The Hundings (

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

: ''Hundingas'', the "hound-clan") are a legendary tribe or

clan A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, a clan may claim descent from a founding member or apical ancestor who serves as a symbol of the clan's unity. Many societie ...

in early Germanic sources, mostly mentioned due to their feud with the Wulfings (the "wolf-clan").

History

In the

Poetic Edda The ''Poetic Edda'' is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems in alliterative verse. It is distinct from the closely related ''Prose Edda'', although both works are seminal to the study of Old Norse ...

, Hunding is a king of the

Saxons The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons or Continental Saxons, were a Germanic people of early medieval "Old" Saxony () which became a Carolingian " stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany. Many of their neighbours were, like th ...

, slain by

Helgi Hundingsbane Helgi Hundingsbane is a hero in Norse sagas. Helgi appears in '' Volsunga saga'' and in two lays in the ''Poetic Edda'' named '' Helgakviða Hundingsbana I'' and '' Helgakviða Hundingsbana II''. The ''Poetic Edda'' relates that Helgi and his mist ...

. The ''

Gesta Danorum ("Deeds of the Danes") is a patriotic work of Danish history, by the 12th-century author Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Literate", literally "the Grammarian"). It is the most ambitious literary undertaking of medieval Denmark and is an essentia ...

'' mentions a Danish king Helgo who slew Hundingus, king of Saxony, in single combat. The historical core of the story is likely a conflict between the Eastern

Geats The Geats ( ; ; ; ), sometimes called ''Geats#Goths, Goths'', were a large North Germanic peoples, North Germanic tribe who inhabited ("land of the Geats") in modern southern Sweden from antiquity until the Late Middle Ages. They are one of ...

(the wolf-clan) and the

Lombards The Lombards () or Longobards () were a Germanic peoples, Germanic people who conquered most of the Italian Peninsula between 568 and 774. The medieval Lombard historian Paul the Deacon wrote in the ''History of the Lombards'' (written betwee ...

(the hound-clan). ''Hunding'' itself is a

patronymic A patronymic, or patronym, is a component of a personal name based on the given name of one's father, grandfather (more specifically an avonymic), or an earlier male ancestor. It is the male equivalent of a matronymic. Patronymics are used, b ...

translating to "son of a hound", while the Hundings as a clan (''

sibb ''Sippe'' is German for "clan, kindred, extended family" ( Frisian ''Sibbe'', Norse ''Sifjar''). It continues a Proto-Germanic term ''*sebjō'', which referred to a band or confederation bound by a treaty or oath, not primarily restricted to b ...

'') would be the descendants of Hunding. Being named a "hound" or "dog" was by no means an insult in pre-Christian Germanic culture, but that the animal was rather a symbol of the warrior, while in Christian Germanic culture, it became associated with heathendom, "heathen hounds" being an appellation especially of the pagan

Vikings Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

(cf. Ulfhednar). The name of Lamicho, king of the Lombards, may mean "little barker" (Harris 2004). In Paulus' ''

Historia Langobardorum The ''History of the Lombards'' or the ''History of the Langobards'' () is the chief work by Paul the Deacon, written in the late 8th century. This incomplete history in six books was written after 787 and at any rate no later than 796, maybe at ...

'', the Lombards terrorize their neighbors by spreading the word that they had dog-headed warriors, possibly a reference to ulfhednar. In Paulus's account, Lamicho is one of seven sons of a "prostitute" (''meretrix''), who is fostered by king Agelmund. This "prostitute" has been explained by Rudolf Much (followed by Höfler and others) as going back to a word for bitch. The Lombards' original ethnic name, ''Winnili'', has also been connected with "savage dogs" by Much. In Eddaic account of a feud between the Hundings and the Wulfings surrounding

may correspond to the Lombard story, and Malone (1926) explains the whole story of Lamicho as the Hunding version of the same feud. Jacob Grimm (1848) compared the story of Lamicho to the German legends of the origins of the Welfen, in German legend tracing their ancestry to fostered babes who were given the surname of "whelps" (Harris 2004). Hundings also appear in Sturlaugs saga starfsama, where they are a tribe of Cynocephali dwelling in Hundingjaland, which is apparently in much the same latitudes as

Bjarmaland Bjarmaland (also spelled ''Bjarmland'' and ''Bjarmia'') was a territory mentioned in sagas from the Viking Age and in geographical accounts until the 16th century. The term is usually understood to have referred to the southern shores of the Whit ...

. These Hundings may relate to those Cynocephali mentioned by

Adam of Bremen Adam of Bremen (; ; before 1050 – 12 October 1081/1085) was a German medieval chronicler. He lived and worked in the second half of the eleventh century. Adam is most famous for his chronicle '' Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum'' ('' ...

. The ''Hundingas'' are mentioned in such Old English literary works as

Beowulf ''Beowulf'' (; ) is an Old English poetry, Old English poem, an Epic poetry, epic in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 Alliterative verse, alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and List of translat ...

and

Widsith "Widsith" (, "far-traveller", lit. "wide-journey"), also known as "The Traveller's Song", is an Old English poem of 143 lines. It survives only in the '' Exeter Book'' (''pages 84v–87r''), a manuscript of Old English poetry compiled in the la ...

mentions the Hundings twice, once in a list of Germanic clans, as ruled by ''Mearchalf'', and a second time among outlandish tribes and peoples, in the sequence ''mid hæðnum ond mid hæleþum ond mid hundingum'' "with heathens, heroes and dog-people", implying a re-interpretation of the name as a remote people of "heathen hounds". This re-interpretation is complete in a later Anglo-Saxon manuscript on the ''Marvels of the East'', where the Cynocephali are glossed as ''healf hundingas''.Tiberius, f. 80r: "Eac swylce þær beoþ cende healf hundingas þa syndon hatene conopoenas. hy habbaþ horses mana & eoferes tuxas & hunda heafdu & heora oruþ byþ swylce fyreslig. þas land beoþ neah þæm burgum þe beoþ eallum world welum gefylled þis on þa suþ healfe aegiptna landes." ("And similarly there is a race of half-dogs that are called conopoenas. They have a horse's mane and a boar's tusks and a dog's head and their breath is like fire. This land is near the city which is filled with all the costly things of the world. This is in the south half of Egypt's lands.") Asa Simon Mittman, ''Headless men and hungry monsters'', The Sarum Seminar, Stanford University Alumni Center (200

References

{{reflist * Joseph Harris, ''Myth and Literary History: Two Germanic Examples'', Oral Tradition 19.1 (2004) 3–1

* Otto Höfler. "Cangrande von Verona und das Hundsymbol der Langobarden". in: Brauch und Sinnbild: Eugen Fehrle zum 60. Geburtstag gewidmet von seinen Schülern und Freunden. ed. by Ferdinand Herrmann and Wolfgang Treutlein. Karlsruhe: Kommissionsverlag (1940) pp. 101–37.
Rudolf Much, "Der Germanische Osten in der Heldensage." Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 57 (1920), 145-176.
(archive.org) * Rudolf Much, "Widsith. Beitrage zu einem Commentar." Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 62 (1925), 113–50. * J. Insley, 'Hundingas', Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, RGA XV, 240-1 Germanic mythology Lombard families Characters in Beowulf

History

See also

References