Thunderbolt of the North: Harald Hardrada, Viking King

REVIEW BY JEFFREY JAMES King Harald III of Norway’s sobriquet Hardrada conjures up an image of a resolute, ruthless, no-nonsense leader, yet may in fact be a corruption of the Norse word harfagri, meaning ‘the fine or fair haired’. Nevertheless, in his new book Thunderbolt of the North, the author W B Bartlett is undoubtedly right to portray his subject in the mould of other fierce, axe-wielding Scandinavians from history as a ‘hard ruler of granite-tough warriors’ – a man cast from the same rock face as earlier invaders of England, such as Erik Bloodaxe, Sven Forkbeard, and Cnut. Dominance in the far west of Europe was hotly disputed within close kinship networks of aspirant