The story of Lother, as given by Saxo, will be found below: the story of Heremod as given in Beowulf is hopelessly obscure—a mere succession of allusions intended for an audience who knew the tale quite well. Assuming the stories of Lother and Heremod to be different versions of one original, the following would seem to be the most likely reconstruction[[200]], the more doubtful portions being placed within round brackets thus ( ):
The old Danish prince [Dan in Saxo] has two sons, one a weakling [Humblus, Saxo] the other a hero [Lotherus, Saxo: Heremod, Beowulf] (who was already in his youth the hope of the nation). But after his father's death the elder was (through violence) raised to the throne: and Lother-Heremod went into banishment. (But under the rule of the weakling the kingdom went to pieces, and thus) many a man longed for the return of the exile, as a help against these evils. So the hero conquers and deposes the weaker brother. But then his faults break forth, his greed and his cruelty: he ceases to be the darling and becomes the scourge of his people, till they rise and either slay him or drive him again into exile.
If the stories of Lother and Heremod are connected, we may be fairly confident that Heremod, not Lother, was the name of the king in the original story.
For Scandinavian literature does know a Hermoth (Hermóðr), though no such adventures are attributed to him as those recorded of Heremod in Beowulf. Nevertheless it is probable that this Hermoth and Heremod in Beowulf are one and the same, because both heroes are linked in some way or other with Sigemund. How these two kings, Heremod and Sigemund, came to be connected, we do not know, but we find this connection recurring again and again[[201]]. This may be
mere coincidence: but I doubt if we are justified in assuming it to be so[[202]].
It has been suggested[[203]] that both Heremod and Sigemund were originally heroes specially connected with the worship of Odin, and hence grouped together. The history of the Scandinavian Sigmund is bound up with that of the magic sword which Odin gave him, and with which he was always victorious till the last fight when Odin himself shattered it.
And we are told in the Icelandic that Odin, whilst he gave a sword to Sigmund, gave a helm and byrnie to Hermoth.
Again, whilst in one Scandinavian poem Sigmund is represented as welcoming the newcomer at the gates of Valhalla, in another the same duty is entrusted to Hermoth.
It is clear also that the Beowulf-poet had in mind some kind of connection, though we cannot tell what, between Sigemund and Heremod.
We may take it, then, that the Heremod who is linked with Sigemund in Beowulf was also known in Scandinavian literature as a hero in some way connected with Sigmund: whether or no the adventures which Saxo records of Lotherus were really told in Scandinavian lands in connection with Hermoth, we cannot say. The wicked king whose subjects rebel against him is too common a feature of Germanic story for us to feel sure, without a good deal of corroborative evidence, that the figures of Lotherus and Heremod are identical.