What you are about to listen to is part three of a multi-part series exploring

powerful women in old Norse literature with a particular focus on the life and legend of the infamous Queen Gunhild of Norway,

perhaps better known by her title Mother of Kings.

In our last episode, we explored Ginnhild's origins and talked about the early years of

her marriage to King Eric Blood Acts of Norway.

What we discovered was a strong tradition within Old Norse literature

in which Gunhild is portrayed as a wicked and malicious counselor to her husband.

Many of these sources, in turn blame Gunhild in her counsel for all of her husband's faults.

Faults, which would eventually lead to Gunhild and Eric

being forced to flee Norway before the forces of Eric's brother, Hakon the Good.

Today we are going to briefly explore what Gunhild's quote-unquote

wicked council may have looked like. And then we are going to

broaden our view a bit and take a deep dive into the way that the words of other

powerful saga women are portrayed.

Old Norse literature frequently depicts FEMA words as having power.

And in this episode, we are going to examine the various ways that these texts

portray and judge the women behind these words.

If you haven't already listened to the first two parts of this series yet, I would highly recommend that you go back and listen to those before you begin this episode.

We are once again going to dive right into the story today, and so it might be a little bit disorienting for you if this is your first time.

And with that, let's get into it.

This is part three, of Mother of Kings. You're going to do. Fagerskina, one of the king sagas which was composed in Norway in the mid-12 hundreds or so,

remembers the reign of King Eric Bloodaxe with the following words, reading from Allison Finlay's translation.

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