Ynglingatal
Ynglingatal is composed in kviðuháttr (modern Norwegian kviduhått); this genealogical verse form is also used in Son loss (Sonatorrek) in Egils saga.
For example: Ynglingatal has also makes extensive use of acquaintance, such as rewriting and metaphors that give life to the poem, which otherwise contains much litany.
[6] Akerlund has also said the bard Thjodolf learned the verse-form kviðuháttr by studying the Rök runestone in present-day Sweden, which dates from around the year 800.
[8] Stories that build on the poem are found in the Norwegian history, Historia Norvegiæ,[9] which was written in Latin in the late 1100s, and in the short saga Af Upplendinga konungum (About the upplander-kings).
In the preamble to the Heimskringla, Snorri writes that Thjodolf, in addition to composing the poem Ynglingatal, was poet at Harald Fairhair's hird (royal retinue).
[17] Snorri mentions a man named Torgrim from Kvine, "son" to Thjodolf in the Olav Tryggvasson saga.
According to the Ynglinga saga, Fjolne, the first king described in Ynglingatal, was the son of the god Frey and a giantess named Gerd.
Frey, the great fertility god in the Nordic countries, entered into a sacred wedding (Hiero Gamos) with Gerd, which is retold in the poem Skírnismál.
The author of the myth gives the king a special destiny as the main symbol within the ruling ideology in the Norse-thought universe.
[19] Both major ruling families in Norway, the Ynglings and Earls of Lade, legitimized their statuses by using a wedding myth.
Just as Yngling had their legitimacy reinterpreted in Ynglingatal, the Ladejarlsætt got its equivalent in the poem Háleygjatal, which was written by the Norwegian poet Eyvindr skáldaspillir at the end of the 900s.
In Háleygjatal it is Odin and the giantess Skade were of mythological origin, and their son Sæming is the ancestor of Hákon jarl.
It may have been the Icelandic poet Ari Þorgilsson who constructed the genealogy of the Ynglings and connected Harald Fairhair's seed to Ynglingatal.
Norwegian historians Rudolf Keyser and Peter Andreas Munch held the traditional dating to the late 800s.
[37] Around the time of World War I, saga literature was subjected to much criticism as a historical source, in Sweden by the brothers Lauritz and Curt Weibull, and in Norway by Halvdan Koht and Edvard Bull.
In a research project during the 1980s Krag's attempt to justify the doubt regarding Ynglingatal's age began to take shape, disregarding the traditional, uncritical acceptance.
[40] As an argument, Krag proposed that the first four kings' deaths represent the cosmology of Greek philosopher Empedocles, with the four classical elements Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, and thus that a euhemeristic vision influenced the description of the first few generations.
[41] Krag's hypothesis has received serious criticism on several points,[42] and so far "a convincing case has not been made against the authenticity of the poem as a ninth-century creation".
If the saga is a late work of propaganda, it should reasonably have been concluded with Norwegian king Harald Fairhair and not by his largely unknown cousin Ragnvald Heidrumhære, whose meaning seems otherwise to have been lost after 1000.
There are places and names in the poem that archeology has shown to have had great importance until the Viking Age, but not later, and thus should not have been stated in a more recent saga.
Cultural phenomena such as a king who goes to holy places and the memory of a warrior elite can point to ancient human migrations.
Finnur Jonsson said the various descriptions stem from the kings mentioned in Ynglingatal; all have different traditions handed down by word of mouth.
[53] Religion historian Walter Baetke said Yngligatal was free of euhemerism—the notion of lineage of gods was added in the Christian era.
They partly reasoned that people in Norse times kept track of their genus for six generations, thus it is possible to follow Harald Fairhair's ancestors back to Halfdan Hvitbeinn.
Are dated Harald Fairhair's birth to 848, and until the 1920s historians used Are's reckoning to calculate the composition time stamp for different people and events.
[57] Traditionally, historians have attributed great source value to scaldic poems because of the tight form that made them easier to remember than narratives.
[60] Archeologists, particularly Anton Wilhelm Brøgger in the early 1900s, have made many attempts to "place" the various youth kings and their wives in barrows in Vestfold.
[61] When the issue of Ynglingatal's value as a source and recent archeological methods including C14 dating and dendrochronology are taken into account, finding out who was buried in the various barrows on the basis of information in this poem is at best educated guessing.
