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Furthermore, Bjarki's interest in having Hott attack the beast and display his courage indicated that he knew that the beast was dead and that he had a special interest in having Hott recognized as a brave man. This, again, indicated that Bjarki had himself killed the beast and been the cause of the change in Hott's nature, for both of which he receives due credit.
Sarrazin thinks that perhaps Beowulf married Freawaru, Hrothgar's daughter, as, similarly, Bjarki, according to the Hrólfssaga, married Drifa, the daughter of Hrothgar's nephew, Hrolf Kraki; that the troll which supports Hrolf Kraki's enemies in Hrolf's last battle is a reminiscence of the dragon in Beowulf; and that, owing to the change of taste and other causes that occurred in the course of time, the Beowulf story developed into the form in which it is found in the Bjarki story in the Hrólfssaga.
It must have been killed before, and now the king strongly suspects that the reason why Bjarki has urged Hott to attack it was that Bjarki, having killed the monster himself, knew that it was dead; and when he is charged with the deed he does not deny it. Thus Bjarki gets the credit for his achievement.
The rímur must therefore be left entirely out of account in any attempt to identify Bjarki with Beowulf, or in attempting to connect Bjarki's deeds with those of other heroes, as, for instance, that of Hereward in Gesta Herwardi. In regard to some particulars, these conclusions differ from the conclusions at which others have arrived; in regard to others, they agree with them.
Max Deutschbein sees a connection between the Bjarki story and the Gesta Herwardi that would tend to establish the story in the Bjarkarímur as earlier than the corresponding story in the Hrólfssaga. H. Munro Chadwick, basing his opinion on the similarity between the career of Bjarki and that of Beowulf, thinks there is good reason for believing that Beowulf was the same person as Bothvar Bjarki.
Now that the beast is dead, the killing of it proved not to be an impossible feat, and Bjarki has shown before, that he possesses the qualities necessary for such a deed. But that he possesses the ability to make a hero out of the miserable, cowardly wretch, Hott, is a revelation of a new and uncommon power.
The boy, who is there the hero of the story, as is Bjarki in the Hrólfssaga, is represented as deceiving his master, but likewise without doing him appreciable harm, and furthermore without raising reflections on the part of the author as to the rectitude of his conduct.
It is first told in the second book, where we find the version with which is connected the story about Hrolf Kraki, Yrsa, Athils, and Ingjald and his son Agnar, whom Bjarki slew; it is told a second time in the seventh book, where Hroar and Helgi are called Harald and Halfdan, and where the story about them is another version of the same story that we have in the Hrólfssaga.
To which the king could have assented, whereupon Bjarki could have taken Hott with him and let Hott, at the last, proceed against the beast alone and knock it over. One can imagine other possibilities, which it is not necessary to enumerate here.
The author of the rímur, liking it better than the last part of the dragon story in the saga, as most modern readers also have done, took it from the version contained in the saga of the early life of Bjarki and used it for letting Hjalti display his courage. As a result, he modified the story where it applies to the early life of Bjarki.
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