The Composition of Hildibrandskviða

Abstract The Old Norse stanzas in Ásmundar saga kappabana , sometimes titled Hildibrandskviða , have long been seen as predating their prose framework, owing to archaisms in the orthography and to clear parallels with a poem in Saxo Grammaticus’ Gesta Danorum . Both the saga author and Saxo seem to have reconstructed the story based solely on the poetry—not without misunderstanding its original context at several points, such as the death of Hildibrandr’s son. To explain the many peculiarities of these verses, including the use of Drótt as a personal name, I suggest that Hildibrandskviða was composed during the second half of the twelfth century with a basis in German traditions. This would account for the lack of references to the story in other eddic poems and in the kenning corpus. The poet responsible for this adaptation had reshaped the material into a retrospective poem in accordance with Old Norse practice, dividing it between the speakers—Hildibrandr and his brother Ásmundr—while making their duel the main conflict of the legend. Similarities with Hlǫðskviða indicate that this change was inspired by the rivalry between Hlǫðr and Angantýr. Saxo reworked this fairly recent composition, incorporating additional verses that might be based on a lost passage in the Old Norse poem.