Part 1 (1/2)

THE SAGA OF KING HROLF KRAKI.

JESSE L. BYOCK.

Introduction.

The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki is one of the major Scandinavian legendary tales and belongs to the group of mythicheroic Icelandic stories known as the 'sagas of ancient times', or fornaldar sagas. These texts, which are also sometimes called the 'legendary sagas', are distinctive in that they tell of events that occurred, or are supposed to have occurred, long before the ninth-century settlement of Iceland. A narrative about pre-Viking Age kings and their rivals, Hrolf's Saga, as the text is often called, tells of King Hrolf, a warrior chieftain who ruled in Denmark in about the sixth century AD. Called Kraki (tall, angular and slender like a pole ladder), Hrolf was widely remembered in the medieval North as one of the most magnificent kings of 'ancient times', and the saga draws on a long oral tradition as it describes Hrolf's often treacherous family and recounts the exploits of his famous champions.

Hrolf's Saga, which was written in prose in fourteenth-century Iceland, has close affinities with the Old English verse epic Beowulf, written sometime in the period from the eighth to the early eleventh centuries. Both compositions draw on a common tradition of storytelling, recounting events that may or may not have occurred in the fifth-and/or sixth-century Danish kingdom of the Skjoldungs (Old English: Scyldinga). And both, though differentiated by centuries of independent transmission in different lands, have many of the same characters and settings. The relations.h.i.+p is based on an ancient core of shared storytelling, which displays the extent of a common oral tradition in the medieval North and may echo long-past historical events. Hrolf's Saga and Beowulf share a further similarity. Each provides information about a powerful champion whose bearlike character may reflect the distant memory of early cultic practices.

Medieval Iceland was a suitable place for pa.s.sing down the memory of King Hrolf and his twelve champions. The settlement of Iceland, an island country first colonized by Nors.e.m.e.n in the ninth century, was an offshoot of Viking Age (c. 8001070) exploration and westward expansion across the North Atlantic. At considerable distance from Europe, Iceland was a frontier country. As in such communities elsewhere, the settlers and their descendants tended to venerate the traditions of the mother-culture. The Icelanders' knowledge of the Scandinavian past was so broad that in medieval times they were acknowledged throughout the North to be master storytellers and the keepers of ancient poetic lore. The Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, writing about 1200, credits the trustworthiness of Icelanders, who: spend their time improving knowledge of others' deeds, making up for their poverty by their intelligence. They take great pleasure in discovering and commemorating the achievements of all nations; in their view it is as enlightening to discourse on the prowess of others as to display their own.

In recounting their own past and the history of other peoples, Icelandic saga tellers made prose narration a high art. Their sagas were unusual among the literatures of medieval Europe where, with the exception of Ireland, traditional narrative stories were usually told in verse. The introduction in Iceland of the written saga in the twelfth century invigorated the process of narrative innovation. Writing provided Icelandic saga tellers with broader possibilities for reworking and preserving the lore of the past. In the case of the legends surrounding King Hrolf and his retinue of champions, the saga tellers had at their disposal an extensive body of existing heroic lore.

The various stories concerning Hrolf and his heroes were first a.s.sembled in a coherent, single text possibly as early as the thirteenth century. In its present form, Hrolf's Saga was composed around 1400. In 1461 a copy of a saga about Hrolf was included among the 'books in the Norse language' in the library of the monastery of Modruvellir in northern Iceland. Today the earliest of the forty-four known ma.n.u.scripts dates from the seventeenth century, and all of these are copies deriving ultimately from a single common ancestor. The saga author, well aware that he was arranging a compilation of older material, retains the episodic structure of his sources, often telling the audience when one sub-tale ends and another begins: 'Here ends the tale of Frodi and now begins the story of Hroar and Helgi, the sons of Halfdan.'

If the underlying, individual episodes are often discernible, the saga is, nevertheless, a unified work, very much in the matter-of-fact style of the Icelandic family sagas. Even in the pa.s.sages that treat fabulous events and creatures, the text uses an understated tone, relying on realistic-sounding description to create an almost believable story. So too the physical world of the saga is presented in non-fabulous geographical terms, and one can place most events on a modern map. Centred on the court at Hleidargard (Old Norse Hleidr, modern Danish Lejre) on the island of Sjaelland, the action spreads across the legendary landscape of northern Europe from Lapland in the far north to England in the west.

Because the saga, like many medieval tales, is fas.h.i.+oned from disparate parts, it is helpful to keep the basic structure in mind. The text falls into five main sections, each one focusing on a different set of characters. The common connection with Hrolf, the male and female members of his family, and his court unites the episodes, giving the saga a consistent narrative focus. The first section (chaps. 14) gives the often modest Hrolf an ill.u.s.trious pedigree. Opening with a dynastic conflict, the saga plunges into the struggle between King Halfdan and his brother Frodi, who were greatly dissimilar in character. At issue was control of the Danish kingdom. In this first part the saga teller uses the unfolding conflict to introduce Hrolf's tempestuous ancestors. These include the young princes; Helgi, Hrolf's father; Hroar, his uncle; and Signy, his aunt.

The second section (chaps. 513) traces events in the lives of Helgi and Hroar. In particular, the narrative at this point follows the actions of Helgi, a man with large and sometimes uncontrollable appet.i.tes. Despite the fact that on each occasion the women caution him not to act on his impulse, Helgi plunges into a series of unfortunate s.e.xual liaisons. The stories of the women then enter the tale, and here we first meet Hrolf's mother Yrsa, a person of uncommon heritage. The events of Yrsa's life, including her marriages and wishes, form a narrative thread, linking different sections of the saga and touching the lives of many of the characters. Toward the end of the second section King Hrolf is born, the offspring of a curious parentage. In the next section (chaps. 1416) the saga turns to Hrolf's champions, explaining how the Swede Svipdag battles the berserkers of King Adils of Sweden before coming into King Hrolf's service.

The fourth section (chaps. 1624) takes the tale to Norway and Lapland and is one of the saga's episodic gems. Virtually a fully formed tale in itself, it recounts the fate of Bjorn, the 'manbear'. This tragic tale of ancient magic offers insight into the supernatural gifts of Bjorn's sons, including the bearlike nature of Bodvar Bjarki. A sword hidden in a cave and embedded in stone awaits the rightful heir among Bjorn's three sons. In this section each occurrence is more extraordinary than the preceding one. Not the least of these is the s.h.i.+eld wall constructed of bones with its occupant Hjalti, the champion who confronts and conquers fear.

Up to this point Hrolf himself plays a relatively minor role in the saga. Like Charlemagne in the sequence of Norse stories named after him or like Arthur in medieval Romance tradition, Hrolf the great king of the North is often overshadowed by the individual stories about his champions. With all the pieces in place, however, the fifth and last part of the saga (chaps. 2434) concentrates on King Hrolf himself and his unfolding destiny. The retinue of champions has reached its full strength, and the central female characters have been introduced into the saga. In the Scandinavian dynastic struggles that form the major underlying theme in the rest of the saga, King Adils of Sweden emerges as Hrolf's princ.i.p.al opponent. Here both Bodvar Bjarki and the G.o.d Odin (in the guise of Hrani) play crucial, though very different, roles.

Hrolf's Saga devotes a significant share of the narrative to the destiny of female characters, and a significant feature of the text is that important events turn on decisions made by women. Queens, sorceresses, a freeman's loyal daughter and an elfin woman and her daughter all change the destiny of those who encounter them. Kings and jarls (earls) frequently seek the advice of the women, and the intimate details of marriages, whether good or bad, are exposed. This emphasis is possible because a number of prominent male heroes in Hrolf's Saga are only marginally involved in stories of maturation, whereby a boy, such as Sigurd in The Saga of the Volsungs, comes of age. According to the basic maturation story, a 'helper' or 'donor' a.s.sists the boy in acquiring special weapons and/or knowledge. The youth uses these acquisitions to prove himself through deeds, finding in the end a bride and thereby consummating the transition to manhood. To be sure, elements of this traditional pattern are found in Hrolf's Saga, as for instance in the intertwined stories of Bodvar Bjarki and Hjalti. In the main, however, Hrolf's Saga, like Beowulf, is about mature people. The action concentrates on adults such as Queen Yrsa and her husbands, King Helgi and King Adils, and the saga probes deeply into the often complex emotional and s.e.xual needs of such individuals.

While King Hrolf remains the central focus, it is frequently the women who connect the saga's different episodes, binding the individual pieces of story into a cohesive whole. Consider Queen Yrsa: she first enters the tale as an impoverished child of uncertain birth. Taken captive at an early age, Yrsa is forced to marry King Helgi. Against the odds, the union is good; she comes to love Helgi and he her. The ramifications of this love and the psychological unease caused by the abrupt termination of the marriage, affect the lives of almost all of the saga's subsequent characters. And what a story it is. Yrsa, forced by conventions of morality, throws her happiness away and as a grown woman returns to live with Queen Olof, the mother who hates her. From this point on, Yrsa's life is a dilemma. Her previous husband, King Helgi, remains in love with her. But Helgi, although normally a forceful man, becomes immobilized, his heart broken. In what we now would understand as a deep depression, Helgi retires to his bed. Yrsa, too, suffers cruelly. Her only route of escape from Queen Olof is marriage to King Adils of Sweden, a man whom she dislikes. From Yrsa's second forced marriage will come her greatest loss.

Queen Yrsa does not employ magic, but many of the other women of the saga do. Queen White, the Lapp king's daughter, Heid, the seeress, and Queen Skuld all find empowerment in magic and sorcery. Skuld, the enigmatic half-elfin woman, proves to be a fearful opponent, conjuring up among other feats a monstrous boar. Men in the saga also utilize magic as we see in the behaviour of Vifil the commoner, the warrior Bodvar Bjarki and King Adils. The example of these characters makes The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki a valuable text for understanding the northern perception of magic and sorcery in the late medieval period. The reader wanting more information concerning such subjects is directed to the Explanatory Notes at the end of the book. There I draw distinctions between different types of magic encountered in the saga and discuss the meanings of terms such as wizards, sorcerers and fetches. The endnotes are also designed to a.s.sist the reader wanting additional information about the relations.h.i.+p between Hrolf's Saga and other medieval Scandinavian and English texts.

The Sagas of Ancient Times and Heroic Lays.

As mentioned, Hrolf's Saga belongs to the group of mythicheroic Icelandic stories known as the 'sagas of ancient times', or fornaldar sagas. For the medieval Icelanders themselves, the fornaldar sagas were set in the most distant Scandinavian past, a time of myth and legend. Along with the Saga of the Volsungs, Hrolf's Saga is the best known of these tales of ancient times. These two texts, which are similar in many ways, are major examples of a large genre of storytelling which was popular in medieval Iceland. Both the Volsung story, concerned with Sigurd the dragon slayer and his family, and Hrolf's Saga combine legendary, mythic and Romance traditions which were known beyond the sh.o.r.es of Scandinavia. Containing many international folktale motifs, both sagas derive in part from older heroic poetry, and each contains traces of the mythology of the G.o.d Odin. Both sagas have a similar social theme: the tragedy of strife among n.o.ble kindred. Whereas the Volsung Saga tells mostly of deadly rivalries between individuals from different kingdoms tied together by marriage, Hrolf's Saga tends to focus more on quarrels among siblings within the Danish royal family. It is perhaps not entirely by chance that the opening conflict in Hrolf's Saga involving a royal uncle, mother and nephew triangle (Frodi, his brother Halfdan's wife and Halfdan's avenging sons) reveals a narrative structure reminiscent of that of Shakespeare's Hamlet, a story taken from medieval Danish sources.

Although some of the fornaldar sagas were written later than the better known family and kings' sagas, many of them preserve the memory of ancient historical events and of the people involvedin them. For example, embellished though their stories are with myth and legend, it is probable that the kings mentioned in Hrolf's Saga, such as Frodi, Halfdan, Helgi and Hrolf, were historical chieftains, who lived in Denmark during the Migration Period of the fifth and sixth centuries. Long before Iceland's colonization in the ninth century, the names of these kings were carried to England. They were preserved in Anglo-Saxon written sources which may have depended upon oral tradition from northern Europe carried to Britain at the time of the Germanic invasions in the fifth and sixth centuries. Some of these invaders came from Denmark.

The materials that make up Hrolf's Saga survived the transition from pagan to Christian society as well as the accompanying s.h.i.+ft from oral to written culture. Many of the legends incorporated in the saga were transmitted orally as heroic lays during the Viking Age. We know something about one of these poems, 'The Lay of Bjarki' (Bjarkamal), a heroic lay from the mid-tenth century. Although Bjarkamal is no longer fully extant, it is worthwhile to consider the way in which its contents survived independently of Hrolf's Saga.

Significant parts of Bjarkamal are preserved in the work of Saxo Grammaticus, who translated the lay into Latin hexameters in his History of the Danes (Gesta Danorum). Of crucial importance is the fact that a few of the lay's verses are quoted in the Old Icelandic by Snorri Sturluson (11791241), the powerful Icelandic chieftain and man of letters who inserted the verses into his Prose Edda as well as into Saint Olaf's Saga. In both instances these originally oral stanzas were incorporated into the written texts because they possessed the timeless power to move audiences, whether pagan or Christian. The heroic deeds of King Hrolf and his champions had long since become a symbol for courage and the prowess of a warrior in medieval Scandinavian culture.

According to Snorri in Saint Olaf's Saga, Bjarkamal was recited on the morning of the important battle of Stiklestad in 1030. The Christian king of Norway, Saint Olaf, ordered his personal skald, the Icelander Thormod Kolbrun's-poet, to rouse the king's army, inciting it to battle against his pagan foes by reciting the opening verses of Bjarkamal. These were the same verses that Bodvar Bjarki was said to have sung at Hleidargard half a millennium earlier when inciting King Hrolf's warriors to stand firm in their last battle: The day has arisen,

the c.o.c.k's wings resound.

Time is for thralls

to get to their work.

Awake now, be awake,

closest of friends,

all the best

companions of Adils.

Har the Hard-griper,

Hrolf the Bowman,