The Last King
2016 Norwegian film by Nils Gaup
The Last King (Norwegian: Birkebeinerne) is a 2016 Norwegian historical drama, directed by Nils Gaup. The story, inspired by true events, centers on the efforts of the Birkebeiner loyalists to protect the infant, Haakon Haakonsson, the heir to the Norwegian throne after the death of his father, King Haakon Sverresson. The film is set during the civil war era in Norway during the 13th-century.
Synopsis
In Norway 1204, Birkebeiners and king Haakon Sverresson possess the throne in Nidaros. They are threatened by Baglers, a rebel faction who have taken power in Eastern Norway, with help from Denmark.
In Nidaros, after having sex, Gisle (Pal Sverre Valheim Hagan), a corrupt aristocrat and Bagler supporter, conspires with the former queen Margaret (Lia Boysen) to have king Haakon (Benjamin Helstad) murdered, promising to return her to power as queen. Margaret's daughter Kristin overhears this and confronts her, but her mother claims that exposing the plot would mean certain death for them, scaring Kristin into secrecy.
Margaret poisons Haakon and departs Norway for her native Sweden. Before he dies, however, Haakon reveals he has a son with a woman named Inga, and has sent Torstein (Kristofer Hivju) and Skervald (Jakob Oftebro), two Birkebeiner agents, to find him. Gisle later frames his brother Inge and plans to marry Kristin.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 2016 Norwegian film by Nils Gaup. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q23705696. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2016 and 1204.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Last King” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.