Ragnvald could not speak. Harald turned to Hakon. “Then we will go on to Tafjord and win the kingdoms of Maer for your sons. I will build my northern capital there. Together we will rule this new land.”
A land where his sister was not welcome; he had sacrificed her, just as the sorceress Ronhild predicted. He pressed his fingers into the scar on his palm as he walked with Harald up the beach and toward the hall. The sun lit up Harald’s tangled, shining hair.
Author’s Note
History
The Half-Drowned King is a work of fiction that takes its inspiration from the saga of Harald Fairhair in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla.
Norway in the late ninth century is only beginning to emerge from myth into written history. Most of the existing sources for the life of Harald and his contemporaries were written many centuries later. Ninth-century Norway did not have written language besides runes, the angular writing found on Viking markers like the Danish Jelling stones, which were raised in memory of great deeds and departed family. Runes in Viking Age Norway were used for fortune-telling, as well as marking some religious and other monuments, but not for historical record-keeping.
In the thirteenth century the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, a historian, poet, and politician, would write down the Heimskringla, and many other sagas—roughly the equivalent of someone today writing the story of the founding of the United States with only oral tradition on which to base his narrative. The Heimskringla almost certainly has gaps and inaccuracies. Furthermore, many scholars believe that Snorri Sturluson used the saga to make certain implicit arguments about Iceland’s political situation at the time, leading him to highlight some stories and leave out others. The works of Saxo Grammaticus, a twelfth-century Danish historian, and Historia Norwegiae, a history of Norway written in the thirteenth century by an anonymous Scandinavian monk, also attest to Harald’s conquest of Norway and his reign, while focusing on different aspects of the events than the Heimskringla.
In writing The Half-Drowned King, I have used the stories in the Heimskringla as a jumping-off point, and also asked myself what might have been the real events behind the stories that Snorri Sturluson and others passed on and recorded. My sources mention Ragnvald, Harald, Svanhild, Solvi, and many others, but I have invented aspects of these figures’ relationships—such as Svanhild and Solvi’s romantic involvement—and also invented some new characters, like Ragnvald’s stepfather, Olaf, and stepmother, Vigdis.
Still, those wishing to avoid spoilers for subsequent novels should probably avoid Wikipedia and the Heimskringla.
Names
Because so many names and name parts are repeated in the history of Harald Fairhair, I’ve had to make some tough choices. For instance, Ragnvald’s brother Sigurd (here I’ve made him a stepbrother) shares his name with many other Sigurds, including a son of Hakon Grjotgardsson. It would be terribly confusing to have two important characters named Sigurd in a novel, so Hakon’s eldest son takes the name of one of his other sons, Heming.
Similarly, the prefix Ragn- (meaning council, wisdom, or power) is found in the names of many characters in Harald’s saga. For the sake of clarity, I’ve used the spelling Ronhild rather than Ragnhild for Harald’s mother. I also shortened the name of Ragnvald’s intended, Ragnhild(a), to Hilda, again for clarity.
Old Norse—similar to modern Scandinavian languages—is an inflected language, meaning it has noun cases. Old Norse names in the nominative case, the case used when the person is the subject of a sentence, end with the suffix -r, so Ragnvald would be Ragnvaldr (sometimes transliterated Ragnvaldur). For ease of pronunciation, in most instances I have omitted the-r suffix, and used more anglicized versions of the names without diacritics, e.g., I use Solvi rather than S?lvi.
Sources
Here are a few, but not nearly all, of the books I have found valuable in researching Viking Age Norway and Early Medieval Europe. Christie Ward’s Viking Answer Lady website, www.vikinganswerlady.com, is also a useful resource.
Bauer, Susan Wise. The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010.
Davidson, Hilda Ellis. Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. New York: Penguin, 1990.
———. The Roles of the Northern Goddess. London: Routledge, 2002.
Fitzhugh, William W., and Elizabeth I. Ward, eds. Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 2000.
Foote, Peter G., and David M. Wilson. The Viking Achievement: The Society and Culture of Early Medieval Scandinavia. London: Book Club Associates, 1974.
Griffith, Paddy. The Viking Art of War. London: Greenhill, 1995.
Jesch, Judith. Women in the Viking Age. Woodbridge, England: Boydell, 1991.
Jochens, Jenny. Women in Old Norse Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995.
Jones, Gwyn. A History of the Vikings. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1984.
Larrington, Carolyne, trans. The Poetic Edda. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Lindow, John. Norse Mythology: A Guide to Gods, Heroes, Rituals and Beliefs. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Sturluson, Snorri. Heimskringla; or, The Lives of the Norse Kings. Translated by Erling Monson. New York: Dover, 1990.
Wells, Peter S. Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009.