Home of the Eddic Lays
Chapter 21
On the other hand, it may be noted that a modern Norwegian tale (9) has a king's son changed into an eagle which eats up a whole ox, and thereupon flies away with the hero of the story on its back, to rescue him from peril in the mountain.
The earl who transforms himself into an eagle, is called in the ON poem Fránmarr, from the adjective fránn, which has about the same meaning as the Latin coruscus, and is used of serpents. If I am right in my conjecture that this saga figure has his origin in Aridius in the Frankish tale, the questions still remain: How did he get his ON name? and how well does this name suit the conjecture as to Aridius which I have just made? The following is an attempt at an explanation.
Both Gregory of Tours (II, 32) and the Liber Hist. Francorum mention virum inlustrem Aridium. When the story was carried over from the Franks to the English, vir illustris may have been translated into AS by fréamære (or fræmære) eorl. From this an ON poet could have made the name Fránmarr Jarl. (10)
Gregory tells (11) how Aridius later (in the year 500), when Chlodovech after his marriage wages war against Gundobad, employs cunning to save Gundobad's life. He comes to Chlodovech and gives himself out for Gundobad's enemy. The king receives him and keeps him at his court; for Aridius could converse well and give useful counsel (Erat enim iocundus in fabulis, strenuus in consiliis). He humbly begs Chlodovech to hear his word, and advises him to spare Gundobad's life, but to make him pay tribute, in order that Chlodovech may thereby induce Gundobad to surrender the more quickly and come to rule over him and his land. Gundobad promises to pay the tribute demanded.
It looks as if we had a fantastic and indistinct echo of this in the incident in the ON poem that Fránmar transformed into a wise bird (fugl fróðhugaðr), comes to Atli's dwelling and makes as if he would help Hjörvarth to win Sigrlinn, although later he tries to prevent it. He begs Atli to listen to what he has to say. He then demands sacrifices, which Atli is willing to procure for him, in order to get Sigrlinn to follow Hjörvarth of her own free will; but, in making the agreement with Atli, the bird discusses the sparing of Hjörvarth's life.
According to this conjecture, therefore, a feature which in the Frankish saga belongs to an event which takes place after Chlodovech's marriage, would seem to have been carried over in a new form into the ON poem in the account of how Hjörvarth won his bride.
Such a conjecture may appear too bold; but it is supported by the fact that the feature above mentioned occurs in an altered form in the story of Attila's wooing in the þiðrekssaga. Rotholf comes to Ósangtrix, feigns to be Attila's enemy, and is received by the king. Here we have an obvious imitation of the following incidents: Aridius comes to Chlodovech, feigns to be Gundobad's enemy, and is received by the king of the Franks. (12)
I have tried to make it probable that Atli, in one of the stories on which the Lay of Hjörvarth and Sigrlinn is based, as well as in the þiðrekssaga, was the name of the chief hero of the story, viz. of the king who would wed the foreign king's daughter. If so, then we may suppose that in the tradition which was the source of our poem, the Atli with whom the transformed earl talked was the chief hero, the king for whom the foreign king's daughter was wooed, just as it is Chlodovech in the Frankish story with whom Aridius converses.
Very frequently in popular heroic poems the form of the story presupposes a fusion of several different historical personages having the same name. We seem to have an instance of this in the poem under discussion.
The story of Fránmar, who in eagle form talks with Atli, presupposes, as I take it, the fusion of that Aridius who was Chlodovech's contemporary with a later Aridius who was Abbot of Limoges at the end of the sixth century, and one of the canonised saints. Of him Gregory of Tours relates (X, 29) that a dove hovered over him, alighted on his head or on his shoulders, and followed him constantly, the explanation being that he was full of the Holy Spirit. This seems to have something to do with the fact that the poem represents Fránmar, who corresponds to Chlodovech's contemporary Aridius, as transforming himself into a bird. That it is an eagle, and not a dove, whose form Fránmar takes, is due partly to his name of his prototype Aridius, which was thought of as Ari-deus, partly to the fact that the eagle, unlike the dove, was a well known bird in Scandinavian mythology.
The holy Aridius performed many miracles in curing the sick, etc. This may have helped to bring it about that Fránmar is called wise in magic. In the conversation with Atli the bird demands divine sacrifice (blóta, H. Hj., 4). This is doubtless the heathen ON poet's fantastic interpretation of the statements made about the holy Aridius: he claimed as his only privilege the building of churches. He raised temples to the honour of the saints of God, and founded a monastery. (13)
In the þiðrekssaga, the episode of the false deserter is transferred from the enemy of the suitor king to this king's faithful follower. Such a transformation did not take place in the ON poem, which in this respect, therefore, adheres more closely to the Frankish tale.
As I have already hinted, the ON poet, by his alterations in this feature, made the course of the story and its motivierung obscure.
Aridius seeks to prevent Chlodovech's marriage with Chrodechildis. In the þiðrekssaga, chap. 49, the earl Hertnit and his brother Hirthir enthusiastically support the suit of Northung, Attila's rival, for the king's daughter Erca. We must, therefore, imagine Hertnit and Hirthir to have been opposed to Attila's suit. In the complete story they doubtless advised Ósangtrix openly to refuse his daughter's hand to Attila. The earl Hertnit and his brother Hirthir correspond, then, in this connection to Aridius in the Frankish tale.
The alteration in the name may be explained in the following way: Aridius was, perhaps, thought by the Germans to stand for Hari-deo, Heri-deo (which name occurs several times), Herdeo; and from this Herdeo, possibly through an (etymologically different) Low German Herder, we may get the form Hirðir of our story. (14)
The þiðrekssaga mentions, following Low German accounts, three Hertnids in Slavic lands. (15) One, Hertnid of Holmgard (Novgorod) has a brother Hirðir (chap. 22). One of the sons of this Hertnid is Ósangtrix of Vilcinaland. Another Hertnid, an earl at Ósangtrix's court, is son of the Earl Ilias of Russia. His brother is also called Hirthir in a version in the Stockholm MS. This Hertnid plays a prominent part in the story of Ósangtrix in the þiðrekssaga.
The fact that the Earl Hertnid and his brother Hirthir, in the story of Attila's wooing, correspond to Aridius in the tale of Chlodovech (of which the Attila story is an imitation), may be explained as follows: Even before the Attila story arose, Herder may have been known as a brother of Hertnid, who was an earl at the court of Ósangtrix. When, now, the name Aridius, because of the similarity in sound, was changed (through Harideo, Herideo, Herdeo) to Herder, this Herder, who opposed the saga king's winning of his bride, was identified by the Germans with Herder, Hertnid's brother. This identification not only suggested the naming of Earl Hertnid along with his brother Herder as opponents of the suit, but also helped to bring it about that the story of the king's wooing was transferred from Gundobad, Chrodechildis, and Chlodovech, to Ósangtrix, Erca, and Attila; so that the action was carried from the lands of the Franks and of the Burgundians to districts in the north-east.
Thus, in my opinion, the Lay of Hjörvarth, Helgi's father, was composed by a Scandinavian poet in England, after the model of various West-Germanic (particularly Frankish) heroic stories closely related with one another. The ON form preserved in the Edda was not the only Scandinavian treatment of the story. The ballad of Raadengaard and the Eagle presupposes another Scandinavian (most likely Danish) version known in England, in which the king's messenger was not called Atli, but Rodengaar (Raadengaard), just as Róthingeir is named as messenger in one version of the þiðrekssaga.
From the name Atli in the Hjörvarth lay, I have inferred that the Norseman who gave the story its extant form, knew a version of the foreign tale in which Atli (Attila), as in the þiðrekssaga, was the hero for whom the messenger wins the foreign king's daughter. In this version the messenger was doubtless called Rodingâr. But, even if I am right in this, it is probable that the foreign version, which the author of the Lay of Hjörvarth knew in one of the British Isles, varied both in the forms of the names and in saga features from the account in the þiðrekssaga, although in just what particulars it is impossible now to determine.
It seems to me probable that some at any rate of the Frankish episodes which influenced the ON poem, had indirectly a literary source. I consider it as especially probable that we have in the Lay an echo of Gregory's written account of St. Aridius in the Historia Francorum. On the other hand, the other Frankish features may, like the written accounts of Gregory and Fredegar, have been drawn from oral Frankish tradition.
In several of the proper names in the story of Hjörvarth and Sigrlinn, we see a tendency to avoid forms which had a foreign sound, and to insert Norse names instead. Thus in the Lay we have Álof instead of Saedeleuba in the Frankish tale, Atli instead of Rodengaar in the ballad, and Hróðmarr instead of the Frankish Chlodomer. Even the chief hero of the story is replaced by a Scandinavian saga hero.
Atli is called in H. Hj., 2, 'the son of Ithmund' (in the MS. iþmundar). In agreement with this, we read in the prose account of Hjörvarth: 'His earl was called Ithmund; Ithmund's son was Atli.' Of the name of Atli's father, which in the form Iðmundr has no parallel in any other story, I venture to propose a bold explanation. I have given reasons for the opinion that Atli, the name of the earl's son, was borrowed from a story in which this name was borne by the famous King of the Huns. The father (16) of this king was called by Jordanes Mundzucus, by Priscus Moundioucoj, which Müllenhoff has explained (17) as a Germanic *Mundiwih. It was doubtless after this father of Attila that one of Attila's descendents was called Mundo. (18) Perhaps, then, there is some connection between these two names Iðmundr and Mundo. (19)
We have seen that Hjörvarth's messenger Atli corresponds to Chlodovech's messenger Aurelianus in the Frankish tale. The home of Aurelianus is Orléans, Aurelianensium territorium. (20) The place where Atli dwells is called at Glasislundi (H. Hj., I). This name was influenced by an ON myth: Glasir was the name of a tree (lundr) with golden foliage, which stood before Valhöll. I would connect the ON name with the French. The Norse poet, I imagine, heard the name of Orléans, Aureliani, explained by aurum, gold, and therefore reproduced it by at Glasis lundi, from Glasir, the tree with the golden foliage. (21)
In the conversation with Atli, the bird demands as sacrifices gold-horned cows (gullhyrndar kýr, H. Hj., 4). This phrase also occurs in þrymskviða, 23, where the giant Thrym says that gold-horned cows go about in his courts. (22) It is worth while to mention here certain parallels to this feature in Irish poetry. In the old Irish story of the Battle of Ross na Ríg, we read of an ox with two horns of gold. (23) In a modern Irish popular story, (24) a giant has five hundred oxen with golden horns and silver hoofs. Yet gold-horned cows are to be found elsewhere. (25).
The Norwegian author of the Lay of Hjörvarth and Sigrlinn was himself a heathen, but he had heard from Christians the stories of the Frankish Christian kings and saints.
The poem shows us how strong was the myth making imagination among the heathen Scandinavians who in Viking times travelled about in Britain. There is an incorrect idea fairly widespread, that of several forms of a story the one which is plainly mythical must necessarily be the oldest, and that it must go back to far distant and obscure eras. The Lay of Hjörvarth and Sigrlinn gives us a good example of the development of the mythical element out of the historical.
9. 'The Eagle my Companion,' in Folke-Eventyr, ed. Kristofer Janson, p. 37. In an Irish story in the Book of Leinster (fol. 168 b) Mossad mac Móin finds a vulture (séig) and supplies it with food. It tears to pieces horses and cattle and human beings. Finally it eats up its own master. Back
10. Observe that Magnus the Good got his name from the surname of Charlemagne, and that the latter in a Swedish MS. of the fifteenth century is called 'Konung Magnus' (Munch, Norske Folks Hist., b, p. 666), in the ballad of Roland, Magnus Kongjen. In what follows I shall try to show that Ribold (Rikeball), the name of the hero of a ballad, arose from the epithet ríkr baldr in an old poem. The Icel. svanni, 'woman,' is changed into the name Svanelille in several Danish and Norwegian ballads. See Grundtvig and S. Bugge in Danm. gl. Folkev., II, 81 f, and III, 823 a. Back
11. Gregor. Turon. Hist. Franc., lib. II, cap. 32; Fredegar, lib. III, cap. 23.
12. Ósangtrix says to Rótholf, who has given himself out as Attila's enemy: þú ert maðr vitr ok góðr drengr, trúlyndr ok réttorðr ('thou art a wise man and good fellow, faithful and of just speech') chap. 49. We read of Aridius, when he is with Chlodovech: Erat......strenuus in consiliis, iustus in iudiciis et in commisso fidelis. Back
13. 'Unum sibi tantum privilegium vindicans, ut ad ecclesias aedificandas ipse praeesset......Construxit templa in Dei honore sanctorum.......cenobiumque fundavit.' Back
14. According to Müllenhoff (Ztsch. f. d. Alt., XII, 348), Hirðir = Low Ger. Herder, OS. Hardheri. This is supported by the fact that the Swedish translation, chap. 17, calls another person of that name now Hirder, now Herder. Back
15. Cf. Müllenhoff, as above. Back
16. In the þiðrekssaga Attila's father is called Osið, and he is represented as a king of Friesland. Back
17. In Ztsch. f. d. Alt., X, 160 f; in Mommsen's ed. of Jordanes, p. 152 b. Back
18. Mundo de Attilanis quondam origine descendens (Jordanes, chap. 58, ed. Mommsen, p. 135). Back
19. It is just possible that in an earlier form H. Hj., 2 read as follows:---
Mundu við AtlaWilt thou, wise bird, talk still more with Atli, the son of Mundi.' The word ið would then be the AS git (pronounced yit) 'still,' which often occurs before a comparative. We should have circular alliteration (Mundu - Mundar, Atla - ið). This ið, from AS git, might be taken to support the opinion that the ON poet imitated an AS poem. Back
ið Mundar (or Munda) son,
fugl fróðhugaðr!
fleira mæla?
20. Fredegar, III, 18, ed. Krusch, p. 100 Back
21. Hjörvarth's men are obliged to wade across Sæmorn (H. Hj., 5) on their way to Svávaland. The name of this river must have been regarded as a combination of sær, sea, and the river name Morn (Snorri's Edda, II, 576, alongside Mörn); but it is probably a working over of the name of a foreign river. Could this river be the Saugonna, Saogonna (i.e. Saône; see Fredegar, ed. Krusch, pp. 141, 167)? Back
22. H. Hj., 5, Höfum erfiði ok ekki ørindi, shows also similarity with þrk., II, Hefi ek erfiði ok ørindi. Back
23. Hogan's edition, p. 7. Back
24. Curtin, Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland, p. 33. Back
25. Gesta Romanorum (ed. Oesterley, chap. III) has a corrupt account of the myth of Io, Argos, and Hermes, in which we read that 'quidam nobilis' had a cow which gave a full quantity of milk. 'Nobilis ille pre nimio amore ordinavit, quod vacca duo cornea aurea habuit.' Among the Greeks, the horns of animals offered in sacrifice were covered with gold: Homer, Odyssey, III, 384, 426, 432-436. Egilsson adduces other examples from later Icelandic writings under gullhyrnar. Lüning says (Die Edda, p. 214): 'In Westphalen ist es heute noch hie und da sitte, bei festlichkeiten auf den bauern-höfen......die hörner der kühe mit goldschaum zu überziehen.' Back
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