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Scyld Scyldinga: Intercultural Innovation at the Interface of West and North Germanic

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Abstract

While many agree that Scyld in Beowulf was back-formed from Scyldingas, the context in which this occurred is rarely discussed. It seems frequently assumed that Scyld was created in Denmark and exported to England along with the name Scyldingas. However, the way that names and terms corresponding to Scyld and Scyldingas are used in medieval Scandinavian texts suggests that neither the figure nor an associated dynasty may have been very familiar to Scandinavians. Moreover, a consideration of Scandinavian place-name evidence shows that pre-medieval Scandinavian group-names in -ing-/-ung- were not formed on anthroponymic bases, though this practice was frequent in West Germanic contexts. Thus, though it is unlikely that Scandinavians in Scandinavia back-formed a figure named Scyld from a Scandinavian group-name antecedent to Scyldingas, such an interpretation would have been familiar and logical in West Germanic contexts. Accordingly, the figure of Scyld was likely back-formed by persons familiar with West Germanic naming practices and a Scandinavian form of Scyldingas, perhaps in an Anglo-Scandinavian context in Britain. Subsequently, the figure of Scyld was exported to Scandinavia and, though perhaps absent from autochthonous traditions, incorporated as accepted wisdom into written history and legend.

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Notes

  1. For example: “(descendants of Scyld, members of Danish dynasty), Danes (poet. name)” (Klaeber et al. 2008, p. 471, s.v. “Scyldingas”).

  2. In this paper, normalized Old Icelandic forms Skjǫldr and Skjǫldungar alongside normalized Old English forms Scyld and Scyldingas are used to refer generically to the figure and associated group as represented in Scandinavian or English contexts, respectively.

  3. For example, Klaeber et al. (2008, p. 11): “Scyld ‘Shield’ is well known in the Scandinavian tradition as Skjǫldr, the eponymous ancestor of the Skjǫldungr, or Scyldingas in Beowulf”.

  4. Quotations in English are from the revised (though abbreviated) version (1919) of Olrik’s original (1903) Danish-language argument.

  5. Lappenberg (1834, p. 212) was the first of several to suggest a derivation from the name of the river Scheldt (Latin Scaldis, Old English Scald); similarly, Liebermann (1925) saw the name of the Scheldt in the term Scaldi, identifying an apparently Scandinavian group in the AD 911 entry of the Annales Lindisfarnenses. In contrast, Björkman (1912) suggested a derivation from a Low German *skalda “punt, boat”.

  6. Malone (1953, 1954) agreed that Scyld was a non-historical, invented figure of an “ideal king”, but argued the group-name Scyldingas was formed on the name of this legendary figure.

  7. In this sense, Olrik’s analysis is not so different from that of Bruce (2002), who saw Scyld’s origins in genuine Migration Age legends of a (semi-)divine hero.

  8. Widsið, preserved in a later tenth-century manuscript but perhaps composed in something like the surviving form as early as the seventh century (Neidorf 2013), makes fleeting reference to Hroþwulf and Hroðgar, analogous to similarly named figures identified as Scyldingas in Beowulf, though that term does not appear in Widsið.

  9. On periodization, see Axboe (2002, p. 627).

  10. Æthelweard was sufficiently comfortable with contemporary Norse names that he frequently used forms distinctly derived from these in preference to their English equivalents (Townend 2002, pp. 119–127). His use of Scyld suggests either he did not follow this practice in this case or no analogous figure with a cognate Norse name was known amongst his Scandinavian contacts.

  11. Sven, speaking of Skiold, says: “a quo primum modibus Hislandensibus skioldunger sunt reges nuncupati” (Gertz 1917b, p. 97), (“He was the first after whom kings were called skioldunger in the poetry of the Icelanders”; translation adapted from Christiansen 1992, p. 49). Saxo, who also acknowledges a general debt to Icelandic sources in the Gesta Danorum, goes slightly further, saying of Skjǫldr: “tantaque indolis eius experimenta fuere, ut ab ipso ceteri Danorum reges communi quodam vocabulo skioldungi nuncuparentur” (Olrik and Raeder 1931, p. 11), (“so forceful were the proofs of his talent that the other Danish kings assumed from him the title of skioldungs”; translation adapted from Davison 1979, p. 15).

  12. Although skjǫldungr appears in some poems attributed to tenth-century poets, they are of “doubtful authenticity” (Frank 1981, p. 126, n. 14).

  13. “who was called Skjǫldr … thence is come that family which is called the Skjǫldungar” (my translation).

  14. “Skjǫldr was the name of a son of Óðinn from whom the Skjǫldungar are descended” (my translation).

  15. “They say that for that reason those now called Danes were once called Skiolldungar” (Miller 2007, p. 10).

  16. “just as the Swedes were called Inglingar after Ingo” (Miller 2007, p. 10).

  17. “These are the names of the agnate ancestors of the Ynglingar” (my translation).

  18. The term ynglingr probably stems from *ingulingaʀ (perhaps *ingwalingaʀ originally, with -w- vocalised to -u- before the consonant), itself a combination of a weak noun *ingulē with the -ing- suffix; *ingulē would be a diminutive form of *ingwanaʀ (*ingw- + adjectival suffix, ancestral to the Old Norse personal name Yngvinn) suffixed with a variant of the early -ila-type found also in names like Attila. Thus, ynglingr can be analysed as meaning something like “person associated with something that has the attributes of an yngvi”. In turn, yngvi might be an adjectival formation (*ingwia-) based on *ingwaz, the basic Proto-Germanic form that stands behind (in one way or another) all the derived terms (Krause 1944; de Vries 1962, p. 678, s.v. “ynglingr”, “Yngvi”).

  19. “Beaw son of Scealdwa, Scealdwa son of Heremod” (my translation).

  20. “Oeric whose surname was Oisc, whence the kings of Kent were known as oiscingas” (Colgrave and Mynors 1969, p. 151).

  21. East Germanic likewise lacks clear examples of the -ing-/-ung- suffix being used to form group-names on personal names. The Tervingi and Greotingi are probably “people of the pine-tree regions” and “people of the sandy/steppe regions”, respectively (Lehmann and Hewitt 1986, pp. 160, 343, s.v. “Greotingi”, “Tervingi”). Forms such as Old High German Amulunga, Old English Amulingas (this latter probably borrowed from the Continent) are later West Germanic terms perhaps secondarily derived from Latinate Amalī (Schönfeld 1911, pp. 16–17, s.v. “Amali”; Forssner 1916, p. 25, s.v. “Amalberga”); no name formed on Amal- with the -ing-/-ung- suffix appears in classical sources.

  22. In this light, understanding Scaldingi as being adapted from a Scandinavian name designating “people associated with the Scheldt River” (Lappenberg 1834, p. 112; Steenstrup 1878, pp. 178, 283; Woolf 2007, p. 72) is perhaps not so far-fetched as has sometimes been thought (Björkman 1912, p. 133; Frank 1981, p. 127, n. 17). Such a formation would be little different from the group-name behind Swedish Skänninge, “(area of) the people living by the river Skenaån” (Strandberg 2002, p. 676) or Icelandic Vestfirðingar.

  23. In place-names, it seems that Old English scield, scyld “shield” could be equated with (and even replaced by) its Norse cognate, which itself appears in Anglo-Scandinavian place-names as skeld-, apparently lacking the effects of breaking and u-umlaut seen in classical Old Icelandic skjǫld- (Townend 2002, p. 81; Coates 2006).

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Anderson, C.E. Scyld Scyldinga: Intercultural Innovation at the Interface of West and North Germanic. Neophilologus 100, 461–476 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-015-9468-y

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