The authentic history begins with Halfdan the Swarthy, who reigned from the year 821 to 860.  The Icelander Snorre Sturlason, who, in the twelfth century, wrote the Heimskringla, or Sagas of the Norse Kings, gives a long line of preceding kings of the Yngling race, the royal family to which Halfdan the Swarthy belonged; but that part of the Saga belongs to mythology rather than to history.

According to tradition, the Yngling family were descendants of Fiolner, the son of the god Frey.  One of the surnames of the god was Yngve, from which the family derived the name Ynglings.  King Halfdan was a wise man, a lover of truth and justice.  He made good laws, which he observed himself and compelled others to observe.  He fixed certain penalties for all crimes committed.  His code of laws, called the Eidsiva Law, was adopted at a common Thing at Eidsvol, where about a thousand years later the present constitution of Norway was adopted.

One day in the spring of 860, when Halfdan the Swarthy was driving home from a feast across the Randsfjord, he broke through the ice and was drowned.  He was so popular that, when his body was found, the leading men in each Fylki demanded to have him buried with them, believing that it would bring prosperity to the district.  They at last agreed to divide the body into four parts, which were buried in four different districts.  The trunk of the body was buried in a mound at Stien, Ringerike, where a little hill is still called Halfdan’s Mound.  And this Halfdan became the ancestor of the royal race of Norway.

Halfdan’s son, Harald the Fairhaired, at the age of ten years succeeded his father on the throne of Norway, or it afterward proved to be the throne of United Norway.  When he became old enough to marry, he sent his men to a girl named Gyda, a daughter of King Erik of Hordaland, who was brought up a foster-child in the house of a rich Bonde in Valders.

Harald had heard of her as a very beautiful though proud girl.  When the men delivered their message, she answered that she would not marry a king who had no greater kingdom than a few Fylkis (districts), and she added that she thought it strange that “no king here in Norway will make the whole country subject to him, in the same way that Gorm the Old did in Denmark, or Erik at Upsala.”  When the messengers returned to the king, they advised him to punish her for her haughty words, but Harald said she had spoken well, and he made the solemn vow not to cut or comb his hair until he had subdued the whole of Norway, which he did, and became sole king of Norway.  The decisive battle was a naval one in the Hafrsfjord, near the present city of Stavanger.  After this battle, which occurred in 872, when he had been declared King of United Norway, he attended a feast, and the Earl of More cut his hair, which had not been cut or combed for ten years, and gave him the name of Fairhaired.  Harald shortly afterward married Gyda.