among which are three which give the following account of the traditions about these ruins.[1]
Lady Grimhild, who owned the whole island, made a festival at Nordborg, to which she, among others, invited her brothers, Helled Haagen and Folker, the minstrel, both well-known figures in Danish mediæval ballads. She intended, however, to slay the two brothers, with whom she was at enmity, but they accepted her invitation, though they were warned while crossing the Sound, first by a mermaid and next by the ferryman, both of whom were beheaded by Helled Haagen as a punishment for the evil omen. On arriving at Nordborg they were well received by Grimhild, who, however, soon persuaded her men to challenge the brothers to mortal combat. She was specially infuriated against Helled Haagen, and enticed him into promising that he would confess himself defeated if he should merely stumble. To bring about this result, she had the lists covered with hides, on which peas were strewn, and of course Helled Haagen slipped on these, and, true to his vow, remained lying and was slain. His brother, Folker, was likewise killed. But one of Grimhild's maids, Hvenild, after whom the island got its name, bore a son who was called Ranke, and who afterwards avenged the death of his father Helled Haagen. The poems merely mention the revenge, without going into details, but in his introduction Vedel tells how Ranke enticed Grimhild into a place in Hammer Castle, where he said his grandfather, Niflung or Niding, had hidden his treasure, but when she had gone inside, he ran out and bolted the door, leaving her to die of hunger. The resemblance of this story to the principal events of the Niebelungenlied is striking, and doubtless the story is, both in the German epic and
- ↑ I take the following account from the Danish poet Heiberg's delightful article on Hveen and its state in 1845, in his year-book, Urania, for 1846.
