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"King Harald bade these memorials to be made after Gorm, his father, and Thyra, his mother. The Harald who won the whole of Denmark and Norway and turned the Danes to Christianity."
The conversion of the Danes or, rather, the conversion of King Harald Bluetooth, is a contested bit of history, not least because medieval writers such as Widukind of Corvey and Adam of Bremen give conflicting accounts of how it came about.
We know from the runestone erected at Jelling that Harald claimed to have converted the Danes himself. In his "History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen", finished in 1076, Adam of Bremen claimed that Harald was himself forcibly converted by Otto I, after a defeat in battle. In the Heimskringla this story was changed somewhat to have Harald be converted, along with Earl Haakon, by Otto II.
However, Widukind of Corvey, writing nearly 100 years before Adam and during the lives of Otto I and Harald, mentioned no such episode in his Res gestae saxonicae sive annalium libri tres or "Deeds of the Saxons". Considering that this history was at least partly written to promote the greatness of Otto and his family, this silence is damning to Adam of Bremen's claim. Widukind himself claims that Harald was converted by a "cleric by the name of Poppa" who, when asked by Harald whether he would be tested as to his faith in Christ, supposedly carried "a great weight of iron" heated by a fire without being burned. A similar story does appear in Adam of Bremen's history, but about Eric of Sweden, who had supposedly conquered Denmark (there is no evidence that this happened anywhere else), and a self-immolating cleric named Poppo. The story of this otherwise unknown Poppo or Poppa's miracle and baptism of Harald is also depicted on the gilded altar piece in the Church of Tandrup in Denmark, a detail of which is at the top of this article. The altar itself has been dated to about 1200. Adam of Bremen's claim regarding Otto I and Harald appears to have been inspired by an attempt to manufacture a historical reason for the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen to claim jurisdiction over Denmark (and thus the rest of Scandinavia); in the 1070s, the Danish King was in Rome asking for Denmark to have its own arch-bishop, and Adam's account of Harald's supposed conversion (and baptism of both him and his "little son" Sweyn, with Otto serving as Sweyn's godfather) is followed by the unambiguous claim that "At that time Denmark on this side of the sea, which is called Jutland by the inhabitants, was divided into three dioceses and subjected to the bishopric of Hamburg."
But after his conversion, in about the 960s, Harald had his father's body disinterred and reburied in the church he built next to the now empty mound, and erected the now famous Jelling stones described above.
Harald undoubtedly professed Christianity at that time and contributed to its spread but with limited success in Denmark and Norway.
He also constructed the oldest known bridge in southern Scandinavia, known as the Ravninge Bridge at Ravninge meadows, which was 5 meters wide and 760 meters long.
While absolute quiet prevailed throughout the interior, he was even able to turn his thoughts to foreign enterprises. Again and again he came to the help of Richard the Fearless of Normandy (in the years 945 and 963), while his son conquered Samland and, after the assassination of King Harald Greycloak of Norway, he also managed to force the people of that country into temporary subjection to himself.
The Norse sagas presents Harald in a rather negative light. He was forced twice to submit to the renegade Swedish prince Styrbjörn the Strong of the Jomsvikings- first by giving Styrbjörn a fleet and his daughter Tyra, the second time by giving up himself as hostage and an additional fleet. Styrbjörn brought this fleet to Uppsala in Sweden in order to claim the throne of Sweden. However, this time Harald broke his oath and fled with his Danes in order to avoid facing the Swedish army at the Battle of the Fýrisvellir.
As a consequence of Harald's army having lost to the Germans in the shadow of Danevirke in 974, he no longer had control of Norway and Germans settled back into the border area between Scandinavia and Germany. The German settlers were driven out of Denmark in 983 by an alliance consisting of Obodrite soldiers and troops loyal to Harald. Soon after, Harald was killed fighting off a rebellion led by his son Swein. He was believed to have died in 986, although there are many other accounts that claim he died in 985.
Category:Danish monarchs Category:Norwegian monarchs Category:Viking Age monarchs Category:910 births Category:980s deaths Category:Converts to Christianity Category:Burials at Roskilde Cathedral Category:10th-century Christians Category:Roman Catholic monarchs Category:10th-century rulers in Europe
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