The Kings of Norway
The Ynglinga Saga — Gods Made Kings
Odin out of Asia
Snorri begins his history of the kings with a daring move: he makes the gods human. East of the Don, he says, lay Ásaland — Asia — and its chief city Asgard, where a great chief named Odin ruled and sacrificed, served by twelve temple-priests.[1] This is the gods rationalised into history: not deities, but a gifted migrant people whose leader was so wise and so victorious that later generations worshipped him as a god.
It is one of the most famous strokes in medieval historiography — a Christian Icelander preserving the old gods by demoting them to ancestors, so their stories could be told as the history of kings rather than the worship of idols. The whole vast chronicle of Norway's kings, and behind it the family sagas of Iceland, is given a single source here: Odin of Asia, the god made king, from whom the royal blood descends.
The source text · 1
The country east of the Tanaquisl in Asia was called Asaland, or Asaheim, and the chief city in that land was called Asgaard.[5] In that city was a chief called Odin, and it was a great place for sacrifice. It was the custom there that twelve temple godars[6] should both direct the sacrifices, and also judge the people. They were called Diars, or Drotners, and all the people served and obeyed them. Odin was a great and very far-travelled warrior, who conquered many kingdoms, and so successful was he that in every battle the victory was on his side. It was the belief of his people that victory belonged to him in every battle. It was his custom when he sent his men into battle, or on any expedition, that he first laid his hand upon their heads, and called down a blessing upon them; and then they believed their undertaking would be successful. His people also were accustomed, whenever they fell into danger by land or sea, to call upon his name; and they thought that always they got comfort and aid by it, for where he was they thought help was near. Often he went away so long that he passed many seasons on his journeys.— heimskringla
Odin chief at Asgard in Asaland, a great place of sacrifice (Laing).
Gefjon ploughs the land
As Odin moved north he placed his people, and the saga pauses for one strange bright tale: Gefjon, sent by Odin, took land from King Gylfi of Sweden — turning her four giant sons into oxen and ploughing a great piece of the country loose, dragging it out to sea to make the Danish island of Zealand, leaving behind the lake in its shape.[1]
The episode, quoted in old verse, is the kind of myth Snorri keeps even inside his rationalised history — too good, too rooted in the landscape to discard. It sets the tone of the Ynglinga Saga: a chronicle that moves between dry king-lists and these sudden eruptions of the marvellous, where gods plough islands out of the earth. The land itself, in this saga, is shaped by the divine ancestors of the kings.
The source text · 1
There goes a great mountain barrier from northeast to south-west, which divides the Greater Sweden from other kingdoms. South of this mountain ridge it is not far to Turkland, where Odin had great possessions. But Odin having foreknowledge, and magic-sight, knew that his posterity would come to settle and dwell in the northern half of the world. In those times the Roman chiefs went wide around in the world, subduing to themselves all people; and on this account many chiefs fled from their domains. Odin set his brothers Ve and Vitir over Asgaard; and he himself, with all the gods and a great many other people, wandered out, first westward to Gardarige[8], and then south to Saxland.[9] He had many sons; and after having subdued an extensive kingdom in Saxland, he set his sons to defend the country. He himself went northwards to the sea, and took up his abode in an island which is called Odinsö in Fyen. Then he sent Gefion across the sound to the north, to discover new countries; and she came to King Gylfe, who gave her a ploughgate of land. Then she went to Jotunheim, and bore four sons to a giant, and transformed them into a yoke of oxen, and yoked them to a plough, and broke out the land into the ocean right opposite to Odinsö, which land was called Sealand, where she afterwards settled and dwelt. Skiold, a son of Odin, married her, and they dwelt at Leidre.[10] Where the ploughed land was is a lake or sea called Laage. In the Swedish land the fiords of Laage correspond to the nesses in Sealand. Brage the Old sings thus of it:[11]—— heimskringla
Gefjon ploughs Zealand loose from Gylfi's Sweden (Laing).
The arts of the god-king
When Odin came north he taught the people the arts that made him seem divine. He was the cleverest of all, the saga says, and from him the others learned their magic; he could change his shape, lying as if dead while his spirit went out as bird or beast or fish to far countries; he knew the songs that opened the earth and the seiðr that told the future and dealt death.[1]
Snorri lists Odin's powers as a wise man's accomplishments rather than a god's — but the list is exactly the lore of Odin the All-Father: the shape-shifting, the raven-sending, the magic of the gallows and the spear. The saga is doing two things at once, preserving the full mythic Odin while framing him as a historical sorcerer-king. It is the hinge where the Eddas and the kings' sagas are the same story told in two keys.
The source text · 1
When Odin of Asaland came to the north, and the gods with him, he began to exercise and teach others the arts which the people long afterwards have practised. Odin was the cleverest of all, and from him all the others learned their magic arts; and he knew them first, and knew many more than other people. But now, to tell why he is held in such high respect, we must mention various causes that contributed to it. When sitting among his friends his countenance was so beautiful and friendly, that the spirits of all were exhilarated by it; but when he was in war he appeared fierce and dreadful. This arose from his being able to change his colour and form in any way he liked. Another cause was, that he conversed so cleverly and smoothly, that all who heard were persuaded. He spoke every thing in rhyme, such as now composed, and which we call scald-craft. He and his temple gods were called song-smiths, for from them came that art of song into the northern countries. Odin could make his enemies in battle blind, or deaf, or terror-struck, and their weapons so blunt that they could no more cut than a willow twig; on the other hand, his men rushed forwards without armour, were as mad as dogs or wolves, bit their shields, and were strong as bears or wild bulls, and killed people at a blow, and neither fire nor iron told upon them. These were called Bersærkers.[12]— heimskringla
Odin teaches the arts and magic from which he is held divine (Laing).
Marked for Odin
Odin died in his bed in Sweden — but as death came he had himself marked with the point of a spear, and claimed all men slain by weapons as his own, saying he was going to Godheim to welcome his friends there.[1] The Swedes believed he had gone back to the ancient Asgard to live forever, and they began to sacrifice to him and to trust in him.
So the man becomes the god in the very moment of dying. The spear-mark is the same gesture the Eddas give the divine Odin, who wounds himself with a spear and hangs on the world-tree; here it is the death-rite that turns a king into the war-god of the North, the taker of the slain. Snorri lets us watch worship being born — the historical chief dedicating himself to weapons-death and becoming, in his people's eyes, the eternal Odin of Valhalla.
The source text · 1
Odin died in his bed in Sweden; and when he was near his death he made himself be marked with the point of a spear[15], and said he was going to Godheim, and would give a welcome there to all his friends, and all brave warriors should be dedicated to him; and the Swedes believed that he was gone to the ancient Asgaard, and would live there eternally. Then began the belief in Odin, and the calling upon him. The Swedes believed that he often showed himself to them before any great battle. To some he gave victory; others he invited to himself; and they reckoned both of these to be well off in their fate. Odin was burnt, and at his pile there was great splendour. It was their faith, that the higher the smoke arose in the air, the higher he would be raised whose pile it was; and the richer he would be, the more property that was consumed with him.— heimskringla
Odin dies marked with a spear, claiming the weapon-slain, and is worshipped (Laing).
Njörd, Frey, and the peace of Uppsala
After Odin came Njörd, and after Njörd his son Frey — both keeping the sacrifices and the good seasons, both honoured as the gods we know.[1] Frey built the great temple at Uppsala, made it his seat, gave it all his lands and taxes, and so founded the Uppsala domains that endured for centuries; in his days came the great peace and plenty the Swedes long remembered as the Frið-Fróði age.[2]
This is the saga's account of how the central institution of heathen Sweden — the temple-kingdom of Uppsala, with its sacrifices and its sacred peace — was founded by the fertility-gods themselves, ruling as kings. The Ynglings take their name from Frey (Yngvi-Frey), and so every king who descends from them, down to Harald Fairhair, carries the blood of the harvest-god. Kingship and the land's fertility are bound together at the root.
The source text · 2
Niord of Noatun was then the sole sovereign of the Swedes; and he continued the sacrifices, and was called the drot or sovereign by the Swedes, and he received scatt and gifts from them. In his days were peace and plenty, and such good years, in all respects, that the Swedes believed Niord ruled over the growth of seasons and the prosperity of the people. In his time all the diars or gods died, and blood-sacrifices were made for them. Niord died on the bed of sickness, and before he died made himself be marked for Odin with the spear-point. The Swedes burned him, and all wept over his grave-mound.— heimskringla
Njörd succeeds Odin, keeps the sacrifices and good seasons (Laing).
Freyr took the kingdom after Niort, and was called drot by the Swedes, and they paid taxes to him. He was, like his father, fortunate in friends and in good seasons. Freyr built a great temple at Upsal, made it his chief seat, and gave it all his taxes, his land, and goods. Then began the Upsal domains[16], which have remained ever since. Then began, in his days, the Frode-peace; and then there were good seasons in all the land, which the Swedes ascribed to Freyr, so that he was more worshipped than the other gods, as the people became much richer in his days by reason of the peace and good seasons. His wife was called Gerder, daughter of Gymis, and their son was called Fiölner. Freyr was called by another name, Yngve; and this name Yngve was considered long after in his race as a name of honour, so that his descendants have since been called Ynglingers. Freyr fell into a sickness; and as his illness took the upper hand, his men took the plan of letting few approach him. In the meantime they raised a great mound, in which they placed a door with three holes in it. Now when Freyr died they bore him secretly into the mound, but told the Swedes he was alive; and they kept watch over him for three years. They brought all the taxes into the mound, and through the one hole they put in the gold, through the other the silver, and through the third the copper money that was paid. Peace and good seasons continued.— heimskringla
Frey founds the temple and domains of Uppsala; the great peace.
Drowned in the mead
With Frey's son Fjölnir the line passes from gods to mortal kings — and the saga's long, grim comedy of strange royal deaths begins. Fjölnir, visiting his friend Fróði in Zealand for a great feast, rose in the night half-asleep and full of ale, missed his footing on a gallery, and fell into a huge vat of mead and drowned in it.[1]
It is the first of the Ynglinga deaths, and it sets the saga's strange tone: these god-descended kings die not in glory but in bizarre, almost folkloric mishaps — drowned in drink, gored, hanged by a neck-chain, burned. Snorri, working from the old poem Ynglingatal, preserves each odd end as the dynasty's dark refrain. The blood of Frey runs in them, but it does not save them from ridiculous and terrible deaths.
The source text · 1
Fiolner, Yngve Frey's son, ruled thereafter over the Swedes and the Upsal domains. He was powerful, and lucky in seasons and in holding the peace. Fridfrode ruled then in Hleidre, and between them there was great friendship and visiting. Once when Fiolner went to Frode in Sealand, a great feast was prepared for him, and invitations to it were sent all over the country. Frode had a large house, in which there was a great vessel many ells high, and put together of great pieces of timber; and this vessel stood in a lower room. Above it was a loft, in the floor of which was an opening through which liquor was poured into this vessel. The vessel was full of mead, which was excessively strong. In the evening Fiolner, with his attendants, was taken into the adjoining loft to sleep. In the night he went out to the gallery outside to seek the privy of the house, and he was very sleepy, and exceedingly drunk. As he came back to his room he went along the gallery to the door of another loft, went into it, and his foot slipping he fell into the vessel of mead, and was drowned. So says Thiodolf of Huine:—— heimskringla
Fjölnir, Frey's son, drowns in a vat of mead at Fróði's feast (Laing).
The king given for the harvest
The darkest of all comes with Domald. In his reign came great famine, and the Swedes sacrificed at Uppsala for better seasons — the first autumn oxen, and the year was no better; the next autumn men, and it was worse; and the third autumn the chiefs took counsel and concluded the cause was the king himself.[1] So they seized Domald, killed him, and reddened the altars of the gods with their own king's blood — and afterward, the saga says, the seasons mended.[2]
This is the rawest expression in the whole corpus of the oldest idea of kingship: that the king is bound to the land's fertility, answerable with his life for famine, a sacrifice in human shape. The god-descended dynasty that began with Frey the harvest-god here gives one of its own back to the soil. It is the shadow side of sacral kingship — the king as the people's luck, and so the king as the thing that must be killed when the luck fails.
The source text · 2
Domald took the heritage after his father Visbur, and ruled over the land. As in his time there was great famine and distress, the Swedes made great offerings of sacrifice at Upsal. The first autumn they sacrificed oxen, but the succeeding season was not improved by it. The following autumn they sacrificed men, but the succeeding year was rather worse. The third autumn, when the offer of sacrifices should begin, a great multitude of Swedes came to Upsal; and now the chiefs held consultations with each other, and all agreed that the times of scarcity were on account of their king Domald, and they resolved to offer him for good seasons, and to assault and kill him, and sprinkle the altar of the gods with his blood. And they did so. Thiodolf tells of this:—— heimskringla
Famine; the Swedes sacrifice oxen, then men, then resolve on the king (Laing).
"It has happened oft ere now, That foeman's weapon has laid low The crowned head, where battle plain Was miry red with the blood-rain. But Domald dies by bloody arms, Raised not by foes in war's alarms,— Raised by his Swedish liegeman's hand, To bring good seasons to the land."— heimskringla
Domald killed and the altars reddened with the king's blood.
The long cycle of deaths
So it goes, king after king, each with his own strange end drawn from the old verse: Sveigðir lured into a stone by a dwarf and never seen again; Vanlandi ridden to death by a nightmare-hag; Agni hanged from a tree by his own neck-chain while he slept; Dyggvi, Dag the Wise, brother killing brother.[1] The Ynglinga Saga becomes a litany of mortality — the god-blooded dynasty dying in fire and water and witchcraft, generation upon generation.
Snorri is preserving a genealogical poem, but the cumulative effect is something stranger and grander: a meditation on death itself, ringing the changes on every way a king can die. No other saga is quite like it — a chronicle where the plot is simply mortality, the throne passing down a line that cannot escape its many doors of death. It is the dark ground-bass beneath all the kings' sagas that follow.
The source text · 1
Domald's son, called Domar, next ruled over the land. He reigned long, and in his days were good seasons and peace. Nothing is told of him but that he died in his bed in Upsal, and was transported to the Fyrisvold, where his body was burned on the river-bank, and where his standing stone still remains. So says Thiodolf: —— heimskringla
The succeeding Yngling kings and their deaths in the old verse (Laing).
Ingjald the Wicked and the burning hall
The dynasty turns cruel in Ingjald, called the Wicked. The Uppsala kings had been the highest in Sweden since Odin's day, but the realm had fragmented into many district-kings — and Ingjald set out to reunite it by treachery, inviting rival kings to a great feast in a new hall and burning them alive inside it to seize their lands.[1] Again and again he widened his kingdom by fire and murder.
Ingjald is the saga's portrait of ambition turned monstrous — the unifier as arsonist, the throne built on the ashes of guests. His reign is the dark mirror of the unification that Harald Fairhair will later achieve in Norway by war; here it is achieved by the worst breach a Norse mind could imagine, the burning of men under their host's own roof. The god-line's drive to rule all has curdled into atrocity.
The source text · 1
Then Ingiald, King Onund's son, came to the kingdom. The Upsal kings were the highest in Sweden among the many district-kings who had been since the time that Odin was chief. The kings who resided at Upsal had been the supreme chiefs over the whole Swedish dominions until the death of Agne, when, as before related, the kingdom came to be divided between brothers. After that time the dominions and kingly powers were spread among the branches of the family as these increased; but some kings cleared great tracts of forest-land, and settled them, and thereby increased their domains. Now when Ingiald took the dominions and the kingdom of his father, there were, as before said, many district-kings. King Ingiald ordered a great feast to be prepared in Upsal, and intended to enter at it on his heritage after King Onund his father. He had a large hall made ready for the occasion,—one not less, nor less sumptuous, than that of Upsal; and this hall was called the Seven Kings Hall, and in it were seven high seats for kings. Then King Ingiald sent men all through Sweden, and invited to his feast kings, earls, and other men of consequence. To this heir-feast came King Algaut, his father-in-law; Yngvar king of Fiadryndaland, with his two sons, Alf and Agnar; King Spossniall of Nerike; King Sighvat of Aattundaland: but Granmar king of Sondermanland did not come. Six kings were placed in the seats in the new hall; but one of the high seats which Ingiald had prepared was empty. All the persons who had come got places in the new hall; but to his own court, and the rest of his people, he had appointed places at Upsal. It was the custom at that time that he who gave an heirship-feast after kings or earls, and entered upon the heritage, should sit upon the footstool in front of the high seat, until the full bowl, which was called the Braga-bowl, was brought in. Then he should stand up, take the braga-bowl, make solemn vows to be afterwards fulfilled, and thereupon empty the bowl. Then he should ascend the high seat which his father had occupied; and thus he came to the full heritage after his father. Now it was done so on this occasion. When the full braga-bowl came in, King Ingiald stood up, grasped a large bull's horn, and made a solemn vow to enlarge his dominions by one half, towards all the four corners of the world, or die; and thereupon pointed with the horn to the four quarters. Now when the guests had become drunk towards evening King Ingiald told Svipdag's sons, Folkvid and Hylvid, to arm themselves and their men, as had before been settled; and accordingly they went out, and came up to the new hall, and set fire to it. The hall was soon in a blaze, and the six kings, with all their people, were burned in it. Those who tried to come out were killed. Then King Ingiald laid all the dominions these kings had possessed under himself, and took scatt from them.— heimskringla
Ingjald, highest of the Uppsala kings, burns his rivals to reunite Sweden (Laing).
The end of the Uppsala line
Ingjald's cruelty brought its reckoning. When the dread war-king Ívar Wide-Fathom rose and the whole Swedish people turned against Ingjald's house, the Wicked king chose his own end: rather than be taken, he set fire to his own hall and burned himself and his daughter Åsa within it — a last burning to match all the burnings he had made.[1] The Uppsala dynasty of the Ynglings was finished in Sweden.
It is a fittingly terrible close: the arsonist-king consumed by his own fire, the line that began with Odin guttering out in the ashes of its own hall. But the blood does not end — it flees. Ingjald's son escapes westward, and the saga turns from the dying Swedish dynasty toward the new country where its remnant will take root. The end at Uppsala is the beginning of Norway.
The source text · 1
When Olaf, King Ingiald's son, heard of his father's end, he went, with the men who chose to follow him, to Nerike; for all the Swedish community rose with one accord to drive out Ingiald's family and all its friends. Now, when the Swedes got intelligence of him he could not remain there, but went on westwards, through the forest, to a river which comes from the north and falls into the Venner lake, and is called Klar River. There they sat themselves down, turned to, and cleared the woods, burnt, and then settled there. Soon there were great districts, which altogether were called Vermeland; and a good living was to be made there. Now when it was told of Olaf, in Sweden, that he was clearing the forests, they laughed at his proceedings, and called him the Tree-feller. Olaf got a wife called Solva, or Solveig, a daughter of Halfdan Guldtand, westward in Soloer Islands.[45] Halfdan was a son of Solve Solvesson, who was a son of Solve the Old, who first settled on these islands. Olaf Tree-feller's mother was called Gauthild, and her mother was Alofa, daughter of Olaf Skygne, king in Nerike. Olaf and Solva had two sons, Ingiald and Halfdan. Halfdan was brought up in Soloer Isles, in the house of his mother's brother Solve, and was called Halfdan Huitbein.— heimskringla
Olaf, Ingjald's son, flees west as the Swedes rise against the house (Laing).
Olaf the Tree-feller clears the west
Olaf, Ingjald's son, driven from Sweden, went west through the great forests with the men who chose to follow him, and settled in the wilderness of Värmland — clearing and burning the woods to make farmland, until so many came to him that the cleared country could not feed them.[1] For this he was nicknamed the Tree-feller, and his line struck root in the new western land.
It is a quiet, pioneering chapter after all the burning halls — the exiled prince become a forest-clearer, the dynasty replanting itself in raw country. And it is the geographic hinge of the whole saga: the Yngling blood, which had ruled Sweden from Uppsala since Odin, now crosses west and begins to become Norwegian. From Olaf the Tree-feller the line runs down through the petty kings of the Norwegian uplands toward the man who will unite the country.
The source text · 1
When Olaf, King Ingiald's son, heard of his father's end, he went, with the men who chose to follow him, to Nerike; for all the Swedish community rose with one accord to drive out Ingiald's family and all its friends. Now, when the Swedes got intelligence of him he could not remain there, but went on westwards, through the forest, to a river which comes from the north and falls into the Venner lake, and is called Klar River. There they sat themselves down, turned to, and cleared the woods, burnt, and then settled there. Soon there were great districts, which altogether were called Vermeland; and a good living was to be made there. Now when it was told of Olaf, in Sweden, that he was clearing the forests, they laughed at his proceedings, and called him the Tree-feller. Olaf got a wife called Solva, or Solveig, a daughter of Halfdan Guldtand, westward in Soloer Islands.[45] Halfdan was a son of Solve Solvesson, who was a son of Solve the Old, who first settled on these islands. Olaf Tree-feller's mother was called Gauthild, and her mother was Alofa, daughter of Olaf Skygne, king in Nerike. Olaf and Solva had two sons, Ingiald and Halfdan. Halfdan was brought up in Soloer Isles, in the house of his mother's brother Solve, and was called Halfdan Huitbein.— heimskringla
Olaf clears the forests of the west and settles his followers (Laing).
Down to Halfdan and Harald
From Olaf the Tree-feller the saga runs the line down through the kings of the Norwegian uplands — Halfdan Hvitbein and his heirs — generation by generation toward Gudröd and Halfdan, and so to the threshold of the man this whole chronicle has been climbing toward.[1] The Ynglinga Saga ends exactly where the Saga of Halfdan the Black and the Saga of Harald Fairhair begin.
And so the headwater joins the river. Everything downstream in this atlas — the unification of Norway, the conversion-kings, the settlers who fled to Iceland and filled the family sagas, the kings who crusaded and went east — descends from this one long line that began with Odin in Asia. The Ynglinga Saga is Snorri's great foundation stone: it makes the gods the ancestors of the kings, and the kings the ancestors of the whole Norse world. Read it first, and every other journey in this atlas is the continuation of its story.
The source text · 1
Halfdan was the name of King Eystein's son who succeeded him. He was called Halfdan the Mild, but the Bad Entertainer; that is to say, he was reported to be generous, and to give his men as much gold as other kings gave of silver, but he starved them in their diet. He was a great warrior, who had been long on viking cruises, and had collected great property. He was married to Hlif, a daughter of King Dag of Westmor. Holtar, in Westfold, was his chief house; and he died there on the bed of sickness, and was buried at Borre under a mound. So says Thiodolf:—— heimskringla
The line runs down through the upland kings toward Halfdan and Harald (Laing).
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