Enigmatic Gods, Legends, and Minor Functionaries

H.R. Ellis Davidson refers to many of the peripheral figures in the Norse mythology as the enigmatic gods. These are  gods or personages that play prominent or pivotal roles in some of the received myths, but whom are mentioned only briefly. There is frequently very little historical or archeological record of cults associated with these figures and the role of these figures in the Norse cosmos is an open question.

Many explanations have offered for these figures. The enigmatic gods may not be separate deities at all, but merely manifestations of known gods under other names. The enigmatic gods may not have been gods at all but, mere legendary or semi-historical figures, whose deeds had accrued layers of myth.

Similarly, in the Old English poem Beowulf there are several personages that are nothing if not enigmatic.  The obscurity of these figures has much to do with the structure and style of the poem itself. Many events and myths are alluded to or mentioned in passing, and the poet feels no need to dwell upon them. Simply mentioning the name of a place or hero is more than enough to evoke the lesson of that particular tale because the poet knows that the audience is already quite familiar with the details.  The storyteller uses the listener’s familiarity with these tales for dramatic purposes—specifically, to foreshadow future tragic events.

Five characters in Beowulf are of particular interest  in this respect Heorogar and his son Heoroweard; the legendary King Hereomod; Froda, the King of the Heaðobards; and Halga, Hrothgar’s brother, the father to Hroðulf (Hrolf Kraki).

Heorogar and Heoroweard

In Beowulf, Heorogar is a former king of Denmark. He was of the legendary king Heafdane and older brother to Halga and Hrothgar, the current king.  Both Heorogar and his son Heoroweard are peripheral to the main story of the Skoldungar clan as related in Beowulf. And yet, they cast dark shadows over the tale.

One of the more puzzling aspects of Beowulf is the name given to Hrothgar’s hall, heorot, meaning hart or stag. No name is given for the mead hall described in the Saga of Hrolf Kraki or any of the other Scandinavian sources that identify Lejre as the seat of the Skoldungar. Interestingly, the Scandinavian sources also fail to mention Heorogar.

Heorogar is the eldest son of King Halfdeane and the rightful heir to the throne. At the time of story related in Beowulf, Heorogar  has died and Halfdeane’s second son, King Hrothgar, has ruled over the Danes for sixty years. Perhaps, the great hall itself was not built by Hrothgar at all, but by his older brother Heorgar and so bears his name. The transference of the hall from one generation to the next should not be so surprising. In Hrolf Kraki, the hall belongs to Hrothgar’s nephew.

Heorogar’s son, Heoroweard, is mentioned  only briefly (lines 2160-61) in the poem as the loyal son. Hrothgar presents a precious coat of mail to Beowulf for slaying Grendel, a suit of mail that properly belongs to Heoroweard.

no ðy ær suna sinum           syllan wolde,
hwatum Heorowearde,       þeah he him hold wære,
breostgewædu.

As the son of Heorgar, the eldest son, Heorogar is the rightful heir to the Skoldungar dynasty. Heoroweard is known in Scandinavian sources as  Hjovard, but is not considered to be Skoldung. In the Saga of Hrolf Kraki, Hjovard marries Skuld, Helgi’s daughter by an elvish woman, and is responsible for the destruction of Hrolf and his heroes. The Saga of Hrolf Kraki describes how Hjörvarðr leads an army of Swedes and Geats against Hrolf Kraki and destroys the great hall at Lejre.

The hall towered,
its gables wide and high and awaiting
a barbarous burning. That doom abided,
but in time it would come: the killer instinct
unleashed among in-laws, the blood-lust rampant.

Heromod

Heremod is a legendary king of Denmark that is known from a brief mention in Beowulf, his appearance in some genealogies as a descent of Sceafa and the father of Scyld Scefing, the progenitor of the Skoldungar clan. Some have identified him with the figures Hermóðr mentioned in the Icelandic sagas and the legendary king Lotherus found in Saxo. Lotherus, in turn, is frequently identified with the god Lóðurr.

In Beowulf, Heromod is mentioned as a past king of the Danes, who due to his greed was forced into exile in Jutland where he was betrayed and died. He represents a paradigm of poor kingship, whose example Hrothgar is wise not to follow.

The connection between Heromod and Lother can be made based on both personages identification as the father of Scyld/Skjöld.

In the Prose Edda, Hermóðr is a son of Odin who rides Slipnir to Hel to retrieve Balder.

Froda

Froda/Fróði/Frothi is an obscure, if ubiquitous figure in Nordic legends about Denmark. Saxo relates tales of five different kings named Frothi. A common thread throughout most of these tales is that he reigned over the land during a period peace and prosperity. Many of the details in Saxo’s narratives indicate that Frodi was originally the name of a male male fertility god associated with—or identical to— Freyr. That said, in the Anglo-Saxon tradition and in the Saga of Hrolf Kraki, Froda is an arch-nemensis and enemy of the Skoldungar.

H.R. Ellis Davidson notes the similarity between the Danish King Frodi as described in Saxo and Freyr in Sweden and implies that the two figures may be identical:

The Old Norse word fróði means ‘wise’, but also has meaning ‘fruitful’, ‘luxurious’, and so would be a fitting title for a god of fertility. Snorri indeed tells us that one of Freyr’s titles was inn fróði, ‘the fruitful’. It seems reasonable to assume then that Frodi was the Danish god of fertility, the equivalent of Freyr in Sweden.

In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, Beowulf and Widsith, Froda is neither a king of the Danes, nor is he a fertility god. Rather, Froda is described as the king of a rival tribe known at the Heaðobards. The Heaðobards are thought to have been a branch of the Langobards, a Germanic tribe that originated in southern Scandinavia.

In the Saga of Hrof Kraki, Frodi is described as the brother and rival of King Hálfdan and the uncle to Hróarr, Helgi, and Signý. The saga relates how Frodi kills Hálfdan,  usurpts the crown, and attempts to hunt down and kill his nephews Hróarr and Helgi. Frodi and his men die when their great hall is burned to the ground by Hróarr and Helgi. Helgi becomes king.

Interestingly, Frodi’s son Ingjald bears a name that is also connected with Freyr, who was known by the titles Yngvi and Ingunar. The name of the royal house of Sweden—the Ynglings—is derived from this name. Davidson posits that Ing may have been another name for Freyr in northern Europe and notes that “some of the men who are said to have worshipped Freyr in Iceland bore names like Ingjald or Ingimund.”

In the Latin synopsis of the now lost Saga of the Skolungs, Frodi has two sons—Halfdan and Ingialldus. Ingialldus kills Halfdan.

Interestingly enough, the Heaðobards have been long been associated with Frigg/Freyja . According to the Historia gentis Langobardorum (8th century), Frigg concocted a ruse to ensure that the Winnili, whom she favored, would be granted victory over their rivals the Vandals. The Winnili were required to comb out their beards so that their appearance would imitate that of Odin’s Vandal attendents  The Winnili were henceforth known by they longbeards.

Frigg, the wife of Odin, and Freyja, the sister of Freyr, have longed been linked to one another. Some argue that they were originally the same deity.

Halga

In the Saga of Hrolf Kraki, Helgi becomes king of the Danes when he and his brother kill their uncle, the usurper, by burning the hall down.

The brothers were unlike in temperment. Hroar was mild and easy-going, whereas Helgi was a staunch warrior and was regarded by far the more important of the two.

These art forms must be developed

Stranded in Canton just isn’t about anything but itself.

Stuck inside of Memphis: David A. Ross on William Eggleston’s Stranded in Canton

And now, more than thirty years after Eggleston shot some seventy-five tapes comprising over thirty hours of video, his “experiment” has been edited (with documentarian Robert Gordon) into Stranded in Canton–a seventy-seven-minute compilation of portraits, loosely strung together with a voice-over narrative by the artist himself. These tapes have a fever-dream quality, exposing in barely edited real-time chunks a group of the artist’s friends and family–many of whom are characters one would find hard to believe exist if this weren’t such compelling “reality television.” Oddly enough, seen in the context of contemporary reality TV, Eggleston’s somewhat claustrophobic chronicle of people from his own life may seem to some a bit genteel and dated.

For, unlike Cocksucker Blues, Robert Frank’s anguished 1972 cinema-verite documentation of a Rolling Stones tour, or Frederick Wiseman’s rigorous investigative documentaries, such as Titicut Follies (1967), Stranded in Canton relies on a hypercasual, completely personal, and slow-paced approach. With perhaps the exception of the spontaneous geek performance toward the end of Stranded, Eggleston’s simple, unvarnished, and always personalized camera work lends a different kind of authenticity to this deeply moving artifact.

Carried along in its narrative flow by the artist’s voice and a stream of casual musical performances, Stranded contains songs by an assortment of Eggleston’s friends, including Jerry McGill (now in prison for attempted murder), Jim Dickinson (still making music in Mississippi), blues singer Furry Lewis, and a remarkable harmonica player named Johnny Woods, along with frenzied clips of onstage performances by none other than Jerry Lee Lewis and the King himself.

Even given his inexperience with the intricacies of the new video technology, Eggleston was able to bring a distinctive style to this work. Posing silently, his children and his girlfriend at the time are photographed lovingly, in a style reminiscent of his gentler still photography. Using a low-light-level infrared tube and a high-quality lens (Eggleston souped up the camera himself), he was able to record life in dark bars and dimly lit rooms without rendering his subjects in a ghostly pale imagery.

Listening to and watching the artist’s friends, many of whom are raving drunk or stoned on Quaaludes, is not always pleasant. But the intense realism remains compelling, and as we sense that there is no standard narrative payoff looming, we recognize that Eggleston has found a way to use this crude black-and-white camera and recorder to convey as much, if not more, than the optically precise, carefully rendered moments extracted from the flow of time in his still photographs. It seems that he found, in this experiment with moving imagery and the temporality of video, a way inside the subjects of his portraiture, for it is their individual and collective response to his presence that we are actually reading.