Teutonic Mythology Part 9

28B.

LOKE CAUSES ENMITY BETWEEN THE G.o.dS AND THE ORIGINAL ARTISTS (THE CREATORS OF ALL THINGS GROWING). THE CONSEQUENCE IS THE FIMBUL-WINTER AND EMIGRATIONS.

The danger averted by Heimdal when he secured the sun-dis with bonds of love begins in the time of Borgar. The corruption of nature and of man go hand in hand. Borgar has to contend with robbers (_pugiles_ and _piratae_), and among them the prototype of pirates--that terrible character, remembered also in Icelandic poetry, called _Rodi_ (Saxo, _Hist._, 23, 345). The moderate laws given by Heimdal had to be made more severe by Borgar (_Hist._, 24, 25).

While the moral condition in Midgard grows worse, Loke carries out in Asgard a cunningly-conceived plan, which seems to be to the advantage of the G.o.ds, but is intended to bring about the ruin of both the G.o.ds and man. His purpose is to cause enmity between the original artists themselves and between them and the G.o.ds.

Among these artists the sons of Ivalde const.i.tute a separate group.

Originally they enjoyed the best relations to the G.o.ds, and gave them the best products of their wonderful art, for ornament and for use.

Odin's spear _Gungnir_, the golden locks on Sif's head, and Frey's celebrated s.h.i.+p Skidbladner, which could hold all the warriors of Asgard and always had favourable wind, but which also could be folded as a napkin and be carried in one's pocket (Gylf.a.ginning), had all come from the workshop of these artists.

Ivalda synir The sons of Ivalde gengu i ardaga went in ancient times Scidbladni at skapa, to make Skidbladner, sc.i.p.a bezt, among s.h.i.+ps the best, scirom Frey, for the s.h.i.+ning Frey, nytom Njardar bur. Njord's useful son.

(Grimnismal.)

Another group of original artists were Sindre and his kinsmen, who dwelt on Nida's plains in the happy domain of the lower world (Volusp., Nos.

93, 94). According to the account given in Gylf.a.ginning, ch. 37, Loke meets Sindre's brother Brok, and wagers his head that Sindre cannot make treasures as good as the above-named gifts from Ivalde's sons to the Asas. Sindre then made in his smithy the golden boar for Frey, the ring Draupner for Odin, from which eight gold rings of equal weight drop every ninth night, and the incomparable hammer Mjolner for Thor. When the treasures were finished, Loke cunningly gets the G.o.ds to a.s.semble for the purpose of deciding whether or not he has forfeited his head.

The G.o.ds cannot, of course, decide this without at the same time pa.s.sing judgment on the gifts of Sindre and those of Ivalde's sons, and showing that one group of artists is inferior to the other. And this is done.

Sindre's treasures are preferred, and thus the sons of Ivalde are declared to be inferior in comparison. But at the same time Sindre fails, through the decision of the G.o.ds, to get the prize agreed on.

Both groups of artists are offended by the decision.

Gylf.a.ginning does not inform us whether the sons of Ivalde accepted the decision with satisfaction or anger, or whether any noteworthy consequences followed or not. An entirely similar judgment is mentioned in Rigveda (see No. 111). The judgment there has the most important consequences: hatred toward the artists who were victorious, and toward the G.o.ds who were the judges, takes possession of the ancient artist who was defeated, and nature is afflicted with great suffering. That the Teutonic mythology has described similar results of the decision shall be demonstrated in this work.

Just as in the names _Alveig_ and _Almveig_, _Bil-rost_ and _Bifrost_, _Arinbjorn_ and _Grjotbjorn_, so also in the name _Ivaldi_ or _Ivaldr_, the latter part of the word forms the permanent part, corresponding to the Old English Valdere, the German Walther, the Latinised Waltharius.[14]

The former part of the word may change without any change as to the person indicated: _ivaldi_, _Allvaldi_, _olvaldi_, _Audvaldi_, may be names of one and the same person. Of these variations _ivaldi_ and _Allvaldi_ are in their sense most closely related, for the prefix i (_Id_) and _All_ may interchange in the language without the least change in the meaning. Compare _all-likr_, _ilikr_, and _idglikr_; _all-litill_ and _ilitill_; _all-nog_, _ignog_ and _idgnog_. On the other hand, the prefixes in _olvaldi_ and _Audvaldi_ produce different meanings of the compound word. But the records give most satisfactory evidence that _olvaldi_ and _Audvaldi_ nevertheless are the same person as _Allvaldi_ (Ivaldi). Thja.s.se's father is called in Harbardsljod (19) _Allvaldi_; in the Younger Edda (i. 214) _olvaldi_ and _Audvaldi_. He has three sons, Ide, Gang, also called Urner (the Grotte-song), and the just-named Thja.s.se, who are the famous ancient artists, "the sons of Ivalde" (_Ivalda synir_). We here point this out in pa.s.sing. Complete statement and proof of this fact, so important from a mythological standpoint, will be given in Nos. 113, 114, 115.

Nor is it long before it becomes apparent what the consequences are of the decision p.r.o.nounced by the Asas on Loke's advice upon the treasures presented to the G.o.ds. The sons of Ivalde regarded it as a mortal offence, born of the ingrat.i.tude of the G.o.ds. Loke, the originator of the scheme, is caught in the snares laid by Thja.s.se in a manner fully described in Thjodolf's poem "Haustlaung," and to regain his liberty he is obliged to a.s.sist him (Thja.s.se) in carrying Idun away from Asgard.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GIANT THJa.s.sE, IN THE GUISE OF AN EAGLE, CARRIES OFF LOKE.

(_From an etching by Lorenz Frolich._)

Thja.s.se was known as the storm-giant who having been born in deformity was ever seeking golden apples from Idun to cure his ugliness. Upon one occasion a.s.suming the form of an eagle he interrupted a feast of Odin, Honer and Loke and when the latter attempted to strike the voracious bird with a stake found himself fastened to both stake and eagle and was borne away shrieking for mercy. Thja.s.se promised to release Loke if he would bring to him Idun and her golden apples. Loke in fulfillment of his promise beguiled Idun out of Asgard whereupon Thja.s.se in the form of an eagle seized the G.o.ddess in his talons and bore her away to his castle, Thrymheim. He was soon afterwards killed by the G.o.ds, and Idun was released.]

Idun, who possesses "the Asas' remedy against old age," and keeps the apples which symbolise the ever-renewing and rejuvenating force of nature, is carried away by Thja.s.se to a part of the world inaccessible to the G.o.ds. The G.o.ds grow old, and winter extends its power more and more beyond the limits prescribed for it in creation. Thja.s.se, who before was the friend of the G.o.ds, is now their irreconcilable foe. He who was the promoter of growth and the benefactor of nature--for Sif's golden locks, and Skidbladner, belonging to the G.o.d of fertility, doubtless are symbols thereof--is changed into "the mightiest foe of earth," _dolg ballastan vallar_ (Haustl., 6), and has wholly a.s.sumed the nature of a giant.

At the same time, with the approach of the great winter, a terrible earthquake takes place, the effects of which are felt even in heaven.

The myth in regard to this is explained in No. 81. In this explanation the reader will find that the great earthquake in primeval time is caused by Thja.s.se's kinswomen on his mother's side (the Grotte-song)--that is, by the giantesses Fenja and Menja, who turned the enormous world-mill, built on the foundations of the lower world, and working in the depths of the sea, the prototype of the mill of the Grotte-song composed in Christian times; that the world-mill has a _mondull_, the mill-handle, which sweeps the uttermost rim of the earth, with which handle not only the mill-stone but also the starry heavens are made to whirl round; and that when the mill was put in so violent a motion by the angry giantesses that it got out of order, then the starry constellations were also disturbed. The ancient terrible winter and the inclination of the axis of heaven have in the myth been connected, and these again with the close of the golden age. The mill had up to this time ground gold, happiness, peace, and good-will among men; henceforth it grinds salt and dust.

The winter must of course first of all affect those people who inhabited the extensive Svithiod north of the original country and over which another kinsman of Heimdal, the first of the race of Skilfings or Ynglings, ruled. This kinsman of Heimdal has an important part in the mythology, and thereof we shall give an account in Nos. 89, 91, 110, 113-115, and 123. It is there found that he is the same as Ivalde, who, with a giantess, begot the illegitimate children Ide, Urner, and Thja.s.se. Already before his sons he became the foe of the G.o.ds, and from Svithiod now proceeds, in connection with the spreading of the fimbul-winter, a migration southward, the work at the same time of the Skilfings and the primeval artists. The list of dwarfs in Voluspa has preserved the record of this in the strophe about the artist migration from the rocks of the hall (_Salar steinar_) and from Svarin's mound situated in the north (the Voluspa strophe quoted in the Younger Edda; cp. Saxo., _Hist._, 32, 33, and Helg. Hund., i. 31, ii. to str. 14). The attack is directed against _aurvanga sjot_, the land of the clayey plains, and the a.s.sailants do not stop before they reach _Joruvalla_ the Jara plains, which name is still applied to the south coast of Scandinavia (see No. 32). In the pedigree of these emigrants--

their er sottu fra Salar steina (or Svarins haugi) aurvanga sjot til Joruvalla--

occur the names _alfr_ and _Yngvi_, who have Skilfing names; _Fjalarr_, who is Ivalde's ally and Odin's enemy (see No. 89); _Finnr_, which is one of the several names of Ivalde himself (see No. 123); _Frosti_, who symbolises cold; _Skirfir_, a name which points to the Skilfings; and _Virfir_, whom Saxo (_Hist. Dan._, 178, 179) speaks of as _Huyrvillus_, and the Icelandic records as _Virvill_ and _Vifill_ (Fornalders. ii. 8; Younger Edda, i. 548). In Fornalders. Vifill is an emigration leader who married to Loge's daughter _Eymyrja_ (a metaphor for fire--Younger Edda, 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 _Holandiae princeps_. At the same time a brother-in-law of Virfir takes possession of Bornholm, and Gotland is colonised by Thjelvar (_Thjalfi_ of the myth), who is the son of Thja.s.se'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 Thja.s.se 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 Thja.s.se and concerning the therewith connected attack by the Skilfings and Thja.s.se'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 leaders.h.i.+p of Berig. (_Ex hac igitur Scandza insula quasi officina gentium aut certe velut v.a.g.i.n.a nationum c.u.m rege s...o...b..rig Gothi quondam memorantur egressi--De Goth. Orig., c.

4. Meminisse debes, me de Scandzae insulae gremio Gothos dixisse egressos c.u.m 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 const.i.tuted 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 circ.u.mstances 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 Wess.e.x 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 G.o.ds; to the robbing of Idun and the fimbul-winter which was the result.

The myth makes the G.o.ds 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 Thja.s.se 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 doc.u.ments (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 ident.i.ty 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 fra in the skin of a wild beast, so ulfidi "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).