Clive Nolan will release "Song Of The Winter Throne – The Saga Of Håkon Håkonsson" on October 2 through WLR (We Låve Rock) and Oskar Records. The British composer, keyboardist and producer has built it out of progressive rock, folk, orchestral and cinematic writing, and around one of medieval Norway's least likely kings.
The first single, "Frost Upon The Longships", is online now.
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Håkon Håkonsson was born around 1204, in secret, in the middle of Norway's civil war era — the illegitimate son of a king who was already dead. He took the throne in 1217 as a child, with Earl Skule Bårdsson ruling as regent, and went on to reign for forty-six years, longer than any Norwegian king since Harald Fairhair. He put down Sigurd Ribbung, the last of the Bagler pretenders, in 1227, and ended the civil wars for good in 1240, when Skule — who had proclaimed himself king a year earlier — was killed.
What followed is usually treated as medieval Norway's golden age. European literature was translated into Old Norse, monumental stone buildings went up in the European style, and Iceland and the Norse Greenland settlements were brought into the realm, leaving it at its greatest extent. His fleet and his standing were such that the pope offered him an imperial crown, a delegation of Irish kings offered him their high kingship, and the king of France offered him command of a crusader fleet. He died wintering in Orkney in 1263.
For Nolan, the appeal was that none of it needed inventing. His 2020 project "Song Of The Wildlands" set Beowulf for orchestra, soloists and a 200-voice choir singing in Old English, and it left something unfinished.
"Having immersed myself in the world of Beowulf, I found that the pull of the North had not loosened its grip on me," he said. "The sagas, the stark beauty of Norway, the rhythm of old stories carried across crackling fires and ocean spray… all of it continued to echo in my imagination long after the final notes of 'Wildlands' had faded. There were more stories to tell… and perhaps, this time, something based in history, rather than myth. The more I explored Haakon's world, the more I realised that this was not simply the story of a king's reign. It was a story of survival. This was the perfect story for me to set as an album!"
War, ambition, loyalty, power and, in the end, legacy — carried as a cinematic journey rather than a chronicle.
Pre-orders are open. The album comes as a digital release, a digipak CD, 2LP on black vinyl, 2LP on Blue Ice vinyl, and an Earbook holding two CDs and a DVD. The Earbook's second disc amounts to a companion record: twelve bonus tracks, alternate mixes, instrumental versions, backing tracks and "The Narration (Fireside Mix)", alongside a 43-minute documentary.
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