the eastern shore of the Vågen harbour. From around 1360 the German Hansa established its Bergen kontor here, and for nearly four hundred years (until 1754) the buildings housed German merchants who controlled the export of Norwegian stockfish to Catholic Europe. The structures burned and were rebuilt repeatedly to the same medieval footprint; the surviving wooden buildings (most after the 1702 fire) preserve the medieval urban plan. UNESCO World Heritage site since 1979 and Bergen's most-visited landmark. On the trip Day 4 in Bergen lands the Ungdommene (the Youngsters) directly on the Bryggen waterfront — the wharf the Hanseatic trade in Norwegian stockfish built and rebuilt for four centuries. Also discussed in The Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverThe Germans Who "Ruled" Bergen — the Hanseatic merchants on Bryggen WharfThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantAlcohol and Vinmonopolet — when and where to buy a drinkRespecting nature — why you can roam and camp on private landWhat to wear — the layering system, on the ground in Bergen, where the stockfish that paid for the realm was traded, still stands in the medieval footprint. The cathedral at Nidaros, where the archbishop’s metropolitan authority once extended across the North Atlantic, is still the principal Norwegian Lutheran cathedral and the consecration church of Norwegian kings. Between the longships of the Viking Age and the long absorption into Denmark stood the hundred years when Norway sent its daughter to the king of Castile, ran the medieval North Atlantic from a cathedral at Trondheim and a wharf at Bergen, and wrote one of the earliest unified national codes in any European vernacular. The Norwegian rediscovery of the period — the storhetstiden — came in the nineteenth century, bound up with the national-romantic project that produced the modern independent country in 1905. Most of the institutional inheritance the period left has outlasted it by seven centuries.

Sources & further reading

Primary sources

• Sturla Þórðarson, Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar (c. 1264–65). The longest single medieval Norwegian royal biography, composed by Snorri Sturluson’s nephew for Magnus VI shortly after Hákon IV’s death. Critical edition: Sverrir Jakobsson and Þorleifur Hauksson, eds., Íslenzk fornrit XXXI–XXXII (Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2013).
• Konungs skuggsjá (The King’s Mirror), c. 1250. The major didactic document of the medieval Norwegian court. Critical edition: Ludvig Holm-Olsen, ed., Konungs Skuggsiá, 2nd ed. (Norsk historisk kjeldeskrift-institutt, 1983). English translation by Laurence Marcellus Larson (American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1917).
• Magnús lagabœtir landslög (the Landslov of 1274). Critical edition by Magnus Rindal and Bjørg Dale Spørck (Riksarkivet, 2018). Modern Norwegian translation: Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde et al., Landslova av 1274 og 1604 (Fagbokforlaget, 2024).
• Gamli sáttmáli (the Old Covenant, 1262). The treaty of Iceland’s submission to the Norwegian crown.
• Diplomatarium Norvegicum, 23 vols. (Christiania/Oslo, 1847–2011). The standard collection of medieval Norwegian charters and treaties, including the Treaty of Perth (1266) and the Hanseatic privileges. Digitised at https://www.dokpro.uio.no/dipl_norv/diplom_field_eng.html.

Modern scholarship

• Sverre Bagge, From Viking Stronghold to Christian Kingdom: State Formation in Norway, c. 900–1350 (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010). The standard modern English-language synthesis on medieval Norwegian state formation.
• Sverre Bagge, Cross and Scepter: The Rise of the Scandinavian Kingdoms from the Vikings to the Reformation (Princeton University Press, 2014). Broader Scandinavian context for the Golden Age period.
• Knut Helle, Norge blir en stat 1130–1319, 2nd ed. (Universitetsforlaget, 1974). The classic Norwegian-language treatment of the formation of the medieval Norwegian state under the Sverre dynasty and the Hákonarson line.
• Knut Helle, ed., The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, Volume 1: Prehistory to 1520 (Cambridge University Press, 2003). The reference treatment.
• Hans Jacob Orning, Unpredictability and Presence: Norwegian Kingship in the High Middle Ages, trans. Alan Crozier (Brill, 2008). The leading modern study of how the medieval Norwegian kingship actually operated.
• Steinar Imsen, ed., The Norwegian Domination and the Norse World, c. 1100–c. 1400 (Tapir Academic Press, 2010). The standard treatment of the structure of the Norgesveldet across the Atlantic dependencies.
• Arnved Nedkvitne, The German Hansa and Bergen, 1100–1600 (Böhlau, 2014). The standard study of the Hanseatic merchant presence in Bergen, including the reconstruction of medieval export figures from the customs records.
• Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde, Speculum Legale — Rettsspegelen (Fagbokforlaget, 2005). The standard modern legal-historical treatment of the Landslov tradition.
• Joseph F. O’Callaghan, The Learned King: The Reign of Alfonso X of Castile (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993). The standard biography of Alfonso X, with the context for the Castile marriage.
• Vicente Almazán, Gallaecia Scandinavica: Introducción ó estudo das relacións galaico-escandinavas durante a Idade Media (Galaxia, 1986). The standard treatment of medieval Iberian-Scandinavian diplomatic relations, including the Kristina marriage.

Reference

• Store norske leksikon (snl.no). The Norwegian peer-reviewed encyclopedia. See in particular Håkon 4 Håkonsson, Magnus 6 Håkonsson Lagabøte, Landsloven, Kristina Håkonsdatter, Norgesveldet, Slaget ved Largs, and Perth-traktaten.
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Bryggen” (1979 inscription): https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/59.

Visit

• Bryggen, Bergen. The medieval merchant wharf where the stockfish that paid for the Norgesveldet was traded; a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1979. The current timber buildings are eighteenth-century replacements of medieval predecessors, but the parcel pattern and street lines are essentially those of the thirteenth-century harbour.
• Nidaros Cathedral, Trondheim. The seat of the archbishopric whose metropolitan authority ran the same North Atlantic arc as the king’s writ.
• Håkonshallen, Bergen. Hákon IV’s great hall, built in stone between about 1247 and 1261 for his son Magnus VI’s wedding and coronation, and the principal surviving stone building of the medieval royal court at Bergen.
• Tønsberg Castle ruins (Slottsfjellet), Tønsberg. The fortified royal centre on the Oslofjord, the medieval seat of the southeastern royal administration and the town to which the Castilian delegation came in 1256.
• Colegiata de San Cosme y San Damián, Covarrubias, Burgos province, Castile. The collegiate church where Kristina Hákonsdatter is buried, with a small modern Norwegian-Castilian exhibition on her marriage and tomb.