The composition is Nordic-influenced classical in style and features a chorus singing lyrics in a fictional language, Dragon-tongue, that was created by Emil Pagliarulo for the game.
It is featured in orchestral performances and spawned numerous covers, many of which combine the song with an in-game, English-language composition "The Dragonborn Comes".
[7] In Kyle E. Miller's review of the game soundtrack, he found "Dragonborn" to be the most memorable and felt it "accurately establishes and conveys the tone of Skyrim before the player ever sees the world.
According to them, Carl Dahlaus's concepts of Naturklang which he used explain the music of Edvard Grieg also apply to Soule's work on Skyrim, including "Dragonborn".
Naturklang is a sense of stasis that paradoxically contains an inner drive from ostinatos and a proto-minimalist rhythmic repetition of "cells" and Klangfläche is a "sound-sheet" which is externally static yet full of constant motion from rhythm and unresolved harmonic notes (seconds and fourths) preventing the music from becoming "dull and lifeless".