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.)
