Heathobard

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The Heathobards was a group which appears in the Anglo-Saxon poems Widsith and Beowulf. In the Anglo-Saxon sources, they were the enemies of Hrothgar and Hrothulf led by Ingeld. They were probably a minor clan in what is today Denmark.

In Beowulf Froda is the father of Ingeld and king of the Heathobards. The existence of the Heathobards has been forgotten in Norse texts and this Fródi there sometimes appears as the brother of Halfdan with the long hositily between Heathobards and Danes becoming a family feud between Halfdan and his brother Fródi in which Fródi kills his brother Halfdan and is himself slain by Halfdan's sons Helgi (Halga) and Hroar (Hrothgar). (In the Latin summary to the lost Skjöldunga saga the names Fródi and Ingjald are interchanged). Saxo Grammaticus (Book 6) makes this Fródi instead to be a late legendary king, the son of Fridleif son of Saxo's late peaceful Fródi. Saxo knows some of the story of this feud but nothing of any relationship to Halfdan. Instead Saxo relates how this Fródi was slain by Saxons and how, after a marriage alliance between his son Ingel and a Saxon princess to heal the feud, Ingel opened it again under urging of an old warrior, just as the hero Beowulf prophecies of Ingjald in the poem Beowulf.

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