iv.

I Called the Wind Back

Act II — Mother of Kings Released Approx. 4:10

About this track

Track 04 opens Act II as the album’s structural pivot and its slowest, heaviest cut. Erik Bloodaxe is ambushed and killed on the Pennine moor at Stainmore in 954, and Gunnhild hears of it second-hand on her western-Norway coast. The chroniclers’ two-line dismissal opens the song in a dry recitation voice — “They wrote: an axe-king dead in a moor. / They wrote: a queen widowed and gone.” — and the album refuses that framing inside the first sung phrase: “They forgot she was calling the wind back.” The track’s central move is the voice-shift from the chroniclers’ third-person to Gunnhild’s first-person at the chorus. The witch does not weep and does not keen; she opens the leather pouch at the hearth-stone’s edge, drops the ash on the fire, and begins the curse-game that carries the rest of the record. Her response to Erik’s death is the cursing, not the funeral — the body stays on the moor; she stays at the hearth.

Sonically this is the album’s doom floor — 70 BPM throughout, no tempo-shift, the slowest track by design. A jaw-harp drone and palm-muted rhythm guitars open under a slow frame-drum heart-beat and tribal floor toms; tremolo guitars drop in at the chorus as the voice turns first-person; the tagelharpa is held back until the bridge (the album’s latest bowed-lyre entry), where a bone-flute solo carries the quietest sustained passage on the record. The women’s chorus is held back too — Chorus 1 is mezzo solo, sparse, the cursing-claim emerging from silence, and the chorus locks only on Chorus 2 and the Final Chorus. The hammer-line anaphora (“I called the wind / I called the ravens / I did not weep, I did not name”) repeats verbatim while the fourth line escalates across the three passes — “the ash that he had been” to “named the next” to “named the war” — the cursing-act widening from private mourning to the long arc of the album. The outro plants the album’s tense-arc: “And the moor kept his body. And the hearth kept mine.”

Track 04 of 8 Act II — Mother of Kings Cadence Doom register — 70 BPM Norse black-folk metal, jaw harp drone + frame-drum heart-beat, female mezzo low-chest, tagelharpa and bone flute held to the bridge, women’s chorus held back to Chorus 2

Verse 1

Two chronicler lines spoken in a dry English recitation — a clerk reading from a manuscript page — then sung mezzo low-chest over a jaw-harp drone and a slow frame-drum heart-beat. The put-down, and the reversal that refuses it.

They wrote: an axe-king dead in a moor.
They wrote: a queen widowed and gone.
They wrote: another Viking ending,
They forgot she was calling the wind back.
They closed the saga on a bloody page,
But the wind would not be written down.

Pre-Chorus

Tightening — jaw harp louder, frame drum heavier, palm-muted guitars climbing.

The hall was dark, the long table cold,
The hearth alone gave light —

Chorus

Stomping full band, mezzo solo — no women's chorus yet. Tremolo-picked guitars drop in, lurr horn restrained. The first 'I' of the track: the witch's voice claims the song.

I called the wind back from the moor,
I called the ravens to his side,
I did not weep, I did not name,
I held the ash that he had been.

Verse 2

Sung mezzo low-chest at the 70 BPM doom floor, palm-muted guitars, jaw-harp drone, frame-drum heart-beat. The cursing-act as completed event.

I opened the pouch at the hearth-stone's edge,
I let the ash fall onto the fire,
The flame flared up — and did not die,
I sent the wind back across the sea.
I did not bring him home, I did not bow,
I called the wind, and the wind came.

Pre-Chorus 2

Thickening — jaw harp louder, frame drum heavier, palm-muted guitars climbing.

The pouch at my hand, the ash on the flame,
And the hall held its breath —

Chorus 2

Stomping full band, women's chorus locked for the first time, tremolo-picked guitars, tagelharpa entering low-drone. The fourth line mutates — the cursing extends to naming the future-dead.

I called the wind back from the moor,
I called the ravens to his side,
I did not weep, I did not name,
I held the ash, and named the next.

Bridge

Drums drop to a half-tempo stomp — pounding with weight, not dropping out. Bone-flute solo over the tagelharpa drone and jaw-harp drone beneath. Mezzo low chest. The long game named.

They thought a widow could be moved,
They thought a witch could be undone,
They forgot the hearth, they forgot the loom,
They forgot the long game just begun.
The years are mine, and the wind is mine,
The kings I made are coming yet.

Final Chorus

Biggest stomp — full band, women's chorus locked, tagelharpa escalating, a single lurr Norse-horn hit on the thesis-couplet downbeat. The fourth line mutates a last time; the cursing has become the war.

I called the wind back from the moor,
I called the ravens to his side,
I did not weep, I did not name,
I held the ash, and named the war.
Mother of Kings, the kings will come,
And the moor kept what the moor was given.

Outro

Drums hold one beat, jaw harp fading, hard cut on the past-tense seal.

And the moor kept his body.
And the hearth kept mine.

From the music video

A massive Norse raven perches solemnly on the weathered surf. — Pennine Moor Stainmore — establishing shot

In front of Gunnhild Hall Mourning, the massive timber door. — Gunnhild Hall Mourning — establishing shot

A wide low‑angle view of Gunnhild Hall Mourning reveals the. — Gunnhild Hall Mourning — wide shot

A wide view of Stone Porch Above Fjord captures the empty wo. — Stone Porch Above Fjord — wide shot

The history

954 · the Pennine moor at Stainmore and Gunnhild’s hall on the western-Norway coast · Erik Bloodaxe ambushed and killed; the witch-queen’s first cursing-act at the hearth

Source: Heimskringla — Hákonar saga góða (Snorri Sturluson, c. 1230); Fagrskinna (c. 1220); Flores Historiarum (Roger of Wendover, c. 1230, using earlier Northumbrian sources); Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (entries c. 954)

Named figures

Gunnhildr konungamóðir (G2 mourning variant, ~30) Erik’s widow on the western-Norway coast; the album’s grief track, held at strategic distance. She does not travel to Stainmore and does not weep — she opens the pouch at the hearth and begins the cursing. The first-person witch-voice claims the song at the chorus
Erik Bloodaxe Twice King of Northumbria; ambushed and killed at Stainmore in 954. Rendered off-screen and with respect — the “axe-king dead in a moor” of the chroniclers’ line, never named in the lyric, his body kept on the moor
Harald Greycloak (establishing appearance) The eldest of the Eríkssynir, who survived the ambush and rode home; he arrives silent in the hall doorway at the track’s close, eyes meeting his mother’s — the mother-son-king-line the album carries through to Fitjar
The chroniclers (the “They wrote” voice) The dry recitation hook that opens the track — the medieval framing of Erik’s death as ‘another Viking ending’ and Gunnhild as widow-and-gone, the framing the album spends the rest of the record contesting

Gunnhild’s hall in mourning after Erik’s death at Stainmore.

What this song renders

Erik’s death at Stainmore is documented. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the end of his Northumbrian kingship; Flores Historiarum, drawing on earlier Northumbrian sources, names Maccus son of Anlaf as the man who killed him in 954; the Norse sagas (Heimskringla, Fagrskinna) name Stainmore as the place where he fell. The saga sources disagree on the manner of death — Fagrskinna leans toward ambush, Heimskringla toward a last stand — and the album takes the ambush-by-treachery framing as the more dramatic and the more defensible for the Pennine terrain.

What the track stages around the documented death is the witch-queen’s response. The sagas do not record any journey by Gunnhild to recover or bury Erik, and the album’s central claim is that her answer to his death is the cursing, not the funeral — the leather pouch opened at the hearth, the ash dropped on the fire, the flame flaring up and not dying, the wind sent back across the sea. This is the album’s signature curse-shape, landing here for the first time before the named arrow at Fitjar (Track 05) and the bog at Haraldskær (Track 08). The witch’s refusal to weep or to name the dead aloud (“I did not weep, I did not name”) inverts the Norse public-mourning rite of keening and naming.

The chorus’s fourth line escalates across its three passes — the ash held as private mourning, then the cursing extending to ‘the next’ (Hákon the Good, the named arrow at Fitjar), then to ‘the war’ (the whole arc of the Eríkssynir’s return). The outro’s archaic verb ‘kept’ (“the moor kept his body. And the hearth kept mine”) plants the album’s tense-arc, the past-stasis grammar of places that hold what was given to them, which closes the record at the bog in Track 08.

Verdict

Documented death, sagaic cursing. Erik’s killing at Stainmore in 954 is recorded in English source and Norse saga alike, with Maccus son of Anlaf named as the killer in Flores Historiarum. Gunnhild’s cursing-act at the hearth, her refusal of the funeral, and the ‘calling the wind back’ register are the album’s reading of the witch-queen frame, not the chronicles’ claim — though the chroniclers’ own dismissal of her as ‘widowed and gone’ is exactly the framing the track sets out to contest.

See the full Truth, Saga & Legend entry →