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Book Reviews 255
technical words found chiefly in the prose of the twelfth to
to fourteenth century.v"
The theme of the Rigspula has also led critics to believe that it
was composed at a late date. It tells of the origins of three classes
of men, pra:ll (thrall), karl (freeman), jarl (prince). All of these
descend from the god (ass), Rigr, who wandered over the earth to
beget three sons on three different women, Edda (greatgrandmother),
Amma (grandmother) and M66ir (mother).
Speculation about the origins of social classes was certainly
widespread in medieval Europe. Honorius Augustodunensis in
the Imago mundi traced three classes, liberi, milites and servi to
the three sons of Noah, Sem, ]aphet and Cham.!" The Imago,
like other works ascribed to Honorius, may have been known in
medieval Iceland, but this is a very different story from that of
the Rigspula, which tells that the three classes descend from one
divine ancestor and three earthly women. We may remember the
proverb: prysvar hefir allt oroit forauni, and suspect that, even in
the Viking Age, men were considered to belong to one of three
classes. In this case, Snorris!" distinction of Norwegians at the
time of Haraldr Harfagri as bamdr, hersar, [arlar may not be so
wide of the mark as i, commonly said.
It has been said-" that, in his description of the thralls, ugly
and dark-skinned (hQrundsvartan?), but tilling their own fields,
the poet shows that he belonged to an age when thraldom had been
abandoned. But in his contrast between the ugly, dusky thrall
and the beautiful blond prince, the poet seems to show that he
knew an age when thralls were largely imported. The Rigs pula
is a peculiarly "racist" poem.
The relations between the Rlgsbula and the Skjoldunga saga,
probably written about 1200, are of some importance, and have
lately been discussed thoroughly by Bjarni Guonason.P" The
genealogies of Rigr, Danr and Danpr given in these two sources
differ considerably, but it seems more probable that the
Skjoldunga saga has drawn on the Rigspula than that the Rigspula
followed and misunderstood the Skjoldunga saga, as some would
have it.
Who is this Rigr, said to be the father of men? The redactor of
the poem said in prose that he was Heimdallr. R. Meissner, 21
16 See Hensler, op. cii., 275-6.
l' Migne, Patrologia latina CLXXII, 166.
18 In ch. 6 of Haralds saga hdrfagra in the Heimskringla.
19 Eirikr Magnusson, op. cit., 221-2.
2. Um Skj6ldungas6gu (1963).
21 Beitrag» zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur LVII (1933),
IID ft.
L