Home of the Eddic Lays
Chapter 15
Earlier historians put Canute's expedition to Slavic lands in the year 1019; but Steenstrup tries to prove (12) that it took place in 1022-1023. When the poet tells of the prediction of the Norns at the birth of Helgi, the Danish king, he says that the fate-goddess 'fastened a cord toward the North and said that it should hold for ever' (brá.........á norðrvega einni festi, ey bað hon halda). When the ON poet sang thus, did he know that Canute had already prepared for, or completed the capture of Norway? If so, his work was not composed before 1027 or 1028.
But enough of these airy combinations! I acknowledge that the guess that the author of the First Helgi lay, when he wrote about Helgi, thought of Canute the Great, has no solid foundation in external evidence. Still, I think I have shown that the poet was of Norwegian nationality; that he was born in the western part of Norway, and that he composed his poem in Britain ca. 1020-1035; that, moreover, he sojourned for some time among the English and Irish, and probably associated with Irish poets at the court of the Scandinavian king of Dublin.
This poem was not, therefore, first composed in the stillness of a mountainous Norwegian valley, nor on the lonely shores of an ice-bound sea, but in the heart of Northern Europe---where Norsemen and Danes, Irish and English were assembled together, under the stress of great events, on a soil which, from early times, had been inundated and made fertile by the culture of the south.
The life of the Norwegian poets among the Irish, and the influence of Irish literature on ON epics, supplied the Norsemen with new material, widened their horizon, and disclosed to their imaginations a richer and more stirring life than that to which they had been accustomed. Through the Irish stories the Norse poets became familiar with new images drawn from a splendid, fantastic, supernatural world. (13) But the wild life of the Vikings, the roughness and sensuality of character which it occasioned, set its mark on Old Norse poetry. It is important to observe, however, that this roughness and sensuality in the poems on Helgi Hundingsbani and Helgi Hjörvarthsson is ascribed to subordinate persons only---to the watchmen Sinfjötli and Atli, to the brother of the hostile King Guthmund, and to the sea-troll Hrímgerth, who are all contrasted with the chief heroes. In the chaste description of the relations between the victory maiden and the hero in all three Helgi lays, as well as in the clearness with which the chieftain's noble, high minded conception of his duty towards his opponents is expressed, we may perceive the seriousness, moderation, and purity of the Old Norse mind, influenced no doubt for the better by the poet's life in England.
The author of the First Lay was no sure master of style. (14) His treatment of his material is also unequal. On the one hand, knowing aparently that the account of the slaying of Höthbrodd was treated at length in older Helgi poems, he hurries far too rapidly through this part, and as a result makes no scene in it vivid or clear. On the other hand, he draws out to an unnecessary length the rough and vulgar word combat between Guthmund and Sinfjötli, which in no way contributes to the main action. There is little individuality, depth, or insight in his description of personal character. There are no moving soul-struggles or conflicts of mind. But the poet had, nevertheless, a rich imagination, and succeeded in painting his central scenes in glowing and vigorous colours. He opens his lay with a grand panorama at Helgi's birth, and he unfolds before us a marvellously imaginative picture in Sigrún's coming with the lofty, helmet-decked company of maidens riding through the air to the tumult of battle. The evidence of later poems shows us that the First Helgi lay long exercised a deep and widespread influence.
In this poem the description of external things takes up more room, in comparison with the dialogue, than in any other ON mythic-heroic lay, with the exception of the poem on Ríg. The account is expanded by means of general descriptions which show a marked contrast to the brevity of other lays. This is not, apparently, due to an effort on the part of the author to reproduce the older, more epic, native mode of presentation, but to the fact that he was influenced by Irish tales, characterised as they were by richness of vocabulary.
The Norseman found in the Irish descriptions magnificent and complete colouring; but, in opposition to their mannered and overloaded accounts, which sometimes (as in the Destruction of Troy) degenerate into mere verbiage, his sonorous verses bring before us a very graphic picture, full of life and action; we see the Vikings row away from land, and the ships of the king bid defiance to the storm. (15)
If we compare the Helgi lays with the majority of the ON poems treating of the gods, and with the Lay of Wayland, the oldest heroic lay, we observe that the Helgi lays make considerable use of kennings and other poetic appellatives. These appellatives are more frequent in the First Lay than in any other ON heroic poem. (16) Since, now, the First Lay arose, as it seems, under English and Irish influence, and in particular since it shows the influence of Irish literature more extensively than has as yet been pointed out for any other Eddic poem, it is a priori probable that acquaintance with foreign (particularly Irish) works had something to do with the greater use of kennings in the ON lays. This inference is supported by a closer investigation.
I have shown (pp. 26-28) that mistar marr (H. H., I, 23) as a kenning = 'steed of the mist' (?) must be due to a misunderstanding, and that originally the poem doubtless had a simple direct phrase = 'misty moor,' which was misunderstood later because it contained English words. We have also seen (pp. 35 f, 54) that the expression hugins barr (I, 54), 'the grain of Odin's raven,' applied to corpses, agrees with an Irish poetic expression, and arose under Irish influence. I have pointed out, moreover, that many other kennings are inventions of the author of the First Lay, who imitated them from phrases in older extant Eddic poems. In at least one instance I have shown that he misunderstood the phrase which he imitated. (17)
In two strophes (13, 27) of the First Helgi lay end-rhyme is used and seems to be intentional. This peculiarity, which occurs also sporadically in some other Eddic poems, (18) deserves special mention when it occurs in a poem which seems to have been much influenced by Irish and English. (19) The same may be said of the lists of names (in strophes 8, 51, 52). To this subject I hope to return at another time.
In the Edda collection the First Lay is placed before the account of Helgi Hjörvarthsson, and thus the poems on Helgi Hundingsbani are separated from each other. This order may be compared with that by which the Grípsspá has first place among the Sigurth poems. In both cases that poem is put first which forms a complete and finished whole, and which in a continuous metrical account gives a review of a series of events in the hero's life; but, in both cases, the poem thus chosen to precede the others is one of the latest in the Edda collection. (20)
12. Normannerne, III, 322-328. In the summer of the same year in which Svein Forkbeard died, Canute and his younger brother Harald made an expedition to 'Sclavonia' to bring back their mother Gunnhild, who had been repudiated by Svein. Did the Helgi poet think of Canute's brother when he made a 'young king,' who bore the name of one of the Shielding kings, Hjörleifr, or better, Herleifr, accompany Helgi as the latter's subordinate on the expedition to Höthbrodd's land? Back
13. 'These poems discover an ideal of beauty, an aerial, unearthly, fairy world, and love of nature, which we do not find in the sagas' (Vigfusson, in C.P.B., I, lxi). Back
14. The expression þeir sjálfir 31, of other persons than those referred to just before in þeim sjálfum 30, is not happy. Strophe 44 repeats expressions from 34. Back
15. The lost AS poem on Wolf-Theodoric may also have contributed to the descriptive elaboration of the ON lay; but this it is, of course, impossible to determine. Back
16. Cf. Sv. Grundtvig, Er nordens gamle literatur norsk? pp. 82 ff; Jessen, Über die Eddalieder, p. 13; Sijmons, Ztsch. f. d. Phil., XVIII, 113. Back
17. On ógnar ljómi see pp. 18 f; geirmímir, 15 f, 21; rakka hirtir, 115; Kólgu systir and Ægis dóttir, 41 and 61; sárvitr and hjálmvitr, 18 and 33; Viðris grey, 86; varga vinr, 84 f; on blóðormr see the discussion of the Lay of Helgi Hjörvarthsson. Back
18. In Völuspá; H. H., II, 25; Sigurðarkviða, etc.; cf. Edzardi in Paul-Braune, Beit., V, 573 f. Back
19. Cf. my Bidrag til den œldste Skaldedigtnings Historie, p. 66 f. Back
20. Cf. R. Meyer in Ztsch. f. d. Alt., XXXII, 405; F. Jónsson, Litt. Hist., I, 120. Back
<< Previous Page Next Page >>
© 2004-2007 Northvegr.
Most of the material on this site is in the public domain. However, many people have worked very hard to bring these texts to you so if you do use the work, we would appreciate it if you could give credit to both the Northvegr site and to the individuals who worked to bring you these texts. A small number of texts are copyrighted and cannot be used without the author's permission. Any text that is copyrighted will have a clear notation of such on the main index page for that text. Inquiries can be sent to info@northvegr.org. Northvegr™ and the Northvegr symbol are trademarks and service marks of the Northvegr Foundation.
|