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The former is natural and to be expected, and is probably what has taken place, because: 1. in all the versions of the story Hjalti is represented as having undergone a change that has caused him to become very much like Bjarki "equal to Bjarki," as it is stated in the rímur, where he is represented as having killed a ferocious beast in the same manner that Bjarki, in the saga, killed a winged monster; 2. it was not unusual to represent dragons as having been killed by being pierced under the shoulder, since a dragon had to be pierced where its scales did not prevent the entrance of a weapon into its body; 3. since there is no special reason why a bear, which is vulnerable in all parts of the body, should be represented as being pierced through the shoulder, the manner in which Hjalti is said to have killed the bear is evidently another unmotivated incident in the rímur that is imitated from a motivated incident in the saga.
In the rímur, it is said that Hjalti killed a bear by plunging his sword into its right shoulder. This is another harking back to the Hrólfssaga. It can not be assumed that the author of the rímur and the author of the saga employed this manner of dispatching the animal without any knowledge on the part of the one as to what was contained in the account of the other.
It reminds us of the situation in the saga where King Hrolf and his men avoid the winged monster by remaining indoors when it is expected. In the saga, Bjarki, of course, did not avoid the monster; but whether, in the rímur, the king fled is uncertain. He was, in any event, near enough to Hjalti to toss Hjalti his sword.
To eat wolf meat in order to gain strength has just as good warrant in Old Norse literature as to drink the blood of a bear; this, in so far, justifies the introduction in the rímur of the wolf.
In the second place, the author of the rímur made precisely the changes that were necessary to remove the most irrational features of the story as we find it in the Hrólfssaga.
But the author of the rímur, having apparently missed the point in the saga, assumes that, when Hjalti asks for the king's sword, it is because he has no weapon of his own.
and so forth; which was still sung, with other "rimur," or ballads, in the Faroes, at the end of the last century. Professor Rafn has inserted it, because it talks of Vinland as a well-known place, and because the brothers are sent by the princess to slay American kings; but that Rime has another value.
Hence, either this episode in the rímur is modeled after that in the saga, and Hjalti is made to kill the bear in the same way that Bjarki killed the dragon, or the episode in the saga is modeled after that in the rímur, and Bjarki is made to kill the dragon in the same way that Hjalti killed the bear. Is there any doubt as to what has occurred?
The troll-dragon has been eliminated, but so great, in the rímur, has the strength of Hjalti become that it now equals that of the very monster, the troll, which, in the saga, he feared to such an extent that it rendered him pitiable in the extreme.
Furthermore, we find in the rímur another of the characteristic traces that the author left when he tampered with the dragon story. In the saga, in connection with Bjarki's early life, it is said that when the bear was hunted, it killed all the dogs, but was itself soon after killed by the men. From this the author concluded that it was death on dogs, but could not contend successfully with men.
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