the hall, so that the king's men did not know of it." Why did they go
out of the hall so that the king's men did not know of it? No reason is
assigned; the deed is unmotivated. It seems to be a mere harking back to
the statement in the _Hrólfssaga_,[108] that the two men left the hall
secretly. But in the saga there is a reason for their leaving the hall
secretly; the king has forbidden his men to leave the hall and expose
themselves to attack. That, in the _rímur_, the men are said to leave
the hall in the daytime, instead of at night, is a consequence of the
substitution of the wolf for the troll-dragon; a wolf is usually hunted
in the daytime. It might be surmised that their going out secretly is in
imitation of the story as Saxo knew it. But this is not the case; Saxo
does not say that Bjarki and Hjalti went out secretly.[109] The weakness
of this feature of the story in the _rímur_ has been observed by Panzer,
who believes, nevertheless, that the _rímur_ represent an earlier form
of the story than the one in the saga. He says, "Zweifeln möchte man
nur, ob das Motiv des heimlichen Auszugs der beiden nicht in den _Rímur_
fälschlich in den ersten Kampf gesetzt ist, wo es ganz unbegründet
steht, statt in den zweiten, wo es allein motiviert erscheint."[110]
But this is not the correct explanation. The author of the _rímur_ for
some reason, such as a wish to rationalize the story, but which,
however, we can only surmise, decided to make radical changes in it. In
the first instance he substitutes a wolf for the dragon, but otherwise,
considering the material he is going to use in the story of the fight
with the bear, retains as much as he can of the story as it is in the
saga. Thus the idea of Bjarki's and Hjalti's going out secretly is
retained, but without motivation; and if we did not have the story in
the saga for comparison, perhaps this deficiency would not have been
noticed. Even as it is, Panzer is the only one who has called attention
to it.