Ragnar The Red - Alderon Tyran

We're going into Full Music Video territory finally! This song I put together over a few months and apparently didn't realize the reason I found the name so catchy is because there already exists a Skyrim song by the same name. So... That's a thing. This is not that same song, but I hope you still enjoy it!

(The displayed lyrics in the song, when in Old Norse are actually using runes, rather than approximate syllables. Also I apologize in advance to all Icelandic speakers for the incredibly rough pronunciation!)

Lyrics:

Hearken, ye drinkers, I’ll sing of the Red,
Ragnarr hinn rauði, how Westward he sped;
Over sævar vestan, with steel at his side,
Under storm-dark ravens that follow the tide.

His mother in fjord-hall laid hand on his head,
“Ragnar, minn son, þú ert rauðr,” she said;
He laughed at the naming, scarce heeded her word,
Dreaming long dragonships and the sea-wind he heard.

South from the snow-peaks, down cold river’s bed,
He strode from the homestead as Ragnar the Red;
“Farðu nú, drengr minn, go carve thine own way,”
So spoke his old mother while dusk swallowed day.

Over the whale-road he followed war’s call,
Past mist-hidden headlands and cliffs iron-tall;
“Til landa vestræna!” the steersman would cry,
Where smoke-marked shore-villages blackened the sky.

I found him at last in the lands of the West,
With tatters for raiment clung close to his chest;
Fingers were missing and half of one ear,
Yet his gaze was a sword-edge that kindled me fear.

His mail shirt was ragged, with rust it was red,
Fresh blood seeped through byrnie and bandage and thread;
“Þú ert rauðr, Ragnarr,” I whispered in dread,
For all that I saw spoke of wounds he had bled.

Scars laced his shoulders like sea-rope well-worn,
One eye was ice-pale from a long-healed horn;
He limped as a grey wolf that’s gnawed from a snare,
A draugr í dreyra, yet grimly he’d stare.

The hall-men all murmured, “He’s bled half his life,
His naming was given for sorrow and strife;
See how his own lifeblood runs dark as the sea,
Surely ‘the Red’ is for wounds that you see.”

So thought I of Ragnarr, so broken, half-dead,
That his name had been forged by the blood he had shed;
His hands, once like hammers, were twisted and scarred,
His heart seemed a longship with planks split and marred.

But an old skjald beside me, with ale-foam mustache,
Leaned close through the fire-glow and spoke in a hush:
“Þú skalt heyra, ungi, you’ve guessed not aright,
Red was his naming for red in the fight.”

“Long ere his fingers were bitten by steel,
Ere Westland had marked him from shoulder to heel,
He came with the sea-wolves in storm-tattered sail,
Where Northumbrian shore-folk cried useless and pale.

North ran the rivers through low-lying fen,
South stood the halls of the Westland men;
Wherever their war-bands in shieldwall were set,
Ragnarr walked forward and redder he’d get.

Skjǫldr ok sverð in his hard-gripping hand,
He strode through the war-crash like fire through dry land;
Blóð ok bein paved the path where he trod,
And each stroke of his iron rang loud unto God.

When shieldrings were sundered and spears had all bit,
And kings of the West saw their champions split,
He’d come from the slaughter, slow, silent, and dread,
From beard-tip to heel-bone all dripping in red.

Then huskarlar shouted in mead-halls at night,
“Ragnarr hinn rauði! He returns from the fight!”
Not red from his heartbeat, nor hurts of his own,
But red with the lifeblood of foemen o’erthrown.

“So know this,” the skjald said, “when bandage runs bright,
It’s but the last embers of far older fight;
He earned that grim by-name on corpse-littered shore,
When lands of the West learned to dread him of yore.”

Now when I name him in hall fire-fed,
I think not first on the blood he has bled;
I see him stride shoreward through surf running red,
And whisper in awe, “There goes Ragnar the Red.”

For Credit: most video generation was with the assistance of OpenArt.ai and Sora.chatgpt. Video editing with Filmora, and Audio editing with Studio One.