Eric Bloodaxe (1): The Last King of Northumbria’s Ouster from Norway
Eric “Bloodaxe” Haraldsson (c. 885-954), the last king of Northumbria – a realm the Vikings usurped after the invasion and conquest of much of England by the Great Heathen Army between the years 867 and 872AD, was one of Norwegian king Harald Fairhair’s many sons sired from nine wives.
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Mythology, Mead, and Mirth: Thor’s Drinking Bout with Loki in Jötunheim
According to the Edda, Thor and his companions came upon the massive castle one day with “a great hall” and entered it. Once inside, Loki “looked slowly on them, and smiled scornfully” before telling the travelers it was “‘late to ask tidings of a long way’” but that if they could perform some skillful feats, they would be allowed to stay the night
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Everyone Loved Him – Daring and Sassy Highwayman during Romanticism
So, why was the figure of the bandit or highwayman so popular? Well, these were different times, and as any time shapes the tastes and preferences of the individual, so did the Age of Romanticism.
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Earl Rognvald’s Sons: Einar of the Orkneys and Rolf, Conqueror of Normandy
According to the thirteenth-century Icelandic Heimskringla, before the Viking Rollo became the first ruler of Normandy and of the Normans – the people who later conquered much of England, Ireland, and Sicily – he was known as Hrolf Ganger, or Rolf the Walker. Why the son of Earl Rognvald (Eysteinsson) – the legendary Norwegian nobleman and friend of King Harald Fairhair – ended up creating a powerful ducal dynasty in the early tenth century on the coast of modern-day France is less known because it may have involved his older brother Einar – who at the behest of their father sailed to the Orkneys from their home in Møre (western Norway) and established his own dynastic earldom enduring centuries.
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Aud the Deepminded, Daughter of Ketill, Flees Scotland with her Grandchildren
Accounts conflict as to why Ketill (Björnsson) Flatnose, a Viking chieftain from Romsdal and the father of his “tall and portly” yet wisely regal second daughter, Aud the Deepminded, left Norway for the Hebrides (Suðreyjar) in the years of Harald Fairhair’s rise to power.
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