Harold Harefoot

On this day in 1040 Harold Harefoot, king of England since 1035, died in Oxford. By any reckoning he has one of the best names of any English monarch. How did he come by it, and what did it mean?

'His cognomen "Harefoot" referred to his speed, and the skill of his huntsmanship', says Wikipedia, citing a book from 1899 called Essentials of Language and Grammar by the august-sounding Albert Le Roy Bartlett. Bartlett does indeed say that Harold was called Harefoot because he could run as fast as a hare, but he was not the first to do so. The celebrated eighteenth-century historian David Hume said exactly the same and, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, so too did other writers as far back as the late Middle Ages. Small wonder, then, that Harold's hare-like agility is today reported pretty much everywhere, online and in print, as a matter of established fact.

But sadly for those who like to imagine their medieval kings haring around at such velocity, it is a fact that is almost certainly made-up. No contemporary source accords Harold his arresting nickname. Indeed, eleventh-century sources tell us next to nothing about Harold, who is one of the most faceless kings ever to have ruled England. His nickname first occurs over a hundred years after his death, in a history of Ely Abbey, where it is written as 'Harefah' or 'Harefoh'. The likeliest explanation is that the monk who wrote it simply confused Harold with his Norwegian namesake, Harold Fairhair.

So Harold was probably no more frisky than any other English monarch. But his colourful cognomen does illustrate the tenacious power of myth, and the desire of historians throughout the ages to add substance to the ghosts of the distant past.