Alfaleith.org - Rydberg's Teutonic Mythology

A glance at these parallels is sufficient to remove every doubt that the hero in the songs concerning Helgi Hundingsbani is originally the same mythic person as is celebrated in the song or songs from which Saxo gathered his materials concerning the kings, Gram Skjoldson, Halfdan Berggram, and Halfdan Borgarson. It is the ancient myth in regard to Halfdan, the son of Skjold-Borgar, which myth, after the introduction of Christianity in Scandinavia, is divided into two branches, of which the one continues to be the saga of this patriarch, while the other utilises the history of his youth and tranforms it into a new saga, that of Helgi Hundingsbani. In Saxo's time, and long before him, this division into two branches had already taken place. How this younger branch, Helgi Hundingsbani's saga, was afterwards partly appropriated by the all-absorbing Sigurdsaga and became connected with it in an external and purely genealogical manner, and partly did itself appropriate (as in Saxo) the old Danish local tradition about Rolf, the illegitimate son of Halfdan Skjoldung, and, in fact, foreign to his pedigree; how it got mixed with the saga about an evil Frode and his stepsons, a saga with which it formerly had no connection; - all these are questions which I shall discuss fully in a second part of this work, and in a separate treatise on the heroic sagas. For the present, my task is to show what influence this knowledge of Halfdan and Helgi Hundingsbani's identity has upon the interpretation of the myth concerning the antiquity of the Teutons.

<< Previous Page | Back | Next Page >>