Home of the Eddic Lays
Chapter 19
But since it is evident that the author of the Hrímgerðarmál, for one part of his lay, used a story not elsewhere to be found in ON literature, it is probable that the same story also furnished him material respecting Hrímgerth and her kin, and their relations with Helgi Hjörvarthsson and his watchman Atli.
Light seems to be thrown on the problem by a short Latin mythical story from the early Middle Ages. Its subject is the Greek tale of the sailing of Odysseus past the monster Scylla, in whom the fancy of the mythmakers personified the maelstrom surrounded by dangerous rocks. The story, which was indirectly the source of the ON poem, is a working-over of a passage in Servious's Commentary on Virgil's Æneid. It is included in a collection of mythical tales from the early Middle Ages, written in barbarous Latin, and familiar under the name of the Second Vatican Mythograph. (22) Both these documents were well known in the British Isles, particularly among the Irish, and, as I have shown in my first series of my 'Studies on the Origin of the ON stories of Gods and Heroes,' left many traces on the ON mythical world.
In the Second Mythograph we read (p. 169): Scilla [sic, MS.]........pube tenus in varias mutata est formas. Horrens itaque (23) deformitate sua, se praecipitavit in mare. Hanc postea Glaucus fecit marinam deam. Haec classem Ulixis cum sociis eius evertisse narratur. Homerus hanc immortale monstrum fuisse, Salustius saxum esse dicit, simile formae celebratae procul visentibus. Canes vero et lupi ob hoc ex ea nati esse finguntur, quia ipsa loca plena sunt monstris marinis, et saxorum asperitas illic bestiarum imitatur latratus.
I do not go so far as to hold that the author of the Hrímgerth-lay read the Second Vatican Mythograph in Latin; but I assume that in some way he became familiar with a story which contained a partially altered redaction of the passage just quoted.
Hrímgerth, like Scylla, is a sea-troll. Both are spoken of as horrible monsters. (24) Hrímgerth has a mare's tail, and her father bears the same name as a wolf. Scylla is not of woman's nature from her waist down; she gives birth to wolves and dogs. Both Hrímgerth and Scylla wreck ships so that the crews are drowned.
The words applied to Scylla, saxum simile formae celebratae procul visentibus, may be recognized in the concluding words addressed to Hrímgerth: hafnar mark þykkir hlægligt vera þars þú í steins líki stendr, 'Thou standest changed into stone, like a laughable sea-mark in the harbour.' The poet had here in mind a rock of peculiar form at the entrance to the harbour, which, since it could be seen far out at sea, served as a sea-mark. The strange form of the cliff and its fanciful explanation are hinted at in the adjective 'laughable' (hlægligt), which reminds us of formae celebratae.
But the foreign tale is here fused with native stories of trolls turned into stone. We find parallels to certain expressions of the Hrímgerth-lay in modern Scandinavian popular ballads. When St. Óláf conjures the giant into stone, he says (25): 'Here shalt thou stand as a beacon (26) to the end of time; sail now in to the bay and harbour, all who here will land.' And in a Swedish ballad, (27) Heming the Young says to the witch: 'Thou art good for nothing better than to serve as a track-mark.'
The words of the Latin story cited above must have suggested to the ON poet the change of Hrímgerth into stone, for no other ON mermaid-story mentioned a similar transformation.
In the statement regarding Scylla: Haec classem Ulixis cum sociis eius evertisse narratur, I find the source of Hrímgerth's words: 'I drowned Hlöthvarth's sons in the sea' (ec drecþa Hlavþvarz sonom i hafi). Ulysses was a son of Laertes. This is told in several Latin collections of myths known in Britain in the early Middle Ages, e.g. in the First Vatican Mythograph, (28) which is preserved in the same MS. as the Second, and in the fables of Hyginus in three different places.
It was usual in Icelandic translations of mediæval Latin works to make over the foreign names into native ones, e.g. Hengistus, Heimgestr; Sichelinus, Sighjálmr. (29) When the Latin stories were orally narrated among Scandinavians in the last years of heathendom, it was, doubtless, a fixed rule to give a Scandinavian form to foreign names, either by translation or by altering them into the form of native names to which they happened to be similar in sound. Now, it was not easy to find a name with Norse sound which could reproduce Laertes better than Hlöðvarðr. This name does not occur elsewhere; but we have in ON epic-story the name Hlöðvér, of which the first part is the same. The second part, -varðr, is of common occurrence in ON names, being found e.g. in this Helgi lay in the name Hjörvarðr. (30)
We may suppose that the ON poet heard the name Laertes from the Irish in some form which was more like Hlöðvarðr than was the Greek name. In a poem in the Book of Leinster, an Irish MS. of about 1150, Ulysses is called mac Luaithlirta, 'Laerte's son.' (31) The first syllable of the Irish name Luaith- is much like the first part of the ON name Hlöð-, for Irish th is elsewhere reproduced by ON ð (ON Kormlöð = Irish Gormlaith, ON. Kaðall = Irish Cathal, etc.). However the separate sounds in the two names are related, the change which I suppose to have taken place---that, namely, by which the foreign name Laertes, in Irish in the gen. Luaithlirta, is made over into the ON name Hlöðvarðr---is at any rate natural and in entire agreement with the influences which in general made themselves felt when Scandinavians adopted foreign names in the early Middle Ages.
The ON poet gave the mermaid the name Hrímgerðr, thereby designating her as of the kin of the disgusting hrímþursar (frost-giants). Analogous names of male giants are seen in Hrímnir, Hrímgrímnir. Names of women in –gerðr are common. The name Hrímgerðr looks decidedly like a name made up by a poet, most likely in contrast to Gerðr, the name of the beautiful daughter of a giant, and does not seem to have been adopted from a popular story.
Hrímgerth is said to be of such a nature that she tore to pieces greedily the dead bodies of men (nágráðug). In like manner Scylla tore to pieces the comrades of Ulysses. Neither this incident nor the name Laertes occurs in the Second Vatican Mythograph; but in Hyginus, (32) e.g., it is said of Scylla, ea sex socious Ulyxis nave abreptos consumpsit.
In the story of Scylla which is presupposed by the ON poem, information derived from the Second Vatican Mythograph appears, therefore, to have been united with material from other documents.
I have tried to further show that the story of Wolf-Theodoric's meeting with a mermaid presupposes an acquaintance with the story of Odysseus.
We need not assume any direct influence of the Odyssey on the Frankish saga of Wolf-Theodoric. I think only of a distant echo of the Greek poem, and in this view there is nothing improbable. The historical subject of the original saga of Wolfdietrich is, in my opinion, the youthful life of the East-Gothic Theodoric in the Balkan Peninsula before he became king in Italy. The Wolfdietrich story, even in its original form, implies some knowledge of affairs in the East-Roman kingdom. There seems, then, to be nothing in the way of the supposition that it also implies some knowledge of the saga material contained in the Odyssey. (33)
It is impossible to say definitely why the Wolf-Theodoric story was influenced by that of Odysseus. Perhaps the reason was that Wolf-Theodoric, in the form of the story not yet affected by the Odysseus narrative, wandered about many years in foreign lands before he returned to his faithful men, who had been ill-treated in his long absence.
The transformation of the mermaid into a beautiful woman, though found in two redactions of the Wolfdietrich story, does not occur in the ON poem. The Hrímgerth lay is here the more original; for that transformation is due to a combination of Calypso, Circe, and Scylla---a combination which had not been made in the Frankish poem by which the Hrímgerth lay was indirectly influenced. Hrímgerth is an out and out troll, like Scylla.
It is for this reason that the result of the meeting in the ON poem is entirely different from that in the German Wolfdietrich stories. Helgi leaves Hrímgerth, who is transformed into stone, just as Odysseus escapes from Scylla, who is bound to a rock.
But the fact that Hrímgerth, like the mermaid in the Wolfdietrich story, demands the hero's love, does not force us to believe that the Calypso story exerted indirect influence on the ON lay; for this feature has sufficient explanation in the popular ideas concerning mermaids, fairies, and similar female beings.
Even in the story of Wolf-Theodoric, the description of the mermaid was influenced by the account of the sea troll Scylla. But the influence of the Scylla story was quickened and magnified by the fact that the poet most likely in Ireland, used material derived from a tale about Scylla, which was based on statements concerning her in Servius and other writers.
The ON poem shows the identity of Hrímgerth with Scylla by letting Hrímgerth say that she has drowned Hlöthvarth's (i.e. Laertes's) sons. Hence it follows that there is also some connection between Scylla and the sea troll whom Wolfdietrich encounters.
Hrímgerth comes to Helgi after a storm in which his fleet came near perishing. Sváfa comes with her maidens riding through the air. She protects Helgi's ships so that Hrímgerth cannot sink them.
The description of Sváfa, Helgi's beloved, is, in its essential, independent of the story of Odysseus; but it is perhaps possible that there is here also a slender thread uniting the stories of Helgi and Odysseus. I am reminded, on the one hand, of Athene, who always helps Odysseus, and who calms the waves so that the hero comes to the land of the Phæacians (see Odyssey, V, 382 ff); on the other, of the fact that Circe and Scylla in the old story are hostile to each other, and that Circe, who receives Odysseus into her bed, afterwards tells him how to avoid Scylla and Charybdis.
In my opinion, the Norseman who composed the Hrímgerðarmál know from another ON poem that Atli was the man most esteemed by Helgi's father, and identified this Atli with the Atlas of the story just given. It is due, then, to the resemblance of the names Atli and Atlas that Atli appears as a leading personage in the Lay of Hrímgerth. Since the meeting with the mermaid was transferred from Wolf-Theodoric to Helgi Hjörvarthsson, and since the ON story knew Helgi as king, and Atli as his father's faithful man, the poet made King Helgi, and not Atli, kill Hrímgerth's father, though Scylla's father, according to the Latin tale, was killed by King Atlas. Still, the Hrímgerth lay puts Atli in the foreground as Hrímgerth's enemy, and dwells most on him. I conjecture that the Latin text was misunderstood, so that Atlas was supposed to have a great fleet in the battle in which Scylla's father was killed, the words cum magna exercitus parte being applied to Atlante rege alone; and that this gave rise to the statement in the ON story that Helgi and Atli lay in a fjord, with a fleet, after Hrímgerth's father was killed.
There is no reason to believe that there existed in ancient times in the ON language an epic poem or separate detailed story which told more fully how Helgi killed the giant Hati. It is even possible that the account of Hati's death in the prose bit before the Hrímgerðarmál was drawn exclusively from the poem which follows; for the only feature in the prose account which is not in the poem, the statement that Hati was sitting on a cliff when he was killed, may very well have been a pure fabrication of the author's.
22. On this cf. my Studien, I, 257 ff (Norw. ed., pp. 246-248). Back
23. The MS., in agreement with Servius (Æneid, III, 420), has itaque, not igitur. Back
24. Cf. horrens deformitate sua, Myth. Vatic., with leið ertu mannkyni, H. Hj.; monstrum, Myth. Vatic., with skass, H. Hj. Back
25. In Færøiske Kvæder, II, No. 15, v. 52. Back
26. 'Her skalt tú til áburð standa / allar ævir til enda, / takið nú vík og havnarlag / hvör sum her vil lenda!' áburð either for afburð, i.e. really, 'for a distinction,' or 'stone-heap used for a landing place'; see Aasen's Ordbog, and Hertzberg's Glossarium. Scarcely 'accusation' as Fær. Anthol. takes it. Back
27. Arwidsson, No. 13, v. 24. Back
28. Ed. Bode, I, 204, L, 44. Back
29. See my Studien, first series, e.g. p. 180 (Norw. ed., p. 173). Back
30. I have pointed out many examples of foreign l when initial being reproduced by Old Icel. hl, e.g. in hlébarðr = MHG lêbart, Hlymrek = Limerik, Old Irish Luimnech. Just as ð after r in Hlöðvarðr corresponds to t in Laertes, so we find the same relation in Old Icel. Arðabaðite (Nokkur blöðúr, Hauksbók, p. 25) from Artabatitae in Isidore and Pliny; in AS sæðerie, suðerige, from Lat. satureia; cf. Old Icel. Kaðlín from Irish Katilín. ON a in Hlöðvarðr takes the place of e in Laertes. With reference to this we may note that the late AS form -werd = ON -varðr. In Hlöðvarðr a v appeared in the reconstruction, when Laertes was made over into a Norse name combined with -varðr. Cf. garðsveinn in MSS. of þiðrekssaga from garzun, Fr. garcon; gangveri, gangvari = gangari. But since in Middle Age Latin Nicolavus is sometimes written for Nicolaus, Danavis for Danais, and the like (Schuchardt, Vocal., II, 521-524), so Laertes may possibly have been pronounced as *Lavartes. Finally, it is probable that the first ð in Hlöðvarðr might have been pronounced indistinctly since þjórekr occurs alongside þjóðrekr, and since Hrólfr arose from *Hrówulfr, *Hróðwulfr. Moreover, Scandinavians in transforming names added ð where there was no corresponding consonant in the foreign name. Thus the name of the island Skíð among the Hebrides = Skye, in Adamnan (c. 700) insula Scia, Irish Sci (Cogadh Gaidhel, ed. Todd, p. 153); Guðjón in Beverssaga for Guion (Arkiv f. n. Filol., I, 78). Back
31. Merugud Uilix, ed. Kuno Meyer, p. xii. Back
32. Hyginus, ed. M. Schmidt, fab. cxxv, p. 108, l. 17. Back
33. I need not, therefore, at this point go into the question of how much was known in Western Europe in the Middle Ages of the story of Odysseus or Ulysses. On this, see E. G. Joly, Le Roman de Troie de Beneoit de Sainte-More; Dernedde, Über die den altfranzös. Dichtern bekannten epischen Stoffe aus dem Alterthum, Erlangen, 1887; Merugud Uilix maice Leirtis, the Irish Odyssey, ed. Kuno Meyer, London, 1886; Heinzel, Anzeiger, IX, 256. Back
34. Qui cum ab Atlante rege navali certamine cum magna exercitus parte obrutus fuisset, finxerunt socii, eum in deum marinum esse conversum. Back
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