King of Norway

Germanic kingdom

Harald Fairhair was the first king of Norway. The date of the first formation of a unified Norwegian kingdom is set as 872 AD when he defeated the last petty kings who resisted him at the Battle of Hafrsfjord; however, the consolidation of his power took many years. The boundaries of Fairhair's kingdom were not identical to those of present-day Norway, and upon his death, the kingship was shared among his sons. Some historians emphasise the actual monarchial control over the country and assert that Olaf II, alias Saint Olaf, who reigned from 1015 to 1028, was the first king to control the entire country. Olaf is generally held to have been the driving force behind Norway's final conversion to Christianity. Furthermore, he was in 1031 revered as Rex Perpetuus Norvegiae ("Eternal King of Norway"), and subsequently, the 1163 Succession Law stated that all kings after Olaf II's son, Magnus I, were not independent monarchs, but vassals holding Norway as a fief from Saint Olaf.