The proof of this, so far as Denmark is concerned, is that, according to the Beowulf poem, its first royal family was descended from Scef through his son Scyld (Skjold). In accordance herewith, Danish and Icelandic genealogies make Skjold the progenitor of the first dynasty in Denmark, and also make him the ruler of the land to which his father came, that is, Skane. His origin as a divinely-born patriarch, as a hero receiving divine worship, and as the ruler of the original Teutonic country, appears also in Fornmannasögur, v. 239, where he is styled Skáninga god, the god of the Scanians.
Matthæus Westmonast. informs us that Scef ruled in Angeln.
According to the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, the dynasty of Wessex came from Saxland, and its progenitor was Scef.
If we examine the northern sources we discover that the Scef myth still may be found in passages which have been unnoticed, and that the tribes of the far North saw in the boy who came with the sheaf and the tools the divine progenitor of their celebrated dynasty in Upsala. This can be found in spite of the younger saga-geological layer which the hypothesis of Odin's and his Trojan Asas' immigration has spread over it since the introduction of Christianity. Scef's personality comes to the surface, we shall see, as Skefill and Skelfir.
In the Fornalder-sagas, ii. 9, and in Flateyarbók, i. 24, Skelfir is mentioned as family patriarch and as Skjold's father, the progenitor of the Skjoldungs. There can, therefore, be no doubt that Scef, Scyld's father, and through him the progenitor of the Skjoldungs, originally is the same as Skelfir, Skjold's father, and progenitor of the Skjoldungs in these Icelandic works.
But he is not only the progenitor of the Skjoldungs, but also of the Ynglings. The genealogy beginning with him is called in the Flateryarbók, Skilfinga ætt edr skjoldunga ætt. The Younger Edda also (i. 522) knows Skelfir, and says he was a famous king whose genealogy er köllut skilvinga ætt. Now the Skilfing race in the oldest sources is precisely the same as the Yngling race both from an Anglo-Saxon and from a heathen Norse standpoint. The Beowulf poem calls the Swedish kings scilfingas, and according to Thjodulf, a kinsman of the Ynglings and a kinsman of the Skilfing, Skilfinga nidr, are identical (Ynglingatal, 30). Even the Younger Edda seems to be aware of this. It says in the passage quoted above that the Skilfing race er i Austrvegum. In the Thjodulf strophes Austrvegar means simply Svealand, and Austrkonungur means Swedish king.
Thus it follows that the Scef who is identical with Skelfir was in the heathen saga of the North the common progenitor of the Ynglinga and of the Skjoldunga race. From his dignity as original patriarch of the royal families of Sweden, Denmark, Angeln, Saxland, and England, he was displaced by the scholastic fiction of the middle ages concerning the immigration of Trojan Asiatics under the leadership of Odin, who as the leader of the immigration also had to be the progenitor of the most distinguished families of the immigrants. This view seems first to have been established in England after this country had been converted to Christianity and conquered by the Trojan immigration hypothesis. Wodan is there placed at the head of the royal genealogies of the chronicles, excepting in Wessex, where Scef is allowed to retain his old position, and where Odin must content himself with a secondary place in the genealogy. But in the Beowulf poem Scef still retains his dignity as ancient patriarch of the kings of Denmark.
From England this same distortion of the myth comes to the North in connection with the hypothesis concerning the immigration of the "Asiamen," and is there finally accepted in the most unconcerned manner, without the least regard to the mythic records which were still well known. Skjold, Scef's son, is without any hesitation changed into a son of Odin (Ynglingasaga, 5; Foreword to Gylfag., 11). Yngve, who as the progenitor of the Ynglings is identical with Scef, and whose very name, perhaps, is or has been conceived as an epithet indicating Scef's tender age when he came to the coast of Scandia—Yngve-Scef is confounded with Frey, is styled Yngve-Frey after the appellation of the Vana-god Ingunar Frey, and he, too, is called a son of Odin (Foreword to Gylfag., c. 13), although Frey in the myth is a son of Njord and belongs to another race of gods than Odin. The epithet with which Are Frode in his Schedæ characterises Yngve, viz., Tyrkiakonungr, Trojan king, proves that the lad who came with the sheaf of grain to Skane is already in Are changed into a Trojan.
21.
SCEF THE AUTHOR OF CULTURE IDENTICAL WITH HEIMDAL-RIG, THE ORIGINAL PATRIARCH.