[Intro]
[Two tagelharpa notes sound with long pauses; the expected third note never arrives.]

[Verse 1]
White snow lay clean outside the gate,
Inside, the dead still held their weight.
The hearth had sunk to coals and lime,
The roof dripped melt in measured time.
A widow stood beneath the beam,
Her wool hood edged with frozen steam.
She did not ask which side had won.
She searched each face and found her son.

[Chorus]
Empty Seats in Winter, empty bowls in rows,
Snow upon the threshold, blood beneath the snow.
Empty Seats in Winter, no laughter answers back;
A hall may keep its timber and still lose what it had.
Empty Seats in Winter, name the missing men;
The bench remains beneath us, but none sit there again.

[Verse 2]
Astrid found the shield we knew,
Its broken boards now split in two.
She touched the strap Eirik had sewn,
Then asked why I returned alone.
No wound she gave me with her hand
Could match the way she chose to stand.
She saw his blood upon my sleeve,
And turned aside before her grief.

[Chorus]
Empty Seats in Winter, empty bowls in rows,
Snow upon the threshold, blood beneath the snow.
Empty Seats in Winter, no laughter answers back;
A hall may keep its timber and still lose what it had.
Empty Seats in Winter, name the missing men;
The bench remains beneath us, but none sit there again.

[Verse 3]
We laid the loyal near the west,
With comb and knife upon each chest.
The traitors fallen by the wall
Were counted, covered, named as all.
For grief does not erase a birth,
Nor anger lift a corpse from earth.
But Ketil’s band had crossed the fjord,
With Harek’s silver, grain, and sword.

[Bridge]
[Female alto carries the first half; male baritone answers the second.]

I placed his half-carved boar beside
The hand that held the shield and died.
Then Astrid said, “Bring back his name.
Do not bring home another flame.”

[Instrumental]
[Clean guitar plays a spare funeral melody over bowed tagelharpa and mallet toms.]

[Final Chorus]
Empty Seats in Winter, empty bowls in rows,
Snow upon the threshold, ash beneath the snow.
Empty Seats in Winter, our answers do not mend;
A hall may bury warriors and never house them again.
We name the absent, rise from where they should have been,
And leave their waiting seats behind to hunt the missing men.

[Outro]
[The widow’s voice sings the missing third note of the oath motif without words.]

One chair stood near the silent flame.
No one moved it from its place.
