Hundings

The Hundings (Old English Hundingas, the "hound-clan") are a legendary tribe or clan in early Germanic sources, mostly mentioned due to their feud with the Wulfings (the "wolf-clan"). In the Poetic Edda, Hunding is a king of the Saxons, slain by Helgi Hundingsbane. The Gesta Danorum mentions a Danish king Helgo who slew Hundingus, king of Saxony, in single combat. The historical core of the story is likely a conflict between the Eastern Geats (the wolf-clan) and the Lombards (the hound-clan).

Hunding itself is a patronymic translating to "son of a hound", while the Hundings as a clan (sibb) would be the descendants of Hunding. Being named a "hound" or "dog" was by no means an insult in pre-Christian Germanic culture, but that the animal was rather a symbol of the warrior, while in Christian Germanic culture, it became associated with heathendom, "heathen hounds" being an appellation especially of the pagan Vikings (c.f. Ulfhednar).

The name of Lamicho, king of the Lombards, may mean "little barker" (Harris 2004). In Paulus' Historia Langobardorum, the Lombards terrorize their neighbors by spreading the word that they had dog-headed warriors, possibly a reference to ulfhednar. In Paulus's account, Lamicho is one of seven sons of a "prostitute" (meretrix), who is fostered by king Agelmund. This "prostitute" been explained by Much (followed by Höfler and others) as going back to a word for bitch. The Lombards' original ethnic name, Winnili, has als been connected with "savage dogs" by Much.

In Eddaic account of a feud between the Hundings and the Wulfings surrounding Helgi Hundingsbane may correspond to the Lombard story, and Malone (1926) explains the whole story of Lamicho as the Hunding version of the same feud. Jacob Grimm (1848) compared the story of Lamicho to the German legends of the origins of the Welfen, in German legend tracing their ancestry to fostered babes who were given the surname of "whelps" (Harris 2004). Hundings also appear in Sturlaugs saga starfsama, where they are a tribe of Cynocephali dwelling in Hundingjaland, which is apparently in much the same latitudes as Permia. These Hundings may relate to those Cynocephali mentioned by Adam of Bremen.

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