The Helgi poems in GkS 2365 4to

Lecture by Judy Quinn, Professor Emerita, University of Cambridge

Three poems about an ancient legendary hero called Helgi and a valkyrie are placed at the beginning of the cycle of heroic poems in the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda (GkS 2365 4to). Two of the poems are about Helgi, son of Sigmundr and grandson of Völsungr (Helgakviða Hundingsbana I and Helgakviða Hundingsbana II) but their overlapping storylines are interrupted by a poem about another unrelated Helgi, son of Hjörvarðr (Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar). The prosimetric form of the sequence as it develops offers reincarnation as the explanation for the reiteration of the valkyrie–Helgi pairing. The semantics of the term endrborinn, which occurs four times in the prose of this section of the manuscript, will be discussed in my presentation in the context of the compiler’s manoeuvres to wrangle complex poetic material into a sequence. I will also argue that the poems present a mythologically-inflected model of how legitimate leaders are formed as well as exploring political ideas about dynastic succession.