Note to Anon (Heiðr) 6VIII (Heiðr 87)
[All]: As has often been noted, this stanza bears some resemblance to the Old English poem Wīdsīð, which includes an eighteen-line catalogue of rulers and their peoples (ll. 18-35), e.g. (ll. 18-19) (Malone 1962, 23): Ætla weold Hunum, Eormanric Gotum, | Becca Baningum, Burgendum Gifica ‘Attila ruled the Huns, Eormanric the Goths, Becca the Banings, Gifica the Burgundians’. Although Attila and Eormanric (ON Atli and Jǫrmunrekkr) are chosen as the ‘archetypical’ leaders of the Huns and Goths respectively (cf. Niles 1999, 182-8), later in the poem the narrator speaks of visiting Heaþoric ond Sifecan, Hliþe ond Incgenþeow (l. 116), which have been compared to Heiðr’s Heiðrekr, Sifka(?) (Hlǫðr’s mother), Hlǫðr and Angantýr. On further connections with Wīdsīð see e.g. Heiðr 1960, xxv-xxviii, Malone (1925).
References
- Bibliography
- Heiðr 1960 = Tolkien, Christopher, ed. and trans. 1960. Saga Heiðreks konungs ins vitra / The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise. Nelson Icelandic Texts. London etc.: Nelson.
- Malone, Kemp. 1925. ‘Widsith and the Hervararsaga’. PMLA 40, 769-813.
- Malone, Kemp, ed. 1962. Widsith. 2nd edn. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger. First published 1936. London: Methuen.
- Niles, John D. 1999. ‘Widsith and the Anthropology of the Past’. Philological Quarterly 78, 171-213.
- Internal references
- 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 367. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=23> (accessed 30 April 2024)