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59-604: Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks (The Saga of Hervör and Heidrek) is a legendary saga from the 13th century combining matter from several older sagas in Germanic heroic legend . It tells of wars between the Goths and the Huns during the 4th century. The final part of the saga, which was likely composed separately from and later than the rest, is a source for Swedish medieval history. The saga may be most appreciated for its memorable imagery, as seen in

118-520: A holmganga (duel) on Samsø against the Swedish hero Hjálmarr , whose friend Örvar-Oddr buries the cursed sword in a barrow with Angantýr's body. Tyrfingr is retrieved from the barrow by Angantýr's daughter, the shieldmaiden Hervör , who summons her dead father to claim her inheritance. This section mixes prose with extensive quotations from a poem known today as Hervarakviða , which largely comprises dialogue between Hervör and her father. Then

177-470: A 4to. All the different manuscripts of the saga tell a similar story, though with many variations of detail (in particular, the U- and H-versions open with a mythic tale of Guðmundr of Glæsisvellir ). The saga deals with the sword Tyrfingr and how it was forged and cursed by the dwarfs Dvalinn and Durin for king Svafrlami . Later, Svafrlami loses it to the berserker Arngrímr of Bolmsö . The sword provides

236-614: A common ancestor with R 715. The version dramatically reworks the saga, adding a new opening chapter and including alterations sourced from other sagas, including from the Rímur reworking of the same tale, the Hervarar Rímur . H ( Hauksbók : Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, AM 544), dates to c. 1325. This parchment manuscript is today fragmentary, containing the story up to the end of Gestumblindi's second riddle, but two early copies (AM 281 4to) and (AM 597b) record parts of H now lost. H

295-572: A common link throughout the saga, being passed down through the generations in Arngrímr's family, particularly the saga's main protagonists, Hervör and her son Heiðrekr. This magical sword shares a common property with other mythological weapons such as Dáinsleif and Bödvar Bjarki's sword in Hrolf Kraki's Saga that, once it has been drawn, it cannot be sheathed until it has drawn blood. Arngrímr passes Tyrfingr to his son Angantýr . Angantýr dies during

354-559: A fond farewell of his mother and departed over the Fyrisvellir . When they saw Aðils and his warriors in pursuit, they spread the gold behind themselves. Aðils saw his precious Svíagris on the ground and stooped to pick it up with his spear, whereupon Hrólf cut his back with his sword and screamed in triumph that he had bent the back of the most powerful man in Sweden. Hrólfr lived in peace for some time. However, his half-elven half-sister Skuld

413-415: A man named Vöggr to entertain them. This Vöggr remarked that Hrólfr had the thin face of a pole ladder, a Kraki . Happy with his new cognomen Hrólfr gave Vöggr a golden ring, and Vöggr swore to avenge Hrólfr if anyone should kill him. Hrólfr and his company were then attacked by a troll in the shape of a boar in the service of Aðils, but Hrólfr's dog Gram killed it. They then found out that Aðils had set

472-483: A quotation from one of its translators, Nora Kershaw Chadwick , on the invasion of the Huns: Hervör standing at sunrise on the summit of the tower and looking southward towards the forest; Angantyr marshalling his men for battle and remarking dryly 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

531-480: Is a conflation of an early version of the saga similar to that preserved in R, and the U-version of the saga. Thus although it is found in the earliest surviving manuscript, H is the third known recension of the saga. There are many other paper manuscripts of the saga that were copied in the seventeenth century from the manuscripts mentioned above. These include AM 192, AM 193, AM 202 k, AM 354 4to, AM 355 4to, and AM 359

590-588: Is common to a widely known family of tales (called by Knut Liestøl "The Good Counsels of the Father"). In general there are three counsels; in the saga, a set of three (1st, 2nd, and 6th) fit together. Tolkien proposes that after the counsels were introduced into the work, further counsels were added, further extending that theme through the saga. The poem Hlöðskviða (or "Battle of the Goths and Huns") has numerous analogues that overlap in topical coverage. The oldest of these

649-415: Is in most respects closest witness to the lost archetype of Heiðreks saga . U is the version best attested in a seventeenth-century paper manuscript, Uppsala, University Library, R 715. Another early witness to parts of this version is the seventeenth-century paper manuscript Copenhagen, Den Arnamagnæanske Samling, AM 203 fol. This contains a copy of R, but where R breaks off it then continues with text from

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708-598: Is much in this saga that readers of J. R. R. Tolkien 's work will recognize, most importantly the riddle contest . There are, for instance, warriors similar to the Rohirrim , brave shieldmaidens , Mirkwood , haunted barrows yielding enchanted swords (see Barrow-downs ), an epic battle, and two dwarfs named Dwalin and Durin . Legendary saga In terms of form, fornaldarsögur are similar to various other saga-genres, but tend towards fairly linear, episodic narratives. Like sagas in other genres, many quote verse, but in

767-551: Is taken prisoner. In the other battle, the new Langobardian king Lamissio is victorious; Much conflates this battle with that of the Goths and Huns. He also identifies the battlefields to be north of the River Danube in the Carpathian Mountains , near modern-day Kraków . In the latter half of the 19th century, Heinzel's theory was predominant and widely accepted. Later, Gustav Neckel and Gudmund Schütte further analyzed

826-563: Is the visigothic Athanaric . In an analysis of parts of the tale, ( Tolkien 1953 ) identifies the place where Angantyr revenges his father's (Heithrekr) killing by slaves as being at the foot of the Carpathians, using linguistic analysis based on consonant shifts (see Grimm's Law ) in the term "Harvath Mountains". The place Árheimar in Danparstathir mentioned in association is unidentified, though "Danpar-" has been assumed to be some form of

885-461: Is thought to be the Old English poem Widsith . Several of the characters who appear in the battle of the Goths and Huns appear are mentioned in this poem: Heiðrekr (Heaþoric), Sifka (Sifeca), Hlǫðr (Hliðe), and Angantýr (Incgenþeow). Tolkien considers that the poem, though seemingly considerably altered over time, once formed part of a continuous poetic narrative that gave a complete description of

944-581: The Great Lacuna ). Other sagas deal with heroes such as Ragnar Lodbrok , Hrólf Kraki and Orvar-Odd . In these respects, then, the fornaldarsögur overlap in genre and occasionally content with the Kings' sagas . The Fornaldarsagas have great value for legend research, since they contain motifs and complexes of motifs from many types of legend of which there is otherwise no documentation in Scandinavia prior to

1003-501: The Saga of King Rolf Kraki , is a late legendary saga on the adventures Hrólfr Kraki , a semi-legendary king in what is now Denmark , and his clan , the Skjöldungs . The events can be dated to the late 5th century and the 6th century. A precursor text may have dated to the 13th century, but the saga in the form that survived to this day dates to c. 1400. Forty-four manuscripts survive, but

1062-652: The fornaldarsögur that verse is almost invariably in the metre of Eddaic verse (unlike the skaldic verse found in most other saga genres). The setting is primarily Scandinavia in the time prior to the settlement of Iceland and the conversion of Scandinavia, but occasionally it moves temporarily to more distant and exotic locations or has its characters encounter Christian cultures (one example of both being Örvar-Odds saga ). There are also very often mythological elements, such as dwarves , elves , giants and magic . In centuries past, they were considered to be reliable historic sources by Scandinavian scholars, but since

1121-417: The 19th century, they have been considered to contain very little historic material. The present consensus is that, although some of the sagas contain a small core which is not fiction, or are based on historical characters, the primary function of the legendary sagas was entertainment, and the aim of the sagas has not been to present a historically accurate tale. Recently, however, it has been emphasized that

1180-468: The Danes. Finally Aðils entertained them but put them to a test where they had to endure immense heat by a fire. Hrólfr and his berserkers finally had enough and threw the courtiers, who were feeding the fire, into the fire and leapt at Aðils. The Swedish king disappeared through a hollow tree trunk that stood in his hall. Yrsa admonished Aðils for wanting to kill her son, and went to meet the Danes. She gave them

1239-797: The Danish Angelfyr og Helmer kamp , the Faroese Hjálmar og Angantýr , Arngrims synir , Gátu rima , and in the Swedish Kung Speleman . The Faroese ballad, Gátu ríma ('riddle poem') was collected in the 19th century; it is thought by some scholars to derive from the riddle-contest in the saga. At the beginning of the 18th century, George Hickes published a translation of the Hervararkviða in his Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archæologicus . Working from Verelius's 1671 translations ( Verelius 1671 ), with

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1298-691: The Frankish Chlodio , with the incorporation of parts of the general Litorius , whereas the Vandal Geiseric is the prototype for Gizurr Grytingalithi. ( Much 1889 ) proposed alternative attributions for the battles. One, recorded by Paul the Deacon , took place between the Langobards and the Vulgares Bulgars ; in that battle, Agelmundus ( Agelmund ) was killed, and his sister (conflated with Hervor)

1357-518: The Goth-Hun conflict and existed as a separate work. In the 17th century, when the Norse sagas became a subject of interest to scholars, they were initially taken as reasonably accurate depictions of historical events. Later, in the 19th and 20th centuries, scholars realized that they were not completely historically accurate. Carl Christian Rafn ( Rafn 1850 ) considered that the battle between Goths and Huns

1416-603: The Goths lived during the wars with the Huns. The Gothic capital Árheimar is located on the Dniepr ( ...á Danparstöðum á þeim bæ, er Árheimar heita... ), King Heidrek dies in the Carpathians (... und Harvaða fjöllum ), and the battle with the Huns takes place on the plains of the Danube (... á vígvöll á Dúnheiði í Dylgjudölum ). The mythical Myrkviðr [Mirkwood] that separates the Goths from

1475-571: The Hunnish host came riding on. The text contains several poetic sections: the Hervararkviða , on Hervor's visit to her father's grave and her retrieval of the sword Tyrfing ; another, the Hlöðskviða , on the battle between Goths and Huns; and a third, containing the riddles of Gestumblindi . It has inspired later writers and derivative works, such as J. R. R. Tolkien when shaping his legends of Middle-earth . His son, Christopher Tolkien translated

1534-480: The Huns appears to correspond to the Maeotian marshes . Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks was one source for the fifteenth-century Icelandic poem Ormars rímur (probably via a now-lost prose saga), in which the hero Ormarr visits his father's burial mound to convince his dead father to give him his sword. Traditions appearing in the saga have also been preserved in several Scandinavian medieval ballads and rímur , i.e.

1593-584: The Skjöldungs, as the Scyldings. Moreover, some of their enemies also appear: Fróðo as Froda and king Aðils of Sweden as the Swedish king Eadgils . There are similarities between Bödvar Bjarki killing the beast at the king's court and the killing of Grendel in Beowulf. In Hrólfr Kraki's saga , Halfdan ( Healfdene ) had three children, the sons Helgi ( Halga ) and Hróarr ( Hroðgar ) and the daughter Signý. The sister

1652-532: The Swede Esaias Tegnér , who wrote Frithiof's saga , based on the Friðþjófs saga ins frœkna . One such saga was even forged in the early modern period: Hjalmars och Hramers saga . For a comprehensive list of the medieval fornaldarsögur , with information about manuscripts, bibliography, etc., see Stories for all time: The Icelandic fornaldarsögur . Hrolf Kraki%27s Saga Hrólfs saga kraka ,

1711-670: The aid of a Swedish scholar, he presented the entire poem in half-line verse similar to that used in Old English poetry (see Old English metre ). It was the first full Icelandic poem translated into English, and it aroused interest in England in such works. The work was reprinted in Dryden's Poetical Miscellanies (1716) and by Thomas Percy in amended form as "The Incantation of Hervor" in his Five Pieces of Runic Poetry (1763). Hickes's publication inspired various "Gothic" and "Runic odes" based on

1770-594: The case of Hervarar saga , it conveys names of historical places in present Ukraine during the period c. 150-450, and the last part of the saga is used as a historic source for Swedish history. Indeed, they often contain very old Germanic matter, such as the Hervarar saga and the Völsunga saga which contains poetry about Sigurd that did not find its way into the Poetic Edda and which would otherwise have been lost (see

1829-450: The gold that Aðils had taken from Helgi after the battle. Hrólfr departed with 120 men and his twelve berserkers and during a rest they were tested by a farmer called Hrani ( Odin in disguise) who advised Hrólfr to send back all his troops but his twelve berserkers, as numbers would not help him against Aðils. They were at first well received, but in his hall, Aðils did his best to stop Hrólfr with pit traps and hidden warriors who attacked

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1888-439: The hall on fire, and so they broke out of the hall, only to find themselves surrounded by heavily armed warriors in the street. After a fight, king Aðils retreated to summon reinforcements. Yrsa then provided her son with a silver drinking horn filled with gold and jewels and a famous ring, Svíagris. Then she gave Hrólf and his men twelve of the Swedish king's best horses, and all the armour and provisions they needed. Hrólfr took

1947-570: The legendary sagas in less esteem, in terms of their literary value, than the Icelanders' sagas. The content is often less realistic, the characters more two-dimensional, and the sagas often borrow themes from each other, and from folk tales. In these aspects of style and reception, the fornaldarsögur tend to overlap with the Chivalric sagas , particularly those composed in medieval Iceland. The legendary sagas have influenced later writers, for instance

2006-405: The main surviving evidence for medieval Scandinavian riddling . After Heiðrekr's death, his sons Angantýr and Hlöðr wage a great battle over their father's inheritance. Hlöðr is aided by the Huns, to whom his mother belonged, but nonetheless Angantýr defeats and kills him. This section of the saga too quotes extensively from a poem describing this battle between the Huns and Goths. The end of

2065-475: The mid-19th century. They are also of great value for scholars studying medieval Scandinavian ballads, particularly the Faroese kvæði , which are often based on the same matters. Moreover, they are also very important for the study of Scandinavian and Germanic heroic legends together with Saxo Grammaticus ' Gesta Danorum which was based on the same heroic poetry and traditions. Philologists have generally held

2124-582: The midwinter celebrations, with all the weapons hidden in wagons. A fight started and like in the account found in Gesta Danorum , Bödvar Bjarki fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by Hjalti. Skuld used her witchcraft to resuscitate her fallen warriors and after a long fight Hrólfr and all his berserkers fell. Skuld became the ruler of Denmark but did not rule well. Bödvar Bjarki's brothers Elk-Froði and Þorir Houndsfoot went to Denmark to avenge their brother. The Swedish queen Yrsa gave them

2183-736: The oldest one of them is from the 17th century, although a manuscript is known to have existed c. 1461 at the monastery of Möðruvellir in Iceland . The saga elaborates on the same matter as several other sagas and chronicles in Scandinavian tradition, and also in the Anglo-Saxon poems Beowulf and Widsith . In Beowulf and Widsith , many of the same characters appear in their corresponding Old English forms: Hrólfr Kraki appears as Hroðulf, his father Helgi as Halga , his uncle Hróarr as Hroðgar , his grandfather Halfdan as Healfdene and their clan,

2242-483: The outline story of the duel between Arngrímr and Hjálmarr also appears in books 5 and 6 of the Gesta Danorum . There are also elemental plot similarities between the saga and Sturlaugs saga starfsama up to the point that a protagonist receives the magic sword from a female figure; Hall surmises that the two may share a narrative origin. The section of the saga concerning Heiðrekr's disregard for his father's advice

2301-518: The poem, of varying quality and faithfulness to the original. ( Wawn 2002 ) states "[T]he cult of the ubiquitous eighteenth-century poem known as 'The Waking of Angantyr' can be traced directly to its door." The Hervararkviða poem was translated fairly closely into verse by Beatrice Barmby and included in her Gísli Súrsson: a Drama (1900); and into a more "Old English" style by ( Smith-Dampier 1912 ) in The Norse King's Bridal . Hjálmar's Death-Song

2360-449: The relationship between the events in the saga and real-world historical characters, events, and places (see § Historicity ), the manuscripts and contents are also useful to research into the attitudes and cultures of the periods in which they were composed or written down. Hall thinks the text derives ultimately from oral tradition , not from the invention of an author. Hall believes the poem Hervararkviða (or 'The Waking of Angantýr')

2419-506: The river Dnieper . Similarities with the Battle of Nedao (454 CE) have also been noted. It is a testimony to its great age that names appear in genuinely Germanic forms and not in any form remotely influenced by Latin. Names for Goths appear that ceased to be used after 390 CE, such as Grýting (cf. the Latin form Greutungi ) and Tyrfing (cf. the Latin form Tervingi ). The events take place where

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2478-538: The saga is only preserved in the U-recension. This version relates that Angantýr had a son, Heiðrekr Ulfhamr  [ es ] , who was king of Reiðgotaland for a long time. Heiðrekr's daughter Hildr was the mother of Hálfdanr the Valiant , who was the father of Ívarr Víðfaðmi . After Ívarr, there follows a list of Swedish kings , both real and semi-legendary , ending with Philip Halstensson . However, this king-list

2537-491: The saga relates how Hervör marries and has a son Heiðrekr , who becomes king of Reiðgotaland . Heiðrekr spends his youth systematically contravening the good advice given to him by his father and fathering sons on several different women. Eventually, he settles down and becomes a wise king. At this point in the saga, Heiðrekr is killed after a riddle contest with Óðinn (who is disguised as Gestumblindi ). The riddles of Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks are all in verse and constitute

2596-462: The sagas are useful sources for the culture of 13th and 14th century Iceland, "in terms of the light that they can shed on the culture in which they were composed" i.e. Iceland in the later Middle Ages. In the words of Margaret Clunies Ross, Some of the sagas are based on distant historic characters, and this is evident in cases where there are corroborating sources, such as Ragnars saga loðbrókar , Yngvars saga víðförla and Völsunga saga . In

2655-538: The setting of the tale changes from the Kingdom of the Goths to somewhere in Eastern Europe ( c. 4th–5th century); finally, the tale returns to the historically later date. Kershaw considers that the latter part of the tale involving the Huns and Goths has an origin separate from that of the earlier parts and, in chronological time, is actually taking place several centuries earlier. In addition to attempts to understand

2714-596: The strife between brothers from that of the Goth-Hun war, as well as their geographic locations, and identified both sites as being in southern Russia. Boer associated the Dunheithr with the Daugava River but placed the battle further north in central European Russia, in the Valdai Hills . Further scholarship in the 20th century added more name and place attributions, with Otto von Friesen and Arwid Johannson returning to

2773-461: The surviving manuscripts and the ways in which they vary has been studied in detail. R is the version found in the fifteenth-century parchment manuscript Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, MS 2845, formerly held in the Danish Royal Library at Copenhagen. The manuscript is fragmentary, today containing the saga only into chapter 12, that is within the poem on the battle of Goths and Huns. R

2832-460: The textual and historical information. Neckel placed the events after the death of Attila (d. 453 CE) during the later Gepid-Hun conflicts, whereas Schütte identified either Heithrekr or Heathoric as transformations of the name of the Gepid king Ardaric . In the early 1900s, Henrik Schück and Richard Constant Boer both rejected Heinzel's attribution and the link with Attila. Schück split the legend of

2891-526: The western end of the Carpathians; Hermann Schneider placing the Goths in the Black Sea area ( Crimean Goths ); and Niels Clausen Lukman reanalyzing the tale, not in the context of Jordanes' history but in that of Ammianus Marcellinus . Lukman shifted the date to 386 CE, when a mass migration of peoples under Odotheus (conflated with Hlothr) was destroyed by the Romans on the Danube ; in his reconstruction Heithrekr

2950-449: The work into English as The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise . There are three medieval recensions of the saga, each of which is an independent witness to its lost archetype, and which together are the basis for all post-medieval manuscripts of the saga. These are known as versions R , H , and U . The saga continued to be copied in manuscript into the nineteenth century, and the relationships of

3009-620: Was a legendary retelling of the battle between the Gothic king Ostrogotha and the Gepid king Fastida , which was described by Jordanes in Ch. 17 of his history of the Goths. Richard Heinzel ( Heinzel 1887 ), in his analysis Über die Hervararsaga , suggested the battle described was the same as the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains (451 CE), identifying Angantyr as the Roman general Aetius and Hlothr as

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3068-409: Was asleep, and sending him back to his ship. Some time later, Helgi returned and through a ruse, he kidnapped the queen for a while during which time he made her pregnant. Having returned to her kingdom, the queen bore a child, a girl which she named Yrsa after her dog. Yrsa was set to live as a shepherd, until she was 12 years old, when she met her father Helgi who fell in love with her, not knowing it

3127-528: Was composed specifically for a narrative closely akin to the tale told in Heiðreks saga , as it is consistent in style and forms a consistent narrative link between the events in the tale. Tolkien considers it unequivocally older than the saga itself. The exact nature of the original underlying narrative for the poem is a matter of scholarly debate. Some passages of the poetry in Heiðreks saga also appear in variant forms in Örvar-Odd's saga (lines 97–9, 103-6), and

3186-405: Was his daughter. Oluf kept quiet about the parentage and saw it as her revenge that Helgi would wed his own daughter. Helgi and Yrsa had the son Hrólfr . Learning that Helgi and Yrsa lived happily together, queen Oluf travelled to Denmark to tell her daughter the truth. Yrsa was shocked and although Helgi wanted their relationship to remain as it was, Yrsa insisted on leaving him to live alone. She

3245-550: Was later taken by the Swedish king Aðils ( Eadgils ) as his queen, which made Helgi even more unhappy. Helgi went to Uppsala to fetch her, but was killed by Aðils in battle. In Lejre , he was succeeded by his son Hrólfr. Hrólfr soon assembled twelve great berserkers named Hrómundr harði, Hrólfr skjóthendi, Svipdagr , Beigaðr , Hvítserkr inn hvati, Haklangr, Harðrefill, Haki inn frækni, Vöttr inn mikilaflaði, Starólfr, Hjalti inn hugprúði and Bödvar Bjarki . After some time, Bödvar Bjarki encouraged Hrólfr to go Uppsala to claim

3304-442: Was married to Hjörvarðr ( Heoroweard ) one of Hrólfr's subkings, and she began to turn her husband against Hrólfr. Under the pretext that they would wait three years before paying the accumulated tribute at one time, Skuld assembled a large army which included strong warriors, criminals, elves and norns . She used seiðr (witchcraft) to hide the great muster from Hrólfr and his champions. They then arrived at Lejre one yule for

3363-449: Was probably composed separately from the rest of the saga and integrated into it in later redactions. The saga tells the history of the family of Hervör and Heidrek over several generations. Then, the story turns to the sons of Arngrim , a Viking Age tale also told in the Hyndluljóð . Next, the tale tells of Hervör , daughter of Angantyr ; then of Heidrek son of Hervör. At this point,

3422-573: Was the eldest and married to Sævil Jarl, with whom she had the son Hrókr. Halfdan was murdered by his own brother Fróði ( Froda ) and the two brothers had to seek refuge with a man called Vivil on an island, until they could avenge their father and kill Fróði. Whereas Hróarr moved to Northumbria and married the king's daughter, Helgi (i.e. Halga) went to the Saxons wanting to woo their warlike queen Oluf. She was, however, not interested and humiliated Helgi by shaving his head and covering him with tar, while he

3481-512: Was translated by W. Herbert in his Select Icelandic Poetry . The French poet Charles-Marie-René Leconte de Lisle adapted the Hervararkviða in the poem "L’Épée d’Angantyr" [ Angantyr's Sword ] in his Poèmes barbares . Swedish composer Wilhelm Stenhammar wrote the opera Tirfing as an adaptation of the Hervor-section of the saga using her as the opera's lead protagonist. There

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