Heroes & Legends
Sigurðr, Brynhildr, Ragnar Loðbrók — the dragon-slayers, shield-maidens, and doomed kings of the sagas.
SigurðrSigurðr Fáfnisbani
The dragon-slayer — greatest hero of the NorthSlayer of the dragon Fáfnir, taster of its heart's blood, speaker with birds, winner and betrayer of Brynhildr — the North's greatest hero, doomed by cursed gold and a memory-potion.
BrynhildrBrynhildr Buðladóttir
Valkyrie and shield-maiden — the tragedy's centreThe valkyrie Odin punished with sleep behind a wall of fire, wakened by Sigurðr, cheated of him by a potion and a shape-trick — she ordered his death and rode his pyre.
GuðrúnGuðrún Gjúkadóttir
The survivor of the Völsung cycleSigurðr's widow, married off to Brynhildr's brother Atli — who killed her brothers for the gold; she served him his sons for dinner and burned his hall. The saga's longest griever and hardest avenger.
GunnarrGunnarr Gjúkason
King of the Gjúkungs — the harper in the snake-pitBrynhildr's husband by fraud and Sigurðr's murderer by proxy, who redeemed a compromised life with a legendary death: refusing the gold's secret, playing the harp with his toes in Atli's snake-pit.
SigmundrSigmundr Völsungsson
The Völsung — drawer of Odin's swordThe only man who could draw Odin's sword from the tree Barnstokkr; werewolf, avenger, and father of Sigurðr — he fell when the god who armed him came to collect.
Reginn
The smith who forged a hero as a weaponFáfnir's brother: the master-smith who fostered Sigurðr, reforged Gram, and aimed the boy at the dragon — planning to murder him after. The birds told on him.
Völundr
The master smith — WaylandThe greatest of all smiths, hamstrung and enslaved on an island by a greedy king. His revenge, wrought in his own workshop, is the darkest masterpiece in Norse poetry.
Starkaðr
The cursed champion of three lifetimesOdin granted him three lifetimes; Thor cursed him with a crime in each. The North's greatest and grimmest champion, doomed to outlive everyone he served and betray someone in every age.
Hervör
Shield-maiden — claimer of the cursed swordThe shield-maiden who sailed to a haunted island, stood in the grave-fires at midnight, and demanded the cursed sword Tyrfing from her dead father's ghost, and got it.
Hrólfr KrakiHrólfr kraki
The ideal king of the NorthDenmark's legendary Arthur: the generous, doomed king of Lejre whose twelve champions included the bear-warrior Böðvarr Bjarki, and who sowed gold on the Fyris Plains to slow an army.
Ragnarr LoðbrókRagnarr loðbrók
The legendary Viking — 'Hairy-Breeches'The semi-legendary Viking king who slew a serpent in boiled-pitch trousers, married the dragon-slayer's daughter, and died in a snake-pit laughing: 'how the little pigs will grunt when they hear how the old boar died.'
LagerthaHlaðgerðr
Shield-maiden — Ragnarr's first wifeSaxo's shield-maiden: she fought at the front 'with the courage of a man,' won Ragnarr's siege of her heart via a bear and a hound, and later saved his life in battle, years after divorcing him.
AmlethAmlóði
The avenging prince — Hamlet's originalThe Danish prince who feigned idiocy to survive his uncle's fratricide, passed every test of his madness, and burned the court at its own feast, four centuries before Shakespeare borrowed him.
Ívarr the BonelessÍvarr hinn Beinlausi
Ragnarr's eldest son — commander of the Great Heathen ArmyThe most feared of Ragnarr Loðbrók's sons: a warlord the sagas call boneless yet unbeatable in battle, who led the Great Heathen Army into England in 865 to avenge his father and may himself be the historical Ímar who founded a Viking dynasty in Dublin.
Leifr EiríkssonLeifr Eiríksson hinn heppni
Greenlandic voyager — first European in North AmericaThe Greenlander who stepped ashore in Vínland around the year 1000 and became the first European known to have reached North America — five centuries before Columbus, and provably so: the Norse settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows has been dated to a single year, 1021.
Egill SkallagrímssonEgill Skalla-Grímsson
Icelandic skald and berserker — the saga age's greatest poet and worst house-guestAn Icelandic farmer who killed his first man at seven, ransomed his own head from the king he had wronged with a single night's praise-poem, and turned the drowning of his son into the earliest deeply personal lyric in a Northern tongue.
Erik the RedEiríkr rauði Þorvaldsson
Icelandic outlaw, founder of the Norse Greenland colonyThree killings got him outlawed from Iceland for three years, so he spent the sentence charting the fjords of a country nobody had settled, then sailed home and sold it to his neighbours under the name Greenland.
Björn IronsideBjǫrn Járnsíða
Sea-king of the Mediterranean raid — reputed founder of Sweden's Munsö lineRagnarr Loðbrók's son in the sagas and a sea-king of the Swedes in later tradition, Björn Járnsíða took a fleet through the Strait of Gibraltar in 859 and spent three years plundering Iberia, North Africa, Provence and Italy, including the sack of Luni, which his men were said to have mistaken for Rome.
Haraldr HárfagriHaraldr inn hárfagri
First king of a unified NorwayA jilted suitor's oath, no comb and no scissors until Norway was his, carried a Vestfold petty-king to sole rule after the battle of Hafrsfjord around 872, and drove the losers west to settle Iceland.