Widsith

• Heoden makes another peace offering, but Hagena declines because once his sword has been drawn it has to kill
• they fight during the day
• at night, Hild revives the dead
• the battle continues endlessly

• legendary king of the Angles
• defeated Alewih, "bravest of all Danes"
• youngest king ever
• successfully conquered the Myrgings

• almost exclusively Germanic names
• knowledge of Anglo-Frisian tribes, their legends and neighbours - but complete ignorance of nearly everything else
• Widsith represents a form of traditional lore

Widsith

kings, tribes, heroes, places

Introduction

Kings

Eormanric

• king of the East of Anglia
• "most war-like king"
• ruled over extensively wide and fertile regions
• eventually commited suicide

• survey of the peoples, kings and heroes of Europe in the Heroic Age
• divided into three Thulas
• 1st part: list of various kings
• 2nd part: list of peoples the narrator visited
• 3rd part: list of heroes of myth and legend he has visited

• daughter Hild is kidnapped by Heoden
• Hagena follows Heoden first to the North, then to the West; they meet on the Orkney Islands
• Hild gives Hagena a necklace as peace offering from Heoden
• a battle ensues

Hagena

Offa

Hrothwulf and Hrothgar

The ‘Myrgings’

The Goths / Hrædas

It can be assumed that Widsith belongs to the Myrgings

• lines 4 to 5: “Him from Myrgingum æþele onwocon”

→“He belonged by birth to the Myrging tribe”

→“His race sprang from the Myrgings”

Lines 5 to 8:

• “He mid Ealhhilde / fælre freoþuwebban | forman siþe /Hreðcyninges | ham gesohte / eastan of Ongle | Eormanrices”
• “He first, from Angel in the East, sought with Ealhhild the home of the Gothic king Eormanric”

Term Hrædas applied to the Goths: Hreð-cyning

• only found in Old English and Scandinavian sources

Indication: lines 93 to 96

• “þone ic Eadgilse | on æht sealde / minum hleodryhtne | þa ic to ham bicwom / leofum to leane | þæs þe he me lond forgeaf | mines fæder eþel”
• “This I gave into the possession of my lord and protec-tor Eadgils, when I came home: a gift unto my beloved prince, because he gave me my land, the home of my father”

→Eadgils as Widsith’s liege lord (Ger.: Lehnsherr)

Ongle = old home of the Angles

• Angulus (Bede), Angel (King Alfred)

Dwellings of the Goths

• 2nd century: due east of Angel
• 3rd century: shores of the Black Sea
• 6th century: mainly south and west of Europe

Tribes & Heroes in Widsith

Who were the Myrgings?

Not an easy question

• lines 40 to 44:

“Nænig efeneald him | eorlscipe maran / on orette | Ane sweorde / merce gemærde | wið Myrgingum / bi Fifeldore | heoldon forð siþþan / Engle ond Swæfe | swa hit Offa geslog”

“No one of his age [Offa] did greater deeds of valour in battle with his single sword; he drew the boundary against the Myrgings at Fifeldor”

Only an approximate region can be determined

• boundaries at Fifeldor (Eider [river] in Schleswig-Holstein)

Myrgings and Swæfe used as synonyms

• members of the wide-spread Suevic descent

No mention in other sources

• some coincident tribe names, but no clear reference points

The 3rd ‘catalogue’ (chula)

List of legendary heroes Widsith has visited

• model/structure: “{hero} I sought and {hero} and {hero}”

“{hero} sohte ic ond {hero} ond {hero}”

“Seccan sohte ic ond Beccan | Seafolan ond þeodric” (116)

“Rædhere sohte ic ond Rondhere | Rumstan ond Gislhere” (123)

“Emercan sohte ic ond Fridlan ond Eastgotan” (123)

Theodoric, the Ostrogoth (‘East-Goth’)

• king of the Ostrogoths
• hero of migration-period Europe celebrated in song from 5th to 11th century
• Walter, Attila

King Gislaharius of the Burgundian laws

• in later German tradition: Gunther’s younger brother

His name occurs in Widsith as ruler of a tribe neighboring the Goths

• drawn into the Gothic cycle of heroes
• that he was a Burgundian has apparently been forgotten

Ostrogotha, king of the Ostrogoths

• first Gothic king to become part of the common stock of Germanic story
• one of the heroes/chieftains of much earlier date included in Eormanric’s circle

Eormanric’s assumed great-great-grandfather

• his fame is relatively pale compared to later Gothic kings (Widigauja, Ermanaric, Theodoric)
• his story was mostly forgotten, he is otherwise unremembered in extant Germanic heroic poetry

His name is the first to meet us in two important contexts

• Gothic invasion of Rome
• Gothic heroic stories

Places

The 2nd ‘catalogue’ (chula)

List of tribes Widsith has visited

• model/structure: “With the {tribe} I was, and with the {tribe}”

“Mid {tribe} ic wæs, ond mid {tribe}”

“Ic wæs mid Hunum | ond mid Hreðgotum /

mid Sweom ond mid Geatum [...]” (57&58)

“Ond mid Geatum”

• Widsith is one of the Myrgings
• when he visits Eormanric, he comes from "eastan of Ongle" (l. 8)

Widsith refers to the Geatas of Beowulf

• assumed primeval connection between names: Geatas & Goths
• unlike the Goths, Geats did not scatter around Europe
• permanently settled to the south of the great lakes Wener and Wetter

Already in Beowulf the Geats are engaged in strife with the Swedes

• result: absorption of the Geatas into Swedish kingdom in prehist. times

Earliest definite accounts of Sweden (by missionaries)

• desription of only one kingdom
• mid-11th to mid-13th century: renewed warfare
• result: final absorption of the Geats

Identification of Geatas is etymologically exact & agrees with Beowulf

• almost as certain as the ethnological data in Beowulf

• Widsith claims to have visited numerous tribes and heroes all over Europe
• travel speed and life expectancy?
• certain tribes are missing from the list
• not an autobiographical travel report