Home of the Eddic Lays
Chapter 17
It should be mentioned that there are also some special points of agreement between the ballad and the Eddic lay. Both poems assert, for example, that the tears of the woman harass the lover in the other world. This does not harmonise with the rest of the ON account, in which Helgi is represented as going after death to join the company of the einherjar in Valhöll; and it appears to have been added to the story for the first time in our lay. The poet has combined older ideas of the life of the dead in the grave with features of the life of the einherjar in Valhöll (a myth created shortly before his time by the court-skalds), without being able to unite into one harmonious whole these fundamentally different conceptions. (12)
Both the old lay and the popular ballad make the young woman weep blood. Helgi says to Sigrún (II, 45): 'Thou weepest bitter tears before thou goest to sleep; each one falls bloody on my breast.' In a Swedish version of the ballad (Afzelius, 6:2, v. 1), we read: 'The maiden weeps tears, she weeps blood.' In the Danish ballad (A, 17): 'Every time thou weepest for me, when thou art sad at heart, my coffin is filled with clotted blood.' Thus, in both poems the dead man is drenched with blood every time his loved one weeps. (13) In the old lay, Sigrún makes a couch for Helgi in the grave mound, and sleeps there in his embrace. In the Swedish ballad (Afz., I, v. 7; 2, v. 7), the dead youth shares a bed with his betrothed. In both poems, moreover, cocks are named in the world of the dead. In the lay it is Salgofnir ('the bird of the hall'), who wakes the einherjar. In the Danish ballad the dead lover says: 'Now crows the white cock: for the earth long all the corpses. Now crows the red cock: to the earth must all the dead [go]. Now crows the black cock: now all the gates open.' (14)
The day after the dead Helgi leaves his wife, Sigrún comes after sunset to the grave mound; but she waits there in vain. 'Because of sorrow and grief Sigrún lived only a short time.' In the Swedish ballad (Afz., 6:2), the maiden sits down on the grave of the dead youth who has left her. She sits there and weeps until daybreak, when she leaves the grave. She dies soon after.
Evidently, we must conclude that the Scandinavian popular ballad, 'The Lover in the Grave,' not only treats the same subject as the Eddic lay on Helgi and Sigrún, but stands in close relationship to that poem. As I take it, the Swedish ballad comes from the Danish (though not, of course, from one of the extant Danish forms), and the latter from England, where the ballad exists in many versions. The Eddic poem was also composed in Britain. The ballad may have arisen in England under the influence of some old Helgi lay----hardly the one which we have, but more likely one, nearly related, which may have been the work of a Danish poet---a lay which made the dead Helgi dwell, not in the heavenly castle Valhöll among the einherjar, but (according to the more primitive conception) in his grave mound.
The story of the return of a dead husband (or lover) to his surviving, inconsolable wife (or betrothed) was familiar before the time of the Eddic lay and the popular ballad, and was attached to Protesilaus, who fell before Troy, and his wife Laodamia. The form of the story which resembles most the Eddic lay is that found in the First Vatican Mythograph (I, 158): 'Laodamia,' we read, 'was the wife of Protesilaus. When she heard that he had fallen in the Trojan war, she expressed the wish that she might see his shade. Her wish was fulfilled; but she could not escape from the shade, and died in his embrace.'(15)
I conjecture that this story became known in Ireland, and that the author of Helgi's Death heard it there. He combined with it the idea that the tears of surviving friends disturb the repose of the dead---a belief which was well known among the Greeks, the Romans, and many other races. (16)
We may next inquire why the incident of the dead lover's return was attached to Sigrún. Of course, the fact that Sigrún, like Guthrún in the Sigurth story, is described as a devoted wife, in despair at her husband's early death, may have been one reason for attaching to her this incident. But this explanation seems to me insufficient, and I believe that it is possible to point out a more potent cause (17): the First Helgi lay seems to have been influenced in its account of the hero's birth by the classical story of Meleager; this story, as I suppose, also influenced the poem on Helgi's Death.
After the meeting between Sigrún and the dead Helgi in the Second Lay, comes a prose note: 'Sigrún lived only a short time because of sorrow and grief' (18)---a note which has probably been attached to the poem from early times. Hyginus makes the same remark respecting Meleager's wife: at coniunx eius Alcyone moerens in luctu decessit. (19) It was this, I conjecture, that suggested to the ON poet the manner of Sigrún's death.
The usual classical account---that Meleager's death was caused by his mother, who threw into the fire the brand with which his life was bound up---has left no trace in the Helgi lay. Perhaps the ON poet became familiar with a different version of Meleager's death, based on some late and corrupt Latin redaction. In Myth. Vatic., I, 198, we read of sorores Meleagri illum a fratre Tydeo interfectum intolerabiliter flentes. (20) According to this, Meleager would appear to have been killed by his own brother; and with this version our account of the slaying of Helgi may be connected. That the ON poet represented Helgi as killed, not by his own brother, but by his wife's, may be due to the influence of the Völsung story. (21)
The Helgi poet, then, knew that Meleager's wife died of grief at the loss of her husband, and also that certain female relatives of his wept inconsolably over his death. Following a suggestion derived from these two incidents, he transferred to Helgi and Sigrún the main feature of the story of Protesilaus and Laodamia---the inconsolable wife who wishes for the return of her slain husband, and who sleeps in his arms when her wish has been fulfilled.
Helgi's Death also shows relationship with the Völsung stories in their ON form, in that the same religious conception permeated both, and that Odin affects the action both in the Helgi lays and in the Völsung stories. Yet in the Helgi story Odin does not appear personally in the world of mortals.
In the Second Lay we are told that Helgi is killed by Sigrún's brother, und Fjöturlundi, 'under the fetter-tree.' In the prose he is called Dag, and it is said that he had invoked Odin (blótađi Óđin) to get revenge for his father, and that Odin had lent him his own spear. The preposition und, 'under,' in the expression und Fjöturlundi seems to show that lundr here means 'tree.' Fjöturlundi seems to be a name invented by the poet, signifying 'a tree of sacrifice to which the victim is bound with a fjöturr, fetter.' By using this place-name the poet meant to indicate that Helgi was killed as an offering to Odin. He is pierced with Odin's spear, just as Vikar is pierced with the spear lent to Starkath by Odin.
Odin's relation to Helgi is analogous to his relation to the Völsung Sigmund. Odin himself goes with his spear against Sigmund in the hero's last fight (Völs. s., chap. xi.); and, in the Eiríksmál, Odin in Valhöll bids Sigmund and Sinfjötli go to meet King Eric Blood-axe. (22)
I have already shown that the author of Helgi's Death, like the author of the First Helgi lay, lived in Britain, and understood both English and Irish. Apparently (as the phrase at Jordán (II, 28) seems to show) he had heard some Christian stories. But he is far from being so much influenced by Irish literature as the author of the First Helgi lay, and he has not the character of a learned poet. (23)
It is hard to say exactly what difference in age there is between Helgi's Death, in its present form, and the First Helgi lay; but if my conjecture be right that the author of Helgi's Death altered AS on eorđan, 'on the earth,' into 'by Jordan,' this poem probably dates at the earliest from the middle of the tenth century.
The author of Helgi's Death may, then, have been a skald at Óláf Kvaran's court. If so, we have an easy and natural explanation for the fact that he understood both Irish and English, and that a Danish heroic story forms the basis of his lay, which was influenced in its construction both by English verse and by Latin mythical tales.
I regard it as certain that this poet was by nationality Norwegian, not Danish. The connection of his work with the ON poems, to which I have already called attention, argues in favour of this view---likewise the poetic phraseology, and some of the kennings employed. Moreover, the highly developed conception of Odin and Valhöll cannot in this form be shown to be really Danish. (24)
It seems probable, however, that the poet knew and utilised older Danish verses composed in Britain. The name of the hero Helgi, and his position in the poem; the name Höthbrodd, as I have explained it (above, p. 159 ff); the name of the 'king' Starkath, Höthbrodd's ally, and the place name Hlébjörg---all support this theory. I have tried to show that it was a Danish poet in Britain who first sang of Helgi as the slayer of Höthbrodd.
That the Danes in England in later times, at all events up to about 1200, also knew an old lay on Helgi's love, his tragic death, and his return from the grave, we may infer from the popular ballads of 'Ribold,' 'Herr Hjelmer,' 'The Lover in the Grave,' and the corresponding ballads in English and Scotch. In my discussion of the Lay of Helgi Hjörvarthsson I shall examine these ballads more minutely, and try to decide whether it was an Old Norse or a corresponding Old Danish lay which influenced the ballad of Ribold and Guldborg in England.
It is hard to decide what district of Norway was the home of the author of Helgi's Death. The most likely supposition is that he lived in the south western part. (25)
In the description of Sigrún's grief on hearing the tidings of her lover's death, there is an intense passion which has been thought to be genuinely Scandinavian, or even primitive Germanic in its character. To Helgi, the mighty warrior, Sigrún looks up with admiration, and she even seeks him on the battlefield among the corpses of her relatives. Yet she is gentle and mild, of quite different nature from Hild, who, as Högni's daughter, is her prototype, and who wakes her father and her lover from the sleep of death to perpetual fight. When Helgi, after the death of Sigrún's relatives, says to her: 'It was destined that thou shouldst cause strife between chieftains,' she bursts into tears; and when Helgi, by way of consolation, adds that no one can withstand fate, she exclaims: 'I should now be willing to call to life those who are dead, if I could nevertheless hide myself in thy bosom.'
12. Cf. Uhland, Schriften, VIII, 148 f; Schullerus, in Paul-Braune, Beit., XII, 238 f. Back
13. In H. H., II, 44, Sigrún says: 'Thy hair, O Helgi! is full of frost......How shall I find thee a remedy for this?' In the Danish ballad the maiden combs the hair of her betrothed; for every hair she arranges, she lets fall a tear. She then asks: 'How is it in the grave with thee?' Back
14. In Danish B the white cock is not mentioned. Cf. Vpá., 43: 'The cock with the golden comb wakes the heroes in the dwelling of the Father of the Hosts; but in the halls of Hel crows another soot-red cock.' Back
15. 'F(abula) laodomie. Laodomia uxor Prothesilai fuit. Que cum maritum in bello Troiano perire (so MS.) cognovisset, optavit, ut umbram eius videret. Qua re concessa, non deserens umbram in amplexibus eius periit.' ---Taken from Severius, Commentary on Virgil's Aeneid, 6, 447. Same story in Myth. Vatic., II, 215. The story is different, however, in Hyginus, Fables, 103, 104 (ed. M. Schmidt, p. 95). Back
16. See Schenkl in Germ., II, 451 f; Child, Pop. Ballads, III, 235 f. Back
17. Simrock (Handb. d. d. Myth., p. 394) would unite the poetic motive that Sigrún 'ihren Geliebten, der im Kampf gefallen und zur Odhin gegangen ist, durch ihre heissen Thränen erweckt und herabzieht,' with the feature in the story that Hild wakes the dead to life. But Sigrún does not, like Hild, wake her dead husband to life again in order that he may fight, but gets him as a dead man to visit his grave mound and embrace his living wife. Yet Simrock's idea is supported by the fact that in Saxo Hild awakes the dead because of longing for her husband (Ferunt Hildam tanta mariti cupiditate flagrasse, ut noctu interfectorum manes redintegrandi belli gratia carminibus excitasse credatur.---Ed. Müller, Bk. V, p. 342.) Back
18. Sigrún varð skammlíf af harmi ok trega. Back
19. Fables, ed. M. Schmidt, 174, p. 29. Back
20. The story in Myth. Vatic., I, 198, is taken from Schol. to Statius, Theb. 4, 103; p. 123, and to 8, 483; p. 294. The addition a fratre Tydeo interfectum is a late corruption, which probably arose from the story that Tydeus killed his brother Melanippus (in Schol. to Statius, Theb., I, 402 and 280). Back
21. It is doubtless an accidental agreement that the lover in the fifth novel of the fourth day in the Decameron, who showed himself after death to his desolate loved one, had been killed by her brothers; accidental also, doubtless, that the loved on in Boccaccio is called Lisabetta, and in the Danish ballad Else. Back
22. This is a support for the reading of the MSS. in H. H., II, 29, where Hunding is addressed in Valhöll by Helgi. Back
23. This would not prevent his hearing stories based on classical traditions.
24. Cf. Olrik, Sakses Oldhist., I, 30-36. Back
25. The word dagsbrún in H. H., II, 43, is now used, according to Ivar Aasen, 'in Sogn and other places'; héla in II, 44, is now used in Bergen's Stift, Ryfylke, Agder, Telemarken, Hallingdalen, Gudbrandsdalen, etc. With átfrekr in II, 43, cf. matfrek, which is now used in Telemarken and elsewhere. Back
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