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"Stolt Herr Alf" ("Proud Lord Alf",SMB 206,TSB E 58) or "Álvur kongur" (CCF 14) is amedieval Scandinavian ballad with Swedish and Faroese variants,[1] based on the same legendary material as the Icelandiclegendary sagaHálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka,[2] frompre-Christian times. There are two different manuscripts of this ballad in theNational Library of Sweden, and some dialectal words indicate that the ballad was current in south-western Sweden before its documentation.[3]
The Norse godOdin is appealed to withan epithet which has aroused scholarly interest, and he is calledOden Asagrim, meaning "Odin, leader of theÆsir". The suffix -grim is a virtually unique word for "leader" which is otherwise only attested in therunestone Sö 126, but in the earlier formgrimR. It is not attested as a noun in the sense "leader" inWest Norse sources. InOld Norse, the basic meaning of the adjectivegrimmr is "heartless, strict and wicked", and sogrimmr is comparable in semantics to Old Norsegramr which meant both "wrath", "king" and "warrior".[4]
The ballad tells that Lord Alf's wife woke up from a nightmare. She informed her husband that she had dreamt that she had seen a stone and brick house at her father's estate in which her husband had beenburnt to death with hisretinue.[3]
Lord Alf told his wife that she must not worry and instead go to sleep again. The next day Lord Alf rode to his father-in-law, King Asmund, with his retinue and asked the king for a house where they could sleep during the night. King Asmund told them that they could sleep in a house at the orchard.[5]
The king then appealed to Odin:
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Odin responded that King Asmund should bar the door of Lord Alf's house and set its gables aflame. In that way, he could defeat Lord Alf without incurring any harm.[8]
Toward the end of the ballad, the people decide to take vengeance and slay King Asmund because he refused to payweregild—usual punishment, according tomedieval Scandinavian laws when a killer refuses to payweregild[8] (as in the story) or commitsquickfire.[9]