Civil war era in Norway

Common card · No. 396700

The civil war era in Norway (Norwegian: borgarkrigstida, borgarkrigstidi, borgerkrigstida or borgerkrigstiden) began in 1130 and ended in 1240. During this time in Norwegian history, some two dozen rival kings and pretenders waged wars to claim the throne. In the absence of formal laws governing claims to rule, men who had proper lineage and wanted to be king came forward and entered into peaceful, if still fraught, agreements to let one man be king, set up temporary lines of succession, take turns ruling, or share power simultaneously. In 1130, with the death of King Sigurd the Crusader, his possible half-brother, Harald Gillekrist, broke an agreement that he and Sigurd had made to pass the throne to Sigurd's only son, the bastard Magnus. Already on bad terms before Sigurd's death, the two men and the factions loyal to them went to war. In the first decades of the civil wars, alliances shifted and centered on the person of a king or pretender. However, towards the end of the 12th century...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Peter Nicolai Arbo, Public domain