Road To Hel - Rune Web Vitki

44
FUNERAL CUSTOMS
that we are dealing indeed with two versions of the same story. It is thought 1 that Snorri
obtained the part of Ynglinga Saga which includes the story of Haki from the original
Skjöldunga Saga, which is likely to have been composed about 1200. Arngrimr, who recorded
the Latin version, certainly knew this too, as part of his version is taken from it. It
seems at least possible that the two stories have been confused, and the tradition
transferred from one king to the other. This however need not prevent it from being a
genuine tradition all the same, although it might well have resulted from an imaginative
account of the cremation of a king in a ship, and not originally have been the record of
such a ship being set adrift on the sea. However, we are again reminded of the dead chief
sitting upright in his ship in the Vendel grave, and of another account, this time in the
Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, of a dead king floating out to sea. The ship of the dead
Scyld is laden with treasures, and then launched on the sea to float to an unknown
destination, bearing the mysterious king with it: ‘Those who hold office in kings’ halls,
heroes under the heavens, cannot say in truth who received that burden’ (50-52).
There is also a passage in one of the Íslendinga Sögur which might well be a confused
echo of such a tradition as this. At the end of Njáls Saga the valiant old warrior Flosi
goes to Norway to buy timber in the last year of his life. He does not begin the return
voyage to Iceland until rather late in the summer, and as he is leaving, people tell him
that his boat is unseaworthy. But in reply to this
Flosi said it was good enough for a man who was old and had forebodings of death
(feigr); and he went on board and put out to sea; and that ship was never heard of again
(CLIX).
Such traditions might reflect a definite belief in a land of the dead across the sea,
originally the inspiration behind ship-funeral and afterwards forgotten, or again they
might be literary or religious traditions of a different kind. There are other small pieces of
evidence that might be taken into consideration here. Sinfjötli’s dead body is carried off
by a stranger in a boat, who seems to be Othin, in Vol- sunga Saga (x); on one occasion,
though a ship is not used, Othin is said to carry off Hadingus to his house across the sea: 2
and several of the gods are said to have possessed ships: Skiðblaðnir, which could hold
all the gods, is connected sometimes with Freyr and sometimes
1 F. Jónsson, Litt, Hist. II, p. 659; Introduction to Skjöldunga Saga, op. cit. p. 146.
2 Saxo, I, 24, p. 29.