THERE will be just one thing on Gunnar Olafsson’s mind when he turns up at Stamford Bridge cricket club tonight – and it won’t be cricket.

“I will say to people that I’m back and that I demand my crown!” growled the 6ft 4ins giant.

“Of course, it’s a joke!”

That’s a relief. Because Gunnar claims direct descent from one of the most fearsome Vikings of them all – King Harald Hardrada of Norway.

Almost 1,000 years ago – in 1066 – Hardrada was defeated and killed by King Harold Godwinson of England at the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

So heavy was the slaughter that 40 years later, a monk who visited the battlefield described it as being “white with bones”.

Gunnar has been to the site before.

“I look at it as holy ground,” he said. “I remember wandering for a long time on the field and I was asking them for forgiveness that they died here.”

But he isn’t out for revenge – or to reclaim his lost kingdom. He simply wants to explain to members of the Battle of Stamford Bridge Society how he can trace his descent directly back to the Viking king.

All Icelanders like him are Vikings, he said. And tracing your lineage is simple.

“To be an Icelander is to know your background, your lineage. We have a database of all Icelanders.”

In Iceland, a son takes his father’s name as his surname.

Gunnar is Olafsson after his father, Olaf Gunnarsson – who is named in turn after his own father, Gunnar Salomonsson.

A document from the records office in Reykjavik shows his lineage going all the way back, for 31 generations, to “Haraldur Hardradi, King of Norway, fell (in battle) 1066”.

This week, Gunnar is in York to take part in the Jorvik Viking Festival – and is regularly to be seen at the Coppergate camp.

A 51-year-old former policeman – he was once in the unit that guarded Mikhail Gorbachev during his 1986 Iceland summit with Ronald Reagan – he’s now a professional Viking re-enactor himself.

And he loves to see the way York remembers its Viking heritage. “There are people that are from a Viking lineage here. I know that people feel it. I see it in the street names, and I feel it!”