Home of the Eddic Lays
Chapter 23
Gustav Storm has collected the places in Icelandic documents where belief in rebirth is mentioned. (12) He has shown that the naming of a child after dead relatives is connected with the belief that the relative after whom he is named is born again in him who is thus called after the departed. (13)
I would point out here that nowhere in Germanic heroic stories, except in Old Norse, do we find the idea that certain of the characters in the story are born again, as if that were a favour to them, the reborn person not being of necessity of the same race as he in whom he reappears (for no connection in race between the three Helgis' is suggested), nor bearing of necessity the same name as he in whom he is reborn, though this is doubtless usually the case (for Svįfa, Sigrśn, and Kįra have different names).
We may observe, however, that this same belief also occurs in Irish heroic stories. Finn was born again as Mongįn, and as Mongįn remembered his first life. Tuan, son of Carell, had lived previously as Tuan, son of Starn. (14) May we not, therefore, believe that the Norse conception was influenced in the west by Irish beliefs?
We have seen that Helgi Hund. has his foreign prototype in Wolf-Theodoric, the legendary hero corresponding to the East Gothic Theodorik before the latter became King of Italy; while Helgi Hjör. partly corresponds to the Frankish Theoderik. We find a departure from this relation in the fact that the story of Wolf-Theodoric's meeting with the mermaid is not transferred to Helgi Hund. but to Helgi Hjör. in what seems to be one of the latest sections of the story about the latter. This variation is doubtless to be explained by the supposition that the name of Atlas, who in the Latin tale kills Scylla's father, reminded the poet of Atli, who had previously been brought into connection with Helgi's father Hjörvarth.
At the same time that the Scandinavian poets in England heard the Frankish stories of the two Theodorics, they also heard the stories of Sigmund and his son Sigfried (Sefert), who, as I shall try to show in another investigation, had even in West Germanic tradition been brought into connection with the stories of Wolf-Theodoric. This gave occasion for the Völsung story to exercise influence first on the Lay of Helgi Hund., and also on that of Helgi Hjör. Here also it is clear that the former lay in its earliest developed form is older than the latter, even if the two poems must be regarded as having arisen in practically the same environment.
We find a series of points of contrast between the stories of the Völsungs and that of Helgi Hjör. Just as Helgi Hund. was represented as the son of Sigurth's (Sigfried's, Sefert's) father Sigmund, so the name Sigrlinn, which is identical with Sigelint, the German name of Siegfried's mother, was transferred to Helgi Hjör.'s mother. Both the mother of Helgi Hjör. and the mother of Sigurth Fįfnisbani were wooed by two kings at the same time. The fathers of the mothers of both Helgi and Sigurth were killed by the rejected suitor; and the first warlike deed of Helgi, as of Sigurth, was to avenge his grandfather.
Evidently, however, all the agreements are not to be explained as due to the influence of the story of the Völsungs on that of Helgi Hjör.; there were doubtless older agreements between the two stories which helped to bring them into connection with each other, as appears from the relations they bear to the stories of Attila and Chlodovech.
The name Eylimi (15) is common to the Sigurth story and to the Helgi story: the father of Svįfa and the father of Hjördis, Sigurth's mother, are both so called. The young Helgi Hjör. receives from Svįfa a sword with which to do heroic deeds. The young Sigmund receives a sword from Odin, and from its fragments is forged the sword Gram for Sigurth. Helgi goes to his father King Hjörvarth, Sigurth to King Hjalprek, at whose court he has been brought up, to get ships and followers for his expedition of revenge. Svįfa comes to the dying Helgi on the battlefield, just as Hjördķs comes to the dying Sigmund. Both stories give the dying hero's conversation with the faithful woman he loved. (16)
In still another respect we may observe that the Lay of Helgi Hjör. developed with the Lay of Helgi Hund. as a model. I have pointed out in what precedes that the story of Sigrśn was influenced by that of the Hjathnings. Similarly, the story of Helgi Hjör.'s relations to his brother Hethin certainly arose under the influence of the same narrative, especially in the form in which it is recounted in Sörla žįttr. (17)
In both stories a king's son, Hethin, appears. Hithinus, who carries off Hilda, has his home, according to Saxo, in Norway. The Norwegian champion Hethin the slender, in the Brįvalla lay, is probably the same saga hero. (18) The Hethin of the Helgi story also dwells in Norway. When the story begins, both are spending the winter peacefully at home. Both, when alone out in a forest, meet a superhuman demonic woman, who converses with the king's son. In both stories this woman confuses the young man's mind to such an extent that, after he has drunk from a beaker, he offends another king to whom he is bound by ties of dutiful affection. He carries off, or wishes to carry off, from this king a young woman who is described as a battle maiden (though of Svįfa this is only partly true). Hild's home, according to Saxo, is in Jutland, and, according to Sörla žįttr, in Denmark. There is much which indicates that Svįfa also was considered by the author of the Lay of Helgi Hjör. as the daughter of a Jutish king. In the Helgi story, the king against whom Hethin offends is his own brother, whose loved one he would make his own; in the story of the Hjathnings, it is Hethin's foster brother whose daughter he carries off. In both stories, Hethin sets out repentant for foreign lands. In both he meets in a foreign land---though under different circumstances ---the king against whom he has offended, and confesses to him his sorrow for his offence in words which show mutual relationship in the two poems. (19) At the time when this conversation takes place, Helgi is under agreement to fight with another king, and in this combat he afterwards loses his life. In the story of the Hjathnings, the conversation between hethin and his foster brother ends with a challenge, and in the ensuing fight both fall.
In the Helgi story, Svįfa comes to the battlefield where she finds Helgi wounded to death, with Hethin by his side. In the Hjathning story, Hild comes to the battlefield where Högni and Hethin lie dead.
I believe, therefore, that the confusion of Hethin's mind by a demonic woman, which leads him to desire his brother's loved one, was taken from the Hjathning story. But in the Lay of Helgi Hjör., as in that of Helgi Hund., what is borrowed from the story of the Hjathnings is conceived and reproduced in a milder spirit.
While the Hjörvarth lay may in general be regarded as a remodelling of Frankish stories, transferred to a Scandinavian saga hero, the story of his son Helgi, on the contrary, contains but few Frankish features. The conclusion of the story of Helgi and his brother Hethin is in all its essentials a Scandinavian work. (20) Both Hethin and his mother Įlfhild appear to be Scandinavian, not West Germanic saga figures.
The attendant spirit (fylgja) in the tale of Helgi and Hethin has no parallel in the Hjathning story. There is, however, something similar in the shorter Hallfreth's saga of the beginning of the thirteenth century. (21) When Hallfreth Vandręthaskįld was lying sick unto death on board a ship, he saw a great birnie clad woman go over the billows. He understood that it was his attendant spirit, and declared himself separated from her. She then asked his brother Thorvald if he would accept her. He refused. Then said Hallfreth the younger, the skald's son: 'I will accept thee'; whereupon she vanished. The Helgi lay is doubtless the model of this Hallfreth story. (22)
The information which the ON story gives us concerning King Hjörvarth, and also (though to a less extent) that concerning his son Helgi, is based largely on Frankish tradition. Moreover, several of the persons with whom Hjörvarth and Helgi are brought into connection are really Franks, or persons who had something to do with Franks. And yet both these heroes were thought of and designated in the story as Scandinavian kings.
In the prose passage before st. 31, Hethin is represented as at home in Norway with his father King Hjörvarth. Afterwards he journeys southward (sušr į lönd) until he meets his brother Helgi, who has been out on a warlike expedition. Helgi asks:
hvat kantu segja
nżra spjalla
ór Nóregi? (st. 31).
'What news from Norway canst thou tell?'
It is clear at all events that the author of this prose passage must have understood ór Nóregi as 'from Norway'; and there is every reason to believe that the poet who gave the lay its present form, had the same conception of the words of the verse. Helgi is therefore thought of here as a Norwegian hero. His home and Hethin's is called in the last strophe Rogheimr. That was most likely taken by the Norwegian poet to mean 'the dwelling place of the Norwegian Rygir.'
Though the situation of Svįfa's home is not stated plainly, yet everything seems to indicate that the poet imagined it to be in Denmark. (23) The sword which Svįfa presents Helgi, with which to perform warlike deeds, lies in Sigarsholm (st. 8). The man whom the dying Helgi sends after Svįfa, is called Sigarr (st. 36). Helgi had agreed to fight on the Plains of Sigarr (į Sigarsvöllum, H. Hj., 35; į Sigarsvelli in the prose following). Apparently the poet did not imagine Svįfa's home as being very far from this place; for Helgi, after being fatally wounded, sends a messenger to her, whereupon she comes to his deathbed. If we connect the names above mentioned with the Plains of Sigarr (Sigarsvöllu) which the new born Helgi Hund. gets as a name gift, and with the statement in an AS poem that Sigehere (i.e. Sigar) ruled long over the Sea-Danes, together with the relations in which the name Sigar occurs elsewhere in Scandinavian tradition, we see that this name Sigar and the compounds of which it forms a part, point to Denmark. The name of Svįfa's father is Eylimi. I conjecture that the ON poet thought of him as a Jutish king, and brought his name into connection with Limafjöršr, Limfjord. But I do not therefore hold that this was the original conception. I intend to discuss this question more particularly in my investigation of the Sigurth story.
The poet appears to have imagined Įlf, Hróthmar's son, who slays Helgi, as king of a more southerly land, most likely one south of the Baltic, since Hróthmar has harried in Svįfaland, which may well be the land of the North Swabians by the Elbe. (24)
We have another support for the theory that the Lay of Helgi Hjör. was composed by a Norwegian speaking poet, in the fact that this work was influenced by a form of the story of the Hjathnings which, according to Olrik, (25) was Old Norse (norrn), and varied from the Danish form.
I am unable to prove in what district of Norway the poet who in Britain gave to the Hjörvarth lay its present form, had his home. But it seems to me most likely that it was in the southwest; partly because the hero's home is Rogheimr, partly because of the relations of the poem to Danish works. (26)
On the one hand, there is nothing to lead us to believe that the account of King Hjörvarth and his son Helig reproduced the stories which from olden times were known in Norway, and which took form in popular tradition by the unconscious alteration of Norwegian historical events. On the contrary, I think I have shown in what precedes that we have before us poems composed by skalds of Scandinavian chieftains in Britain, and that these poems were much influenced by Frankish heroic stories, some of which became familiar to the Scandinavians in AS form.
12. Cf. Uhland, Schriften, VIII, 136 f. Back
13. Arkiv f. nord. Filol., IX, 199-222. I may add that I have heard in the western part of Telemarken reise upp atte (raise up again) used with reference to the naming of a child after a dead person. Back
14. See D'Arbois de Jubainville, Le Cycle Mythol., p. 244 ff; Stokes and Windisch, Irische Texte, III, 231. Back
15. The question as to the origin of this name cannot well be discussed except in connection with Sigurth. Back
16. Cf. Müllenhoff, Ztsch. f. d. Alt., XXIII, 142; Sijmons, in Paul-Braune, Beit., IV 187 f. Back
17. Flat., I, 275-283; Fornald. ss., I, 391-407. This I have already pointed out in my Studien (Ist Series), pp. 174 f. Back
18. A. Olrik, Sakses Oldhist., I, 192-195. Back
19. In Sörla þáttr (Flat., I, 281) Hethin says: þat er þer at segia, fostbrodir, at mig hefir hent sua mikit slys at þat ma einge bæta nema þu. According to this, the defective text in Helgi Hjör., 32, Mic hefir myclo glöpr meiri sóttan, may be corrected to:
Mik hefir myklu
meiri sóttan
glæpr [en, bróðir!
bæta megak].
The words of Hethin from the Hjathning story given above were doubtless at
one time in verse form. Back
20. Viktor Rydberg (Undersökningar, II, 252-264) holds the view that Helgi Hjör. is the god Baldr transformed into a hero, that Helgi's brother Heðinn (dat. Heðni) is Höðr (dat. Heði) as a hero, and that Óláf Geirstadaalf also is Baldr transformed. I cannot agree with Rydberg's view; but still I regard it as possible that there are certain points of contact between the story of Helgi and Hethin and the story of Baldr and Höðr. In this connection it may be mentioned that Hotherus in Saxo (ed. Müller, p. 122), after having been conquered by Baldr, wanders, like Hethin, tired of life alone in deserted paths. Odin's words to Bo in Saxo (p. 131): potius a Balderi interfectoribus ultionem exacturum, quam armis innoxios oppressurum, remind us of Helgi's words to his father in H. Hj., 10, 11: léztu eld eta jöfra bygðir, en þeir angr við þik ekki gørðu, 'thou madest fire to devour the dwellings of princes who had done thee no harm.' Back
21. Fornsögur, ed. Vigfusson and Möbius, p. 114. Back
22. Of the ceremonial in the course of which Hethin makes his vow, it is unnecessary to speak here. Back
23. This is also F. Jónsson's opinion, Lit. Hist., I, 249 f. Back
24. Did the poet think in this connection of Álfr as 'King of the Elbe'? Cf. dottur Álfs konungs, er land átti milli elfa tveggja ('the daughter of King Álf, who possessed land between the two rivers, i.e. Gautelf and Raumelf,' Sögubrot in Fornald. ss., I, 376). One of Hunding's sons, whom Helgi, son of Sigmund, kills (H. H., I, 14) is called Álfr. Back
25. Sakses Oldhist., II, 191-196. Back
26. Did the poet form the name of the river Sæmorn by analogy with Mörn, the river of Mandal valley? Back
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