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Groa’s son Svipdag is mentioned by this name in two Old Norse songs, Grogalder and Fjölsvinnsmal, which, as Bugge has shown, are mutually connected, and describe episodes from the same chain of events. The contents of Grogalder are as follows: Groa is dead when the event described in the song takes place. Svipdag is still quite young. Before her death she has told him that he is to go to her grave and call her if he needs her help. The grave is a grave-chamber made of large flat stones raised over a stone floor, and forming when seen from the outside a mound which is furnished with a door (str. 1, 15). Svipdag’s father has married a second time. The stepmother commands her stepson to go abroad and find Menglödum, “those fond of ornaments.” From Fjölsvinnsmal we learn that one of those called by this name is a young maid who becomes Svipdag’s wife. Her real name is not given: she is continually designated as Menglöd, Menglad, one of “those fond of ornaments,” whom Svipdag has been commanded to find. |
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This task seems to Svipdag to exceed his powers. It must have been one of great adventures and great dangers, for he now considers it the proper time to ask his deceased mother for help. He has become suspicious of his stepmother’s intentions; he considers her lœvis (cunning), and her proposition is “a cruel play which she has put before him” (str. 3). He goes to Groa’s grave-chamber, probably in the night (verda auflgari allir a nottum dauthir — Helge Hund., ii. 51), bids her wake, and reminds her of her promise. That of Groa which had become dust (er til moldar er komin), and that of her which had left this world of man and gone to the lower world (er ór ljódheimum lidin), become again united under the influence of maternal love and of the son’s prayer, and Svipdag hears out of the grave-chamber his mother’s voice asking him why he has come. He speaks of the errand on which he has been sent by his stepmother (str. 3, 4). The voice from the grave declares that long journeys lie before Svipdag if he is to reach the goal indicated. It does not, however, advise him to disobey the comnnand of his stepmother, but assures him that if he will but patiently look for a good outcome of the matter, then the norn will guide the events into their right course (str. 4). The son then requests his mother to sing protecting incantations over him. She is celebrated in mythology as one mighty in incantations of the good kind. It was Groa that sang healing incantations over Thor when with a wounded forehead he returned from the conflict with the giant Hrungner (Gylfag.). |
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Groa hears his prayer, and sings from the grave an incantation of protection against the dangers which her prophetic vision has discovered on those journeys that now lie before Svipdag: first, the incantation that can inspire the despondent youth who lacks confidence in himself with courage and reliance in his own powers. It is, Groa says, the same incantation as another mother before her sang over a son whose strength had not yet been developed, and who had a similar perilous task to perform. It is an incantation, says Groa, which Rind, Vale’s mother, sang over Ránr. This synonym of Vale is of saga-historical interest. Saxo calls Vale Bous, the Latinised form for Beowulf, and Beowulf’s grave-mound, according to the Old English poem which bears his name, is situated on Hrones nœss, Ránr’s ness. Here too a connection between Vale and the name Ránr is indicated. Groa’s second incantation contains a prayer that when her son, joyless, travels his paths and sees scorn and evil before his eyes, he may always be protected by Urd’s lokur (an ambiguous expression, which may on the one hand refer to the bonds and locks of the goddess of fate, on the other hand to Groa’s own prophetic magic song: lokur means both songs of a certain kind and locks and prisons). On his journey Svipdag is to cross rivers, which with swelling floods threaten his life; but Groa’s third incanntation commands these rivers to flow down to Hel and to fall for her son. The rivers which have their course to Hel (falla til Heljar hedan — Grimnersmal, 28) are subterranean rivers rising on the Hvergelmer mountain (59, 93). |
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Groa’s fourth and fifth incantations indicate that Svipdag is to encounter enemies and be put in chains. Her songs are then to operate in such a manner that the hearts of the foes are softened into reconciliation, and that the chains fall from the limbs of her son. For this purpose she gives him that power which is called “Leifnir’s fires” (see No. 38), which loosens fetters from enchanted limbs (str. 9, 10). Groa’s sixth incantation is to save Svipdag from perishing in a gale on the sea. In the great world-mill (ludr) which produces the maelstrom, ocean currents, ebb and flood tide (see Nos. 79-82), calm and war are to “gang thegither” in harmony, be at Svipdag’s service and prepare him a safe voyage. The seventh incantation that comes from the grave-chamber speaks of a journey which Svipdag is to make over a mountain where terrible cold reigns. The song is to save him from becoming a victim of the frost there. The last two incantations, the eighth and the ninth, show what was already suggested by the third, namely, that Svipdag’s adventurous journeys are to be crowned with a visit in the lower world. He is to meet Nat á Niflvegi, “on the Nifel-way,” “in Nifel-land.” The word nifl does not occur in the Old Norse literature except in reference to the northern part of the Teutonic Hades, the forecourt to the worlds of torture there. Niflhel and Niflheim are, as we know, the names of that forecourt. Niflfarinn is the designation, as heretofore mentioned, of a deceased whose soul has descended to Nifelhel; Niflgódr is a nithing, one deserving to be damned to the |
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tortures of the lower world. Groa’s eighth incantation is to protect her son against the perilous consequences of encountering a “dead woman” (daud kona) on his journey through Nifelhel. The ninth incantation shows that Svipdag, on having traversed the way to the northern part of the lower world, crosses the Hvergelmer mountain and comes to the realm of Mimer; for he is to meet and talk with “the weapon-honoured giant,” Mimer himself, under circumstances which demand “tongue and brains” on the part of Groa’s son:
In the poem Fjölsvinnsmal, which I am now to discuss, we read with regard to Svipdag’s adventures in the lower world that on his journey in Mimer’s domain he had occasion to see the ásmegir’s citadel and the splendid things within its walls (str. 33; cp. No. 53). 97. In the first stanzas of Fjölsvinnsmal we see Svipdag making his way to a citadel which is furnished with forgördum — that is to say, ramparts in front of the gate in the wall which surrounds the place. On one of these ramparts stands a watchman who calls himself Fjölsvinnr, which is an epithet of Odin (Grimnersmal, 47). |
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The first strophe of the poem calls Svipdag thursa thjódar sjólr (sjóli), “the leader of the Thurs people.” The reason why he could be designated thus has already been given (see Nos. 24, 33): During the conflicts between the powers of winter and the sons of Ivalde, and the race connected with them, on the one side, and the Teutonic patriarch Halfdan, favoured by the Asa-gods, on the other side, Svipdag opposed the latter and finally defeated him (see No. 93). From the manner in which Fjölsvin receives the traveller it appears that a “leader of the Thurs people” need not look for a welcome outside of such a citadel as this. Fjölsvin calls him a flagd, a vargr, and advises him to go back by “moist ways,” for within this wall such a being can never come. Meanwhile these severe words do not on this occasion appear to be spoken in absolute earnest, for the watchman at the same time encourages conversation, by asking Svipdag what his errand is. The latter corrects the watchman for his rough manner of receiving him, and explains that he is not able to return, for the burgh he sees is a beautiful sight, and there he would be able to pass a happy life. When the watchman now asks him about his parents and family he answers in riddles. Himself “the leader of the Thurs people,” the former ally of the powers of frost, he calls Windcold, his father he calls Springcold, and his grandfather Verycold (Fjölkaldr). This answer gives the key to the character of the whole following conversation, in which Svipdag is the questioner, whose interrogations the watchman answers in such a manner |
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that he gives persons and things names which seldom are their usual ones, but which refer to their qualities. What castle is this, then, before which Svipdag stopped, and within whose walls he is soon to find Menglad, whom he seeks? A correct answer to this question is of the greatest importance to a proper understanding of the events of mythology and their connection. Strange to say, it has hitherto been assumed that the castle is the citadel of a giant, a resort of thurses, and that Menglad is a giantess. Svipdag has before him a scene that enchants his gaze and fills him with a longing to remain there for ever. It is a pleasure to the eyes, he says, which no one willingly renounces who once has seen a thing so charming. Several “halls,” that is to say, large residences or palaces, with their “open courts,” are situated on these grounds. The halls glitter with gold, which casts a reflection over the plains in front of them (gardar gloa mer thykkja af gullna sali — str. 5). One of the palaces, a most magnificent one (an audrann), is surrounded by “wise Vaferflame,” and Fjölsvin says of it that from time immemorial there has been a report among men in regard to this dwelling. He calls it Hýrr, “the gladdening one,” “the laughing one,” “the soul-stirring one.” Within the castle wall there rises a hill or rock, which the author of the song conceived as decorated with flowers or in some other ravishing way, for he calls it a joyous rock. There the fair Menglad is seen sitting like an image (thruma), surrounded by lovely dises. Svipdag here sees the world-tree, |
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invisible on earth, spreading its branches loaded with fruits (aldin) over all lands. In the tree sits the cock Vidofnir, whose whole plumage glitters like gold (str. 19, 22, 23, 31, 32, 35, 49). The whole place is surrounded by a wall, “so solid that it shall stand as long as the world” (str. 12). It is built of Leirbrimer’s (Ymer’s) limbs, and is called Gastrofnir, “the one as refuses admittance to uninvited guests.” In the wall is inserted the gate skilfully made by Solblinde’s sons, the one which I have already mentioned in No. 36. Svipdag, who had been in the lower world and had there seen the halls of the gods and the well-fortified castle of the ásmegir (see No. 53), admires the wall and the gate, and remarks that no more dangerous contrivances (for uninvited guests) than these were seen among the gods (str. 9-12). The gate is guarded by two “garms,” wolf-dogs. Fjölsvin explains that their names are Gifr and Geri, that they are to live and perform their duty as watch-dogs to the end of the world (unz rjúfask regin), and that they are the watchers of watchers, whose number is eleven (vardir ellifu, er their varda — str. 14). Just as the mythic personality that Svipdag met outside of the castle is named by the Odin-epithet Fjölsvidr, so we here find one of the watching dogs called after one of Odin’s wolf-dogs, Geri (Grimnersmal, 19). Their duty of watching, which does not cease before Ragnarok, they perform in connection with eleven mythic persons dwelling within the citadel, who are themselves called vardir, an epithet for world-protecting divinities. Heimdal is |
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vördr goda, Balder is vördr Hálfdanar jarda. The number of the Asas is eleven after Balder descended to the lower world. Hyndluljod says: Voru ellifu œsir taldir, Balldr er hne vid banathufu. These wolf-dogs are foes of giants and trolls. If a vœttr came there he would not be able to get past them (str. 16 — ok kemt thá vœttr, ef thá kom). The troll-beings that are called gifr and kveldridur (Völuspa, 50; Helge Hjorv., 15), and that fly about in the air with lim (bundles of sticks) in their hands, have been made to fall by these dogs. They have made gifr-lim into a “land-wreck” (er gjordu gífrlim reka fyrir löndin — str. 13). As one of the dogs is himself called Gifr, his ability, like that of those chased by him, to fly in the air seems to be indicated. The old tradition about Odin, who with his dogs flies through the air high above the earth, has its root in the myth concerning the duty devolving upon the Asa-father, in his capacity of lord of the heavens, to keep space free from gifr, kveddridur, tunridur, who “leika á lopti,” do their mischief in the air (cp. Havamál, 155). The hall in which Menglad lives, and that part of the wall-surrounded domain which belongs to her, seems to be situated directly in front of the gate, for Svipdag, standing before it, asks who is the ruler of the domain which he sees before him, and Fjölsvin answers that it is Menglad who there holds sway, owns the land, and is mistress of the treasure-chambers. The poem tells us in the most unmistakable manner that Menglad is an asynja, and that one of the very |
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noblest ones. “What are the names,” asks Svipdag, “of the young women who sit so pleasantly together at Menglad’s feet?” Fjölsvin answers by naming nine, among whom are the goddess of healing, Eir (Prose Edda, i. 114), and the dises Hlif “the protectress,” Björt, “the shining,” Blid, “the blithe,” and Frid, “the fair.” Their place at Menglad’s feet indicates that they are subordinate to her and belong to her attendants. Nevertheless they are, Fjölsvin assures us, higher beings, who have sanctuaries and altars (str. 40), and have both power and inclination quickly to help men who offer sacrifices to them. Nay, “no so severe evil can happen to the sons of men that these maids are not able to help them out of their distress.” It follows with certainty that their mistress Menglad, “the one fond of ornaments,” must be one of the highest and most worshipped goddesses in the mythology. And to none of the asynjes is the epithet “fond of ornaments” (Menglad) more applicable than to the fair owner of the first among female ornaments, Brisingamen — to Freyja, whose daughters Hnoss and Gersami are called by names that mean “ornaments,” and of whose fondness for beautiful jewels even Christian saga authors speak. To the court of no other goddess are such dises as Björt, Blid, and Frid so well suited as to hers. And all that Fjölsvinnsmal tells about Menglad is in harmony with this. Freyja was the goddess of love, of matrimony, and of fertility, and for this reason she was regarded as the divine ruler and helper, to whom loving maids, wives who are to bear children, and sick women were to address |
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themselves with prayers and offerings. Figuratively this is expressed in Fjölsvinnsmal with the words that every sick woman who walks up the mountain on which Menglad sits regains her health. “That mountain has long been the joy of the sick and wounded” (str. 26). The great tree whose foliage spreads over Menglad’s palace bears the fruits that help kélisjúkar konur, so that utar hverva that thœr innar skyli (str. 22). In the midst of the fair dises who attend Menglad the poem also mentions Aurboda, the giantess, who afterwards becomes the mother-in-law of Freyja’s brother, and whose appearance in Asgard as a maidservant of Freyja, and as one of those that bring fruits from the world-tree to kélisjúkar konur, has already been mentioned in No. 35. If we now add that Menglad, though a mighty goddess, is married to Svipdag, who is not one of the gods, and that Freyja, despite her high rank among the goddesses, does not have a god for her husband, but, as Gylfaginning expresses it, giptist theim manni er Ódr heitir, and, finally, that Menglad’s father is characterised by a name which refers to Freyja’s father, Njord,* then these circumstances alone, without the additional and decisive proofs which are to be presented as this investigation progresses, are sufficient to form a solid basis for the identity of Menglad
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and Freyja, and as a necessary consequence for the identity of Svipdag and Ódr, also called Óttar. The glorious castle to which Svipdag travelled “up” is therefore Asgard, as is plain from its very description — with its gold-glittering palace, with its wall standing until Ragnarok, with its artistic gate, with its eleven watchers, with its Fjölsvin-Odin, with its asynja Eir, with its benevolent and lovely dises worshipped by men, with its two wolf-dogs who are to keep watch so long as the world stands, and which clear the air of tunridur, with its shady arbour formed by the overhanging branches of the world-tree, and with its gold-feathered cock Vidofnir (Völuspa’s Gullinkambi). Svipdag comes as a stranger to Asgard’s gate, and what he there sees he has never before seen. His conversation with Fjölsvin is a series of curious questions in regard to the strange things that he now witnesses for the first time. His designation as thursa thjodar sjólr indicates not only that he is a stranger in Asgard, but also that he has been the foe of the Asgards. That he under such circumstances was able to secure admittance to the only way that leads to Asgard, the bridge Bifrost; that he was allowed unhindered to travel up this bridge and approach the gate unpunished, and without encountering any other annoyances than a few repelling words from Fjölsvin, who soon changes his tone and gives him such information as he desires — all this presupposes that the mythology must have had strong and satisfactory reasons for permitting a thing so unusual to take place. In several passages in Grogalder and in Fjölsvinnsmal it is |
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hinted that the powers of fate had selected Svipdag to perform extraordinary things and gain an end the attaining of which seemed impossible. That the norns have some special purpose with him, and that Urd is to protect him and direct his course with invisible bonds, however erratic it may seem, all this gleams forth from the words of his mother Groa in the grave-chamber. And when Svipdag finally sees Menglad hasten to throw herself into his arms, he says himself that it is Urd’s irresistible decree that has shaped things thus: Urdar ordi kvedr engi madr. But Urd’s resolve alone cannot be a sufficient reason in the epic for Svipdag’s adoption in Asgard, and for his gaining, though he is not of Asa-birth, the extraordinary honour and good luck of becoming the husband of the fairest of the asynjes and of one of the foremost of the goddesses. Urd must have arranged the chain of events in such a manner that Menglad desires to possess him, that Svipdag has deserved her love, and that the Asa-gods deem it best for themselves to secure this opponent of theirs by bonds of kinship. 98. The most important question put to Fjölsvin by Svipdag is, of course, the one whether a stranger can enter. Fjölsvin’s answer is to the effect that this is, and remains, impossible, unless the stranger brings with him a certain |
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sword. The wall repels an uninvited comer; the gate holds him fast if he ventures to lay hands on it; of the two wolf-dogs one is always watching while the other sleeps, and no one can pass them without permission. To this assurance on the part of Fjölsvin are added a series of questions and answers, which the author of the poem has planned with uncommon acumen. Svipdag asks if it is not, after all, possible to get past the watching dogs. There must be something in the world delicate enough to satisfy their appetite and thus turn away their attention. Fjölsvin admits that there are two delicacies that might produce this effect, but they are pieces of flesh that lie in the limbs of the cock Vidofner (str. 17, 18). He who can procure these can steal past the dogs. But the cock Vidofner sits high in the top of the world-tree and seems to be inaccessible. Is there, then, asks Svipdag, any weapon that can bring him down dead? Yes, says Fjölsvin, there is such a weapon. It was made outside of the Na-gate (nagrindr). The smith was one Loptr. He was robbed (rúinn) of this weapon so dangerous to the gold-glittering cock, and now it is in the possession of Sinmara, who has laid it in a chest of tough iron beneath nine njard-locks (str. 25, 26). It must have been most difficult and dangerous to go to the place where Sinmara has her abode and try to secure the weapon so well kept. Svipdag asks if anyone who is willing to attempt it has any hope of returning. Fjölsvin answers that in Vidofner’s ankle-bones (völum) lies a bright, hook-shaped bone. If one can secure this, bring it to Ludr (the place of the lower-world mill), |
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and give it to Sinmara, then she can be induced to part with the weapon in question (str. 27-30). It appears from this that the condition on which Svipdag can get into the castle where Menglad dwells is that he shall be in possession of a weapon which was smithied by an enemy of the gods, here called Loptr, and thus to be compared with Loke, who actually bears this epithet. If he does not possess this weapon, which doubtless is fraught with danger to the gods, and is the only one that can kill the gold-glittering cock of the world-tree, then the gate of the citadel is not opened to him, and the watching wolf-dogs will not let him pass through it. But Fjölsvin also indicates that under ordinary circumstances, and for one who is not particularly chosen for this purpose by Fate, it is utterly impossible to secure possession of the sword in question. Before Sinmara can be induced to lend it, it is necessary to bring Vidofner dead down from the branches of the world-tree. But to kill the cock that very weapon is needed which Sinmara cannot otherwise be induced to part with. Meanwhile the continuation of the poem shows that what was impossible for everybody else has already been accomplished by Svipdag. When he stands at the gate of the castle in conversation with Fjölsvin he has the sword by his side, and knows perfectly well that the gate is to be opened so soon as it pleases him to put an end to the talk with Fjölsvin and pronounce his own name. The very moment he does this the gate swings on its hinges, the mighty wolf-dogs welcome (fagna) him, and Menglad, informed by Fjölsvin of his arrival, |
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hastens eagerly to meet him (str. 42, &c.). Fjölsvinnsmal, so far as acumen in plot and in execution is concerned, is the finest old poem that has been handed down to our time, but it would be reduced to the most absurd nonsense if the sword were not in Svipdag’s possession, as the gate is never to be opened to anyone else than to him who brings to Menglad’s castle the sword in question. So far as the sword is concerned we have now learned: That it was made by an artist who must have been a foe of the gods, for Fjölsvin designates him by the Loke-epithet Loptr; That the place where the artist dwelt when he made the weapon was situated fyr nágrindr nedan; That while he dwelt there, and after he had finished the sword, he was robbed of it (Loptr rúinn fyr nágrindr nedan); That he or they who robbed him of it must have been closely related to Night and the night dises, for the sword was thereafter in the keeping of the night-being Sinmara; That she regarded it as exceedingly precious, and also dangerous if it came into improper hands, since she keeps it in a “tough iron chest” beneath nine magical locks; That the eleven guards that dwell in the same castle with Menglad regard it as of the greatest importance to get the sword within their castle wall; That it has qualities like no other weapon in the world: this sword, and it alone, can kill the golden cock on the world-tree — a quality which seems to indicate that it threatens the existence of the world and the gods. |
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It is evident that the artist who made this incomparable and terrible weapon was one of the most celebrated smiths in mythology. The question now is, whether the information given us by Fjölsvinnsmal in regard to him is sufficient to enable us to determine with certainty who he is. The poem does not name him by any of his names, but calls him by the Loke-epithet Loptr, “the airy.” Among the ancient smiths mentioned in our mythic fragments there is one who refers to himself with the epithet Byrr, “Wind,” suggesting to us the same person — this one is Volund. After he in his sleep had been made prisoner by Mimer-Nidhadr and his Njarians (see No. 87), he says when he awakes:
“Who are the mighty, who with bonds (besti, dative of böstr) bound the wind (laugdo sima a Byr) and fettered me?” The expression implies that it is as easy to bind the wind as Volund. He was also able to secure his liberty again in spite of all precautions. According to the Norse version of the Volund saga, one of the precautions resorted to is to sever the sinews of his knees (str. 17 and the prose). It is Nidhadr’s queen who causes this cruel treatment. In Fjölsvinnsmal the nameless mythic personality who deprived the “airy one” of his weapon has left it to be kept by a feminine person, Sinmara. The name is composed of sin, which |
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means “sinew,” and mara, which means “the one that maims.” (Mara is related to the verb merja, “to maim” — see Vigfusson’s Dict.) Thus Sinmara means “the one who maims by doing violence to the sinews.” The one designated by this epithet in Fjölsvinnsmal has therefore acted the same part as Mimer-Nidhadr’s queen in the Volundarkvida. Mimer-Nidhadr, who imprisons Volund and robs him of his sword and the incomparable arm-ring, is the father of Night and her sisters (see No. 85). He who robs “the airy one” of his treasures must also have been intimately related to the dises of night, else he would not have selected as keeper of the weapon Sinmara, whose quality as a being of night is manifested by the meaning incubus nocturnes which is the name Mara acquired. In Fjölsvinsmal (str. 29) Sinmara is called hin fölva gygr, “the ashes-coloured giantess” — a designation pointing in the same direction. She is also called Eir aurglasis (str. 28), an expression which, as I believe, has been correctly interpreted as “the dis of the shining arm-ring” (cp. Bugge Edda, p. 348). In Volundarkvida the daughter of Mimer-Nidhadr receives Volund’s incomparable arm-ring to wear. According to Fjölsvinnsmal “the airy one” makes his weapon fyr nágrindr nedan. The meaning of this expression has already been discussed in No. 60. The smith has his abode in the frost-cold and foggy Nifelheim, while he is at work on the sword. Nifelheim, the land fyr nágrindr nedan, as we already know, is the northern subterranean border-land of Mimer’s domain. The two |
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realms are separated by Mount Hvergelmer, on which the Na-gates are set, and where the world-mill, called Eylúdr and Lúdr have their foundation-structure (see Nos. 59, 60, 79, 80). In its vicinity below the southern slope of the Hvergelmer mountain Nat has her hall (Nos. 84, 93). According to Fjölsvinnsmal Sinmara also dwells here. For Fjölsvin says that if Svipdag is to borrow the sword which she keeps, he must carry the above-mentioned hooked bone “to Ludr and give it to Sinmara” (ljósan ljá skaltu i Lúdr bera, Sinmöra at selja — str. 30). Lúdr, the subterranean world-mill, which stands on the Nida mountain above Nat’s hall, has given its name to the region where it stands. In Volundarkvida Mimer-Nidhadr suddenly appears with his wife and daughter and armed Njarians in the remote cold Wolfdales, where Volund thinks himself secure, and no one knows whence these foes of his come. The explanation is that the “Wolfdales” of the heroic saga were in the mythology situated in Nifelheim, the border-land of Mimer’s realm. Like “the airy one,” Volund made his sword fyr nágrindr nedan; the latter, like the former, was robbed of the weapon as soon as it was finished by a lower-world ruler, whose kinswomen are dises of the night; and in the saga of the one, as of the other, one of these night dises has caused a maiming by injuring the sinews. Thus we can also understand why Svipdag must travers Nifelheim, “meet Night on Niflway,” visit the world-mill, wade across Hel-rivers, and encounter Mimer himself, “the weapon honoured.” If Svipdag wants the sword made by Loptr, he must risk these adventures, |
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since the sword is kept in the lower world by a kinswoman of Mimer. The heroic saga about Volund is therefore identical with the myth concerning the maker of the sword which opens Asgard for Svipdag. The former, produced in Christian times, is only a new version of the latter. Volund is a foe of the gods, an elf-prince whc was deeply insulted by beings more powerful than himself (No. 87). “The airy one” must likewise be a foe of the gods, since the weapon he has made is dangerous to the golden cock of the world-tree, and is bought by “the eleven wards” with the opening of Asgard’s gate and the giving of Menglad as wife to Svipdag. Its danger to Asgard must also be suggested by Fjölsvin’s statement, that the splendid hall, called Hýrr, “the gladdener,” “the soul-stirring,” that hall which is situated within the castle wall, which is encircled by vaferflames, and which from time out of mind has been celebrated among men — that this hall has already long trembled á brodds oddi, “on the point of the sword” (str. 32). No other weapon can here be meant than one which was fraught with the greatest danger to the safety of the gods, and which filled them with anxiety; and unless we wish to deny that there is sense and connection in the poem, this sword can be no other than that which Svipdag now has with him, and which, having been brought to Asgard, relieves the gods of their anxiety. And to repeat the points of similarity, Volund, like “Loptr,” makes his weapon in the northern borderland of Mimer’s domain; and when the sword is finished he is surprised by subterranean powers. In Loptr’s saga, |
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as in Volund’s, a magnificent arm-ring is mentioned, and in both a dis of night received this ring to wear. In Loptr’s saga, as in Volund’s, a night-dis is mentioned who injures sinews. And Volund himself calls himself Byrr, “the wind,” which is a synonym of Loptr. Thus Svipdag has made a journey to the lower world to get possession of the sword of Volund, and he has been successful. 99. The conversation between Fjölsvin and Svipdag ends when the latter gives his name, and requests the former to ask Menglad if she wishes to possess his love. Menglad then hastens to meet him, but before she shows what she feels for him, he must confirm with his own name and that of his father’s that he really is the one he pretends to be — the one she has long been longing for. The young hero then says: Svipdagr ek heitir, Sólbjartr hét minn fadir (str. 47). When Fjölsvin asked Svipdag what the name of his father was, he answered: Springcold, Várkaldr (str. 6); and I have already stated the reason why he was so called. Now he gives another name of his father — Sólbjartr — which also is a mere epithet, but still, as Svipdag must here speak plainly, it has to be such a name as can refer to his father in a distinct and definite manner. Svipdag’s mother, Groa, was married to Örvandell hinn |
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frœkni (Younger Edda, 276-278). The epithet Sólbjartr, “he who has a brightness like that of the sun,” if it really refers to Orvandel, must be justified and explained by something that the mythology had to report of him. Of Orvandel, we know from the Skaldskaparmal that he and Groa had at least for a time been good friends of Thor; that on one of his expeditions in Jotunheim, north of the Elivogar rivers, the latter had met Orvandel and had carried him in his provision-basket across the water to his home; that Orvandel there froze his toe; that Thor broke this off, and, in honour of Orvandel, threw it up into the heavens, where it became that star which is called Orvandel’s toe. Of ancient Teutonic star-names but very few have been handed down to our time, and it is natural that those now extant must be those of constellations or separate stars, which attracted attention on account of their appearance, or particularly on account of the strength of their light. One of them was “Orvandel’s toe.” By the name Orvandel (Earendel) a star was also known among the Teutons in Great Britain. After being converted to Christianity they regarded the Earendel star as a symbol of Christ. The Church had already sanctified such a view by applying to Christ the second epistle of Peter i. 19: “We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts.” The morning star became, as we read in a Latin hymn, “typus Christi.” But it would be a too hasty conclusion to assume that Orvandel’s star and the morning star were identical in |
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heathen times. All that we can assert with certainty is that the former must have been one of the brightest, for the very name Earendel gradually became in the Old English an abstract word meaning “splendour.” Codex Exoniensis has preserved a hymn to Christ, the introductory stanzas of which appear to be borrowed from the memory of a heathen hymn to Orvandel, and to have been adapted to Christ with a slight change:
From this Old English song it appears as if the Orvandel epithet Sólbjartr was in vogue among the Saxon tribes in England. We there find an apparent interpretation of the epithet in the phrases adapted to Earendel, “brightest (beorhtast) of angels” and “true beam of the sun.” That Svipdag’s name was well known in England, and that a Saxon royal dynasty counted him among their mythical forefathers, can be demonstrated by the genealogy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. That Svipdag with sufficient distinctness might characterise his father as Sólbjartr is accordingly explained by the fact that Orvandel is a star-hero, and that the star bearing his name |
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was one of the “brightest” in the heavens, and in brilliancy was like “a beam from the sun.” 100. When Menglad requests Svipdag to name his race and his name, she does so because she wants jartegn (legal evidence; compare the expression med vitnum ok jartegnum) that he is the one as whose wife she had been designated by the norns (ef ek var ther kván of kvedin — str. 46), and that her eyes had not deceived her. She also wishes to know something about his past life that may confirm that he is Svipdag. When Svipdag had given as a jartegn his own name and an epithet of his father, he makes only a brief statement in regard to his past life, but to Menglad it is an entirely sufficient proof of his identity with her intended husband. He says that the winds drove him on cold paths from his father’s house to frosty regions of the world (str. 47). The word used by him, “drove” (reka), implies that he did not spontaneously leave his home, a fact which we also learn in Grogalder. On the command of his stepmother, and contrary to his own will, he departs to find Menglads, “the women fond of ornaments.” His answer further shows that after he had left his father’s house he had made journeys in frost-cold regions of the world. Such regions are Jotunheim and |
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Nifelheim, which was in fact regarded as a subterranean part of Jotunheim (see Nos. 59, 63). Menglad has eagerly longed for the day when Svipdag should come. Her mood, when Svipdag sees her within the castle wall sitting on “the joyous mount” surrounded by asynjes and dises, is described in the poem by the verb thruma, “to be sunk into a lethargic, dreamy condition.” When Fjölsvin approaches her and bids her “look at a stranger who may be Svipdag” (str. 43), she awakes in great agony, and for a moment she can scarcely control herself. When she is persuaded that she has not been deceived either by Fjölsvin’s words or by her own eyes, she at once seals the arrival of the youth with a kiss. The words which the poem makes her lips utter testify, like her conduct, that it is not the first time she and Svipdag have met, but that it is a “meeting again,” and that she long ere this knew that she possessed Svipdag’s love. She speaks not only of her own longing for him, but also of his longing and love for her (str. 48-50), and is happy that “he has come again to her halls” (at thu est aptr komin, mögr, til minna sala — str. 49). This “again” (back), which indicates a previous meeting between Menglad and Svipdag, is found in all the manuscripts of Fjölsvinnsmal, and that it has not been added by any “betterer” trying to mend the metres of the text is demonstrated by the fact that the metre would be improved by the absence of the word aptr. Meanwhile it appears with certainty from Fjölsvinnsmal that Svipdag never before had seen the castle within whose walls Menglad has ríki, eign ok audsölum (str. 7, 8). |
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He stands before its gate as a wondering stranger, and puts question after question to Fjölsvin in regard to the remarkable sights before his eyes. It follows that Menglad did not have her halls within this citadel, but dwelt somewhere else, at the time when she on a previous occasion met Svipdag and became assured that he loved her. In this other place she must have resided when Svipdag’s stepmother commanded him to find Menglödum, that is to say, Menglad, but also some one else to whom the epithet “ornament-glad” might apply. This is confirmued by the fact that this other person to whom Grogalder’s words refer is not at all mentioned in Fjölsvinnsmal. It is manifest that many things had happened, and that Svipdag had encountered many adventures, between the episode described in Grogalder, when he had just been commanded by his stepmother to find “those loving ornaments,” and the episode in Fjölsvinnsmal, when he seeks Menglad again in Asgard itself. Where can he have met her before? Was there any time when Freyja did not dwell in Asgard? Völuspa answers this question, as we know, in the affirmative. The event threatening to the gods and to the existence of the world once happened that the goddess of fertility and love came into the power of the giants. Then all the high-holy powers assembled to consider “who had mixed the air with corruption and given Oder’s maid to the race of giants.” But none of our Icelandic mythic records mentions how and by whom Freyja was liberated from the hands of the powers of frost. Under the name |
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Svipdag our hero is mentioned only in Grogalder and Fjölsvinnsmal; all we learn of him under the name Ódr and Óttarr is that he was Freyja’s lover and husband (Völuspa, Hyndluljod); that he went far, far away; that Freyja then wept for him, that her tears became gold, that she sought him among unknown peoples, and that she in her search assumed many names: Mardöll, Hörn, Gefn, Syr (Younger Edda, 114). To get further contributions to the Svipdag myth we must turn to Saxo, where the name Svipdag should be found as Svipdagerus, Óttar as Otharus or Hotharus, and Ódr as Otherus or Hotherus.* There cannot be the least doubt that Saxo’s Otharus is a figure borrowed from the mythology and from the heroic sagas therewith connected, since in the first eight books of his History not a single person can be shown who is not originally found in the mythology. But the mythic records that have come down to our time know only one Óttarr, and he is the one who wins Freyja’s heart. This alone makes it the duty of the mythologist to follow this hint here given and see whether that which Saxo relates about his Otharus confirms his identity with Svipdag-Ottar. The Danish king Syvaldus had, says Saxo, an uncommonly beautiful daughter, Syritha, who fell into the hands of a giant. The way this happened was as follows: A woman who had a secret understanding with * In Saxo, as in other sources of about the same time, aspirated names do not usually occur with aspiration. I have already referred to the examples Handuuanus, Andvani, Helias, Elias, Hersbernus, Esbjörn, Hevindus, Eyvindur, Horvendillus, Orvandell, Hestia, Estland, Holandia, Oland. |
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774 the giant succeeded in nestling herself in Syritha’s confidence, in being adopted as her maidservant, and in enticing her to a place where the giant lay in ambush. The latter hastened away with Syritha and concealed her in a wild mountain district. When Otharus learned this he started out in search of the young maiden. He visited every recess in the mountains, found the maiden and slew the giant. Syritha was in a strange condition when Otharus liberated her. The giant had twisted and pressed her locks together so that they formed on her head one hard mass which hardly could be combed out except with the aid of an iron tool. Her eyes stared in an apathetic manner, and she never raised them to look at her liberator. It was Otharus’ determination to bring a pure virgin back to her kinsmen. But the coldness and indifference she seemed to manifest toward him was more than he could endure, and so he abandoned her on the way. While she now wandered alone through the wilderness she came to the abode of a giantess. The latter made the maiden tend her goats. Still, Otharus must have regretted that he abandoned Syritha, for he went in search of her and liberated her a second time. The mythic poem from which Saxo borrowed his story must have contained a song, reproduced by him in Latin paraphrases, and in which Otharus explained to Syritha his love, and requested her, “whom he had suffered so much in seeking and finding,” to give him a look from her eyes as a token that under his protection she was willing to be brought back to her father and mother. But her eyes continually stared on the ground, and apparently she remained as |
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775 cold and indifferent as before. Otharus then abandoned her for the second time. From the thread of the story it appears that they were then not far from that border which separates Jotunheim from the other realms of the world. Otharus crossed that water, which in the old records is probably called the Elivagar rivers, on the opposite side of which was his father’s home. Of Syritha Saxo, on the other hand, says cautiously and obscurely that “she in a manner that sometimes happened in antiquity hastened far away down the rocks” — more pristino decursis late scopulis (Hist., 333) — an expression which leads us to suppose that in the mythic account she had flown away in the guise of a bird. Meanwhile fate brought her to the home of Otharus’ parents. Here she represented herself to be a poor traveller, born of parents who had nothing. But her refined manners contradicted her statement, and the mother of Otharus received her as a noble guest. Otharus himself had already come home. She thought she could remain unknown to him by never raising the veil with which she covered her face. But Otharus well knew who she was. To find out whether she really had so little feeling for him as her manners seemed to indicate, a pretended wedding between Otharus and a young maiden was arranged, whose name and position Saxo does not mention. When Otharus went to the bridal bed, Syritha was probably near him as bridesmaid, and carried the candle. The light or the flame burnt down, so that the fire came in contact with her hand, but she felt no pain, for there was in her heart a still more burning pain. When Otharus then requested |
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her to take care of her hand, she finally raised her gaze from the ground, and their eyes met. Therewith the spell resting on Syritha was broken: it was plain that they loved each other and the pretended wedding was changed into a real one between Syritha and Otharus. When her father learned this he became exceedingly wroth; but after his daughter had made a full explanation to him, his anger was transformed into kindness and graciousness, and he himself thereupon married a sister of Otharus. In regard to the person who enticed Syritha into the snare laid by the giant, Saxo is not quite certain that it was a woman. Others think, he says, that it was a man in the guise of a woman. It has long since attracted the attention of mythologists that in this narrative there are found two names, Otharus and Syritha, which seem to refer to the myth concerning Freyja. Otharus is no doubt a Latinised form of Ottar, and, as is well known, the only one who had this name in the mythology is, as stated, Freyja’s lover and husband. Syritha, on the other hand, may be a Latinised form of Freyja’s epithet Syr, in which Saxo presumably supposed he had found an abbreviated form of Syri (Siri, Sigrid). In Saxo’s narrative Syritha is abducted by a giant (gigas), with the aid of an ally whom he had procured among Freyja’s attendants. In the mythology Freyja is abducted by a giant, and, as it appears from Völuspa’s words, likewise by the aid of some ally who was in Freyja’s service, for it is there said that the gods hold council as to who it could have been |
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777 who “gave,” delivered Freyja to the race of the giants (hverr hefdi œtt jötuns Óds mey gefna). In Saxo Otharus is of lower descent than Syritha. Saxo has not made him a son of a king, but a youth of humble birth as compared with his bride; and his courage to look up to Syritha, Saxo remarks, can only be explained by the great deeds he had performed or by his reliance on his agreeable manners and his eloquence (sive gestarum rerum magnitudine sive comitatis et facundiæ fiducia accensus). In the mythology Ódr was of lower birth than Freyja: he did not by birth belong to the number of higher gods; and Svipdag had, as we know, never seen Asgard before he arrived there under the circumstances described in Fjölsvinnsmal. That the most beautiful of all the goddesses, and the one second in rank to Frigg alone, she who is particularly desired by all powers, the sister of the harvest god Frey, the daughter of Njord, the god of wealth, she who with Odin shares the privilege of choosing heroes on the battlefield — that she does not become the wife of an Asa-god, but “is married to the man called Ódr,” would long since have been selected by the mythologists as a question both interesting and worthy of investigation had they cared to devote any attention to epic coherence and to premises and dénouement in the mythology in connection with the speculations on the signification of the myths as symbols of nature or on their ethical meaning. The view would then certainly have been reached that this Ódr in the epic of the mythology must have been the author of exploits which balanced his humbler descent, and the mythologists would thus |
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778 have been driven to direct the investigation first of all to the question whether Freyja, who we know was for some time in the power of the giants, but was rescued therefrom, did not find as her liberator this very Ódr, who afterwards became her husband, and whether Ódr did not by this very act gain her love and become entitled to obtain her hand. The adventure which Saxo relates actually dovetails itself into and fills a gap in that chain of events which are the result of the analysis of Grogalder and Fjölsvinnsmal. We understand that the young Svipdag is alarmed, and considers the task imposed on him by the stepmother to find Menglad far too great for his strength, if it is necessary to seek Menglad in Jotunheim and rescue her thence. We understand why on his arrival at Asgard he is so kindly received, after he has gone through the formality of giving his name, when we know that he comes not only as the feared possessor of the Volund sword, but also as the one who has restored to Asgard the most lovely and most beautiful asynja. We can then understand why the gate, which holds fast every uninvited guest, opens as of itself for him, and why the savage wolf-dogs lick him. That his words: thadan (from his paternal home) rákumk vinda kalda vegu, are to Menglad a sufficient answer to her question in regard to his previous journeys can be understood if Svipdag has, as Ottar, searched through the frost-cold Jotunheim’s eastern mountain districts to find Menglad; and we can then see that Menglad in Fjölsvinnsmal can speak of her meeting with Svipdag at the gate of Asgard as a “meeting again,” although Svipdag |
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never before had been in Asgard. And that Menglad receives him as a husband to whom she is already married, with whom she is now to be “united for ever” (Fjölsvinnsmal, 58), is likewise explained by the improvised wedding which Otharus celebrated with Syrithia before she returns to her father. The identity of Otharus with the Ottarr-Ódr-Svipdagr of the mythology further appears from the fact that Saxo gives him as father an Ebbo, which a comparative investigation proves to be identical with Svipdag’s father Orvandel. Of the name Ebbo and the person to whom it belongs I shall have something to say in Nos. 108 and 109. Here it must be remarked that if Otharus is identical with Svipdag, then his father Ebbo, like Svipdag’s father, should appear in the history of the mythic patriarch Halfdan and be the enemy of the latter (see Nos. 24, 33). Such is also the case. Saxo produces Ebbo on the scene as an enemy of Halfdan Berggram (Hist., 329, 330). A woman, Groa, is the cause of the enmity between Halfdan and Orvandel. A woman, Sygrutha, is the cause of the enmity between Halfdan and Ebbo. In the one passage Halfdan robs Orvandel of his betrothed Groa; in the other passage Halfdan robs Ebbo of his bride Sygrutha. In a third passage in his History (p. 138) Saxo has recorded the tradition that Horvendillus (Orvandel) is slain by a rival, who takes his wife, there called Gerutha. Halfdan kills Ebbo. Thus it is plain that the same story is told about Svipdag’s father Orvandel and about Ebbo the father of Otharus, and that Groa, Sygrutha, and Gerutha are different versions of the same dis of vegetation. |
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According to Saxo, Syritha’s father was afterwards married to a sister of Otharus. In the mythology Freyja’s father Njord marries Skade, who is the foster-sister and systrunga (the mother’s sister’s daughter, female cousin) of Ottar-Svipdag (see Nos. 108, 113, 114, 115). Freyja’s surname Hörn (also Horn) may possibly be explained by what Saxo relates about the giant’s manner of treating her hair, which he pressed into one snarled, stiff, and hard mass. With the myth concerning Freyja’s locks, we must compare that about Sif’s hair. The hair of both these goddesses is subject to the violence of the hands of giants, and it may be presumed that both myths symbolised some feature of nature. Loke’s act of violence on Sif’s hair is made good by the skill and good-will of the ancient artists Sindre and Brokk (Younger Edda, i. 340). In regard to Freyja’s locks, the skill of a “dwarf” may have been resorted to, since Saxo relates that an iron instrument was necessary to separate and comb out the horn-hard braids. In Völuspa’s list of ancient artists there is a smith by name Hornbori, which possibly has some reference to this. Reasons have already been given in No. 35 for the theory that it was Gulveig-Heid who betrayed Freyja and delivered her into the hands of the giants. When Saxo says that this treachery was committed by a woman, but also suggests the possibility that it was a man in the guise of a woman, then this too is explained by the mythology, in which Gulveig-Heid, like her fellow culprit, has an androgynous nature. Loke becomes “pregnant of the evil woman” (kvidugr af konu illri). In |
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Fjölsvinnsmal we meet again with Gulveig-Heid, born again and called Aurboda, as one of Freyja’s attendants, into whose graces she is nestled for a second time. 101. From the parallel name Otharus, we must turn to the other parallel name Hotherus. It has already been shown that if the Svipdag synonym Ódr occurs in Saxo, it must have been Latinised into Otherus or Hotherus. The latter form is actually found, but under circumstances making an elaborate investigation necessary, for in what Saxo narrates concerning this Hotherus, he has to the best of his ability united sketches and episodes of two different mythic persons, and it is therefore necessary to separate these different elements borrowed from different sources. One of these mythic persons is Hödr the Asa-god, and the other is Ódr-Svipdag. The investigation will therefore at the same time contain a contribution to the researches concerning the original records of the myth of Balder. Saxo’s account of Hotherus (Hist., 110, &c.), is as follows: Hotherus, son of Hothbrodus (Hodbrod), was fostered in the home of Nanna’s father, King Gevarus (Gevarr; see Nos. 90-92), and he grew up to be a stately youth, distinguished as a man of accomplishments among the contemporaries of his age. He could swim, was an excellent archer and boxer, and his skill on various musical |
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instruments was so great that he had the human passions under his control, and could produce at pleasure, gladness, sorrow, sympathy, or hate. Nanna, the daughter of Gevarus, fell in love with the highly gifted youth and he with her. Meanwhile, fate brought it to come to pass that Balder, the son of the idol Odin, also fell in love with Nanna. He had once seen her bathing, and had been dazzled by the splendour of her limbs. In order to remove the most dangerous obstacle between himself and her, he resolved to slay Hotherus. As Hotherus on a foggy day was hunting in the woods he got lost and came to a house, where there sat three wood-nymphs. They greeted him by name, and in answer to his question they said they were the maids who determine the events of the battle, and give defeat or success in war. Invisible they come to the battlefield, and secretly give help to those whom they wish to favour. From them Hotherus learned that Balder was in love with Nanna, but they advised him not to resort to weapons against him, for he was a demigod born of supernatural seed. When they had said this, they and the house in which Hotherus had found them disappeared, and to his joy be found himself standing on a field under the open sky. When he arrived home, he mentioned to Gevarus what he had seen and heard, and at once demanded the hand of his daughter. Gevarus answered that it would have been a pleasure to him to see Hotherus and Nanna united, but Balder had already made a similar request, and he |
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did not dare to draw the wrath of the latter down upon himself, since not even iron could harm the conjured body of the demigod. But Gevarus said he knew of a sword with which Balder could be slain, but it lies locked up behind the strongest bars, and the place where it is found is scarcely accessible to mortals. The way thither — if we may use the expression where no road has been made — is filled with obstacles, and leads for the greater part through exceedingly cold regions. But behind a span of swift stags one ought to be able to get safe across the icy mountain ridges. He who keeps the sword is the forest-being Mimingus, who also has a wonderful wealth-producing arm-ring. If Hotherus gets there, he should place his tent in such a manner that its shadow does not fall into the cave where Mimingus dwells, for at the sight of this strange eclipse the latter would withdraw farther into the mountain. Observing these rules of caution, the sword and arm-ring might possibly be secured. The sword is of such a kind that victory never fails to attend it, and its value is quite inestimable. Hotherus, who carefully followed the advice of Gevarus, succeeded in securing the sword and the ring, which Mimingus, surprised and bound by Hotherus, delivered as a ransom for his life. When Gelder, the king of Saxony, learned that the treasure of Mimingus had been robbed, he resolved to make war against Hotherus. The foreknowing Gevarus saw this in advance, and advised Hotherus to receive the rain of javelins from the enemy patiently in the battle, |
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and not to throw his own javelins before the enemy’s supply of weapons was exhausted. Gelder was conquered, and had to pray for peace. Hotherus received him in the most friendly manner, and now he conquered him with his kindness as he had before done with his cunning as a warrior. Hotherus also had a friend in Helgo, the king of Halogaland. The chieftain of the Finns and of the Bjarmians, Cuso (Guse), was the father of Thora, whose hand Helgo sought through messengers. But Helgo had so ugly a blemish on his mouth that he was ashamed to converse, not only with strangers, but also with his own household and friends. Cuso had already refused his offer of marriage, but as he now addressed himself to Hotherus asking for assistance, the latter was able to secure a hearing from the Finnish chieftain, so that Helgo secured the wife he so greatly desired. While this happened in Halogaland, Balder had invaded the territory of Gevarus with an armed force, to demand Nanna’s hand. Gevarus referred him to his daughter, who was herself permitted to determine her fate. Nanna answered that she was of too humble birth to be the wife of a husband of divine descent. Gevarus informed Hotherus of what had happened, and the latter took counsel with Helgo as to what was now to be done. After having considered various things, they finally resolved on making war. And it was a war in which one should think men fought with gods. For Odin, Thor, and the hosts sanctified by the gods fought on Balder’s side. Thor had a |
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heavy club, with which he smashed shields and coats-of-mail, and slew all before him. Hotherus would have seen his retreating army defeated had he not himself succeeded in checking Thor’s progress. Clad in an impenetrable coat-of-mail, he went against Thor, and with a blow of his sword he severed the handle from Thor’s club and made it unfit for use. Then the gods fled. Thereupon the warriors of Hotherus rushed upon Balder’s fleet and destroyed and sank it. In the same war Gelder fell. On a funeral pile kindled on Gelder’s ship his body was burnt on a heap of fallen warriors, and Hotherus buried with great solemnity his ashes in a large and magnificent grave-mound. Then Hotherus returned to Gevarus, celebrated his wedding with Nanna, and made great presents to Helgo and Thora. But Balder had no peace. Another war was declared, and this time Balder was the victor. The defeated Hotherus took refuge with Gevarus. In this war a water-famine occurred in Balder’s army, but the latter dug deep wells and opened new fountains for his thirsty men. Meanwhile Balder was afflicted in his dreams by ghosts which had assumed Nanna’s form. His love and longing so consumed him that he at last was unable to walk, but had to ride in a chariot on his journeys. Hotherus had fled to Sweden, where he retained the royal authority; but Balder took possession of Seeland, and soon acquired the devotion of the Danes, for he was regarded as having martial merits, and was a man of great dignity. Hotherus again declared war against Balder, but was defeated in Jutland, and was obliged to return |
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786 to Sweden alone and abandoned. Despondent on account of his defeats, weary of life and the light of day, he went into the wilderness and traversed most desolate forests, where the fall of mortal feet is seldom heard. Then he came to a cave in which sat three strange women. From such women he had once received the impenetrable coat-of-mail, and he recognised them as those very persons. They asked him why he had come to these regions, and he told them how unsuccessful he had been in his last battle. He reproached them, saying that they had deceived him, for they had promised him victory, but he had had a totally different fate. The women responded that he nevertheless had done his enemies great harm, and assured him that victory would yet perch on his banners if he should succeed in finding the wonderful nourishment which was invented for the increasing of Balder’s strength. This was sufficient to encourage him to make another war, although there were those among his friends who dissuaded him therefrom. From different sides men were gathered, and a bloody battle was fought, which was not decided at the fall of night. The uneasiness of Hotherus hindered him from sleeping, and he went out in the darkness of the night to reconnoitre the condition and position of the enemy. When he had reached the camp of the enemy he perceived that three dises, who were wont to prepare Balder’s mysterious food, had just left. He followed their footprints in the bedewed grass and reached their abode. Asked by them who he was, he said he was a player on the cithern. One of them then handed him a cithern, and he played for them |
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magnificently. They had three serpents, with whose venom Balder’s food was mixed. They were now engaged in preparing this food. One of them had the goodness to offer Hotherus some of the food; but the eldest said: “It would be treason to Balder to increase the strength of his foe.” The stranger said that he was one of the men of Hotherus, and not Hotherus himself. He was then permitted to taste the food.* The women also presented him with a beautiful girdle of victory. On his way home Hotherus met his foe and thrust a weapon into his side, so that he fell half-dead to the ground. This produced joy in the camp of Hotherus, but sorrow in the Danish camp. Balder, who knew that he was going to die, but was unwilling to abide death in his tent, renewed the battle the following day, and had himself carried on a stretcher into the thickest of the fight. The following night Proserpina (the goddess of death) came to him and announced to him that he should be her guest the next day. He died from his wound at the time predicted, and was buried in a mound with royal splendour. Hotherus took the sceptre in Denmark after Balder. Meanwhile it had happened that King Gevarus had been attacked and burned in his house by a jarl under him, by name Gunno. Hotherus avenged the death of Gevarus, and burnt Gunno alive on a funeral pyre as a punishment for his crime. Rinda and Odin had a son by name Bous. The latter, * According to Gheysmer’s synopsis. Saxo himself says nothing of the kind. The present reading of the passage in Saxo is distinctly mutilated. |
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to avenge the death of his brother Balder, attacked Hotherus, who fell in the conflict. But Bous himself was severely wounded and died the following day from his wounds. Hotherus was followed on the Danish throne by his son Röricus. In the examination of this narrative in Saxo there is no hope of arriving at absolutely positive results unless the student lays aside all current presuppositions and, in fact, all notions concerning the origin and age of the Balder-myth, concerning a special Danish myth in opposition to a special Norse-Icelandic, &c. If the latter conjecture based on Saxo is correct, then this is to appear as a result of the investigation; but the conjecture is not to be used as a presupposition. That which first strikes the reader is that the story is not homogeneous. It is composed of elements that could not be blended into one harmonious whole. It suffers from intrinsic contradictions. The origin of these contradictions must first of all be explained. The most persistent contradiction concerns the sword of victory of which Hotherus secured possession.* We are assured that it is of immense value (ingens prœmium), and is attended with the success of victory (belli fortuna comitaretur), and Hotherus is, in fact, able with the help of this sword to accomplish a great exploit; put Thor and other gods to flight. But then Hotherus is conquered again and again by Balder, and finally also defeated by Bous and slain, in spite of the fact that Gevarus had assured * This Bugge, too, has observed, and he rightly assumes that the episode concerning the sword has been interpolated from some other source. |
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him that this sword should always be victorious. To be sure, Hotherus succeeds after several defeats in giving Balder his death-wound, but this is not done in a battle, and can hardly be counted as a victory; and Hotherus is not able to commit this secret murder by aid of this sword alone, but is obliged to own a belt of victory and to eat a wonderful food, which gives Balder his strength, before he can accomplish this deed. There must be some reason why Saxo fell into this contradiction, which is so striking, and is maintained throughout the narrative. If Hotherus-Hödr in the mythology possessed a sword which always gives victory and is able to conquer the gods themselves, then the mythology can not have contained anything about defeats suffered by him after he got possession of this sword, nor can he then have fallen in conflict with Odin’s and Rind’s son. The only way in which this could happen would be that Hotherus-Hödr, after getting possession of the sword of victory, and after once having used it to advantage, in some manner was robbed of it again. But Saxo has read nothing of the sort in his sources, otherwise he would have mentioned it, if for no other reason than for the purpose of giving a cause for the defeat suffered by his hero, and it is doubtless his opinion that the sword with which Balder is mortally wounded is the same as the one Hotherus took from Mimingus. Hence, either Hödr has neither suffered the defeats mentioned by Saxo nor fallen by the sword of the brother-avenging son of Odin and Rind, or he has never possessed the sword of victory here mentioned. It is not necessary to |
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point out in which of these alternatives we have the mythological fact. Hödr has never possessed the irresistible sword. But Saxo has not himself invented the episode concerning the sword of victory, nor has he introduced this episode in his narrative about Hotherus without thinking he had good reason therefore. It follows with certainty that the episode belongs to the saga of another hero, and that things were found in that saga which made it possible for Saxo to confound him with Hödr. The question then arises who this hero was. The first thread the investigation finds, and has to follow, is the name itself, Hotherus, within which Latin form Oder can lie concealed as well as Hödr. In the mythology Ódr, like Hödr, was an inhabitant of Asgard, but nevertheless, like Hödr, he has had hostile relations to Asgard, and in this connection he has fought with Thor (see No. 103). The similarity of the names and the similarity of the mythological situation are sufficient to explain the confusion on the part of Saxo. But there are several other reasons, of which I will give one. The weapon with which Hoder slew Balder in the mythology was a young twig, Mistelteinn. The sword of victory made by Volund, with hostile intentions against the gods, could, for the very reason that it was dangerous to Asgard, be compared by skalds with the mistletoe, and be so called in a poetic-rhetorical figure. The fact is, that both in Skirnersmal and in Fjölsvinnsmal the Volund sword is designated as a teinn; that the mistletoe |
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is included in the list of sword-names in the Nafnathulur; and that in the later Icelandic saga-literature mistelteinn is a sword which is owned in succession by Saming, Thráinn, and Romund Gripson; and finally, that all that is there said about this sword mistelteinn is a faithful echo of the sword of victory made by Volund, though the facts are more or less confused. Thus we find, for example, that it is Máni Karl who informs Romund where the sword is to be sought, while in Saxo it is the moon-god Gevar, Nanna’s father, who tells Hotherus where it lies hid. That the god Máni and Gevar are identical has already been proved (see Nos. 90, 91, 92). Already before Saxo’s time the mistelteinn and the sword of victory of the mythology had been confounded with each other, and Hoder’s and Oder’s weapons had received the same name. This was another reason for Saxo to confound Hoder and Oder and unite them in Hotherus. And when he found in some of his sources that a sword mistelteinn was used by Oder, and in others that a mistelteinn was wielded by Hoder, it was natural that he as a historian should prefer the sword to the fabulous mistletoe (see more below). The circumstance that two mythical persons are united into one in Hotherus has given Saxo free choice of making his Hotherus the son of the father of the one or of the other. In the mythology Hoder is the son of Odin; Oder-Svipdag is the son of Orvandel. Saxo has made him a son of Hodbrodd, who is identical with Orvandel. It has already been demonstrated (see No. 29) that Helge Hundingsbane is a copy of the Teutonic patriarch Halfdan. |
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The series of parallels by which this demonstration was made clear at the same time makes it manifest that Helge’s rival Hodbrodd is Halfdan’s rival Orvandel. The same place as is occupied in the Halfdan myth by Orvandel, Hodbrodd occupies in the songs concerning Helge Hundingsbane. What we had a right to expect, namely, that Saxo, when he did not make Hotherus the son of Hoder’s father, should make him a son of Oder’s, has actually been done, whence there can be no doubt that Hoder and Oder were united into one in Saxo’s Hotherus. With this point perfectly established, it is possible to analyse Saxo’s narrative point by point, resolve it into its constituent parts, and refer them to the one of the two myths concerning Hoder and Oder to which they belong.* It has already been noted that Saxo was unable to unite organically with his narration of Hoder’s adventure the episode concerning the sword of victory taken from Mimingus. The introduction of this episode has made the story of Hotherus a chain of contradictions. On the other hand, the same episode naturally adapts itself to the Svipdag-Oder story, which we already know. We have seen that Svipdag descends to the lower world and there gets into possession of the Volund sword. Hence it is Svipdag-Oder, not Hoder, who is instructed by the moon-god Gevar as to where the sword is to be found. It is he who crosses the frost-mountains, penetrates into the specus guarded by Mimingus, and there captures the Volund sword and the Volund ring. It is Svipdag, not * This analysis will be given in the second part of this work in the treatise on the Balder-myth. |
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Hoder, who, thanks to this sword, is able as thursar thjódar sjóli to conquer the otherwise indomitable Halfdan — nay, even more, compel Halfdan’s co-father and protector, the Asa-god Thor, to yield. Thus Saxo’s accounts about Otharus and Hotherus fill two important gaps in the records preserved to our time in the Icelandic sources concerning the Svipdag-myth. To this is also to be added what Saxo tells us about Svipdag under this very name (see Nos. 24, 33): that he carries on an implacable war with Halfdan after the latter had first secured and then rejected Groa; that after various fortunes of war he conquers him and gives him a mortal wound; that he takes Halfdan’s and Groa’s son Gudhorm into his good graces and gives him a kingdom, but that he pursues and wars against Halfdan’s and Alveig-Signe’s son Hadding, and finally falls by his hand. Hotherus-Svipdag’s perilous journey across the frosty mountains, mentioned by Saxo, is predicted by Groa in her seventh incantation of protection over her son:
We have not yet exhausted Saxo’s contributions to the |
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myth concerning Svipdag. In two other passages in his Historia Danica Svipdag reappears, namely, in the accounts of the reigns of Frode III and of Halfdan Berggram, in both under the name Ericus (Eirekr), a name applied to Svipdag in the mythology also (see No. 108). The first reference showing that Svipdag and Erik are identical appears in the following analogies: Halfdan (Gram), who kills a Swedish king, is attacked in war by Svipdag. Halfdan (Berggram), who kills a Swedish king, is attacked in war by Erik. Svipdag is the son of the slain Swedish king’s daughter. Erik is the son of the slain Swedish king’s daughter. Saxo’s account of King Frode is for the greater part the myth about Frey told as history. We might then expect to find that Svipdag, who becomes Frey’s brother-in-law, should appear in some rôle in Frode’s history. The question, then, is whether any brother-in-law of Frode plays a part therein. This is actually the case. Frode’s brother-in-law is a young hero who is his general and factotum, and is called Ericus, with the surname Disertus, the eloquent. The Ericus who appears as Halfdan’s enemy accordingly resembles Svipdag, Halfdan’s enemy, in the fact that he is a son of the daughter of the Swedish king slain by Halfdan. The Ericus who is Frode-Frey’s general, again, resembles Svipdag in the fact that he marries Frode-Frey’s sister. This is another indication that Erik and Svipdag were identical in Saxo’s mythic sources. |
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Let us now pursue these indications and see whether they are confirmed by the stories which Saxo tells of Halfdan’s enemy Erik and Frode-Frey’s brother-in-law, Erik the eloquent. Saxo first brings us to the paternal home of Erik the eloquent. In the beginning of the narrative Erik’s mother is already dead and his father is married a second time (Hist., 192). Compare with this the beginning of Svipdag’s history, where his mother, according to Grogalder, is dead, and his father is married again. The stepmother has a son, by name Rollerus, whose position in the myth I shall consider hereafter. Erik and Roller leave their paternal home to find Frode-Frey and his sister Gunvara, a maiden of the most extraordinary beauty. Before they proceed on this adventurous journey Erik’s stepmother, Roller’s mother, has given them a wisdom-inspiring food to eat, in which one of the constituent parts was the fat of three serpents. Of this food the cunning Erik knew how to secure the better part, really intended for Roller. But the half-brothers were faithful friends. From Saxo’s narrative it appears that Erik had no desire at all to make this journey. It was Roller who first made the promise to go in search of Frode and his sister, and it was doubtless Erik’s stepmother who brought about that Erik should assist his brother in the accomplishment of the task. Erik himself regarded the resolve taken by Roller as surpassing his strength. This corresponds with what Grogalder tells us about |
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Svipdag’s disinclination to perform the task imposed on him by his stepmother. This also gives us the key to Grogalder’s words, that Svipdag was commanded to go and find not only “the one fond of ornaments,” but “those fond of ornaments” (koma móti Menglödum). The plural indicates that there is more than one “fond of ornaments” to be sought. It is necessary to bring back to Asgard not only Freyja, but also Frey her brother, the god of the harvests, for whom the ancient artists made ornaments, and who as a symbol of nature is the one under whose supremacy the forces of vegetation in nature decorate the meadows with grass and the fields with grain. He, too, with his sister, was in the power of the giant-world in the great fimbul-winter (see below). The food to which serpents must contribute one of the constituent parts reappears in Saxo’s account of Hotherus (Hist., 123; No. 101), and is there described with about the same words. In both passages three serpents are required for the purpose. That Balder should be nourished with this sort of food is highly improbable. The serpent food in the stories about Hotherus and Ericus has been borrowed from the Svipdag-myth. The land in which Frode and his beautiful sister live is difficult of access, and magic powers have hitherto made futile every effort to get there. The attendants of the brother and sister there are described as the most savage, the most impudent, and the most disagreeable that can be conceived. They are beings of the inmost disgusting kind, whose manners are as unrestrained as their words. To get to this country it is necessary to cross an ocean, where |
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storms, conjured up by witchcraft, threaten every sailor with destruction. Groa has predicted this journey, and has sung a magic song of protection over her son against the dangers which he is to meet on the magic sea:
When Erik and Roller, defying the storms, had crossed this sea and conquered the magic power which hindered the approach to the country, they entered a harbour, near which Frode and Gunvara are to be sought. On the strand they meet people who belong to the attendants of the brother and sister. Among them are three brothers, all named Grep, and of whom one is Gunvara’s pressing and persistent suitor. This Grep, who is a poet and orator of the sort to be found in that land, at once enters into a discussion with Erik. At the end of the discussion Grep retires defeated and angry. Then Erik and Roller proceed up to the abode where they are to find those whom they seek. Frode and Gunvara are met amid attendants who treat them as princely persons, and look upon themselves as their court-circle. But the royal household is of a very strange kind, and receives visitors with great hooting, barking of dogs, and insulting manners. Frode occupies the high-seat in the hall, where a great fire is burning as a protection against the bitter cold. |
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It is manifest from Saxo’s description that Frode and Gunvara, possibly by virtue of the sorcery of the giants, are in a spiritual condition in which they have almost forgotten the past, but without being happy in their present circumstances. Frode feels unhappy and degraded. Gunvara loathes her suitor Grep. The days here spent by Erik and Roller, before they get an opportunity to take flight with Gunvara, form a series of drinking-bouts, vulgar songs, assaults, fights, and murders. The jealous Grep tries to assassinate Erik, but in this attempt he is slain by Roller’s sword. Frode cannot be persuaded to accompany Erik, Roller, and Gunvara on this flight. He feels that his life is stained with a spot that cannot be removed, and he is unwilling to appear with it among other men. In the mythology it is left to Njord himself to liberate his son. In another passage (Hist., 266, 267) Saxo says that King Fridlevus (Njord) liberated a princely youth who had been robbed by a giant. In the mythology this youth can hardly be anyone else than the young Frey, the son of the liberator. Erik afterwards marries Gunvara. Among the poetical paraphrases from heathen times are found some which refer to Frey’s and Freyja’s captivity among the giants. In a song of the skald Kormak the mead of poetry is called jastrin fontanna Sýrar Greppa, “the seething flood of the sea ranks (of the skerry) of Syr (of Freyja) of the Greps.” This paraphrase evidently owes its existence to an association of ideas based on the same myth as Saxo has told in his way. Sýr, as we know, is one of Freyja’s surnames, and as to its meaning, |
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one which she must have acquired during her sojourn in Jotunheim, for it is scarcely applicable to her outside of Jotunheim. Greppr, the poet there, as we have already seen, is Freyja’s suitor. He has had brothers also called Greppr, whence the plural expression Sýrs Greppa (“Syr’s Greps”), wherein Freyja’s surname is joined with more than one Grep, receives its mythological explanation. The giant abode where Frode and Gunvara sojourn, is according to Saxo, situated not far from the harbour where Erik and Roller entered (portum a quo Frotho non longe deversabatur — Hist., 198). The expression “the Greps of Syr’s skerries” thus agrees with Saxo. A northern land uninhabited by man is by Eyvind Skaldaspiller called utröst Belja dolgs, “the most remotely situated abode of Beli’s enemy (Frey).” This paraphrase is also explained by the myth concerning Frey’s and Freyja’s visit in Jotunheim. Beli is a giant-name, and means “the bellower.” Erik and Roller, according to Saxo, are received with a horrible howl by the giants who attend Frey. “They produced horrible sounds like those of howling animals” (ululantium more horrisonas dedere voces). To the myth about how Frey fell into the power of the giants I shall come later (see Nos. 109, 111, 112). Erik is in Saxo called disertus, the eloquent. The Svipdag epithet Ódr originally had a meaning very near to this. The impersonal ódr means partly the reflecting element in man, partly song and poetry, the ability of expressing one’s self skilfully and of joining the words |
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in an agreeable and persuasive manner (cp. the Gothic weit-wodan, to convince). Erik demonstrates the propriety of his name. Saxo makes him speak in proverbs and sentences, certainly for the reason that his Northern source has put them on the lips of the young hero. The same quality characterises Svipdag. In Grogalder his mother sings over him: “Eloquence and social talents be abundantly bestowed upon you”; and the description of him in Fjölsvinnsmal places before our eyes a nimble and vivacious youth who well understands the watchman’s veiled words, and on whose lips the speech develops into proverbs which fasten themselves on the mind. Compare augna gamans, &c. (str. 5), and the often quoted Urdar ordi kvedr engi madr (str. 47). Toward Gunvara Erik observes the same chaste and chivalrous conduct as Otharus toward Syritha (intacta illi pudicitia manet — p. 216). As to birth, he occupies the same subordinate position to her as Ódr to Freyja, Otharus to Syritha, Svipdag to Menglad. The adventures related in the mythology from Svipdag’s journey, when he went in search of Freyja-Menglad, are by Saxo so divided between Ericus Disertus and Otharus that of the former is told the most of what happened to Svipdag during his visit in the giant abode, of the latter the most of what happened to him on his way thence to his home. Concerning Erik’s family relations, Saxo gives some facts which, from a mythological point of view, are of great value. It has already been stated that Erik’s mother, like Svipdag’s, is dead, and that his father, like |
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Svipdag’s, is married a second time where his saga begins. The father begets with his second wife a son, whom Saxo calls Rollerus. When Erik’s father also is dead, Roller’s mother, according to Saxo, marries again, and this time a powerful champion called Brac (Hist., 217), who in the continuation of the story proves himself to be Asa-Brage, the god Thor (cp. No. 105), to whom she brings her son Roller. In our mythological records we learn that Thor’s wife was Sif, the goddess of vegetation, and that Sif had been married and had had a son, by name Ullr, before she became the wife of the Asa-god, and that she brought with her to Asgard this son, who became adopted among the gods. Thus the mythic records and Saxo correspond in these points, and it follows that Rollerus is the same as Uller, whom Saxo elsewhere (Hist., 130, 131; cp. No. 36) mentions as Ollerus. The forms Ollerus and Rollerus are to each other as Olfr to Hrólfr. Hrólfr is a contraction of Hród-úlfr; Rollerus indicates a contraction of Hród-Ullr, Hríd-Ullr. The latter form occurs in the paraphrase Hrídullr hrotta, “the sword’s storm-Ull,” a designation of a warrior (Grett., 20, 1). It has already been pointed out that in the great war between Odin’s clan and the Vans, Ull, although Thor’s stepson, takes the side of the Vans and identifies his cause with that of Frey and Svipdag. Saxo also describes the half-brothers as faithfully united, and, in regard to Roller’s reliable fraternity, makes Erik utter a sentence which very nearly corresponds to the Danish:
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(Hist., 207 — optima est affinium opera opis indigo). Saxo’s account of Erik and Roller thus gives us the key to the mythological statements, not otherwise intelligible, that though Ull has in Thor a friendly stepfather (cp. the expression gulli Ullar — Younger Edda, i. 302), and in Odin a clan-chief who distinguishes him (cp. Ullar hylli, &c. — Grimnersmal, 42), nevertheless he contends in this feud on the same side as Erik-Svipdag, with whom he once set out to rescue Frey from the power of the giants. The mythology was not willing to sever those bonds of fidelity which youthful adventures shared in common had established between Frey, Ull, and Svipdag. Both the last two therefore associate themselves with Frey when the war breaks out between the Asas and Vans. It follows that Sif was the second wife of Orvandel the brave before she became Thor’s, and that Ull is Orvandel’s son. The intimate relation between Orvandel on the one side and Thor on the other has already been shown above. When Orvandel was out on adventures in Jotunheim his first wife Groa visited Thor’s halls as his guest, where the dis of vegetation might have a safe place of refuge during her husband’s absence. This feature preserved in the Younger Edda is of great mythological importance, and, as I shall show further on, of ancient Aryan origin. Orvandel, the great archer and star-hero, reappears in Rigveda and also in the Greek mythology — in the latter under the name Orion, as Vigfusson has already assumed. The correctness of the assumption is corroborated by reasons, which I shall present later on. |
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We now pass to that Erik whom Saxo mentions in his narrative concerning Halfdan-Berggram, and who, like Svipdag, is the son of a Swedish king’s daughter. This king had been slain by Halfdan. Just as Svipdag undertakes an irreconcilable war of revenge against Halfdan-Gram, so does Erik against Halfdan-Berggram. In one of their battles Halfdan was obliged to take flight, despite his superhumnan strength and martial luck. More than this, he has by his side the “champion Thoro,” and Saxo himself informs us that the latter is no less a personage than the Asa-god Thor, but he too must yield to Erik. Thor’s Mjolner and Halfdan’s club availed nothing against Erik. In conflict with him their weapons seemed edgeless (Hist., 323, 324). Thus not only Halfdan, but even Thor himself, Odin’s mighty son, he who alone outweighs in strength all the other descendants and clanmen of Odin, was obliged to retreat before a mythical hero; and that his lightning hammer, at other times irresistible, Sindre’s wonderful work, is powerless in this conflict, must in the mythology have had particular reasons. The mythology has scarcely permitted its favourite, “Hlodyn’s celebrated son,” to be subjected to such a humiliation more than once, and this fact must have had such a motive, that the event might be regarded as a solitary exception. It must therefore be borne in mind that, in his narrative concerning Hotherus, Saxo states, that after the latter had acquired the |
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sword of victory guarded by Mimingus, he meets the Asa-god Thor in a battle and forces him to yield, after the former has severed the hammer from its handle with a blow of the sword (Hist., 118; see No. 101). It has already been shown that Ódr-Svipdag, not Hödr, is the Hotherus who captured the sword of victory and accomplished this deed (see No. 101). Erik accordingly has, in common with Svipdag, not only those features that he is the daughter-son of a Swedish king whom Halfdan had slain, and that he persists in making war on the latter, but also that he accomplished the unique deed of putting Thor to flight. Thus the hammer Mjolner is found to have been a weapon which, in spite of its extraordinary qualities, is inferior to the sword of victory forged by Volund (see Nos. 87, 98). Accordingly the mythology has contained two famous judgments on products of the ancient artists. The first judgment is passed by the Asa-gods in solemn consultation, and in reference to this very hammer, Mjolner, explains that Sindre’s products are superior to those of Ivalde’s sons. The other judgment is passed on the field of battle, and confirms the former judgment of the gods. Mjolner proves itself useless in conflict with the sword of victory. If now the Volund of the heroic traditions were one of the Ivalde sons who fails to get the prize in the mythology, then an epic connection could be found between the former and the latter judgment: the insulted Ivalde son has then avenged himself on the gods and re-established his reputation injured by them. I shall recur to the question whether Volund was a son of Ivalde or not. |
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The wars between Erik and Halfdan were, according to Saxo, carried on with changing fortunes. In one of these conflicts, which must have taken place before Erik secured the irresistible sword, Halfdan is victorious and takes Erik prisoner; but the heart of the victor is turned into reconciliation toward the inexorable foe, and he offers Erik his life and friendship if the latter will serve his cause. But when Erik refuses the offered conciliation, Halfdan binds him fast to a tree in order to make him the prey of the wild beasts of the forest and abandons him to his fate. Halfdan’s desire to become reconciled with Erik, and also the circumstance that he binds him, is predicted, in Grogalder (strs. 9, 10), by Svipdag’s mother among the fortunes that await her son:
The Svipdag synonyms so far met with are: Ódr (Hotherus), Óttarr (Otharus), and Eirekr (Ericus). It is remarkable, but, as we shall find later, easy to explain, that this saga-hero, whom the mythology made |
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806 Freyja’s husband, and whose career was adorned with such strange adventures, was not before the ninth century, and that in Sweden, accorded the same rank as the Asa-gods, and this in spite of the fact that he was adopted in Asgard, and despite the fact that his half-brother Ull was clothed with the same dignity as that of the Asa-gods. There is no trace to show that he who is Freyja’s husband and Frey’s brother-in-law was generally honoured with a divine title, with a temple, and with sacrifices. He remained to the devotees of the mythology what he was — a brilliant hero, but nothing more; and while the saga on the remote antiquity of the Teutons made him a ruler of North Teutonic tribes, whose leader he is in the war against Halfdan and Hadding (see Nos. 33, 38), he was honoured as one of the oldest kings of the Scandinavian peoples, but was not worshipped as a god. As an ancient king he has received his place in the middle-age chronicles and genealogies of rulers now under the name Svipdag, now under the name Erik. But, at the same time, his position in the epic was such that, if the Teutonic Olympus was ever to be increased with a divinity of Asa-rank, no one would have a greater right than he to be clothed with this dignity. From this point of view light is shed on a passage in ch. 26 of Vita Ansgarii. It is there related, that before Ansgarius arrived in Birka, where his impending arrival was not unknown, there came thither a man (doubtless a heathen priest or skald) who insisted that he had a mission from the gods to the king and the people. According to the man’s statement, the gods had held a meeting, at which he himself had been present, |
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807 and in which they unanimously had resolved to adopt in their council that King Erik who in antiquity had ruled over the Swedes, so that he henceforth should be one of the gods (Ericum, quondam regem vestrum, nos unanimes in collegiam nostrum ascisimus, ut sit unus de numero deorum); this was done because they had perceived that the Swedes were about to increase the number of their present gods by adopting a stranger (Christ) whose doctrine could not be reconciled with theirs, and who accordingly did not deserve to be worshipped. If the Swedes wished to add another god to the old ones, under whose protection the country had so long enjoyed happiness, peace, and plenty, they ought to accord to Erik, and not to the strange god, that honour which belongs to the divinities of the land. What the man who came to Birka with this mission reported was made public, and created much stir and agitation. When Ansgarius landed, a temple had already been built to Erik, in which supplications and sacrifices were offered to him. This event took place at a time foreboding a crisis for the ancient Odinic religion. Its last bulwarks on the Teutonic continent had recently been levelled with the ground by Charlemagne’s victory over the Saxons. The report of the cruelties practised by the advocates of the doctrine, which invaded the country from the south and the west, for the purpose of breaking the faith of the Saxon Odin worshippers towards their religion, had certainly found its way to Scandinavia, and doubtless had its influence in encouraging that mighty effort made by the northern peoples in the ninth century to visit and conquer on their own territory |
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their Teutonic kinsmen who had been converted to Christianity. It is of no slight mythological interest to learn that zealous men among the Swedes hoped to be able to inspire the old doctrine with new life by adopting among the gods Freyja’s husband, the most brilliant of the ancient mythic heroes and the one most celebrated by the skalds. I do not deem it impossible that this very attempt made Erik’s name hated among some of the Christians, and was the reason why “Old Erik” became a name of the devil. Vita Ansgarii says that it was the devil’s own work that Erik was adopted among the gods. The Svipdag synonym Erik reappears in the Christian saga about Erik Vidforle (the far-travelled), who succeeded in finding and entering Odainsakr (see No. 44). This is a reminiscence of Svipdag’s visit in Mimer’s realm. The surname Vídförli has become connected with two names of Svipdag: we have Eirikr hinn vídförli and Ódr (Oddr) hinn vídförli in the later Icelandic sagas. 104. I have now given a review of the manner in which I have found the fragments of the myth concerning Svipdag up to the point where he obtains Freyja as his wife. The fragments dovetail into each other and form a consecutive whole. Now, a few words in regard to the part afterwards played by the Volund sword, secured by Svipdag in the lower world, in the mythology, and in the saga. The sword, as we have seen, is the prize for |
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which Asgard opens its gate and receives Svipdag as Freyja’s husband. We subsequently find it in Frey’s possession. Once more the sword becomes the price of a bride, and passes into the hands of the giant Gymer and his wife. It has already been demonstrated that Gymer’s wife is the same Angerboda who, in historical times and until Ragnarok, dwells in the Ironwood (see No. 35). Her shepherd, who in the woods watches her monster flocks, also keeps the sword until the fire-giant Fjalar shall appear in his abode in the guise of the red cock and bring it to his own father Surt, in whose hand it shall cause Frey’s death, and contribute to the destruction of the world of gods. A historian, Priscus, who was Attila’s contemporary, relates that the Hun king got possession of a divine sword that a shepherd had dug out of the ground and presented to him as a gift. The king of the Huns, it is added, rejoiced in the find; for, as the possessor of the sword that had belonged to the god “Mars,” he considered himself as armed with authority to undertake and carry on successfully any war he pleased (see Jordanes, who quotes Priscus). On the Teutonic peoples the report of this pretended event must have made a mighty impression. It may be that the story was invented for this purpose; for their myths told of a sword of victory which was owned by that god who, since the death of Balder, and since Tyr became one-handed, was, together with Thor, looked upon as the bravest of the warlike gods, which sword had been carried away from Asgard to the unknown wildernesses |
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of the East, where it had been buried, not to be produced again before the approach of Ragnarok, when it was to be exhumed and delivered by a shepherd to a foe of mankind. Already, before this time, the Teutons had connected the appearance of the Huns with this myth. According to Jordanes, they believed that evil trollwomen, whom the Gothic king Filimer had banished from his people, had taken refuge in the wildernesses of the East, and there given birth to children with forest giants (“satyres”), which children became the progenitors of the Huns. This is to say, in other words, that they believed the Huns were descended from Angerboda’s progeny in the Ironwood, which, in the fulness of time, were to break into Midgard with the monster Hate as their leader. The sword which the god Frey had possessed, and which was concealed in the Ironwood, becomes in Jordanes a sword which the god “Mars” had owned, and which, thereafter, had been concealed in the earth. Out of Angerboda’s shepherd, who again brings the sword into daylight and gives it to the world-hostile Fjalar, becomes a shepherd who exhumes the sword and gives it to Attila, the foe of the Teutonic race. The memory of the sword survived the victory of Christianity, and was handed down through the centuries in many variations. That Surt at the end of the world was to possess the sword of course fell away, and instead now one and then another was selected as the hero who was to find and take it; that it was watched by a woman and by a man (in the mythology Angerboda and Egther); and that the woman was an even more disgusting |
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being than the man, were features that the saga retained both on the Continent and in England. The Beowulf poem makes a monster, by name Grendel (“the destroyer”), dwell with his mother below a marsh in a forest, which, though referred to Denmark and to the vicinity of the splendid castle of a Danish king, is described in a manner which makes it highly probable that the prototype used by the Christian poet was a heathen skald’s description of the Ironwood. There is, says he, the mysterious land in which the wolf conceals himself, full of narrow valleys, precipices, and abysses, full of dark and deep forests, marshes shrouded in gloom, lakes shaded with trees, nesses lashed by the sea, mountain torrents and bogs, which in the night shine as of fire, and shelter demoniac beings and dragons in their turbid waves. The hunted game prefers being torn into pieces by dogs to seeking its refuge on this unholy ground, from which raging storms chase black clouds until the heavens are darkened and the rain pours down in torrents. The English poet may honestly have located the mythological Ironwood in Denmark. The same old border-land, which to this very day is called “Dänische wold,” was still in the thirteenth century called by the Danes Jarnwith, the Ironwood. From his abode in this wilderness Grendel makes nightly excursions to the Danish royal castle, breaks in there, kills sleeping champions with his iron hands, sucks out their blood, and carries their corpses to the enchanted marsh in order to eat them there. The hero, Beowulf, who has heard of this, proceeds to Denmark, penetrates into the awful forest, dives, armed with |
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Denmark’s best sword, down into the magic marsh to Grendel’s and his mother’s hall, and kills them after a conflict in which the above-mentioned sword was found useless. But down there he finds another which Grendel and his mother kept concealed, gets possession of it, and conquers with its aid. Of this remarkable sword it is said that it was “rich in victory,” that it hailed from the past, that “it was a good and excellent work of a smith,” and that the golden hilt was the work of the wonder-smith.” On the blade was risted (engraved) “that ancient war” when “the billows of the raging sea washed over the race of giants,” and on a plate made of the purest gold was written in runes “the name of him for whom this weapon was first made.” The Christian poet found it most convenient for his purpose not to name this name for his readers or hearers. But all that is here stated is applicable to the mythological sword of victory. “The Wonder-smith” in the Old English tale is Volund (Weland). The coat of mail borne by Beowulf is “Welandes geweorc.” “Deor the Scald’s Complaint” sings of Weland, and King Alfred in his translation of Boethius speaks of “the wise Weland, the goldsmith, who, in ancient times, was the most celebrated.” That the Weland sword was “the work of a giant” corresponds with the Volund myth (see below); and as we here learn that the blade was engraved with pictures representing the destructions of the ancient giant-artists in the waves of the sea (the blood of the primeval giant Ymer), then this illustrates a passage in Skirnersmal, where it is likewise stated that the sword was risted |
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with images and “that it fights of itself against the giant race” (Skirnersmal, 8, 23, 25; see No. 60). This expression is purposely ambiguous. One meaning is emphasised by Frey’s words in Skirnersmal, that it fights of itself “if it is a wise man who owns it” (ef sá er horscr er hefir). The other meaning of the expression appears from the Beowulf poem. The sword itself fights against the giant race in the sense that the “wonder-smith” (Weland), by the aid of pictures on the blade of the sword itself, represented that battle which Odin and his brothers fought against the primeval giants, when the former drowned the latter in the blood of their progenitor, the giant Ymer. Grendel is the son of the troll-woman living in the marsh, just as Hate is Angerboda’s. The author identifies Grendel with Cain banished from the sight of his Creator, and makes giants, thurses, and “elves” the progeny of the banished one. Grendel’s mother is a “she-wolf of the deep” and a mermaid (merewif). Angerboda is the mother of the wolf progeny in the Ironwood and “drives the ships into Ægir’s jaws.” What “Beowulf” tells about Grendel reminds us in some of the details so strongly of Völuspa’s words concerning Hate that the question may be raised whether the English author did not have in mind a strophe resembling the one in Völuspa which treats of him. Völuspa’s Hate fyllisk fjörvi feigra manna, “satiates himself with the vital force of men selected for death.” Beowulf’s Grendel sucks the blood of his chosen victims until life ebbs out of them. Völuspa’s Hate rydr ragna sjöt raudum |
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dreyra, “colours the princely abode with red blood from the wounds.” Grendel steals into the royal castle and stains it with blood. The expression here reappears almost literally. Völuspa’s ragna sjöt and dreyri correspond perfectly to “Beowulf’s” driht-sele and dreor. In Vilkinasaga we read that Nagelring, the best sword in the world, was concealed in a forest, and was there watched by a woman and a man. The man had the strength of twelve men, but the woman was still stronger. King Thidrek and his friend Hildebrand succeeded after a terrible combat in slaying the monster. The woman had to be slain thrice in order that she should not come to life again. This feature is also borrowed from the myth about Angerboda, the thrice slain. Historia Pontificum (from time middle of the twelfth century) informs us that Duke Wilhelm of Angoulême (second half of the tenth century) possessed an extraordinary sword made by Volund. But this was not the real sword of victory. From Jordanes’ history it was known in the middle age that this sword had fallen into Attila’s hands, and the question was naturally asked what afterwards became of it. Sagas answered the question. The sword remained with the descendants of the Huns, the Hungarians. The mother of the Hungarian king Solomon gave it to one Otto of Bavaria. He lent it to the margrave of Lausitz, Dedi the younger. After the murder of Dedi it came into the hands of Emperor Henry IV, who gave it to his favourite, Leopold of Merseburg. By a fall from his horse Leopold was wounded by the point of the sword, and died from the |
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wound. Even in later times the sword was believed to exist, and there were those who believed that the Duke of Alba bore it at his side. 105. After Svipdag’s marriage with Freyja the saga of his life may be divided into two parts — the time before his visit in Asgard as Freyja’s happy husband and Frey’s best friend, and the time of his absence from Asgard and his change and destruction. To the former of these divisions belongs his journey, celebrated in song, to the abode of the giant Gymer, whither he proceeds to ask, on Frey’s behalf, for the hand of Gerd, Gymer’s and Aurboda’s fair daughter. It has already been pointed out that after his marriage with Gunvara-Freyja, Erik-Svipdag appears in Saxo as Frotho-Frey’s right hand, ready to help and a trusted man in all things. Among other things the task is also imposed on him to ask, on behalf of Frotho, for the hand of a young maiden whose father in the mythology doubtless was a giant. He is described as a deceitful, treacherous being, hostile to the gods, as a person who had laid a plan with his daughter as a bait to deceive Frotho and win Gunvara for himself. The plan is frustrated by Svipdag (Ericus), Ull (Rollerus), and Thor (Bracus), the last of whom here appears in his usual rôle as the conqueror |
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(cp. Str. 13 in Skirnersmal with str. 47 in Fjölsvinnsmal). But the conclusive proof of their identity is the fact that Skirner, like Svipdag, had made a journey to the lower world, had been in Mimer’s realm at the root of Ygdrasil, and there had fetched a sword called Gambantein, which is the same sword as the one Frey lays in his hand when he is to go on his errand of courtship — the same sword as Frey afterwards parts with as the price paid to Gymer and Aurboda for the bride. When Gerd refuses to accept the courtship-presents that Skirner brings with him, he draws his sword, shows its blade to Gerd, threatens to send her with its edge to Nifelhel, the region below the Na-gates, the Hades-dwelling of Hrimner, Hrimgrimner, and of other giants of antiquity, the abode of the furies of physical sicknesses (see No. 60), and tells her how this terrible weapon originally came into his possession:
The word teinn, a branch, a twig, has the meaning of sword in all the compounds where it occurs : benteinn, bifteinn, eggteinar, hœvateinn (homateinn), hjörteinn, hrœteinn, sárteinn, valteinn. Mistilteinn has also become the name of a sword (Younger Edda, i. 564; Fornald., i. 416, 515; ii. 371; cp. No. 101), and the same weapon as |
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is here called gambanteinn is called hœvateinn, homateinn (see further No. 116) in Fjölsvinnsmal. In the mythology there is only one single place which is called Holt. It is Mimis holt, Hoddmimis holt, the subterranean grove, where the children who are to be the parents of the future race of man have their secure abode until the regeneration of the world (see Nos. 52, 53), living on the morning-dew which falls from the world-tree, hrár vidr, “the tree rich in sap” (see No. 89). Mimer-Nidhad also comes from Holt when he imprisons Volund (Volund., 14). It has already been proved above that, on his journey in the lower world, Svipdag also came to Mimis holt, and saw the citadel within which the ásmegir have their asylum. Saxo has known either the above-cited strophe or another resembling it, and, when his Erik-Svipdag speaks of his journey in ambiguous words (obscura umbage), Saxo makes him say: Ad trunca sylvarum robora penetravi . . . ibi cuspis a robore regis excussa est (Hist., 206). With the expression ad robora sylvarum penetravi we must compare til holtz ec gecc. The words robur regis refer to the tree of the lower world king, Mimer, Mimameidr, the world-tree. Erik-Svipdag’s purpose with his journey to this tree is to secure a weapon. Saxo calls this weapon cuspis. Fjölsvinnsmal calls it, with a paraphrase, broddr. Cuspis is a translation of broddr. Thus there can be no doubt concerning the identity of Skirner with Svipdag. |
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