Hadding (Haddingr)

Hadding is one of the great heroes of Saxo's first books — an early Danish king raised by giants and favoured all his life by Odin, who appears to him again and again as a one-eyed old man and carries him through storm and battle. His life is a string of marvels: he is suckled (the legend says) by a she-wolf's strength, rides Odin's horse over the sea, is shown a glimpse of the underworld by a woman who conjures green herbs in winter, and is bound to a sea-monster's curse and a god's protection by turns. Hadding is the most thoroughly Odinic of Saxo's heroes — a man whose whole career is steered by the wandering god, marked out, tested, and finally undone when the divine favour runs its course. He belongs to the oldest, most mythic layer of the Danish legends, where kings and gods still walk the same roads.