Civil war era in Norway

Norwegian Civil Wars
King Sverre crossing the mountains of Voss
Date 1130–1240 (110 years) Location Norway Result King Haakon IV's men killed self-declared king Duke Skule. Start of The Golden Age of Norway.
Belligerents
Aristocrats	Pretenders
Commanders and leaders
List:	List:
Units involved
Bagler	Birkebeiner

Part of a series on the
History of Norway
Ancient history Prehistory ∞ Stone Age Pre 1700 BC Bronze Age 1700–500 BC Iron Age 500 BC–800 AD Migration Age 21–700
Early Middle Ages Petty kingdoms Unknown–11thC Viking Age 8th–11thC Unification 860–1029 Establishment 872 Hereditary kingdom 9thC–1397 Imperial realm 9thC–1814 Military Establishment 9thC Migration settlement 9th–12thC Oversea colonization 9th–14thC Christianization 975–1000
High Middle Ages Middle Ages 1000–16th Civil War 1130–1240
Late Middle Ages Black Death 1349–1353 Kalmar Union 1397–1523 Treaty of Bergen 1450
Early modern period Denmark–Norway 1524–1814 Reformation 1537 Council abolishment 1537 Absolute monarchy 1661
Late modern period Re-established state 1814 Constitution 1814 Union with Sweden 1814–1905 Emigration 19th–20th Language conflict 19th– Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration 19th–1922 Polar exploration 1892–2008 Union dissolution 1905 Interwar independence 1905–1940 Possession annexations 1920–1939 German occupation 1940–1945 Reichskommissariat 1940–1945 Quisling regime 1942–1945 Cold War 1945–1991
Contemporary history Oil industry 1966–
Related topics Economic history of Norway Judaism in Norway LGBT history Nobility in Norway
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The civil war era in Norway (Norwegian: borgarkrigstida, borgarkrigstidi, borgerkrigstida or borgerkrigstiden) began in 1130 and ended in 1240. During this time in Norwegian history, some two dozen rival kings and pretenders waged wars to claim the throne.

In the absence of formal laws governing claims to rule, men who had proper lineage and wanted to be king came forward and entered into peaceful, if still fraught, agreements to let one man be king, set up temporary lines of succession, take turns ruling, or share power simultaneously. In 1130, with the death of King Sigurd the Crusader, his possible half-brother, Harald Gillekrist, broke an agreement that he and Sigurd had made to pass the throne to Sigurd's only son, the bastard Magnus. Already on bad terms before Sigurd's death, the two men and the factions loyal to them went to war.

In the first decades of the civil wars, alliances shifted and centered on the person of a king or pretender. However, towards the end of the 12th century, two rival parties, the Birkebeiner and the Bagler, emerged. In their competition for power, the legitimacy dimension retained its symbolic power, but it was bent to accommodate the parties' pragmatic selection of effective leaders to realize their political aspirations. When they reconciled in 1217, a more ordered and codified governmental system gradually freed Norway from wars to overthrow the lawful monarch. In 1239, Duke Skule Bårdsson became the third pretender to wage war against King Håkon Håkonsson. Duke Skule was defeated in 1240, bringing more than 100 years of civil wars to an end.^{[citation needed]}