thumb|right|300px|"Rig in Great-grandfather's Cottage" (1908) by [[W. G. Collingwood]]

Rígsþula or Rígsmál (Old Norse: 'The Lay of Ríg') is an Eddic poem, preserved in the Codex Wormianus (AM 242 fol), in which a Norse god named Ríg or Rígr, described as "old, wise, mighty and strong", fathers the social classes of mankind. The prose introduction states that Rígr is another name for Heimdall, who is also called the father of mankind in Völuspá. However, there seems to be some confusion of Heimdall and Odinn, see below.

In Rígsþula, Rig wanders through the world and fathers the progenitors of the three classes of human beings as conceived by the poet. The youngest of these sons, Jarl ('earl, nobleman'), inherits the name or title "Ríg" and so in turn does his youngest son, Kon the Young or Kon ungr (, king). This third Ríg was the first true king and the ultimate founder of the state of royalty as appears in the Rígsþula and in two other associated works. In all three sources he is connected with two primordial Danish rulers named Dan and Danþír.

The poem Rígsþula is preserved incomplete on the last surviving sheet in the 14th-century Codex Wormianus, following Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda. A short prose introduction explains that the god in question was Heimdall, who wandered along the seashore until he came to a farm where he called himself Ríg. The name Rígr appears to be the oblique case of Old Irish rí, ríg "king", cognate to Latin rex, Sanskrit rajan. and Gothic reiks.

The identification of Rígr with Heimdall is supported by his characterization as an ancestor, or kinsman, of humankind in the first two lines of the Eddic poem Völuspá:'

:I ask for a hearing

:of all the holy races

:Greater and lesser

:kinsmen of Heimdall

However, some scholars, including Finnur Jónsson and Rudolf Simek, have suggested this is a role more appropriate to Óðinn and that the Eddic tradition has thus transferred the name Rígr from him to Heimdall. Since Rígsþula is only preserved in a 14th-century manuscript, it is also plausible that the prose introduction was added by the compiler to conform it to the opening of Völuspá. Additionally, the dating problem is complicated by the poem's history of oral transmission, which tends to warp pieces as long as the Rígsþula as they are recited numerous times. In terms of provenance, although there has been some speculation in the past as to Celtic authorship of the poem, the modern consensus is to ascribe Icelandic authorship to it. Thus although qualitative aspects of the social classes are difficult to determine from the text, there is broader understanding that can be gained.

Firstly, the poem presents a view of Þræll in line with certain slave tropes found throughout Old Norse literature, as dark, short, stupid, gloomy and ugly. Specifically, Karl is described as fairly prosperous, given that he and his family are landed proprietors or freeholders who own the farm building on the land they work. Also, although in Rome and India the color white is assigned to the sacred and to priests and red to warriors, here the noble warrior is white in color while the red coloration is ascribed instead to the commoner in place of the green, blue, or yellow color assigned to the lower classes in other cultures associated with Proto-Indo-European society. Dumézil saw this as a Germanic adaptation of the Indo-European heritage.

Jean Young and Ursula Dronke, among others, have suggested that the Rígsþula story is Celtic in origin and that the name Rígr is an indication of this.

References

Bibliography

  • Rígsþula English translation by Benjamin Thorpe
  • Rígsþula in Old Norse and Olive Bray's translation on pages 202-217 of The Elder of Poetic Eddathrough openlibrary.org
  • MENOTA transliteration of the original Wormianus manuscript
  • MyNDIR (My Norse Digital Image Repository) Illustrations from manuscripts and early print books.