Home of the Eddic Lays
Introduction
Page 1
The Norwegian original of the present work forms the Second Series of my 'Studies on the Origin of the Scandinavian Stories of Gods and Heroes,' of which the First Series appeared at Christiania in 1881-1889. (1)
In the First Series I refrained from investigating the general foundation of the heathen Scandinavian religion, and made no effort to determine where Scandinavian mythological ideas, taken as a whole, had their origin, or to decide whether these ideas were known to all classes of society. My object was rather to throw light on certain of the most important of the Old Norse (Norwegian-Icelandic) myths preserved in the so-called Elder Edda, and in Snorri's Edda.
The foundations of the heathen Scandinavian religion were laid in primitive Germanic times. Near kinship between Scandinavian and other Germanic peoples reveals itself in numerous conceptions regarding the whole mythological world, and in names connected with these conceptions---e.g., Hel, the abode of the dead, Urđr (A.S. Wyrd), who controls the fate of mortals, álfar (elves), risar (giants), jötnar (giants), dvergar (dwarfs), vćttir (wights), etc., etc.
Many of the gods worshipped among the Scandinavians were known and worshipped likewise among the West-Germanic peoples---particularly the chief gods, like Odin, Frigg, Thor, Týr, but still others as well. The different Germanic peoples ascribed to these several gods, to some extent, the same activity and attributes; they placed some of them in the same relations to one another, and associated not a few closely related stories with their names. But in the First Series of my Studies I have strongly emphasised the fact that we find in the two Edda-collections whole series of names of gods and giants unknown to German and English races; and that in these collections there is a very large number of stories and conceptions which cannot have arisen under primitive Germanic conditions of culture. The history of the world, for instance, is narrated in mythological language in a way entirely unknown to the early Germanic races. We cannot but marvel at the conception of life revealed in these poems, with its profound ethical seriousness, power of will, and love of battle; at the poets' description of character, playing with rough humour over the deep abyss; at the comprehensiveness of the mythological symbols; at the skill and power with which has been constructed out of varied and complex elements a grand, unified drama of the world.
In the First Series of these Studies I endeavoured to prove that many of the most important Old Norse myths are preserved in a form not older than the Viking era, and that they are shaped by Scandinavian mythological poets who associated with Christians in the British Isles, especially with the English and Irish. This is true, for example, of the myths of Baldr and Loki, of the ash Yggdrasil, and Ragnarökkr (the end of the world). These myths in their extant form were shaped at a time when familiarity with Christian European culture, and with Jewish-Christian and classical mythological conceptions and stories current among western races (especially the English and Irish) had become widespread among Scandinavians, particularly among Norwegians and Icelanders. Such Old Norse stories of the gods are, to be sure, genuine Scandinavian mythological compositions, but they were shaped under the profound influence of foreign conceptions.
My main contention is, that at the time when the mythological Eddic stories took shape, Norwegians and Icelanders were not influenced by the rest of Europe, but that they were subjected, on the contrary, to a strong and lasting influence from the Christian English and Irish. In the ninth and tenth centuries, before the German races had settled along the Baltic, it was only a very inconsiderable stream of culture that reached Norway overland by way of Denmark. Norwegians and Icelanders received at that time intellectual impulses, across the water, from western peoples who had long been cultivated and Christian. It was in this way that their chieftains and poets became familiar with the thoughts that governed men in the early Middle Ages.
The Viking period did not put an end to the mythmaking activity of the Norsemen. They myth-making faculty was still alive and productive among them in that age. It was, indeed, stimulated by their association with the Christian peoples of the West, so that in the Viking era the Scandinavian mythological conceptions became grander, broader, and deeper than those of primitive Germanic times.
Since the most important Old Norse myths are known to us in their earliest forms from the Eddic poems, the question as to the origin of these myths is most closely connected with the question of where and when the Eddic poems, especially those of a mythological character, arose.
The so-called Eddic lays are preserved in Icelandic manuscripts, the oldest of which are from the thirteenth century. But these manuscripts are only copies of older codices. No one of the poems is older than the end of the ninth century. The majority of them belong to the tenth century, and some are still later. These poems were, it is true, composed by various poets, at various times, and at various places; but it is a mistake to suppose that they were never associated with one another before they were gathered into one collection in Iceland in the thirteenth century. Most of them, from their very origin, belonged to one and the same poetical and mythological tendency. Many betray such literary relations with one another that the younger presuppose the older.
Most of the Eddic poems seem to have been composed by Norsemen, or by men who traced their ancestry back to Norway, the majority coming from the western, but some also from the northern part of that country. Observe, in evidence of this, the following facts:---Hjörvarth, Helgi's father, is represented as a king of Norway. Later in this volume (see p. 66) I have pointed out that the author of the First Lay of Helgi Hundingsbani mentions not only the Sognefjord, but also an obscure point on the outer part of the Sognefjord, viz. Ságunes. Ţolley, another place mentioned by the same poet in the Lay of Hrímgerth, may be found in the diocese of Bergen. The poem Hyndluljóđ, preserved in the Flateyjarbók, but correctly regarded as part of the Poetic Edda, deals with a family of Hörthaland in Norway. Grímnismál presupposes knowledge of a mythical story in the form in which that story was known in northern Norway, the old Hálogaland, and seems to show familiarity with the landscape there. (2) The author of Völundarkviđa, which is probably the oldest of the heroic poems, was familiar with life in Hálogaland, where the Finns went about on snowshoes and lived by hunting. He knew that they dwelt beside inland lakes, where fir and birch grew, and where wolves and bears were plentiful; he had seen swans build their nests in summer on the shores of the solitary forest lakes.
But the Eddic poems just mentioned, and in general those Eddic lays which were the work of poets born in Norway, were not, in my opinion, composed under the influence of impressions from Norway alone. On the contrary, they were, I believe, composed after their authors had become profoundly affected by impressions, conceptions, and stories, or poems, from the British Isles; and to this influence was due, in a considerable degree, the very production of the lays themselves. it is not possible to decide in the case of each lay what soil the poet's foot trod when his poem took shape. Nor is that, indeed, a matter of great importance. The chief thing is to determine where the poet received the impulses that called his work into being.
We are here, moreover, concerned with a continuous literary development which we can follow through a comparatively long period of time. We may, therefore, suppose that the poems were composed, not in the widely scattered places where the several authors were born, but in some district where they associated under similar conditions of life---conditions which were essential for the production of such works, and under which the compositions of the older poets influenced those of the younger.
When this is taken into consideration, one cannot but conclude that the oldest, and, indeed, the great majority of both the mythological and heroic poems were composed by Norwegians in the British Isles, the greater number probably in northern England, but some, it may be, in Ireland, in Scotland, or in the Scottish Isles. Very few Eddic lays seem to have arisen outside of the British Isles. The late Atlamál, which varies greatly from the other heroic poems on the same subject, was certainly composed in Greenland. Some of the latest poems, e.g. Grípisspá, may have originated in Iceland.
The old Norse poems which arose in the British Isles were carried, by way of the Scottish Isles, to Iceland,--- and certainly in written form. But in Norway also, especially in the western part, several of the Eddic poems were known as early as the end of the heathen period.
There is no space here for a minute examination of all the lays with a view to seeing what light each one throws on this question, and for the present I shall only adduce a few scattered bits of evidence.
We find in most of the poems a goodly number of words which are of English origin, and cannot be shown to have been in general use in Norway or Iceland. In many cases they occur only in the Eddic lays, and must have been transferred to them from English poems. Moreover, we find in these same lays Norse poetic expressions that are reconstructions of English expressions similar in sound but etymologically different; also Latin words taken into Norse from English; and in addition certain Irish words.
The following words, selected from not a few poems, will serve as examples. Hárbarđsljóđ, Skírnismál, and Lokasenna are closely related. In Old Norse, gamban occurs only in the compounds gambanteinn, gambanreiđi, gambansumbl. The first, gambanteinn, which occurs in Hárb., 20, and in Skírn., 26, and signifies a twig with magic powers,' may be a reproduction of an A.S. *gombantân, which would signify 'a treasure-twig,' i.e. 'a twig with magic powers, by the help of which its owner could discover and obtain riches, gold and treasure,' nearly synonymous with the German Wünschelrute. In Anglo-Saxon, gomban gyldan means 'to pay tribute' (Danish 'betale skat'); and gomban must have meant 'treasure' (Danish 'skat') as well. In imitation of gambanteinn was formed gambanreiđi, Skírn., 33, referring to the wrath of the gods, which probably meant 'the anger called down upon one by striking him with a gambanteinn, or magic rod.' In imitation of gambanteinn was formed also gambansumbl, Lok., 8, 'wonderful banquet,' applied to the banquet at which the gods are present. Further, the poetic word sumbl, 'banquet, drink,' which occurs in many poems, is of foreign origin; it goes back to A.S. symbel, O.S. at sumble, from the medićval Latin symbolum, 'feast, banquet.' Hrímkálkr, Skírn., 37, Lok., 53, has its model in a Latin phrase, calix crystallinus; kálkr, which occurs in several poems, comes from Latin calix, through A.S. calic. In Skírn., 29, there is mentioned as a magic sign tjösull, i.e. 'he who causes harm,' from A.S. teosu, 'harm.' In the same strophe Skírnir says to Gerth, 'I will announce to you heavy súsbreka and double sorrow.' Súsbreki arose from *súslbreki; the first part is A.S. sűsl, 'torment'; the second part is O.N. breki, 'billow'; sváran súsbreka means, then, 'the heavy billow of torments,' which shall overpower Gerth. (3) In Lok., 19, we read of Loki: hann fjörg öll fía, 'all living beings hate him'; fjörg, neuter, pl., is A.S. feorg, feorh, 'life, living being.' Sievers has shown that in Lok., 3, we have A.S. oll, 'mockery.'
In Völundarkviđa occur many English words, as well as poetic expressions that are reconstructions of English expressions: jarknasteinn, from A.S. eorcnanstân; gim, Vkv., 5, acc. masc., from A.S. gim, 'gem,' which in its turn comes from Lat. gemma; ljóđi, Vkv., 10, 'prince,' formed from A.S. léod; kista, Vkv., 21, 23, borrowed by way of England from Lat. cista. in Vkv., 18, fra, i.e. fram, is used with the same meaning as A.S. fram, 'from,' for which the O.N. word is frá; in Vkv., 37, níta is inserted for an older neita, derived from A.S. nćtan, 'to afflict'; in Vkv., 12, we should read:
ţeir er á lögđu
besti ýr (MS. byr) síma.
In síma ýr besti, 'bond of bast,' besti is taken direct from an A.S. dative bćste, like á strćti, Hamth., 12, which is taken from A.S. on strćte, as Zimmer has pointed out. The word used in Vkv. of the maidens who come flying in swan-form, Alvitr, was interpreted by the Norsemen as a compound, al-vitr; but it is really a transformation of A.S. ćlbite, elfete, 'swans.' In Vkv., 5 and 8, we read of Wayland:
Kom ţar af veiđi
veđreygr skyti.
Veđreygr skyti was intended by the Norse poet to mean, 'the hunter with a weather-eye,' just as the English now say: 'to keep one's weather-eye open,' 'to have a weather-eye.' But when we compare expressions in A.S. poems, like that in Gűđlâc, 183,
ţonne hie af wâđum
węrige cwômon,
ENDNOTES:
1.
German translation by Professor Oscar Brenner, Munich, 1889. Back
2. See my Studies, First Series, pp. 422-425. Back
3. We find the same metaphor in Irish---e.g. tuind
mbroin, 'a billow of sorrow.' The above explanation of tjösull and súsbreki
was arrived at by Professor Falk and me independently. Back
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