She Learned It From Me

Standalone single — Orkney, after 954 Released Approx. 4:13

About this track

The third Gunnhild single, and the first to leave Jórvík. The album is called Mother of Kings, counts six sons, and never once mentions the daughter. After Erik’s death Gunnhild married Ragnhild Eiríksdóttir into the Orkney earldom — to Arnfinn, one of the five sons of Thorfinn Skull-splitter — and sailed for Denmark. Twenty-odd years later one late manuscript says the girl contrived Arnfinn’s death at Murkle, talked a nephew into killing his successor at Stenness on a promise of marriage, publicly denied ever making the promise, let a second nephew kill the first, and married the third brother. Three husbands, and not one of them died in bed.

The commissioned angle was Gunnhild watching her daughter, and the research killed it: Gunnhild was not present at any of these killings and is almost certainly dead before the sequence closes. So the frame is inheritance, not witness. She hands the girl over on a wet Orkney quay, sails, and hears the rest the way everyone else hears it — second-hand. What she recognises is not the crime but the wording. Sigurður Nordal, introducing his critical edition, called it the tale of the wicked Ragnhild “who took after her parents, especially Gunnhild”; the song takes him at his word and turns it back on the record. The mother is in the daughter, not in the room.

Musically it is the album’s only two-voice track, and the single-only exception to its own negative prompt: a high operatic soprano set against Rei’s low chest mezzo, with an arc of its own — wordless above the first chorus, singing the words by the second, absent from the bridge, and leading the last one with the mezzo underneath. The daughter gets a voice, gradually, and then takes the song.

Track Standalone single · Vol. IX Position Non-album — the handover follows Track 04’s Stainmore; the Orkney sequence outlives Track 08 entirely Cadence Norse folk-metal at 124 BPM — flat frame drum and tagelharpa under a seidr-chant open, jaw harp on the pre-choruses, tremolo guitars from Verse 2, lurr horn on the final chorus. Two voices: low-chest mezzo lead against a high operatic soprano descant

Verse 1

Seidr-chant spoken, then sung low-chest mezzo. Flat frame drum, tagelharpa under.

Before Orkney. Before the brothers.
There was a girl on a quay, and one thing I taught her.
A comb, a cloak, and a marriage,
And a wind that was going the wrong way,
I gave her to one of five brothers,
And I did not go back for her,
The first one died at a dark hill in Caithness,

Pre-Chorus

Mezzo alone, jaw harp louder, toms unchanged.

They wrote that she contrived it,
They did not write how,

Chorus

Mezzo lead, with a wordless soprano descant high above — the daughter present, with nothing to say yet.

She learned it from me, she learned it young,
She learned the waiting and the wording,
She learned the door left standing open,
And the promise nobody could prove,
Mother of Kings — and she buried three.

Verse 2

Mezzo alone, same weight, tagelharpa unchanged, tremolo guitars entering.

She put it to a nephew that he was better made,
Better than the man she was married to,
And her marriage would not last much longer,
And she left the rest of the sentence in the room,
The second one fell on the ness of the stones,

Pre-Chorus 2

Mezzo alone, jaw harp forward, toms unchanged.

They wrote that she promised him marriage,
She called it a plain lie,

Chorus 2

Mezzo lead, the soprano now singing the words above. The chorus mutates on its fourth and fifth lines.

She learned it from me, she learned it young,
She learned the waiting and the wording,
She learned the door left standing open,
And the promise she denied she made,
Mother of Kings — and she buried them all.

Bridge

Mezzo ALONE — the soprano absent for the only time. Drums open up. The felt peak: she hears the charge-sheet and recognises the handwriting.

A field in Orkney still carries his name,
And no field anywhere carries hers,
They will call her a witch and a whetter of men,
They will write that she promised what she never gave,
I know the words. They used them on me first.

Final Chorus

SOPRANO leads with the mezzo underneath — the inversion. Lurr horn, biggest.

She learned it from me, she learned it young,
She learned the waiting and the wording,
She learned the door left standing open,
And the promise they wrote in later,
Mother of Kings — and they buried her name,
One chapter, four hundred years late,
And both of us dead when they wrote it.

Outro

Mezzo alone, drums hold one beat, hard cut. Past tense, cadenced, sealing.

I was twenty years dead when a king stood on a deck
And ruled that she had forfeited her life — if it were true.
Nobody ever checked.

The history

c. 954 onward · an Orkney quay, the drystone-and-turf halls of the earls, and the ness of the standing stones at Stenness · the marriage of Gunnhild’s daughter into the house of Thorfinn Skull-splitter

Source: Orkneyinga saga, chs. 8–12, surviving in Flateyjarbók (GKS 1005 fol., compiled c. 1387–94); Sigurður Nordal’s critical edition (1913–16); Heimskringla (Snorri Sturluson, c. 1230); modern scholarship on the Orkney earls (Barbara Crawford; Brian Cook, 2019)

Named figures

Gunnhildr konungamóðir The narrator, and absent from almost everything she describes. She arranges the marriage, hands her daughter over, and sails for Denmark. She dies c. 977–980 — before Ljót’s death, before Hlǫðvir’s reign, and long before the judgement in the outro
Ragnhild Eiríksdóttir Daughter of Erik Bloodaxe and Gunnhild. Married Arnfinn, then Hávarðr, then Ljót — three of Thorfinn Skull-splitter’s sons — and later Hlǫðvir, a fourth. The saga says she contrived it. It does not say how
Einar klíningr and Einar harðkjǫptr The two kinsmen. The first killed Hávarðr at Stenness on a promise of marriage and the earldom; the second killed the first, on the same promise. She married neither of them
The manuscript itself The track’s antagonist. There were no witnesses to any of this, and the only surviving account was copied in Iceland around 1387 — roughly four hundred years after everyone in it was dead

What this song renders

The sequence is genuinely in the saga: Arnfinn killed at Murkle in Caithness; his brother Hávarðr taking both the earldom and the widow, then killed on the ness at Stenness by his own kinsman; the promise denied; the second kinsman set on the first; the marriage to a third brother. A field in Orkney — Hávarðsteigar, Hávarðr’s strips — still carried his name centuries later. Nothing anywhere carries hers.

What the saga does not supply is a single date. No medieval source dates any of it. The years now circulating online — Arnfinn “c. 979”, Hávarðr “d. c. 984” — trace to a 2008 Wikipedia edit citing a popular reference work, with a scholarly citation bolted on seven years later that does not support it. Guesswork here is older than that, too: an 1873 edition already prints “about A.D. 970”. The track prints no date for any killing, and neither should anything downstream of it.

The frame is the invention. No source has Gunnhild reacting to any of this, and the reading that mother and daughter were condemned in the same borrowed vocabulary is an argument the song makes, not a fact the record states — though it is the reading Nordal, Crawford and Cook all reach for. The outro is documented: a king on a ship’s deck ruling that she had forfeited her life if it were true. The conditional is the point.

Verdict

Documented sequence, invented vantage. The marriages, the killings, the denied promise and the surviving field-name are all in Orkneyinga saga. What is not: any date for any of it, any witness to any of it, and Gunnhild’s presence — she was in Denmark and then dead. That she taught her daughter anything is the album’s claim, made in the album’s voice, and the song is honest that the charge against Ragnhild reaches us only as hearsay written down four centuries late.

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