Harald Bluetooth

Harald Bluetooth, known in Old Norse as Haraldr blátǫnn Gormsson, was a tenth-century king of Denmark and, for a period, a ruler who also claimed power in Norway. He was the son of King Gorm the Old and Queen Thyra, the couple commemorated on the earlier of the two great runestones at Jelling in Jutland. No contemporary source records the year or place of his birth; estimates that place it in the early or middle decades of the tenth century depend on the chronology of Gorm’s reign and of Harald’s own attested activity as king. He succeeded his father around the late 950s. The byname Bluetooth is not explained in the earliest records. Later tradition associated it with a dark or discolored tooth. The name became widely known in modern times when it was given to a short-range wireless standard whose logo combines runic initials linked to Harald.

Harald’s reign is associated with the consolidation of royal authority over Jutland, the Danish islands, and Scania, and with an ambitious program of monumental building. Archaeologists attribute to his era the great circular timber fortresses of Trelleborg type, including Trelleborg on Zealand, Fyrkat and Aggersborg in Jutland, and Nonnebakken on Funen, as well as work on the Danevirke, the defensive barrier across the neck of the Jutland peninsula. At Jelling he developed a royal complex of burial mounds, stone settings, and a church. The larger Jelling runestone, raised by Harald, states in runes that he won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian. That inscription is the principal contemporary statement of his political and religious claims and remains the central monument of his rule.

The official Christianization of Denmark is the deed for which he is most often remembered. Widukind of Corvey, writing in the late tenth century, relates that a cleric named Poppo persuaded the king by undergoing an ordeal of hot iron without injury, after which Harald accepted baptism and required his people to abandon the old gods. Whatever the precise circumstances, the public adoption of Christianity is generally placed in the 960s. Churches were founded, including an early church at Roskilde associated with his patronage, and Denmark was drawn more fully into the political and ecclesiastical world of Ottonian Germany and Latin Christendom. Harald also intervened in Norwegian affairs, extending Danish overlordship for a time after the fall of Harald Greycloak. Later Norwegian and Icelandic narrative sources describe a more tangled struggle among Danish kings, the earls of Lade, and local rulers rather than a simple or lasting conquest.

Toward the end of his life Harald came into conflict with his son Sweyn Forkbeard. Medieval accounts, including those of Adam of Bremen and later Scandinavian historians, describe a rebellion in which the aging king was defeated, wounded, and forced into exile. He is said to have taken refuge among the Wends on the southern Baltic coast and to have died there of his injuries, most often placed in the mid-980s. Adam of Bremen states that the body was brought back to Denmark and buried in the church Harald had built at Roskilde. Sweyn succeeded him and later conquered England; through Sweyn, Harald was the grandfather of Cnut the Great. Harald was a warrior-king, not a monk or a canonized saint. His historical image rests on the Jelling monuments, on German and later Scandinavian chronicles, and on the archaeological record of fortresses and frontier works. His official adoption of Christianity nonetheless reshaped the religious map of Scandinavia and tied the Danish monarchy to the Latin church.