Augvald (Old Norse: Ogvaldr) was a semi-legendary Norwegian petty king portrayed in the legendary Norse sagas. If considered historical, reconstructed estimates based on saga information would have Augvald living some time in the 7th century AD. His kingdom was said to have been based in Jøsursheid, somewhere in the interior of south-western Norway. After a number of naval battles he succeeded in conquering the islands off the western coast of Rogaland. He subsequently moved his kingdom's seat to the north-east of Karmøy, the largest of those islands and adjacent to the strategically important Karmsund strait, to a site later given the name Avaldsnes, after the king. Augvald's kingdom further expanded to incorporate parts of what is today south-western Hordaland. Augvald had several daughters, including two who notably fought alongside him as so-called shield-maidens, or female warriors. He owned and worshipped a sacred cow, which he always kept with him, believing he owed his victories to the cow and the power of its milk. Augvald was killed during a battle with his rival Ferking, the native king of western Karmøy, with whom his story is interlinked. Sources Norse sagas telling parts of the story of Augvald include the Saga of Olaf Tryggvason (both by Snorri Sturluson in Heimskringla and by Oddr Snorrason), the Saga of Half & His Heroes and the Flateyjarbok. He also appears in the later Historia rerum Norvegicarum and other works of the Icelandic historian Thormodus Torfæus, who lived and worked in Kopervik, Karmøy. In addition, Augvald is mentioned in the Avaldsnes parish register, and in local Karmøy legends. Scholars have been very sceptical about the reliability of the legendary sagas, which were dismissed as being of little value even in the early 20th century, before the establishment of general source criticism. The legendary sagas' value as sources has not been re-evaluated in recent times. Name Augvald's name (originally Ogvaldr) later spelled as af Awaldzstadom in Aslak Bolt's cadastre (Norwegian "Aslak Bolts Jordebok") (A.B 52), later abbreviated to Ofstad (as recorded in Professor Ole Ryghs publicly commissioned study of old personalnames, titled "Gamle Personnavne i Norske stedsnavne", has been interpreted in several different ways, although usually taken to mean a combination of the words "awe" and "violence" (old norse "Agi" + "valdr") or "awe" + "reign", meaning something like "respect-reign" or "Fear-reign" or "he who is held in awe," derived from the West-Nordic agi meaning holy unrest and