Hnæf son of Hoc is a prince mentioned in the

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

poems ''

Beowulf ''Beowulf'' (; ) is an Old English poetry, Old English poem, an Epic poetry, epic in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 Alliterative verse, alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and List of translat ...

'' and the '' Finnsburg Fragment.'' According to the listing of tribes in the poem ''

Widsith "Widsith" (, "far-traveller", lit. "wide-journey"), also known as "The Traveller's Song", is an Old English poem of 143 lines. It survives only in the '' Exeter Book'' (''pages 84v–87r''), a manuscript of Old English poetry compiled in the la ...

'' (10th century), Hnæf ruled the Hocings. Hoc is called ''Hoc Healfdene'', suggesting a partly Danish ancestry. According to the narrative, Hnæf was the brother of Hildeburh and brother-in-law of Finn, who ruled the

Frisians The Frisians () are an ethnic group indigenous to the German Bight, coastal regions of the Netherlands, north-western Germany and southern Denmark. They inhabit an area known as Frisia and are concentrated in the Dutch provinces of Friesland an ...

and was killed during a Danish expedition to Frisian territory. Hoc may be identical to the chieftain

Haki Haki, Hake (Old Norse: ), Haco or Aki, the brother of Hagbard, was a famous Scandinavian sea-king, in Norse mythology. He is mentioned in the 12th century ''Gesta Danorum'' and '' Chronicon Lethrense'', and in 13th-century sources including ''Y ...

mentioned in the ''

Ynglinga Saga ''Ynglinga saga'' ( ) is a Kings' sagas, Kings' saga, originally written in Old Norse by the Icelanders, Icelandic poet and historian Snorri Sturluson about 1225. It is the first section of his ''Heimskringla''. It was first translated into Engl ...

'' by Snorri Sturlason. This Haki conquered the kingdom of

Uppsala Uppsala ( ; ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the capital of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Loc ...

and reigned there for ten years before he was cast out by king

Jorund Jorund or Jörundr (5th century) was a Swedish king of the House of Yngling. He was the son of Yngvi, and he had reclaimed the throne of Sweden for his dynasty from Haki (the brother of Hagbard, the hero of the legend of Hagbard and Signy. Snorr ...

. The father-son pair Hoc and Hnæf has been associated with the historical

Alamanni The Alemanni or Alamanni were a confederation of Germanic tribes * * * on the Upper Rhine River during the first millennium. First mentioned by Cassius Dio in the context of the campaign of Roman emperor Caracalla of 213 CE, the Alemanni c ...

c noblemen, possibly of

Nibelung The term Nibelung ( German) or Niflungr (Old Norse) is a personal or clan name with several competing and contradictory uses in Germanic heroic legend. It has an unclear etymology, but is often connected to the root ''Nebel'', meaning mist. The ...

extraction, Huoching (d. 744) and

Hnabi Hnabi or Nebi (c. 710 – c. 789) was an Alemannian duke. He was a son of Huoching and perhaps a grandson of the duke Gotfrid, which would make him a scion of the Agilolfing dynasty of Bavaria. He was the founder of the "old" line of the A ...

(d. 788), the founder of the Ahalolfings. This suggestion was first made in 1849 by

John Mitchell Kemble John Mitchell Kemble (2 April 1807 – 26 March 1857), English scholar and historian, was the eldest son of Charles Kemble the actor and Maria Theresa Kemble. He is known for his major contribution to the history of the Anglo-Saxons and philol ...

in ''History of the Saxons in England'' (p. 419). If the Old English legendary characters have been influenced by these historical characters, this would set the late 8th century as a

terminus post quem A ''terminus post quem'' ('limit after which', sometimes abbreviated TPQ) and ''terminus ante quem'' ('limit before which', abbreviated TAQ) specify the known limits of dating for events or items.. A ''terminus post quem'' is the earliest date t ...

for the date of ''Beowulf''.Hans Jänichen, ''Die alemannischen Fürsten Nebi und Berthold und ihre Beziehungen zu den Klöstern St. Gallen und Reichenau'', Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte (1976), pp. 30-40.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hnaef Legendary Danish people English heroic legends Characters in Beowulf it:Hoc (Beowulf)

See also

References