Siward accepted the banner and proceeded to London, where he was summoned by King Edward to meet him at Westminster. Siward obeyed the summons and was enlisted in the service of the king, who promised him the first position of honor to become vacant in the kingdom. On this visit to the king, he slew Tosti in order to avenge an imagined insult and demanded and received Tosti's earldom of Huntingdon, which had thus become vacant. Some time after he also received the earldoms of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland.
Later the Norwegians made war on the king; but Siward defeated them and avenged many fold the insults and injuries sustained by the king, thus fulfilling the prophecy "that Divine Providence would permit to be born from the union of a rational with an irrational creature, i.e., from the union of a woman with a bear, a man who would wreak vengeance on the enemies of the illustrious and glorious King of England."
In the course of time, Dunewal, King of the Scots, was ejected from his kingdom. He sought the aid of Siward, who gathered an army and proceeded as far as Dundee, when news was brought him that his subjects in Northumberland had risen in insurrection and slain his son Osbertum (Osbernum) Bulax. Compelled to return he was roused to such anger that he sank his sword into a rock leaving a mark that could be seen, the author says, in his day. Siward restored to the king the territory seized by the rebels, and returned home and inflicted severe punishment on his enemies.
B has some variations from the account in A, but none of these variations are of present significance.
The transformation of Siward from an historical character, in regard to whom we have authentic information, into the hero of a saga the first part of which is of the "fornaldarsaga" type, the latter part of the "Islændingasaga" type,[41] is quite remarkable. He must have made a deep impression on the minds of his contemporaries and remained a hero in oral tradition long after the historical events of his life had been forgotten.
Olrik, who has done work of great importance in this field, offers a discussion of the legendary life of Siward in the Arkiv för nordisk Filologi, vol. XIX, from which it seems desirable to quote some passages for the light they throw on the development of this saga in England.
"Tagen som helhed er Sivards saga den mærkelige forening af æventyrlig og historisk sagastil."
* * * * *
"I dragekampene og i Odinskikkelsen, er der nær tilslutning til norrön tradition; her må de i Nordengland bosatte Nordmænd have gjort sig gældende med et berigende og udviklende element. Dette gælder da ikke blot for Sivards saga, men også for Ragnar Lodbroks historie, for så vidt den fra först er bleven til i England. På den anden side må vi ikke alene regne med, at Nordengland er en aflægger af norsk sagakultur; den er tillige en banebryder for dens rigere udvikling. Vi har set det med dragekampen, der optages væsenlig fra engelske forestillinger, og som vistnok ad den vej finder ind i de norsk-islandske æventyrsagaer og historiske traditioner".[42]
With the situation thus before us—namely: 1. the numerical strength of the Danes and Norwegians in the north of England, which had become a second home of Norwegian saga-culture; 2. the fact that the Hrólfssaga was known in England, where Bjarki received the addition "Bothvar" to his name; and 3. the fact that the Siward saga as we find it in Langebek was developed in the same locality—it is evident that it was not only possible, but practically inevitable, that the Hrólfssaga and the Siward saga should come in contact with each other. And this was, indeed, the case. That a popular hero is said to have descended from a bear is a very widespread motive, not at all confined to the territory in which the Bjarki story was known; but the similarities in the genealogies of Siward, Bothvar Bjarki, and Ulf (Gest. Dan., tenth book) are so great that the casual reader immediately concludes that these genealogies must in some way be related. Olrik has unraveled the skein and shown that the bear-ancestry belonged originally to Siward and from him was transferred to Ulf and Bjarki.