Hildibrandr Lv 1^VIII (Ásm 1)

The following six stanzas, which may originally have been from an independent poem sometimes referred to as ‘Hildibrandr’s Death-song’, are said to have been recited by Hildibrandr as he lay dying. Poems reviewing their lives are said to have been recited by several fornaldarsaga heroes, like Hjálmarr and Ǫrvar-Oddr, just before they die. These stanzas correspond, though with much elaboration on Saxo’s part, to Saxo 2015, I, vii. 9. 14-15, pp. 506-9.

Mjök er vandgætt,         hvé verða skal
um borinn öðrum         at banaorði.
Þik Drótt um bar         af Danmörku
en mik sjálfan         á Svíþjóðu.

Mjök er vandgætt, hvé skal verða um borinn öðrum at banaorði. Drótt um bar þik af Danmörku en mik sjálfan á Svíþjóðu.

It is very difficult to deal with how one must be born to become the slayer of another. Drótt gave birth to you in Denmark and to me myself in Sweden.

Mss: 7(43r) (Ásm)

Editions: Skj AII, 320, Skj BII, 340, Skald II, 183, FF §31, NN §2994C; Peringskiöld 1722, 21 (ch. 9), FSN 2, 484-5 (ch. 9), Detter 1891, 98, FSGJ 1, 405 (ch. 9) (Ásm); CPB I, 190, Halvorsen 1951, 11; Edd. Min. 53, NK 313.

Context: After Ásmundr has slain a succession of Hildibrandr’s best warriors, Hildibrandr breaks into a berserk rage, slays his own son, and meets Ásmundr at the River Rhine. Hildibrandr’s sword breaks on his adversary’s helmet and flies into the Rhine. Mortally wounded, he utters a poem of six stanzas.

Notes: [1] vandgætt ‘difficult to deal with’: This cpd adj. has only one attested usage in prose, notably in Hallfr (Hallfr 1977, 52-3), where King Óláfr Tryggvason says to Hallfreðr that the sword he is giving him will be vandgætt because it has no sheath. Here Hildibrandr may mean that his fate, of being the killer of his half-brother, is a situation that is difficult to handle. — [3, 5]: In both ll. 3 and 5, the first element of the ms.’s of borinn ‘be born’ and of bar ‘bore’ has been normalised to um, to conform to Old Norse usage of the period after 1250. The untranslatable pleonastic particle of occurs most commonly in early poetic texts, and its presence here suggests a lengthy transmission history for this stanza. — [5-6]: These lines are similar to Saxo 2015, I, vii. 9. 14, ll. 9-11, pp. 506-8: ‘Danica te tellus, me Sueticus edidit orbis, | Drot tibi maternum quondam distenderat uber: Hac genitrice tibi pariter collacteus exto’ ‘Danish territory bore you, | Sweden me. Once Drot extended a mother’s | breast to you; I too sucked milk from her teat.’ — [5] Drótt: Name of the mother of both Ásmundr and Hildibrandr; she is consistently called Hildr in the saga prose, but always Drota or Drot in Saxo, which would indicate that the prose was added a considerable time after the stanzas were composed. — [6] af ‘in’: Lit. ‘from’. Several eds (e.g. Edd. Min., Skald) often emend af to í or á to better reflect events in the story. If an emendation is necessary, it could be either á, which would better parallel l. 8, or í for both lines, which would be the more common form.

References

1. Bibliography
2. FSN = Rafn, Carl Christian, ed. 1829-30. Fornaldar sögur nordrlanda. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Popp.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. CPB = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and F. York Powell, eds. 1883. Corpus poeticum boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1965, New York: Russell & Russell.
6. NK = Neckel, Gustav and Hans Kuhn (1899), eds. 1983. Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern. 2 vols. I: Text. 5th edn. Heidelberg: Winter.
7. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
8. Edd. Min. = Heusler, Andreas and Wilhelm Ranisch, eds. 1903. Eddica Minora: Dichtungen eddischer Art aus den Fornaldarsögur und anderen Prosawerken. Dortmund: Ruhfus. Rpt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
9. Hallfr 1977 = Bjarni Einarsson, ed. 1977. Hallfreðar saga. RSÁM 15. Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar.
10. FF = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1922. Fornjermansk forskning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 18:1. Lund: Gleerup.
11. Detter, Ferdinand, ed. 1891. Zwei Fornaldarsögur (Hrólfssaga Gautrekssonar und Ásmundarsaga kappabana) nach Cod. Holm. 7, 4to. Halle: Niemeyer.
12. Halvorsen, Eyvind Fjeld. 1951. ‘On the Sources of the Ásmundarsaga kappabana’. Studia Norvegica 2, 1-57.
13. Peringskiöld, Johann, ed. 1722. Saugu Asmundar, er kallaður er Kappabani. Stockholm: Horrn.
14. Saxo 2015 = Friis-Jensen, Karsten, ed. 2015. Saxo Grammaticus: Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes. Trans. Peter Fisher. Oxford Medieval Texts. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon.
15. Internal references
16. 2022, ‘ Anonymous, Hallfreðar saga’ in Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade and Tarrin Wills (eds), Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 5. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 873-914. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=63> (accessed 19 April 2024)
17. 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Ásmundar saga kappabana’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 15. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=65> (accessed 19 April 2024)
18. Diana Whaley 2012, ‘(Biography of) Óláfr Tryggvason’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 383.