Harald Fairhair is portrayed as the first king of which country?

Harald I Fairhair (c. 850 – c. 932) is portrayed by medieval Icelandic historians as the first King of Norway. According to traditions current in Norway and Iceland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, he reigned from c. 872 to 930.

Through the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, historians broadly accepted the account of Harald Fairhair given by later Icelandic sagas. However, Peter Sawyer began to cast doubt on this in 1976, and the decades around 2000 saw a wave of revisionist research that suggested that Harald Fairhair did not exist, or at least not in a way resembling his appearance in sagas.

Harald Fairhair became an important figure in Norwegian nationalism in the nineteenth century, during its struggle for independence from Sweden, when he served as 'a heroic narrative character disseminating a foundation story of Norway becoming an independent nation'. In particular, a national monument to Harald was erected in 1872 on Haraldshaugen, a prehistoric burial mound at the town of Haugesund then imagined to be Harald Finehair's burial place, despite opposition from left-wing politicians.