R. S. Radford

       The skaldic poem Ynglingatal is the primary basis for Snorri Sturlusson= s Ynglingasaga, the opening saga of Heimskringla. In the prologue to his Prose Edda, Snorri attributes the poem to the ninth-century Norwegian court skald, Þjóðólfr of Hvin. This attribution would make Ynglingatal one of the most ancient surviving Norse poems, a source of valuable and unparalleled glimpses into the pagan world of Scandinavian prehistory. In particular, it lays the legendary foundation leading up to the unification of Norway under Harald hárfagr.

        Snorri= s attribution of Ynglingatal to the late 9^th century was questioned by Guðbrandr Vigfusson and Sophus Bugge, among others. Typically, Bugge thought he detected Christian influences in the poem, and concluded it was based on foreign models that would not have been accessible to Norwegian skalds until sometime after the change of religions. Some decades later, Gustav Neckel again challenged the early dating of Ynglingatal, arguing on the basis of his system of metrical categories that the poem originated in Christian Iceland. All of these arguments were seemingly laid to rest by Walter Akerlund in his 1939 opus, Studier över Ynglingatal. Akerlund refuted Neckel= s metrical analysis, as well as arguments to the effect that many of the poem= s original verses had been lost. Akerlund further tied Ynglingatal to then-recent archaeological finds in Sweden and demonstrated affinities between the poem and Beowulf, concluding that original estimates setting the composition of the poem to the years just preceding 900 CE were correct. Akerlund= s views prevailed for more than half a century, so that as recently as 1979 Joan Turville-Petre could state with confidence, "Ynglingatal is one of the most ancient of Norse Poems." ("On Ynglingatal,@ Mediaeval Scandinavia vol. 11 (1978-79), p. 48.)

        In 1991, the assignment of an early date to Ynglingatal was again called into question by Claus Krag in Ynglingatal og Ynglingesaga: En Studie I Historiske Kilder. This book examines the broader topic of the Yngling tradition as an historical source, beginning with a two-chapter critique of the dating of Ynglingatal. He concludes the poem was composed around 1200 CE, in Iceland. Krag notes that the use of archaeological finds to date Ynglingatal has tended to circularity, with the dating of certain key finds being dependent upon the assumption of an early composition date for the poem. Similarly, the parallels Akerlund adduced between Ynglingatal and Beowulf are no longer very compelling, now that serious questions have arisen concerning the age of the latter poem.

         Having demonstrated the unsteady foundation of the case for an early dating, Krag advances his own case, which at many points echoes arguments previously set forth by Bugge and Neckel. Stripped to its core, Krag= s thesis is that Ynglingatal incorporates certain ways of looking at the world that would not have been possible in pre-Christian Scandinavia. Diana Whaley summarizes the salient points in her review of Krag in Saga-Book, vol. 23 (1993), pp. 511-15:

     "The first four royal deaths are by drowning in a mead-tub, immolation in a rock-cave, suffocation and burning, and this appears too programmatic, to close to the medieval four-element theory, which was known in Iceland from the late eleventh century, to be coincidental. The rare genealogical fire kennings saevar nið and sonr Fornjóts (vv. 4 and 29) seem to allude to a personified version of the same systematic view of the elements. Other likely cases of conceptual anachronism are invoked by Krag. He sees the often-noted fact that the Yngling kings bear names elsewhere attached to Óðinn and Freyr as a late phenomenon, comparable with the euhemerization of myth in the Prologue to Snorra Edda. Similarly, the demonic view of heathendom in evidence at some points in the poem seems to be a species of interpretatio Christiana, and the touch of erotic personification in the presentation of Hel in v. 7 would have been unlikely at a time when Hel was still taken seriously.@

        Krag= s critique, if accurate, would have a major impact across a wide range of Old Norse studies. As Whaley noted, "The most obvious result of Krag= s researches is that the removal of Ynglingatal to the twelfth century invalidates the only substantial literary source for Scandinavia= s legendary past, which has been treasured not only as a resource for the study of dynastic history but also as a repository for nuggets of information about early burial customs, sacral kingship and onomastic practices."

        But was Krag right? Whaley equivocates on this point, proclaiming herself A more [inclined] towards belief than disbelief@ in Krag= s thesis. Theodore M. Andersson was more skeptical, judging by a review he published in Scandinavian Studies (vol. 64 (1992), pp. 487-89). Recognizing that Krag= s book A deserves recognition as a strikingly independent and imaginative reformulation of materials that have been sifted repeatedly,@ Andersson nevertheless raises a number of objections to Krag= s thesis:

        1. Krag does not account for Snorri= s belief that Ynglingatal was ancient. It is not easy to understand how a well-educated, well-traveled scholar, author, and poet of Snorri= s stature could have mistaken a poem written during his own lifetime for a three-centuries-old text.

        2. The metre in which Ynglingatal is written, kviðuháttr, was also used in several early poems, including Sonatorrek and Háylegjatal.

        3. The stylistic ambitiousness of Ynglingatal is not a common characteristic of late 12th or early 13th century poetry, and moreover Krag does not point to any known skald writing around 1200 who would have been capable of producing so elegant a work.

        4. Krag muddies the waters by suggesting that the final stanza, dedicating the poem to Rögnvald, may indeed have been composed by Þjóðólfr, and may have led to the attribution of the entire poem to him. As Andersson dryly notes, this is surely a A complicated and speculative hypothesis. It will perhaps be easier to accept Snorri's information.@

        5. Ynglingatal contains numerous A verbal echoes@ of early poems, including Völuspá and Ragnarsdrápa.

        6. The poem includes many arcane references that were no clearer to Snorri than they are to us today. Similarly, place names like Vöri, Taurr, Skereið, and Vöðlustraumr were unknown to the 13th century Icelandic scholar (and have only speculatively been identified after centuries of study). It must seem doubtful that the meaning of so many words and terms could have been forgotten during Snorri= s lifetime.

        In conclusion, Andersson expressed admiration for Krag= s accomplishment but added, A I emerge with the sense that > Ynglingatal= may well weather his critique and survive as an > old= poem.@

        Preben Meulengracht Sorensen criticized Krag= s argument regarding the four elements in his contribution to the Proceedings of the 11th Viking Congress (1993), noting that the first four kings of Ynglingatal do not represent the four elements, but only water, air, and fire. Moreover, these instrumentalities do not denote the metaphysical elements of Christian scholasticism, but merely represent dangerous forces of nature. Recognition of a fictive kinship among these forces has a verifiable pagan tradition, as Richard North demonstrated in his 1997 book, Heathen Gods in Old English Literature.

        The latest inquiry into the age of Ynglingatal is Christopher D. Sapp= s article, A Dating Ynglingatal--Chronological Metrical Developments in Kviðuháttr,@ in Skandinavistik, vol. 30 (2000), pp. 85-98. Sapp examines the occurrence of certain metrical features in Ynglingatal, compared to their incidence in four other poems written in the same metre, two from the 10th century and one each from the 12th and 13th centuries. On the basis of this metrical analysis Sapp concludes that A Ynglingatal is metrically more similar to the tenth-century poems, suggesting that the traditional earlier date is preferable.@ The author acknowledges, however, that while metrical analysis may rule out an assignment of Ynglingatal to the 12th century, it does not provide positive evidence for a correct dating. A The metrical similarities between Ynglingatal and Egill= s poems simply suggest that Ynglingatal is not likely to have been composed much earlier or later than Arinbjarnarkvíða and Sonatorrek. . . . Thus the traditional ninth-century date for Ynglingatal is possible, but so is a tenth-century date.@

        While this debate has hardly been resolved, there does not appear to be a groundswell of scholarly support for Krag= s thesis of a late origin for Ynglingatal, 15 years after his analysis appeared.