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

portrayal of powerful women in Old Norse literature with a particular focus on the life in times of Gunhild Canungasmuller.

So in our last episode we discussed the decades that Gunhild and her family spent in exile in Denmark.

We witnessed their continued attempts to regain their thrones, and ultimately, we followed the arrow sped along by Gunhild's magic

which ultimately allowed them to achieve that dream. We then widened out our view and spoke more generally about the relationship between women and

magic in the Icelandic sagas. Today we are continuing our narrative and exploring Ginnhild and her son's time on the Norwegian throne.

While her son Harold enjoyed the title of King. Many of our sources make it clear that

Gunhild enjoyed significant independent power during this time. Perhaps even more

so than her son.

We are going to explore how that power was described by later authors,

and particularly how these authors used Gunhilled Sexuality to paint a very specific image of the

mother of kings in their audience's minds. Before we get started I do want to issue a quick content warning for today's episode.

As I just mentioned, today's episode deals with themes of sex, sexuality, and as so unfortunately often accompanies these topics, sexual violence.

For the most part, our discussion will not be particularly explicit or graphic, but there are a couple of examples which I've pulled from the sagas, which portray attitudes and actions which are fairly disturbing.

I'm going to include additional warnings before any of these particularly problematic sections

for fast-forwarding purposes, but listener discretion is still advised

particularly for those sections but really for this episode as a whole.

And as always for this series. If you haven't yet listened to earlier

parts of this series I would highly recommend that you go back and do so before beginning with this episode. We are going to be heading

directly into the story today and I don't want to spoil anything for you. And with all that said, this is Part 6, of Mother of Kings. You're going to do. The King was dead.

Long live the King. 26 years after he had returned to Norway and forced Ginnhild, her husband, and their sons to flee the country.

King Hakan the Good lay dying on a damp slab of coastal rock.

...