Released November 30, 2023
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Every day, thanks to Bluetooth innovation, people around the world can wirelessly connect to listen to music, check out a podcast, or watch a movie. In the mid-1990s, its creator– Intel engineer Jim Kardach– was trying to come up with a name for the new technology. Reading Viking history at the time, he was intrigued by a stone engraved with runes that praised the exploits of a 10th-century Danish king named Harald Bluetooth.
The stone described how Bluetooth had brought the Danes together as one people and conquered Norway. “It struck me that [his name] would make a good code word for the program,” Kardach wrote. Other names were considered, but the Viking ruler’s name stuck. Bluetooth technology set out to conquer and connect the modern world, just as King Bluetooth had connected and conquered swathes of Scandinavia more than a thousand years ago.
(Facts vs. fiction: How the real Vikings compared to the fierce warriors of legend.)
Birth of a dynasty
Harald Bluetooth’s lifespan spanned the 10th century. During his 30-year reign, he overran Norway, completed the conversion of Denmark to Christianity, and erected fortresses to glorify his name. His life would end in strife with his son, Sweyn Forkbeard, but his dynasty held firm: His grandson, Canute, would later rule England, Denmark, and Norway.
The Bluetooth name comes from BlaÌŠtand, which in Old Norse means “bluetooth” or “dark tooth.” Tradition states that the moniker came from the king’s having a dark, or bad, tooth, but hard evidence of his dentition does not exist.
Bluetooth had another name: Harald Gormsson, or Gorm’s son. Exactly how his father Gorm rose to power is uncertain. He seems to have been a native Jutlander. In A.D. 936, Gorm took over northern Jutland from the Swedes, creating a kingdom centered on the town of Jelling.
Gorm’s efforts to maintain and pass down this realm to his heir reflects a general trend in 10th-century Scandinavia. Viking kingdoms had emerged in previous centuries thanks to riches generated through plunder around the North Sea. Later in the 900s, they began to evolve into centralized monarchies. What Gorm began in Jelling, Bluetooth and his successors solidified. This Jelling dynasty was also shaped by another important transformation of the 10th century: the Christianization of Scandinavia.
(Explore the world of the Vikings.)
The Bluetooth legend
Two famous runic stones at Jelling were remarkable monuments to a new, stable style of rule. The older and smaller of the pair was inscribed by the pagan Gorm to honor Thyra, his wife and the mother of Bluetooth. The larger stone was raised by Bluetooth. On one side, it bears an inscription of Christ hanging from a tree, the earliest pictorial representation of Jesus in Denmark. On another face is a runic inscription that would, centuries later, divulge to archaeologists and scholars …
