 A thirteenth-century letter from Edward I to Pope Boniface VIII identifies Erik as Scottish in origin.Lappenberg, Plummer and Todd, writing in the late nineteenth century, identified Erik as a son of Harald Bluetooth, a claim Downham discounts as untenable.Downham, however, regards Erik the king of Jorvik as a distinct individual from Erik Bloodaxe, and thus views Gunnhild's sojourn in Orkney and Jorvik as the construct of later saga-writers who conflated different characters between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.