Epic
The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise
Heiðreks saga
Anonymous · 1250
Opening lines
SIGRLAMI hét konungr, er réð fyrir Garðaríki.
There was a king called Sigrlami, who ruled over Garðaríki.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from heimskringla.no
Synopsis
The sword Tyrfing, forged by the dwarfs Dvalinn and Durin for King Svafrlami, bears a curse. It passes down in the family of the berserker Arngrímr to his son Angantýr, who falls in a duel against Hjálmarr. His daughter Hervör goes to her father's burial mound to draw out the sword, and the poem of this visit, the Hervararkviða, is one of the three poems the saga preserves. Hervör's son, Heiðrekr, becomes king, and is one day offered a riddle contest by an old man who calls himself Gestumblindi.
Context
A legendary saga of the thirteenth century, it combines the material of several older heroic tales. It survives in three medieval versions: R, on a fifteenth-century parchment, the closest to the lost archetype, but interrupted; H, in the Hauksbók, around 1325, fragmentary; and U, known mainly from a seventeenth-century paper manuscript, which reworks it. Besides the song of Hervör, it preserves the riddles of the old man and the Hlöðskviða, on the battle of the Goths and the Huns. Christopher Tolkien translated it into English in 1960, from the R text.
Who it is for
A short but uneven text, in prose interspersed with verse, translated into French by Régis Boyer; the riddles can also be read separately.
Prizes and reception
Its final list of the kings of Sweden makes it a source for medieval Swedish history; it fed into the work of J. R. R. Tolkien.