Sogn

Origins

Sogn, the land around the great Sognefjord in western Norway, appears in the sagas as one of the small kingdoms of the Viking Age. Rich graves along the fjord show a prosperous elite in the Iron Age, but its rulers are known only from late Icelandic tradition.

Rule and society

Its people farmed the fjord slopes, raised livestock in mountain pastures and traded along the coast and over the mountains to eastern Norway. The site of the Gulating, the great law assembly of western Norway, lay at Gulen near the mouth of the fjord, and the district later belonged to its law province.

Decline and legacy

The sagas say Harald Fairhair took Sogn during his conquest of the west coast and placed it under one of his earls. It became part of the Kingdom of Norway; in the Middle Ages Sogn was known for its stave churches, including Urnes, now a World Heritage Site.

Few sources survive for this state; details are uncertain.