Home of the Eddic Lays
Chapter 4
PHRASEOLOGY OF THE FIRST HELGI-LAY
After Helgi's birth is described, we read in H. H., I, 7:---
Sjálfr gékk vísi
ór vigţrimu
ungum fśra
ítrlauk grami.
This passage has been interpreted as follows:---'The king himself (Helgi's father Sigmund) went out of the tumult of battle to bear the young prince a magnificent leek.' Thus the Icelandic scribe of the old MS. doubtless understood it, and so also the author of the Völsungasaga, for he writes the lines thus: Sigmundr……gékk međ einum lauk ímóti syni sínum, 'Sigmund went with a leek to his son.' But what meaning this 'magnificient leek' can have here, scholars have been unable to decide. (1)
No one has been able to point out any other allusion to a custom by which a father gives his new born child a 'leek.' And there is still another consideration which awakes our doubts as to the correctness of reading lauk in this passage, viz., the fact that the following strophe begins with the words Gaf hann Helga nafn, 'he gave the name (of) Helgi,' and tells of the lands and the magnificient sword which the son receives. We cannot help asking: Why should the 'leek' be named apart, before all these gifts? No satisfactory explanation seems possible, and we may therefore conclude that laukr, 'leek,' was not the word the poet used.
The MS. has itr lavc (with a and v run together and a stroke above). In other old Icelandic MSS. this mark is used (2) (though we more frequently find a combination of a and o with a long stroke above) to indicate the u-umlaut of á. Further the u-umlaut of short a, is indicated in older MSS. by a combined ao, in the later MSS. by a combined av. I am, therfore, of the opinion that lavc was originally intended for lác, (3) acc. Pl. neut. Of lák = AS lâc, neut. (pl. lâc, preserved in Mid. Eng. lac, loc)---a word which means 'gift.'
The father came to bring his son ítr lák, 'magnificient gifts.' Thereupon we read in the following strophe: 'He gave the name (of) Helgi [the places] Hringstathir, Sólfjöll, Snćfjöll, ……a richly ornamented sword to the brother of Sinjfjötli (i.e. to Helgi).'
The word lák is used to sum up the gifts which are named directly after. This word lák, 'gift,' is not, and could never have been, a genuine Old Norse word. It is, on the contrary, clearly English. The AS lâc, neuter, has its ON phonetic equivalent in the word leikr, 'game'; but there is not trace in Norway or Iceland of lák with the meaning of 'gift.' Therefore, if my explanation is correct, it must have been in Britian that the word was carried over into Norse.
Just as lák is used in the Helgi-lay of gifts presented by a father to his son, so the AS lâc is used in the same way in the AS poem Elene, 1200 f.: hire selfre suna sende tô lâce….gife unscynde, 'to her own son she sent as a present the irreproachable gift.' And, further, just as the word is used in the Helgi-poem of a father's gifts, so we find in an AS hymn, fćderes lâce = Patris munere. (4)
I believe, then, that the word lák, 'gifts,' was carred over from English into the Helgi-lay in Britian, most likely from an English poem. Hence we may infer that the Norse poet who used the word had travelled among Englishmen in Britian, and that he had lived in districts where both English and Norse were spoken, and where both English and Norse poems were heard.
It may seem hazardous to make such wide-reaching conclusions on the evidence of a single word. I shall try, however, to prove that this is not an isolated example, but that there are many words, not only in other Eddic poems, but also in the First Helgi-lay, which have a similar origin. (5)
Another sure example of an English expression preserved in this First Helgi-lay, though in the guise of a Norse word, occurs in strophe 47, where a description is given of the men riding away in hot haste to announce to King Höthbrodd the coming of his enemies:---
Ţeir af ríki
denna létu
Svipuđ ok Sveggjuđ
Sólheima til
dala döggótta,
dřkkvar hlíđir;
skalf 'mistar marr'
hvar megir fóru.
'They rode (let run) their steeds, Sviputh and Sveggjuth, with all speed to Sólheimar, through dewy dales and dusky glens….'
The expression in the last line but one has not yet been satisfactorily explained. The word skalf, 'trembled,' shows that the meaning intended was: 'The earth trembled where the men advanced.' (6) The statement that the earth is made to tremble by the riding of men occurs regularly in Germanic epic poetry. (7) We find it not only in Scandinavian ballads of the Middle Ages, but also in the Eddic poems: when Skírnir rode to the dwelling of Gerth, the earth, we read, trembled (jörđ bifask, Skm. 14). But I would call particular attention to the following similar lines:---
skalf 'mistar marr'
hvar megir fóru,
and Atlakviđa, 13:---
hristisk öll Húnmörk
ţar er harđmóđgir fóru.
'The whole of Hunmark (or Hunwood) shook where the bold ones advanced,' referring to the ride of the Niflungs to Atli's land. Both poems have here fóru. ţar er corresponds to hvar (originally hvars); harđmóđgir to megir; hristisk to skalf; so 'mistar marr' must likewise correspond to Hunmörk, and be, like it, an indication of the particular land over which the men rode. (8)
I believe, therefore, that mistar marr is a corruption of AS mistig môr, 'misty moor.' In Béow., 162, we read of Grendel: héold mistige môras, 'he held (inhabited) the misty moors.' The phrase, ofer môr mistig, occurs elsewhere as a translation of super montem caliginosum. (9) With AS mistig, which comes from the masc. noun mist, may be compared the mod. Icel. neuter mistur, 'fogginess in the air'; the mod. Norw. dialectal neuters mistr and mist, 'heat-mist,' 'drizzle, Scotch mist'; in Eidskogen (in Norway), mist, fem., 'cloud of dust'; mod. Swedish mist (said to be both masc. and fem.), 'fog'; so also in many West-Germanic dialects. AS môr means both moor and mountain, the later meaning being developed from 'marshy mountains,' 'stretches of fen-land.'
The expressions used in the Helgi-lay:---'dewy dales, dusky glens,' and 'misty moors,' are entirely applicable to the landscape in many places in Northern England, Scotland, and Ireland.
Even if, as seems to me evident, the AS mistig môr is the original of mistar marr, the former having been learnt by the Norse poet from Englishmen, the historical relation between the two expressions can be explained in different ways. It is possible that a Norse poet in Britain took from some AS poem the words mistig môr in the form mistar mórr, and that some Icelander afterwards worked this over into mistar marr. Perhaps the latter conceived the original simple and natural expression as an artificial kenning, 'the steed of the fog,' 'the bearer of the fog,' i.e. the earth, on which the fog rested.
We have, as a result of what precedes, good grounds for believing that the First Helgi-lay was composed by a Norseman who had lived among Englishmen and was influenced by AS poetry. Looking at the poem from this point of view, we are able to throw light on several obscure places; and the conclusions above stated are thereby strengthened.
Of Helgi's youth we read in st. 9:---
ţá nam at vaxa
fyr vina brjósti (10)
álmr ítrborinn
ynđis ljóma.
'Then grew up before his friends' eyes (lit., breast) the high-born elm (i.e. hero) with the radiance of joy (i.e. joyous and fair).' That a hero, especially a young man, may be desginated in the older Norse poetry as a tree, without the addition of a genitive, I have elsewhere (11) shown. here the young prince is called elm. This mode of expression by which a hero or chieftain may be designated as a tree is very common in Irish poetry. In a verse on the Battle of Ross na Ríg, (12) Cuchulinn is called an oak (ráil). In the poem of Gilla Comgaill ua Slebin of the year 1002, the King Aed ua Neill is apostrophised as a craeb oebind, 'O, delightful tree!' (13) The brothers Mathgamain and Brian are called da dos didin, 'two spreading trees of shelter.' (14) The son of Murchad Brian is called eo Rossa, 'The yew of Ross.' (15) It is possible, then (though not necessary), to regard the use of the word 'tree' as a designation for Helgi, as showing the influence of Irish poetry.
The elm (16) is one of the most conspicious trees in Scotland, as well as in the northern part of England and Ireland. It grows luxuriantly there in just such places as are described in our poem (st. 47) with the words: 'dewy dales, dusky glens,' and 'misty moors,' or 'foggy, marshy mountains.' The elm is less prominent in Norway, although indeed it is common in the south.
The fact that the wood 'elm' is used to describe the young Helgi, together with many other considerations to which I shall call attention in this investigation, compels us to reject the opinion of Finnur Jónsson that the First Helgi-lay was composed in Greenland. (17) This expression proves also that the poem could not have been written in Iceland, as Björn Ólsen thinks. For just as the tree itself is foreign to that island, so the pictorial expression by which a young chieftain is called an elm, is foreign to the old poetry of its people. Nowhere in Icelandic poetry is a man described by the name of a definite sort of tree, (18) without the addition of a genitive, or an antecedent word in a compound.
It was in a land where the poet's eye saw the elm strong and mighty, with magnificent trunk and wide-extending, luxuriant foliage, a land of dewy dales and dusky glens, that this lay was composed. Hence it is that the poet has taken the elm as a symbol of the vigorous youthful chieftain, the shelter of his faithful men. (19)
Possibly the poet was also influenced by the fact that he was familiar with H. H., II, 38; 'Helgi surpassed other warriors, even as a noble (ítrskapađr) ash is higher than thorn-bushes.'
Of the young Helgi we read in the same strophe (I, 9):---
sparđi eigi hilmir
hodd 'bloţrekiN.'
'The king spared not the hoard………' The word blóđrekinn, if really Old Norse, can buy mean only 'washed in blood,' like dreyrrekinn (20); but that meaning is not suitable here. (21)
I would suggest that blóđrekinn is to be regarded as an epithet of hilmir, 'king,' and that the adjective is a corruption of the expression blćdrecen in some AS poem. The first part of the word is the AS blćd, masc. 'abundance, prosperity,' which is used of youth in AS poetry exactly as here. Cf. On ţâm ćrestan blćde (Gűđlâc, 468), 'in the first (youth's) prosperity'; geoguđhâdes blćd (Jul., 168), 'prosperity of youth.' The second part appears to me to be AS recen, 'ready, quick.' The compound blćdrecen describes, therefore, the king's son as one who quickly (after a short time had passed) stood fully developed in all the prosperity of youth. (22) Heroes in epic poetry are usually described as having had a much more rapid growth and development than other persons.
After the battle in which the sons of Hunding are slain, Sigrún and her battle-maidens come riding through the air to Helgi. In H. H., I, 15, we read that the king saw the maidens come riding und hjálmum á himinvanga, 'helmet-decked on the plains of heaven.'
Evidently the poet to whom we owe the lay in its present form, understood Himinvanga as the name of a place on the earth to which the battle-maidens came riding; for we read in st. 8 that, immediately after Helgi's birth, his father gave him Himinvanga, together with other places. But it is evident also that his name was not originally that of a definite locality, for hebanwang, 'plain of heaven,' is used in the OS poem Hęliand as a poetic phrase for heaven, eg. Scal hęlag gęst fan hebanwange cuman (1. 275), 'the Holy Ghost shall come from heaven (the plain of heaven).
ENDNOTES:
1. In my edition of the Völs. Saga (p. 194) I wrote as follows:---'This refers probably to an old custom not spoke of elsewhere: the leek which the chieftain gives his new-born son is probably thought of as a sign that the latter shall grow up to be a famous hero. Laukr was considered by the Norsemen as the fairest of all roots: "the leek ranks first among the grasses of the forest," runs the Norwegian ballad on the "Marriage of the Raven" (Landstand, Norkse Folkeviser, p. 633, st. 31); laukr í ćtt signifies in Icelandic "the most distinguished of a race"; men and heroes are constantly likened to leeks.' In the Flóamannasaga, 146, a man dreams of the leeks which grow from his knees. They signify his children. Rassmann (Heldensage, I , 76) and Lüning (Die Edda) have on the other hand compared ítrlauk with the old Germanic custom by which a man who transferred a plot of ground to another, gave him a piece of green turf; or, according to the Salic law, chrenecruda, translated wrongly by 'reines kraut.' Mannhardt (German. Mythen, p. 591, n.) notes that the leek was used in Scandinavia in witchcraft. Finally, I must mention the fact that many have regarded ítrlauk as a designation of a sword, benlaukr, 'wound-leek,' etc. Cf. Grimm, D. Myth., p. 1165; E. H. Meyer, Germ. Myth., p. 209; Wimmer, Oldn. Lćsebog, p. 157. Vigfusson wrongly inserts ímunlauk in the text (see C. P. B., I, 490). Back
2. See Gislason, Um Frumparta Íslenzkrar Túngu í Fornöld, Copenhagen, 1846. Back
3. We have another example of the same thing in the same poem, H. H. I, 54, where halţva is for havlo, i.e. hálu, if, indeed, the right form here be not hvlţar. Back
4. Hymns, ed. for the Surtees Soc., 95, 27. Back
5. From the way in which the words that the scribe failed to understand, viz. the acc. pl. of lák, 'gifts' (I, 7) and hálu (I, 54) are written, I infer that the u-umlaut of á was indicated in the original MS., and that this is a proof of its age. This shows, moreover, that the forms of easily intelligible words in the original MS. of the poem may often have been very different from those in the extant MS., and that they may have been a good deal more antique. Back
6. This has already been recognised by F. Jónsson. He changes marr to mćrr, 'the earth.' I cannot, however, agree with him when, with Egilsson, he combines Mistar megir, 'sons of battle,' (from Mist, the name of a valkyrie, used by the skalds to designate 'battle'). This suggestion seems to me inadmissible, both because of the order of the words and the artificiality of the kenning. Back
7. Cf. the remark in the Irish tale, 'The Destruction of Troy,' in the Book of Leinster (1. 595, ed. Stokes): 'The earth trembled in that place where they came together.' Back
8. From the agreement pointed out here it is not necessary to presuppose that the First Helgi-lay was influenced by the Atlakviđa. But in favour of that view we have the fact that the riders in H. H., I, 48, are called Hniflungar, just as the men whose ride is described in the Akv. strophe, are really Niflungs. Back
9. Rituale eccles. Dunelm., ed. Stevenson, 18, 38. Back
10. With fyr vina brjósti, which occurs earlier in Fáfn., 7, cf. the Irish a hucht slóig, 'in the presence of an army.' See Windisch (Wörterbuch), s.v. ucht, breast. Back
11. Aarbřger f. nord. Old., 1889, 29-33. Back
12. Hogan´s edition, 92. Back
13. Cogadh Gaidhel, 120. Back
14. Id., 56. Back
15. Id., 166. Back
16. Ulmus montana, 'the Mountain Wych or Scotch Elm.' See Selby, British Forest Trees, 124 ff. Back
17. Björn Ólsen (Tímarit, XV, 1894, 108-122) has, it seems to me, proved that Finnur Jónnson's arguments on this point are quite insufficient. Back
18. ţollr (root-vowel o) is not the name of a definite sort of tree, and must not be confused with ţöll, gen. ţallar (root-vowel a), 'fir,' pine. Back
19. Finnur Jónsson is wrong in changing álmr ítrborinn to alms árr borenn, 'Eigtl. = diener des bogens, ein krieger. borenn yn ţis ljóma = begabt mit der wonne glanz, mit herrlicher wonne; cp. vite borenn; ítrborenn mit dat. konnte nicht gesagt werden.' The form ítrborinn, however, is supported by the fact that we have the same word in H. Hj., 37; and ítr- as the first part of the compound, by the fact that ítr-skapađr is used as an epithet for askr in H. H., II, 38, where Helgi is compared to an ash. Moreover, ynđis ljóma is not, in my opinion, to be construed with ítrborinn, but is to be regarded as an accompanying detail to be taken along with nam at vaxa. In the Eddic poems árr is always used in its original meaning of 'messenger' and never as part of a compound artificial kenning for a man, as Finnur Jónnson would use it here. Back
20. Cf. Reka blóđ um granar einhvers. Back
21. The way in which the word is written would lead us to construe ´bloţrekiN' with hilmir, but Helgi, who has not yet been in battle, cannot be called 'blood-washed.' Vigfusson and F. Jónsson write hodd blóđrekin; but 'blood-washed hoard' is also an expression which has no analogue Back
22. There is another AS expression which one might regard as the basis of the word, viz. blędrecen, from blęd, fem = Germ. Blüte, bloom, which is contained in blędhvćt (copiosus floribus vel fructibus) Exeter Book Riddles, 2, AS blęd is often confused with AS blćd. Back
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