#so I move to name him Union Boss Harald

[nimblermortal]

Daaaaaang, Harald Hardradi was a bamf with way too much talent

So, start with his older half-brother, Olaf the Saint. (Who was the woman who bore the both of them??) Olaf the Saint was king in Norway for 13 years before being deposed by King Canute. Two years later Olaf tried to take back his throne, with the help of his little bro Harald, who was 15 at the time. It didn’t work, Olaf died instead.

So wee babe Harald, 15 and the loser at war, fled to Sweden, then over to Kiev, where he got in so good with Jaroslav the Wise that he was promised Jaroslav’s daughter in marriage. So he musta been something diplomatic, I guess, because he was kind of an exiled prince with nothing going for him. But this is the tame paragraph of his life.

He then went down to the Byzantine Empire and joined the Varangian Guard, where he got on super poorly with their general, Georgios Maniakes (Gyrgir). He waited for an opportune battle, and then refused to let the Varangians fight, despite Gyrgir’s order. When Harald finally finished making his point and led the Varangians in, they kicked butt and took names, and everyone else took notice. So eventually Gyrgir had to give in and give Harald an independent command, at which point Harald went ape-gaga nutso and got himself super famous because all they did was win.

So Harald was very popular and rich in the Byzantine Empire, and presumably started talking about going home and claiming his half-brother’s throne, because Empress Zoe forbade him to go, so hard that she stuck him in prison, but according to the sagas Byzantine prisons were made out of tin foil, because anyone who got in one got out real quick. Harald was no exception, but that does imply that he left the Byzantine Empire no richer than he came to it. (This could be misleading as I am summarizing a summary.)

So he stopped by Kiev real quick to claim his princess bride, and then, as he wished, returned to Norway and demanded that his nephew Magnus, Saint Olaf’s son?, share the thrones of Norway and Denmark with him. Magnus actually agreed to this plan, despite having had sole claim to those thrones for the last ten years. And this bizarre sharing thing worked, somehow, for presumably years until Magnus died.

Also the Varangian thing worked out because he unionized the Varangian Guard against the nepotism-appointed Gyrgir.