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They Could Not Name Me Queen

Act II — Mother of Kings Released Approx. 4:20

About this track

Track 06 closes Act II on the album’s most explicitly magical scene — the sorcery duel of Egils saga ch. 57. Egil Skallagrímsson, on a skerry off the Norwegian coast, takes a hazel pole, sets a horse’s head on it facing inland, and carves the runes of the níðstǫng — the nithing-pole curse turned against King Erik and Queen Gunnhild. The album stages the duel as parallel acts in cross-cut: his knife on the hazel-wood at the skerry, her hand on the second leather pouch at the hearth. She does not chant; she opens the pouch, drops the ash, and sends his wind back across the sea. The track carries the album’s secondary thesis in its long chorus — “They called me witch because they could not name me queen” — the historiographical-defense move at maximum compression: the men who called her witch did so because they could not name what she had earned, or describe what they had seen.

Sonically this is the album’s second-largest engine after Track 05 — 150 BPM galloping black-folk metal, tremolo-picked guitars from the first second, knife-on-hazel-wood carving sounds audible under the engine until the pole is planted. The chorus is the record’s most verbose, delivered as sustained chest-belt proclamation rather than fast patter, its closing line mutating across the three passes from “the name is mine” to “the years are mine” to “the song is mine” — the witch ending up owning the very verse-form that tried to destroy her. The bridge half-tempo-stomps under the album’s only mouth-harp lead — mouth-harp against jaw harp, the skald’s verse against the witch’s seiðr — with a brief blast-beat burst on the pole-planting line. The outro seals the feud in past tense and hard-cuts: “And Egil lived. And Egil mourned. / And Egil did not write me wrong.”

Track 06 of 8 Act II — Mother of Kings Cadence Galloping black-folk metal — 150 BPM tremolo gallop, knife-on-hazel-wood carving under the engine, female mezzo chest-belt, jaw harp + tagelharpa, mouth-harp duet on the bridge, one lurr-horn hit on the final chorus

Verse 1

Two seiðr-chant lines in Old Norse breath, then the verse continues sung at full gallop — tremolo guitars, frame-drum gallop, jaw harp drone, the knife-on-hazel carving sounds beginning under the engine.

He gave me a name in verse.
He carved it on a horse's skull.
I gave him back his brother's death,
And his own years on the sea,
The skerry-stone, the knife, the wood,
The wind that carried him to me.

Pre-Chorus

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

The horse-head facing my hall,
The pole-shadow on my floor,

Chorus

Stomping full band, women's chorus locked, tremolo guitars galloping, the lurr horn held in restraint.

They called me witch because they could not name me queen,
They called me witch because they could not name what they had seen,
The skald who carves my name in skull and pine,
Will name me till the salt-wind takes him — and the name is mine.

Verse 2

Sung at the gallop, palm-muted guitars, frame-drum gallop, tagelharpa entering as a low-drone counter-melody.

I opened the second pouch at the hearth,
I let the ash fall onto the fire,
The flame caught and flared, and did not die,
I sent his wind back across the sea,
I called the years he had not yet lived,
And I named the ones he would mourn.

Pre-Chorus 2

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

The pouch in my hand, the flame —
The smoke-hole let the curse out —

Chorus 2

Stomping full band, women's chorus locked, tagelharpa escalating, tremolo guitars galloping. The closing line mutates.

Bridge

Drums slow to a half-tempo stomp — pounding with weight, not dropping out. The album's only mouth-harp lead: mouth-harp and jaw harp in duet over a tagelharpa drone, mezzo low chest, with a brief blast-beat burst on the pole-planting line.

He cuts the horse's head, I cut the thread.
He plants the pole, I drop the ash.
The wind he sends, the wind I send.
The years he names, the years he ends.

Final Chorus

Biggest stomp — full band, women's chorus locked, tremolo guitars galloping, one lurr-horn hit on the thesis-line downbeat. Closes on the two-line couplet.

Outro

Drums hold one beat, mouth-harp fading, hard cut.

And Egil lived. And Egil mourned.
And Egil did not write me wrong.

The history

Mid-tenth century · a skerry off the Norwegian coast, the horse-head pole turned inland · Gunnhild at her hearth, answering the curse without a word

Source: Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, ch. 57 (anonymous, c. 1230–1240); Heimskringla (Snorri Sturluson, c. 1230) for the seiðr-tradition around the queen

Named figures

Gunnhildr konungamóðir (G2) The witch-queen at the hearth inland. The saga gives her no answer to the pole; the album stages one — the second pouch, the ash on the fire, the wind sent back across the sea — built from the long feud the saga does record
Egil Skallagrímsson Icelandic skald, c. 904–c. 990 — the greatest poet of the saga age and Gunnhild’s lifelong enemy. Carves the níðstǫng: the hazel pole, the horse’s head, the runes of the curse-formula, planted in a cleft in the rock facing the land
Erik Bloodaxe (named in the curse) The pole’s invocation is turned ‘against king Eirik and queen Gunnhild’ — the land-spirits charged to wander astray until they drive the royal pair from Norway. The saga records that the pair were, in fact, driven out

What this song renders

Egils saga ch. 57 preserves the most famous documented act of insult-magic in the whole Norse corpus, and its detail is the saga’s, not the album’s: the hazel pole, the horse’s head set on top, the pole driven into a cleft in the rock facing inland, the runes carving the whole formula of the invocation, the land-spirits called to wander astray until they drive Erik and Gunnhild from the country. The níðstǫng form is independently attested in the Norse legal corpus as a punishable act. And Egils saga is independent of Heimskringla — a second medieval witness to the witch-queen frame, the canon’s most famous skald set against the canon’s most dangerous queen.

What the album adds is the counter-curse. The saga records the pole and the long feud — Gunnhild’s repeated attempts on Egil’s life across decades — but gives her no answer at the hearth; the album asserts one, in her own silent object-grammar. The verse’s boldest claim, “I gave him back his brother’s death,” is the witch’s expansion, not the chronicle’s: Thorolf Skallagrímsson died at Brunanburh in 937 fighting beside Egil for King Athelstan, and no source credits Gunnhild with it. Her point of view claims more than the chronicles assign her — which is the point.

Neither curse killed, and both succeeded. Egil’s pole preceded Erik and Gunnhild being driven from Norway — but she came back, and ruled through Harald Greycloak. Her counter-curse never took Egil’s life — he died in old age at Borg, the longest-lived major skald of the saga age — but he mourned: the Sonatorrek, his lament for lost sons, was composed well inside the curse-window. The outro’s grudging respect — “And Egil did not write me wrong” — is the album acknowledging that the hostile skald produced the most truthful portrait of her that survives.

Verdict

Saga-attested curse, invented answer. The nithing-pole — hazel, horse-head, runes, the cleft in the rock — is specified in Egils saga ch. 57, and the curse-form is independently attested in Norse law. Gunnhild’s counter-curse at the hearth is the album’s addition, and the chorus’s claim is historiography rather than history — the album’s second thesis, sung back at the chroniclers.

See the full Truth, Saga & Legend entry →