Hadingus, Amleth and Starkad

A man is sitting at dinner in winter when a woman rises out of the floor beside the fire, holding fresh green stalks of hemlock. Where, she asks, do herbs like these grow at this time of year? He wants to know. She wraps him in her cloak and the ground swallows them both.

That man is Hadingus, and the scene is one of the strangest in the *Gesta Danorum*, the great Latin history of the Danes written by Saxo Grammaticus and finished in the early years of the thirteenth century. Saxo was a Christian cleric, and his early books are a hoard of older Scandinavian legend, reworked as the deeds of ancient kings. Three of their heroes stand above the rest: Hadingus, the exile who walked into the land of the dead; Starkad, the giant-born warrior condemned to betray his lords; and Amleth, the prince who played the fool until it was time to burn his enemies alive.

Hadingus comes first, in Saxo’s opening book. He is the son of King Gram, and when his father is killed he is carried off to Sweden and raised by giants, the giant Wagnofthus and his daughter Harthgrepa. Harthgrepa loves him and travels with him, until she uses magic to make a dead man speak and is killed by the powers she has disturbed. Odin then takes the boy under his protection. In one passage the god carries Hadingus across the sea on Sleipnir, wrapped inside his cloak, and sends him back with counsel for the wars ahead. Hadingus wins back Denmark from Svipdagr, his father’s killer, rescues the princess Regnilda from giants and marries her, and kills a sacred beast for which he must atone with sacrifice to Freyr. The woman with the hemlock takes him down through a dark, misty cloud, past richly robed figures, into a sunlit country where the green herbs grow, and to a fast black river crowded with weapons. Beyond its bridge two evenly matched armies are fighting. Saxo explains that the gods wanted him to see, while still alive, where he would go when he died. At the end of his reign, hearing of a dear friend’s death, Hadingus hangs himself in front of his own people.

The French scholar Georges Dumézil argued in *From Myth to Fiction: The Saga of Hadingus* (French 1970, English 1973) that much of this life is a god’s myth wearing a king’s clothes, a story of the sea god Njörðr retold as human history. Regnilda, in that reading, is Skaði, the giantess who married Njörðr. The argument has been influential. It is an argument.

Starkad arrives in Saxo’s sixth book and refuses to leave, striding on through the seventh and eighth. He is the grandson of a giant, and in Saxo’s telling he was born with extra arms until Thor tore all but two of them from his body. The Icelandic *Gautreks saga* gives his destiny its fullest form. His foster-father, Horsehair Grani, wakes him at midnight and takes him to an island where eleven men sit in council. Grani takes the twelfth chair and is revealed as Odin. The gods then bargain over Starkad’s fate. Odin grants him three lifetimes, fine weapons, wealth, victory in every battle and the gift of poetry. Thor answers each blessing with a curse: no children, no land of his own, and in each of his lives a terrible deed.

The first deed is the worst. Starkad has grown up beside King Víkar, fought for him and loved him. Odin demands Víkar as a sacrifice. Starkad persuades the king to stand in a mock hanging, a flimsy noose and a harmless reed held in place of a spear, and in the moment of the rite the noose becomes real rope and the reed becomes a spear. Saxo, uneasy with magic, tells it more coldly: Starkad simply pulls the noose tight and runs the king through with his sword. Later crimes follow, among them the killing of King Olo. Starkad fights at the great battle of Brávellir for Sigurd Hring and comes out of it with a finger gone and his chest torn open. Old, hated, and tired of living, he pays the young Hather to kill him. Hather strikes off his head, and the severed head bites into the turf as it falls.

Amleth belongs to Saxo’s third and fourth books, and of the three he has travelled furthest. His father Horwendil, a Jutland chieftain, is murdered by his own brother Feng, who then marries Horwendil’s widow Gerutha and claims he did it to protect her. Amleth understands that he is next. So he becomes a fool. He sits filthy and slack-jawed by the fire, and answers every question with a truth so twisted that it sounds like nonsense. Feng sets traps. A young woman, Amleth’s foster-sister, is sent to tempt him into giving himself away. A courtier hides in Gerutha’s room to listen to mother and son. Amleth finds him, kills him, and disposes of the body so thoroughly that nobody finds a trace.

Feng sends him to Britain with two escorts and a letter asking the British king to kill him. Amleth rewrites the letter on the voyage, so that the king hangs the escorts instead and gives Amleth his daughter. A year later Amleth walks into his own funeral feast. He gets the guests drunk, traps them inside the hall, sets fire to the building, and then kills Feng. He becomes king. Saxo carries the story on past where Shakespeare stopped: a second marriage to the warrior queen Hermuthruda, a battle won by propping up the dead in the ranks, and at last Amleth’s death fighting King Wiglek, whom Hermuthruda then marries. His name had an older life too. Snorri Sturluson preserves the phrase “Amlóði’s quern” as a poetic name for the sea. François de Belleforest retold Saxo’s version in French in 1572, and from that line of retelling the plot reached the English stage.

What drives all three is the same pressure. Gods choose them, use them and do not ask. Hadingus gets Odin’s protection and a glimpse of his own afterlife, and still dies by his own hand. Starkad gets triumph after triumph and a curse that turns every victory into another betrayal. Amleth has no god at all, only his wits, a bad name, and patience long enough to wait for the perfect night. Their limits are the limits of mortals in Norse story: what fate decides arrives anyway, and the most a hero can choose is how he meets it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are Hadingus, Amleth and Starkad?

Hadingus, Amleth and Starkad are three legendary heroes of the Gesta Danorum, the history of the Danes written in Latin by Saxo Grammaticus and completed around 1200. Hadingus is an early Danish king protected by Odin, Starkad is a giant-born warrior cursed to betray his lords, and Amleth is a prince who fakes madness to avenge his murdered father.

Is Amleth the same as Hamlet?

Yes. Amleth’s story in Saxo’s third and fourth books is the ancestor of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: a murdered father, a usurping uncle who marries the widow, a prince who pretends to be mad, an eavesdropper killed in the mother’s room, and a deadly letter sent with escorts. Saxo’s Amleth succeeds in his revenge, burns his enemies in their hall, becomes king, and later dies in battle against King Wiglek.

Why did Starkad kill King Víkar?

Starkad killed King Víkar because Odin demanded the king as a sacrifice in return for the gifts he had given Starkad. In Gautreks saga, Starkad stages a mock hanging that magically becomes real; in Saxo’s version he simply tightens the noose and stabs the king. The killing was the first of the crimes Thor’s curse laid on him.

What did Hadingus see in the underworld?

Hadingus was led underground by a woman carrying fresh hemlock in winter. He passed through dark mist to a sunlit land where those herbs grew, then reached a fast, black river full of weapons with a bridge, beyond which two armies were fighting. Saxo says the gods wanted Hadingus to see while living the place he would go after death.

How did Starkad die?

In old age Starkad paid the young warrior Hather to kill him. Hather cut off his head, and Starkad’s severed head bit into the ground as it fell. Hather then raised a barrow for him.

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Odin, Thor, Sleipnir, Njord, Skadi, Freyr (Frey), Hel, Ran, Aegir, Sigurd, Sigmund, Beowulf