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Updated: May 11, 2025
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.
In the stories of the wolf hunt and the bear hunt, the rímur contain several unmotivated statements that are plainly based on the story as we have it in the saga; and, on the whole, the two stories in the rímur represent such decidedly poor workmanship in the art of narration that recourse must be had to the story in the saga for a realization of the significance of some of the incidents contained in the rímur.
If it is correct, it shows that the stories in the rímur are less admirable compositions than they are usually held to be; it shows that the dragon story in the saga is a better composition than it is usually taken to be; and, finally, it establishes the fact that the dragon story in the Hrólfssaga has no connection whatever with the Grendel story or the dragon story in Beowulf.
The bear-ancestor feature was not applicable in the connection in which the story is used in the rímur; hence, it was omitted. Now, did this story spring up spontaneously and independently in all these three instances?
In the saga, Bjarki knew that the dragon was harmless, because he had killed it; and his knowledge of its harmlessness is vital to the latter part of the dragon story. In the rímur, he is informed that the bear is not so dangerous as one would suppose.
But when the rímur say that he became "mighty as a troll," it amounts to saying, "Hjalti is no longer represented as having drunk the blood of a troll and eaten some of its heart, as is the case in the Hrólfssaga, but let it be understood, nevertheless, that the strength he has acquired is no less than that of a troll."
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.
Here again the author of the rímur inserted an element that is wholly foreign to his story and unsuggested by it, but that is suggested by the saga, and that he probably never would have thought of, had he not known of the version of the story that is contained in the saga.
And however insistent one may be in maintaining that the author has introduced an element that is not recognized saga-material, it must be admitted that he has so skillfully fused it with good saga-material that it is not probable, as the rímur show, that contemporary readers found any fault with the episode. But does such a monster as a troll-dragon have any sanction in folk-lore? Yes, it does.
In the first place, by introducing two animals, where the other versions have only one, the author of the rímur has broken the unity of the story, a feature in which the story in the Hrólfssaga remains intact and as a consequence is nearer to the primitive form of the story as we find it in Saxo.
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