ii. 570), betakes himself from the far North and takes possession of an

island on the Swedish coast. That this island is Oland is clear from Saxo, 178, where Huyrvillus is called _Holandiæ princeps_. At the same time a brother-in-law of Virfir takes possession of Bornholm, and Gotland is colonised by Thjelvar (_Thjálfi_ of the myth), who is the son of Thjasse's brother (see Nos. 113, 114, 115). _Virfir_ is allied with the sons of _Finnr_ (_Fyn_--Saxo, _Hist._, 178). The saga concerning the emigration of the Longobardians is also connected with the myth about Thjasse and his kinsmen (see Nos. 112-115).

From all this it appears that a series of emigration and colonisation tales have their origin in the myth concerning the fimbul-winter caused by Thjasse and concerning the therewith connected attack by the Skilfings and Thjasse's kinsmen on South Scandinavia, that is, on the clayey plains near Jaravall, where the second son of Heimdal, Skjold-Borgar, rules. It is the remembrance of this migration from north to south which forms the basis of all the Teutonic middle-age migration sagas. The migration saga of the Goths, as Jordanes heard it, makes them emigrate from Scandinavia under the leadership of Berig. (_Ex hac igitur Scandza insula quasi officina gentium aut certe velut vagina nationum cum rege suo Berig Gothi quondam memorantur egressi--De Goth. Orig., c. 4. Meminisse debes, me de Scandzæ insulæ gremio Gothos dixisse egressos cum Berich suo rege_--c. 17.) The name Berig, also written Berich and Berigo, is the same as the German Berker, Berchtung, and indicates the same person as the Norse _Borgarr_. With Berig is connected the race of the Amalians; with Borgar the memory of Hamal (Amala), who is the foster-brother of Borgar's son (cp. No. 28 with Helge Hund., ii.). Thus the emigration of the Goths is in the myth a result of the fate experienced by Borgar and his people in their original country. And as the Swedes constituted the northernmost Teutonic branch, they were the ones who, on the approach of the fimbul-winter, were the first that were compelled to surrender their abodes and secure more southern habitations. This also appears from saga fragments which have been preserved; and here, but not in the circumstances themselves, lies the explanation of the statements, according to which the Swedes forced Scandinavian tribes dwelling farther south to emigrate. Jordanes (c. 3) claims that the Herulians were driven from their abode in Scandza by the Svithidians, and that the Danes are of Svithidian origin--in other words, that an older Teutonic population in Denmark was driven south, and that Denmark was repeopled by emigrants from Sweden. And in the Norse sagas themselves, the centre of gravity, as we have seen, is continually being moved farther to the south. Heimdal, under the name Scef-Skelfir, comes to the original inhabitants in Scania. Borgar, his son, becomes a ruler there, but founds, under the name Skjold, the royal dynasty of the Skjoldungs in Denmark. With Scef and Skjold the Wessex royal family of Saxon origin is in turn connected, and thus the royal dynasty of the Goths is again connected with the Skjold who emigrated from Scandza, and who is identical with Borgar. And finally there existed in Saxo's time mythic traditions or songs which related that all the present Germany came under the power of the Teutons who emigrated with Borgar; that, in other words, the emigration from the North carried with it the hegemony of Teutonic tribes over other tribes which before them inhabited Germany. Saxo says of Skjold-Borgar that _omnem Alamannorum gentem tributaria ditione perdomuit_; that is, "he made the whole race of Alamanni tributary." The name Alamanni is in this case not to be taken in an ethnographical but in a geographical sense. It means the people who were rulers in Germany before the immigration of Teutons from the North.

From this we see that migration traditions remembered by Teutons beneath Italian and Icelandic skies, on the islands of Great Britain and on the German continent, in spite of their wide diffusion and their separation in time, point to a single root: to the myth concerning the primeval artists and their conflict with the gods; to the robbing of Idun and the fimbul-winter which was the result.

The myth makes the gods themselves to be seized by terror at the fate of the world, and Mimer makes arrangements to save all that is best and purest on earth for an expected regeneration of the world. At the very beginning of the fimbul-winter Mimer opens in his subterranean grove of immortality an asylum, closed against all physical and spiritual evil, for the two children of men, Lif and Lifthrasir (Vafthr., 45), who are to be the parents of a new race of men (see Nos. 52, 53).

The war begun in Borgar's time for the possession of the ancient country continues under his son Halfdan, who reconquers it for a time, invades Svithiod, and repels Thjasse and his kinsmen (see Nos. 32, 33).

[Footnote 14: Elsewhere it shall be shown that the heroes mentioned in the middle age poetry under the names Valdere, Walther, Waltharius manufortis, and Valthere of Vaskasten are all variations of the name of the same mythic type changed into a human hero, and the same, too, as Ivalde of the Norse documents (see No. 123).]

29.

EVIDENCE THAT HALFDAN IS IDENTICAL WITH HELGE HUNDINGSBANE.

The main outlines of Halfdan's saga reappears related as history, and more or less blended with foreign elements, in Saxo's accounts of the kings Gram, Halfdan Berggram, and Halfdan Borgarson (see No. 23). Contributions to the saga are found in Hyndluljod (str. 14, 15, 16) and in Skaldskaparmal (Younger Edda, i. 516 ff.), in what they tell about Halfdan Skjoldung and Halfdan the Old. The juvenile adventures of the hero have, with some modifications, furnished the materials for both the songs about Helge Hundingsbane, with which Saxo's story of Helgo Hundingicida (_Hist._, 80-110) and Volsungasaga's about Helge Sigmundson are to be compared. The Grotte-song also (str. 22) identifies Helge Hundingsbane with Halfdan.

For the history of the origin of the existing heroic poems from mythic sources, of their relation to these and to each other, it is important to get the original identity of the hero-myth, concerning Halfdan and the heroic poems concerning Helge Hundingsbane, fixed on a firm foundation. The following parallels suffice to show that this Helge is a later time's reproduction of the mythic Halfdan:

Halfdan-Gram, sent on a Helge Hundingsbane, sent warlike expedition, meets on a warlike expedition, Groa, who is mounted on meets Sigrun, who is mounted horseback and accompanied on horseback and is accompanied by other women on horseback by other women (Saxo, 26, 27). on horseback (Helge Hund., i. 16; Volsungasaga, c. 9).

The meeting takes place in The meeting takes place in a forest (Saxo, 26). a forest (Vols., c. 9).

Halfdan-Gram is on the Helge is on the occasion occasion completely wrapped disguised. He speaks frá in the skin of a wild beast, so úlfidi "from a wolf guise" that even his face is concealed (Helge Hund., i. 16), which (Saxo, 26). expression finds its interpretation in Saxo, where Halfdan appears wrapped in the skin of a wild beast.

Conversation is begun between Conversation is begun between Halfdan-Gram and Helge and Sigrun. Groa. Halfdan pretends to be Helge pretends to be a person a person who is his brother-at-arms who is his foster-brother (Saxo, 27). (Helge Hund., ii. 6).

Groa asks Halfdan-Gram: Sigrun asks Helge: Quis, rogo, vestrum Hverir lata fljota dirigit agmen, fley vid backa, quo duce signa hvar hermegir bellica fertis? heima eigud? (Saxo, 27.) (Helge Hund., ii. 5.)

Halfdan-Gram invites Groa Helge invites Sigrun to to accompany him. At first accompany him. At first the the invitation is refused invitation is rebuked (Helge (Saxo, 27). Hund., i. 16, 17).

Groa's father had already Sigrun's father had already given her hand to another promised her to another (Saxo, 26). (Helge Hund., i. 18).

Halfdan-Gram explains Helge explains that this that this rival ought not to rival should not cause them to cause them to fear (Saxo, 28). fear (Helge Hund., i., ii.).

Halfdan-Gram makes war Helge makes war on Sigrun's on Groa's father, on his rival, father, on his rival, and and on the kinsmen of the latter on the kinsmen of the latter (Saxo, 32). (Helge Hund., i., ii.).

Halfdan-Gram slays Groa's Helge kills Sigrun's father father and betrothed, and and suitors, and many heroes many heroes who belonged to who were the brothers or his circle of kinsmen or were allies of his rival (Helge subject to him (Saxo, 32). Hund., ii.).

Halfdan-Gram marries Groa Helge marries Sigrun (Helge (Saxo, 33). Hund., i. 56).

Halfdan-Gram conquers a Helge conquers Ring's sons king Ring (Saxo, 32). (Helge Hund., i. 52).

Borgar's son has defeated Helge has slain king Hunding, and slain king Hunding and thus gotten the (Saxo, 362; cp. Saxo, 337). name Hundingsbane (Helge Hund., i. 10).

Halfdan-Gram has felled Helge's rival and the many Svarin and many of his brothers. brothers of the latter dwell Svarin was viceroy under around Svarin's grave-mound. Groa's father (Saxo, 32). They are allies or subjects of Sigrun's father.

Halfdan-Gram is slain by Helge is slain by Dag, who Svipdag, who is armed with is armed with an Asgard an Asgard weapon (Saxo, 34, weapon (Helge Hund., ii.). to be compared with other sources. See Nos. 33, 98, 101, 103).

Halfdan-Berggram's father Helge's father was slain by is slain by his brother Frode, his brother Frode, who took who took his kingdom (Saxo, his kingdom (Rolf Krake's 320). saga).

Halfdan Berggram and his Helge and his brother were brother were in their childhood in their childhood protected protected by Regno by Regin (Rolf Krake's saga). (Saxo, 320).

Halfdan Berggram and his Helge and his brothers brother burnt Frode to death burnt Frode to death in his in his house (Saxo, 323). house (Rolf Krake's saga).

Halfdan Berggram as a Helge Hundingsbane as a youth left the kingdom to his youth left the kingdom to his brother and went warfaring brother and went warfaring (Saxo, 320 ff). (Saxo, 80).

During Halfdan's absence During Helge Hundingsbane's Denmark is attacked by an absence Denmark is attacked enemy, who conquers his by an enemy, who conquers brother in three battles and his brother in three slays him in a fourth (Saxo, battles and slays him in a 325). fourth (Saxo, 82).

Halfdan, the descendant of Helge Hundingsbane became Scef and Scyld, becomes the the father of Rolf father of Rolf (Beowulf (Saxo, 83; compare Rolf poem). Krake's saga).

Halfdan had a son with his Helge Hundingsbane had a own sister Yrsa (Grotte-song, son with his own sister Ursa 22; mon Yrsu sonr vid Half-dana (Saxo, 82). The son was Rolf hefna Froda; sa mun (compare Rolf Krake's saga). hennar heitinn vertha börr oc bróthir).

A glance at these parallels is sufficient to remove every doubt that the hero in the songs concerning Helge Hundingsbane is originally the same mythic person as is celebrated in the song or songs from which Saxo gathered his materials concerning the kings, Gram Skjoldson, Halfdan Berggram, and Halfdan Borgarson. It is the ancient myth in regard to Halfdan, the son of Skjold-Borgar, which myth, after the introduction of Christianity in Scandinavia, is divided into two branches, of which the one continues to be the saga of this patriarch, while the other utilises the history of his youth and transforms it into a new saga, that of Helge Hundingsbane. In Saxo's time, and long before him, this division into two branches had already taken place. How this younger branch, Helge Hundingsbane's saga, was afterwards partly appropriated by the all-absorbing Sigurdsaga and became connected with it in an external and purely genealogical manner, and partly did itself appropriate (as in Saxo) the old Danish local tradition about Rolf, the illegitimate son of Halfdan Skjoldung, and, in fact, foreign to his pedigree; how it got mixed with the saga about an evil Frode and his stepsons, a saga with which it formerly had no connection;--all these are questions which I shall discuss fully in a second part of this work, and in a separate treatise on the heroic sagas. For the present, my task is to show what influence this knowledge of Halfdan and Helge Hundingsbane's identity has upon the interpretation of the myth concerning the antiquity of the Teutons.

30.

HALFDAN'S BIRTH AND THE END OF THE AGE OF PEACE. THE FAMILY NAMES YLFING, HILDING, BUDLUNG.

The first strophes of the first song of Helge Hundingsbane distinguish themselves in tone and character and broad treatment from the continuation of the song, and have clearly belonged to a genuine old mythic poem about Halfdan, and without much change the compiler of the Helge Hundingsbane song has incorporated them into his poem. They describe Halfdan's ("Helge Hundingsbane's") birth. The real mythic names of his parents, Borgar and Drott, have been retained side by side with the names given by the compiler, Sigmund and Borghild.

Ar var alda; It was time's morning, that er arar gullo, eagles screeched, hnigo heilog votn holy waters fell af himinfjollum; from the heavenly mountains. thá hafthi Helga Then was the mighty inn hugom stora Helge born Borghildr borit by Borghild i Bralundi. in Bralund.

Nott varth i boe, It was night, nornir qvomo, norns came, ther er authlingi they who did shape aldr urn scopo; the fate of the nobleman; thann batho fylci they proclaimed him frægstan vertha best among Budlungs, oc buthlunga and most famed beztan ticcia. among princes.

Snero ther af afli With all their might the threads aurlaugthátto, of fate they twisted, tha er Borgarr braut when Borgar settled i Brálundi; in Bralund; ther um greiddo of gold they made gullin simo the warp of the web, oc und manasal and fastened it directly mithian festo. 'neath the halls of the moon.

ther austr oc vestr In the east and west enda fálo: they hid the ends: thar átti lofdungr there between land a milli; the chief should rule; brá nipt Nera Nere's[15] kinswoman a nordrevega northward sent einni festi one thread and bade it ey bath hon halda. hold for ever.

Eitt var at angri One cause there was Ylfinga nith of alarm to the Yngling (Borgar), oc theirre meyio and also for her er nunuth fæddi; who bore the loved one. hrafn gvath at hrafni Hungry cawed --sat a hám meithi raven to raven andvanr áto:-- in the high tree: "Ec veit noccoth! "Hear what I know!

"Stendr i brynio "In coat of mail burr Sigmundar, stands Sigmund's son, doegrs eins gamall, one day old, nu er dagr kominn; now the day is come; hversir augo sharp eyes of the Hildings sem hildingar, has he, and the wolves' sa er varga vinr, friend he becomes, vith scolom teitir." We shall thrive."

Drótt thotti sa Drott, it is said, saw dauglingr vera In him a dayling,[16] quado meth gumnom saying, "Now are good seasons god-ár kominn; come among men;" sialfr gecc visi to the young lord or vig thrimo from thunder-strife ungum færa came the chief himself itrlauc grami. with a glorious flower.

Halfdan's ("Helge Hundingsbane's") birth occurs, according to the contents of these strophes, when two epochs meet. His arrival announces the close of the peaceful epoch and the beginning of an age of strife, which ever since has reigned in the world. His significance in this respect is distinctly manifest in the poem. The raven, to whom the battle-field will soon be as a wellspread table, is yet suffering from hunger (_andvanr átu_); but from the high tree in which it sits, it has on the day after the birth of the child, presumably through the window, seen the newcomer, and discovered that he possessed "the sharp eyes of the Hildings," and with prophetic vision it has already seen him clad in coat of mail. It proclaims its discovery to another raven in the same tree, and foretells that theirs and the age of the wolves has come: "We shall thrive."

The parents of the child heard and understood what the raven said. Among the runes which Heimdal, Borgar's father, taught him, and which the son of the latter in time learned, are the knowledge of bird-speech (_Konr ungr klök nam fugla_--Rigsthula, 43, 44). The raven's appearance in the song of Helge Hundingsbane is to be compared with its relative the crow in Rigsthula; the one foretells that the new-born one's path of life lies over battle-fields, the other urges the grown man to turn away from his peaceful amusements. Important in regard to a correct understanding of the song, and characteristic of the original relation of the strophes quoted to the myth concerning primeval time, is the circumstance that Halfdan's ("Helge Hundingsbane's") parents are not pleased with the prophecies of the raven; on the contrary they are filled with alarm. Former interpreters have been surprised at this. It has seemed to them that the prophecy of the lad's future heroic and blood-stained career ought, in harmony with the general spirit pervading the old Norse literature, to have awakened the parents' joy and pride. But the matter is explained by the mythic connection which makes Borgars' life constitute the transition period from a happy and peaceful golden age to an age of warfare. With all their love of strife and admiration for warlike deeds, the Teutons still were human, and shared with all other people the opinion that peace and harmony is something better and more desirable than war and bloodshed. Like their Aryan kinsmen, they dreamed of primeval _Saturnia regna_, and looked forward to a regeneration which is to restore the reign of peace. Borgar, in the myth, established the community, was the legislator and judge. He was the hero of peaceful deeds, who did not care to employ weapons except against wild beasts and robbers. But the myth had also equipped him with courage and strength, the necessary qualities for inspiring respect and interest, and had given him abundant opportunity for exhibiting these qualities in the promotion of culture and the maintenance of the sacredness of the law. Borgar was the Hercules of the northern myth, who fought with the gigantic beasts and robbers of the olden time. Saxo (_Hist._, 23) has preserved the traditions which tell how he at one time fought breast to breast with a giant bear, conquering him and bringing him fettered into his own camp.

As is well known, the family names Ylfings, Hildings, Budlungs, &c., have in the poems of the Christian skalds lost their specific application to certain families, and are applied to royal and princely warriors in general. This is in perfect analogy with the Christian Icelandic poetry, according to which it is proper to take the name of any viking, giant, or dwarf, and apply it to any special viking, giant, or dwarf, a poetic principle which scholars even of our time claim can also be applied in the interpretation of the heathen poems. In regard to the old Norse poets this method is, however, as impossible as it would be in Greek poetry to call Odysseus a Peleid, or Achilleus a Laertiatid, or Prometheus Hephæstos, or Hephæstos Dædalos. The poems concerning Helge Hundingsbane are compiled in Christian times from old songs about Borgar's son Halfdan, and we find that the patronymic appellations Ylfing, Hilding, Budlung, and Lofdung are copiously strewn on "Helge Hundingsbane." But, so far as the above-quoted strophes are concerned, it can be shown that the appellations Ylfing, Hilding, and Budlung are in fact old usage and have a mythic foundation. The German poem "Wolfdieterich und Sabin" calls Berchtung (Borgar) Potelung--that is, Budlung; the poem "Wolfdieterich" makes Berchtung the progenitor of the Hildings, and adds: "From the same race the Ylfings have come to us"--_von dem selbe geslehte sint uns die wilfinge kumen_ (v. 223).

Saxo mentions the Hilding Hildeger as Halfdan's half-brother, and the traditions on which the saga of Asmund Kæmpebane is based has done the same (compare No. 43). The agreement in this point between German, Danish, and Icelandic statements points to an older source common to them all, and furnishes an additional proof that the German Berchtung occupied in the mythic genælogies precisely the same place as the Norse Borgar.

That Thor is one of Halfdan's fathers, just as Heimdal is one of Borgar's, has already been pointed out above (see No. 25). To a divine common fatherhood point the words: "Drott it is said, saw in him (the lad just born) a dayling (son of a god of light), a son divine." Who the divine partner-father is, is indicated by the fact that a storm has broken out the night when Drott's son is born. There is a thunder-strife _vig thrimo_, the eagles screech, and holy waters fall from the heavenly mountains (from the clouds). The god of thunder is present, and casts his shadow over the house where the child is born.

[Footnote 15: Urd, the chief goddess of fate. See the treatise "Mythen om Under-jorden."]

[Footnote 16: _Dayling_ = bright son of day or light.]

31.

HALFDAN'S CHARACTER. THE WEAPON-MYTH.

The myths and heroic poems are not wanting in ideal heroes, who are models of goodness of heart, justice, and the most sensitive nobleness. Such are, for example, the Asa-god Balder, his counter part among heroes, Helge Hjorvardson, Beowulf, and, to a certain degree also, Sigurd Fafnesbane. Halfdan did not belong to this group. His part in the myth is to be the personal representative of the strife-age that came with him, of an age when the inhabitants of the earth are visited by the great winter and by dire misfortunes, when the demoralisation of the world has begun along with disturbances in nature and when the words already are applicable, "_hart er i heimi_" (hard is the world). Halfdan is guilty of the abduction of a woman--the old custom of taking a maid from her father by violence or cunning is illustrated in his saga. It follows, however, that the myth at the same time embellished him with qualities which made him a worthy Teutonic patriarch, and attractive to the hearers of the songs concerning him. These qualities are, besides the necessary strength and courage, the above-mentioned knowledge of runes, wherein he even surpasses his father (Rigsth.), great skaldic gifts (Saxo, _Hist._, 325), a liberality which makes him love to strew gold about him (Helge Hund., i. 9), and an extraordinary, fascinating physical beauty--which is emphasised by Saxo (_Hist._, 30), and which is also evident from the fact that the Teutonic myth makes him, as the Greek myth makes Achilleus, on one occasion don a woman's attire, and resemble a valkyrie in this guise (Helge Hund., ii.). No doubt the myth also described him as the model of a faithful foster-brother in his relations to the silent Hamal, who externally was so like him that the one could easily be taken for the other (cp. Helge Hund., ii. 1, 6). In all cases it is certain that the myth made the foster-brotherhood between Halfdan and Hamal the basis of the unfailing fidelity with which Hamal's descendants, the Amalians, cling to the son of Halfdan's favourite Hadding, and support his cause even amid the most difficult circumstances (see Nos. 42, 43). The abduction of a woman by Halfdan is founded in the physical interpretation of the myth, and can thus be justified. The wife he takes by force is the goddess of vegetation, Groa, and he does it because her husband Orvandel has made a compact with the powers of frost (see Nos. 33, 38, 108, 109).

There are indications that our ancestors believed the sword to be a later invention than the other kinds of weapons, and that it was from the beginning under a curse. The first and most important of all sword-smiths was, according to the myth, Thjasse,[17] who accordingly is called _fadir mörna_, the father of the swords (Haustlaung, Younger Edda, 306). The best sword made by him is intended to make way for the destruction of the gods (see Nos. 33, 98, 101, 103). After various fortunes it comes into the possession of Frey, but is of no service to Asgard. It is given to the parents of the giantess Gerd, and in Ragnarok it causes the death of Frey.

Halfdan had two swords, which his mother's father, for whom they were made, had buried in the earth, and his mother long kept the place of concealment secret from him. The first time he uses one of them he slays in a duel his noble half-brother Hildeger, fighting on the side of the Skilfings, without knowing who he is (cp. Saxo, _Hist._, 351, 355, 356, with Asmund Kæmpebane's saga). Cursed swords are several times mentioned in the sagas.

Halfdan's weapon, which he wields successfully in advantageous exploits, is in fact, the club (Saxo, _Hist._, 26, 31, 323, 353). That the Teutonic patriarch's favourite weapon is the club, not the sword; that the latter, later, in his hand, sheds the blood of a kinsman; and that he himself finally is slain by the sword forged by Thjasse, and that, too, in conflict with a son (the stepson Svipdag--see below), I regard as worthy of notice from the standpoint of the views cherished during some of the centuries of the Teutonic heathendom in regard to the various age and sacredness of the different kinds of weapons. That the sword also at length was looked upon as sacred is plain from the fact that it was adopted and used by the Asa-gods. In Ragnarok, Vidar is to avenge his father with a _hjörr_ and pierce Fafner's heart (_Völuspa_). _Hjörr_ may, it is true, also mean a missile, but still it is probable that it, in Vidar's hand, means a sword. The oldest and most sacred weapons were the spear, the hammer, the club, and the axe. The spear which, in the days of Tacitus, and much later, was the chief weapon both for foot-soldiers and cavalry in the Teutonic armies, is wielded by the Asa-father himself, whose Gungner was forged for him by Ivalde's sons before the dreadful enmity between the gods and them had begun.

The hammer is Thor's most sacred weapon. Before Sindre forged one for him of iron (Gylfaginning), he wielded a hammer of stone. This is evident from the very name _hamarr_, a rock, a stone. The club is, as we have seen, the weapon of the Teutonic patriarch, and is wielded side by side with Thor's hammer in the conflict with the powers of frost. The battle-axe belonged to Njord. This is evident from the metaphors found in the Younger Edda, p. 346, and in Islend. Saga, 9. The mythological kernel in the former metaphor is _Njördrklauf Herjan's hurdir_, _i.e._, "_Njord_ cleaved Odin's gates" (when the Vans conquered Asgard); in the other the battle-axe is called _Gaut's megin-hurdar galli_, _i.e._, "the destroyer of Odin's great gate." The bow is a weapon employed by the Asa-gods _Hödr_ and _Ullr_, but Balder is slain by a shot from the bow, and the chief archer of the myth is, as we shall see, not an Asa-god, but a brother of Thjasse. (Further discussion of the weapon-myth will be found in No. 39.)

[Footnote 17: Proofs of Thjasse's original identity with Volund are given in Nos. 113-115.]

32.

HALFDAN'S CONFLICTS INTERPRETED AS MYTHS OF NATURE. THE WAR WITH THE HEROES FROM SVARIN'S MOUND. HALFDAN'S MARRIAGE WITH DISES OF VEGETATION.

In regard to the significance of the conflicts awaiting Halfdan, and occupying his whole life, when interpreted as myths of nature, we must remember that he inherits from his father the duty of stopping the progress southward of the giant-world's wintry agents, the kinsmen of Thjasse, and of the Skilfing (Yngling) tribes dwelling in the north. The migration sagas have, as we have seen, shown that Borgar and his people had to leave the original country and move south to Denmark, Saxland, and to those regions on the other side of the Baltic in which the Goths settled. For a time the original country is possessed by the conquerors who according to Völuspa, "from Svarin's Mound attacked and took (_sótti_) the clayey plains as far as Jaravall." But Halfdan represses them. That the words quoted from Völuspa really refer to the same mythic persons with whom Halfdan afterwards fights is proved by the fact that Svarin and Svarin's Mound are never named in our documents except in connection with Halfdan's saga. In Saxo it is Halfdan-Gram who slays Svarin and his numerous brothers; in the saga of "Helge Hundingsbane" it is again Halfdan, under the name Helge, who attacks tribes dwelling around Svarin's Mound, and conquers them. To this may be added, that the compiler of the first song about Helge Hundingsbane borrowed from the saga-original, on which the song is based, names which point to the Völuspa strophe concerning the attack on the south Scandinavian plains. In the category of names, or the genealogy of the aggressors, occur, as has been shown already, the Skilfing names Alf and Yngve. Thus also in the Helge-song's list of persons with whom the conflict is waged in the vicinity of Svarin's Mound. In the Vö1uspa's list Moinn is mentioned among the aggressors (in the variation in the Prose Edda); in the Helge-song, strophe 46, it is said that Helge-Halfdan fought _á Móinsheimom_ against his brave foes, whom he afterwards slew in the battle around Svarin's Mound. In the Völuspa's list is named among the aggressors one _Haugspori_, "the one spying from the mound"; in the Helge-song is mentioned _Sporvitnir_, who from Svarin's Mound watches the forces of Helge-Halfdan advancing. I have already (No. 28B), pointed out several other names which occur in the Völuspa list, and whose connection with the myth concerning the artists, frost-giants, and Skilfings of antiquity and their attack on the original country, can be shown.

The physical significance of Halfdan's conflicts and adventures is apparent also from the names of the women, whom the saga makes him marry. Groa (grow), whom he robs and keeps for some time, is, as her very name indicates, a goddess of vegetation. Signe-Alveig, whom he afterwards marries, is the same. Her name signifies "the nourishing drink." According to Saxo she is the daughter of Sumblus, Latin for _Sumbl_, which means feast, ale, mead, and is a synonym for _Ölvaldi_, _Ölmódr_, names which belonged to the father of the Ivalde sons (see No. 123).

According to a well-supported statement in Forspjallsljod (see No. 123), Ivalde was the father of two groups of children. The mother of one of these groups is a giantess (see Nos. 113, 114, 115). With her he has three sons, viz., the three famous artists of antiquity--Ide, Gang-Urnir, and Thjasse. The mother of the other group is a goddess of light (see No. 123). With her he has daughters, who are goddesses of growth, among them Idun and Signe-Alveig. That Idun is the daughter of Ivalde is clear from Forspjallsljod (6), _álfa ættar Ithunni hèto Ivallds ellri ýngsta barna_.

Of the names of their father _Sumbl_, _Ölvaldi_, _Ölmódr_, it may be said that, as nature-symbols, "öl" (ale) and "mjöd" (mead), are in the Teutonic mythology identical with _soma_ and _somamadhu_ in Rigveda and _haoma_ in Avesta, that is, they are the strength-developing, nourishing saps in nature. Mimer's subterranean well, from which the world-tree draws its nourishment, is a mead-fountain. In the poem "Haustlaung" Idun is called _Ölgefn_; in the same poem Groa is called _Ölgefion_. Both appellations refer to goddesses who give the drink of growth and regeneration to nature and to the gods. Thus we here have a family, the names and epithets of whose members characterise them as forces, active in the service of nature and of the god of harvests. Their names and epithets also point to the family bond which unites them. We have the group of names, _Idvaldi_, _Idi_, _Idunn_, and the group, _Ölvaldi_ (_Ölmódr_), _Ölgefn_, and _Ölgefion_, both indicating members of the same family. Further on (see Nos. 113, 114, 115), proof shall be presented that Groa's first husband, Orvandel the brave, is one of Thjasse's brothers, and thus that Groa, too, was closely connected with this family.

As we know, it is the enmity caused by Loke between the Asa-gods and the lower serving, yet powerful, divinities of nature belonging to the Ivalde group, which produces the terrible winter with its awful consequences for man, and particularly for the Teutonic tribes. These hitherto beneficent agents of growth have ceased to serve the gods, and have allied themselves with the frost-giants. The war waged by Halfdan must be regarded from this standpoint. Midgard's chief hero, the real Teutonic patriarch, tries to reconquer for the Teutons the country of which winter has robbed them. To be able to do this, he is the son of Thor, the divine foe of the frost-giants, and performs on the border of Midgard a work corresponding to that which Thor has to do in space and in Jotunheim. And in the same manner as Heimdal before secured favourable conditions of nature to the original country, by uniting the sun-goddess with himself through bonds of love, his grandson Halfdan now seeks to do the same for the Teutonic country, by robbing a hostile son of Ivalde, Orvandel, of his wife Groa, the growth-giver, and thereupon also of Alveig, the giver of the nourishing sap. A symbol of nature may also be found in Saxo's statement, that the king of Svithiod, Sigtrygg, Groa's father, could not be conquered unless Halfdan fastened a golden ball to his club (_Hist._, 31). The purpose of Halfdan's conflicts, the object which the norns particularly gave to his life, that of reconquering from the powers of frost the northernmost regions of the Teutonic territory and of permanently securing them for culture, and the difficulty of this task is indicated, it seems to me, in the strophes above quoted, which tell us that the norns fastened the woof of his power in the east and west, and that he from the beginning, and undisputed, extended the sceptre of his rule over these latitudes, while in regard to the northern latitudes, it is said that Nere's kinswoman, the chief of the norns (see Nos. 57-64, 85), cast a single thread in this direction and _prayed_ that it might hold for ever:

ther austr oc vestr enda fâlo, thar átti lofdungr land a milli; brá nipt Nera a nordrvega einni festi, ey bath hon halda.

The norns' prayer was heard. That the myth made Halfdan proceed victoriously to the north, even to the very starting-point of the emigration to the south caused by the fimbul-winter, that is to say, to Svarin's Mound, is proved by the statements that he slays Svarin and his brothers, and wins in the vicinity of Svarin's Mound the victory over his opponents, which was for a time decisive. His penetration into the north, when regarded as a nature-myth, means the restoration of the proper change of seasons, and the rendering of the original country and of Svithiod inhabitable. As far as the hero, who secured the "giver of growth" and the "giver of nourishing sap," succeeds with the aid of his father Thor to carry his weapons into the Teutonic lands destroyed by frost, so far spring and summer again extend the sceptre of their reign. The songs about Helge Hundingsbane have also preserved from the myth the idea that Halfdan and his forces penetrating northward by land and by sea are accompanied in the air by "valkyries," "goddesses from the south," armed with helmets, coats of mail, and shining spears, who fight the forces of nature that are hostile to Halfdan, and these valkyries are in their very nature goddesses of growth, from the manes of whose horses falls the dew which gives the power of growth back to the earth and harvests to men. (Cp. Helg. Hund., i. 15, 30; ii., the prose to v. 5, 12, 13, with Helg. Hjörv., 28.) On this account the Swedes, too, have celebrated Halfdan in their songs as their patriarch and benefactor, and according to Saxo they have worshipped him as a divinity, although it was his task to check the advance of the Skilfings to the south.

Doubtless it is after this successful war that Halfdan performs the great sacrifice mentioned in Skaldskaparmal, ch. 64, in order that he may retain his royal power for three hundred years. The statement should be compared with what the German poems of the middle ages tell about the longevity of Berchtung-Borgar and other heroes of antiquity. They live for several centuries. But the response Halfdan gets from the powers to whom he sacrificed is that he shall live simply to the age of an old man, and that in his family there shall not for three hundred years be born a woman or a fameless man.

33.

REVIEW OF THE SVIPDAG MYTH AND ITS POINTS OF CONNECTION WITH THE MYTH ABOUT HALFDAN (cp. No. 24).

When Halfdan secured Groa, she was already the bride of Orvandel the brave, and the first son she bore in Halfdan's house was not his, but Orvandel's. The son's name is Svipdag. He develops into a hero who, like Halfdan himself, is the most brilliant and most beloved of those celebrated in Teutonic songs. We have devoted a special part of this work to him (see Nos. 96-107). There we have given proofs of various mythological facts, which I now already must incorporate with the following series of events in order that the epic thread may not be wanting:

(_a_) Groa bears with Halfdan the son Guthorm (Saxo, _Hist._, _Dan._, 34).

(_b_) Groa is rejected by Halfdan (Saxo, _Hist. Dan._, 33). She returns to Orvandel, and brings with her her own and his son Svipdag.

(_c_) Halfdan marries Signe-Alveig (Hyndluljod, 15; Prose Edda, i. 516; Saxo _Hist._, 33), and with her becomes the father of the son Hadding (Saxo, _Hist. Dan._, 34).

(_d_) Groa dies, and Orvandel marries again (Grógaldr, 3). Before her death Groa has told her son that if he needs her help he must go to her grave and invoke her (Grógaldr, 1).

(_e_) It is Svipdag's duty to revenge on Halfdan the disgrace done to his mother and the murder of his mother's father Sigtrygg. But his stepmother bids Svipdag seek Menglad, "the one loving ornaments" (Grógaldr, 3).

(_f_) Under the weight of these tasks Svipdag goes to his mother's grave, bids her awake from her sleep of death, and from her he receives protecting incantations (Grógaldr, 1).

(_g_) Before Svipdag enters upon the adventurous expedition to find Menglad, he undertakes, at the head of the giants, the allies of the Ivaldesons (see Fjölsvinsm, 1, where Svipdag is called _thursathjodar sjólr_), a war of revenge against Halfdan (Saxo, 33 ff., 325; cp. Nos. 102, 103). The host of giants is defeated, and Svipdag, who has entered into a duel with his stepfather, is overcome by the latter. Halfdan offers to spare his life and adopt him as his son. But Svipdag refuses to accept life as a gift from him, and answers a defiant no to the proffered father-hand. Then Halfdan binds him to a tree and leaves him to his fate (Saxo, _Hist._, 325; cp. No. 103).

(_h_) Svipdag is freed from his bonds through one of the incantations sung over him by his mother (Grógaldr, 10).

(_i_) Svipdag wanders about sorrowing in the land of the giants. Gevarr-Nökkve, god of the moon (see Nos. 90, 91), tells him how he is to find an irresistible sword, which is always attended by victory (see No. 101). The Sword is forged by Thjasse, who intended to destroy the world of the gods with it; but just at the moment when the smith had finished his weapon he was surprised in his sleep by Mimer, who put him in chains and took the sword. The latter is now concealed in the lower world (see Nos. 98, 101, 103).

(_j_) Following Gevarr-Nökkve's directions, Svipdag goes to the northernmost edge of the world, and finds there a descent to the lower world; he conquers the guard of the gates of Hades, sees the wonderful regions down there, and succeeds in securing the sword of victory (see Nos. 53, 97, 98, 101, 103, 112).

(_k_) Svipdag begins a new war with Halfdan. Thor fights on his son's side, but the irresistible sword cleaves the hammer Mjolner; the Asa-god himself must yield. The war ends with Halfdan's defeat. He dies of the wounds he has received in the battle (see Nos. 101, 103; cp. Saxo, _Hist._, 34).

(_l_) Svipdag seeks and finds Menglad, who is Freyja who was robbed by the giants. He liberates her and sends her pure and undefiled to Asgard (see Nos. 96, 98, 100, 102).

(_m_) Idun is brought back to Asgard by Loke. Thjasse, who is freed from his prison at Mimer's, pursues, in the guise of an eagle, Loke to the walls of Asgard, where he is slain by the gods (see the Eddas).

(_n_) Svipdag, armed with the sword of victory, goes to Asgard, is received joyfully by Freyja, becomes her husband, and presents his sword of victory to Frey. Reconciliation between the gods and the Ivalde race. Njord marries Thjasse's daughter Skade. Orvandel's second son Ull, Svipdag's half-brother (see No. 102), is adopted in Valhal. A sister of Svipdag is married to Forsete (Hyndluljod, 20). The gods honour the memory of Thjasse by connecting his name with certain stars (Harbardsljod, 19). A similar honour had already been paid to his brother Orvandel (Prose Edda).

From this series of events we find that, although the Teutonic patriarch finally succumbs in the war which he waged against the Thjasse-race and the frost-powers led by Thjasse's kinsmen, still the results of his work are permanent. When the crisis had reached its culminating point; when the giant hosts of the fimbul-winter had received as their leader the son of Orvandel, armed with the irresistible sword; when Halfdan's fate is settled; when Thor himself, _Midgard's veorr_ (Völusp.), the mighty protector of earth and the human race, must retreat with his lightning hammer broken into pieces, then the power of love suddenly prevails and saves the world. Svipdag, who, under the spell of his deceased mother's incantations from the grave, obeyed the command of his stepmother to find and rescue Freyja from the power of the giants, thereby wins her heart and earns the gratitude of the gods. He has himself learned to love her, and is at last compelled by his longing to seek her in Asgard. The end of the power of the fimbul-winter is marked by Freyja's and Idun's return to the gods, by Thjasse's death, by the presentation of the invincible sword to the god of harvests (Frey), by the adoption of Thjasse's kinsmen, Svipdag, Ull, and Skade in Asgard, and by several marriage ties celebrated in commemoration of the reconciliation between Asgard's gods and the kinsmen of the great artist of antiquity.

34.

THE WORLD WAR. ITS CAUSE. THE MURDER OF GULLVEIG-HEIDR. THE VOICE OE COUNSEL BETWEEN THE ASAS AND THE VANS.

Thus the peace of the world and the order of nature might seem secured. But it is not long before a new war breaks out, to which the former may be regarded as simply the prelude. The feud, which had its origin in the judgment passed by the gods on Thjasse's gifts, and which ended in the marriage of Svipdag and Freyja, was waged for the purpose of securing again for settlement and culture the ancient domain and Svithiod, where Heimdal had founded the first community. It was confined within the limits of the North Teutonic peninsula, and in it the united powers of Asgard supported the other Teutonic tribes fighting under Halfdan. But the new conflict rages at the same time in heaven and in earth, between the divine clans of the Asas and the Vans, and between all the Teutonic tribes led into war with each other by Halfdan's sons. From the standpoint of Teutonic mythology it is a world war; and Völuspa calls it _the first great war in the world--folcvig fyrst i heimi_ (str. 21, 25).

Loke was the cause of the former prelusive war. His feminine counterpart and ally _Gullveig-Heidr_, who gradually is blended, so to speak, into one with him, causes the other. This is apparent from the following Völuspa strophes:

Str. 21. That man hon folcvig fyrst i heimi er Gullveig geirum studdu oc i haull Hárs hana brendo.

Str. 22. Thrysvar brendo thrysvar borna opt osialdan tho hon en lifir.

Str. 23. Heida hana heto hvars til husa com vólo velspá vitti hon ganda seid hon kuni seid hon Leikin, e var hon angan illrar brudar.

Str. 24. Thá gengo regin oll a raukstola ginheilog god oc um that gettuz hvart scyldo esir afrad gialda etha scyldo godin aull gildi eiga.

Str. 25. Fleygde Odin oc i folc um scáut that var en folcvig fyrst i heimi.

Brotin var bordvegr borgar asa knatto vanir vigspa vollo sporna.

The first thing to be established in the interpretation of these strophes is the fact that they, in the order in which they are found in Codex Regius, and in which I have given them, all belong together and refer to the same mythic event--that is, to the origin of the great world war. This is evident from a comparison of strophe 21 with 25, the first and last of those quoted. Both speak of the war, which is called _fólkvig fyrst i heimi_. The former strophe informs us that it occurred as a result of, and in connection with, the murder of Gulveig, a murder committed in Valhal itself, in the hall of the Asa-father, beneath the roof where the gods of the Asa-clan are gathered around their father. The latter strophe tells that the first great war in the world produced a separation between the two god-clans, the Asas and Vans, a division caused by the fact that Odin, hurling his spear, interrupted a discussion between them; and the strophe also explains the result of the war: the bulwark around Asgard was broken, and the Vans got possession of the power of the Asas. The discussion or council is explained in strophe 24. It is there expressly emphasised that all the gods, the Asas and Vans, _regin oll, godin aull_, solemnly assemble and seat themselves on their _raukstola_ to counsel together concerning the murder of _Gullveig-Heidr_. Strophe 23 has already described who Gulveig is, and thus given at least one reason for the hatred of the Asas towards her, and for the treatment she receives in Odin's hall. It is evident that she was in Asgard under the name Gulveig, since Gulveig was killed and burnt in Valhal; but Midgard, the abode of man, has also been the scene of her activity. There she has roamed about under the name Heidr, practising the evil arts of black sorcery (see No. 27) and encouraging the evil passions of mankind: _æ var hon angan illrar brudar_. Hence Gulveig suffers the punishment which from time immemorial was established among the Aryans for the practice of the black art: she was burnt. And her mysteriously terrible and magic nature is revealed by the fact that the flames, though kindled by divine hands, do not have the power over her that they have over other agents of sorcery. The gods burn her thrice; they pierce the body of the witch with their spears, and hold her over the flames of the fire. All is in vain. They cannot prevent her return and regeneration. Thrice burned and thrice born, she still lives.

After Völuspa has given an account of the vala who in Asgard was called _Gullveig_ and on earth _Heidr_, the poem speaks, in strophe 24, of the dispute which arose among the gods on account of her murder. The gods assembled on and around the judgment-seats are divided into two parties, of which the Asas constitute the one. The fact that the treatment received by Gulveig can become a question of dispute which ends in enmity between the gods is a proof that only one of the god-clans has committed the murder; and since this took place, not in Njord's, or Frey's, or Freyja's halls, but in Valhal, where Odin rules and is surrounded by his sons, it follows that the Asas must have committed the murder. Of course, Vans who were guests in Odin's hall _might_ have been the perpetrators of the murder; but, on the one hand, the poem would scarcely have indicated Odin's hall as the place where Gulveig was to be punished, unless it wished thereby to point out the Asas as the doers of the deed, and, on the other hand, we cannot conceive the murder as possible, as described in Völuspa, if the Vans were the ones who committed it, and the Asas were Gulveig's protectors; for then the latter, who were the lords in Valhal, would certainly not have permitted the Vans quietly and peaceably to subject Gulveig to the long torture there described, in which she is spitted on spears and held over the flames to be burnt to ashes.

That the Asas committed the murder is also corroborated by Völuspa's account of the question in dispute. One of the views prevailing in the consultation and discussion in regard to the matter is that the Asas ought to _afrád gjalda_ in reference to the murder committed. In this _afrád gjalda_ we meet with a phrase which is echoed in the laws of Iceland, and in the old codes of Norway and Sweden. There can be no doubt that the phrase has found its way into the language of the law from the popular vernacular, and that its legal significance was simply more definite and precise than its use in the vernacular. The common popular meaning of the phrase is _to pay compensation_. The compensation may be of any kind whatsoever. It may be rent for the use of another's field, or it may be taxes for the enjoyment of social rights, or it may be death and wounds for having waged war. In the present instance, it must mean compensation to be paid by the Asas for the slaying of _Gullveig-Heidr_. As such a demand could not be made by the Asas themselves, it must have been made by the Vans and their supporters in the discussion. Against this demand we have the proposition from the Asas that all the gods should _gildi eiga_. In regard to this disputed phrase at least so much is clear, that it must contain either an absolute or a partial counter-proposition to the demand of the Vans, and its purpose must be that the Asas ought not--at least, not alone--to pay the compensation for the murder, but that the crime should be regarded as one in reference to which all the gods, the Asas and the Vans, were alike guilty, and as one for which they all together should assume the responsibility.

The discussion does not lead to a friendly settlement. Something must have been said at which Odin has become deeply offended, for the Asa-father, distinguished for his wisdom and calmness, hurls his spear into the midst of those deliberating--a token that the contest of reason against reason is at an end, and that it is to be followed by a contest with weapons.

The myth concerning this deliberation between Asas and Vans was well known to Saxo, and what he has to say about it (_Hist._, 126 ff.), turning myth as usual into history, should be compared with Völuspa's account, for both these sources complement each other.

The first thing that strikes us in Saxo's narrative is that sorcery, the black art, plays, as in Völuspa, the chief part in the chain of events. His account is taken from a mythic circumstance, mentioned by the heathen skald Kormak (_seid Y ggr til Rindar_--Younger Edda, i. 236), according to which Odin, forced by extreme need, sought the favour of Rind, and gained his point by sorcery and witchcraft, as he could not gain it otherwise. According to Saxo, Odin touched Rind with a piece of bark on which he had inscribed magic songs, and the result was that she became insane (_Rinda ... quam Othinus cortice carminibus adnotato contingens lymphanti similem reddidit_). In immediate connection herewith it is related that the gods held a council, in which it was claimed that Odin had stained his divine honour, and ought to be deposed from his royal dignity (_dii ... Othinum variis majestatis detrimentis divinitatis gloriam maculasse cernentes, collegio suo submovendum duxerunt--Hist._, 129). Among the deeds of which his opponents in this council accused him was, as it appears from Saxo, at least one of which he ought to take the consequences, but for which all the gods ought not to be held responsible ( ... _ne vel ipsi, alieno crimine implicati, insontes nocentis crimine punirentur--Hist., 129; in omnium caput unius culpam recidere putares, Hist._, 130). The result of the deliberation of the gods is, in Saxo as in Völuspa, that Odin is banished, and that another clan of gods than his holds the power for some time. Thereupon he is, with the consent of the reigning gods, recalled to the throne, which he henceforth occupies in a brilliant manner. But one of his first acts after his return is to banish the black art and its agents from heaven and from earth (_Hist._, 44).

Thus the chain of events in Saxo both begins and ends with sorcery. It is the background on which both in Saxo and in Völuspa those events occur which are connected with the dispute between the Asas and Vans. In both the documents the gods meet in council before the breaking out of the enmity. In both the question turns on a deed done by Odin, for which certain gods do not wish to take the responsibility. Saxo indicates this by the words: _Ne vel ipsi, alieno crimine implicati innocentes nocentis crimine punirentur._ Völuspa indicates it by letting the Vans present, against the proposition that _godin öll skyldu gildi eiga_, the claim that Odin's own clan, and it alone, should _afrád gjalda_. And while Völuspa makes Odin suddenly interrupt the deliberations and hurl his spear among the deliberators, Saxo gives us the explanation of his sudden wrath. He and his clan had slain and burnt Gulveig-Heid because she practised sorcery and other evil arts of witchcraft. And as he refuses to make compensation for the murder and demands that all the gods take the consequences and share the blame, the Vans have replied in council, that he too once practised sorcery on the occasion when he visited Rind, and that, if Gulveig was justly burnt for this crime, then he ought justly to be deposed from his dignity stained by the same crime as the ruler of all the gods. Thus Völuspa's and Saxo's accounts supplement and illustrate each other.

_One_ dark point remains, however. Why have the Vans objected to the killing of Gulveig-Heid? Should this clan of gods, celebrated in song as benevolent, useful, and pure, be kindly disposed toward the evil and corrupting arts of witchcraft? This cannot have been the meaning of the myth. As shall be shown, the evil plans of Gulveig-Heid have particularly been directed against those very Vana-gods who in the council demand compensation for her death. In this regard Saxo has in perfect faithfulness toward his mythic source represented Odin on the one hand, and his opponents among the gods on the other, as alike hostile to the black art. Odin, who on one occasion and under peculiar circumstances, which I shall discuss in connection with the Balder myth, was guilty of the practise of sorcery, is nevertheless the declared enemy of witchcraft, and Saxo makes him take pains to forbid and persecute it. The Vans likewise look upon it with horror, and it is this horror which adds strength to their words when they attack and depose Odin, because he has himself practised that for which he has punished Gulveig.

The explanation of the fact is, as shall be shown below, that Frey, on account of a passion of which he is the victim (probably through sorcery), was driven to marry the giant maid Gerd, whose kin in that way became friends of the Vans. Frey is obliged to demand satisfaction for a murder perpetrated on a kinswoman of his wife. The kinship of blood demands its sacred right, and according to Teutonic ideas of law, the Vans must act as they do regardless of the moral character of Gulveig.

35.

GULVEIG-HEIDR. HER IDENTITY WITH AURBODA, ANGRBODA, HYRROKIN. THE MYTH CONCERNING THE SWORD GUARDIAN AND FJALAR.

The duty of the Vana-deities becomes even more plain, if it can be shown that Gulveig-Heid is Gerd's mother; for Frey, supported by the Vana-gods, then demands satisfaction for the murder of his own mother-in-law. Gerd's mother is, in Hyndluljod, 30, called Aurboda, and is the wife of the giant Gymer:

Freyr atti Gerdi, Hon vor Gymis dottir, iotna ættar ok Aurbodu.

It can, in fact, be demonstrated that Aurboda is identical with Gulveig-Heid. The evidence is given below in two divisions. (a) Evidence that Gulveig-Heid is identical with Angerboda, "the ancient one in the Ironwood;" (b) evidence that Gulveig-Heid-Angerboda is identical with Aurboda, Gerd's mother.

(a) Gulveid-Heid identical with Angerboda.

Hyndluljod, 40, 41, says:

Ol ulf Loki vid Angrbodu, (enn Sleipni gat vid Svadilfara); eitt thotti skars allra feiknazst that var brodur fra Byleistz komit.

Loki af hiarta lindi brendu, fann hann haalfsuidinn hugstein konu; vard Loptr kvidugr af konu illri; thadan er aa folldu flagd hvert komit.

From the account we see that an evil female being (_ill kona_) had been burnt, but that the flames were not able to destroy the seed of life in her nature. Her heart had not been burnt through or changed to ashes. It was only half-burnt (_hálfsvidinn hugsteinn_), and in this condition it had together with the other remains of the cremated woman been thrown away, for Loke finds and swallows the heart.

Our ancestors looked upon the heart as the seat of the life principle, of the soul of living beings. A number of linguistic phrases are founded on the idea that goodness and evil, kindness and severity, courage and cowardice, joy and sorrow, are connected with the character of the heart; sometimes we find _hjarta_ used entirely in the sense of soul, as in the expression _hold ok hjarta_, soul and body. So long as the heart in a dead body had not gone into decay, it was believed that the principle of life dwelling therein still was able, under peculiar circumstances, to operate on the limbs and exercise an influence on its environment, particularly if the dead person in life had been endowed with a will at once evil and powerful. In such cases it was regarded as important to pierce the heart of the dead with a pointed spear (cp. Saxo, _Hist._, 43, and No. 95).

The half-burnt heart, accordingly, contains the evil woman's soul, and its influence upon Loke, after he has swallowed it, is most remarkable. Once before when he bore Sleipner with the giant horse Svadilfare, Loke had revealed his androgynous nature. So he does now. The swallowed heart redeveloped the feminine in him (_Loki lindi af brendu hjarta_). It fertilised him with the evil purposes which the heart contained. Loke became the possessor of the evil woman (_kvidugr af konu illri_), and became the father of the children from which the trolls (_flagd_) are come which are found in the world. First among the children is mentioned the wolf, which is called _Fenrir_, and which in Ragnarok shall cause the death of the Asa-father. To this event point Njord's words about Loke, in Lokasenna, str. 33: _ass ragr er hefir born of borit_. The woman possessing the half-burnt heart, who is the mother or rather the father of the wolf, is called Angerboda (_ól ulf Loki vid Angrbodu_). N. M. Peterson and other mythologists have rightly seen that she is the same as "the old one," who in historical times and until Ragnarok dwells in the Ironwood, and "there fosters Fenrer's kinsmen" (Völuspa, 39), her own offspring, which at the close of this period are to issue from the Ironwood, and break into Midgard and dye its citadels with blood (Völuspa, 30).

The fact that Angerboda now dwells in the Ironwood, although there on a former occasion did not remain more of her than a half-burnt heart, proves that the attempt to destroy her with fire was unsuccessful, and that she arose again in bodily form after this cremation, and became the mother and nourisher of were-wolves. Thus the myth about Angerboda is identical with the myth about Gulveig-Heid in the two characteristic points:

Unsuccessful burning of an evil woman. Her regeneration after the cremation.

These points apply equally to Gulveig-Heid and to Angerboda, "the old one in the Ironwood."

The myth about Gulveig-Heid-Angerboda, as it was remembered in the first period after the introduction of Christianity, we find in part recapitulated in Helgakvida Hundingsbane, i. 37-40, where Sinfjotle compares his opponent Gudmund with the evil female principle in the heathen mythology, the vala in question, and where Gudmund in return compares Sinfjotle with its evil masculine principle, Loke.

Sinfjotle says:

Thu vart vaulva i Varinseyio, scollvis kona bartu scrauc saman;

* * * * *

Thu vart, en scetha, scass valkyria, autul, amátlig at Alfaudar; mundo einherjar allir beriaz, svevis kona, um sakar thinar. Nio attu vith a neri Sagu ulfa alna ec var einn fathir theirra.

Gudmund's answer begins:

Fadir varattu fenrisulfa....

The evil woman with whom one of the two heroes compares the other is said to be a vala, who has practised her art partly on Varin's Isle partly in Asgard at Alfather's, and there she was the cause of a war in which all the warriors of Asgard took part. This refers to the war between the Asas and Vans. It is the second feud among the powers of Asgard.

The vala must therefore be Gulveig-Heid of the myth, on whose account the war between the Asas and Vans broke out, according to Völuspa. Now it is said of her in the lines above quoted, that she gave birth to wolves, and that these wolves were "fenrisulfar." Of Angerboda we already know that she is the mother of the real Fenris-wolf, and that she, in the Ironwood, produces other wolves which are called by Fenrer's name (_Fenris kindir_--Völuspa). Thus the identity of Gulveig-Heid and Angerboda is still further established by the fact that both the one and the other is called the mother of the Fenris family.

The passage quoted is not the only one which has preserved the memory of Gulveig-Heid as mother of the were-wolves. Volsungasaga (c. ii. 8) relates that a giantess, _Hrímnir's_ daughter, first dwelt in Asgard as the maid-servant of Frigg, then on earth, and that she, during her sojourn on earth, became the wife of a king, and with him the mother and grandmother of were-wolves, who infested the woods and murdered men. The fantastic and horrible saga about these were-wolves has, in Christian times and by Christian authors been connected with the poems about Helge Hundingsbane and Sigurd Fafnersbane. The circumstance that the giantess in question first dwelt in Asgard and thereupon in Midgard, indicates that she is identical with Gulveig-Heid, and this identity is confirmed by the statement that she is a daughter of the giant _Hrímnir_.

The myth, as it has come down to our days, knows only one daughter of this giant, and she is the same as Gulveig-Heid. Hyndluljod states that _Heidr_ is _Hrímnir's_ daughter, and mentions no sister of hers, but, on the other hand, a brother _Hrossthiofr_ (_Heidr ok Hrorsthiofr Hrimnis kindar_--Hyndl., 30). In allusion to the cremation of Gulveig-Heid fire is called in Thorsdrapa _Hrimnis drósar lyptisylgr_, "the lifting drink of Hrimner's daughter," the drink which Heid lifted up on spears had to drink. Nowhere is any other daughter of Hrimner mentioned. And while it is stated in the above-cited strophe that the giantess who caused the war in Asgard and became the mother of fenris-wolves was a vala on Varin's Isle (_vaulva i Varinseyio_), a comparison of Helgakv. Hund., i. 26, with Volsungasaga, c. 2, shows that Varin's Isle and Varin's Fjord were located in that very country, where Hrimner's daughter was supposed to have been for some time the wife of a king and to have given birth to were-wolves.

Thus we have found that the three characteristic points--

unsuccessful cremation of an evil giantess, her regeneration after the cremation, the same woman as mother of the Fenrer race--

are common to Gulveig-Heid and Angerboda.

Their identity is apparent from various other circumstances, but may be regarded as completely demonstrated by the proofs given. Gulveig's activity in antiquity as the founder of the diabolical magic art, as one who awakens man's evil passions and produces strife in Asgard itself, has its complement in Angerboda's activity as the mother and nourisher of that class of beings in whose members witchcraft, thirst for blood, and hatred of the gods are personified. The activity of the evil principle has, in the great epic of the myth, formed a continuity spanning all ages, and this continuous thread of evil is twisted from the treacherous deeds of Gulveig and Loke, the feminine and the masculine representatives of the evil principle. Both appear at the dawn of mankind: Loke has already at the beginning of time secured access to Alfather (Lokasenna, 9), and Gulveig deceives the sons of men already in the time of Heimdal's son Borgar. Loke entices Idun from the secure grounds of Asgard, and treacherously delivers her to the powers of frost; Gulveig, as we shall see, plays Freyja into the hands of the giants. Loke plans enmity between the gods and the forces of nature, which hitherto had been friendly, and which have their personal representatives in Ivalde's sons; Gulveig causes the war between the Asas and Vans. The interference of both is interrupted at the close of the mythic age, when Loke is chained, and Gulveig, in the guise of Angerboda, is an exile in the Ironwood. Before this they have for a time been blended, so to speak, into a single being, in which the feminine assuming masculineness, and the masculine effeminated, bear to the world an offspring of foes to the gods and to creation. Both finally act their parts in the destruction of the world. Before that crisis comes Angerboda has fostered that host of "sons of world-ruin" which Loke is to lead to battle, and a magic sword which she has kept in the Ironwood is given to Surt, in whose hand it is to be the death of Frey, the lord of harvests (see Nos. 89, 98, 101, 103).

That the woman who in antiquity, in various guises, visited Asgard and Midgard was believed to have had her home in the Ironwood[18] of the East during the historical age down to Ragnarok is explained by what Saxo says--viz., that Odin, after his return and reconciliation with the Vans, banished the agents of the black art both from heaven and from earth. Here, too, the connection between Gulveig-Heid and Angerboda is manifest. The war between the Asas and Vans was caused by the burning of Gulveig by the former. After the reconciliation with the Asas this punishment cannot again be inflicted on the regenerated witch. The Asas must allow her to live to the end of time; but both the clans of gods agree that she must not show her face again in Asgard or Midgard. The myth concerning the banishment of the famous vala to the Ironwood, and of the Loke progeny which she there fosters, has been turned into history by Jordanes in his _De Goth. Origine_, ch. 24, where it is stated that a Gothic king compelled the suspected valas (_haliorunas_) found among his people to take their refuge to the deserts in the East beyond the Moeotian Marsh, where they mixed with the wood-sprites, and thus became the progenitors of the Huns. In this manner the Christian Goths got from their mythic traditions an explanation of the source of the eastern hosts of horsemen, whose ugly faces and barbarous manners seemed to them to prove an other than purely human origin. The vala Gulveig-Heid and her like become in Jordanes these _haliorunæ_; Loke and the giants of the Ironwood become these wood-sprites; the Asa-god who caused the banishment becomes a king, son of Gandaricus Magnus (the great ruler of the Gandians, Odin), and Loke's and Angerboda's wonderful progeny become the Huns.

Stress should be laid on the fact that Jordanes and Saxo have in the same manner preserved the tradition that Odin and the Asas, after making peace and becoming reconciled with the Vans, do not apply the death-penalty and burning to Gulveid-Heid-Angerboda and her kith and kin, but, instead, sentence them to banishment from the domains of gods and men. That the tradition preserved in Saxo and Jordanes corresponded with the myth is proved by the fact that we there rediscover Gulveig-Heid-Angerboda with her offspring in the Ironwood, which was thought to be situated in the utmost East, far away from the human world, and that she remains there undisturbed until the destruction of the world. The reconciliation between the Asas and Vans has, as this conclusively shows, been based on an admission on the part of the Asas that the Vans had a right to find fault with and demand satisfaction for the murder of Gulveig-Heid. Thus the dispute which caused the war between Asas and Vans was at last decided to the advantage of the latter, while they on their part, after being satisfied, reinstate Odin in his dignity as universal ruler and father of the gods.

(b) Gulveig-Heid-Angerboda identical with Aurboda.

In the Ironwood dwells Angerboda, together with a giant, who is _gygjar hirdir_, the guardian and watcher of the giantess. He has charge of her remarkable herds, and also guards a sword brought to the Ironwood. This vocation has given him the epithet Egther (_Egtherr_--Völuspa), which means sword-guardian. Saxo speaks of him as Egtherus, an ally of Finns, skilled in magic, and a chief of Bjarmians, equally skilful in magic (cp. _Hist._, 248, 249, with Nos. 52, 53). Bjarmians and Finns are in Saxo made the heirs of the wicked inhabitants of Jotunheim. Vilkinasaga knows him by the name Etgeir, who watches over precious implements in Isung's wood. Etgeir is a corruption of Egther, and Isung's wood is a reminiscence of _Isarnvidr_, _Isarnho_, the Ironwood. In the Vilkinasaga he is the brother of Vidolf. According to Hyndluljod, all the valas of the myth come from Vidolf. As Gulveig-Heid-Angerboda is the chief of all valas, and the teacher of the arts practised by the valas this statement in Hyndluljod makes us think of her particularly; and as _Hrimnir's_ daughter has been born and burnt several times, she may also have had several fathers. Among them, then, is Vidolf, whose character, as described by Saxo, fits well for such a daughter. He is a master in sorcery, and also skilful in the art of medicine. But the medical art he practises in such a manner that those who seek his help receive from him such remedies as do harm instead of good. Only by threats can he be made to do good with his art (_Hist._, 323, 324). The statement in Vilkinasaga compared with that in Hyndluljod seems therefore to point to a near kinship between Angerboda and her sword-guard. She appears to be the daughter of his brother.

In Völuspa's description of the approach of Ragnarok, Egther Angerboda's shepherd, is represented as sitting on a mound--like Aurboda's shepherd in _Skirnisför_--and playing a harp, happy over that which is to happen. That the giant who is hostile to the gods, and who is the guardian of the strange herds, does not play an idyl on the strings of his harp does not need to be stated. He is visited by a being in the guise of the red cock. The cock, says Völuspa, is _Fjalarr_ (str. 44).

What the heathen records tell us about Fjalar is the following:[19]

(a) He is the same giant as the Younger Edda (i. 144 ff.) calls Utgard-Loke. The latter is a fire-giant, _Loge's_, the fire's ruler (Younger Edda, 152), the cause of earthquakes (Younger Edda, 144), and skilled in producing optical delusions. Fjalar's identity with Utgard-Loke is proved by Harbardsljod, str. 26, where Thor, on his way to Fjalar, meets with the same adventures as, according to the Younger Edda, he met with on his way to Utgard-Loke.

(b) He is the same giant as the one called Suttung. The giant from whom Odin robs the skaldic mead, and whose devoted daughter Gunlad he causes bitter sorrow, is called in Havamál sometimes Fjalar and sometimes Suttung (cp. strs. 13, 14, 104, 105).

(c) Fjalar is the son of the chief of the fire-giants, _Surtr_, and dwells in the subterranean dales of the latter. A full account of this in No. 89. Here it will suffice to point out that when Odin flies out of Fjalar's dwelling with the skaldic mead, it is "from Surt's deep dales" that he "flying bears" the precious drink (_hinn er Surts or sökkdölum farmagnudr fljúgandi bar_, a strophe by Eyvind, quoted in the Younger Edda, p. 242), and that this drink while it remained with Fjalar was "the drink of Surt's race" (_Sylgr Surts ættar_, Fornms., iii. 3).

(d) Fjalar, with Froste, takes part in the attack of Thjasse's kinsmen and the Skilfings from Svarin's Mound against "the land of the clayey plains, to Jaravall" (Völuspa, 14, 15; see Nos. 28, 32). Thus he is allied with the powers of frost, who are foes of the gods, and who seek to conquer the Teutonic domain. The approach of the fimbul-winter was also attended by an earthquake (see Nos. 28, 81).

When, therefore, Völuspa makes Fjalar on his visit to the sword-guardian in the Ironwood appear in the guise of the red cock, then this is in harmony with Fjalar's nature as a fire-giant and as a son of Surt.

Sat thar a haugi oc sló haurpo gygjar hirthir gladr Egther. Gol um hanom i galgvithi fagrraudr hani sa er Fjalar heitir (Völusp., 41).

The red cock has from time immemorial been the symbol of fire as a destructive power.

That what Odin does against Fjalar--when he robs him of the mead, which in the myth is the most precious of all drinks, and when he deceived his daughter--is calculated to awaken Fjalar's thirst for revenge and to bring about a satisfaction sooner or later, lies in the very spirit of Teutonic poetry and ethics, especially since, Odin's act, though done from a good motive, was morally reprehensible. What Fjalar's errand to Angerboda's sword-guard was appears from the fact that when the last war between the gods and their enemies is fought a short time afterwards, Fjalar's father, the chief of the fire-giants, Surt, is armed with the best of the mythical weapons, the sword which had belonged to a _valtivi_, one of the gods of Asgard (Völusp., 50), and which casts the splendour of the sun upon the world. The famous sword of the myth, that which Thjasse finished with a purpose hostile to the gods (see No. 87 and elsewhere), the sword concealed by Mimer (see Nos. 87, 98, 101), the sword found by Svipdag (see Nos. 89, 101, 103), the sword secured through him by Frey, the one given by Frey to Gymer and Aurboda in exchange for Gerd,--this sword is found again in the Ragnarok conflict, wielded by Surt, and causes Frey's death (Völuspa), it having been secured by Surt's son, Fjalar, in the Ironwood from Angerboda's sword-guard.

Gulli keypta leztu Gymis dottur oc seldir thitt sva sverth; Enn er Muspells synir rida myrcvith yfir veizta thu tha, vesall, hve thu vegr (Lokas., 42).

This passage not only tells us that Frey gave his sword in exchange for Gerd to the parents of the giantess, Gymer and Aurboda, but also gives us to understand that this bargain shall cause his death in Ragnarok. This bride-purchase is fully described in Skirnismal, in which poem we learn that the gods most unwillingly part with the safety which the incomparable sword secured to Asgard. They yield in order to save the life of the harvest-god, who was wasting away with longing and anxiety, but not until the giants had refused to accept other Asgard treasures, among them the precious ring Draupner, which the Asa-father once laid on the pulseless breast of his favourite son Balder. At the approach of Ragnarok, Surt's son, Fjalar, goes to the Ironwood to fetch for his father the sword by which Frey, its former possessor, is to fall. The sword is then guarded by Angerboda's shepherd, and consequently belongs to her. In other words, the sword which Aurboda enticed Frey to give her is now found in the possession of Angerboda. This circumstance of itself is a very strong reason for their identity. If there were no other evidence of their identity than this, a sound application of methodology would still bid us accept this identity rather than explain the matter by inventing a new, nowhere-supported myth, and thus making the sword pass from Aurboda to another giantess.

When we now add the important fact in the disposition of this matter, that Aurboda's son-in-law, Frey, demands, in behalf of a near kinsman, satisfaction from the Asas when they had killed and burnt Gulveig-Heid-Angerboda, then it seems to me that there can be no doubt in regard to the identity of Aurboda and Angerboda, the less so, since all that our mythic fragments have to tell us about Gymer's wife confirms the theory that she is the same person. Aurboda has, like Gulveig-Heid-Angerboda, practised the arts of sorcery: she is one of the valas of the evil giant world. This is told to us in a strophe by the skald _Refr_, who calls her "Gymer's primeval cold vala" (_ursvöl Gymis völva_--Younger Edda, i. 326, 496). She might be called "primeval cold" (_ursvöl_) from the fact that the fire was not able to pierce her heart and change it to ashes, in spite of a threefold burning. Under all circumstances, the passage quoted informs us that she is a vala.

But have our mythic fragments preserved any allusion to show that Aurboda, like Gulveig-Heid-Angerboda, ever dwelt among the gods in Asgard? Asgard is a place where giants are refused admittance. Exceptions from this prohibition must have been very few, and the myths must have given good reasons for them. We know in regard to Loke's appearance in Asgard, that it is based on a promise given him by the Asa-father in time's morning; and the promise was sealed with blood (Lokasenna, 9). If, now, this Aurboda, who, like Angerboda, is a vala of giant race, and like Angerboda, is the owner of Frey's sword, and, like Angerboda, is a kinswoman of the Vans--if now this same Aurboda, in further likeness with Angerboda, was one of the certainly very few of the giant class who was permitted to enter within the gates of Asgard, then it must be admitted that this fact absolutely confirms their identity.

Aurboda did actually dwell in Asgard. Of this we are assured by the poem "Fjölsvinsmal." There it is related that when Svipdag came to the gates of Asgard to seek and find Menglad-Freyja, who was destined to be his wife (see Nos. 96, 97), he sees Menglad sitting on a hill surrounded by goddesses, whose very names _Eir_, _Björt_, _Blid_, and _Frid_, tell us that they are goddesses of lower or higher rank. _Eir_ is an asynja of the healing art (Younger Edda, i. 114). _Björt_, _Blid_, and _Frid_ are the dises of splendour, benevolence, and beauty. They are mighty beings, and can give aid in distress to all who worship them (Fjolsv., 40). But in the midst of this circle of dises, who surround Menglad, Svipdag also sees Aurboda (Fjolsv., 38).

Above them Svipdag sees Mimer's tree--the world-tree (see No. 97), spreading its all-embracing branches, on which grow fruits which soothe _kelisjukar konur_ and lighten the entrance upon terrestrial life for the children of men (Fjolsv., 22). Menglad-Freyja is, as we know, the goddess of love and fertility, and it is Frigg's and her vocation to dispose of these fruits for the purposes for which they are intended.

The Volsungasaga has preserved a record concerning these fruits, and concerning the giant-daughter who was admitted to Asgard as a maid-servant of the goddesses. A king and queen had long been married without getting any children. They beseeched the gods for an heir. Frigg heard their prayers and sent them in the guise of a crow the daughter of the giant Hrimner, a giantess who had been adopted in Asgard as Odin's "wish-may." Hrimner's daughter took an apple with her, and when the queen had eaten it, it was not long before she perceived that her wish would come to pass (Volsungasaga, pp. 1, 2). Hrimner's daughter is, as we know, Gulveig-Heid.

Thus the question whether Aurboda ever dwelt in Asgard is answered in the affirmative. We have discovered her, though she is the daughter of a giant, in the circle around Menglad-Freyja, where she has occupied a subordinate position as maid-servant. At the same time we have found that Gulveig-Heid has for some time had an occupation in Asgard of precisely the same kind as that which belongs to a dis serving under the goddess of fertility. Thus the similarity between Aurboda and Gulveig-Heid is not confined to the fact that they, although giantesses, dwelt in Asgard, but they were employed there in the same manner.

The demonstration that Gulveig-Heid-Angerboda is identical with Aurboda may now be regarded as complete. Of the one as of the other it is related that she was a vala of giant-race, that she nevertheless dwelt for some time in Asgard, and was there employed by Frigg or Freyja in the service of fertility, and that she possessed the sword, which had formerly belonged to Frey, and by which Frey is to fall. Aurboda is Frey's mother-in-law, consequently closely related to him; and it must have been in behalf of a near relation that Frey and Njord demanded satisfaction from the Asas when the latter slew Gulveig-Heid. Under such circumstances it is utterly impossible from a methodological standpoint to regard them otherwise than identical. We must consider that nearly all mythic characters are polyonomous, and that the Teutonic mythology, particularly, on account of its poetics, is burdened with a highly-developed polyonomy.

But of Gulveig-Heid's and Aurboda's identity there are also other proofs which, for the sake of completeness, we will not omit.

So far as the very names Gulveig and Aurboda are concerned the one can serve as a paraphrase of the other. The first part of the name _Aurboda_, the _aur_ of many significations may be referred to _eyrir_, pl. _aurar_, which means precious metal, and is thought to be borrowed from the Latin _aurum_ (gold). Thus _Gull_ and _Aur_ correspond. In the same manner _veig_ in Gulveig can correspond to _boda_ in _Aurboda_. _Veig_ means a fermenting liquid. _Boda_ has two significations. It can be the feminine form of _bodi_, meaning fermenting water, froth, foam. No other names compounded with _boda_ occur in Norse literature than _Aurboda_ and _Angrboda_.

Ynglingasaga[20] (ch. 4) relates a tradition that _Freyja kendi fyrst med Ásum seid_, that Freyja was the first to practise sorcery in Asgard. There is no doubt that the statement is correct. For we have seen that Gulveig-Heid, the sorceress and spreader of sorcery in antiquity, succeeded in getting admission to Asgard, and that Aurboda is mentioned as particularly belonging to the circle of serving dises who attended Freyja. As this giantess was so zealous in spreading her evil arts among the inhabitants of Midgard, it would be strange if the myth did not make her, after she had gained Freyja's confidence, try to betray her into practising the same arts. Doubtless Völuspa and Saxo have reference to Gulveig-Heid-Aurboda when they say that Freyja, through some treacherous person among her attendants, was delivered into the hands of the giants.

In his historical account relating how Freyja (_Syritha_) was robbed from Asgard and came to the giants but was afterwards saved from their power, Saxo (_Hist._, 331; cp. No. 100) tells that a woman, who was secretly allied with a giant, had succeeded in ingratiating herself in her favour, and for some time performed the duties of a maid-servant at her home; but this she did in order to entice her in a cunning manner away from her safe home to a place where the giant lay in ambush and carried her away to the recesses of his mountain country. (_Gigas fæminam subornat, quæ cum obtenta virginis familiaritate, ejus aliquamdiu pedissequam egisset, hanc tandem a paternis procul penatibus, quæsita callidius digressione, reduxit; quam ipse mox irruens in arctiora montanæ crepidinis septa devexit._) Thus Saxo informs us that it was a woman among Freyja's attendants who betrayed her, and that this woman was allied with the giant world, which is hostile to the gods, while she held a trusted servant's place with the goddess. Aurboda is the only woman connected with the giants in regard to whom our mythic records inform us that she occupied such a position with Freyja; and as Aurboda's character and part, played in the epic of the myth, correspond with such an act of treason, there is no reason for assuming the mere possibility, that the betrayer of Freyja may have been some one else, who is neither mentioned nor known.

With this it is important to compare Völuspa, 26, 27, which not only mentions the fact that Freyja came into the power of the giants through treachery, but also informs us how the treason was punished:

Tha gengo regin oll A ráukstola, ginheilog god oc um that gettuz hverir hefdi lopt alt levi blandit etha ett iotuns Oths mey gefna thorr ein thar va thrungin modi, hann sialdan sitr er hann slict um fregn.

These Völuspa lines stand in Codex Regius in immediate connection with the above-quoted strophes which speak of Gulveig-Heid and of the war caused by her between the Asas and Vans. They inform us that the gods assembled to hold a solemn counsel to find out "who had filled all the air with evil," or "who had delivered Freyja to the race of giants;" and that the person found guilty was at once slain by Thor, who grew most angry.

Now if this person is Gulveig-Aurboda, then it follows that she received her death-blow from Thor's hammer, before the Asas made in common the unsuccessful attempt to change her body into ashes. We also find elsewhere in our mythic records that an exceedingly dangerous woman met with precisely this fate. There she is called _Hyrrokin_. A strophe by Thorbjorn Disarskald preserved in the Younger Edda, states that _Hyrrokin_ was one of the giantesses slain by Thor. But the very appellation _Hyrrokin_, which must be an epithet of a giantess known by some other more common name indicates that some effort worthy of being remembered in the myth had been made to burn her, but that the effort resulted in her being smoked (_rökt_) rather than that she was burnt; for the epithet _Hyrrokin_ means the "fire-smoked." For those familiar with the contents of the myth, this epithet was regarded as plain enough to indicate who was meant. If it is not, therefore, to be looked upon as an unhappy and misleading epithet, it must refer to the thrice in vain burnt Gulveig. All that we learn about _Hyrrokin_ confirms her identity with Aurboda. In the symbolic-allegorical work of art, which toward the close of the tenth century decorated a hall at Hjardarholt, and of which I shall give a fuller account elsewhere, the storm which from the land side carried Balder's ship out on the sea is represented by the giantess Hyrrokin. In the same capacity of storm-giantess carrying sailors out upon the ocean appears Gymer's wife, Aurboda, in a poem by _Refr_;

Færir björn, thar er bára brestr, undinna festa,

Opt i Ægis kjopta úrsvöl Gymis völva.

"Gymer's ancient-cold vala often carries the ship amid breaking billows into the jaws of Ægir." Gymer, Aurboda's husband, represents in the physical interpretation of the myth the east wind coming from the Ironwood. From the other side of Eystrasalt (the Baltic) Gymer sings his song (Ynglingasaga, 36); and the same gale belongs to Aurboda, for Ægir, into whose jaws she drives the ships, is the great open western ocean. That Aurboda represents the gale from the east finds its natural explanation in her identity with Angerboda "the old," who dwells in the Ironwood in the uttermost east, "_Austr byr hin alldna i iarnvithi_" (Völusp.).

The result of the investigation is that _Gullveig-Heidr_, _Aurboda_, and _Angrboda_ are different names for the different hypostases of the thrice-born and thrice-burnt one, and that _Hyrrokin_, "the fire-smoked," is an epithet common to all these hypostases.

[Footnote 18: In Völuspa the wood is called both _Jarnvidr, Gaglvidr_ (Cod. Reg.), and _Galgvidr_ (Cod. Hauk.). It may be that we here have a fossil word preserved in Völuspa meaning metal. Perhaps the wood was a copper or bronze forest before it became an iron wood. Compare _ghalgha_, _ghalghi_ (Fick., ii. 578) = metal, which, again, is to be compared with _Chalkos._ = copper, bronze.]

[Footnote 19: In _Bragarædur's_ pseudo-mythic account of the Skaldic mead (Younger Edda, 216 ff.) the name _Fjalarr_ also appears. In regard to the value of this account, see the investigation in No. 89.]

[Footnote 20: Ynglingasaga is the opening chapters of Snorre Sturlason's Heimskringla.]

36.

THE WORLD WAR (_continued_). THE BREACH OF PEACE BETWEEN ASAS AND VANS. FRIGG, SKADE, AND ULL IN THE CONFLICT. THE SIEGE OF ASGARD. THE VAFERFLAMES. THE DEFENCE AND SURROUNDINGS OF ASGARD. THE VICTORY OF THE VANS.

When the Asas had refused to give satisfaction for the murder of Gulveig, and when Odin, by hurling his spear, had indicated that the treaty of peace between him and the Vans was broken, the latter leave the assembly hall and Asgard. This is evident from the fact that they afterwards return to Asgard and attack the citadel of the Asa clan. The gods are now divided into two hostile camps: on the one side Odin and his allies, among whom are Heimdal (see Nos. 38, 39, 40), and Skade; on the other Njord, Frigg (Saxo, _Hist._, 42-44), Frey, Ull (Saxo, _Hist_., 130, 131), and Freyja and her husband Svipdag, besides all that clan of divinities who were not adopted in Asgard, but belong to the race of Vans and dwell in Vanaheim.

So far as Skade is concerned the breach between the gods seems to have furnished her an opportunity of getting a divorce from Njord, with whom she did not live on good terms. According to statements found in the myths, Thjasse's daughter and he were altogether too different in disposition to dwell in peace together. Saxo (_Hist._, 53 ff.) and the Younger Edda (p. 94) have both preserved the record of a song which describes their different tastes as to home and surroundings. Skade loved Thrymheim, the rocky home of her father Thjasse, on whose snow-clad plains she was fond of running on skees and of felling wild beasts with her arrows; but when Njord had remained nine days and nine nights among the mountains he was weary of the rocks and of the howling of wolves, and longed for the song of swans on the sea-strand. But when Skade accompanied him thither she could not long endure to be awakened every morning by the shrieking of sea-fowls. In Grimnismal, 11, it is said that Skade "now" occupies her father's "ancient home" in Thrymheim, but Njord is not named there. In a strophe by Thord Sjarekson (Younger Edda, 262) we read that Skade never became devoted to the Vana-god (_nama snotr una godbrúdr Vani_), and Eyvind Skalda-spiller relates in _Haleygjatal_ that there was a time when Odin dwelt _í Manheimum_ together with Skade, and begat with her many sons. With _Manheimar_ is meant that part of the world which is inhabited by man; that is to say, Midgard and the lower world, where are also found a race of _menskir menn_ (see Nos. 52, 53, 59, 63), and the topographical counterpart of the word is _Ásgardr_. Thus it must have been after his banishment from Asgard, while he was separated from Frigg and found refuge somewhere in _Manheimar_, that Odin had Skade for his wife. Her epithet in Grimnismal, _skír brúdr goda_, also seems to indicate that she had conjugal relations with more than one of the gods.

While Odin was absent and deposed as ruler of the world, Ull has occupied so important a position among the ruling Vans that, according to the tradition preserved in Saxo, they bestowed upon him the task and honour which until that time had belonged to Odin (_Dii ... Ollerum quendam non solum in regni, sed etiam in divinitatis infulas subrogavere_--_Hist._, 130). This is explained by the fact that Njord and Frey, though _valtívar_ and brave warriors when they are invoked, are in their very nature gods of peace and promoters of wealth and agriculture, while Ull is by nature a warrior. He is a skilful archer, excellent in a duel, and _hefir hermanns atgervi_ (Younger Edda, i. 102). Also after the reconciliation between the Asas and Vans, Thor's stepson Ull has held a high position in Asgard, as is apparently corroborated by Odin's words in Grimnismal, 41 (_Ullar hylli ok allra góda_).

From the mythic accounts in regard to the situation and environment of Asgard we may conclude that the siege by the Vans was no easy task. The home of the Asas is surrounded by the atmospheric ocean, whose strong currents make it difficult for the mythic horses to swim to it (see Nos. 65, 93). The bridge Bifrost is not therefore superfluous, but it is that connection between the lower worlds and Asgard which the gods daily use, and which must be captured by the enemy before the great cordon which encloses the shining halls of the gods can be attacked. The wall is built of "the limbs of Lerbrimer" (Fjolsv., 1), and constructed by its architect in such a manner that it is a safe protection against mountain-giants and frost-giants (Younger Edda, 134). In the wall is a gate wondrously made by the artist-brothers who are sons of "Solblinde" (_Valgrind_--Grimnism., 22; _thrymgjöll_--Fjölsvimsm., 10). Few there are who understand the lock of that gate, and if anybody brings it out of its proper place in the wall-opening where it blocks the way for those who have no right to enter, then the gate itself becomes a chain for him who has attempted such a thing (_Forn er su grind, enn that fáir vito, hor hve er i lás um lokin_--Grimn., 22. _Fjöturr fastr verdr vid faranda hvern er hana hefr frá hlidi_--Fjölsv., 10).

Outside of the very high Asgard cordon and around it there flows a rapid river (see below), the moat of the citadel. Over the eddies of the stream floats a dark, shining ignitible mist. If it is kindled it explodes in flames, whose bickering tongues strike their victims with unerring certainty. It is the _vaferloge_, "the bickering flame," "the quick fire," celebrated in ancient songs--_vafrlogi_, _vafreydi_, _skjót-brinni_. It was this fire which the gods kindled around Asgard when they saw Thjasse approaching in eagle guise. In it their irreconcilable foe burnt his pinions, and fell to the ground. "Haustlaung," Thjodolf's poem, says that when Thjasse approached the citadel of the gods "the gods raised the quick fire and sharpened their javelins"--_Hófu skjót; en skófu sköpt; ginnregin brinna_. The "quick fire," _skjót-brinni_, is the _vaferloge_.[21]

The material of which the ignitible mist consists is called "black terror-gleam." It is _or odauccom_; that is to say, _ofdauccom ognar ljoma_ (Fafn., 40) (_cp. myrckvan vafrloga_--Skirn., 8, 9; Fjolsv., 31). It is said to be "wise," which implies that it consciously aims at him for whose destruction it is kindled.

How a water could be conceived that evaporates a dark, ignitible mist we find explained in Thorsdrapa. The thunder-storm is the "storm of the vaferfire," and Thor is the "ruler of the chariot of the vaferfire-storm" (_vafreyda hreggs húfstjóri_). Thus the thunder-cloud contains the water that evaporates a dark material for lightning. The dark metallic colour which is peculiar to the thunder-cloud was regarded as coming from that very material which is the "black terror-gleam" of which lightning is formed. When Thor splits the cloud he separates the two component parts, the water and the vafermist; the former falls down as rain, the latter is ignited and rushes away in quick, bickering, zigzag flames--the vaferfires. That these are "wise" was a common Aryan belief. They do not proceed blindly, but know their mark and never miss it.

The river that foams around Asgard thus has its source in the thunder-clouds; not as we find them after they have been split by Thor, but such as they are originally, swollen with a celestial water that evaporates vafermist. All waters--subterranean, terrestrial, and celestial--have their source in that great subterranean fountain Hvergelmer. Thence they come and thither they return (Grimn., 26; see Nos. 59, 63, 33). Hvergelmer's waters are sucked up by the northern root of the world-tree; they rise through its trunk, spread into its branches and leaves, and evaporate from its crown into a water-tank situated on the top of Asgard, _Eikthyrnir_, in Grimnismal, str. 26, symbolised as a "stag"[22] who stands on the roof of Odin's hall and out of whose horns the waters stream down into Hvergelmer. _Eikthyrnir_ is the great celestial water-tank which gathers and lets out the thunder-cloud. In this tank the Asgard river has its source, and hence it consists not only of foaming water but also of ignitible vafermists. In its capacity of discharger of the thunder-cloud, the tank is called _Eikthyrnir_, the oak-stinger. Oaks struck by lightning is no unusual occurrence. The oak is, according to popular belief based on observation, that tree which the lightning most frequently strikes.

But Asgard is not the only citadel which is surrounded by vafermists. These are also found enveloping the home where dwelt the storm-giant Gymer and the storm-giantess Aurboda, the sorceress who knows all of Asgard's secrets, at the time when Frey sent Skirner to ask for the hand of their daughter Gerd. Epics which in their present form date from Christian times make vaferflames burn around castles, where goddesses, pricked by sleep-thorns, are slumbering. This is a belief of a later age.

To get over or through the vaferflame is, according to the myth, impossible for anyone who has not got a certain mythical horse to ride--probably Sleipner, the eight-footed steed of the Asa-father, which is the best of all horses (Grimn., 44). The quality of this steed, which enables it to bear its rider unscathed through the vaferflame, makes it indespensable when this obstacle is to be overcome. When Skirner is to go on Frey's journey of courtship to Gerd, he asks for that purpose _mar thann er mic um myrckvan beri visan vafrloga_, and is allowed to ride it on and for the journey (Skirn., 8, 9). This horse must accordingly have been in the possession of the Vans when they conquered Asgard, an assumption confirmed by what is to be stated below. (In the great epic Sigurd's horse Grane is made to inherit the qualities of this divine horse.)

On the outer side of the Asgard river, and directly opposite the Asgard gate, lie projecting ramparts (_forgardir_) to protect the drawbridge, which from the opening in the wall can be dropped down across the river (see below). When Svipdag proceeded toward Menglad's abode in Asgard, he first came to this _forgardir_ (Fjöls., i. 3). There he is hailed by the watch of the citadel, and thence he gets a glimpse over the gate of all the glorious things which are hid behind the high walls of the citadel.

Outside the river Asgard has fields with groves and woods (Younger Edda, 136, 210).

Of the events of the wars waged around Asgard, the mythic fragments, which the Icelandic records have preserved, give us but very little information, though they must have been favourite themes for the heathen skaldic art, which here had an opportunity of describing in a characteristic manner all the gods involved, and of picturing not only their various characters, but also their various weapons, equipments, and horses. In regard to the weapons of attack we must remember that Thor at the outbreak of the conflict is deprived of the assistance of his splendid hammer: it has been broken by Svipdag's sword of victory (see Nos. 101, 103)--a point which it was necessary for the myth to assume, otherwise the Vans could hardly he represented as conquerors. Nor do the Vans have the above-mentioned sword at their disposal: it is already in the power of Gymer and Aurboda. The irresistible weapons which in a purely mechanical manner would have decided the issue of the war, were disposed of in advance in order that the persons themselves, with their varied warlike qualities, might get to the foreground and decide the fate of the conflict by heroism or prudence, by prescient wisdom or by blind daring. In this war the Vans have particularly distinguished themselves by wise and well calculated strategies. This we learn from Völuspa, where it makes the final victors conquer Asgard through _vígspá_, that is, foreknowledge applied to warlike ends (str. 26). The Asas, as we might expect from Odin's brave sons, have especially distinguished themselves by their strength and courage. A record of this is found in the words of Thorbjorn Disarskald (Younger Edda, 256).

Thórr hefir Yggs med árum Ásgard of threk vardan.

"Thor with Odin's clan-men defended Asgard with indomitable courage."

But in number they must have been far inferior to their foes. Simply the circumstance that Odin and his men had to confine themselves to the defence of Asgard shows that nearly all other divinities of various ranks had allied themselves with his enemies. The ruler of the lower world (Mimer) and Honer are the only ones of whom it can be said that they remained faithful to Odin; and if we can trust the Heimskringla tradition, which is related as history and greatly corrupted, then Mimer lost his life in an effort at mediation between the contending gods, while he and Honer were held as hostages among the Vans (Ynglingas., ch. 4). Asgard was at length conquered. Völuspa, str. 25, relates the final catastrophe:

brotin var bordvegr borgar asa knatto vanir vigspa vollo sporna.

Broken was the bulwark of the asaburg; Through warlike prudence were the Vans able its fields to tread.

Völuspa's words seem to indicate that the Vans took Asgard by strategy; and this is confirmed by a source which shall be quoted below. But to carry out the plan which chiefly involved the finding of means for crossing the vaferflames kindled around the citadel and for opening the gates of Asgard, not only cunning but also courage was required. The myth has given the honour of this undertaking to Njord, the clan-chief of the Vans and the commander of their forces. This is clear from the above-quoted passage: _Njordr klauf Herjans hurdir_--"Njord broke Odin's doors open," which should be compared with the poetical paraphrase for battle-axe: _Gauts megin-hurdar galli_--"the destroyer of Odin's great gate,"--a paraphrase that indicates that Njord burst the Asgard gate open with the battle-axe. The conclusion which must be drawn from these utterances is confirmed by an account with which the sixth book of Saxo begins, and which doubtless is a fragment of the myth concerning the conquest of Asgard by the Vans corrupted and told as history.

The event is transferred by Saxo to the reign of King Fridlevus II. It should here be remarked that every important statement made by Saxo about this Fridlevus, on a closer examination, is found to be taken from the myth concerning Njord.

There were at that time twelve brothers, says Saxo, distinguished for courage, strength, and fine physical appearance. They were "widely celebrated for gigantic triumphs." To their trophies and riches many peoples had paid tribute. But the source from which Saxo received information in regard to Fridlevus' conflict with them did not mention more than seven of these twelve, and of these seven Saxo gives the names. They are called Bjorn, Asbjorn, Gunbjorn, &c. In all the names is found the epithet of the Asa-god Bjorn.

The brothers had had allies, says Saxo further, but at the point when the story begins they had been abandoned by them, and on this account they had been obliged to confine themselves on an island surrounded by a most violent stream which fell from the brow of a very high rock, and the whole surface of which glittered with raging foam. The island was fortified by a very high wall (_præaltum vallum_), in which was built a remarkable gate. It was so built that the hinges were placed near the ground between the sides of the opening in the wall, so that the gate turning thereon could, by a movement regulated by chains, be lowered and form a bridge across the stream.

Thus the gate is, at the same time, a drawbridge of that kind with which the Germans became acquainted during the war with the Romans already before the time of Tacitus (cp. _Annal._, iv. 51, with iv. 47). Within the fortification there was a most strange horse, and also a remarkably strong dog, which formerly had watched the herds of the giant Offotes. The horse was celebrated for his size and speed, and it was the only steed with which it was possible for a rider to cross the raging stream around the island fortress.

King Fridlevus now surrounds this citadel with his forces. These are arrayed at some distance from the citadel, and in the beginning nothing else is gained by the siege than that the besieged are hindered from making sallies into the surrounding territory. The citadel cannot be taken unless the above-mentioned horse gets into the power of Fridlevus. Bjorn, the owner of the horse, makes sorties from the citadel, and in so doing he did not always take sufficient care, for on one occasion when he was on the outer side of the stream, and had gone some distance away from his horse, he fell into an ambush laid by Fridlevus. He saved himself by rushing headlong over the bridge, which was drawn up behind him, but the precious horse became Fridlevus' booty. This was of course a severe loss to the besieged, and must have diminished considerably their sense of security. Meanwhile, Fridlevus was able to manage the matter in such a way that the accident served rather to lull them into increased safety. During the following night the brothers found their horse, safe and sound, back on the island. Hence it must have swum back across the stream. And when it was afterwards found that the dead body of a man, clad in the shining robes of Fridlevus, floated on the eddies of the stream, they took it for granted that Fridlevus himself had perished in the stream.

But the real facts were as follows: Fridlevus, attended by a single companion, had in the night ridden from his camp to the river. There his companion's life had to be sacrificed, in order that the king's plan might be carried out. Fridlevus exchanged clothes with the dead man, who, in the king's splendid robes, was cast into the stream. Then Fridlevus gave spur to the steed which he had captured, and rode through the eddies of the stream. Having passed this obstacle safely, he set the horse at liberty, climbed on a ladder over the wall, stole into the hall where the brothers were wont to assemble, hid himself under a projection over the hall door, listened to their conversation, saw them go out to reconnoitre the island, and saw them return, secure in the conviction that there was no danger at hand. Then he went to the gate and let it fall across the stream. His forces had, during the night, advanced toward the citadel, and when they saw the drawbridge down and the way open, they stormed the fortress and captured it.

The fact that we here have a transformation of the myth, telling how Njord at the head of the Vans conquered Asgard, is evident from the following circumstances:

(_a_) The conqueror is Fridlevus. The most of what Saxo relates about this Fridlevus is, as stated, taken from the myth about Njord, and told as history.

(_b_) The brothers were, according to Saxo, originally twelve, which is the well-established number of Odin's clansmen: his sons, and the adopted Asa-gods. But when the siege in question takes place, Saxo finds in his source only seven of the twelve mentioned as enclosed in the citadel beseiged by Fridlevus. The reason for the diminishing of the number is to be found in the fact that the adopted gods--Njord, Frey, and Ull--had left Asgard, and are in fact identical with the leaders of the besiegers. If we also deduct Balder and Hödr, who, at the time of the event, are dead and removed to the lower world, then we have left the number seven given. The name Bjorn, which they all bear, is an Asa epithet (Younger Edda, i. 553). The brothers have formerly had allies, but these have abandoned them (_deficientibus a se sociis_), and it is on this account that they must confine themselves within their citadel. The Asas have had the Vans and other divine powers as allies, but these abandon them, and the Asas must defend themselves on their own fortified ground.

(_c_) Before this the brothers have made themselves celebrated for extraordinary exploits, and have enjoyed a no less extraordinary power. They shone on account of their _giganteis triumphis_--an ambiguous expression which alludes to the mythic sagas concerning the victories of the Asas over Jotunheim's giants (_gigantes_), and nations have submitted to them as victors, and enriched them with treasures (_trophæis gentium celebres, spoliis locupletes_).

(_d_) The island on which they are confined is fortified, like the Asa citadel, by an immensely high wall (_præaltum vallum_), and is surrounded by a stream which is impassable unless one possesses a horse which is found among the brothers. Asgard is surrounded by a river belt covered with vaferflames, which cannot be crossed unless one has that single steed which _um myrckvan beri visan vafrloga_, and this belongs to the Asas.

(_e_) The stream which roars around the fortress of the brothers comes _ex summis montium cacuminibus_. The Asgard stream comes from the collector of the thunder-cloud, _Eikthynir_, who stands on the summit of the world of the gods. The kindled vaferflames, which did not suit an historical narration, are explained by Saxo to be a _spumeus candor_, a foaming whiteness, a shining froth, which in uniform, eddying billows everywhere whirl on the surface of the stream, (_tota alvei tractu undis uniformiter turbidatis spumeus ubique candor exuberat_).

(_f_) The only horse which was able to run through the shining and eddying foam is clearly one of the mythic horses. It is named along with another prodigy from the animal kingdom of mythology, viz., the terrible dog of the giant Offotes. Whether this is a reminiscence of _Fenrir_ which was kept for some time in Asgard, or of Odin's wolf-dog _Freki_, or of some other saga-animal of that sort, we will not now decide.

(_g_) Just as Asgard has an artfully contrived gate, so has also the citadel of the brothers. Saxo's description of the gate implies that any person who does not know its character as a drawbridge, but lays violent hands on the mechanism which holds it in an upright position, falls, and is crushed under it. This explains the words of Fjölsvinnsmal about the gate to that citadel, within which Freyja-Menglad dwells: _Fjöturr fastr verdr vid faranda hvern, er hana hefr frá hlidi_.

(_h_) In the myth, it is Njord himself who removes the obstacle, "Odin's great gate," placed in his way. In Saxo's account, it is Fridlevus himself who accomplishes the same exploit.

(_i_) In Saxo's narration occurs an improbability, which is explained by the fact that he has transformed a myth into history. When Fridlevus is safe across the stream, he raises a ladder against the wall and climbs up on to it. Whence did he get this ladder, which must have been colossal, since the wall he got over in this manner is said to be _præaltum_? Could he have taken it with him on the horse's back? Or did the besieged themselves place it against the wall as a friendly aid to the foe, who was already in possession of the only means for crossing the stream? Both assumptions are alike improbable. Saxo had to take recourse to a ladder, for he could not, without damaging the "historical" character of his story, repeat the myth's probable description of the event. The horse which can gallop through the bickering flame can also leap over the highest wall. Sleipner's ability in this direction is demonstrated in the account of how it, with Hermod in the saddle, leaps over the wall to Balder's high hall in the lower world (Younger Edda, 178). The impassibility of the Asgard wall is limited to mountain-giants and frost-giants; for a god riding Odin's horse the wall was no obstacle. No doubt the myth has also stated that the Asas, after Njord had leaped over the wall and sought out the above-mentioned place of concealment, found within the wall their precious horse again, which lately had become the booty of the enemy. And where else should they have found it, if we regard the stream with the bickering flames as breaking against the very foot of the wall?

Finally, it should be added, that our myths tell of no other siege than the one Asgard was subjected to by the Vans. If other sieges have been mentioned, they cannot have been of the same importance as this one, and consequently they could not so easily have left traces in the mythic traditions adapted to history or heroic poetry; nor could a historicised account of a mythic siege which did not concern Asgard have preserved the points here pointed out, which are in harmony with the story of the Asgard siege.

When the citadel of the gods is captured, the gods are, as we have seen, once more in possession of the steed, which, judging from its qualities, must be Sleipner. Thus Odin has the means of escaping from the enemy after all resistance has proved impossible. Thor has his thundering car, which, according to the Younger Edda, has room for several besides the owner, and the other Asas have splendid horses (Grimnism., Younger Edda), even though they are not equal to that of their father. The Asas give up their throne of power, and the Vans now assume the rule of the world.

[Footnote 21: The author of _Bragarædur_ in the Younger Edda has understood this passage to mean that the Asas, when they saw Thjasse approaching, carried out a lot of shavings, which were kindled (!)]

[Footnote 22: In the same poem the elf-artist, Dáinn, and the "dwarf"-artist, Dvalinn, are symbolised as stags, the wanderer Ratr (see below) as a squirrel, the wolf-giant _Grafvitner's_ sons as serpents, the bridge Bifrost as a fish (see No. 93), &c. Fortunately for the comprehension of our mythic records such symbolising is confined to a few strophes in the poem named, and these strophes appear to have belonged originally to an independent song which made a speciality of that sort of symbolism, and to have been incorporated in Grimnismal in later times.]

37.

THE WORLD WAR (_continued_). THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CONFLICT FROM A RELIGIOUS-RITUAL STANDPOINT.

In regard to the significance of the change of administration in the world of gods, Saxo has preserved a tradition which is of no small interest. The circumstance that Odin and his sons had to surrender the reign of the world did not imply that mankind should abandon their faith in the old gods and accept a new religion. Hitherto the Asas and Vans had been worshipped in common. Now, when Odin was deposed, his name, honoured by the nations, was not to be obliterated. The name was given to Ull, and, as if he really were Odin, he was to receive the sacrifices and prayers that hitherto had been addressed to the banished one (_Hist._, 130). The ancient faith was to be maintained, and the shift involved nothing but the person; there was no change of religion. But in connection with this information, we also learn, from another statement in Saxo, that the myth concerning the war between Asas and Vans was connected with traditions concerning a conflict between various views among the believers in the Teutonic religion concerning offerings and prayers. The one view was more ritual, and demanded more attention paid to sacrifices. This view seems to have gotten the upper hand after the banishment of Odin. It was claimed that sacrifices and hymns addressed at the same time to several or all of the gods, did not have the efficacy of pacifying and reconciling angry deities, but that to each one of the gods should be given a separate sacrificial service (Saxo, _Hist._, 43). The result of this was, of course, an increase of sacrifices and a more highly-developed ritual, which from its very nature might have produced among the Teutons the same hierarchy as resulted from an excess of sacrifices among their Aryan-Asiatic kinsmen. The correctness of Saxo's statement is fully confirmed by strophe 145 in Havamál, which advocates the opposite and incomparably more moderate view in regard to sacrifices. This view came, according to the strophe, from Odin's own lips. He is made to proclaim it to the people "after his return to his ancient power."

Betra er obethit en se ofblothit ey ser til gildis giof; betra er osennt enn se ofsóit. Sva thundr um reist fyr thiotha rauc, thar hann up um reis er hann aptr of kom.

The expression, _thar hann up um reis, er hann apter of kom_, refers to the fact that Odin had for some time been deposed from the administration of the world, but had returned, and that he then proclaimed to the people the view in regard to the real value of prayers and sacrifices which is laid down in the strophe. Hence it follows that before Odin returned to his throne another more exacting doctrine in regard to sacrifices had, according to the myth, secured prevalence. This is precisely what Saxo tells us. It is difficult to repress the question whether an historical reminiscence is not concealed in these statements. May it not be the record of conflicting views within the Teutonic religion--views represented in the myth by the Vana-gods on the one side and the Asas on the other? The Vana views, I take it, represented tendencies which had they been victorious, would have resulted in hierarchy, while the Asa doctrine represented the tendencies of the believers in the time-honoured Aryan custom of those who maintained the priestly authority of the father of the family, and who defended the efficacy of the simple hymns and sacrifices which from time out of mind had been addressed to several or all of the gods in common. That the question really has existed among the Teutonic peoples, at least as a subject for reflection, spontaneously suggests itself in the myth alluded to above. This myth has discussed the question, and decided it in precisely the same manner as history has decided it among the Teutonic races, among whom priestcraft and ritualism have held a far less important position than among their western kinsmen, the Celts, and their eastern kinsmen, the Iranians and Hindoos. That prayers on account of their length, or sacrifices on account of their abundance, should give evidence of greater piety and fear of God, and should be able to secure a more ready hearing, is a doctrine which Odin himself rejects in the strophe above cited. He understands human nature, and knows that when a man brings abundant sacrifices he has the selfish purpose in view of prevailing on the gods to give a more abundant reward--a purpose prompted by selfishness, not by piety.

38.

THE WORLD WAR (_continued_). THE WAR IN MIDGARD BETWEEN HALFDAN'S SONS. GROA'S SONS AGAINST ALVEIG'S. LOKE'S APPEARANCE ON THE STAGE. HADDING'S YOUTHFUL ADVENTURES.

The conflict between the gods has its counterpart in, and is connected with, a war between all the Teutonic races, and the latter is again a continuation of the feud between Halfdan and Svipdag. The Teutonic race comes to the front fighting under three race-representatives--(1) Yngve-Svipdag, the son of Orvandel and Groa; (2) Gudhorm, the son of Halfdan and Groa, consequently Svipdag's half-brother; (3) Hadding, the son of Halfdan and Alveig (in Saxo called Signe, daughter of Sumbel), consequently Gudhorm's half-brother.

The ruling Vans favour Svipdag, who is Freyja's husband and Frey's brother-in-law. The banished Asas support Hadding from their place of refuge. The conflict between the gods and the war between Halfdan's successor and heir are woven together. It is like the Trojan war, where the gods, divided into parties, assist the Trojans or assist the Danai. Odin, Thor, and Heimdal interfere, as we shall see, to protect Hadding. This is their duty as kinsmen; for Heimdal, having assumed human nature, was the lad with the sheaf of grain who came to the primeval country and became the father of Borgar, who begat the son Halfdan. Thor was Halfdan's associate father; hence he too had duties of kinship toward Hadding and Gudhorm, Halfdan's sons. The gods, on the other hand, that favour Svipdag are, in Hadding's eyes, foes, and Hadding long refuses to propitiate Frey by a demanded sacrifice (Saxo, _Hist._, 49, 50).

This war, simultaneously waged between the clans of the gods on the one hand, and between the Teutonic tribes on the other, is what the seeress in Völuspa calls "the first great war in the world." She not only gives an account of its outbreak and events among the gods, but also indicates that it was waged on the earth. Then--

sa hon valkyrior saw she valkyries vitt um komnar far travelled gaurvar at rida equipped to ride til Godthjodar to Goththjod.

Goththjod is the Teutonic people and the Teutonic country.

When Svipdag had slain Halfdan, and when the Asas were expelled, the sons of the Teutonic patriarch were in danger of falling into the power of Svipdag. Thor interested himself in their behalf, and brought Gudhorm and Hadding to Jotunheim, where he concealed them with the giants Hafle and Vagnhofde--Gudhorm in Hafle's rocky gard and Hadding in Vagnhofde's. In Saxo, who relates this story, the Asa-god Thor appears partly as _Thor deus_ and _Thoro pugil_, Halfdan's protector, whom Saxo himself identifies as the god Thor (_Hist._, 324), and partly as _Brac_ and _Brache_, which name Saxo formed from Thor's epithet, _Asa-Bragr_. It is by the name Brache that Thor appears as the protector of Halfdan's sons. The giants Hafle and Vagnhofde dwell, according to Saxo, in "Svetia" probably, since Jotunheim, the northernmost Sweden, and the most distant east were called _Svithiod hinn kalda_.[23]

Svipdag waged war against Halfdan, since it was his duty to avenge the disgrace of his mother Groa, and also that of his mother's father, and, as shall be shown later, the death of his father Orvandel (see Nos. 108, 109). The revenge for bloodshed was sacred in the Teutonic world, and this duty he performed when he with his irresistible sword felled his stepfather. But thereby the duty of revenge for bloodshed was transferred to Halfdan's sons--less to Gudhorm, who is himself a son of Groa, but with all its weight to Hadding, the son of Alveig, and it is _his_ bounden duty to bring about Svipdag's death, since Svipdag had slain Halfdan. Connecting itself with Halfdan's robbery of Groa, the goddess of growth, the red thread of revenge for bloodshed extends throughout the great hero-saga of Teutonic mythology.

Svipdag makes an effort to cut the thread. He offers Gudhorm and Hadding peace and friendship, and promises them kingship among the tribes subject to him. Groa's son, Gudhorm, accepts the offer, and Svipdag makes him ruler of the Danes; but Hadding sends answer that he prefers to avenge his father's death to accepting favours from an enemy (Saxo, _Hist._, 35, 36).

Svipdag's offer of peace and reconciliation is in harmony, if not with his own nature, at least with that of his kinsmen, the reigning Vans. If the offer to Hadding had been accepted, we might have looked for peace in the world. Now the future is threatened with the devastations of war, and the bloody thread of revenge shall continue to be spun if Svipdag does not prevent it by overpowering Hadding. The myth may have contained much information about the efforts of the one camp to capture him and about contrivances of the other to frustrate these efforts. Saxo has preserved a partial record thereof. Among those who plot against Hadding is also Loke (_Lokerus_--Saxo, _Hist._, 40, 41),[24] the banished ally of Aurboda. His purpose is doubtless to get into the favour of the reigning Vans. Hadding is no longer safe in Vagnhofde's mountain home. The lad is exposed to Loke's snares. From one of these he is saved by the Asa-father himself. There came, says Saxo, on this occasion a rider to Hadding. He resembled a very aged man, one of whose eyes was lost (_grandævus quidam altero orbus oculo_). He placed Hadding in front of himself on the horse, wrapped his mantle about him, and rode away. The lad became curious and wanted to see whither they were going. Through a hole in the mantle he got an opportunity of looking down, and found to his astonishment and fright that land and sea were far below the hoofs of the steed. The rider must have noticed his fright, for he forbade him to look out any more.

The rider, the one-eyed old man, is Odin, and the horse is Sleipner, rescued from the captured Asgard. The place to which the lad is carried by Odin is the place of refuge secured by the Asas during their exile _i Manheimum_. In perfect harmony with the myths, Saxo refers Odin's exile to the time preceding Hadding's juvenile adventures, and makes Odin's return to power simultaneous with Hadding's great victory over his enemies (_Hist._, 42-44). Saxo has also found in his sources that sword-slain men, whom Odin chooses during "the first great war in the world," cannot come to Valhal. The reason for this is that Odin is not at that time the ruler there. They have dwelling-places and plains for their warlike amusements appointed in the lower world (_Hist._, 51).

The regions which, according to Saxo, are the scenes of Hadding's juvenile adventures lie on the other side of the Baltic down toward the Black Sea. He is associated with "Curetians" and "Hellespontians," doubtless for the reason that the myth has referred those adventures to the far east.

The one-eyed old man is endowed with wonderful powers. When he landed with the lad at his home, he sang over him prophetic incantations to protect him (_Hist._, 40), and gave him a drink of the "most splendid sort," which produced in Hadding enormous physical strength, and particularly made him able to free himself from bonds and chains. (Compare Havamál, str. 149, concerning Odin's freeing incantations by which "fetters spring from the feet and chains from the hands.") A comparison with other passages, which I shall discuss later, shows that the potion of which the old man is lord contains something which is called "Leifner's flames," and that he who has been permitted to drink it, and over whom freeing incantations have simultaneously been sung, is able with his warm breath to free himself from every fetter which has been put on his enchanted limbs (see Nos. 43, 96, 103).

The old man predicts that Hadding will soon have an opportunity of testing the strength with which the drink and the magic songs have endowed him. And the prophecy is fulfilled. Hadding falls into the power of Loke. He chains him and threatens to expose him as food for a wild beast--in Saxo a lion, in the myth presumably some one of the wolf or serpent prodigies that are Loke's offspring. But when his guards are put to sleep by Odin's magic song, though Odin is far away, Hadding bursts his bonds, slays the beast, and eats, in obedience to Odin's instructions, its heart. (The saga of Sigurd Fafnersbane has copied this feature. Sigurd eats the heart of the dragon Fafner and gets wisdom thereby.)

Thus Hadding has become a powerful hero, and his task to make war on Svipdag, to revenge on him his father's death, and to recover the share in the rulership of the Teutons which Halfdan had possessed, now lies before him as the goal he is to reach.

Hadding leaves Vagnhofde's home. The latter's daughter, Hardgrep, who had fallen in love with the youth, accompanies him. When we next find Hadding he is at the head of an army. That this consisted of the tribes of Eastern Teutondom is confirmed by documents which I shall hereafter quote; but it also follows from Saxo's narrative, although he has referred the war to narrower limits than were given to it in the myth, since he, constructing a Danish history from mythic traditions, has his eyes fixed chiefly on Denmark. Over the Scandian tribes and the Danes rule, according to Saxo's own statement, Svipdag, and as his tributary king in Denmark his half-brother Gudhorm. Saxo also is aware that the Saxons, the Teutonic tribes of the German lowlands, on one occasion were the allies of Svipdag (_Hist._, 34). From these parts of Teutondom did not come Hadding's friends, but his enemies; and when we add that the first battle which Saxo mentions in this war was fought among the Curetians east of the Baltic, then it is clear that Saxo, too, like the other records to which I am coming later, has conceived the forces under Hadding's banner as having been gathered in the East. From this it is evident that the war is one between the tribes of North Teutondom, led by Svipdag and supported by the Vans on the one side, and the tribes of East Teutondom, led by Hadding and supported by the Asas on the other. But the tribes of the western Teutonic continent have also taken part in the first great war of mankind. Gudhorm, whom Saxo makes a tributary king in Yngve-Svipdag's most southern domain, Denmark, has in the mythic traditions had a much greater empire, and has ruled over the tribes of Western and Southern Teutondom, as shall be shown hereafter.

[Footnote 23: _Filii Gram, Guthormus et Hadingus, quorum alterum Gro, alterum Signe enixa est, Svipdagero Daniam obtinente, per educatorem suum Brache nave Svetiam deportati, Vagnophto et Haphlio gigantibus non solum alendi, verum etiam defensandi traduntur_ (Saxo _Hist._, 34).]

[Footnote 24: The form _Loki_ is also duplicated by the form _Lokr_. The latter is preserved in the sense of "effeminated man," found in myths concerning Loke. Compare the phrase "_veykr Lokr_" with "_hinn veyki Loki_."]

39.

THE WORLD WAR (_continued_). THE POSITION OF THE DIVINE CLANS TO THE WARRIORS.

The circumstance that the different divine clans had their favourites in the different camps gives the war a peculiar character. The armies see before a battle supernatural forms contending with each other in the starlight, and recognize in them their divine friends and opponents (_Hist._, 48). The elements are conjured on one and the other side for the good or harm of the contending brother-tribes. When fog and pouring rain suddenly darken the sky and fall upon Hadding's forces from that side where the fylkings of the North are arrayed, then the one-eyed old man comes to their rescue and calls forth dark masses of clouds from the other side, which force back the rain-clouds and the fog (_Hist._, 53). In these cloud-masses we must recognize the presence of the thundering Thor, the son of the one-eyed old man.

Giants also take part in the conflict. Vagnhofde and Hardgrep, the latter in a man's attire, contend on the side of the foster-son and the beloved Hadding (_Hist._, 45, 38). From Icelandic records we learn that Hafle and the giantesses Fenja and Menja fight under Gudhorm's banners. In the Grotte-song (14, 15) these maids sing:

En vit sithan a Svidiothu framvisar tvoer i folk stigum; beiddum biornu, en brutum skioldu gengum igegnum graserkiat lit. Steyptom stilli, studdum annan, veittum gothum Guthormi lid.

That the giant Hafle fought on the side of Gudhorm is probable from the fact that he is his foster-father, and it is confirmed by the fact that Thor paraphrased (Grett., 30) is called _fangvinr Hafla_, "he who wrestled with Hafle." Since Thor and Hafle formerly were friends--else the former would not have trusted Gudhorm to the care of the latter--their appearance afterwards as foes can hardly be explained otherwise than by the war between Thor's protégé Hadding and Hafle's foster-son Gudhorm. And as Hadding's foster-father, the giant Vagnhofde, faithfully supports the young chief whose childhood he protected, then the myth could scarcely avoid giving a similar part to the giant Hafle, and thus make the foster-fathers, like the foster-sons, contend with each other. The heroic poems are fond of parallels of this kind.

When Svipdag learns that Hadding has suddenly made his appearance in the East, and gathered its tribes around him for a war with Gudhorm, he descends from Asgard and reveals himself in the primeval Teutonic country on the Scandian peninsula, and requests its tribes to join the Danes and raise the banner of war against Halfdan's and Alveig's son, who, at the head of the eastern Teutons, is marching against their half-brother Gudhorm. The friends of both parties among the gods, men and giants, hasten to attach themselves to the cause which they have espoused as their own, and Vagnhofde among the rest abandons his rocky home to fight by the side of his foster-son and daughter.

This mythic situation is described in a hitherto unexplained strophe in the Old English song concerning the names of the letters in the runic alphabet. In regard to the rune which answers to _I_ there is added the following lines:

Ing väs oerest mid Eástdenum geseven secgum od he siddan eást ofer væg gevât. Væn æfter ran; thus Heardingas thone häle nemdon.

"Yngve (Inge) was first seen among the East-Danemen. Then he betook himself eastward over the sea. Vagn hastened to follow: Thus the Heardings called this hero."

The Heardings are the Haddings--that is to say, Hadding himself, the kinsmen and friends who embraced his cause, and the Teutonic tribes who recognised him as their chief. The Norse _Haddingr_ is to the Anglo-Saxon _Hearding_ as the Norse _haddr_ to the Anglo-Saxon _heard_. Vigfusson, and before him J. Grimm, have already identified these forms.

Ing is Yngve-Svipdag, who, when he left Asgard, "was first seen among the East-Danemen." He calls Swedes and Danes to arms against Hadding's tribes. The Anglo-Saxon strophe confirms the fact that they dwell in the East, separated by a sea from the Scandian tribes. Ing, with his warriors, "betakes himself eastward over the sea" to attack them. Thus the armies of the Swedes and Danes go by sea to the seat of war. What the authorities of Tacitus heard among the continental Teutons about the mighty fleets of the Swedes may be founded on the heroic songs about the first great war not less than on fact. As the army which was to cross the Baltic must be regarded as immensely large, so the myth, too, has represented the ships of the Swedes as numerous, and in part as of immense size. A confused record from the songs about the expedition of Svipdag and his friends against the East Teutons, found in Icelandic tradition, occurs in Fornald, pp. 406-407, where a ship called Gnod, and capable of carrying 3000 men, is mentioned as belonging to a King Asmund. Odin did not want this monstrous ship to reach its destination, but sank it, so it is said, in the Lessö seaway, with all its men and contents. The Asmund who is known in the heroic sagas of heathen times is a son of Svipdag and a king among the Sviones (Saxo, _Hist._, 44). According to Saxo, he has given brilliant proofs of his bravery in the war against Hadding, and fallen by the weapons of Vagnhofde and Hadding. That Odin in the Icelandic tradition appears as his enemy thus corresponds with the myth. The same Asmund may, as Gisle Brynjulfsson has assumed, be meant in Grimnersmal (49), where we learn that Odin, concealing himself under the name Jalk, once visited Asmund.

The hero Vagn, whom "the Haddings so called," is Hadding's foster-father, Vagnhofde. As the word _höfdi_ constitutes the second part of a mythic name, the compound form is a synonym of that name which forms the first part of the composition. Thus _Svarthöfdi_ is identical with _Svartr_, _Surtr_. In Hyndluljod, 33, all the mythical sorcerers (_seidberendr_) are said to be sprung from _Svarthöfdi_. In this connection we must first of all think of Fjalar, who is the greatest sorcerer in mythology. The story about Thor's, Thjalfe's, and Loke's visit to him is a chain of delusions of sight and hearing called forth by Fjalar, so that the Asa-god and his companions always mistake things for something else than they are. Fjalar is a son of _Surtr_ (see No. 89). Thus the greatest agent of sorcery is descended from _Surtr_, _Svartr_, and, as Hyndluljod states that all magicians of mythology have come of some _Svarthöfdi_, _Svartr_ and _Svarthöfdi_ must be identical. And so it is with Vagn and _Vagnhöfdi_; they are different names for the same person.

When the Anglo-Saxon rune-strophe says that Vang "made haste to follow" after Ing had gone across the sea, then this is to be compared with Saxo's statement (_Hist._, 45), where it is said that Hadding in a battle was in greatest peril of losing his life, but was saved by the sudden and miraculous landing of Vagnhofde, who came to the battle-field and placed himself at his side. The Scandian fylkings advanced against Hadding's; and Svipdag's son Asmund, who fought at the head of his men, forced his way forward against Hadding himself, with his shield thrown on his back, and with both his hands on the hilt of a sword which felled all before it. Then Hadding invoked the gods who were the friends of himself and his race (_Hadingo familiarium sibi numinum præsidia postulante subito Vagnophtus partibus ejus propugnaturus advehitur_), and then Vagnhofde is brought (_advehitur_) by some one of these gods to the battle-field and suddenly stands by Hadding's side, swinging a crooked sword[25] against Asmund, while Hadding hurls his spear against him. This statement in Saxo corresponds with and explains the old English strophe's reference to a quick journey which Vagn made to help _Heardingas_ against _Ing_, and it is also illustrated by a passage in Grimnismal, 49, which, in connection with Odin's appearance at Asmund's, tells that he once by the name Kjalar "drew _Kjalki_" (_mic heto Jalc at Asmundar, enn tha Kialar, er ec Kialka dró_). The word and name _Kjálki_, as also _Sledi_, is used as a paraphrase of the word and name _Vagn_.[26] Thus Odin has once "drawn Vagn" (waggon). The meaning of this is clear from what is stated above. Hadding calls on Odin, who is the friend of him and of his cause, and Odin, who on a former occasion has carried Hadding on Sleipner's back through the air, now brings, in the same or a similar manner, Vagnhofde to the battle-field, and places him near his foster-son. This episode is also interesting from the fact that we can draw from it the conclusion that the skalds who celebrated the first great war in their songs made the gods influence the fate of the battle, not directly but indirectly. Odin might himself have saved his favourite, and he might have slain Svipdag's son Asmund with his spear Gungner; but he does not do so; instead, he brings Vagnhofde to protect him. This is well calculated from an epic standpoint, while _dii ex machina_, when they appear in person on the battle-field with their superhuman strength, diminish the effect of the deeds of mortal heroes, and deprive every distress in which they have taken part of its more earnest significance. Homer never violated this rule without injury to the honour either of his gods or of his heroes.

[Footnote 25: The crooked sword, as it appears from several passages in the sagas, has long been regarded by our heathen ancestors as a foreign form of weapon, used by the giants, but not by the gods or by the heroes of Midgard.]

[Footnote 26: Compare Fornald., ii. 118, where the hero of the saga cries to _Gusi_, who comes running after him with "2 hreina ok _vagn_"--

_Skrid thu af kjalka, Kyrr thu hreina, seggr sidförull seg hvattu heitir!_ ]

40.

THE WORLD WAR (_continued_). HADDING'S DEFEAT. LOKE IN THE COUNCIL AND ON THE BATTLE-FIELD. HEIMDAL THE PROTECTOR OF HIS DESCENDANT HADDING.

The first great conflict in which the warriors of North and West Teutondom fight with the East Teutons ends with the complete victory of Groa's sons. Hadding's fylkings are so thoroughly beaten and defeated that he, after the end of the conflict, is nothing but a defenceless fugitive, wandering in deep forests with no other companion than Vagnhofde's daughter, who survived the battle and accompanies her beloved in his wanderings in the wildernesses. Saxo ascribes the victory won over Hadding to Loke. It follows of itself that, in a war whose deepest root must be sought in Loke's and Aurboda's intrigues, and in which the clans of gods on both sides take part, Loke should not be excluded by the skalds from influence upon the course of events. We have already seen that he sought to ruin Hadding while the latter was still a boy. He afterwards appears in various guises as evil counsellor, as an evil intriguer, and as a skilful arranger of the fylkings on the field of battle. His purpose is to frustrate every effort to bring about reconciliation, and by means of persuasion and falsehoods to increase the chances of enmity between Halfdan's descendants, in order that they may mutually destroy each other (see below). His activity among the heroes is the counterpart of his activity among the gods. The merry, sly, cynical, blameworthy, and profoundly evil Mefisto of the Teutonic mythology is bound to bring about the ruin of the Teutonic people like that of the gods of the Teutons.

In the later Icelandic traditions he reveals himself as the evil counsellor of princes in the forms of Blind ille, Blind bölvise (in Saxo Bolvisus); _Bikki_; in the German and Old English traditions as Sibich, Sifeca, Sifka. _Bikki_ is a name-form borrowed from Germany. The original Norse Loke-epithet is _Bekki_, which means "the foe," "the opponent". A closer examination shows that everywhere where this counsellor appears his enterprises have originally been connected with persons who belong to Borgar's race. He has wormed himself into the favour of both the contending parties--as Blind ille with King Hadding--whereof Hromund Greipson's saga has preserved a distorted record--as Bikke, Sibeke, with King Gudhorm (whose identity with Jormunrek shall be established below). As Blind bölvise he lies in waiting for and seeks to capture the young "Helge Hundingsbane," that is to say, Halfdan, Hadding's father (Helge Hund., ii.). Under his own name, Loke, he lies in waiting for and seeks to capture the young Hadding, Halfdan's son. As a cunning general and cowardly warrior he appears in the German saga-traditions, and there is every reason to assume that it is his activity in the first great war as the planner of Gudhorm's battle-line that in the Norse heathen records secured Loke the epithets _sagna hroerir_ and _sagna sviptir_, the leader of the warriors forward and the leader of the warriors back--epithets which otherwise would be both unfounded and incomprehensible, but they are found both in Thjodolf's poem Haustlaung, and in Eilif Gudrunson's Thorsdrapa. It is also a noticeable fact that while Loke in the first great battle which ends with Hadding's defeat determines the array of the victorious army--for only on this basis can the victory be attributed to him by Saxo--it is in the other great battle in which Hadding is victorious that Odin himself determines how the forces of his protégé are to be arranged, namely, in that wedge-form which after that time and for many centuries following was the sacred and strictly preserved rule for the battle-array of Teutonic forces. Thus the ancient Teutonic saga has mentioned and compared with one another two different kinds of battle-arrays--the one invented by Loke and the other invented by Odin.

During his wanderings in the forests of the East Hadding has had wonderful adventures and passed through great trials. Saxo tells one of these adventures. He and Hardgrep, Vagnhofde's daughter, came late one evening to a dwelling where they got lodgings for the night. The husband was dead, but not yet buried. For the purpose of learning Hadding's destiny, Hardgrep engraved speech-runes (see No. 70) on a piece of wood, and asked Hadding to place it under the tongue of the dead one. The latter would in this wise recover the power of speech and prophecy. So it came to pass. But what the dead one sang in an awe-inspiring voice was a curse on Hardgrep, who had compelled him to return from life in the lower world to life on earth, and a prediction that an avenging Niflheim demon would inflict punishment on her for what she had done. A following night, when Hadding and Hardgrep had sought shelter in a bower of twigs and branches which they had gathered, there appeared a gigantic hand groping under the ceiling of the bower. The frightened Hadding waked Hardgrep. She then rose in all her giant strength, seized the mysterious hand, and bade Hadding cut it off with his sword. He attempted to do this, but from the wounds he inflicted on the ghost's hand there issued matter or venom more than blood, and the hand seized Hardgrep with its iron claws and tore her into pieces (Saxo, _Hist._, 36 ff.).

When Hadding in this manner had lost his companion, he considered himself abandoned by everybody; but the one-eyed old man had not forgotten his favourite. He sent him a faithful helper, by name _Liserus_ (Saxo, _Hist._, 40). Who was _Liserus_ in our mythology?

First, as to the name itself: in the very nature of the case it must be the Latinising of some one of the mythological names or epithets that Saxo found in the Norse records. But as no such root as _lis_ or _lís_ is to be found in the old Norse language, and as Saxo interchanges the vowels _i_ and _y_,[27] we must regard _Liserus_ as a Latinising of _Lýsir_, "the shining one," "the one giving light," "the bright one." When Odin sent a helper thus described to Hadding, it must have been a person belonging to Odin's circle and subject to him. Such a person and described by a similar epithet is _hinn hvíti áss, hvítastr ása_ (Heimdal). In Saxo's account, this shining messenger is particularly to oppose Loke (_Hist._, 40). And in the myth it is the keen-sighted and faithful Heimdal who always appears as the opposite of the cunning and faithless Loke. Loke has to contend with Heimdal when the former tries to get possession of Brisingamen, and in Ragnarok the two opponents kill each other. Hadding's shining protector thus has the same part to act in the heroic saga as the whitest of the Asas in the mythology. If we now add that Heimdal is Hadding's progenitor, and on account of blood kinship owes him special protection in a war in which all the gods have taken part either for or against Halfdan's and Alveig's son, then we are forced by every consideration to regard _Liserus_ and Heimdal as identical (see further, No. 82).

[Footnote 27: Compare the double forms _Trigo_, _Thrygir_; _Ivarus_, _Yvarus_; _Sibbo_, _Sybbo_; _Siritha_, _Syritha_; _Sivardus_, _Syvardus_; _Hibernia_, _Hybernia_; _Isora_, _Ysora_.]

41.

THE WORLD WAR (_continued_). HADDING'S JOURNEY TO THE EAST. RECONCILIATION BETWEEN THE ASAS AND VANS. "THE HUN WAR." HADDING RETURNS AND CONQUERS. RECONCILIATION BETWEEN GROA'S DESCENDANTS AND ALVEIG'S. LOKE'S PUNISHMENT.

Some time later there has been a change in Hadding's affairs. He is no longer the exile wandering about in the forests, but appears once more at the head of warlike hosts. But although he accomplishes various exploits, it still appears from Saxo's narrative that it takes a long time before he becomes strong enough to meet his enemies in a decisive battle with hope of success. In the meanwhile he has succeeded in accomplishing the revenge of his father and slaying Svipdag (Saxo _Hist._, 42)--this under circumstances which I shall explain below (No. 106). The proof that the hero-saga has left a long space of time between the great battle lost by Hadding and that in which he wins a decided victory is that he, before this conflict is fought out, has slain a young grandson (son's son) of Svipdag, that is, a son of Asmund, who was Svipdag's son (Saxo, _Hist._, 46). Hadding was a mere boy when Svipdag first tried to capture him. He is a man of years when he, through decided successes on the battle-field, acquires and secures control of a great part of the domain over which his father, the Teutonic patriarch, reigned. Hence he must have spent considerable time in the place of refuge which Odin opened for him, and under the protection of that subject of Odin, called by Saxo _Liserus_.

In the time intervening important events have taken place in the world of the gods. The two clans of gods, the Asas and Vans, have become reconciled. Odin's exile lasted, according to Saxo, only ten years, and there is no reason for doubting the mythical correctness of this statement. The reconciliation must have been demanded by the dangers which their enmity caused to the administration of the world. The giants, whose purpose it is to destroy the world of man, became once more dangerous to the earth on account of the war among the gods. During this time they made a desperate effort to conquer Asgard occupied by the Vans. The memory of this expedition was preserved during the Christian centuries in the traditions concerning the great Hun war. Saxo (_Hist._, 231 ff.) refers this to _Frotho_ III.'s reign. What he relates about this _Frotho_, son of _Fridlevus_ (Njord), is for the greatest part a historicised version of the myth about the Vana-god Frey (see No. 102); and every doubt that his account of the war of the "Huns" against Frotho has its foundation in mythology, and belongs to the chain of events here discussed, vanishes when we learn that the attack of the Huns against Frotho-Frey's power happened at a time when an old prophet, by name _Uggerus_, "whose age was unknown, but exceeded every measure of human life," lived in exile, and belonged to the number of Frotho's enemies. _Uggerus_ is a Latinised form of Odin's name _Yggr_, and is the same mythic character as Saxo before introduced on the scene as "the old one-eyed man," Hadding's protector. Although he had been Frotho's enemy, the aged _Yggr_ comes to him and informs him what the "Huns" are plotting, and thus Frotho is enabled to resist their assault.[28]

When Odin, out of consideration for the common welfare of mankind and the gods, renders the Vans, who had banished him, this service, and as the latter are in the greatest need of the assistance of the mighty Asa-father and his powerful sons in the conflict with the giant world, then these facts explain sufficiently the reconciliation between the Asas and the Vans. This reconciliation was also in order on account of the bonds of kinship between them. The chief hero of the Asas, Thor, was the stepfather of Ull, the chief warrior of the Vans (Younger Edda, i. 252). The record of a friendly settlement between Thor and Ull is preserved in a paraphrase, by which Thor is described in Thorsdrapa as "_gulli Ullar_," he who with persuasive words makes Ull friendly. Odin was invited to occupy again the high-seat in Asgard, with all the prerogatives of a paterfamilias and ruler (Saxo, _Hist._, 44). But the dispute which caused the conflict between him and the Vans was at the same time manifestly settled to the advantage of the Vans. They do not assume in common the responsibility for the murder of Gulveig Angerboda. She is banished to the Ironwood, but remains there unharmed until Ragnarok, and when the destruction of the world approaches, then Njord shall leave the Asas threatened with the ruin they have themselves caused and return to the "wise Vans" (_i aldar rauc hann mun aptr coma heim med visom vaunom_--Vafthr., 39).

The "Hun war" has supplied the answer to a question, which those believing in the myths naturally would ask themselves. That question was: How did it happen that Midgard was not in historical times exposed to such attacks from the dwellers in Jotunheim as occurred in antiquity, and at that time threatened Asgard itself with destruction? The "Hun war" was in the myth characterized by the countless lives lost by the enemy. This we learn from Saxo. The sea, he says, was so filled with the bodies of the slain that boats could hardly be rowed through the waves. In the rivers their bodies formed bridges, and on land a person could make a three days' journey on horseback without seeing anything but dead bodies of the slain (_Hist._, 234, 240). And so the answer to the question was, that the "Hun war" of antiquity had so weakened the giants in number and strength that they could not become so dangerous as they had been to Asgard and Midgard formerly, that is, before the time immediately preceding Ragnarok, when a new fimbul-winter is to set in, and when the giant world shall rise again in all its ancient might. From the time of the "Hun war" and until then, Thor's hammer is able to keep the growth of the giants' race within certain limits, wherefore Thor in Harbardsljod explains his attack on giants and giantesses with _micil mundi ett iotna, ef allir lifdi, vetr mundi manna undir Mithgarthi_.

Hadding's rising star of success must be put in connection with the reconciliation between the Asas and Vans. The reconciled gods must lay aside that seed of new feuds between them which is contained in the war between Hadding, the favourite of the Asas, and Gudhorm, the favourite of the Vans. The great defeat once suffered by Hadding must be balanced by a corresponding victory, and then the contending kinsmen must be reconciled. And this happens. Hadding wins a great battle and enters upon a secure reign in his part of Teutondom. Then are tied new bonds of kinship and friendship between the hostile races, so that the Teutonic dynasties of chiefs may trace their descent both from Yngve (Svipdag) and from Borgar's son Halfdan. Hadding and a surviving grandson of Svipdag are united in so tender a devotion to one another that the latter, upon an unfounded report of the former's death, is unable to survive him and takes his own life. And when Hadding learns this, he does not care to live any longer either, but meets death voluntarily (Saxo, _Hist._, 59, 60).

After the reconciliation between the Asas and Vans they succeed in capturing Loke. Saxo relates this in connection with Odin's return from Asgard, and here calls Loke _Mitothin_. In regard to this name, we may, without entering upon difficult conjectures concerning the first part of the word, be sure that it, too, is taken by Saxo from the heathen records in which he has found his account of the first great war, and that it, in accordance with the rule for forming such epithets, must refer to a mythic person who has had a certain relation with Odin, and at the same time been his antithesis. According to Saxo, _Mitothin_ is a thoroughly evil being, who, like Aurboda, strove to disseminate the practice of witchcraft in the world and to displace Odin. He was compelled to take flight and to conceal himself from the gods. He is captured and slain, but from his dead body arises a pest, so that he does no less harm after than before his death. It therefore became necessary to open his grave, cut his head off, and pierce his breast with a sharp stick (_Hist._, 43).

These statements in regard to _Mitothin's_ death seem at first glance not to correspond very well with the mythic accounts of Loke's exit, and thus give room for doubt as to his identity with the latter. It is also clear that Saxo's narrative has been influenced by the mediæval stories about vampires and evil ghosts, and about the manner of preventing these from doing harm to the living. Nevertheless, all that he here tells, the beheading included, is founded on the mythic accounts of Loke. The place where Loke is fettered is situated in the extreme part of the hell of the wicked dead (see No. 78). The fact that he is relegated to the realm of the dead, and is there chained in a subterranean cavern until Ragnarok, when all the dead in the lower world shall return, has been a sufficient reason for Saxo to represent him as dead and buried. That he after death causes a pest corresponds with Saxo's account of _Ugarthilocus_, who has his prison in a cave under a rock situated in a sea, over which darkness broods for ever (the island _Lyngvi_ in Amsvartner's sea, where Loke's prison is--see No. 78). The hardy sea-captain, Thorkil, seeks and finds him in his cave of torture, pulls a hair from the beard on his chin, and brings it with him to Denmark. When this hair afterwards is exposed and exhibited, the awful exhalation from it causes the death of several persons standing near (_Hist._, 432, 433). When a hair from the beard of the tortured Loke ("a hair from the evil one") could produce this effect, then his whole body removed to the kingdom of death must work even greater mischief, until measures were taken to prevent it. In this connection it is to be remembered that Loke, according to the Icelandic records, is the father of the feminine demon of epidemics and diseases, of her who rules in Niflheim, the home of the spirits of disease (see No. 60), and that it is Loke's daughter who rides the three-footed steed, which appears when an epidemic breaks out (see No. 67). Thus Loke is, according to the Icelandic mythic fragments, the cause of epidemics. Lakasenna also states that he lies with a pierced body, although the weapon there is a sword, or possibly a spear (_pic a hiorvi scola binda god_--Lakas., 49). That Mitothin takes flight and conceals himself from the gods corresponds with the myth about Loke. But that which finally and conclusively confirms the identity of Loke and Mitothin is that the latter, though a thoroughly evil being and hostile to the gods, is said to have risen through the enjoyment of divine favour (_cælesti beneficio vegetatus_). Among male beings of his character this applies to Loke alone.

In regard to the statement that Loke after his removal to the kingdom of death had his head separated from his body, Saxo here relates, though in his own peculiar manner, what the myth contained about Loke's ruin, which was a logical consequence of his acts and happened long after his removal to the realm of death. Loke is slain in Ragnarok, to which he, freed from his cave of torture in the kingdom of death, proceeds at the head of the hosts of "the sons of destruction." In the midst of the conflict he seeks or is sought by his constant foe, Heimdal. The shining god, the protector of Asgard, the original patriarch and benefactor of man, contends here for the last time with the Satan of the Teutonic mythology, and Heimdal and Loke mutually slay each other (_Loki á orustu vid Heimdall, ok verdr hvârr annars bani_--Younger Edda, 192). In this duel we learn that Heimdal, who fells his foe, was himself pierced or "struck through" to death by a head (_svâ er sagt, at hann var lostinn manns höfdi i gögnum_--Younger Edda, 264; _hann var lostinn i hel med manns höfdi_--Younger Edda, 100, ed. Res). When Heimdal and Loke mutually cause each other's death, this must mean that Loke's head is that with which Heimdal is pierced after the latter has cut it off with his sword and become the bane (death) of his foe. Light is thrown on this episode by what Saxo tells about Loke's head. While the demon in chains awaits Ragnarok, his hair and beard grow in such a manner that "they in size and stiffness resemble horn-spears" (_Ugarthilocus ... cujus olentes pili tam magnitudine quam rigore corneas æquaverant hastas_--_Hist._, 431, 432). And thus it is explained how the myth could make his head act the part of a weapon. That amputated limbs continue to live and fight is a peculiarity mentioned in other mythic sagas, and should not surprise us in regard to Loke, the dragon-demon, the father of the Midgard-serpent (see further, No. 82).

[Footnote 28: _Deseruit eum_ (Hun) _quoque Uggerus vates, vir ætatis incognitæ et supra humanum terminum prolixæ; qui Frothonem transfugæ titulo petens quidquid ab Hunis parabatur edocuit_ (_Hist._, 238).]

42.

HALFDAN AND HAMAL FOSTER-BROTHERS. THE AMALIANS FIGHT IN BEHALF OF HALFDAN'S SON HADDING. HAMAL AND THE WEDGE-FORMED BATTLE-ARRAY. THE ORIGINAL MODEL OF THE BRAVALLA BATTLE.

The mythic progenitor of the Amalians, _Hamall_, has already been mentioned above as the foster-brother of the Teutonic patriarch, Halfdan (Helge Hundingsbane). According to Norse tradition, Hamal's father, _Hagall_, had been Halfdan's foster-father (Helge Hund., ii.), and thus the devoted friend of Borgar. There being so close a relation between the progenitors of these great hero-families of Teutonic mythology, it is highly improbable that the Amalians did not also act an important part in the first great world war, since all the Teutonic tribes, and consequently surely their first families of mythic origin, took part in it. In the ancient records of the North, we discover a trace which indicates that the Amalians actually did fight on that side where we should expect to find them, that is, on Hadding's, and that Hamal himself was the field-commander of his foster-brother. The trace is found in the phrase _fylkja Hamalt_, occurring in several places (Sig. Faf., ii. 23; Har. Hardr., ch. 2; Fornalds. Saga, ii. 40; Fornm., xi. 304). The phrase can only be explained in one way, "arranged the battle-array as _Hamall_ first did it." To Hamal has also been ascribed the origin of the custom of fastening the shields close together along the ship's railing, which appears from the following lines in Harald Hardrade's Saga, 63:

Hamalt syndiz mèr hömlur hildings vinir skilda.

We also learn in our Norse records that _fylkja Hamalt_, "to draw up in line of battle as Hamal did," means the same as _svinfylkja_, that is, to arrange the battalions in the form of a wedge.[29] Now Saxo relates (_Hist._, 52) that Hadding's army was the first to draw the forces up in this manner, and that an old man (Odin) whom he has taken on board on a sea-journey had taught and advised him to do this.[30] Several centuries later Odin, according to Saxo, taught this art to Harald Hildetand. But the mythology has not made Odin teach it twice. The repetition has its reason in the fact that Harald Hildetand, in one of the records accessible to Saxo, was a son of Halfdan Borgarson (_Hist._, 361; according to other records a son of Borgar himself--_Hist._, 337), and consequently a son of Hadding's father, the consequence of which is that features of Hadding's saga have been incorporated into the saga produced in a later time concerning the saga-hero Harald Hildetand. Thereby the Bravalla battle has obtained so universal and gigantic a character.

It has been turned into an arbitrarily written version of the battle which ended in Hadding's defeat. Swedes, Goths, Norsemen, Curians, and Esthonians here fight on that side which, in the original model of the battle, was represented by the hosts of Svipdag and Gudhorm; Danes (few in number, according to Saxo), Saxons (according to Saxo, the main part of the army), Livonians, and Slavs fight on the other side. The fleets and armies are immense on both sides. Shield-maids (amazons) occupy the position which in the original was held by the giantesses Hardgrep, Fenja, and Menja. In the saga description produced in Christian times the Bravalla battle is a ghost of the myth concerning the first great war. Therefore the names of several of the heroes who take part in the battle are an echo from the myth concerning the Teutonic patriarchs and the great war. There appear _Borgar_ and _Behrgar_ the wise (Borgar), _Haddir_ (Hadding), _Ruthar_ (_Hrútr_-Heimdal, see No. 28_a_), _Od_ (_Odr_, a surname of Freyja's, husband, Svipdag, see Nos. 96-98, 100, 101), _Brahi_ (_Brache_, _Asa-Bragr_, see No. 102), _Gram_ (Halfdan), and _Ingi_ (Yngve), all of which names we recognise from the patriarch saga, but which, in the manner in which they are presented in the new saga, show how arbitrarily the mythic records were treated at that time.

The myth has rightly described the wedge-shaped arrangement of the troops as an ancient custom among the Teutons. Tacitus (_Germ._, 6) says that the Teutons arranged their forces in the form of a wedge (_acies per cuneos componitur_), and Cæsar suggests the same (_De Bell. Gall._, i. 52: _Germani celeriter ex consuetudine sua phalange facta_...). Thus our knowledge of this custom as Teutonic extends back to the time before the birth of Christ. Possibly it was then already centuries old. The Aryan-Asiatic kinsmen of the Teutons had knowledge of it, and the Hindooic law-book, called Manus', ascribes to it divine sanctity and divine origin. On the geographical line which unites Teutondom with Asia it was also in vogue. According to Ælianus (_De instr. ac._, 18), the wedge-shaped array of battle was known to the Scythians and Thracians.

The statement that Harald Hildetand, son of Halfdan Borgarson, learned this arrangement of the forces from Odin many centuries after he had taught the art to Hadding, does not disprove, but on the contrary confirms, the theory that Hadding, son of Halfdan Borgarson, was not only the first but also the only one who received this instruction from the Asa-father. And as we now have side by side the two statements, that Odin gave Hadding this means of victory, and that Hamal was the first one who arranged his forces in the shape of a wedge, then it is all the more necessary to assume that these statements belong together, and that Hamal was Hadding's general, especially as we have already seen that Hadding's and Hamal's families were united by the sacred ties which connect foster-father with foster-son and foster-brother with foster-brother.

[Footnote 29: Compare the passage, _Eirikr konungr fylkti svá lidi sinu, at rani (the swine-snout) var á framan á fylkinganni, ok lukt allt útan med skjaldbjorg_, (Fornm., xi. 304), with the passage quoted in this connection: _hildingr fylkti Hamalt lidi miklu_.]

[Footnote 30: The saga of Sigurd Fafnersbane, which absorbed materials from all older sagas, has also incorporated this episode. On a sea-journey Sigurd takes on board a man who calls himself _Hnikarr_ (a name of Odin). He advises him to "_fylkja Hamalt_" (Sig. Fafn., ii. 16-23).]

43.

EVIDENCE THAT DIETERICH "OF BERN" IS HADDING. THE DIETERICH SAGA THUS HAS ITS ORIGIN IN THE MYTH CONCERNING THE WAR BETWEEN MANNUS-HALFDAN'S SONS.

The appearance of Hamal and the Amalians on Hadding's side in the great world war becomes a certainty from the fact that we discover among the descendants of the continental Teutons a great cycle of sagas, all of whose events are more or less intimately connected with the mythic kernel: that Amalian heroes with unflinching fidelity supported a prince who already in the tender years of his youth had been deprived of his share of his father's kingdom, and was obliged to take flight from the persecution of a kinsman and his assistants to the far East, where he remained a long time, until after various fortunes of war he was able to return, conquer, and take possession of his paternal inheritance. And for this he was indebted to the assistance of the brave Amalians. These are the chief points in the saga cycle about Dieterich of Bern (_thjódrekr_, _Thidrek_, _Theodericus_), and the fortunes of the young prince are, as we have thus seen, substantially the same as Hadding's.

When we compare sagas preserved by the descendants of the Teutons of the Continent with sagas handed down to us from Scandinavian sources, we must constantly bear in mind that the great revolution which the victory of Christianity over Odinism produced in the Teutonic world of thought, inasmuch as it tore down the ancient mythical structure and applied the fragments that were fit for use as material for a new saga structure--that this revolution required a period of more than eight hundred years before it had conquered the last fastnesses of the Odinic doctrine. On the one side of the slowly advancing borders between the two religions there developed and continued a changing and transformation of the old sagas, the main purpose of which was to obliterate all that contained too much flavour of heathendom and was incompatible with Christianity; while, on the other side of the borders of faith, the old mythic songs, but little affected by the tooth of time, still continued to live in their original form. Thus one might, to choose the nearest example at hand, sing on the northern side of this faith-border, where heathendom still prevailed, about how Hadding, when the persecutions of Svipdag and his half-brother Gudhorm compelled him to fly to the far East, there was protected by Odin, and how he through him received the assistance of _Hrútr-Heimdall_; while the Christians, on the south side of this border, sang of how Dieterich, persecuted by a brother and the protectors of the latter, was forced to take flight to the far East, and how he was there received by a mighty king, who, as he could no longer be Odin, must be the mightiest king in the East ever heard of--that is, Attila--and how Attila gave him as protector a certain Rüdiger, whose very name contains an echo of Ruther (Heimdal), who could not, however, be the white Asa-god, Odin's faithful servant, but must be changed into a faithful vassal and "markgrave" under Attila. The Saxons were converted to Christianity by fire and sword in the latter part of the eighth century. In the deep forests of Sweden heathendom did not yield completely to Christianity before the twelfth century. In the time of Saxo's father there were still heathen communities in Smaland on the Danish border. It follows that Saxo must have received the songs concerning the ancient Teutonic heroes in a far more original form than that in which the same songs could be found in Germany.

Hadding means "the hairy one," "the fair-haired;" Dieterich (_thjódrekr_) means "the ruler of the people," "the great ruler." Both epithets belong to one and the same saga character. Hadding is the epithet which belongs to him as a youth, before he possessed a kingdom; Dieterich is the epithet which represents him as the king of many Teutonic tribes. The Vilkinsaga says of him that he had an abundant and beautiful growth of hair, but that he never got a beard. This is sufficient to explain the name Hadding, by which he was presumably celebrated in song among all Teutonic tribes; for we have already seen that Hadding is known in Anglo-Saxon poetry as Hearding, and, as we shall see, the continental Teutons knew him not only as Dieterich, but also as Hartung. It is also possible that the name "the hairy" has in the myth had the same purport as the epithet "the fair-haired" has in the Norse account of Harald, Norway's first ruler, and that Hadding of the myth was the prototype of Harald, when the latter made the vow to let his hair grow until he was king of all Norway (Harald Harfager's Saga, 4). The custom of not cutting hair or beard before an exploit resolved upon was carried out was an ancient one among the Teutons, and so common and so sacred that it must have had foothold and prototype in the hero-saga. Tacitus mentions it (_Germania_, 31); so does Paulus Diaconus (_Hist._, iii. 7) and Gregorius of Tours (v. 15).

Although it had nearly ceased to be heard in the German saga cycle, still the name Hartung has there left traces of its existence. "Anhang des Heldenbuchs" mentions King Hartung _aus Reüssenlant_; that is to say, a King Hartung who came from some land in the East. The poem "Rosengarten" (variant D; cp. W. Grimm, _D. Heldensage_, 139, 253) also mentions Hartunc, king _von Riuzen_. A comparison of the different versions of "Rosengarten" with the poem "Dieterichs Flucht" shows that the name Hartung _von Riuzen_ in the course of time becomes Hartnit _von Riuzen_ and Hertnit _von Riuzen_, by which form of the name the hero reappears in Vilkinasaga as a king in Russia. If we unite the scattered features contained in these sources about Hartung we get the following main outlines of his saga:

(_a_) Hartung is a king and dwells in an eastern country (all the records).

(_b_) He is not, however, an independent ruler there, at least not in the beginning, but is subject to Attila (who in the Dieterich's saga has supplanted Odin as chief ruler in the East). He is Attila's man ("Dieterichs Flucht").

(_c_) A Swedish king has robbed him of his land and driven him into exile.

(_d_) The Swedish king is of the race of elves, and the chief of the same race as the celebrated Velint--that is to say, Volund (Wayland)--belonged to (Vilkinasaga). As shall be shown later (see Nos. 108, 109), Svipdag, the banisher of Hadding, belongs to the same race. He is Volund's nephew (brother's son).

(_e_) Hartung recovers, after the death of the Swedish conqueror, his own kingdom, and also conquers that of the Swedish king (Vilkinasaga).

All these features are found in the saga of Hadding. Thus the original identity of Hadding and Hartung is beyond doubt. We also find that Hartung, like Dieterich, is banished from his country; that he fled, like him, to the East; that he got, like him, Attila the king of the East as his protector; that he thereupon returned, conquered his enemies, and recovered his kingdom. Hadding's, Hartung's and Dieterich's sagas are, therefore, one and the same in root and in general outline. Below it shall also be shown that the most remarkable details are common to them all.

I have above (No. 42) given reasons why Hamal (Amala), the foster-brother of Halfdan Borgarson, was Hadding's assistant and general in the war against his foes. The hero, who in the German saga has the same place under Dieterich, is the aged "master" Hildebrand, Dieterich's faithful companion, teacher, and commander of his troops. Can it be demonstrated that what the German saga tells about Hildebrand reveals threads that connect him with the saga of the original patriarchs, and that not only his position as Dieterich's aged friend and general, but also his genealogy, refer to this saga? And can a satisfactory explanation be given of the reason why Hildebrand obtained in the German Dieterich saga the same place as Hamal had in the old myth?

Hildebrand is, as his very name shows, a Hilding,[31] like Hildeger who appears in the patriarch saga (Saxo, _Hist._, 356-359). Hildeger was, according to the tradition in Saxo, the half-brother of Halfdan Borgarson. They had the same mother _Drot_, but not the same father; Hildeger counted himself a Swede on his father's side; Halfdan, Borgar's son, considered himself as belonging to the South Scandinavians and Danes, and hence the dying Hildeger sings to Halfdan (_Hist._, 357):

Danica te tellus, me Sveticus edidit orbis. Drot tibi maternum, quondam distenderat uber; Hac genitrici tibi pariter collacteus exto.[32]

In the German tradition Hildebrand is the son of Herbrand. The Old High German fragment of the song, about Hildebrand's meeting with his son Hadubrand, calls him _Heribrantes sunu_. Herbrand again is, according to the poem "Wolfdieterich," Berchtung's son (concerning Berchtung, see No. 6). In a Norse tradition preserved by Saxo we find a Hilding (Hildeger) who is Borgar's stepson; in the German tradition we find a Hilding (Herbrand) who is Borgar-Berchtung's son. This already shows that the German saga about Hildebrand was originally connected with the patriarch saga about Borgar, Halfdan, and Halfdan's sons, and that the Hildings from the beginning were akin to the Teutonic patriarchs. Borgar's transformation from stepfather to the father of a Hilding shall be explained below.

Hildeger's saga and Hildebrand's are also related in subject matter. The fortunes of both the kinsmen are at the same time like each other and the antithesis of each other. Hildeger's character is profoundly tragic; Hildebrand is happy and secure. Hildeger complains in his death-song in Saxo (cp. Asmund Kæmpebane's saga) that he has fought with and slain his own beloved son. In the Old High German song-fragment Hildebrand seeks, after his return from the East, his son Hadubrand, who believed that his father was dead and calls Hildebrand a deceiver, who has taken the dead man's name, and forces him to fight a duel. The fragment ends before we learn the issue of the duel; but Vilkinasaga and a ballad about Hildebrand have preserved the tradition in regard to it. When the old "master" has demonstrated that his Hadubrand is not yet equal to him in arms, father and son ride side by side in peace and happiness to their home. Both the conflicts between father and son, within the Hilding family, are pendants and each other's antithesis. Hildeger, who passionately loves war and combat, inflicts in his eagerness for strife a deep wound in his own heart when he kills his own son. Hildebrand acts wisely, prudently, and seeks to ward off and allay the son's love of combat before the duel begins, and he is able to end it by pressing his young opponent to his paternal bosom. On the other hand, Hildeger's conduct toward his half-brother Halfdan, the ideal of a noble and generous enemy, and his last words to his brother, who, ignorant of the kinship, has given him the fatal wound, and whose mantle the dying one wishes to wrap himself in (Asmund Kæmpebane's saga), is one of the touching scenes in the grand poems about our earliest ancestors. It seems to have proclaimed that blood revenge was inadmissible, when a kinsman, without being aware of the kinship, slays a kinsman, and when the latter before he died declared his devotion to his slayer. At all events we rediscover the aged Hildebrand as the teacher and protector of the son of the same Halfdan who slew Hildeger, and not a word is said about blood revenge between Halfdan's and Hildeger's descendants.

The kinship pointed out between the Teutonic patriarchs and the Hildings has not, however, excluded a relation of subordination of the latter to the former. In "Wolfdieterich" Hildebrand's father receives land and fief from Dieterich's grandfather and carries his banner in war. Hildebrand himself performs toward Dieterich those duties which are due from a foster-father, which, as a rule, show a relation of subordination to the real father of the foster-son. Among the kindred families to which Dieterich and Hildebrand belong there was the same difference of rank as between those to which Hadding and Hamal belong. Hamal's father Hagal was Halfdan's foster-father, and, to judge from this, occupied the position of a subordinate friend toward Halfdan's father Borgar. Thus Halfdan and Hamal were foster-brothers, and from this it follows that Hamal, if he survived Halfdan, was bound to assume a foster-father's duties towards the latter's son Hadding, who was not yet of age. Hamal's relation to Hadding is therefore entirely analagous to Hildebrand's relation to Dieterich.

The pith of that army which attached itself to Dieterich are Amelungs, Amalians (see "Biterolf"); that is to say, members of Hamal's race. The oldest and most important hero, the pith of the pith, is old master Hildebrand himself, Dieterich's foster-father and general. Persons who in the German poems have names which refer to their Amalian birth are by Hildebrand treated as members of a clan are treated by a clan-chief. Thus Hildebrand brings from Sweden a princess, Amalgart, and gives her as wife to a son of Amelolt serving among Dieterich's Amelungs, and to Amelolt Hildebrand has already given his sister for a wife.

The question as to whether we find threads which connect the Hildebrand of the German poem with the saga of the mythic patriarchs, and especially with the Hamal (Amala) who appears in this saga, has now been answered. Master Hildebrand has in the German saga-cycle received the position and the tasks which originally belonged to Hamal, the progenitor of the Amalians.

The relation between the kindred families--the patriarch family, the Hilding family, and the Amal family--has certainly been just as distinctly pointed out in the German saga-cycle as in the Norse before the German met with a crisis, which to some extent confused the old connection. This crisis came when Hadding-_thjódrekr_ of the ancient myth was confounded with the historical king of the East Goths, Theoderich. The East Goth Theoderich counted himself as belonging to the Amal family, which had grown out of the soil of the myth. He was, according to Jordanes (_De Goth. Orig._, 14), a son of Thiudemer, who traced his ancestry to Amal (Hamal), son of Augis (Hagal).[33] The result of the confusion was:

(_a_) That Hadding-_thjódrekr_ became the son of Thiudemer, and that his descent from the Teuton patriarchs was cut off.

(_b_) That Hadding-_thjódrekr_ himself became a descendant of Hamal, whereby the distinction between this race of rulers--the line of Teutonic patriarchs begun with Ruther Heimdal--together with the Amal family, friendly but subject to the Hadding family, and the Hilding family was partly obscured and partly abolished. Dieterich himself became an "Amelung" like several of his heroes.

(_c_) That when Hamal thus was changed from an elder contemporary of Hadding-_thjódrekr_ into his earliest progenitor, separated from him by several generations of time, he could no longer serve as Dieterich's foster-father and general; but this vocation had to be transferred to master Hildebrand, who also in the myth must have been closely connected with Hadding, and, together with Hamal, one of his chief and constant helpers.

(_d_) That Borgar-Berchtung, who in the myth is the grandfather of Hadding-_thjódrekr_, must, as he was not an Amal, resign this dignity and confine himself to being the progenitor of the Hildings. As we have seen, he is in Saxo the progenitor of the Hilding Hildeger.

Another result of Hadding-_thjódrekr's_ confusion with the historical Theoderich was that Dieterich's kingdom, and the scene of various of his exploits, was transferred to Italy: to Verona (Bern), Ravenna (Raben), &c. Still the strong stream of the ancient myths became master of the confused historical increments, so that the Dieterich of the saga has but little in common with the historical Theoderich.

After the dissemination of Christianity, the hero saga of the Teutonic myths was cut off from its roots in the mythology, and hence this confusion was natural and necessary. Popular tradition, in which traces were found of the historical Theoderich-Dieterich, was no longer able to distinguish the one Dieterich from the other. A writer acquainted with the chronicle of Jordanes took the last step and made Theoderich's father Thiudemer the father of the mythic Hadding-_thjódrekr_.

Nor did the similarity of names alone encourage this blending of the persons. There was also another reason. The historical Theoderich had fought against Odoacer. The mythic Hadding-_thjódrekr_ had warred with Svipdag, the husband of Freyja, who also bore the name _Ódr_ and _Ottar_ (see Nos. 96-100). The latter name-form corresponds to the English and German _Otter_, the Old High German _Otar_, a name which suggested the historical _Otacher_ (Odoacer). The Dieterich and Otacher of historical traditions became identified with _thjódrekr_ and _Ottar_ of mythical traditions.

As the Hadding-_thjódrekr_ of mythology was in his tender youth exposed to the persecutions of Ottar, and had to take flight from them to the far East, so the Dieterich of the historical saga also had to suffer persecutions in his tender youth from Otacher, and take flight, accompanied by his faithful Amalians, to a kingdom in the East. Accordingly, Hadubrand says of his father Hildebrand, that, when he betook himself to the East with Dieterich, _floh her Otachres nîd_, "he fled from Otacher's hate." Therefore, Otacher soon disappears from the German saga-cycle, for Svipdag-Ottar perishes and disappears in the myth, long before Hadding's victory and restoration to his father's power (see No. 106).

Odin and Heimdal, who then, according to the myth, dwelt in the East and there became the protectors of Hadding, must, as heathen deities, be removed from the Christian saga, and be replaced as best they could by others. The famous ruler in the East, Attila, was better suited than anyone else to take Odin's place, though Attila was dead before Theoderich was born. Ruther-Heimdal was, as we have already seen, changed into Rüdiger.

The myth made Hadding dwell in the East for many years (see above). The ten-year rule of the Vans in Asgard must end, and many other events must occur before the epic connection of the myths permitted Hadding to return as a victor. As a result of this, the saga of "Dieterich of Bern" also lets him remain a long time with Attila. An old English song preserved in the Exeter manuscript, makes _Theodric_ remain _thrittig wintra_ in exile at Mæringaburg. The song about Hildebrand and Hadubrand make him remain in exile _sumarô enti wintro sehstic_, and Vilkinasaga makes him sojourn in the East thirty-two years.

Mæringaburg of the Anglo-Saxon poem is the refuge which Odin opened for his favourite, and where the former dwelt during his exile in the East. Mæringaburg means a citadel inhabited by noble, honoured, and splendid persons: compare the Old Norse _mæringr_. But the original meaning of _mærr_, Old German _mâra_, is "glittering," "shining," "pure," and it is possible that, before _mæringr_ received its general signification of a famous, honoured, noble man, it was used in the more special sense of a man descended from "the shining one," that is to say, from Heimdal through Borgar. However this may be, these "mæringar" have, in the Anglo-Saxon version of the Hadding saga, had their antitheses in the "baningar," that is, the men of Loke-Bicke (Bekki). This appears from the expression _Bekka veóld Baningum_, in Codex Exoniensis. The Banings are no more than the Mærings, an historical name. The interpretation of the word is to be sought in the Anglo-Saxon _bana_, the English _bane_. The Banings means "the destroyers," "the corrupters," a suitable appellation of those who follow the source of pest, the all-corrupting Loke. In the German poems, Mæringaburg is changed to Meran, and Borgar-Berchtung (Hadding's grandfather in the myth) is Duke of Meran. It is his fathers who have gone to the gods that Hadding finds again with Odin and Heimdal in the East.

Despite the confusion of the historical Theoderich with the mythic Hadding-_thjódrekr_, a tradition has been handed down within the German saga-cycle to the effect that "Dieterich of Bern" belonged to a genealogy which Christianity had anathematised. Two of the German Dieterich poems, "Nibelunge Noth" and "Klage," refrain from mentioning the ancestors of their hero. Wilhelm Grimm suspects that the reason for this is that the authors of these poems knew something about Dieterich's descent, which they could not relate without wounding Christian ears; and he reminds us that, when the Vilkinasaga Thidrek (Dieterich) teases Högne (Hagen) by calling him the son of an elf, Högne answers that Thidrek has a still worse descent, as he is the son of the devil himself. The matter, which in Grimm's eyes is mystical, is explained by the fact that Hadding-_thjódrekr's_ father in the myth, Halfdan Borgarson, was supposed to be descended from Thor, and in his capacity of a Teutonic patriarch he had received divine worship (see Nos. 23 and 30). _Anhang des Heldenbuchs_ says that Dieterich was the son of a "böser geyst."

It has already been stated (No. 38) that Hadding from Odin received a drink which exercised a wonderful influence upon his physical nature. It made him _recreatum vegetiori corporis firmitate_, and, thanks to it and to the incantation sung over him by Odin, he was able to free himself from the chains afterwards put on him by Loke. It has also been pointed out that this drink contained something called Leifner's or Leifin's flames. There is every reason for assuming that these "flames" had the effect of enabling the person who had partaken of the potion of Leifner's flames to free himself from his chains with his own breath. Groa (Groagalder, 10) gives her son Svipdag "Leifner's fires" in order that if he is chained, his enchanted limbs may be liberated (_ek læt ther Leifnis elda fyr kvedinn legg_). The record of the giving of this gift to Hadding meets us in the German saga, in the form that Dieterich was able with his breath to burn the fetters laid upon him (see "Laurin"), nay, when he became angry, he could breathe fire and make the cuirass of his opponent red-hot. The tradition that Hadding by eating, on the advice of Odin, the heart of a wild beast (Saxo says of a lion) gained extraordinary strength, is also preserved in the form, that when Dieterich was in distress, God sent him _eines löwen krafft von herczenlichen zoren_ ("Ecken Ausfarth").

Saxo relates that Hadding on one occasion was invited to descend into the lower world and see its strange things (see No. 47). The heathen lower world, with its fields of bliss and places of torture, became in the Christian mind synonymous with hell. Hadding's descent to the lower world, together with the mythic account of his journey through the air on Odin's horse Sleipner, were remembered in Christian times in the form that he once on a black diabolical horse rode to hell. This explains the remarkable _dénouement_ of the Dieterich saga; namely, that he, the magnanimous and celebrated hero, was captured by the devil. Otto of Friesingen (first half of the twelfth century) states that _Theodoricus vivus equo sedens ad inferos descendit_. The Kaiser chronicle says that "many saw that the devils took Dieterich and carried him into the mountain to Vulcan."

In Saxo we read that Hadding once while bathing had an adventure which threatened him with the most direful revenge from the gods (see No. 106). Manuscripts of the Vilkinasaga speak of a fateful bath which Thidrek took, and connects it with his journey to hell. While the hero was bathing there came a black horse, the largest and stateliest ever seen. The king wrapped himself in his bath towel and mounted the horse. He found, too late, that the steed was the devil, and he disappeared for ever.

Saxo tells that Hadding made war on a King Handuanus, who had concealed his treasures in the bottom of a lake, and who was obliged to ransom his life with a golden treasure of the same weight as his body (_Hist._. 41, 42, 67). Handuanus is a Latinised form of the dwarf name _Andvanr, Andvani_. The Sigurd saga has a record of this event, and calls the dwarf _Andvari_ (Sig. Fafn., ii.). The German saga is also able to tell of a war which Dieterich waged against a dwarf king. The war has furnished the materials for the saga of "Laurin." Here, too, the conquered dwarf-king's life is spared, and Dieterich gets possession of many of his treasures.

In the German as in the Norse saga, Hadding-_thjódrekr's_ rival to secure the crown was his brother, supported by _Otacher-Ottar_ (Svipdag). The tradition in regard to this, which agrees with the myth, was known to the author of _Anhang des Heldenbuchs_. But already in an early day the brother was changed into uncle on account of the intermixing of historical reminiscences.

The brother's name in the Norse tradition is _Gudhormr_, in the German _Ermenrich_ (_Ermanaricus_). _Ermenrich Jörmunrekr_ means, like _thjódrekr_, a ruler over many people, a great king. Jordanes already has confounded the mythic _Jörmunrekr-Gudhormr_ with the historical Gothic King _Hermanaricus_, whose kingdom was destroyed by the Huns, and has applied to him the saga of Svanhild and her brothers _Sarus_ (_Sörli_) and _Ammius_ (_Hamdir_), a saga which originally was connected with that of the mythic _Jörmunrek_. The Sigurd epic, which expanded with plunder from all sources, has added to the confusion by annexing this saga.

In the Roman authors the form _Herminones_ is found by the side of _Hermiones_ as the name of one of the three Teutonic tribes which descended from Mannus. It is possible, as already indicated, that _-horm_ in _Gudhorm_ is connected with the form _Hermio_, and it is probable, as already pointed out by several linguists, that the Teutonic _irmin_ (_jörmun_, Goth. _airmana_) is linguistically connected with the word _Hermino_. In that case, the very names _Gudhormr_ and _Jörmunrekr_ already point as such to the mythic progenitor of the Hermiones, Herminones, just as Yngve-Svipdag's name points to the progenitor of the _Ingvæones_ (Ingævones), and possibly also Hadding's to that of the Istævones (see No. 25). To the name Hadding corresponds, as already shown, the Anglo-Saxon Hearding, the old German Hartung. The _Hasdingi_ (_Asdingi_) mentioned by Jordanes were the chief warriors of the Vandals (_Goth. Orig._, 22), and there may be a mythic reason for rediscovering this family name among an East Teutonic tribe (the Vandals), since Hadding, according to the myth, had his support among the East Teutonic tribes. To the form _Hasdingi_ (Goth. _Hazdiggós_) the words _istævones_, _istvæones_, might readily enough correspond, provided the vowel _i_ in the Latin form can be harmonised with _a_ in the Teutonic. That the vowel _i_ was an uncertain element may be seen from the genealogy in Codex La Cava, which calls Istævo _Ostius_, _Hostius_.

As to geography, both the Roman and Teutonic records agree that the northern Teutonic tribes were Ingævones. In the myths they are Scandinavians and neighbours to the Ingævones. In the Beowulf poem the king of the Danes is called _eodor Inguina_, the protection of the Ingævones, and _freâ Inguina_, the lord of the Ingævones. Tacitus says that they live nearest to the ocean (_Germ._, 2); Pliny says that Cimbrians, Teutons, and Chaucians were Ingævones (_Hist. Nat._, iv. 28). Pomponius Mela says that the land of the Cimbrians and Teutons was washed by the Codan bay (iii. 3). As to the Hermiones and Istævones, the former dwelt along the middle Rhine, and of the latter, who are the East Teutons of mythology, several tribes had already before the time of Pliny pressed forward south of the Hermiones to this river.

The German saga-cycle has preserved the tradition that in the first great battle in which Hadding-_thjódrekr_ measured his strength with the North and West Teutons he suffered a great defeat. This is openly avowed in the Dieterich poem "die Klage." Those poems, on the other hand, which out of sympathy for their hero give him victory in this battle ("the Raben battle") nevertheless in fact acknowledge that such was not the case, for they make him return to the East after the battle and remain there many years, robbed of his crown, before he makes his second and successful attempt to regain his kingdom. Thus the "Raben battle" corresponds to the mythic battle in which Hadding is defeated by Ingævones and Hermiones. Besides the "Raben battle" has from a Teutonic standpoint a trait of universality, and the German tradition has upon the whole faithfully, and in harmony with the myth, grouped the allies and heroes of the hostile brothers. Dieterich is supported by East Teutonic warriors, and by non-Teutonic people from the East--from Poland, Wallachia, Russia, Greece, &c.; Ermenrich, on the other hand, by chiefs from Thuringia, Swabia, Hessen, Saxony, the Netherlands, England, and the North, and, above all, by the Burgundians, who in the genealogy in the St. Gaelen Codex are counted among the Hermiones, and in the genealogy in the La Cava Codex are counted with the Ingævones. For the mythic descent of the Burgundian dynasty from an uncle of Svipdag I shall present evidence in my chapters on the Ivalde race.

The original identity of Hadding's and Dieterich's sagas, and their descent from the myth concerning the earliest antiquity and the patriarchs, I now regard as demonstrated and established. The war between Hadding-Dieterich and Gudhorm-Ermenrich is identical with the conflict begun by Yngve-Svipdag between the tribes of the Ingævones, Hermiones, and Istævones. It has also been demonstrated that Halfdan, Gudhorm's, and Hadding's father, and Yngve-Svipdag's stepfather, is identical with Mannus. One of the results of this investigation is, therefore, that _the songs about Mannus and his sons, ancient already in the days of Tacitus, have, more or less influenced by the centuries, continued to live far down in the middle ages, and that, not the songs themselves, but the main features of their contents, have been preserved to our time_, and should again be incorporated in our mythology together with the myth in regard to the primeval time, the main outline of which has been restored, and the final episode of which is the first great war in the world.

The Norse-Icelandic school, which accepted and developed the learned hypothesis of the middle age in regard to the immigration of Odin and his Asiamen, is to blame that the myth, in many respects important, in regard to the olden time and its events in the world of gods and men--among Aryan myths one of the most important, either from a scientific or poetic point of view, that could be handed down to our time--was thrust aside and forgotten. The learned hypothesis and the ancient myth could not be harmonised. For that reason the latter had to yield. Nor was there anything in this myth that particularly appealed to the Norse national feeling, and so could claim mercy. Norway is not at all named in it. Scania, Denmark, Svithiod (Sweden), and continental Teutondom are the scene of the mythic events. Among the many causes co-operating in Christian times, in giving what is now called "Norse mythology" its present character, there is not one which has contributed so much as the rejection of this myth toward giving "Norse mythology" the stamp which it hitherto has borne of a narrow, illiberal town mythology, which, built chiefly on the foundation of the Younger Edda, is, as shall be shown in the present work, in many respects a caricature of the real Norse, and at the same time in its main outlines Teutonic, mythology.

In regard to the ancient Aryan elements in the myth here presented, see Nos. 82 and 111.

[Footnote 31: In nearly all the names of members of this family, Hild- or -brand, appears as a part of the compound word. All that the names appear to signify is that their owners belong to the Hilding race. Examples:--

_Old High German fragment._ Herbrand - Hildebrand - Hadubrand. _Wolfdieterich_ Berchtung. - Herbrand - Hildebrand. _Vilkinasaga._ Hildebrand. - Alebrand. _A popular song about Hildebrand._ Hildebrand. - The younger Hildebrand. / Hildir. _Fundin Noregur._ Hildir. - Hildebrand. \ Herbrand. / Hildir. _Flateybook, i. 25,_ Hildir. - Hildebrand. - Vigbrand. \ Herbrand. _Asmund Kæmpebane's Saga._ Hildebrand. - Helge. - Hildebrand. ]

[Footnote 32: Compare in Asmund Kæmpebane's saga the words of the dying hero:

_thik Drott of bar af Danmorku en mik sjálfan á Svithiodu._ ]

[Footnote 33: The texts of Jordanes often omit the aspirate and write Eruli for Heruli, &c. In regard to the name-form Amal, Closs remarks, in his edition of 1886: AMAL, _sic, Ambr. cum Epit. et Pall, nisi quod hi Hamal aspirate_.]

IV.

THE MYTH IN REGARD TO THE LOWER WORLD.

44.

MIDDLE AGE SAGAS WITH ROOTS IN THE MYTH CONCERNING THE LOWER WORLD. ERIK VIDFORLE'S SAGA.

Far down in Christian times there prevailed among the Scandinavians the idea that their heathen ancestors had believed in the existence of a place of joy, from which sorrow, pain, blemishes, age, sickness, and death were excluded. This place of joy was called _Ódáinsakr_, the-acre-of-the-not-dead, _Jörd lifanda manna_, the earth of living men. It was situated not in heaven but below, either on the surface of the earth or in the lower world, but it was separated from the lands inhabited by men in such a manner that it was not impossible, but nevertheless exceeding perilous, to get there.

A saga from the fourteenth century incorporated in Flateybook, and with a few textual modifications in Fornald. Saga, iii., tells the following:

Erik, the son of a petty Norse king, one Christmas Eve, made the vow to seek out Odainsaker, and the fame of it spread over all Norway. In company with a Danish prince, who also was named Erik, he betook himself first to Miklagard (Constantinople), where the king engaged the young men in his service, and was greatly benefited by their warlike skill. One day the king talked with the Norwegian Erik about religion, and the result was that the latter surrendered the faith of his ancestors and accepted baptism. He told his royal teacher of the vow he had taken to find Odainsaker,--"_frá honum heyrdi vèr sagt a voru landi_,"--and asked him if he knew where it was situated. The king believed that Odainsaker was identical with Paradise, and said it lies in the East beyond the farthest boundaries of India, but that no one was able to get there because it was enclosed by a fire-wall, which aspires to heaven itself. Still Erik was bound by his vow, and with his Danish namesake he set out on his journey, after the king had instructed them as well as he was able in regard to the way, and had given them a letter of recommendation to the authorities and princes through whose territories they had to pass. They travelled through Syria and the immense and wonderful India, and came to a dark country where the stars are seen all day long. After having traversed its deep forests, they saw when it began to grow light a river, over which there was a vaulted stone bridge. On the other side of the river there was a plain, from which came sweet fragrance. Erik conjectured that the river was the one called by the king in Miklagard Pison, and which rises in Paradise. On the stone bridge lay a dragon with wide open mouth. The Danish prince advised that they return, for he considered it impossible to conquer the dragon or to pass it. But the Norwegian Erik seized one of his men by one hand, and rushed with his sword in the other against the dragon. They were seen to vanish between the jaws of the monster. With the other companions the Danish prince then returned by the same route as he had come, and after many years he got back to his native land.

When Erik and his fellow-countryman had been swallowed by the dragon, they thought themselves enveloped in smoke; but it was scattered, and they were unharmed, and saw before them the great plain lit up by the sun and covered with flowers. There flowed rivers of honey, the air was still, but just above the ground were felt breezes that conveyed the fragrance of the flowers. It is never dark in this country, and objects cast no shadow. Both the adventurers went far into the country in order to find, if possible, inhabited parts. But the country seemed to be uninhabited. Still they discovered a tower in the distance. They continued to travel in that direction, and on coming nearer they found that the tower was suspended in the air, without foundation or pillars. A ladder led up to it. Within the tower there was a room, carpeted with velvet, and there stood a beautiful table with delicious food in silver dishes, and wine in golden goblets. There were also splendid beds. Both the men were now convinced that they had come to Odainsaker, and they thanked God that they had reached their destination. They refreshed themselves and laid themselves to sleep. While Erik slept there came to him a beautiful lad, who called him by name, and said he was one of the angels who guarded the gates of Paradise, and also Erik's guardian angel, who had been at his side when he vowed to go in search of Odainsaker. He asked whether Erik wished to remain where he now was or to return home. Erik wished to return to report what he had seen. The angel informed him that Odainsaker, or _jörd lifanda manna_, where he now was, was not the same place as Paradise, for to the latter only spirits could come, and the land of spirits, Paradise, was so glorious that, in comparison, Odainsaker seemed like a desert. Still, these two regions are on each other's borders, and the river which Erik had seen has its source in Paradise. The angel permitted the two travellers to remain in Odainsaker for six days to rest themselves. Then they returned by way of Miklagard to Norway, and there Erik was called _vid-förli_, the far-travelled.

In regard to Erik's genealogy, the saga states (Fornald. Saga, iii. 519) that his father's name was Thrand, that his aunt (mother's sister) was a certain Svanhvit, and that he belonged to the race of Thjasse's daughter Skade. Further on in the domain of the real myth, we shall discover an Erik who belongs to Thjasse's family, and whose mother is a swan-maid (goddess of growth). This latter Erik also succeeded in seeing Odainsaker (see Nos. 102, 103).

45.

MIDDLE AGE SAGAS (_continued_). ICELANDIC SOURCES IN REGARD TO GUDMUND, KING ON THE GLITTERING PLAINS.

In the saga of Hervor, Odainsaker is mentioned, and there without any visible addition of Christian elements. Gudmund (_Godmundr_) was the name of a king in Jotunheim. His home was called _Grund_, but the district in which it was situated was called the Glittering Plains (_Glæsisvellir_). He was wise and mighty, and in a heathen sense pious, and he and his men became so old that they lived many generations. Therefore, the story continues, the heathens believed that Odainsaker was situated in his country. "That place (Odainsaker) is for everyone who comes there so healthy that sickness and age depart, and no one ever dies there."

According to the saga-author, Jotunheim is situated north from Halogaland, along the shores of Gandvik. The wise and mighty Gudmund died after he had lived half a thousand years. After his death the people worshipped him as a god, and offered sacrifices to him.

The same Gudmund is mentioned in Herrod's and Bose's saga as a ruler of the Glittering Plains, who was very skilful in the magic arts. The Glittering Plains are here said to be situated near Bjarmaland, just as in Thorstein Bæarmagn's saga, in which king Gudmund's kingdom, Glittering Plains, is a country tributary to Jotunheim, whose ruler is Geirrod.

In the history of Olaf Trygveson, as it is given in Flateybook, the following episode is incorporated. The Northman Helge Thoreson was sent on a commercial journey to the far North on the coast of Finmark, but he got lost in a great forest. There he met twelve red-clad young maidens on horseback, and the horses' trappings shone like gold. The chief one of the maidens was Ingeborg, the daughter of Gudmund on the Glittering Plains. The young maidens raised a splendid tent and set a table with dishes of silver and gold. Helge was invited to remain, and he stayed three days with Ingeborg. Then Gudmund's daughters got ready to leave; but before they parted Helge received from Ingeborg two chests full of gold and silver. With these he returned to his father, but mentioned to nobody how he had obtained them. The next Yule night there came a great storm, during which two men carried Helge away, none knew whither. His sorrowing father reported this to Olaf Trygveson. The year passed. Then it happened at Yule that Helge came in to the king in the hall, and with him two strangers, who handed Olaf two gold-plated horns. They said they were gifts from Gudmund on the Glittering Plains. Olaf filled the horns with good drink and handed them to the messengers. Meanwhile he had commanded the bishop who was present to bless the drink. The result was that the heathen beings, who were Gudmund's messengers, cast the horns away, and at the same time there was great noise and confusion in the hall. The fire was extinguished, and Gudmund's men disappeared with Helge, after having slain three of King Olaf's men. Another year passed. Then there came to the king two men, who brought Helge with them, and disappeared again. Helge was at that time blind. The king asked him many questions, and Helge explained that he had spent most happy days at Gudmund's; but King Olaf's prayers had at length made it difficult for Gudmund and his daughter to retain him, and before his departure Ingeborg picked his eyes out, in order that Norway's daughters should not fall in love with them. With his gifts Gudmund had intended to deceive King Olaf; but upon the whole Helge had nothing but good to report about this heathen.

46.

MIDDLE AGE SAGAS (_continued_). SAXO CONCERNING THIS SAME GUDMUND, RULER OF THE LOWER WORLD.

Saxo, the Danish historian, also knows Gudmund. He relates (_Hist. Dan._, viii.) that King Gorm had resolved to find a mysterious country in regard to which there were many reports in the North. Incredible treasures were preserved in that land. A certain Geruthus, known in the traditions, dwelt there, but the way thither was full of dangers and well-nigh inaccessible for mortals. They who had any knowledge of the situation of the land insisted that it was necessary to sail across the ocean surrounding the earth, leave sun and stars behind, and make a journey _sub Chao_, before reaching the land which is deprived of the light of day, and over whose mountains and valleys darkness broods. First there was a perilous voyage to be made, and then a journey in the lower world. With the experienced sailor Thorkillus as his guide, King Gorm left Denmark with three ships and a numerous company, sailed past Halogaland, and came, after strange adventures on his way, to Bjarmaland, situated beyond the known land of the same name, and anchored near its coast. In this _Bjarmia ulterior_ it is always cold; to its snow-clad fields there comes no summer warmth, through its deep wild forests flow rapid foaming rivers which well forth from the rocky recesses, and the woods are full of wild beasts, the like of which are unknown elsewhere. The inhabitants are monsters with whom it is dangerous for strangers to enter into conversation, for from unconsidered words they get power to do harm. Therefore Thorkillus was to do the talking alone for all his companions. The place for anchoring he had chosen in such a manner that they thence had the shortest journey to Geruthus. In the evening twilight the travellers saw a man of unusual size coming to meet them, and to their joy he greeted them by name. Thorkillus informed them that they should regard the coming of this man as a good omen, for he was the brother of Geruthus, Guthmundus, a friendly person and the most faithful protector in peril. When Thorkillus had explained the perpetual silence of his companions by saying that they were too bashful to enter into conversation with one whose language they did not understand, Guthmundus invited them to be his guests and led them by paths down along a river. Then they came to a place where a golden bridge was built across the river. The Danes felt a desire to cross the bridge and visit the land on the other side, but Guthmundus warned them that nature with the bed of this stream has drawn a line between the human and superhuman and mysterious, and that the ground on the other side was by a sacred order proclaimed unlawful for the feet of mortals.[34] They therefore continued the march on that side of the river on which they had hitherto gone, and so came to the mysterious dwelling of Guthmundus, where a feast was spread before them, at which twelve of his sons, all of noble appearance, and as many daughters, most fair of face, waited upon them.

But the feast was a peculiar one. The Danes heeded the advice of Thorkillus not to come into too close contact with their strange table-companions or the servants, and instead of tasting the courses presented of food and drink, they ate and drank of the provisions they had taken with them from home. This they did because Thorkillus knew that mortals who accept the courtesies here offered them lose all memory of the past and remain for ever among "these non-human and dismal beings." Danger threatened even those who were weak in reference to the enticing loveliness of the daughters of Guthmundus. He offered King Gorm a daughter in marriage. Gorm himself was prudent enough to decline the honour; but four of his men could not resist the temptation, and had to pay the penalty with the loss of their memory and with enfeebled minds.

One more trial awaited them. Guthmundus mentioned to the king that he had a villa, and invited Gorm to accompany him thither and taste of the delicious fruits. Thorkillus, who had a talent for inventing excuses, now found one for the king's lips. The host, though displeased with the reserve of the guests, still continued to show them friendliness, and when they expressed their desire to see the domain of Geruthus, he accompanied them all to the river, conducted them across it, and promised to wait there until they returned.

The land which they now entered was the home of terrors. They had not gone very far before they discovered before them a city, which seemed to be built of dark mists. Human heads were raised on stakes which surrounded the bulwarks of the city. Wild dogs, whose rage Thorkillus, however, knew how to calm, kept watch outside of the gates. The gates were located high up in the bulwark, and it was necessary to climb up on ladders in order to get to them. Within the city was a crowd of beings horrible to look at and to hear, and filth and rottenness and a terrible stench were everywhere. Further in was a sort of mountain-fastness. When they had reached its entrance the travellers were overpowered by its awful aspect, but Thorkillus inspired them with courage. At the same time he warned them most strictly not to touch any of the treasures that might entice their eyes. All that sight and soul can conceive as terrible and loathsome was gathered within this rocky citadel. The door-frames were covered with the soot of centuries, the walls were draped with filth, the roofs were composed of sharp stings, the floors were made of serpents encased in foulness. At the thresholds crowds of monsters acted as doorkeepers and were very noisy. On iron benches, surrounded by a hurdle-work of lead, there lay giant monsters which looked like lifeless images. Higher up in a rocky niche sat the aged Geruthus, with his body pierced and nailed to the rock, and there lay also three women with their backs broken. Thorkillus explained that it was this Geruthus whom the god Thor had pierced with a red-hot iron; the women had also received their punishment from the same god.

When the travellers left these places of punishment they came to a place where they saw cisterns of mead (_dolia_) in great numbers. These were plated with seven sheets of gold, and above them hung objects of silver, round as to form, from which shot numerous braids down into the cisterns. Near by was found a gold-plated tooth of some strange animal, and near it, again, there lay an immense horn decorated with pictures and flashing with precious stones, and also an arm-ring of great size. Despite the warnings, three of Gorm's men laid greedy hands on these works of art. But the greed got its reward. The arm-ring changed into a venomous serpent; the horn into a dragon, which killed their robbers; the tooth became a sword, which pierced the heart of him who bore it. The others who witnessed the fate of their comrades expected that they too, although innocent, should meet with some misfortune. But their anxiety seemed unfounded, and when they looked about them again they found the entrance to another treasury, which contained a wealth of immense weapons, among which was kept a royal mantle, together with a splendid head-gear and a belt, the finest work of art. Thorkillus himself could not govern his greed when he saw these robes. He took hold of the mantle, and thus gave the signal to the others to plunder. But then the building shook in its foundations; the voices of shrieking women were heard, who asked if these robbers were longer to be tolerated; beings which hitherto had been lying as if half-dead or lifeless started up and joined other spectres who attacked the Danes. The latter would all have lost their lives had not their retreat been covered by two excellent archers whom Gorm had with him. But of the men, nearly three hundred in number, with whom the king had ventured into this part of the lower world, there remained only twenty when they finally reached the river, where Guthmundus, true to his promise, was waiting for them, and carried them in a boat to his own domain. Here he proposed to them that they should remain, but as he could not persuade them, he gave them presents and let them return to their ships in safety the same way as they had come.

[Footnote 34: Cujus transeundi cupidos revocavit, docens, eo alveo humana a monstrosis rerum secrevisse naturam, nec mortalibus ultra fas esse vestigiis.]

47.

MIDDLE AGE SAGAS (_continued_). FJALLERUS AND HADINGUS (HADDING) IN THE LOWER WORLD.

Two other Danish princes have, according to Saxo, been permitted to see a subterranean world, or Odainsaker. Saxo calls the one Fjallerus, and makes him a sub-regent in Scania. The question who this Fjallerus was in the mythology is discussed in another part of this work (see No. 92). According to Saxo he was banished from the realm by King Amlethus, the son of Horvendillus, and so retired to Undensakre (Odainsaker), "a place which is unknown to our people" (_Hist. Dan._ iv.).

The other of these two is King Hadingus (_Hist. Dan._, i.), the above-mentioned Hadding, son of Halfdan. One winter's day, while Hadding sat at the hearth, there rose out of the ground the form of a woman, who had her lap full of cowbanes, and showed them as if she was about to ask whether the king would like to see that part of the world where, in the midst of winter, so fresh flowers could bloom. Hadding desired this. Then she wrapped him in her mantle and carried him away down into the lower world. "The gods of the lower world," says Saxo, "must have determined that he should be transferred living to those places, which are not to be sought until after death." In the beginning the journey was through a territory wrapped in darkness, fogs, and mists. Then Hadding perceived that they proceeded along a path "which is daily trod by the feet of walkers." The path led to a river, in whose rapids spears and other weapons were tossed about, and over which there was a bridge. Before reaching this river Hadding had seen from the path he travelled a region in which "a few" or "certain" (_quidam_), but very noble beings (_proceres_) were walking, dressed in beautiful frocks and purple mantles. Thence the woman brought him to a plain which glittered as in sunshine (_loca aprica_, translation of "The Glittering Plains"), and there grew the plants which she had shown him. This was one side of the river. On the other side there was bustle and activity. There Hadding saw two armies engaged in battle. They were, his fair guide explained to him, the souls of warriors who had fallen in battle, and now imitated the sword-games they had played on earth. Continuing their journey, they reached a place surrounded by a wall, which was difficult to pass through or to surmount. Nor did the woman make any effort to enter there, either alone or with him: "It would not have been possible for the smallest or thinnest physical being." They therefore returned the way they had come. But before this, and while they stood near the wall, the woman demonstrated to Hadding by an experiment that the walled place had a strange nature. She jerked the head off a chicken which she had taken with her, and threw it over the wall, but the head came back to the neck of the chicken, and with a distinct crow it announced "that it had regained its life and breath."

48.

MIDDLE AGE SAGAS (_continued_). A FRISIAN SAGA IN ADAM OF BREMEN.

The series of traditions above narrated in regard to Odainsaker, the Glittering Plains, and their ruler Gudmund, and also in regard to the neighbouring domains as habitations of the souls of the dead, extends, so far as the age of their recording in writing is concerned, through a period of considerable length. The latest cannot be referred to an earlier date than the fourteenth century; the oldest were put in writing toward the close of the twelfth. Saxo began working on his history between the years 1179 and 1186. Thus these literary evidences span about two centuries, and stop near the threshold of heathendom. The generation to which Saxo's father belonged witnessed the crusade which Sigurd the Crusader made in Eastern Smaland, in whose forests the Asa-doctrine until that time seems to have prevailed, and the Odinic religion is believed to have flourished in the more remote parts of Sweden even in Saxo's own time.

We must still add to this series of documents one which is to carry it back another century, and even more. This document is a saga told by Adam of Bremen in _De Situ Daniæ_. Adam, or, perhaps, before him, his authority Adalbert (appointed archbishop in the year 1043), has turned the saga into history, and made it as credible as possible by excluding all distinctly mythical elements. And as it, doubtless for this reason, neither mentions a place which can be compared with Odainsaker or with the Glittering Plains, I have omitted it among the literary evidences above quoted. Nevertheless, it reminds us in its main features of Saxo's account of Gorm's journey of discovery, and its relation both to it and to the still older myth shall be shown later (see No. 94). In the form in which Adam heard the saga, its point of departure has been located in Friesland, not in Denmark. Frisian noblemen make a voyage past Norway up to the farthest limits of the Arctic Ocean, get into a darkness which the eyes scarcely can penetrate, are exposed to a maelstrom which threatens to drag them down _ad Chaos_, but finally come quite unexpectedly out of darkness and cold to an island which, surrounded as by a wall of high rocks, contains subterranean caverns, wherein giants lie concealed. At the entrances of the underground dwellings lay a great number of tubs and vessels of gold and other metals which "to mortals seem rare and valuable." As much as the adventurers could carry of these treasures they took with them and hastened to their ships. But the giants, represented by great dogs, rushed after them. One of the Frisians was overtaken and torn into pieces before the eyes of the others. The others succeeded, thanks to our Lord and to Saint Willehad, in getting safely on board their ships.

49.

ANALYSIS OF THE SAGAS MENTIONED IN NOS. 44-48.

If we consider the position of the authors or recorders of these sagas in relation to the views they present in regard to Odainsaker and the Glittering Plains, then we find that they themselves, with or without reason, believe that these views are from a heathen time and of heathen origin. The saga of Erik Vidforle states that its hero had in his own native land, and in his heathen environment, heard reports about Odainsaker. The Miklagard king who instructs the prince in the doctrines of Christianity knows, on the other hand, nothing of such a country. He simply conjectures that the Odainsaker of the heathens must be the same as the Paradise of the Christians, and the saga later makes this conjecture turn out to be incorrect.

The author of Hervor's saga mentions Odainsaker as a heathen belief, and tries to give reasons why it was believed in heathen times that Odainsaker was situated within the limits of Gudmund's kingdom, the Glittering Plains. The reason is: "Gudmund and his men became so old that they lived through several generations (Gudmund lived five hundred years), and therefore the heathens believed that Odainsaker was situated in his domain."

The man who compiled the legend about Helge Thoreson connects it with the history of King Olaf Trygveson, and pits this first king of Norway, who laboured for the introduction of Christianity, as a representative of the new and true doctrine against King Gudmund of the Glittering Plains as the representative of the heathen doctrine. The author would not have done this if he had not believed that the ruler of the Glittering Plains had his ancestors in heathendom.

The saga of Thorstein Bæarmagn puts Gudmund and the Glittering Plains in a tributary relation to Jotunheim and to Geirrod, the giant, well known in the mythology.

Saxo makes Gudmund Geirrod's (Geruthus') brother, and he believes he is discussing ancient traditions when he relates Gorm's journey of discovery and Hadding's journey to Jotunheim. Gorm's reign is referred by Saxo to the period immediately following the reign of the mythical King Snö (Snow) and the emigration of the Longobardians. Hadding's descent to the lower world occurred, according to Saxo, in an antiquity many centuries before King Snow. Hadding is, in Saxo, one of the first kings of Denmark, the grandson of Skjold, progenitor of the Skjoldungs.

The saga of Erik Vidforle makes the way to Odainsaker pass through Syria, India, and an unknown land which wants the light of the sun, and where the stars are visible all day long. On the other side of Odainsaker, and bordering on it, lies the land of the happy spirits, Paradise.

That these last ideas have been influenced by Christianity would seem to be sufficiently clear. Nor do we find a trace of Syria, India, and Paradise as soon as we leave this saga and pass to the others, in the chain of which it forms one of the later links. All the rest agree in transferring to the uttermost North the land which must be reached before the journey can be continued to the Glittering Plains and Odainsaker. Hervor's saga says that the Glittering Plains and Odainsaker are situated north of Halogaland, in Jotunheim; Herrod's and Bose's saga states that they are situated in the vicinity of Bjarmaland. The saga of Thorstein Bæarmagn says that they are a kingdom subject to Geirrod in Jotunheim. Gorm's saga in Saxo says it is necessary to sail past Halogaland north to a _Bjarmia ulterior_ in order to get to the kingdoms of Gudmund and Geirrod. The saga of Helge Thoreson makes its hero meet the daughters of Gudmund, the ruler of the Glittering Plains, after a voyage to Finmarken. Hadding's saga in Saxo makes the Danish king pay a visit to the unknown but wintry cold land of the "Nitherians," when he is invited to make a journey to the lower world. Thus the older and common view was that he who made the attempt to visit the Glittering Plains and Odainsaker must first penetrate the regions of the uttermost North, known only by hearsay.

Those of the sagas which give us more definite local descriptions in addition to this geographical information all agree that the region which forms, as it were, a foreground to the Glittering Plains and Odainsaker is a land over which the darkness of night broods. As just indicated, Erik Vidforle's saga claims that the stars there are visible all day long. Gorm's saga in Saxo makes the Danish adventurers leave sun and stars behind to continue the journey _sub Chao_. Darkness, fogs, and mists envelop Hadding before he gets sight of the splendidly-clad _proceres_ who dwell down there, and the shining meadows whose flowers are never visited by winter. The Frisian saga in Adam of Bremen also speaks of a gloom which must be penetrated ere one reaches the land where rich giants dwell in subterranean caverns.

Through this darkness one comes, according to the saga of Erik Vidforle, to a plain full of flowers, delicious fragrances, rivers of honey (a Biblical idea, but see Nos. 89, 123), and perpetual light. A river separates this plain from the land of the spirits.

Through the same darkness, according to Gorm's saga, one comes to Gudmund's Glittering Plains, where there is a pleasure-farm bearing delicious fruits, while in that Bjarmaland whence the Glittering Plains can be reached reign eternal winter and cold. A river separates the Glittering Plains from two or more other domains, of which at least one is the home of departed souls. There is a bridge of gold across the river to another region, "which separates that which is mortal from the superhuman," and on whose soil a mortal being must not set his foot. Further on one can pass in a boat across the river to a land which is the place of punishment for the damned and a resort of ghosts.

Through the same darkness one comes, according to Hadding's saga, to a subterranean land where flowers grow in spite of the winter which reigns on the surface of the earth. The land of flowers is separated from the Elysian fields of those fallen in battle by a river which hurls about in its eddies spears and other weapons.

These statements from different sources agree with each other in their main features. They agree that the lower world is divided into two main parts by a river, and that departed souls are found only on the farther side of the river.

The other main part on this side the river thus has another purpose than that of receiving the happy or damned souls of the dead. There dwells, according to Gorm's saga, the giant Gudmund, with his sons and daughters. There are also the Glittering Plains, since these, according to Hervor's, Herrod's, Thorstein Bæarmagn's, and Helge Thoreson's sagas, are ruled by Gudmund.

Some of the accounts cited say that the Glittering Plains are situated in Jotunheim. This statement does not contradict the fact that they are situated in the lower world. The myths mention two Jotunheims, and hence the Eddas employ the plural form, Jotunheimar. One of the Jotunheims is located on the surface of the earth in the far North and East, separated from the Midgard inhabited by man by the uttermost sea or the Elivogs (Gylfaginning, 8). The other Jotunheim is subterranean. According to Vafthrudnismal (31), one of the roots of the world-tree extends down "to the frost-giants." Urd and her sisters, who guard one of the fountains of Ygdrasil's roots, are giantesses. Mimer, who guards another fountain in the lower world, is called a giant. That part of the world which is inhabited by the goddesses of fate and by Mimer is thus inhabited by giants, and is a subterranean Jotunheim. Both these Jotunheims are connected with each other. From the upper there is a path leading to the lower. Therefore those traditions recorded in a Christian age, which we are here discussing, have referred to the Arctic Ocean and the uttermost North as the route for those who have the desire and courage to visit the giants of the lower world.

When it is said in Hadding's saga that he on the other side of the subterranean river saw the shades of heroes fallen by the sword arrayed in line of battle and contending with each other, then this is no contradiction of the myth, according to which the heroes chosen on the battle-field come to Asgard and play their warlike games on the plains of the world of the gods.

In Völuspa (str. 24) we read that when the first "folk"-war broke out in the world, the citadel of Odin and his clan was stormed by the Vans, who broke through its bulwark and captured Asgard. In harmony with this, Saxo (_Hist._, i.) relates that at the time when King Hadding reigned Odin was banished from his power and lived for some time in exile (see Nos. 36-41).

It is evident that no great battles can have been fought, and that there could not have been any great number of sword-fallen men, before the _first_ great "folk" war broke out in the world. Otherwise this war would not have been the first. Thus Valhal has not before this war had those hosts of einherjes who later are feasted in Valfather's hall. But as Odin, after the breaking out of this war, is banished from Valhal and Asgard, and does not return before peace is made between the Asas and Vans, then none of the einherjes chosen by him could be received in Valhal _during_ the war. Hence it follows that the heroes fallen in this war, though chosen by Odin, must have been referred to some other place than Asgard (excepting, of course, all those chosen by the Vans, _in case_ they chose einherjes, which is probable, for the reason that the Vanadis Freyja gets, after the reconciliation with Odin, the right to divide with him the choice of the slain). This other place can nowhere else be so appropriately looked for as in the lower world, which we know was destined to receive the souls of the dead. And as Hadding, who, according to Saxo, descended to the lower world, is, according to Saxo, the same Hadding during whose reign Odin was banished from Asgard, then it follows that the statement of the saga, making him see in the lower world those warlike games which else are practised on Asgard's plains, far from contradicting the myth, on the contrary is a consequence of the connection of the mythical events.

The river which is mentioned in Erik Vidforle's, Gorm's, and Hadding's sagas has its prototype in the mythic records. When Hermod on Sleipner rides to the lower world (Gylfaginning, 10) he first journeys through a dark country (compare above) and then comes to the river _Gjöll_, over which there is the golden bridge called the Gjallar bridge. On the other side of _Gjöll_ is the Helgate, which leads to the realm of the dead. In Gorm's saga the bridge across the river is also of gold, and it is forbidden mortals to cross to the other side.

A subterranean river hurling weapons in its eddies is mentioned in Völuspa, 33. In Hadding's saga we also read of a weapon-hurling river which forms the boundary of the Elysium of those slain by the sword.

In Vegtamskvida is mentioned an underground dog, bloody about the breast, coming from Nifelhel, the proper place of punishment. In Gorm's saga the bulwark around the city of the damned is guarded by great dogs. The word "nifel" (_nifl_, the German _Nebel_), which forms one part of the word Nifelhel, means mist, fog. In Gorm's saga the city in question is most like a cloud of vapour (_vaporanti maxime nubi simile_).

Saxo's description of that house of torture, which is found within the city, is not unlike Völuspa's description of that dwelling of torture called Nastrand. In Saxo the floor of the house consists of serpents wattled together, and the roof of sharp stings. In Völuspa the hall is made of serpents braided together, whose heads from above spit venom down on those dwelling there. Saxo speaks of soot a century old on the door frames; Völuspa of _ljórar_, air- and smoke-openings in the roof (see further Nos. 77 and 78).

Saxo himself points out that the Geruthus (_Geirrödr_) mentioned by him, and his famous daughters, belong to the myth about the Asa-god Thor. That Geirrod after his death is transferred to the lower world is no contradiction to the heathen belief, according to which beautiful or terrible habitations await the dead, not only of men but also of other beings. Compare Gylfaginning, ch. 46, where Thor with one blow of his Mjolner sends a giant _nidr undir Niflhel_ (see further, No. 60).

As Mimer's and Urd's fountains are found in the lower world (see Nos. 63, 93), and as Mimer is mentioned as the guardian of Heimdal's horn and other treasures, it might be expected that these circumstances would not be forgotten in those stories from Christian times which have been cited above and found to have roots in the myths.

When in Saxo's saga about Gorm the Danish adventurers had left the horrible city of fog, they came to another place in the lower world where the gold-plated mead-cisterns were found. The Latin word used by Saxo, which I translate with cisterns of mead, is _dolium_. In the classical Latin this word is used in regard to wine-cisterns of so immense a size that they were counted among the immovables, and usually were sunk in the cellar floors. They were so large that a person could live in such a cistern, and this is also reported as having happened. That the word _dolium_ still in Saxo's time had a similar meaning appears from a letter quoted by Du Cange, written by Saxo's younger contemporary, Bishop Gebhard. The size is therefore no obstacle to Saxo's using this word for a wine-cistern to mean the mead-wells in the lower world of Teutonic mythology. The question now is whether he actually did so, or whether the subterranean _dolia_ in question are objects in regard to which our earliest mythic records have left us in ignorance.

In Saxo's time, and earlier, the epithets by which the mead-wells--Urd's and Mimer's--and their contents are mentioned in mythological songs had come to be applied also to those mead-buckets which Odin is said to have emptied in the halls of the giant Fjalar or Suttung. This application also lay near at hand, since these wells and these vessels contained the same liquor, and since it originally, as appears from the meaning of the words, was the liquor, and not the place where the liquor was kept, to which the epithets _Odrærir_, _Bodn_, and _Son_ applied. In Havamál (107) Odin expresses his joy that _Odrærir_ has passed out of the possession of the giant Fjalar and can be of use to the beings of the upper world. But if we may trust Bragar, (ch. 5), it is the drink and not the empty vessels that Odin takes with him to Valhal. On this supposition, it is the drink and not one of the vessels which in Havamál is called _Odrærir_. In Havamál (140) Odin relates how he, through self-sacrifice and suffering, succeeded in getting runic songs up from the deep, and also a drink dipped out of _Odrærir_. He who gives him the songs and the drink, and accordingly is the ruler of the fountain of the drink, is a man, "Bolthorn's celebrated son." Here again Odrærer is one of the subterranean fountains, and no doubt Mimer's, since the one who pours out the drink is a man. But in Forspjalsljod (2) Urd's fountain is also called Odrærer (_Odhrærir Urdar_). Paraphrases for the liquor of poetry, such as "Bodn's growing billow" (Einar Skalaglam) and "Son's reedgrown grass edge" (Eilif Gudrunson), point to fountains or wells, not to vessels. Meanwhile a satire was composed before the time of Saxo and Sturlason about Odin's adventure at Fjalar's, and the author of this song, the contents of which the Younger Edda has preserved, calls the vessels which Odin empties at the giant's _Odhrærir_, _Bodn_, and _Són_ (Brogarædur, 6). Saxo, who reveals a familiarity with the genuine heathen, or supposed heathen, poems handed down to his time, may thus have seen the epithets _Odrærir_, _Bodn_, and _Són_ applied both to the subterranean mead-wells and to a giant's mead-vessels. The greater reason he would have for selecting the Latin _dolium_ to express an idea that can be accommodated to both these objects.

Over these mead-reservoirs there hang, according to Saxo's description, round-shaped objects of silver, which in close braids drop down and are spread around the seven times gold-plated walls of the mead-cisterns. [35]

Over Mimer's and Urd's fountains hang the roots of the ash Ygdrasil, which sends its root-knots and root-threads down into their waters. But not only the rootlets sunk in the water, but also the roots from which they are suspended, partake of the waters of the fountains. The norns take daily from the water and sprinkle the stem of the tree therewith, "and the water is so holy," says Gylfaginning (16), "that everything that is put in the well (consequently, also, all that which the norns daily sprinkle with the water) becomes as white as the membrane between the egg and the egg-shell." Also the root over Mimer's fountain is sprinkled with its water (Völusp., Cod. R., 28), and this water, so far as its colour is concerned, seems to be of the same kind as that in Urd's fountain, for the latter is called _hvítr aurr_ (Völusp., 18) and the former runs in _aurgum forsi_ upon its root of the world-tree (Völusp., 28). The adjective _aurigr_, which describes a quality of the water in Mimer's fountain, is formed from the noun _aurr_, with which the liquid is described which waters the root over Urd's fountain. Ygdrasil's roots, as far up as the liquid of the wells can get to them, thus have a colour like that of "the membrane between the egg and the egg-shell," and consequently recall both as to position, form, and colour the round-shaped objects "of silver" which, according to Saxo, hang down and are intertwined in the mead-reservoirs of the lower world.

Mimer's fountain contains, as we know, the purest mead--the liquid of inspiration, of poetry, of wisdom, of understanding.

Near by Ygdrasil, according to Völuspa (27), Heimdal's horn is concealed. The seeress in Völuspa knows that it is hid "beneath the hedge-o'ershadowing holy tree."

Veit hon Heimdallar hljod um fólgit undir heidvönum helgum badmi.

Near one of the mead-cisterns in the lower world Gorm's men see a horn ornamented with pictures and flashing with precious stones.

Among the treasures taken care of by Mimer is the world's foremost sword and a wonderful arm-ring, smithied by the same master as made the sword (see Nos. 87, 98, 101).

Near the gorgeous horn Gorm's men see a gold-plated tooth of an animal and an arm-ring. The animal tooth becomes a sword when it is taken into the hand.[36] Near by is a treasury filled with a large number of weapons and a royal robe. Mimer is known in mythology as a collector of treasures. He is therefore called _Hoddmimir_, _Hoddropnir_, _Baugregin_.

Thus Gorm and his men have on their journeys in the lower world seen not only Nastrand's place of punishment in Nifelhel, but also the holy land, where Mimer reigns.

When Gorm and his men desire to cross the golden bridge and see the wonders to which it leads, Gudmund prohibits it. When they in another place farther up desire to cross the river to see what there is beyond, he consents and has them taken over in a boat. He does not deem it proper to show them the unknown land at the golden bridge, but it is within the limits of his authority to let them see the places of punishment and those regions which contain the mead-cisterns and the treasure chambers. The sagas call him the king on the Glittering Plains, and as the Glittering Plains are situated in the lower world, he must be a lower world ruler.

Two of the sagas, Helge Thoreson's and Gorm's, cast a shadow on Gudmund's character. In the former this shadow does not produce confusion or contradiction. The saga is a legend which represents Christianity, with Olaf Trygveson as its apostle, in conflict with heathenism, represented by Gudmund. It is therefore natural that the latter cannot be presented in the most favourable light. Olaf destroys with his prayers the happiness of Gudmund's daughter. He compels her to abandon her lover, and Gudmund, who is unable to take revenge in any other manner, tries to do so, as is the case with so many of the characters in saga and history, by treachery. This is demanded by the fundamental idea and tendency of the legend. What the author of the legend has heard about Gudmund's character from older saga-men, or what he has read in records, he does not, however, conceal with silence, but admits that Gudmund, aside from his heathen religion and grudge towards Olaf Trygveson, was a man in whose home one might fare well and be happy.

Saxo has preserved the shadow, but in his narrative it produces the greatest contradiction. Gudmund offers fruits, drinks, and embraces in order to induce his guests to remain with him for ever, and he does it in a tempting manner and, as it seems, with conscious cunning. Nevertheless, he shows unlimited patience when the guests insult him by accepting nothing of what he offers. When he comes down to the sea-strand, where Gorm's ships are anchored, he is greeted by the leader of the discoverers with joy, because he is "the most pious being and man's protector in perils." He conducts them in safety to his castle. When a handful of them returns after the attempt to plunder the treasury of the lower world, he considers the crime sufficiently punished by the loss of life they have suffered, and takes them across the river to his own safe home; and when they, contrary to his wishes, desire to return to their native land, he loads them with gifts and sees to it that they get safely on board their ships. It follows that Saxo's sources have described Gudmund as a kind and benevolent person. Here, as in the legend about Helge Thoreson, the shadow has been thrown by younger hands upon an older background painted in bright colours.

Hervor's saga says that he was wise, mighty, in a heathen sense pious ("a great sacrificer"), and so honoured that sacrifices were offered to him, and he was worshipped as a god after death. Herrod's saga says that he was greatly skilled in magic arts, which is another expression for heathen wisdom, for fimbul-songs, runes, and incantations.

The change for the worse which Gudmund's character seems in part to have suffered is confirmed by a change connected with, and running parallel to it, in the conception of the forces in those things which belonged to the lower world of the Teutonic heathendom and to Gudmund's domain. In Saxo we find an idea related to the antique Lethe myth, according to which the liquids and plants which belong to the lower world produce forgetfulness of the past. Therefore, Thorkil (Thorkillus) warns his companions not to eat or drink any of that which Gudmund offers them. In the Gudrun song (ii. 21, 22), and elsewhere, we meet with the same idea. I shall return to this subject (see No. 50).

[Footnote 35: Inde digressis dolia septem zonis aureis circumligata panduntur, quibus pensiles ex argento circuli crebros inseruerant nexus.]

[Footnote 36: The word _biti_= a tooth (cp. bite) becomes in the composition _leggbiti_, the name of a sword.]

50.

ANALYSIS OF THE SAGAS MENTIONED IN NOS. 44-48. THE QUESTION IN REGARD TO THE IDENTIFICATION OF ODAINSAKER.

Is Gudmund an invention of Christian times, although he is placed in an environment which in general and in detail reflects the heathen mythology? Or is there to be found in the mythology a person who has precisely the same environment and is endowed with the same attributes and qualities?

The latter form an exceedingly strange _ensemble_, and can therefore easily be recognized. Ruler in the lower world, and at the same time a giant. Pious and still a giant. King in a domain to which winter cannot penetrate. Within that domain an enclosed place, whose bulwark neither sickness, nor age, nor death can surmount. It is left to his power and pleasure to give admittance to the mysterious meadows, where the mead-cisterns of the lower world are found, and where the most precious of all horns, a wonderful sword, and a splendid arm-ring are kept. Old as the hills, but yet subject to death. Honoured as if he were not a giant, but a divine being. These are the features which together characterise Gudmund, and should be found in his mythological prototype, if there is one. With these peculiar characteristics are united wisdom and wealth.

The answer to the question whether a mythical original of this picture is to be discovered will be given below. But before that we must call attention to some points in the Christian accounts cited in regard to Odainsaker.

Odainsaker is not made identical with the Glittering Plains, but is a separate place on them, or at all events within Gudmund's domain. Thus according to Hervor's saga. The correctness of the statement is confirmed by comparison with Gorm's and Hadding's sagas. The former mentions, as will be remembered, a place which Gudmund does not consider himself authorized to show his guests, although they are permitted to see other mysterious places in the lower world, even the mead-fountains and treasure-chambers. To the unknown place, as to Balder's subterranean dwelling, leads a golden bridge, which doubtless is to indicate the splendour of the place. The subterranean goddess, who is Hadding's guide in Hades, shows him both the Glittering Fields (_loca aprica_) and the plains of the dead heroes, but stops with him near a wall, which is not opened for them. The domain surrounded by the wall receives nothing which has suffered death, and its very proximity seems to be enough to keep death at bay (see No. 47).

All the sagas are silent in regard to who those beings are for whom this wonderful enclosed place is intended. Its very name, _Acre-of-the-not-dead_ (_Odainsakr_), and _The field-of-the-living_ (_Jörd lifanda manna_), however, makes it clear that it is not intended for the souls of the dead. This Erik Vidforle's saga is also able to state, inasmuch as it makes a definite distinction between _Odainsaker_ and the land of the spirits, between _Odainsaker_ and Paradise. If human or other beings are found within the bulwark of the place, they must have come there as living beings in a physical sense; and when once there, they are protected from perishing, for diseases, age, and death are excluded.

Erik Vidforle and his companion find on their journey on Odainsaker only a single dwelling, a splendid one with two beds. Who the couple are who own this house, and seem to have placed it at the disposal of the travellers, is not stated. But in the night there came a beautiful lad to Erik. The author of the saga has made him an angel, who is on duty on the borders between Odainsaker and Paradise.

The purpose of Odainsaker is not mentioned in Erik Vidforle's saga. There is no intelligible connection between it and the Christian environment given to it by the saga. The ecclesiastical belief knows an earthly Paradise, that which existed in the beginning and was the home of Adam and Eve, but that it is guarded by the angel with the flaming sword, or, as Erik's saga expresses it, it is encircled by a wall of fire. In the lower world the Christian Church knows a Hades and a hell, but the path to them is through the gates of death; physically living persons, persons who have not paid tribute to death, are not found there. In the Christian group of ideas there is no place for Odainsaker. An underground place for physically living people, who are there no longer exposed to aging and death, has nothing to do in the economy of the Church. Was there occasion for it among the ideas of the heathen eschatology? The above-quoted sagas say nothing about the purposes of Odainsaker. Here is therefore a question of importance to our subject, and one that demands an answer.

51.

GUDMUND'S IDENTITY WITH MIMER.

I dare say the most characteristic figure of Teutonic mythology is Mimer, the lord of the fountain which bears his name. The liquid contained in the fountain is the object of Odin's deepest desire. He has neither authority nor power over it. Nor does he or anyone else of the gods seek to get control of it by force. Instances are mentioned showing that Odin, to get a drink from it, must subject himself to great sufferings and sacrifices (Völuspa, Cod. Reg., 28, 29; Havamál, 138-140; Gylfag., 15), and it is as a gift or a loan that he afterwards receives from Mimer the invigorating and soul-inspiring drink (Havamál, 140, 141). Over the fountain and its territory Mimer, of course, exercises unlimited control, an authority which the gods never appear to have disputed. He has a sphere of power which the gods recognize as inviolable. The domain of his rule belongs to the lower world; it is situated under one of the roots of the world-tree (Völuspa, 28, 29; Gylfag., 15), and when Odin, from the world-tree, asks for the precious mead of the fountain, he peers _downward_ into the deep, and thence brings up the runes (_nysta ec nithr_, _nam ec up rúnar_--Havamál, 139). Saxo's account of the adventure of Hotherus (_Hist_., pp. 113-115, Müller's ed.) shows that there was thought to be a descent to Mimer's land in the form of a mountain cave (_specus_), and that this descent was, like the one to Gudmund's domain, to be found in the uttermost North, where terrible cold reigns.

Though a giant, Mimer is the friend of the order of the world and of the gods. He, like Urd, guards the sacred ash, the world-tree (Völuspa, 28), which accordingly also bears his name and is called Mimer's tree (_Mimameidr_--Fjolsvinsm, 20; _meidr Mima_--Fjolsv., 24). The intercourse between the Asa-father and him has been of such a nature that the expression "Mimer's friend" (_Mimsvinr_--Sonatorrek, 22; Younger Edda, i. 238, 250, 602) could be used by the skalds as an epithet of Odin. Of this friendship Ynglingasaga (ch. 4) has preserved a record. It makes Mimer lose his life in his activity for the good of the gods, and makes Odin embalm his head, in order that he may always be able to get wise counsels from its lips. The song about Sigrdrifa (str. 14) represents Odin as listening to the words of truth which come from Mimer's head. Völuspa (str. 45) predicts that Odin, when Ragnarok approaches, shall converse with Mimer's head; and, according to Gylfaginning (56), he, immediately before the conflagration of the world, rides to Mimer's fountain to get advice from the deep thinker for himself and his friends. The firm friendship between Alfather and this strange giant of the lower world was formed in time's morning while Odin was still young and undeveloped (Hav., 141), and continued until the end of the gods and the world.

Mimer is the collector of treasures. The same treasures as Gorm and his men found in the land which Gudmund let them visit are, according to mythology, in the care of Mimer. The wonderful horn (Völuspa, 28), the sword of victory, and the ring (Saxo, _Hist._, 113, 114; cp. Nos. 87, 97, 98, 101, 103).

In all these points the Gudmund of the middle-age sagas and Mimer of the mythology are identical. There still remains an important point. In Gudmund's domain there is a splendid grove, an enclosed place, from which weaknesses, age, and death are banished--a Paradise of the peculiar kind, that it is not intended for the souls of the dead, but for certain _lifandi menn_, yet inaccessible to people in general. In the myth concerning Mimer we also find such a grove.

52.

MIMER'S GROVE. LIF AND LEIFTHRASER.

The grove is called after its ruler and guardian, Mimer's or Treasure-Mimer's grove (_Mimis holt_--Younger Edda, Upsala Codex; Gylfag., 58; _Hoddmimis holt_--Vafthrudnism, 45; Gylfag., 58).

Gylfaginning describes the destruction of the world and its regeneration, and then relates how the earth, rising out of the sea, is furnished with human inhabitants. "During the conflagration (_i Surtarloga_) two persons are concealed in Treasure-Mimer's grove. Their names are Lif (_Lif_) and Leifthraser (_Leifthrasir_), and they feed on the morning dews. From them come so great an offspring that all the world is peopled."

In support of its statement Gylfaginning quotes Vafthrudnersmal. This poem makes Odin and the giant Vafthrudner (_Vafthrúdnir_) put questions to each other, and among others Odin asks this question:

Fiolth ec for, fiolth ec freistathac, fiolth ec um reynda regin: hvat lifir manna, tha er inn mæra lithr fimbulvetr meth firom?

"Much I have travelled, much I have tried, much I have tested the powers. What human persons shall still live when the famous fimbul-winter has been in the world?"

Vafthrudner answers:

Lif oc Leifthrasir, enn thau leynaz muno i holti Hoddmimis; morgindauggvar thau ser at mat hafa enn thadan af aldir alaz.

"Lif and Leifthraser (are still living); they are concealed in Hodd-Mimer's grove. They have morning dews for nourishment. Thence (from Hodd-Mimer's grove and this human pair) are born (new) races."

Gylfaginning says that the two human beings, Lif and Leifthraser, who become the progenitors of the races that are to people the earth after Ragnarok, are concealed _during the conflagration of the world_ in Hodd-Mimer's grove. This is, beyond doubt, in accordance with mythic views. But mythologists, who have not paid sufficient attention to what Gylfaginning's source (Vafthrudnersmal) has to say on the subject, have from the above expression drawn a conclusion which implies a complete misunderstanding of the traditions in regard to Hodd-Mimer's grove and the human pair therein concealed. They have assumed that Lif and Leifthraser are, like all other people living at that time, inhabitants of the surface of the earth at the time when the conflagration of the world begins. They have explained Mimer's grove to mean the world-tree, and argued that when Surt's flames destroy all other mortals this one human pair have succeeded in climbing upon some particular branch of the world-tree, where they were protected from the destructive element. There they were supposed to live on morning dews until the end of Ragnarok, and until they could come down from their hiding-place in Ygdrasil upon the earth which has risen from the sea, and there become the progenitors of a more happy human race.

According to this interpretation, Ygdrasil was a tree whose trunk and branches could be grasped by human hands, and one or more mornings, with attendant morning dews, are assumed to have come and gone, while fire and flames enveloped all creation, and after the sun had been swallowed by the wolf and the stars had fallen from the heavens (Gylfag., 55; Völusp., 54)! And with this terrible catastrophe before their eyes, Lif and Leifthraser are supposed to sit in perfect unconcern, eating the morning dews!

For the scientific reputation of mythical inquiry it were well if that sort of investigations were avoided when they are not made necessary by the sources themselves.

If sufficient attention had been paid to the above-cited evidence furnished by Vafthrudnersmal in this question, the misunderstanding might have been avoided, and the statement of Gylfaginning would not have been interpreted to mean that Lif and Leifthraser inhabited Mimer's grove _only_ during Ragnarok. For Vafthrudnersmal plainly states that this human pair are in perfect security in Mimer's grove, _while a long and terrible winter, a fimbul-winter, visits the earth and destroys its inhabitants_. Not until after the end of this winter do giants and gods collect their forces for a decisive conflict on Vigrid's plains; and when this conflict is ended, then comes the conflagration of the world, and after it the regeneration. Anent the length of the fimbul-winter, Gylfaginning (ch. 55) claims that it continued for three years "without any intervening summer."

Consequently Lif and Leifthraser must have had their secure place of refuge in Mimer's grove during the fimbul-winter, which precedes Ragnarok. And, accordingly, the idea that they were there only during Ragnarok, and all the strange conjectures based thereon, are unfounded. They continue to remain there while the winter rages, and during all the episodes which characterise the progress of the world towards ruin, and, finally, also, as Gylfaginning reports, during the conflagration and regeneration of the world.

Thus it is explained why the myth finds it of importance to inform us how Lif and Leifthraser support themselves during their stay in Mimer's grove. It would not have occurred to the myth to present and answer this question had not the sojourn of the human pair in the grove continued for some length of time. Their food is the morning dew. The morning dew from Ygdrasil was, according to the mythology, a sweet and wonderful nourishment, and in the popular traditions of the Teutonic middle age the dew of the morning retained its reputation for having strange, nourishing qualities. According to the myth, it evaporates from the world-tree, which stands, ever green and blooming, over Urd's and Mimer's sacred fountains, and drops thence "in dales" (Völuspa, 18, 28; Gylfag., 16). And as the world-tree is sprinkled and gets its life-giving sap from these fountains, then it follows that the liquid of its morning dew is substantially the same as that of the subterranean fountains, which contain the elixir of life, wisdom, and poesy (cp. Nos. 72, 82, and elsewhere).

_At what time_ Mimer's grove was opened as an asylum for Lif and Leifthraser, whether this happened during or shortly before the fimbul-winter, or perchance long before it, on this point there is not a word in the passages quoted from Vafthrudnersmal. But by the following investigation the problem shall be solved.

The Teutonic mythology has not looked upon the regeneration of the world as a new creation. The life which in time's morning developed out of chaos is not destroyed by Surt's flames, but rescues itself, purified, for the coming age of the world. The world-tree survives the conflagration, for it defies both edge and fire (Fjolsvinnsm, 20, 21). The Ida-plains are not annihilated. After Ragnarok, as in the beginning of time, they are the scene of the assemblings of the gods (Völuspa, 57; cp. 7). Vanaheim is not affected by the destruction, for Njord shall in _aldar rauc_ (Vafthrudnersmal, 39) return thither "to wise Vans." Odin's dwellings of victory remain, and are inhabited after regeneration by Balder and _Hödr_ (Völuspa, 59). The new sun is the daughter of the old one, and was born before Ragnarok (Vafthr., 47), which she passes through unscathed. The ocean does not disappear in Ragnarok, for the present earth sinks beneath its surface (Völuspa, 54), and the new earth after regeneration rises from its deep (Völuspa, 55). Gods survive (Völuspa, 53, 56; Vafthr. 51; Gylfag., 58). Human beings survive, for Lif and Leifthraser are destined to become the connecting link between the present human race and the better race which is to spring therefrom. Animals and plants survive--though the animals and plants on the surface of the earth perish; but the earth risen from the sea was decorated with green, and there is not the slightest reference to a new act of creation to produce the green vegetation. Its cascades contain living beings, and over them flies the eagle in search of his prey (Völuspa, 56; see further, No. 55). A work of art from antiquity is also preserved in the new world. The game of dice, with which the gods played in their youth while they were yet free from care, is found again among the flowers on the new earth (Völuspa, 8, 58; see further, No. 55).

If the regeneration had been conceived as a new creation, a wholly new beginning of life, then the human race of the new era would also have started from a new creation of a human pair. The myth about Lif and Leifthraser would then have been unnecessary and superfluous. But the fundamental idea is that the life of the new era is to be a continuation of the present life purified and developed to perfection, and from the standpoint of this fundamental idea Lif and Leifthraser are necessary.

The idea of improvement and perfection are most clearly held forth in regard to both the physical and spiritual condition of the future world. All that is weak and evil shall be redeemed (_bauls mun allz batna_--Völuspa, 59). In that perfection of nature the fields unsown by men shall yield their harvests. To secure the restored world against relapse into the faults of the former, the myth applies radical measures--so radical, that the Asa majesty himself, Valfather, must retire from the scene, in order that his son, the perfectly blameless Balder, may be the centre in the assembly of the chosen gods. But the mythology would fail in its purpose if it did not apply equally radical measures in the choice and care of the human beings who are to perpetuate our race after Ragnarok; for if the progenitors have within them the seed of corruption, it will be developed in their descendants.

Has the mythology forgotten to meet this logical claim? The demand is no greater than that which is made in reference to every product of the fancy of whatever age. I do not mean to say that a logical claim made on the mythology, or that a conclusion which may logically be drawn from the premises of the mythology, is to be considered as evidence that the claim has actually been met by the mythology, and that the mythology itself has been developed into its logical conclusion. I simply want to point out what the claim is, and in the next place I desire to investigate whether there is evidence that the claim has been honoured.

From the standpoint that there must be a logical harmony in the mythological system, it is necessary:

1. That Lif and Leifthraser when they enter their asylum, Mimer's grove, are physically and spiritually uncorrupted persons.

2. That during their stay in Mimer's grove they are protected against:

(_a_) Spiritual degradation.

(_b_) Physical degradation.

(_c_) Against everything threatening their very existence.

So far as the last point (2_c_) is concerned, we know already from Vafthrudnersmal that the place of refuge they received in the vicinity of those fountains, which, with never-failing veins, nourish the life of the world-tree, is approached neither by the frost of the fimbul-winter nor by the flames of Ragnarok. This claim is, therefore, met completely.

In regard to the second point (2_b_), the above-cited mythic traditions have preserved from the days of heathendom the memory of a grove in the subterranean domain of Gudmund-Mimer, set aside for living men, not for the dead, and protected against sickness, aging, and death. Thus this claim is met also.

As to the third point (2_a_), all we know at present is that there, in the lower world, is found an enclosed place, the very one which death cannot enter, and from which even _those_ mortals are banished by divine command who are admitted to the holy fountains and treasure chambers of the lower world, and who have been permitted to see the regions of bliss and places of punishment there. It would therefore appear that all contact between those who dwell there and those who take part in the events of our world is cut off. The realms of Mimer and the lower world have, according to the sagas--and, as we shall see later, according to the myths themselves--now and then been opened to bold adventurers, who have seen their wonders, looked at their remarkable fountains, their plains for the amusement of the shades of heroes, and their places of punishment of the wicked. But there is one place which has been inaccessible to them, a field proclaimed inviolable by divine command (Gorm's saga), a place surrounded by a wall, which can be entered only by such beings as can pass through the smallest crevices (Hadding's saga).[37] But that this difficulty of entrance also was meant to exclude the moral evil, by which the mankind of our age is stained, is not expressly stated.

Thus we have yet to look and see whether the original documents from the heathen times contain any statements which can shed light on this subject. In regard to the point (1), the question it contains as to whether the mythology conceived Lif and Leifthraser as physically and morally undefiled at the time when they entered Mimer's grove, can only be solved if we, in the old records, can find evidence that a wise, foreseeing power opened Mimer's grove as asylum for them, at a time when mankind as a whole had not yet become the prey of physical and moral misery. But in that very primeval age in which the most of the events of mythology are supposed to have happened, creation had already become the victim of corruption. There was a time when the life of the gods was happiness and the joy of youthful activity; the condition of the world did not cause them anxiety, and, free from care, they amused themselves with the wonderful dice (Völuspa, 7, 8). But the golden age ended in physical and moral catastrophies. The air was mixed with treacherous evil; Freyja, the goddess of fertility and modesty, was treacherously delivered into the hands of the frost giants; on the earth the sorceress Heid (_Heid_) strutted about teaching the secrets of black magic, which was hostile to the gods and hurtful to man. The first great war broke out in the world (Völuspa, 21, 22, 26). The effects of this are felt down through the historical ages even to Ragnarok. The corruption of nature culminates in the fimbul-winter of the last days; the corruption of mankind has its climax in "the axe- and knife-ages." The separation of Lif and Leifthraser from their race and confinement in Mimer's grove must have occurred before the above catastrophies in time's beginning, if there is to be a guarantee that the human race of the new world is not to inherit and develop the defects and weaknesses of the present historical generations.

[Footnote 37: _Prodcuntibus murus aditu transcensuque difficilis obsistebat, quem femina_ (the subterranean goddess who is Hadding's guide) _nequicquam transilire conata cum ne corrugati quidem exilitate proficeret_ (Saxo, _Hist. Dan._, i. 51).]

(_Continuation of Part IV in Volume II._)