Ríg
Encyclopedia
Poetic Edda
The Poetic Edda is a collection of Old Norse poems primarily preserved in the Icelandic mediaeval manuscript Codex Regius. Along with Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, the Poetic Edda is the most important extant source on Norse mythology and Germanic heroic legends, and from the early 19th century...
in which a Norse
Norsemen
Norsemen is used to refer to the group of people as a whole who spoke what is now called the Old Norse language belonging to the North Germanic branch of Indo-European languages, especially Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Swedish and Danish in their earlier forms.The meaning of Norseman was "people...
god
Deity
A deity is a recognized preternatural or supernatural immortal being, who may be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, and respected by believers....
named Ríg or Rígr , described as "old and wise, mighty and strong" fathers the classes of mankind. The prose introduction states that Rígr is another name for Heimdall
Heimdall
In Norse mythology, Heimdallr is a god who possesses the resounding horn Gjallarhorn, owns the golden-maned horse Gulltoppr, has gold teeth, and is the son of Nine Mothers...
, who is also called the father of mankind in Völuspá
Völuspá
Völuspá is the first and best known poem of the Poetic Edda. It tells the story of the creation of the world and its coming end related by a völva addressing Odin...
.
In Rígsþula, Rig wanders through the world and fathers the progenitors of the three classes of human beings as conceived by the poet. The youngest of these sons inherits the name or title "Ríg" and so in turn does his youngest son, Kon the Young or Kon ungr . This third Ríg was the first true king and the ultimate founder of the state of royalty as appears in the Rígsþula and in two other associated works. In all three sources he is connected with two primordial Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
rulers named Dan and Danþír.
The poem Rígsþula is preserved incomplete on the last surviving sheet in the 14th-century Codex Wormianus, following Snorri Sturluson
Snorri Sturluson
Snorri Sturluson was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was twice elected lawspeaker at the Icelandic parliament, the Althing...
's Prose Edda
Prose Edda
The Prose Edda, also known as the Younger Edda, Snorri's Edda or simply Edda, is an Icelandic collection of four sections interspersed with excerpts from earlier skaldic and Eddic poetry containing tales from Nordic mythology...
. A short prose introduction explains that the god in question was Heimdall
Heimdall
In Norse mythology, Heimdallr is a god who possesses the resounding horn Gjallarhorn, owns the golden-maned horse Gulltoppr, has gold teeth, and is the son of Nine Mothers...
, who wandered along the seashore until he came to a farm where he called himself Ríg. The name Rígr appears to be the oblique case of Old Irish
Old Irish language
Old Irish is the name given to the oldest form of the Goidelic languages for which extensive written texts are extant. It was used from the 6th to the 10th centuries, by which time it had developed into Middle Irish....
rí
Rí
Rí, or very commonly ríg , is an ancient Gaelic word meaning "King". It is used in historical texts referring to the Irish and Scottish kings and those of similar rank. While the modern Irish word is exactly the same, in modern Scottish it is Rìgh, apparently derived from the genitive. The word...
, ríg "king", cognate to Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
rex
King
- Centers of population :* King, Ontario, CanadaIn USA:* King, Indiana* King, North Carolina* King, Lincoln County, Wisconsin* King, Waupaca County, Wisconsin* King County, Washington- Moving-image works :Television:...
, Sanskrit raja
Raja
Raja is an Indian term for a monarch, or princely ruler of the Kshatriya varna...
n. and Gothic
Gothic language
Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
reiks.
The identification of Rígr with Heimdall is supported by his characterization as an ancestor, or kinsman, of humankind in the first two lines of the Eddic poem Völuspá
Völuspá
Völuspá is the first and best known poem of the Poetic Edda. It tells the story of the creation of the world and its coming end related by a völva addressing Odin...
:'
- I ask for a hearing
- of all the holy races
- Greater and lesser
- kinsmen of Heimdall
However, some scholars, including Finnur Jónsson
Finnur Jónsson
Finnur Jónsson was an Icelandic philologist who made extensive contributions to the study of Old Norse literature.Finnur graduated from Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík in 1878 and went to Denmark for further studies at the University of Copenhagen. He received a doctorate in philology in 1884 with a...
and Rudolf Simek
Rudolf Simek
Rudolf Simek is an Austrian Germanist and Philologian.Simek studied German literature, philosophy and Catholic theology in the University of Vienna, before becoming a librarian and a docent at the institution. He taught among others in the universities of Edinburgh, Tromsø and Sydney...
, have suggested this is a role more appropriate to Óðinn and that the Eddic tradition has thus transferred the name Rígr from him to Heimdall. Since Rígsþula is only preserved in a 14th-century manuscript, it is also plausible that the prose introduction was added by the compiler to conform it to the opening of Völuspá.
Synopsis
Farm
A farm is an area of land, or, for aquaculture, lake, river or sea, including various structures, devoted primarily to the practice of producing and managing food , fibres and, increasingly, fuel. It is the basic production facility in food production. Farms may be owned and operated by a single...
-hut owned by Ái (great-grandfather) and Edda (great-grandmother). They offered him shelter and poor, rough food for a meal
Meal
A meal is an instance of eating, specifically one that takes place at a specific time and includes specific, prepared food.Meals occur primarily at homes, restaurants, and cafeterias, but may occur anywhere. Regular meals occur on a daily basis, typically several times a day...
. That night Rígr slept between the pair in their bed and then departed. Nine month
Month
A month is a unit of time, used with calendars, which was first used and invented in Mesopotamia, as a natural period related to the motion of the Moon; month and Moon are cognates. The traditional concept arose with the cycle of moon phases; such months are synodic months and last approximately...
s later, Edda gave birth
Childbirth
Childbirth is the culmination of a human pregnancy or gestation period with the birth of one or more newborn infants from a woman's uterus...
to a son who was svartan (dark). They named him Þræll (thrall
Thrall
Thrall was the term for a serf or unfree servant in Scandinavian culture during the Viking Age.Thralls were the lowest in the social order and usually provided unskilled labor during the Viking era.-Etymology:...
, serf
SERF
A spin exchange relaxation-free magnetometer is a type of magnetometer developed at Princeton University in the early 2000s. SERF magnetometers measure magnetic fields by using lasers to detect the interaction between alkali metal atoms in a vapor and the magnetic field.The name for the technique...
, or slave
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
). Þræll grew up strong but ugly. He married a woman named Thír (slave girl or bondswoman), and they had twelve sons and nine daughters with names mostly suggesting ugliness and squatness. They became the race of serfs.
Traveling further, Rígr came across a pleasant house
House
A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...
where a farmer
Farmer
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...
/craftsman
Artisan
An artisan is a skilled manual worker who makes items that may be functional or strictly decorative, including furniture, clothing, jewellery, household items, and tools...
, Afi (grandfather) lived with his wife Amma (grandmother). This couple gave him good food and also let him sleep between them. Nine months later, a son, Karl (churl
Churl
A churl , in its earliest Old English meaning, was simply "a man", but the word soon came to mean "a non-servile peasant", still spelt ċeorl, and denoting the lowest rank of freemen...
or freeman) was born, whose face and hair were red. Karl married a woman named Snör (daughter-in-law), and they had twelve sons and ten daughters with names mostly suggesting a neat appearance or being of good quality. One of the names is smiðr (smith). These became the ancestors of the lesser farmers and herdsmen.
Traveling further, Rígr came to a mansion
Mansion
A mansion is a very large dwelling house. U.S. real estate brokers define a mansion as a dwelling of over . A traditional European mansion was defined as a house which contained a ballroom and tens of bedrooms...
inhabited by Faðir (Father) and Móðir (Mother). They gave him excellent food served splendidly and, nine months later, Móðir gave birth to a beautiful baby named Jarl (earl or noble), whose hair was blond and who was bleikr (bright white in color). When Jarl grew up and began to handle weapons and to use hawks, hounds, and horses, Rígr reappeared, claimed him as his son, gave him his own name of Rígr, made him his heir, taught him runes, and advised him to seek lordship.
Through warfare Jarl became lord of eighteen homesteads with much wealth besides. He also gained the hand of Erna
Erna
In Norse mythology, Erna was the mother of eleven sons by Jarl, the ancestors of the race of warriors in Norse society. Her father was Hersir, a tribal chief.-References:...
(Brisk), daughter of Hersir (lord). Erna bore eleven sons to Ríg-Jarl but no daughters. All the sons were given high-sounding names, mostly meaning "son." They became the ancestors of the warrior
Warrior
A warrior is a person skilled in combat or warfare, especially within the context of a tribal or clan-based society that recognizes a separate warrior class.-Warrior classes in tribal culture:...
nobility.
The youngest son, named Konr, was the best of them. He alone learned rune-craft as well as other magic and was able to understand the speech of birds, to quench fire, and to heal minds. He also had the strength of eight normal men. His name was Kon the young (Konr ungr in Old Norse), the name and title to be understood as the origin of the Norse word konungr (king) (although this is a false etymology
False etymology
Folk etymology is change in a word or phrase over time resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one. Unanalyzable borrowings from foreign languages, like asparagus, or old compounds such as samblind which have lost their iconic motivation are...
). Konr, like his father, also acquired the name or title of Rígr.
Theories
A marriage by Konr the young into the family of Dan and Danp seems to be where the tale was headed, as seen in the two other sources that mention this Rígr. According to Arngrímur JónssonArngrímur Jónsson
Arngrímur Jónsson the Learned was an Icelandic scholar and an apologist. His father was Jón Jónsson, who died in 1591...
's Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
epitome of the lost Skjöldungasaga:
Ríg (Rigus) was a man not the least among the great ones of his time. He married the daughter of a certain Danp, lord of Danpsted, whose name was Dana; and later, having won the royal title for his province, left as his heir his son by Dana, called Dan or Danum, all of whose subjects were called Danes.
The other tradition appears in chapter 20 of the Ynglinga Saga section of Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla
Heimskringla
Heimskringla is the best known of the Old Norse kings' sagas. It was written in Old Norse in Iceland by the poet and historian Snorri Sturluson ca. 1230...
. The story speaks of King Dygvi of Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
:
Dygvi's mother was Drótt, a daughter of King Danp, the son of Ríg, who was first called konungr in the Danish tongueOld NorseOld Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
. His descendants always afterwards considered the title of konungr the title of highest dignity. Dygvi was the first of his family to be called konungr, for his predecessors had been called dróttinn [chieftain], and their wives dróttning, and their court dróttDrott*Druhtinaz is a Common Germanic term meaning a military leader or warlord and is derived from *druhti "war band" and the "ruler suffix" -īna- *Druhtinaz (Old English: dryhten, Old Norse: dróttinn, Old English-Middle English: drihten, Middle English: driȝten) is a Common Germanic term meaning a...
(war band). Each of their race was called YngviYngviYngvi, Yngvin, Ingwine, Inguin are names that relate to an older theonym Ing and which appears to have been the older name for the god Freyr ....
, or Ynguni, and the whole race together Ynglingar. Queen Drótt was a sister of King Dan Mikillati, from whom DenmarkDenmarkDenmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
took its name.
Despite genealogical discrepancies (to be evaded only by imagining more than one Danp and more than one Dan) the accounts relate a common tradition about the origin of the title konungr (king).
Konr the young, whose magical abilities are so emphasized, is as much a magician as a warrior: a magician king, perhaps a sacred king. Dumézil pointed out that Kon alone represents the supernatural function, represented by the brahman
Brahman
In Hinduism, Brahman is the one supreme, universal Spirit that is the origin and support of the phenomenal universe. Brahman is sometimes referred to as the Absolute or Godhead which is the Divine Ground of all being...
caste
Caste
Caste is an elaborate and complex social system that combines elements of endogamy, occupation, culture, social class, tribal affiliation and political power. It should not be confused with race or social class, e.g. members of different castes in one society may belong to the same race, as in India...
in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, the flamen
Flamen
In ancient Roman religion, a flamen was a priest assigned to one of fifteen deities with official cults during the Roman Republic. The most important three were the flamines maiores , who served the three chief Roman gods of the Archaic Triad. The remaining twelve were the flamines minores...
function in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, the druids in some Celt
Celt
The Celts were a diverse group of tribal societies in Iron Age and Roman-era Europe who spoke Celtic languages.The earliest archaeological culture commonly accepted as Celtic, or rather Proto-Celtic, was the central European Hallstatt culture , named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria....
ic cultures, and the clergy
Clergy
Clergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. A clergyman, churchman or cleric is a member of the clergy, especially one who is a priest, preacher, pastor, or other religious professional....
in the three estates of medieval Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. Instead of the three estates of clergy/priest, warrior, and commoner, with serfs outside the system, the Rígsþula presents three estates or castes in which the clergy/priest class has been subsumed within the warrior class and identified with royalty. Also, although in Rome and India the color white is assigned to the sacred and to priests and red to warriors, here the noble warrior is white in color while the red coloration is ascribed instead to the commoner in place of the green, blue, or yellow color assigned to the lower classes in other cultures associated with Proto-Indo-European society
Proto-Indo-European society
Proto-Indo-European refers to the single ancestor language common to all Indo-European languages. It is therefore a linguistic concept, not an ethnic, social or cultural one, so there is no direct evidence of the nature of Proto-Indo-European 'society'. Much depends on the unsettled Indo-European...
. Dumézil saw this as a Germanic adaptation of the Indo-European heritage.
Jean Young and Ursula Dronke
Ursula Dronke
Ursula Dronke is a medievalist and former Reader in Old Norse at the University of Oxford. She is the Emeritus Vigfússon Reader in Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities and an Emeritus Fellow of Linacre College. She also formerly taught in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages at...
, among others, have suggested that the Rígsþula story is Celtic in origin and that the name Rígr is an indication of this.
Sources
- Frederic Amory, "The Historical Worth of Rígsþula," Alvíssmál 10 (2001) 3–20 (pdf)
External links
- Rígsþula in Old Norse and Henry Adams BellowsHenry Adams BellowsHenry Adams Bellows was a lawyer, state legislator, and jurist born in Rockingham, Vermont. He was elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives from Littleton, New Hampshire in 1839. He was subsequently elected again to the House from Concord, New Hampshire in 1856–1857, and served as...
' translation at voluspa.org