Widsith is still more explicit. The poet states that he visited the Gothic king Eormenric, who as we know died about 370. It is true that incidentally he mentions that he had met with a number of other princes, some of whom lived in the fifth and sixth centuries; but the visit to Eormenric is his main theme. Eormenric is of course one of the most prominent figures of the Heroic Age, and it may be for this reason—as the type of a powerful king—that he is chosen for the poet's host and patron. But then it is by no means so easy to see why he is associated with such an obscure person as Eadgils, prince of the Myrgingas. The suggestion that the poem is founded upon a tradition that this Eadgils possessed a famous minstrel breaks down upon the name Widsith, which is obviously fictitious as we have seen (p. [44]). It appears to me that considerably less difficulty is involved in the hypothesis that the kernel of the poem[68] is really the work of an unknown bard of the fourth century, and that successive minstrels from time to time have added the names of famous heroes with which they were acquainted[69]—a process to which the original plan of the poem may well have offered inducement.
However this may be neither of the poems shows any characteristics which suggest a later date than Beowulf. Both appear to be constructed in strophic form, a feature rare elsewhere in Anglo-Saxon poetry, while Deor also has a refrain, which is almost without parallel. Lastly, we have seen that Widsith occurs as a personal name, apparently in the seventh century, and that this presupposes the existence not only of the poem itself but also of the introduction, which is clearly later.
The case of Waldhere stands somewhat apart from the others, since it has been suggested that this is really a translation of a lost German poem, on which Ekkehard's Waltharius is also based. That the story came from the Continent may of course be granted; but we have also to consider when and in what form it was brought. The linguistic arguments which have been adduced in favour of the German origin of the poem are not now generally maintained. But it is further to be noticed that the poet seems to have treated his subject very differently from Ekkehard. The speeches, with which the fragments are entirely taken up, have nothing corresponding to them in the Latin poem, while the characterisation of the heroine is as unlike as it well could be. Ekkehard represents her as a timid creature, but in the fragments she displays a spirit which may fairly be called martial. It is unwise to lay stress on agreements between Ekkehard and the fragments as against the version of the story given in Thiðreks Saga af Bern. The less complicated form of the latter—in which Guthhere is omitted and Hagena represented as an officer of Attila, pursuing the fugitives—may be due either to imperfect acquaintance with the story or, perhaps more probably, to the conditions under which it had been preserved. We shall see later that for a considerable period heroic poetry appears to have been entirely neglected by the higher classes in Germany; and it may be accepted as generally true that when stories are preserved only by the peasants complex situations tend to become simplified, while all except the most prominent characters drop out. As for the date at which the story became known in England we may note that besides Aetla and Hagena, which may come from other sources, Waldhere, Hildegyth and Hereric were all names current during the seventh century. There seems therefore to be no adequate reason for believing Waldhere to have had a different history from the other heroic poems.
On the whole, taking all the poems, including Beowulf, together, we may conclude with probability that they assumed substantially their present form[70] in the course of the seventh century. But if our reasoning with regard to the composition of Beowulf is correct we shall have to refer the first treatment of the subject to the sixth century, i.e. almost if not quite to the Heroic Age itself. Deor and Widsith may quite possibly contain still older elements.
We may now turn to the Old Norse poems. Here the data at our disposal are of a very different character, for the metrical evidence is said to preclude the possibility that any of the extant poems date from before the ninth century. It may perhaps be questioned whether all of them are necessarily new compositions since that time—whether certain of them may not be old poems somewhat recast. To this question however we can hardly hope to obtain a satisfactory answer.
The fragmentary Ragnarsdrápa of Bragi Boddason, who seems to have lived in the first half of the ninth century, is probably the earliest extant piece which refers to stories of the Heroic Age. In this poem we find allusions both to the story of Heðinn and Högni and to the attack made upon Iörmunrekr by Hamðir and Sörli. Thiódolfr's Ynglingatal, perhaps half a century later, contains references to the story of Hagbarðr and Signý, as well as brief accounts of the Swedish kings Óttarr and Aðils, who are mentioned in Beowulf (cf. p. [20]). All these stories, except that of Óttarr, are told also by Saxo, but in a somewhat different form, which points to their derivation from Danish rather than Norse sources[71].
On the other hand the stories of the Völsungar, Sigmundr and Sigurðr, are not mentioned by any early Danish authority. The story of Sigurðr is generally supposed to have been introduced into Norway from Germany; and in some sense or other this would seem necessarily to be true, since in the Northern version, as well as in the German, the scene is laid chiefly in the Rhineland. But it is apparently impossible to determine when and in what form the story was transmitted. We have already noticed that there is archaeological evidence for a considerable amount of communication between Norway (not Denmark) and the southern (Frisian) coasts of the North Sea during the seventh and eighth centuries, and this is clearly a factor which deserves to be taken into account. Further, it is worth noting that, with the exception perhaps of Atli[72], the names all appear in regular Northern form[73], as if they had been known from the earliest times, e.g. Gunnarr, Högni, Giúki, Buðli. This consideration, as far as it goes, certainly favours a very early date; but it is hardly conclusive[74].
The story of Sigmundr stands on a somewhat different footing. In the first place Sigemund (Sigmundr) himself is little more than a name in German tradition, while though Welsung and Sintarfizzilo occur as personal names, they are not connected in any way with the story of Siegfried. Again, in the Helgi poems, which contain no reference to Sigurðr, Sigmundr is connected with the Baltic, and this is still more clearly the case with his son Helgi, who is unknown to the German story. Thirdly, in Beowulf, which knows Sigemund and Fitela, though not Sigurðr, the former is brought into juxtaposition, and apparently also into comparison, with a Danish prince named Heremod. The same two persons are brought together also in the Old Norse poem Hyndlulióð, while the Hákonarmál likewise seems to imply some connection between them, as I have tried to show elsewhere[75]. Apart from the passages specified this Hermóðr (Heremod) is apparently not mentioned in Scandinavian literature, but the facts noted seem to indicate that the two characters were connected in poetry before English and Danish tradition became separated, i.e. presumably in the sixth century.
We have seen that many of the persons mentioned in the main narrative of Beowulf were remembered also in Scandinavian tradition. But since these persons are in all probability to be regarded as historical, it is hardly safe to infer the existence of ancient Scandinavian poems, unless the same incidents are related of them, which is generally not the case. There is a rather striking verbal resemblance[76] between the first speech of Wiglaf (Beow. 2633-60) and certain passages in Biarkamál (especially Saxo's version), where Hialti is addressing Biarki; and this fact is the more noteworthy if Biarki is really to be identified with Beowulf. But the words themselves are of a somewhat general character and might have been used on other occasions. Again there is a certain affinity[77] between the account of the dragon-fight in Beowulf and that of a similar incident related of Frotho I by Saxo (p. [38] f.); and here again a connection can be traced indirectly between the two heroes. But the story of Frotho seems really rather to resemble the account given in Beowulf of Sigemund's dragon-fight; so it may be questioned whether the points of affinity between the two did not originally form part of a standard description of incidents of this kind.