The Last Great Viking

Intro

(Hardrada! Hardrada!)

Fifteen years old at Stiklestad — still standing...

(Hu-ha!) Half the army dead — I kept expanding —

Three continents bled under my commanding —

(Hardrada!) The last great Viking — no misunderstanding...

Verse 1

Stiklestad — 1030 — fifteen in the shield-press,

Half-brother Olaf falling — blood on the hill-crest.

Wounded — barely breathing — crawled out from the kill-fest,

East to Kievan Rus — built the name from the illness.

Yaroslav took me in — I repaid him in iron,

Three years in the Rus guard — then Constantinople's horizon.

Emperor needed killers — Varangian fire rising —

I walked into Byzantium — they stopped what they were prizing.

Commanded the elite where the purple palace glittered,

Bulgaria to Sicily — every fortress made bitter.

Asia Minor, Jerusalem — the battle-count delivered —

Every general before me left the field a little withered.

Loaded ship with Byzantine gold on the returning,

Every crown in Scandinavia already learning:

Harald Sigurdsson — Hardrada — hard-earning —

The whole Norwegian throne about to start its turning.

Pre-Chorus

From the fifteen-year-old bleeding in the frozen hill-grass (hill-grass)

To the Varangian axe swinging through Byzantine brass.

Every war I fought just made the next one come fast —

Norway took one winter — England's first and last. (uh!)

Chorus

Three continents built me — one bridge took me down (took me down!)

Stamford Bridge — September — last king, last crown (last crown!)

Arrow through the throat — that's how legends drown (legends drown!)

The last great Viking — hear the final sound! (Hu-ha!)

Verse 2

Norway fell in line when I came back with the treasury,

Magnus dead — the throne vacant — practically pleasantry.

Twenty years of ruling in the cold and the blustery —

Then the English crown dangled in the political history.

1066 — the Great North Fleet assembled —

Three hundred longships — all of England trembled.

Fulford Gate fell first — the English line dismembered —

The shield-wall broke the way the Norns had always scheduled.

Stamford Bridge came next — caught us by the river,

Half the army armored — half still at the quiver.

Godwinson asked: what land will Harald get to keep here? —

Seven feet of English earth — since he is taller — neither.

I rode out to negotiate — rode back unresolved,

The arrow found the throat before the standoff was dissolved.

Sixty-one years burning bright before the flame evolved —

The last great Viking age — September — problem solved.

Pre-Chorus

From the fifteen-year-old bleeding in the frozen hill-grass (hill-grass)

To the Varangian axe swinging through Byzantine brass.

Every war I fought just made the next one come fast —

Norway took one winter — England's first and last. (uh!)

Chorus

Three continents built me — one bridge took me down (took me down!)

Stamford Bridge — September — last king, last crown (last crown!)

Arrow through the throat — that's how legends drown (legends drown!)

The last great Viking — hear the final sound! (Hu-ha!)

Bridge

You want to know what sixty years of war leaves you?

(what does it leave?)

Not the gold — the gold is what deceives you.

(not the gold...)

Not the crown — the crown is what believes you

(not the crown...)

Have more permanence than the blade that retrieves you.

It leaves you knowing every battlefield by texture —

(by texture...)

Every general's tell — every shield-wall's fracture.

(every fracture...)

Stiklestad — fifteen — bleeding in the heather —

(bleeding...)

That boy survived everything — including the weather.

Stamford Bridge just closed the ledger on the accounting —

(the ledger...)

Forty-six years after Stiklestad — still mounting.

(still mounting...)

One arrow — clean — I'll take that reckoning:

(Skál to the Varangian! Skál — last of the reckoning!)

(Three continents in sixty years — that's the Viking beckoning!)

Drop — Instrumental

Chorus

Three continents built me — one bridge took me down (took me down!)

Stamford Bridge — September — last king, last crown (last crown!)

Arrow through the throat — that's how legends drown (legends drown!)

The last great Viking — hear the final sound! (Hu-ha!)

Outro

(Hardrada! Hardrada!)

September 25, 1066...

(Hu-ha!)

Seven feet of English earth.

The last great Viking

closed the age.

(Skál.)