The Danish Mirror
Rolf Kraki and the Last Stand at Lejre
A legend recovered through Saxo
Some of the greatest Norse legends survive in more than one place — and sometimes the only road open to us runs through the Latin. The tale of Rolf Kraki (Old Norse Hrólfr kraki) is the supreme Danish heroic legend, told at length in its own Icelandic saga, Hrólfs saga kraka. But that saga has no public-domain English translation — its earliest English version is too recent to reproduce freely — so the Norse text is, for now, beyond this atlas's reach.
Saxo Grammaticus saves the day. His Latin Gesta Danorum tells the Rolf Kraki story fully, in a translation long out of copyright, and so the atlas can give one of the North's finest legends after all — by the Danish-Latin route rather than the Norse. This is a quieter virtue of the cross-source tier: not only does Saxo let us corroborate stories the Norse also tell, he sometimes lets us reach ones we otherwise could not. Rolf Kraki and his champions — the open-handed king, the bear-warrior Bjarki, the loyal Hjalti, the last stand in the night — come into the atlas through Saxo's pages, a great legend rescued for the collection by its second, Latin witness.
The source text · 1
Now they relate that Rolf used with ready generosity to grant at the first entreaty whatsoever he was begged to bestow, and never put off the request till the second time of asking. For he preferred to forestall repeated supplication by speedy liberality, rather than mar his kindness by delay. This habit brought him a great concourse of champions; valour having commonly either rewards for its food or glory for its spur.— gesta danorum
Rolf's ready generosity — the open-handed king (Elton 1894).
The open-handed king and his champions
Rolf Kraki is, above all, the king of generosity. Saxo dwells on how he gave freely at the first asking whatever he was begged for, gathering to himself by his open hand the finest band of champions in the North.[1] His hall at Lejre, the ancient seat of the Danish kings, was filled with peerless warriors — and in the Norse tradition this is the Danish answer to a Camelot or a Heorot, the gold-bright hall of a generous king ringed by his heroes.
This is the heart of the heroic-age ideal that runs through the whole corpus: the bond between a lord and his retainers, sealed by gifts. The king gives gold, feast, and honour; the warriors give, in return, absolute loyalty — including the duty to die at his side. Rolf's generosity is not mere kindness but the very foundation of his power and his fame; the rings he hands out are the visible form of the trust that binds his champions to him. The whole tragic last stand that follows is the cashing-in of that bond — the moment the warriors prove that the gifts were a contract written in blood. To understand Rolf Kraki you must first see the open hand that made him loved.
The source text · 1
Now they relate that Rolf used with ready generosity to grant at the first entreaty whatsoever he was begged to bestow, and never put off the request till the second time of asking. For he preferred to forestall repeated supplication by speedy liberality, rather than mar his kindness by delay. This habit brought him a great concourse of champions; valour having commonly either rewards for its food or glory for its spur.— gesta danorum
Rolf grants freely at the first entreaty — gathering his champions (Elton 1894).
Skulde's treachery
The doom comes from within the family. Rolf's half-sister Skulde, wife of the tributary king Hiartuar, is stung with humiliation at the tribute her husband must pay to Rolf, and she bends her mind to 'deeds of horror' — devising a treacherous attack to destroy her brother and seize his kingdom.[1] Under cover of a friendly visit, weapons are smuggled in, and Hiartuar's men prepare to fall on Rolf's hall by night.
Treachery by kin, the violation of the sacred bonds of family and guest-friendship, is the blackest crime in the Norse moral world — and it is the engine of this tragedy as of so many others in the atlas. Skulde is the kinswoman whose resentment turns murderous, the figure who uses the trust of family and the cover of hospitality as a weapon. That the destroyer of the greatest Danish king should be his own sister, striking under the guise of a visit, gives the legend its bitter shape: Rolf cannot be beaten in open war, only betrayed from inside the bonds that should protect him. The night-attack on the unsuspecting hall is set.
The source text · 1
Meantime, Skulde was stung with humiliation at the payment of the tribute, and bent her mind to devise deeds of horror. Taunting her husband with his ignominious estate, she urged and egged him to break off his servitude, induced him to weave plots against Rolf, and filled his mind with the most abominable plans of disloyalty, declaring that everyone owed more to their freedom than to kinship. Accordingly, she ordered huge piles of arms to be muffled up under divers coverings, to be carried by Hiartuar into Denmark, as if they were tribute: these would furnish a store wherewith to slay the king by night. So the vessels were loaded with the mass of pretended tribute, and they proceeded to Leire, a town which Rolf had built and adorned with the richest treasure of his realm, and which, being a royal foundation and a royal seat, surpassed in importance all the cities of the neighbouring districts. The king welcomed the coming of Hiartuar with a splendid banquet, and drank very deep, while his guests, contrary to their custom, shunned immoderate tippling. So, while all the others were sleeping soundly, the Swedes, who had been kept from their ordinary rest by their eagerness on their guilty purpose, began furtively to slip down from their sleeping-rooms. Straightway uncovering the hidden heap of weapons, each girded on his arms silently and then went to the palace. Bursting into its recesses, they drew their swords upon the sleeping figures. Many awoke; but, invaded as much by the sudden and dreadful carnage as by the drowsiness of sleep, they faltered in their resistance; for the night misled them and made it doubtful whether those they met were friends or foes. Hjalte, who was foremost in tried bravery among the nobles of the king, chanced to have gone out in the dead of that same night into the country and given himself to the embraces of a harlot. But when his torpid hearing caught from afar the rising din of battle, preferring valour to wantonness, he chose rather to seek the deadly perils of the War-god than to yield to the soft allurements of Love. What a love for his king, must we suppose, burned in this warrior! For he might have excused his absence by feigning not to have known; but he thought it better to expose his life to manifest danger than save it for pleasure. As he went away, his mistress asked him how aged a man she ought to marry if she were to lose him? Then Hjalte bade her come closer, as though he would speak to her more privately; and, resenting that she needed a successor to his love, he cut off her nose and made her unsightly, punishing the utterance of that wanton question with a shameful wound, and thinking that the lecherousness of her soul ought to be cooled by outrage to her face. When he had done this, he said he left her choice free in the matter she had asked about. Then he went quickly back to the town and plunged into the densest of the fray, mowing down the opposing ranks as he gave blow for blow. Passing the sleeping-room of Bjarke, who was still slumbering, he bade him wake up, addressing him as follows:— gesta danorum
Skulde, humiliated by the tribute, devises the treacherous attack (Elton 1894).
Hjalti's rousing call
The attack falls in the night, and the most famous part of the legend begins — a long exchange of heroic verses, the 'Bjarkamál', that Saxo preserves in his Latin. The loyal champion Hjalti, awake and aware of the danger, raises a great rousing cry to wake the sleeping warriors: it is sweet, he calls, to repay the gifts received from our lord, to grip our swords and spend our lives for the king who gave us all we have.[1]
This rousing-call is the purest statement in the whole atlas of the comitatus ideal — the warrior-band ethic that a man must die beside the lord whose bread he has eaten and whose rings he has worn. Hjalti shames and spurs his fellows not to flee but to make good, with their lives, the bond Rolf's generosity created. It is the same ethic that runs through the sagas and through Hávamál's counsel on loyalty, here raised to its absolute pitch: the gifts are now due, and the only honourable payment is death in the lord's defence. The 'Bjarkamál' was so admired that, centuries on, it was recited to hearten armies before battle. Here it wakes Rolf's champions for their last fight.
The source text · 1
Hjalte said again: "Sweet is it to repay the gifts received from our lord, to grip the swords, and devote the steel to glory. Behold, each man's courage tells him loyally to follow a king of such deserts, and to guard our captain with fitting earnestness. Let the Teuton swords, the helmets, the shining armlets, the mail-coats that reach the heel, which Rolf of old bestowed upon his men, let these sharpen our mindful hearts to the fray. The time requires, and it is just, that in time of war we should earn whatsoever we have gotten in the deep idleness of peace, that we should not think more of joyous courses than of sorrowful fortunes, or always prefer prosperity to hardship. Being noble, let us with even soul accept either lot, nor let fortune sway our behaviour, for it beseems us to receive equably difficult and delightsome days; let us pass the years of sorrow with the same countenance wherewith we took the years of joy. Let us do with brave hearts all the things that in our cups we boasted with sodden lips; let us keep the vows which we swore by highest Jove and the mighty gods. My master is the greatest of the Danes: let each man, as he is valorous, stand by him; far, far hence be all cowards! We need a brave and steadfast man, not one that turns his back on a dangerous pass, or dreads the grim preparations for battle. Often a general's greatest valour depends on his soldiery, for the chief enters the fray all the more at ease that a better array of nobles throngs him round. Let the thane catch up his arms with fighting fingers, setting his right hand on the hilt and holding fast the shield: let him charge upon the foes, nor pale at any strokes. Let none offer himself to be smitten by the enemy behind, let none receive the swords in his back: let the battling breast ever front the blow. `Eagles fight brow foremost', and with swift gaping beaks speed onward in the front: be ye like that bird in mien, shrinking from no stroke, but with body facing the foe.— gesta danorum
Hjalti's call: sweet to repay the lord's gifts with our lives (Elton 1894).
Bjarki's slaughter and Odin on the field
The greatest of the champions is Bjarki — in the Norse tradition a were-bear, whose fighting-spirit is said to take the form of a great bear at the battle. In Saxo he sleeps strangely deep as the attack begins, and Hjalti must call him again and again before he rouses;[1] but once awake, Bjarki deals terrible slaughter among the attackers, a one-man wall before his king. The champions fight with the desperate valour of men who have chosen to die well.
And at the climax comes the detail that ties this Danish legend straight to the heart of Norse myth. As the battle turns hopeless, the dying Bjarki says that if only he could look upon the awful husband of Frigg — Odin — however the god be covered with his white shield, riding his horse across the field, he would not let him go unhurt.[2] The appearance of Odin on a battlefield is, in the Norse mind, the sign that the war-god has come to claim his chosen dead; to see him is to know the doom is sealed. Bjarki's defiant wish to wound the very god who has decreed the king's fall is the legend's grandest moment — and it is unmistakably the Odin of the Eddas, the chooser of the slain, walking through Saxo's Latin to gather Rolf's fallen champions to Valhöll.
The source text · 2
"Bjarke, why art thou absent? Doth deep sleep hold thee? I prithee, what makes thee tarry? Come out, or the fire will overcome thee. Ho! Choose the better way, charge with me! Bears may be kept off with fire; let us spread fire in the recesses, and let the blaze attack the door-posts first. Let the firebrand fall upon the bedchamber, let the falling roof offer fuel for the flames and serve to feed the fire. It is right to scatter conflagration on the doomed gates. But let us who honour our king with better loyalty form the firm battle-wedges, and, having measured the phalanx in safe rows, go forth in the way the king taught us: our king, who laid low Rorik, the son of Bok the covetous, and wrapped the coward in death. He was rich in wealth, but in enjoyment poor, stronger in gain than bravery; and thinking gold better than warfare, he set lucre above all things, and ingloriously accumulated piles of treasure, scorning the service of noble friends. And when he was attacked by the navy of Rolf, he bade his servants take the gold from the chests and spread it out in front of the city gates, making ready bribes rather than battle, because he knew not the soldier, and thought that the foe should be attempted with gifts and not with arms: as though he could fight with wealth alone, and prolong the war by using, not men, but wares! So he undid the heavy coffers and the rich chests; he brought forth the polished bracelets and the heavy caskets; they only fed his destruction. Rich in treasure, poor in warriors, he left his foes to take away the prizes which he forebore to give to the friends of his own land. He who once shrank to give little rings of his own will, now unwillingly squandered his masses of wealth, rifling his hoarded heap. But our king in his wisdom spurned him and the gifts he proffered, and took from him life and goods at once; nor was his foe profited by the useless wealth which he had greedily heaped up through long years. But Rolf the righteous assailed him, slew him, and captured his vast wealth, and shared among worthy friends what the hand of avarice had piled up in all those years; and, bursting into the camp which was wealthy but not brave, gave his friends a lordly booty without bloodshed. Nothing was so fair to him that he would not lavish it, or so dear that he would not give it to his friends, for he used treasure like ashes, and measured his years by glory and not by gain. Whence it is plain that the king who hath died nobly lived also most nobly, that the hour of his doom is beautiful, and that he graced the years of his life with manliness. For while he lived his glowing valour prevailed over all things, and he was allotted might worthy of his lofty stature. He was as swift to war as a torrent tearing down to sea, and as speedy to begin battle as a stag is to fly with cleft foot upon his fleet way.— gesta danorum
Hjalti calls the deep-sleeping Bjarki to come out and fight (Elton 1894).
Then said Bjarke: "If I may look on the awful husband of Frigg, howsoever he be covered with his white shield, and guide his tall steed, he shall in no wise go safe out of Leire; it is lawful to lay low in war the war-waging god. Let a noble death come to those that fall before the eyes of their king. While life lasts, let us strive for the power to die honourably and to reap a noble end by our deeds. I will die overpowered near the head of my slain captain, and at his feet thou also shalt slip on thy face in death, so that whoso scans the piled corpses may see in what wise we rate the gold our lord gave us. We shall be the prey of ravens and a morsel for hungry eagles, and the ravening bird shall feast on the banquet of our body. Thus should fall princes dauntless in war, clasping their famous king in a common death."— gesta danorum
dying Bjarki longs to look on Odin, the husband of Frigg, on the field (Elton 1894).
All fallen but one
The end is total. Rolf's whole array is cut down around him; the king and all his champions die in the hall, and of the entire band only one man, Wigg, is left alive.[1] The traitor Hiartuar takes the throne and sits down to feast over the slaughter — but the legend gives a last turn: the surviving Wigg, feigning submission, takes the sword he is offered and runs Hiartuar through, avenging Rolf, so that the usurper's reign is among the shortest ever recorded. The bond of loyalty pays its final debt.
For the atlas, Rolf Kraki's last stand is the Danish summit of the heroic ideal that the whole corpus circles: the lord and his warriors bound by the gift, the warriors choosing death over the shame of outliving their king, the doom met with open eyes and a defiant word. It belongs beside the great Norse death-stands — beside Gunnarr at Hlíðarendi, beside the burning of Njáll — and it shares their deepest conviction, that how a man meets his certain end is the measure of his worth. That this supreme legend reaches the atlas at all is owed to Saxo: where the Norse door was closed, the Latin one stood open, and through it walked Rolf, Bjarki, Hjalti, and the war-god come to claim them — the heroic North entire, preserved in a Danish churchman's Latin and given back to the collection whole.
The source text · 1
Now, it came to pass that the Goths gained the victory and all the array of Rolf fell, no man save Wigg remaining out of all those warriors. For the soldiers of the king paid this homage to his noble virtues in that battle, that his slaying inspired in all the longing to meet their end, and union with him in death was accounted sweeter than life.— gesta danorum
all Rolf's array falls save one man, Wigg (Elton 1894).
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