There are few women of the Viking Age more famous or infamous than Gunnhildr konungamóðir, or Gunnhild, Mother of Kings. Stories of political intrigue and murder, of witchcraft and sexual transgression gather around her in the saga traditions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But can anything be recovered of the tenth-century woman who stands behind the legends?
By Matthew Firth
Queen Gunnhild is perhaps the most prominent woman of the Old Norse-Icelandic saga tradition, and certainly the most infamous: a witch, a murderer, a conspirator, a lover, a royal advisor, a wicked queen, an implacable enemy. Her notorious reputation is preserved in kings’ sagas (konungasögur) and Icelandic sagas (Íslendingasögur) alike. But these stories were first recorded in texts put to parchment centuries after Gunnhild’s death around the year 980. No contemporary narrative sources survive to tell her story. And while there is little reason to doubt that she was a historical figure, what is known of her, and the most compelling stories about her, are wrapped up in myth and legend. Fact and fiction are not easy to unravel.
Gunnhild is associated with the reign of at least four kings of Norway. She married Eiríkr blóðøx, or Erik Bloodaxe, in the early tenth century when he was merely one of the many sons of King Haraldr hárfagri (fairhair; r. c. 872–930). Gunnhild’s fortunes were bound up with the vicissitudes of Erik’s career. The young prince would be elevated to kingly status by his father, along with his brothers, under Harald’s overlordship. In his old age, Harald would designate Erik as his successor to the high kingship, engendering the resentment of his other sons. It was Erik’s brutal approach to dynastic politics that earned him the sobriquet, Bloodaxe. The sagas imply that Gunnhild was complicit as Erik set about killing his rivals, his brothers.
However, the brother who would prove Erik’s greatest opposition, Hákon góði (the good; r. c. 934–961), was then in England at the court of King Æthelstan (r. 924–939), and so escaped Erik’s murderous intentions. According to the saga chronology, Hákon returned to Norway around 933 and usurped Erik’s throne. Erik and Gunnhild fled the following year to Æthelstan’s court, subsequently taking up the rule of Northumbria with the English king’s blessing. This timeline, placing events in the 930s as it does, is difficult to reconcile with the English historical record, which states that the Northumbrians accepted a ruler named Yryc (or Eric) in 947/8 and again in 952. Whether this Northumbrian ruler was Erik Bloodaxe, as traditionally identified, or a different figure remains uncertain.
Gunnhild Encourages Her Sons (Gunnhild egger sønnene sine), an illustration by Christian Krohg for Heimskringla, depicting Gunnhild, Mother of Kings, urging her sons to action. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
In saga narratives, however, Gunnhild reached the apex of her influence after her husband’s death. This is a historical pattern observable in early medieval queenship. Erik’s death, perhaps at the behest of King Edmund I (r. 939–946), perhaps while raiding in Spain, depending on the saga, brought Gunnhild to political prominence. Fleeing England with her sons – still boys according to the sagas – Gunnhild brought them into alliance with the king of Denmark, Haraldr blátǫnn (blue-tooth; r. c. 958–986). From Denmark, with their mother’s guidance, the Gunnhildarsynir, or Gunnhild’s sons as they are known in the sagas, launched a successful campaign to overthrow their uncle, Hákon. So Gunnhild returned to the centre of power in Norway at the side of her sons, Haraldr gráfeldr (grey-cloak; r. 961–970) most prominent among them.
This is the broad outline of Gunnhild’s life that emerges from the saga tradition. It is the background against which its more salacious tales of the queen unfold, and a story that saga authors could assume their audiences knew. Almost every other aspect of the queen’s life is contested, embellished, or simply incredible.
Gunnhild’s origins
Gunnhild Has the Finns Killed, an illustration by Christian Krohg for Heimskringla, depicting Gunnhild arranging the killing of two Sámi magicians. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Even something as simple as Gunnhild’s background remains unclear. While for most Viking Age women this would simply be because that information was not recorded, the opposite is true here: we have rival accounts of Gunnhild’s origins.
The oldest history to mention Gunnhild, Historia Norwegie, which dates to around 1170, states that Gunnhild was the daughter of the Danish king, Gormr gamli (the old; r. c. 936–958). This identification has often been accepted in modern scholarship. Gorm is often viewed as the founding king of Denmark, a similar conceptual space to that occupied by Harald fairhair in Norway. As such, there is some logic to the idea of a marriage union between two families with regional hegemonic ambitions. Moreover, two of Gunnhild’s sons, Gamli and Gormr, could have been named for their maternal grandfather, in the same way that Harald grey-cloak had been named after Harald fairhair. It is also of note that, after Erik’s death, Gunnhild and her sons were able to seek refuge at the Danish court of Harald blue-tooth who, according to Historia Norwegie, would have been Gunnhild’s brother.
Counter to this narrative, though, is the much more widely told story of Gunnhild’s origins in Hálogaland, in northern Norway, the daughter of a regional noble named Ǫzurr tóti (snout). This identification appears in seven sagas, though it is also the case that these are often inter-dependent, and Ǫzurr himself makes no appearances in the historical record outside references to his supposed daughter. Nonetheless, it would have been a reasonable dynastic strategy for a king seeking to consolidate rule over Norway to pursue a marriage alliance for his son with a powerful regional noble family.
The sagas associate northern Norway with the Saami, and the Saami with magic. This more than anything else has raised the prospect that Gunnhild’s origins in Hálogaland are a later invention. Two prominent kings’ sagas connect Gunnhild’s magic prowess with skills learned under tutoring from Saami magicians. Fagrskinna, dating to around 1225, states that Gunnhild was fostered and educated by Mǫtull, the king of the Finnar, a man greatly skilled in magical arts. Heimskringla, composed only a few years later by Snorri Sturluson, tells an entirely more fantastic story.
In his twentieth year, Erik Bloodaxe had set off on a great viking adventure, heading north to Finnmǫrk and then east to Bjarmaland where he was said to have won a great victory on the Dvina River. On his return journey, some of his men came across a woman in the forest who was more beautiful than any they had seen. Gunnhild tells the men that she is learning magic from two Saami magicians who will certainly kill them if they are present when the magicians return. Yet Gunnhild is ready to depart the company of the Saami, perhaps by this time an unwilling guest of the two men, who have come to lust after her and distrust each other. Using her own magic, Gunnhild hides Erik’s men in the camp and lulls the magicians into an unawakenable sleep before signalling for the Norwegians to come out and slaughter them. The men take Gunnhild to Erik the next day who immediately falls in love with her and sets sail for Hálogaland to seek out Ǫzurr and ask for Gunnhild’s hand in marriage.
Gunnhild, an illustration by Christian Krohg for Heimskringla, in the section devoted to the saga of Olaf Tryggvason. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
This account of how Gunnhild and Erik met should quite clearly be treated as a literary construction rather than a reliable historical reconstruction. But does it follow that Gunnhild’s potential origins in Hálogaland should likewise be dismissed? While it is possible that her association with the region in saga tradition grew out of the belief that she was educated in magic by the Saami, it is equally plausible that her association with magical knowledge grew out of the belief in her origins in Hálogaland.
Whatever her origins, from this point forward, Gunnhild’s life is tied to Erik’s reign, and rarely for the best. Ágrip af Nóregskonungasögum, an Old Norse history that dates to around 1190, summarises her legacy as queen consort of Norway:
Gunnhild, Erik’s wife, was the most beautiful of all women; small in stature yet great of counsel. She became so wicked in her counsel, and he so easily led to acts cruel and oppressive to the people, that it was hard to bear. Erik had killed his brother Óláfr and Bjǫrn and others of his brothers. Thus he was called Bloodaxe, because he was a cruel and ruthless man, and mostly as a result of her counsel.
Here Gunnhild is identified as not merely a partner in Erik’s power, but as a key advisor and author of his policies, including that to eliminate his brothers as rivals. Historia Norwegie directly blames Gunnhild and her advice for the decision of the Norwegian nobles to recall Hákon from England and support his usurpation. Moreover, it suggests that Gunnhild did not learn from this experience, carrying a similar attitude to the use of authority into the next phase of her career, as queen consort of Northumbria.
Gunnhild in the sagas: sorcery, politics and reputation
Evil Gunhild (Gunhild den onde), a 1922 painting of Gunnhild, Mother of Kings, by Norwegian artist Christian Krohg (1852–1925). Trondheim Art Museum, Norway. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Certain stories about the queen have captured the historical imagination more than others and Gunnhild appears nowhere as prominently as in Egils saga. Within Egils saga, which dates to around 1230, the queen is cast as the main rival to the Icelandic protagonist, Egill. It is also the only account that provides any sort of narrative to Gunnhild’s time in Northumbria. However, it is Norway that the queen and the Icelander first come into conflict.
Egill’s brother is one of Erik’s companions on the voyage where the Norwegian royal meets his future wife, and even becomes friends with Gunnhild. That all changes, though, when Egill is brought into Gunnhild’s orbit. During their association in Norway, Egill insults the queen, kills one of her men, challenges Erik’s authority in his own court, murders one of the queen’s sons (who is an invention of this saga), and curses Gunnhild and Erik’s reign to failure. In the reckoning of Egils saga, the Icelander is directly responsible for Hákon’s usurpation. Whatever Gunnhild’s actions, it would be difficult to argue she was not provoked.
Gunnhild curses Egill to find no peace in Iceland until she sets eyes on him again. It is in this context that Egill finds himself shipwrecked on the Humber and, in short order, fronting Erik’s court in York to plead for his life. In what follows, Gunnhild demonstrates herself as an active participant of the court. What ensues is a back-and-forth contest between Gunnhild and Egill’s ally at the court, Arinbjǫrn, to sway Erik’s mind to either kill or spare the Icelander. Here Gunnhild acts in a ‘whetting’ role, a motif typical of the sagas, whereby a female character goads men into action by calling their honour and agency into question. In this instance, despite resorting to shapeshifting magic to distract the Icelander in his mission, Gunnhild is unsuccessful and disappears from the pages of the saga.
This is not the only place where Erik and Gunnhild’s tenure in Northumbria is recorded. Egils saga builds on a foundation of sources, like Ágrip and Fagrskinna, that report both Erik’s lordship in the North of England and, at times, Gunnhild’s ‘pernicious fury’, as Historia Norwegie puts it. Nevertheless, while this offers Egils saga a plausible historical setting, most of what it relates about the queen can be relegated to the realm of the fantastic.
In the aftermath of Erik’s death, Gunnhild and her children may have headed first to Orkney, a region of heavy Norse settlement. Orkneyinga saga, which dates to around 1200, suggests that Gunnhild’s sons took control of the islands and used them as a base for raiding. News, however, soon reached them that Hákon was in conflict with Harald blue-tooth, and so they departed to see if the situation could be turned to their benefit. Before leaving Orkney, Gunnhild married her only known daughter to the local jarl.
Gunnhild and her sons found support in Denmark, which is hardly surprising if Harald blue-tooth was indeed the queen’s brother. However, across multiple campaigns Gunnhild’s sons came off second-best, even in the battle of Fitjar in 961 which saw the downfall of Hákon. This is because, as the brothers were fleeing, a kitchen boy let loose a spear that mortally wounded Hákon. Ágrip states that Gunnhild’s magics lay behind the event, and this is the version of the story that made its way into almost all later accounts.
The sons of Gunnhild came to authority in Norway with Harald grey-cloak at their head and Gunnhild at their side. Heimskringla paints her as the architect of their plans as they systematically sought to neutralise any rivals for power. Harald retained the kingship for at least eight years. In most accounts, his death came about through a conspiracy between a powerful local jarl, another Hákon, and the Danish king, Harald blue-tooth.
While Gunnhild fades from view in most texts, three provide an addendum to Harald grey-cloak’s assassination. In this version of events, Harald blue-tooth sends messengers to the widowed queen offering marriage. To return to the question of Gunnhild’s origins, this is impossible were they actually siblings. Gunnhild, though, is tempted by the offer, and so heads to Denmark, only to be greeted by a force of men who convey her to a swamp where she is drowned and buried. Writing about 1180, Theodoricus Monachus concludes the story by stating ‘that was the end of the crimes and sorceries of Gunnhild’.
There are many other stories of Gunnhild that could be told: the lustful queen mother of Njáls saga, the lonely widow of Laxdœla saga, the persecutor of the future king of Norway, Óláfr Tryggvason (r. 995–1000). These stories are not consistent accounts of a single life. Across the sagas, Gunnhild emerges as a woman whose influence over kings and their actions was inseparable from her reputation for wickedness and sorcery. She is blamed for Erik’s violence against his brothers, credited with helping her sons secure the Norwegian kingship, and cast as an implacable antagonist to Egill. Even her death becomes a final reckoning for a life of supposed crimes and magic. These are narratives shaped by different authors, for different purposes, which nonetheless made Gunnhild into one of the most memorable and notorious women of the Scandinavian past.
Is a ‘real’ Gunnhild recoverable?
A ‘historical’ Gunnhild is only glimpsed in saga narrative; as a fully-formed character, she is beyond our reach. This, though, does not make the woman who emerges from the sagas any less ‘real’. Despite the shifting narrative currents that swirl around the queen, their biographical core remains stable: wife of Erik, queen consort, mother of kings, among the most politically consequential Scandinavian women of her day.
Jessica Madsen has been cast as Gunnhild, the lead female role in the upcoming original series, Bloodaxe. Photo courtesy Amazon / MGM Studios
She is a figure who captures imagination and has continued to do so into the modern era. When a female bog body was uncovered at Haraldskær in 1835, she was quickly declared to be Queen Gunnhild. Although the identification was challenged within a few years, the story proved more compelling than the truth. The body became a bona fide celebrity, and Gunnhild inspired new poems and plays. It was only in 1977 that radiocarbon dating conclusively established that the woman had lived more than a millennium before the queen. In the twentieth century, the queen was adopted as a character in at least six novels, and now Prime Video is set to join the long tradition of rewriting Gunnhild’s legacy in the series Bloodaxe premiering in 2027.
There are few women of the Viking Age more famous or infamous than Gunnhildr konungamóðir, or Gunnhild, Mother of Kings. Stories of political intrigue and murder, of witchcraft and sexual transgression gather around her in the saga traditions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But can anything be recovered of the tenth-century woman who stands behind the legends?
By Matthew Firth
Queen Gunnhild is perhaps the most prominent woman of the Old Norse-Icelandic saga tradition, and certainly the most infamous: a witch, a murderer, a conspirator, a lover, a royal advisor, a wicked queen, an implacable enemy. Her notorious reputation is preserved in kings’ sagas (konungasögur) and Icelandic sagas (Íslendingasögur) alike. But these stories were first recorded in texts put to parchment centuries after Gunnhild’s death around the year 980. No contemporary narrative sources survive to tell her story. And while there is little reason to doubt that she was a historical figure, what is known of her, and the most compelling stories about her, are wrapped up in myth and legend. Fact and fiction are not easy to unravel.
Gunnhild is associated with the reign of at least four kings of Norway. She married Eiríkr blóðøx, or Erik Bloodaxe, in the early tenth century when he was merely one of the many sons of King Haraldr hárfagri (fairhair; r. c. 872–930). Gunnhild’s fortunes were bound up with the vicissitudes of Erik’s career. The young prince would be elevated to kingly status by his father, along with his brothers, under Harald’s overlordship. In his old age, Harald would designate Erik as his successor to the high kingship, engendering the resentment of his other sons. It was Erik’s brutal approach to dynastic politics that earned him the sobriquet, Bloodaxe. The sagas imply that Gunnhild was complicit as Erik set about killing his rivals, his brothers.
However, the brother who would prove Erik’s greatest opposition, Hákon góði (the good; r. c. 934–961), was then in England at the court of King Æthelstan (r. 924–939), and so escaped Erik’s murderous intentions. According to the saga chronology, Hákon returned to Norway around 933 and usurped Erik’s throne. Erik and Gunnhild fled the following year to Æthelstan’s court, subsequently taking up the rule of Northumbria with the English king’s blessing. This timeline, placing events in the 930s as it does, is difficult to reconcile with the English historical record, which states that the Northumbrians accepted a ruler named Yryc (or Eric) in 947/8 and again in 952. Whether this Northumbrian ruler was Erik Bloodaxe, as traditionally identified, or a different figure remains uncertain.
In saga narratives, however, Gunnhild reached the apex of her influence after her husband’s death. This is a historical pattern observable in early medieval queenship. Erik’s death, perhaps at the behest of King Edmund I (r. 939–946), perhaps while raiding in Spain, depending on the saga, brought Gunnhild to political prominence. Fleeing England with her sons – still boys according to the sagas – Gunnhild brought them into alliance with the king of Denmark, Haraldr blátǫnn (blue-tooth; r. c. 958–986). From Denmark, with their mother’s guidance, the Gunnhildarsynir, or Gunnhild’s sons as they are known in the sagas, launched a successful campaign to overthrow their uncle, Hákon. So Gunnhild returned to the centre of power in Norway at the side of her sons, Haraldr gráfeldr (grey-cloak; r. 961–970) most prominent among them.
This is the broad outline of Gunnhild’s life that emerges from the saga tradition. It is the background against which its more salacious tales of the queen unfold, and a story that saga authors could assume their audiences knew. Almost every other aspect of the queen’s life is contested, embellished, or simply incredible.
Gunnhild’s origins
Even something as simple as Gunnhild’s background remains unclear. While for most Viking Age women this would simply be because that information was not recorded, the opposite is true here: we have rival accounts of Gunnhild’s origins.
The oldest history to mention Gunnhild, Historia Norwegie, which dates to around 1170, states that Gunnhild was the daughter of the Danish king, Gormr gamli (the old; r. c. 936–958). This identification has often been accepted in modern scholarship. Gorm is often viewed as the founding king of Denmark, a similar conceptual space to that occupied by Harald fairhair in Norway. As such, there is some logic to the idea of a marriage union between two families with regional hegemonic ambitions. Moreover, two of Gunnhild’s sons, Gamli and Gormr, could have been named for their maternal grandfather, in the same way that Harald grey-cloak had been named after Harald fairhair. It is also of note that, after Erik’s death, Gunnhild and her sons were able to seek refuge at the Danish court of Harald blue-tooth who, according to Historia Norwegie, would have been Gunnhild’s brother.
Counter to this narrative, though, is the much more widely told story of Gunnhild’s origins in Hálogaland, in northern Norway, the daughter of a regional noble named Ǫzurr tóti (snout). This identification appears in seven sagas, though it is also the case that these are often inter-dependent, and Ǫzurr himself makes no appearances in the historical record outside references to his supposed daughter. Nonetheless, it would have been a reasonable dynastic strategy for a king seeking to consolidate rule over Norway to pursue a marriage alliance for his son with a powerful regional noble family.
The sagas associate northern Norway with the Saami, and the Saami with magic. This more than anything else has raised the prospect that Gunnhild’s origins in Hálogaland are a later invention. Two prominent kings’ sagas connect Gunnhild’s magic prowess with skills learned under tutoring from Saami magicians. Fagrskinna, dating to around 1225, states that Gunnhild was fostered and educated by Mǫtull, the king of the Finnar, a man greatly skilled in magical arts. Heimskringla, composed only a few years later by Snorri Sturluson, tells an entirely more fantastic story.
In his twentieth year, Erik Bloodaxe had set off on a great viking adventure, heading north to Finnmǫrk and then east to Bjarmaland where he was said to have won a great victory on the Dvina River. On his return journey, some of his men came across a woman in the forest who was more beautiful than any they had seen. Gunnhild tells the men that she is learning magic from two Saami magicians who will certainly kill them if they are present when the magicians return. Yet Gunnhild is ready to depart the company of the Saami, perhaps by this time an unwilling guest of the two men, who have come to lust after her and distrust each other. Using her own magic, Gunnhild hides Erik’s men in the camp and lulls the magicians into an unawakenable sleep before signalling for the Norwegians to come out and slaughter them. The men take Gunnhild to Erik the next day who immediately falls in love with her and sets sail for Hálogaland to seek out Ǫzurr and ask for Gunnhild’s hand in marriage.
This account of how Gunnhild and Erik met should quite clearly be treated as a literary construction rather than a reliable historical reconstruction. But does it follow that Gunnhild’s potential origins in Hálogaland should likewise be dismissed? While it is possible that her association with the region in saga tradition grew out of the belief that she was educated in magic by the Saami, it is equally plausible that her association with magical knowledge grew out of the belief in her origins in Hálogaland.
Whatever her origins, from this point forward, Gunnhild’s life is tied to Erik’s reign, and rarely for the best. Ágrip af Nóregskonungasögum, an Old Norse history that dates to around 1190, summarises her legacy as queen consort of Norway:
Gunnhild, Erik’s wife, was the most beautiful of all women; small in stature yet great of counsel. She became so wicked in her counsel, and he so easily led to acts cruel and oppressive to the people, that it was hard to bear. Erik had killed his brother Óláfr and Bjǫrn and others of his brothers. Thus he was called Bloodaxe, because he was a cruel and ruthless man, and mostly as a result of her counsel.
Here Gunnhild is identified as not merely a partner in Erik’s power, but as a key advisor and author of his policies, including that to eliminate his brothers as rivals. Historia Norwegie directly blames Gunnhild and her advice for the decision of the Norwegian nobles to recall Hákon from England and support his usurpation. Moreover, it suggests that Gunnhild did not learn from this experience, carrying a similar attitude to the use of authority into the next phase of her career, as queen consort of Northumbria.
Gunnhild in the sagas: sorcery, politics and reputation
Certain stories about the queen have captured the historical imagination more than others and Gunnhild appears nowhere as prominently as in Egils saga. Within Egils saga, which dates to around 1230, the queen is cast as the main rival to the Icelandic protagonist, Egill. It is also the only account that provides any sort of narrative to Gunnhild’s time in Northumbria. However, it is Norway that the queen and the Icelander first come into conflict.
Egill’s brother is one of Erik’s companions on the voyage where the Norwegian royal meets his future wife, and even becomes friends with Gunnhild. That all changes, though, when Egill is brought into Gunnhild’s orbit. During their association in Norway, Egill insults the queen, kills one of her men, challenges Erik’s authority in his own court, murders one of the queen’s sons (who is an invention of this saga), and curses Gunnhild and Erik’s reign to failure. In the reckoning of Egils saga, the Icelander is directly responsible for Hákon’s usurpation. Whatever Gunnhild’s actions, it would be difficult to argue she was not provoked.
Gunnhild curses Egill to find no peace in Iceland until she sets eyes on him again. It is in this context that Egill finds himself shipwrecked on the Humber and, in short order, fronting Erik’s court in York to plead for his life. In what follows, Gunnhild demonstrates herself as an active participant of the court. What ensues is a back-and-forth contest between Gunnhild and Egill’s ally at the court, Arinbjǫrn, to sway Erik’s mind to either kill or spare the Icelander. Here Gunnhild acts in a ‘whetting’ role, a motif typical of the sagas, whereby a female character goads men into action by calling their honour and agency into question. In this instance, despite resorting to shapeshifting magic to distract the Icelander in his mission, Gunnhild is unsuccessful and disappears from the pages of the saga.
This is not the only place where Erik and Gunnhild’s tenure in Northumbria is recorded. Egils saga builds on a foundation of sources, like Ágrip and Fagrskinna, that report both Erik’s lordship in the North of England and, at times, Gunnhild’s ‘pernicious fury’, as Historia Norwegie puts it. Nevertheless, while this offers Egils saga a plausible historical setting, most of what it relates about the queen can be relegated to the realm of the fantastic.
In the aftermath of Erik’s death, Gunnhild and her children may have headed first to Orkney, a region of heavy Norse settlement. Orkneyinga saga, which dates to around 1200, suggests that Gunnhild’s sons took control of the islands and used them as a base for raiding. News, however, soon reached them that Hákon was in conflict with Harald blue-tooth, and so they departed to see if the situation could be turned to their benefit. Before leaving Orkney, Gunnhild married her only known daughter to the local jarl.
Gunnhild and her sons found support in Denmark, which is hardly surprising if Harald blue-tooth was indeed the queen’s brother. However, across multiple campaigns Gunnhild’s sons came off second-best, even in the battle of Fitjar in 961 which saw the downfall of Hákon. This is because, as the brothers were fleeing, a kitchen boy let loose a spear that mortally wounded Hákon. Ágrip states that Gunnhild’s magics lay behind the event, and this is the version of the story that made its way into almost all later accounts.
The sons of Gunnhild came to authority in Norway with Harald grey-cloak at their head and Gunnhild at their side. Heimskringla paints her as the architect of their plans as they systematically sought to neutralise any rivals for power. Harald retained the kingship for at least eight years. In most accounts, his death came about through a conspiracy between a powerful local jarl, another Hákon, and the Danish king, Harald blue-tooth.
While Gunnhild fades from view in most texts, three provide an addendum to Harald grey-cloak’s assassination. In this version of events, Harald blue-tooth sends messengers to the widowed queen offering marriage. To return to the question of Gunnhild’s origins, this is impossible were they actually siblings. Gunnhild, though, is tempted by the offer, and so heads to Denmark, only to be greeted by a force of men who convey her to a swamp where she is drowned and buried. Writing about 1180, Theodoricus Monachus concludes the story by stating ‘that was the end of the crimes and sorceries of Gunnhild’.
There are many other stories of Gunnhild that could be told: the lustful queen mother of Njáls saga, the lonely widow of Laxdœla saga, the persecutor of the future king of Norway, Óláfr Tryggvason (r. 995–1000). These stories are not consistent accounts of a single life. Across the sagas, Gunnhild emerges as a woman whose influence over kings and their actions was inseparable from her reputation for wickedness and sorcery. She is blamed for Erik’s violence against his brothers, credited with helping her sons secure the Norwegian kingship, and cast as an implacable antagonist to Egill. Even her death becomes a final reckoning for a life of supposed crimes and magic. These are narratives shaped by different authors, for different purposes, which nonetheless made Gunnhild into one of the most memorable and notorious women of the Scandinavian past.
Is a ‘real’ Gunnhild recoverable?
A ‘historical’ Gunnhild is only glimpsed in saga narrative; as a fully-formed character, she is beyond our reach. This, though, does not make the woman who emerges from the sagas any less ‘real’. Despite the shifting narrative currents that swirl around the queen, their biographical core remains stable: wife of Erik, queen consort, mother of kings, among the most politically consequential Scandinavian women of her day.
She is a figure who captures imagination and has continued to do so into the modern era. When a female bog body was uncovered at Haraldskær in 1835, she was quickly declared to be Queen Gunnhild. Although the identification was challenged within a few years, the story proved more compelling than the truth. The body became a bona fide celebrity, and Gunnhild inspired new poems and plays. It was only in 1977 that radiocarbon dating conclusively established that the woman had lived more than a millennium before the queen. In the twentieth century, the queen was adopted as a character in at least six novels, and now Prime Video is set to join the long tradition of rewriting Gunnhild’s legacy in the series Bloodaxe premiering in 2027.
Matthew Firth is Research Fellow in Medieval History at Flinders University, Australia. He is the author of the forthcoming open access book, Gunnhildr, Mother of Kings, in Scandinavian Cultural Memory (Arc Humanities Press, 2027). Matthew’s research is supported by an Australian Research Council DECRA (DE250100116).
Further Readings:
Nicola Alexandra Ibbott, ‘The Witch-Queen of Avaldsnes: An Analysis of the Portrayals of Gunnhildr konungamóðir’. Unpublished master’s thesis, Durham University, 2019.
Lyonel D. Perabo, ‘The Disputed Origins of Gunnhildr konungamóðir’. Apardjón 1 (2020): 112–37.
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