Sorry for the delay, I tried to make the Gavelkind algorithm give each of my sons a kingdom. I failed, but I have a plan B
(involves a lot of tyranny, so my second ruler will just go North Korean at the start of the next chapter because Valencia is small enough)
Chapter 2: South Hispania is Norse Hispania
After uniting the Norse lands Haraldr Fairhair gave his army some time to rest and reinforce. Conquests drained all the blood from Noregr, and its people needed time to rebuild all the casualties.
At the meantime, konung decided to bring order to his vassals. Many plotters were imprisoned and their land was confiscated. Some of them tried to rebel, but nobody succeeded. Crown domain had grown to enormous size. Soon, it was hard for Haraldr to administer it, even with the help of his sons.
Rebellion in Alfheimr
In 880 and 881, Ragnhild gave birth to two daughters, Gyða and Ragnhild. Many men were jealous of king's fertility. Even after his death skalds wrote poems about his love adventures.
In the autumn of the same year, konung Haraldr traveled to Uppsala and publicly sacrificed some people from his dungeon. There he grandly proclaimed that his army will go south and conquer the rich and wealthy land of Muslims and that every man who joins him will acquire a piece of fertile land for his family and much glory. "The Oath of Uppsala", as historians call it, started the two years long preparation for Iberian campaign. This was an opportunity for many poor-living warriors and peasants to start a new life.
Haraldr gave them food and beds, and they helped the masters in building ships for future conquest.
Next 2 years king and his band were busy preparing for the expedition. Freyr, the oldest son of Haraldr Fairhair, became a man a few months before departure. He was a brilliant strategist, just as his father.
At the autumn of 883, two years after the start of preparation, the invasion was ready. 22 thousand men were waiting for the start of the attack. They sailed south and arrived in Hispania at the summer of 884.
By the start of the invasion, the Umayyad state wasn't in the best condition. As we know, the huge revolt happened a few months before the arrival of Haraldr, and from the North, they were pushed by a huge reconquistador force.
Iberia in 883
The Norse army was divided into two parts, with the first commanded by Haraldr himself and the second by Freyr Haraldrsson. They landed at the shore of Portu Cale and captured it. Due to a civil war, Muslims weren't able to resist. The only difficulty konung found were castles. Norse warriors were bad at assaulting them, thus having high casualties. After two years they lost more than 5 thousand men because of small skirmishes, attrition and enemy fortifications.
Haraldr was too busy invading Umayyad land to actually govern his lands. To solve this problem he proposed to Storthing an expansion of Storthing's rights and privileges. Surprisingly, Storthing supported the increase of Storthing power.
In the period of the next seven years, nothing really important happened. Haraldr Fairhair conquered one lord after another, giving all their land to fellow Norsemen. Hispania became for him a place, where he wasn't restricted by various tribal chiefs and leaders, being able to institute the system he wanted. Konung assigned a jarl to each former Muslim sheikhdoms and emirates and gave them land as his army conquered it. Muslim rulers, stripped of all their holdings, joined the Umayyad army. In fact, this was the only reason for such a long war. While emirs and sheiks of Andalusia were ready to surrender if the conqueror guaranteed the inviolability of their land, the konung and his retinue wanted to take it themselves. If you want to read more about the Iberian Campaign, you can read the work of famous historian Eriksson Luo called "Iberian Campaign, each month", which contains a collection of various Muslim and Norse records of the time, but we won't stop here and continue our story.
While Haraldr was absent, he had a great opportunity of cheating on his wife with his own court physician, who gave him a bastard called Ale.
The war ended on the 7th, November of 892. The peace treaty between "all the Norse men" and the Sultan of Umayyad was signed in Cordoba, which at the time was sieged by some Christian army. Haraldr Fairhair, the konung of Norway, got all the land he conquered, while sheiks of Granada, the last bastion of moors, were obliged to swear felty and become his loyal subjects. Sultan Al-Mundir kept his castle near Cordoba but gave the city itself to Haraldr.
But this territory wasn't enough for konung. He gave the fertile land of Andalusia to his vassals, but nothing was left for him. After the small council with his army in Murcia, he decided, that to fulfill his oath he had to conquer Valencia, which at the time was a part of the demesne of the Italian king.
This war was fast. It ended in December of 893, a year later after the Codobian treaty. After the whole decade of conquest, Haraldr was able to go home.
The southern part of Haraldr's kingdom after the end of Iberian Campaign
But before he did it, he adopted in his Hispanian territory a new administrative system, similar to the Umayyad one. In spite of traditional Norse chieftain system, he restricted the power of jarls, local governors. Instead, he gave each city the right to elect its mayor and magistrates, with some of them being direct vassals of konung, instead of a local lord. The former sultanate of Valencia became a royal demesne.
Administrative division of Norse Spain. The borders of the Norse kingdom are depicted by red lines.
Then Haraldr left Freyr in charge of Valencia and sailed to Noregr. He casually raided several Frankish and English cities by the way.
In Viken, he approved all the laws that Storthing enacted while he was absent and even gave it new powers and privileges. After that with the support of Storthing, he obliged all the tribes of Norse to pay the crown taxes with gold and army.
Then he imprisoned all tribal leaders, who were plotting against him, his family or his loyal subjects and confiscated their land. Only one, jarl Valdemar, a jarl of Gotland and a chief of Uppsala, was able to escape from the justice and rebel.
Haraldr Fairhair had no troops to fight Valdemar, so he sent a messenger to Freyr and flew to the mountains of Norway. Freyr returned to Noregr with the army of Spanish jarls and crushed the rebellion. Valdemar forfeited Uppsala and surrounding land to the crown. In Uppsala Haraldr crowned as a konung of Valencia and Andalusia. The remaining time of his reign he spent in Hispania, while his many sons were ruling Norway and Denmark.
After another Haraldr's departure from Scandinavia, the royal court moved to Valencia with him. He divided the country into six parts (Noregr, Svitjod, Danmark, Valencia, Andalusia, West Hispania), with all having separate landthings (regional assembly), and sent one of his sons to each of them.
Ruling from Valencia, the konung slowly started to adopt the local type of governance. Like many ancient tribes, who invaded China only to become Chinese themselves, Norsemen learned many things from the advanced Muslim civilization. There was no exact date of it, but gradually Norse people transformed their rural villages into cities and castles, and their society became a kind of fuse between the Muslim iqta and traditional north tribalism, which was very similar to the feudalism of Europe. We know, that at the death of Haraldr Uppland and Viken were full of Norse cities, while the Northern regions were still ruled by various tribes.
For all the innovations he brought Haraldr Fairhair is considered not only a great warrior but a great architect too.
In 898 Ynglings decided to force vassalize the tribe of Smaaland, which refused to accept the reformed Germanic faith. The konung of Smaaland was just a small, 5-year-old boy, so it looked like an easy task.
But the campaign was interrupted by the independence league, which was led by a Slavic jarl Wlodzimierz of Pomeralia, to rebel. They wanted to completely leave the kingdom and become independent. Haraldr and his sons were able to drive them out of Hispania by winning the battle of Avis, but the faith of Scandinavian territories was unsure.
The rebellion
The battle of Avis. Rebels in Spain are crushed.
The konung decided to surrender. He was not able to win this war. As the records say, fear and gloom swamped his court. But, as we know from the Saga of Ynglings, before he sent the messenger to Pomeralia, he saw Urðr, one of the norns, responsible for a future of people. She said that Haraldr needs to wait just one day before making the decision because his fate is "die of beer not steel". We can't prove the reality of this legend but, as we know from records, Wlodzimierz died in his bed. Disorganized, rebels were not able to effectively fight this war, thus agreeing to sign white peace, pretending that this riot never happened.
After the end of the revolt, Haraldr was able to march his troops into lands of Smaaland, defeating them in the battle of Vestergautland. The victory became just a matter of time.
After this Haraldr Fairhair crowned in Uppsala as konung of Svitjod. His full title at that time was "Haraldr, bless him Odin, the First of his name, konung of Noregr, Svitjod, Valencia, Andalusia, jarl of Viken and Valencia, the leader of people, victor in Denmark and Hispania".
Some records also say that around this time Haraldr decided to appoint his horse as a councilor. In fact, many people claim that he was lunatic, but this theory has nearly no proofs and, as we think, Haraldr just was a very zealous man, proud of his true faith.
After the war konung's son Freyr, married on a French woman of Henneberg dynasty, who was presumably as quick as her husband and maybe even smarter, had a son called Hakon. Many people called Hakon a genius because even as a child he was a very brainy boy. But we will tell you more about Hakon Freyrsson in the chapter next chapter, devoted to his father Freyr Haraldrsson.
The Ynglings are notable to the history of architecture and urbanism because they were one of the first rulers, who knew the value of roads in the administration of the realm. Haraldr was the first to start this tradition, which was carried by his various descendants. The road system in Valencia was a precursor to the current road system of the imperial capital of our great country.
