Gunnhildr konungamóðir (mother of kings) or Gunnhildr Gormsdóttir,Or, alternatively, Gunnhildr Özurardóttir. whose name is often Anglicised as Gunnhild (c. 910  –  c. 980), is a quasi-historical figure who appears in the Icelandic Sagas, according to which she was the wife of Eric Bloodaxe (King of Norway 930–934, King of Orkney c. 937–954, and King of Jórvík 948–49 and 952–954). She appears prominently in sagas such as Fagrskinna, Egils saga, Njáls saga, Heimskringla, and Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta.

The sagas relate that Gunnhild lived during a time of great change and upheaval in Norway. Her father-in-law Harald Fairhair had recently united much of Norway under his rule. Shortly after his death, Gunnhild and her husband Eric Bloodaxe were overthrown and exiled. She spent much of the rest of her life in exile in Orkney, Jorvik and Denmark. A number of her many children with Eric became co-rulers of Norway in the late tenth century.

Historicity

Many of the details of her life are disputed, including her parentage. Although she is treated in the sagas as a historical person, even her historicity is a matter of some debate.Downham 112-120; 121–24; Bradbury 38; Orfield 129; Ashley 444; Alen 88; Driscoll 88, note 15. What details of her life are known come largely from Icelandic sources, which generally asserted that the Icelandic settlers had fled from Harald's tyranny. While the historicity of sources as the Landnámabók is disputed, the perception that Harald had exiled or driven out many of their ancestors led to an attitude among Icelanders generally hostile to Erik and Gunnhild. Scholars such as Gwyn Jones therefore regard some of the episodes reported in them as suspect. 121–24.

In the sagas, Gunnhild is most often depicted in a negative light, and depicted as a figure known for her "power and cruelty, admired for her beauty and generosity, and feared for her magic, cunning, sexual insatiability, and her goading", according to Jenny Jochens.

Her parentage was altered from Danish royalty to a farmer in Hålogaland in northern Norway. This made her native to a land neighboring Finnmark, and her tutelage in the magic arts by Sàmi ('Finnish' – the contemporary Norwegian designation for the indigenous people of Northern Norway) wizards became more plausible. This contrivance, Jones has argued, was the Icelandic saga-maker's attempt to mitigate the "defeats and expulsions of his own heroic ancestors" by ascribing magical abilities to the queen. 121–22.

Origins According to the 12th century Historia Norwegiæ, Gunnhild was the daughter of Gorm the Old, king of Denmark and Thyra, and Erik and Gunnhild met at a feast given by Gorm. Modern scholars have largely accepted this version as accurate.Bradbury 38; Orfield 129; Ashley 444; Alen 88; Driscoll 88, note 15. In their view, her marriage with Erik was a dynastic union between two houses, that of the Norwegian Ynglings and that of the early Danish monarchy, in the process of unifying and consolidating their respective countries. Erik himself was the product of such a union between Harald and Ragnhild, a Danish princess from Jutland. 94–95. Gunnhild being the daughter of Gorm the Old would explain why she would seek shelter in Denmark after the death of her husband.

Heimskringla and Egil's Saga, on the other hand, assert that Gunnhild was the daughter of Ozur Toti, a hersir from Halogaland.For example, Harald Fairhair's Saga § 34. The Ágrip af Nóregskonungasögum calls her father Ozurr lafskegg [dangling beard], thus also Fagrskinna; Driscoll § 5 & p. 88, note 15. Accounts of her early life vary between sources. Egil's Saga relates that "Eirik fought a great battle on the Northern Dvina in Bjarmaland, and was victorious as the poems about him record. On the same expedition he obtained Gunnhild, the daughter of Ozur Toti, and brought her home with him."Egil's Saga § 37.

Gwyn Jones regarded many of the traditions that grew up around Gunnhild in the Icelandic sources as fictional. However, both Theodoricus monachus and the Ágrip af Nóregskonungasögum report that when Gunnhild was at the court of Harald Bluetooth after Erik's death, the Danish king offered marriage to her; if valid, these accounts call into question the identification of Gunnhild as Harald's sister, but their most recent editors follow Jones in viewing their accounts of Gunnhild's origins as unreliable.Theodoricus, § 6 & p. 64, note 54; Driscoll, § 11 & p. 91, note 39.

Heimskringla relates that Gunnhild lived for a time in a hut with two Finnish wizards and learned magic from them. The two wizards each desired to marry Gunnhild and had slain any other men who approached their hut. With the aid of Erik's men, as they returned from an expedition to Bjarmaland, Gunnhild enacted a plan to kill the wizards. The Norwegians then took her to Erik who brought Gunnhild to her father's house and announced his intent to marry her.Harald Fairhair's Saga § 34. The older Fagrskinna, however, says simply that Erik met Gunnhild during an expedition to the Finnish north, where she was being "fostered and educated ... with Mǫttull, king of the Finns".Fagrskinna § 8. Gunnhild's Finnish sojourn is described by historian Marlene Ciklamini as a "fable" designed to set the stage for placing the blame for Erik's future misrule on his wife.Ciklamini 210-211.

Marriage with Eric

Eric's kinslaying and exile

Gunnhild and Eric are said to have had the following children: Gamle, the oldest; then Guthorm, Harald, Ragnfrod, Ragnhild, Erling, Gudrod, and Sigurd Sleva.Harald Fairhair's Saga § 46. Egil's Saga mentions a son named Rögnvald, but it is not known whether he can be identified with one of those mentioned in Heimskringla, or even whether he was Gunnhild's son or Eric's by another woman.

Gunnhild was widely reputed to have or otherwise employ magical powers.E.g., Harald Fairhair's Saga § 34; Njal's Saga §§ 5–8; Fox 289–310. Prior to the death of Harald Fairhair, Erik's popular half-brother Halfdan Haraldsson the Black died mysteriously, and Gunnhild was suspected of having "bribed a witch to give him a death-drink.""Harald Fairhair's Saga" § 44. Shortly thereafter, Harald died and Eric consolidated his power over the whole country. He began to quarrel with his other brothers, egged on by Gunnhild, and had four of them killed, beginning with Bjørn Farmann and later Olaf and Sigrød in battle at Tønsberg.Harald Fairhair's Saga §§ 45–46. As a result of Eric's tyrannical rule, he was expelled from Norway when the nobles of the country declared for his half-brother, Haakon the Good.

Orkney and Jorvik According to the Icelandic sagas, Eric set sail with his family and his retainers to Orkney, where they settled for a number of years. During that time Eric was acknowledged as "King of Orkney" by its de facto rulers, the jarls Arnkel and Erlend Turf-Einarsson.E.g., Ashley 443–44. Gunnhild went with Eric to Jorvik when, at the invitation of Bishop Wulfstan, the erstwhile Norwegian king settled as client king over northern England.According to the "Saga of Haakon the Good", it was King Athelstan of England who appointed Erik as ruler of Jorvik, but this is chronologically problematic; Athelstan died in 939. Ashley, among others, proposes that Erik received his commission from Athelstan but did not take it up until later. Ashley 443–44. At Jorvik, both Eric and Gunnhild may have been baptized.Saussaye 183.

Following Eric's loss of Jorvik and subsequent death at the Battle of Stainmore (954), the survivors of the battle brought word of the defeat to Gunnhild and her sons in Northumberland.Haakon the Good's Saga §§ 4–5. Taking with them all that they could, they set sail for Orkney, where they exacted tribute from the new jarl, Thorfinn Skullsplitter.Haakon the Good's Saga § 5.

Ultimately, however, Gunnhild decided to move on; marrying her daughter Ragnhild to Jarl Thorfinn's son Arnfinn, she took her other children and set sail for Denmark.Ashley 443; see also Haakon the Good's Saga § 5; Fagrskinna §§ 8–9. Ragnhild would later, according to the Orkneyinga Saga, murder Arnfinn, marry his brother Havard, murder him in turn, and then marry their brother Ljot. Ashley 443–44.

Some modern historians call into question the identification of the Eric who ruled over Jorvik with Eric Bloodaxe. None of the English sources for Eric's reign in Northumbria identify him as Norwegian or as the son of Harald Fairhair. A thirteenth-century letter from Edward I to Pope Boniface VIII identifies Eric as Scottish in origin.Downham 116. Lappenberg, Plummer and Todd, writing in the late nineteenth century, identified Eric as a son of Harald Bluetooth, a claim Downham discounts as untenable. Downham, however, regards Eric the king of Jorvik as a distinct individual from Eric Bloodaxe, and thus views Gunnhild's sojourn in Orkney and Jorvik as the construct of later saga-writers who conflated different characters between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.Downham 118.

Conflict with Egill Skallagrímsson Gunnhild was the nemesis of Egill Skallagrímsson, and his saga and poetry present her in a particularly negative light. Egil was introduced to Erik by his older brother Thorolf, who was a friend of the prince, and the brothers were originally on good terms with Eric and Gunnhild.Egil's Saga § 36. However, during a sojourn in Norway around 930, Egil got into an inheritance dispute with certain members of Eric's court, during which he killed Bárðr of Atley, one of the king's retainers.Egil's Saga §§ 56–58.

Gunnhild ordered her two brothers to kill Egil and Thorolf. Egil killed the pair when they confronted him, greatly increasing the Queen's thirst for revenge.Egil's Saga §§ 59–60.

Eric then declared Egil an outlaw in Norway. Berg-Önundr gathered a company of men to capture Egil, but was killed in his attempt to do so. During his escape from Norway, Egil killed Rögnvald Eriksson, Erik's son.Egil's Saga § 60. He then cursed Eric and Gunnhild by setting a horse's head on a pole in a shamanic ritual (the pillar was a níðstöng or "níð-pole"; níð translates, roughly, to 'scorn' or 'curse'.) and saying: "Here I set up a níð-pole, and declare this níð against King Erik and Queen Gunnhildr", — he turned the horse-head to face the mainland — "I declare this níð at the land-spirits there, and the land itself, so that all will fare astray, not to hold nor find their places, not until they wreak King Eric and Gunnhild from the land." He set up the pole of níð in the cliff-face and left it standing; he faced the horse's eyes on the land, and he rist runes upon the pole, and said all the formal words of the curse.Egil's Saga § 60. the Icelandic source is, essentially, giving Egil credit for the ouster of Gunnhild and Erik from Norway.

The last encounter between Egil and Gunnhild occurred around 948 in Jorvik. Egil was shipwrecked on a nearby shore and came before Eric, who sentenced him to death. But Egil composed a drápa called "Höfuðlausn" in Eric's praise over a single night.He did so despite being pestered by the noise of a bird, which he believed was Gunnhild disguised with magic. Egil's Saga § 62 When he recited it in the morning, Eric gave him his freedom and forgave the killing of Rögnvald, against Gunnhild's wishes.Egil's Saga § 64.

Life after Eric

In Denmark

After the death of her husband, Gunnhild took refuge with her sons at the court of Harald Bluetooth at Roskilde.Haakon the Good's Saga § 10. As noted above, Harald may have been Gunnhild's brother or half-brother. Tradition ascribes to Gunnhild the commissioning of the skaldic poem Eiríksmál in honor of her fallen husband. 123; Fagrskinna § 8; Haakon the Good's Saga § 10.