Teutonic Mythology

Gods and Goddesses of the Northland

IN

THREE VOLUMES

By VIKTOR RYDBERG, Ph.D.,

MEMBER OF THE SWEDISH ACADEMY; AUTHOR OF "THE LAST ATHENIAN" AND OTHER WORKS.

AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE SWEDISH

BY

RASMUS B. ANDERSON, LL.D.,
EX-UNITED STATES MINISTER TO DENMARK; AUTHOR OF "NORSE
MYTHOLOGY," "VIKING TALES," ETC.

HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON, LL.D., Ph.D.,
EDITOR IN CHIEF.
J. W. BUEL, Ph.D.,
MANAGING EDITOR.

VOL. III.

PUBLISHED BY THE
NORRŒNA SOCIETY,
LONDON COPENHAGEN STOCKHOLM BERLIN NEW YORK
1906

OF THE
Viking Edition

There are but six hundred and fifty sets made for the world, of which this is

No. 99

COPYRIGHT,
T. H. SMART,
1905.

THOR'S JOURNEY TO GIERRODSGARD.
(From an etching by Lorenz Frölich.)
Loke, in the guise of a falcon, having been captured by Geirrod, promised if released to bring Thor into the power of the giant without his hammer, belt or iron gloves. Thor being persuaded by the crafty Loke, started upon the journey. When he came to the river Vimer he attempted to ford it, though the stream had become a great torrent. As he reached the center the waters rose rapidly until they washed over his shoulders and he seemed to be in imminent danger of being carried away. At this juncture, looking toward the source of the river, he perceived Gjalp, Geirrod's daughter, who stood astride the stream and was causing its rapid growth. He thereupon seized a stone and threw it with his usual precision at the offending woman, who retreated. But it was with much struggling that Thor reached the bank which, however, he would have had great difficulty in ascending but for his fortune to seize a projecting shrub, by the aid of which he drew himself out of the raging waters.
See page [933].

TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

VOLUME THREE

LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURES.

THE MYTH IN REGARD TO THE LOWER WORLD.
(Part IV. Continued from Volume II.)

94.

THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.

Völuspa gives an account of the events which forebode and lead up to Ragnarok. Among these we also find that leika Mims synir, that is, that the sons of Mimer "spring up," "fly up," "get into lively motion." But the meaning of this has hitherto been an unsolved problem.

In the strophe immediately preceding (the 44th) Völuspa describes how it looks on the surface of Midgard when the end of the world is at hand. Brothers and near kinsmen slay each other. The sacred bonds of morality are broken. It is the storm-age and the wolf-age. Men no longer spare or pity one another. Knives and axes rage. Volund's world-destroying sword of revenge has already been fetched by Fjalar in the guise of the red cock (str. 41), and from the Ironwood, where it hitherto had been concealed by Angerboda and guarded by Egther; the wolf-giant Hate with his companions have invaded the world, which it was the duty of the gods to protect. The storms are attended by eclipses of the sun (str. 40).

Then suddenly the Hjallar-horn sounds, announcing that the destruction of the world is now to be fulfilled, and just as the first notes of this trumpet penetrate the world, Mimer's sons spring up. "The old tree," the world-tree, groans and trembles. When Mimer's sons "spring up" Odin is engaged in conversation with the head of their father, his faithful adviser, in regard to the impending conflict, which is the last one in which the gods are to take a hand.

I shall here give reasons for the assumption that the blast from the Hjallar-horn wakes Mimer's sons from a sleep that has lasted through centuries, and that the Christian legend concerning the seven sleepers has its chief, if not its only, root in a Teutonic myth which in the second half of the fifth or in the first half of the sixth century was changed into a legend. At that time large portions of the Teutonic race had already been converted to Christianity: the Goths, Vandals, Gepidians, Rugians, Burgundians, and Swabians were Christians. Considerable parts of the Roman empire were settled by the Teutons or governed by their swords. The Franks were on the point of entering the Christian Church, and behind them the Alamannians and Longobardians. Their myths and sagas were reconstructed so far as they could be adapted to the new forms and ideas, and if they, more or less transformed, assumed the garb of a Christian legend, then this guise enabled them to travel to the utmost limits of Christendom; and if they also contained, as in the case here in question, ideas that were not entirely foreign to the Greek-Roman world, then they might the more easily acquire the right of Roman nativity.

In its oldest form the legend of "the seven sleepers" has the following outlines (Miraculorum Liber, vii., i. 92):

"Seven brothers"[1] have their place of rest near the city of Ephesus, and the story of them is as follows: In the time of the Emperor Decius, while the persecution of the Christians took place, seven men were captured and brought before the ruler. Their names were Maximianus, Malchus, Martinianus, Constantius, Dionysius, Joannes, and Serapion. All sorts of persuasion was attempted, but they would not yield. The emperor, who was pleased with their courteous manners, gave them time for reflection, so that they should not at once fall under the sentence of death. But they concealed themselves in a cave and remained there many days. Still, one of them went out to get provisions and attend to other necessary matters. But when the emperor returned to the same city, these men prayed to God, asking Him in His mercy to save them out of this danger, and when, lying on the ground, they had finished their prayers, they fell asleep. When the emperor learned that they were in the above-mentioned cave, he, under divine influence, commanded that the entrance of the cave should be closed with large stones, "for," said he, "as they are unwilling to offer sacrifices to our gods, they must perish there." While this transpired a Christian man had engraved the names of the seven men on a leaden tablet, and also their testimony in regard to their belief, and he had secretly laid the tablet in the entrance of the cave before the latter was closed. After many years, the congregations having secured peace and the Christian Theodosius having gained the imperial dignity, the false doctrine of the Sadducees, who denied resurrection, was spread among the people. At this time it happens that a citizen of Ephesus is about to make an enclosure for his sheep on the mountain in question, and for this purpose he loosens the stones at the entrance of the cave, so that the cave was opened, but without his becoming aware of what was concealed within. But the Lord sent a breath of life into the seven men and they arose. Thinking they had slept only one night, they sent one of their number, a youth, to buy food. When he came to the city gate he was astonished, for he saw the glorious sign of the Cross, and he heard people aver by the name of Christ. But when he produced his money, which was from the time of Decius, he was seized by the vendor, who insisted that he must have found secreted treasures from former times, and who, as the youth made a stout denial, brought him before the bishop and the judge. Pressed by them, he was forced to reveal his secret, and he conducted them to the cave where the men were. At the entrance the bishop then finds the leaden tablet, on which all that concerned their case was noted down, and when he had talked with the men a messenger was despatched to the Emperor Theodosius. He came and kneeled on the ground and worshipped them, and they said to the ruler: "Most august Augustus! there has sprung up a false doctrine which tries to turn the Christian people from the promises of God, claiming that there is no resurrection of the dead. In order that you may know that we are all to appear before the judgment-seat of Christ according to the words of the Apostle Paul, the Lord God has raised us from the dead and commanded us to make this statement to you. See to it that you are not deceived and excluded from the kingdom of God." When the Emperor Theodosius heard this he praised the Lord for not permitting His people to perish. But the men again lay down on the ground and fell asleep. The Emperor Theodosius wanted to make graves of gold for them, but in a vision he was prohibited from doing this. And until this very day these men rest in the same place, wrapped in fine linen mantles.

At the first glance there is nothing which betrays the Teutonic origin of this legend. It may seemingly have had an independent origin anywhere in the Christian world, and particularly in the vicinity of Ephesus.

Meanwhile the historian of the Franks, Bishop Gregorius of Tours (born 538 or 539), is the first one who presented in writing the legend regarding the seven sleepers. In the form given above it appears through him for the first time within the borders of the christianised western Europe (see Gregorius' Miraculorum Liber, i., ch. 92). After him it reappears in Greek records, and thence it travels on and finally gets to Arabia and Abyssinia. His account is not written before the year 571 or 572. As the legend itself claims in its preserved form not to be older than the first years of the reign of Theodosius, it must have originated between the years 379-572.

The next time we learn anything about the seven sleepers in occidental literature is in the Longobardian historian, Paulus Diaconus (born about 723). What he relates has greatly surprised investigators; for although he certainly was acquainted with the Christian version in regard to the seven men who sleep for generations in a cave, and although he entertained no doubt as to its truth, he nevertheless relates another—and that a Teutonic—seven sleepers' legend, the scene of which is the remotest part of Teutondom. He narrates (i. 4):

"As my pen is still occupied with Germany, I deem it proper, in connection with some other miracles, to mention one which there is on the lips of everybody. In the remotest western boundaries of Germany is to be seen near the sea-strand under a high rock a cave where seven men have been sleeping no one knows how long. They are in the deepest sleep and uninfluenced by time, not only as to their bodies but also as to their garments, so that they are held in great honour by the savage and ignorant people, since time for so many years has left no trace either on their bodies or on their clothes. To judge from their dress they must be Romans. When a man from curiosity tried to undress one of them, it is said that his arm at once withered, and this punishment spread such a terror that nobody has since then dared to touch them. Doubtless it will some day be apparent why Divine Providence has so long preserved them. Perhaps by their preaching—for they are believed to be none other than Christians—this people shall once more be called to salvation. In the vicinity of this place dwell the race of the Skritobinians ('the Skridfinns')."

In chapter 6 Paulus makes the following additions, which will be found to be of importance to our theme: "Not far from that sea-strand which I mentioned as lying far to the west (in the most remote Germany), where the boundless ocean extends, is found the unfathomably deep eddy which we traditionally call the navel of the sea. Twice a-day it swallows the waves, and twice it vomits them forth again. Often, we are assured, ships are drawn into this eddy so violently that they look like arrows flying through the air, and frequently they perish in this abyss. But sometimes, when they are on the point of being swallowed up, they are driven back with the same terrible swiftness."

From what Paulus Diaconus here relates we learn that in the eighth century the common belief prevailed among the heathen Teutons that in the neighbourhood of that ocean-maelstrom, caused by Hvergelmer ("the roaring kettle"), seven men slept from time immemorial under a rock. How far the heathen Teutons believed that these men were Romans and Christians, or whether this feature is to be attributed to a conjecture by Christian Teutons, and came through influence from the Christian version of the legend of the seven sleepers, is a question which it is not necessary to discuss at present. That they are some day to awake to preach Christianity to "the stubborn," still heathen Teutonic tribes is manifestly a supposition on the part of Paulus himself, and he does not present it as anything else. It has nothing to do with the saga in its heathen form.

The first question now is: Has the heathen tradition in regard to the seven sleepers, which, according to the testimony of the Longobardian historian, was common among the heathen Teutons of the eighth century, since then disappeared without leaving any traces in our mythic records?

The answer is: Traces of it reappear in Saxo, in Adam of Bremen, in Norse and German popular belief, and in Völuspa. When compared with one another these traces are sufficient to determine the character and original place of the tradition in the epic of the Teutonic mythology.

I have already given above (No. 46) the main features of Saxo's account of King Gorm's and Thorkil's journey to and in the lower world. With their companions they are permitted to visit the abodes of torture of the damned and the fields of bliss, together with the gold-clad world-fountains, and to see the treasures preserved in their vicinity. In the same realm where these fountains are found there is, says Saxo, a tabernaculum within which still more precious treasures are preserved. It is an uberioris thesauri secretarium. The Danish adventurers also entered here. The treasury was also an armoury, and contained weapons suited to be borne by warriors of superhuman size. The owners and makers of these arms were also there, but they were perfectly quiet and as immovable as lifeless figures. Still they were not dead, but made the impression of being half-dead (semineces). By the enticing beauty and value of the treasures, and partly, too, by the dormant condition of the owners, the Danes were betrayed into an attempt to secure some of these precious things. Even the usually cautious Thorkil set a bad example and put his hand on a garment (amiculo manum inserens). We are not told by Saxo whether the garment covered anyone of those sleeping in the treasury, nor is it directly stated that the touching with the hand produced any disagreeable consequences for Thorkil. But further on Saxo relates that Thorkil became unrecognisable, because a withering or emaciation (marcor) had changed his body and the features of his face. With this account in Saxo we must compare what we read in Adam of Bremen about the Frisian adventurers who tried to plunder treasures belonging to giants who in the middle of the day lay concealed in subterranean caves (meridiano tempore latitantes antris subterraneis). This account must also have conceived the owners of the treasures as sleeping while the plundering took place, for not before they were on their way back were the Frisians pursued by the plundered party or by other lower-world beings. Still, all but one succeeded in getting back to their ships. Adam asserts that they were such beings quos nostri cyclopes appellant ("which among us are called cyclops"), that they, in other words, were gigantic smiths, who, accordingly, themselves had made the untold amount of golden treasures which the Frisians there saw. These northern cyclops, he says, dwelt within solid walls, surrounded by a water, to which, according to Adam of Bremen, one first comes after traversing the land of frost (provincia frigoris), and after passing that Euripus, "in which the water of the ocean flows back to its mysterious fountain" (ad initia quædam fontis sui arcani recurrens), "this deep subterranean abyss wherein the ebbing streams of the sea, according to report, were swallowed up to return," and which "with most violent force drew the unfortunate seamen down into the lower world" (infelices nautos vehementissimo impetu traxit ad Chaos).

It is evident that what Paulus Diaconus, Adam of Bremen, and Saxo here relate must be referred to the same tradition. All three refer the scene of these strange things and events to the "most remote part of Germany" (cp. Nos. 45, 46, 48, 49). According to all three reports the boundless ocean washes the shores of this saga-land which has to be traversed in order to get to "the sleepers," to "the men half-dead and resembling lifeless images," to "those concealed in the middle of the day in subterranean caves." Paulus assures us that they are in a cave under a rock in the neighbourhood of the famous maelstrom which sucks the billows of the sea into itself and spews them out again. Adam makes his Frisian adventurers come near being swallowed up by this maelstrom before they reach the caves of treasures where the cyclops in question dwell; and Saxo locates their tabernacle, filled with weapons and treasures, to a region which we have already recognised (see Nos. 45-51) as belonging to Mimer's lower-world realm, and situated in the neighbourhood of the sacred subterranean fountains.

In the northern part of Mimer's domain, consequently in the vicinity of the Hvergelmer fountain (see Nos. 59, 93), from and to which all waters find their way, and which is the source of the famous maelstrom (see Nos. 79, 80, 81), there stands, according to Völuspa, a golden hall in which Sindre's kinsmen have their home. Sindre is, as we know, like his brother Brok and others of his kinsmen, an artist of antiquity, a cyclops, to use the language of Adam of Bremen. The Northern records and the Latin chronicles thus correspond in the statement that in the neighbourhood of the maelstrom or of its subterranean fountain, beneath a rock and in a golden hall, or in subterranean caves filled with gold, certain men who are subterranean artisans dwell. Paulus Diaconus makes a "curious" person who had penetrated into this abode disrobe one of the sleepers clad in "Roman" clothes, and for this he is punished with a withered arm. Saxo makes Thorkil put his hand on a splendid garment which he sees there, and Thorkil returns from his journey with an emaciated body, and is so lean and lank as not to be recognised.

There are reasons for assuming that the ancient artisan Sindre is identical with Dvalinn, the ancient artisan created by Mimer. I base this assumption on the following circumstances:

Dvalinn is mentioned by the side of Dáinn both in Havamál (43) and in Grimnersmal (33); also in the sagas, where they make treasures in company. Both the names are clearly epithets which point to the mythic destiny of the ancient artists in question. Dáinn means "the dead one," and in analogy herewith we must interpret Dvalinn as "the dormant one," "the one slumbering." (cp. the Old Swedish dvale, sleep, unconscious condition). Their fates have made them the representatives of death and sleep, a sort of equivalents of Thanatos and Hypnos. As such they appear in the allegorical strophes incorporated in Grimnersmal, which, describing how the world-tree suffers and grows old, make Dáinn and Dvalinn, "death" and "slumber," get their food from its branches, while Nidhog and other serpents wound its roots.

In Hyndluljod (6) the artists who made Frey's golden boar are called Dáinn and Nabbi. In the Younger Edda (i. 340-342) they are called Brokkr and Sindri. Strange to say, on account of mythological circumstances not known to us, the skalds have been able to use Dáinn as a paraphrase for a rooting four-footed animal, and Brokkr too has a similar signification (cp. the Younger Edda, ii. 490, and Vigfusson, Dict., under Brokkr). This points to an original identity of these epithets. Thus we arrive at the following parallels:

• Dáinn (-Brokkr) and Dvalinn made treasures together;
• (Dáinn-) Brokkr and Sindri made Frey's golden boar;
• Dáinn and Nabbi made Frey's golden boar;

and the conclusion we draw herefrom is that in our mythology, in which there is such a plurality of names, Dvalinn, Sindri, and Nabbi are the same person, and that Dáinn and Brokkr are identical. I may have an opportunity later to present further evidence of this identity.

The primeval artist Sindre, who with his kinsmen inhabits a golden hall in Mimer's realm under the Hvergelmer mountains, near the subterranean fountain of the maelstrom, has therefore borne the epithet Dvalinn, "the one wrapped in slumber." "The slumberer" thus rests with his kinsmen, where Paulus Diaconus has heard that seven men sleep from time out of mind, and where Adam of Bremen makes smithying giants, rich in treasures, keep themselves concealed in lower-world caves within walls surrounded by water.

It has already been demonstrated that Dvalinn is a son of Mimer (see No. 53). Sindre-Dvalin and his kinsmen are therefore Mimer's offspring (Mims synir). The golden citadel situated near the fountain of the maelstrom is therefore inhabited by the sons of Mimer.

It has also been shown that, according to Solarljod, the sons of Mimer-Nidi come from this region (from the north in Mimer's domain), and that they are in all seven:

Nordan sá ek rida
Nidja sonu
ok váru sjau saman;

that is to say, that they are the same number as the "economical months," or the changes of the year (see No. 87).

In the same region Mimer's daughter Nat has her hall, where she takes her rest after her journey across the heavens is accomplished (see No. 93). The "chateau dormant" of Teutonic mythology is therefore situated in Nat's udal territory, and Dvalin, "the slumberer," is Nat's brother. Perhaps her citadel is identical with the one in which Dvalin and his brothers sleep. According to Saxo, voices of women are heard in the tabernaculum belonging to the sleeping men, and glittering with weapons and treasures, when Thorkil and his men come to plunder the treasures there. Nat has her court and her attendant sisters in the Teutonic mythology, as in Rigveda (Ushas). Simmara (see Nos. 97, 98) is one of the dises of the night. According to the middle-age sagas, these dises and daughters of Mimer are said to be twelve in number (see Nos. 45, 46).

Mimer, as we know, was the ward of the middle root of the world-tree. His seven sons, representing the changes experienced by the world-tree and nature annually, have with him guarded and tended the holy tree and watered its root with aurgom forsi from the subterranean horn, "Valfather's pledge." When the god-clans became foes, and the Vans seized weapons against the Asas, Mimer was slain, and the world-tree, losing its wise guardian, became subject to the influence of time. It suffers in crown and root (Grimnersmal), and as it is ideally identical with creation itself, both the natural and the moral, so toward the close of the period of this world it will betray the same dilapidated condition as nature and the moral world then are to reveal.

Logic demanded that when the world-tree lost its chief ward, the lord of the well of wisdom, it should also lose that care which under his direction was bestowed upon it by his seven sons. These, voluntarily or involuntarily, retired, and the story of the seven men who sleep in the citadel full of treasures informs us how they thenceforth spend their time until Ragnarok. The details of the myth telling how they entered into this condition cannot now be found; but it may be in order to point out, as a possible connection with this matter, that one of the older Vanagods, Njord's father, and possibly the same as Mundilfore, had the epithet Svafr, Svafrthorinn (Fjölsvinnsmal). Svafr means sopitor, the sleeper, and Svafrthorinn seems to refer to svefnthorn, "sleep-thorn." According to the traditions, a person could be put to sleep by laying a "sleep-thorn" in his ear, and he then slept until it was taken out or fell out.

Popular traditions scattered over Sweden, Denmark, and Germany have to this very day been preserved, on the lips of the common people, of the men sleeping among weapons and treasures in underground chambers or in rocky halls. A Swedish tradition makes them equipped not only with weapons, but also with horses which in their stalls abide the day when their masters are to awake and sally forth. Common to the most of these traditions, both the Northern and the German, is the feature that this is to happen when the greatest distress is at hand, or when the end of the world approaches and the day of judgment comes. With regard to the German sagas on this point I refer to Jacob Grimm's Mythology. I simply wish to point out here certain features which are of special importance to the subject under discussion, and which the popular memory in certain parts of Germany has preserved from the heathen myths. When the heroes who have slept through centuries sally forth, the trumpets of the last day sound, a great battle with the powers of evil (Antichrist) is to be fought, an immensely old tree, which has withered, is to grow green again, and a happier age is to begin.

This immensely old tree, which is withered at the close of the present period of the world, and which is to become green again in a happier age after a decisive conflict between the good and evil, can be no other than the world-tree of Teutonic mythology, the Ygdrasil of our Eddas. The angel trumpets, at whose blasts the men who sleep within the mountains sally forth, have their prototype in Heimdal's horn, which proclaims the destruction of the world; and the battle to be fought with Antichrist is the Ragnarok conflict, clad in Christian robes, between the gods and the destroyers of the world. Here Mimer's seven sons also have their task to perform. The last great struggle also concerns the lower world, whose regions of bliss demand protection against the thurs-clans of Nifelhel, the more so since these very regions of bliss constitute the new earth, which after Ragnarok rises from the sea to become the abode of a better race of men (see No. 55). The "wall rock" of the Hvergelmer mountain and its "stone gates" (Völuspa; cp. Nos. 46, 75) require defenders able to wield those immensely large swords which are kept in the sleeping castle on Nat's udal fields, and Sindre-Dvalin is remembered not only as the artist of antiquity, spreader of Mimer's runic wisdom, enemy of Loke, and father of the man-loving dises (see No. 53), but also as a hero. The name of the horse he rode, and probably is to ride in the Ragnarok conflict, is according to a strophe cited in the Younger Edda, Modinn; the middle-age sagas have connected his name to a certain viking, Sindri, and to Sintram of the German heroic poetry.

I now come back to the Völuspa strophe, which was the starting-point in the investigation contained in this chapter:

Leika Mims synir
en mjotudr kyndisk
at hinu gamla
gjallarhorni;
hátt blæss Heimdallr,
horn er á lothi.

"Mimer's sons spring up, for the fate of the world is proclaimed by the old gjallar-horn. Loud blows Heimdal—the horn is raised."

In regard to leika, it is to be remembered that its old meaning, "to jump," "to leap," "to fly up," reappears not only in Ulfilas, who translates skirtan of the New Testament with laikan (Luke i. 41, 44, and vi. 23; in the former passage in reference to the child slumbering in Elizabeth's womb; the child "leaps" at her meeting with Mary), but also in another passage in Völuspa, where it is said in regard to Ragnarok, leikr hár hiti vid himin sjalfan—"high leaps" (plays) "the fire against heaven itself." Further, we must point out the preterit form kyndisk (from kynna, to make known) by the side of the present form leika. This juxtaposition indicates that the sons of Mimer "rush up," while the fate of the world, the final destiny of creation in advance and immediately beforehand, was proclaimed "by the old gjallarhorn." The bounding up of Mimer's sons is the effect of the first powerful blast. One or more of these follow: "Loud blows Heimdal—the horn is raised; and Odin speaks with Mimer's head." Thus we have found the meaning of leika Mims synir. Their waking and appearance is one of the signs best remembered in the chronicles in popular traditions of Ragnarok's approach and the return of the dead, and in this strophe Völuspa has preserved the memory of the "chateau dormant" of Teutonic mythology.

Thus a comparison of the mythic fragments extant with the popular traditions gives us the following outline of the Teutonic myth concerning the seven sleepers:

The world-tree—the representative of the physical and moral laws of the world—grew in time's morning gloriously out of the fields of the three world-fountains, and during the first epochs of the mythological events (ár alda) it stood fresh and green, cared for by the subterranean guardians of these fountains. But the times became worse. The feminine counterpart of Loke, Gulveig-Heid, spreads evil runes in Asgard and Midgard, and he and she cause disputes and war between those god-clans whose task it is to watch over and sustain the order of the world in harmony. In the feud between the Asas and Vans, the middle and most important world-fountain—the fountain of wisdom, the one from which the good runes were fetched—became robbed of its watchman. Mimer was slain, and his seven sons, the superintendents of the seven seasons, who saw to it that these season-changes followed each other within the limits prescribed by the world-laws, were put to sleep, and fell into a stupor, which continues throughout the historical time until Ragnarok. Consequently the world-tree cannot help withering and growing old during the historical age. Still it is not to perish. Neither fire nor sword can harm it; and when evil has reached its climax, and when the present world is ended in the Ragnarok conflict and in Surt's flames, then it is to regain that freshness and splendour which it had in time's morning.

Until that time Sindre-Dvalin and Mimer's six other sons slumber in that golden hall which stands toward the north in the lower world, on Mimer's fields. Nat, their sister, dwells in the same region, and shrouds the chambers of those slumbering in darkness. Standing toward the north beneath the Nida mountains, the hall is near Hvergelmer's fountain, which causes the famous maelstrom. As sons of Mimer, the great smith of antiquity, the seven brothers were themselves great smiths of antiquity, who, during the first happy epoch, gave to the gods and to nature the most beautiful treasures (Mjolner, Brisingamen, Slidrugtanne, Draupner). The hall where they now rest is also a treasure-chamber, which preserves a number of splendid products of their skill as smiths, and among these are weapons, too large to be wielded by human hands, but intended to be employed by the brothers themselves when Ragnarok is at hand and the great decisive conflict comes between the powers of good and of evil. The seven sleepers are there clad in splendid mantles of another cut than those common among men. Certain mortals have had the privilege of seeing the realms of the lower world and of inspecting the hall where the seven brothers have their abode. But whoever ventured to touch their treasures, or was allured by the splendour of their mantles to attempt to secure any of them, was punished by the drooping and withering of his limbs.

When Ragnarok is at hand, the aged and abused world-tree trembles, and Heimdal's trumpet, until then kept in the deepest shade of the tree, is once more in the hand of the god, and at a world-piercing blast from this trumpet Mimer's seven sons start up from their sleep and arm themselves to take part in the last conflict. This is to end with the victory of the good; the world-tree will grow green again and flourish under the care of its former keepers; "all evil shall then cease, and Balder shall come back." The Teutonic myth in regard to the seven sleepers is thus most intimately connected with the myth concerning the return of the dead Balder and of the other dead men from the lower world, with the idea of resurrection and the regeneration of the world. It forms an integral part of the great epic of Teutonic mythology, and could not be spared. If the world-tree is to age during the historical epoch, and if the present period of time is to progress toward ruin, then this must have its epic cause in the fact that the keepers of the chief root of the tree were severed by the course of events from their important occupation. Therefore Mimer dies; therefore his sons sink into the sleep of ages. But it is necessary that they should wake and resume their occupation, for there is to be a regeneration, and the world-tree is to bloom with new freshness.

Both in Germany and in Sweden there still prevails a popular belief which puts "the seven sleepers" in connection with the weather. If it rains on the day of the seven sleepers, then, according to this popular belief, it is to rain for seven weeks thereafter. People have wondered how a weather prophecy could be connected with the sleeping saints, and the matter would also, in reality, be utterly incomprehensible if the legend were of Christian origin; but it is satisfactorily explained by the heathen-Teutonic mythology, where the seven sleepers represent those very seven so-called economic months—the seven changes of the weather—which gave rise to the division of the year into the months—gormánudr, frerm., hrútm., einm., sólm., selm., and kornskurdarmánudr. Navigation was also believed to be under the protection of the seven sleepers, and this we can understand when we remember that the hall of Mimer's sons was thought to stand near the Hvergelmer fountain and the Grotte of the skerry, "dangerous to seamen," and that they, like their father, were lovers of men. Thorkil, the great navigator of the saga, therefore praises Gudmund-Mimer as a protector in dangers.

The legend has preserved the connection found in the myth between the above meaning and the idea of a resurrection of the dead. But in the myth concerning Mimer's seven sons this idea is most intimately connected with the myth itself, and is, with epic logic, united with the whole mythological system. In the legend, on the other hand, the resurrection idea is put on as a trade-mark. The seven men in Ephesus are lulled into their long sleep, and are waked again to appear before Theodosius, the emperor, to preach a sermon illustrated by their own fate against the false doctrine which tries to deny the resurrection of the dead.

Gregorius says that he is the first who recorded in the Latin language this miracle, not before known to the Church of Western Europe. As his authority he quotes "a certain Syrian" who had interpreted the story for him. There was also need of a man from the Orient as an authority when a hitherto unknown miracle was to be presented—a miracle that had transpired in a cave near Ephesus. But there is no absolute reason for assuming that Gregorius presents a story of his own invention. The reference of the legend to Ephesus is explained by the antique saga-variation concerning Endymion, according to which the latter was sentenced to confinement and eternal sleep in a cave in the mountain Latmos. Latmos is south of Ephesus, and not very far from there. This saga is the antique root-thread of the legend, out of which rose its localisation, but not its contents and its details. The contents are borrowed from the Teutonic mythology. That Syria or Asia Minor was the scene of its transformation into a Christian legend is possible, and is not surprising. During and immediately after the time to which the legend itself refers the resurrection of the seven sleepers, the time of Theodosius, the Roman Orient, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt were full of Teutonic warriors who had permanent quarters there. A Notitia dignitatum from this age speaks of hosts of Goths, Alamannians, Franks, Chamavians, and Vandals, who there had fixed military quarters. There then stood an ala Francorum, a cohors Alamannorum, a cohors Chamavorum, an ala Vandilorum, a cohors Gothorum, and no doubt there, as elsewhere in the Roman Empire, great provinces were colonised by Teutonic veterans and other immigrants. Nor must we neglect to remark that the legend refers the falling asleep of the seven men to the time of Decius. Decius fell in battle against the Goths, who, a few years later, invaded Asia Minor and captured among other places also Ephesus.

95.

ON THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE MYTHOLOGY.

The account now given of the myths concerning the lower world shows that the hierologists and skalds of our heathendom had developed the doctrine in a perspicuous manner even down to the minutest details. The lower world and its kingdom of death were the chief subjects with which their fancy was occupied. The many sagas and traditions which flowed from heathen sources and which described Svipdag's, Hadding's, Gorm's, Thorkil's, and other journeys down there are proof of this, and the complete agreement of statements from totally different sources in regard to the topography of the lower world and the life there below shows that the ideas were reduced to a systematised and perspicuous whole. Svipdag's and Hadding's journeys in the lower world have been incorporated as episodes in the great epic concerning the Teutonic patriarchs, the chief outlines of which I have presented in the preceding pages. This is done in the same manner as the visits of Ulysses and Æneas in the lower world have become a part of the great Greek and Roman epic poems.

Under such circumstances it may seem surprising that Icelandic records from the middle ages concerning the heathen belief in regard to the abodes after death should give us statements which seems utterly irreconcilable with one another. For there are many proofs that the dead were believed to live in hills and rocks, or in grave-mounds where their bodies were buried. How can this be reconciled with the doctrine that the dead descended to the lower world, and were there judged either to receive abodes in Asgard or in the realms of bliss in Hades, or in the world of torture?

The question has been answered too hastily to the effect that the statements cannot be harmonised, and that consequently the heathen-Teutonic views in regard to the day of judgment were in this most important part of the religious doctrine unsupported.

The reason for the obscurity is not, however, in the matter itself, which has never been thoroughly studied, but in the false premises from which the conclusions have been drawn. Mythologists have simply assumed that the popular view of the Christian Church in regard to terrestrial man, conceiving him to consist of two factors, the perishable body and the imperishable soul, was the necessary condition for every belief in a life hereafter, and that the heathen Teutons accordingly also cherished this idea.

But this duality did not enter into the belief of our heathen fathers. Nor is it of such a kind that a man, having conceived a life hereafter, in this connection necessarily must conceive the soul as the simple, indissoluble spiritual factor of human nature. The division into two parts, lif ok sála, líkamr ok sála, body and soul, came with Christianity, and there is every reason for assuming, so far as the Scandinavian peoples are concerned, that the very word soul, sála, sál, is, like the idea it represents, an imported word. In Old Norse literature the word occurs for the first time in Olaf Trygveson's contemporary Halfred, after he had been converted to Christianity. Still the word is of Teutonic root. Ulfilas translates the New Testament psyche with saiwala, but this he does with his mind on the Platonic New Testament view of man as consisting of three factors: spirit (pneuma), soul (psyche), and body (soma). Spirit (pneuma) Ulfilas translates with ahma.

Another assumption, likewise incorrect in estimating the anthropological-eschatological belief of the Teutons, is that they are supposed to have distinguished between matter and mind, which is a result reached by the philosophers of the Occident in their abstract studies. It is, on the contrary, certain that such a distinction never entered the system of heathen Teutonic views. In it all things were material, an efni of course or fine grain, tangible or intangible, visible or invisible. The imperishable factors of man were, like the perishable, material, and a force could not be conceived which was not bound to matter, or expressed itself in matter, or was matter.

The heathen Teutonic conception of human nature, and of the factors composing it, is most like the Aryan-Asiatic as we find the latter preserved in the traditions of Buddhism, which assume more than three factors in a human being, and deny the existence of a soul, if this is to mean that all that is not corporal in man consists of a single simple, and therefore indissoluble, element, the soul.

The anthropological conception presented in Völuspa is as follows: Man consists of six elements, namely, to begin with the lower and coarser and to end with the highest and noblest:

• (1) The earthly matter of which the body is formed.
• (2) A formative vegetative force.
• (3) and (4) Loder's gifts.
• (5) Honer's gifts.
• (6) Odin's gifts.

Völuspa's words are these: The gods

The two lowest factors, the earthly material and the vegetative force, were already united in Ask and Embla when the three gods found them "growing as trees." These elements were able to unite themselves simply by the course of nature without any divine interference. When the sun for the first time shone from the south on "the stones of the hall," the vegetative force united with the matter of the primeval giant Ymer, who was filled with the seed of life from Audhumbla's milk, and then the "ground was overgrown with green herbs."

Thus man was not created directly from the crude earthly matter, but had already been organised and formed when the gods came and from the trees made persons with blood, motion, and spiritual qualities. The vegetative force must not be conceived in accordance with modern ideas, as an activity separated from the matter by abstraction and at the same time inseparably joined with it, but as an active matter joined with the earthly matter.

Loder's first gift lá with læti makes Ask and Embla animal beings. Egilsson's view that lá means blood is confirmed by the connection in which we find the word used. The læti united with lá (compare the related Swedish word "later," manners) means the way in which a conscious being moves and acts. The blood and the power of a motion which is voluntary were to the Teutons, as to all other people, the marks distinguishing animal from vegetable life. And thus we are already within the domain of psychical elements. The inherited features, growth, gait, and pose, which were observed as forming race- and family-types, were regarded as having the blood as efni and as being concealed therein. The blood which produced the family-type also produced the family-tie, even though it was not acquired by the natural process of generation. A person not at all related to the family of another man could become his blódi, his blood-kinsman, if they resolved at blanda blódi saman. They thereby entered into the same relations to each other as if they had the same mother and father.

Loder also gave at the same time another gift, litr goda. To understand this expression (hitherto translated with "good complexion"), we must bear in mind that the Teutons, like the Hellenes and Romans, conceived the gods in human form, and that the image which characterises man was borne by the gods alone before man's creation, and originally belonged to the gods. To the hierologists and the skalds of the Teutons, as to those of the Greeks and Romans, man was created in effigiem deorum and had in his nature a divine image in the real sense of this word, a litr goda. Nor was this litr goda a mere abstraction to the Teutons, or an empty form, but a created efni dwelling in man and giving shape and character to the earthly body which is visible to the eye. The common meaning of the word litr is something presenting itself to the eye without being actually tangible to the hands. The Gothic form of the word is wlits, which Ulfilas uses in translating the Greek prosopon—look, appearance, expression. Certain persons were regarded as able to separate their litr from its union with the other factors of their being, and to lend it, at least for a short time, to some other person in exchange for his. This was called to skipta litum, vixla litum. It was done by Sigurd and Gunnar in the song of Sigurd Fafnersbane (i. 37-42). That factor in Gunnar's being which causes his earthly body to present itself in a peculiar individual manner to the eyes of others is transmitted to Sigurd, whose exterior, affected by Gunnar's litr, accommodates itself to the latter, while the spiritual kernel in Sigurd's personality suffers no change.

Lit hefir thu Gunnars
oc læti hans,
mælsco thina
oc meginhyggior (Sig., i. 39).

Thus man has within him an inner body made in the image of the gods and consisting of a finer material, a body which is his litr, by virtue of which his coarser tabernacle, formed from the earth, receives that form by which it impresses itself on the minds of others. The recollection of the belief in this inner body has been preserved in a more or less distorted form in traditions handed down even to our days (see for example, Hyltén-Cavallius, Värend och Virdarne, i. 343-360; Rääf in Småland, Beskr. öfver Ydre, p. 84).

The appearance of the outer body therefore depends on the condition of the litr, that is, of the inner being. Beautiful women have a "joyous fair litr" (Havamál, 93). An emotion has influence upon the litr, and through it on the blood and the appearance of the outward body. A sudden blushing, a sudden paleness, are among the results thereof, and can give rise to the question, Hefir thu lit brugdit?—Have you changed your litr? (Fornald., i. 426). To translate this with, Have you changed colour? is absurd. The questioner sees the change of colour, and does not need to ask the other one who cannot see it.

On account of its mythological signification and application, it is very natural that the word litr should in every-day life acquire on the one hand the meaning of complexion in general, and on the other hand the signification of hamr, guise, an earthly garb which persons skilled in magic could put on and off. Skipta litum, vixla litum, have in Christian times been used as synonymous with skipta hömum, vixla hömum.

In physical death the coarser elements of an earthly person's nature are separated from the other constituent parts. The tabernacle formed of earth and the vegetative material united therewith are eliminated like the animal element and remain on earth. But this does not imply that the deceased descend without form to Hades. The form in which they travel in "deep dales," traverse the thornfields, wade across the subterranean rivers, or ride over the gold-clad Gjallar-bridge, is not a new creation, but was worn by them in their earthly career. It can be none other than their litr, their umbra et imago. It also shows distinctly what the dead man has been in his earthly life, and what care has been bestowed on his dust. The washing, combing, dressing, ornamenting, and supplying with Hel-shoes of the dead body has influence upon one's looks in Hades, on one's looks when he is to appear before his judge.

Separated from the earthly element, from the vegetative material, and from the blood, the lit is almost imponderable, and does not possess the qualities for an intensive life, either in bliss or in torture. Five fylkes of dead men who rode over the Gjallar-bridge produced no greater din than Hermod alone riding on Sleipner; and the woman watching the bridge saw that Hermod's exterior was not that of one separated from the earthly element. It was not litr daudra manna (Gylfaginning). But the litr of the dead is compensated for what it has lost. Those who in the judgment on daudan hvern are pronounced worthy of bliss are permitted to drink from the horn decorated with the serpent-symbol of eternity, the liquids of the three world-fountains which give life to all the world, and thereby their litr gets a higher grade of body and nobler blood (see Nos. 72, 73). Those sentenced to torture must also drink, but it is a drink eitri blandinn miok, "much mixed with venom," and it is illu heilli, that is, a warning of evil. This drink also restores their bodies, but only to make them feel the burden of torture. The liquid of life which they imbibe in this drink is the same as that which was thought to flow in the veins of the demons of torture. When Hadding with his sword wounds the demon-hand which grasps after Hardgrep and tears her into pieces (see No. 41), there flows from the wound "more venom than blood" (plus tabi quam cruoris—Saxo, Hist., 40).

When Loder had given Ask and Embla litr goda, an inner body formed in the image of the gods, a body which gives to their earthly tabernacle a human-divine type, they received from Honer the gift which is called ódr. In signification this word corresponds most closely to the Latin mens, the Greek nous (cp. Vigfusson's Lexicon), and means that material which forms the kernel of a human personality, its ego, and whose manifestations are understanding, memory, fancy, and will.

Vigfusson has called attention to the fact that the epithet langifótr and aurkonungr, "Longleg" and "Mire-king," applied to Honer, is applicable to the stork, and that this cannot be an accident, as the very name Hænir suggests a bird, and is related to the Greek kuknos, and the Sanscrit sakunas (Corpus Poet. Bor., i. p. cii.).[2] It should be borne in mind in this connection that the stork even to this day is regarded as a sacred and protected bird, and that among Scandinavians and Germans there still exists a nursery tale telling how the stork takes from some saga-pond the little fruits of man and brings them to their mothers. The tale which now belongs to the nursery has its root in the myth, where Honer gives our first parents that very gift which in a spiritual sense makes them human beings and contains the personal ego. It is both possible and probable that the conditions essential to the existence of every person were conceived as being analogous with the conditions attending the creation of the first human pair, and that the gifts which were then given by the gods to Ask and Embla were thought to be repeated in the case of each one of their descendants—that Honer consequently was believed to be continually active in the same manner as when the first human pair was created, giving to the mother-fruit the ego that is to be. The fruit itself out of which the child is developed was conceived as grown on the world-tree, which therefore is called manna mjötudr (Fjölsvinnsmal, 22). Every fruit of this kind (aldin) that matured (and fell from the branches of the world-tree into the mythic pond [?]) is fetched by the winged servants of the gods, and is born á eld into the maternal lap, after being mentally fructified by Honer.

Ut af hans (Mimameids) aldni
skal á eld bera
fyr kelisjúkar konur;
utar hverfa
thaz thær innar skyli,
sá er hann med mönnum mjötudr.

Above, in No. 83, it has been shown that Lodurr is identical with Mundilföri, the one producing fire by friction, and that Hœnir and Lodurr are Odin's brothers, also called Vei and Vili. With regard to the last name it should be remarked that its meaning of "will" developed out of the meaning "desire," "longing," and that the word preserved this older meaning also in the secondary sense of cupido, libido, sexual desire. This epithet of Lodurr corresponds both with the nature of the gifts he bestows on the human child which is to be—that is, the blood and the human, originally divine, form—and also with his quality of fire-producer, if, as is probable, the friction-fire had the same symbolic meaning in the Teutonic mythology as in the Rigveda. Like Honer, Loder causes the knitting together of the human generations. While the former fructifies the embryo developing on the world-tree with ódr, it receives from Loder the warmth of the blood and human organism. The expression Vilja byrdr, "Vili's burden," "that which Vili has produced," is from this point of view a well-chosen and at the same time an ambiguous paraphrase for a human body. The paraphrase occurs in Ynglingatal (Ynglingasaga, 17). When Visbur loses his life in the flames it is there said of him that the fire consumed his Vilja byrdi, his corporal life.

To Loder's and Honer's gifts the highest Asa-god adds the best element in human nature, önd, spirit, that by which a human being becomes participator in the divine also in an inner sense, and not only as to form. The divine must here, of course, be understood in the sense (far different from the ecclesiastical) in which it was used by our heathen ancestors, to whom the divine, as it can reveal itself in men, chiefly consisted in power of thought, courage, honesty, veracity, and mercy, but who knew no other humility than that of patiently bearing such misfortunes as cannot be averted by human ingenuity.

These six elements, united into one in human nature, were of course constantly in reciprocal activity. The personal kernel ódr is on the one hand influenced by önd, the spirit, and on the other hand by the animal, vegetative, and corporal elements, and the personality being endowed with will, it is responsible for the result of this reciprocal activity. If the spirit becomes superior to the other elements then it penetrates and sanctifies not only the personal kernel, but also the animal, vegetative, and corporal elements. Then human nature becomes a being that may be called divine, and deserves divine honour. When such a person dies the lower elements which are abandoned and consigned to the grave have been permeated by, and have become participators in, the personality which they have served, and may thereafter in a wonderful manner diffuse happiness and blessings around them. When Halfdan the Black died different places competed for the keeping of his remains, and the dispute was settled by dividing the corpse between Hadaland, Ringerike, and Vestfold (Fagerskinna, Heimskringla). The vegetative force in the remains of certain persons might also manifest itself in a strange manner. Thorgrim's grave-mound in Gisle's saga was always green on one side, and Laugarbrekku-Einar's grave-mound was entirely green both winter and summer (Landn., ii. 7).

The elements of the dead buried in the grave continued for more or less time their reciprocal activity, and formed a sort of unity which, if permeated by his ódr and önd, preserved some of his personality and qualities. The grave-mound might in this manner contain an alter ego of him who had descended to the realm of death. This alter ego, called after his dwelling haugbúi, hill-dweller, was characterised by his nature as a draugr, a branch which, though cut off from its life-root, still maintains its consistency, but gradually, though slowly, pays tribute to corruption and progresses toward its dissolution. In Christian times the word draugr acquired a bad, demoniacal meaning, which did not belong to it exclusively in heathen times, to judge from the compounds in which it is found: eldraugr, herdraugr, hirdidraugr, which were used in paraphrases for "warriors;" ódaldraugr, "rightful owner," &c. The alter ego of the deceased, his representative dwelling in the grave, retained his character: was good and kind if the deceased had been so in life; in the opposite case, evil and dangerous. As a rule he was believed to sleep in his grave, especially in the daytime, but might wake up in the night, or could be waked by the influence of prayer or the powers of conjuration. Ghosts of the good kind were hollar vættir, of the evil kind úvættir. Respect for the fathers and the idea that the men of the past were more pious and more noble than those of the present time caused the alter egos of the fathers to be regarded as beneficent and working for the good of the race, and for this reason family grave-mounds where the bones of the ancestors rested were generally near the home. If there was no grave-mound in the vicinity, but a rock or hill, the alter egos in question were believed to congregate there when something of importance to the family was impending. It might also happen that the lower elements, when abandoned by ódr and önd, became an alter ego in whom the vegetative and animal elements exclusively asserted themselves. Such an one was always tormented by animal desire of food, and did not seem to have any feeling for or memory of bonds tied in life. Saxo (Hist., 244) gives a horrible account of one of this sort. Two foster-brothers, Asmund and Asvid, had agreed that if the one died before the other the survivor should confine himself in the foster-brother's grave-chamber and remain there. Asvid died and was buried with horse and dog. Asmund kept his agreement, and ordered himself to be confined in the large, roomy grave, but discovered to his horror that his foster-brother had become a haugbúi of the last-named kind, who, after eating horse and dog, attacked Asmund to make him a victim of his hunger. Asmund conquered the haugbúi, cut off his head, and pierced his heart with a pole to prevent his coming to life again. Swedish adventurers who opened the grave to plunder it freed Asmund from his prison. In such instances as this it must have been assumed that the lower elements of the deceased consigned to the grave were never in his lifetime sufficiently permeated by his ódr and önd to enable these qualities to give the corpse an impression of the rational personality and human character of the deceased. The same idea is the basis of belief of the Slavic people in the vampire. In one of this sort the vegetative element united with his dust still asserts itself, so that hair and nails continue to grow as on a living being, and the animal element, which likewise continues to operate in the one buried, visits him with hunger and drives him in the night out of the grave to suck the blood of surviving kinsmen.

The real personality of the dead, the one endowed with litr, ódr, and önd, was and remained in the death kingdom, although circumstances might take place that would call him back for a short time. The drink which the happy dead person received in Hades was intended not only to strengthen his litr, but also to soothe that longing which the earthly life and its memories might cause him to feel. If a dearly-beloved kinsman or friend mourned the deceased too violently, this sorrow disturbed his happiness in the death kingdom, and was able to bring him back to earth. Then he would visit his grave-mound, and he and his alter ego, the haugbúi, would become one. This was the case with Helge Hundingsbane (Helge Hund., ii. 40, &c.). The sorrow of Sigrun, his beloved, caused him to return from Valhal to earth and to ride to his grave, where Sigrun came to him and wanted to rest in his arms during the night. But when Helge had told her that her tears pierced his breast with pain, and had assured her that she was exceedingly dear to him, and had predicted that they together should drink the sorrow-allaying liquids of the lower world, he rode his way again, in order that, before the crowing of the cock, he might be back among the departed heroes. Prayer was another means of calling the dead back. At the entrance of his deceased mother's grave-chamber Svipdag beseeches her to awake. Her ashes kept in the grave-chamber (er til moldar er komin) and her real personality from the realm of death (er ór ljodheimum er lidin) then unite, and Groa speaks out of the grave to her son (Grogaldr., i. 2). A third means of revoking the dead to earth lay in conjuration. But such a use of conjuration was a great sin, which relegated the sinner to the demons. (Cp. Saxo's account of Hardgrep.)

Thus we understand why the dead descended to Hades and still inhabited the grave-mounds. One died "to Hel" and "to the grave" at the same time. That of which earthly man consisted, in addition to his corporal garb, was not the simple being, "the soul," which cannot be divided, but there was a combination of factors, which in death could be separated, and of which those remaining on earth, while they had long been the covering of a personal kernel (ódr), could themselves in a new combination form another ego of the person who had descended to Hades.

But that too consisted of several factors, litr, ódr, and önd, and they were not inseparably united. We have already seen that the sinner, sentenced to torture, dies a second death in the lower world before he passes through the Na-gates, the death from Hel to Nifelhel, so that he becomes a nár, a corpse in a still deeper sense than that which nár has in a physical sense. The second death, like the first (physical), must consist in the separation of one or more of the factors from the being that dies. And in the second death, that which separates itself from the damned one and changes his remains into a lower-world nár, must be those factors that have no blame in connection with his sins, and consequently should not suffer his punishment, and which in their origin are too noble to become the objects of the practice of demons in the art of torturing. The venom drink which the damned person has to empty deprives him of that image of the gods in which he was made, and of the spirit which was the noble gift of the Asa-father. Changed into a monster, he goes to his destiny fraught with misfortunes.

The idea of a regeneration was not foreign to the faith of the Teutonic heathens. To judge from the very few statements we have on this point, it would seem that it was only the very best and the very worst who were thought to be born anew in the present world. Gulveig was born again several times by the force of her own evil will. But it is only ideal persons of whom it is said that they are born again—e.g., Helge Hjorvardson, Helge Hundingsbane, and Olaf Geirstadaralf, of whom the last was believed to have risen again in Saint Olaf. With the exception of Gulveig, the statements in regard to the others from Christian times are an echo from the heathen Teutonic doctrine which it would be most interesting to become better acquainted with—also from the standpoint of comparative Aryan mythology, since this same doctrine appears in a highly-developed form in the Asiatic-Aryan group of myths.

V.
THE IVALDE RACE.

96.

SVIPDAG AND GROA.

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.

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 lævis (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 command 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.).

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 næss, 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 phrophetic 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 incantation 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).

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 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:

ef thú vid inn náddgöfga
ordum skiptir jötun:
máls ok mannvits
sé ther á Mimis hjarta
gnóga of getit.

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.

SVIPDAG OUTSIDE OF THE GATES OF ASGARD. MENGLAD'S IDENTITY WITH FREYJA.

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).

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 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, 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 Lerbrimer's (Ymer's) limbs, and is called Gastrofnir, "the same 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 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 æsir taldir, Balldr er hne vid banathufu.

These wolf-dogs are foes of giants and trolls. If a vættr came there he would not be able to get past them (str. 16—ok kemt thá vættr, 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 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 asynje, and that one of the very 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 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. 36). The great tree whose foliage spreads over Menglad's palace bears the fruits that help kélisjúkar konur, so that utar hverva that thær 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 maid-servant 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,[3] 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 and Freyja, and as a necessary consequence for the identity of Svipdag and Ódr, also called Óttarr.

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 asynje 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 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.

SVIPDAG BRINGS TO ASGARD THE SWORD OF REVENGE FORGED BY VOLUND.

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 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 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), 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, 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 Nat 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.

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-Nidadr and his Njarians (see No. 87), he says when he awakes:

Hverir 'ro iofrar
their er a laugdo
besti Byr síma
oc mic bundo?

"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 Nidadr'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 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-Nidadr's queen in the Volundarkvida.

Mimer-Nidadr, who imprisons Volund and robs him of his sword and the incomparable arm-ring, is the father of Nat 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 Fjölsvinnsmal (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-Nidadr 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 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 Lúdr 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-Nidadr 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 traverse Nifelheim, "meet Nat on Nifelway," 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, 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 who 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 border-land of Mimer's domain; and when the sword is finished he is surprised by subterranean powers. In Loptr's saga, 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.

SVIPDAG'S FATHER ORVANDEL, THE STAR-HERO. EXPLANATION OF HIS EPITHET SÓLBJARTR.

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 Örvandill hinn frækni (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 Younger Edda 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 Elivagar 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 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 the 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 was one of the "brightest" in the heavens, and in brilliancy was like "a beam from the sun."

100.

SVIPDAG RESCUED FREYJA FROM THE HANDS OF THE GIANTS. SAXO ON OTHARUS AND SYRITHA. SVIPDAG IDENTICAL WITH OTHARUS.

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). That 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 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). 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 confirmed 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 Od'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 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.[4]

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 Ottarr, 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 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 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 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 who "gave," delivered Freyja to the race of the giants (hverr hefdi ætt 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 Odr," would long since have been selected by the mythologist 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 Odr in the epic of the mythology must have been the author of exploits which balanced his humbler descent, and the mythologists would thus 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 Odr, who afterwards became her husband, and whether Odr 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 asynje. 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 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 Syritha before she returns to her father.

The identity of Otharus with the Ottarr-Odr-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.

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 (sister's child) 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 goodwill of the ancient artists Sindre and Brok (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 "the possessor of the evil woman" (kvidugr af konu illri). In 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.

SVIPDAG IN SAXO'S ACCOUNT OF HOTHERUS.

From the parallel name Otharus, we must turn to the other parallel name Hotherus. It has already been shown that if the Svipdag synonym Odr 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 Odr-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 (Hödbrodd), 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 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 he 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 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, 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 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 and his body was laid in his ship on a pile of his fallen warriors and burned, but his ashes were afterwards deposited with great solemnity in a magnificent grave-mound by Hotherus who then 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 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 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 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.[5] 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, 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.[6] We are assured that it is of immense value (ingens præmium), 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 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 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 therefor.

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 Odr, 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 is included in the list of sword-names in the Younger Edda; and that in the later Icelandic saga-literature mistelteinn is a sword which is owned in succession by Saming, Thráinn, and Romund Greipson; 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 Hoddbrodd, who is identical with Orvandel. It has already been demonstrated (see No. 29) that Helge Hundingsbane is a copy of the Teutonic patriarch Halfdan. The series of parallels by which this demonstration was made clear at the same time makes it manifest that Helge's rival Hoddbrodd is Halfdan's rival Orvandel. The same place as is occupied in the Halfdan myth by Orvandel, Hoddbrodd 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.[7] 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 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:

thann gel ek thér in sjaunda,
ef thik sækja kemr
frost á fjalli há
hávetrar kuldi
megit thinu holdi fara,
ok haldisk æ lik at lidum.

102.

SVIPDAG'S SYNONYM EIREKR. ERICUS DISERTUS IN SAXO.

We have not yet exhausted Saxo's contributions to the 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.

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 for 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 (Hist., 193).

This corresponds with what Grogalder tells us about 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 most disgusting kind, whose manners are as unrestrained as their words. To get to this country it is necessary to cross an ocean, where 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:

thann gel ek thér inn sétta
ef thú á sjó kemr
meira en menn viti:
logn ok lögr
gangi thér i lúdr saman
ok ljái thér æ friddrjúgrar farar.

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 them 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. 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, 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 Bele'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 howler." 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 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 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 (p. 217, &c.) 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:

"End svige de Sorne
og ikke de Baarne"

(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 adventurers 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.

103.

THE SVIPDAG SYNONYM EIRIKR (continued).

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 superhuman 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 clansmen 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 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.

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:

thann gel ek thér inn fjórda
ef thik fjándr standa
görvir á galgvegi:
hugr theim hverfi
til handa ther mætti,
ok snuisk theim til sátta sefi.
thann gel ek pér inn fimta
ef thér fjöturr verdr
borinn at boglimum:
Leifnis elda læt ek thér
fyr legg of kvedinn,
ok stökkr thá láss af limum,
en af fótum fjöturr.

The Svipdag synonyms so far met with are: Ódr (Hotherus), Óttarr (Otharus), and Eirekr (Ericus).

IDUN BROUGHT BACK TO ASGARD.
(From an etching by Lorenz Frölich.)
In pursuance of a promise made by Loke to secure his release, he beguiled Idun out of Asgard and into the power of giant Thjasse. Idun was keeper of the apples upon which the gods fed to renew their youth and her disappearance from Asgard was, therefore, followed by rapid ageing, into decrepitude, of the gods. They discovered that Loke was the scoundrel who had caused Idun's betrayal and threatened him with death if he failed to bring her back. Accordingly Loke borrowed Freyja's falcon plumage and flew to Jotunheim—home of the giants. Thjasse was at sea fishing, so Loke quickly found Idun, whom he transformed into a nut and hastened with her to Asgard. Thjasse soon learned what had happened and on eagle wings he pursued the fleeing Loke but his coming was seen by Heimdal, warder of Asgard's gate, and by his orders a fire was quickly made on the walls, which scorched Thjasse's wings as he flew over and he fell into the power of the gods who promptly slew him.
See pages [899], [959], [909], [960].

It is remarkable, but, as we shall find later, easy to explain that this saga-hero, whom the mythology made 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, 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 collegium 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 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 Vidförli has become connected with two names of Svipdag: we have Eirikr hinn vidförli and Ódr (Oddr) hinn vidförli in the later Icelandic sagas.

104.

THE LATER FORTUNES OF THE VOLUND SWORD.

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 dove-tail 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 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 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 troll-women, 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 Eggther); and that the woman was an even more disgusting 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 under 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 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 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 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 the 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 Jordane's 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 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.