comparison with the Grotte-song. There Olvalde's sons are called _Idi_,
_Aurnir_, and _Thjazi_, while in the Younger Edda they are called _Idi_,
_Gángr_, and _Thjazi_. Thus Aurnir is identical with _Gángr_, and as
_Aurnir_ means "wild boar," and as "wild boar" (Ebur, Ibor, Ebbo) is an
epithet of Egil, Orvandel-Egil must be identical with Gang.
In regard to the rest of Thorsdrapa I may be brief, since it is of less
interest to the subject under discussion.
_Strophe 10._ In spite of the perilous adventure described above, the
hearts of Thjalfe and the Gandvik champions were no more terrified than
Thor's. Here they are designated as _eids fiardar_, "the men pledged by
oath," with which is to be compared _eidsvara fridar_ in strophe 8.
_Strophes 11, 12_, show that Thor landed safely with his burden. Scarcely
had he and his companions got a firm foothold on the other strand before
Geirrod's giant-clan, "the world-tree-destroying folk of the sea-belt,"
came to the spot, and a conflict arose, in which the attacks of the
giants were firmly repulsed, and the latter were finally forced to
retreat.
_Strophe 13._ After the victory Thor's terrible hosts pressed farther
into Jotunheim to open Geirrod's hall, and they arrived there amid the
din and noise of cave-dwellers.
The following strophes mention that Thor broke the backs of Geirrod's
daughters, and pressed with his warriors into Geirrod's hall, where he
was received with a piece of red-hot iron hurled by the latter, which,
hurled back by Thor, caused the death of the giant-chief. Thor had given
the glowing javelin such a force that some one who stood near him,
probably Egil, "drank so that he reeled in the air-current of the piece
of iron the air-drink of Hrimner's daughter" (_svalg hrapmunum á siu
lopti Hrimnis drósar lyptisylg_). Hrimner's daughter is Gulveig-Heid
(Hyndluljod, 32), and her "air-drink" is the fire, over which the gods
held her lifted on their spears (Völuspa, 21).
As we see from the context, Geirrod's halls were filled with the men who
had fled from the battle near the river, and within the mountain there
arose another conflict, which is described in the last three strophes
of the poem. Geirrod's hall shook with the din of battle. Thor swung
his bloody hammer. "The staff of safety," "the help-tree of the way,"
the staff on which Thor supported himself in crossing the river, fell
into Egil's hands (_kom at tvívidar Tývi brautar lids tollr_), who did
not here have room to use his bow, but who, with this "convenient tree
jerked (or broken) from the forest," gave death-blows to "the calves of
Alfheim." The arrows from his quiver could not be used in this crowded
place against the men of the mountain-chief.
The fact that the giants in Thorsdrapa use the sling is of interest to
the question concerning the position of the various weapons of mythology.
Geirrod is called _vegtaugar thrjótr_, "the industrious applier of the
sling" (str. 17), and _álmtaugar Ægir_, "the _Ægir_ of the sling made of
elm-bast."
In the last strophe Egil is said to be _helblótinn_ and _hneitir_,
_undirfjálfs bliku_, expressions to which I shall recur further on.
Like the relation between Volund and his swan-maids in Volundarkvida,
the relation between Rogner-Thjasse and Idun in Forspjallsljod is not
that of the robber to his unwilling victim, but one of mutual harmony.
This is confirmed by a poem which I shall analyse when the investigation
reaches a point that demands it, and according to which Idun was from
her childhood tied by bonds of love and by oath to the highly-gifted but
unhappy son of Ivalde, to the great artist who, by his irreconcilable
thirst for revenge, became the Lucifer of Teutonic mythology, while
Loke is its Mefisto. I presume that the means of rejuvenation, the
divine remedy against age (_ellilyf ása_--Haustlaung), which Idun alone
in Asgard knows and possesses, was a product of Thjasse-Volund's art.
The middle age also remembered Volund (Wieland) as a physician, and
this trait seems to be from the oldest time, for in Rigveda, too, the
counterparts of the Ivalde sons, that is, the Ribhus, at the request
of the gods, invent means of rejuvenation. It may be presumed that the
mythology described his exterior personality in a clear manner. From
his mother he must have inherited his giant strength, which, according
to the Grotte-song, surpassed Hrungner's and that of the father of
the latter (_Hard var Hrungnir ok hans fadir, thó var Thjazi theim
auflgari_--str. 9). With his strength beauty was doubtless united.
Otherwise, Volundarkvida's author would scarcely have said that his
swan-maid laid her arms around Anund's (Volund's) "white" neck. That his
eyes were conceived as glittering may be concluded from the fact that
they distinguish him on the starry canopy as a star-hero, and that in
Volundarkvida Nidhad's queen speaks of the threatening glow in the gaze
of the fettered artist (_amon ero augu ormi theim enom frána_--str. 17).
Ivalde's sons--Thjasse-Volund, Aurnir-Egil, and Ide-Slagfin--are, as we
have seen, bastards of an elf and a giantess (Greip, Gambara). Ivalde's
daughters, on the other hand (see No. 113), have as mother a sun-dis,
daughter of the ruler of the atmosphere, Nokver. In other sources the
statement in Forspjallsljod (6) is confirmed, that Ivalde had two groups
of children, and that she who "among the races of elves was called
Idun" belonged to one of them. Thus, while Idun and her sisters are
half-sisters to Ivalde's sons, these are in turn half-brothers to pure
giants, sons of Greip, and these giants are, according to the Grotte-song
(str. 9), the fathers of Fenja and Menja. The relationship of the Ivalde
sons to the gods on the one hand and to the giants on the other may be
illustrated by the following scheme:
Ivalde begets (1) (2) with the giantess Greip bears with a giant
with a sun-dis Greip-- ------------------------
--------- ------- | |
| | giant giant
Idun and her sisters. Thjasse-Volund and | |
his brothers. Fenja. Menja.
115.
REVIEW OF THE PROOFS OF VOLUND'S IDENTITY WITH THJASSE.
The circumstances which first drew my attention to the necessity of
investigating whether Thjasse and Volund were not different names of
the same mythic personality, which the mythology particularly called
Thjasse, and which the heroic saga springing from the mythology in
Christian times particularly called Volund, were the following: (1) In
the study of Saxo I found in no less than three passages that Njord,
under different historical masks, marries a daughter of Volund, while
in the mythology he marries a daughter of Thjasse. (2) In investigating
the statements anent Volund's father in Volundarkvida's text and prose
appendix I found that these led to the result that Volund was a son of
Sumbl, the Finn king--that is to say, of Olvalde, Thjasse's father. (3)
My researches in regard to the myth about the mead produced the result
that Svigder-Olvalde perished by the treachery of a dwarf outside of a
mountain, where one of the smith-races of the mythology, Suttung's sons,
had their abode. In Vilkinasaga's account of the death of Volund's
father I discovered the main outlines of the same mythic episode.
The correspondence of so different sources in so unexpected a matter
was altogether too remarkable to permit it to be overlooked in my
mythological researches. The fact that the name-variation itself, Alvalde
(for Olvalde), as Thjasse's father is called in Harbardsljod, was in
meaning and form a complete synonym of Ivalde I had already observed, but
without attaching any importance thereto.
The next step was to examine whether a similar proof of the identity of
Thjasse's and Volund's mother was to be found. In one Norse mythological
source Thjasse's mother is called Greip. Volund's and Egil's (Ayo's and
Ibor's, Aggo's and Ebbo's) mother is in Paulus Diaconus and in Origo
Longobardorum called Gambara, in Saxo Gambaruc. The Norse stem in the
Latinised name Gambara is _Gammr_, which is a synonym of Greip, the
name of Thjasse's mother. Thus I found a reference to the identity of
Thjasse's mother and Volund's mother.
From the parents I went to the brothers. One of Volund's brothers bore
the epithet Aurnir, "wild boar." Aurnir's wife is remembered in the
Christian traditions as one who forebodes the future. Ebur's wife is a
mythological seeress. One of Thjasse's brothers, Ide, is the only one in
the mythology whose name points to an original connection with Ivalde
(Idvalde), Volund's father, and with Idun, Volund's half-sister. Volund
himself bears the epithet Brunne, and Thjasse's home is Brunnsacre. One
of Thjasse's sons is slain at the instigation of Loke, and Loke, who in
Lokasenna takes pleasure in stating this, boasts in the same poem that
he has caused the slaying of Thjasse.
In regard to bonds of relationship in general, I found that on the one
side Volund, like Thjasse, was regarded as a giant, and had relations
among the giants, among whom Vidolf is mentioned both as Volund's and
Thjasse's relative, and that on the other hand Volund is called an
elf-prince, and that Thjasse's father belonged to the clan of elves, and
that Thjasse's daughter is characterised, like Volund and his nearest
relatives, as a skee-runner and hunter, and in this respect has the same
epithet as Volund's nephew Ull. I found, furthermore, that so far as
tradition has preserved the memory of star-heroes, every mythic person
who belonged to their number was called a son of Ivalde or a son of
Olvalde. Orvandel-Egil is a star-hero and a son of Ivalde. The Watlings,
after whom the Milky Way is named, are descendants of Vate-Vade, Volund's
father. Thjasse is a star-hero and the son of Olvalde. Ide, too,
Thjasse's brother, "the torch-bearer," may have been a star-hero, and, as
we shall show later, the memory of Volund's brother Slagfin was partly
connected with the Milky Way and partly with the spots on the moon;
while, according to another tradition, it is Volund's father whose image
is seen in these spots (see Nos. 121, 123).
I found that Rogner is a Thjasse-epithet, and that all that is stated of
Rogner is also told of Volund. Rogner was, like the latter, first the
friend of the gods and then their foe. He was a "swan-gladdener," and
Volund the lover of a swan-maid. Like Volund he fought against Njord.
Like Volund he proceeded to the northernmost edge of the world, and there
he worked with magic implements through the powers of frost for the
destruction of the gods and of the world. And from some one he has taken
the same ransom as Volund did, when the latter killed Nidhad's young sons
and made goblets of their skulls.
I found that while Olvalde's sons, Ide, Aurner (Gang), and Thjasse, still
were friends of the gods, they had their abode on the south coast of the
Elivagar, where Ivalde had his home, called after him _Geirvadils setr_,
and where his son Orvandel-Egil afterwards dwelt; that Thor on his way to
Jotunheim visits Ide's _setr_, and that he is a guest in Egil's dwelling;
that the mythological warriors who dwell around Ide's _setr_ are called
"warrior-vans," and that these "Gang's warrior-vans" have these very
persons, Egil and his foster-son Thjalfe, as their leaders when they
accompany Thor to fight the giants, wherefore the _setr_ of the Olvalde
sons Ide and Gang must be identical with that of the Ivalde sons, and
Ide, Gang, and Thjasse identical with Slagfin, Egil, and Volund.
On these foundations the identity of Olvalde's sons with Ivalde's sons
is sufficiently supported, even though our mythic records had preserved
no evidence that Thjasse, like Volund, was the most celebrated artist
of mythology. But such evidence is not wanting. As the real meaning
of _Regin_ is "shaper," "workman," and as this has been retained as a
smith-name in Christian times, there is every reason to assume that
Thjasse, who is called _fjadrar-blads leik-Regin_ and _vingvagna Rögnir_,
did himself make, like Volund, the eagle guise which he, like Volund,
wears. The son of Ivalde, Volund, made the most precious treasures for
the gods while he still was their friend, and the Olvalde son Thjasse is
called _hapta snytrir_, "the decorator of the gods," doubtless for the
reason that he had smithied treasures for the gods during a time when he
was their friend and Thor's _ofrúni_ (Thor's confidential friend). Volund
is the most famous and, so far as we can see, also the first sword-smith,
which seems to appear from the fact that his father Ivalde, though a
valiant champion, does not use the sword but the spear as a weapon, and
is therefore called _Geirvandill_. Thjasse was the first sword-smith,
otherwise he would not have been called _fadir mörna_, "the father of
the swords." Splendid implements are called _verk Rögnis_ and _Thjaza
thingskil_, _Idja glýsmál_, _Idja ord_--expressions which do not find
their adequate explanation in the Younger Edda's account of the division
of Olvalde's estate, but in the myth about the judgment which the gods
once proclaimed in the contest concerning the skill of Sindre and the
sons of Ivalde, when the treasures of the latter presented in court had
to plead their own cause.
116.
A LOOK AT THE MYTH CONCERNING THJASSE-VOLUND. HIS EPITHET
HLEBARDR. HIS WORST DEED OF REVENGE.
What our mythic records tell us about the sons of Olvalde and the sons
of Ivalde is under such circumstances to be regarded as fragments
which come to us from one and the same original myth. When combined,
the fragments are found to dovetail together and form one whole.
Volundarkvida (28) indicates that something terrible, something that in
the highest degree aroused his indignation and awakened his deep and
satanic thirst for revenge, had happened to Volund ere he, accompanied by
his brothers, betook himself to the wintry wilderness, where he smithied
the sword of revenge and the gand rings; and the poem makes Volund add
that this injustice remained to be avenged when he left the Wolf-dales.
It lies in the nature of the case that the saga about Volund did not end
where the fragment of the Volundarkvida which we possess is interrupted.
The balance of the saga must have related what Volund did to accomplish
the revenge which he still had to take, and how the effort to take
vengeance resulted. The continuation probably also had something to say
about that swan-maid, that dis of vegetation, who by the name Hervor
Alvitr spends nine years with Volund in the Wolfdales, and then, seized
by longing, departs with the other swan-maids, but of whose faithful
love Volund is perfectly convinced (Volundarkvida, 10). While Volund is
Nidhad's prisoner, the hope he has built on the sword of revenge and
victory smithied by him seems to be frustrated. The sword is in the power
of Mimer-Nidhad, the friend of the gods. But the hope of the plan of
revenge must have awakened again when Svipdag, Volund's nephew, succeeded
in coming up from the lower world with the weapon in his possession. The
conflict between the powers of frost and the kinsmen of Ivalde, who had
deserted the gods, on the one side, and the gods and their favourite
Halfdan, the Teutonic patriarch, on the other side, was kindled anew
(see No. 33). Halfdan is repulsed, and finally falls in the war in which
Volund got satisfaction by the fact that his sword conquered Thor's
Mjolner and made Thor retreat. But once more the hope based on the sword
of revenge is frustrated, this time by the possessor of the sword itself,
Volund's young kinsman, who--victor in the war, but conquered by the love
he cherished for Freyja, rescued by him--becomes the husband of the fair
asynje and gives the sword of Volund to Frey, the god of the harvests.
That, in spite of this crossing of his plan of revenge, Volund still did
not give it up may be taken for granted. He is described not only as the
most revengeful, but also as the most persistent and patient person (see
"Doer the Scald's Complaint"), when patience could promote his plans.
To make war on the gods with the aid of the giants, when the sword of
victory had fallen into the hands of the latter, could not give him the
least hope of success. After the mythology has given Volund satisfaction
for the despicable judgment passed on the products of his skill, it
unites the chain of events in such a manner that the same weapon which
refuted the judgment and was to cause the ruin of the gods became their
palladium against its own maker. What was Volund able to do afterwards,
and what did he do? The answer to this question is given in the myth
about Thjasse. With Idun--the Hervor Alvitr of the heroic poem--he
confined himself in a mountain, whose halls he presumably decorated with
all the wonders which the sagas of the middle ages, describing splendid
mountain-halls and parks within the mountains, inherited from the
mythology. The mountain must have been situated in a region difficult of
access to the gods--according to Bragarædur in Jotunheim. At all events,
Thjasse is there secure against every effort to disturb him, forcibly, in
his retreat. The means against the depredations of time and years which
Idun possesses have their virtue only when in her care. Without this
means, even the gods of Asgard are subject to the influence of time, and
are to grow old and die. And in the sense of a myth symbolising nature,
the same means must have had its share in the rejuvenation of creation
through the saps rising every year in trees and herbs. The destruction
of the world--the approach of which Volund wished to precipitate with
his sword of revenge--must come slowly, but surely, if Idun remains away
from Asgard. This plan is frustrated by the gods through Loke, as an
instrument compelled by necessity--compelled by necessity (Haustlaung,
str. 11), although he delighted in the mischief of deceiving even his
allies. Near Thjasse's mountain-halls is a body of water, on which he
occasionally rows out to fish (Bragarædur.) Once, when he rows out for
this purpose, perhaps accompanied by Skade, Idun is at home alone. Loke,
who seems to have studied his customs, flies in a borrowed feather guise
into the mountain and steals Idun, who, changed into a nut, is carried in
his claws through space to Asgard. But the robbing of Idun was not enough
for Loke. He enticed Thjasse to pursue. In his inconsiderate zeal, the
latter dons his eagle guise and hastens after the robber into Asgard's
vaferflames, where he falls by the javelins of the gods and by Thor's
hammer. Sindre's work, the one surpassed by Volund, causes his death, and
is avenged. I have already pointed out that this event explains Loke's
words to Idun in Lokasenna, where he speaks of the murder of one of the
Ivalde sons, and insists that she, Idun, embraced the one who caused his
death.
The fate of the great artist and his tragical death help to throw light
on the character of Loke and on the part he played in the mythology.
Ivalde's sons are, in the beginning, the zealous friends of the gods,
and the decorators and protectors of their creation. They smithy
ornaments, which are the symbols of vegetation; and at their outpost by
the Elivagar they defend the domain of vegetation against Jotunheim's
powers of frost. As I have already stated, they are, like the Ribhus, at
the same time heroes, promoters of growth, and artists of antiquity. The
mythology had also manifestly endowed the sons of Ivalde with pleasing
qualities--profound knowledge of the mysteries of nature, intelligence,
strength, beauty, and with faithfulness toward their beloved. We find
that, in time of adversity, the brothers were firmly united, and that
their swan-maids love them in joy and in distress. For the powers of
evil it was, therefore, of the greatest moment to bring about strife
between the gods and these their "sworn men." Loke, who is a _gedreynir_
(Thorsdrapa), "a searcher of the qualities of the soul," a "tempter of
the character," has discovered in the great artist of antiquity the false
but hitherto unawakened qualities of his character--his ambition and
irreconcilable thirst for revenge. These qualities, particularly the
latter, burst forth fully developed suddenly after the injustice which,
at Loke's instigation, the gods have done to the sons of Ivalde. The
thirst for revenge breaks out in Thjasse-Volund in a despicable misdeed.
There is reason for assuming that the terrible vengeance which, according
to the heroic saga, he took against Nidhad, and which had its counterpart
in the mythology itself, was not the worst crime which the epic of the
Teutonic mythology had to blame him for. Harbardsljod (20) alludes to
another and worse one. Speaking of Thjasse (str. 19), _Hárbardr-Loke_[12]
there boasts that--
hardan jotun
ec hugda Hlebard vera,
gaf han mer gambantein,
en ec velta hann or viti.