Editing Eric Bloodaxe (section)

==Marriage==
The ''Life of St [[Cathróe of Metz]]'', written ''c''. 1000 at the latest and therefore of near contemporary value, has information about Eric and his wife. It relates that "after keeping him for some time", the King of the Cumbrians conducted Cathróe to ''Loidam Civitatem'', the boundary between the ''Normanni'' ("Scandinavians") and the ''Cumbri'' ("Britons"):

<blockquote>And there he was received by a certain nobleman, Gunderic, by whom he was led to king ''Erichius'' in the town of York, because this king had as wife a relative of the godly Cathróe<ref>Anderson, ''Early Sources'', vol. i, p. 441; Downham, ''Viking Kings'', p. 121; Dumville, "St Cathroe of Metz", p. 177</ref></blockquote>

Given what is known of Cathróe's own background, this probably means that she was of [[Britons (historical)|British]] ("Cumbrian") or Scottish descent.<ref>Downham, "Eric Bloodaxed&nbsp;– Axed?", p. 73; Woolf, "Erik Bloodaxe Revisited", p. 190</ref> This contradicts to some extent later saga tradition. According to the early 13th century ''[[Egils saga]]'', Eric's consort at York was [[Gunnhild, Mother of Kings|Gunnhild]], the famous "mother of kings".<ref name="ftn25">''Egils saga'' chs. 45, 57</ref> This account was constructed by the author of ''Egils saga'' using an earlier poem called ''[[Arinbjarnarkviða]]'' "Lay of Arinbjörn", and this poem does not mention Gunnhild by name, implying therefore that the name was introduced by the author of ''Egils saga''.<ref>See Sawyer, "Last Scandinavian Kings", p. 42—3; Woolf, "Erik Bloodaxe Revisited", p. 190.</ref>

Saga tradition is, however, unanimous that Eric did cohabit with a woman named Gunnhild. Her name occurs in a handful of Egill's ''lausavísur''.<ref>Egill Skallagrímsson, ''Lausavísur'', stanzas 7, 22, 24 (in ''Egils saga'' ch. 45, 57).</ref> The earliest saga, ''Historia Norwegiæ'', describes her as the daughter of [[Gorm inn Gamli]] (‘the Old’), king of Denmark (and hence a sister of [[Harald Bluetooth]]). Most subsequent accounts<ref name="ftn26">Theodoricus names her on several occasions (ch. 2, etc.), but omits to identify her background. For further discussion, see [[Gunnhild, Mother of Kings|the main article on Gunnhild]].</ref> name her father [[Ozur Toti|Ozur]], nicknamed either Toti "teat" (''Egils saga, Fagrskinna'', ''Heimskringla'') or lafskegg "dangling beard" (''Ágrip'', ''Fagrskinna''), a man who hailed from the northern province of [[Hålogaland]] (''Egils saga'', ''Heimskringla'').<ref name="ftn27">''Ágrip'' ch. 5. ''Fagrskinna ''ch. 5; ''Egils saga'' ch. 37, ''Heimskringla'' (''Haraldar saga'') ch. 32 and 34. Cf: the longer account in ''Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta'', ch. 3.</ref> Icelandic hostility towards Gunnhild has been cited as a possible source for her dissociation from the Danish royal house.<ref name="ftn28">Gwyn Jones, ''A History of the Vikings''. Oxford, 1984. 121–22.</ref>

There is no consensus on how to solve this problem. An early suggestion is that the name for the king in York in the ''Life ''of Cathróe has been erroneously supplanted for Eric's predecessor [[Amlaíb Cuarán]] (Olaf Sihtricsson), whose (second) wife Dúnflaith was an Irishwoman.<ref>W. G. Collingwood, "King Eirík of York". p. 325.</ref> Recently, Clare Downham has suggested that ''Erichius'', Eric of Northumbria, is not the same as Eric Bloodaxe.<ref>See Downham, "Eric Bloodaxed&nbsp;– Axed?", pp. 51—77.</ref> And there remains the possibility that he was not strictly monogamous, and the existence of two wives need not be mutually exclusive.<ref>Woolf, "Erik Bloodaxe Revisited", p. 190, n. 10</ref>