Gripla - 20.12.2009, Page 270

GRIPLA270
familiar to Anglo­Saxonists from Widsith; but though Widsith knows the
Goths, it does not mention Theoderic. Rök’s connection with Deor is
closer. The Þjóðrekr of Rök was skati Mæringa ‘lord of the Mærings’ while
Deor’s Þeodric ‘ruled for thirty winters the fortress of the Mærings’ (ll.18-
19a).25 These Mærings are difficult to place, but the connection between
Rök and Deor is an intimate one. A further parallel may perhaps be seen
between dœmir enn um sakar and Deor’s þæt wæs monegum cuð ‘that was
known to many’ (l. 19), both perhaps referring not just to Theoderic’s last­
ing fame but to the mixture of blame and praise in that great reputation –
the blame of course ultimately stemming from his heresy. the identity of
both Theoderics with each other and with Theoderic the Great, the later
Dietrich von Bern, is, in my opinion, conclusive, and I have already
revealed that I am convinced by the argument, which goes back at least as
far as 1889, that Rök’s fornyrðislag stanza is ultimately traceable to an eye­
witness of the famous statue in Aachen. Varinn’s knowledge that Theoderic
the Great died “nine ages ago” was remarkably accurate; counting from 526
at 30 years per generation we arrive at 796. Despite the folk-poetic ring of
‘nine ages ago,’ this cannot be an accident, and elements of possible
Carolingian origin begin to accumulate.
Section 2 continues this accumulation. There the Answer is a Widsith­
like thula of eight names, which show at the very least a strong West
Germanic strain. Two of the fathers’ names are probably West Germanic,
while the other two are attested in both North and West; the sons show
two definitely West Germanic names and two where the evidence is incon­
clusive but compatible with West Germanic origin. Von Friesen, whose
extensive work on the names I have depended on – perhaps too much, but
not blindly – sifted the onomastic evidence carefully and concluded that in
general the names could be explained as “af icke­nordisk börd” (1920, 81,
76–81), possibly frisian.
In my article I follow von Friesen (and to an extent Höfler 1952, 308–
17) in imagining an historical background in frisian trade along the Birka­
Haithabu­Dorstad axis and in positing a foreground in the kind of
Männerbund that was the foundation of such trading-and-raiding compa­
nies of the earliest viking Age. the placement of events on Zealand brings
the numerical symmetries of the brother-bands into contact with the simi­
25 Deor and Widsith are cited from krappe 1936.