This Viking warlord had a magical banner that promised victory. But it had a secret curse

Sigurd the Stout’s mother promised that her banner would win him a battle, but warned that its bearer would die. Judith Jesch explores a saga tale of magic, warfare and death

A stained-glass window depicting a medieval figure in St Magnus Cathedral, Orkney.

Published: October 20, 2026 at 3:59 PM

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Facing a Scottish army he believed outnumbered his own seven to one, the Viking warlord Sigurd the Stout went to his mother for help. According to Orkneyinga Saga, she had little sympathy – if any – for his concerns.

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“She basically says, ‘Well, if I thought you would be worried about dying, I would have brought you up in my wool basket,’” Viking Age scholar Judith Jesch explains on the HistoryExtra podcast.

Despite her misgivings about her son’s courage, his mother had, however, made something for him: a banner bearing a raven, so skilfully worked that the bird seemed to fly when the cloth whipped in the wind. She promised that it would bring him victory, with one condition.

“She says, ‘This banner will help you win the battle, but whoever carries the banner will die.’”

Three standard-bearers were killed in the fighting that followed. “You'd think they would have heard that it was a bad idea to carry this banner,” Jesch says. “But Sigurd does eventually win the battle.”

Fighting for power in Scotland

Sigurd ruled Orkney in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. From the islands off Scotland’s northern coast, the Norse earls could reach allies and enemies across Scandinavia, Scotland and Ireland. They also sought territory closer to home, across the Pentland Firth in Caithness.

The saga names Sigurd’s Scottish opponent as Earl Finnleik and places their battle at a site generally identified as Skitten, near Wick. Control of this part of the mainland was a recurring concern for Orkney’s rulers.

This account of the battle was written long after the fighting. Orkneyinga Saga, a history of the islands’ earls, is generally thought to have first taken shape around 1200, some two centuries after Sigurd’s lifetime. Its writers drew on earlier traditions, and the text underwent further revision.

We cannot recover a conversation between Sigurd and his mother from this scene, or establish what happened at Skitten through its account of an enchanted banner. We can, though, see what interested the storytellers who wrote this legend.

A black-and-white 19th-century illustration of the Battle of Clontarf, showing armoured warriors fighting with swords and spears, with a fallen raven banner on the battlefield.

A 19th-century depiction of the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, where Sigurd the Stout, Earl of Orkney, was killed fighting against the forces of Irish ruler Brian Boru. According to Njál’s Saga, Sigurd died after taking up the cursed raven banner made by his mother, whose bearers were fated to die | Credit: Wikimedia Commons

A taunting mother

“Her response to him is goading,” Jesch explains. “And this is a motif we find a lot in Icelandic sagas.”

In saga feuds, a killing or an insult could affect the standing of an entire family. Relatives had a stake in whether a man sought compensation, took revenge or did nothing, even if they would never fight themselves.

“It's often thought of as a very masculine world,” says Jesch. “It's the men going out and killing each other, basically. But as the sagas make clear, women also play a part in this process because they're part of the family group.”

That involvement often means “urging, encouraging the menfolk to go out” and commit violence, she explains, whether to avenge a wrong or for another purpose.

Sigurd’s mother uses the same pressure against her son. Her wool-basket remark paints a picture of an earl anxious about the odds as a child who still needs protecting – it’s emasculating. If he wants to be taken seriously, she implies, he must accept the possibility of death.

Such scenes tell us about the expectations of saga writers and their audiences. The woman who shames a reluctant man into fighting is a recurring literary figure – beyond this saga, too; think of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

But in this story, the notion of women encouraging men to commit violence is only one of several motifs.

“It's the combination of women giving advice, women with magical powers, and women goading men to go out and kill. These are three motifs that are entwined in this episode.”

Weaving the fate of warriors

Women who foresee events or practise magic appear elsewhere in Norse literature, among them the seeresses known as ‘völur’. The banner belongs to another strand of Norse storytelling, in which textile work gives women control over the fate of warriors. A poem preserved in Njál’s Saga describes valkyries, the supernatural figures associated with choosing the battlefield dead, weaving a fabric of war from human entrails and severed heads.

The raven, too, was familiar in accounts of battle. It fed on the corpses left after fighting and was associated with Odin, whose ravens Huginn and Muninn brought him knowledge of the world. On Sigurd’s banner, the bird is an appropriate emblem for a victory that will leave its bearers dead.

A black-and-white illustration of the Norse god Odin seated on a throne, holding a spear, with two ravens and two wolves beside him.

An illustration of the Norse god Odin, accompanied by his ravens Huginn and Muninn and wolves Geri and Freki. Ravens were closely associated with Odin and the battlefield dead, making the bird a powerful symbol for the magical banner that, according to Norse sagas, brought Sigurd the Stout victory at a deadly price | Credit: Getty Images

There is evidence for Vikings entering battles with raven standards outside the sagas. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the capture of a Viking war banner with the black bird in Devon in 878 – during the Viking attacks on Alfred the Great’s Wessex.

The death of Earl Sigurd

Sigurd died in 1014 at Clontarf, near Dublin, fighting in the coalition opposed to the Irish ruler Brian Boru. His allies included the rulers of Dublin and Leinster. With Irish and Norse interests entangled on the battlefield, the conflict neatly demonstrates how interlinked the Norse and broader Gaelic worlds had become.

His death is recorded beyond the Icelandic saga tradition. The Annals of Ulster name the earl of Orkney among the dead. And in Njál’s Saga, the raven banner returns to account for his end. Once again, its bearers are killed. This time, the surviving men refuse to take it. Sigurd takes the banner himself. As per his mother’s magic, he dies.

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Judith Jesch was speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.

Authors

James OsborneSenior content producer

James Osborne is a senior content producer at HistoryExtra

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