Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Page 156

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The Valkyries in the Heroic Literature
for herself. Svanhvita’s action on behalf of Regnerus probably means that Sweden
was dependent on Denmark at that time. Regnerus must have strengthened his
position by marrying Svanhvita. Ruta is the only one whose husband is not to
become a king himself, but only leader of the king’s personal retinue, although
to us he seems to be more important than the king himself.
It will not be necessary to go very deeply into the delicate problems connected
with matriarchy and matrilineal descent. It has been repeatedly pointed out that
even in a society like Iceland, which was organised according to very typical
patriarchal principles, descent was established through cognatic, not agnaticWnes,
that is, both male and femaleancestors were remembered. s It is H.M. Chadwick’s
opinion that not so very long before the historical times there was matrilineal
succession in Scandinavia.
Matrilineal succession can be very important in connection with kingship. But
when this subject is discussed, it is usually in connection with kingship not passing
on to the king’s own son, but to his sister’s son. We need not pursue this discussion,
because here it is the daughter’s husband who is the successor.
It is a well-known fact that during the times of the Viking expansion, exactly
those times that are important in this connection, Scandinavian conquerors of
new lands enhanced their legitimacy by marrying the daughters, sisters or wives
of the previous kings. (The most famous instance is that of Cnut the Great who
married Queen Emma, widow of the Anglo-Saxon king Ethelred the Unready in
1016.)
The Icelanders never tired of relating viking stories of Scandinavia’s Golden
Age. A major position in these stories was taken by the great viking leaders who
became kings of conquered countries (or wanted to become kings) by marrying
women of the countries’ royal families.
Why did these women have to have supernatural properties and why did they
have to be valkyries? In the first place because they took the place of the goddesses
of agriculture. In the second place they had to be the handmaidens of Óðinn, the
god to whom all the viking heroes dedicated themselves. Everything they enjoyed
was given to them by Óðinn, and therefore the highest gift granted to them —
this marriage and everything it entailed — must also have been due to his favour.
Therefore these maidens, eager to receive the heroes of their own free will and
even setting them against their own families, had to belong to Óðinn in a very
ostentatious way.
Bugge has argued that the origins of the Helgi Lays are to be sought in the
British Archipelago, and Hofmann has strengthened this theory by adding much
valuable material to it.76 The present proposal could well be in harmony with this
theory.
The British Isles certainly witnessed many bold viking adventures and political
75 Meulengracht Sorensen (1977), pp. 30-36.
76 Bugge (1892), Hofmann (1955).