Hello everyone and welcome back to the Viking Age podcast. My name is Lee and I am

thrilled to kick off the first episode of our new Viking Stories series.

In this series, we will be exploring the stories of the many colorful characters who feature prominently in the history, myth, and mystery of the Viking Age.

Now, we are of course going to be looking at these figures from a historical perspective.

We will try to tease out exactly who they were, what actions they took, and what impact they had. But we will also be examining

the stories through which we know about these characters.

In many cases, the tales which we are told about these figures take on a life of their

own, and we will see firsthand how these accounts can grow, distort, and change

over the centuries.

As any longtime listeners should know all too well by now, there is very little hard historical

evidence which we can rely upon when talking about the Viking Age.

Instead, we are left to contend with a whole lot of fascinating pseudo-history, myth, and legend,

which lurks within the sagas, scaldic poetry,

and the quote-unquote histories of the Viking Age.

This series is going to give us a chance

to dive into that material,

while still trying to maintain our grip, however tenuous, on what events may actually have transpired.

I can't think of a better place to start this series than with the larger than life exploits of King Harold Fine Hare.

The man who is credited with conquering all of the lands of Norway over the course of about a decade in the late 800s,

and then with ruling this realm as a single more or less unified kingdom for 70 years.

This accomplishment in the political and social upheavals which followed his conquests,

ensured that the memory of Harold loomed large in the minds of chroniclers for centuries to come.

...