Stolt Herr Alf

Stolt Herr Alf

"Stolt Herr Alf" ("Proud Lord Alf") is a medieval Swedish ballad which, due to its content, is thought to originate from pre-Christian times. There are two different manuscripts of this ballad in the National Library of Sweden, and some dialectal words indicate that the ballad was current in south-western Sweden before its documentation.

The Norse god Odin is appealed to with an epithet which has aroused scholarly interest, and he is called Oden Asagrim, meaning "Odin, leader of the Æsir". The suffix -grim is a virtually unique word for "leader" and which is otherwise only attested in the runestone Sö 126, but in the earlier form grim. It is not attested as a noun in the sense "leader" in West Norse sources. In Old Norse, the basic meaning of the adjective grimmr is "heartless, strict and wicked", and so grimmr is comparable in semantics to Old Norse gramr which meant both "wrath", "king" and "warrior".