Åsa Haraldsdottir of Agder (died c. 834?) was a semi-legendary Norwegian

Viking Age The Viking Age () was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. It followed the Migration Period and the Germ ...

queen regnant A queen regnant (plural: queens regnant) is a female monarch, equivalent in rank and title to a king, who reigns '' suo jure'' (in her own right) over a realm known as a "kingdom"; as opposed to a queen consort, who is the wife of a reigni ...

of the petty kingdom of

Agder Agder is a county (''fylke'') and traditional region in the southern part of Norway. The county was established on 1 January 2020, when the old Vest-Agder and Aust-Agder counties were merged. Since the early 1900s, the term Sørlandet ("south ...

. According to sagas referencing the clan

Yngling The Ynglings were a dynasty of kings, first in Sweden and later in Norway, primarily attested through the poem '' Ynglingatal''. The dynasty also appears as Scylfings ( Old Norse ''Skilfingar'') in ''Beowulf''. When ''Beowulf'' and ''Ynglingatal' ...

(''Ynglingaätten''), she was the mother of

Halfdan the Black Halfdan the Black (Old Norse: ''Halfdanr Svarti''; fl. c. 9th century) was a king of Vestfold. He belonged to the House of Yngling and was the father of Harald Fairhair, the first king of a unified Norway. In sagas According to ''Heimskringla'' ...

(''Halvdan Svarte'') and grandmother of King

Harald Fairhair Harald Fairhair no, Harald hårfagre Modern 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 No ...

(''Harald Hårfagre'').

Biography

Åsa was the daughter of King Harald Granraude of

and a reputed woman. King

Gudrød the Hunter Gudrød the Hunter ( Old Norse: ''Guðrøðr veiðikonungr'', Norwegian: ''Gudrød Veidekonge'', literally ''Gudrod Hunter-king''; died 820 AD), also known as Gudrød the Magnificent ( Old Norse: ''enn gǫfugláti'', Norwegian: ''den gjeve''), is ...

(''Gudrød Veidekonge'') of Borre in

Vestfold Vestfold is a traditional region, a former county and a current electoral district in Eastern Norway. In 2020 the county became part of the much larger county of Vestfold og Telemark. Located on the western shore of the Oslofjord, it bordered ...

proposed marriage to her after the death of his first wife, but her father refused the marriage. Gudrød Veidekonge then killed her father and her brother, abducted her and married her. One year later, she became the mother of

. One year after this, Åsa took her revenge and had her servant kill her husband. She left the kingdom of Borre to her stepson

Olaf Geirstad-Alf Olaf Gudrødsson (c. 810 – c. 860), known after his death as Olaf Geirstad-Alf "Olaf, Elf of Geirstad" (Old Norse Ólafr Geirstaðaalfr), was a semi-legendary petty king in Norway. A member of the House of Yngling, he was the son of Gudrød the Hu ...

and took her own son with her to the kingdom of Agder, her birth country, where she took power. Åsa ruled Agder for twenty years, and after this she left the throne to her son,

. He also demanded half of his father's kingdom from his half-brother. There are theories, proposed by Professor

Anton Wilhelm Brøgger Anton Wilhelm Brøgger (11 October 1884 – 29 August 1951) was a Norwegian archaeologist. Personal life He was born in Stockholm as a son of professor of geology Waldemar Christofer Brøgger (1851–1940) and Antonie Scheel Siewers (1854– ...

of Oslo University, that queen Åsa was the woman buried with the famous Oseberg ship shortly after 834 AD, but this has not been confirmed.Dronning Åsa av Oseberg
(Vitenskap-og-teknologi – NRK)

References

External links

Historien om dronning Åsa – Nysgjerrigper
834 deaths 9th-century Norwegian monarchs Year of birth unknown 9th-century women rulers Queens regnant 9th-century Norwegian women {{europe-royal-stub