Inge Haraldsson
Inge Haraldsson | |
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Ingrid Ragnvaldsdotter |
Inge Haraldsson (
Childhood and accession
Inge was the only son of King
Adulthood and reign
The division of the kingdom does not seem to have been territorial, all brothers seem to have held equal regal status over all parts of the country. According to the sagas, relations between the brothers were peaceful as long as their guardians were alive. This period of their reign saw the establishment of an independent Norwegian
) in 1152. As their guardians died, and the brothers grew up, conflict broke out.In 1155, a meeting between the brothers in Bergen resulted in fighting breaking out between the men of king Inge and king Sigurd, in which king Sigurd was killed. King Eystein was late in arriving for the meeting, and only approached the city after Sigurd was already dead. An uneasy settlement was reached between Inge and Eystein. The reasons for the fighting in Bergen remain disputed. According to the sagas, Eystein and Sigurd had plotted to strip Inge of his royal title and divide his share of the kingdom between them. Some modern historians doubt this version, seeing it as Inge’s excuse for his own aggressive actions. In any event, peace between Inge and Eystein did not hold for long after the events of 1155. In 1157, both sides gathered their forces for a confrontation. Inge’s forces outnumbered Eystein’s, and when they met, on the west coast near Moster, Eystein’s forces melted away. Eystein was forced to flee, he was caught and killed in Bohuslän later the same year.
Inge was now the last remaining brother. However, the supporters of Sigurd and Eystein united behind a son of Sigurd,
Aftermath
The period of peace during the minority of king Inge and his brothers – from 1129 until 1155 - was the longest peaceful period Norway was to see until 1240, as the dispute between the brothers ushered in the Norwegian civil war era. Heimskringla describes Inge thus:
- King Inge was the handsomest among them in countenance. He had yellow but rather thin hair, which was much curled. His stature was small; and he had difficulty in walking alone, because he had one foot withered, and he had a hump both on his back and his breast. He was of cheerful conversation, and friendly towards his friends; was generous, and allowed other chiefs to give him counsel in governing the country. He was popular, therefore, with the public; and all this brought the kingdom and the mass of the people on his side.s:Heimskringla/Saga of Sigurd, Inge, and Eystein, the Sons of Harald#Habits and Manners of Harald's Sons.
After Inge’s fall, his supporters rallied behind the lendmann Erling Skakke and his son, king Magnus Erlingsson. This party is sometimes referred to as the lendmann-party. The sagas of king Inge do not mention any offspring, but one of the pretenders against king Sverre, Jon Kuvlung (died 1188), claimed to be Inge’s son.
Sources
The main sources to Inge’s reign are the kings’ sagas Heimskringla, Fagrskinna, Morkinskinna and Ágrip. The three former base at least part of their account on the older saga Hryggjarstykki, which was written some time between 1150 and 1170, and was thus a near-contemporary source. This saga itself has not been preserved.
References
- Matthew James Driscoll (ed.); (1995). Agrip Af Noregskonungasogum. Viking Society for Northern Research. ISBN 0-903521-27-X
- Kari Ellen Gade & Theodore Murdock Andersson (eds.); (2000) [Morkinskinna: The Earliest Icelandic Chronicle of the Norwegian Kings (1030–1157)]. ISBN 0-8014-3694-X
- Alison Finlay; editor and translator (2004). Fagrskinna, a Catalogue of the Kings of Norway. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-13172-8
- ISBN 0-292-73061-6