spear," or, more accurately, "the one who exhibits great care and skill
in regard to the spear" (from _geir_, spear, and _vanda_, to apply
care to something in order that it may serve its purpose). In Saxo,
Gervandillus-Geirvandel is the father of Horvendillus-Orvandel; the
spear-hero is the father of the archer. It is evident that the epithets
of the son and father are parallel formations, and that as the one
designates the foremost archer in mythology, the other must refer to a
prominent spear-champion. It is of no slight importance to our knowledge
of the Teutonic weapon-myth that the foremost representatives of the
spear, the bow, and the sword among the heroes are grandfather, father,
and son. Svipdag, Ivalde's grandson, the son of Orvandel-Egil, is above
all others the sword-champion, "the sword-elf" (_sverdálfr_--see Olaf
Trygv., 43, where Svipdag-Erik's namesake and supposed descendant, Erik,
Jarl Hakonson, is called by this epithet). It is he who from the lower
world fetches the best and most terrible sword, which was also probably
regarded as the first of its kind in that age, as his uncle, who had
made it, was called "the father of swords" (see Nos. 113, 114, 115).
Svipdag's father is the most excellent archer whose memory still survives
in the story about William Tell. The grandfather, Ivalde, must have been
the most excellent marksman with the spear. The memory of this survives
not only in the epithets, _Geirvandill_ and _Geirvadill_, but also in
the heroic poem, "Valtarius Manufortis," written before the year 950 by
Eckehard in St. Gallen, and in Vilkinasaga, which has preserved certain
features of the Ivalde-myth.
Clad in an armour smithied by Volund (_Vuelandia fabrica_), Valtarius
appears as the great spear-champion, who despises all other weapons of
attack--
Vualtarius erat vir maximus undique telis
Suspectamque habuit cuncto sibi tempori pugnam (v. 366-7).
With the spear he meets a sword-champion--
Hic gladio fidens hic acer et arduus hasta (v. 822);
and he has developed the use of the spear into an art, all of whose
secrets were originally known by him alone, then also by Hagano, who
learned them from the former (v. 336, 367). Vilkinasaga speaks of
Valthari as an excellent spear-champion. Sure of success, he wagers his
head in a competitive contest with this weapon.
It has already been shown above (see No. 89) that _Svigdir_-Ivalde in the
mythic saga concerning the race-heroes was the first ruler of the Swedes,
just as his sons, Volund and Egil, became those of the Longobardians and
Slagfin that of the Burgundians, and, as shall be shown below, also that
of the Saxons. Even in the Ynglingasaga, compiled in the twelfth century,
he remains, by the name _Svegdir_ among the first kings of the Yngling
race, and in reality as the first hero; for his forerunners, _Fjölnir_,
_Freyr_, and _Odinn_, are prehuman gods (in regard to _Fjölnir_, see
Völuspa). That _Svidir_ was made the race-hero of the Swedes is explained
by the fact that Ivalde, before his sons, before he had yet become the
foe of the gods and a "perjured _hapt_," was the guardian of the northern
Teutonic world against the powers of frost, and that the Sviones were the
northernmost race of the Teutonic domain. The elf-citadel on the southern
coast of the Elivagar was _Geirvadill_-Ivalde's _setr_ before it became
that of his sons (see Nos. 109, 113-115, 117, 118). The continental
Teutons, like their kinsmen on the Scandian peninsula, knew that north
of the Swedes and in the uttermost north lived a non-Teutonic people who
ran on skees and practised hunting--the Finns. And as the realm that was
subject to the race-hero of the Swedes in the mythology extended to
the Elivagar, where his _setr_ was situated, even the Finns must have
been subject to his sceptre. This explains his surname, _Finnakonungr_,
_Finnr_, _Vidfinnr_, Fin Folcvalding, and also the fact that his
descendants form a group of skee-runners. To the location of the _setr_
near the Elivagar, at the point where Thor was wont to wade across this
body of water (see Nos. 109, 114), we have a reference in the Ivalde
epithets, _Vadill Vadi_. They indicate his occupation as the keeper of
the ford. Vilkinasaga makes him a wader of the same kind as Thor, and
makes him bear his son, Volund, across a sound while the latter was still
a lad. Reasons which I may yet have an opportunity to present indicate
that Ivalde's mother was the mightiest amazon of Teutonic mythology,
whose memory survives in Saxo's account of Queen Rusila, Rusla (_Hist._,
178, 365, 394-396), and in the German heroic-saga's Rütze. This queen
of the elves, dwelling south of the Elivagar, is also remembered by
Tactitus' informer. In _Germania_ (45) we read: _Svionibus Sitonum gentes
continuantur. Cetera similes uno different quod femina dominatur.... Hic
Suebiæ fines_--"The Sviones are bounded by the Sitones. While they are
like each other in other things they differ in the one respect, that
a woman rules over the Sitones. Here the confines of Suebia end." The
name Sitones does not occur elsewhere, and it would be vain to seek it
in the domain of reality. Beyond the domain of the Sviones extended at
that time that of the mythic geography. The Sitones, who were governed
by a queen, belonged to the Teutonic mythology, like the Hellusians
and Oxionians, mentioned elsewhere in _Germania_. It is not impossible
that the name _Sitones_, of which the stem is sit, is connected with the
Norse mythological name of the chief citadel in their country--_setr_
(_Geirvadill's setr_, _Ide's setr_; cp. _setr-verjendr_ as a designation
in Ynglingasaga [17] of the descendants of _Svigdir_-Ivalde). The word
_setr_ is derived from _setja_, a causative form of _sitja_, the Gothic
_sitan_.
I now pass to the name _Hlaudverr_, in Volundarkvida. This poem does not
state directly who Volund's, Egil's, and Slagfin's father was, but it
does so indirectly by mentioning the name of the father of Volund's and
Slagfin's swan-maids, and by stating that these swan-maids were sisters
of the brothers. Volund's swan-maid is called _theirra systir_ in str.
2. Among the many uncalled-for "emendations" made in the text of the
Elder Edda is also the change of _theirra_ to _theirrar_, made for the
reason that the student, forgetting that Volundarkvida was a poem born
of mythology, regarded it as impossible for a brother and sister to be
husband and wife, and for the reason that it was observed in the prose
introduction to Volundarkvida that the father of the three brothers was
_Finnakonungr_. _Hlaudverr_ is also found in a German source, "Biterolf,"
as King Liutwar. There he appears in the war between Hadding-Dieterich
and Gudhorm-Ermenrich, and the poem makes him a champion on the side
where all who in the mythology were foes of the Asas generally got their
place, that is, on Ermenrich's. There he occupied the most conspicuous
place as Ermenrich's standard-bearer, and, with Sabene, leads his forces.
The same position as Ermenrich's standard-bearer occupies is held in
"Dieterich's Flucht" by Vate, that is to say, _Vadi_-Ivalde, and in
Vilkinasaga by Valthari, that is to say again, Ivalde. Liutwar, Vate,
and Valthari are originally one and the same person in these German
records, just as Hlaudver (corresponding to Liutwar), Vade (corresponding
to Vate), and Ivalde (corresponding to Valthari) are identical in the
Scandinavian Volundarkvida's statement, that Volund's and Slagfin's
swan-maids are their sisters (half-sisters, as we shall see), and, like
them, daughters of Ivalde, is thus found to be correct by the comparison
of widely-separated sources.
While the father of these two swan-maids is called _Hlaudverr_ in
Volundarkvida, the father of the third swan-maid, Egil's beloved, is
called King _Kiarr_ in Valland. As Egil was first married to the dis
of vegetation, Groa, whose father is Sigtryg in the heroic saga, and
then to Sif, his swan-maid must be one of these two. In Volundarkvida,
where none of the swan-maids have their common mythological names,
she is called Olrun, and is said to be not a sister, but a kinswoman
(_kunn_--str. 15) of both the others. _Hlaudverr_ (Ivalde) and _Kiarr_
are therefore kinsmen. Who _Kiarr_ was in the mythology I cannot now
consider. Both these kings of mythological descent reappear in the cycle
of the Sigurd songs. It has already been shown above (No. 118) that the
Gjukungs appear in the Sigurd saga as heirs and possessors of _Hlaudverrs
halls_ and treasures; it is added that "they possess the whitest shield
from _Kiarr's_ hall (Gudrunarkvida, ii. 25; Atlakvida, 7). Here we
accordingly once more find the connection already pointed out between
the persons appearing in Volundarkvida and those in the Gjukungsaga. The
fathers of the swan-maids who love Volund and his brothers reappear in
the Sigurd songs as heroes who had already left the scene of action, and
who had owned immense treasures, which after their death have passed by
inheritance into the possession of the Gjukungs. This also follows from
the fact that the Gjukungs are descendants of Gjuke-Slagfin, and that
Slagfin and his brothers are Niflungs, heirs of Hlaudver-Ivalde, who was
_gullaudigr mjök_ (Younger Edda).
Like his sons, Ivalde originally stood in a friendly relation to the
higher reigning gods; he was their sworn man, and from his citadel near
the Elivagar, _Geirvadills setr_, he protected the creation of the gods
from the powers of frost. But, like his sons, and before them, he fell
into enmity with the gods and became "a perjured _hapt_." The features
of the Ivalde-myth, which have been preserved in the heroic poems and
shed light on the relation between the moon-god and him, are told partly
in the account of Gevarus, Nanna's father, in Saxo, and partly in the
poems about Walther (Valtarius, Walthari) and Fin Folcvalding. From these
accounts it appears that Ivalde abducted a daughter of the moon-god; that
enmity arose between them; that, after the defeat of Ivalde, Sunna's and
Nanna's father offered him peace, and that the peace was confirmed by
oath; that Ivalde broke the oath, attacked Gevar-Nokver and burnt him;
that, during the hostilities between them, Slagfin-Gjuke, though a son
of Ivalde, did not take the side of his natural father, but that of his
foster-father; and that Ivalde had to pay for his own deeds with ruin and
death.
Concerning the point that Ivalde abducted a daughter of Gevar-Nokver
and married her, the Latin poems Valtarius Manufortis, Nibelunge Noth,
Biterolf, Vilkinasaga, and Boguphalus (Chronicon Poloniæ) relate that
Walther fled with a princess named Hildigund. On the flight he was
attacked by Gjukungs, according to Valtarius Manufortis. The chief one
of these (in the poem Gunthari, Gjuke's son) received in the battle a
wound "clean to the hip-bone." The statement anent the wound, which
Walther gave to the chief one among the Gjukungs, has its roots in the
mythology where the chief Gjukung, that is, Gjuke himself, appears
with surnames (Hengest, Geldr, _öndr-Jálkr_) alluding to the wound
inflicted. In the Anglo-Saxon heroic poem Fin Folcvalding is married
to Hildeburh, a daughter of Hnæf-Hoce, and in Hyndluljod (cp. str. 17
with str. 15) _Hildigunnr_ is the mother of Halfdan's wife Almveig,
and consequently the wife of _Sumbl Finnakonungr_, that is, Ivalde.
_Hildigunnr's_ father is called Sækonungr in Hyndluljod, a synonym of
_Nökkver_ ("the ship-captain," the moon-god), and Hildigun's mother is
called _Sváfa_, the same name as that by which Nanna is introduced in
the poem concerning Helge Hjorvardson. Hildeburh, Hnæf-Hoce's daughter,
is identical with Hildigun, daughter of _Sækonungr_. Compare furthermore
str. 20 in Hyndluljod, which speaks of Nanna as Nokver's daughter, and
thus refers back to str. 17, where Hildigun is mentioned as the daughter
of _Sækonungr_. The phrase _Nanna vat næst thor Nauckva dottir_ shows
that _Nökkver_ and another elder daughter of his were named in one of the
immediately preceding strophes. But in these no man's name or epithet
occurs except _Sækonungr_, "the sea-king," which can refer to _Nökkver_,
"the ship-owner," or "ship-captain," and the "daughter" last mentioned in
the poem is _Hildigunnr_.
Of the names of Ivalde's wife the various records contain the following
statements:
Hlaudver-Ivalde is married to Svanfeather (_Svanfjödr_,
Volundarkvida).
Finnalf-Ivalde is married to Svanhild Gold-feather, daughter of
Sol (Fornal. saga).
Fin Folcvalding-Ivalde is married to Hildeburh, daughter of
Hnæf-Hoce (Beowulf poem).
Walther-Ivalde is married to Hildigunt (German poems).
Sumbl-Finnakonungr is married to Hildigun, daughter of
Sækonungr Nokver, the same as _Hnæfr_, _Hnefr_, Nanna's father
(Hyndluljod, compared with Saxo and other sources).
She who is called Svanfeather, the sun-daughter Svanhild Gold-feather,
Hildeburh, Hildigunt, and Hildigun is accordingly a sister of the
moon-dis Nanna, and a daughter of the ruler of the atmosphere and of the
moon. She is herself a sun-dis. In regard to the composition of the name,
we must compare Hildigun, _Hiltigunt_, with Nanna's surname _Sinhtgunt_.
The Teutonic, or at all events the Norse, mythology knew two divinities
of the sun, mother and daughter. Grimnersmal (47) tells us that the older
one, _Alfraudull_, has a daughter, who, not at the present time, but in
the future, is to drive the car of the sun (_eina dottur berr Alfraudull
..._). The elder is the wife of the moon-god. The younger one is the
Sunna mentioned in the Merseburg formula (see No. 92), Sinhtgunt-Nanna's
sister. As a surname, Sunna also occurs in the Norse literature
(Alvissmal, 17; Younger Edda, i. 472, and elsewhere).
In the Beowulf poem and in "Battle of Furnesburg," we find Fin
Folcvalding, Hildeburh's husband, as the foe of his father-in-law Hnæf,
and conquered by him and Hengest. After a war ending unluckily for him,
he makes peace with his victors, breaks the peace, attacks the citadel
in the night, and cremates the slain and wounded in an immense funeral
pyre. Hnæf is among those fallen, and Hildeburh weeps at his funeral
pyre; Hengest escapes and afterwards avenges Hnæf's death. Saxo confirms
the fact, that the historified person who in the mythology is the
moon-god is attacked and burnt by one of his "satraps," and afterwards
avenged. This he tells of his Gevarus, Nanna's father (_Hist._, 131).
The correspondence on this point shows that the episode has its root in
the mythology, though it would be vain to try to find out the symbolic
significance from a standpoint of physical nature of the fact that the
moon-god was attacked and burnt by the husband of his daughter, the
sun-dis.
[Illustration: KING SVAFRLAME SECURES THE SWORD TYRFING.
(_From a painting by Lorenz Frölich._)
In the Icelandic Hervar's Saga is an account of the mythical sword
called Tyrfing, which Odin commanded the dwarfs Durin and Dvalin to
forge for his grandson, King Svafrlame. When, against their will, they
were compelled to deliver the sword to the king, the dwarfs pronounced a
curse upon it, declaring that it should never be drawn from its sheath
without causing the death of some one. Soon after Svafrlame was killed
by Arngrim and the sword passed to Angantyr, who, in turn, was slain by
Hjalmar and, to abate the curse, Tyrfing was buried with him. Angantyr's
daughter, Hervor, however, by a spell, exorcised the spirit of her father
and obtained the sword, after which it had many owners in succession,
but the curse remained, for it brought death as before to every one who
unsheathed it.]
Meanwhile we obtain from these scattered mythic fragments preserved
in the heroic poems, when compared with the statements found in the
mythology itself, the following connected story as the myth about the
mead:
Originally, the mead, the _soma_, belongs to Mimer alone. From an unknown
depth it rises in the lower world directly under the world-tree, whose
middle root is watered by the well of the precious liquid. Only by
self-sacrifice, after prayers and tears, is Odin permitted to take a
drink from this fountain. The drink increases his strength and wisdom,
and enables him to give order to the world situated above the lower
regions. From its middle root the world-tree draws liquids from the
mead-fountain, which bless the einherjes of Asgard as a beverage, and
bless the people of Midgard as a fructifying honey-dew. Still this mead
is not pure; it is mixed with the liquids from Urd's and Hvergelmer's
fountains. But somewhere in the Jotunheims, the genuine mead was
discovered in the fountain Byrger. This discovery was kept secret. The
keeper of the secret was Ivalde, the sworn watchman near the Elivagar.
In the night he sent his son Slagfin (afterwards called after his
adopted father Hjuke) and his daughter Bil (Idun) to dip liquid from the
fountain Byrger and bring it to him. But the children never returned.
The moon-god had taken them and Byrger's liquids unto himself, and thus
the gods of Asgard were able to partake of this drink. Without the
consent of the moon-god, Ivalde on his part secured his daughter the
sun-dis, and doubtless she bears to him the daughters Idun, Almveig, and
other dises of growth and rejuvenation, after he had begotten Slagfin,
Egil, and Volund with the giantess Greip. The moon-god and Ivalde have
accordingly taken children from each other. The circumstance that the
mead, which gives the gods their creative power and wisdom, was robbed
from Ivalde--this find which he kept secret and wished to keep for
himself alone--makes him the irreconcilable foe of the moon-god, is the
cause of the war between them, and leads him to violate the oath which he
had taken to him. He attacks Gevar in the night, kills and burns him, and
recaptures the mead preserved in the ship of the moon. He is henceforth
for ever a foe of the gods, and allies himself with the worst enemies
of their world, the powers of frost and fire. Deep down in Hades there
has long dwelt another foe of the gods, Surt-Durin, the clan-chief of
Suttung's sons, the father of Fjalar. In the oldest time he too was the
friend of the gods, and co-operated with Mimer in the first creation (see
No. 89). But this bond of friendship had now long been broken. Down into
the deep and dark dales in which this clan hostile to the gods dwells,
Ivalde brings his mead-treasure into safety. He apparently gives it as
the price of Fjalar's daughter Gunlad, and as a pledge of his alliance
with the world of giants. On the day of the wedding, Odin comes before
him, and clad in his guise, into Surt's halls, marries Gunlad, robs the
liquids of Byrger, and flies in eagle guise with them to Asgard. On the
wedding day Ivalde comes outside of Surt's mountain-abode, but never
enters. A dwarf, the keeper of the halls, entices him into his ruin. It
has already been stated that he was probably buried beneath an avalanche.
The myth concerning the carrying of the mead to the moon, and concerning
its fate there, has left various traces in the traditions of the Teutonic
people. In the North, Hjuke and Bil with their mead-burden were the
objects seen in the spots on the moon. In southern Sweden, according
to Ling, it was still known in the beginning of this century, that
the bucket carried by the figures in the moon was a "brewing kettle,"
consequently containing or having contained a brewed liquid. According
to English traditions, not the two children of Vidfin, but a drunken
criminal (Ritson's _Ancient Songs_; cp. J. Grimm, _Deut. Myth._, 681),
dwelt in the full moon, and that of which he is charged in widely
circulated traditions is that he was gathering fagots for the purpose of
crime, or in an improper time (on the Sabbath). Both the statements that
he is drunk and that his crime consists in the gathering of fagots--lead
us to suppose that this "man in the moon" originally was Ivalde, the
drink-champion and the mead-robber, who attacked and burnt the moon-god.
His punishment is that he will never get to heaven, but will remain in
the moon, and there he is for ever to carry a bundle of thorn-fagots
(thus according to a German tradition, and also according to a tradition
told by Chaucer). Most probably, he has to carry the thorn-rod of the
moon-god burnt by him. The moon-god (see Nos. 75, 91) ruled over the
Teutonic Erynnies armed with rods (_limar_), and in this capacity he bore
the epithet _Eylimi_. A Dutch poem from the fourteenth century says that
the culprit _in duitshe heet Ludergheer_. A variation which J. Grimm
(_Deut. Myth._, 683) quotes is Lodeger. The name refers, as Grimm has
pointed out, to the Old High German Liutker, the Lüdiger of the German
middle-age poem. In "Nibelunge Noth," Lüdiger contends with the Gjukungs;
in "Dieterichs Flucht," he abandons Dieterich's cause and allies himself
with the evil Ermenrich. Like Liutwar, Lüdiger is a pendant to the Norse
Hlaudver, in whom we have already rediscovered Ivalde. While, according
to the Younger Edda, both the Ivalde children Hjuke and Bil appear in the
moon, according to the English and German traditions it is their criminal
father who appears on the scene of the fire he kindled, drunk with the
mead he robbed, and punished with the rod kept by his victim.
The statement in Forspjallsljod, that Ivalde had two groups of children,
corresponds with the result at which we have arrived. By the giantess
Greip he is the father of Slagfin, Egil, and Volund; by the sun-dis
Gevar, Nokver's daughter and Nanna's sister, he is the father of dises of
growth, among whom are Idun, who first is Volund's beloved or wife, and
thereupon is married to Brage. Another daughter of Ivalde is the beloved
of Slagfin-Gjuke, Auda, the "frau Ute" of the German heroic saga. A third
is Signe-Alveig, in Saxo the daughter of _Sumblus Phinnorum_ (Ivalde). At
his wedding with her, Egil is attacked and slain by Halfdan. Hadding is
Halfdan's and her son.