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Hence, without realizing, apparently, the anomalous situation in which he places Hjalti, who is now strong and courageous, he represents him as taking part in the bear hunt empty-handed, though there is no indication that Hjalti thinks that he can cope with the animal without a weapon. In the Hrólfssaga, it is said that Bjarki killed a dragon by plunging his sword under its shoulder.
That, in the rímur, the men are said to leave the hall in the daytime, instead of at night, is a consequence of the substitution of the wolf for the troll-dragon; a wolf is usually hunted in the daytime. It might be surmised that their going out secretly is in imitation of the story as Saxo knew it. But this is not the case; Saxo does not say that Bjarki and Hjalti went out secretly.
These statements are deductions that the author of the rímur made from the story in the saga, in the light of subsequent events. In the rímur, it is said that Hjalti "became very strong, mighty as a troll, all his clothes burst open." Why, or whence, this reference to a troll? Another harking back to the Hrólfssaga, another deduction made from the story in the saga.
Sarrazin regards the cowardly, useless Hott, Bjarki's companion, as a personification of the sword Hrunting, which fails Beowulf in his fight with Grendel's mother. But Hjalti, as Hott is called after he has become brave and strong, he regards as a personification of the giant-sword with which Beowulf dispatches Grendel's mother.
Thus the author's third purpose is accomplished, and the king rewards Hott, not in spite of the deception that been practiced and revealed, but on account of his bravery, which been proved. In Saxon, Hjalti has no other name than "Hialto." In the Hrólfssaga he first has the name "Hott" and this is changed to "Hjalti."
The idea of supplying a motive and observing such consistency as we find in connection with the corresponding story in the Hrólfssaga never occurred to him. The author was under no more obligation than Saxo was, to say that Bjarki and Hjalti went out secretly, and the idea is not contained in Saxo's account.
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.
Just as Hjalti knocked over a dragon that was not dangerous because it was dead, so, in the rímur, he dispatched a bear that was not particularly dangerous because "it was not much used to contending with men." In the former instance, however, the feat was not the real test of his courage; in the latter instance, it was.
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.
But the author of the rímur, observing what pains the author of the saga took to motivate the going out secretly, felt that this feature of the story was so important that it must be retained, and so he retained it without motivation. In Saxo, Hjalti shows no fear when the bear is met, and he does not refuse to drink the animal's blood.
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