Chapter 6

        The second place to which Hercules goes for help is Salamis. We have seen that Sparta, which in the Irish tale is named in connection with Hercules, became in the ON poem a place which was named in connection with Höthbrodd, and here we have another example of the same thing. In A 485, we read: corríg Salamána, 'to the king of Slamána,' in A 489 Salamona, in B 81 in the Accus. Salamiam, in B 90, 94, in the Gen. Salamiae, in Dares Salaminam. Now the place in which Höthbrodd is when the messengers bear him the ill news of Helgi's coming, is called Sólheimar (see H. H., I, 47). In my opinion this is a Norse modification of Salamona, or rather Salamina. This modification was due to the fact that Sólheimar as the name of a place was familiar in both Norway and Iceland. The name of the foreign city could have become by popular etymology the name of a place whose second part was the AS hâm, corresponding to the ON heimr, 'a home, a dwelling-place.' (16) Salamina is the name of Telamon's royal abode; that of King Höthbrodd is called Sólheimar. (17)
        Directly after having named the places to which the messengers are to ride with all speed to get help, Höthbrodd says (I, 51):
                        látið engi mann
                        eptir sitja
                        þeira er benlogum
                        bregða kunni.
'Let no man sit at home who knows how to swing swords.' This is modelled after Telamon's words to Hercules in the Irish story, when the latter came to the former for aid. In B 90 we read: 'With us....shall go the inhabitants of Salamia, whoso shall take spear in his hand and is fit to know how to wield weapons.' In A 490 ff, the passage runs thus: 'I will go with thee and the dwellers of Salamona both old and young, whosoever is fit to take arms and is daring to carry weapons.'
        The sending out of the messengers in the Helgi-lay is immediately followed by the description of the battle in which Höthbrodd falls. In my opinion this account was influenced to some extent by the detailed pictorial description of the battle between Hercules and Laomedon in version A of the Irish story.
        There Hercules in the heat of battle is thus described: (A 599 ff): 'Then came the rage and the might and the great wrath of the soldier Hercules, and his bird of valour rose over his breath and kept flying round his head, and he made a savage rush (?) at the Trojans, like the outburst of a flood, or like a flash of lightning.' (18) This representation of the battle-bird occurs also in Irish traditional tales, and is connected with the belief that the war-goddess or war-fury Morrigan appears as a bird. (19) In the description of the battle before Troy in Priam's time, the Irish tale has united both ideas: 'their birds of valour ascended over their breaths......white broad-mouthed battle-goddesses rose over their heads.' (20)
        Instead of these wild Irish conceptions, the Helgi-poet inserted the nobler pictures of the battle-maidens coming armed from the heavens, when the battle was in progress, to protect Helgi, and strike down his opponents. The Irish 'bird of valour' became 'a flying wound-wight' (sárvitr fluga, I, 54).
        The Irish story concludes one section with the account of Laomedon's fall and the defeat of the Trojans. In A 687 ff, we read: 'Thereafter they (i.e. the Greeks) returned to their own country, and each of them bids farewell to the other, and all separate in peace and goodwill from Hercules. Finit.' Then begins certain chronological statements on entirely different matters. In the other version (B 170), the passage runs as follows: 'So when all that came to an end, each leader of them went to his land with victory and triumph.'
        The conclusion of the Helgi-lay represents Sigrún, Helgi's victory-genius, as congratulating him on his victory and on the fall of Höthbrodd. The last line is: þá er sókn lokit, 'then is the fight over.' (21) This may be compared with the closing word Finit in version A, or with the words 'when all that came to an end' in version B.
        Though the author of the First Helgi-lay knew older verses which told of Helgi's fate after Höthbrodd's fall, he nevertheless brought his poem to an end at this point, being influenced, as I believe, by the fact that the Irish story closed with the account of the defeat of the Trojans and the fall of Laomedon. He has thus given us a well-rounded poem with a very effective ending. We see the hero in the closing scene radiant with the glow of victory.
        The last section of the Irish story, which deals with the expedition of the Greeks against Troy when Priam was king, seems to have had no definite influence on the Helgi-lay. (22)
        Zimmer has shown that the story of the Destruction of Troy belonged, as early as the close of the tenth century, to the repertory of Irish story-tellers. (23) Stokes remarks that the Annals of the Four Masters mention a man named Dariet the Learned, who died in 948, (24) and Zimmer notes that the Ulster annals call a certain hero, who fell in 942, the Hector of the western world. Moreover, according to Zimmer, the Destruction of Troy in the Book of Leinster may go back to the beginning of the eleventh century.
        My supposition, that the Norse poet, about 1020-1035, learned to know the Destruction of Troy in Ireland, most probably in Dublin, agrees therefore completely with all that Irish literary history has to tell us of the history of this document.
        It appears, then, that the author of the First Helgi-lay was a literary, and, so far as the times and the circumstances of his life allowed, what we may call a learned man. He was evidently a poet by profession. We have every reason to believe that he either wrote down his poem himself or dictated it to a scribe.
        Nor do I now see any reason for denying that the poem, as it lies before us in the Edda collection, goes back through many intermediaries to a form arranged by the author himself. In my opinion it is not necessary to suppose---it is even improbable---that the poem as we have it was written down in Iceland after the oral rendering of a poem which had earlier been preserved only in the memory of reciters. True, the text contains a number of corruptions, and several lines have fallen out; but these defects can be easily explained by the inaccuracy of the scribes. Taken as a whole, the poem appears to have been completely preserved, and no interpolation of any length is manifest.
        By a comparison of the Norse lay with the Irish story of the Battle of Ross na Ríg, by which the Norse poet was influenced, we see the difference, which Zimmer has pointed out, between the Celtic and the Germanic poetic style and mode of literary presentation. The Irish records of traditional heroic saga take the form of prose stories interspersed with verses of a lyric or dramatic character. The Norse poet, on the contrary, treats his subject in the rhythms of the heroic lay.
        A Norwegian in Norway would scarcely have introduced the Sognefjord among places unknown in Norway, such as Móinsheimar and Sparinsheiðr. The author of the Helgi-lay, however, may well have done so, for he lived in the west, far from Norway. Yet this name seems to be a reminiscence of the poet's native land, for there is another name in his poem which makes it highly probable that he was born in the western part of Norway, and that in his early days he himself knew the Sognefjord. In St. 39, Sinfjötli says to Sigmund: 'Together we got at Sága-ness (á nesi Ságu) nine children, who were wolves.' This name recurs in the name of a country-seat, Saagnes (pronounced Saones or Sånes), in the west of Norway. (25) The older written forms of this name, which Professor Rygh has kindly noted for me, are: saaghonæs, Bj. Kalfsk., 28b, saghones, Bj. kalfsk., 52b. (26) I may add that in western Norway there still exist places with the names Soleim (cf. H. H., I, 47, Sólheima til), Arasteinn (cf. H. H., I, 14) and þórsnes (cf. H. H., I, 40). (27)




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