‘conveyed’ the word from him. We know roughly the date of other poems Eywind borrows from, Ynglingatal, c. 930, and Erics-mal, soon after 950; the Helgi poems would not be farther removed from him than these (he certainly would not copy old-fashioned poems), and c. 950, leaving a margin of a score of years, would fit admirably with their metre, spirit, and internal evidence [note the Fair-hair allusion, Wak. l. 93]. But even if the word ‘vigroði’ were out of the question, the peculiar rôle of the Walcyria in Haconar-mal is doubtless of a piece with that played by Helgi's amazon heroines; and after all is not the exact scene, fine as it is, where Hacon is sitting war-weary and wounded on the field amid the dead, and Gondul and her maiden-mates armed and helmed ride spear in hand to greet him, copied from the interview of Helgi and his 'Helmed Fairies?' Even the turns of phrase, the Helgian 'asides' (which no other poet employs), recur in Eywind's Lay. In saying this, we do not deny Eywind's talents,—he ‘imitates like a man of genius,’—but simply wish to point out his attitude to the earlier poet, and establish this anonymous poet's date.
The Tapestry-poet (one might also dub him the Monologue-poet, or the Lamentation-poet) is undeniably later than the Helgi-poet; he is living in an age of greater culture, of more sentiment, of refinement, of luxury, when ladies worked tapestry instead of serving the household, leaving that to slave-women. He bears all the marks of the eleventh century, its chivalry, its brutality, its passionate weeping [compare the Song of Roland on this head]. Then the style, the prevalence of narrative, the falling off in dramatic power, the Euripidean similes, and love of doleful and harrowing situations, the special study of female character, the constant harping on sorrow, Gudrun’s, Brunhild’s, Ordrun’s, etc., whole poems being built on a ‘chain of woes,’—would all be impossible in an earlier age, and would not be tolerated by those who lived the rougher life of the earlier settlers. That they are written for entertainment their epilogues declare plainly, and this is suitable to a generation of ‘gluttons and winebibbers,’ such as Wulfstan’s sermon and Malmesbury’s jeremiads portray (with considerable animus of course). The Helgi-poet is a heathen evidently at heart: while there is nothing in the Tapestry-poet to vindicate his faith or creed, he is more unreligious than the Court-poets, for they use heathen figures in abundance, though they were good Christians enough. The date of 1050, all things considered, would suit the Tapestry poems well enough.
The Greenland Poem cannot be older than the discovery and colonisation of Greenland, c. 984, and would reasonably fit to some time early in the next century, say 1020. It is more archaic and naive, and composed for a sterner and more simple public than the Tapestry poems.
The Ballad-poet is harder to deal with. In high poetic gift he does not stand far from the Helgi-poet: in elaboration of form, in dramatic treatment, in the regular character of his phrasing, in his minute and select vocabulary he has analogies with the Norwegian school of poets. It does not do to lay too much stress on a phrase
