[1] Alrekr: The pers. n. Alrīkʀ is attested several times in Swedish runic inscriptions (Peterson 2007, 21), so it is unlikely that the king was named after the Visigoth king Alarich (d. 410), as Nerman (1919, 147-8) assumes. The brothers, kings Alrekr and Eiríkr, are also mentioned by Saxo (Saxo 2005, I, 5, 10, 1-2, pp. 343-4), who reports that the Swedish king Alricus was killed in a duel by an Eiricus disertus ‘the Eloquent’. Eiricus survived and assumed the kingship. This corresponds to Gautreks saga (FSGJ 4, 34), which specifies that Alrekr was killed with a beisl ‘bridle’.
References
- Bibliography
- FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
- Saxo 2005 = Friis-Jensen, Karsten, ed. 2005. Saxo Grammaticus: Gesta Danorum / Danmarkshistorien. Trans. Peter Zeeberg. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Det danske sprog- og litteraturselskab & Gads forlag.
- Nerman, Birger. 1919. ‘Kung Agne och hans död på Agnefit’. Fv 14, 143-69.
- Peterson, Lena. 2007. Nordiskt runnamnslexikon. 5th edn. Uppsala: Institutet för språk och folkminnen.
- Internal references
- 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Gautreks saga’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 241. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=9> (accessed 28 March 2024)