GUNNHILD, MOTHER OF KINGS

The ambition and brutality of Queen Gunnhild Kingsmother
c. AD 900–970

A most beautiful woman, wise and learned, gladsome of speech, but very guileful and stern in disposition.

—Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla

JUST BECAUSE THEY WEREN’T ALWAYS LEAPING from the decks of burning longships and swinging their mighty broadswords at a mob of fleeing peasants, that doesn’t mean Viking women weren’t some of the toughest, most independent, most ferocious, and most utterly ruthless human beings ever to walk the earth. Coming from a civilization that was unusually good to women compared with elsewhere in the world, Viking women owned property, built structures, managed farms, and basically ran the show while their husbands were gone for months or even years at a time on their epic raids. The self-reliance and strength required to keep their families alive in a harsh, subzero tundra environment surrounded by Vikings made the Norse women fierce, bold, and daring… and more than a match for their axe-swinging husbands and sons in matters of personal courage and intelligence.

Of those daring, no-nonsense Norse women, none was more fierce—or notorious—than the infamous Gunnhild, Mother of Kings. Wife, mother, and daughter of powerful Viking rulers, two-time queen of Norway, and a well-spoken political animal, this woman was also so despised for her cruelty that saga writers portray her less like a historical figure and more like a wicked witch from an antiquated fairy tale.

Sources differ on where Gunnhild came from, but the best guess is that she was a daughter of Gorm the Old, the powerful Viking king who had spent his apparently exceptionally long life conquering most of the small kingdoms of Denmark and uniting them into one land. Gorm was basically the Harald Fairhair of Denmark, and by the time both those guys were done killing everyone who disagreed with them, all the Viking lands had gone from being a bunch of tiny nothing kingdoms to two really powerful ones—Norway and Denmark. Naturally, the best thing to do was to unite those two countries through marriage. So Gorm the Old’s daughter Gunnhild was sent to Norway to marry Harald Fairhair’s son Erik. This would, in theory, unify the land under one Viking king, and everyone would live happily ever after in one jolly sing-along filled with helmets and axes and burning and destruction.

Unfortunately, things didn’t work out that way (they usually don’t).

For starters, Princess Gunnhild was not your typical glass-slipper-wearing Disney princess with a blindingly white smile and one of those little waves the beauty queens do on TV. Sure, she was legendarily beautiful, eloquent, and really fun to talk to at parties, but she was also calculating, ambitious, and deadly. According to one (highly unreliable) source, she’d spent part of her life living in a hut near the North Pole, learning magic from two Finnish sorcerers, only to have them murdered once she’d become more powerful than them. While the whole witchcraft-and-magic thing was probably bogus, it is true that Gunnhild didn’t take talk-back from anybody, and she didn’t hesitate to go for the jugular to get what she wanted.

Gunnhild’s husband was a nice, handsome prince named Erik Bloodaxe. Yes, Bloodaxe.

Erik was the favorite son of King Harald Fairhair, and after Fairhair retired from being king in the late 920s, he passed the throne to Erik and Gunnhild, who were crowned king and queen of Norway. Of course, as I mentioned before, Harald Fairhair had a lot of kids, and this king/queen thing didn’t sit well with Erik’s twenty half brothers, all of whom wanted that crown for themselves. When Harald died a couple of years later, Erik’s brothers decided they were going to do something about it.

Luckily for Erik Bloodaxe, he had a secret weapon—his wife. Queen Gunnhild, signing secret backroom treaties, buying off corrupt politicians, and outright hiring professional assassins and poisoners, immediately went to work making sure nobody even dreamed of taking the crown of Norway from the head of her beloved husband. One by one, and for various reasons, Erik Bloodaxe’s half brothers began passing out of history. One of them tried to make an alliance against Erik, so Gunnhild had him locked inside his own house, which was then set on fire. Another brother picked a fight with Erik over a land dispute, so Gunnhild paid a witch to poison him. She got one brother, Haakon the Good, deported to England. Another was completely discredited and abandoned by his own followers after some nasty rumors about him started spreading.

Eventually, with brothers dropping off all over the place, things got so out of control that all the sons of Harald Fairhair raised armies and fought it out in a huge battle on a giant snowy field near Erik’s palace. Four separate armies, each commanded by a Fairhair son, met in a swirling, bloody melee that left thousands of brave Vikings dead on the field. From the rubble, smoke, destruction, and carnage, only one side emerged victorious—that of Erik Bloodaxe and his wife, Queen Gunnhild.

Things went great for a while. Erik Bloodaxe and Queen Gunnhild ruled with an iron fist, kept the jarls in line, eviscerated anyone who challenged them, and still found time to have nine kids together.

Well, I guess it turns out that even though tyranny is fun if you’re the tyrant, it didn’t really work for the jarls of Norway, and after a couple of years of suffering under Erik and Gunnhild, those guys went looking for help. They found Haakon the Good, the young boy Gunnhild had sent away to be raised by King Athelstan of England (the grandson of Alfred the Great), and asked him if he wanted to be king of Norway. Haakon said sure, returned to Norway with a sword named Quernbiter (because it was so sharp it could cut through a quern, or grinding stone) and a loyal group of followers, and Erik’s now bitter jarls and soldiers deserted him almost immediately. Erik Bloodaxe fought Haakon the Good in battle, was defeated, and had to flee Norway.

Queen Gunnhild, driven from her palace by traitors, seethed with rage. She would get her revenge. She swore it.

Gunnhild and Erik Bloodaxe went to England, where they settled in York, the Viking-controlled city that had been captured from the English by Ivar the Boneless. Gunnhild helped establish Erik as the Viking king of York, where he ruled for the next decade or so, issued coins, and spent his summers leading military campaigns to ravage the English, Scottish, and Irish countrysides for goods and supplies. When the people of York threw him out and put some other guy on the throne, Gunnhild and Erik regrouped, attacked, and recaptured the kingdom.

It was a dark day in 954 when word came to Gunnhild that her beloved husband, Erik Bloodaxe, had been killed in battle with the English, and the armies of England were marching toward York. The queen gathered her children, commissioned a boat, and headed to the Orkney Islands, a small group of islands off the coast of Scotland, where her daughter lived with her husband, a powerful jarl named Thorfinn Skull-Cleaver. Thorfinn took Gunnhild in, and she immediately began strategizing her next move.

From this point on, Gunnhild, Mother of Kings, became even more intense. First, she organized treaties and alliances between Thorfinn and powerful jarls in both England and Norway. She encouraged bands of adventure-hungry Viking raiders to launch attacks up and down the coast of Norway to destabilize Haakon the Good’s rule, promising the pirates rewards if she ever regained the throne. She reached out to her brother, King Harald Bluetooth of Denmark, for reinforcements and support. She trained her son, Harald Greycloak, in the arts of leadership and strategy.

After biding her time for seven long years, Gunnhild was ready to make her move.

She arrived off the coast of Norway at the head of a gigantic fleet of warriors from every walk of Viking life—Thorfinn Skull-Cleaver’s Orkney men, jarls from York, Danish troops on loan from Harald Bluetooth, and mercenary Viking pirates she’d contacted on remote islands, all unified in one invading armada. When they landed, they were joined by Norwegian forces who had been loyal to Erik or had been promised money and power in the new reign of Gunnhild.