Home of the Eddic Lays
Chapter 15
CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE FIRST HELGI LAY
Page 1
Even within the Eddic Lays themselves we can trace several different stages in the conception of the war against Höthbrodd. That which in one respect is the oldest is expressed in the dispute between Sinfjötli and Guthmund in the Second Helgi lay. Here we have hints of a longstanding feud between the two races. Helgi's kin have conquered Höthbrodd's and subdued their land. Thereupon a treaty is made which is disadvantageous to Höthbrodd. This is broken, and Höthbrodd's men thirst for revenge. But a final decisive battle takes place between Höthbrodd and the Danish kings, in which, as we may imagine, Höthbrodd falls (it is so stated in all the ON sources which mention his death). In the word combat in the Second Lay, as well as in Saxo, whose form of the story is closely related, Sigrún is not referred to.
The next stage in the development is contained in the First Helgi lay, which seems to have derived its form of the story from several sources, and in which the conceptions of the war with Höthbrodd is more original in certain respects than that in the Second Lay (with the exception of the word combat), although the verses in the Second Lay in which this conception is expressed are older than the corresponding verses in the First Lay. In the First Lay, though Helgi's war against Höthbrodd is directly occasioned by the appeal which Högni's daughter, Sigrún, Höthbrodd's betrothed, makes to Helgi, yet Höthbrodd, not Högni, is throughout represented as Helgi's real opponent. Moreover, the war against the foreign king is waged in defence of the Danish kingdom. After Höthbrodd is conquered, Helgi is undisturbed in his possession of the Danish royal seat. Yet in several other respects (as in the introduction of a series of names of fantastic places) the First Lay has much altered either the earlier poetic version of the Helgi story or the facts of history.
Finally , we come to that stage in the development of the story which is revealed to us in the passionate and marvellously effective concluding strophes of the Second Lay. These I shall discuss at greater length in the next chapter.
Since all that is left of the older verses on Helgi Hundingsbani, which the author of the First Lay knew and utilised, are the fragments collected under the name of the Second Lay, we cannot get a clear idea throughout of what the author of the First Lay borrowed from these older poems.
In the section on the war with Höthbrodd older lays seem to have been followed in some important particulars respecting the course of the action. On the other hand, numerous motives, descriptive details, poetic expressions, and kennings are doubtless due to the author of the lay as it lies before us. It is in the word combat that we can distinguish most clearly between what was added by the author of the First Lay himself and what he derived from the older poems; for to the thirteen strophes (32-44) which contain the dispute in the First Lay, correspond the four (19-22) of the Second which in our collection are inserted at a later point in the development of the action, where they interrupt the narrative. (1)
The shorter form of the word combat is evidently the older: the war with Höthbrodd is more primitive in conception, and the conversation is more dignified. The redactor took pleasure in filling out the retorts of the two subordinate persons with vulgar terms of abuse, under which are hidden allusions to the mythical world of gods and witches, especially to such as were known from the Völuspá and the Grímnismál. (2)
The First Lay seems most likely to be a working over of that Helgi lay of which we have fragments preserved in the wrod combat in II, 19-22. But it was, I believe, a Danish poet in Britain who first sang of Helgi as the ideal representative of the Shieldings, and as the conqueror of Hunding and Höthbrodd, who were taken to represent the enemies of the Danes. The lost lays of this Danish poet doubtless formed indirectly the chief basis, so far as the foundation and form of the story were concerned, for the lays of the West-Norwegian poet to whom we owe the First Helgi lay. In II, 19-22, we have, perhaps, a few verses of the Danish poet's lay (3) in essentially their original form. Two strophes, in which Helgi breaks off the dispute between Sinfjötli and Guthmund, (4) have nearly the same form in both lays (I, 45-46; II, 23-24). There has been considerable doubt to which of the two poems the strophes originally belonged. (5) It seems to me most probable that the author of the First Lay took them almost unchanged from the older lay. (6)
Sinfjötli is one of the subordinate characters in the Helgi poems. On his birth there rested a stain, and he never appears in the old story as an independent leader. As early as in the English story of the Wælsingas, he is a follower of Sigmund. In like manner, the Helgi poet represents him here as a follower of his brother and as a subordinate. He is pictured as a wilder, rougher and fiercer warrior than his brother, and the poets used him to put in a clearer light the nobler, more dignified Helgi. Helgi will conquer his foes, but will not jeer at them. (7) He even acknowledges their valour (II, 26): 'The sons of Granmar,' he says, 'do not seem to me good; yet it is best for highborn men to speak the truth: they have shown at Moins-heimar that they have courage in swinging swords.' May we not believe that such a way of thinking was developed in the more cultivated surroundings of England? (8)
There are in the First Lay, as we have seen, a series of names which point to places in Denmark and neighbouring lands. Of these Ægir, the representative of Eider, appears certainly to have belonged to the Danish model, and to have been introduced by the Danish poet in accordance with his own geographical knowledge. It seems probable, then, that the Norse poet took from his Danish model some at least of the names Hringstaðir (Ringsted), Sigarsvellir (near Sigersted), Ísungr (representative of the Isefjord), Móinsheimar (in Mön), Heðinsey (Hiddensee), Örvasund (Stralsund), and that he did not himself introduce all these names into the Helgi poem following the stories of Danes from these different places. In the case of Sigarsvellir, this supposition is supported by the fact that the name also occurs in H. Hj., 35. The Danish expedition to Venden would, of course, familiarise a Danish poet of the time of Canute or Svein Forkbeard with Stralsund and Hiddensee. (9)
In suggesting that a Danish poet in Britain, in a poem which was perhaps composed in Svein Forkbeard's time, mentioned Ringsted as the Danish royal seat, I cannot but think of the statement in Fagrskinna, that Svein Forkbeard held a feast of inheritance after his father's death in that same city Ringsted.
The Danish poet was probably stimulated to compose his Helgi lay by the expeditions which the Danes made to Venden in his own lifetime---most likely, as I imagine, during the reign of Svein Forkbeard.
The Norse author of the First Lay probably lived at the court of the Scandinavian king of Dublin; and, as I have said, his poem seems to me, because of its relations with an Irish story and with Icelandic poems, to have been composed ca. 1020-1035. He sings the praises of an ancient Danish king. All nature expresses joy at the birth of the royal child. The Fates predict that the boy shall become the most famous and the best of all kings. He begins to engage in battle when but fifteen years old. The genius of victory chooses him as her beloved, and by her help he conquers his opponent, to whom she is betrothed. The poem ends with the expression of her good wishes for his happiness. Now shall he unopposed possess Ringsted, and govern his land in peace. Now has he won for ever the victory maiden.
It is hard to resist the idea that it was Canute the Great who inspired the poet to write this lay. We can readily imagine that in praising the ancient Danish king Helgi, his mind was fixed on the young Danish king who in his own time had led warlike expeditions to Venden, and who had won and exercised in Britain the greatest power which any Scandinavian ever possessed there. Moreover, even as Helgi began his life of warfare at fifteen, so Canute does not seem to have been older when he accompanied his father on the latter's expedition to England in 1013. (10)
The author of the First Helgi lay probably sojourned among the Scandinavians, who were at one time in Northumberland, at another in Dublin. We may then, perhaps infer that after the Battle of Clontarf he left Dublin and went to England, where he may have been in the service of Canute the Great. If it was of Canute that he thought in his poem, the work was doubtless composed after Canute had received the homage of the whole of the English in 1017, and had married the widow of the English king.
Under Canute there were many relations between England and the Slavic lands on the Baltic. (11) Jomsborg (the fortress of the Jom Vikings) was subject to Canute; and farther east the Danes had won possessions before his time. Early in his reign, certainly before 1027, Canute made at least one plundering expedition from England to the southern and eastern coasts of the Baltic. He subdued districts in Prussia, particularly those on the Frische Haff. One source names among the tribes whom he made his tributaries, the Roani---i.e. the Inhabitants of Rügen. Near Rügen, according to the First Helgi lay, Helgi's fleet assembled in the war with Höthbrodd. His expedition is not represented as going to the same district as Canute's, but farther west to what is now Mecklenburg. But in deciding upon the places to which the expedition of the ancient king was to go, the poet doubtless felt himself to some extent bound by the account in the older Helgi lay and by the names there given. In describing Helgi's expedition to Wendland he may at all events have thought of Canute's expedition thither; and in lauding Helgi's victory he may have wished to praise the similar one gained by Canute.
1.
See the phototype edition, p. 50, and my edition, p. 201. Back
2. Cf. Sijmons, in Paul-Braune, Beit., IV, 170 f. Back
3. Note that the name of the fish fjörsungr is now preserved only
in Denmark and in the south of Norway. Back
4. Cf. Didrik's words in Nibelungenlied, 2282 (lachmann). Back
5. Detter in Arkiv, IV, 74 f, thinks that the two strophes are more original
in II than in I. F. Jónsson, on the other hand, is of the opinion
(Litt. Hist., I, 255 f) that they were inserted in II in imitation of
I. Back
6. For the following reasons: (1) If the strophes had originally belonged
to I alone, there would have been no reason for repeating them in II.
(2) Since the strophes which contain the dispute in I show in other respects
imitation of II (not the reverse), it is improbable that we have the opposite
relation here. (3) The place name á Móinsheimum, which points
to Mön, can scarcely have been made up by the author of the First
Lay. (4) hildingar is a more original expression than hringbrotar. (5)
þér er, Sinfjötli! in II, 23, seems, as Detter notes,
more original than Vœri ykkr, Sinfjötli! in I, 45. (6) Moreover,
in II there are good reasons for Helgi to interrupt the conversation,
since Sinfjötli in II, 22, has said that menial labour suited Guthmund
better than fighting. Yet lines 9 and 10 in II, 24, are doubtless later.
F. Jónsson's opinion might be supported by the fact that deila
in II, 23 (if d. is correctly filled out thus) does not appear quite suitable;
but this is not conclusive. It may have been because this expression was
not happy that it was changed by the author of I. Back
7. Cf. Sv. Grundtvig, Heroisk Digtning, pp. 35 f.
Back
8. It is not far from this to Koll's remark in Saxo (ed. M., Bk. III,
p. 136): 'Even if the soul is full of hate, yet let friendship be there
also, which in due time may take the place of bitterness,' wherein Olrik
(Sakses Oldhist., II, 157) finds thoughts of the Valdemar era. Back
9. On Svarinshaugr, see pp. 133 f, and on Varinsfjörðr, see pp.
132 and 134. Back
10. Steenstrup (Normannerne, III, 298) says that in the summer of 1017
Canute was not much over twenty years old. On Canute's age, cf. Munch,
Norske Folks Hist., b, 126 f. Back
11. Cf. Steenstrup, Normannerne, III, 306 and 327. Back
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