Saga Book
Saga Book
Saga Book
VOL. XL
President
Judy Quinn, B.A., Ph.D., University of Cambridge.
Hon. Secretaries
Haki Antonsson, M.Litt, Ph.D., University College London.
David Ashurst, B.Sc, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Durham University.
Hon. Treasurer
David Reid, B.A., University College London.
Saga-Book Editors
Alison Finlay, B.A., B.Phil., D.Phil., Birkbeck, University of London.
Christina Lee, M.A., Ph.D., University of Nottingham.
John McKinnell, M.A., Durham University.
Carl Phelpstead, B.A., M.Phil., D.Phil., Cardiff University.
Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, B.A., Ph.D., University of Cambridge.
Reviews Editors
Alison Finlay
Erin Goeres, B.A., M.A., D.Phil., University College London.
ISSN: 0305-9219
Printed by Short Run Press Limited, Exeter
CONTENTS
REVIEWS
reykholt. archaeological investigations at a high status farm
in western iceland. By Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir. (Chris
Callow) .................................................................................... 105
into the ocean. vikings, irish, and environmental change in
iceland and the north. By Kristján Ahronson. (Paul Sander
Langeslag) ............................................................................... 106
the vikings in ireland and beyond. before and after the battle
of clontarf.
Edited by Howard B. Clarke and Ruth Johnson
(Rosemary Power) ................................................................... 109
fibula, fabula, fact. the viking age in finland.
Edited by Joonas
Ahola and Frog with Clive Tolley. (M.Th. Karolina Kouvola) ... 111
the viking age in åland. insights into identity and remnants of
culture.Edited by Joonas Ahola, Frog and Jenni Lucenius.
(M.Th. Karolina Kouvola) ....................................................... 113
the conversion of scandinavia: vikings, merchants and mission-
aries in the remaking of northern europe. By Anders Winroth.
(Paul Gazzoli) .......................................................................... 115
the viking experience. By Marjolein Stern and Roderick Dale.
(Dale Kedwards) ...................................................................... 117
66 manuscripts from the arnamagnæan collection. Edited by M.
J. Driscoll and Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir. (Stefan Drechsler) .... 119
writing and reading in medieval manuscript culture. the trans-
lation and transmission of the story of elye in old french
and old norse literary contexts. By Stefka Georgieva
Eriksen. (Stefan Drechsler) ................................................... 121
riddarasÑgur: the translation of european court culture in
medieval scandinavia. Edited by Karl G. Johansson and Else
Mundal. (Heidi Støa) ............................................................ 123
women in old norse literature. bodies, words, and power. By
Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir. (Philip Lavender) ................. 126
tree of salvation: yggdrasil and the cross in the north. By G.
Ronald Murphy. (Michael Bintley) ....................................... 128
magic and kingship in medieval iceland. the construction of a
discourse of political resistance. By Nicolas Meylan. (Jan
Alexander van Nahl) .............................................................. 130
erzählen im mittelalterlichen skandinavien ii. Edited by Robert
Nedoma. (Daniela Hahn) ...................................................... 132
new focus on retrospective methods. resuming methodological
discussions. case studies from northern europe. Edited by
Eldar Heide and Karen Bek-Pedersen. (Clive Tolley) ............. 134
the academy of odin. selected papers on old norse literature.
By Lars Lönnroth. (Paul Bibire)............................................. 136
myths, legends, and heroes. essays on old norse and old english
literature in honour of john mckinnell. Edited by Daniel
Anlezark. (John D. Shafer) ................................................... 140
eddukvæði i–ii. Edited by Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Óla-
son. (Brittany Schorn) ........................................................... 143
gesta danorum. the history of the danes. By Saxo Grammaticus.
Edited by Karsten Friis-Jensen. Translated by Peter Fisher.
(Lars Boje Mortensen) ......................................................... 145
Rodulf and Ubba. In Search of a Frisian–Danish Viking 5
By STEPHEN LEWIS
Independent Scholar
It is strange that, while students of other Germanic peoples have been obsessed
with the identity and office of their leaders, Viking scholars have said very
little of such things—a literal case of Hamlet without princes of Denmark!
(Patrick Wormald 1982, 144)
ment in Frisia than can be provided here see Coupland 1998, Helton 2011, Maund
1995, Bauduin 2009, Lebecq 2011, Vogel 1906, de Vries 1923, Blok 1978 and
Braat 1954.
Rodulf and Ubba. In Search of a Frisian–Danish Viking 7
brothers, and in 841 Louis the Pious’s son Lothar I granted him the same
Frisian island benefice of Walcheren that Hemming had held before him
(AB 841, 39; Nelson 1991, 51). The two other known brothers of Harald
Klak, called Anulo and Reginfrid, had died in dynastic fights in Denmark
in 812 and 814 respectively (ARF 812, 814, 136, 141).
It seems certain that the younger Harald and a brother called Rorik
were involved in some of the raids on Frisia in the 830s, although it is
unlikely that Lothar I incited these raids as part of his long struggle with
his father Louis for his rightful inheritance of the Frankish empire, as
has been claimed by a number of historians (e.g. Coupland 1998, 90–93;
Henstra 2012, 35; Lund 1989, 47; Lund 2005, 31; Nelson 1991, 51 n. 9).
The 841 grant of Walcheren to Harald was probably made either early in
the year when Lothar was desperately trying to prevent Charles the Bald
from crossing the Seine and joining forces with Louis the German, or more
likely in the aftermath of the bloody battle of Fontenoy on 25 June 841
where Lothar was defeated by Louis and Charles and after which he was
frantically looking for allies to support him (AB 841 39; Nelson 1991, 51).2
Harald is named by the royal Frankish chronicler Nithard (a grandson of
Charlemagne) as one of Lothar’s army leaders on the Moselle in March
842 and Nithard also mentions that Lothar had called in the Northmen to
help him (Lauer 1926, 114, 122; Scholz 1972, 164, 167); he died sometime
in the course of the next few years (Coupland 1998, 92).
In 850 Rorik, who had been in exile for a few years in Saxony in Louis
the German’s realm following some supposed disloyalty to Lothar, col-
lected a great fleet and army and together and with his cousin Godfrid,
Harald Klak’s son, raided and captured the important, though by now
declining, Frisian emporium of Dorestad. Lothar I had no choice but to
grant the town, which he had held before with his brother Harald in the
time of Louis the Pious, to Rorik (AF 850, 39; AB 850, 59; AX 850, 17;
Coupland 1998, 96). His cousin Godfrid got nothing and his part of the
fleet continued to raid in Flanders, the Artois, Frisia, around the mouth
of the Rhine and on the river Scheldt (AB 850, 851, 59, 63; AF 850, 39;
AFont 850, 85), until in October 852 he sailed up the Seine. The next year
the West Frankish king Charles the Bald was forced to pay him a tribute
to leave (AB 852, 853, 65-66; AF s.a. 850=852, 39–40; AFont 852, 89).
Another part of the large Danish–Frisian fleet of 850, under an unnamed
leader, decided to head for England where they plundered London and
Canterbury but were eventually repulsed in 851 by the West-Saxon king
Æthelwulf and his sons Æthelbald and Æthelstan (AB 850, 59; ASC, s.a.
851). Bloodied but not defeated, they then probably moved on to Ireland
where they were called ‘dark heathens’ by the Irish (Woolf 2007, 72).
Following the death of the Danish king Horik I in 854 in a civil war
with some family pretenders to the throne who had been forced into exile,
when most of the royal family had been killed (AB 854, 70; AF 854), the
cousins then attempted to grab the Danish throne for themselves the next
year. When they failed they returned to Frisia (AB 855, 70–71; Coupland
1998, 96). Rorik made another attempt on the Danish throne in 857 and
had more success, because the young Danish king Horik II had to grant
him some Danish territory ‘between the Eider and the sea’ (AF 857, 47;
Coupland 1998, 97),3 but at some point he lost these lands and was back
in Frisia by 863 at the latest.
Given what we know of the activities and dates of Rodulf’s various
relatives based in Frisia, it is probable that he was born sometime around
830, give or take five years. Given the location of his father Harald’s bene
fice on the Frisian island of Walcheren, which had previously belonged
to Hemming Hálfdansson, it is quite possible that Rodulf was born on
Walcheren itself or in one of the neighbouring counties.
By the early 860s most of coastal Frisia, which extended at the time from
the southern limits of Danish Jutland to the borders of modern Belgium,
was effectively ruled by Rodulf’s uncle Rorik until his death sometime
after he visited Louis the German in Aachen in 873 (AF 873, 78; AX 873,
32), but before 882 when the Northman Godfrid (not to be confused with
his probable relative Godfrid Haraldsson) was granted the Frisian benefice
that Rorik had held before (AF 882, 99; Coupland 1998, 100). Rorik had
been a very effective gamekeeper for the Franks. Coupland says: ‘During
the twenty-three years in which Dorestad and its region are known to have
been under his control, there were just two recorded Viking attacks’ (1998,
101). At various times Rorik had served four Frankish kings: Lothar I,
Lothar II, Charles the Bald and Louis the German. Coupland gives a very
positive account of Rorik (at least as viewed by the Franks). Vogel was
less laudatory, supported perhaps, as we will see, by the accusation that
Rorik had probably allowed some Northmen to raid through his territory
in 863, as well as the fact that on his nephew Rodulf’s death in 873 Rorik
was called fel Christianitatis ‘poison/gall of Christianity’ in the Annals
of Xanten (AX 873, 32).
3 This was probably the coastal province between the Eider and the Elbe called
But unlike his uncle Rorik, Rodulf was never trusted by the Frankish
kings. It is likely, Coupland suggests, that he was at some time granted some
kind of benefice, ‘perhaps one inherited from his father Harald on the lat-
ter’s death in the 840s’ (1998, 102). He rightly adds that this is speculation,
but that ‘the very few facts at our disposal suggest that Rodulf had some
sort of territorial power in Lothar’s kingdom’. Whatever the case, Rodulf
was, at least in the Franks’ eyes, the black sheep of the family, ‘the unac-
ceptable face of the Danish presence on Carolingian soil’ (Coupland 1998,
101). As will be shown below, it seems that despite his efforts to receive
proper recognition in Frisia from the Franks, and a position like his relatives
Rorik, the two Haralds and Hemming, Rodulf never did manage to turn
from poacher to gamekeeper; he was and remained an unrepentant Viking.
Robert ‘paid 6,000 lb and exchanged hostages’ to secure the services of other
Northmen who had recently arrived in the area (1992, 204).
The question thus arises: did Lothar pay Rodulf for services he had already
undertaken or was this a payment in advance? Nelson and de Vries, among
others, suggest that it was Rodulf who had made a raid up the Rhine from
Frisia to Cologne the year before (863), as reported in the Annals of St
Bertin (AB 863, 95–96; Nelson 1991, 104) and the Annals of Xanten (AX
s.a. 864, 22–23) (Nelson 1991, 112 n. 5; de Vries 1923, 192–93). This
might well be true, because after the raid Archbishop Hincmar wrote to
Hungarius, the bishop of Utrecht, saying he suspected that Rorik had
encouraged the raid up the Rhine on Lothar’s kingdom, and if this turned
out to be the case the bishop was to impose a suitable penance on Rorik.
He also wrote to Rorik himself warning him ‘to give neither counsel nor
assistance to the pagans against the Christians’ (Flodoard 1881, 529, 541).
In addition, in the Annals of St Bertin Hincmar wrote that these ‘Danes’
had ‘followed Roric’s advice and withdrew by the same way they had
come’, i.e. back through Frisia (AB 863, 95–96). Hincmar’s suspicions
regarding Rorik’s complicity seem reasonable, particularly as Rorik con-
trolled most of Frisia and it would be hard to imagine that a Danish fleet
had passed and withdrawn underneath Rorik’s nose without at least his
tacit agreement. Clearly, though, this was an attack on Lothar II’s realm
and so the payment for mercenary services made by Lothar to Rodulf in
864 cannot have been made to pay for a previous attack on his own lands;
in any case it was Lothar who had fought these Danes on the Rhine. An
argument against Rodulf’s involvement in this raid might be that the Danes
first attacked Dorestad (which Rorik usually controlled) before proceeding
up the Rhine to Xanten and an island in the Rhine near Neuss; but as de
Vries persuasively argues, this can probably be explained by the fraught
relationship between the ‘gamekeeper’ Rorik and his Viking nephew
Rodulf (de Vries 1923, 194–95, 391–92). The Annals of Xanten also tell
us that a part of the army then reached Cologne but lost one hundred men
and had to retreat, and that one of the Viking leaders called Calbi was
killed (AX s.a. 864, 21). It is highly probable therefore that in 864 Lothar
was paying Rodulf for future mercenary services.
After 864 there is a gap of seven to eight years in the Frankish records
when Rodulf is never mentioned. Then in 872 he is mentioned twice as
accompanying his uncle Rorik to meet the West Frankish king Charles the
Bald, first in January at Moustier-sur-Sambre in the province of Namur
and again in October at Maastricht (AB 872, 184, 188; Nelson 1991, 177,
180). The annals tell us that Charles came expressly to meet Rorik and
Rodulf and Ubba. In Search of a Frisian–Danish Viking 11
Rodulf on both occasions, and Nelson suggests that these meetings were
to ‘forestall the alliance of these warlords with Carloman’, Charles’s
son, who had recently rebelled against his father (Nelson 1991, 177 n. 2;
Nelson 1988, 113). This finds support in Hincmar’s comment about the
October meeting, that Charles
gave a gracious reception to Roric who had proved loyal to him, but Rodulf he
dismissed empty-handed, because he had been plotting acts of treachery and
pitching his demands too high. Charles prepared his faithful men for defence
against Rodulf’s treacherous attacks (Nelson 1991, 180).4
Two matters are of importance here. First, Charles suspected that Rodulf
had been plotting treachery, possibly with Carloman, and he expected
future ‘treacherous attacks’. Second, Rodulf had pitched ‘his demands too
high’, which clearly suggests either too high a locarium or, more likely
in this instance, extravagant demands for an extensive Frankish-granted
benefice, probably in Frisia. That Rodulf wanted a large territory of his
own in Frisia is clear, because in the next year, just as Charles the Bald had
suspected, Rodulf tried to grab a territory in Oostergo in northern Frisia,
and was killed in the attempt. This is reported by the Annals of St Bertin,
the Annals of Fulda and the Annals of Xanten. In the Annals of St Bertin,
Hincmar wrote that Rodulf ‘who had inflicted many evils on Charles’s
realm, was slain in the realm of Louis [the German] with 500 and more
of his accomplices’ (AB 873, 193; Nelson 1991, 184). The East Frank-
ish Annals of Fulda report what happened in greater detail (AF 873, 80;
Reuter 1992, 72). To summarise: in June 873 Rodulf (called Hruodolfus,
Ruodolfus or Hruodulfus according to the manuscript), ‘a certain North-
man of royal stock, who had often raided Charles’s kingdom with pillage
and arson’ arrived with a fleet in Oostergo in northern Frisia, which was
now in Louis the German’s realm, demanding that the inhabitants pay him
tribute. When the Frisians refused, claiming their adherence to Louis, Rod-
ulf ‘invaded their lands’ and made ‘war against them’. A long description
of the subsequent battle follows in which Rodulf was killed with ‘eight
hundred men’. After his death Rodulf’s Danes ‘took refuge in a certain
building’ surrounded by the Frisians, but were eventually allowed to leave
‘unwounded for their ships’ after they had given hostages, returned all the
treasure plundered (when the hostages were released) and made an oath
never to return to King Louis’s kingdom. They then ‘departed with great
shame and loss, and without their dux, to their own country’. The Annals
of Xanten tell a similar story, but add the facts that Rodulf (Ruodoldus)
was a nephew of Rorik and that he had previously ‘wasted’ many regions
over the sea (transmarinas regiones plurimas . . . vastavit), as well as
everywhere in the kingdom of the Franks, in ‘Gaul’ and in Frisia (AX 873,
33). This annal also tells us that Quamvis baptizatus esset, caninam vitam
digne morte finivit ‘Even though he had been baptised he ended his dog’s
life with a fitting death’ (Coupland 1998, 101).
It is important to note that Rodulf is called not only a Northman ‘of royal
stock’ by the Annals of Fulda, which of course he was, being a member
of Hemming Hálfdansson’s and Harold Klak’s family, but also a dux by
the Annals of Xanten, while Rorik is called a rex. Even more interesting
and relevant is what these contemporary Frankish annalists tell us about
what Rodulf had done before his death. He had ‘often’ made attacks on
Charles the Bald’s West Frankish kingdom, as well as in other parts of
Gaul (possibly in Aquitaine), and had devastated almost all Frisia (pene
totam Frisiam) (AX 873, 33). This statement cannot refer to his unsuccess-
ful 873 attack on Oostergo when he was killed. Yet we also hear that he
had raided many ‘regions over the sea’, which given the context here can
only mean Britain and/or Ireland. Coupland says this report ‘presumably’
means ‘in the British Isles’, which include Ireland (1998, 102). Steenstrup
(1876, 125), de Vries (1923, 179–81) and Vogel (1906, 196) long ago sug-
gested Rodulf’s presence in Ireland. It is these probable earlier activities
that should now be explored.
Rodlaibh in Ireland
A Viking leader called Rodlaibh, which is an Irish form of the Old Norse
name Hróðólfr/Hróðúlfr (Rodulf), is reported in the Annals of the Four
Masters (AFM) and the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland (FAI) as being
active in and around Waterford and on the Rivers Barrow and Nore from
860 to 862, and perhaps even as early as 855. As previously mentioned,
Steenstrup, de Vries and Vogel identified this Rodlaibh with the Frisian
Dane Rodulf, as more recently have Kelly and Maas (1995, 30–32; 1999,
132–37). We should start with what is most definite. For 862 the Annals
of the Four Masters report: ‘The base of Rauðulfr [longphuirt Rothlaibh]
was torn apart by Cennétig son of Gáethíne, lord of Laigis, on the fifth of
the Ides of September; and Conall Ultach and Luirgnen were killed, and
other multitudes along with them’ (AFM s.a. 860.11=862; Downham 2010,
App. 1). The Annals of the Four Masters is an early modern compilation
which includes ‘some ninth-century parts from the so-called “Chronicle
Rodulf and Ubba. In Search of a Frisian–Danish Viking 13
of Ireland”’ (Rowe 2012, 44; see also Cunningham 2010). Given that the
information found in this annal is very specific, it can probably be relied
on for the identity of the Viking leader involved. The Fragmentary Annals
of Ireland are a ‘mid-eleventh century compilation of earlier monastic
annals, expanded with entire narratives’ (Rowe 2012, 57).5 They report
under the same year, 862: ‘Cerball son of Dúnlang and Cennétig son of
Gáethíne (i.e. the son of Cerball’s sister) defeated Rodolb’s fleet [lon-
gus Rodlaibh], which had come from Lochlann shortly before that; and
Conall Ultach was killed there, and Luirgnén, and many others’ (FAI,
§308, 862). Clearly the core of this annal drew on the same source as
the Four Masters; the addition of Cerball the king of Osraige (Ossory)
to the winning side is perhaps to be expected, as this part of the annals is
very much concerned with Cerball’s family (see Radner 1978; Downham
2005 and 2013), but there is no reason at all why the compiler should
have invented Rodlaibh/Rodulf’s name.
These two rather short annalistic reports suggest that Rodlaibh’s ship-
base and at least part of his fleet was destroyed on 9 September 862,
either by Cerball the king of Osraige in league with Cennétig the king
of Loígis or by Cennétig alone. The location of this protected ship-base
(longphort) was most probably Dunrally on the bank of the River Barrow
at Vicarstown, Co. Laois (Kelly and Maas, 1995), but the Viking base at
Woodstown, Co. Waterford is possible; both longphuirt were probably
Rodlaibh’s bases. Dunrally lies eighty kilometres upriver from the sea
and the name is probably an Anglicisation of Dún Rothlaibh, the Fort of
Rodulf (Kelly and Maas 1995, 30). Even before the discovery of the base
at Woodstown in 2003, Kelly and Maas had suggested that such a base
must exist to protect the Vikings’ rear in the Waterford harbour area (Kelly
and Mass 1999). Yet although of interest for Irish history, whether it was
the longphort at Dunrally or the one at Woodstown that was destroyed
when Rodlaibh fled is of no great consequence for present purposes.
Something of the earlier history of Rodlaibh in Ireland can be re-
constructed. It is likely that it was his fleet which raided up the River
Nore towards Kilkenny in 860, a fleet which, according to both the
AFM and the FAI, was defeated by Cerball at Achad mic Erclaigh,
identified as ‘Agha, alias St John’s, near the city of Kilkenny’ (AFM,
858.6=860; FAI, §277, 860; Kelly and Maas 1999, 133). In an event that
can probably be dated to 861 (but possibly as early as 856/7) Rodulf
5 A mid-eleventh-century compilation of the early annals and chronicles that
make up the FAI was proposed by their latest editor Joan Radner (1976), but this
is far from certain.
14 Saga-Book
(and indeed of the earlier term Laithlinn) remains highly contested and,
as yet, unresolved.
Charles then had to agree to pay them off, ‘at the price of 4,000 lbs of
silver, according to their scales’. While the Northmen waited,
Charles collected the amount he had agreed to pay those Northmen, both in
silver and in wine. Furthermore, any slaves who had been carried off by the
Northmen and escaped from them after the agreement was made were either
handed back or ransomed at a price set by the Northmen; and if any one of
the Northmen was killed, whatever price the Northmen demanded for him
was paid . . . In June the Northmen moved from the island near the monastery
of St-Denis and sailed down the Seine until they reached a place suitable for
making repairs to their ships and for building new ones, and there they awaited
the payment of the sum due to them. Charles marched to the place called Pîtres
with workmen and carts to complete the fortifications, so that the Northmen
might never again be able to get up the Seine beyond that point. In July the
Northmen reached the sea. One group of them returned for a while to the Ijs-
sel district [in Frisia] and enjoyed everything they wanted, except that they
did not manage to make an open alliance with Lothar. (Nelson 1991, 130–31)
The Ijssel district to which the Northmen returned could be one of two
places in Frisia: either the area around the river called the Hollandse Ijs-
sel, which enters the sea quite near Walcheren, or, further north, the area
around the Gelderse Ijssel which discharges into the Ijsselmeer, previously
known as the Zuiderzee (see van den Bergh 1949, 39–43, 85–88, 122–23,
136). We cannot be sure which area of Frisia the Seine Northmen returned
to in 866, but the fact that only the area south of the Gelderse Ijssel was
in Lothar’s realm (the northern part belonging to Louis the German),
while the whole area along and around the Hollandse Ijssel was a part of
Lothar’s kingdom, and the fact that the Hollandse Ijssel is quite near both
Walcheren and Dorestad, the centres of power of these Frisian Danes,
maybe suggests the Hollandse Ijssel as more likely (see Vogel 1906, 217
n. 2 and de Vries 1923, 198–201). In addition the returning Northmen had
failed to get recognition from Lothar, which might also support the view
that they had returned to the Hollandse Ijssel.
No name is given for the leader of this lucrative (though costly) raid
up the Seine, but clearly ‘one group of them’ had ‘returned’ to Frisia in
July 866, where Lothar II had not been willing to ‘make an open alliance’
with whoever was the leader of this group, and so after ‘a while’ it clearly
moved on elsewhere. The suspicion must arise that the Viking leader
concerned was Rodulf. He had demanded and got a mercenary fee from
Lothar in 864, possibly in advance as I have suggested, and it is possible
that after raiding the territory of Lothar’s uncle Charles in 865–66, perhaps
as part of Lothar’s continuing struggle with Charles, Rodulf had returned
to Frisia expecting an ‘open’ grant of territory in Frisia, but Lothar had
Rodulf and Ubba. In Search of a Frisian–Danish Viking 17
been unwilling to comply. Nelson, the editor and translator of the Annals
of St Bertin, writes: ‘Apparently these Northmen wanted to be granted
land in Frisia, as previous groups had been’. She then refers to the 841
grant of Walcheren to the younger Harald (Rodulf’s father) and the grant
of Dorestad to Rodulf’s uncle Rorik in 850 (Nelson 1991, 866, 132 n. 12).
The fact that one of the Viking leaders on the Seine in 866 returned to Frisia
in July, where he ‘wanted to be granted land’ by Lothar, would suggest
previous dealings between this Northman and Lothar. In her biography
of Charles the Bald, Nelson also rightly points out that the Northmen’s
raid up the Seine in 865–66 was the last such raid on Charles’s northern
heartland for another ten years (1992, 213), probably because Charles’s
defensive measures were making such raids increasingly difficult and
costly for the Northmen (see Coupland 2004).
Following this particular raid in 865–66, Nelson says: ‘Some Vikings
went back to Frisia, while most of them seem to have turned their attention
to England’ (1992, 213), and adds that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (e.g.
ASC A, s.a. 866) says that ‘a great army came to the land of the English’
(1992, 213 n. 128). Similarly, Smyth maintains that some of these Seine
Vikings ‘undoubtedly headed for Eastern England to join the full-scale
invading force bent on the conquest of that land’ (1995, 19). Abels, Sawyer
and McLeod have suggested the same (1998, 114; 1971, 101 and 1998,
92; 2014, 132). De Vries also clearly identified part of this Frisian Seine
fleet as coming to England and being a part of the early Great Army, and
suggested that Ubba was its leader (1923, 198–201, 393). I believe that
all these historians were right in suggesting that at least one part of the
Danish army and fleet leaving the Seine in the summer 866 subsequently
became a part of the early Great Army in England—whether this was the
part that did ‘go back’ to Frisia or the part that did not, or both.
Dunelmensis ecclesie (HCD), they entered York on the 1st November 866
(Rollason 1998; Symeon of Durham, xv–xcv, xlii–xliv; Stevenson 1858,
654). All the mentions of the Great Army going ‘over the mouth of the
Humber’, and in the version of the late tenth-century Anglo-Saxon chroni-
cler Æthelweard being ‘transported across the River Humber’ (CA 1962,
IV:2, §35), coupled with the fact that these Danes would scarcely have
risked leaving their valuable longships behind in East Anglia, suggest, as
Smyth put it, that it is ‘likely that the greater part of the host sailed north
to the Humber in the all-important longships’ (1995, 21). It might well be
that another part of the army made its way overland using the horses they
had extorted from the East Angles, because the twelfth-century Historia
regum says they ‘marched’ to York (Stevenson 1855, 488). After reaching
and occupying York in early November it seems that over the next few
months the Danes plundered throughout Northumbria as far as the Tyne
and then returned to York (Stevenson 1855, 654). The only source which
mentions the name of a Danish leader in 865–66 is Æthelweard’s Latin
Chronicon (CA, IV: 2, §35; Rowe 2012, 53):
Enimuero Eðered successit in regnum post obitum fratris sui Æðelbyrhti.
In eodem anno aduectæ sunt classes tyranni Iguuares ab aquilone in terram
Anglorum, hiemaueruntque inter Orientales Anglos . . . Scilicet post annum
ipse exercitus, relicta orientali parte, transfretatusque est fluuium Humbre in
Nordhymbriorum prouinciam ad Euoracam urbem.
Æthelred succeeded to the kingdom after the death of his brother Æthelbyrht.
In the same year, the fleets of the tyrant Inwær [‘Iguuares’] arrived in the land
of the English from the north, and they wintered among the East Angles . . .
After a year, that army, leaving the eastern area, was transported across the
River Humber into the province of the Northumbrians, and to the city of York.
Frank Stenton believed that this Iguuare (Inwær) was the original leader
of the Great Army (1971, 246 n. 2):
The form Igwares proves that the statement comes from an Old English source,
and there is no reason to doubt that Æthelweard derived it from the very early
manuscript of the Chronicle which was the basis of his work.
I can see no reason to disagree. The fact is that there is as yet no mention
of the Danish ‘king’ Healfdene, who probably arrived somewhat later, or
indeed of Ubba. Turning to Ubba, in the Historia de sancto Cuthberto,
compiled in the tenth or eleventh century in Chester-le-Street or Durham
but based on earlier sources (Craster 1954; HSC), we read (HSC, c. 10,
50 and 51):
Nam Ubba dux Fresciorum cum magno Danorum exercitu in regnum eius
uenit, et in sanctos die palmarum apud Eboracum ciuitatem applicuit.
Rodulf and Ubba. In Search of a Frisian–Danish Viking 19
For Ubba duke of the Frisians, with a great army of Danes, came into the
kingdom and on Palm Sunday approached the city of York.
Johnson-South, the latest English editor and translator of the HSC, has
argued persuasively that this mention of Ubba is likely to be historically
reliable (HSC, 4–8). Three things are of great interest. First, Ubba ‘came
into the kingdom’ of Northumbria probably a little before 23 March 867
(Palm Sunday), when he ‘approached the city of York’ (HCD gives the date
as 21 March, see Arnold 1882, i 55). The HSC then goes on to tell the story
of how the Northumbrian kings Ælle and Osberht had tried to recapture
York but were defeated and both killed by the ‘enemy’, though Ubba is
not mentioned again by name. This may mean that Ubba only arrived in
Northumbria in the spring of 867, and thus it is quite possible that he had
come to join the earlier Danish warlord Iguuar/Inwær who had probably first
taken York in the previous November. Of course we cannot preclude the
possibility that Ubba had been with Inwær since November, but nowhere in
the sources is there any support for this. Second, Ubba is said to be leading
an army of Danes. That these forces in Northumbria in 867 are called Danes
is no great surprise—whenever an ethnic name is given to any part or all of
the Great Army they are always called Danes, or occasionally Danes and
Frisians. But the identification of Ubba as a leader of Danes is important.
Third, Ubba is called dux of the Frisians. As Rowe rightly says, this ‘need
not mean that Ubba was a Frisian himself; control of Frisia was often in
Danish hands at this time’ (2012, 62). Bremmer, the Dutch historian of the
Frisians in Anglo-Saxon England, maintains (1981, 78):
Ubba dux Fresonum . . . cannot have been a Frisian himself, and it seems
doubtful for the men whose leader he was. It might be possible, though, that
his men were not Frisian proper, but had made a name for themselves in Frisia
. . . Now Ubba might have come to England by way of Frisia.
As discussed earlier, leaders such as Harald Klak, Hemming Hálfdansson,
Rorik, Godfrid Haraldsson, the younger Harald and, of course, Rodulf
himself were all ethnic Danes based in Frisia. So there can be little doubt
that Ubba was ethnically a Danish leader who had been operating in Frisia
and is now found wreaking havoc in Northumbria—leading an army of
‘Danes’. This is not the only place where we find Ubba of the Great Army
called a dux of the Frisians. In the HSC we read (c. 14, 52, 53):
Igitur exercitus ille quem Ubba dux Fresonum et Healfdene rex Denorum in
Anglicam terram adduxit in tres partes diuisus est; una Eboracam ciuitatem
reedificauit, terram in circuuitu coluit, et ibi remansit. Alia uero quae terram
Merciorum occupauit, et tercia quae terram Australium Saxonum inuasit, per
tres annos multa mala egerunt omnesque regii generis interfecerunt, praetor
20 Saga-Book
solum Elfredum patrem Eadwardi regis, qui his tribus annis in Glestigiensi
palude latuit in magna penuria.
The army which Ubba duke of the Frisians and Healfdene king of the Danes
had led into England divided into three parts; one rebuilt the city of York,
cultivated the surrounding land and stayed there. The second, however, which
occupied the land of the Mercians, and the third, which invaded the land of the
South Saxons, committed many crimes over the next three years and slew all
those of royal stock excepting only Alfred, the father of King Edward, who
for three years hid in Glastonbury marsh in great want.
Here we find a retrospective notice that dux Ubba and rex Healfdene ‘had
led [the army] into England’ plus a notice that the Great Army (at Repton
in 874) ‘divided into three parts’. The Chronicle names one of the leaders
at Repton as Healfdene, who ‘went with some of the raiding-army into
Northumbria’, and others as ‘Guthrum, and Oscytel and Anund’ who ‘went
from Repton to Cambridge’, mirroring the HSC’s ‘invaded the land of the
South Saxons’ (ASC A, 874). The Chronicle mentions the army splitting
into two, not three. If there were three, who it was that led the third part
‘which occupied the land of the Mercians’ is not known.
Lastly, probably taking information from the HSC, or using the same
early sources that lay behind it, the early twelfth-century Annales Lindis-
farnenses et Dunelmenses also say that Ubba, the duke of the Frisians
(Ubba duce Fresonum) ‘not long after Palm Sunday’ slaughtered ‘almost
the entire Northumbrian nation with its kings’ (Rollason 1998, xlvii; Levi-
son 1961, s.a. 868, 484). These Northumbrian-composed annals also report
that in 855, when we know from the Chronicle that a Danish force was on
the Isle of Sheppey in Kent (ASC A, 855), ‘an army of pagans, namely of
Danes and Frisians, led by dukes [ducibus] Halfdene, Ubba and Inguar,
landed on the island of Sheppey’ (Levison 1961, s.a. 855, 484). As Rowe
suggests, this could well be a conflation of sources and a confusion of dates
(2012, 80–81), but if not it would be a matter of immense interest—one,
unfortunately, that I will not be able to explore here.
The earliest source mentioning Ubba is the French cleric Abbo of
Fleury’s Passio Sancti Eadmundi, written between 985 and 988 when
Abbo was at Ramsey abbey in Huntingdonshire (see Hervey 1907). Here
he is called both Ubba and Hubba and is linked with Inguar. Abbo wrote
that the Danes’ two duces were Hinguar and Hubba, who were both of
equal depravity, although he suggests Hinguar was the senior, and that it
was the two of them who killed King Edmund in East Anglia in Novem-
ber 869 (Hervey 1907, 19, 21). Abbo says he got his information from
Archbishop Dunstan while at Ramsey and that Dunstan had heard it as a
Rodulf and Ubba. In Search of a Frisian–Danish Viking 21
young man from the old armour-bearer of King Edmund when he told the
story to King Æthelstan (Rowe 2012, 52–53; Cavill 2005). Abbo’s story
tells how, to use Whitelock’s words, ‘Hinguar and Hubba first came to
Northumbria, which they overran. Leaving Hubba there, Hinguar came
from the north to the east with a fleet’ (Whitelock 1969, 219). Whether
Ubba was with Hinguar when he killed Edmund is not clear; most other
sources giving a name mention just Inguar as the culprit. What is interest-
ing here is Abbo’s statement that Hinguar had left Ubba (presumably in
charge) in Northumbria when he sailed east ‘with a great fleet’ to East
Anglia: ‘Having raked together their booty, Inguar left on the spot Hubba,
his associate in cruelty’ (Hervey 1907, 20).
After the defeat of the Northumbrians in late March 867, the Danes
installed a client-king called Ecgbert (HCD, Stevenson 1855, 652; Coxe
1841, 295) and left for Nottingham in Mercia later the same year (ASC
A, 868=867), before returning to York for a year: ‘Here the raiding-army
went back to York city and stayed there one year’ (ASC A, 869=868). The
army left York again for East Anglia in 869 and over-wintered at Thet-
ford (ASC A, s.a. 870). According to the Historia Dunelmensis ecclesie
(Symeon of Durham, II.6, 98 and 99):
Inde altero anno diuertens, duce omnium crudelissimo Inguar Orientales
Anglos inuadit, sanctissimumque regem Eadmundum diueris penis laceratum
cum suo pontifice Hunberto peremit.
It [the Viking army] left in the following year and, under its most cruel of
all leaders Inguar, it invaded the East Angles, and killed the most holy King
Edmund, on whom had been inflicted various tortures, and with him his
bishop Hunberht.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says the Danish army ‘rode across Mercia’ to
reach Thetford in 869 (ASC A, s.a. 870), whereas Abbo says Inguar sailed
to East Anglia. They could of course have done both. But if Inguar did
leave Ubba in York in 869 it is unlikely that he was with Inguar when he
killed King Edmund in East Anglia in November of that year.
Also originating in Ramsey abbey is Byrhtferth’s Life of St Oswald,
written around the year 1000 (Lapidge 2009). Byrhtferth was a former
pupil of Abbo of Fleury (Rowe 2012, 56). Oswald had founded the
abbey and his Life says that his own grandfather had come to England
with the ship-army and that it had been led by ‘Huba and Hinuuar’
(Lapidge 2009, 17).6 Wormald commented that ‘this looks like oral
6 Actually the Life refers to the father of Oswald’s uncle Archbishop Oda of
Canterbury.
22 Saga-Book
Scaldingi
It has thus far been suggested that Ubba, a dux of the Frisians, was prob-
ably a Danish chieftain who had been active in Frisia before his arrival
in England leading an army of ‘Danes’. Additional, though not critical,
support for the view that at least some of the early Danish leaders of the
Great Army came from Frisia is the name Scaldingi, which might mean
people of the Scald, i.e. the region of the River Scheldt in Frisia (in present
day Dutch Zeeland and Belgium). It is the name given three times in the
Rodulf and Ubba. In Search of a Frisian–Danish Viking 23
the dark heathens’ arrival in Ireland in 851 (AU 851.3) with the activities
of the Danish fleet in Frisia and England in 850–51 discussed earlier
(2007, 71–72), but then, like others, he erroneously links these 851 ‘dark
heathens’ both with the Dublin Scandinavian king Ímar and the Danish
Great Army in England in the late 860s (Woolf 2007, 71–73; Downham
2007, 64–67; Smyth 1977. See Etchingham 2013 and forthcoming for
the arguments against this view).
There are three references in the Historia de sancto Cuthberto to the
Scaldingi: in chapters 7, 11 and 12 (HSC 2002, 49, 50, 51, 53). Chapter 11
simply refers to the time before the Scaldingi arrived in England. Chapter
7 says that (long) after the death of the seventh-century Northumbrian
king Ecgfrith ‘Scaldingi came and crushed York and devastated the land’.
Certainly Ubba, the dux of the Frisians, was heavily involved in these
events, and Scaldingi as a locational identifier would make complete
sense for him and his army, but Inguar is heavily implicated in these
early events in Northumbria too, even though the Northumbrian HSC
never once mentions Inguar (unlike Ubba and Healfdene) in Northum-
bria, nor anywhere else for that matter, which might make us question
the real importance and length of his involvement there even though
Æthelweard’s testimony suggests it was he who initially took York in
late 866. There is no evidence that Inguar was from the River Scheldt or
even from Frisia, and this may account for Woolf’s substitution of Ubba
for the Dane ‘Ímar’. Chapter 12 of the HSC, having yet again touched on
the defeat and death of the Northumbrian kings Ælle and Osberht in early
867, says that ‘the Scaldingi slew nearly all the English in the southern
and the northern parts [of England]’. This report of the ‘slaying’ of the
southern and northern English after 867 can only refer to the various
campaigns of the undoubtedly Danish Great Army in general, and thus it
is not necessarily specifically connected with Ubba the dux of the Frisians
or any other specifically Frisian Dane.
An alternative suggestion for the meaning of Scaldingi was proposed
by historians of the Anglo-Saxons, Arnold (1882, 1, 200, 202), Plummer
(1889, ii, 65), Stevenson (1904, 218, n. 1) and Collingwood (1908, 124),
followed later by Binns (1963, 49–50; 1965, 184) and Frank (1997, 127).
This theory is that Scaldingi is a remembrance by the compiler of the
HSC, or more likely one of his sources, of the Frisian/Danish origins of
the first Anglo-Saxons, as epitomised by the Old English poems Beowulf
and Widsið, which they assumed to be well known in England at the time
when the HSC was compiled (cf. Anderson 1999). Legendary events and
peoples referred to in these poems were located in Frisia and Danish Jutland
Rodulf and Ubba. In Search of a Frisian–Danish Viking 25
in the fifth and sixth centuries, and two of the most significant people
were called Healfdene and Hroþulf (Hróðólfr/Hróðúlfr, or Hrólfr kraki in
Norse sources), who were related but of different generations, and both of
whom were members of the Danish royal ‘clan’ of the Scyldingas/Skjöld
ungar, with a legendary founder called Scyld. W. H. Stevenson wrote:
‘[Scaldingi] is . . . probably a somewhat corrupted form of Skjöldungar,
the Scyldingas of Beowulf, the name of the royal race of the Danes, and,
by extension, of the Danes themselves’ (1904, 218 n. 1). The linguistic
and historical arguments for Scaldingi meaning Scyldingas/Skjöldungar
(when any are given at all) are obscure and debatable, but it may not be a
coincidence that English sources call the Danish leader of the Great Army
Healfdene, with an identical spelling to that found in Beowulf, and that
another leader was called Ubba ‘dux of the Frisians’, a name which, as I
will argue below, may well correspond to the name Hroþulf (i.e. Rodulf)
mentioned in both Beowulf and Widsið.
The view that Scaldingi does not mean ‘people from the River Scheldt’
precisely, but refers rather to Danes/Frisians in general, is quite persuasive.
However, the indisputable fact that Ubba, one of the leaders of the early
Great Army, was called a dux of the Frisians strongly implies that he at
least had come with his fleet from Frisia.7
2014, 109–73.
26 Saga-Book
(2001, 9), perhaps because on one occasion the Historia says Rodulfus—a sociis
Gongurolfr cognominatus (Storm, 90), and later in Heimskringla he is called
G†ngu-Hrólfr (Heimskringla 70–71).
Rodulf and Ubba. In Search of a Frisian–Danish Viking 27
called Hróðólfr (Jakob Benediktsson 1968, 18, 65; Grønlie 2006, 10,
n. 77), in Adam of Bremen’s Latin both Rudolfo and Rodolf (Adam of
Bremen, Waitz 1876, c. 55 and c. 62) and in the Old English of the C and
E recensions of the Chronicle Roðulfe (Conner 1996, s.a. 1050=1051;
Whitelock 1954, s.a. 1048=1051). The Icelandic Hungrvaka, probably
composed around 1200 or somewhat thereafter, refers to him as Rúðólfr
biskup, er sumir kalla Úlfr héti, ok væri kynjaðr af Ruðu ór Englandi
(Ásdís Egilsdóttir 2002, 11), ‘Bishop Rúdólfr, whom some say was called
Úlfr and was descended from people who hailed from Rouen in England’
(Basset 2013, 50).
So Úlfr is an historically attested diminutive form of Hróðólfr/Hróðúlfr
(Rodulf). But what are we to make of the Ubba of the English sources,
who was called Ubbe by the Anglo-Norman Geoffrey Gaimar (2009, 156)?
There is no doubt that these are Anglo-Saxon Latin and Norman-French
renditions of the common Old Norse name Ubbi, which is generally
rendered Ubbe in old and modern Danish. Ubbi is found on at least two
Swedish runes stones (Rafn 1854, 56–57; Brate and Wessén 1924, 223). In
his Gesta Danorum Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1150–1220), probably a canon
of Lund, uses the form Ubbo dux Fresciorum, while the thirteenth-century
S†gubrot af nokkrum fornkonungum mentions Ubbi friski ‘the Frisian’
(McTurk 1991, 106). It might well also be that Hebbi, the name of one of
the Danish king Hemming I’s important jarls or sub-kings who met with
Charlemagne’s nobles at Heiligen on the River Eider in 811 (Scholz 1972,
811, 93; de Vries 1923b, 271), is also a Frankish-Latin rendition of Ubbi.
It could be added that Ubba, as the name usually appears in Anglo-Saxon
sources, is a typical Anglo-Saxon hypocorism, with a short vowel followed
by a double consonant and an ending in ‘a’. So the question is: can people
called Hróðólfr/Úlfr also be called Ubbi/Ubba? They can and they were.
The consensus among scholars of early Scandinavian personal names
is that Ubbi (and its usual runic form Ubi) is a hypocorism or pet name
derived from Úlfr. An alternative is that it derives from the Old Norse
adjectives úfr (‘unfriendly/hostile’) and ubben, which has the meaning
‘fierce, stern, rough, severe, harsh’. Janzén said that Ubbi derives from
Úlfr and that it can also derive from dithematic names such as Ulfgestr,
Ulfheðinn (a type of wolfish berserker) or from names ending in úlfr, such
as Hróðólfr/Hróðúlfr. Hornby (1947, 208), supported by Peterson (2002,
214), points out that the name Ulf can change to Ubbi. Brate and Wessén
add that the name Ubbi was mostly found in the East Norse area (1924,
223). Following von Friesen (1897, 20), Hornby adds that Ubbi might
also derive from the Norse adjective ubben (‘barsk, bitter’) ‘fierce, stern’.
28 Saga-Book
Rodulf was in the context of the Danes see Polzer 2008, 50–57.
30 Saga-Book
and Rowe has suggested that Adam’s otherwise unknown ‘History of the
Franks’ might be these East Frankish Fulda annals (2012, 70). Sigefrid
(‘Sigifridi’) was the joint king of Denmark in 873 with a brother called
Hálfdan (‘Halbdeni’) (AF 873). Rudolf is obviously our man. Rowe sug-
gests that Gotafrid was the Danish leader active in the 880s mentioned
many times in Frankish sources (2012, 70), but he could as well be
Rorik’s cousin Godfrid Haraldsson (the two Godfrids were very probably
related). If, as is most likely, this Horic is the earlier Danish king Horik
II who took the throne in 854, then Orwig could be Rorik, while Ingvar
is another story completely—he is never mentioned in any contemporary
Frankish source.
Even more suggestive than Adam of Bremen’s names are those given in
the very slightly later Danish Chronicon Roskildense, probably composed
around 1137–38 by a canon of Roskilde Cathedral (Gelting 2016, 13). A
part of the Chronicon reads (Gertz c. 3, 16–17):
Ex tempore collectis [suis] rex crudelissimus Normannorum Ywar, filius
Lothpardi, quem ferunt ossibus caruisse, cuius fratres Ingvar et Vbbi et Byorn
et Vlf aquilonis gentibus.
In this time, Ywar, son of Lothpardus, the cruellest king of the Northmen,
who was said to lack bones, whose brothers Inguar and Ubbi and Byorn and
Ulf ruled the northern people.
The Danish clerical scribe took many of the names he gives from Adam
of Bremen, but it has been argued by the Chronicon’s editor Gertz
(1917, 14) that he also got additional information from an English cleric
‘of whom there were many in Denmark at this time’ (Rowe 2012, 89).
Gelting has also shown that the cleric certainly heavily used Henry of
Huntingdon’s brand new Historia Anglorum, which talks of the duces
‘Hinguar’ and ‘Ubba’ together in England (Arnold 1879, 143). Gelting
says: ‘We may assume that Henry of Huntingdon was the source of the
Chronicle of Roskilde for part of its description of the Viking raids of the
ninth century’ (2016, 9). We are not concerned with ‘Ivar the Boneless’
here, except to say that Janzén believed that the Danish cleric might not
have realised that Ywar and Inguar were variant forms of the same name
(1947, 81; followed by McTurk 1991, 106, Rowe 2012, 90 and Gelting
2016, 10). The writer of the Chronicon also drew directly on Abbo of
Fleury’s Life of St Edmund for his description of Edmund’s martyrdom
(Gelting 2016, 9). Most important for our purposes is that the Chronicon
names one of these ninth-century Danish leaders as ‘Ulf’, which not
only clearly refers to the Rodulf found in Adam of Bremen’s list but is
also an extremely clear indication that at least in Denmark the Viking
Rodulf and Ubba. In Search of a Frisian–Danish Viking 31
Rodulf/Ubba’s death
Rodulf died in Oostergo in northern Frisia in 873 while on a raid
to extract tribute and land from the Frisians. Given what we know
happened when Rodulf met Charles the Bald for the second time in
872, it is highly unlikely that he was teleguided by Charles against
his brother Louis the German as Lebecq has suggested (2011, 160).
He was much vilified by the Frankish annalists for being a bad
Christian and for his many harmful attacks in Francia, Frisia and on
‘many regions over the sea’. Yet there is a suggestion that Ubba died
in Devon in 878. If he did die in that year then obviously he was not
the Frisian Dane Rodulf.
In early 878 a Danish fleet and army, that had been in South Wales dur-
ing the previous winter, arrived in Devon, but was defeated by the West
Saxons. In an entry in different manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
under 877/878 we read (ASC A, s.a. 878):
And that same winter [877/78] a brother of Inwær and Healfdene [‘Inwæres
broðor 7 Healfdenes’] was in Wessex in Devonshire with 23 ships, and he was
killed there and 800 men with him and 40 men of his war-band.
As Patrick Wormald pointed out, Inwæres broðor 7 Healfdenes is ‘certainly
a strange phrase’ (1982, 143; de Vries 1923b, 272). In the Life of King Alfred
Asser, who when he is in any way reliable got his information from the
Chronicle (see Smyth 1995), added that they had come from Demetia (i.e.
Dyfed in South Wales) and that it was ‘the king’s thegns’ who won the vic-
tory, and he names the place of the battle as Cynuit (probably Countisbury
in Devon) (Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 83–84). Unlike the extant versions
of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the tenth-century chronicler Æthelweard,
who was the ealdorman of western Wessex as well as a direct descendant
of King Alfred’s older brother King Æthelred, and ‘who certainly used a
lost text of the Chronicle’ (Wormald 1982, 143), stated in his Latin version
of the Chronicle that the Danish leader who died in Devon was ‘Healfdene,
the brother of the tyrant Inwær’ (Healfdene Inguuares tyranni frater) and
that it was the Danes who eventually won (CA, IV: 3, §§42–43). In an early
Rodulf and Ubba. In Search of a Frisian–Danish Viking 33
11 As he does here (though the Chronicle does not name the Danish chieftain
involved), since he mentions the capture of the Raven banner, which is referred
to in the E version of the Chronicle but not in the A version.
12 See Blair 1939 for a discussion of ‘brother’ sometimes meaning ‘brother
in arms’.
34 Saga-Book
and particularly when they could present King Alfred in a good light.
Concerning matters further north, they were usually vague in the extreme,
and often completely silent. But the Danish army in Devon in 878 was
clearly a direct threat to the West Saxons in their own territory and, at least
according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the West Saxons defeated them
and killed their leader. Why the chroniclers did not know this leader’s
name but knew the names of his two (by now supposedly dead) brothers
is a mystery (de Vries 1923b, 272).13 If the West-Saxon chroniclers did
not know his name, which beggars belief, then how did Geoffrey Gaimar?
Ian Short, Gaimar’s most recent English editor, suggests local tradition
(Gaimar, 156), while Rowe says that Gaimar had access to a lost northern
recension of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and that ‘it is tempting to guess
that the re-introduction of Ubbe at this point in the Estoire des Engleis is
due to the fact that this is where Ubbe is introduced for the first time in
that source’ (2012, 88). This guess is not very persuasive, particularly as
there is nowhere even the slightest hint that Ubba was in England after
the end of 869, and surely any lost northern recension of the Chronicle
would have mentioned Ubba before his death, given his grisly reputation
in the North.
Consequently, it must be admitted that we will probably never know
the name of the Danish chieftain who fell in Devon in 878, although
there is something suspicious here. Those who wish to accept Geoffrey
Gaimar’s words as historically true will obviously find the identification
of Ubba with Rodulf out of the question; but it should be remembered
that when he was not simply translating the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and
Asser’s Life of King Alfred Gaimar was a romancer or an historical nov-
elist rather than an historian. He did after all introduce into his Estoire a
Lincolnshire-derived legend of a Danish king Haveloc (later a model for
Shakespeare’s Hamlet), placing this story in King Arthur’s time, and he
even included references to Haveloc in his account of ninth-century events
derived from the Chronicle and Asser.14 For example, when describing
the battle of Ashdown in 871 both the Chronicle and Asser include a list
of the Danish leaders, one of whom was a ‘Jarl Sidroc the Young’ (ASC A
13 Regarding the absence of a name for the fallen chieftain in the ASC, Smyth
said that ‘incidental information in early medieval annals may be all the more reli-
able becaue of its peripheral relationship to the prejudices of a compiler’ (1995,
58), which fails to answer the question.
14 For the Haveloc legend of Geoffrey Gaimar see Bell 1925, Kleinman 2003
871, Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 80); Gaimar elaborates: le jovene Sydroc
ki fu parent rei Haveloc ‘the young Sydroc who was a relation of King
Haveloc’ (Gaimar, 162, 164).15
possibly Rodulf’s, went back to Frisia, but Lothar II refused to grant him
any benefice there ‘openly’, and thus he and his men soon moved on
elsewhere. Then Rodulf’s ‘Frisian’ Danes went to England, arriving at
York in March 867, being called the ‘Danish’ army of ‘Ubba dux of the
Frisians’ in English sources. At York, probably joining forces with Inguar
who had arrived in England earlier, he defeated the Northumbrians and
killed their kings.
It seems that thereafter Ubba/Rodulf stayed in England for about three
years. He was probably with the Great Army at Nottingham in 868 and
either remained behind in York when the Danish army moved from
there in 869 or accompanied Inguar to East Anglia, where together
they killed the East Anglian king Edmund. In late 869 or early 870, but
certainly b efore the many battles with the English in 871, Ubba/Rodulf
disappeared from England. There is a chance that he might have visited
Ireland in 870 before next reappearing in Frisia in early 872, in which
year he twice went to meet Charles the Bald with his uncle Rorik. But
Charles did not trust Rodulf and refused his excessive demands for
land. A few months later, in June 873, Rodulf tried to grab himself a
territory in Oostergo in northern Frisia in Louis the German’s realm but
was killed in the attempt.
Conclusion
On his death Rodulf was much vilified by the Franks for his numerous
attacks on Charles the Bald’s territory and in Frisia, as well as for his
devastation of ‘many regions over the sea’. So who were Rodlaibh in
Ireland and Ubba, the dux of the Frisians, in England, if they were not
the Frisian Dane Rodulf? The tentative identification made here will
not convince everyone, maybe not even the majority. The evidence is
circumstantial, although ample, reasoned and, to my mind, compelling.
It would certainly not stand up in an English criminal court of law where
the standard of proof is ‘beyond any reasonable doubt’. In a civil court,
however, where the standard of proof is ‘on the balance of evidence’,
it just might.
Note: I would like to thank various anonymous peer reviewers for their useful
comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper. Thanks are due
also to Rory McTurk, Simon Coupland, Colmán Etchingham, Eamonn Kelly
and Lena Peterson who provided invaluable advice and support while the paper
was evolving.
Rodulf and Ubba. In Search of a Frisian–Danish Viking 37
Bibliography
AB = Annals of St Bertin. Les Annales de Saint Bertin 1964. Ed. F. Grat, J. Viel-
liard and S. Clémenset.
Abels, Richard 1998. Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-
Saxon England.
AClon = The Annals of Clonmacnoise, being annals of Ireland from the earliest
period to A.D. 1408 1896. Ed. Denis Murphy.
Adam of Bremen 2002. History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen. Trans.
Francis J. Tschan.
Adamus Bremensis. Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum 1876. Ed. G.
Waitz.
AF = Annals of Fulda. Die Annales Fuldenses. MGH, SRG VII. 1891. Ed. F. Kurze.
Anderson, Carl Edlund 1999. ‘Formation and Resolution of Ideological
Contrast in the Early History of Scandinavia’. Ph.D thesis, University of
Cambridge.
AFM = Annals of the Four Masters 1856. Annala Rioghachta Eireann, Annals of
the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters, from the Earliest Period to the
year 1616. 2nd edn. Ed. and trans. John O’Donovan.
AFont = Annales Fontanellenses. ‘Les premières annales de Fontanelle’. Mélange
de la Société de l’histoire de Normandie 15, 1951. Ed. Jean Laporte.
AL = Annales Lindisfarnenses. MGH SS 19. 1886. Ed. G. H. Pertz.
Annales Bertiniani 1883. Ed. G. Waitz. MGH, SSRG V.
Annals of Ireland: three Fragments copied from Ancient sources by Dubhaltach
Mac Firbisigh 1860. Ed. and trans. John O’Donovan.
ARF = Annales regni Francorum. MGH, SSRG V. 1895. Ed. F. Kurze.
Arnold, Thomas, ed., 1879. Henrici Archidiaconi Huntendunensis Historia
Anglorum. The History of the English by Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon.
From A.C. 55 to A.D. 1154.
Arnold, Thomas, ed., 1882–85. Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, Reum
Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores 75.
Arnold, Thomas, ed., 1890. Abbonis Floriacensis Passio Sancti Eadmundi.
Memorials of St. Edmund’s Abbey 1, 1–25.
ASC = The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles 1996. Ed. and trans. Michael Swanton.
AU = The Annals of Ulster (to A.D. 1131) 1983. Ed. and trans. Seán Mac Airt
and Gearóid Mac Niocaill.
AX = Annals of Xanten. Annales Xantenses et Annales Vedastini. MGH, SSRG
12. 1909. Ed. Bernard von Simson.
Ásdís Egilsdóttir, ed., 2002. Hungrvaka. In Biskupa sögur II. Íslenzk fornrit
XVI, 1–43.
Basset, Camilla, trans., 2013. Hungrvaka. MA thesis, University of Iceland.
Bauduin, Pierre 2009. Le monde franc et les Vikings VIIIe–Xe siècle.
Beaven, M. L. R. 1918. ‘The Beginning of the Year in the Alfredian Chronicle’.
English Historical Review XXXIII, 328–42.
Bell, Alexander, ed., 1925. Le Lai D’Haveloc and Gaimar’s Haveloc Episode.
38 Saga-Book
Hervey, Francis 1907. Corolla Sancti Eadmundi: The Garland of Saint Edmund
King and Martyr.
HSC = A History of Saint Cuthbert and a Record of his Patrimony 2002. Ed. and
trans. Ted Johnson-South.
Hornby, Rikard 1947. ‘Fornavne i Danmark i middelalderen’. In Personnamn/
Personnavne. Ed. Assar Janzén. Nordisk kultur 7.
Hudson, John, ed., 2007. Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis: The History of the
Church of Abingdon 1.
Janzén, Assar 1947. ‘De fornvästnordiska personnamnen’. In Personnamn/Person
navne. Ed. Assar Janzén. Nordisk kultur 7.
Jón Jóhannesson 1974. A History of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth: Islendinga Saga.
Jordanes = De origine actibusque Getarum 1895. Ed. Alfred Holder; The Gothic
History of Jordanes 1915. Trans. Charles C. Mierow.
Kelly, Eamonn P. 2015. ‘The longphort in Viking-Age Ireland: the archaeological
evidence’. In The Vikings in Ireland and beyond. Before and after the battle of
Clontarf. Ed. Howard B. Clarke and Ruth Johnson.
Kelly, Eamonn and John Maas 1995. ‘Vikings on the Barrow’. Archaeology
Ireland 9, 30–32.
Kelly, Eamonn and John Maas 1999. ‘The Vikings and the kingdom of Laois’.
In Laois History & Society. Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish
County. Ed. Pádraig G. Lane and William Nolan, 123–59.
Keynes, Simon and Michael Lapidge, eds, 1983. Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of
King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources.
Kleinman, Scott 2003. ‘The Legend of Havelok the Dane and the Historiography
of East Anglia’. Studies in Philology 100, 245–77.
Kunin, Devra, trans. and Carl Phelpstead, ed., 2001. A History of Norway
and the Passion and Miracles of the Blessed Óláfr. Viking Society Text
Series 13.
La Cour, Vilhelm et al, eds, 1930. Sønderjyllands Historie fremstillet for det
danske folk.
Lapidge, Michael 1982. ‘Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the Early Sections of the
Historia regum attributed to Symeon of Durham’. Anglo-Saxon England 10,
97–122.
Lapidge, Michael, ed. and trans., 2009. Byrhtferth of Ramsey: The Lives of St
Oswald and St Ecgwine.
Lappenberg, J. M. 1834. Geschichte von England 1.
Lauer, Philippe, ed. and trans., 1926. Nithard : Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux.
Lebecq, Stéphane 2011. Hommes, mers et terres du Nord début du Moyen Âge:
Peuples, cultures, territoires 1.
Levison, W., ed., 1961. ‘Die “Annales Lindisfarnenses et Dunelmenses”’. Deutsches
Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 17, 447–506.
Lewis, Stephen forthcoming. ‘A Question of Responsibility: Scandinavian raids
on Frisia in the 830s’.
Lund, Niels 1989. ‘Allies of God or man? The Viking expansion in a European
perspective’. Viator 20, 45–59.
Rodulf and Ubba. In Search of a Frisian–Danish Viking 41
Lund, Niels 2005. ‘L’an 845 et les relations franco-danoises dans la première
moitié du IXe siècle’. In Les fondations scandinaves en Occident et les
débuts du duché de Normandie, Colloque du Centre culturel International
de Cerisy-la-Salle et de l’Université de Caen Basse-Normandie. Ed. Pierre
Bauduin, 25–36.
Lieberman, Felix 1925. ‘Die Name Scaldi für Dänen’. Archiv 148.
McLeod, Shaun 2014. The Beginning of the Scandinavian Settlement in England.
The Viking ‘Great Army’ and Early Settlers, c.865–900.
Maund, K. L. 1995. ‘“A Turmoil of Warring Princes”: Political Leadership in
ninth-Century Denmark’, Haskins Society Journal 6, 29–47.
McTurk, Rory 1991. Studies in Ragnars saga loðbrókar and its Major Scandi
navian Analogues.
Nelson, Janet L. 1988. ‘A Tale of two princes: politics, text and ideology
in a Carolingian annal’. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 10,
105–41.
Nelson, Janet L. 1991. Annals of St-Bertin.
Nelson, Janet L. 1992. Charles the Bald.
Peterson, Lena 2002. Nordiskt runnamnslexikon.
Plummer, C., ed., 1892–99. Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel.
Polzer, Sandra 2008. Die Franken und der Norden. Über die Schwierigkeit der
Interpretation von frühmittelalterlichen Quellen zur Geschichte Dänemarks.
M.Phil thesis, University of Vienna.
Rafn, Charles C., 1854. Remarks on a Danish Runic Stone, from the Eleventh
Century, found in the Central part of London.
Reuter, Timothy, ed. and trans., 1992. The Annals of Fulda.
Rollason, David 1998. ‘Symeon’s contribution to Historical Writings in Northern
England’. In Symeon of Durham: Historian of Durham and the North. Ed. D.
Rollason, 1–13.
Rowe, Elizabeth Ashman 2012. Vikings in the West: The Legend of Ragnar
Loðbrók and his sons.
Sawyer, Peter H. 1971. The Age of the Vikings.
Sawyer, Peter H. 1998. Anglo-Saxon Lincolnshire. A History of Lincolnshire 3.
Scholz, Bernhard Walter, trans., 1972. Carolingian Chronicles, Royal Frankish
Annals and Nithard’s Histories.
Smyth, Alfred P. 1977. Scandinavian Kings in the British Isles 850–80.
Smyth, Alfred P. 1995. Alfred the Great.
Steenstrup, Johannes 1876. Normannerne 2.
Stenton, Frank 1971. Anglo-Saxon England.
Stevenson, Joseph, trans., 1855. The Historical Works of Simeon of Durham.
Church Historians of England 3: 2.
Stevenson, William H., ed., 1904. Asser’s Life of Alfred, together with the annals
of St. Neots erroneously ascribed to Asser.
Storm, Gustav 1878. Kritiske Bidrag til Vikingetidens Historie.
Storm, Gustav 1880. Monumenta historica Norwegiæ: Latinske kildeskrifter til
Norges historie i middelalderen.
42 Saga-Book
Symeon of Durham. Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelm
ensis, ecclesie. Tract on the Origins and Progress of this the Church of Durham
2000. Ed. David Rollason.
Thegan 1995. Gesta Hludowici, continuation, MGH, SRG 64. Ed. E. Tremp.
Tolkien, J. R. R. 1982. Finn and Hengest. The Fragment and the Episode.
Vogel, Walther 1906. Die Normannen und das fränkische Reich bis zur Gründung
der Normandie (799–911).
van den Bergh, L. Ph. C. 1949. Handboek der Middelnederlandse Geographie.
von Friesen, Otto 1897. Om de germanska mediageminatorna med särskild hänsyn
till de nordiska språken.
Whitelock, Dorothy, ed., 1954. The Peterborough Chronicle: The Bodleian Manu
script Laud Misc. 636. Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 4.
Whitelock, Dorothy 1969. ‘Fact and fiction in the legend of St. Edmund’.
Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology 3, 217–233.
Woods, I. N. 1987. ‘Christians and pagans in ninth-century Scandinavia’. In The
Christianisation of Scandinavia. Ed. B. Sawyer, P. Sawyer and I. N. Woods,
36–68.
Woolf, Alex 2004. ‘The Age of Sea-Kings: 900–1300’. The Argyll Book. Ed. D.
Omand, 94–109.
Woolf, Alex 2007. From Pictland to Alba 789–107.
Wormald, Patrick C. 1982. ‘Viking Studies: Whence and Whither?’ In The Vikings.
Ed. R. T. Farrell, 128–56.
Shedding Light on the Kylver Slab 43
By NELA SCHOLMA-MASON
University of York
and A (long row), in more recent sources the lines are referred to as A (short row)
and B (long row). For consistency’s sake I will use the more recent classification.
44 Saga-Book
Above Line B a shorter runic inscription can be observed (Line A), which
has to date been interpreted as the cryptic palindrome “SUEUS” (e.g. Spur-
kland 2009). This palindrome is believed to be an invocation or charm, the
meaning of which is thus far unknown, but commonly believed to relate
to the burial (e.g. Krause 1993, 59; Spurkland 2009, 2). This article will
examine key interpretative problems concerning both lines, and present
an alternative interpretation of Line A.
Research background
Most of the recent discussions of the Kylver slab focus on the runic
inscriptions, whilst not much is known about its archaeological context.
Crucially, the circumstances under which the slab was found are by no
means certain and this has a significant impact on the way the inscriptions
can be understood.
The principal source for the initial findings on the Kylver slab is an
extensive article, published in two parts by Hans Hansson and Otto von
Friesen respectively in the Antiqvarisk tidskrift för Sverige (1864–1924,
1–14) sometime after 1903.2 The first article, by Hansson, is concerned
with the slab itself, the discovery context, its landscape context and Hans-
son’s grounds for the suggested c. fifth-century date of the cist burial. The
second part of the article is written by von Friesen (14–23), and deals
with the runic inscriptions of lines A and B. This initial publication was
followed thirty years later by Arthur Nordén’s (1934) and Birger Ner-
man’s (1935) work, which features both archaeological interpretations and
analyses of the runes. Regrettably, however, these initial articles have not
seen much, if any, discussion in more recent publications on the slab. In
light of this, it is necessary to revisit the work of the earlier scholars on
the archaeological context of the Kylver stone before I present my own
interpretation of the inscriptions.
other than the 1864–1924 range of the Antikvarisk tidskrift, they must have been
published sometime between late 1903 and before 1911, as George T. Flom
published a review of the two articles in April 1911. In this article this source
will be dated 1903–11.
Shedding Light on the Kylver Slab 45
Statens historiska museum (Hansson 1903–11, 1; Enderborg 2009–13),
where the slab is still stored. Upon its discovery, Hansson was asked for
a professional opinion on the stone and he reports that he visited Stånga
in late summer 1903 to conduct an investigation of the ancient burials
in this area (Hansson 1903–11, 1). His article in the Antiqvarisk tidskrift
contains a detailed description of the burial in which the inscribed slab
was found, followed by his initial theory about the grave’s supposed age
as no later than AD 400 (see also Flom 1911, 323 and Nordén 1934, 99,
which include this date). Hansson deduces his proposed date from the
nature of the artefacts found near the slab—among which were a partly
melted bronze fitting and a fragment of glass from the fill of the grave
(SHM staff member personal communication; Nerman 1935)—as well
as from the fact that cist burials are relatively rare in Gotland after AD
400 (Hansson 1903–11, 8). Hansson concludes from this data that the
runes present on the slab must be the oldest known example of a fuþark
(1903–11, 8; see also Flom 1911, 323; Nylén 1988, 15). The security of
this date, however, is questionable. Hansson states that upon his arrival
the rune-inscribed slab had already been dug up by ‘treasure hunters’,
and that it is not certain that the runic inscription had ever formed part of
the original grave setting, nor where exactly the stone would have been
placed originally (Hansson 1903–11, 2, 4). Furthermore it can no longer
be stated with certainty whether the inscribed side faced into the cist or
not (Nedoma 1998, 39). This is crucial for our understanding of this in-
scription, as it is the key to several interpretive problems concerning this
slab. Given that the runes were not found in a sealed context, the date of
the burial and the artefacts cannot be applied to the runes with the same
confidence. In order to secure confident dating, the integrity of the find
context must be certain (cf. Thrane 1998, 219). The doubts concerning the
later robbing of the grave appear to have led to the inscriptions now being
the primary basis for the fifth-century date (SHM staff member personal
communication; and this is the core information most present-day sources
will provide on the Kylver slab). The problem with this argument is its
circularity. If the runes were initially dated on the basis of the burial cist,
the runes cannot at the same time be the basis for their own date. Also, the
date of the burial is not necessarily also the date of the inscriptions. It is
obvious that there has, over time, been some confusion about the nature of
the site, which may in part be to do with the imbalance of scholarly focus
as outlined above. In sum, whilst the inscribed slab was associated with
a cist burial, its original position is unclear, and as such the application
of a fifth-century date to the inscriptions on the slab is questionable. In
46 Saga-Book
the next section I will examine in more detail the nature of the inscription
and discuss whether the runes themselves are of any aid in resolving the
question of dating.
fuþark but was trying to carve a much earlier set of characters along with
contemporary ones. This explanation would make some sense of the oc-
currence of the later ᛋ in Line A, a concept discussed later in this article.
In any case, the ᛋ is out of place on a slab believed to be one of the earliest
examples of the older fuþark.
The ideas expressed in the remainder of this article are not based on the
assumption that the runes were carved around the fifth century, but allow
for their having been carved at an uncertain later date, when the grave was
opened. The remainder of the article will focus on the more cryptic line A.
he does not explain this thought in much detail, and it remains unsure in
what way ᛖ would divide up seamlessly into an “L” and an “I” (on the
basis of ᛚ and ᛁ). In any case, von Friesen appears to abandon this theory
within his own article, and it does not continue into later debates (Erik
Brate remarks on it, albeit without much further detail, 1922, 9), wherein
Line A is commonly accepted as reading “SUEUS”.
Continuing on the postulated basis of a split ᛖ, I will now bring forward a
selection of suggestions for transliteration and interpretation. In the further
course of this article I will suggest that the carvings stem from a secondary
disturbance of the grave, postdating the burial itself. Importantly, there is
no more certainty whether the mirroring of Line A relates to the mirrored
runes of Line B than there is about any direct relation at all of the two lines
to each other. Above all, transliteration and interpretation depend much
on how the runes are mirrored and how this mirroring is to be interpreted.
There is general awareness that much gets lost in translation between
contemporary languages; even more is lost over the multiple stages of
transliteration of runes, followed by translations into Old Norse and finally
into several present-day languages. Puns and wordplay which may have
been obvious to a contemporaneous reader of the runes may now be im-
possible to reconstruct in full, if at all. Any potential intention reflected
in not only the words, but also the arrangement and nature (mirroring /
folding) of the runes must be an unknowable aspect of a past mentality.
Based on these considerations, I set out my key transliteration and inter-
pretations below. There are numerous possible options for the interpreta-
tion of these, and the many uncertainties concerning the age of the runes
complicate any interpretation further. Therefore, the suggestions listed here
are not exhaustive and should be viewed as suggestions for further debate.
1) “sul lus”: inter alia ON sól ljós ‘sunlight’ or ON sól lauss ‘sunless’.
This is my primary interpretation to which I will return in the course of
this article.
Alternatively, “sul” may be understood as ‘soul’ (ON sál), but this
would only apply in a post-Conversion context (Alver 1989, 111; Cleasby
and Vigfusson 1874, 516–17), being probably a borrowing from an
ecclesiastical Anglo-Saxon and / or Christian Danelaw context (Cleasby
and Vigfusson 1874, 516), derived from OE sawol / sawel / sawul (Clark
Hall 1960, 290). If this were the case it would represent an interesting
ideological alternative to the other interpretations offered here. Noteworthy
parallels from OE include sāwolhūs ‘soul-house, body’ and sāwollēas
‘lifeless, without life; soulless, without soul’.
Shedding Light on the Kylver Slab 49
A close examination of this suggestion reveals that the runes are
not merely mirrored, but, in fact, folded, which would not apply to the
other options listed below. As was mentioned before, this folded ar-
rangement may represent a palindrome, ‘a word or expression that can
be read backwards as well as forwards either with the same meaning
or a new meaning’ (Spurkland 2009, 16). Palindromes are mentioned
within the context of runic scholarship, yet the Kylver inscription ap-
pears to remain the best known one to which most scholars refer (e.g.
Spurkland 2009, 16; MacLeod and Mees 2006, 219; Markvad 2003,
11; Schwab 1998, 405). Importantly, however, the question remains
whether a palindrome requires all characters to have the same orienta-
tion in order to be read in two directions in full, and whether a mirrored
character would entail a different way of reading. The mirrored arrange-
ment of both “s” may be indicative of two separate words that are each
to be read from the outside towards the middle and/or vice versa, each
ending or beginning with their share of the split middle-rune, rather
than readable backwards as well as forwards as a whole (see Fig. 1).
Therefore “sul sul” and “lus lus”—or to be read as both—are further
options. This might entail a figurative way of bouncing the sun back
from the slab, as will be discussed in more detail later. Notably, read
from left-to-right the inscription begins with the mirrored “s” and ends
with the original orientation of “s” (Fig. 2).
sul sul
lus lus
and grave goods), whilst the carving of Lines A and B is more likely to
stem from a later date, most plausibly sometime after the eighth century
(mostly based on the ᛋ in Line A, as outlined above). Perhaps the grave-
robber(s) feared threat from ghosts or draugar after disturbing a grave,
which may have led to the carving of (among other options) ‘sunless’ or
‘sunlight’, as suggested above. Given the continuity of folkloric beliefs
into more recent times (see esp. Muir 1998; Kvideland and Sehmsdorf
1989, 138) this theory not only applies strictly to a medieval disturbance
of the site, but would indeed also allow for such beliefs to have had a
potent effect in more recent centuries. Merely the carver’s reasonable
understanding of the older fuþark would need explanation if this were
indeed a more recent carving.
Perhaps the site was opened and, upon discovering a grave, the
robber(s) felt the need for protection against any potential menace fol-
lowing the disturbance of such a place. In this case Line A could indeed
be interpreted as a contemporary ‘charm’, whilst the less securely carved
line in the elder fuþark may have been intended either also as a ‘charm’,
or indeed as an acknowledgment of the more ancient buried individual,
through the carving of older runes. This idea would tie in with my ear-
lier suggestion that the carvings may stem from a hand familiar with
the younger fuþark and less accustomed to the elder. The process of
carving and the expenditure of energy that this entails would have been
motivated by fear of any supernatural consequences unless the carving
was completed. More tentatively, the backward orientation of parts of
Line A could indicate the urge to ‘undo’ the contact of the sunlight with
the grave and the dead.
Importantly, the Kylver stone was reputedly found as a side slab and
not as a covering slab (Janssen 1987, 12), but this does not exclude the
possibility that Line A was nonetheless intended as a protective ‘covering’
charm and, in the likely case of the runes stemming from secondary activ-
ity, it may have been a more easily accessible spot for carving, depending
on the state the cist was in once disturbed. It may even be the case that
there were two carvers at work, which would explain the corner place-
ment of Line A, should both lines have been carved simultaneously. The
mirrored (and eventually folded or palindromic) arrangement of Line A
may add weight to the folkloric dimension, since it could be interpreted
as a visual symbol for bouncing any light off the grave; however, there is
no basis for this suggestion other than a visualisation of the indications
in the aforementioned sources of the need to block out the sun by means
of stone slabs placed over a burial.
Shedding Light on the Kylver Slab 53
Discussion
The relation between Line A and Line B remains unresolved. Thus far there
is no clear indication that the two lines are at all related, either intention-
ally or with regard to the respective types of runes used, nor can the date
of the carvings be established with any certainty. What we can see on the
Kylver stone represents only the tip of the iceberg, whilst the thoughts
and concepts that informed the carvings are difficult, if not impossible, to
trace. No certain answer can be provided about how, let alone if, the runic
lines relate to the disturbed burial context they were found in. I would
therefore like to close this discussion with an open question to readers,
summarising the two main issues I have raised:
1.Whilst Hansson’s argument for a fifth century date for the burial
itself is plausible, I would question this date for the runic carvings. This
is primarily on the grounds of Line A’s ᛋ, added to by the uncertainties
regarding the secondary disturbance of the site and the unclear conditions
of initial excavation before Hansson’s arrival.
Consequently, I would suggest that the carving of both lines, especially
Line A, is more likely to have taken place sometime around the eighth
century, without excluding the probability of an even later date.
2. On the basis of the mirrored “S” I postulate that Line A’s middle rune
is not an “E” but “L L” (or less likely: “T T” / “L T” / “T L”) and that the
inscription therefore should be read not as “sueus”, but as “sullus” (in-
cluding “sul sul” / “lus lus” ). This is primarily based on the chronological
aspects of the fuþark varieties as outlined above, as well as the abundance
of evidence for sun-related beliefs in early Scandinavia.
Unfortunately the uncertainties surrounding the Kylver slab and its
inscriptions make it difficult to be firmer about interpreting the carvings
or even about their date. This is difficult to prove or disprove, especially
after the stone has been exposed for so long and even more because
those people who dealt with the stone in 1903 are now dead themselves.
More research into this enigmatic inscription may aid in shedding more
light on past mentalities, and may further illuminate early Scandinavian
afterlife beliefs.
Note: I would like to express my thanks to the following: Dr. Lisbeth Imer for
her literature suggestion; staff of the Statens historiska museum in Stockholm
for information on our prevailing understanding of the slab and for providing me
with a photograph of it; and for proof-reading Eleanor Jackson, Owain Mason,
Prof. Julian Richards, Dr. Matt Townend and, not least, Prof. Alison Finlay and
the editors of Saga-Book. Any remaining errors are my own.
54 Saga-Book
Bibliography
Alver, B. G. 1989. ‘Concepts of the Soul in Norwegian tradition’. In R. Kvideland
and H. K. Sehmsdorf, eds, Nordic Folklore. Recent Studies, 110–27.
Axboe, M. 2004. Die Goldbrakteaten der Völkerwanderungszeit. Herstellungs-
probleme und Chronologie.
Barnes, M. P. 1998a. The Norn Language of Orkney and Shetland.
Barnes, M. P. 1998b. ‘The transitional inscriptions’. In Runeninschriften als Quel-
len interdisziplinärer Forschung. Abhandlungen des Vierten internationalen
Symposiums über Runen und Runeninschriften in Göttingen, 4–9 August 1995.
Edited by K. Düwel, 448–61.
Barnes, M. P. 2012. Runes: A Handbook.
Boberg, I. M. 1966. Motif-Index of Early Icelandic Literature.
Brate, E. 1922. Sverges runinskrifter. Also http://runeberg.org/runor/.
Clark Hall, J. R. 1894. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary.
Cleasby, R. and G. Vigfusson 1874. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. Also
http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/texts/oi_cleasbyvigfusson_about.html (The Germanic
Lexicon Project).
Enderborg, B. 2009–2013, ‘Stånga Socken: Runor’.
http://www.guteinfo.com/socknar/stanga/default.asp?id=2068.
Flom, G. T. 1911. ‘Kylfverstenen. En 24-Typig Runsten by Otto von Friesen; Hans
Hansson; Bidrag Till Tolkning af Rök-Inskriften by Henrik Schück; Review by
George T. Flom’. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 10:2, 322–27.
Furset, O. J., ed, 2011. Roaring Mountains, Rumbling Sea: Folktales and Folklore
from Arctic Norway.
Gazin-Schwartz, A. 2001. ‘Archaeology and Folklore of Material Culture, Ritual,
and Everyday Life’. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 5:4,
263–80.
Hansson, H., 1903–11. ‘Kylfverstenen—en 24-typig runrad’. Antiqvarisk Tidskrift
för Sverige 18:2.
Jansson, S. B. F. 1987. Runes in Sweden.
Krause, A. 1993. Runen.
Kristiansen, K. 2011. The Rise of Bronze Age Society. Travels, Transmissions
and Transformations.
Kvideland, R. and H. K. Sehmsdorf 2010 [1988]. Scandinavian Folk Belief and
Legend.
‘Kylverstenen’ [No author /date]. Statens Historiska Museet. http://www.historiska.
se/template/RelatedImagePopup.aspx?parent=24903&image=24906
Looijenga, T. 2003. Texts and Contexts of the Oldest Runic Inscriptions.
MacLeod, M. and B. Mees 2006. Runic Amulets and Magic Objects.
McKinnell, J., R. Simek and K. Düwel 2004. Runes, Magic and Religion: A
sourcebook. Studia Medievalia Septentrionalia 10.
Markvad, J. 2003. Runer og runesten.
Nedoma, R. 1998. ‘Zur Problematik der Deutung älterer Runeninschriften‘. In
Runeninschriften als Quellen interdisziplinärer Forschung. Abhandlungen
Shedding Light on the Kylver Slab 55
des Vierten Internationalen Symposiums über Runen und Runeninschriften in
Göttingen, 4–9 August 1995. Edited by K. Düwel, 24–54.
Nielsen, P. O. 2014. Solstensøen. På sporet af Bornholms bondestenalder.
Nerman, B. 1935. Die Völkerwanderungszeit Gotlands.
Nordén, A. 1934. ‘Från Kivik till Eggjum. II. Runristningar med gengångarbes-
värjelser’. Fornvännen 29, 97–117.
Nylén, E. and J. P. Lamm 1987. Stones, Ships and Symbols.
Spurkland, T. 2009. Norwegian Runes and Runic Inscriptions.
Parsons, D. N. 1999. Recasting the Runes. The Reform of the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc.
Schwab, U. 1998. ‘Runen der Merowingerzeit als Quelle für das Weiterleben
der spätantiken christlichen und nichtchristlichen Schriftmagie?’ In Runenin-
schriften als Quellen interdisziplinärer Forschung. Abhandlungen des Vierten
Internationalen Symposiums über Runen und Runeninschriften in Göttingen,
4–9 August 1995. Edited by K. Düwel, 376–433.
Thrane, H. 1998. ‘An Archaeologist’s view of runes’. In Runeninschriften als
Quellen interdisziplinärer Forschung. Abhandlungen des Vierten Internatio-
nalen Symposiums über Runen und Runeninschriften in Göttingen, 4–9 August
1995. Edited by K. Düwel, 219–27.
von Friesen, O. 1903–11. ‘Inskrifterna’. Antiqvarisk tidskrift för Sverige 18:2
(1864–1924), 14–23.
56 Saga-Book
By D. BOND WEST
Independent Scholar
Egils saga also echoes one of the most prevalent themes in the book
of Genesis: the passing of a family inheritance from the preferred son to
his brother who is a less conventional heir. Primogeniture is a cultural
norm in the ancient Near Eastern society that the Old Testament depicts
(Alter 1981, 6), but in the generations that are given in any detail in
Genesis, oldest sons never inherit their fathers’ estates; younger sons
inherit instead. Þórólfr Kveld-Úlfsson and Þórólfr Skalla-Grímsson show
more potential as future chieftains than their unruly younger brothers, but
neither is able to inherit owing to his untimely death. In biblical narrative
the younger son’s inheritance defies social convention but proves to be
the work of divine providence, made all the clearer once the historical
narrative reaches Jesus’s genealogies in the New Testament books of
Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels, both of which (despite their discrepan-
cies) are traced largely through younger sons (Matthew 1. 1–18; Luke
3. 23–38). That this same providence is at work in the succession of
the Mýramenn in Egils saga is implied once Egill’s descendants are
converted to Christianity in the last few chapters of the saga, when the
Christian era is inaugurated with an annotated genealogy much as it is
in the Bible (Egils saga, 299–300).
Though the Þórólfrs are, like their biblical analogues, first-born sons,
the saga distinguishes them from their younger brothers as preferential
heirs by their physical characteristics, temperaments and social skills
more than by their seniority. In each generation, the older brother dem-
onstrates the characteristics of a gæfumaðr while the younger exhibits
those of an ógæfumaðr. The gæfumenn, Lars Lönnroth writes, are hand-
some, well liked, and display a knack for getting along well in a courtly
setting, all traits demonstrated by the Þórólfrs. Þórólfr Kveld-Úlfsson is
manna vænstr ok gørviligastr . . . gleðimaðr mikill, †rr ok ákafamaðr
mikill í †llu ok inn mesti kappsmaðr; var hann vinsæll af †llum m†nnum
‘an attractive man and highly accomplished . . . a very cheerful man,
eager and very impetuous in all things and the most energetic; he was
beloved by all men’ (Egils saga, 5). Of Þórólfr Skalla-Grímsson it is
said at hann myndi vera inn líkasti Þórólfi Kveld-Úlfssyni, er hann var
eptir heitinn, ‘that he was very similar to Þórólfr Kveld-Úlfsson, after
whom he had been named’, and varð hann brátt vinsæll af alþýðu ‘he
became well-liked by all’ (Egils saga, 80). Ógæfumenn tend to be ugly,
moody, difficult to get along with and, in contrast to the often fair-haired
gæfumenn, dark or red-haired. Grímr is a svartr maðr ok ljótr, ‘a swart
man and ugly’ (Egils saga, 5). Egill is described in much the same way:
en er hann óx upp, þá mátti brátt sjá á honum, at hann myndi verða
60 Saga-Book
mj†k ljótr ok líkr feðr sínum, svartr á hár ‘as he grew up, it quickly
became visible in him that he would become very ugly and, like his
father, dark-haired’ (Egils saga, 80). According to Lönnroth, the two
types often represent contrasting social ranks, the gæfumaðr being the
king or chieftain and the ógæfumaðr the serf or peasant (Lönnroth 1965,
59). As gæfumenn the Þórólfrs are more fit for chieftainship than their
unruly brothers, but as they both meet untimely demises, ógæfumenn are
left to inherit in their places. What is more, the traits of the ógæfumaðr
are often linked to poetic talent and a passionate disposition that often
erupts in a volatile temper, both of which are prominent elements of
Egill’s personality.
The traits of the Norse ógæfumaðr and of the biblical younger son are
both present in the biblical David. David is described as rufus ‘ruddy’
or ‘red-haired’, and, like an ógæfumaðr, has a reputation for compos-
ing poetry. That he perpetuates the younger-son motif is evident in his
introduction in I Kings (I Samuel in the Authorised Version) when God
sends the prophet Samuel to the house of Jesse to anoint Israel’s next
king. Samuel is impressed by Jesse’s older sons and is surprised that God
passes over them to anoint David, the youngest (I Kings 16. 1–14). Torfi
Tulinius has argued convincingly that David may be seen as a model for
Egill. He notes that both are poets from pre-Christian times who deliver
their poetry to kings, David to Saul and Egill to Eiríkr blóðøx. Both have
turbulent relationships with these kings, sometimes serving and sometimes
opposing them, and are protected from their anger by influential friends,
David by Jonathan and Egill by Arinbj†rn (Tulinius 2005, 4). David and
Egill also have similarly questionable relationships to morality, for each
wishes to marry another man’s wife and plays a role in sending that man
to his death in battle, and each of them loses a son born to him and the
other man’s wife.
Like Egill, it might be said of David that his personality is bound up
with his poetry. If the Psalms, many of which are attributed to David,
are to be taken as an expression of the Israelite king’s personality, then
they present a figure alternating as wildly between violence and peace
and between faith and doubt as Egill does between heinousness and
hagiographical parallel. But despite this, the influence of the Psalms
on devotional literature and prayer in medieval Christian society is
difficult to overstate. So significant is the manner in which David’s
prayers prefigure those of a Christian saint that they possess spiritual
value for Christian worshippers long after Christ’s resurrection. The
art of poetry in Egils saga, then, parallels the Psalms and, therefore,
Egils saga and the Old Testament 61
out of his scabbard while holding one eye open and the other shut (Egils
saga, 143–44). The narrator emphasises Egill’s threatening appearance
as if to suggest that Egill holds Aðalsteinn responsible for his brother’s
death and wants revenge.
Aðalsteinn’s response is to unsheathe his own sword, take a ring from his
arm and use the blade to offer the ring to Egill over the fire pit. This offer
is striking in several ways. By presenting the ring on his sword, Aðalsteinn
demonstrates that he is equally willing to threaten violence if need be to
maintain order in his hall. The action implies an offer—much like the one
Haraldr makes to the Norwegian chieftains earlier in the saga—that Egill
can accept the king’s authority or be put to the sword.
The ring-giving scene gives a fair amount of theological weight to
Aðalsteinn and Egill. In it we see Egill, a pagan chieftain, threatening a
Christian king with insurrection in a time period that is post-Conversion
for the Englishman and pre-Conversion for the Icelander. Tulinius has
suggested that by opening and closing his eye Egill is imitating Óðinn
(Tulinius 2001, 255). If this is true, then the author is drawing special
attention to the religious difference between the two and the conflict that
could result from it.
For Aðalsteinn, living in post-Conversion England, Egill’s threat is
one of both political insurrection and disruption of the Christian order
in his court by a figure whose origins in a country that has not yet been
converted make him symbolic of a sort of threat from an earlier time.
We can compare the threat that Grendel, a creature whose origins are
in a pre-Deluge race, poses to the post-Deluge court of Hroþgar in
Heorot in Beowulf.1 The description of Egill here hints at elements of
1 The deluge in Genesis prefigures conversion much like the Israelites’ cross-
ings of the Red Sea and the Jordan. In each case we see the people of God cross
from one period of their history into another, leaving behind their prior state to be
closer to God. The flood divides Noah’s descendants from the wicked ways and the
giants of the antediluvian world, the Red Sea divides the liberated Israelites from
their Egyptian masters, the Jordan from forty years of wandering in the wilder-
ness, and the baptismal water of conversion from the convert’s sinful past. When
representative features of these past ages appear after their times they are treated
as things to be avoided or overcome. Examples are the Israelites’ encounters with
giants when they first enter the Promised Land (Numbers 13.33–34), the com-
mandment that the Israelites never return to or even conduct trade with Egypt (e.g.
Deuteronomy 17.16), Christ’s temptation in the wilderness (Mark 1.9–13), Paul’s
warnings against returning to sin by using the language of slavery (e.g. Galatians
5.1) or even the survival of the Grendelkin after the Deluge.
64 Saga-Book
onstrosity associated with the skald, and like Grendel, Egill has the
m
potential to disrupt the hospitality that the king is offering to his retainers
in his hall. But Aðalsteinn is no Hroþgar, incapable of dealing with a
potential threat himself, nor is he a pre-Christian warrior like Beowulf,
who merely meets Grendel’s monstrosity with violence. Aðalsteinn
instead extends a ring to Egill, offering him a place in society, and in
so doing looks beyond the threat that Egill poses to see his humanity.
His presentation of the ring on the end of his sword shows that this is
not a coy offer of payment to avoid violence, like those of Christian
communities that tried to pay Viking raiders for security from their
raiding. Aðalsteinn is not afraid of Egill, and his display of combined
graciousness and power brings an end to Egill’s imitation of Óðinn,
and while this does not bring about the latter’s conversion, it ends
the potential threat of chaos posed by the pre-Christian world to the
Christian space represented by the hall.
This transformation is important for Egill in a different sense. Though
Egill is a pagan from a pre-Conversion society, Aðalsteinn offers
him a place in post-Conversion England. In that sense the English
king functions as a type of Christ in Egill’s life, able to offer him the
opportunity to transform himself from a part of a pagan world into a
defender of a Christian kingdom. The fact that Aðalsteinn sees Egill
as suitable for this role is also telling, for it does not require Egill to
give up his warlike ways to become a monk, as might be expected in
a saint’s life, but instead suggests that the pagan warrior-poet’s talents
can be put to meaningful service in a Christian society. This is made
even more clear by Aðalsteinn’s gift of two more rings to Egill as a
reward for his poetry, suggesting that the art of skaldic verse with which
Egill is associated is a redeemable part of the pagan past that can be
incorporated into the Christian present in the hands of Christian poets
just as a pagan warrior like Egill can be offered a role in Christian
society by a Christian king.
Weber notes that ‘it is essential for the validity of an individual’s
conversion to the Christian faith that the latter should come about of
this individual’s own free will, without the use of immediate force’
(Weber 2001, 131). This, he says, is a topos of Christian missionary
theory that can apply to either individuals or populations when they are
confronted with the new faith. On the literal level, Aðalsteinn demon-
strates his respect for the importance of free will when he first accepts
Þórólfr and Egill into his retinue by requiring only they skyldi láta
prímsignask, ‘must let themselves be primesigned’, a formality that,
Egils saga and the Old Testament 65
in Egill’s case, does not seem to indicate any sincere conversion (Egils
saga, 128). On the more literary level, when Aðalsteinn offers Egill a
place in his retinue following Þórólfr’s death, he tells him that it will
be Egill’s decision whether or not he wants to remain in England (Egils
saga, 147). This offer is made twice, and Egill turns it down twice to
see to matters in Norway and Iceland (Egils saga 147, 196–97). But it is
important to note that although Egill leaves England after each offer, he
also says both times that he intends eventually to return to accept them.
After the second offer, Aðalsteinn dies and Egill’s opportunity to join
Christian society passes with him, leaving him part of the pre-Christian
Scandinavian world and his promise to return to the Christian king’s
service unfulfilled (Egils saga, 212).
Weber holds that in Heimskringla the conversion of Norway, much
like the Incarnation, is meant to happen at a fixed, unchangeable point
in time set by God’s providence. This is why Hákon Haraldsson’s best
efforts to convert Norway before the reign of Óláfr helgi (or, arguably,
Óláfr Tryggvason) inevitably fail (Weber 2001, 127). It is probable that
the conversion of the Mýramenn, and certainly that of the Icelanders,
is also preordained (though many Icelanders are converted before the
conversion is made official by the Alþingi in 1000), and it may be that
Egill is, for whatever reason, tied more permanently to his people’s
providential fate. If this is the case, then his hope to return to Aðalsteinn
may be comparable to Hákon’s failed attempt to convert Norway in that
it prefigures a genuine convert’s will to join the Christian faith which is
prevented by the grand designs of Providence. It is a prefigurative hope,
of course. On the literal level, Egill demonstrates no interest in conversion
proper, but does express an interest in returning to Aðalsteinn’s service
in a Christian kingdom. A Christian kingdom and its king are types of
the Kingdom of Heaven and of Christ; to be a Christian is to be what
St Paul calls a citizen in the Kingdom of Heaven (Philippians 3.20).
Egill’s foiled hope is not a hope of conversion, but a hope of a type of
conversion, an attraction to an earthly type of a heavenly kingdom and,
therefore, prefigures the desire of genuine converts (like his descendants)
to become Christian.
Egill’s final prefiguration of a saint comes after his death. His
stepdaughter Þórdís, a convert to Christianity, has Egill’s remains ex-
humed and reburied under the altar of a newly built church. Margaret
Clunies Ross has observed that the discovery of a body, or inventio,
and its transferral to a new burial place, or translatio, are both hagio-
graphical motifs, perhaps indicating some chance that the influence
66 Saga-Book
Lönnroth, Lars 1969. ‘The Noble Heathen’. Scandinavian Studies 41, 1–30.
Markus, R. A. 1999. ‘History’. In Augustine through the Ages; an Encyclopedia.
Ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald, 432–34.
Tkacs, Catherine Brown 1999. ‘Typology’. In Augustine through the Ages: an
Encyclopedia. Ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald, 855–57.
Tulinius, T. H. 2002. The Matter of the North. The Rise of Literary Fiction in
Thirteenth-Century Iceland.
Tulinius, T. H. 2005. ‘Political Exegesis or Personal Expression? The Problem of
Egils saga’. In Neue Ansätze in der Mittelalterphilologie / Nye veier i middel
alderfilologien: Akten der skandinavistischen Arbeitstagung in Münster vom
24. bis 26. oktober 2002. Ed. Susanne Kramarz-Bein, 131–40.
Weber, G. W. 2001. ‘Intelligere historiam. Typological Perspectives of Nordic
Prehistory (in Snorri, Saxo, Widukind, and others)’. In Mythos und Geschichte:
Essays zur Geschichtsmythologie Skandinaviens in Mittelalter und Neuzeit. Ed.
Margaret Clunies Ross, 99–145.
The Goals of Galdralag 69
By EIRIK WESTCOAT
Independent Scholar
1. Introduction
Íslenskt Textasafn.
The Goals of Galdralag 71
4. Defining the galdralag form
In order to identify its occurrences, galdralag as a poetic form must be
defined, and the genres of poetry that it can be found in determined.
Faulkes mentions that extra lines added to certain dróttkvætt stanzas
might warrant comparison to galdralag, but adds, ‘Snorri seems to
confine the term galdralag to ljóðaháttr with an extra line at the end of
the stanza’ (2007, 51). Here I do likewise, considering galdralag to be
something that is only found in ljóðaháttr and ignoring galdralag-like
constructions in forms other than ljóðaháttr. These do exist; the ending
of V†lundarqviða 41 has a repetitive, galdralag-like construction in a
fornyrðislag poem:2
Ec vætr hánom I knew not how
vinna kunnac, to withstand him,
ec vætr hánom I could do nothing
vinna máttac. to withstand him.
It might be suggested that B†ðvildr is complaining that V†lundr has used
magic on her to explain why she succumbed to him.
Now that galdralag is restricted here to a sub-class of ljóðaháttr, some
remarks on ljóðaháttr itself will be helpful. Regular ljóðaháttr consists
of stanzas of four lines, starting with a fornyrðislag-style long line com-
posed of two half lines linked by alliteration, although it tends to have a
less rigid syllable count, as a comparison between Hávamál and V†luspá
will quickly show. Each half line generally has two stressed syllables.
This long line is then followed by a peculiar structure commonly called
a full line which generally seems to have two or three stressed syllables
and internal alliteration. This combination of long line and full line is
usually repeated to make a full stanza—but the half-stanza of two lines
is the fundamental unit.
The long line needs no further comment here. The full line does,
however, since it is critical to the definition of galdralag. In particular,
it is characterised by how it ends. Turville-Petre says that a long disyl-
labic word was apparently forbidden as an ending, and that instead,
the word used to end the line can be a short disyllable, a long mono-
syllable, a short monosyllable, or a trisyllable made up of a stressed
long syllable, a half-stressed syllable and an unstressed syllable (1976,
xv–xvi). Examples of these valid endings would be fyrir, menn, hvat
and Óðreri, respectively. Evans elaborates on the nature of the disyl-
lable (1986, 87):
2 All translations in this article are my own.
72 Saga-Book
The first syllable of a disyllable at the end of a ljóðaháttr ‘full line’ must be
short. (A long vowel followed immediately by a short vowel, as for instance
in búa, counts as short for this purpose.)
Thus, a long disyllable such as rúnar by itself would not be expected as
the ending of a full line. However, Sievers allows the combination of
stressed long, half-stressed long and unstressed, although it ends with a
long disyllable (1893, 84). This suggests that word boundaries are impor-
tant. The question of appropriate line endings will be used in evaluating
some potential instances of galdralag.
Many have indicated that the identifying feature of galdralag is the
addition of an extra full line in a half-stanza, one which often repeats the
previous full line with some changes. This upsets the regular alternation
of long lines and full lines that is characteristic of ljóðaháttr. According
to Sievers (1893, 81):
Im galdralag wird die vollzeile einer halbstrophe (in dem musterbeispiel des
Háttatal str. 101 die der letzten) in etwas veränderter gestalt wiederholt. So
z. b. Hôv. 105 . . . Aber auch in der ersten halbstrophe ist die widerholung
gestattet und häufig, z. b. Hôv. 1. . . ebenso die widerholung in beiden halb-
strophen, z. b. Hôv. 125.
In galdralag the full line of a half-stanza (in the prime example of Háttatal
strophe 101, in which it is the last one) is repeated in a somewhat changed form.
Thus for example Hávamál 105 . . . However, the repetition is also permitted
and frequent in the first half-stanza; for example Hávamál 1. . . likewise, the
repetition in both half-stanzas; for example Hávamál 125.
Here I disagree with Sievers and others and follow the approach of
Anderson, considering to be galdralag any instance where two or more
consecutive full lines occur in a half-stanza of ljóðaháttr poetry where
the listener expects only a single full line. Thus, I do not consider the
modified repetition of the previous line to be an essential feature.
Anderson defines galdralag as follows with respect to ljóðaháttr
(2002, 151):
There is a variation of this six line stanza called, significantly, galdralag,
‘incantation’ or ‘magic song’ meter. This variation involves the addition of
another three stress line [‘full line’] to the ljóðaháttr stanza. The effectiveness
of this variation is derived from its similarity to the basic verse form. Until
the seventh line of the galdralag, which is linked by grammatical forms and
complementary sentence structure to the sixth line but is not anticipated by
the preceding lines, the two verse forms are exactly alike. The seventh line
therefore comes as a surprise to the reader or listener, thereby assuming a power
lacking in an ordinary stanza, a power which perhaps explains the origin of
the term ‘incantation meter’.
The Goals of Galdralag 73
Among the various problems the lists have posed for editors of the eddic
poems is the fact that they frequently display metrical irregularity and are
consequently difficult to group into conventional strophes.
I have noted that galdralag involved situations ‘where the listener
expects only a single full line’. However, metrical irregularities and
poetic lists would be situations where the listeners’ expectations may
be different. A good example of such a poetic list starts in Grímnismál
27. It begins with a typical ljóðaháttr long line, Síð oc Víð, | Sœkin oc
Eikin, but this is followed by Sv†l oc Gunnþró which is not a full line,
since it lacks internal alliteration. It cannot be a half line paired with
the Fi†rm oc Fimbulþul that follows, as the two do not alliterate. Sv†l
oc Gunnþró alliterates with the long line that opens the stanza—but
this offers the unusual case of three half lines linked by alliteration. No
matter how it is reckoned, it is an irregularity. As most editors have it,
one can only assume that the metre in this and the following stanza has
been suspended while the poet recites the list of rivers. The irregular-
ity (three alliterating half lines) may be the poet’s way of announcing
a suspension of metre that starts a list. Therefore, in stanzas where the
ljóðaháttr has been suspended for the sake of a list, one should be more
reluctant to identify an instance of galdralag. When the regular alterna-
tion of long lines with full lines has been suspended, two consecutive
full lines would not confound the expectations of the listener. Of course,
not every poetic list suspends the metre; Grímnismál 30 comfortably
contains a list of horses while maintaining the regular alternation. The
simplest case of such a list and the suspension of metre is that of a dense
sequence of proper nouns separated by simple conjunctions (usually
oc, sometimes en).
However, poetic lists can be more complicated than that and still entail
a suspension of the standard ljóðaháttr metre. Jackson has done important
work on such complex lists in Eddic poetry, especially lists in Hávamál
which are more than just dense sequences of proper nouns (1995). She
identified several such lists in ljóðaháttr poetry where regular metre seems
to be suspended (1994; 1995). As in simpler lists, it is not meaningful to
identify galdralag where there is no expectation of metre to be upset.
Interestingly enough, some of these lists appear to start with galdralag
lines, particularly ones that have strong repetition (1995, 84, 95–96). It
must also be noted that lists sometimes seem to end with galdralag (1995,
99; 1994, 45). These usages can complicate identification of galdralag
instances. Nevertheless, whether or not the poets are reciting lists must
be a factor in identifying instances of galdralag.
The Goals of Galdralag 75
that such a pair could fit into. The fragment features the slightly restated
repetition also found in Háttatal 101. Here the second line gives new
information limiting, but not contradicting, the first line. In the first line
it is possible that the nine mothers are unrelated; the second line restricts
it to nine sisters specifically. Snorri’s model stanza, however, does not
give limiting information, except perhaps for the first three lines. Lines
4–7 merely say the same thing twice in different words.
The closing lines of Snorri’s model stanza show the use of repetition
for emphasis, a function that is not peculiar to galdralag. The Heimdalar-
galdr fragment and the opening lines of Snorri’s stanza, on the other hand,
demonstrate limitation with emphasis. There are further examples in the
corpus of limitation with emphasis as a function of galdralag, alongside
clarification and expansion.
in suspense waiting for the expected full line that keeps getting delayed.
Nonetheless, Jackson also reckons this as a transitional stanza (1994, 39).
There are more instances of long-line galdralag in Hávamál and For Scírnis.
Both types of repetition (that is, the use of multiple long lines or ordinary
long line plus full line) may very well be examples of skilled poets push-
ing the boundaries of conventional practice. Having sufficiently defined
the boundaries of galdralag and its possible expansions, we now turn to
listing the instances of galdralag in the corpus.
starts a list or other section of metrical irregularity, as the next three stanzas
are composed using only long lines. Given these features in common with
Grímnismál 27, it would be inconsistent to reckon one as galdralag and
the other not. Beyond that, the last line of Hávamál 80 is suspect. It is not
clear whether it is a full line or a long line, as the indentation that Neckel
and Kuhn give it suggests (1983, 29). One may object that I include other
instances of galdralag that occur in lists, but the key difference is that these
use the galdralag itself to signal the start or end of the list. In Hávamál
80, however, the three linked half lines signal the departure from metre.
Similarly, Hávamál 142 clearly has a galdralag couplet in mi†c stóra
stafi, || mi†c stinna stafi, but should the following lines be considered part
of an extended galdralag, or simply part of a list as Jackson has reckoned
(1995, 95–100)? Consistency suggests that once a list has been started with
galdralag, further galdralag should not be reckoned in it except perhaps
for an instance of galdralag to end it. Those following lines in Hávamál
142 are, of course, extremely similar to the ones in Hávamál 80 (þeim er
gorðo ginregin || oc fáði fimbulþulr). Thus, in a later section when I ad-
dress extended galdralag sequences of three or more full lines, I do not
make that reckoning exhaustive: I leave out stanzas such as Hávamál 142
where the extended nature is uncertain.
In Hávamál 111 I reckon the end of the stanza as three consecutive full
lines, making it an extended galdralag: Háva h†llo at, || Háva h†llo í; ||
heyrða ec segia svá. Why is Háva h†llo at a full line instead of a half line
here, especially when the next line, Háva h†llo í, is a half line in Hávamál
164? Sverdlov points out that half lines can migrate to full lines and vice
versa (2011, 55–56). In deciding whether an ambiguous item is a half
line or a full line, the expectations of the audience must be taken into ac-
count. The listeners know they are hearing ljóðaháttr and would reckon
a full line if the material is valid as such in a position when they expect
a full line. After the earlier lines of stanza 111, they would expect a full
line, since the alternation of long lines and full lines has been regular, and
Háva h†llo at satisfies the alliteration and stress requirements for a full
line. The repetition in the following line, Háva h†llo í, underscores the
fact that this is a second consecutive full line. Also, the syllable structure
corresponds to the galdralag couplet in Grímnismál 45 as well: stressed
long, unstressed short, stressed long, unstressed short, stressed long. Fur-
thermore, Grímnismál 45 has the same grammatical structure of genitive
noun, dative noun and preposition. The only structural difference is where
alliteration falls. Sverdlov also notes the correspondence, pointing out that
the two formulae and syllable structures are the same (2011, 54).
80 Saga-Book
9. Themes of galdralag
While many, although probably not all, instances of galdralag
represent magic, that is a rather broad statement. By comparing the
instances, specific repeated magical topics can be identified. Recur-
ring themes include fetters, runes, memory charms, insults, curses
and the emphasising of advice. As Jackson indicates, it is also used
for starting and ending lists, and I will remark on some stanzas that
she does not mention.
Fetters are mentioned in Hávamál 149, Grógaldr 10 and Helgaqviða
Hi†rvarðzsonar 26. The first two are about loosening fetters, while the
last concerns the laying on of a metaphorical fetter.
Hávamál 149:
sprettr mér af fótom fi†turr, a fetter springs from my feet,
enn af h†ndom hapt. and a bond from my hands.
Grógaldr 10:
ok støkr þá láss af limom, and then flees lock from limbs,
en af fótom f†torr. and from feet a fetter.
Helgaqviða Hi†rvarðzsonar 26:
hér sté hon land af legi here she went ashore from the sea
oc festi svá yðarn flota. and thus made fast your fleet.
The use of g aldralag when mentioning fetters may be self-referential: the
surprise of the unexpected full line was perhaps thought a fetter to restrain
the mind of the listener, which suggests that magic (to the poets) was a
means of binding or loosening. McKinnell notes the correspondence of
the Grógaldr stanza to part of the First Merseberg Charm, indicating the
antiquity of the theme (2005, 205).
Galdralag is very frequently used for references to runes, whether these
be fuþark staves or secrets and mysteries. The stanzas mentioning runes
are Hávamál 111, 142–43, 157; Vafþrúðnismál 42–43; Sigrdrífomál 13,
84 Saga-Book
18, 19. Of course, runes are mentioned in non-galdralag stanzas and lists,
such as Hávamál 137 and 139 and Fj†lsvinnsmál 26. Still, these galdralag
instances are a significant fraction of all reference to runes in ljóðaháttr
poems, giving a further indication that the poets reckoned a strong con-
nection between runes and magic.
Galdralag is also frequently used in memory charms. The refrain of
the section of Hávamál giving advice to Loddfáfnir, first occurring in
stanza 112, represents the speaker’s use of magic to help Loddfáfnir learn,
remember and use the advice that is given. The speaker uses another
galdralag memory charm on him in Hávamál 162. Sigrdrífomál 19b is
a memory charm, as is suggested by its similarities with Hávamál 112
(mentioned previously). These uses of memory charms parallel those in
the fornyrðislag of Hyndlolióð 45 and the prose after Sigrdrífomál 2 where
reference is made to memory drinks which help the initiates remember
important information.
Galdralag also adds force to insults, as Anderson has noted (2002,
152). Locasenna 13, 54, and 62 are all insults by Loki against Bragi,
Sif and Þórr respectively. Locasenna 23 is a retaliation by Óðinn
against Loki, using an extended g aldralag. However, Locasenna is
the only poem that uses g aldralag to enhance insults. (This could
make them curses, except that there is no overt harm or threat of
harm in them.)
Galdralag is used for cursing in ten instances across multiple poems, a
curse being defined as any magic used with intent to harm. Thus, Alvíssmál
35 is a curse—Þórr is certainly not trying to help Alvíss with galdralag.
Sverdlov notes (2011, 61):
We may surmise that the galdralag stanza forces Alvíss to look around and
see the sun, and thus turn into stone (otherwise he could probably have dis
appeared hastily into the earth).
Thus we have a piece of galdralag functioning as a fetter instead of
referring to one. Five of the six instances of g aldralag in For Scírnis
are in Scírnir’s curse on Gerðr (stanzas 29–30, 32, 34–35). Hávamál
155 is a curse against the túnriðor. In Locasenna 65 Loki curses Ægir
and his hall. Hárbarðzlióð 20 starts with talk of a love spell, but the
galdralag lines at the end are clearly about harmful magic. Helgaqviða
Hi†rvarðzsonar 26 recounts the curse of a witch or valkyrie on a fleet,
causing it to become stuck.
Galdralag can also emphasise particular pieces of advice in a list. In-
stances of this include Hávamál 125, Hávamál 135, Sigrdrífomál 25 and
Sigrdrífomál 35. Interestingly, both Sigrdrífomál stanzas refer to revenge,
The Goals of Galdralag 85
which is one possible reason for their special emphasis. We must consider
whether the galdralag in the list of charms in Hávamál is also used in this
way to indicate that those particular charms are more important than the
others. The list of charms includes five galdralag instances (stanzas 149,
155–57 and 162), but only one, Hávamál 156, is not covered in the uses
already mentioned. It is a protection charm whose extended g aldralag has
three consecutive full lines. However, overuse of g aldralag to emphasise
items in a list might defeat its purpose; the use of galdralag in five of the
eighteen charms suggests to me that its function here is not to emphasise
particular charms. In contrast, the g aldralag in the advice to Loddfáfnir
occurs in two of twenty distinct pieces of advice. (We can safely exclude
the refrain from this tally, since it marks the boundaries between the
pieces of advice.) Sigrdrífa uses galdralag in only two of eleven pieces
of advice to Sigurðr. Both fractions are lower than in the list of charms
in Hávamál, and neither can be considered excessive.
As Jackson’s work suggests, g aldralag sometimes signals the start of a
list and the suspension of ordinary metre (1995). She identifies Grímnismál
45, Hávamál 111 and Hávamál 142 as g aldralag couplets that signal the
start of lists (1995, 85, 95). Applying her methods, the following additional
instances of g aldralag also start lists: Hávamál 164a and Sigrdrífomál
14. As mentioned earlier, Jackson notes that galdralag sometimes ends a
list, instancing the g aldralag in Sigrdrífomál 13 (1994, 40, 45). She also
implies Sigrdrífomál 18b and Hávamál 143 to be list-ending g aldralag
(1995, 99). To those, I add Hávamál 162 (which is already reckoned a
memory charm) as signalling the forthcoming end of the list, although
it does not itself end the list. Jackson observed that a pattern break was
used to signal the end of the charms list here but did not comment on the
galdralag in it (1994, 41). Both may have been thought necessary, since
the charms list already has several g aldralag stanzas in it. By this point,
an ordinary galdralag could not suffice to signal the list’s end. Thus, the
poet has combined a pattern break with a most exceptional g aldralag that
consists of four consecutive full lines.
are Hávamál 111, 134, 143, 156 and 162; Locasenna 23; Helgaqviða
Hi†rvarðzsonar 28 and Sigrdrífomál 14, 19b, 25 and 35.
Extended g aldralag has many uses. No consistent themes emerge. Háva
mál 111 and Sigrdrífomál 14 are not magic per se, but rather markers of
the beginnings of lists as was discussed above. Hávamál 134 is advice
about the wisdom of elders, connected to magic through Tangherlini’s
interpretation of the stanza as referring to a ‘sage dangling from the
roof of a smoke house’ in a wisdom ritual (1990, 97). Hávamál 143 and
Sigrdrífomál 19b end lists that deal with runes. Hávamál 156 is a charm
for safety in battle; Hávamál 162 is a memory charm. Locasenna 23 is a
magically enhanced insult, as noted earlier. Helgaqviða Hi†rvarðzsonar
28 refers to supernatural horses. In Sigrdrífomál 25 and 35 there is no
obvious magic; as mentioned above, they add emphasis to items in
lists. In addition to emphasis, however, they clarify the advice through
additional details.
Considering the instances together, all they have in common is the
purpose of intensification, to increase the emphasis for the audience
beyond that of normal galdralag. We can also envision the same for
the character spoken to: all the Hávamál and Sigrdrífomál examples
appear to have an initiatory context, while the Locasenna example is
emotionally intense. Perhaps emphasis qua magic would best sum-
marise it.
Having just touched on clarification, we now consider it further,
along with two closely related functions. As mentioned previously,
the examples in Snorri’s Edda indicate that one use of galdralag is
for limitation. The opposite of that, expansion, should also be con-
sidered. Next are some stanzas that I include in each category. Not
all instances of galdralag can necessarily be analysed in this way,
but many of them certainly can. Ultimately, such designations must
necessarily be somewhat subjective. Limitation and expansion seem
more apparent where there is strong repetition between the full lines
in question. In instances of limitation or expansion, there is the pos-
sibility of active magic—that is, magic causing change—between
the first and last lines of the sequence. In instances of clarification,
the magical function would probably be emphasis or intensification
instead of causing change.
Examples of clarification include Hávamál 125, 134; Locasenna
23, 54, 62; Alvíssmál 35, Fáfnismál 24; Sigrdrífomál 25, 35. In Háva
mál 125 the extra lines add detail to clarify or emphasise; they do
not change the scope of the remarks or offer any other surprises. In
The Goals of Galdralag 87
Hávamál 134 the extra lines emphasise the importance of the advice,
while explaining what this þulr does. In Locasenna 23 Óðinn piles on
the details of Loki’s womanish ways in his retort. Locasenna 54 and
62 serve Loki similarly by adding detail to his insults. Alvíssmál 35
clarifies the predicament that Alvíss finds himself in. In Fáfnismál 24
the extra line adds details and does not limit or expand anything. Lastly,
Sigrdrífomál 25 and 35 add clarifying details while emphasising the
importance of the advice on taking revenge and avoiding being killed
in revenge, respectively.
Examples of limitation include Gylfaginning 27; Hávamál 111, 164;
Grímnismál 45. As noted above, Gylfaginning 27 provides limitation
without apparent magical purpose. Heimdallr is not trying to work magic,
and as far as we can tell from the extant lines, it seems he is merely boast-
ing of his unusual parentage. Hávamál 164, on the other hand, is indeed
magic that functions through limitation. Hávi’s sayings are identified as
being very useful to the sons of men, but the next line denies their utility
to an entire kindred by declaring them useless to the sons of j†tnar! The
limitation in Hávamál 111 is subtler: the speaker specifies the location
of Hávi’s hall and limits it by adding that the important events take place
inside it, not merely at it. This extended instance of galdralag concludes
by narrowing the focus to the words spoken in the hall. Grímnismál 45
is also a limitation: it starts with the Æsir on Ægir’s benches and is then
limited to those who are there for Ægir’s feast. Put another way, a simple
physical location (Ægir’s benches) is limited by a significant event taking
place there (Ægir’s feast).
Examples of expansion include Hávamál 1, 112, 149, 155–57, 162;
For Scírnis 10, 30, 35; Locasenna 65; Sigrdrífomál 13, 19b; Grógaldr
10. Hávamál 1 starts the poem with an expansion when the listener is
instructed first to look around and then quickly exhorted also to pry or
search around. Hávamál 112 (the Loddfáfnismál refrain) is an expan-
sion also. The speaker indicates that Loddfáfnir will use the advice if
he learns it, but extends it by saying that it will be good if he under-
stands it. Hávamál 162, which mentions Loddfáfnir again, is similarly
expansive. Sigrdrífomál 19b is also expansive, in a manner similar to
the Loddfáfnismál refrain. Hávamál 149 and the similar Grógaldr 10
are both expansive. The charms do not just release fetters from one part
of the body, they release fetters from additional parts also. Hávamál
155 starts by affecting the physical forms of the túnriðor and then
expands to include non-physical or spiritual aspects also. Hávamál
156 is perhaps the most expansive of all. Wholeness is bestowed not
88 Saga-Book
just for going into battle, but also for returning from battle, and finally
for persisting outside the context of battle. Hávamál 157 is a simple
expansion: that the dead man walks is not sufficient; the magic must
endow him with speech as well. In For Scírnis 10, Scírnir speaks a
charm to his horse, declaring they must get over the tribe of þursar
in addition to getting over the dewy mountain. Getting over the dewy
mountain may have been easy for the horse, but getting over the tribe
of þursar was probably harder—thus, magic is needed to increase the
horse’s ability. In For Scírnis 30, Scírnir constrains Gerðr by declaring
that she will be without choice, and adds to her predicament by say-
ing she will be wanting choice nonetheless. In For Scírnis 35 Scírnir
points out that Gerðr’s misfortunes shall be the result of her own will
in choosing to deny Freyr, but he immediately expands this to add his
own will in causing the misfortunes. Locasenna 65 is another expansion.
Loki starts by having the flames play, but then actually burn. Lastly,
the g
aldralag in Sigrdrífomál 13 proclaims a certain liquid as being
from hauss Heiddraupnis, but then expands the origin of the liquid to
a second source, horn Hoddrofnis, perhaps to establish some level of
identity between them.
11. Conclusions
The word galdralag is inextricably linked with magic: the frequent
occurrences of galdr and the scant occurrences of galdralag itself in
the prose corpus support this. With a proper definition of galdralag as
a poetic form, considerations of poetic lists and suspended metre, and
criteria for identifying valid ljóðaháttr full lines, genuine instances of
galdralag in the poetic corpus can be separated from material that merely
looks like consecutive full lines due to editorial printing conventions.
A brief analysis of long line structures has revealed that a more com-
prehensive notion of galdralag that goes beyond extra full lines could
also be considered.
Themes of magic are well represented in galdralag poetry. Previ-
ous commentary has shown that the magic of galdralag can be used
for or against another person, or by the user upon himself. My own
analysis shows that the magical themes of runes, binding/loosening
fetters, memory charms and curses all appear in multiple instances of
galdralag poetry. The magic of suspending a poem’s normal ljóðaháttr
metre while delving into a list arranged according to different metrical
principles is well represented, and g
aldralag is often used for restoring
ordinary metre.
The Goals of Galdralag 89
Bibliography
Anderson, Philip N. 2002. ‘Form and Content in Lokasenna: A Re-evaluation’.
In The Poetic Edda. Essays on Old Norse Mythology. Ed. Paul Acker and
Carolyne Larrington, 139–58.
Cleasby, Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874. An Icelandic-English Dictionary.
Evans, David A. H., ed., 1986. Hávamál.
Faulkes, Anthony, ed., 1998. Snorri Sturluson. Edda: Skáldskaparmál.
Faulkes, Anthony, ed., 2005. Snorri Sturluson. Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning.
Faulkes, Anthony, ed., 2007. Snorri Sturluson. Edda: Háttatal.
Fj†lsvinnsmál. In B. Sijmons and H. Gering, eds, 1906. Die Lieder der Edda.
Vol. I: Text, 200–13.
Gade, Kari Ellen 1995. The Structure of Old Norse Dróttkvætt Poetry.
Grógaldr. In B. Sijmons and H. Gering, eds, 1906. Die Lieder der Edda. Vol. I:
Text, 200–13.
Heusler, Andreas and Wilhelm Ranisch, eds, 1903. Eddica Minora.
Icelandic Parsed Historical Corpus 2011. Ed. Joel C. Wallenberg et al. Version
0.9. <http://www.linguist.is/icelandic_treebank>.
Íslenskt Textasafn. Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum. <http://corpus.
arnastofnun.is/>. Accessed 02.2015.
Jackson, Elizabeth 1994. ‘A New Perspective on the Relationship between the
Final Three Sections of Hávamál and on the Role of Loddfáfnir’. Saga-Book
XXIV, 33–57.
Jackson, Elizabeth 1995. ‘Eddic Listing Techniques and the Coherence of Rúna-
tal’. Alvíssmál 5, 81–106.
McKinnell, John 2005. Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend.
Neckel, Gustav and Hans Kuhn, eds, 1983. Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius
nebst verwandten Denkmälern. Vol. I: Text.
Píslarsaga séra Jóns Magnússonar 2001. Ed. Matthías Viðar Sæmundsson.
90 Saga-Book
Russom, Geoffrey 1998. Beowulf and Old Germanic Metre.
Sievers, Eduard 1893. Altgermanische Metrik.
Sverdlov, Ilya V. 2011. ‘Ok dulða ek þann inn alsvinna j†tun: Some Linguistic and
Metrical Aspects of Óðinn’s Win over Vafþrúðnir’. Saga-Book XXXV, 39–72.
Tangherlini, Timothy 1990. ‘Some Old Norse Hang-Ups: Ritual Aspects of Háva
mál 134’. Mankind Quarterly 31, 87–108.
Turville-Petre, E. O. G. 1976. Scaldic Poetry.
Vries, Jan de 1964. Altnordische Literaturgeschichte.
Hvers manns gagn 91
By TORFI H. TULINIUS
University of Iceland
olive oil, and as an anaesthetic, paternosters sung by the clerics who assist
him in the operation (Hrafns saga 1987, 6).
The description makes one feel grateful for modern medicine, and it is
no wonder that this rather gruesome passage has attracted considerable
attention. Indeed, it shows that Hrafn’s medical knowledge was both
learned and up-to-date for his time. Other aspects of Hrafn’s description,
however, have not been given as much consideration. One is the fact that
he has all these talents. Maybe because of Hrafn’s connections to the Ork
ney Islands—he went there at least once, probably more often—as well
as to the Orkney Bishop Bjarni Kolbeinsson, who gave him a signet ring
bearing both his name and the effigy of a raven, I have been reminded of
the famous stanza by Earl Rögnvaldur Kali of Orkney:
Tafl emk †rr at efla;
íþróttir kannk níu;
týnik trauðla rúnum;
tíðs mér bók ok smíðir.
Skríða kannk á skíðum;
skýtk ok rœk, svát nýtir;
hvártveggja kannk hyggja:
harpsl°tt ok bragþ°ttu.
(Skaldic Poetry II, 576)1
Four of the nine skills that Rögnvaldur claims to have, poetry, books,
archery and craftsmanship with wood and metal, are also attributed to
Hrafn. Of course, this does not tell us anything about any kind of relation-
ship between Hrafn and the Orkney aristocrats, but it does tell us quite a
lot about what could be called the self-fashioning of a leader in Old Norse
society, at least in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Goeres 2015). It did
not suffice to be born into the position, one had to acquire the skills needed
to fulfil the expectations society had of a leader. Though different, both
lists of accomplishments tell us that it was not enough for a man to know
how to fight and lead men into battle to be a leader in his community. All
kinds of other abilities were required.
Of special interest are those that have to do with literacy. This is a
development that could be seen all over medieval Europe from the early
1 Prose word order: Ek kann íþróttir níu. Ek em †rr tafl at efla. Ek týni trauðla
rúnum. Mér er tíð bók ok smíðir. Ek kann skríða á skíðum. Ek skýt ok ræ svá at
nýtir. Ek kann hyggja hvártveggja, harpsl°tt ok bragþ°ttu.
My translation: I have nine accomplishments. I am eager to play chess. I hardly
forget runes. I enjoy books and craftsmanship. I can glide on skis. I shoot and I
row usefully. I understand harp-playing and the elements of poetry.
96 Saga-Book
2 ‘En fyrir því, at aptr hverfr lygi, þá er s†nnu mœtir, þá ætlum vér at rita n†kkura
atburði, þá er g†rzk hafa á várum d†gum á meðal vár kunnra manna, sem vér
vitum sannleik til. Í þeim atburðum mun sýnask mikil þolinmœði guðs almáttigs,
sú er hann hefir hvern dag við oss, ok sjálfræði þat, er hann gefr hverjum manna,
at hverr má gøra þat, sem vill, gott eða illt.’
102 Saga-Book
a saint but that of a secular lord who exercises his power in a way that
conforms to the Church’s conception of power.
This leads me to my fourth point, which is that in the effort to achieve
both of her or his aims, which are to tell the truth but also to show how
Hrafn obeyed God’s will, the author of the saga opens up the possibility
of other interpretations of the facts than her or his own. The great mystery
of Hrafn’s behaviour—a question many people must have pondered when
these events were recalled to memory over the years—is why he spares
Þorvaldur’s life on several occasions, ignoring his followers’ admoni-
tions, when it is clear that his opponent is determined to kill him. The
author tells us that this is because Hrafn would rather suffer in this world
than in the next (Hrafns saga 1987, 32–33). He therefore refrains from
violence towards Þorvaldur, even though he makes every effort to defend
himself, only being betrayed at last by his own men’s negligence on that
fatal night in March 1213.
An alternative explanation might be proposed. Hrafn was a close friend
and follower of Bishop Guðmundur Arason of the northern diocese. He
and Þórður Sturluson were the only chieftains in Iceland who refused to
participate in the attack on the bishop’s seat at Hólar after the death of
Kolbeinn Tumason in 1208, while Þorvaldur participated with great enthu-
siasm (Hrafns saga 1987, 29). This must have weakened Hrafn’s position
in the balance of power in the country. Aware of this, he might have been
wary of bringing his conflict with Þorvaldur to a head, possibly bringing
about Þorvaldur’s death. When we consider the settlement after Hrafn’s
killing, when Þorvaldur was only sentenced to five years of outlawry
and was not deprived of his chieftaincy, we may ask ourselves whether
Hrafn feared that he would receive harsher treatment if he were to get rid
of his dangerous neighbour (Hrafns saga 1987, 44–45). This could have
been permanent exile or confiscation of his goðorð, especially because
so many of the chieftains in the country, who would inevitably have been
involved in the settlement, were ill disposed towards him because of his
loyalty to Bishop Guðmundur.
I come now to my fifth and final point. In an article on Eyrbyggja saga
which focuses on the peculiar way in which the farm of Fróðá is rid of
its revenants by the exercise of law, I have suggested that the saga as a
whole is a sort of inquiry into the role of the chieftain. It reveals not only a
questioning within Icelandic society about the social function of the goðar
but also a possible debate between the lay chieftains and the dignitaries of
the Church in their relationship to the supernatural, i.e. to the divine or in
other words to the metaphysical foundation of their power (Tulinius 2007,
Hvers manns gagn 103
61). Such a debate must have been inevitable because of the protracted
conflict between the chieftains and Bishop Guðmundur, from 1208 until
his death in 1237. I even suggest an intertextual connection between the
story of Selkolla in which Guðmundur rids the Westfjords of a particularly
nasty revenant, and that of the Wonders of Fróðá.
I believe that the attitude towards and the relationship to the Church is a
neglected part of the background to the internal struggles of Iceland in the
period we often call the Sturlung Age. The Icelandic chieftains are not only
attracted by the rise of the royal state in Norway, separated from Iceland by
five hundred miles of dangerous waters, or influenced by the strengthening
of the aristocratic model of conduct widely distributed through Europe
by this time, but are also constructing themselves and their social role in
relation to a Church which is evolving fast in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. Though we know a lot about Hrafn, his connections to bishops,
both in Iceland and Orkney, and his alleged service to the community,
it is far from impossible that other chieftains, of whom we know much
less, may have behaved in a similar way. More research would have to be
done on that, in order to glean what information we can from the sources.
Regardless of whether I will be able to do that at some point, I believe
that I have been able to show you that the social role of the chieftains in
Icelandic society was more complex, mobile and open to change and de-
bate than you might have thought, and that I am not being presumptuous
in hoping that this lecture may have been of use to each and every one of
you: Hvers manns gagn!
Bibliography
Ásdís Egilsdóttir 2004. ‘Hrafn Sveinbjarnarson, pilgrim and martyr’. In Sagas,
Saints and Settlements. Ed. Gareth Williams and Paul Bibire. The Northern
World 11, 29–39.
Aurell, Martin 2011. Le chevalier lettré. Savoir et conduite de l‘aristocratie aux
XIIe et XIIIe siècles.
Bekker-Nielsen, Hans, et al. 1965. Norrøn fortællekunst: kapitler af den norsk-
islandske middelalderlitteraturs historie.
Benedikt Eyþórsson 2005. ʻReykholt and Church Centres’. Church Centres in
Iceland from the 11th to the 13th Century and their Parallels in other Countries.
Ed. Helgi Þorláksson, 105–16.
Dalarun, Jacques 2012. Gouverner c’est servir. Essai de démocratie médiévale.
Foucault, Michel 1978. The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction.
Trans. Robert Hurley.
Foucault, Michel 2007. Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collège
de France 1977–1978. Trans. Graham Burchell.
104 Saga-Book
REVIEWS
seems to show convincingly that the buildings here were more like those associ-
ated with administrative centres found elsewhere in the North Atlantic rather than
Icelandic turf houses. Three Phase 2 buildings were identified, Buildings 10/11,
and Building 12. Unusually, the separate Building 12 had a paved stone floor and
a conduit running towards the hot water stream to the east; the building appears
to have been heated with hot water or steam and the excavators’ hypothesis is that
this was some kind of sauna-like facility. Building 10/11, a square structure con-
joined with a longer, rectangular one running east-west, seems to be some kind of
dwelling of which only stone foundations and a possible cellar floor remain. This,
the excavators speculate, had a wooden superstructure, much like some forms of
medieval Norwegian buildings, the stofur found at the seat of the bishop at Hólar
in northern Iceland and The Biggings, Papa Stour, Shetland. From Buildings
10/11 there were also remains of a subterranean passageway which led southwards
towards the surviving hot pool, Snorralaug. All in all, this does have the look of
the kind of home that a member of Iceland’s wealthiest and most powerful social
tier would have, especially someone like Snorri who had regular contact with the
Norwegian court. The lack of artefacts associated with these structures can be used
to bolster the argument for the existence of a cellar beneath Building 11. At the
same time, the recovery of three fragments of imported medieval pottery would
seem to confirm the site’s high status even in the absence of other artefacts or the
remains of wooden building materials (no doubt reused or burnt).
In answer to the question how the excavated structures relate to the description
of the Reykholt farmstead in Sturlunga saga, it would appear that there is general
agreement between them, but not a perfect match. The suggestion here is that
Building 10 might be the litlastofa and Building 11 the stofa mentioned in Stur-
lunga saga (p. 95). This argument, as with so many in this detailed and thoughtful
volume, is presented carefully but proposed cautiously. It is to be hoped that there
will be further opportunities to excavate historically prominent farms in Iceland,
or other farms in Borgarfjörður, to produce material with which to compare the
Reykholt evidence.
Chris Callow
University of Birmingham
into the ocean. vikings, irish, and environmental change in iceland and the
north. By Kristján Ahronson. Toronto Old Norse and Icelandic Series 8.
Toronto University Press. Toronto, Buffalo and London 2015. xvi + 245 pp.
ISBN 978-1-4426-4617-9.
Into the Ocean is an exciting reconsideration of the evidence for early North
Atlantic Christendom. Using a range of new data and techniques, it sheds valuable
new light on the identity of the mysterious papar said to have inhabited the region,
including Iceland, prior to its Norse settlement. Though it is widely assumed that
medieval references to such populations have a basis in history, the sparseness of
Reviews 107
archaeological evidence has always loomed over the otherwise rather spectacular
narrative of an Irish discovery and settlement of Iceland no later than the ninth
century. However, Iceland remains a country with vast untapped archaeological
potential; there is much knowledge still to be gained.
In this book, Kristján Ahronson makes some significant strides towards un-
locking the secrets of what may have been Iceland’s earliest human residents. To
this end, he brings together an array of different lines of investigation, with the
southern Icelandic region of Seljaland as its archaeological focus. First, he revisits
the Pap- place-name evidence with a special focus on the Hebrides. He then turns
to Seljaland, where he concentrates on an understudied group of caves and reports
on his archaeological investigations of the area, starting with the caves’ relation-
ship to the surrounding man-made features. He soon moves to the dating of one
of the caves, their correlation with the historical presence of woodlands and the
taxonomy of a range of cruciform carvings in the caves, which he links back to
the western Scottish papar discussed at the start of his investigations.
Ahronson brings a relentlessly Popperian approach to the task. Following an
opening chapter discussing the long-discarded work of Eugène Beauvois, his
second chapter reformulates the conditions of valid interdisciplinary exchange.
Neither chapter is essential to his undertaking, but at least the latter details the
assumptions underlying the book and explains its unconventional format. Proceed-
ing from Popper’s axiom that all scholarship shares a unity of method, Ahronson
has formatted each chapter as a science article, using headings like ‘Hypotheses’,
‘Method’ and ‘Results and Discussion’ for each of its seven chapters, which feels
rather out of place in the first two chapters but functions well in the others. The more
meaningful Popperian policy he adopts is to formulate multiple rival hypotheses
for each chapter, whose respective validity he then weighs after producing the data.
In his third chapter, for instance, Ahronson considers several pre-existing
hypotheses to explain Pap- place-names in the Hebrides. Recapitulating his
earlier, shorter publication, Viking-Age Communities: Pap-names and Papar in
the Hebridean Islands (Oxford, 2007), he tests and dismisses the possibility that
these could be Celtic names before proceeding to test and reject the scenario that
Pap- place-names could have been introduced some considerable time after initial
Norse settlement to refer to a bygone Gaelic culture. Unfortunately, the two sets
of binary hypotheses in this chapter are formulated with just enough asymmetry
and ambiguity to make the choice between them a little muddled. For instance,
the winning hypothesis that ‘the distribution of Pap- names reflects the character
of earliest Norse settlement’ (p. 66; cf. p. 74) should presumably be understood to
mean that the place-names reflect current Celtic Christianity being incorporated
into the Norse landscape, as opposed to Viking settlements having themselves
been Christian from the outset.
It is from this point onward that Ahronson turns to archaeology, and it is here
that he offers exciting data from excavations carried out in the early 2000s. His
fourth chapter introduces the Seljaland caves, reports on a general archaeo-
logical survey of the area, and concludes that the caves do not form part of the
Norse settlement landscape but instead represent a cultural landscape of their
108 Saga-Book
own. Since one group of caves has the alternative (but possibly modern) name
Papahellir, there is potential for a connection with the island’s presumed pre-
Norse inhabitants.
The fifth chapter therefore sets out to date the Kverkarhellir cave, which fits least
well into the modern settlement pattern. This chapter steps up the archaeological
rigour of the work, detailing the author’s methods at length. Since the entrance to
the man-made cave is above a steep drop, Ahronson assumes the construction debris
would have been deposited immediately below. He has therefore dug two trenches
(D1, D4) within the expected apron of debris, as well as two control trenches: one
(D3) to establish the local stratigraphical fingerprint and another (D5) to establish
the character of palagonite erosion material for this region.
Trench D4 in particular differs from control trench D3 at some distance (up to
25 cm) below the settlement tephra. The layer in question consists of palagonite
pebbles consistent with construction debris. Trench D1 has a less pronounced
profile that could nevertheless also result from construction. Unfortunately,
morphological analysis of D4 material has yielded no evidence of contact with
metal tools. Ahronson nevertheless makes a case for construction debris in this
trench, as the pebbles it contains differ in size from those of control trench D5.
The layer’s depth below the settlement layer leads Ahronson to postulate a con-
struction phase c.800.
Chapter 6 demonstrates a technique in which multiple datable layers in a single,
larger trench are imaged from a bird’s-eye perspective, thus providing an insight
into such features as tree growth. A trench in Seljaland suggests that the area was
wooded c.920, but not c.870. Furthermore, as small depressions in the settlement
tephra layer are consistent with grazing, Ahronson speculates that the ninth-century
absence of tree growth might be due to human clearance for this purpose.
Ahronson then returns to the Seljaland caves for his final and longest chapter,
which compares the crosses engraved in the caves with cruciform engravings in other
northwestern-European contexts. The Seljaland crosses are found to have most in com-
mon with Argyll crosses associated with the pre-Viking-Age Columban tradition in
western Scotland, suggesting a connection with Gaelic monasticism of this early era.
Into the Ocean presents valuable archaeological work whose results combine
with available data to offer glimpses of a persuasive papar-narrative. Its opening
chapter, which revisits fanciful nineteenth-century conjectures, has no role in this
undertaking, while Ahronson’s generally healthy emphasis on the Popperian method
leads him to expend more space than strictly required on discussing methods and
rejecting weak hypotheses. The author’s emphasis on standards of research also
invites scrutiny of his own standard of inductive reasoning, encouraged in part by
the labour-intensive nature of archaeology. Trenches D1 and D4 actually yield rather
different results despite both falling within the expected apron of debris; further-
more, no external rationale is adduced to explain how the difference in pebble size
between trenches D4 and D5 links the material of the former to human construction.
The author’s estimate of the cave’s date at around 800 likewise lacks a detailed
motivation, but conveniently matches the end of the pre-Norse era in the Scottish
environment whose cross sculptures Ahronson compares to those of Seljaland. In
Reviews 109
these cases, more detailed rationalisation could have bolstered Ahronson’s case,
even if additional analysis is no substitute for additional fieldwork. Despite these
caveats, Ahronson’s multi-pronged contribution to the field is most welcome. It
will be fascinating to watch the discussion unfold from here.
the vikings in ireland and beyond. before and after the battle of clontarf.
Edited by Howard B. Clarke and Ruth Johnson. Four Courts Press. Dublin,
2015. xxxiv + 526 pp. ISBN 978-1-84682-495-1.
This large and lavishly-produced volume is one of a number of recent books
from Four Courts Press on aspects of medieval Ireland. They can be of use in the
field of Old Norse studies as a resource for modern research in a field that often
appears difficult to engage with. This volume, dedicated in memoriam Richard
Hall of the University of York, is edited by a historian and an archaeologist, and
as can be expected from its connection with the Royal Society of Antiquaries
of Ireland, a fair number of the collected essays concern archaeology and art.
The high-quality illustrations are welcome, while the reproduction of maps of
archaeological sites is helpful.
The collection originated in the 2011 one-day conference of the [English] Mid-
lands Viking Symposium held in Dublin in the lead-up to the millennium of the
Battle of Clontarf, but other contributions from an Irish perspective were added
on its way to press. There are advantages for many scholars in having a collec-
tion of papers that reflects research published elsewhere and in other disciplines,
often in journals that are not easily accessible. This volume’s usage outside the
field of early medieval and Viking Ireland is more likely to be for comparative
work rather than adding to the still little-researched fields of direct contacts as
manifested in later written sources.
The editors start by giving an overview of recent historiography of Ireland and
the Viking Age from a largely Irish perspective. The assumption is that study
of the Viking Age is replete with misconceptions. The various essays follow in
more or less chronological order. An impressive array of subjects is covered, most
with some referencing, albeit comparative rather than suggestive of connections
between the Viking world in Ireland and the ‘Beyond’ that the title leads us to
expect. Throughout, there are efforts to provide a new take on the evidence, and
indeed the emphasis on historiography in the volume is helpful in displaying how
academic fashions change. The inclusion of work by Scandinavian scholars may
have helped us to see how the different perspectives we accept as normative are
influenced by our own academic and national cultures.
There is little about Clontarf itself, which is a disappointment given the title of
the volume and the expectation that the millennium has brought. However, Howard
Clarke writes on Sitriuc, who appears in Njáls saga as ‘Sigtryggr silkiskeggr’,
110 Saga-Book
the King of Dublin who fled the Battle of Clontarf, and whose long-continuing
career is recorded in Irish sources. Máire Ní Mhaonaigh takes the same period
in an assessment of the Mide [Meath] king Mael Sechnail, a significant figure at
Clontarf but not one who made it into the Norse sources.
Catherine Swift deals with the wider world in a vigorous and in many ways
ground-breaking article on Hiberno-Norse military culture, and the ways in which
hints of Norse words may be preserved in Irish texts, delving into art history and
poetry as well and showing how a close reading of the texts can indicate new areas of
research. Clare Downham gives suggestions on the use of the term ‘Gallgóidil’ in the
Irish sources in relation to the complex identities of the west of Scotland during the
Viking Age. The Irish Sea area as a unifying system is explored by David Griffiths.
Several stimulating papers cover art from the perspective of surviving artefacts and
carvings. These papers indicate that the ‘Beyond’ is an area that can be explored
fruitfully from a number of perspectives. Donnchadh Ó Corráin gives a finale on later
medieval presentations of the Vikings as a catastrophe that caused social upheaval
and artistic dislocation, suggesting that there was more continuity than has hitherto
been believed. But his paper suffers from the somewhat inward-looking nature of the
volume: for example, Ó Corráin refers to a Brjáns saga as a possible Dublin riposte
to the Cogadh Gáedhel re Gallaibh, without reference to the fact that many Norse
scholars question whether there ever was a written saga concerning Brian bórama,
and nearly all would reject a Dublin origin in the relevant time-frame.
This reviewer was particularly attracted to Linzi Simpson’s contribution, with
photographs that displayed, though somewhat repetitively, what could be learnt
from the Dublin grave of a young man of some wealth and taste. He died, prob-
ably violently, during the earliest period of occupation, and was apparently buried
with a new-born or prenatal infant. His grave may have been robbed: his lower
body had been moved during the period of decomposition, and artefects but no
weapons other than small knives were found with him.
Inevitably when a large number of writers contribute there is a degree of repeti-
tion, which the editors might have addressed. Pruning could also have been helpful.
Some papers seem to repeat material already published elsewhere: references to
these earlier publications could have cut the word-length further, leaving room
perhaps for the work of new scholars. It would have been helpful to have, rather
than the editors’ preface describing each paper, and another section for authors’
bibliographies, a brief summary and the author’s biography preceding each paper.
These matters do not detract from the achievement of the amassed scholar-
ship presented here in a single volume. A copy would be useful in a university
library or to scholars of the medieval period in Ireland, not least for the extensive
references. There is much that is valuable for the student of Old Norse, and that
may relate well to parallel discoveries and research elsewhere in the world of the
Vikings and their descendants.
Rosemary Power
National University of Ireland, Galway
Reviews 111
fibula, fabula, fact. the viking age in finland. Edited by Joonas Ahola and
Frog with Clive Tolley. Studia Fennica Historica 18. Finnish Literature Society.
Helsinki, 2014. 519 pp. Black-and-white illustrations. ISBN 978-952-222-603-7.
Fibula, Fabula, Fact focuses on the Viking Age in a region that is known today as
Finland. The title is carefully thought-out. The fibula is a particular leg-bone and
also a variety of brooch. ‘Fibula’ is therefore emblematic of the Viking Age in Fin-
land and also symbolises the tangible evidence of that time. ‘Fabula’, on the other
hand, symbolises the tales and narratives that give information about the Viking
Age in Finland. The term also symbolises the intangible evidence of the Viking
Age. ‘Facts’ can be achieved through this tangible and intangible source material.
The starting point for this volume was a collaborative international research
project that began in Helsinki in 2011. These articles were presented in seminars
hosted by the Department of Folklore Studies at the University of Helsinki. After
an introduction by Joonas Ahola and Frog, the book is divided into three parts.
Each of these parts begins with a short introduction to the theme in question and
the articles included in that section. Altogether, there are nineteen articles in this
volume, each of them viewing the Viking Age in Finland from different perspec-
tives and disciplines.
The first part is entitled ‘Time’ (pp. 87–168). The first article, by Clive Tolley,
offers an overview of the languages of the Viking Age in Finland. It is directed
especially to readers who are not familiar with historical linguistics and its
methods. This article functions as an introduction to the other linguistic articles
in the volume. The second article, by Ville Laakso, similarly offers an overview
of Viking-Age archaeology for readers who are not archaeologists themselves.
This article discusses the dating of the Viking Age in Finland, an issue that is not
so simple because the dating is based on Scandinavian archaeological m aterial,
which presents problems when it is applied to the Finnish context. The third
article, by Samuli Helama, focuses on climatic variations and how these can be
applied to the study of the Viking Age. The numismatic aspect is discussed in
the fourth article, written by Tuukka Talvio. Coins can tell us about trade routes,
as well as the unsettled times when coins are buried in hoards. The use of the
term ‘Viking Age’ in historiography is the subject of the fifth article, by Sirpa
Aalto. This article approaches the subject by examining the use of the term in
four different Finnish archaeological and historical journals. The sixth article, by
Petri Kallio, illuminates proto-Finnic linguistic diversification and demonstrates
how one can trace a language back to the Viking Age by using the methods of
historical linguistics.
The second part is entitled ‘Space’ (pp. 169–320). The first article, by Jukka
Korpela, explores the question of distances, both mental and geographical. These
distances affected how visible the Viking Age was in peripheries such as Karelia.
In the second article Mervi Koskela Vasaru surveys the ancient Bjarmaland. It
seems that Bjarmians were Finno-Ugric people and their main trade was in fur.
It is more difficult to say where Bjarmaland was located, but this was most likely
somewhere near the White Sea. In the third article Jari-Matti Kuusela examines
112 Saga-Book
settlement patterns in northern Finland. Scattered finds from the Iron Age include
many weapon and silver hoards, and these might suggest that violence was an
important factor in the Iron and Viking Ages in northern Finland. Teija Alenius
discusses pollen analyses in the fourth article. Several pollen samples give evidence
of a rise in the cultivation of hops and hemp during the Viking Age, in addition
to other, more common pollen types.
There is no continuous textual source material from the Viking Age, but the
analysis of toponymy might help to compensate for this absence. In the fifth article
Matti Leiviskä surveys place-names in the Siikajoki river valley, located in the
Gulf of Bothnia. Place-names can give information about the livelihoods of people
in the area, as well as peoples’ movements in different regions. In the final article
in this section, Lassi Heininen, Joonas Ahola and Frog write about the geopolitics
of the Viking Age. This was the first time in the history of Finland when regional
boundaries were drawn. At the same time, Scandinavian trade and pillaging networks
reached the coastline of Finland, while Slavic languages spread to the north and east.
The third part of the volume is entitled ‘People’ (pp. 321–482). It opens
with an article by Sami Raninen and Anna Wessman about the importance of
Åland during the Viking Age. Åland may have been a central trading post for
furs and other kinds of goods from Finland, and therefore had better contacts
with the Scandinavian Viking Age than other regions in Finland. Elina Salmela
discusses how genetic studies can be used to investigate, for example, how
certain diseases might have been transferred from Scandinavia. Such studies
are best suited for the study of long time spans, and conclusions can be drawn
only when a decent DNA sequence can be found which dates to the Viking
Age or earlier. A contribution by Joonas Ahola then shows that the Kalevala
epic material includes themes that can be traced back to the Viking Age; by
carefully examining these layers it is possible to discover themes that played
an important social role during that time.
The Finnish language has words that date back to the Viking Age, as Kaisa
Häkkinen then notes. Through these words, it is possible to survey Germanic or
Scandinavian influences on Finnish during the period. This third section ends
with an article by Frog on mythological thinking in the Viking Age. Each culture
is reflected in its myths, and by studying these myths it is possible to understand
their value; this is especially important in a period such as the Viking Age for
which there is little textual source material left for us to study.
This volume presents an excellent cross-section of the study of the Viking Age in
Finland from the point of view of different disciplines. The Viking Age in Finland
has often been overlooked not only because of language barriers but also perhaps
because it is so strongly associated with other parts of the Nordic region. Along
with The Viking Age in Åland, this volume contributes greatly to the picture we
are able to build as scholars of the Viking Age.
its material culture, especially burial customs, and compare this data with that
of burials from eastern central Sweden. Teija Alenius looks at pollen evidence,
noting that the cultivation of barley, rye and hemp played an important part
in the lives of Ålanders. The Finnar in Old Norse sources are the topic of
the third article, by Sirpa Aalto. Åland as such does not appear in Old Norse
sources but Finno-Ugric and Sámi people do; it is argued that attitudes towards
them might also reveal attitudes towards Ålanders. Historical linguistics is
discussed in the article by Joonas Ahola, Frog and Johan Schalin. It seems that
toponomy research in its present state cannot offer answers to the questions of
language in Viking-Age Åland. Nevertheless, archaeological material implies
a multilingual environment, and that the preferred language might have varied
in different regions.
In Part III, ‘Context, Contacts and Perceptions’ (pp. 267–414), Johan Schalin
and Frog survey toponomy in connection with seafaring. Seafarers invented
many of Åland’s toponyms, which were still in use in later times. The changing
language situation is discussed by Mikko Heikkilä in the second article. Evi-
dence suggests that Finns, people speaking Scandinavian languages and even
‘Lapps’ have all been responsible for place-names in Åland. An article by Lassi
Heininen, Jan Storå, Frog and Joonas Ahola addresses geopolitical perspectives
in Åland. The archipelago is strategically situated in the Baltic Sea, and this
means that the population of Åland changed constantly through immigration and
emigration, and that the archipelago was important in establishing power rela-
tions in the region. In the final article Frog explores mythology in Viking-Age
Åland. A lack of evidence makes it difficult to discuss the mythological matrix
on Åland but some conclusions can be drawn on a general level. In particular,
the clay-paw rite that is a distinctive cultural phenomenon on Åland is studied
in detail, and it is argued that this might reveal a high appreciation of beavers
or bears on the island.
The Viking Age in Åland is an important foundation for future research on the
Viking Age. This small yet undeniably important archipelago has been left out
of Viking-Age studies, but it is hoped that this volume will bring it to the atten-
tion of scholars. The book approaches the archipelago from different academic
disciplines that illuminate identities and the way of life of Viking-Age Åland.
Because some earlier research is outdated in some respects according to modern
academic standards, the efforts made in several of these articles to re-evaluate it
may seem repetitive to some readers. Perhaps because of the shortage of mate-
rial evidence, there is also repetition in the emphasis on particular themes, such
as Åland’s position between east and west and the problems of interpreting the
surviving material. Nevertheless, this collection of articles is an important addition
to studies of the Viking Age and a must-read for everyone who is interested in the
Viking Age in the Baltic Sea.
the wrong impression: thus on p. 54 it is stated that Ingólfr Arnarson settled and
‘was residing in Reykjavik, which has maintained its predominance into modern
times as the capital of Iceland’. This gives a false sense of continuity and suggests
that Reykjavík was a city, and a capital city at that, in the ninth century. Similarly,
the description of Beowulf as ‘giver of rings’ presents the statement ‘he gave rings’
(beagas geaf in Old English) as a title. But these concerns are, admittedly, minor.
A larger problem is that the author’s take on complicated subjects on which
there has been much debate can be presented as simple fact, as in the assertion
that Harald Bluetooth moved his father Gorm’s body from the burial-mound at
Jelling to the Church (p. 114). Similarly, the ingenious though not yet univer-
sally accepted revisions to the career of the missionary Anskar, produced by
the author’s erstwhile student Eric Knibbs, are presented as fact, as is (more
problematically) Henrik Jansson’s highly controversial thesis that the Temple of
Uppsala was pure fiction created by Adam of Bremen for propaganda purposes
(p. 148). The other assertions about Adam’s point of view—such as the claim
that he was ‘implicitly’ attacking English missionaries and the kings who used
them (pp. 123–24)—add up to what is, in my opinion, a rather unfair assessment
(albeit a fairly widespread one) of the great magister and his work. Adam’s
attitude towards English influence was not straightforwardly negative, as (for
example) his thoroughly approving judgements of St Olav and the bishops and
priests he brought with him from England show. Perhaps the simplification of
these issues is inevitable owing to the function of the book as a survey, but some
acknowledgement of the complexities underneath would be desirable. Nonethe-
less, these points do not greatly hinder the author in making his arguments. The
author also cannot be blamed for the fact that three years after the publication
of his book, new evidence of permanent habitation in early Ribe was published
which now contradicts what he writes on p. 75, that it was only a seasonal market
in the eighth century (Sarah Croix, ‘Permanency in Early Medieval Emporia:
Reassessing Ribe’, European Journal of Archaeology 18:3 (2015), 497–523).
The argument of the book is as follows: the conversion of Scandinavia
should not be seen as a proto-colonial endeavour in which Scandinavian p agans
passively had Christianity and the trappings of European society imposed on
them, but rather as part of a lengthy process growing out of long-standing
relationships with Europe, which intensified in the period of the Viking raids.
An academic reader will not find any of this controversial. Winroth argues for
the interconnection of raiding, trade, crafts and conversion through social and
political structures. Building on the traditional model of the chieftain who has
to gain booty to reward his followers (a model, as he rightly notes, that was not
unique to the Scandinavian world), he ties into it not only the more obvious
phenomena of raiding and trade, but also the growth of towns as centres for
trade and crafts, which turned materials into more valuable gifts for followers.
His main thesis is that Christianity itself was also a kind of ‘gift’ that kings
could use to reward their followers, and a highly prestigious one at that: not
only was Christianity the religion of the great kingdoms of the West, but the
bond of god-parentage allowed for a strong and personal connection to a ruler.
Reviews 117
It was the fact, W inroth contends, that Christianity could create stronger bonds
than paganism that allowed Christianising kings to defeat their rivals. It was
also the desire to destroy their pagan rivals’ ability to bind followers to them-
selves through rituals and spaces associated with them, more than a religious
concern with stamping out idolatry per se, that led to the violent suppression
of paganism. His argument for the superiority of Christianity in this regard
makes sense—unlike paganism, Christianity required a hierarchy of ordained
priests and bishops and specially consecrated spaces, and so could be controlled
more effectively by a ruler who introduced it—but the proof of this argument
seems largely to be the fact that Christianity triumphed, which presents us with
something of a circular argument. Nonetheless, this is a compelling thesis with
a good deal of merit to it, and is worthy of further discussion.
All in all, this is a strong offering from a noted medievalist who has hitherto
been known for his work in other fields. In an age where hackneyed ideas about
Viking heroism and a sudden conflict between a ‘native’ Scandinavian paganism
and a ‘foreign’ European Christianity are increasingly propagated in the popular
media, a readable account that is free of such nonsense is welcome and refreshing.
Paul Gazzoli
University of Cambridge
Dale Kedwards
University of Southern Denmark, Odense
collection than for the collector himself, who died in grief some two years later.
The following sub-chapter features a short description of the establishment of the
AM institute in Copenhagen and a review of the negotiations between Iceland and
Denmark leading to the return of many of the Icelandic manuscripts to Iceland
in the latter half of the last century. The introduction closes with an up-to-date
account of the two AM institutes, highlighting several recent scholarly activities
such as the digitalisation of the complete collection via the purpose-built website
www.handrit.is. A highlight of this introduction, as well as of the following short
presentation of each individual manuscript, is undoubtedly the well-designed
appearance of the text, which features not only high-quality images of related
photographs, but also many interesting side-notes such as (translated) comments
by Árni himself. Excellently directed by the editors, a commentary relates many
of the manuscripts featured in the book to the life and cultural surroundings of
Árni; it thus provides not only an example of the vivid variety of literature written
in medieval and early modern Scandinavia, but also a link to the core of the whole
collection, the collector himself.
This lavishly-bound and high-quality colour volume looks nothing short of
spectacular. In particular, the stunning quality of the manuscript images, one of
the most striking features of the book, is astonishing. Generally, the pictures are
given much more space than the scholarly articles. Several of the most picturesque
manuscripts, such as AM 227 fol. and Codex runicus (AM 28 8vo), are each
given a full two-page photo, thereby showing not only the sheer beauty of the
featured illumination of AM 227 fol. for example, but also the unconventionally
executed writing of AM 28 8vo. Similarly, manuscripts such as Reykjafjarðar-
bók (AM 122 b fol.) and Reynistaðarbók (AM 764 4to) are given two full-page
photographs, since they both undoubtedly represent extraordinary examples of
the broad codicological features of Old Norse manuscripts. The book closes with
an account of ‘Icelandic book production in the Middle Ages’, written by Soffía
Guðný Guðmundsdóttir and Laufey Guðnadóttir, with additional texts by Anne
Mette Hansen. Albeit rather general in content, the concluding chapter features a
coherent and complete description of the production of a medieval manuscript from
start (parchment making) to finish (writing, illuminating and binding). Together
with the introduction to the life of Árni Magnússon and the establishment of the
AM collection, the concluding chapter on the actual production of manuscripts
provides a very suitable frame for the main content of the book.
The large number and size of the photographs, together with the unusual layout,
indicate that the book is not intended to be read only by a scholarly audience. The
lack of bibliographical references, discussions of general philological aspects or
mention of shelfmarks in the chapter titles are obvious signs that the intention of
the editors was not to create a book exclusively for the scholarly public. Rather,
the volume is designed first and foremost for general readers interested in the AM
collection. It provides an intriguing introduction to the great variety of manuscripts
in the AM collection. Fittingly, it is written in an easy-to-read yet still scholarly
way and thereby stands out as the best and most informative introduction to Old
Norse manuscripts currently available. It will undoubtedly act as a starting point
Reviews 121
for many future students pursuing interests in one or more of the many sub-fields
of Old Norse manuscript studies.
Stefan Drechsler
University of Aberdeen
as the content and size of the rubrics. Also related to this level are contemporary
marginal additions, historiated illuminations and their text-image links in rela-
tion to the whole of the manuscript structure, and any iconological relations to
the contemporary medieval audience for which the manuscript was produced. At
the third level she discusses the punctuation system of the specific manuscript in
relation to other contemporary medieval vernacular manuscripts from the same
scribal surround, as well as previous influences such as the Latin punctus and
punctus elevatus marks, all of which are present not only in Old French but also
in Old Norse texts. A further important aspect of the mise en texte is the use of
abbreviations, which is once again set in relation to other manuscripts from the
same scribal area, suggested patronage and use.
Since it is the only Old French manuscript containing the chanson de geste
Elye de Saint-Gille, Eriksen discusses Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France,
MS Fr. 25516 in great detail in the first of the three case-studies in chapter two.
In particular, the contemporary French and Flemish cultural background, literary
production and suggested aristocratic commissioners are presented, as well as a
detailed analysis of the manuscript as a whole, all of which closely follows the
three-level method proposed in Chapter One. Eriksen’s conclusion is that MS Fr.
25516, featuring four romances, two of which are closely related, is a typical manu-
script of northern France, possibly related to the established House of Flanders.
It is ‘a coherent production unit’, with a structurally and codicologically uniform
appearance (p. 98). It may have been used for public vocal performance, as well
as for smaller listening circles where the audience was able to make use of the
miniatures provided in the manuscript. MS Fr. 25516, however, appears to be an
average, professionally produced Old French vernacular manuscript according to
its size, illuminations and number of folio leaves.
The third chapter takes a similarly rigorous approach to the Old Norwegian
manuscript Uppsala Universitetsbiblioteket De la Gardie 4–7 fol. Eriksen sets it in
the aristocratic context of the court of King Hákon Hákonarson, who is known to
have had a strong interest in the translation of chansons de geste and other courtly
French literature. De la Gardie 4–7 fol., which possibly originally featured only
romances translated from Old French works, is discussed in relation to contempo-
rary Norwegian manuscripts from the late thirteenth century and, like Fr. 25516,
appears to be a typical manuscript for its time and area. De la Gardie 4–7 fol.,
however, is distinguished from other thirteenth-century Norwegian manuscripts,
since it includes an unusual number and combination of texts in the same genre.
Written in an otherwise ‘prosperous, dynamic, and highly productive literary
culture and milieu’ (p. 155), De la Gardie 4–7 fol. is a work that appears to have
been produced for an audience already acquainted with the content, judging by the
common formulas, the content of the rubrics and the text-image structure of the
minor initials. Furthermore, Eriksen claims that De la Gardie 4–7 fol. in particular
was intended to be read aloud to smaller audiences, or to be used for private reading.
The fourth chapter presents and discusses the fifteenth-century Icelandic
manuscript Stockholm Kungliga biblioteket Holm Perg 6 4to, an anthology of
romances translated from Old French and Latin sources. It was mainly written by
Reviews 123
a monk named Guthormr in or near the Benedictine monastery of Munkaþverá
in northern Iceland, and appears to be a standard and coherently produced manu-
script typical for its time and (monastic) place. Erikson concludes, owing to the
high proportion of abbreviations in the text, its comparatively small size and
only minor illumination, among other reasons, that Holm Perg 6 4to was most
likely produced for a private library, and mainly for private reading. This fits in
well with the general situation in early fifteenth-century Iceland, where foreign
literature was less frequently translated and less valued than in previous centuries,
as Eriksen concludes (p. 229).
The fifth chapter provides a conclusion to the three case studies and highlights
the differences between the literary cultures that produced them. Interestingly,
and according to the internal structures of the three examples, the two Old Norse
manuscripts, despite some 150 years between the times of their production, have
much in common in terms of their text, rubrics and minor initials, punctuation
and use of abbreviations. According to Eriksen, ‘this indicates that a translation
process from one language to another implied greater changes than the intralingual
rewriting over time’ (p. 224). This factor, however, is found not only in the text
itself, but in all three levels of Eriksen’s methodology. It suggests that different
versions of a text-work are much more subject to historical and cultural factors
than the content of the text itself.
In conclusion, with this study Eriksen has contributed a new and illuminating
approach to the field of translation and transmission of central European texts to
Scandinavia. Despite its complex and interdisciplinary content, it is well-structured
and the arguments are presented in a clear and concise way. In addition, her study
is one of the first to accord to art-historical features of illuminated manuscripts
such as stylistic and iconographic contents the same importance as philological
ones such as textual variations, as well as codicological and palaeographical
peculiarities. Eriksen not only fluently combines various linguistic methodologies
with codicological, broader philological and even art-historical studies; she also
sets the cultural background of the manuscripts in the same context as the content
of the text, specifically the intended use of the text for the original audience.
Stefan Drechsler
University of Aberdeen
Heidi Støa
Indiana University
126 Saga-Book
women in old norse literature. bodies, words, and power. By Jóhanna Katrín Friðriks
dóttir. Palgrave Macmillan. New York, 2013. xiv + 192 pp. ISBN 978-0-230-12042-6.
Women have not been overlooked in research on early Icelandic and Scandinavian
culture, with essential reading including well-known works such as Helga Kress’s
Máttugar meyjar (1993), Judith Jesch’s Women in the Viking Age (1991), Jenny
Jochens’s Women in Old Norse Society (1995) and Old Norse Images of Women
(1996), and a number of influential articles by Carol Clover. Yet much more work
remains to be done, and Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir’s book is a valuable contri-
bution to and development upon the discussions to date. Moreover, by specifically
focusing on the literary representation of women, much is gained. Instead of rop-
ing sagas in as source material for the debate over ‘real’ historical gender roles,
the author treats literary representation as its own historical phenomenon, part of
a cultural history of ideas. Whetters, for example, may or may not have actually
existed in saga-age Iceland, but in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the im-
age of the whetter was one among the ensemble of women’s roles through which
people could conceive of female agency and thus potentially structure their lives
and personal narratives.
The book is divided into five chapters, each covering one broad female char-
acter type or role. These types, as Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir points out, also
happen often to be associated with particular genres of Old Norse–Icelandic
literature. Chapter One on ‘Women and Words’ throws into doubt the oft-implied
view that women who speak in the sagas are primarily instigators of violence
and strife. While the act of whetting is certainly important in various narrative
contexts, the author reminds us that this performative function is not present to
the same extent in all prose genres (being mostly restricted to the Íslendinga
sögur), and that various other outcomes resulting from the actions of voluble and
loquacious women have been more or less overlooked in previous assessments.
By presenting a variety of representations of women’s speech (including ones
with socially cohesive results) sourced from more than one genre, an important
perspective is provided on the possibilities which were conceived of as being
available to women. This is particularly useful when it comes to arguing against
the necessary existence of the whetter as a social reality or nuancing the idea of
the paucity of roles for women in patriarchally-determined Old Norse–Icelandic
written culture.
The social reality of female agency also raises its head in Chapter Two, ‘Women
and Magic’, where we are informed that ‘what is most important is not whether the
magic has some near-forgotten historical basis or is entirely invented by imagina-
tive narrators, but rather . . . what the authors do with it and how it functions in the
narrative’ (p. 51). Prophetesses are a particular case in point. Their pronouncements
frequently have no evident psychological grounding, but are rather plot devices
which moderate how information on the events which are to come is presented to
the characters and audience. In other cases, particularly Fóstbrœðra saga, we see
how magic gains significance for women’s social participation owing to the fact that
in many situations their agency is otherwise circumscribed. With spheres of action
Reviews 127
such as physical contests and economic negotiations being generally out of bounds
for them, women resort to magic to assert themselves and forward their agendas.
In Chapter Three, ‘Monstrous Women’, giantesses in the fornaldarsögur are
dealt with under two main headings: ‘The Hostile Giantess’ and ‘The Helpful
Giantess’. These contrasting images help to group many of the deep ambiguities
that are visible in the representation of these complex female characters. The many
potential characteristics and roles of such women are said to ‘engage with difficult
(gendered) topics and explore certain preoccupations that are more complex than
simply a binary opposite Other’ (pp. 76–77). The willingness not to enforce pro-
crustean taxonomy on these multifarious giantesses is praiseworthy.
The ‘Royal and Aristocratic Women’ discussed in Chapter Four are shown to
intercede on behalf of male relatives in a number of ways, often seeking to exert
influence less directly than the kings and earls around them. Max Weber’s concept
of power, and its subdivisions, is brought in to help explain the legitimacy of ac-
tions taken by female characters in various examples taken from the konungasögur,
particularly Friðgerðar þáttr. While a rigorous theoretical approach to power is
certainly something lacking in many similar discussions, even the author must ad-
mit that ‘Weber’s three types of power are difficult to match up with corresponding
representation of queens in the konungasögur since there is no point in the texts
at which acceptable or appropriate queenly behavior . . . is made explicit’ (p. 89).
Finally, in Chapter Five on ‘The Female Ruler’, the meykongr ‘maiden-king’
motif is thoroughly discussed in a number of examples from mostly indigenous
romances. Examples such as Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar show that maiden-kings
can successfully perform traditionally male-designated roles, yet the ‘happy end-
ing’ of marriage with the assumption of more traditionally female-designated
behaviour is said to reveal the ultimate conservatism of many of these texts.
Only Nitida saga, the last text to be discussed, contains hints of a proto-feminist
outlook where the roles available to female characters (and women more gener-
ally?) might be otherwise.
Overall, Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir’s book is a pleasure to read and extremely
thought-provoking. Particularly refreshing are the great number of examples
taken from numerous genres and sources from off the beaten track, as well as the
awareness that the author shows of subtle variations between different texts of one
and the same saga. The effort expended in not choosing tendentious examples in
order to prove a particular point is admirably carried out: the variation on offer
may be harder to draw clear-cut and pithy conclusions from, but respectfully al-
lows the range of potential for female representation to shine through. It would be
interesting to see the insights drawn from this book made use of in the future with
respect to Old Norse–Icelandic religious prose (female saints’ lives are mentioned
in footnotes), narrative poetry and æfintýri, all areas ripe for gender-nuanced
investigation. The bold steps that this book takes will certainly be an inspiration
for future studies in those directions.
Philip Lavender
The Arnamagnæan Institute, Copenhagen
128 Saga-Book
tree of salvation: yggdrasil and the cross in the north. By G. Ronald Murphy.
Oxford University Press. Oxford, 2013. xii + 239 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-994861-1.
Tree of Salvation can be read both as a meditation upon the cross and the genesis
of Christianity in Scandinavia, and as a book concerned with scholarly work on the
Conversion period and the role of the ‘natural’ world in this process. Murphy also
clearly appreciates the extent to which his work is one ‘that sails out of the range of
the usual and familiar’ (p. xi), tacking against the wind of conventional approaches
to the period and its religious culture. This is definitely one of its strengths.
The book falls into three sections: ‘In Wood and Stone’; ‘In Poetry and Runes’;
and ‘In Yuletide Carol and Evergreens’. Chapters are short but focused, and their
argument is straightforward and easily summarised. The first, ‘Yggdrasil and
the Cross’, introduces the theme of the book and identifies important aspects of
the similarities between the World Tree and the Christian arbor vitae and cross
of crucifixion. In Chapter Two, ‘Yggdrasil and the Stave Church’, Murphy
suggests ‘that the stave church is a Christian Yggdrasil’ (p. 29), on the basis
that Yggdrasill serves as a refuge at Doomsday, as does the Cross. Murphy ad-
vances his argument on the basis of stave church architecture in an imaginative
but convincing fashion, emphasising the physical properties of wood and trees
which lend themselves to the construction of these buildings, and noting the
‘resemblance of the roof structure to the cascading branches of an evergreen’
in the case of the church at Borgund (p. 35). His reading of the Skog Church
tapestry suggests that the transition from ancient beliefs to the new faith may
have been seen as a confirmation of the ‘old and hopeful story that salvation
would come in the form of a tree’ (p. 65), embodied in both the Cross and the
physical form of these churches. Chapter Three pushes on into the Baltic, to
the island of Bornholm, where Murphy draws connections between medieval
round churches and the stave churches of the preceding chapter, continuing the
argument that both were constructed with ‘the contemplative aim of envisioning
the new faith in concord with the poetic images of the old’ (p. 68). Again, this
draws upon both the architectural forms of these buildings and their decoration,
but also emphasises experiential aspects of the way in which these churches’
structures would themselves have structured medieval Christian worship. Chapter
Four crosses the North Sea to focus on the ‘two figured crosses from Viking-
age Middleton’ (p. 98). Through the exegetical prism of the Heliand, Murphy
envisions these crosses and their interlace as a continuation of the tradition of
tree-trunk coffin burials found throughout the ‘Germanic world of the north’ (p.
101), aligning these pre-Christian timber coffins with the trunk of Yggdrasill. The
suggestion, as with the stave churches and round churches, is that the funerary
monument, as a lithicised tree, will protect the soul of the dead in the manner of
both Yggdrasill and the Cross.
The fifth chapter focuses on ‘The Trembling Tree of The Dream of the Rood’,
a work of Old English rather than Old Norse poetry, but this discussion is nec-
essary in order to establish the ground for ‘Yggdrasil and the Sequence of the
Runes in the Elder Fuþark’ (Chapter Six), in so far as the earliest surviving form
Reviews 129
of the Dream is inscribed in runes on the Ruthwell Cross. Here, Murphy follows
Richard North (and others) in aligning the speaking tree of the Vercelli Book
Dream of the Rood, found in an earlier form on the Ruthwell Cross, with Ygg
drasill (pp. 142–43). Whilst there seem likely to have been English parallel(s)
to this cosmic tree, this does assume rather than demonstrate an Anglo-Saxon
pre-Christian Yggdrasill on the basis of later analogues, when contemporary
beliefs are likely to have been more disparate. The discussion of the runes of
the Elder Furþark, whose study Murphy declares to have been impeded by ‘an
unnecessarily restricted, literal, and nonmythological notion of religious magic’
(p. 154), will not please all, whether or not these comments are valid. He argues
that the sequence of the fuþark is ‘rooted in the Germanic myth of the nature
of the runes as staves seized by Woden as he hung from the tree Yggdrasil’ (p.
156). Elaborating on the ‘possible mythopoetic meaning of the rune arrange-
ment’ (pp. 160–61), Murphy develops a reading in which Christ ‘must have been
seen by the runemaster who created the fuþark as a parallel to the hanged god,
Woden’ (pp. 170). Once again, he argues that form reflects origins, in this case
that the ordering of the Germanic alphabet ultimately reveals its Mediterranean
origins, and spells out that ‘Father and Christ were one long ago in giving man-
kind speaking staves as hereditary property’ (p. 185). The concluding section,
‘In Yuletide Carol and Evergreens’, consists of the chapter ‘Yggdrasil and the
Christmas Tree’. Here the discussion focuses on the relationship between the
pre-Christian and post-Conversion Yuletide festivals, with an emphasis on the
role of evergreens in Christmas traditions of northern European origin, and the
promised regeneration of life after the cold of winter.
There is much to recommend in Tree of Salvation, though it is a book in which
some recent commentators on this topic do not appear.1 This aside, it is full of
interesting and nuanced reflections on the relationship between the Cross and the
central sacred tree of the pagan Norse cosmos, and Murphy has a keen eye for
the exegetical potential of literature, architecture and artefacts. He demonstrates
a sensitivity to the nature of belief which transcends mundane and reductive
approaches to the subject, and offers a reflective reconstruction of the manner
in which the tree served as a central symbol for mediation and meditation in the
medieval North. It is on these grounds that Murphy makes his case, and on these
grounds that this book is successful.
Michael Bintley
Canterbury Christ Church University
1 E.g. Clive Tolley. Shamanism in Norse Myth and Magic. Folklore Fellows
Communications 296, 297 (Helsinki, 2009); Anders Hultgård. ‘The Askr and
Embla Myth in a Comparative Perspective’. In Old Norse Religion in Long-Term
Perspectives: Origins, Changes, and Interactions: An International Conference
in Lund, Sweden, June 3–7, 2004. Ed. Anders Andrén, Kristina Jennbert and
Catharina Raudvere (Lund, 2006), 58–62.
130 Saga-Book
surrounding Snorri’s actual share in the Prose Edda and Heimskringla, not to speak
of recently renewed discussions regarding the different versions of the Edda. As
to the Kings’ Sagas, to take another example, Meylan mentions Fagrskinna and
Morkinskinna here and there, but a more systematic comparison of the different
compilations might very well have added to his argument about political subtexts.
Despite Meylan’s initial accusation that current research on magic in Old Norse
literature tends to be superficial, his own examination occasionally falls into the
same trap by covering too broad a range of literary sources with too little regard
for studies of individual texts.
That said, Meylan’s monograph clearly has its merits. The author’s conflation
of textual evidence from a great number of sources ought to be a resource for
subsequent scholarly debate on allegedly well-known matters. Meylan’s study,
combining a range of close readings with aspects of literary theory, must be con-
sidered a welcome narratological contribution to a debate that hitherto has mostly
been dominated by (religio-)historical scholarship.
h istorical narratives and, furthermore, whether some kind of Viking warrior ethos
can be detected in their contents. All examples are accompanied by a discussion of
established interpretations and a detailed linguistic analysis. Historical-narrative
aspects can only be detected in three of the selected inscriptions, while in most
instances pious, legal or genealogical contents predominate.
The final (and longest: 56 pages) essay is a contribution by Matthias Teichert,
who guides his readers into the cabinet of horrors, discussing elements of horror
fiction in Old Norse literature. Applying theories of the fantastic, the uncanny and
the abject (most notably suggested by Tzvetan Todorov, Sigmund Freud and Julia
Kristeva), he gives an insightful reading of various episodes involving monstrous
creatures. He classifies these into the categories ‘living dead’, ‘werewolves’, ‘arti-
ficial life’, ‘Doppelgängers’, ‘female demons’ and ‘dragons and (sea) monsters’,
suggesting a typology with regard to their narrative function. With reference to
dark romanticism and modern horror fiction, Teichert singles out interesting the-
matic continuities and stresses the timeless narrative potential of these motifs. As
his survey could only touch briefly upon this large corpus, one hopes that a more
detailed exploration will soon follow.
Overall, this volume offers a heterogeneous range of essays, providing a cross-
section of some current research trends in German-speaking Old Norse studies, with
some articles providing insights into ongoing projects. The strict arrangement of
the essays in alphabetical order by author emphasises the diverse nature of topics
within the volume, which is highlighted furthermore by its non-uniform formal
appearance. The volume concludes with a useful index of all primary sources.
Daniela Hahn
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Clive Tolley
University of Turku
136 Saga-Book
the academy of odin. selected papers on old norse literature. By Lars Lönnroth.
The Viking Collection 19. University Press of Southern Denmark. Odense, 2011.
426 pp. ISBN 978-87-7674-589-9.
It is a pleasure to review Lars Lönnroth’s Selected Papers, covering nearly forty
years of their author’s work, from 1965 to 2003. Some of them became classics in
their time, others remain controversial, and all merit rereading. They are consis-
tently written with clarity and wit, and are still capable of arousing that peculiar
mix of assent and irritation which Professor Lönnroth intended: in short, they
stimulate interest and argument.
The volume contains seventeen papers, divided rather arbitrarily into five groups.
Under ‘Origins’, the author includes his important paper of 1965, ‘European
Sources of Icelandic Saga Writing’. Unfortunately or otherwise, he has much cut
this major work. It was, as he admits, intentionally controversial at the time, and he
no longer accepts, or at least has much modified, many of his earlier conclusions.
But the bravado of the original work was needful, and it successfully stirred up
a productive debate. We now have a much more nuanced understanding of the
relationship between native and imported styles and content in the sagas, and if
anything that makes them seem the more remarkable. This essay has become part
of the history of the subject, and this reviewer would have wished to see it here in
all its original vitality, even with Professor Lönnroth’s later and appropriate caveats.
Two short papers in this section deal with problems of orality and literacy,
and the supposed transition between them: ‘Sponsors, Writers and Readers of
Early Norse Literature’ (1990–91) and ‘The Transformation of Literary Genres
in Iceland from Orality to Literacy’ (2003). These reflect the rather brief period
when ‘Literacy’ was a fashionable topic in medieval studies, and of course follow
on from the ancient wars between Free-Prose and Book-Prose theorists. In the
first, Professor Lönnroth takes up and much qualifies some of the earlier views
expressed in ‘European Sources’, and in his 2011 postscript again extends and
qualifies his discussion of 1990. Here the conflict is not so much between oral
tradition and its written record as between aristocratic or clerical, and lower-status
secular writing and performance of medieval Icelandic texts. Again the author is
prepared to develop his originally rather strident opinions into much more subtle
discussion. He may still over-emphasise the nature of ‘aristocratic’ and clerical
performance and preservation. Medieval Icelanders even at their richest were
still, by the standards of mainland Europe, peasant farmers; Icelandic monaster-
ies were, at their best, small and poverty-stricken, and may not have been more
than ordinary farms that happened to be inhabited by monks, a familia Dei rather
than a family. So distinctions in Iceland between layman and cleric, ‘aristocrat’
and farmer, perhaps should not be considered so sharp. Similarly, any distinction
between oral performance and written record is probably not very significant. As
far as we can tell, sagas were performed orally to whoever would listen, and the
written manuscript served partly as a much-abbreviated prompt-book, and partly as
redaction, before or after the event, to suit and record the stylistic or interpretative
preferences of the performer and his audience. Performance fed into manuscript
Reviews 137
production, which was itself intended for performance. The saga texts themselves
were both oral and literate, and remained so for many centuries, until the normalis-
ing authority of available printed editions.
The last essay in this section is a well-argued and useful presentation of the topos
of the Noble Heathen (1969). Medieval Christian Icelanders were understandably
reluctant to condemn their ancestors to eternal damnation, and one way of dealing
with this problem was that of the pre-Christian Noble Heathen, a figure possessing
only natural religion, as discussed in the Prologue to Snorra Edda, but capable
of deducing and adhering to admirable ethical principles. He could in principle
be redeemed from damnation, as the corresponding pre-Christian patriarchs and
prophets of the Old Testament were released in the Harrowing of Hell. So figures
from Iceland’s pagan past were reburied in Christian churchyards, presumably
with Christian funerary rites. Even Egill Skalla-Grímsson, perhaps, could be given
hope by his Christian descendants.
Under ‘Saga Rhetoric’ there are three articles, ‘Rhetorical Persuasion in the
Sagas’ (1969), ‘Saga and Jartegn’ (1999), and ‘Dreams in the Sagas’ (2002). The
first of these argues against ‘objectivity’ in saga narrative, demonstrating the
techniques whereby a saga audience may be directed to specific interpretation of
its events and persons. It is entirely valid on its own terms, but in his Postscript the
author notes distinctions put forward by some critics between ‘author’ and ‘nar-
ratorial voice’. This terminology, perhaps, is less than useful, since the ‘authors’ of
sagas are inaccessible to us, and the Sagas of Icelanders and Kings’ Sagas at least
rarely show an overt narratorial voice. However, there is a necessary distinction
to be made between the surface presentation of a saga narrative, usually avoiding
direct value-loading in its description of persons and events, and the expression
of underlying ethical attitudes which can direct or provoke audience response.
‘Saga and Jartegn’ and ‘Dreams in the Sagas’ deal with prefiguring motifs, often
in prophetic dreams, that indicate to an audience what may be going to happen.
Jartegn in this context may not be an ideal term, since its usage in Norse is often
religious, a ‘sign’ or even a miracle, denoting a person’s religious status; dreams
are rather more straightforward. Professor Lönnroth’s discussions here are always
sensible but somewhat laboured, and he does not discuss the obvious structural
function of prefiguring: that of setting up narrative expectation, and so narrative
tension until that expectation is fulfilled, maybe several hundred pages later.
Under the heading ‘Structure and Ideology’ there are three papers: ‘Ideology and
Structure in Heimskringla’ (1976), ‘Sverrir’s Dreams’ (2006) and ‘Christianity,
Revenge and Reconciliation in Njáls saga’ (2008). The first of these, despite its
all-encompassing title, deals with a single narrative about the relations of King
Óláfr inn helgi Haraldsson of Norway with Óláfr the Swede. It shows convincingly
and in detail how a relatively short tale is expanded and elaborated in Heimskringla
to show the importance and value of mediating figures in royal conflict: counsel-
lors, lawmen and farmers at legal assemblies. This is of course a topos, though it
doubtless corresponds to some sort of historical ‘reality’: the góðir menn of the
Norwegian king’s council, analysed long since by Knut Helle (Konge og gode
138 Saga-Book
menn, Oslo etc., 1972), the gœðingar of Orkney, and, earliest and most obviously,
the spakir menn of Ari Þorgilsson’s Íslendingabók, where the archetypal narrative
of Þorgeirr Ljósvetningagoði demonstrates such mediation at the Conversion of
Iceland. The article on the dreams of King Sverrir presents a close reading of the
accounts of these dreams, showing for instance their underlying Biblical imagery.
It does not, of course, prove that Sverrir was ‘the Lord’s anointed’, but merely
that he might have wished, at least intermittently, to present himself as such: the
dreams are part of the characterisation of the figure within his saga. The article on
Njáls saga shows how seamlessly Christian ideology is mapped onto the ‘noble
heathendom’ of the pre-Conversion parts of the saga. Here it seems only necessary
to note that, in a kingless society, the only available means for justice is feud. So
when Christian ethics of good and evil are superimposed on the previous ethical
system of honour and shame, feud may properly continue within Christian Iceland.
Under ‘Edda and Saga as Oral Performance’, Professor Lönnroth has selected
four papers: ‘Hjálmarr’s Death-Song and the Delivery of Eddic Poetry’ (1971),
‘I†rð fannz æva né upphiminn: a Formulaic Analysis’ (1981), ‘The Double Scene
of Arrow-Oddr’s Drinking Contest’ (1979) and ‘Heroine in Grief: The Old Norse
Development of a Germanic Theme’ (2001). All these in their different ways deal
with the application, or misapplication, of the oral-formulaic theory to Old Norse
texts. As applied to literature of the ancient Germanic languages the oral-formulaic
theory seems now to be an extinct or at least dormant volcano, and some of the
studies that dealt with it now appear rather dated. Professor Lönnroth gives a
well-judged comparison between Hjálmarr’s Death-Song and the lengthy dying
speech of Beowulf in Old English, showing that the Norse poem has a relatively
low number of phrases that could be considered formulae, and, interestingly,
that these tend to cluster where the various texts of the poem, in Heiðreks saga
and Ñrvar-Odds saga, most vary. Unfortunately the Latin version preserved by
Saxo Grammaticus is not discussed here. The choice of the Death-Song makes
specific comparison with Beowulf easier, but introduces a further complexity. As
Professor Lönnroth admits, the Norse poem is likely to be late, probably twelfth
century, to judge from the possible presence of a romance motif. As he does not
acknowledge, it may well therefore have been composed in writing. A written text
would certainly have been composed for oral delivery, and perhaps recomposed
in different versions for that purpose; it might even have been rerecorded in writ-
ing from an oral performance of a written text, passing in and out of the written
record. Apparently oral variant readings do not preclude written transmission.
The paper dealing with the phrase I†rð fannz æva né upphiminn, best known
from V†luspá, provides a valuable analysis of a genuine formula preserved in a
non-formulaic poetic tradition. Professor Lönnroth discusses its parallels in the
Eddic poems Þrymskviða, Vafþrúðnismál and Oddrúnargrátr, in a Swedish runic
inscription from Skarpåker, in the Old English poems Andreas and Crist and the
Old English verse translation of the Psalms, and in the Old Saxon Hêliand and
the Old High German Wessobrunner Gebet. Some of these variants are rather
removed from the central alliterative formula, but not unacceptably so. Professor
Lönnroth argues persuasively that the contextual usage of this formula deals with
Reviews 139
Creation or Destruction of the world, often in the context of wisdom demanded
of a wise being: that is, that the formula was not inherited in isolation, but carried
thematic significance with it. In his Postscript of 1981, he also cites two further
instances noted and discussed by Gerd Wolfgang Weber, the Old English charm
for unfruitful land, and an Old Danish runic inscription, and generously quotes
Weber’s subtle development of his own argument.
The following paper, dealing with Arrow-Oddr’s drinking contest in Chapter 27
of Ñrvar-Odds saga, employs the notion of the ‘double scene’: one of performance,
one of depicted narrative. This runs the risk of vacuity, because it can be applied
to almost any experience of narrative. Even Professor Lönnroth’s book counts
as a sort of performance, as he addresses his reader, over and above its content.
The concept comes into its own, however, when performance itself is depicted
within a text, and the relationship between content and depicted performance is
admirably analysed.
The final article here discusses the ‘Heroine in Grief’, elegiac poetry set in the
mouth of a woman, usually lamenting the death of a hero. Obvious instances of
‘woman’s lamentation’ occur in Old English and, in Norse, are largely centred on
the figure of Guðrún Gjúkadóttir in the various Guðrúnarkviður of the Elder Edda.
This has been a matter of scholarly contention, some arguing that it is of ancient,
Germanic origin, and some that it is a fairly late development, under Christian
(religious) influence. Professor Lönnroth describes and discusses this debate
in some detail, concluding that, at least in the case of Guðrúnarkviða I, neither
position is strictly tenable, and that these poems represent reworkings of older
motifs and terminology within the new frameworks of romantic love and of the
Marian lamentation which culminated in the Stabat mater. The hapax legomenon
tresk, (Gkv I 16:4), if it is an Old French loan-word as Professor Lönnroth follows
Gering in believing, would confirm at least probable late reworking within this
poem. This etymology seems now to be generally rejected, and certainly the -sk
is difficult to derive from any Romance origin other than by sound-substitution
from OFr tresce, medieval Latin tricia / trecia. Such sound-substitutions certainly
occurred in England, where Norse settlers substituted sk for an English sound or
sounds now written as <sh>, e.g. Skipton for ‘sheep-town’. Alternative etymol
ogies, however, seem even less plausible. Professor Lönnroth’s via media in this
heated debate may well be the best way forward.
The last section in this volume, ‘Reception and Adaptation’, contains three
papers: ‘The Riddles of the Rök Stone: A Structural Approach’ (1977), ‘The
Academy of Odin: Grundtvig’s Political Instrumentalization of Old Norse Mythol-
ogy’ (1988) and ‘The Nordic Sublime: The Romantic Rediscovery of Icelandic
Myth and Poetry’ (1995). The first of these, a lengthy attempt to interpret the runic
inscription on the infamous Rök Stone (pp. 279–356), fits into no category within
this volume. Professor Lönnroth is not a paid-up member of the Guild of Runolo-
gists, and this paper was, as he laments, largely ignored. From a runological point
of view, this neglect was largely justified: in terms of that discipline, much of this
paper either repeats the work of others, omits necessary context and discussion
or is in detail unacceptable. This is unfortunate, because although the attempt to
140 Saga-Book
divide the text of the inscription into some sort of literary structure may be rather
implausible, the discussion of literary parallels is valuable. Professor Lönnroth’s
discussion of the poetic form greppaminni ‘mindfulness of poets’ is particularly
noteworthy. The form usually employs a pattern of questions with answers, usu-
ally in multiples of four. The questions concern specialised knowledge, often
involving kennings. Although he does not cite it, there is even a related example
attributed to Bragi hinn gamli (Snorra Edda: Skáldskaparmál, ed. A. Faulkes
(1998), pp. 83–84). The application of this to the Rök inscription is, as Professor
Lönnroth admits, inexact, but the riddling tendencies of the Rök runesmith are at
least partly illuminated thereby.
The article on Grundtvig’s politicisation of Norse mythology, from which the
volume rather inappropriately derives its title, is a striking example of an early
attempt to use Nordic mythology in education to inspire nationalist fervour in
Scandinavia. This remains distasteful, even disturbing, for a present-day reader,
several generations after World War II, but it is a reminder that as early as the
mid-nineteenth century, a revered figure such as N. F. S. Grundtvig was us-
ing this material for nationalist, and his successors for militarist, even military
purposes. Meanwhile, the final article on ‘The Nordic Sublime’ briefly recharts
familiar waters: the romantic rediscovery of Norse literature, particularly poetry,
culminating in the operas of Richard Wagner. The volume ends with a large and
useful bibliography.
This rather mechanical progress through Professor Lönnroth’s selected essays
has at least the merit of showing his remarkable range of interest, and his ability
to contribute to many aspects of our subject. It is frequently still possible to give
assent to his past work, but even when one disagrees, the intellectual stimulus of that
disagreement is immense, and not infrequently given impetus by his own critique
of his earlier views. The volume is extremely accurately printed and is exemplary
in presentation. It stands as a monument to a remarkable scholar.
Paul Bibire
University of St Andrews
myths, legends, and heroes. essays on old norse and old english literature
in honour of john mckinnell. Edited by Daniel Anlezark. Toronto Old Norse-
Icelandic Series 5. University of Toronto Press. Toronto, 2011. viii + 274 pp.
ISBN 978-0-8020-9947-1.
Daniel Anlezark’s purpose in editing the Festschrift Myths, Legends, and Heroes:
Essays on Old Norse and Old English Literature in Honour of John McKinnell is
to acknowledge McKinnell’s contribution to research in the myths, legends and
storytelling traditions of northwest Europe in the early Middle Ages—Old Norse
and Old English in particular—by assembling new contributions that take as a
starting point McKinnell’s focus on encounters with the ‘other’ (p. 3). Indicating
the collection’s success is its list of contributors, a dozen of the top scholars in the
Reviews 141
two fields; their contributions, furthermore, are characteristic of their best work.
The collection, mirroring the career of the scholar whose work it celebrates, is
slightly weighted towards Old Norse, and is arranged in four sections: ‘Transform-
ing Paganism’, ‘Using Poetry’, ‘Literary Histories’ and ‘Motifs and Themes’.
Judith Jesch’s article on Norse gods in England and the Isle of Man pursues
the theme of paganism in transformation, seeking to ‘penetrate beyond’ accepted
Christian uses of inherited pagan narratives to ‘discover an authentic and practised
paganism’ (p. 12) in the tenth century, the period to which most English and
Manx sculpture depicting Scandinavian myths has been assigned. The evidence
marshalled is wide-ranging: sites, place-names and personal names, artefacts in
metal and stone, texts, standing crosses and scuplture are all surveyed. Similarly
wide-ranging is Rudolf Simek’s examination of elves and exorcism in runic and
other lead amulets across medieval Europe. Simek usefully surveys and discusses
the material within the context of medieval popular religion, engaging with the
most relevant scholarship on amulets (his former collaborator Klaus Düwel fore-
most) and on elves (Alaric Hall), ultimately hypothesising in light of the evidence
that inscribed incantations in lead amulets are intended to combat fever. Dealing,
like Jesch, with pagan material filtered through Christian understanding of the
world, Margaret Clunies Ross closes the first section with an article tracing what
we can know of how the Old Norse cosmos might have been visualised, focusing
especially on the heavily classically-influenced diagrammatic representations of
later antiquarians, beginning with Finnur Magnússon’s highly influential diagram
in his 1821–23 Edda translation and commentary.
The area in which Professor McKinnell’s research has been perhaps most
influential is Eddic poetry. Opening the section on ‘Using Poetry’, John Lin-
dow’s allusively titled essay ‘Meeting the Other’ expands on ideas pursued by
McKinnell in Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend (Brewer, 2005).
Applying M cKinnell’s interpretive framework and terminology, Lindow analyses
cross-gender encounters between representatives of the world of gods and men
and the Other World in two complementary þættir about visions, Kumlbúa þáttr
and Draumr Þorsteins Síðu-Hallssonar. Alison Finlay’s essay investigates how
Vafþrúðnismál provides a mythic model for the head-wagering story told of several
poets, most famously Egill Skalla-Grímsson. Ranging furthest from the direct
use of poetry, Rory McTurk interprets Snorri’s Edda as Menippean satire, first
defining the form with reference to a number of scholars—from Mikhail Bakhtin
to Howard Weinbrot via Northrop Frye and others—and applying the concept to
Snorra Edda, evaluating the possibility that Snorri knew about Menippean satire
and discussing its possible targets and purposes.
‘Literary Histories’ begins with David Ashurst’s analysis of the alterations in
the Old Norse–Icelandic translation of 1 Maccabees in Gyðinga saga that ‘exhibit
coherent though complex attitudes towards political and ecclesiastical questions’
important to thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Icelanders and Norwegians (p. 134).
In the first essay in the book explicitly focusing on Old English, Helen Damico
proposes that, in addition to adapting and transmitting mythology and legend, the
Beowulf poet ‘may also have imaginately reinterpreted and transformed what we
142 Saga-Book
may consider chief contemporary events into poetic form’ (p. 150), especially in
the poem’s second fitt, ‘Grendel’s Reign of Terror’. Damico discusses how Danish
attacks on England in the early eleventh century may be reflected in the wording,
narrative focus and characterisation in that part of Beowulf.
Carolyne Larrington begins the ‘Motifs and Themes’ section by following
McKinnell’s lead in applying psychoanalytical and psychological theory (under-
utilised in Old Norse scholarship, as Larrington points out) to Eddic poems. She
argues that the heroic poems are organised and ordered to explore systematically
‘sibling and affinal relationships in a gender and power politics which puts the
interests of the clan group above consideration of individual happiness and personal
honour’ (p. 170). Joyce Hill’s article traces the origins of the episode in Morkin-
skinna of Sigurðr Jórsalafari improbably burning walnuts in preparation for an
imperial feast to a wider international tradition, identifying how Morkinskinna’s
treatment of the motif uniquely reconceptualises it as a test and placing it within
a series of prestige-building anecdotes. Maria Elena Ruggerini similarly places a
literary episode within an existing tradition: she proposes as the possible origins
of Christ’s ‘riding’ into hell (a hapax legomenon oþridan) in the Anglo-Saxon
poem known as The Descent into Hell the widespread ‘liturgy of entrance’, the
Palm Sunday liturgies and processions dramatising Christ’s arrival in Jerusalem.
Daniel Anlezark closes the collection by examining how Beowulf’s marvellous
swimming feats contribute to his characterisation, emphasising the hero’s special
relationship with the sea; Anlezark draws some striking narrative and linguistic
parallels between Beowulf and the Old English dialogue poem Solomon and Saturn
II, in which is attested another swimming hero, named Wulf.
In the sphere of early medieval scholarship in English, the relationship between
the disciplines of Old Norse and Old English can feel uncertain, perhaps even
uneasy. We wonder if it is proper to teach Old Norse in ‘English’ departments;
whether when discussing either of the two literatures we are right to expect of our
listeners (or ourselves) in-depth knowledge of the other; whether the terms ‘Old
Norse’ and ‘Old English’ invite a misguided perception of proximity in subjects
for which the alternative names ‘early Scandinavian’, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic’,
and ‘Anglo-Saxon’ are available; and whether important discoveries about the
characteristics of one of the two literatures really tell us much about the other. In
short: do the subjects belong together?
Though Myths, Legends, and Heroes cannot and does not attempt a definitive
answer, it does assert the validity of considering Old Norse and Old English
together. The encompassing of both fields is appropriate in a collection dedicated
to Professor McKinnell, the breadth of whose further medieval interests—Middle
English and Scots literature, and especially medieval and Early Modern English
drama—could prompt the question why contributions were not also invited in
these areas. Anlezark’s collection achieves a level of focus between the extremes
of an earlier Festschrift designed broadly enough to include essays from each of
the areas of McKinnell’s scholarship, Studi Anglo-norreni in onore di John S.
McKinnell, edited by Maria Elena Ruggerini with Veronke Szòke (Cagliari, 2009),
and a collection narrowing the focus to only one particular area, the recent reissue
Reviews 143
of a dozen of McKinnell’s own essays on Eddic poetry Essays on Eddic Poetry
(Toronto, 2014) (reviewed in Saga-Book XXXIX, 118–19).
The book is handsomely mounted and supplemented by useful features such as
the black-and-white plates printed throughout Clunies Ross’s article on images
of Old Norse cosmology, a short list of standard abbreviations at the beginning
of the volume and a comprehensive bibliography at the end. Though the depth
of an index is always a matter of editorial judgment, the three-page index that
closes the volume, though adequate, could be more extensive. It may be thought
surprising, for example, that though Joyce Hill devotes four pages to analysing an
episode related in more than one source concerning Duke Robert I of Normandy,
Robert does not appear in the index. The book’s typographical errors are minor
and few, mostly limited to non-English names. Examples include ‘Þriðranda þáttr’
for ‘Þiðranda þáttr’ (p. 78), ‘Geirstðarálfr’ for ‘Geirstaðaálfr’ (p. 87, elsewhere
always spelled correctly) and ‘Asmundar’ for ‘Ásmundar’ (p. 230). One other
oddity about the book is that the dedicatee’s name does not appear on either the
book jacket or the spine, where only a shortened title is printed.
These minor drawbacks notwithstanding, Myths, Legends, and Heroes presents
a dozen valuable contributions to the fields of Old Norse and Old English stud-
ies and must be regarded as essential reading for students and scholars of either
discipline interested in the myths, legends and heroes of the North. That the book
celebrates the many already essential contributions to these subjects by our teacher
and colleague John McKinnell is an added bonus.
John D. Shafer
University of Nottingham
eddukvæði i–ii. Edited by Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason. Íslenzk fornrit.
Hið íslenzka fornritafélag. Reykjavík, 2014. 469 + 466 pp. Colour plates. ISBN
978-9979-893-36-3 and 978-9979893-37-0.
The Íslenzk fornrit edition of Eddukvæði has been anticipated by the international
scholarly community with both great enthusiasm and curiosity, as it represents not
only a significant milestone in the venerable series, but also the first unnumbered
volume, heralding the beginning of the second part of the series. All volumes
published previously (twenty-nine out of a planned thirty-five) have belonged to
a numbered series of editions of sagas pertaining in some way to the history of
Iceland between the time of the settlement and the period in which the sagas were
composed. This two-volume edition is the first of the second part of the series,
originally planned to include a selection of significant Icelandic texts from the
huge and varied corpus of other medieval genres. The evolving treatment of this
body of material by the Íslenzk fornrit series is discussed by Jóhannes Nordal in
his Preface to this edition.
The particular challenges facing editors Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason
are signalled from the outset by the question with which Vésteinn Ólason opens his
144 Saga-Book
Foreword: ‘Hvað eru eddukvæði?’ The Poetic Edda is a nebulous and not altogether
comfortable conflation of a particular manuscript anthology (GKS 2365 4to, widely
referred to simply as the Codex Regius) and a genre of Old Norse poetry, codified
by a tradition of scholarly practice and popular reception. This edition follows
established practice in including a number of poems preserved outside GKS 2365
4to but felt to be closely related in terms of verse-form, style and subject matter.
Baldrsdraumar, Rígsþula, Hyndluljóð and Grottas†ngr are predictable choices, so
frequently associated with the Codex Regius poems that they are included in most
modern editions and translations of the Poetic Edda. Grógaldr, Fj†lsvinnsmál and
Hl†ðskviða are less conventional, but equally defensible inclusions by the same
criteria, and it is very welcome to possess at last such an accessible modern edi-
tion of these poems. The editors are also very up-front about the more debatable
and subjective decisions regarding which poems to exclude. The inclusion of
Hl†ðskviða, for example, raises the possibility of considering other incomplete, or
more or less prosimetric, sequences (not least from Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks).
Though it would be desirable in some ways, the practical obstacles to an expanded
selection of Eddic verse that includes fragments, lausavísur and quotations are
obvious and understandable.
Similarly, the division of the two volumes of the edition into goðakvæði and
hetjukvæði is defensible for an edition of the Codex Regius, which itself arguably
arranges the poems along these lines, but problematic as a signal of generic cat-
egorisation of Eddic poetry more widely; hence the allocation of the extra-Regius
poems Grottas†ngr to volume I and Grógaldr and Fj†lsvinnsmál to volume II is
logical, but does not necessarily reflect medieval taxonomies. At the same time,
the division also proves helpful in structuring the introduction. Discussion of the
heroic poems in the second volume in groups rather than individually is neces-
sary and productive, and one of the most valuable scholarly contributions of this
edition is undoubtedly Vésteinn Ólason’s excellent elaboration of his previously
published views on the textual genesis of the Nibelungen cycle.
The other poems are introduced individually with a variable format that is
appropriate and effective. This reflects the diverse origins of the individual p oems
and the unique critical concerns surrounding each one, as well as the nature of
Eddic scholarship, which has traditionally treated the poems individually or in
small groups. The focus is fittingly on textual questions such as dating, form
and transmission, although the literary features of the poems and aspects of their
content and interpretation are also commented upon. As Vésteinn Ólason himself
notes, a comprehensive account of the scholarship would be both impossible and
out of keeping with the aims of the edition and the interests of its target audience.
Instead the introduction concisely presents accepted current opinion with selected
references, including to more expansive commentaries such as the Kommentar
zu den Liedern der Edda (ed. Klaus von See et al., Heidelberg, 1997–2012). One
of the most impressive feats of this edition is how well it caters to its hetero
geneous audience, including both non-specialist Icelanders as well as the cohort
of international students and scholars that the editors (no doubt rightly) anticipate
will form the largest group of readers. The notes to the text provide the necessary
Reviews 145
support to explain the language and indicate contended readings without becom-
ing distracting: no mean feat.
The editions themselves are of the highest standard, presenting a careful text that
takes into account scholarly findings in the years following the last published ver-
sion of the standard edition by Gustav Neckel (rev. Hans Kuhn, 1983) and avoids
speculative readings. As the Foreword wryly observes, there is a long tradition
of highly interventionist editions of these poems and the editors resolve not to
emend ‘nema þar sem augljóst virðist að þeir hafi aflagast’ [unless it is obvious
the texts have been garbled in transmission] (p. 18). This is, of course, a subjective
process, and individual readings could and doubtless will be debated. Among the
major ways in which this edition improves on its widely used predecessors are
the decision to edit three separate versions of V†luspá, and the general practice
throughout of maintaining the order of stanzas as they appear in the manuscripts.
The resultant text is both more accurate and more readable.
Spelling is normalised in accordance with the principles of the series, with the
result that it differs from the manuscript orthography, and does not attempt to
recreate the original language of the poems. While this limits the edition’s useful-
ness to philologists, it is a necessary concession to its popular and student audi-
ence. The design, layout and general production values of the volumes themselves
are extremely impressive, with high-resolution, colour-plate images beautifully
illustrating manuscripts of all of the poems included. No single edition of any
group of medieval texts can cater to all possible users, and this is especially true
of a body of material as formidably complex as the Eddukvæði. Yet this pair of
volumes now represents the best all-round edition. It is an extremely valuable
addition to scholarship on the subject and another testament to the learning of
the late Jónas Kristjánsson (d. 7 June 2014), which will be celebrated as part of
his tremendous legacy. It deserves a place on the shelf of all those interested
in Old Norse literature and especially the Eddukvæði, which will be read with
unprecedented pleasure in this edition.
Brittany Schorn
University of Cambridge
runs to more than 1800 pages of dense, systematic scholarship, of which about
770 give a creative, rich and precise English rendition of this monumental and
demanding chronicle.
Saxo scholarship and translations have suffered from the modern partitioning
of the text into a legendary part (books 1–9) and a historical part (books 10–16,
covering the ninth century to 1185)—although Saxo worked very hard to compose
a unified literary and historical monument. This unity attracted more attention in
the 1970s and 1980s, not least in Friis-Jensen’s scholarship, and this has finally
given rise to a continuous English translation. Saxo’s Latin is notoriously highly
stylised and strictly modelled on a few Leitautoren (in particular Valerius Maxi-
mus, Curtius Rufus, Justinus and Martianus Capella), and the translation of both
the earlier and the later books by the same hand obviously benefits from a deep
knowledge of Saxo’s language, acquired through an intense study of the whole
work in collaboration with Friis-Jensen. Peter Fisher’s translation can be perused
as an extended reading experience as well as an elucidation of particular passages
scholars might be interested in for all the different fields for which Saxo provides
unique material: Old Norse mythology, history of religion, literary and cultural
history of the North and of Europe, Danish, Nordic and imperial history, ecclesias-
tical history, medieval Latin linguistics, the reception of the classics, onomastics,
narratology, archaeology, gender and value studies, social and economic history.
Gesta Danorum has something to offer for many different tastes and interests:
intricate Horatian moralistic poems, the epic casting of the destruction of Lejre,
novelistic pieces about Hamlet, Erik the Eloquent, Starkath, the star-crossed lov-
ers Hagbarth and Signe, tales of the longlived magician Odin, and more. In the
later books eyewitness reports from the original patron and informant of the work,
archbishop Absalon (d. 1201) stand out: his escape with Valdemar (later the Great)
from the Blood Feast of Roskilde, the destruction of the Wends’ idol Svantevith,
as well as Saxo’s complex crafting of the portrait of King Sven Grathe, turning
from friend to foe of the Valdemarian network. These famous episodes are now
eminently readable in Peter Fisher’s rendition, but they are only the tip of the
iceberg; this new, complete translation will no doubt be instrumental in opening
up more extensive parts of the work for twenty-first-century international read-
ers and scholarship. The translation is a cornucopia of high-register and poetic
language, reflecting the original very well, while at the same time allowing for
the narrative flow one expects in a modern language unable to handle complex
subordination and long periods as Latin does. Often Peter Fisher has managed to
copy the alliterative qualities of the original as well as the less formal register of
some of the verbal exchanges. To the present reviewer it also seems that he has
hit on a balanced compromise between modernising and explaining the text on the
one hand, and reflecting the concepts and mindset of the author on the other—even
when that seems outlandish and verges on the incomprehensible.
The Latin text is essentially the same as that published by Friis-Jensen in 2005
in a similar two-volume format with a complete modern Danish translation by
Peter Zeeberg (Gad, Copenhagen). Our knowledge of Gesta Danorum is depen-
dent for ninety-nine percent of the text on the Paris edition of 1514 by the Danish
Reviews 147
humanist Christiern Pedersen (indicated by ‘A’ in this edition); the medieval
manuscript of the chronicle which he, with some difficulty, had obtained as the
exemplar has since disappeared—and so have all other medieval copies except
for some scattered leaves from a couple of thirteenth-century manuscripts. Given
the fact that the printed Paris text is a high-quality work, one should presume
that the philological task today was a fairly straightforward affair. But owing to
a significant indirect textual tradition, the special register of Saxo’s Latin and the
interventionist character of nineteenth- and twentieth-century textual criticism, this
is not so. Friis-Jensen’s work is conservative in the sense that it has cleaned up lay-
ers of emendations (especially from the much-criticised last edition of 1931) and,
in many instances, returned to the text transmitted in A. However, Friis-Jensen’s
edition is the first to take into account systematically the early-sixteenth-century
chronicles by Albert Krantz, which paraphrase or quote substantial parts of Saxo
based on a manuscript other than the exemplar of A. This edition is also the first
to use computer concordances of Saxo and of his textual models. Moreover,
medieval Latin is much better documented today than in 1931 through masses
of databases and lexicographical work, including the crucial Saxo dictionary
by Franz Blatt, which appeared in 1957 as Volume 2 of the 1931 edition, while
having to question many of the choices made in Volume 1. What appeared to
earlier philologists to be errors calling for emendation can now be established as
standard medieval Latin or, at least, as Saxonian Latin. A curious instance of the
latter is seen in the echoes of Valerius Maximus which we do not find in modern
editions or as part of Roman Latin at all, but which, according to Friis-Jensen’s
research, are documented in the Valerius text that Saxo probably had access to.
This does not mean that the whole text is now plain sailing. But the exemplary
critical apparatus lists all variations from A and warns us when sharp minds like
Stephanius, Müller, Velschow, Knabe, Gertz, Madvig, Svennung, Weibull, A.
Olrik, J. Olrik, Kinch and Friis-Jensen himself have had reason to be on the alert;
it also highlights conjectures, which are carefully weighed and supplemented by
Friis-Jensen himself. In one instance only, the 2015 text improves on the 2005
edition, owing to the editor’s rediscovery of an early publication (1627) by the later
Saxo scholar and editor Stephanius (1644). It is comforting to note that almost all
of his early suggestions were made independently by later philologists, but less
comforting of course that a large number of nineteenth- and twentieth-century
conjectures have now been relegated to the apparatus in favour of the original
reading of A or of the indirect tradition.
There are other more tangible bonuses in this edition when compared to that of
2005. Friis-Jensen has extended his 2005 introduction, which focused on textual
criticism, to include sections on the historical and literary contexts, as well as
structure and important literary themes, the author and the subsequent influence
of the text. It is also worth noting that Friis-Jensen made a strong case for the
completion of Gesta Danorum just after 1208 in an important article from 2012
written after the introduction, in which he was more cautious (referring to the
time frame 1208–19). Otherwise, the wonderfully precise introduction represents
the high quality scholars have come to expect from Friis-Jensen’s careful and
148 Saga-Book
Membership fees
(payable on 1st October annually)
Ordinary membership £25
Student membership £12
Ordinary membership paid by Banker’s Order £23
EDITIONS
Ágrip af Nóregskonungas†gum: A Twelfth-Century Synoptic History of the Kings
of Norway. Edited and translated by M. J. Driscoll. Text Series X. Second
edition 2009. ISBN 978 0 903521 75 8. £6/£12.
Bandamanna saga. Edited by H. Magerøy. 1981, reprinted 2006. ISBN
978 0 903521 15 4. £6/£12.
Clemens saga. The Life of St Clement of Rome. Edited and translated by H. Carron.
Text Series XVII. 2005. ISBN 978 0 903521 67 3. £4/£8.
Egils saga. Edited by Bjarni Einarsson. With notes and glossary. 2003, reprinted 2013.
ISBN 978 0 903521 60 4 (bound) £12/£24; ISBN 978 0 903521 54 3 (card) £8/£16.
Fourteenth-Century Icelandic Verse on the Virgin Mary. Drápa af Maríugrát.
Vitnisvísur af Maríu. Maríuvísur I–III. Edited and translated by K. Wrightson.
Text Series XIV. 2001. ISBN 978 0 903521 46 8. £2.50/£5.
The Fourth Grammatical Treatise. Edited by Margaret Clunies Ross and Jonas
Wellendorf. With introduction, commentary and translation. 2014. ISBN 978
0 903521 90 1. £6/£12.
Grottas†ngr. Edited and translated by C. Tolley. 2008. ISBN 978 0 903521
78 9. £4/£8.
Guta lag: The Law of the Gotlanders. Translated and edited by C. Peel. Text Series
XIX. 2009. ISBN 978 0 903521 79 6. £4/£8.
Guta saga: The History of the Gotlanders. Edited and translated by C. Peel. Text
Series XII. 1999. ISBN 978 0 903521 44 4. £4/£8.
Hávamál. Edited by D. A. H. Evans. Text Series VII (i). 1986, repr. 2000. Sold
together with Hávamál. Glossary and Index compiled by A. Faulkes. Text
Series VII (ii). 1987. ISBN 978 0 903521 82 6. £6/£12. (Volumes may also
be bought separately on application to the Society.)
Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks. With notes and glossary by G. Turville-Petre. Introduction
by C. Tolkien. Text Series II. 1956, repr. 2014. ISBN 978 0 903521 11 6. £5/£10.
Hrafnagaldur Óðins (Forspjallsljóð). Edited with introduction, notes and trans
lation by A. Lassen. Text Series XX. 2011. ISBN 978 0 903521 81 9. £6/£12.
Illuga saga Gríðarfóstra. The Saga of Illugi, Gríður’s Foster-son. Edited and
translated by Philip Lavender. 2015. ISBN 978 0 903521 91 8. £5/£10.
Magnús Ólafsson of Laufás: Specimen Lexici Runici and Glossarium Priscæ
Linguæ Danicæ. Edited by A. Faulkes and Gunnlaugur Ingólfsson. Stofnun
Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum and Viking Society for Northern
Research 2010. ISBN 978 0 903521 80 2. £30/£60.
Snorri Sturluson: Edda. Prologue and Gylfaginning. Edited by A. Faulkes. Second
edition 2005. ISBN 978 0 903521 64 2. £6/£12.
Snorri Sturluson: Edda. Skáldskaparmál. Edited by A. Faulkes. 2 vols. 1998.
ISBN 978 0 903521 34 5. £12/£24.
Snorri Sturluson: Edda. Háttatal. Edited by A. Faulkes. Second edition 2007.
ISBN 978 0 903521 68 0. £6/£12.
Snorri Sturluson: The Uppsala Edda. Edited by Heimir Palsson. 2012. ISBN
978 0 903521 85 7. £6/£12.
Stories from Sagas of Kings: Halldórs þáttr Snorrasonar inn fyrri, Halldórs þáttr
Snorrasonar inn síðari, Stúfs þáttr inn meiri, Stúfs þáttr inn skemmri, Völsa
þáttr, Brands þáttr örva. With introduction, notes and glossary by A. Faulkes.
Second edition 2007. ISBN 978 0 903521 72 7. £5/£10.
Two Icelandic Stories: Hreiðars þáttr, Orms þáttr. Edited by A. Faulkes. Text
Series IV. Second edition 2011. ISBN 978 0 903521 73 4. £5/£10.
TRANSLATIONS
A History of Norway and the Passion and Miracles of the Blessed Óláfr. Translated
by D. Kunin. Edited with introduction and notes by C. Phelpstead.Text Series
XIII. 2001. ISBN 978 0 903521 48 2. £5/£10.
Íslendingabók, Kristni saga. The Book of the Icelanders, The Story of the Conver-
sion. Translated with introduction and notes by S. Grønlie. Text Series XVIII.
2006, reprinted 2015. ISBN 978 0 903521 71 0. £5/£10.
The Saga of Bishop Thorlak (Þorláks saga byskups). Translated with in-
troduction and notes by Ármann Jakobsson and D. Clark. 2013. ISBN
978 0 903521 88 8. £5/£10.
Snorri Sturluson. Heimskringla. I: The Beginnings to Óláfr Tryggvason. Trans-
lated by A. Finlay and A. Faulkes. 2011. ISBN 978 0 903521 86 4. £6/£12.
Snorri Sturluson. Heimskringla II: Óláfr Haraldsson (the Saint). Translated by A.
Finlay and A. Faulkes. 2014. ISBN 978 0 903521 89 5. £6/£12.
Snorri Sturluson. Heimskringla III: Magnús Óláfsson to Magnús Erlingsson. Trans-
lated by A. Finlay and A. Faulkes. 2015. ISBN 978 0 903521 93 2. £6/£12.
Theodoricus Monachus: Historia de Antiquitate Regum Norwagiensium. An Ac-
count of the Ancient History of the Norwegian Kings. Translated and annotated
by D. and I. McDougall, with introduction by P. Foote. Text Series XI. 1998,
repr. 2006. ISBN 978 0 903521 40 6. £5/£10.
Three Icelandic Outlaw Sagas. The Saga of Gisli, The Saga of Grettir, The Saga
of Hord. Translated by G. Johnston and A. Faulkes. Edited and introduced
by A. Faulkes. 2004. ISBN 978 0 903521 66 6. £6/£12.
The Works of Sven Aggesen, Twelfth-Century Danish Historian. Translated
with introduction and notes by E. Christiansen. Text Series IX. 1992. ISBN
978 0 903521 24 6. £6/£12.
TEXTBOOKS
A New Introduction to Old Norse. Part I: Grammar. By M. Barnes. Third edition.
2007. Reprinted 2014. ISBN 978 0 903521 74 1. £6/£12.
A New Introduction to Old Norse. Part II: Reader. Edited by A. Faulkes. Fifth
edition. 2011. ISBN 978 0 903521 978 83 3. £6/£12.
A New Introduction to Old Norse. Part III: Glossary and Index of Names. Compiled
by A. Faulkes. Fourth edition with 2 supplements compiled by M. Barnes.
2007. ISBN 978 0 903521 70 3. £6/£12.
STUDIES
Árni Björnsson: Wagner and the Volsungs. Icelandic Sources of der Ring des
Nibelungen. 2003. ISBN 978 0 903521 55 0. £6/£12.
W. G. Collingwood and Jón Stefánsson: A Pilgrimage to the Saga-Steads of
Iceland. Facsimile of the original 1899 edition. Edited by Matthias Egeler.
Hardback. 2015. ISBN 978 0 903521 92 5. £15/£30.
Einar Ólafur Sveinsson: The Folk-Stories of Iceland. Revised by Einar G. Péturs
son. Translated by Benedikt Benedikz. Edited by A. Faulkes. Text Series XVI.
2003. ISBN 978 0 903521 53 6. £6/£12.
Introductory Essays on Egils saga and Njáls saga. Edited by J. Hines and D. Slay.
1992. Reprinted 2016. ISBN 978 0 903521 25 3. £5/£10.
Making History. Essays on the fornaldarsögur. Edited by M. Arnold and A. Finlay.
2010. ISBN 978 0 903521 84 0. £5/£10.
Old Norse Made New. Edited by D. Clark and C. Phelpstead. 2007. ISBN
978 0 903521 76 5. £5/£10.
Ólafur Halldórsson: Danish Kings and the Jomsvikings in the Greatest Saga of
Óláfr Tryggvason. 2000. ISBN 978 0 903521 47 5. £5/£10.
Ólafur Halldórsson: Text by Snorri Sturluson in Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta.
2001. ISBN 978 0 903521 49 9. £5/£10.
R. Perkins: Thor the Wind-Raiser and the Eyrarland Image. Text Series XV. 2001.
ISBN 978 0 903521 52 9. £6/£12.
N. S. Price: The Vikings in Brittany. 1989. Reprinted 2013. ISBN 978 0 903521 22 2
[Saga-Book XXII:6]. £5/£10.
A. S. C. Ross: The Terfinnas and Beormas of Ohthere. Leeds 1940 Reprinted
with an additional note by the author and an afterword by M. Chesnutt 1981.
ISBN 978 0 903521 14 7. £1/£2.
Stefán Karlsson: The Icelandic Language. Translated by R. McTurk. 2004. ISBN
978 0 903521 61 1. £3/£6.
Viking Revaluations. Viking Society Centenary Symposium 14–15 May 1992.
Edited by A. Faulkes and R. Perkins. 1993. ISBN 978 0 903521 28 4. £3.50/£7.
D. Whaley: Heimskringla. An Introduction. Text Series VIII. 1991. ISBN
978 0 903521 23 9. £7/£14.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Alice Selby: Icelandic Journal. Edited by A. R. Taylor. 1974. ISBN
978 0 903521 04 8 [Saga-Book XIX:1]. £2.50/£5.
Index to Old-Lore Miscellany. By J. A. B. Townsend. 1992. ISBN 978 0 903521
26 0. £1/£2.