Hrolf Kraki's Saga Read online

  THE PROPHECY OF AN ELF MAID ...

  "So, you have had your will, King. Know, we got a child together. When you took me in, I wished you well; and I do not yet wish you ill. Do as I say, and it may be we can still halt the bad luck you have sown in my womb.

  "Our child," she continued, "must be born mv dersea; for mine is the blood of Ran. Be down by your boathouses this time next winter, and look for her." Pain crossed her mouth. "If you fail, the Skjoldungs will suffer."

  But as the seasons went by, the king forgot what his elf-love had asked of him. Indeed, she seemed so strange to everything else he knew, he sometimes wondered if she had been a dream.

  But she had not been a dream—and what she had augured would most tragically come to pass.

  Also by Paid Anderson published by Ballantine Boos:

  BRAIN WAVE THE BROKEN SWORD FIRE TIME A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST

  HROLF KRAKE’S SAGA

  A Del Rey Book

  BALLANTINE BOOKS · NEW YORK

  Poul Anderson

  To my favorite Finnish spellbinders— Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Emil Petaja

  A Del Rey Book

  Published by Ballantine Books

  Copyright © 1973 by Poul Anderson

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Ballantine Books of Canada, Ltd., Toronto, Canada.

  ISBN 0-345-25846-0

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition: October 1973 Second Printing: July 1977

  Cover art by Darrell Sweet

  THE HISTORY OF HROLF KRAKI: Foreword by Poul Anderson

  A book should speak for itself. But since this is not a modem fantasy, you the reader may like to know its background.

  In contrast to the Volsungasaga, whose core is a story from the Rhineland, the cycle of Hrolf Kraki and his heroes is purely Northern. Once it was widely known and many-branched, deep in the souls and the songs of the folk. But it did not have the same good luck as the tale of Sigmund, Sigurdh Fafnir's-Bane, Brynhild, and Gudhrun: to get a sinewy prose narrative and to inspire poems which have survived in their entirety. Hence, today it is nearly forgotten. It deserves to be remembered anew.

  The germ of it is close in age to that of the Nibelungenlied and contemporary with Beowulf. In fact, it and the latter throw a great deal of light on each other and include a number of the same people. The most conspicuous example is King Hrothgar, whose hall Beowulf rid of the monsters. In the homeland version he is Hrolf’s uncle Hroar. Enough additional identifications have been made to leave no doubt.

  Now this can be dated rather closely. Gregory of Tours, in his History of the Franks, mentions a Danish king—whom a slightly later chronicle calls Geatish—Chochuaicus, who fell in the course of a massive raid on Holland. He has to be that lord whom Beowulf calls Hygelac and Hrolf (and certain other Northern remnants) Hugleik. On that basis, we can say with reasonable confidence that he was indeed a Geat. We are not sure whether this people lived in Jutland or the Gotaland part of Sweden, then an independent kingdom. I think the second is more likely. In any case, since that leader was real, no doubt others were whose names loom far larger in tradition: such as Beowulf and Hrolf themselves.

  Hugleik died between 512 and 520 A.D. Thus Hrolf flourished two or three decades later. This was during the Volkerwanderung period, when Rome had gone under and the Germanic tribes were on the move, as wild a time as the world has ever seen. We can understand why Hrolf Kraki was gloriously remembered, why the saga tellers generation by generation brought every hero they could to his court, even if this meant giving less and less of the cycle to the king himself. His reign was—by comparison, anyhow; in story, at least —a moment of sunshine during a storm which raged for centuries. He became to the North what Arthur did to Britain and Charlemagne, afterward, to France. On the morning of Stiklestad, five hundred years later and away off in Norway, the men of King Olaf the Saint were wakened by a skald who chanted aloud a Bjarkamaal: one of those lays wherein the warriors of the pagan Dane-King Hrolf were called to their last battle.

  Fragments of it have come down to us. We know also the Bjarkarimur, a different and late set of verses. In his chronicle of Danish legend and history, the monk Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1150-1206) gives still another poem, in a long Latin paraphrase from which we can only attempt to reconstruct the original. (A sample is in Chapter I of "The Tale of Skuld," and some other parts have been worked into a form more in period for Chapters II and III.) This book—which likewise includes the oldest extant account of Hamlet—tells the story of Hrolf. In addition we find mention of it in Snorri Sturlason's Younger Edda and Heinlinskringla, the synopsized Skjoidunga-saga, and scattered references elsewhere. The principal sources are a few Icelandic manuscripts devoted wholly to the legend. Unfortunately, no copy of these is from before c. 1650, and both the style and the logic leave something to be desired.

  AH the sources contradict each other, and occasionally themselves, on various points. Moreover, they are too sparse, leave too much unexplained, for the modern reader who is not a specialist in the early North.

  I have long wanted to make a reconstruction, if not the reconstruction: put together the best parts, fill in the gaps, use the old words where they seem right and otherwise find new ones. My gratitude is great to Ian and Betty Ballantine and to Lin Carter for this chance to try.

  Many such choices and suppositions must be controversial, or sheerly arbitrary. However, we can leave to scholars the pleasant pastime of arguing over details. To me, the most important questions turned on how the narrative might be made enjoyable to read while staying faithful to its originals.

  For instance, from my viewpoint and doubtless yours, too many names begin with H- and even Hr-. I did not feel free to change this, unless one of the sources gave an alternative; but I have tried to write so as to minimize the chance of confusion. For similar reasons I have used modem place names throughout, generally the English versions, except for territories like Svithjodh which no longer exist.

  A greater hazard lies in the very spirit of the saga. Here is no Lord of the Rings, work of a civilized, Christian author— though probably it was one of Tolkien's many wellsprings. Hrolf Kraki lived in the midnight of the Dark Ages. Slaughter, slavery, robbery, rape, torture, heathen rites bloody or obscene, were parts of daily life. Finns in particular will note the brutality and superstition to which the Scandinavians subjected their harmless people.* Love, loyalty, honesty beyond the most niggling technicalities, were only for one's kindred, chieftain, and closest friends. The rest of mankind were foe-men or prey. And often anger or treachery broke what bonds there had been.

  Adam Oehlenschlager, writing in the Romantic era, could sentimentalize Helgi, Hroar, and Hrolf. I would not. If nothing else, we today need a reminder that we must never take civilization for granted.

  I hope you will bear with that, as well as the necessarily sprawling character of the tale and what we today feel as a lack of psychological depth. The latter merely reflects how those folk thought of themselves. To us, their behavior seems insanely egoistic; but to them, each was first a member of his family and only second—however greedy for wealth or fame —himself. The hero is no one of them, but rather the blood of Skjold the Sheaf-Child, which coursed through many different hearts.

  I felt obliged to give you some idea of how those lives and that society worked. Yet my aim was not at a hypothetical historical reality, but a myth. Therefore I have put the narrative in the mouth of a person in tenth-century England, when the cycle would have reached its full development—a woman, who would be less likely than a man to use
the spare saga style. Of course, she brings in not just the supernatural, but numerous anachronisms. The Scandinavia she describes is, in most respects, the one she herself knows.

  As for personal names, those of the gods are in their

  *At least, the sagas call them Finns, though many of them were doubtless actually Lapps.

  modern forms. Since those of humans are exotic anyway, they have been left in the Old Norse. Spellings have occasionally been modified, though, to make both printing and reading easier. For those readers who care, pronunciations go about as follows, accents always being on the first syllable:

  a: Generally broad as in ah.

  aa: Midway between aw and oh.

  dh: The edh, like th in this.

  ei. ey: As in rein, they.

  g: Always hard, as in get.

  gn: Both letters pronounced.

  j: like y in yet.

  kn: Both letters pronounced.

  ng: Always as in ring.

  ö: As in German or, roughly, English oo in good.

  oa: Two vowels, oh-ah.

  th: The thorn, like th in thunder.

  u: Long except when followed by a doubled consonant

  (Skuld vs. Gunnar.)

  y: Like German ü or, roughly, English

  æ.: Like German ä or, roughly English eh. But never mind any of this unless you are especially interested. All that really matters is the story.

  —Poul Anderson

  HROLF KRAKI'S SAGA

  Though life is lost, one thing will outlive us: memory sinks not beneath the mould.

  Till the Weird of the World stands, unforgotten, high under heaven, the hero's name.

  —The Bjarkamaal

  OF THE TELLING

  There was a man called Eyvind the Red, who dwelt in the Danelaw of England while Æthelstan was king. His father was Svein Kolbeinsson, who had come there from Denmark and often made trading voyages back. When old enough, Eyvind went along. Yet he was more restless and eager for a name than Svein, and at last took service under the king. In a few years he rose high, until at Brunanburh he fought so mightily and led his followers so well that Æthelstan gave him full friendship and wished him to stay always in the royal household. Eyvind was not sure if he wanted that for the rest of his life, and asked leave to go visit his old homestead.

  He found Svein readying for another journey, and decided to embark. In Denmark they got hospitality from the chieftain Sigurdh Haraldsson. This man had a daughter, Gunnvor, a fair maiden whom Eyvind soon began to woo. The fathers thought it would be a match good for both their houses; and when Eyvind returned to England, he brought Gunnvor as his bride.

  Then he must attend the king, who spent that winter in travel. Gunnvor came too. She won the heart of ladies in the court, for she could speak much about foreign lands and ways. Though Æthelstan was unwed, news of this came to him: especially of a long saga from olden days that she was relating. He called her to the building where he sat among his men. "These are gloomy nights," he chided her, laughing. "Why do you give the women a pleasure you refuse me?"

  "I was only telling stories, lord," she said.

  "Good ones, though, from what I hear," answered the king.

  Still she looked unhappy. Eyvind took the word on her behalf: "Lord, I know something of this, and it may not be fit for your company." His eye dwelt on the bishop who sat near. "It is a heathen tale." He had not given out that he still offered to the elves.

  "Well, what of that?" asked Æthelstan. "If I have among my friends a man like Egil Skallagrimsson—"

  "There is no harm in hearing about the forefathers, if we do not forget they were in error," said the bishop. "Rather, it helps us to understand today's heathen, and thus learn how best to bring them to the Faith." After a little, he added thoughtfully: "I must confess, I spent my youth studying abroad and know less about you Danes than do most Englishmen. I would be grateful if you could explain things as you go along, Lady Gunnvor."

  The end of it was that she spent many evenings that winter telling them about Hrolf Kraki.

  THE TALE OF FRODHI

  1

  In those days, Denmark was less than it is now. There were Zealand and the smaller islands about this great one. Save for the chalk cliffs of Mon in the south, it is a low country, hills rolling as easily as the rivers flow. Then eastward across the Sound lay Scania. At the narrowest part of that strait, swimmable by any boy, it looks much like its sister; and they say that in an olden year the goddess Gefion plowed Zealand free of the peninsula that she might have it for herself and her man Skjold, Odin's son. But northward, where it juts into the Kattegat, Scania lifts in red heights, the southern end of the Keel.

  This is a land whose soil bears well, whose waters swarm with fish and seal and whale, whose marshes are darkened and made thunderous by the wings of wildfowl, whose timber fares afar in the strakes of goodly ships. But that same timber grows in woods well-nigh impassable, the haunt of deer and elk, aurochs and wisent, wolf and bear. In former times the wildernesses reached further and darker than they do now, cut the settlements of men off from each other in loneliness, sheltered not only outlaws but elves and trolls and other uncanny beings.

  North of Scania is the land of the Gotar, whom the English call Geats. It was then a realm in its own right. North of it in turn lay Svithjodh, where dwelt the Swedes; theirs was the biggest and strongest of the Northern countries. West across mountains was Norway, but it was a lot of little quarreling kingdoms and tribes. Beyond it and Svithjodh live the Finns. They are mostly wandering hunters and reindeer herders, who speak no tongue akin to any of ours. But they are so rich in furs that, in spite of numbering many among them who are skilled in witchcraft, they are always being raided or laid under scot by Dane, Swede, and Norseman.

  Turning south again, to the west of Zealand we find the Great Belt, and beyond that water the island of Fyn. Then comes the Little Belt and then the Jutland peninsula. Jutland is an earth more steep and stern than the rest of what is today the Danish realm. From the wide wind-whistling strands of the Skaw, south to the bogs where men stride on stilts as if they would be storks, and so to the mouth of the mighty Elbe, here is the mother of whole folk who have wandered widely across the world—Cimbri, Teutons, Vandals, Heruli, Angles who gave their name to England, Jutes, Saxons, and more and more.

  Not only to gain strength, wealth, and fame, but to halt endless wars and reavings, the Danish kings who held Zealand and Scania strove to bring these others beneath them. And sometimes they would win a battle and be acknowledged overlords here or there. But erelong blades were again unsheathed, and on the roofs of the jarls they had set to steer yonder lands, the red cock crowed. As often as not, this happened because royal brothers fell out with each other.

  Theirs was the house of Skjold and Gefion. In England it is told that he—they call him Scyld—drifted to shore in an oarless boat. It was filled with weapons but bore also a sheaf of grain whereon rested the head of the child. The Danes took him for their king, and a great one he grew to be, who gave law and peace and the groundwork of a country. When at last he died, his grieving folk set him adrift in a ship richly laden, that he might go home to that unknownness whence he had come. They believed his father had been Odin. And truth to tell, the blood of the One-Eyed showed itself afterward in many ways, so that some of the Skjoldungs were wise and forbearing landfathers, others wild and greedy, still others given to peering into things best left alone.

  This last was more often true of the Svithjodh kings.

  They were the Ynglings, stemming from Frey, and he is no god of the sky but of the earth, its fruitfulness to be called forth by strange rites, likewise its shadows and all-devouring mould. In their seat of Uppsala, no few of these lords worshipped beasts and wrought wizardries. Withal, they bred their share of doughty warriors, and when at last Ivar Widespan drove them out—long after the tale I will tell you—a man of them became the ancestor of that Harald Fairhair who made Norway into one kingdom.r />
  Between Skjoldungs and Ynglings was scant love and much bloodshed. Between them was also the land of the Gotar. Being fewer in numbers than either set of neighbors, these sought the friendship of both, or at least to play a double game. Yet the Gotar were no weaklings either. Among them was to arise that man the English call Beowulf,

  Thus matters stood in the days when Frodhi the Peace-Good became king of Denmark. Of him are many things told, how he won overlordship through battle and craftiness, then went on to give such laws and keep such a calm that a maiden might carry a sackful of gold from end to end of his realm and be safe. Yet in him was likewise that ravenousness which could show in the Skjoldungs and which had, earlier, caused his own forebear Hermodh to be driven from the royal seat in Leidhra town, into the wilderness. We hear different tales about King Frodhi's ending; but this is the one the skalds like best.

  A ship from Norway brought for sale some captured uplanders. Out of these, Frodhi chose two huge young women, long-haired, tangle-haired, dark-haired, high of cheekbone, broad of mouth and nose, slant of eye, clad in stinking skins. They called themselves, in thunder-deep voices, Fenja and Menja. It was told how men's lives were lost in binding them and how they were not really human but of the Jotun race. A wiseman warned Frodhi that they could never have been made captive were there not the will of a Norn in this. But the king did not listen.

  He owned a quern named Grotti. Whence it came, no one knows—maybe from one of those dolmens which stand stark around the Danish lands, the very names of their builders long ago forgotten. A witch had said that it could grind forth whatever he wanted; but none had strength to wield the oaken shaft which turned the upper stone. He thought that these women might.

  And they did. He set them in a gloomy shed where stood the quern. An old lay tells the story of what followed.