Olaf Tryggvason

Olaf Tryggvason was born in the 960s, son of Tryggvi Olafsson, king of Viken, and by later telling a great-grandson of Harald Fairhair. He took Norway's throne in 995 and set about converting his kingdom by force. In 995 he built what's said to be the first Christian church in Norway; two years later he founded Trondheim, where a statue now stands in the central plaza. He died at sea on 9 September 1000, five years into his reign. Almost nothing contemporary survives - a few English mentions, some skaldic verse, a brief note in Adam of Bremen's chronicle from 1070. The sagas that made him vivid came centuries later: two lost Latin lives from the 1190s, Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla around 1230, the vast Flateyjarbók account in the fifteenth century. Modern historians handle them carefully.