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Updated: May 1, 2025
Hrolf, or Rollo Duke of Normandy, the wild Sea-king, has a share in governing England at this hour. Nor was it altogether nothing, even that wild sea-roving and battling, through so many generations. It needed to be ascertained which was the strongest kind of men; who were to be ruler over whom. Among the Northland Sovereigns, too, I find some who got the title Wood-cutter; Forest-felling Kings.
A feature of the Hrólfssaga that is much more noteworthy in this connection and that has certainly been acquired from the Siward saga is that concerning the kind of monster slain by Bjarki at the court of Hrolf Kraki. When Siward's bear-ancestry had been transferred to Bothvar Bjarki, it followed as a matter of course that Bjarki must no longer be represented as killing a bear.
And if Hjalti is now known to be such a hero that Hrolf feels warranted in placing reliance on him to the extent that he tosses him his sword at this critical juncture, why has Hjalti taken part in the hunt with "nothing in his hands"? In the saga it is not said that Hjalti has nothing in his hands; his motive in asking for the king's sword has no connection with whether he has anything in his hands or not.
Olrik says that the story should have given us a real test of Hjalti's manhood; Lawrence says, "The beast-propping episode spoils the courage-scene"; and Panzer says that this part of the story is impossible, because Hjalti is represented as killing a dead monster, and Hrolf, although he perceives the deception that has been practiced, nevertheless gives the swindler the heroic name Hjalti.
Ordinarily, there was nothing about Bjarki's person that revealed or suggested that his father was a bear; but he was able to assume the shape of a bear, which, according to the Hrólfssaga, he did with terrible effect in the last battle of Hrolf and his warriors.
The Northmen loved no master, and a great multitude fled out of the country, some pushing as far as Iceland and colonizing it, some swarming to the Orkneys and Hebrides till Harald harried them out again and the sea-kings sailed southward to join Guthrum's host in the Rhine country or follow Hrolf to his fights on the Seine.
Hrolf, like Guthrum, was baptized, received the king's daughter in marriage, and became his vassal for the territory which now took the name of "the Northman's land" or Normandy. But vassalage and the new faith sat lightly on the Dane.
Odin also appears to the men as they return on their way to Denmark, when he offers Hrolf a sword, shield, and armor. Hrolf declines the preferred gift, whereupon Odin tells Hrolf that he is not as wise as he thinks he is, and Hrolf soon, but too late, realizes that the rejection of the gift augurs ill fortune.
The cry "Deus vult!" at Clermont marks for the whole Teutonic race the final transition from the type of Alaric and Chlodovech, of Cerdic and Hrolf, to that of Godfrey and Tancred, Richard Lion-heart and Saint Louis, from the sagas and the war-songs of the northern skalds to the chivalrous verse of the troubadours, a Bertrand or a Rudel, to the epic narrative of the crusades which transfigures at moments the prose of William of Tyre or of Orderic, of Geoffrey de Vinsauf or of Joinville.
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.
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