Harald Hardrada is a towering figure in European history, but as is often the case, the significance of the women in his life is often overlooked, and in no major figure is this more apparent and varied than the way history, both contemporary to Harald, and the current era, treats the women who stood beside Harald on his rise to fame and kingship.
Because, in a very rare way for the early medieval period, Harald was not the dominant partner in all of his relationships. Harald had three well-documented romantic partners. The first was Empress Zoe of Byzantium, who as one of the most powerful people in Europe in the 1040’s-50’s, took a shine to the young and ambitious commander of her royal guard, an exiled Norwegian prince called Harald Sigurdsson.
Zoe was a shrewd and ruthless political operator, renowned in her own time as a great beauty, and her relationship with Harald was likely largely transactional in nature. But there is evidence of genuine affection too, not least because when he stopped doing her bidding and got in her way, she did not immediately have him killed, as she likely did with ‘at least’ two of her husbands.
Entire books could and should be written about Zoe, but here it suffices to point out that she was absolutely foundational to his rise to power, but popular history ignores that entirely.
Harald’s first wife was no less noble. Elisiv, princess of the Kyivan Rus, and daughter of Grand Prince Yaroslav, who would vie with Empress Zoe and a couple of European kings for the distinction of being the most powerful and influential person in Europe at the time. Harald’s marriage to Elisliv was political, but he loved her dearly. A large number of his letters and poems to her are preserved, and they make his affections abundantly clear.
Only though Elisliv did Harald secure the support he needed to regain the throne of Norway, a political pact with her father, the second time his rise had relied on the woman in his life.
Harald took a third wife in his middle age as King of Norway when Elisliv bore two daughters and no sons. His third wife, Tora Torergsdatter, bore him the sons Harald desperately needed to secure his line and his legacy, and their descendants ruled Norway for hundreds of years.
But what became of Elisliv and Tora when Harald died in 1066AD? We don’t know. They are never mentioned in the histories again other than a passing comment or two that perhaps they died the same year or remarried. Despite their importance, no-one bothered to record what became of them, because at the time all that was regarded as important was the life and death of the man they stood beside. Their relevance died with him.
As we celebrate Women’s History Month this March, it is important to work for a future of equality and representation, as history shows us the cruel truth of what it is for women to be forgotten footnotes in the lives of powerful men.