Home of the Eddic Lays
Chapter 17
In Helgi's Death the hero also is much more human than the impersonal victor of the First Lay. Even on the battlefield, after the defeat of his opponents, he is sad rather than exultant; for the corpses about him are those of his loved one's kin. His first words to her are half reproachful: 'Thou hast not fortune with thee in all; yet I say that the Norns cause something.' In this we may note the presentiment of his death.
We perceive, moreover, that this poem, where delight in nature shows itself so clearly in beautiful pictures, where the poet sings of the all-subduing power of the love of an affectionate, devoted woman, was produced in a sunnier land than the rugged mountains of Iceland and Norway. The ancient Norse spirit was here affected by that conception of life which later got its peculiar and full expression in the ballads of the Middle Ages, most completely in England, Scotland, and Denmark.
When Sigrún likens Helgi to a hart, the comparison broadens out into the picture of a landscape. We are reminded of the ballads. The chaste presentation of affection has, indeed, all the Old Norse seriousness; but the passionate love of the hero, and (more especially) of the heroine, with the joy of the latter in the presence of her lover, fills the poem so fully that it is as a forerunner of the conception of a later era regarding the relations between man and woman. While this instance of the return of a departed hero stands almost alone in ancient poems, there is a whole series of ballads in which a dead man is brought back to the side of his surviving love by her inconsolable longing, need of help, or passion---or in order to give a warning.
All this makes against the view that the Lay of Helgi's Death was composed by an Icelander. It has been said that the practical, prosaic, sober spirit of the Icelanders pervades all their intellectual productions. (26) It is with an entirely different spirit that the Lay of Helgi's Death is filled.
The considerations here adduced show also that the lay was not composed in Norway but in Britain, where the Norwegian poet associated with Englishmen, Danes, and Celts, ---in Britain, where the tones of the popular ballad were soon to be heard clear and full of fervour, gay and pleasing, yet with undertones of deep melancholy.
That the Lay of Helgi's Death stands in some connection with Danish poetry is evident also from the fact that all-conquering love is the common poetic theme of a series of old Danish stories, some of which are recounted of persons (e.g. Sigar) who bear the same names as persons who were also associated with Helgi. (27)
With respect to the poetic form of the story, the poems united under the general heading of 'The SecondHelgi lay' stand in strong contrast, on the one hand, to the treatment of the Shielding story in Béowulf, and, on the other, to the account in the First elgi lay. This difference has not hitherto been explained with sufficient clearness, because the strophes of the Second Lay have, too one-sidedly, been treated as fragments.
Let us examine the Lay of Helgi's Death in H. H., II, 25-51. All of these strophes were, without any doubt, composed by one and the same poet. The theory that they are fragments of a Helgi poem which treated its subject throughout in versified form and with continuous strophes, like the First Helgi lay, seems to me incapable of proof and incorrect. The author of the Lay of Helgi's Death has, on the contrary, treated in lyric-dramatic strophes a series of separate and distinct scenes in such a way that the situation is made clear, and the inner connection explained, by the remarks of the characters. The prose narrative united the versified parts.
These prose passages were an original and necessary part of the work. Of course, in saying this I do not mean that all the bits of prose in the old MS. are as old as the strophes, or that the prose preserves details of phraseology in as pure and original a form as the poetry. Some of the bits of prose are inserted to replace strophes whose verse-form had been forgotten. Other bits communicate nothing more than inferences drawn from strophes contained in the MS., and some express ideas which are later than those which appear in the strophes. In general, the phraseology of prose changes much more readily than that of verse. But in point of principle, in works like that on Helgi's Death, the prose narrative element is, as regards the poetic form of presentation, quite as original as the lyric-dramatic strophes. (28) This appears plainly, for example, in the scene in Valhöll (H. H., II, 39), where Hunding is bidden to perform menial duties. Here an explanation is needed, in order that the strophes may be understood, and there is nothing to show that this necessary explanation was ever given in verse-form.
Heinzel has already called attention to the fact that it is a characteristic of Helgi's Death, as opposed to the First Lay, that the account of the battle is given in prose, but that the poet afterwards makes Sigrún and Helgi appear on the battlefield and express in strophes the feelings aroused by the outcome of the combat. (29) On the other hand, however, 'the Old Lay of the Völsungs' (H. H., II, 14-18), has narrative strophes. To judge from the fragmentary remains, this lay was a much less significant work than that on Helgi's Death. I refrain from making any definite conjecture as to the exact point where the Lay of Helgi's Death began; but it seems to me certain that something preceded the account of the battle which Helgi won over Höthbrodd and Högni and their kinsmen. The work is but fragmentarily preserved.
26. See Finnur Jónsson, Litt. Hist., I, 50. Back
27. See Olrik, Sakses Oldhist., II, 230 ff. Back
28. I reserve the discussion of the origin of this poetic mode of presentation for another occasion. Back
29. Heinzel (Über die Hervararsaga, p. 43) says: 'Es ist nicht beweisbar, dass die Prosatheile der Eddalieder durchaus jünger seien als die Verse.' This view, which F. Jónsson (Litt. Hist., I, 246) regards as 'altogether inconceivable,' I believe to be entirely correct. Müllenhoff (Ztsch. f. d. Alt., XXIII, 151) says very truly: 'Zwei Formen der episehen Überlieferung, prosaische Erzählung mit bedeutsamen Reden---Wechsel-oder Einzelreden---der handelnden Personen in poetischer Fassung und erzählende epische Lieder in vollständig durchgeführter strophischer Form finden wir......im Norden neben einander im Gebrauch und keineswegs ist die Prosa der gemischten Form bloss eine Auflösung oder ein späterer Ersatz der gebundenen Rede.' Cf. Kögel, Gesch. d. d. Litt., I, 98. On the contrary, Sijmon's view in Paul-Braune (Beit., IV, 168), is incapable of proof and erroneous. He says: 'Zunächst ist die Prosa des zweiten Liedes von Helgi Hund. für uns ganz ohne Wert.' Back
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