The paper deals with the central event in early Norwegian history – the battle of king Harald Fairhair in Hafrsfjord, dated by many historians to 872, and thought to have been a great step on the way of the early state formation in Norway. The author subscribes to the opinion of a number of modern Norwegian, Icelandic and English scholars who doubt the dating of this event as well as the continuity of the genealogical line of Norwegian rulers as it is presented by the authors of the Icelandic kings’ sagas. Medieval mythology of the formation of the Norwegian state is likely to have been created in the interests of the impostor-king Sverrir (1184–1202) and his descendants. Mythmaking of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries also poses and solves its own problems.
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