It is necessary at this point to consider the numerous allusions to the custom of sitting on a howe which we find in the sagas and poems, and which are perhaps more varied in their nature than Olrik admitted in his article ‘At sidde paa Hoj’ in the Danske Studier for the year 1909.
In this article he argues that all the examples except the story of Þorleifr Spaki in Hallfreðar Saga reveal the custom of sitting on a mound to be restricted to kings in their official capacity. He refuses to include allusions to shepherds who sit on a howe, since this, he argues, can be given a purely rational interpretation and the shepherd sits higher than his flock in order to watch over it. He suggests that this practice of the king is dependent on the conception of his person as sacred and something to be kept inaccessible, a belief derived from
1 Finnish word for ‘god’. A recent survey of information about the Bjarmians is The Terfuinas and Beormas of Ohthere, A. S. C. Ross(Leeds Monographs vii, 1940).
prophesying from a high platform which we find in accounts of the völva (seeress).
Without attempting to disprove Olrik’s main thesis—the peaceful and mantic origin of the kingship in early times—I would suggest that the fact that it was undoubtedly a burial mound on which the king chose to sit deserves greater emphasis. It will be worth while, I think, to examine the evidence for the custom in some detail.
Olrik in his article refers to the passage in Saxo where Hotherus is said to have made it his custom to give out decrees to the people from the top of a high hill; I to the story of King 1-Hrollaugr, who rolled himself down from the king’s seat on top of the mound as a symbol of his vassalage to Harald Hárfagr; 2 to the dog-king Eysteinn imposed on the Thronds, that ‘sat on a howe like a king’; 3 and to a fourteenth-century Icelandic tale,
‘The I)ream of Stjærne-Oddr’, in which a place is prepared on a howe for the king to sit on a stool. These, he points out, show that it is from a mound that the king displays his power. The description of Þrymr, king of the giants, sitting on a mound in Jotunheim,4 of King Rerir who receives Frigg’s apple while sitting on a howe,5 and time incident of King Gautrekr who dies his hawk from the mound of his queen in Gautreks Saga6 are also quoted; but the statement in the last passage that the king sat on the howe out of sorrow for his queen’s death is dismissed by him as an imaginary reason introduced to explain so widespread a custom.
This passage does not, however, stand alone; we may also notice that in Hjálmðérs Saga ok Ölvérs we are told that Hjálmðér’s father Yngi ‘had his throne placed on the howe of the queen; there he sat night and day enduring sorrow and grief for her loss’ (II).
Again in Göngu-Hrólfs Saga, though there is no idea of excessive grief, we read:
. . .Jarl Þorgnýr had loved his queen dearly, and her howe was near the palace. The jarl often sat there in fine weather, or when he held conferences or had games played before him (V),
and further on in the saga the Jan is said to be watching sports one day in autumn from his queen’s howe (X). While it is fairly certain
1 Saxo, III, 76, p. 91.
2 Heimskringla: Haralds Saga Hárfagra, VIII.
3 Ibid. Hákons Saga Goða, xii.
4 Þrymskviða, 5.
5 Völsunga Saga, II.
6 Gautreks Saga, VIII.
that the idea of King Gautrekr’s and King Yngi’s grief is something supplied by the saga-teller to explain a prevalent custom—for indeed hunting and sports hardly accord with inconsolable sorrow—the tradition as we have it in the third extract that the Jarl or King made a practice of sitting on the burial mound of his queen, either in private or for public sports, deserves further consideration.
We may notice that it is not always the queen’s howe on which the king is said to sit, but that it may also be the howe of his father, the former king. In Friðþjófs Saga the hero finds the two brother kings, Helgi and Hálfdan, sitting on the mound of their father, King Beli (II). Even more significant are passages in which the practice is directly connected with succession. In Flateyjarbók we read of a boy of twelve, Björn, the son of a king Olaf, who was brought up by his father’s brother, Eric, after his father had been slain.
Eric had no intention of letting his young nephew take over his father’s kingdom, and Björn makes his first protest in a peculiar way:
When Björn was twelve years old, he sat on the howe of his father and did not come to table with the king. Then for the first time he claimed the kingdom. This was repeated the following spring and the third.
(Flateyjarbók: Óláfs Saga Helga, II, 9, p. 70).
Another example of a dispossessed heir who considered he had full claim to half his father’s kingdom is found in the poem on Tue Battle of time Got/is and Huns1 from Hervarars Saga, when Gizurr, foster-father of Heiðrekr, remarks of the illegitimate son Hlöðr: ‘While the prince (Angantýr) divided the inheritance, the base-born son sat on the howe’ (v. 13).
In view of these passages, there may be special significance in two allusions which Olrik dismisses rather summarily. Is it accidental that the apple sent by Frigg, the eating of which by his queen brings them a child, drops into the king’s lap while he sits on a howe?2 And again, that it is while sitting on a howe that the young Helgi, for whom no name can be found, receives one at last?3 The importance attributed to the choosing of the right name is closely connected with rebirth, as we shall see later.
It is perhaps worth noticing that two pieces of evidence for a similar custom connected with inheritance outside Scandinavia are found in the Book of Llandaff:4 In two separate records of grants of
1 Kershaw, Anglo-Saxon and Norse Poems (Cambridge, 1922), p. 152.
2 Völsunga Saga, II.
3 See p. 140 below.
4 For these references I am indebted to Professor Chadwick.
land made over to the church by Welsh kings, it is there recorded that the king in question chose to make his gift while he either sat or lay upon a tomb, in one case that of his father and in the other his grandfather. King Gurcant did so sedens super sepulchrum patris sui et pro anima illius,1 and King Morcant similarly super sepulchrum Mourici regis jacentis coram idoneis testibus.2 This seems to indicate that the same custom lingered on in Wales into Christian times, and that here too the sitting on the tomb of the former ruler is closely connected with the possession of the kingdom, so that the ceremony has to be repeated if part of the land is given up. It will be remembered that the Norse king who gave up his realm to Harald Hárfagr sat on top of a mound and then ‘rolled himself down’ from it.3
But while the idea of succession is one that seems apparent in examining the evidence for this practice, the idea of inspiration which Olrik emphasises is certainly present too;
only I would suggest, and intend to give more reasons for doing so in chapter VI, that here the connection with the dead is at least as important as the connection with a high place. Nor do I see any reason why the evidence restricts us entirely to kings, though the fact that the practice is so widely prevalent among them is undoubtedly of importance in considering the origin of the kingship. There is a story in Flateyjarbók from the Þáttr Þorleifs Jarlaskálds4 that is perhaps relevant here. A shepherd named Hallbjörn used to make it his habit to sit on the howe of the poet Þorleifr, and sometimes lie would sleep on it at night: ‘It often occurred to him that he would like to make a poem in praise of the howe-dweller, and recite it whenever he lay on the howe.’ But since he had no skill as a poet, he did not get very far with his attempts. One night, after an unavailing struggle at poetic composition, he fell asleep, and dreamed that the howe opened, and a man of great size stepped out and climbed up beside him. He thanked Hallbjörn for his efforts on his behalf, and told him that he should not find poetry hard to compose any longer: ‘Now I will recite a verse to you, and if you learn the verse by heart, and can say it when you wake, you will become a great poet.’ We are told that Hallbjörn woke up, and thought he caught sight of his visitor disappearing into the howe. He remembered the verse, and found no more difficulty
1 Liber Landavensis ( W. J. Rhys. Llandovery, 1840), p. 156.
2 Ibid. p. 41.
3 Heimskringla: Háralds Saga Hárfagra, VIII.
4 Óláfs Saga Tryggvasonar, I, 174, p. 214.
in composing his poem, and subsequently, as Þorleifr had promised, he became a great poet. This story forms a striking contrast with Bede’s tale of Caedmon;1 now the gift of poetry, still thought of as something bestowed on the fortunate from outside, comes not from a dweller in heaven, but from a dweller in the earth. Viewed from this angle, it seems altogether natural that in Hallfreðar Saga (VI) we should find Þorleifr Spaki, renowned for his wisdom, sitting on a mound.
It is perhaps worth noticing at this point that several of the Irish stories contain allusions to sitting on an eminence of some kind, occasionally specified as a mound, as a means of entering into communication with the supernatural world. For instance, Muircertach is said to be sitting alone on his hunting mound when the supernatural woman Sin appears beside him.2 It is while he is on Mur Tea in Tara that Cormac is joined by a warrior from the Land of Promise,3 while his father Art is sitting on Ben Etair, bewailing his dead wife—here the likeness to the Norse accounts may be noticed—
when a woman from the Land of Promise joins him;4 and all who journey to and fro from that land throughout the story, it may be noticed, begin by going to Ben Etair. It is on the hill of Usnech, also, that Art’s brother Connla is sitting with his father when a woman from the Land of the Living, who is said at the same time to dwell in a fairy mound, arrives to summon him to Mag Mell.5 From Wales, also, we have the tale of Pwyll Prince of Dyved, from the Mabinogion,6 in which there is mention of a mound on which whosoever sits must either receive blows or behold a wonder; and it is while sitting on this mound that the king perceives his future wife, Rhiannon. It seems likely that these allusions point to a Celtic variant of the Norse traditions we have been studying. An eighteenth-century antiquary, writing on ‘The Ancient Topography of Ireland’,7 also refers to ‘the cairns and tumuli’ where ‘those slept who consulted the manes of their ancestors who were supposed to inform them either by dreams
1 Historia Ecciesiastica Genus Anglorum (Plummer, Oxford, 2896), IV, 22, p. 259.
2 The Death of Muircertach Mac Erca, translated by T. P. Cross and C. H. Slover from the Otia Merseiana (Ancient Irish Tales, Chicago, 1935), p. 518.
3 Ibid. Cormac’s Adventures in the Land of Promise, p. 503.
4 Ibid. Adventures of Art Son of Court, p. 492.
5 Ibid Adventures of Connla the Fair, p 488.
6 Loth, Les Mabinogion (Paris, 1913), 1, pp. 92-97.
7 Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis, Vol. 3, XI: The Ancient Topography of Ireland, W. Beauford, p. 395.
or visions of circumstances relative to the future events of their life’, although unfortunately he does not say where he obtained this information.
The two allusions in Norse which I find most difficult to comprehend, and which are ignored by Olrik, come from the Edda. When Skírnir arrives at the palace of Gerðr,’ there is a ‘shepherd watchman’ sitting on a howe outside. The verse which he speaks is incomplete, but it is a threatening one, defying Skírnir to reach Gerðr through the wall of fire which protects her. He seems to be the ‘loathsome giant’ to whom Skírnir referred before he began his journey, with whom he was to compete in wisdom, and in that case we are faced with the question of the exact connection between him and the other sinister figure in Völuspá (41), again a ‘herdsman of the giantess’, who sits on a mound and strikes his harp, exulting in the ruin of the worlds of gods and men. These figures will be further discussed in the chapter on The Journey to the Land of the Dead, when it will be seen that there are a number of parallels to them elsewhere. Again, are we to attach any deep significance to Ketill’s action in sitting through a wintry storm on the sacred howe of King Framarr, and interpret it as an attempt to tap a rival source of power, or is it merely a typical gesture, like that made by the brothers in Vatnsdæla Saga (XXXIV), of a man who will not be kept back from a duel by such a trifle as bad weather? It is impossible to answer these questions without more information than we at present possess about the significance of this custom.
It is worth noticing, however, that there is archaeological corroboration for the practice of sitting on a howe. A number of Swedish howes of the Migration period are not rounded at the top but flattened to give them an appearance of platforms. This is true for instance of ‘Ingjald’s howe’ at Husby, and of the howes called after Ottar and Thor at Old Uppsala. The platform tops of the two first sloped slightly downwards, like a stage at a theatre. Lindqvist, who has commented on this feature in his article on Ynglingättens Gravskick,2 believes that in some cases stones were set on the tops of the howes, and suggests that these may have been used for seats; he also notes the fact that in many cases howes in Scandinavia and Scandinavian colonies were situated on the sites of the local assemblies or Things, and that flattened howes are among these, although they are not confined to Thing-places. It seems clear from the evidence that
1 Skírnismál, II.
2 Fornvännen, 1921, p. 92 f.
the flat tops of these howes were intended for some public ceremony; for when the howe was particularly high and steep, as in the case of ‘Frey’; howe’ at Old Uppsala, there was no flat place on top, but one at the foot of the howe of about the same size; and sometimes this is marked by a ship formed of stones.
This evidence, taken in conjunction with that given in the literature, is significant, for it shows us that the practice of sitting on a howe was almost certainly known in the Migration period in Sweden. .‘ Ingjald’s howe’ is thought to belong to the seventh century, and some of the other cases are probably of still earlier date. The exact nature of the ceremonies connected with these howes is unknown, although we have obtained certain indications from the literature; but it is clear in any case that the cult of the dead must have been of importance, and that the howe played its part in ceremonies in some cases held in the place of local assembly. It also seems that time practice is not, as might have been expected, confined necessarily to inhumation burials; in the cases mentioned at Old Uppsala amid Husby the howes held burnt remains. We do not know whether the custom originated with cremation or inhumation graves; certainly from the rich literary traditions it would seem that it was at one time familiar in Norway, and connected there with burial of the dead. The fact that ship-forms in stone are found associated with certain of these howes is extremely interesting, although its significance is not clear from the limited evidence we possess.