Introduction to the Saga of Hervör and Heithrek
The Saga of Hervör and Heithrek is found in two vellums, the Hauksbók (a.m. 544), dating from c. 1325, which for convenience is usually called H; and ms. 28451 in the Royal Library at Copenhagen, dating from the fifteenth century, and generally called R. Besides these there are a number of paper mss. (h) dating from the seventeenth century. According to Bugge2, these have no independent value and can contribute nothing to our knowledge of the text up to the point at which the vellums break off. They are useful however as continuing the Saga beyond this point. H comes to an end with Gestumblindi’s second riddle, while R breaks off just before the close of ch. 12. Beyond this point we are entirely dependent on the paper mss. One of these (a.m. 345 written in 1694) was adopted by Rafn3 as the text for his edition of the Saga, though he gives H in full as an Appendix.
The mss. differ considerably among themselves. For instance R omits the first chapter of the Saga, but contains Hjalmar’s Death Song. Here, too, many of the riddles are wanting, and the order of the rest is quite different from that of h. Finnur Jónsson4 is of the opinion that R is the best text throughout; but Heusler5, like Valdimar Ásmundarson, keeps the order of the riddles as in h. Petersen6 regards H as the best text and follows it so far as it goes; but when it breaks off he follows R mainly, although he considers the latter ms. to be defective in many places, “at the beginning, middle and end.” He has supplied the lacunae in it from Arn. Magn. 192, the paper ms. which comes nearest to it, and also from others but with greater reservation. Valdimar Ásmundarson, like Petersen, and no doubt influenced by him, has followed H very closely in his edition of the Saga7 till it breaks off, and after that the paper mss. (h) most closely related to it. He does not appear to have used R, and therefore omits the details of the fight on Samsø and Hjalmar’s Death Song. Ásmundarson’s version has been followed closely in the translation given below, but one or two interesting passages omitted by H have been translated separately (see Appendix on pp. 144-150) from the text printed from R in Wimmer’s Oldnordisk Læsebog8 and from some short excerpts from h printed at the close of Petersen’s edition of the Saga.
For a full bibliography of the texts, translations, and literature dealing with this saga the reader is referred to Islandica, Vol. v, pp. 22-26.
In this saga we have what appears to be the history of a certain family for more than four generations. From the point of view of construction, the story can hardly be regarded as a success. Yet it contains scenes at least equal to any others which can be found among sagas of this kind. It also embodies a considerable amount of poetry which is not found elsewhere. Some of this is of high merit, and one piece, dealing with the battle between the Huns and the Goths, is evidently of great antiquity.
The Saga opens in a purely mythical milieu—with Guthmund in Glasisvellir, to whom we have already had reference in the story of Nornagest. Next we have a typical story of the Viking Age—the adventures of the sons of Arngrim and their fight on Samsø. This story is known to us from other sources, the earliest being the poem Hyndluljóth (str. 24), which according to Finnur Jónsson9 cannot be later in date than the latter part of the tenth century, though Mogk10 is inclined to doubt this. Other references occur in the Saga of Örvar-Odd, Saxo’s Danish History, the later ballads translated below, etc.
We then pass on to the account of Hervör, the daughter of Angantyr (which is only found here and in the ballads), and the striking poem in which she is represented as visiting her father’s grave-mound to obtain his sword.
The next and longest section contains the life of Hervör’s son Heithrek, which is peculiar to this saga and which in its earlier part likewise seems to be a story of the Viking Age. Towards the end, however, it gradually dawns upon us that there has been an unconscious change of scene, and that Heithrek instead of being a Viking prince of the Northern coasts, is now represented as a King of the Goths, somewhere in the East of Europe—apparently in the neighbourhood of the Dnieper. In the last section of the story, dealing with the adventures of Angantyr and Hlöth, the sons of Heithrek, there is no longer any reminiscence of the Viking Age or the North of Europe. Here we are away back among the Goths and Huns in the fifth or the latter part of the fourth century.
Throughout this strange concatenation of scenes a connecting link is afforded by the magic flaming sword, which is handed on from generation to generation, and which can never be sheathed without having dealt a death wound.
It is abundantly clear that the latter part of the story is of a totally different origin from the first part, and in reality many centuries earlier. The prose here is for the most part little more than a paraphrase of the poem, which probably has its roots in poetry of the Gothic period. But how this story came to be joined on to a narrative of the Viking Age is far from clear.
It is also interesting to note that some of the characters in the saga are repetitions of one another. At all events what is said about Hervör the daughter of Heithrek in the latter part of the story bears a strong resemblance to the description of the more prominent Hervör, the daughter of Angantyr, in the first part.
Three poems of considerable length are preserved in the story. The Riddles of Gestumblindi, though somewhat tedious as a whole, afford a better specimen of this type of composition than is to be found elsewhere in early Norse literature. They cannot fail to be of considerable interest to anyone who studies the Anglo-Saxon Riddles, though unlike the latter they are wholly Teutonic in spirit and form. Direct Latin influence appears to be entirely absent.
Gestumblindi’s Riddles, while they belong essentially to popular literature, yet contain many arresting phrases which show a minute observation of nature. They illustrate the condensed, proverbial type of wisdom that prevails in a primitive state of society, as well as its keen interest and delight in the little things of life. They can hardly be called literature as we understand the term; they are rather the stuff of which literature is made. But though it is a far cry from these little nature verses to the more beautiful and more ambitious nature poems of Burns and Tennyson, yet Gestumblindi’s loving interest in “every creature of earth” surprised even King Heithrek into comment. The keen and whimsical observation that noted that even a spider is a “marvel” and that it “carries its knees higher than its body” is the same spirit that inspired a poem to the Wee sleekit, cowrin’, tim’rous beastie.
The poet who noticed that water falling as hail on rock looks white by contrast, yet forms little black circles when it falls into the sand as rain, had much in common with one who noticed that rock and sand yield opposite sounds when struck by the same object—
Low on the sand and loud on the stone
The last wheel echoed away.
But though these things are pleasing in themselves, they are, of course, slight. Gestumblindi cannot rise to the heights of true poetry reached by Burns or Tennyson.
Besides the Riddles, this saga has preserved for us two far finer poems—in fact two of the finest Norse poems that we possess—the dialogue between Hervör and Angantyr at the Barrows of Samsø, and the narrative of the great battle between the Goths and the Huns, the Chevy Chase of the North. The ruthlessness and barbaric splendour of the Hunnish leaders, the cruelty and the poetry of warfare a thousand years ago, are here vividly depicted in Norse verse at its simplest and best.
We may notice too the little vignettes that appear from time to time both in the poetry itself and in the prose narrative, some of which is evidently derived from lost verses.—Hervör standing at sunrise on the summit of the tower and looking southward towards the forest; Angantyr marshalling his men for battle and remarking drily that there used to be more of them when mead drinking was in question; great clouds of dust rolling over the plain, through which glittered white corslet and golden helmet, as the Hunnish host came riding on.
The dialogue between Hervör and Angantyr, despite a certain melodramatic element in the setting, is treated with great delicacy and poetic feeling, and an atmosphere of terror and mystery pervades the whole poem. The midnight scene in the eerie and deserted burial-ground, the lurid flickering of the grave fires along the lonely beach, the tombs opening one by one as the corpses start to life—all these work on the imagination and create an atmosphere of dread. The poet understood the technique of presenting the supernatural, and he is deliberately vague and suggestive. Much more is implied than is stated, and much is left to the imagination.
The greatest charm of the poem, however, lies in the sympathetic treatment of Hervör. The Hervör of the prose narrative is perfectly consistent with the Hervör of the poem, but at the same time the poem—which is probably more than a century older than the saga—would lead us to conclude that her character was not correctly understood by the writer of the saga. Obviously unsympathetic, he denounces her with an indignation which would have made the writer of the poem smile.
“She grew up to be a beautiful girl... but as soon as she could do anything it was oftener harm than good; and when she had been checked she escaped to the woods.... And when the Earl heard of it he had her caught and brought home.”
The picture which the poem presents to us is that of a high-spirited girl, headstrong and impulsive, not unlike Brynhild in the Völsung story. When she goes to the barrows, every nerve is strung up to gain the treasure that has fired her imagination:
What care I though the death-fires blaze,
They sink and tremble before my gaze,
They quiver out and die!
But a reaction comes when she holds the sword in her hands at last:
Surely in terror I drew my breath
Between the worlds of life and death
When the grave fires girt me round.
Surveying the saga as a whole, perhaps the most striking feature is its extraordinary diversity of interest. It would be difficult to find elsewhere in Norse literature—or indeed perhaps in any literature—so great a variety of subjects and of literary forms brought together within such narrow limits.
Of the poems contained in the saga, the first is romantic, the second gnomic, the third heroic—and the prose narrative itself is not less varied in character. The conclusion of the saga appears to be purely historical; indeed it is generally regarded as one of the most important authorities for early Swedish history. Elsewhere also historical elements are probably not wanting, but they are interwoven in a network of romance and folklore. Thus whoever King Heithrek may have been, the part which he has come to play in the saga is chiefly that of linking together a number of folk-tales and illustrating popular saws. As regards chronology, the war described in ch. 12-15 must belong to a period nearly seven centuries before the incidents related at the close of the saga. Still more strange is the fact that the victor in this war, the younger Angantyr, would seem to have lived some four or five centuries before his great grandfather and namesake who perished at Samsø—if indeed the latter story rests on any genuine tradition. In spite of these and similar inconsistencies, however, the saga is on the whole perhaps the most attractive of all the Fornaldarsögur.
Footnote 1: This ms. is identical with the one referred to as A in the Introduction to the Tháttr of Nornagest (cf. p. 11 above).
Footnote 2: Quoted by Heusler, Eddica Minora (Dortmund, 1903), p. vii.
Footnote 3: Fornaldarsögur Northrlanda (Copenhagen, 1829), Vol. i; Antiquités russes etc. (Copenhagen, 1850-2), Vol. i.
Footnote 4: Oldnorske og Oldislandske Litteraturs Historie, Vol. ii, p. 839 f.
Footnote 5: Eddica Minora, pp. 106-120.
Footnote 6: Cf. Forord to N. M. Petersen’s edition of Hervarar Saga ok Heithreks Konungs (published by the ‘Nordiske Literatur-Samfund,’ Copenhagen, 1847).
Footnote 7: See Fornaldarsögur Northrlanda (Reykjavík, 1891), Vol. i, pp. 309-360.
Footnote 8: Copenhagen, 4th edition, 1889.
Footnote 9: Oldnorske og Oldislandske Litteraturs Historie, Vol. i, p. 201.
Footnote 10: Geschichte der Norwegisch-Isländischen Literatur (Strassburg, 1904), p. 605.]