What this song renders
After Erik the Victorious died, suitors came. Snorri names two by name. Vissavald arrived from Garðaríki — the Norse term for Kievan Rus and the eastern river-lands — bringing eastern silks, gold, and the bearing of a foreign king who expected to be impressive. Harald Grenske came from Vestfold in southern Norway, a petty king in his own right, and is best known to history not for this trip but as the father of Olaf Haraldsson, who would later become Saint Olaf.
The song renders the feast Snorri describes — the suitors arriving, the mead horns lifting, the crown-combining proposals. Saga literature treats the scene as performative bravado: minor kings using courtship to make themselves sound major. Sigrid's contempt — the chant petty kings — is her verdict on them, not yet acted on.
The bridge is where the decision forms in the saga. The bar will drop / the torch will fall / the hall will burn — these are not yet things that have happened. They are the things she has just decided will happen. The act itself is Track 03.
Vissavald and Harald Grenske are real, documented historical figures. Their joint visit to Sigrid as suitors appears only in Snorri's Heimskringla, written ~250 years after the events. No earlier source confirms it.