There is a moment in Heimskringla — Snorri Sturluson's great 13th-century history of the Norse kings — that says more about Viking kingship than almost anything else in the sources. It involves Haakon the Good, Erik Bloodaxe's younger brother, who had been raised as a Christian at the English court of King Athelstan. After he deposed Erik and became King of Norway, Haakon tried to introduce Christianity to his people.
He failed. The jarls resisted. The farmers resisted. The assembly at Hlaðir — one of the great regional Things — made clear that if Haakon wanted to keep his throne, he would participate in the blót, the ritual feast and sacrifice that was the central religious ceremony of the old Norse tradition. Haakon was a sincere Christian. He reportedly wept. And then he sat down, made the ritual gestures, and ate the horse meat.
He kept his throne.
This is what Norse kingship required. Not just military victory. Not just famous lineage. Not just the ability to kill your brothers before they killed you. The king was embedded in a set of obligations, relationships, and ritual roles that could not be separated from the political role without catastrophic consequence. You could not be a Norse king and do only part of the job.
The Thing: Power From Below
The foundational institution of Norse political life was not the king's court. It was the Thing.
The Thing — þing in Old Norse — was the assembly of free men where law was made, disputes settled, and decisions of communal importance taken. Every region had one: the local Thing handled local matters; the regional Thing handled regional ones. In Iceland, the Althing was established in 930 AD as a national assembly. In Norway, the great regional Things — the Gulating in the west, the Frostathing in the north, the Eidsivating in the east — were the venues where kings had to present themselves, argue their cases, and receive the assembly's ratification of their authority.
This is not a ceremonial nicety. A Norse king who could not command the Thing's support — not just submission, but genuine support from the powerful men who attended — was not a king in any practical sense. He was a man with a title and an uncertain future.
Erik Bloodaxe's downfall in Norway is partly explained by this. The sources suggest that his rule was harsh, that he and Gunnhild made enemies among the powerful jarls and chieftains whose attendance at the Thing was the real measure of a king's authority. When Haakon arrived from England with a counter-claim to the throne, the assembly's support was already looking for somewhere else to go. Erik found himself king in name but not in the thing that actually mattered: the assembled agreement of the free men of Norway.
The Gift Economy: Why Kings Had to Give
The word lord in Old English — hlaford — derives from hlaf-weard: loaf-guardian, the keeper and distributor of bread. The etymology is not incidental. A lord, in the original sense, was the person who fed people. Authority and provision were the same thing.
The Norse equivalent operated on the same principle at a larger scale. A king's legitimacy was inseparable from his generosity. The sagas are relentless on this point: praise for kings who gave freely — gold, weapons, land, cattle — and contempt for those who did not. The word níðingr — one of the worst insults in the Norse vocabulary, difficult to translate but roughly meaning a man without honour, a coward, someone who has violated the basic obligations of manhood — could be applied to a king who failed to give.
This was not mere cultural expectation. In a pre-market economy, wealth that did not circulate was wealth that did not work. The ring the king gave to the warrior who had earned it became the capital with which that warrior equipped himself, attracted followers, built his household's prosperity, and increased the king's available power. Gift-giving was investment. A king who hoarded was not just mean — he was economically irrational, starving the relationships on which his actual power depended.
Haakon the Good was celebrated in the sources as a generous king — accessible, willing to listen, maintaining the relationships that Erik, by the sagas' account, had allowed to deteriorate. The Hákonarmál praises him specifically for maintaining the law and the farming people's prosperity. This is not coincidence. It is a precise description of what Norse kingship required.
The Sacred Role: Kings, Fertility, and the Blót
Norse kingship had a dimension that is easy to underestimate from a modern perspective: the ritual one.
The Norse king was not just a political and military leader. He was, in a real sense, a priest — responsible for maintaining the relationship between the human community and the divine forces that governed the fertility of the land, the success of the harvest, and the outcomes of battles. The blót — the ritual sacrifice of animals (and in some sources, occasionally humans) at specific festivals — was not optional ceremony. It was the mechanism by which the king fulfilled his obligation to mediate between his people and the gods.
Many Norse kings claimed descent from Odin through the Yngling dynasty — the semi-legendary lineage that Snorri traces back to the gods themselves in Ynglinga saga. This was not simply genealogical prestige. It meant that the king's sacred role was grounded in actual divine connection. A king of Yngling blood was, in some sense, the gods' representative on earth. A bad harvest, a failed campaign, a plague — any of these could be read as evidence that something was wrong with the king's relationship to the divine, which meant something was wrong with the king.
The story of Domaldi — an early Yngling king — illustrates this with brutal clarity. The sagas tell it plainly: the harvests failed for three consecutive years. Each year the Swedes held a blót and prayed for better conditions. The third year, the assembly decided the problem was the king himself. They sacrificed him.
You could not separate the sacred role from the political one. Haakon the Good understood this when he sat down at the blót and ate the horse meat. His Christianity was genuine. His political intelligence was greater.
The Skald: Advertising the King
A Norse king's court included, among its essential personnel, one or more skalds — court poets whose job was to compose and perform praise poetry (drápur) about the king's deeds. This was not decoration. It was political communication of the most important kind.
In a world without printing, without mass literacy, without broadcast media, the way a king's reputation spread was through the mouths of the people who had witnessed his deeds — and more importantly, through the mouths of the poets who had rendered those deeds into memorable, formulaic, rhythmically complex verse that could be memorised, transmitted, and performed again and again across the Norse world.
A good skald could make a king's reputation. A great skald could make it last for centuries — which is exactly what happened: much of what we know about specific Norse kings comes from the skaldic poems composed about them in their own lifetimes. The poems were composed for an immediate political purpose and ended up becoming the primary historical sources for the events they described.
Egil Skallagrímsson composed the Höfuðlausn for Erik Bloodaxe and it saved his life. Eyvindr skáldaspillir composed the Hákonarmál for Haakon the Good and it shaped how he was remembered. Whoever composed the Eiríksmál for Gunnhild — imagining Erik's arrival in Valhalla, welcomed by Sigmund — was doing political work as much as artistic work. The poems and the politics were the same thing.
Why Erik Failed and Haakon Succeeded
Erik Bloodaxe had genuine qualities. He was a fighter. He was brave. He held two kingdoms in difficult circumstances. He lasted a long time in political conditions that killed most people who tried to navigate them.
But the sources suggest — consistently, across multiple traditions — that he failed at the relational dimensions of Norse kingship. He was too harsh. He and Gunnhild made the wrong enemies among the people whose support they needed. The jarls and chieftains who attended the Thing had alternatives, and when Haakon offered himself as that alternative, they took it.
Haakon the Good was not a better fighter than Erik. He was a better politician in the specific Norse sense: he understood that a king's power was not his own, but was held in the relationships he maintained with the free men of his kingdom, exercised at the Thing, sustained by generosity, and grounded in the ritual obligations that no one, not even a sincere Christian king who had spent years at an English court, could simply opt out of.
The sword arm mattered. But it was never enough on its own.
For the full Bloodaxe story: Erik Bloodaxe: The Real History. For the poem that made Erik's reputation after his death: Eiríksmál: The Poem Written for a Dead King. For the father who set it all in motion: Harald Fairhair: The Father Who United Norway. And for pieces inspired by Erik's reign, browse our Erik Bloodaxe collection.
FAQ
What was the Thing in Norse society?
The Thing (þing) was the assembly of free men that formed the basis of Norse political and legal life. It met at regular intervals and was the venue where laws were made, disputes settled, and important decisions taken. Crucially, it was also the mechanism by which a king's authority was legitimised — a king who could not command the genuine support of the Thing's key members was politically vulnerable regardless of his military strength.
Why was generosity so important for Norse kings?
In the pre-market gift economy of the Norse world, wealth that circulated created relationships, loyalty, and obligation. A king who gave freely — gold, weapons, land, hospitality — built the network of loyal followers on which his real power depended. A king who hoarded was not just mean; he was failing to invest in the relationships that made his kingship meaningful. The sagas are explicit and consistent on this: generosity was a core kingly virtue, and its absence was a form of political failure.
What was the blót?
The blót was a Norse ritual feast and sacrifice performed at specific seasonal festivals. Animals (and in some sources, occasionally humans) were sacrificed to the gods in exchange for fertility, good harvests, victory in battle, and general divine favour. The king presided over the blót, which was one of his ritual obligations — he mediated between his people and the gods. Haakon the Good's difficulty with the blót — he was a Christian who found it repugnant — illustrates how central and non-negotiable this role was.
What was a skald?
A skald was a Norse court poet, specialising in a highly formal and technically demanding style of praise poetry called skaldic verse. Skalds were essential members of a king's court, composing drápur (praise poems) that recorded the king's deeds and transmitted his reputation across the Norse world. The skaldic poems are among our most important historical sources for the Viking Age, because they were composed for specific occasions in specific kings' lifetimes and preserve details that later saga writing does not always capture.
Did Viking kings claim to be descended from gods?
Many did, particularly through the Yngling dynasty, which Snorri Sturluson traces back to Freyr and ultimately to Odin himself in the Ynglinga saga. This claim was not mere metaphor — it grounded the king's ritual and political authority in divine connection. A king of Yngling blood was understood, in some sense, as the gods' representative in the human world, with specific obligations around maintaining the relationship between his people and the divine order.