Medieval Icelandic Saga
The Icelandic Saga of King Hrolf and his Champions
13th century, Old Norse.
On the way they stay with Odin, who is disguised as a farmer.
A wicked stepmother turns her stepson Bjorn (bear) into a bear. He is hunted and killed, but not before he has fathered triplets upon his girlfriend, whilst assuming human form at night. But this girlfriend, Bera (she-bear) is forced to eat some of his flesh and gives birth to one son who is half man half elk, another with dog’s feet and one, Bothvar of wholly human form. In a later scene, Bothvar fights in the shape of a bear at King Hrolf’s final battle. King Hjorvarth and his men saw how a huge bear advanced before King Hrolf's men...
But before this, King Hrolf and his champions go to Sweden to the court of King Athils to claim the possessions that King Hrolf’s father, King Helgi, lost there. On the way they stay with Odin, who is disguised as a farmer. When they arrive, they are treated discourteously, in fact, abysmally, in the almost comical way that visits by warriors in the Irish Ultonian cycle are sometimes depicted. But later at the court, and with the help of Queen Yrsa, King Hrolf’s mother, they escape with a hornful of golden rings, defeating King Athils huge force in the process and killing King Athils himself.
But when they retrace their steps to the farm for a final visit, there is no sign of the place. The building has vanished. Just like Bjorn’s hall in Grettir’s Saga; Bjorn who was then also revealed to be Odin when Grettir tried to find the hall once more and couldn't. This hall is obviously of a similar nature to the castle of the Fisher King in Chrétien de Troyes’ twelfth century Old French story of the Graal, the castle that Sir Perceval tried unsuccessfully to find again after his night's stay there. So was the Fisher King Odin? Can we at last break through this disguise? Was this why Perceval finds the Fisher King in a boat, like Charon the ferryman-of-souls across the River Styx? We know that the Fisher King is maimed, although we are not told explicitly that he only has one eye.
