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A History of the Vikings

Chapter 3

CHAPTER III

THE BIRTH OF THE VIKING NATIONS

IT may be that not all the royalties and nobles of Beowulf were historical personages, but it is certain that some of them at any rate really lived and Played the parts assigned to them in the poem. That this is so is proved not only by the record in Frankish history of Hygelac's raid, but by the mention of some of the Beowulf names, coupled with accounts of their doings resembling those chronicled in the poem, in the traditional Scandinavian history that is preserved in other works. Chief of these is the Ynglingatal, a Norse genealogical poem said to have been composed in the middle of the ninth century, but probably an altered version of an earlier Swedish poem. (1) Another, but less important, document is Snorri Sturlason Ynglingasaga, incorporated in the Heimskringla, that was written in Iceland in the thirteenth century, and there is also the Historia Norwegiae that was written about the same time and was based on the older and lost Íslendingabók (2) of Ari Thorgilsson that had been compiled at the beginning of the twelfth century.
Of the early Yngling kings of Svitjod there is little need to speak, for fancy alone can say whether they were real people or not. (3) But the Ynglingatal and Ynglingasaga, after giving the names of fifteen rulers of the Swedes, make unquestionable allusions to some of the personalities and some of the events that are mentioned in Beowulf. The Yngling king Ottar is Ohthere of Beowulf, and king Adils (Eadgils of the poem) is his son who made war upon king Ali

1. The poem was incorporated by Snorri Sturlason in the Ynglingasaga. In the prologue to the Heimskringla Snorri says that the Ynglingatal was composed by Thjodolf of Kvinesdal, the scald (court-poet) of Harald Fairhair. The genealogy is not, however, traced to Harald, but terminates with an early Vestfold (Norwegian) king Ragnvald Heidumhar, a cousin of Harald's according to Snorri. There is a good edition of the poem, with a critical commentary, by Adolf Noreen, K. Vitt. Ant. Akad. Handl., 28 : 2 (1925).
2. A recension of this by Ari, the Libellus Islandorum, is also known as Íslendingabók and has survived; but it deals only with Icelandic history.
3. But see Birger Nerman's brave struggle with this problem, Det svenska rikets uppkomst, Stockholm, 1925, p. 29 ff., 137 ff.

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(Onela), his uncle, and slew him at the Battle on the Ice. It is true that king Ali of Uppland is presented in the Ynglingasaga, and also in the Skjöldungasaga of the Danish kings, (1) as coming from Norway, but this is easily explained as the result of a confusion on the part of the Icelandic authors who, writing many centuries later, did not realize that the struggle between Adils and Ali was a civil war, and consequently assumed that Uppland was not the Swedish Uppland but Opland in Norway.
Adils, according to the dead reckoning that alone can be used to find the approximate chronology of the kings of the Ynglinga line, died in the first half of the sixth century, and that is a date corresponding with the time of Eadgils's death according to the Beowulf chronology. (2) He was a mighty king and much is heard of him in the northern sagas and chronicles. They tell that he fought with Helgi, a Danish king (p. 82), some saying that he attacked Denmark and took scatt from the Danes, (3) while others aver that it was Helgi who was the invader. (4)
The most famous of the Yngling kings was Ingjald Illradi who was the great-grandson of Adils and who reigned in the seventh century. It is said (5) of him that he increased his dominions by the simple expedient of inviting the petty kings whose power and possessions he coveted to a feast where he deliberately burnt them alive. But one invited king, Granmar of Södermanland, did not attend the feast and so escaped the fate of the others. Ingjald accordingly went to war with him, but he found that Hogne, king of Östergötland, had allied himself with Grarunar, and Ingjald got the worst of the battle that took place between the rival forces. However, he succeeded at length in overcoming Granmar by treachery and thereupon annexed his lands; but the king of Östergötland he was never

1. It is known only in a Latin epitome. Ed. A. Olrik, Aarb. f. nordisk Oldkyndighed, 2 S. IX (1894), p. 116.
2. The counting here is so inexact that the agreement of the two chronologies really carries little weight. B. Nerman, it should be noted, puts the death of Adils at about A.D. 575, Det svenska rikets uppkomst, p. 138. It is possible that Adils may have been one of the kings who were buried in the three royal barrows of Uppsala, see Nerman, Vilka konungar ligga i Uppsala högar? Uppsala, 1913; his father Ottar is thought to have been buried in the Ottar-barrow at Vendel, Uppland, despite Snorri's account of his horrible obsequies in Jutland. For the excavation of this barrow and a discussion of the problem, see S. Lindqvist, Fornvännen, 1917, p. 127; the barrow contained a coin of A.D. 476 or 477.
3. Leire Chronicle, ed. M. Cl. Gertz (Script. min. hist. Danicae, Copenhagen, 1917), Cap. V, p. 48.
4. Ynglingasaga, ed. F. Jónsson, Copenhagen, 1912, p. 36; Skjöldungasaga, ed. A. Olrik, Aarb. f. n. Oldkyndighed, 1894, p. 114
5. Ynglingasaga, ed. F. Jónsson, 1912, K. 34-40.

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able to subdue. Finally he burnt himself in order to avoid falling into the hands of Ivar Vidfadmi, the king of Scania.
Among the kings summoned to the feast where they were to be destroyed by fire was Algaut of Västergötland, and it is said afterwards that there were men from Västergötland in Ingjald's service. This suggests that Västergötland ceased to be an independent kingdom during Ingjald's reign at Uppsala and came under the Swedish sovereignty. On this supposition Ingjald has acquired much fame as a ruler who welded the lands of modern Sweden into a political whole, and it has been found possible to adduce other statements from the sagas that seem to reveal him as the founder of the present Swedish kingdom. But, although there is a certain sentimental interest in the enquiry, little profit is to be gained from a discussion of Ingjald's claim to this honourable title, for it is obvious that his achievements have been overstated. It is very unlikely, for instance, that the important island of Gotland had passed at this early period under Swedish rule, ¹ and it is quite clear from the sagas themselves that Östergötland at any rate resisted his supposed pan-Swedish policy. Indeed, except for the instance of Västergötland, there is no reasonable evidence that any large tracks of Götaland, such as Småland and Blekinge, accepted his rule. And certain it is that the territories won by him were soon in danger of being lost to Sweden, for at his death another and a greater king was threatening his realm.
This was the conquering Ivar Vidfadmi. It is said of him

1. An attempt has been made to prove by means of archaeological evidence that Sweden conquered Gotland in the sixth century. Knut Stjerna was the first to suggest that the cultural equipment of Gotland assumed an altered complexion in the middle of the sixth century and that thenceforward brooches, pins, and pottery favour the Swedish fashion as opposed to those previously current in Götaland, Essays . . . on Beowulf, Viking Club Extra Series, III (1912), esp. p. 72. This contention is warmly supported by Birger Nerman, Det svenska rikets uppkomst, 197, but I must confess that at present I do not attach much weight to these archaeological arguments. Dr. Nerman, however, tells me that the greater part of the Gotland material has yet to be published, and I respect the judgement of this great authority on Gotland antiquities sufficiently to know that a verdict must accordingly be postponed. All that history tells us here is that Gotland indubitably belonged to the Swedes about A.D. 850 (Wulfstan's narrative in Alfred Orosius, ed. Sweet, 1883, p. 20). Tradition, however, does suggest that the island was under Swedish rule at a rather earlier date than this, for it is recorded in the Gutasaga that the men of Gotland first paid scatt to the Swedes in the days of a legendary king Awair Strabain; but this, of course, proves very little (Gutasaga, ed. H. Pipping, 1905-7, p. 64; also in Prof. E. V. Gordon's Introduction to Old Norse, Oxford, 1927, p. 158).

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that he overthrew Ingjald, who is described as the last of the Ynglings, and usurped the Swedish throne. This is perhaps an overstatement, but it is impossible to doubt that Ivar won for himself considerable power in Scandinavia. It is not by any means clear that he did overthrow the Yngling dynasty, for it is said in the Historia Norwegiae (1) that Ingjald's son, Olof Tretelgja, died in Swethia after a long and peaceful reign, while the great Icelandic historian, Ari Thorgilsson, whose works were one of the sources of the Historia, calls him Suía-konungr, king of Svitjod. (2) But Snorri says of Olof that he was an exile in Vermland after the death of Ingjald, becoming king of that country and dying there. (3) It is just possible to explain this discrepancy on the grounds that Ari and the author of the Historia wrote loosely, deeming Vermland a part of Swethia in Olof's time as it most certainly was in their own day; so that on the whole it is tempting to read something of fact into Snorri's evidence which thus points to a break in the line of Swedish kings at the very period of Ivar's sudden rise to power. (4)
Before following the history of Svitjod and its dependencies under Ivar Vidfadmi, it is necessary to say something of the early kings in Denmark, though the accounts of them are exceedingly difficult to follow and have only a small historical value. As an aid to the understanding of their affairs it will be profitable to recall the manner whereby the country of Denmark had become the land of the Danes, namely the migration of a section of the Swedes, styling themselves Danes, from the MU+ 00E4lar region of Svitjod direct to South Jutland, and the subsequent conquest by these emigrants of the Heruls who were the native peoples of south Jutland and Fyen. (5) This movement was rapidly followed by an extension of the Danish conquests until the invaders possessed not only all the Danish islands but also Scania in South Sweden, and perhaps Halland as well.

1. Ed. G. Storm, Monumenta Historica Norwegiae, Oslo, 1880, p. 102.
2. Íslendingabók, ed. W. Golther, Halle, 1892, p. 2.
3. Ynglingasaga, ed. F. Jónsson, K. 42, p. 48.
4. Snorri's version of the story is adopted as historical fact by Birger Nerman, but is vigorously contested by other authorities. Cf. A. Noreen, Ynglingatal, K. Vitt. Ant. Akad. Handl., 28 : 2 (1925), 245. Professor Sune Lindqvist, Fornvännen, 1921, 178, in discussing this question rightly observes that it is ridiculous to suppose that Ivar introduced the boat-grave custom into Svitjod, for the earliest Vendel graves are much earlier than Ivar's time.
5. E. Wessén, K. Vitt. Ant. Akad. Handl., 36 : 2 (1927), 7; also Otto v. Friesen, Uppsala Universitets Årsskrift, 1924, p. 47.

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       The date at which this Danish incursion took place is uncertain. It may have been as early as the third century, this corresponding with the first appearance of the Heruls on the Continent, but the manner of the reference to the event by Jordanes (p. 73) suggests, on the other hand, a period not very long before that in which he himself wrote. It seems, therefore, that a date about A.D. 450-500, and after the migration of the Jutes from Jutland and the Angles from Sleswig, is a more probable one. It is, of course, certain that the Danes were firmly established in their new home in the middle of the sixth century, and it is to be expected that their rulers, as portrayed in Beowulf, should be presented as stalwart and powerful kings of an ancient house. It is thus, indeed, that they are described, yet Hrothgar did not boast the long series of mythological ancestors that decorated the family tree of the contemporary Yngling, and it is reasonable to suppose that in the early sixth century the Danes and their kings were not far from being newcomers to Denmark.
        Of the Danish kings mentioned in Beowulf the first, and the founder of the Scylding dynasty, is Scyld Scefing, an entirely mythical personage. But his grandson, according to the poem, was Halfdan (Healfdene), and with Halfdan begins the real history of the Scylding line of kings. Halfdan, following now the Danish versions of their story, had two sons Hroar or Ro (Hrothgar) and Helgi (1) who, after the death of their father, ruled simultaneously, each taking a separate portion of the kingdom. Helgi is said to have warred with Adils in Sweden; the chronicles also relate of him that he unwittingly contracted an incestuous union with his own daughter Yrsa, the son of this terrible marriage being that famous person Hrolf Kraki (c. A.D. 6 50)- 700), the great heroking of the Scyldings.
       Hrolf's court was at Leire, now a small village near Roskilde (2)

1. Saxo (ed. Miiller, 1839; II, 80) says of Helgi that he killed a Saxon prince by name Hunding and this has naturally suggested that he was really the renowned hero Helgi Hundingsbane of the elder Edda. If this was so Helgi the Scylding must be credited with considerable foreign conquest; but it is much more likely that Hundingsbane was not the Danish chief but a king of Östergötland. Cf. S. Bugge, Home of the Eddic Poems (Grimm Library 11), London, 1899, p. 126 ff.; T. Hederström, Fornsagor och Eddakvdden, II, Stockholm, 1919, pp. 1-124; E. Wessén, Fornvännen, 1927, p. 64 ff.
2. For a long time it was erroneously supposed that Roskilde was founded by Ro (Hróar); see E. V. Gordon, Introduction to Old Norse, Oxford, 19-27, p. 230, n. 14.

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