Eric Bloodaxe

Eiríkr Haraldsson, known as Erik Bloodaxe, was a son of Harald Fairhair (Harald Hárfagri), who according to the sagas unified Norway under one king after the Battle of Hafrsfjord around 872 AD. Harald had many sons by different mothers, and in time he designated Erik his primary heir — a decision that set brother against brother.

The sagas say Erik killed several of his own brothers, possibly four or five, to secure the succession. That is very likely where the name Bloodaxe comes from — Old Norse blóðøx — either from his skill with the axe or from the blood he shed consolidating power. Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla and the Fagrskinna saga are the primary sources for these years; Fagrskinna describes him as "brawny, bewhiskered, brave."

He ruled Norway from around 930 to 934. It was a harsh reign, and an unpopular one. His younger half-brother Haakon — raised Christian at the English court, and later remembered as Haakon the Good — returned to Norway, and Erik's support collapsed around him. Rather than fight a war he could not win, Erik left. He was roughly thirty-four years old, a king without a kingdom, and his story was only half told.

Yes. He is a documented historical figure — Old Norse Eiríkr Haraldsson, c. 895–954 — attested in multiple saga sources including Heimskringla, Fagrskinna and Egils saga, and in Anglo-Saxon chronicle sources relating to Northumbria.

His earlier Norwegian years reach us through saga tradition written down two to three centuries after his death, so they carry the normal caveats that apply to Norse historical sources. His Northumbrian kingship is better attested, in English sources closer to his own lifetime. Saga details are sometimes embellished and sometimes contradict one another — but the broad shape of his life is accepted historical fact, not legend: king of Norway, exile, twice king of Northumbria, killed at Stainmore.

Erik's wife Gunnhild — later known by the title konungamóðir, Mother of Kings — was one of the most formidable political figures of the Viking Age. Her parentage is genuinely disputed in the sources: Heimskringla names her father as Özur Tóti, a Norwegian chieftain from Hålogaland, while other, later sources connect her to the Danish royal house as a possible daughter of Gorm the Old.

The sagas describe her as trained in seiðr — Norse magical and seeress practice — during time spent in Finnmark. After Erik's death she took their sons into exile, first to Orkney and then to the Danish court, and spent the next twenty-five years or so as the political force behind her sons' repeated attempts to reclaim the Norwegian throne. Her son Harald Greycloak did briefly rule Norway, around 961 to 970.

In 954, at Stainmore — a pass in the Pennines between the Yorkshire Dales and Cumbria — Erik was killed in an ambush, along with his son Haeric and his brother Ragnald. The sources disagree on the exact circumstances: treachery from within his own circle, or a coalition led by Maccus, son of Anlaf. They agree on the outcome. He was probably around fifty-nine.

His death ended the Scandinavian royal tradition in Jorvik for good, and Northumbria was absorbed into the kingdom of England under Eadred of Wessex. A memorial poem, Eiríksmál, was composed for him, imagining his welcome into Valhalla — genuine primary-source evidence of how seriously his death was taken at the time.