Harald the Younger

Who is Harald the Younger?

Harald the Younger was a Viking leader and a member of the Danish royal family. He has sometimes been mistakenly identified with Harald Klak, who was in fact his uncle and probable namesake. His brother was Rorik of Dorestad.

In 841 the Emperor Lothair I granted the isle of Walcheren to Harald and his brother as a fief rewarding him for the attacks he had launched against Lothair's father, Louis the Pious, during the civil wars of the 830s. Since at the time Harald was a pagan, whereas the population of Walcheren was Christian, this incident is probably the basis for the contemporary historian Nithard's claim that Lothair placed a Christian population in submission to a group of Northmen and gave them licence to plunder the Christian territories of his enemies in the same year. Between 840 and 843 Lothair was engaged in a civil war with his brothers Louis the German and Charles the Bald, and Nithard records that Harald was present in his army in 842. Not long thereafter Harald died and his brother was forced to flee to the court of Louis the German, where he spent several years.