Though the king's sagas and medieval accounts have been critically scrutinised during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Harald maintains a reputation as the father of the Norwegian nation.

Since the nineteenth century, when Norway was in a personal union with Sweden, Harald has become a national icon of Norway and a symbol of independence. Their accounts of Harald and his life differ on many points, but it is clear that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Harald was regarded as having unified Norway into one kingdom. His life is described in several of the Kings' sagas, none of them older than the twelfth century. Indeed, although it is possible to write a detailed account of Harald as a character in medieval Icelandic sagas, it is even possible to argue that there was no such historical figure at all.

Much of Harald's biography remains uncertain, since the extant accounts of his life in the sagas were set down in writing around three centuries after his lifetime. Supposedly, two of his sons, Eric Bloodaxe and Haakon the Good, succeeded Harald, respectively, to become kings after his death. According to traditions current in Norway and Iceland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, he reigned from c. 872 to 930. Harald I Fairhair ( Old Norse: Haraldr inn hárfagri Norwegian: Harald hårfagre Modern Icelandic: Haraldur hárfagri putatively c. 850 – c. 932) is portrayed by the Icelandic sagas as the first King of Norway.

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