Harald Fairhair is remembered in the sagas as the first king to rule all Norway. Tradition says he vowed not to cut his hair until he had won the whole country, and broke the last resistance of the western chieftains at the sea battle of Hafrsfjord, conventionally dated 872 but probably somewhat later. Icelandic writers blamed his rule for the emigration that settled Iceland. Modern historians think his real power lay in the coastal south-west, around Avaldsnes on Karmøy.