Raum (king)
King Raum is the name of at least two legendary kings in Norway. Two related kings named Raum are mentioned in Hversu Noregr byggdist, and one king named Raum is mentioned in Thorsteins saga Víkingssonar. One of the kings in Hversu Noregr byggðist is called Raum the Old, but it is not explicit whether this refers to the first or second king by that name.
In Thorsteins saga Víkingssonar, Raum is the eponymous ruler of Raumaríki. In Hversu Noregr byggðist, the elder King Raum is the namesake of Raumsdal, an area of land he gave to his son Jötunbjörn. In both versions, King Raum is also the namesake of Raumelfr ; while this name is similar to the modern day Rauma, which runs through Romsdal, the name Raumelfr was also used in Old Norse to refer to the river now called the Glomma.
In Old Norse, the word raum or raumr was a partly disparaging term for men who were both large and ugly. According to Thorsteins saga Víkingssonar, this term came to be used because King Raum had been ugly-looking. Although no such connection is made between the word raum and the name King Raum in Hversu Noregr byggðist, the word is used to refer to another individual: Ketil Raum, i.e. Ketil the Ugly, the great-great-grandson of the younger King Raum.
In ''Hversu Noregr byggdist''
Two kings named Raum appear in Hversu Noregr byggdist. The first King Raum is the son of King Nór, the eponymous founder of Norway, who takes control of his father's land. The second is the grandson of the first. There is also mentioned Raum the Old, and although it is not explicitly clear from the text which of the Kings Raum it is meant to be, it can be inferred that it is the second.The elder King Raum, son of Nór
The first King Raum mentioned in Hversu Noregr byggdist was one of three sons of Nór, the legendary first king of Norway. Nór's wife was Hödda, daughter of the jötun Svaða, but she is only identified as the mother of Nór's other sons, Thrand and Garð who is called Agði, the namesakes of Trondheim and Agder.Raum is first mentioned after the section that introduces Thrand and Garð as the sons of Nór and Hödda. Once Thrand and Garð's inheritances and descendants are listed, the text says that "Raum, son of King Nór, took over his father's realm." Raum's lands included Álfheim, a region bounded by several named rivers.
Raum attended a Yule feast given by Bergfinn, son of Thrym the jötun of Vermá, and bedded Bergfinn's sister Bergdís. Bergdís subsequently bore three sons:
- Björn, aka Jötunbjörn, who was raised by Bergdís
- Brand, aka Guðbrand, who was raised by Raum and given to the gods
- Álf, aka Finnálf, who was fostered by Bergfinn
The younger King Raum, son of Jötunbjörn
The second King Raum is the grandson of the elder King Raum and Bergdís through their son Jötunbjörn the Old. This younger King Raum is called the father of Hrossbjarn, father of Orm Skeljamola, father of Knatt, father of Thorolf Straw and Ketil Raum.Raum the Old
After the descendants of the elder King Raum are listed, the text says that Raum the Old then married Hild, daughter of Guðröð the Old, son of King Sölva, first king of Sóleyjar. Raum the Old's sons were:- Guðröð
- Hauk
- Hadding
- Hring.
Neither King Raum mentioned so far is explicitly identified as Raum the Old, and both of them have their own identified sets of children that are not the same as the listed sons of Raum the Old. However, there is also no inconsistency within the text with Raum the Old being identified with either above-mentioned King Raum.
The second Raum may be King Raum the Old. In Hversu Noregr byggðist, as well as other sagas, such as Örvar Odd's saga, the cognomen inn gamli - the Old - refers to the person's longevity, not as in the elder or younger of two. Quite specifically the cognomen inn gamli refers to a certain capability of death-defiance acquired by certain sacrifices, typically lasting for three hundred years. This is explained in the saga itself. At least three kings in this and other sagas has acquired this cognomen explicitly this way:
- Snœr the Old, the grandfather of King Nór, father to King Raum Nórsson, who is grandfather to Raum the Old
- Halfdan the Old is grandson to Raum the Old Björnsson and father to nine royal lineages, among them Næfill, the eponymous anchestor of the Niebelungen, famous through Richard Wagner's operacycle Der Ring des Nibelungen
- Örvar Odd, the son of a peculiar couple from Hålogaland, Lopthœna and Grimr Ulfsson. In Örvar Odd's saga the story of his longevity is told explicitly.
Descendants of King Raum, son of Nór
Descendants of Gudbrand
Gudbrand inherited the valley from his father Raum. King Gudbrand was father of King Audleif, father of King Gudmund, father of Gudbrand who refused to be king, gave himself an earl's name instead, as he wanted to become the mightiest earl in the northern lands. Jarl Gudbrand's son was Jarl Geirmund, father of Jarl Hródgeir, father of Gudbrand who refused the title of jarl and called himself hersir'' as did his descendants.Descendants of Jötunbjörn
Jötunbjörn the Old inherited Raumaranes Dale from his father King Raum., father of Orm Broken-shell, father of Knatti who had two sons: Thórolf and Ketil Raum. A variant of this genealogy appears at the beginning of the Vatnsdæla saga in which Ketil the Large is the direct son of Orm Broken-shell with no mention of either Knatti or of Ketil's brother Thórolf. Also nothing is said of Jötunbjörn's ancestry, only that he was from the north of Norway.The Hversu then relates that Thórolf was father of Helgi, the father of Bersi, the father of Thormód, the father of Thórlaug who was the mother of Tungu-Odd. In the Landnámabók it is said that two brothers whose ancestry is not given settled the Akraness in Iceland between Kalman's river and Char river. One was Thormod who settled the land to the south of Reymir, and dwelt at Holm; he was the father of Bersi and Geirlaug, the mother of Tungu-Odd. The other was named Ketil. Further information appears in the Landnámabók. Tungu-Odd is a major character in Hænsna-Thóris saga. Geirlaug rather than Thorlaug is the name of Tungu-Odd's mother in all accounts except for that of the Hversu.
Descendants of Finnálf the Old
According to the Hversu, Finnalf inherited the land of East Dale and all the land north of Lake Vænir from the Gautelfr north to the Raumelfi, and that the land was then called Álfheim.Finnálf married Svanhild who was called Gold-feather and was the daughter of Day son of Dayspring by Sun daughter of Mundilfari. Dag as a personification of day and the sun-goddess Sól are mentioned elsewhere, but only the Hversu mentions their daughter. Svanhild bore Finnálf a son named Svan the Red who was father of Sæfari, father of Úlf, father of Álf, father of Ingimund and Eystein.
According to the eddic poem Hyndluljód, Óttar, whose genealogy is the subject of this poem, was son of Innstein, son of Álf the Old, son of Úlf, son of Sæfari, son of Svan the Red. So the Innstein of the Hyndluljód and Eystein of the Hversu are presumably identical.
Descendants of Raum the Old
Descendants of Gudröd
Gudröd, Raum's eldest legitimate son, inherited the largest portion of his father's lands. Gudröd's son was Eystein the Wicked who conquered part of Trondheim and set his son Önund over it. When Önund was killed in a revolt, Eystein made his dog, Saur, king of the territory. The tale is also told more fully as a deed of long ago in the Saga of Hakon the Good in the Heimskringla where Eystein is said to be King of the Uplands in Norway, part of the modern county of Oppland. See Snær for another use of the dog king motif.Descendants of Höd
Höd ruled over Hadeland. Höd was father of Höddbrodd.The Hversu relates that Höddbrodd son of Höd was the father of Hrólf, father of Hrómund Berserk, father of three children: Hámund, Haki, and Gunnlöd.
Hámund was Earl of Hordaland and father of Hrók the Black and Hrók the White. Haki was father of Hródgeir, father of Haki Berserk. Gunnlöd was the mother of Útstein and Innstein. In Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka, the two brothers named Hrók and the brothers Útstein and Innstein play prominent roles. This saga names the father of Útstein and Instein as a Jarl named Álf the Old of Hordaland, which is one of Hálf's kingdoms.
Hrók the Black was the father of Gunnlöd the mother of Hrómund Gripsson, the protagonist of Hrómundar saga Gripssonar. Two sons of Hrómund named Björnólf and Hróald appear among the first Norse settlers in Iceland in the Landnámabók and are mentioned in other sagas.
Descendants of Hadding
The Hversu tells that Hadding son of Raum ruled over Haddingjadal and Telemark. He was father of son also named Hadding, who himself was father of another Hadding, father of Högni the Red. The Hversu then comments cryptically that after him the three Haddings took power, that they ruled one after the other, and that Helgi Hadding-prince was one of them.The Haddingjar are otherwise known as two of the sons of Arngrim of which the fullest account is in Hervarar saga and are certainly not the Haddingjar spoken of by the Hversu. Helgi Haddingjaskati is mentioned in the prose epilogue to the eddic poem Helgavida Hundingsbana II which states that Helgi Hundingsbane and his Valkyrie and his lover Sigrún were afterwards reincarnated as Helgi Haddingjaskati and Kára as told in the Káraljód, a poem no longer extant. A version of this tale survives only in Hrómundar saga Gripssonar in which the Haldingjar are two concurrent kings of Sweden and Helgi is their champion. Helgi conquers in part through the magic of his lover, the sorceress Kára, who appears in the form of a swan. When Helgi accidentally kills her, he meets his own doom and the Halding kings flee. Haldingjar seems to a garblings of Haddingjar. The Hversu account probably indicates a version in which both Helgi and the two Haddingjar proper were all three called Haddingjar and ruled in rotation. Also, in the text the name of Helgi's lover actually appears as Cára, which should have been normalized as Kára. But Cára was instead misread and transcribed as Lára in Jónsson and Vilhjálmsson's Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda and so appears in most later discussion.