Eating Hearts and Biting Noses

• Old Norse
• masculinity
• gendered violence
• Hrólfs saga kraka

Many of the most brutal and graphic depictions of violence against women in the Old Norse corpus are found in the fornaldarsögur, and Hrólfs saga kraka contains some of the most extreme examples. Each woman in Helgi’s triptych of sexual conquests can be read as a victim of sexual violence, and the saga’s final battle alludes to “ýmisligum píningum” (Hrolfs saga kraka 1950, 105) [various tortures] to which the sorceress Skuld will be subjected.¹ The saga is spattered with the blood and tears of women. Carl Phelpstead lists the saga’s array of sexual behaviors as follows: “marriage, cross-dressing, abduction and rape, incest, fornication, male impotence, attempted adultery, bestiality and chastity” (Phelpstead 2003, 11). Amid this catalogue is a short episode in which Hjalti, formerly known as Höttr, bites off the nose of his “frilla” [mistress]. This article focuses on how the meek, cowardly character of Höttr is transformed by the hypermasculine environment of King Hrólfr’s hall and becomes a brutish man capable of such a visceral, misogynistic attack on his lover.

Although the oldest of the thirty-eight manuscripts in which the saga can be found is dated only to the early seventeenth century, the matter of Hrólfs saga kraka is much older: a copy is listed, for instance, as part of a collection in the Icelandic cloister at Möðruvellir in 1461. ármann Jakobsson proposes “that narratives about Hrólfr kraki were certainly in vogue in the early thirteenth century” and that the saga was likely “originally composed no later than the fourteenth or fifteenth century” (ármann Jakobsson 1999, 140). Usually categorized as one of the fornaldarsögur, Hrólfs saga kraka is slippery when it comes to genre, with chivalric ideals intermingling with the heroic. In terms of scholarship, the strand about Böðvarr bjarki has particularly attracted attention, in no small part because of its inclusion of the “bear’s son” folk motif, which has led to it being interpreted as an analogue for Beowulf. Despite the attention paid to Böðvarr, scholarship about this saga “has not paid much attention to Höttr” (Correa Reyes 2016, 20), even though Höttr plays a pivotal role in Böðvarr’s narrative strand. The most comprehensive study has been undertaken by Jens Peter Schjødt, who makes Höttr his primary case study in his work on warrior initiation rites. Schjødt proposes that Höttr’s transformation into Hjalti is an example of a pattern of rebirth via initiation that can be seen elsewhere in world literature and can be linked to “en form for rituel praksis med rødder i hedensk tid” (Schjødt 2000, 39) [a form of ritual practice with roots in heathen times]. However, Hjalti has not yet been thoroughly examined as an example of transformative masculine power in line with more recent studies on gender and the dynamics of masculine hegemonies in Old Norse literature.

By closely examining this largely overlooked character in Hrólfs saga kraka and the emotional and physical changes that affect him and culminate in his brutal mutilation of his mistress, we can develop an understanding of the psyche of this character. This character’s importance to the saga’s narrative is pronounced: he is Böðvarr’s personal project, and the Böðvarr strand ends with Höttr being renamed Hjalti. Hjalti’s actions are actively (and accidentally) detrimental to the outcome of the final battle, which brings the deaths of King Hrólfr and all his champions, including Böðvarr and Hjalti himself. To delve into his character and understand why he evolves as he does, and thus why he affects the narrative so heavily, is in line with other studies of Icelandic heroes and heroines. Scholars have delved deep into the psyches of Njáll, Egill, Grettir, Guðrún ósvífrsdóttir, and Guðrún Gjúkadóttir. Although Höttr/Hjalti is merely a secondary character in Hrólfs saga kraka, he is rendered with so many complex facets that a full analysis is justifiable, especially amid the continuing movements in Old Norse scholarship toward a more comprehensive understanding of masculinity, especially masculine hegemony, in the sagas.

Mapping the transformation from coward to konungsman, from social dereliction to social superiority, from Höttr to Hjalti, this article focuses primarily on the representation of Höttr/Hjalti in Hrólfs saga kraka. The adventures of Böðvarr-Bjarki and Hjalti appear elsewhere in the corpus: Bjarkarímur, anonymous rímur that were probably composed “later than the fifteenth-century Hrólfs saga kraka” (Osborn and Mitchell 2007, 71); Saxo Grammaticus’s account of “Biarco” in the twelfth-century Gesta Danorum; and Bjarkamál in fornu, which now exists only in fragments as well as Saxo’s adaptation of it into Latin hexameters.² As is so often the case with medieval literature, it is very difficult to detect sources or gauge which iterations of the material the writers of these various versions were aware of, and it goes beyond the scope of this article to address these issues. The role of these other texts here is merely to enrich understandings of Höttr/Hjalti in the saga.

Böðvarr first encounters Höttr in a pile of bones at Hrólfr kraki’s court in Hleiðargarðr, and Höttr’s identity is largely based around the skeletal habitation he has constructed. The word used for this is “beinahrúga” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 62–4) [bone pile], which has the trademarks of a kenning denoting a “body,” as best exemplified by Old English kennings that use the base cognate word “bān” [bone]: “bānloca” [bone enclosure], “bānhūs” [bone house], “bāncofa” [bone cage], all denoting “body” (Beowulf 2008, ll. 742; 818; 1445; 2508; 3147). The basic kenning composition here of Old English “bān” and a word indicating a dwelling or enclosed space can certainly be aligned with “beinahrúga,” especially as it is Höttr’s physical abode. “Bein” occasionally appears in compound words in the Old Norse corpus to denote a physical body or corpse. In Gibbons saga, the word “beinalag” [laying of bones] is used as a metaphor for physical stature (Gibbons saga 1960, 94); “beinagrind” [bone enclosure/frame] still exists in modern Icelandic and Faroese, meaning “skeleton.” Scholars have made numerous attempts to categorize types of kennings, and “beinahrúga” could perceivably fall into Edith Marold’s tropic kennings, residing somewhere along the boundaries of the “metaphoric” or the “synecdochic” (Marold 1983, 37–66). Roberta Frank, however, has identified the problems lurking in these systems and the elusive nature of the nomenclature (Frank 1987, 372). Indeed, “beinahrúga” in the sense that I am suggesting (i.e. as a metaphor for Höttr himself) does not lie comfortably under any of these headings. Frederic Amory has pointed out the broadness and intangibility of categorizing kennings: “the pragmatics of metaphor terminates in the uncertainties of private psychology but the systematics of kennings continues to be accessible to wider investigation” (Völsunga saga 1998, 99). Although there is little evidence to support “beinahrúga” as an established kenning apposite with the far more concrete Old English examples, it is nonetheless possible to interpret the bone pile as metaphorical for Höttr, especially because in Bjarkarímur, he is given the epithet bein-Hjalti—“beina-Hjalta” (Bjarkarímur 1904, V, 141) [bone-Hjalti]. He is thus viewed as innately linked to his pile of bones. When Böðvarr ridicules the bone pile, Höttr’s verbal defense can be read as a defense of himself: after all, he is responding to the claim that both he and his bone pile are pathetic, and thus they are cast in the same terms. Destruction of his bone pile is tantamount to destruction of himself, as he assumes Böðvarr will kill him as soon as he has broken the bone pile.

Höttr’s alignment with the pile of bones reveals more of his inner psyche when we examine the dichotomous nomenclature attributed to the pile by the narrator and Höttr: to the narrator it is “beinahrúga”; to Höttr it is “skjaldborg” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 63) [shield wall/fortification]. Now popularized in the vast arrays of Viking depictions in modern media, “shield wall” has virtually become a metonym for battle-savvy Vikings, a bastion of their modes of attack and defense. The historical veracity of these tactics is now subject to some doubt; Rolf Warming’s archeological findings, for instance, have led him to conclude that “Den mytiske skjoldmur har altså intet grundlag i hverken litteraturen eller i praktisk anvendelse” (Uhrenholt Kusnitzoff 2017) [The mythical shield wall has no basis either in literature or in practical usage]. However, there are numerous attestations in the sagas to such military tactics; the skjaldborg is referenced in Egils saga Skalla-grímssonar (1933, 53) and Ynglinga saga (1941, 43). The use of the skjaldborg tactic even appears later in Hrólfs saga kraka, clearly used in the throes of battle as King Hrólfr emerges from behind it before dying in battle with his champions: “Hrólfr komst ór skjaldborginni ok var svá sem fallinn af mæði” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 105) [Hrólfr came out from behind the shield wall and was as though dead from exhaustion]. In the world of Hrólfs saga kraka then, the shield wall is an established battle tactic, and it is therefore to this that Höttr most likely refers, although elsewhere in the corpus the skjaldborg appears as a perimeter for a haven not unlike Höttr’s. In Völsunga saga Sigurðr finds Brynhildr in a skjaldborg (190, 157). This seems a fitting enclosure for the “valkyrja” given her associations with battle (she is clad in armor within the shield wall)—and thus seems to designate the inhabitant as battle-bold.

With his insistent designation of his beinahrúga as a skjaldborg, Höttr encodes his bone pile in the language not of bleak reality but of battle and valor. However, an emotional quaver is detectable when Höttr says, “en ekki var hún enn svá búin sem ek ætlaða hún skyldi verða” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 63) [but it was not yet built as I intended it to be]. He wants to be a gallant, accepted warrior, capable of using the battle tactics involved in a shield wall, or perhaps to be so strongly associated with the clash of battle as to inhabit a shield wall, like Brynhildr. He simply cannot, however, shake the reality that he is trembling and cowardly; like the bone pile, he is not as he had intended to be. The conflicting perceptions of psyche identifiable in Höttr only intensify when he transforms into Hjalti.

Höttr’s desire for glory is evident from the fact that he remains in the hall in the face of considerable antagonism and the threat of death from the heavy bones the retainers throw at him. Indeed, for him to have brought himself to Hrólfr’s hall indicates an ill-fated attempt to attain honor along the benches. Höttr chooses to remain in the hall, however far out he must sit. His conceptualization of the bone pile as a shield wall is evidence of his tenacity as well as his delusions: he cannot will the bone pile to become a bold fortification worthy of a warrior but is forced to remain imprisoned by his fear, his physical frailty, and his obstinate desire for glory,

Höttr’s delusions of valor are alluded to in Böðvarr’s encounter with Höttr’s parents. According to his mother:

Ok einn dag fór hann til borgarinnar at skemmta sér, en þeir glettust við hann konungsmenninir, ok þat stóðst hann illa. Síðan tóku þeir hann ok settu í beina sorp. (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 61–2)

(And one day he went to the fortress to entertain himself, but the king’s men mocked him and he could not withstand it. Then they took him and set him in the bone remnants.)

“Skemmta sér” means to “amuse/entertain oneself,” and it seems that Höttr’s plan to go to Hleiðargarðr is frivolous, in his mother’s opinion. He appears to have inadvertently found himself in this dangerous masculine environment in his guileless mission to entertain himself. It is important that his mother renders Höttr the object of the actions of the konungsmenn, as evinced by James Ralston Caldwell: “Notable in [the saga] is the fact that according to the goodwife, the King’s men set Höttr in the bone heap, contradicting the later account Bjarkarímur, according to which the heap is a rampart built by Höttr for his own protection” (Caldwell 1940, 234). This may be a natural oversimplification by Höttr’s mother. It would be a reasonable deduction to assume that her son’s tormentors would be the ones to build the prison and place him in it. Taking her at her word, Höttr may once again be deluding himself, mentally rendering himself the architect of his skjaldborg to try to psychologically withdraw himself from victimhood. The original builder of the beinahrúga is unimportant in this regard, as it is Höttr’s perception of his circumstance that is of interest.

Höttr’s father is greatly impressed by Böðvarr’s visible strength and physicality, and he does not mention that his only child is in Hleiðargarðr, Böðvarr’s destination. This could indicate that he feels some level of shame or unwillingness to speak of Höttr’s cowardice, and he does not verbally contribute to his wife’s account of their son’s misfortune. Given the value his father places on strength and the great champions found at Hrólfr’s court, a reader might assume that Höttr probably had aspirations to pursue this greatness and succeed socially but was hampered by a naïveté that would bring about his confinement. Höttr’s parents are perhaps aware of their son’s fate through hearsay; it is also possible that one of them (most likely the father) had at some point observed the “hnútukast” [bone throwing] at Hleiðargarðr and did not have either the power or the will to rectify the situation. Hrólfr also expresses dismay at the shameful act of throwing bones, and it can easily be imagined that Höttr could escape or be freed quite easily, but he refuses to; his determination to remain in the hall, however far out, eclipses any desire he might have to flee from his attackers.

Vital to the consideration of Höttr’s predicament is the hegemonic masculine environment of the hall. Masculinities, as described by Gareth Lloyd Evans, are “not to be viewed as static roles”; rather, “an individual’s masculinity is always formed in relation to the hegemonic ideal, [and] an individual’s relationship to the hegemonic is situationally specific, as is the masculinity that is produced for each situation and for any given point in time” (Evans 2019, 19). The attitude of Höttr’s father indicates the values of the society as depicted in the saga, which emphasize heroic masculinity, as well as bullying and subordination. The hnútukast of the hirðmenn [retainers] is a prandial custom so important to them that it warrants going against their king’s orders. This model of masculinity places Höttr on the lowest rungs of the social ladder. Deluded determination to reside in the hall, whatever the cost to his well-being and pride, is symptomatic of this environment of the konungsmenn, where weakness is to be buried, but social acceptance and strength are to be desired. The “disruptive force” of Böðvarr to the “established order in the court . . . [challenges] a reality in which it was admissible to bully Hǫttr” (Correa Reyes 2016, 21), and this destabilization of the status quo permits Böðvarr to forcibly transform Höttr. But newfound super-strength in the hands of someone who has been bullied all his life results in the creation of a new kind of beast. Höttr’s forced and unnatural transformation into an acceptable model of masculinity is at odds with his natural psychological and emotional development, thus creating a hypermasculine figure capable of violently biting off a woman’s nose.

There are two pivotal events in the character’s narrative trajectory that precipitate the transition from Höttr to Hjalti: first, the consumption of the dýrshjarta [beast’s heart]; shortly after that, his renaming. I begin by addressing the consumption of the heart.

Eating the body parts of inhuman or quasi-human creatures is a recurring motif in the Böðvarr strand of Hrólfs saga kraka. Björn predicts his sons will have blemishes if their mother, Bera, consumes any bear meat: “á þeim mun þat sjá, ef þú etr af dýrsslátrinu” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 49) [it will be visible upon them, if you eat any of the beast’s meat]. The bear in question is Björn himself, cursed to inhabit this beastly form by the evil Queen Hvít, and he predicts that he is shortly going to be killed as a result. Bera, pregnant at the time, finds herself unable to resist Hvít’s coercive tactics and does indeed end up eating two morsels of the bear meat. As a consequence, two out of three of her sons are somewhat other than human with the eldest, Elg-Fróði, having the appearance of an elk below the navel, and the second son, þórir, having a hound’s feet. Böðvarr is the strongest of the three, and although he has no visible supernatural qualities—“var honum ekki neitt til lýta” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 51) [upon him was no blemish]—he certainly seems to possess a degree of magic, appearing to control or inhabit a projection of a bear while asleep in the final battle.³ The consumption of meat in Bjarkarímur plays out differently, and emphasizes Bǫðvarr’s bear-like qualities. In the rímur, the children are not disfigured at birth, but the queen sends the bear bones to them. Upon consuming some, the children gain their cervine, canine and ursine qualities, respectively. As Bǫðvarr only touches a drop of the bones’ juice, he gets only ‘bjarnar nǫgl’ (Bjarkarímur 1904, II, 123) [bear claws] rather than the more extreme disfigurements of his brothers.

In both saga and rímur, Böðvarr consumes the blood of a “beast”: that of his eldest brother, Elg-Fróði, which appears to give him even more strength. The effect of this libation is greatly diminished in Böðvarr when compared with Höttr’s consumption of beastly matter. Böðvarr has so far been demonstrably strong, courageous, and willful, showing not only cunning but also humility; most differently from Höttr, he is only too eager to annihilate those who have wronged him and his family, with the fate of Queen Hvít a searing example of the extent of his wrath. Indeed, Böðvarr is already such a paragon of drengskapr [manliness] that Elg-Fróði’s bodily tribute only presents minor improvement, but improvement nonetheless, as Jens Peter Schødt points out: “he drinks the blood of a being who is stronger than himself and in this way increases his strength” (Schjødt 2003, 273). But because Böðvarr is already strong, the change is less pronounced than Höttr’s transformation. Höttr becomes instantly unrecognizable from the moment he consumes the beast’s blood and meat. James Frazer has dubbed this the “homeopathic diet,” in which the “strength, valor, intelligence, and other virtues of slain are believed to be imparted to the eaters” (Frazer 1922, 497). This motif occurs most famously in Völsunga saga when Sigurðr gains the ability to understand the speech of birds after tasting some blood from the dragon Fáfnir’s heart. He learns of Reginn’s treachery from the chattering igður [nuthatches] sitting in the tree above him:

þar sitr Sigurðr ok steikir Fáfnis hjarta. þat skyldi hann sjálfr eta. þá mundi hann verða hverjum manni vitrari. (Völsunga saga 1950, 155)

(There Sigurðr sits, and roasts Fáfnir’s heart. He should eat it himself. Then he would become wiser than any other man.)

Reginn had planned on consuming Fáfnir’s heart himself and benefiting from its qualities. Following the advice of the birds, Sigurðr proceeds to eat some of it and benefit further. Böðvarr similarly forces Höttr both to drink the blood and eat some of the beast’s heart. Previously, scholars have been content to believe that the dýr [beast] is a combination of a dragon (due to its wings) and a tröll (Olson 1916, 27). However, the nature of the beast is not so easily categorized. Much like Grendel, to whom the Norse beast has so often been likened for its attacks on halls, the dýr is too sparingly described to illustrate precise knowledge of its appearance, and while Höttr does announce that “þat er ekki dýr, heldr er þat mesta tröll” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 66) [It is no beast, rather it is the worst of trolls], the creature is referred to exclusively as dýr for the rest of the episode. Jesse Byock attests that “trǫll” designates a “variety of harmful supernatural creatures, including fiends, ghosts, witches and giants” (Byock 1998, 82), and further notes that the same phrase “mesta tröll” [Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 66] [“worst of trolls”] is used earlier of Queen Hvít (“drottning þessi er it mesta tröll” [Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 49] [this queen is the worst of trolls]), who is ostensibly human but practices magic, thus indicating a wide semantic conceptualizing of “tröll” in the saga (Byock 1998, 84). In his more recent study of the Old Norse word tröll, ármann Jakobsson encourages readers to “refrain from imagining that they know precisely what a troll is” (ármann Jakobsson 2017, 18). ármann explains that unlike more recent, modern taxonomies of the tröll, “in a thirteenth-century narrative a troll has no such clear identity, not even within the human psyche. Trolls do not constitute a race or a species. The first step when considering the troll sighted on the ridge is to avoid the idea of a clearly demarcated group” (ármann Jakobsson 2017, 18). It is only possible to identify the dýr as a harmful winged creature, given this wide semantic range of tröll.

It may be tempting to suggest that, given his violent tendencies following the consumption, Höttr receives evil qualities from the beast. However, the transmission of qualities via consumption is hardly so linear: it can affect anything from physical form to magical abilities to temperament. In Hyndluljóð, “by eating the half-roasted heart of an evil woman [Loki] absorbs her wickedness and gives birth to terrifying monsters” (Hyndluljóð in Edda 2014, 467; Maraschi 2020, 20). In Hrólfs saga kraka, the three brothers are given their animal names after they have been born with their deformities: “Hundsfætr váru á honum frá rist, ok því var hann kallaðr þórir hundsfótr” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 51) [he had a hound’s feet from his insteps, and for this he was called þórir Hounds-Foot]. In the rímur, they are given these names—“Fróða elg og þóri hund” (Bjarkarímur 1904, II, 121) [Fróði Elk and þórir Hound]—before gaining these qualities, implying a kind of nominative determinism. In Völsunga saga, Sigurðr gains wisdom and the speech of birds from the dragon’s heart; but when he gives it to Guðrún to eat, “síðan var hún miklu grimmari en áðr ok vitrari” (Völsunga saga 1950, 174) [afterwards she was much grimmer than before and wiser). It is implied that the attainment of qualities varies depending not just on the blood or meat of the eaten creature, but a range of other variables, such as the name or nature of the eater. Oscar Ludvig Olson suggests that “it is never the intention that one who eats the heart of a dragon or drinks an animal’s blood shall acquire all the characteristics of the animal” (Olson 1916, 28). Indeed, it seems to vary case by case, as noted by other examples of “sympathetic absorption of powers” (Maraschi 2020, 19). Höttr is not said to gain any power other than strength from the dýr—“Helzt ertu nú sterkr orðinn” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 67) [You have now become exceedingly strong]—and it is hard to tell whether Höttr gains courage from the beast or whether this is merely a by-product of his new strength. Olson points out that in Bjarkarímur, in which the dýr is a wolf, when Hjalti “had drunk of the blood of the wolf, he became not as strong as a wolf, but ‘as strong as a troll’” (Olson 1916, 28):

raunmjǫg sterkr og ramr sem trǫll,

rifnuðu af honum klæðin ǫll. (Bjarkarímur 1904, IV, 140)

(exceptionally strong and mighty as a troll,

all his clothes were rent from him.)

Like the saga, Bjarkarímur certainly emphasizes the acquisition of strength and nothing else: there is no suggestion of lupine transference. I see no reason to suggest that in the saga, Höttr’s subsequent bravery (and arrogance) come from the beast heart. Rather, they are better seen as psychological developments stemming from the transition of someone bullied for his physical weakness into someone “helzt sterkr” [exceedingly strong]: “the meat of a formidable creature transforms Höttr into a formidable warrior in his own right” (Hui 2018, 477). Indeed, the forced consumption of the heart means that Höttr forgoes any ordinary rites of passage, training, and development involved in forming a typical champion, thus circumventing not only physical but mental cultivation, which results in the overcompensation and the hypermasculinity he goes on to display.

Höttr’s renaming into Hjalti is equally significant to the character’s transformation, and here it is pertinent to apply Carol Clover’s hypothesis, which is “borne out in saga narratives that contrast the Old Norse term hvatr (vigorous or manly), used most often in reference to men, with the term blauðr (weak or cowardly), which often refers to women” (Clover 1993; Raffield 2019, 820). Höttr can be seen as representing the feminine position of blauðr, while Hjalti represents hvatr, and thus the two manifestations of the character represent a social binary in the masculine hegemonic model of the hall as Böðvarr first finds it. Although such binaries do not always apply within all saga narratives, it is quite convincing in the case of Höttr and Hjalti. Böðvarr at one point calls Höttr “bikkjuna” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 66) [the bitch], with bikkja literally meaning a female dog as well as being an insulting term, much like in modern English. Hrólfr’s renaming of Höttr is perfunctory, dramatically speaking, allowing a reader or listener of the tale to view Höttr and Hjalti as distinct from each other. Yet the names are similar enough, being alliterative and bisyllabic, that they are not divorced from each other: they are two sides of the same coin. Their respective names, meaning “hood” and “hilt,” can even be seen as binaries of accoutrements: one is soft and designed to conceal, the other is hard and designed for battle. While Höttr and Hjalti do have binary qualities—strength and weakness, hvatr and blauðr, acceptance and rejection—they are not independent of each other. They both appear to long for acceptance in the masculine hegemony, for power and glory, and they are loyal to their king and to Böðvarr. They are not polar opposites: they are the same person at opposite ends of the social spectrum.

King Hrólfr decides to bequeath him a new name after the faux slaying of the beast, the corpse of which is hoisted up and made to look alive again by Böðvarr and Höttr “at aðrir ætli kvikt muni vera” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 67) [so that everyone else will think it is alive], so that Höttr can pretend to kill it and win the glory of the feat. Böðvarr is the architect of this escapade, as Hrólfr quickly realizes. Given the deceit of the glorious deed, it seems that rather than a badge of honor, the king’s decision to rename Höttr first to “Hjalti” and then to “Hjalti inn hugprúði,” [Hjalti the magnanimous] is in fact riddled with irony. Indeed, Schjødt notes that the renaming decision is somewhat illogical: “Det er indlysende, at den i hvert fald på ét punkt forekommer underlig ulogisk; at dræbe et dyr, der i forvejen var dødt, burde ikke kunne overbevise kongen om Høts mod” (Schjødt 2000, 40) [It is obvious that at least on one point it appears strangely illogical: that killing an animal that was already dead should not convince the king of Höttr’s courage]. Although Hrólfr proclaims that “þetta sverð er ekki beranda nema þeim manni, sem bæði er góðr drengr ok hraustr” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 68) [This sword is not to be carried except by he who is both a good and brave drengr], Höttr’s success in grasping the sword is not ample evidence to assume that he fits this description since he only uses it to hack at an already dead beast, of which Hrólfr is well aware. Hrólfr could even be seen to be humoring Höttr by giving him the sword, and mocking him by going as far as to rename him after it. Pretending to kill a beast slain by someone else is hardly a feat worthy of a “góðr drengr” [good drengr]. Drengr denotes not only strength but “notions of ‘honor’ and ‘uprightness’” (Goetting 2006, 401) or, as Jackson Crawford has joked, “badass,” that is, “someone recklessly courageous, someone who doesn’t back down from a fight, but also someone who probably has somewhat of a sense of sportsmanship and fair play” (Crawford 2017). Had Höttr wanted to prove his valor, perhaps he ought to have refused Böðvarr’s offer to redeem his reputation via trickery and found a real beast to slay himself. Schjødt also finds the absence of an actual kill notable and suggests that it detracts somewhat from the veracity and completeness of the overall initiation process: “fortællingen ville have haft et langt mere realistisk scenarie, hvis Høt efter at have indtaget blod og hjerte, havde dræbt en mand eller i det mindste en levende bjørn” (Schjødt 2000, 43) [the story would have had a much more realistic scenario, if Høt, after consuming blood or heart, had killed a man or at least a live bear].⁴ Indeed, this is precisely what happens in Bjarkarímur: after Bǫðvar kills the she-wolf, Hjalti kills a bear (Bjarkarímur 1904, V). The rímur Hjalti thus makes a more genuine transition from humble to hero by proving himself, whereas the saga Hjalti is renamed on the basis of a charade.

After his transformation, Hjalti becomes a respected member of Hrólfr’s retinue, but his role in the saga becomes peripheral until his rousing battle speech, a prominent part of Bjarkamál in fornu. Aside from sending a man to the stables to discover the maimed horses, Hjlati’s only other significant act stands out as one of the most horrific instances of violence against women in the whole Old Norse corpus. For Phelpstead, “the masculine world of Hrólfs saga, in which a king is surrounded by a company of male warriors and in which a friendship like that between Bǫðvarr-Bjarki and Hjalti thrives, is a kind that is typically maintained by misogyny,” and the episode in which Hjalti attacks his frilla [mistress] exemplifies this (Phelpstead 2003, 16). Hjalti asks his mistress whether she would prefer two men aged twenty-two or one man aged eighty, and when she replies with the former, he bites off her nose:

“þessara orða skaltu gjalda,” sagði Hjalti, “þín hóra,” ok gekk at henni ok beit af henni nefit. “Kenndu mér um, ef nokkurir fljúgast á um þik, ok vænti ek, at flestum þykki lítil gersemi at þér upp frá þessu.” “Illa gerðir þú til mín ok ómakliga,” sagði hún. “Ekki verðr við öllu sét,” sagði Hjalti. (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 96)

(“You shall pay for these words,” said Hjalti, “you whore.” And he went at her and bit off her nose. “You may blame me, if anyone fights over you, but I expect that most will hardly think you a precious jewel from this moment on.” “You behave horribly towards me and I don’t deserve it,” she said. “Everyone can be fooled by scheming,” said Hjalti.)

The nose biting is shocking, disturbing, and as the frilla quite rightly says to Hjalti, it is done entirely “ómakliga” [undeservingly]. The significance of rhinal mutilation has not gone unnoticed among medieval scholars: it is a common motif of folktales and has been seen as “a gendered punishment of the powerless by the powerful” (Skinner 2014, 45).⁵ The removal of a woman’s nose has often been linked to sexual misconduct, and the Hjalti episode is particularly reminiscent of Marie de France’s Bisclavret, in which the eponymous character bites off his wife’s nose in court:⁶

Oiez cum il est bien vengiez:

Le neis li esracha del vis! (Bisclavret 1983, 68)

(Hear how well he venged himself

He ripped the nose from her face!)

Leslie Dunton-Downer has neatly summarized scholarly explanations for the implications of this horrific incident in Bisclavret:

1. Freudian-Lacanian psycho-sexual readings “designate the nose a female phallus (a sign of the wife’s excessive lust and her effort to dominate her husband)”;

2. Historical approaches unveil evidence of the “contemporary practice of punishing adulteresses by cutting off their noses”;

3. Absence of a nose may be a physical indicator of leprosy, and lepers were often aligned with “lascivious marginals” (Dunton-Downer 2015, 208–19).

These points can be seen as rationales for Hjalti’s particularly targeted attack of his mistresses nose: (1) he feels sexually threatened by the fact she is already thinking of the men she will encounter after him (this is particularly evident in Saxo’s account); (2) if he views her as his own mistress, he may consider any other lovers she has, even after his death, as evidence of adultery; (3) he wants to make her entirely undesirable in a way that makes her socially stigmatized and that connotes sexual deviance. Bisclavret is a werewolf and inhabits the liminality of beast and man; Hjalti’s violent outburst is certainly similarly animalistic. After all, he arms himself immediately after the incident, and therefore could have cut her nose off with a weapon (as he appears to do in Saxo’s version); it is an act of bodily depravity to opt for his teeth. There is a deranged intimacy to it, as well as animalistic overtures. “With the sword men keep women in check. With it they tame the shrew,” says Helga Kress (2002, 89), but with his teeth, Hjalti brutalizes the woman. In the masculine hegemony, one must wonder what the other hirðmenn would make of the mistress’s rhinectomy; in Bisclavret, the men of the court first consider the act to be a ferocious, beastly attack, then quickly decide that there must be reason for it and therefore that Bisclavret himself is a reasonable creature. Would the men, the instigators of the hnútukast, approve?

Carolyne Larrington states that, “Saga texts chart, to varying degrees, a transition from a partly-imagined warrior culture to an agricultural and civil society [. . .] the traits to which the adolescent male aspires in the earlier viking era have changed; the old type of masculinity is now coded as anti-social” (Larrington 2008, 153). Hrólfs saga kraka is an especially generically amorphous saga. ármann Jakobsson has referred to it metaphorically as a “kolbítur, an ugly duckling” (Ármann Jakobsson 1999, 139), and the disruptive force of Böðvarr eases fornaldarsaga into riddarasaga: “He is a more chivalric warrior, and the court resembles a “Scandinavian Camelot” after his arrival, before which the “vulgar berserks” had been like “relics of the past” (Ármann Jakobsson 1999, 149). Hjalti, however, is no better (and arguably far worse) than the savage champions who were wont to throw knuckle-bones at him. His forced transformation does not complement the generic transition; he evolved unnaturally and finds himself a “relic of the past,” still tied to the now obsolete hegemonic model of masculinity that “legitimized and fueled expressions of power and competitive behavior” (Raffield 2019, 819) which has now shifted somewhat into a newer, less “troll-like” model (Ármann Jakobsson 1999, 148). He appears unable to evolve from the moment he consumed the heart and remains “vulgar” while the other hirðmenn have progressed to chivalry. His violence toward the frilla is reminiscent of “berserksgangr” [berserkr-fury]; berserkir also inhabit the liminality of animal-human states, much like Bisclavret. Nordberg and Wallenstein note that “the function of the berserkersgangr can be described as twofold: a method of dehumanization and moral distancing on the individual level and one of psychological warfare and terror on the collective level” (Nordberg and Wallenstein 2016, 58). Hjalti’s fellow retainers have transitioned to more courtly behavior, yet he remains dehumanized and capable of the moral distancing that enabled the hirðmenn to bully him in the first place. Hjalti’s resilience to what surely must have been a grisly scene compounded with the physical exertion it must take to bite another person’s nose off—even if one does have superhuman strength—is quite confounding. The act of chomping through cartilage and the pitiful response of the frilla do not faze him in the slightest. He deals her one last blow by reminding her of her status in adding that she will hardly be considered a precious jewel from then on, which is “revealing of the way in which women are objectified as male possessions” (Phelpstead 2003, 20).

Tom Shippey has commented on the difficulty of understanding the emotions conveyed by Hjalti’s outlandish reaction to his mistress’s response: “what are they: resentment, jealousy, even despair?” (Shippey 2018, 51). He turns to Hjalti’s speech in Bjarkamál in fornu and attributes his cruelty to his bitter sentiments over the fact he is obliged to fight and lose his life, compared with the men who do not face the hard clang of battle, as well as the women who the men will be able to find comfort in when he is dead and gone:

vekka yðr at víni né at vífs rúnum,

heldr vekk yðr at hǫrðum Hildar leiki. (Bjarkamál in fornu 2017, 498)

(I wake you not to wine, nor to the whispers of women,

Rather I wake you to Hild’s hard play.)

David Ashurst analyses these lines in Bjarkamál as an example of “the warrior’s rueful, bordering on contemptuous, juxtaposition of the hard manly work of warfare and the soft pleasures of sex,” further identifying “the warrior’s contempt for sex” as widespread in Old Norse and many languages and cultures (2020, 183, 184). This sentiment in Bjarkamál is comparable to Hjalti’s declaration to King Hrólfr in the saga: “Vakið, herra konungr, því at ófriðr er í garðinum, ok er meiri þörf at berjast en at spenna konur” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 96) [Wake up my lord king, for there is war in our courtyard, and there is more need for fighting than for entertaining women]. Later, Hjalti calls the champions to arms and references the waste of time that is “entertaining” women: “ ‘Upp nú allir kapparnir,’ segir Hjalti, ‘ok gerið skjótt at skilja við frillur yðar, því at annat liggr nú brýnna fyrir’” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 97) [“Get up now, champions,” says Hjalti, “and be quick about parting from your mistresses, because you must sharpen yourselves elsewhere”]. The repetition of the element of being distracted by women seems to preoccupy Hjalti; he is perhaps plagued by guilt because his call to battle was delayed by an evening with his mistress. Indeed, it is made explicit that Hjalti was the first to see the incoming army but chose to raise no immediate alarm:

þessu næst er þat at segja, at Hjalti inn hugprúði gengr til húss þess, sem frilla hans er inni. Hann sér þá glöggliga, at eigi mun vera friðsamligt undir tjöldum þeira Hjörvarðar ok Skuldar. Lætr hann þó kyrrt vera, ok lætr sér ekki í brún bregða, leggst nú með frillunni. (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 95–6)

(The next thing to be told is that Hjalti the magnanimous went to the house of his mistress. He then saw clearly that all was not peaceful under the tents of Hjörvarðr and Skuld. He remained quiet however, and appeared to show no sign of emotion, and now lay with the mistress.)

Hjalti even references the collective ignorance of he and his fellow retainers in preparing for battle: “Hafa hér ok stórar bendingar fyrir borit, þótt vér höfum dulizt við langa tíma” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 97) [There have been many indicators of this, but we have ignored them for a long time]. Phelpstead has picked up on “the text’s consistent moral that men’s uncontrolled sexual desire for women has harmful social consequences” (Phelpstead 2003, 9), which is especially obvious in this sequence as Hjalti shirks his duty as a retainer to spend a night with his mistress, ultimately contributing to the deaths of his king and fellow champions. His violence toward his mistress is perhaps due partly to the fact that she has distracted him, and in his repeated call to bring the men out of their women’s arms and towards their battle arms, we see some of his regret about this masochistic attitude. Hrólfr and his champions may have been distracted by women, but unlike Hjalti they did not choose to spend time with their mistresses in full knowledge of an impending attack.

More so than because of his own actions, Hjalti seems to act so violently toward his mistress because of her answer to his question: she chooses two younger men over one older man. One wonders why Hjalti asks this question. It seems designed to trap her, whatever she answers, and he is possibly looking for any excuse to mistreat her, given that “Norse masculinity was partly based on the sexual subjugation of women” (Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir 2020, 48–9). Saxo’s take on the incident differs to the saga: the woman asks how old a man she should marry, if Hialto were to die, and Saxo elucidates his violent reaction in greater depth than the saga writer does:

Discedentem pellex percunctari coepit, si ipso careat, cuius etatis uiro nubere debeat. Quam Hialto perinde ac secretius allocuturus propius accedere iussam, indignatus amoris sibi successorema requiri, preciso naso deformem reddidit erubescendoque uulnere libidinose percunctationis dictum mulctauit, mentis lasciuiam oris iactura temperandam existimans. Quo facto liberum quesite rei iudicium a se ei relinqui dixit.

(At his departure his mistress started to ask how old a man she should marry, if she were to lose him. Hialto told her to come close as if he wished to whisper something confidentially but, resenting that she needed a successor to his love, made her ugly by cutting off the end of her nose; a disfiguring wound was left as punishment for her lustful question, for he reckoned that the loss of her good looks should restrain her lecherous disposition. Afterwards he informed her that she was quite free to make up her own mind on the subject.)

(text and translation from Saxo Grammaticus 2015, 122–3)

Saxo interprets Hialto’s actions as primarily resulting from jealousy, and the physical mutilation as a tool to constrain the woman’s marital prospects. The saga writer chooses to make use of direct speech from Hjalti, whereas Saxo cloaks the character’s voice with that of the narrator; if Hialto hurls verbal abuse as well as physical, Saxo does not mention it. Comparatively, there is vitriol in the saga that is not present in Gesta Danorum: while it is a dangerous task to estimate the precise connotations of hóra [whore] and its cognates (see Pons-Sanz 2011), it is not hard to gauge the insulting and misogynistic intention behind Hjalti’s use of the word. Although he expresses some concern over her future suitors in his absence, the Hjalti of the saga seems to react out of anger. His words and actions are designed to hurt the frilla, to repay her insolence and possibly condemn her promiscuity for choosing two young men over one old man in a hypothetical situation. This is quite at odds with Saxo’s version, which has the girl ask the incendiary question. However, the rage and violent act that ensues are in both cases a reaction to the idea that Hjalti will be replaced: he will not have the opportunity to grow old, and neither will any of the other men who die in battle that night. To the mistress (as Hjalti might see it), they are replaceable; Hjalti and his mistress are not a couple who will grow old together. In Hjalti’s mid-battle speech, he cries, “Mörg brynja er nú slitin ok mörg vápn brotin ok margr hjálmr spilltr ok margr hraustr riddari af baki stunginn” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 99) [Many mail coats are now slashed, many weapons broken, many helmets split and many brave riders thrown from their horses’ backs]. This mournful, anaphoric cry evokes the famous ubi sunt passage which relates the Old English Wanderer’s melancholy at the transience of fallen heroes:

Hwǣr cwōm mearg? Hwǣr cwōm mago? Hwǣr cwōm māþþumgyfa?

Hwǣr cwōm symbla gesetu? Hwǣr sindon seledrĒamas?

Ēalā beorht bune! Ēalā byrnwiga!

Ēalā þĒodnes þrym! (“The Wanderer” 2004, ll. 92–5a)

(Where has the horse gone? Where has the rider gone? Where has the treasure-giver gone?

Where have the seats at the feast gone? Where are the hall-dreams?

Alas, bright cup! Alas, mailed warrior!

Alas, the glory of the king!)

The feeling of impending death and the slipping away of the opportunity to age seems bound up with the feelings of rage the mistress sparked in Hjalti: that he might die yet she will have (to his mind) a replenishing supply of young men is a reminder of his duties as a retainer and ultimately his mortality.

The nose-biting incident reflects the unnaturalness behind Höttr’s transformation into Hjalti. The fact that he has been renamed enables a dichotomous interpretation of Höttr and Hjalti. The latter is not the “improved” version of the former: he is a warped, forced response to the masculine hegemony of Hrólfr’s hall, and his physical power engenders a hyperinflated sense of his own potency, reflected in how he treats his mistress. The hypermasculinity looming over Höttr’s narrative progression is subversive, turning the motif of improvement through animal consumption into a far more complicated and intricate development.

This subversive exploration of masculinity is seen elsewhere in the saga with Helgi’s treatment of ólöf. Johanna Denzin has noted that the relationship between this king and queen is a subversion of the paradigm of the maiden-king narrative, in which the “fierce, but beautiful meykongr’s rejects and abuses all suitors, until the male hero outwits her and persuades her to marry him” (Denzin 2008, 210). The “generic happy ending” quickly mutates into a grotesque tale of rape and incest. Helgi’s actions are clearly a reaction to ólöf’s humiliation of him: “ek nenni eigi fyrir metnaðar sakir at hefna þér engu, svá illa sem ek var leikinn ok háðuliga” (Hrólfs saga kraka 1950, 19) [I cannot bear not to take vengeance upon you for the sake of my honor, as badly and as shamefully as I was toyed with]. She rebukes him romantically, sexually, and politically, and his retaliation forms part of the overall depiction of him as sexually transgressive, cruel, and selfish. His woebegone state when deprived of his wife/daughter, Yrsa, does little to inspire sympathy.

Helgi’s behavior toward ólöf is repugnant, but his reasoning, motivated by revenge and desire to assert dominance, is far more transparent than Hjalti’s, whose motivations require some untangling. Hjalti’s transformation is physical and performative; his psyche, however, is very much plagued by his past. While Helgi merely subverts paradigm, Hjalti inhabits the liminality of psychological trauma. Höttr’s existence, festooned with humiliation, degradation, likely starvation, and imprisonment, has not been erased from Hjalti, and unlike Helgi, Hjalti cannot take revenge on the author of his previous misfortune—ólöf in Helgi’s case, the hirðmenn in Hjalti’s—without risking his new position in the hall, so he takes it out on someone he views as inferior: his mistress.

The saga writer even calls attention to the irony of the character having the nickname “inn hugprúði” [the magnanimous] by introducing the mistress scene with this epithet, thereby making the violent act all the more shocking and outrageous. Hrólfr gives him this nickname, in addition to his new name Hjalti, because he does not kill his fellow retainers, even though they used to terrorize him. Far from being a merciful option on the part of Hjalti, this benevolence is also a sensible option: maintaining the new status quo and the homosocial bonds of the court suits him well as one of the most highly regarded components of the retinue, sitting closest to the king aside from Böðvarr.

Hjalti’s psychological damage and forced new identity manifest in this act of brutality against the frilla. The abused becomes the abuser, and Höttr is not entirely removed from Hjalti. The latter rather remains embittered by his previous place on the lowest rung of the social ladder, ready to use his new-found strength to lash out at anyone unfortunate enough to be his subordinate. He is a product of the masculine hegemonic environment he inhabits and an exaggeration of the misogynistic setting of the hall. Hjalti seems to be a distillation of the inherent misogyny of the court: a product, perhaps, of the society of medieval Iceland itself. Jonathan Correa Reyes has raised some salient points regarding the culture of fear present in the saga:

The story of Hǫttr/Hjalti stresses several features of the representation of fear in Old Norse tradition. Fear seems to be an inalienable component of a character . . . Bǫðvarr does not even try to train Hǫttr in order to make him braver. Bravery is not something that can be attained through isolated internal processes. Hǫttr is only able to overcome his fear by incorporating bits of a winged-troll. He needs to consume external agents in order to cast away his cowardly disposition. (Correa Reyes 2016, 22)

Höttr is a victim of fear and bullying; he cannot find a way to progress naturally: he is physically and mentally incapable of it. He remains trapped in his bone pile, within the constraints of his physical weakness, unable to retreat to the shame of safety outside the hegemony and unable to encroach the threshold of valorous masculinity. When he is forcibly broken out by Böðvarr and transformed by the beast heart, he goes through none of the emotional changes or training needed to keep in proportion his concept of appropriate masculine behavior, and thus he becomes a hypermasculine exaggeration of the “relics” who used to roam Hrólfr’s hall.