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Updated: June 24, 2025
The stratagem of "Starcad", who tried even in death to slay his slayer, seems an integral part of the Starcad story; as much as the doom of three crimes which are to be the price for the threefold life that a triple man or giant should enjoy. No one has commented upon Saxo's mythology with such brilliancy, such minute consideration, and such success as the Swedish scholar, Victor Rydberg.
On the whole, Saxo's story presents something of an attempt to harmonize Danish and Old Norse tradition. The Danish tradition about the Hroar-Helgi group of kings Saxo preserves in his second book. The Old Norse tradition about them he utilizes in his seventh book, at a point where, in the line of Danish kings, it occurs according to the Old Norse conception of the matter.
Saxo's traditions note drinking of a lion's blood that eats men as a means of gaining might and strength; the drinking of bear's blood is also declared to give great bodily power. The tests for "madness" are of a primitive character, such as those applied to Odusseus, who, however, was not able, like Hamlet, to evade them.
The queen, the boys' mother, refusing to leave the hall, perishes also. In Saxo's version, the boys attack the usurper in his hall and set fire to the building; he hides himself in a secret underground passage and perishes of smoke and gas. It is told of Ivor that when he rescues the children he is accompanied by his dog. Not only that, but the dog's name is given.
This conception of him occurs in the Hrólfssaga also, but towards the close, where Bjarki, in recounting his own achievements, mentions his having slain Agnar. This Agnar is not Hroar's son, but the Agnar of the Skjọldungasaga and of Saxo's second book. The Skjọldungasaga, therefore, properly retains him as Ingjald's son and omits him as Hroar's son. Hrok and Hrörik are the same person.
Incidents of this kind need not necessarily be used in one story as they are in another; saga literature abounds in evidence of this fact, as, for instance, Saxo's and the Hrólfssaga's story of Hroar and Helgi, considered later.
But this would not explain why Hroar, Helgi, and their father are given other names in Saxo's version, and why such a radical change has been made in the family relationship of Siward and Signy. This, however, as will be explained later, is due to arbitrary action on the part of Saxo, in order to conceal the fact that he twice includes the same group of men in his line of Danish kings.
In Saxo's version of the Hroar-Helgi story, the children are concealed in a hollow tree, food being brought to them under the pretence that they are dogs, and dogs' names are applied to them. In the Hamlet story, the rescue is supplied by the insanity motive, but friends at court are not wanting.
But there are evidences also of later customs, such as "marriage by purchase", already looked on as archaic in Saxo's day; and the free women in Denmark had clearly long had a veto or refusal of a husband for some time back, and sometimes even free choice. "Go-betweens" negotiate marriages. Betrothal was of course the usage. For the groom to defile an espoused woman is a foul reproach.
This statement is freely taken for granted three centuries afterwards by Urne in the first edition of the book , but is not traced further back than an epitomator, who wrote more than 200 years after Saxo's death. Saxo tells us that his father and grandfather fought for Waldemar the First of Denmark, who reigned from 1157 to 1182.
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