Not content with inspiring Norwegians through his success as a footballer, Erling Haaland wants to do so through history – by teaching them about the Vikings.<\/p>\n
The Manchester City<\/a> striker, who is his country’s all-time top scorer with 55 goals in 48 games, has donated a rare 16th-Century manuscript of Viking sagas to the part of Norway where he grew up.<\/p>\n Haaland was born in Leeds<\/a> – as his father Alf-Inge was playing for Leeds United<\/a> at the time – but grew up in the town of Bryne.<\/p>\n The 25-year-old and his father purchased the manuscript for 1.3 million Norwegian crowns (\u00a3100,000) in December – a record for a book sale in Norway.<\/p>\n It is the 1594 printed edition of a work by the 13th-century historian Snorri Sturluson, and tells medieval stories of Viking kings, queens, farmers and warriors.<\/p>\n Haaland has given the only surviving copy to the library in Bryne so it can be displayed and made accessible to the public.<\/p>\n Bryne is in western Norway, around 30km south of Stavanger, and is part of the municipality of Time, within the district of J\u00e6ren.<\/p>\n “I want the book always to lie open so that people can read about those who came from where I come from, from Bryne and J\u00e6ren,” Haaland said to Norwegian media.<\/p>\n “I’ve been lucky enough to live out my dream through football, and I know not everyone gets that chance.<\/p>\n “Books give so many more people the chance to dream big, see new possibilities and find their own path.”<\/p>\n Haaland is the top scorer in the Premier League this season with 22 goals in 29 appearances.<\/p>\n Last year he finished as the top scorer with 16 goals in the European qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup. Norway have qualified for their first finals since 1998.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not content with inspiring Norwegians through his success as a footballer, Erling Haaland wants to do so through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-544785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}