Sigríðr stórráða (the Haughty)

Sigrid the Haughty is the proud queen whose insult builds the coalition that destroys Olaf Tryggvason. A formidable widow and a great match, she is courted by Olaf — but when she will not give up her heathen faith to marry him, the king strikes her across the face in his anger. Sigrid answers coldly that this blow may well be his death, and she does not forget it: she marries instead Svend Forkbeard of Denmark, and her enmity helps draw together the alliance of the Danish king, the Swedish king, and Olaf's own countryman Earl Eric that ambushes him at Svolder. Sigrid is the saga's image of the woman scorned into a kingmaker's enemy — the proud queen whose refusal of conversion and the slap it earned her she repaid by marrying her suitor's rival and weaving the net of foes that brought the dazzling king down into the Baltic. A blow to a queen's face, repaid with a king's death.