Song of Eric
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The Song of Eric (Swedish Eriksvisan) is an old Swedish song, but the age has been the matter of much dispute.
It is composed of ten stanzas of four lines. The song deals with Eric, who was the first king of Geatland (fyrsti konunger i Götalandinu vidha). He sent a troop of Geats southwards to a country named Vetala, where no one had yet cultivated the land. In their company there was a wise man, a lawspeaker, who was to uphold the law. Finally, the Geatish king Humli set his son Dan to rule the settlers, and after Dan, Vetala was named Denmark.
The song was published for the first time in a latin translation in Johannes Magnus' Historia de omnibus gothorum sueonumque regibus (1554). He states that the original song was a song which was widely sung in Sweden at the time. The Swedish original version is found two different versions.
One of them is found in Elaus Terserus' translation of Johannes Magnus' work, and this translation was done before 1611, but it was never published. The other one is found in Er. Schroderus' translation of the same work, which was published in 1620. There are also several later documentations of the song, which are not complete. One of them is found in Verelius' work, in the annotations of the Hervarar saga, and the other one in Hadorph's work (1690). Both the versions are closely similar to Schroderus' version. Hadorph relates that the Eric song was still widely sung among the peasantry of Västergötland and Dalsland in the late 17th century.
The language of the song is very archaic, and according to two scholars (K. Säve and G. Stephens), the use of i and u instead of e and o indicate that it was first written down with the runic script. Another scholar P. A. Munch has suggested that it was taken from the so-called Prosaic Chronicle and believes that it may have been composed ca 1449 or 1450. Yet another scholar (Schück) has suggested that everybody involved in presenting it lied about its wide currency and that it was composed by Johannes Magnus himself.
