Berle-Kari (Berle-Kåre; non, Berðlu-Kári) was a

viking Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

chieftain A tribal chief or chieftain is the leader of a tribe, tribal society or chiefdom. Tribe The concept of tribe is a broadly applied concept, based on tribal concepts of societies of western Afroeurasia. Tribal societies are sometimes categori ...

who lived in ninth-century

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. His home was at

Berle Berle is a village on the west coast of Norway. It is located on the eastern coast of Bremangerlandet island in the municipality of Bremanger in Vestland county. The village lies along the Berlepollen fjord, a small inlet off the Frøysjøen s ...

(

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...

: ''Berðla''), in present-day

Bremanger Bremanger is a municipality in Vestland county, Norway. The village of Svelgen is the administrative centre of the municipality. Other villages include Bremanger, Berle, Davik, Isane, Kalvåg, Svelgen, Rugsund, and Ålfoten. Bremanger is the ...

Sogn og Fjordane Sogn og Fjordane (; English: "Sogn and Fjordane") was, up to 1 January 2020, a county in western Norway, when it was merged to become part of Vestland county. Bordering previous counties Møre og Romsdal, Oppland, Buskerud, and Hordaland, the cou ...

county. ''

Landnámabók (, "Book of Settlements"), often shortened to , is a medieval Icelandic written work which describes in considerable detail the settlement () of Iceland by the Norse in the 9th and 10th centuries CE. is divided into five parts and over ...

'' names him as the son of Vemund, and brother of Skjoldolf, one of the early settlers of

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

. According to ''

Egil's Saga ''Egill's Saga'' or ''Egil's saga'' ( non, Egils saga ; ) is an Icelandic saga (family saga) on the lives of the clan of Egill Skallagrímsson (Anglicised as Egill Skallagrimsson), an Icelandic farmer, viking and skald. The saga spans the yea ...

'', Kari was a

berserker In the Old Norse written corpus, berserker were those who were said to have fought in a trance-like fury, a characteristic which later gave rise to the modern English word '' berserk'' (meaning "furiously violent or out of control"). Berserkers ...

, and a comrade-at-arms of Ulf the Fearless (Úlfr inn óargi).. The saga also Kari's three offspring as:

Olvir Hnufa Olvir Hnufa or ''Ölvir hnúfa'' was a Norwegian commander in a clan and poet of the late ninth and early tenth centuries, known from, among other sources, ''Egil's Saga'', '' Skaldatal'' and the ''Prose Edda''. Olvir was the son of the viking ...

, who became a

skald A skald, or skáld (Old Norse: , later ; , meaning "poet"), is one of the often named poets who composed skaldic poetry, one of the two kinds of Old Norse poetry, the other being Eddic poetry, which is anonymous. Skaldic poems were traditionally ...

in the court of

Harald I of Norway Harald Fairhair no, Harald hårfagreModern Icelandic: ( – ) was a Norwegian king. According to traditions current in Norway and Iceland in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, he reigned from 872 to 930 and was the first King of Norw ...

Eyvind Lambi Eyvind Lambi or ''Eyvind Lamb'' was a Norwegian Viking and hersir of the late ninth and early tenth centuries, known from, among other sources, ''Egils saga''. Eyvind was the son of the Viking Berle-Kari and brother-in-law of Kveldulf Bjalfason, ...

, who became one of Harald's

hersir A Hersir was a local Viking military commander of a ''hundred'' (a county subdivision) of about 100 men and owed allegiance to a jarl or king. They were also aspiring landowners, and, like the middle class in many feudal societies, supported the k ...

s, and a daughter, Salbjorg, who married

Kveldulf Bjalfason Ulf Bjalfason (Úlfr Bjálfason) (better known as Kveldulf, Old Norse for "Night Wolf") was a renowned hersir and landowner in ninth century Sogn, Norway. He is a main character in the early chapters of ''Egils saga'' and appears in the ''Landnámab ...

. Kveldulf being grandson of the elder Ulf.''Egil's Saga'' (Chapter 1, ). See Pálsson and Edwards' introduction, where the

stemma Stemma (plural stemmata) may refer to: * In stemmatics, an approach to textual criticism, a stemma or stemma codicum is a diagram showing the relationships of the various versions of a text to earlier versions or manuscripts * Tree-like diagrams ...

indicates Kveldulf and Salbjorg are spouses (p. 14) and Berle-Kari is Egil's great-grandfather(p. 11)

Explanatory notes

References

;Citations ;Bibliography * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Berle-Kari Viking rulers 9th-century Norwegian people 9th-century Vikings People from Bremanger