Home of the Eddic Lays
Chapter 19
THE MEETING OF THE MERMAID HRÍMGERTH WITH ATLI AND HELGI HJÖRVARTHSSON
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Hrímgerth comes in the night to Helgi's ship, which lies in the harbour after a storm. The watchman Atli is on guard while the others sleep. She first converses with Atli, and afterwards wakes Helgi himself. She demands Helgi's love as a recompense for his having killed her father. But she is kept talking until day dawns, so that, when the rays of the sun fall upon her she changes into stone there in the harbour.
Hrímgerth is a disgusting troll. (1) She has a tail like a mare. Her father Hati (i.e. the hostile pursuer) was a mountain-giant, who ravished many women. Her mother was a sea troll. Both Hrímgerth and her mother are accustomed to attach ships at sea and to sink them, so that all the crew are drowned. Hrímgerth herself fights with men and kills them, afterwards devouring their dead bodies.
The poet's description of the sea troll agrees in many respects with the stories of mermaids and similar beings in Scandinavian documents of the Middle Ages and in stories gathered from the peasantry in modern times; for the belief in mermaids has long been prevalent on the Scandinavian coast.
Like Hrímgerth, mermaids are described in other old Icelandic and Norwegian documents as disgusting trolls, even when they have a shape which is partly human. The old name for mermaid, margýgr, itself shows that such beings were popularly conceived as giantesses. In the Konungs Skuggsjá (2) such a creature is called a skrimsl (i.e. terrible witch, monster), and is said to have a disgusting, terrifying face. In more recent popular stories, which emphasise the alluring and infatuating powers of the mermaid, she appears more often as a beautiful woman, but in Gotland she is described as ugly behind. Hrímgerth has not that power of alluring song which Scandinavian popular superstition, both in the Middle Ages and in modern times, ascribes to mermaids, but which is merely their inheritance from the sirens.
The mermaid is usually described, both in the Middle Ages and in modern times, as shaped like a fish in her nether parts. Hrímgerth, on the contrary, has a tail like a mare, and longs for the neighing stallion. The description of the margýgr in the story of St. Óláf in the Flateyjarbók (3) is somewhat similar. She has a head like a horse, with ears erect and distended nostrils, big green eyes and fearful jaws. She has shoulders like a horse, and hands in front; but behind she resembles a serpent.
As regards Hrímgerth's mare's tail, I may also point out that, according to popular belief in Gotland, the mermaid is the same being as the skogs-nua, or wood-nymph (4); for in Norway the latter ('huldren') has an animal's tail, usually that of a cow, or, like Guro Ryssernova in Aaskereien (Arthur's Chase), a horse's rump.
Hrímgerth, like the Gotland mermaid and the wood-nymph, is desirous of sexual intercourse with mortal men, and, like them, seeks to win young men's love. In Iceland, as in Gotland, it is still a popular superstition that the mermaid (hafgýgr, meyfiskr) loves to look at young boys and comes to them when they lie in the boats asleep. (5) In like manner, Hrímgerth comes to Helgi's ship when the crew on board are asleep.
In Gotland it is believed that the mermaid prefers boys who have a sweetheart. So Hrímgerth, when she visits Helgi, knows that Sváfa is his love.
In many stories of mermaids they are said, like Hrímgerth and her mother, to appear in storms at sea, and to wreck ships so that the crews are drowned. The sea-troll, Grendel's mother, in Béowulf, like Hrímgerth, devours human bodies greedily.
At sunrise Hrímgerth is changed into stone. Modern Scandinavian popular tradition preserves tales in which various monsters, usually mountain-trolls, are, like Hrímgerth, invited to look to the east. The popular belief that trolls, or giants, being creatures of darkness, are changed to stone by the sun or the light of day is known throughout the world. (6) In the Eddic poem Alvíssmál it is hinted that the dwarf All-wise, who, like Hrímgerth, is kept talking until daylight, is thereby changed into stone.
But in no other popular Scandinavian tale, so far as I know, does a mermaid really become stone. In the Faroes a similar being, the sea-sprite (sjódreygur), is said to appear often on the outlying rocks after sunset. If when morning begins to break he finds himself a captive, he begs the men who have found him to let him loose, and when the sun rises from the sea he dissolves into thin air. (7) But he is not turned to stone.
Hrímgerth has traits of both mountain-troll and mermaid. Atli says to her: 'The ogre Lothin (shaggy) who dwells in Tholley, the worst of mountain-giants (hraunbúa), he is a fit husband for thee.' Her father Hati is called a giant; he was killed while sitting on a cliff in the fjord where Helgi and Atli were lying with their ships. It is, therefore, quite in accordance with her father's nature as a mountain giant that Hrímgerth should be turned into stone.
We could believe that the lay of Hrímgerth and her kin grew up naturally in the circle in which the poem was composed. The poet doubtless lived in Viking times among chieftains who, like Helgi, had been tossed about on the sea. It was not unnatural, therefore, for a fight with a sea-troll to be regarded by him as an essential feature in the life of a typical hero.
Certain later ON heroes also overcome mermaids. A story which seems to have been written down by Styrmer, (8) in the first half of the thirteenth century, makes St. Óláf shoot his spear through a mermaid who attacks his ship in the mouth of a river, (9) just as Hrímgerth's mother, who had put herself in the mouth of the fjord before Helgi's ships, was pierced by a pole (þvari).
Ketil Høng meets, among the islands off the coast far up in the north, a troll black as pitch. She has just risen from the sea, and wishes to kill him; but he shoots her with one of his magic arrows, and with a great clamour she sinks into the sea and departs in the form of a whale. (10) We have an echo of this story in the Swedish tale of Kettil Runske, who binds a mermaid with his runic block, (11) and perhaps also in the Danish ballad of 'Herr Luno,' who in the sea near Greenland binds a mermaid with runes. (12) In the late Scandinavian popular ballad 'Magnus and the Mermaid,' (13) the mermaid, who is here a beautiful woman, lures the knight gently and enticingly with rich gifts; and it is only the crowing of the cock that saves him.
The Lay of H. Hjör., in the old MS., ends with the words: 'It is said that Helgi and Sváfa were born again.' Directly after comes the statement that King Sigmund, the son of Völsung, and his wife Borghild called their son Helgi after Helgi Hjörvarthsson. And later, when the valkyrie Sigrún, who became the love of Sigmund's son, is first named, the following remark is added: 'She was the re-born Sváfa.'
Here, then, we have the idea expressed that Helgi Hjörvarthsson and his loved one, the valkyrie Sváfa, came to life again in the form of Helgi Hundingsbani and his loved one, the valkyrie Sigrún. If now, with reference to this idea (which is not found in the poems themselves), we compare the First Lay of H. Hund. with the Lay of H. Hjör., we discover that the poetic presentation in the two poems bears the stamp of close relationship throughout. In the form of the story also the two show clearly intentional parallelism in many respects. This parallelism, however, is particularly noticeable in Hrímgerth's conversation with Atli, which was purposely made similar to the conversation between Guthmund and Sinfjötli in the First Helgi lay. (14)
The conversation with Hrímgerth is preceded by the following events: Helgi Hjör. comes sailing with his fleet. The ships are near foundering. Then come three companies, of nine maidens each, riding through the air, Sváfa, Helgi's loved one, at their head. She protects the ships so that in the evening the fleet lies safely in the harbour. The conversation with Guthmund is preceded by similar events. Helgi Hund. comes sailing with his fleet in a violent storm, in which the ships are in great danger of foundering. Then come nine (perhaps in the original text three times nine) valkyries riding through the air. Sigrún, Helgi's loved one, the most famous of the valkyries, protects the ships so that in the evening they lie safely in the harbour.
The situation in H. Hjör. when the conversation with Hrímgerth begins, resembles closely that in H. Hund. when the conversation with Guthmund begins. In the former case it is Helgi Hjör.'s most distinguished follower who is watchman of the ships which lie near the shore; in the latter it is the most distinguished follower of Helgi Hund. In both poems an enemy comes towards the ship---in one case Hrímgerth, in the other Guthmund; in the former as night is coming on, in the latter in the evening. In both the visitor inquires the name of the foreign king whose fleet lies in the harbour. The king's watchman, who is on guard, gives Helgi's name, and answers boldly that his king has nothing to fear from the questioner. In both the conversation is coarse, consisting for the most part of outrageous words of abuse. The king, Helgi, who in neither case takes part in it until it has lasted some time, is in both cases represented as a man of noble, high-minded nature, as a chieftain of humanity and refinement. This is brought out conspicuously in Sinfjötli's conversation with Guthmund, and in Atli's with Hrímgerth, through the contrast with the king's watchman, who is of a vulgar nature. He has had encounters with witches before, and can be rough and wild.
In these two conversations there are even agreements in details. Guthmund, like Hrímgerth, is reproached with being a skass, a witch. Sinfjötli accuses Guthmund of having been a mare, and Hrímgerth is a monster with mare's tail, whom the stallion can follow neighing. Guthmund is told that he (as a she-wolf) has given birth to young wolves, and Hrímgerth's father is called Hati, a name which occurs in the Grímnismál as that of a wolf. Guthmund retorts that Sinfjötli has been castrated; Hrímgerth reproaches Atli with the same thing. In the conversation with Hrímgerth the placename Varinsvík occurs, in that with Guthmund Varinsey, just as in H. H., I, 26, it is said that Helgi with his fleet sails from Varins-fjord to Guthmund's land.
There are, further, close linguistic agreements between the two poems. In both, those who are drowned are said to go to Rán. (15) In both, it is not until after the conversation which we have discussed that Helgi marries the valkyrie.
The word-combat between Sinfjötli and Guthmund is doubtless older as a poetic motive than the conversation with Hrímgerth. This appears from the different and certainly older retorts (16) exchanged between Sinfjötli and Guthmund, as recorded in the Second Helgi lay. In the record, the conversation between Sinfjötli and Guthmund has no particular resemblance to that between Atli and Hrímgerth. The sustained parallelism first appears in the altered and lengthened treatment contained in the First Helgi lay. In what follows I shall try to show that it was one and the same poet who composed the Hrímgerth lay (Hrímgerðarmál), i.e. the conversation of Atli and Helgi with Hrímgerth, and the retorts which are exchanged between Guthmund and Sinfjötli in the First Lay of Helgi Hundingsbani.
1.
Cf. leið ertu mannkyni, H. Hj., 21. She is called skass, gífr,
fála, hála. Back
2. Christiania edition, chap. 16, p. 39. Back
3. II, 25 f; Fornmannasögur, V, 162-164. Back
4. P. A. Säve, Hafvets och fiskarens Sagor, Visby, 1880, p. 15 f.
Back
5. Árnason, Islenzkar þjôðsögur, I, 131; Maurer,
Isländische Volkssagen, p. 30. Back
6. In addition to the places cited by E. H. Meyer in German. Mythol.,
§181, see e.g. Landstad, Norske Folkeviser, p. 42; Ein Sogebundel,
p. 62; Friis, Lapp. Eventyr, 145; Maurer, Isl. Volkssagen, pp. 52 f; Simrock,
Mythol., 392; Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, p. 93; Liebrecht in Germ.,
XVI, 218: on the Fidschi Isles; Liebrecht on Gervasius, 83: among the
primitive settlers in Hispaniola. Back
7. Hammershaimb, Ant. Tidskrift, 1849-51, p. 199; and, from this, Niels
Winther, Færøernes Oldtidshistorie, p. 365; Færøsk
Anthologi, I, 336. Back
8. G. Storm, Snorre Sturlesøn's Hist., p.
159. Back
9. Óláfssaga helga, Christiania, 1849, chap. 14; Fornmannasögur,
IV, 56 f; flat., II, 25 f = Fms., V, 162-164. Back
10. Ketils s. Hængs, chap. 5; Fornald. ss., II, 127-131. Back
11. G. O. Hylten-Cavallius, Sägner om Kettil Runske in Läsning
för Folket, 8th year, Stockholm, 1842, p. 171. Back
12. S. Grundtvig, Danm. gl. Folkeviser, No. 43 (II, 92 f). Back
13. In S. Bugge's Gamle Norske Folkeviser, No. 11, where corresponding
ballads among other Scandinavian peoples are cited. Back
14. This has already been pointed out by Simrock in the notes to his translation,
and by Sijmons in Paul-Braune, Beit., IV, 171. Back
15. H. Hj., 18; H. H., I, 30. In H. Hj., 29, we must read lofðungs
flota by analogy with lofðungs floti in H. H., I, 27. Back
16. These begin with Guthmund's words, Hverr er skjöldungr, and end
with Sinfjötli's, þar er þér blíðara
en brimis dómar (H. H., II, 19-22); cf. my edition, p. 201. Back
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