Harald I of Norway in the context of "Kings' sagas"

The settlement of Iceland (Icelandic: landnámsöld [ˈlantˌnaumsˌœlt]) is generally believed to have begun in the second half of the ninth century, when Norse settlers migrated across the North Atlantic. The reasons for the migration are uncertain: later in the Middle Ages Icelanders themselves tended to cite civil strife brought about by the ambitions of the Norwegian king Harald I of Norway, but modern historians focus on deeper factors, such as a shortage of arable land in Scandinavia. Unlike Great Britain and Ireland, Iceland was unsettled land and could be claimed without conflict with existing inhabitants.

On the basis of Íslendingabók by Ari Þorgilsson, and Landnámabók, histories dating from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and providing a wealth of detail about the settlement, the years 870 and 874 have traditionally been considered the first years of settlement. However, these sources are largely unreliable in the details they provide about the settlement, and recent research focuses more heavily on archaeological and genetic evidence.

The petty kingdoms of Norway (Bokmål: smårike) were the entities from which the later Kingdom of Norway was founded. Before the unification of Norway in 872 and during the period of fragmentation after King Harald Fairhair's death, Norway was divided in several small kingdoms. Some could have been as small as a cluster of villages, and others comprised several of today's counties.

By the time of the first historical records of Scandinavia, about the 8th century, a number of small political entities existed in Norway. The exact number is unknown, and would probably also fluctuate with time. It has been estimated that there were 9 petty realms in Western Norway during the early Viking Age. Archaeologist Bergljot Solberg on this basis estimates that there would have been at least 20 in the whole country.

Sturlunga saga (often called simply Sturlunga) is a collection of Icelandic sagas by various authors from the 12th and 13th centuries; it was assembled in about 1300, in Old Norse. It mostly deals with the story of the Sturlungs, a powerful family clan during the eponymous Age of the Sturlungs period of the Icelandic Commonwealth.

Sturlunga saga mostly covers the history of Iceland between 1117 and 1264. It begins with Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns [no], the legend of Geirmundr heljarskinn, a regional ruler in late 9th-century Norway, who moves to Iceland to escape the growing power of King Harald Finehair. The more historical sagas commence in 1117 with Þorgils saga ok Hafliða. Other sagas included in the collection are Sturlu saga, Prestssaga Guðmundar Arasonar, Guðmundar saga biskups, Hrafns saga Sveinbjarnarsonar, Þórðar saga kakala, Svínfellinga saga and Íslendinga saga, composed by Sturla Þórðarson, which constitutes almost half of the compilation and covers the period 1183–1264. The compiler assembled the components in chronological order, added þættir including Geirmundar þáttr and Haukdæla þáttr and genealogies, and endeavoured to combine them into a single work, usually replacing the beginning and the ending with a linking passage. In some cases he broke up sagas to achieve chronological order. The compilation is often thought of as containing the main texts belonging to the textual corpus (or sub-genre) commonly referred to as the samtíðarsögur or 'contemporary sagas'. While it has been treated as a purely historical source, recent decades show acknowledgement that these are constructed texts representing a narrativised version of the past.

Þórbjǫrn hornklofi (Modern Norwegian: Torbjørn Hornklove; note that hornklofi is a nickname, not a surname) was a 9th-century Norwegian skald and one of the court poets of King Harald Fairhair. His poetry has sometimes been regarded as a contemporary source of information regarding King Harald, although it is only preserved embedded within 13th and 14th century king's sagas.

The two skaldic poems by him which are preserved, both only in excerpts, are Hrafnsmál and Glymdrápa. The first poem, which utilizes verse form málaháttr, describes life at Harald's court, mentions that he took a Danish wife, and that he won a victory at the Battle of Hafrsfjord. The second is the earliest preserved drápa in regular dróttkvætt, and relates a series of battles Harald won during the consolidation of his rule of Norway.

The Fairhair dynasty (Norwegian: Hårfagreætta) was a family of kings founded by Harald I of Norway (commonly known as "Harald Fairhair", Haraldr inn hárfagri) which united and ruled Norway with few interruptions from the latter half of the 9th century. In the traditional view, this lasted until 1387, however, some modern scholars view this rule as lasting only three generations, ending with Harald Greycloak in the late 10th century. The moniker "Fairhair dynasty" is a retrospective construction: in their lifetime what little traces there are refer to them consistently as "Ynglings".