Two Sagas of Mythical Heroes, page 16
“And now, take this silver drinking-horn that I present to you. Inside it I have stowed all of King Ađils’s best rings, including the one called Svíagrís that he thinks better of than of all others.” And with this horn she also gave him a great treasure in gold and silver. All of the money and treasure was so much together that hardly any one man could have held it.
{123} Now Vogg was seen to, and he received a great quantity of gold from King Hrólf for his exceptional service. The queen ordered men to lead twelve horses forward, all of them roans except for one stallion who was white as snow, and she asked King Hrólf to ride them. Of all Ađils’s armored war horses, these were the best. Yrsa gave them shields and helmets and coats of chainmail, all of them the highest quality and workmanship, because the fire had destroyed so much of their own weapons and clothing. All of these necessities that she gave them were precious.
King Hrólf said, “Have you now given me the same amount of money that I rightfully was supposed to own and that my father owned?”
She answered, “This is in fact many times more than what you were strictly owed, and in this place you and your men have won yourselves great fame. Now get ready as best you can, because you still have trials up ahead of you.”
Now they mounted up on their horses. King Hrólf spoke lovingly to his mother, and they parted in joy.
Chapter 45
Now King Hrólf and his comrades rode the way down from Uppsala and vicinity, and in the place that is called Fýrisvellir it is said that King Hrólf saw a large golden ring glowing in the street before them, and this ring clanged loudly as the men rode over it.
“The ring is clanging so loudly,” said King Hrólf, “because it is ill content in its loneliness.” And with that, he let one of his own gold rings fall to the street as well.
He then said, “It must be told far and wide that I do not stoop to pick up gold even if it is lying on the street in front of me. And let none of my champions be so bold that he picks it up! That ring was thrown there to deter us on our journey.” And they promised him this, and at that moment they also heard the sound of trumpets from every direction around them, and an enormous following army came into {124} view. This army was moving swiftly; in fact it seemed that each man in it seemed to be letting his horse run as fast as it could.
Just the same, King Hrólf and his men rode straight on forward. Bođvar said, “These men are coming after us hard, and I certainly hope that some of them get what they want from their errand. They want to catch up with us.”
The king said, “We ought to pay no attention to them. They’re the ones who’ll be slowing down.” Now he reached down with his hand for the horn that had the gold in it, the one that Beigađ held in his hand as he rode. And then he began to strew the gold all over the street as they rode over Fýrisvellir, until the streets glowed like gold pieces.
And when the pursuing army saw all the gold gleaming in the street, most of them leapt off their horses, thinking that whoever was quickest to start picking up gold would be the luckiest. There was a great deal of petty stealing and childish wrestling, and the one who was strongest was the one who got the most.
Because of this, the pursuing army was delayed. When King Ađils saw what was happening, he nearly lost his mind with rage, and he berated them with stinging words, saying that they were snatching up the smaller prize while they were letting the bigger prize get away, and that their foul shame would be told of soon in every land—“The fact that you let twelve men escape from us here, you, this uncountable army that I have taken pains to assemble from every region of Sweden.” King Ađils then rode swiftly ahead of them all, full of rage, and now along with him came his army.
King Hrólf now saw King Ađils galloping hard and closing the distance with him, and in this moment Hrólf took the ring Svíagrís and cast it on the street before him. When Ađils saw this ring, he said, “The Swede who gave Hrólf this ring has been truer to Hrólf than to me. And yet Hrólf was given this treasure, and no sooner will I get it back.” And with these words he aimed the tip of his spearshaft at the spot where the ring lay, wanting to seize it before any other man could. He bent down very far in the process as he stuck the end of the spear into the loop of the ring.
As King Hrólf saw this, he turned his own horse back and said, “I made the greatest man among the Swedes poke around like a pig.” And just as King Ađils was starting to swing the tip of the spear back {125} around to himself, Hrólf rode past him at a fast pace and chopped off both of his buttocks all the way down to the bone with his sword Skofnung, the best sword that has ever been carried in the Northlands. Hrólf told Ađils to remember this shame for a little while, “And now you’ll recognize King Hrólf, the one you’ve been seeking for such a long time, wherever I may be.”
King Ađils suffered great blood loss from this, so much so that he began quickly to lose his strength. He was forced now to retreat in worse shape than he’d started out, and King Hrólf retrieved the ring Svíagrís, with this having been the end of their encounter. It has never been told that the two kings met again.
And the Danes slaughtered all the men who had ridden forward far enough and risked the most—those men did not have long to wait before they met King Hrólf and his champions. And none of the champions thought he was too good to kill a Swede, and they spared none of their strength when the opportunity to kill one presented itself.
Chapter 46
Now King Hrólf and his men went riding along on their way, and they rode nearly the whole day through. As night began to fall, they came within sight of a farm and came up to the doors. There before them was the farmer Hrani, and he offered them every kind of entertainment and said that their journey hadn’t gone much different than he’d predicted it would. The king said that was true, and that Hrani certainly wasn’t smoke-blind.
“Here are some weapons that I want to give you,” said Hrani.
King Hrólf said, “These are bizarre weapons, commoner.” They were a shield, a sword, and a suit of chainmail. King Hrólf did not want the weapons.
Hrani began to get angry about this, and felt that he was being humiliated. “You aren’t as well suited for these, King Hrólf,” he said, “as you think you are. And you aren’t always as wise as you think you are.” Hrani said this refusal was disgraceful, and now he offered them no hospitality for the night.
{126} King Hrólf and his companions wanted to ride on, though the night was dark. Hrani’s eye was unsmiling, and they doubted he would offer them much beer when they refused his gifts. And Hrani did nothing to stop them from riding away as they liked, so they rode away after all this with no farewells said on either side.
Before they had been gone long, Bođvar stopped in his tracks and said, “Good ideas often occur to the unwise in hindsight. And now that is true for me; I suspect that we have not behaved entirely wisely in rejecting his gifts. We ought to have accepted them. And since we did otherwise, we might have rejected our own victory.”
King Hrólf said, “I suspect the same. This man must have been Óđin the old, as he certainly was one-eyed.”
“So let’s ride back as fast as we can,” said Svipdag, “and find out.”
Now they rode back, but they found both the farm and the farmer gone. “It’ll do us no good to search for him,” said King Hrólf, “because he is an evil spirit.” So they rode on their way, and nothing is told of their journey before they returned to their own kingdom in Denmark, and remained there in peace.
Bođvar advised King Hrólf that he participate in fewer battles from here on out. If he did so and remained quiet, his enemies would think it less likely that there was anything to gain by attacking him. But Bođvar confessed that he was unsure about how victorious the king would be in the future, if he tested his luck too much.
King Hrólf said, “Fate determines each man’s destiny—not that evil spirit.”
Bođvar answered, “You are the last man we want to lose, but I have deep suspicions that we don’t have long to wait for some big news.” With this, they ended their talk.
King Hrólf and all his companions became extraordinarily famous from their journey.
{127} Part 7: Concerning the Battle with Skuld, and the Fall of King Hrólf and His Champions
Chapter 47
Now a long time passed while King Hrólf and his champions sat in peace in Denmark, and no one tried to attack them. All of Hrólf’s subordinate kings showed him deference and paid their taxes to him, and among them was Hjorvarđ, Hrólf’s brother-in-law.
There came one time when Queen Skuld, Hjorvarđ’s wife, said to him with a heavy sigh, “I don’t like paying taxes to King Hrólf on the pain of being tortured by him, and this will go on no longer. You will no longer be his subordinate.”
Hjorvarđ answered, “It would suit us best as it suits others, to endure this and let everything remain quiet.”
“You’re a little kind of man,” she said, “since you want to just put up with every kind of shame that anyone offers you.”
He replied, “It isn’t possible to fight King Hrólf; no one dares to lift a shield against him.”
“You’re such a little man, in fact,” she said, “that you have no fight in you. Whoever dares nothing, always has nothing. We won’t know until we try, how it will or won’t go with King Hrólf and his champions. But it so happens, I think, that he’ll be the loser of that conflict, and I don’t believe it would be too difficult to prove it. Even though he’s my relative, that won’t protect him from me. He always just sits around at home, because he knows he’ll lose a real battle in the open. But if this idea has any chance of success, I’ll make up a plan, and I won’t leave out any kind of trick that I think might make a difference.”
Skuld was the most terrible kind of witch, a descendant of elves on her mother’s side, and she would make King Hrólf and his champions know it forcefully. “First I’ll send messengers to King Hrólf and ask that he allow me not to pay the taxes I owe him for the next three years on the condition that I’ll pay it all in one sum after that. I think this deception will work, and if it does, we’ll keep the peace for a time.”
{128} Skuld’s messengers left on the errand the queen asked them to perform, and King Hrólf did agree to her offer about delayed payment of her taxes.
Chapter 48
At this time Skuld assembled an army of all the strongest men she could find, and most of them were from the worst people of her area. But through her magic and evil deeds, she kept her treachery secret, so that King Hrólf was not aware of it, and none of his champions suspected her plans. Skuld used all of her forbidden magic [seiđr] in her efforts to defeat King Hrólf, her own brother, to the point that she sought the company of elves and Norns and uncountable other evil creatures that no natural human could stand against.
For their part, King Hrólf and his champions enjoyed great cheer and entertainments and every kind of game men know about in Lejre, and they did all these things with art and noble manners. Each of them had a concubine for his pleasure.
And now it is told that the army of King Hjorvarđ and Skuld was ready, and they marched to Lejre with their uncountable troops and arrived at Yuletime. King Hrólf had ordered a great feast for Yule, and his men drank hard during that evening.
Hjorvarđ and Skuld had their army raise large, long, wonderfully decorated tents outside the city that evening. They had many wagons, all of them full of weapons and armor, though King Hrólf noticed none of this. He was thinking more about his own grandeur and magnanimity and propriety, and about all of the courage that dwelled in his own heart. And he was eager to serve everyone who came, and his good reputation traveled far and wide, and he had every single thing that a king of this world might need to adorn his pride. And it is not told anywhere that King Hrólf or his champions sacrificed to the gods at any time, but rather that they believed in their own strength and abilities. This was because, at the time, the holy faith had not been preached yet here in the Northlands, and thus the men who dwelled in the northern part of the world still had little knowledge of their Creator.
{129} Chapter 49
The next thing to tell of is that Hjalti the Righteous went to the house where his concubine was. He could see clearly that there would be no rest for them under the shadows of the tents of Hjorvarđ and Skuld. Nonetheless he appeared outwardly calm, and showed no change of mood in his brow when he lay down next to his concubine, the most beautiful of women. And when he had been with her for a time, he shot up to his feet and asked her, “What do you think’s better: two twenty-two-year-olds or one eighty-year-old?”
She said, “I think two twenty-two-year-olds would be better than any eighty-year-old man.”
“You whore,” said Hjalti, “You’ll pay for these words.” Then he went to her and bit her nose off.
“Let me know if any men start fighting over you now,” he said. “But I expect few of them will think you’re much of a treasure from here on out.”
“You’ve done evil to me that I didn’t deserve,” she said.
“I can’t be responsible for everything,” said Hjalti. Then he took up his weapons, because he saw that all around the city there were armored men and flags set up, and he understood that it would do no good to ignore any longer this hard battle now at hand. He made his way to the hall where King Hrólf and the champions sat, and he said, “Wake up, my lord king, because there is battle to face here at home. There is more need now to fight than to embrace women, and I think that your hall’s treasures won’t be increased by any further taxes your sister Skuld might pay. She has the ferocity of the Skjoldung family, and I can tell you for a fact that there is an army of no small size outside here with hard swords and other weapons of war, and they are walking around our walls with drawn blades. King Hjorvarđ must have an unfriendly reason for seeking you out, and after this he will have no more reason to ask you for your kingdom.
“Now is the time,” Hjalti continued, “for us to lead the army of our King Hrólf, who refuses us nothing. Let us now do a good job of fulfilling the oaths we swore to defend this most famous of kings who now exists in the Northlands, so that it will be heard of in every land! Let us pay him back for our weapons and armor and so many other {130} gifts—because this isn’t going to be just a little bit of farm work. There have been strong hints that this was coming, and we have ignored them for a long time, and I suspect that great events will come after this as well that will be remembered.
“Some might say that I speak out of fear, but it may be that this is the last time King Hrólf will ever drink with his champions and elite guardsmen. Now stand up, all you champions! Say good-bye to your concubines, because another task lies before us now. Make yourselves ready for what comes after this. Up, all you champions, move fast! Get your weapons, all of you!”
Then Hrómund the Hard stood, and Hrólf Fast-hand, and Svipdag and Beigađ and Hvítserk the Bold. Haklang stood sixth, and seventh stood Harđrefil; Haki the Brave stood eighth. Strong Vott stood ninth, the tenth to stand was Starólf, and the eleventh was Hjalti the Righteous.
The twelfth to rise was Bođvar Little-bear, who was called this because he had driven all of King Hrólf’s berserkers away on account of their arrogance and unfair behavior. Certainly none of them had prevailed against him, and he had killed some of them, because they were like women compared to him when it came to hard tests, even though they had seemed more powerful than he at the time and had possessed the advantage of deception on their side.
This same Bođvar Little-bear stood straight up and put on his armor and said that King Hrólf had need of proud men now—“And heart and spirit alike must work to save the man who now takes his stand alongside King Hrólf!”
Then King Hrólf himself stood and, speaking without fear, he addressed them: “Let us partake of the best drink, and we will drink before we fight and be merry and show them what kind of men King Hrólf’s champions are, and we will strive for one thing alone, to let our bold stand live on in memory—for the greatest and the boldest champions of all lands have gathered to me here! Tell Hjorvarđ and Skuld and their fighters that we will get happily drunk before we receive their ‘tribute’!”
It was done as the king said. Skuld’s answer to this was as follows: “My brother, King Hrólf, is unlike all others, and it is a greater loss to lose such men, but nonetheless our fate is to fight.” King Hrólf was so well regarded that he won praise from his friends and enemies alike.
{131} Chapter 50
Now King Hrólf leapt out of his throne, where he had been drinking alongside all his champions. For now they left the good drink and went outside, all of them except Bođvar Little-bear. They did not see Bođvar and they were perplexed, but they imagined that he had likely either been captured or killed.
As soon as they came outside, a horrible battle began. King Hrólf himself led the standard-bearers forward and his champions alongside him. The rest of his town’s army was with him too, not a small amount of men to count, although they amounted to little against their enemies’ numbers. In that battle there were great blows to helmets and armor, and many a sword and spear swung in the air, and so many men died that their bodies thatched the earth like a roof.
Hjalti the Righteous said, “Now many a suit of chainmail is ruined, and many weapons are broken, many helmets are split, many riders are knocked dead from their horses. Our king is a man of great spirit, because now he is just as cheerful as he was a little while ago when he was drinking ale as hard as a man can, even though now he fights with both hands. Our king is unlike other kings in battle, because he seems to have the strength of twelve kings. He has killed many a vigorous man, and King Hjorvarđ can now see that the sword Skofnung bites indeed—that sword crashes loud into their skulls!” It was, in fact, a property of the sword Skofnung that it rang loudly when it hit bone.
