SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

The Lay of Attila 9
easily recognised by a dozen features irrelevant to the
character of the possessor, but a heart, traditionally the
seat of courage, will, in this grotesque fantasy, reflect,
even when disembodied, the courage at its owner.
Greater fantasy, greater heroism, greater suspense before
the divulgence of Gunnarr's purposes, all spring from this
second motif. Has the poet of Atlakvioa inherited this
complex of motifs from the traditions of his story or did
he impose the second motif upon the first? I see no way
whatever of deciding the matter, but in the light of the
whole organisation of the poem, we can at least conceive
the complexity of the episode to be of his own devising.
The scene is one of stylised trickery, a grotesque play far
removed from reality and wholly unlike the wild realism
of Gul5nin serving dainties at her feast or loosing the dogs
before she burns the hall. The scene need not on that
account be the work of a different poet. There is a
refinement in the handling at the episode that has its echo
elsewhere in the poem. The excision of the cowardly
heart of Hialli is stated with plain rapidity: scdro jjeir
hiarta Hialla or briosii ; it achieves callousness by its speed
and suspense by its economy - for we know nothing as yet
of Hialli.P In Atlamdl, where sheer cruelty and a desire
to bring anguish to Guonin make Atli order the cutting
out of Hogni's heart, the attempt by kindly Huns to take
the heart of the scullion Hialli instead is expanded with
a comic display of his hysterical fear and his laments at
leaving his herd of pigs. Sickened by his cowardice
Hogni persuades the Huns to let Hialli live and to cut out
his own heart. This is an alternative way of shedding
glory upon Hogni, more laborious and coarse. In
Atlakvioa the reticence and brevity of the heart-excision
resembles the reticence, even delicacy, in the presentation
of Gunnarr in the snake-pit. The poet alludes to
12 Sijmons and Gering, ed, cit. 352, consider it certain that lines have
dropped out of the poem, in which the seizing of Hialli is described. This is
surely insensitive: all we need to know of Hialli is that his heart betrays his
cowardice.