Hlöðskviða

Tyrfing

Hlöðskviða or The Battle of the Goths and Huns is sometimes counted among the Eddic Poems. It has been preserved as separate stanzas interspersed among the text in "Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks" (chapters 13 and 14, the stanzas are numbered 1 to 32, after their arrangement within the prose). It is generally agreed that it was originally a poetic whole. The length of the preserved text amounts to 233 lines, constituting a fragment of a longer poem.

Heiðrekr, king of the Goths, had two sons, Angantýr and Hlöðr. Only Angantýr was legitimate, so he inherited his father's kingdom. Hlöðr, whose mother was the daughter of Humli, king of the Huns, and who was born and raised among the Huns, claimed half the inheritance, Angantýr refused to split evenly and war ensued, claiming first Hervör, their sister, then Hlöðr himself as casualties.

Stanza 1 lists peoples and their rulers:

Bibliography

*"The Battle of the Goths and the Huns". Christopher Tolkien, in Saga-Book (University College, London, for the Viking Society for Northern Research) 14, part 3 (1955-6), pp. [141] -63.

ee also

*Widsith, the 9th century Anglo-Saxon poem, contains some names that align with the names given in the Hlöðskviða
*Oium, the Gothic realm in Scythia, overrun by the Huns in the 370s
*Battle of Nedao, the historical battle where the Goths defeated the Huns in 454

Links

* [http://www.heimskringla.no/original/edda/hlodskvida.php Hlöðskviða] in Old Norse from «Kulturformidlingen norrøne tekster og kvad» Norway.
* [http://www.northvegr.org/lore/oldheathen/028.php translation] at Northvegr