VI. Olav Haraldsson is accepted as king in Norway
No sooner had Olav set his foot on Norwegian soil than he heard that earl Erik's young son Håkon was sailing with only one ship. By a stratagem of war, Olav succeeded in overturning his boat and taking the earl's son prisoner. He gave him safe conduct on the condition that he left the country and joined his father, earl Erik, in England. So Olav sailed southwards and eastwards along the coast to Viken. From here, he went on foot to his own native regions in Oppland where he could expect the most support. His mother Åsta and his stepfather Sigurd Syr met the homecoming sea-king with great ceremony, and both promised to support him to the best of their ability. So Olav presented his case to the great farmers and the local kings in Oppland. The chieftains discussed this at length among themselves, and the result was that they accepted him as a superior king. There was certainly no «national» enthusiasm behind this decision: rather, it had become obvious to them that it was impossible to avoid a unified national kingdom in the long run. So all they could do was to hope that the new superior king would not interfere too much in their local affairs. They were all pagans, and Olav did not engage in any Christianising activity for the time being. He got ships and crews and set out westwards along the coast. At Nesjar in the Langesund fjord, he won a great sea-battle against earl Svein, who went to Sweden after his defeat and died shortly afterwards. After this battle, Olav was accepted as king over the whole of Viken and Agder. So he sailed directly to Trøndelag. This part of the land was now without a chieftain, after the earls had left the country. Olav received homage at the Øre parliament, and he settled on the Nidar estuary, where he erected a house and built the church of St Clement. Soon afterwards, he was also acclaimed as king in Inner Trøndelag. So he sailed southwards again, and was acclaimed as king in parliament after parliament. The last mighty man who had not yet submitted to him, the powerful «king of Ryge», Erling Skjalgsson, lived at Sola. He was one of the mighty men who had fought against Olav at Nesjar. Erling and Olav reached an agreement at Kvitsøy in Ryfylkeleia, but king Olav did not accept the demands Erling made for himself and for his family, so there was never a genuine friendship between the two men. After having been acclaimed as king over the whole of Mid- and South Norway, he established his relationship to Sweden. The king of Sweden did not much care for Olav, but the end of long negotiations and much dispute was the restoration of Ranriket (Båhuslen) to Olav. The reconciliation was to be sealed by a marriage: Olav was to marry Ingegjerd, the daughter of the Swedish king. But when the marriage was about to be held on the Norwegian side of the border, no bride arrived: her father had given her in marriage to prince Jaroslav, who was the sovereign in Novgorod. This was hard for Olav to bear. If we can believe the saga, there had arisen a love (at a distance) between the king's daughter and the sea-king who had returned home. The Swedish king's treachery was paid for when his other daughter by a slave woman, Astrid, fled from home and offered herself to king Olav as replacement for her sister. Olav accepted the offer and married her.
When the king had ordered matters to his own satisfaction in the south, he sailed north for Hålogaland, where he was accepted as king at the local parliaments in this region also. Now he was - at least in name - king over the whole of Norway.
