The Gesta Danorum (Books I-IX) on Kraka

The Danish History, > Book Five.

• attestation: Roller's mother and Erik's stepmother was named Kraka

  "Roller's mother and Erik's stepmother was named Kraka"

• attestation: Kraka served a pottage that was part black and part white, corresponding to the different snakes

  "she put before them a small dish containing a piebald mess, part looking pitchy, but spotted with specks of yellow, while part was whitish: the pottage having taken a different hue answering to the different appearance of the snakes"

• attestation: Kraka lamented that the fortune she had brewed for her son Roller had passed to her stepson Erik

  "when Kraka came up, and found that the dish had been turned round, and that Erik had eaten the stronger share of the meal, she lamented that the good luck she had bred for her son should have passed to her stepson"

• attestation: Kraka told Erik he could invoke her name in extremity for supernatural aid, claiming partial divine attributes

  "in case of extreme and violent need, he could find speedy help by calling on her name; declaring that she trusted partially in her divine attributes, and that, consorting as she did in a manner with the gods, she wielded an innate and heavenly power"

• attestation: Kraka disguised herself by muffling her face in a cloak, claiming to be Gunwar's half-sister

  "Kraka, whom Erik, because of her cunning in witchcraft, had brought with him on his travels, feigned weakness of the eyes, and muffled up her face in her cloak"

• attestation: Kraka may have used a magical drink to redirect Alfhild's affections toward Frode

  "There is also a tradition that Kraka turned the maiden's inclinations to Frode by a drink which she mixed and gave to her"