Part 11

Volund and Toko (the name of an archer) are enemies of Halfdan.

Volund and the archer named Avo are enemies of Halfdan.

The archer Orvandel is an enemy of Halfdan.

From this it would appear that Volund was very intimately associated with one of the archers of the mythology, and that both had some reason for being enemies of Halfdan. Can this be corroborated by any other source?

Volund's brothers are called _Egill_ and _Slagfidr_ (_Slagfinnr_) in Volundarkvida. The Icelandic-Norwegian poems from heathen times contain paraphrases which prove that the mythological Egil was famous as an archer and skee-runner. The bow is "Egil's weapon," the arrows are "Egil's weapon-hail" (Younger Edda, 422), and "the swift herring of Egil's hands" (_Har. Gr._, p. 18). A ship is called Egil's skees, originally because he could use his skees also on the water. In Volundarkvida he makes hunting expeditions with his brothers on skees. Vilkinasaga also (29, 30) knows Egil as Volund's brother, and speaks of him as a wonderfully skilful archer.

The same Volund, who in Saxo under the name Anund has Toko (the name of an archer) or the archer Avo by his side in the conflict with Halfdan, also has the archer Egil as a brother in other sources.

Of an archer Toko, who is mentioned in _Hist._, 487-490, Saxo tells the same exploit as Vilkinasaga attributes to Volund's brother Egil. In Saxo it is Toko who performs the celebrated masterpiece which was afterwards attributed to William Tell. In Vilkinasaga it is Egil. The one like the other, amid similar secondary circumstances, shoots an apple from his son's head. Egil's skill as a skee-runner and the serviceableness of his skees on the water have not been forgotten in Saxo's account of Toko. He runs on skees down the mountain, sloping precipitously down to the sea, Kullen in Scania, and is said to have saved himself on board a ship. Saxo's Toko was therefore without doubt identical with Volund's brother Egil, and Saxo's Anund is the same Volund of whom the Volundarkvida testifies that he also had this name in the mythology.

Thus we have demonstrated the fact that Volund and Egil appeared in the saga of the Teutonic patriarch Halfdan as the enemies of the latter, and that the famous archer Egil occupied the position in which we would expect to find the celebrated archer Orvandel, Svipdag's father. Orvandel is therefore either identical with Egil, and then it is easy to understand why the latter is an enemy of Halfdan, who we know had robbed his wife Groa; or he is not identical with Egil, and then we know no motive for the appearance of the latter on the same side as Svipdag, and we, moreover, are confronted by the improbability that Orvandel does nothing to avenge the insult done to him.

Orvandel's identity with Egil is completely confirmed by the following circumstances.

Orvandel has the Elivagar and the coasts of Jotunheim as the scene of his exploits during the time in which he is the friend of the gods and the opponent of the giants. To this time we must refer Horvendillus' victories over Collerus (Kollr) and his sister Sela (cp. the name of a monster _Selkolla_--Bisk S., i. 605) mentioned by Saxo (_Hist._, 135-138). His surname _inn frækni_, the brave, alone is proof that the myth refers to important exploits carried out by him, and that these were performed against the powers of frost in particular--that is to say, in the service of the gods and for the good of Midgard--is plain from the narrative in the Younger Edda (276, 277). This shows, as is also demanded by the epic connection, that the Asa-god Thor and the archer Orvandel were at least for a time confidential friends, and that they had met each other on their expeditions for similar purposes in Jotunheim. When Thor, wounded in his forehead, returns from his combat with the giant _Hrungnir_ to his home, _thrúdvángr_ (_thrúdvángar_, _thrudheimr_,) Orvandel's wife Groa was there and tried to help him with healing sorcery, wherein she would also have succeeded if Thor could have made himself hold his tongue for a while concerning a report he brought with him about her husband, and which he expected would please her. And Groa did become so glad that she forgot to continue the magic song and was unable to complete the healing. The report was, as we know, that, on the expedition to Jotunheim from which he had now come home, Thor had met Orvandel, carried him in his basket across the Elivagar, and thrown a toe which the intrepid adventurer had frozen up to heaven and made a star thereof. Thor added that before long Orvandel would come "home;" that is to say, doubtless, "home to Thor," to fetch his wife Groa. It follows that, when he had carried Orvandel across the Elivagar, Thor had parted with him somewhere on the way, in all probability in Orvandel's own home, and that while Orvandel wandered about in Jotunheim, Groa, the dis of growth, had a safe place of refuge in the Asa-God's own citadel. A close relation between Thor and Orvandel also appears from the fact that Thor afterwards marries Orvandel's second wife Sif, and adopts his son Ull, Svipdag's half-brother (see No. 102), in Asgard.

Consequently Orvandel's abode was situated south of the Elivagar (Thor carried him _nordan_ or _Jötunheimum_--Younger Edda, 276), in the direction Thor had to travel when going to and from the land of the giants, and presumably quite near or on the strand of that mythic water-course over which Thor on this occasion carried him. When Thor goes from Asgard to visit the giants he rides the most of the way in his chariot drawn by the two goats _Tanngnjóstr_ and _Tanngrisnir_. In the poem Haustlaung there is a particularly vivid description of his journey in his thunder chariot through space when he proceeded to the meeting agreed upon with the giant Hrungner, on the return from which he met and helped Orvandel across Elivagar (Younger Edda, 276). But across this water and through Jotunheim itself Thor never travels in his car. He wades across the Elivagar, he travels on foot in the wildernesses of the giants, and encounters his foe face to face, breast to breast, instead of striking from above with lightning. In this all accounts of Thor's journeys to Jotunheim agree. Hence south of the Elivagar and somewhere near them there must have been a place where Thor left his chariot and his goats in safety before he proceeded farther on his journey. And as we already know that the archer Orvandel, Thor's friend, and like him hostile to the giants, dwelt on the road traveled by the Asa-god, and south of the Elivagar, it lies nearest at hand to assume that Orvandel's castle was the stopping place on his journey, and the place where he left his goats and car.

Now in Hymerskvida (7, 37, 38) we actually read that Thor, on his way to Jotunheim, had a stopping-place, where his precious car and goats were housed and taken care of by the host, who accordingly had a very important task, and must have been a friend of Thor and the Asa-gods in the mythology. The host bears the archer name Egil. From Asgard to Egil's abode, says Hymerskvida, it is about one day's journey for Thor when he rides behind his goats on his way to Jotunheim. After this day's journey he leaves the draught-animals, decorated with horns, with Egil, who takes care of them, and the god continues his journey on foot. Thor and Tyr being about to visit the giant Hymer--

Foro drivgom dag thann fram Asgardi fra, unz til Egils quomo; hirdi hann hafra horngaufgasta hurfo at haullo er Hymir átti.

("Nearly all the day they proceeded their way from Asgard until they came to Egil's. He gave the horn-strong goats care. They (Thor and Tyr) continued to the great hall which Hymer owned.")

From Egil's abode both the gods accordingly go on foot. From what is afterwards stated about adventures on their way home, it appears that there is a long distance between Egil's house and Hymer's (cp. str. 35--_foro lengi_, _adr._, &c.). It is necessary to journey across the Elivagar first--_byr fyr austan, Elivága hundviss Hymir_ (str. 5). In the Elivagar Hymer has his fishing-grounds, and there he is wont to catch whales on hooks (cp. str. 17--_a vâg roa_); but still he does not venture far out upon the water (see str. 20), presumably because he has enemies on the southern strand where Egil dwells. Between the Elivagar and Hymer's abode there is a considerable distance through woody mountain recesses (_holtrid_--str. 27) and past rocks in whose caverns dwell monsters belonging to Hymer's giant-clan (str. 35). Thor resorts to cunning in order to secure a safe retreat. After he has been out fishing with the giant, instead of making his boat fast in its proper place on the strand, as Hymer requests him to do, he carries the boat with its belongings all the difficult way up to Hymer's hall. He is also attacked on his way home by Hymer and all his giant-clan, and, in order to be able to wield Mjolner freely, he must put down the precious kettle which he has captured from the frost-giant and was carrying on his broad shoulders (str. 35, 36). But the undisturbed retreat across the Elivagar he has secured by the above-mentioned cunning.

Egil is called _hraunbúi_ (str. 38), an epithet the ambiguous meaning of which should not be unobserved. It is usually translated with rock-dweller, but it here means "he who lives near or at _Hraunn_" (_Hrönn_). _Hraunn_ is one of the names of the Elivagar (see Nos. 59, 93; cp. Younger Edda, 258, with Grimnersmal, 38).

After their return to Egil's, Thor and Tyr again seat themselves in the thunder-chariot and proceed to Asgard with the captured kettle. But they had not driven far before the strength of one of the horn-decorated draught animals failed, and it was found that the goat was lame (str. 37). A misfortune had happened to it while in Egil's keeping, and this had been caused by the cunning Loke (str. 37). The poem does not state the kind of misfortune--the Younger Edda gives us information on this point--but if it was Loke's purpose to make enmity between Thor and his friend Egil he did not succeed this time. Thor, to be sure, demanded a ransom for what had happened, and the ransom was, as Hymerskvida informs us, two children who were reared in Egil's house. But Thor became their excellent foster-father and protector, and the punishment was therefore of such a kind that it was calculated to strengthen the bond of friendship instead of breaking it.

Gylfaginning also (Younger Edda, i. 142, &c.) has preserved traditions showing that when Thor is to make a journey from Asgard to Jotunheim it requires more than one day, and that he therefore puts up in an inn at the end of the first day's travel, where he eats his supper and stops over night. There he leaves his goats and travels the next day eastward (north), "across the deep sea" (_hafit that hit djúpa_), on whose other side his giant foes have their abode. The sea in question is the Elivagar, and the tradition correctly states that the inn is situated on its southern (western) side.

But Gylfaginning has forgotten the name of the host in this inn. Instead of giving his name it simply calls him a _buandi_ (peasant); but it knows and states on the other hand the names of the two children there reared, Thjalfe and Roskva; and it relates how it happened that one of Thor's goats became lame, but without giving Loke the blame for the misfortune. According to Gylfaginning the event occurred when Thor was on his way to Utgard-Loke. In Gylfaginning, too, Thor takes the two children as a ransom, and makes Thjalfe (_thjálfi_) a hero, who takes an honourable part in the exploits of the god.

As shall be shown below, this inn on the road from Asgard to Jotunheim is presupposed as well known in Eilif Gudrunson's Thorsdrapa, which describes the adventures Thor met with on his journey to the giant Geirrod. Thorsdrapa gives facts of great mythological importance in regard to the inhabitants of the place. They are the "sworn" helpers of the Asa-gods, and when it is necessary Thor can thence secure brave warriors, who accompany him across Elivagar into Jotunheim. Among them an archer plays the chief part in connection with Thjalfe (see No. 114).

On the north side of Elivagar dwell accordingly giants hostile to gods and men; on the south side, on the other hand, beings friendly to the gods and bound in their friendship by oaths. The circumstance that they are bound by oaths to the gods (see Thorsdrapa) implies that a treaty has been made with them and that they owe obedience. Manifestly the uttermost picket guard to the north against the frost-giants is entrusted to them.

This also gives us an explanation of the position of the star-hero Orvandel, the great archer, in the mythological Epic. We can understand why he is engaged to the dis of growth, Groa, as it is his duty to defend Midgard against the destructions of frost; and why he fights on the Elivagar and in Jotunheim against the same enemies as Thor; and why the mythology has made him and the lord of thunder friends who visit each other. With the tenderness of a father, and with the devotion of a fellow-warrior, the mighty son of Odin bears on his shoulders the weary and cold star-hero over the foggy Elivagar, filled with magic terrors, to place him safe by his own hearth south of this sea after he has honoured him with a token which shall for ever shine on the heavens as a monument of Orvandel's exploits and Thor's friendship for him. In the meantime Groa, Orvandel's wife, stays in Thor's halls.

But we discover the same bond of hospitality between Thor and Egil. According to Hymerskvida it is in Egil's house, according to Gylfaginning in the house in which Thjalfe is fostered, where the accident to one of Thor's goats happens. In one of the sources the youth whom Thor takes as a ransom is called simply Egil's child; in the other he is called Thjalfe. Two different mythic sources show that Thjalfe was a waif, adopted in Egil's house, and consequently not a real brother but a foster-brother of Svipdag and Ull. One source is Fornaldersaga (iii. 241), where it is stated that Groa in a _flædarmál_ found a little boy and reared him together with her own son. _Flædarmál_ is a place which a part of the time is flooded with water and a part of the time lies dry. The other source is the Longobard saga, in which the mythological Egil reappears as Agelmund, the first king of the Longobardians who emigrated from Scandinavia (_Origo Longob._, Paulus Diac., 14, 15; cp. No. 112). Agelmund, it is said, had a foster-son, Lamicho (_Origo Longob._), or Lamissio (Paulus Diac.), whom he found in a dam and took home out of pity. Thus in the one place it is a woman who bears the name of the archer Orvandel's wife, in the other it is the archer Egil himself, who adopts as foster-son a child found in a dam or in a place filled with water. Paulus Diaconus says that the lad received the name Lamissio to commemorate this circumstance, "since he was fished up out of a dam or dyke," which in their (the Longobardian) language is called _lama_ (cp. _lehm_, mud.) The name Thjalfe (_thjálfi_) thus suggests a similar idea. As Vigfusson has already pointed out, it is connected with the English delve, a dyke; with the Anglo-Saxon _delfan_; the Dutch _delven_, to work the ground with a spade, to dig. The circumstances under which the lad was found presaged his future. In the mythology he fells the clay-giant, _Mökkr-kalfi_ (Younger Edda, i. 272-274). In the migration saga he is the discoverer of land and circumnavigates islands (Korm., 19, 3; Younger Edda, i. 496), and there he conquers giants (Harbards-ljod, 39) in order to make the lands inhabitable for immigrants. In the appendix to the Gotland law he appears as Thjelvar, who lands in Gotland, liberates the island from trolls by carrying fire, colonises it and becomes the progenitor of a host of emigrants, who settle in southern countries. In Paulus Diaconus he grows up to be a powerful hero; in the mythology he develops into the Asa-god Thor's brave helper, who participates in his and the great archer's adventures on the Elivagar and in Jotunheim. Paulus (ch. 15) says that when Agelmund once came with his Longobardians to a river, "amazons" wanted to hinder him from crossing it. Then Lamissio fought, swimming in the river, with the bravest one of the amazons, and killed her. In the mythology Egil himself fights with the giantess Sela, mentioned in Saxo as an amazon; _piraticis exercita rebus ac bellici perita muneris_ (_Hist._, 138), while Thjalfe combats with giantesses on Hlessey (Harbardslj., 39), and at the side of Thor and the archer he fights his way through the river waves, in which giantesses try to drown him (Thorsdrapa). It is evident that Paulus Diaconus' accounts of Agelmund and Lamissio are nothing but echoes related as history of the myths concerning Egil and Thjalfe, of which the Norse records fortunately have preserved valuable fragments.

Thus Thjalfe is the archer Egil's and Groa's foster-son, as is apparent from a bringing together of the sources cited. From other sources we have found that Groa is the archer Orvandel's wife. Orvandel dwells near the Elivagar and Thor is his friend, and visits him on his way to and from Jotunheim. These are the evidences of Orvandel's and Egil's identity which lie nearest at hand.

It has already been pointed out that Svipdag's father Orvandel appears in Saxo by the name Ebbo (see Nos. 23, 100). It is Otharus-Svipdag's father whom he calls Ebbo (_Hist._, 329-333). Halfdan slays Orvandel-Ebbo, while the latter celebrates his wedding with a princess Sygrutha (see No. 23). In the mythology Egil had the same fate: an enemy and rival kills him for the sake of a woman. "Franks Casket," an old work of sculpture now preserved in England, and reproduced in George Stephens' great work on the runes,[9] represents Egil defending his house against a host of assailants who storm it. Within the house a woman is seen, and she is the cause of the conflict. Like Saxo's Halfdan, one of the assailants carries a tree or a branched club as his weapon. Egil has already hastened out, bow in hand, and his three famous arrows have been shot. Above him is written in runes his name, wherefore there can be no doubt about his identity. The attack, according to Saxo, took place, in the night (_noctuque nuptiis superveniens_--_Hist._, p. 330).

In a similar manner Paulus Diaconus relates the story concerning Egil Agelmund's death (ch. 16). He is attacked, so it is stated, in the night time by Bulgarians, who slew him and carried away his only daughter. During a part of their history the Longobardians had the Bulgarians as neighbors, with whom they were on a war-footing. In the mythology it was "Borgarians," that is to say, Borgar's son Halfdan and his men, who slew Orvandel. In history the "Borgarians" have been changed into Bulgarians for the natural reason that accounts of wars fought with Bulgarians were preserved in the traditions of the Longobardians.

The very name Ebbo reappears also in the saga of the Longobardians. The brothers, under whose leadership the Longobardians are said to have emigrated from Scandinavia, are in Saxo (_Hist._, 418) called Aggo and Ebbo; in _Origo Longobardorum_, Ajo and Ybor; in Paulus (ch. 7), Ajo and Ibor. Thus the name Ebbo is another form for Ibor, the German Ebur, the Norse _Jöfurr_, "a wild boar." The Ibor of the Longobard saga, the emigration leader, and Agelmund, the first king of the emigrants, in the mythology, and also in Saxo's authorities, are one and the same person. The Longobardian emigration story, narrated in the form of history, thus has its root in the universal Teutonic emigration myth, which was connected with the enmity caused by Loke between the gods and the primeval artists--an enmity in which the latter allied themselves with the powers of frost, and, at the head of the Skilfing-Yngling tribes, gave the impetus to that migration southward which resulted in the populating of the Teutonic continent with tribes from South Scandia and Denmark (see Nos. 28, 32).

Nor is the mythic hero Ibor forgotten in the German sagas. He is mentioned in Notker (about the year 1000) and in the Vilkinasaga. Notker simply mentions him in passing as a saga-hero well known at that time. He distinguishes between the real wild boar (Eber) roaming in the woods, and the Eber (Ebur) who "wears the swan-ring." This is all he has to say of him. But, according to Volundarkvida, the mythological Ebur-Egil is married to a swan-maid, and, like his brother Volund, he wore a ring. The signification of the swan-rings was originally the same as that of Draupner: they were symbols of fertility, and were made and owned for this reason by the primeval artists of mythology, who, as we have seen, were the personified forces of growth in nature, and by their beloved or wives, the swan-maids, who represented the saps of vegetation, the bestowers of the mythic "mead" or "ale." The swan-maid who loves Egil is, therefore, in Volundarvida called Olrun, a parallel to the name Olgefion, as Groa, Orvandel's wife, is called in Haustlaung (Younger Edda, i. 282). Saxo, too, has heard of the swan-rings, and says that from three swans singing in the air fell a _cingulum_ inscribed with names down to King Fridlevus (Njord), which informed him where he was to find a youth who had been robbed by a giant, and whose liberation was a matter of great importance to Fridlevus. The context shows that the unnamed youth was in the mythology Fridlevus-Njord's own son Frey, the lord of harvests, who had been robbed by the powers of frost. Accordingly, a swan-ring has co-operated in the mythology in restoring the fertility of the earth.

In Vilkinasaga appears Villifer. The author of the saga says himself that this name is identical with Wild-Ebur, wild boar. Villifer, a splendid and noble-minded youth, wears on his arm a gold ring, and is the elder friend, protector, and saviour of Vidga Volundson. Of his family relations Vilkinasaga gives us no information, but the part it gives him to play finds its explanation in the myth, where Ebur is Volund's brother Egil, and hence the uncle of his favourite Vidga.

If we now take into consideration that in the German Orentel saga, which is based on the Svipdag-myth, the father of the hero is called Eigel (Egil), and his patron saint Wieland (Volund), and that in the archer, who in Saxo fights by the side of Anund-Volund against Halfdan, we have re-discovered Egil where we expected Orvandel; then we here find a whole chain of evidence that Ebur, Egil, and Orvandel are identical, and at the same time the links in this chain of evidence, taken as they are from the Icelandic poetry, and from Saxo, from England, Germany, and Italy, have demonstrated how widely spread among the Teutonic peoples was the myth about Orvandel-Egil, his famous brother Volund, and his no less celebrated son Svipdag. The result gained by the investigation is of the greatest importance for the restoration of the epic connection of the mythology. Hitherto the Volundarkvida with its hero has stood in the gallery of myths as an isolated torso with no trace of connection with the other myths and mythic sagas. Now, on the other hand, it appears, and as the investigation progresses it shall become more and more evident, that the Volund-myth belongs to the central timbers of the great epic of Teutonic mythology, and extends branches through it in all directions.