Rígsþula
The poem Rígsþula is preserved incomplete on the last surviving sheet in the 14th-century Codex Wormianus, following Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda.
[2] A short prose introduction explains that the god in question was Heimdall, who wandered along the seashore until he came to a farm where he called himself Ríg.
The name Rígr appears to be the oblique case of Old Irish rí, ríg "king", cognate to Latin rex, Sanskrit rajan.
[4] The identification of Rígr with Heimdall is supported by his characterization as an ancestor, or kinsman, of humankind in the first two lines of the Eddic poem Völuspá:' However, some scholars, including Finnur Jónsson and Rudolf Simek, have suggested this is a role more appropriate to Óðinn and that the Eddic tradition has thus transferred the name Rígr from him to Heimdall.
A key aspect of historical scholarship on this poem is that theories of date and provenance range from the tenth to the thirteenth century and from the Old Norse-Icelandic-speaking areas of the British Isles to Norway.
Initially it was viewed as an ancient poem; later research postulated that it came from the thirteenth century, but some modern scholars continue to place it as early as the Viking Age.
[6] Additionally, the dating problem is complicated by the poem's history of oral transmission, which tends to warp pieces as long as the Rígsþula as they are recited numerous times.
Firstly, the poem presents a view of Þræll in line with certain slave tropes found throughout Old Norse literature, as dark, short, stupid, gloomy and ugly.
[6] Þræll and his aged parents live as tenants in one farmhouse and he and his sons engage largely in menial labor such as keeping the household in firewood and cutting turf.
[7] Additional details reveal the relative comfort of his life: his mother, Amma's stylish shoulder ornaments and the free distribution of gold rings to the guests at his wedding.
Finally we are presented with the class of Jarl or earl, who represents "the idle aristocrat ... whose sole occupations are raiding, hunting, and swimming".
[8]In fact, Konr gets his power directly from Ríg, and the idea of a king is therefore of a man who is blessed by the gods, though not necessarily descended from them in the strict patrilineal fashion typical of Western monarchies.
A second interpretation, however, is that "the names of the three couples - great-grandfather and great-grandmother, grandfather and grandmother, and finally father and mother - might seem to imply that the various classes of mankind share a common heritage".
[8]A marriage by Konr the young into the family of Dan and Danþír seems to be where the tale was headed, as seen in the two other sources that mention this Rígr.
[citation needed]Despite genealogical discrepancies (to be evaded only by imagining more than one Danþír and more than one Dan) the accounts relate a common tradition about the origin of the title konungr (king).
[11] Jean Young and Ursula Dronke, among others, have suggested that the Rígsþula story is Celtic in origin and that the name Rígr is an indication of this.
