Summary
The fylgja, "the follower", is a spirit that follows a person in the sagas of the North, appearing in the shape of an animal or a woman, and whoever sees it has seen a sign of his death. The hamingja is a person's luck and his family's luck, appearing as a huge woman, and at death it passes from the dying to a beloved kinsman. Cleasby–Vigfusson says whole families had a fylgja, and that the two words are nearly synonymous, though the hamingja is the most personal of them and "almost symbolical of family relationship".
In Njáls saga Njáll is sitting outside with Þórðr, the freedman's son who fostered his sons. A he-goat used to wander about the home field and no one drove it away. Þórðr said: what a strange thing! I see the goat lying in the hollow, all covered in blood. Njáll said: there is no goat there, nor anything else. "Then what is it?" "You must be a doomed man, and you have seen your fylgja; be on your guard." Þórðr said: that will not help me if this is meant for me. A few days later men lay in wait for him on the road and killed him.
In Hallfreðar saga the poet Hallfreðr falls sick aboard ship after the boom strikes him, and the crew see a tall woman in a coat of mail walking on the waves behind the ship as if on land. Hallfreðr looks and knows she is his fylgja. He says to her: "I declare myself parted from you in everything." She says: "Will you take me, Þorvaldr?", asking his brother, and he refuses. Then his son, young Hallfreðr, says: "I will take you." And she vanishes. Hallfreðr gives his son the sword the king had given him, and soon after he dies.
In Víga-Glúms saga Glúmr visits his mother's father Vigfúss in Norway, who gives him at parting a cloak, a spear and a sword, saying: our family has put great trust in these; as long as you keep them you will not lose your honour, but if you part with them I fear for you. Later, in Iceland, Glúmr dreams of a woman walking up the valley from the sea towards his farm at Þverá, so huge that her shoulders touched the mountains on either side, and he goes out to meet her and asks her into his house. He says: my grandfather Vigfúss must be dead, and that woman taller than the mountains is his hamingja, "and his hamingja will seek a place to dwell where I am". News of the old man's death came that summer.
The idea these stories turn on is that a person's luck is a being with a shape, which walks with him but is not he. It comes to him from his family and goes back to it: it leaves the dead grandfather for the grandson, the dying father for the son who accepts it, while the brother refuses it and does not get it. So luck is an inheritance, like the sword and the cloak, given and accepted, and no one owns it alone. And whoever sees his follower lying alone and covered in blood knows it is making ready to leave him.
We read the two names in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method. Fylgja comes from the verb fylgja, to follow and accompany, whose root consonants are f, l and g. We read it as falaja: Lane says falaja is to succeed, prevail and gain what one sought, falaja ʿalā khaṣmihi is to overcome one's adversary, and falaja sahmuhu is "his arrow hit". F is f, l is l, and Arabic j answers Germanic g. And the fylgja in the sagas is a luck that prevails or is prevailed over: the Norse dictionary quotes the saying "thy fylgjur cannot stand against his fylgjur". Hamingja the Norse dictionary derives from hamr, the skin and the shape a being puts on. We read ham- as khamara: Lane says khamara is to veil, cover or conceal a thing, and the khimār is the veil a woman covers her head with. Arabic kh becomes h outside Arabic, as in the Juthoor table. So the hamingja is a luck that comes in a shape it puts on as one puts on a covering, which is what it does in Glúmr's dream.
Linguistic Root
| Form | Pronunciation | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| fylgja (verb) | FIL-gya | To follow, to accompany |
| fylgja, fylgjur | FIL-gya, FIL-gyur | The follower and its plural |
| fylgjukona | FIL-gyu-ko-na | The follower-woman, as in Hallfreðar saga |
| kynfylgja, ættarfylgja | KIN-fil-gya, AIT-tar-fil-gya | The follower of a whole family |
| hamr | HAM-r | Skin; the shape one changes into |
| hamingja | HA-min-gya | Luck; guardian spirit |
| falaja, falj | FA-la-ja, FALJ | The Arabic by which we read the follower: success and prevailing |
| khamara, khimār | KHA-ma-ra, khi-MAAR | The Arabic by which we read the first part of hamingja: veiling, covering |
Kroonen sets up the Germanic verb *fulgēn-, "to follow, accompany", whence Norse fylgja and English follow, traces it to an Indo-European root meaning to proceed, and says comparisons outside Germanic are unreliable. He sets up *hama(n)-, "shape, physical form", whence Norse hamr, "skin, slough; shape, form", Old English hama, "covering", and Old Saxon hamo, "covering".
So the reading of fylgja covers the whole root, f, l and g, with -ja as the noun ending, and the Arabic letters stand in the same order without substitution. Its limit is that the Germanic verb means to follow, while Arabic falaja means to succeed and prevail: the reading meets the follower as a luck that prevails, not as a follower. For the sense alone Arabic has walīja: Lane says it is a special intimate, a close friend, one who has entered among a people without belonging to them; the follower too enters a man's life without being of him, but here w stands in place of f. The reading of hamingja covers ham- alone: kh is h, m is m, and the r of hamr is the nominative ending that drops in compounds, so kh and m of khamara remain and the Arabic r has no counterpart. The sense of veiling and covering is the sense of Old English hama in Kroonen. The dictionary does not explain -ingja.
Key Mythic Narratives
The enemy's followers
In Njáls saga itself the followers arrive before their owners. The wizard Svanr yawns long and then says: "Now Ósvífr's fylgjur are coming at us", that is, before Ósvífr and his men reach him; he goes out and waves a goatskin over his head, and a fog comes down in which the pursuers lose their way.
The hamingjur as maidens over mankind
In Vafþrúðnismál Odin asks the giant about the wise maidens who pass over the sea, and the giant answers that they are the daughters of Mögþrasir who come down over the dwellings of men, "the only hamingjur that are in the world, though they were reared among giants".
Symbolic Reading
The sagas give a clear picture of the family: honour and luck are kept in things, a cloak, a spear and a sword, and in a woman no one sees but her owner, and both pass through the family as property passes. Whoever gives the weapons gives his luck with them, and whoever turns the follower away turns away his share of the family.
Cross-Cultural Parallels
At the end of Plato's Republic the souls choose their lives before Lachesis, one of the Moirai, and then Lachesis sends with each soul "the genius that he had chosen, as the guardian of his life and the fulfiller of his choice". So in Greek each person has a follower who guards him from birth, and in the North a follower who guards him until death and then goes on to another.
At Rome the house has its small gods, the Lares, and a man has a genius that follows him; Ovid says the city has a thousand Lares together with the Genius of the leader who handed them over to the people. The Roman genius and the Norse fylgja are both a spirit belonging to one particular man, and the hamingja, like the Lar, belongs to the family and remains in it after its owner's death.
The beings nearest the follower in the North are the dísir: the seer Þórhallr calls the women who killed Þiðrandi "the fylgjur of your kin" and "your dísir" in the same speech. All of them belong within what the Norns decree, and the follower wears a coat of mail as the valkyries do.