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inscription, is aptly characterized by Andreas Heusler as a Denk mal­
epigramm, a brief exercise in ekphrasis based on an eye-witness visit to the
equestrian statue of Theoderic which Charlemagne had installed in the
courtyard of his palace in Aachen; the date of this event, 801, gives us the
earliest possible date for the inscription (Harris 2009, 34–35; Heusler
1941, 85). That, at least, is the belief I share with the majority of students of
Rök; I realize that this specific source, like many other details, is debatable
– and debated – but the source of the Theoderic verse, while important for
a historical understanding of Rök and of its date, is oddly unimportant for
a gross literary explication.21
In the hermeneutically more difficult Section 2, Question 2 asks the
names of twenty kings who once ruled in zealand and now lie dead on a
battlefield there. The Answer lists their names in four groups of five
‘brothers’ with their four ‘fathers’; the brothers all bear the same name,
‘five valkar sons of Ráðulfr’ and so on. Lönnroth had proposed as back­
ground something like an early oral fornaldarsaga featuring berserk ‘broth­
ers’ with an especially good parallel in story and thula in the incident on
Sámsey known from Hervarar saga, Ǫrvar-Odds saga, and Saxo. though
this is definitely the best constellation of medieval texts so far offered to
complete and make intelligible the cryptic early Viking Age source, I criti­
cized various details and tried to establish the anachronism as a disabling
general critique. I offered an alternative based on earlier historical condi­
tions (discussed below), but again the differences are not crucial to the kind
of broad thematic interpretation we are advancing toward.
The third section, the bearer of Olrik’s weighty Achtergewicht (narrative
emphasis on the last of a series), is the most important for interpretation.22
After torturous examination of ll. 21–28, I proposed that in these
Questions and their Answer we have a local Swedish variation of the myth
of the death of a young god, best known in West Nordic as attached to
Baldr, his father Odin, his ‘accidental’ slayer, his brother Hǫðr, and a new-
born brother váli or Bous, dedicated to avenge Baldr and specially engen­
dered through the rape of a giant maiden Rindr (Harris 2006b). equivalents
21 thus Lönnroth and I disagree sharply on the importance for Rök of the statue and on many
other details but seem to be in broad agreement about the theme or meaning or message of
this segment of the inscription.
22 olrik 1909; and cf. Harris 2006b, 51, 98.
PHILoLoGy, eLeGy, AnD CuLtuRAL CHAnGe