Rígsþula — How the Classes Were Made

The poem opens with the god Ríg — wise and aged, mighty and strong — striding along the green ways of the world.^[1] Ríg is Heimdall, the watchman of the gods; and his journey is no idle wandering, for at each house he comes to he will leave a son, and from those sons the whole order of human society will spring.

It is one of the strangest premises in the Edda: a god walking the roads and fathering the social classes one household at a time. The poem treats the divisions of human life — slave, farmer, lord — not as accident or injustice but as something woven into the world by a god's own visits. Ríg sets out, and the shape of society walks out with him.

Ríg comes first to a poor dwelling, where an old couple — Ái and Edda, great-grandfather and great-grandmother — give him coarse bread and broth; he stays three nights, sleeping between them, and goes.^[1] Nine months on, Edda bears a swarthy, heavy-limbed son: Þræll, the Thrall, who grows to hard labour and rough work, and from whom the whole servile class descends.

The poem's portrait of the thrall is unsparing and class-bound — dark-skinned, gnarled, made for toil, mated to a bow-legged drudge. To a modern eye it is uncomfortable; to its own world it was an explanation, fixing the bondsman's lot as part of the god-given order. Ríg's first son is the bottom of the human pyramid, and the poem describes his life and labour with the same matter-of-factness it will give the lord.

Ríg comes next to a well-kept house, where a busy couple — Afi and Amma, grandfather and grandmother — work at their craft, the man shaping a loom-beam, the woman spinning.^[1] Again he stays three nights; and Amma bears a ruddy, bright-eyed son: Karl, the Churl or free farmer, who grows to tame oxen, build, and farm, and from whom the class of free yeomen springs.

Karl is the poem's middle estate — the free working farmer who is the backbone of Norse society, neither bound nor noble. The portrait is warm: a capable, red-cheeked man who marries a thrifty wife and raises a household of his own. Between the thrall below and the lord above, Karl is the ordinary free man, and the poem gives him his due as the second of Ríg's god-fathered sons.

Last, Ríg comes to a fine hall, where a wealthy couple — Faðir and Móðir, father and mother — dine on white bread and roast fowl and wine, the lady in fine linen.^[1] Three nights he stays; and Móðir bears a fair, keen-eyed son: Jarl, the Noble, who grows skilled in arms and the hunt and the warrior's arts.

Jarl is the top of the order — the well-born lord, fair-haired and warlike, bred to weapons and rule. The poem lavishes its finest detail on his household and his upbringing, as a society lavishes its regard on its lords. With Jarl, Ríg's work of making the classes is nearly complete: thrall, farmer, and now noble, each god-fathered, each fixed in his estate. But for Jarl alone Ríg will come back.

Ríg returns to claim Jarl as his own son, gives him his own name, and teaches him the runes — and Jarl grows in craft and wisdom beyond the others, wins lands by the sword, and takes a noble bride.^[1] From Jarl springs a line of sons, the youngest and ablest of whom, Kon the Young (Konr ungr — a play on konungr, 'king'), masters the runes and the speech of birds: the first king.

So the poem closes by founding kingship itself on Ríg's noble line — the god returning to single out the highest estate and raise from it the institution of the king. The whole social order, from thrall to crowned king, is traced back to one god's three visits and the runes he taught his favoured son. It ends gesturing at the great Danish kings (the halls of Dan and Danp), rooting real royal houses in this mythic descent.