Fjölnir

Fjölnir is Frey's son and the first of the mortal Yngling kings — the figure with whom the dynasty passes from gods to men, and the saga's long, grim comedy of strange royal deaths begins. He ruled the Swedes and the domains of Uppsala, lucky in seasons and in peace, and was the friend of the Danish king Fróði. His death sets the dynasty's bizarre tone: visiting Fróði for a great feast, Fjölnir rose in the night half-asleep and heavy with ale, missed his footing on a gallery, and fell into a huge vat of mead, where he drowned. It is the first of the Ynglinga deaths — none of them in battle or glory, all of them in odd, almost folkloric mishap (drowned in drink, gored, hanged by a neck-chain, burned). Fjölnir, drowned in the mead-vat, opens the strange refrain of the whole Yngling line: the god-descended kings who die not grandly but absurdly, one bizarre end after another down the generations.