Haraldr hárfagri (Harald Fairhair)

Harald Fairhair is the founder — the king who forged the scattered realms of Norway into a single crown, and so created both nations of the Norse world. Provoked, the saga says, by the proud Gyða's refusal to wed any king who ruled less than all Norway, he swore a great oath: not to cut or comb his hair until the whole land was his. King by king he conquered it, the wild hair growing longer year by year as a living tally of the war, until at Hafrsfjord he broke the last of his rivals — and only then let his friend Rognvald cut the matted hair and give him the name the world remembers, hárfagri, Fairhair. But a unified Norway had no room for proud free men: he claimed their inherited lands as the crown's, and the boldest of them sailed west rather than kneel, settling the empty island of Iceland. Every family saga exists because Harald's crown drove their ancestors across the sea. The root of the whole tree.