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The fact of the matter is that the account in the rímur of the killing of the bear, though brief, is so confused and indefinite that it does not bear analysis; and this is further evidence of the fact that the author of the rímur clumsily re-worked material that he found in the Hrólfssaga version of Bjarki's career, and for the dragon story, which is a good story, substituted two poor ones, namely the wolf story and the bear story.
The author of the rímur has discarded the story of the troll-dragon, has substituted for it the story of the bear hunt connected with the account of Bjarki's early life, has invented a new story about Bjarki's early life, and has invented the story about the wolf hunt to give an opportunity for the introduction of the blood-drinking episode.
The berserks might have been retained at home to cope unsuccessfully with the monster, or avoid coping with it at all as the king's other men did, and thus place Bjarki's feat of slaying it in the strongest relief. But by letting the berserks be absent at Christmas and return later, the author accomplished more than this.
The explanation of the origin of the dragon and the interpretation of the whole dragon story in the Hrólfssaga, both of which have hitherto been wanting, will be given. From this it will be seen that this story in the Hrólfssaga is based on the story, related in the second book of Saxo's Gesta Danorum , of Bjarki's slaying the bear.
The addition of "Bothvar" to Bjarki's name he thinks was acquired among the Scandinavians in the north of England, where the Bjarki story, by contact with the story of Siward, Earl of Northumberland, acquired the further addition of Bjarki's reputed bear-ancestry.
Lawrence also calls attention to the fact that Gering thinks there is unmistakable similarity between the Grendel story and the story of Bjarki's fight with the winged monster. Friedrich Panzer identifies Bjarki with Beowulf and regards the story in question in the Hrólfssaga as a later composition than the corresponding stories in the Bjarkarímur, which he identifies with the Grendel story.
In Saxo's account of Bjarki, Boer thinks that the dragon has been stripped of its wings and changed to a bear. Finnur Jónsson regards the story in the Hrólfssaga of Bjarki's slaying the winged monster as a reflection, though a feeble one, of the Grendel story in Beowulf.
Finnur Jónsson thinks that the stories in the Bjarkarímur of Bjarki's slaying the wolf and Hjalti's slaying the bear are later compositions than the story in the Hrólfssaga of Bjarki's slaying the winged monster, and supports this opinion by maintaining that the monster in the saga is a reminiscence, though altered and faded, of Grendel in Beowulf.
But the story of Bjarki's fight with the winged monster is not patch-work; it does not represent the poorest and latest form of the Bjarki legends, as Olrik says; it is not an impossible story, as Panzer says; nor is it "inconsequent and absurd," as Lawrence says.
It will be remembered that there was to be a wedding in the royal residence; that Agnar was to marry the king's sister; that Agnar took offense at Bjarki's manner of defending Hjalti, whereupon a fight ensued and Bjarki killed Agnar and his warriors. But if Bjarki did not go on a hunt for the bear, how did he come to meet it, and in a thicket at that?
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