Lade Gård and the Earls of Lade

Long before Olav Tryggvason founded Trondheim in 997, the real centre of power in Trøndelag stood a few kilometres to the east, on the Lade peninsula. Lade Gård was the seat of the Lade jarls (Ladejarlene), the dynasty that effectively governed northern Norway from roughly 870 to 1030. At the height of their influence, jarls Håkon Sigurdsson and his son Eirik ruled the country on behalf of the Danish king and led fleets that fought in England and at the Battle of Svolder.

The farm at Lade was a religious as well as a political centre. A great hof — a pagan temple — stood here, dedicated to the old Norse gods, and the jarls were the leading defenders of pre-Christian religion against the missionary kings Olav Tryggvason and Olav Haraldsson. The conflict between Lade and the new Christian monarchy is one of the main political dramas of the Heimskringla sagas, and it ended only when Earl Håkon was murdered by his own slave in 995 and his dynasty fell from power within a generation.

The current main building at Lade Gård is an 18th-century manor on the site of the original farm, but the surrounding landscape — the Ladestien coastal path, the cliffs over the fjord, the small Lade church a short walk away — still gives a powerful sense of why this place mattered. From here, the entrance to Trondheim Fjord can be watched in both directions; whoever held Lade controlled the gateway to the inner Trøndelag.