Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Page 157

Riti Kroesen
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endeavours in order to gain an old or a new throne. The adventures were in contact
with the Celtic peoples and could have been influenced by their language as well
as by their mythology. In the Irish tales of mythical origin there is also a female
representing and embodying the land, for example Queen Medhb, who could
even appear on the battlefield as a goddess of war.
The poets of the Helgi Lays could have been influenced by these Celtic stories,
and these Lays could in turn have influenced other stories. Yet this way of thinking
was not strange to them, as we can gather from the Hákonardrápa.
2. Another earlier period of expansion is described at the end of Ynglinga saga,
the first book of Heimskringla. Here a connection is established between the
famous Ynglingar kings of Uppsala and the royal family of Vestfold, to which
Haraldr hárfagri belonged. Scholars now look at the historicity of this move with
great scepticism. Krag considers the Ynglingatal, around which the stories about
the Swedish Ynglingar are built, to be a product of later 12th century learned
speculation.'8 The prose stories, both those with and without stanzas, must be
still younger and are aimed at giving Haraldr illustrious ancestors.
The question of whether these persons ever existed or not, is rather irrelevant
to our purpose. What counts is that we see them taking over the government of
tribes from other chieftains, essentially the same policy that later viking leaders
followed. And some of them did this by marrying those chieftains’ daughters,
something which Snorri and the other lcelanders believed was a good policy to
follow. Let us have a closer look at some of those stories. There are no strophes
of the Ynglingatal in them.
Eysteinn, son of Hálfdan hvítbeinn, a member of the Ynglingar family, marries
a princess ofVestfold, Hildr Eiríksdóttir, whose father — quite conveniently — has
no son of his own (Hkr. I, p. 77). He acquires the government of Vestfold, while
her father is still alive, and after his death Eysteinn and Hálfdan take over the
whole of the country.
Eysteinn’s grandson Guðroðr Hálfdanarson marries a woman called Alfhildr
from Álfheimar, and through his marriage he obtains the government over half
ofVingulmörk (Hkr. I, pp. 79-81). Afterherdeath hesends a message to Haraldr
granrauði of Agðir (nowadays Agder) to ask for the hand of his daughter Asa.
When his request is refused, he attacks Haraldr in his own house, and after having
killed him, he abducts Asa. Some years later, however, when the couple have a
son, Hálfdan (the father of Haraldr hárfagrí), Guðroðr is killed at the instigation
of Asa. Here the woman eventually chose the side of her family. In the Swedish
part of the story (Hkr. I, pp. 67-68) we read of a young Viking leader Hjörvarðr,
who comes to king Granmarr of Suðrmannaland (Södermanland) and marries
his daughter Hildr. Because the king has no son of his own, Hjörvarðr stays with
77 Weisweiler (1943).
78 Krag (1991), esp. pp. 198-205.