Have you ever died so hard you laughed? In the legends of proud old Skaðinawjō, gruesome death was the privilege of the stupidly heroic. But c'mon, it's the current year: Why should divine genealogies, class, and the gap between myth and ontological reality keep you from dying like a semi-divine king?
Hold your horses, some heavily earned credit is due before we go on: I would probably never have written this article [originally in Norwegian] had it not been for me Stumbling across Samantha Finley's eminent guide How to Tell if You are in an Old English Poem, which inspired me to make one of my own, though from a Norse perspective. For the sake of cultivating my readers, I chose the Old Norse heroic lays as my springboard, because not every day can be Hávamál day. However, I won't rule out the possibility of abusing other genres or poetry or prose for similar purposes at some later point in time. There's no room for democracy on this blog, unless you're part of the priviledged caste of Brute Norse patrons, but I cordially invite you to throw me a comment or ninety-three.
The heroic lays are a somewhat overlooked genre of Norse literature. One gross oversimplification could be that that they comprise, basically, of those eddic poems that don't have gods as their main characters, but rather mortal men and women of legendary, semi-mythical stature (though the gods are certainly guilty in some of the tomfoolery going on in the background). On a more general level, Norse heroic poetry is part of a pan-Germanic cycle of legends, dealing with a magical and distant past of champions and supernatural intrigue. Interestingly, this age of legends does (to some degree) overlap with the historical era known as the migration period. Because of this, they often contain a zany conglomerate of historical and mythical characters, which is enough to drive a rabid barbarophile like myself utterly mad.
I'll avoid the complicated issue of determining the age of these poems, but it's abundantly clear that they were composed in a society dedicated to a radically different ethos from what most of us are accustomed to. The heroes are generally not what common folk would consider "good people". These dudes and dudettes are entirely beyond good and evil, and largely exhibit übermensch levels of amorality and vitalistic disregard for the health and safety of pretty much anybody. This, and certain other things, add up to a series of features that distinguish them from normal people, and are invariably woven from of a certain hardened fiber, that je ne sais pas (that is French for "I don't know what") that makes a true hero. Heroes like Starkad, Helgi, Gunnar, and last by not least: Sigmund, everybody's pan-Germanic bad boy!
