Hervarar Saga
Two Notes: on Tone and on Genealogy in Old Books

NB: This is hardly a paper in the proper sense; more, it is a series of thoughts about this little book and other bigger books.

“What strange marvel did I see without, in front of Delling’s door?”

In order to consider this great work, I will need to make a few preliminary remarks. It is not my purpose here to speak of the editions of the saga and the various textual variants; it is rather my hope to say something about the style, and to do that, I require - at this stage in my career - one small concession from the reader: allow me to forgo manuscript questions and use all the saga material at hand. I require this because some of what I hope to say I cannot say if I am bound to stick to one text; at least part of that is because I do not have a complete text before me; what I have is Tolkien’s edition, which is merely a combination of various redactions - though perhaps a necessary one. Once I am granted that indulgence, I am free to move about in the saga. I have come to think quite highly of this little book, and I plan on giving it a fuller treatment at some later point. Count, therefore, what I say here as the beginnings of something else.

“The old tale of Hervor is set down in writing as follows here: It is found written in ancient books that to the north beyond Gandvik it was called Jotunheimar, and Ymisland to the south between there and Halogaland. But before the Turks and the men of Asia came to the Northlands giants dwelt in the northern regions, and some were half-giants; there was a great mingling of races in those days, for the giants got themselves wives out of Mannheimar, and some married their daughters to men from that country. Gudmund was the name of a lord in Jotunheimar; his dwelling place was at Grund in the region of Glasisvellir. He was a mighty man and wise, and so old were he and his people that their lives lasted through many generations of men. For this reason heathen men believed that in his realm must lie the Land of the Undying.” Such is the beginning of the saga according to what Tolkien calls the U-redaction. (See pg. 66 in Christopher Tolkien’s, The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise (Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd: New York, 1960))

This version continues in relating, a few pages later, the story of the forging of the sword Tyrfing: “It chanced one day that King Svafrlami rode out hunting, and far on into the day he pursued a stag, without ever overtaking it before the time of sunset. By then he had ridden so deep into the forest that he scarcely knew which way to turn for home. At sunset he saw a great stone, and beside it two dwarves. The king drew his graven sword over them, and with that sign held them outside the stone. They begged him to spare their lives, and Svafrlami asked them what their names were. One said he was called Durin, and the other Dvalin. Svafrlami knew that these were the most skilful of all dwarves and he laid this charge upon them, that they should make a sword for him, the best their skill could devise; its hilts were to be of gold and its grip also, and they were to make its scabbard and baldric of gold. He said that this sword must never fail and never rust, must bite into iron and stone as if into cloth, and that victory must always come to him who carried it in battles and single combats; this was the price of their lives. On the appointed day Svafrlami returned to the stone, and the dwarves delivered over to him the sword; it was very beautiful. But when Dvalin stood in the doors of the stone he said, ‘May your sword, Svafrlami, be the death of a man every time it is drawn, and with it may three of the most hateful deeds be done; may it also bring you your death!’…Svafrlami called [the sword] ‘Tyrfing’.” (pg. 68) King Svafrlami fought later a battle with Arngrim and was defeated; he struck a mighty blow that cut away the top of Arngrim’s shield but plunged the sword fast into the earth; whereupon Arngrim struck off his hand and took Tyrfing for himself; the sword promised victory to the one who wielded it, and Arngrim killed Svafrlami. The sword has now entered the family of Arngrim.

I have given these rather extensive quotes to give the reader a feel for the style and tone of the saga - which is, I believe, quite important. Unlike most of the other legendary sagas, Hervarar Saga has a certain brooding and elevated tone, and that tone is the same tone we find in many, if not all, of the Eddic poems. In this saga, that tone is broadened and refined and, unlike the Eddic poems, maintained throughout the work, for it can be argued that the Eddic poems sometimes have an element of the comic or at least of the absurd; such you will not find in Hervarar Saga. What you will find is a maiden standing at her father’s barrow and summoning his ghost to bring forth for her a cursed sword, Hjalmar’s Bane, a sword fated to bring about the death of her own sons. While Hrolf Saga Kraka has many good things to be said for it, this maintaining of an elevated tone is not one of them: we remember the elfin woman and the lonely old king. The only other saga that can be said to have this quality, to effect this tone throughout, is the most famous of all the legendary sagas, Volsunga Saga. When Brynhild wades further out into the water, we see, for a moment, the pride that a woman has; and we see that same pride when Hervor goes to her mother with a song - “In dreams is told me the truth only; no contentment shall I taste here now” - and binds up her hair and takes a ship for the land where her kinsmen lie slain; someone called her baseborn because she loved to fight, and pride will drive her to find Tyrfing. The story is elevated throughout, and, what is more, it is a fine story.

This tone, then, for lack of a better word, is unique among the shorter legendary sagas. It is shared with much of the mythology of the world, and someone used to it will find mythologies that are not set in a similar tone quite difficult to take seriously. There was a story in medieval Byzantium that the statues of the old gods and ancient heroes and long dead emperors would, on a dark and violent day nearing the ending of the world, come alive to wreak havoc upon the city and her inhabitants. That story has a certain weight and seriousness that the story of birth of Aphrodite, for example, lacks utterly - after Zeus had castrated his father and thrown his genitals into the sea, the goddess of love is spawned in the froth and rides to shore on a clam. Some, of course, may argue that this weight and seriousness is just that of the perspective of a certain culture. While that may be true, it will have to remain without evidence. The more advanced a civilization or culture becomes, the more refined its myths become, and hence the less likely they are to be merely silly. Whatever silliness there may have been in the story of the seer Teiresias coming upon the two Sphinxes mating, separating them with a stick, and being changed into a woman for his trouble has completely gone out of the myth by the time Sophocles took up a pen to write the Oedipus Rex. And there is not a single silly verse in the Aeneid, though there is much suffering, much bloodshed, a mad goddess, and a great quest: Vade age et ingentem factis fer ad aethera Trojam (III.462) And this is not meant to denigrate the stories that lack this weight and seriousness, though it is meant to put them in their proper place. Hervarar Saga takes pride of place over the other legendary sagas because it successfully maintains this seriousness and that is a more difficult and meaningful thing to do than merely reporting the amusing misadventures of some famous Viking. “The bright buckler shall break, kinsman, the cold lances clash together, grim men unnumbered in the grass sinking, ere the heritage I share with Humli’s grandson or ever Tyrfing in twain sunder!” (Poem 83)

"Bresta mun fyrr, bróðir.
in blikhvíta lind
ok kaldr geirr
koma við annan
ok margr gumi
í gras hníga
en ek mun Humlung
hálfan láta
eða Tyrfing
í tvau deila."

I go to such length on the matter of tone because I believe it shows why Hervarar Saga is deserving of more praise and interest than it usually gets. Because this tone comes quite close to that of the Eddic poems, and because the saga itself contains perhaps the oldest Norse poetry, it is reasonable to propose that we look again at its place in the canon and count it not so much in the same class as the Kettil Trout stories as in the same class as the Volsunga Saga and the Poetic Edda itself. And I do not believe it deserves that place merely because of the possible age of some of its material; the serious tone is accompanied, in this saga, by a fine story rivaling all but the finest sagas.

That last, you might say, is quite a statement for this little book. Let me explain briefly. It does not rival Njal’s Saga, that much is true, or even Laxdela or Grettir’s Saga, but it certainly rivals any of the other legendary sagas, including Hrolf Saga Kraka and even Volsunga Saga. I can justify these remarks, but that would take quite a bit of time, and there is a more interesting matter at hand. I think when this book is studied it will be found that the artistic objections to it, for example that the last chapter is too long and has nothing to do with the rest, will fall away. This saga does not pour its time into developing characters and setting up details; it spans generations and handles great events in short paragraphs. But it is clear that the characters are real, that they are not mere set-pieces, though we see just enough of them to be able to tell, and that the things that move them are real as well; the mocking of Hervor is handled in a few lines, but that is all that is needed; we understand both her emotion, and her reaction, and both of those are unique enough to make the scene something more than that of a stock character in a stock situation responding in a stock way. Enough of what the saga does not do. What does it do? Let’s go to the heart of the matter: genealogy. In Njal’s Saga, the genealogies may be skipped with only a slight loss in appreciation; one has the impression that they are more ornamental than anything; and in Njal’s Saga there are quite a few of them. Hervarar Saga, on the other hand, is exactly the reverse: there are very few genealogies; indeed, we might almost say that there are no genealogies, at least not in the same way as there are in the Njala; we can even turn that on its head and say that the entire book is a genealogy, though that would be to liken something great to something small; better said, this little book is like a book of the Bible: it is history, it is poetry, it is story, and it is told with a purpose; it does not matter that one does not have the sense of who Hezekiah King of Judah was in the inner secret of his heart; what matters is that we know what sort of man he was and what he did and what songs he sang before the Lord. To remove the genealogy from this book would be to take out its very heart; and that is why the last chapter with all of its little stories and deaths and marriages, long and tedious though it be to us, is an integral part of the whole: “We are cursed, kinsman; your killer am I. The Norns doom is evil.” (Poem 104) We are all cursed. The curse seems to follow Tyrfing; it seems that it is not our fathers who are cursed but the sword. But, no - when we look again, we see that before Tyrfing was forged, there was a race of giants; Hergrim carried off Starkad’s betrothed when Starkad had gone north over Elivagar, and Starkad, descended from giants and having eight arms, went against Hergrim with four swords and struck him down by the uppermost waterfall of Eidi. The last chapter serves not only to draw the events down to our own day - that of our author and his audience - but also to remind us that, though Tyrfing is gone, the curse remains; the kin slaying and greed and cowardice does not stop; “Ivar [the wide-grasping] came to Sweden with his army; but King Ingijald the Wicked feared his host and burned himself and all his retinue with him in his own house, at the place called Raening. . . [Sigurd Ring, King Harald’s grandson,] fought with King Harald War-tooth at Bravoll in eastern Gautland, and there fell King Harald and a mighty array. This battle, and that which Angantyr and Hlod his brother fought on the Danube Heath, are the most renowned in the ancient tales, with the greatest count of slain.” (pg. 59-60) The curse remains because we remain, and it will only go out with us. “We are cursed, kinsman; your killer am I” is not just the refrain of one man carrying a doomed sword against a brother filled with greed; it is the refrain of all of them, and it is the refrain of all of us. The genealogies - though that word does not do Hervarar Saga justice - remind us that it is so, and it is because of them that readers of this story cannot say the curse has gone out with Tyrfing; indeed, it may be to bring our own curse into relief that the author begins his story in the Land of the Undying, for it is even there that the cold lances clash together, and the blood of men and giants is shed upon the heath. In the last chapter, there is no trace of the cursed sword, it has died, and it is our hope that when we die, our curse will die too.

“‘Ladies I looked on
in likeness of dust
on bed of stone they slept;
black they are and swarthy
in sunny weather,
but the lighter the less one can see.
This riddle ponder,
O Prince Heidrek!’
“‘You riddle is good, Gestumblindi,’ said the king; ‘I have guessed it. Those are embers grown pale upon the hearth.’” (Poem H 53 and response, pg. 82)