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The poem Ynglingatal, attributed to the probably Norwegian ninth-century skald Thodholfr af Hvin, catalogues the deaths of the line of kings known as the Ynglingar, who ruled in Uppsala during prehistory but may with some assurance be linked to archaeological and historical evidence. The poem promises thirty generations but delivers only twenty-seven; however, sources are able to provide three monarchs preceding those found in Ynglingatal. The earliest kings in Ynglingatal die in unusual ways, sometimes involving the supernatural. The first of these kings, Fjolnir, enjoyed (if that is the word) a death without influence from supernatural or other beings; according to Snorri Sturluson's accompanying prose in Ynglinga saga, Fjolnir was unable to find his way back to his quarters after relieving himself of the physical remainder of a night of drinking and fell into in a vat of beer and drowned. His immediate successors, on the hand, were victims of the supernatural. Fjolnir's son, Sveigdhir, was apparently the first recorded victim of bergtagning, being taken into the mountain by supernatural beings. Thodholfr's stanza is as follows.(1) En dagskjarr Durnis nidhja salvordhudhr Sveigdhi velti, pas i stein enn storgedhi Dusla konr ept dvergi hljop, ok salr bjartr theira Sokmimis jotunbyggdhr vidh jofri gein. (Finnur Jonsson 1912-15, vol. 1: 7) (And the day-shy hall-guardian of the kinsmen of Durnir tricked Sveigdhir, when the great-minded kinsman of Dusli leapt into the rock after the dwarf, and the bright hall, giant-built, of Sokmimir's brood [the rock], gaped open for the prince.(2)) This is a nice verse. It juxtaposes light and dark, and giant, and it anthropomorphizes the hard rock which apparently swallowed up Sveigdhir. According to Snorri, Sveigdhir had gone to search out Godhheimr, the ancient seat of his divine forbears, to see whether he could find Odin. Somewhere in eastern Sweden he has stopped at a farm called at Steini, so named because of a huge rock located there. Sveigdhir and his men, not having learned anything from the beery death of Fjolnir, are themselves intoxicated, and when they see a sitting at the foot of the rock, they rush closer. The calls on Sveigdhir to enter the rock and, if he wishes, to meet with Odin. Sveigdhir leaps into the rock, which immediately closes up after him, and he never emerges. Sometimes Snorri seems to be guessing about what Thodholfr's verses mean, but here he must be pretty close to the mark. In any case, the verse alone offers, if one accepts the traditional dating of the poem to the middle of the Viking Age, perhaps as early as the late ninth century,(3) the oldest dateable attestations of the word for dwarf (in any Germanic language) and of Old Norse-Icelandic jotunn[giant]. The dwarfs' fear of daylight is already present, as is the giants' prowess as the builders of large structures; in words, the picture of these beings is consistent with much later traditions and with cognate traditions. As the first more or less dateable presentation of dwarfs, giants, and their hostility to humans, this verse deserves some importance in the history of Scandinavian folk belief. The next stanza of Ynglingatal is equally important. It tells about Sveigdhir's son Vanlandi, whose mother was Vana from Vanaheimr (here we seem to have an alternative version of the role of the Vanir in the learned prehistory and/or the mythology). This unfortunate monarch met his end at the hands - or more literally under the feet - of a nightmare, the first attested in Scandinavian texts. En a vit Vilja brodhur vitta vettr Vanlanda kom, thas trollkund of trodha skyldi lidhs grimhildr ljona baga, ok sa brann a bedhi Skutu menglotudhr, es mara kvaldhi. (Finnur Jonsson 1912-15, vol. 1: 7) (But to visit the brother of Vili [Odin], the creature of magic arranged for Vanlandi, when the troll-related night-Hildr [witch] was to tread underfoot the enemy of the band of men; and that necklace-destroyer [king], whom the nightmare strangled, burned on the bank of Skuta. …
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