In the autumn of 954 AD, news reached Gunnhild that her husband was dead. Erik Bloodaxe had been killed at the Battle of Stainmore — on a moorland pass in the north of England, betrayed or outmanoeuvred or both, his small force overwhelmed. The Scandinavian royal tradition in Jorvik was over. She was a widow in her mid-forties, with a court in exile and several sons whose claims to Norway she would now have to advance alone.
At some point shortly after — possibly immediately, possibly within months — a poem was composed. We do not know for certain who commissioned it, though Gunnhild is the most likely candidate. We do not know who wrote it, though it was clearly someone working within the skaldic tradition, with a deep familiarity with the mythological material of the Eddas. What we know is what the poem says, because nine stanzas of it survived into the 13th-century manuscripts that preserve most of what we have of Old Norse literature.
The poem is called Eiríksmál — Erik's Words, or the Lay of Erik. It is one of the oldest surviving Norse poems about a real, recently-dead historical figure. And it is remarkable.
What the Poem Does
The Eiríksmál opens in Valhalla. Odin has had a dream — he has foreknowledge that a great king is coming, and he orders Valhalla prepared for a distinguished guest. He commands the benches laid, the mead vats readied, the Valkyries to stand ready with drinking horns. Something significant is arriving.
Then Odin sends Sigmund — the legendary hero of the Völsung cycle, the greatest mortal warrior in Norse mythology, the man who pulled the sword from the tree that only he could draw — to go to the gate and welcome the approaching king.
The choice of Sigmund matters. In Norse tradition, the dead warriors of Valhalla are the einherjar, the honoured slain, gathered by Odin for the final battle at Ragnarök. The welcome committee Odin sends is not a minor figure. Sigmund is the pinnacle of mortal heroism in the Norse world — the father of Sigurd, the man whose lineage produces the greatest heroes the tradition can name. To have Sigmund come to meet you at the gates of Valhalla is to be placed in the company of legends.
Sigmund asks Odin why he would receive this king above others — what has Erik done to merit such an honour? Odin's answer is blunt and entirely Norse in its values: Erik has reddened his sword with blood in many lands. He has won many victories. He is a great warrior. And — this is the crucial line — Odin needs great warriors for Ragnarök. The gods' own extinction is coming, and the einherjar are being assembled against that day. Erik's bloody career has been, in a sense, recruitment.
Then the sound of the arriving host fills the poem — the thunder of men and weapons — and Sigmund says he recognises it: it must be Erik himself. The poem ends with Erik arriving at Valhalla's gates, five kings behind him, welcomed by the greatest heroes of the Norse world.
Why Sigmund, and What It Means
The decision to make Sigmund Erik's welcomer is not incidental. It is a political and artistic choice that tells us exactly how the poem's author wanted Erik to be remembered.
Sigmund's story — told in the Völsunga saga and several Eddic poems — is the foundational heroic narrative of the Norse world. He is the last of the Völsung kings, chosen by Odin himself (who puts the sword in the tree that only Sigmund can draw), a warrior of supernatural ability whose line produces Sigurd, the great dragon-slayer. To have Sigmund personally escort Erik into Valhalla is to place Erik in the company of these figures — not literally claiming he is their equal, but drawing a direct line between the legendary heroic tradition and the recently dead historical king.
It is, essentially, the highest possible praise a Norse poet could offer: your king was so great that the greatest hero of legend came to meet him.
The Political Dimension
If Gunnhild commissioned this poem — and most scholars think she did or at least played a central role in its composition — then it was not simply a memorial. It was a political document.
In 954, with Erik dead, Gunnhild was managing a complex situation. She had sons whose claim to the Norwegian throne depended on their descent from a man who had been deposed and killed in a foreign country. She needed to maintain the narrative that Erik had been a great king — worthy of the throne, worthy of the name, worthy of Valhalla. A dead king dismissed as a tyrant who deserved his fate was not a useful father for princes trying to claim Norway.
The Eiríksmál counters that narrative directly. It says: this man went to Valhalla. Odin wanted him. Sigmund welcomed him. Five kings came with him because they chose to fight at his side. He was not a failed exile who died in a ditch on an English moor. He was a king so great that the gods prepared a special welcome.
Skaldic poetry was the primary means of political communication in the Norse world. It was performed at court, shared at feasts, memorised and transmitted. The audience for the Eiríksmál was not posterity — it was the living: the Norwegian jarls and chieftains whose support Gunnhild needed for her sons, the communities that would shape what was remembered about Erik and what was forgotten.
The poem is grief and propaganda at once. The two are not mutually exclusive.
The Hakonarmál — The Companion Piece
Seven years after the Eiríksmál, in 961 AD, Haakon the Good — Erik's brother, the man who had deposed him — died at the Battle of Fitjar. A poem was composed for him too: the Hákonarmál, written by the skald Eyvindr skáldaspillir.
The Hákonarmál deliberately echoes the structure of the Eiríksmál. Odin sends Valkyries to choose Haakon from the battlefield. Haakon is also welcomed at Valhalla. He also arrives with dead warriors at his side.
The mirroring is not accidental. Eyvindr — who knew both poems and worked within the same tradition — was performing a specific act: giving Haakon the Good the same mythological dignity that the Eiríksmál had given Erik. Both kings, in the end, went to Valhalla. Both were worthy. The competition between them, which had consumed the Norse world for decades, was resolved at death by being declared a draw.
There is something almost generous in that. Norse literature at its best has a quality of seeing the full complexity of its subjects — the good and the terrible together, without collapsing either into simple heroism or simple villainy.
What the Poem Tells Us About How Erik Was Remembered
The Eiríksmál is not a historically objective account of Erik Bloodaxe's life. It is partisan, composed for a specific purpose, by people who had every reason to present him in the best possible light.
But it is evidence of something that objective accounts cannot give us: how Erik was perceived in the immediate aftermath of his death, by the people closest to him, in the terms of value that actually mattered to his culture. And what it says is this: Erik Bloodaxe was understood, by those who loved him and those who needed to make use of his legacy, as a man who had lived and died according to the values the Norse world most admired. He was a warrior. He was fierce. He reddened his sword in many lands. Odin wanted him.
The sagas written later — particularly Egils saga — are less flattering. But the Eiríksmál preserves a voice closer to the event, a moment before the longer view had settled into the account that later centuries would inherit.
Nine stanzas. Composed in grief or in strategy or in both. And still being read a thousand years later.
For the full Erik Bloodaxe story: Erik Bloodaxe: The Real History Behind Amazon's New Viking Series. For his father's story: Harald Fairhair: The Father Who United Norway. For Gunnhild, who may have commissioned this poem: Gunnhild: The Most Dangerous Woman in the Viking Age.
FAQ
What is Eiríksmál?
Eiríksmál (Erik's Words, or the Lay of Erik) is an Old Norse poem composed shortly after the death of Erik Bloodaxe at Stainmore in 954 AD. It imagines Erik's arrival in Valhalla, where Odin has ordered a special welcome and sends the legendary hero Sigmund to meet him at the gates. Nine stanzas survive in 13th-century manuscripts.
Who wrote Eiríksmál?
The author is unknown. The poem may have been commissioned by Gunnhild, Erik's widow, though this cannot be confirmed from the surviving evidence. It is clearly the work of someone working within the court skaldic tradition with a deep knowledge of the mythological sources.
Who is Sigmund and why does he appear in the poem?
Sigmund is the greatest mortal hero in Norse mythology — the last of the Völsung kings, chosen by Odin, father of Sigurd the dragon-slayer. His appearance as Erik's welcomer at Valhalla is a deliberate artistic and political choice, placing Erik in the company of the highest heroic figures the Norse tradition could name.
What is the Hákonarmál?
The Hákonarmál is a poem composed for Haakon the Good — Erik's brother — after his death in 961 AD. Written by the skald Eyvindr skáldaspillir, it deliberately echoes the structure of the Eiríksmál, giving Haakon the same mythological dignity that the earlier poem gave Erik. Both kings go to Valhalla. Both are welcomed. The competition between them ends in a poetic draw.
Why was skaldic poetry politically important?
In the Norse world, skaldic poetry was the primary means of recording and communicating a ruler's reputation. Performed at court, shared at feasts, memorised and transmitted by the skalds who composed it, praise poetry shaped what people believed about a king — his victories, his generosity, his worthiness. A well-composed drápa (praise poem) was genuine political capital. The Eiríksmál's assertion of Erik's worthiness for Valhalla was not merely a literary gesture; it was an argument about how he should be remembered, with real implications for the political fortunes of his sons.