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48-502: Atlakviða ( The Lay of Atli ) is one of the heroic poems of the Poetic Edda . One of the main characters is Atli who originates from Attila the Hun . It is one of the most archaic Eddic poems, possibly dating to as early as the 9th century. Owing to its stylistic similarity to Hrafnsmál it has been suggested that the poem might have been composed by Þorbjörn Hornklofi . It is preserved in

96-464: A "discord-metal of men" ( Old Norse : rógmálmi scatna ) does however align with the Icelandic Rune Poem ' s opening line, "wealth is kinsmen's discord" ( Old Norse : fé er frænda róg ). Guðrún is relentless in her need to avenge her brothers. Although the poem expresses horror when it portrays the consequences of her actions— filicide , unsuspecting cannibalism and the deaths of kings—there

144-541: A coward. The German studies scholar Carola L. Gottzmann interprets the visit as a reaction to Atli's offer of gifts, which implies a demand of submission to the Hunnic king. The poet praises how Gunnarr ensures that his gold never will be found, which may be seen as contrary to the ethics of the Germanic lord-retainer system, where societal bonds were created through the generous distribution of wealth. The poem's description of gold as

192-606: A member of the retinue, was tried for the murder of a fellow housecarl. Svend Aggesen's account of the law governing Cnut the Great's housecarls in 11th century England (the Witherlogh or Lex Castrensis ) may reflect, in fact, those governing Danish housecarls in the 12th century. But, by the end of the 12th century, housecarls had probably disappeared in Denmark; they had transformed into a new kind of nobility, whose members no longer resided at

240-505: A network of forts manned by the royal housecarls, the mercenaries, the hird ". Among the Hedeby stones , the Stone of Eric (DR 1) is dedicated by a royal retainer to one of his companions: Thurlf, Sven's retainer [ heimþegi , a variant of húskarl according to Brøndsted] erected this stone after Erik his fellow, who died when the warriors sat around [i.e. besieged] Hedeby , but he was a commander,

288-604: A person who fought in the service of a different person. In Norway, housecarls were members of the king's or another powerful man's hirð . The institution of the hirð in Norway can be traced back to the ninth century. The texts dealing with royal power in medieval Norway, the Heimskringla and the Konungs skuggsjá ("King's Mirror"), make explicit the link between a king or leader and his retainers (housecarls and hirðmenn ). There

336-506: A standing army. Hooper asserts that while the Housecarles might well have had superior esprit de corps and more uniform training and equipment than the average Thegn, they would not necessarily have been a clearly defined military elite. Yet another theory is that the role of a standing army was not assumed, or was not mostly assumed, by the royal housecarls; but that the housecarls were a smaller body of household troops, partly stationed at

384-571: A strict code ( see above ); Aggesen having been used as a main source by L.M. Larson's The King's Household in England Before the Norman Conquest (1902). However, more recently, historian Nicholas Hooper criticised Larson and stated that "it is time to debunk the housecarl"; according to Hooper, housecarls were not in effect distinguishable from Saxon thegns , and were mainly retainers who received lands or pay (or both), but without being really

432-672: A very brave warrior. "Sven" is probably king Svein Forkbeard, as elsewhere on the Hedeby stones. Another runestone there, the Skarthi stone (DR 3), was apparently personally raised by king Svein: King Sveinn placed the stone in memory of Skarði, his retainer [ himþiga or heimþegi , again a variant of húskarl ], Skarde, who has sailed in the west [a possible reference to a campaign in England ], but who then died at Hedeby. Under Svein Forkbeard and Cnut

480-518: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Housecarls The institution originated amongst the Norsemen of Scandinavia , and was brought to Anglo-Saxon England by the Danish conquest in the 11th century. They were well-trained, and paid as full-time soldiers. In England, the royal housecarls had a number of roles, both military and administrative, and they fought under Harold Godwinson at

528-538: Is a genre of Germanic epic poetry characteristic of the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages . A lay is a short narrative poem of between 80 and 200 lines concerning a single heroic episode in the life of a warrior from Germanic legend . It is distinct from the heroic epic ( Beowulf , Nibelungenlied ) which combines a sequence of episodes into a longer narrative. This poetry -related article

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576-427: Is a ring sent by their sister Guðrún, Atli's wife, with a wolf's hair wrapped onto it. Atli obviously plans treachery but Gunnarr still decides to take up the offer, vowing that if he doesn't return no-one will benefit from his riches. As Gunnarr and Högni arrive at Atli's court they meet Guðrún who tells them that they should not have come. Gunnarr is seized by Atli's men while Högni fights and kills eight men before he

624-443: Is known from Icelandic sources that in the 1060s, the royal housecarls were paid with Norwegian coins. Six runestones in Denmark, DR 1 , DR 3 , DR 154, DR 155, DR 296 , and DR 297 , use the term heimþegi (pl. heimþegar ), meaning "home-receiver" (i.e. one who is given a house by another). The use of the term in the inscriptions suggest a strong similarity between heimþegar and housecarls: like housecarls, heimþegar are in

672-565: Is no direct condemnation of her behaviour. Unlike in Guðrúnarhvöt , where Guðrún is angry at the Norns for making her kill her sons, Atlakviða only suggests sorrow once, in strophe 37, before strophe 38 says that she "never wept". She kills Atli when he is in a defenseless state and unlike in Atlamál , he is not portrayed as a tyrannical husband. The final strophe (43) does stress that her actions led to

720-612: Is not clear whether these were types of housecarl or different altogether. Originally, the Old Norse word húskarl (plural: húskarlar ) (spelled huskarl, pl. huskarlar in Swedish ) had a general sense of "manservant", as opposed to the húsbóndi , the "master of the house". In that sense, the word had several synonyms: griðmenn ("home-men") in Norway and Iceland, innæsmæn ("inside-men") in Denmark. Housecarls were free men, not to be confused with thralls (slaves or serfs); to this effect,

768-429: Is subdued. The Huns ask Gunnarr if he wants to ransom his life by telling them where he has hidden his gold. He tells them that he wants to see Högni's heart. They first cut out the heart of a cowardly man named Hjalli and bring it to Gunnarr but he sees from the cowardly trembling of the heart who its owner was. Then they cut out Högni's heart and he dies laughing. Gunnarr recognizes the heart of his brave brother but tells

816-456: The fyrd . According to 12th century Danish historian Svend Aggesen, Cnut's housecarls were governed by a specific law, the Witherlogh or Lex Castrensis . Their organisation in a band or guild was Scandinavian in character, but the legal process the Witherlogh defines is mainly derived from canon law, directly or through Anglo-Saxon laws. Other possible inspirations include the rules of

864-484: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refers to Earl Tostig's retainers as hiredmenn whereas another version calls them hus karlas . As Tostig was fighting against the king at the time, then the use of the term housecarl seems to have been a synonym for a mercenary or retainer rather than just royal bodyguards. It also would have been used to differentiate between that of the paid warrior and the unpaid militia known as

912-534: The Baltic region . Scholars date the composition of Atlakviða to around the year 900, which makes it one of the oldest lays of the Poetic Edda . The 13th-century Codex Regius , in which the poem survives, says that it was written in Greenland, but the early composition date makes this implausible, since Greenland was not colonized until around 985. A Norwegian origin is considered likely. Due to stylistic similarities to

960-508: The Battle of Hastings . Housecarl is a calque of the original Old Norse term, húskarl , which literally means "house man". Karl is cognate to the Old English churl , or ceorl , meaning a man, or a non-servile peasant. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle uses hiredmenn as a term for all paid warriors and thus is applied to housecarl , but it also refers to butsecarls and lithsmen . It

1008-565: The Codex Regius and the same story is related in the Völsunga saga . In the manuscript the poem is identified as Greenlandic but most scholars believe that this results from a confusion with Atlamál . The metre of the poem alternates irregularly between málaháttr and fornyrðislag . This may be an indication that two or more original poems have been merged or that the short and long lines were not felt as constituting two different metres at

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1056-517: The Jomsvikings and the rules of the Norwegian hirð . The Whitherlogh defined an etiquette: housecarles were to be seated at the kings' tables according to a number of factors, among which skill in war and nobility. They could be disgraced by being moved to a lower place; this was punishment for minor offences, such as not giving proper care to the horse of a fellow housecarl. After three such offences,

1104-511: The Norman Conquest . From the annals, it is not clear whether other paid men were types of housecarl or a different subdivision of retainers. There were groups known as lithsmen and butsecarls , who were soldiers that were equally adept in land and maritime warfare. Also, there were bands of foreign warriors under the control of foreign commanders, who sometimes served as the retinues of important Anglo-Saxon lords. For example, one version of

1152-524: The skaldic poem Hrafnsmál , the medievalist Felix Genzmer argued that Atlakviða was written by that poem's author Þorbjörn Hornklofi in 872; it may at least have been inspired by Hrafnsmál . The metre in Atlakviða combines málaháttr and fornyrðislag , which together with stylistic variations also has led to suggestions that the poem was written by several authors. In the Scandinavian material,

1200-596: The Confessor . The royal housecarls had some administrative duties in peacetime as the King's representatives. Florence of Worcester recounts how, in 1041, there was a revolt against a very heavy levy in Worcester, and two of king Harthacnut 's housecarls, who were acting as tax collectors, were killed. Because the main sources on Cnut's housecarls were written at least one century after Cnut's reign, there are several theories about

1248-544: The Great, when the Danish kings came to rule England, a body of royal housecarls was developed there, with institutions that were partly of Norse inspiration, and partly inspired by canon law ( see below ). But even after the Danish kings had lost England, housecarls continued to exist in Denmark. Such a group of royal retainers was still in place at the beginning of the 12th century, under Niels of Denmark , when, according to Danish historian Svend Aggesen , Aggesen's grandfather,

1296-451: The Huns that now that he alone knows the location of the gold he can be certain that it will never be disclosed. The Huns then throw him into a snake pit where he dies playing a harp. Guðrún prepares a banquet for Atli and his court. When the feast is well underway she tells Atli that he is actually eating the flesh of their two sons. Guðrún later kills the unattentive Atli in his bed, sets loose

1344-474: The Icelandic laws also call them einhleypingar ("lone-runners") and lausamenn ("men not tied"). Both terms emphasise that they were voluntarily in service of another, as opposed to thralls . With time, the term "housecarls" ( húskarlar ) came to acquire a specific sense of "retainers", in the service of a lord, in his hirð , lid or drótt (all meaning "bodyguard", "troop of retainers"). In Denmark, this

1392-471: The assessment of the housecarls' specificities, and whether or not they were an elite troop. For instance, Charles Oman , in his book The Art of War in the Middle Ages (1885), states that the main advantage of the housecarls at Hastings were their esprit de corps . This view, still widely held today, mainly stems from Svend Aggesen's 12th-century description of Cnut's housecarls as a group characterized by

1440-430: The deaths of three kings. According to the medievalist Ursula Dronke , this might have been a later addition, but the strophe that precedes it also focuses on the deaths her actions caused. The heroic ethic of vengeance that overtakes Guðrún makes her monstrous, giving her an inhuman self-control which the poem's author appears to find both horrific and admirable. Heroic lay The heroic lay (German Heldenlied )

1488-510: The exact nature and role of these housecarls. Cnut is said to have retained 3,000 to 4,000 men with him in England, to serve as his bodyguard. One theory is that these men were Cnut's housecarls, and that they served as a well-equipped, disciplined, professional, and quite numerous (for the time) standing army at the service of the king. However, another theory is that there was nothing like an important, standing, royal army in 11th century Anglo-Saxon England. This debate has direct consequences on

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1536-577: The hounds and awakens the housecarls she has bribed. Guðrún throws a burning twig into the hall and eventually Atli's entire estate is set ablaze. All the people in the hall, Atli's temple, the "dwelling of the Buthlungs" as well as shield-maidens are consumed by the fire. Gunnarr is shown to be heroic in his moment of defeat and the poet explicitly praises both his and Högni's choices of action. The acceptance of Atli's invitation in spite of clear danger can be understood as necessary in order to not be labeled

1584-666: The king's court. The term entered the English language when Svein Forkbeard and Cnut the Great conquered and occupied Anglo-Saxon England; the housecarls of Cnut were highly disciplined bodyguards. It is unclear, however, whether Cnut's housecarls were all Scandinavians; some were Slavs according to Domesday Book records and according to Susan Reynolds , it is likely that some of them were English, with many Englishmen becoming housecarls early in Cnut's reign. Housecarls were only one group of paid soldiers or hiredmenn who fought for England before

1632-457: The king's court. During the reign of Edward the Confessor, a number of sailors and soldiers, the lithsmen , were paid wages and possibly based in London; those lithsmen were, according to some, the main standing armed force, while the housecarls were only acting as a secondary one. One reason to doubt the existence of a standing army made of housecarls is that, when there was a revolt in 1051, under

1680-529: The king's service. That was New Year's Eve , a day on which it was customary for Scandinavian kings to reward their retainers with gifts. On one hand, the number of housecarls receiving land grants and estates from the king seems to have been rather limited, from the beginning of Cnut's reign up to the Norman conquest in 1066. At that last date, the Domesday Book records only thirty-three landholding housecarls in

1728-462: The kingdom; furthermore, these estates were small. Thus, it does not seem that the English landholders were deprived of their properties to provide for land grants to the king's housecarls. On the other hand, some of Cnut's housecarls seem to have been quite prosperous; the Abbotsbury Abbey was founded either by one of them under the reign of Cnut himself, or by his wife under the reign of Edward

1776-399: The nature of the quarrel, a varying number of testimonies would be required. However, the Witherlogh as we know it through Svend Aggesen was redacted more than one century after the time of Cnut; thus, we cannot be sure that it presents an accurate picture of Cnut's housecarls. A special tax was levied to provide pay in coin to the royal housecarls. According to Saxo Grammaticus , the pay

1824-467: The offender could be seated at the lowest place, and no-one was to talk to him, but everyone could throw bones at him at will. The murder of another housecarl was punished by outlawry and exile, whereas treason was punished by death and confiscation of all property. Quarrels between housecarles were decided by a specific tribunal ( gemot ), the Huskarlesteffne , in the presence of the king; depending on

1872-447: The reign of Edward the Confessor, no such standing army was used to crush it, whereas its existence would have allowed for a swift, decisive action against the rebels. By the end of the 11th century in England, there may have been as many as 3,000 Englishmen who were royal housecarls. As the household troops of Harold Godwinson , the housecarls had a crucial role as the backbone of Harold's army at Hastings. Although they were numerically

1920-456: The retainers of Olaf II of Norway heiðþegar , meaning "gift- (or pay-)receivers". More precisely, Snorri Sturluson explained that " heið -money is the name of the wages or gift which chieftains give". Thus, Sigvat probably referred to an institution similar to the Danish heimþegar ( see below ) or to the housecarls of Cnut the Great ( see below ): free men in the service of a king or lord, who gave them gifts as payment of said service. It

1968-577: The retinue [ lid ], held their housecarls well. He fell in battle in the east in Garðar (Russia) , commander of the retinue [ lid ], the best of landholders. According to Omeljan Pritsak , this Þorsteinn may have commanded the retinue of Yaroslav the Wise , the Grand Prince of Kiev . Thus, the housecarls mentioned here would be royal bodyguards; in any case, it can be seen here that the word "housecarl" now applied to

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2016-520: The same story is treated in a different way in the later poem Atlamál and retold in prose in the Völsunga saga . Atli, king of the Huns, sends a messenger to Gunnarr , king of the Burgundians, and his younger brother Högni . The messenger says that Atli is inviting the brothers to his court and offering them great riches. The brothers are skeptical of the offer since they already have an exceedingly great treasure of gold. Confirming their suspicions

2064-409: The service of a king or lord, of whom they receive gifts (here, homes) for their service. Johannes Brøndsted interpreted heimþegi as nothing more than a local (Danish) variant of húskarl . Johannes Brøndsted suggested that the garrison of the Danish fort of Trelleborg may have consisted of royal housecarls, and that kings Svein Forkbeard and Cnut the Great may have "safeguarded the country by

2112-458: The smaller part of Harold's army, their possibly superior equipment and training meant they could have been used to strengthen the militia, or fyrd , which made up most of Harold's troops. The housecarls were positioned in the centre, around their leader's standard, but also probably in the first ranks of both flanks, with the fyrdmen behind them. In the Battle of Hastings , these Housecarls fought after Harold's death, holding their oath to him until

2160-537: The time the poem was composed. Atlakviða' s subject relates to the historical interaction between Burgundians and Huns in the 5th century. The poem is the oldest surviving version of the legend about the visit of the Burgundian rulers to Atli's court and the revenge of Guðrún . Ultimately derived from Burgundian heroic legend, the Scandinavian literature about the subject is believed to be based on either Low German models or Gothic poems that reached Scandinavia via

2208-507: Was a special fine for the killing of a king's man, which in Konungs skuggsjá is underlined as an advantage of entering the king's service. Conversely, retainers were expected to avenge their leader if he was killed. Sigvatr Þórðarson (also known as Sigvat the Skald), a court poet to two kings of Norway, Olaf II of Norway (saint Olaf) and Magnus the Good (and also to two kings of Denmark), called

2256-459: Was also the sense of the word himthige , a variant of húskarl ( see below ). This meaning can be seen, for instance, on the Turinge stone : Ketill and Bjôrn, they raised this stone in memory of Þorsteinn, their father; Ônundr in memory of his brother and the housecarls in memory of the just(?) (and) Ketiley in memory of her husbandman. These brothers were the best of men in the land and abroad in

2304-481: Was monthly. Due to these wages, the housecarls are seen by some as a type of mercenary ; the Knýtlinga saga calls them málamenn ("men receiving wages"), while Florence of Worcester uses the term solidarii ("salarymen") and William of Malmesbury that of stipendarii ("paid men"). Furthermore, the housecarles were not bound to indefinite service; but there was only one day in the year during which they could leave

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