Hafrsfjörðr

Hafrsfjord is the fjord where Harald Fairhair won the great sea-battle that completed his conquest of Norway. The old kings of the south and west, gathering their fleets for one last stand, met him here in a tremendous clash of dragon-prowed war-ships — and Harald broke them. After Hafrsfjord, the saga says plainly, he met no further opposition in all Norway, his greatest enemies cut off or fled across the sea. The patchwork of petty kingdoms that had covered the land since memory was finished in a single afternoon of ships and spears. Hafrsfjord is the corpus's image of the decisive battle — the sea-fight that made one Norway out of many realms, and so, by driving the proud and the defeated to flee, founded Iceland and the whole world of the sagas.