Haakon IV of Norway

Haakon IV was born around 1204 into Norway's civil war era, a Birkebeiner king who spent his early reign under the regency of Earl Skule Bårdsson. He crushed the final Bagler pretender, Sigurd Ribbung, in 1227, but the decisive break came in 1240 when Skule declared himself king - Haakon had him killed and the internal wars died with him. With peace secured, he turned Norway outward: importing European literature, raising monumental stone buildings, commanding a naval fleet so powerful that the pope offered him the imperial crown, Irish kings offered him their High Kingship, and the French king offered him command of a crusader fleet. He absorbed Iceland and Greenland, pushed Norwegian control over Scotland's offshore islands and the Isle of Man, and brought medieval Norway to what historians call its zenith. He fell ill during a winter campaign in Orkney in 1263, fighting to hold the Scottish fringes, and died there on 16 December after 46 years on the throne.