Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Qupperneq 149

Riti Kroesen
147
Skuld rebels against Hrólfr, because she wants her husband to be king instead
of her brother. She is just as belligerent as the other women, whose stories we have
analysed. She is instrumental in the fulfilling of Óðinn’s revenge against Hrólfr,
because the king had refused him his gift of weapons. Her desire to see her
husband king is soon refuted, however, because he is killed by Vöggr, a friend and
retainer of Hrólfr’s.
8. Ulvilda (Saxo, pp. 32-33, 42-43, 45-46; F/ED pp. 34-35, 45-46; 48-50).
She does not show any supernatural traits, but this side of her personality might
have been passed over by Saxo, who only touches briefly upon her story. She is
the daughter of the Óðinn adherent Hadingus (and therefore the sister of
Svanhvita), and she resembles Skuld in that she plots against her father with her
first husband and against her brother Frotho with her second husband, both times
with the intention to secure the succession in kingship for these husbands and
both times with negative results. The meaning of her name is “battle goddess of
the wolf”. If she is no valkyrie, then at least she is a shield maiden.
9. Lathgertha. (Saxo; IX, pp. 251—254. F/ED. pp. 280-83). It is difficult to form
an opinion about her. The one supernatural property she has is that she can fly
around the battlefield and thus bring panic to the army of her hero’s adversary.
Yet if there was something more than that about her in Saxo’s source, it is to be
expected that he would play it down.
By her skilled fighting she draws the attention of Regnerus (=Ragnarr loðbrók).
In order to find favour with her, he has to slay two wild animals, a bear and a dog,
fastened by her to the porch of her house. This looks like a redoubling of the
episode in which he captures the hand of Thora by slaying the dragon that makes
access to her impossible. Afterwards, when Lathgertha has already borne him
children, he divorces her precisely because of her brutish behaviour towards him,
when she had set two wild animals against him! Yet later on, when Regnerus needs
her help against his enemies, she is not loth to give it, and joins his army together
with her son and second husband. Next comes the flying episode. After her return
home, she sticks a dart into the throat of her second husband, and henceforward
governs her country alone.
McTurk (as well as some earlier scholars) thinks that Saxo here shows a vague
knowledge of the tradition that linked Aslaug, daughter of Sigurðr and Brynhildr,
with Regnerus in the Ragnars saga loðbrókar.v> It seems an interesting idea that
the daughter of such illustrious parents originally was also a valkyrie, but the saga
does not give us any indicadon about that, so we must leave it.
Earlier Nora Chadwick suggested that Lath-gertha originally was the same
person as Þorgerðr Holgabrúðr, and that the picture of Lathgertha in battle, with
streaming hair, may have been inspired by the behaviourofÞorgerðrand hersister
59 McTurk (1991), p. 124.