Winifred Hodge Rose
Deeds may ‘lay’ orlog, but speech ‘shapes’ it. What gives ‘speech’ such power? Is it only Norns and Deities whose speech has such power, or do humans have some degree of this as well? What is the connection between speech, actions /deeds, and orlog: what weaves them together?
The answers, I believe, lie most deeply in the Heathen sacrament of symbel or sumble, though we enact this connection in everyday words and deeds as well. Our words matter, our deeds matter, in every context of our lives when we realize how they are connected with orlog. When we speak in symbel in the company of the Gods and Goddesses, the Norns, and perhaps our fellow Heathens too, we have the opportunity to share most deeply in the shapings of the Norns, as they apply to our own lives and actions. Thus our Heathen troth itself is—word by word, deed by deed—shaped into being as a living faith in Midgard today.
In old Heathen thought, it was not only the Norns, Deities, and powerful rulers whose words could shape the course of events. The speech of ordinary people, too, has power when spoken in the right way, under the right circumstances. Our deeds may ‘lay’ orlog, but speech ‘shapes’ it: this is a profound insight into the power of the symbel ceremony with its formal oaths, boasts, and toasts. “Speech is the means by which the fact of any action is made explicit and the way in which its continuing present is assured” (Bauschatz p. 109).
Shaping Speech in Symbel
In Bauschatz’ book The Well and the Tree: World and Time in Early Germanic Culture, he offers an extensive list of references relating to the practice of sumble or symbel, beginning with Tacitus’ Germania, written about 98 CE. He continues with a list of references to Old Saxon sittian at sumble, Old Norse gamban-sumbl (glorious or mighty sumble), and Anglo-Saxon symbel or symle (pp. 72-3). The Norse also had the same or similar practice called the Bragar-fulli, pledging over the ale; I offer a ‘case study’ that features that term in the next section.
In Bauschatz’ Chapter III on “Beowulf and the Nature of Events,” he offers an in-depth analysis of scenes in the Beowulf poem where significant speeches are given in symbel, and examines their underlying implications relating to wyrd and orlog. These speeches link history and genealogies, past deeds and reputation, with current reputations, events, oaths, and intended future deeds. Bauschatz explains that there are formal structures to these speeches which have metaphysical links to the laying of orlog. “There seem to be at least two important kinds of ‘fact-establishing’ speech…the beot or the gilp (speech that binds the present to the past) and, for want of a better term, the ‘account’ (speech by which the past is brought forward into the present)” (Bauschatz p. 109). The term gilp is also spelled gielp and gylp, pronounced ‘yilp’.
Bauschatz is referring to the order of this formal speech, where first facts are established, such as Beowulf’s descent, heritage, and his past deeds. Then that foundation from the past is carried forward into the present, accounting for the reputation or gefrain that he has earned. During the course of this speech Beowulf is challenged by one of King Hrothgar’s advisors, called a thyle, as to whether he has truly earned his reputation. This type of challenge by a Thyle or other person in authority is part of the formalities, and must be answered in a satisfactory way that proves his understanding of wyrd / orlog, before Beowulf can continue on to actually speaking the oath that he is giving to the king and people of Heorot: to slay Grendel and deliver them from their ordeal. Bauschatz explains that:
“The most important instances of both the account and the beot in Beowulf occur in conjunction with the symbel, the ritual feast, in the poem (but, it needs to be stressed, not only there). A symbel proceeds first to whatever speaking is central to the occasion. The speech making takes the form of either beot or ‘account’ or both (most frequently both). Relevant events from the past are reiterated and, through their being spoken, create a context in which advice or counsel can be given to those making the beot. …This having been done, he [Beowulf] can better and more credibly announce his intentions:
I oblige myself with grip
To fight with the fiend [Grendel] and fight for my life…” (Beowulf ll. 438-9.)
(Bauschatz p. 110, 111; parentheses are his.)
In other words, having used the right speech to establish his own reputation as a successful warrior and one who keeps his word, and having shown that he is aware of the workings of orlog, Beowulf is now prepared to swear his oath: that he binds himself to fight Grendel and either win or die fighting.
In this and analysis of other Beowulf passages, Bauschatz illustrates the art of speaking in symbel in such a way as to shape orlog by one’s powerful and well-thought-out words, and by the orlog and intentions that underlie those words and are woven into them. “It is the nature of any beot to place its action directly into this flow” of wyrd (p. 112).
For explanatory purposes I’ll put these actions into the context of the Norns’ work here, even though Beowulf was dealing in the cultural context of Wyrd, not the Norns. But the shapings of the three Norns can still be seen in the process I just discussed. In step one, Beowulf speaks of Urð’s domain: his heritage, his history, the orlog he has laid in the past. In step two he announces his intention at this present moment, Verðandi’s domain: to swear an oath to kill Grendel. As part of this oath, he acknowledges Skuld’s domain by recognizing the shild, the consequences of his oath: he will either be victorious, or he will die, and he binds or ‘grips’ himself to these consequences by his oath. Throughout Beowulf’s speech the word sculan, ‘shall,’ is used, placing the events under the power of scyld / shild or Skuld. The entire process that Beowulf has followed places his oath and the deed that follows from it into the flow of Wyrd, the shaping of the Norns.
This process of speaking in symbel, as shown and discussed at length by Bauschatz, ideally requires a deep understanding of orlog, Wyrd, shild or consequences, the Norns and their domains, as well as the skill to shape one’s words to fit the requirements of symbel and succeed in laying the intended orlog in the Well. Having looked at this very formal context of oathing in Beowulf—as presented in the Late West Saxon language of England and located in the culture of the Geats, a Danish tribe—let’s turn farther north now and look at an example of oaths and their consequences in a poem from the Poetic Edda.
The Fateful Oaths of Hedin, Helgi, and Svava
Here is an analysis, a case study of orlog if you will, based on the Poem of Helgi Hjörvardsson in the Poetic Edda, using Larrington’s translation. It shows the power and complexity of orlog that results from oaths taken in symbel. We’re beginning with a text-passage inserted into this poem and continuing in the verses afterwards (Larrington p. 125).
Helgi’s brother Hedin was going through the woods one evening to attend a Yule Blot when he met a troll woman. She tried to seduce Hedin but he refused, whereupon she said: “You’ll pay for this when it comes to drinking to pledges” (bragar-fulli in Old Norse, similar to symbel in Anglo-Saxon). The account continues: “In the evening pledges were made. The sacred boar was led out, men put their hands on it and then they made their vows with the pledging cup (braga-full).” Hedin had long been in love with Helgi’s wife Svava, and apparently his honor and courage in resisting this illicit love were damaged by the curse of the troll-wife. Without intending to, under the influence of the troll-woman’s curse Hedin swore an oath that he would have his brother’s wife. Afterwards he bitterly repented of this oath and went to confess it to his brother.
The poem continues with Hedin confessing to Helgi that a “terrible crime has come upon me: I have chosen that royally-born bride of yours with the pledging-cup” (vs. 32). Helgi generously responds: “Don’t reproach yourself! For both of us, Hedin, what’s said over ale must come true” (italics mine). The Old Norse phrase here is munu vertha olmol: “ale-speech / ale-words must become”— must come into being. Helgi continues by telling his brother that he’s been challenged to a duel and thinks that he may shortly be killed. It would be a good thing, he says, for Hedin to wed his brother’s widow if that happens (vs. 33; ON original: Jonsson p. 203.)
The overall sense of this passage is that making oaths—‘speaking over the ale’ in the context of a formal ceremony like the Yule pledging, the bragar-fulli or symbel—sets in motion a course of events that cannot be altered. The same thing can be said about the challenge to a duel, made and accepted, that sets orlog in motion for Helgi. Apparently Helgi’s duel-challenge occurred during a bragar-fulli or pledging ceremony as well, since he tells his brother: “for both of us, what’s spoken over ale must come true.”
This passage gives a very good example of the orlog-power that words have when spoken over ale in symbel. It’s interesting to see how it turns out at the end of the poem, because although Hedin swore an oath that linked his wyrd with Svava’s, Helgi’s wife Svava was not a party to Hedin’s oath. How does this play out for both Hedin and Svava?
Svava was a Valkyrie (though of human descent) and had, in fact, earlier sworn her own powerful oath. Apparently she felt that it conflicted with Hedin’s oath to wed her. When Helgi, at the moment of death, urged her to wed Hedin, Svava responded that “I declared this in Munarheim, when Helgi chose me, gave me rings, that I would not willingly, if my lord were gone, hold a man of no reputation in my arms” (vs. 42). Here Svava is laying down a challenge: she’s implying that due to her own previous oath, she’s not required to wed Hedin because she deems his reputation is not worthy of her. Hedin responds to this challenge: “Kiss me, Svava! Never will I come… (back) until I’ve avenged Hjorvard’s son; he was the best of princes under the sun” (vs. 43).
This is the end of the poem; we don’t know how things worked out after that. But if we follow the strands of orlog that were laid here, we can figure that Hedin eventually wins respect and honor in Svava’s eyes and she agrees to wed him, thus fulfilling both their oaths—and reshaping both their lives. And regarding the context of Svava’s oath, I think it likely that it was ‘spoken over ale,’ as well. It sounds like her oath was given during her bridal ceremony, the ‘bride-ale’—the formal feast that was required to mark a legal wedding, during which toasts, boasts and oaths would have been spoken.
For me, the take-home points from studying this poem are:
(1) that oaths sworn, words spoken in symbel are very powerful and affect orlog;
(2) they will work their way through our lives, but may do so in unexpected ways;
(3) our oaths, words and deeds may affect other people’s orlogs, and theirs may affect our orlog, especially if there are close associations or bonds between us;
(4) nevertheless there are ways for people to work with, to shape, their orlogs around such oaths in ways that work to their benefit in the end.
There’s another take-home point here: try not to get cursed by a troll woman! But in fact that ‘curse’ was part of the larger picture of orlog in this whole complex situation. In another text-interpolation in the poem, Helgi says he suspects that the troll-wife and the wolf she was riding were in fact his own fylgjur, his fetches, appearing to his brother as harbingers of his approaching doom in the duel (Larrington p. 126). Though it seemed that the troll-wife, Helgi’s fylgja, was cursing both Hedin and Helgi by making Hedin swear to take Helgi’s wife, in fact Helgi’s fetch was setting matters in motion for widowed Svava to take a trustworthy new husband, her brother-in-law and a good man who wished to earn her love and respect by mighty deeds. This was, at a very deep level, no doubt a mystical expression of Helgi’s love and care for Svava, expressed by his fylgja setting a good orlog in motion for Svava as his death approaches.
At the end of the poem we are told that “it is said that Helgi and Svava were endrborin,” reborn into Midgard. The next poem in the Poetic Edda, the Second Poem of Helgi Hundingsbani, tells how in the persons of Helgi Hundingsbani and the Valkyrie Sigrun, Helgi and Svava were reborn and loved again, though much disaster resulted from their union in that life.
Many of the old hero tales, poems, and sagas, including the Volsungasaga and the Nibelungenlied, can be ‘mined’ for insights into the complex workings of orlog, oaths, and their consequences, as I have done with this Helgi poem. Such analyses put a human face on the operations of orlog, and help us understand the significance of our words and deeds in this world of Midgard.
Book-Hoard
Bauschatz, Paul C. The Well and the Tree: World and Time in Early Germanic Culture. The University of Massachusetts Press, 1982.
Chickering, Howell D. Jr., transl. Beowulf. Doubleday, 1977. (Dual language edition)
Jonsson, Finnur, ed. De Gamle Eddadigte. Kobenhavn: G.E.C. Gads Forlag, 1932.
Larrington, Carolyne, transl. The Poetic Edda, revised edition. Oxford University Press, 2014.