Готтар мен Һуннар шайқасы жырлары

Old Norse heroic poem about a battle of Goths and Huns. Hlöðskviða (also Hlǫðskviða and Hlǫðsqviða), known in English as The Battle of the Goths and Huns and occasionally known by its German name Hunnenschlachtlied, is an Old Norse heroic poem found in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks. Many attempts have been made to try to fit it with known history, but it is an epic poem, telescoping and fictionalising history to a large extent; some verifiable historical information from the time are place names, surviving in Old Norse forms from the period 750–850, but it was probably collected later in Västergötland. Most scholars place the tale sometime in the 4th and 5th centuries AD, with the battle taking place somewhere either in Central Europe near the Carpathian Mountains, or further east in European Russia.

There are two main sources for the saga, "H", from the Hauksbók (A. M. 544) early 14th century; and "R", a 15th century parchment (MS 2845). The final parts of the saga including Hlöðskviða are absent in H and truncated in R – the remainder of the text is found in better preserved 17th century paper copies of these works. The poem itself is thought to have originally been a stand alone work, separate from the saga. It has several analogues, containing similar or related content, including the English Widsith, as well as Orvar Odd's Saga and the Gesta Danorum. The historicity of the "Battle of the Goths and Huns", including the identification of people, places, and events, has been a matter of scholarly investigation since the 19th century, with no clear answer. Locations proposed for the setting include a number of places around the Carpathian Mountains; the actual battle has been identified as either the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains (451 AD), between Flavius Aetius and the Visigoths under Theodoric I and the Huns under Attila; or a battle between the Gothic king Ostrogotha and the Gepid king Fastida; or a battle between the Langobards and the Vulgares (Bulgars) in which the Lombard king Agelmundus (Agelmund) was killed; or a post Attila (d. 453) conflict between the Gepids and Huns, possibly during the reign of the Gepid Ardaric; another interpretation makes the Goths the Crimean Goths. The battle has alternatively been placed as early as 386 AD, a destruction of peoples under Odotheus in a battle on the River Danube. Similarities between the story in the saga and the Battle of Nedao have also been noted. The identification of persons in the poem with historical figures is equally confused. Additionally any historical date of the "Battle of Goths and Huns" (whatever the exact attribution to historical events) is several centuries earlier than the supposedly preceding events recorded in the saga.

The poem is preserved as 29 separate strophes or parts of strophes interspersed among the text in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, of which most are narrative not speech. Much of the saga is now in prose form, though it is thought that the original had been verse, with some textual evidence in the prose for a verse original. Christopher Tolkien supposes that it originally formed a complete narrative in itself, outside of the context it is now found in the saga. Some damaged verses were recorded differently by different editors, and the text shows signs of different dates of composition or recording in different parts of the text – including rich verses similar to those found in early eddaic poems such as Atlakviða or Hamðismál, whilst other lines are less rich. Most editions number the stanzas, but the numbering may start from the first poetic stanza in the saga, not the poem.