Friðþjófs saga hins frœkna (Frithiof's Saga) is a legendary saga

Legendary saga

A Legendary saga or Fornaldarsaga is a Norse saga that, unlike the Icelanders' sagas, takes place before the colonization of Iceland. There are some exceptions, such as Yngvars saga víðförla, which takes place in the 11th century...

 from Iceland

Iceland

Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...

 which in its present form is from ca 1300. It is a continuation from The Saga of Thorstein Víkingsson (Þorsteins saga Víkingssonar

Þorsteins saga Víkingssonar

Þorsteins saga Víkingssonar or The Saga of Thorstein, Viking's Son is a legendary saga taking place in the 7th century and it is about the father of Frithjof the Bold. It begins in Norway and Sweden but continues into exotic places such as India. It is not one of the more famous sagas, but it is...

). It takes place principally in Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 during the 8th century.

Synopsis

King Beli of Sogn

Sogn

Sogn is a traditional district in Western Norway . It is located in the county of Sogn og Fjordane, surrounding the Sognefjord. Sogn consists of the municipalities of Aurland, Balestrand, Hyllestad, Høyanger, Gulen, Leikanger, Luster, Lærdal, Sogndal, Solund, Vik, and Årdal. The district covers ...

, Norway had two sons and a daughter named Ingeborg. Helgi was his first son, and Halfdan his second. On the other side of the fjord

Fjord

Geologically, a fjord is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created in a valley carved by glacial activity.-Formation:A fjord is formed when a glacier cuts a U-shaped valley by abrasion of the surrounding bedrock. Glacial melting is accompanied by rebound of Earth's crust as the ice...

, lived the king's friend Thorstein (Þorsteinn Víkingsson) whose son Frithjof (Friðþjófr) was called the bold (hinn frœkni). Frithiof was the tallest, strongest and he was the bravest among men.

When the king's children were but young their mother died. A goodman of Sogn named Hilding (Hildingr), prayed to have the king's daughter to foster. Frithjof was the foster-brother to the king's daughter as he was also raised together with Ingeborg (Ingibjörg) by their foster-father Hilding.

Both Beli and Þorsteinn died in war whereupon Helgi and Halfdan took over the kingdom. The two kings were jealous of Frithjof's excellent qualities and so they denied him Ingeborg's hand. They took her to Baldr's sacred enclosure Baldrshagi where no one dared hurt another and where no woman and man had intercourse. Still Frithjof visited Ingeborg and they continued to love each other. This caused Helgi and Halfdan to send Frithjof away to Orkney to take tribute and while he was away they burnt down his homestead and married Ingeborg to King Ring, the aged king of Ringerike

Ringerike

oskar er kjempe kulRingerike is a municipality in Buskerud county, Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Ringerike...

.

When Frithjof returned with the tribute, he burnt down Baldr's temple in Baldrshagi and went away to live as a viking

Viking

The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...

. After three years, he came to King Ring and spent the winter with him. Just before the old king died, Frithjof's identity was apparent to everybody and so the dying king appointed Frithjof earl and made him the care-taker of Ring's and Ingeborg's child.

When Ring had died, Frithjof and Ingeborg married and he became the king of Ringerike. Then he declared war on Ingeborg's brothers, killed one of them and made the second one his vassal.

Frithiof's Saga in translation

Frithjof's Saga is said to have been translated twenty-two times into English, twenty times into German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, and once at least into every European language, including modern Icelandic

Icelandic language

Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...

 in 1866. The Norwegian translation from the Icelandic by Ivar Aasen

Ivar Aasen

Ivar Andreas Aasen was a Norwegian philologist, lexicographer, playwright and poet.-Background:...

 acted precisely on this saga.

Frithiof's Saga had first been translated into Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

 in 1737. In 1820, Swedish writer Esaias Tegnér

Esaias Tegnér

Esaias Tegnér , was a Swedish writer, professor of Greek language, and bishop. He was during the 19th century regarded as the father of modern poetry in Sweden, mainly through the national romantic epos Frithjof's Saga. He has been called Sweden's first modern man...

 published fragments of the epic in Iduna, the journal of the Geatish Society

Geatish Society

The Geatish Society, or Gothic League was created by a number of Swedish poets and authors in 1811, as a social club for literary studies among academics in Sweden with a view to raising the moral tone of society through contemplating Scandinavian antiquity...

. In 1822, he composed five more cantos. In 1825 he published the entire poem Frithiof's Saga. Even before it was completed, it was famous throughout Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

; the aged Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...

 took up his pen to commend to his countrymen this alte, kraftige, gigantischbarbarische Dichtart ("old, mighty, gigantic-barbaric style of verse"), and desired Amalie von Imhoff  to translate it into German. This romantic

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 paraphrase of an ancient saga was composed in twenty-four canto

Canto

The canto is a principal form of division in a long poem, especially the epic. The word comes from Italian, meaning "song" or singing. Famous examples of epic poetry which employ the canto division are Lord Byron's Don Juan, Valmiki's Ramayana , Dante's The Divine Comedy , and Ezra Pound's The...

s, all differing in verse form, modelled somewhat.

Statue of Fridtjof

Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany had a statue of Fridtjof raised in the village of Vangsnes

Vangsnes

-External links:**...

 in Vik

Vik

Vik is a municipality in the county of Sogn og Fjordane, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Sogn. The administrative center of Vik is the village of Vikøyri.-General information:...

 in the county of Sogn og Fjordane

Sogn og Fjordane

is a county in Norway, bordering Møre og Romsdal, Oppland, Buskerud, and Hordaland. The county administration is in the town of Hermansverk in Leikanger municipality while the largest town is Førde....

, Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

. The Statue of Fridtjof (Fridtjof den frøkne) is a landmark which towers 22.5 metres (74 ft) over the hilltop. It stands in a beautiful park overlooking the Sognefjord

Sognefjord

The Sognefjord is the largest fjord in Norway, and the second longest in the world. Located in Sogn og Fjordane county, it stretches inland to the small village of Skjolden...

. The statue was sculpted by the German sculptor and art professor Max Unger (1854-1918) and was erected in July 1913.

Frithiof's Saga in music

Frithjof's Saga was used as an inspiration by at least five composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

s. The first was Max Bruch

Max Bruch

Max Christian Friedrich Bruch , also known as Max Karl August Bruch, was a German Romantic composer and conductor who wrote over 200 works, including three violin concertos, the first of which has become a staple of the violin repertoire.-Life:Bruch was born in Cologne, Rhine Province, where he...

, who composed his cantata Frithjof, opus 23, in 1864. The most famous example is the Frithj of Symphony in F major, Op. 22, by the German composer Heinrich Hofmann

Heinrich Hofmann (composer)

Heinrich Karl Johann Hofmann was a German composer and pianist. He was a pupil of Theodor Kullak, Eduard Grell, Siegfried Dehn and Richard Wüerst...

 (not to be confused with the identically-named and contemporaneous German painter

Heinrich Hofmann

Johann Michael Ferdinand Heinrich Hofmann was a German painter of the late 19th to early 20th century. He was the uncle of the German painter Ludwig von Hofmann. He was born in Darmstadt, Germany and died in Dresden, Germany...

). This piece was one of the most-played pieces in European concert halls at the end of the 19th century. Another example is a work by the Dutch composer Johan Wagenaar

Johan Wagenaar

Johan Wagenaar was a Dutch composer and organist.-Life:Born in Utrecht, out of wedlock, he was the son of Cypriaan Gerard Berger van Hengst and Johanna Wagenaar. Wagenaar's parents were of different social strata: his father was an aristocrat, while his mother was of more humble origins...

, the concert piece for orchestra Fritjof's Meeresfahrt, opus 5. Swedish composer Elfrida Andrée

Elfrida Andrée

Elfrida Andrée , was a Swedish organist, composer, and conductor.Andrée was born in Visby. She was the pupil of Ludvig Norman and Niels Wilhelm Gade. Her sister was the singer Fredrika Stenhammar. An activist in the Swedish women's movement, she was one of the first female organists to be...

 wrote an opera to a libretto by Selma Lagerlöf

Selma Lagerlöf

Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf was a Swedish author. She was the first female writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and most widely known for her children's book Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige ....

 based on the poem, also called Frithjof's Saga; it was never performed publicly, but selections from the opera received a private hearing in 1898. In the manuscript score of the work, two arias and a chorus are translated into German, suggesting that Andrée may have sought their performance for a German audience. Andrée reworked music from the opera into a five-movement suite, Fritiov-svit that has seen performance as recently as 1995 in Sweden. Dutch composer Cornelis Dopper

Cornelis Dopper

Cornelis 'Kees' Dopper was a Dutch composer, conductor and teacher.-Reputation:Dopper's reputation as a composer has suffered from the accusation of being 'too German' for much of his career, and still haunts him to this day...

 also wrote an opera called Frithjof in 1895, but it was never performed.

Other sources

• The Story of Frithiof the Bold ( translated by Eirkr Magnusson and William Morris. Cambridge, Ontario: Old Norse Series. 2000)http://www.imir.k-k.pl/literatura/Frithiof_Story.pdf
• The Sagas of Fridthjof the Bold ( Ben Waggoner, The Troth. 2009) ISBN 978-0-557-24020-3}}

External links

• Original version:
  • Friðþjófs saga ins frækna in Old Norse from Heimskringla.no
  • Friðþjófs Saga Ins Frækna in Old Norse
• Esaias Tegnér
  Esaias Tegnér
  Esaias Tegnér , was a Swedish writer, professor of Greek language, and bishop. He was during the 19th century regarded as the father of modern poetry in Sweden, mainly through the national romantic epos Frithjof's Saga. He has been called Sweden's first modern man...
  
   version:

} (English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 translation by Thomas & Martha Holcomb)
} (Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

with English introduction & notes by Andrew A. Stomberg)