Part 5

In the course taken by our investigation we have already met with and pointed out several names and epithets by which Ivaldi occurs in the mythology and in the heroic poems. Such are Geirvandill, with the variation Geirvaðill; Vaði (Vati), Alvaldi, Auðvaldi, Ölvaldi, Svigðir (Svegðir), Ölmóður, Sumbli Finnakonungr (Sumblus Phinnorum rex), Finnakonungur, Viðfinnur, Finnálfur, Fin Folcvalding, Hlöðvér.

Of these names Ivaldi, Alvaldi, Auðvaldi, and Ölvaldi form a group by themselves, inasmuch as they all have the part, valdi, valdur, "mighty," an epithet preserved from the mythology in those heroic sagas which have treated distinct portions of the Ivaldi-myth, where the hero reappears as Walther, Valthari, Valdere, Valtarius Manufortis.

Another group is formed by Ölvaldi, Ölmóður, Svigðir, Sumbli Finnakonungur. Svigðir means, as already shown, "the great drinker," and Sumbli is a synonym of "ale," "mead ". All the names in this group refer to the quality of their bearer as a person belonging to the myth about the mead.

The name Sumbli Finnakonungur is at the same time connected with a third group of names - Finnakonungur, Finnur, Viðfinnur, Finnálfur, Fin Folcvalding. With this group the epithets Vaði and Vaðill (in Geirvaðill) have a real mythological connection, which shall be pointed out below.

Finally, Geirvaðill is connected with the epithet Geirvandill from the fact that both belong to Ivaldi on account of his place in the weapon-myth.

As has been shown above, Geirvandill means "the one occupied with the 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-Geirvandil is the father of Horvendillus-Örvandil; 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, Ivaldi's grandson, the son of Örvandil-Egil, is above all others the sword-champion, "the sword-elf" (sverðálfur - see Heimskringla, Olaf Tryggvason's saga, 40, where Svipdag-Erik's namesake and supposed descendant, Erik jarl Hakon's son, 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, Ivaldi, must have been the most excellent marksman with the spear. The memory of this survives not only in the epithets, Geirvandill and Geirvaðill, 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 Ivaldi-myth.

Clad in an armour smithied by Völund (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 Svigðir-Ivaldi in the mythic saga concerning the race-heroes was the first ruler of the Swedes, just as his sons, Völund and Egil, became those of the Longobardians and Slagfinn 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 Svegðir among the first kings of the Yngling race, and in reality as the first hero; for his forerunners, Fjölnir, Freyr, and Óðinn, are prehuman gods (in regard to Fjölnir, see Grímnismál). That Svigðir was made the race-hero of the Swedes is explained by the fact that Ivaldi, 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 Geirvaðill-Ivaldi's setur 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 skis 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 setur was situated, even the Finns must have been subject to his sceptre. This explains his surname, Finnakonungur, Finnur, Viðfinnur, Fin Folcvalding, and also the fact that his descendants form a group of ski-runners. To the location of the setur 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 Ivaldi epithets, Vaðill, Vaði. 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, Völund, across a sound while the latter was still a lad. Reasons which I may yet have an opportunity to present indicate that Ivaldi's mother was the mightiest amazon of Teutonic mythology, whose memory survives in Saxo's account of Queen Rusila, Rusla (Book IV, 110; Book VII, 227; Book VIII, 246), and in the German heroic-saga's Rütze. This queen of the elves, dwelling south of the Elivagar, is also remembered by Tacitus' informer. In Germania 45 we read: Svionibus Sitonum gentes continuantur. Cetera similes uno differunt 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 - setur (Geirvaðils setur, Iðja setur; cp. setur-verjendur as a designation in Ynglingasaga 17 of the descendants of Svigðir-Ivaldi). The word setur is derived from setja, a causative form of sitja, the Gothic sitan.

I now pass to the name Hlöðvér, in Völundarkviða. This poem does not state directly who Völund's, Egil's, and Slagfinn's father was, but it does so indirectly by mentioning the name of the father of Völund's and Slagfinn's swan-maids, and by stating that these swan-maids were sisters of the brothers. Völund's swan-maid is called þeirra systir in str. 2. Among the many uncalled-for "emendations" made in the text of the Elder Edda is also the change of þeirra to þeirrar, made for the reason that the student, forgetting that Völundarkviða 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 Völundarkviða that the father of the three brothers was Finnakonungur. Hlöðvér 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 Vati, that is to say, Vaði-Ivaldi, and in Vilkinasaga by Valthari, that is to say again, Ivaldi. Liutwar, Vati, and Valthari are originally one and the same person in these German records, just as Hlödver (corresponding to Liutwar), Vadi (corresponding to Vati), and Ivaldi (corresponding to Valthari) are identical in the Scandinavian. Völundarkviða's statement, that Völund's and Slagfinn's swan-maids are their sisters (half-sisters, as we shall see), and, like them, daughters of Ivaldi, is thus found to be correct by the comparison of widely-separated sources.

While the father of these two swan-maids is called Hlöðvér in Völundarkviða, the father of the third swan-maid, Egil's beloved, is called King Kjár in Valland. As Egil was first married to the dis of vegetation, Groa, whose father is Sigtrygg in the heroic saga, and then to Sif, his swan-maid must be one of these two. In Völundarkviða, where none of the swan-maids have their common mythological names, she is called Ölrun, and is said to be not a sister, but a kinswoman (kunn - str. 15) of both the others. Hlöðvér (Ivaldi) and Kjár are therefore kinsmen. Who Kjár 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 Hlöðvér's halls and treasures; it is added that "they possess the whitest shield from Kjár's hall (Guðrúnarkviða II. 25; Atlakviða 7). Here we accordingly once more find the connection already pointed out between the persons appearing in Völundarkviða and those in the Gjukung-saga. The fathers of the swan-maids who love Völund 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 Gjuki-Slagfinn, and that Slagfinn and his brothers are Niflungs, heirs of Hlödver-Ivaldi, who was gullauðugr mjög (Skáldskaparmál).

Like his sons, Ivaldi originally stood in a friendly relation to the higher reigning gods; he was their sworn man, and from his citadel near the Elivagar, Geirvaðils setur, 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 Ivaldi-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 Ivaldi abducted a daughter of the moon-god; that enmity arose between them; that, after the defeat of Ivaldi, Sunna's and Nanna's father offered him peace, and that the peace was confirmed by oath; that Ivaldi broke the oath, attacked Gevar-Nokkver and burnt him; that, during the hostilities between them, Slagfinn-Gjuki, though a son of Ivaldi, did not take the side of his natural father, but that of his foster-father; and that Ivaldi had to pay for his own deeds with ruin and death.

Concerning the point that Ivaldi abducted a daughter of Gevar-Nokkver 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, Gjuki'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, Gjuki himself, appears with surnames (Hengest, Geldr, öndur-Jálkur) alluding to the wound inflicted. In the Anglo-Saxon heroic poem Fin Folcvalding is married to Hildeburh, a daughter of Hnæf-Hoce, and in Hyndluljóð (cp. str. 17 with str. 15) Hildigunnur is the mother of Halfdan's wife Almveig, and consequently the wife of Sumbli Finnakonungur, that is, Ivaldi. Hildigunn's father is called Sækonungur in Hyndluljóð, a synonym of Nökkver ("the ship-captain," the moon-god), and Hildigunn's mother is called Sváfa, the same name as that by which Nanna is introduced in the poem concerning Helgi Hjorvardsson. Hildeburh, Hnæf-Hoce's daughter, is identical with Hildigunn, daughter of Sækonungur. Compare furthermore str. 20 in Hyndluljóð, which speaks of Nanna as Nokkvi's daughter, and thus refers back to str. 17, where Hildigunn is mentioned as the daughter of Sækonungur. The phrase Nanna var næst þar Nökkva dóttir 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 Sækonungur, "the sea-king," which can refer to Nökkver, "the ship-owner" or "ship-captain," and the "daughter" last mentioned in the poem is Hildigunnur.

Of the names of Ivaldi's wife the various records contain the following statements:

Hlödver-Ivaldi is married to Svanfeather (Svanfjöður, Völundarkviða).

Finnalf-Ivaldi is married to Svanhild Gold-feather, daughter of Sól (Fornaldarsögur).

Fin Folcvalding-Ivaldi is married to Hildeburh, daughter of Hnæf-Hoce (Beowulf poem).

Walther-Ivaldi is married to Hildigunt (German poems).

Sumbli-Finnakonungur is married to Hildigunn, daughter of Sækonungur Nökkver, the same as Hnæfur, Hnefur, Nanna's father (Hyndluljóð, compared with Saxo and other sources).

She who is called Swanfeather, the sun-daughter Svanhild Gold-feather, Hildeburh, Hildigunt, and Hildigunn 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 Hildigunn, Hiltigunt, with Nanna's surname Sinhtgunt. The Teutonic, or at all events the Norse, mythology knew two divinities of the sun, mother and daughter. Vafþrúðnismál 47 tells us that the elder one, Álfröðull, has a daughter, who, not at the present time, but in the future, is to drive the car of the sun (eina dóttur ber Álfröðull...). 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 (Alvíssmál 16; Nafnaþulur, 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 (Book III, p. 79). 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.

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 Mimir 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 Hvergelmir's fountains. But somewhere in the Jötunheims, the genuine mead was discovered in the fountain Byrgir. This discovery was kept secret. The keeper of the secret was Ivaldi, the sworn watchman near the Elivagar. In the night he sent his son Slagfinn (afterwards called after his adopted father Hjuki) and his daughter Bil (Idunn) to dip liquid from the fountain Byrgir and bring it to him. But the children never returned. The moon-god had taken them and Byrgir's liquids unto himself, and thus the gods of Asgard were able to partake of this drink. Without the consent of the moon-god, Ivaldi on his part secured his daughter the sun-dis, and doubtless she bears to him the daughters Idunn, Almveig, and other dises of growth and rejuvenation, after he had begotten Slagfinn, Egil, and Völund with the giantess Greip. The moon-god and Ivaldi have accordingly taken children from each other. The circumstance that the mead, which gives the gods their creative power and wisdom, was robbed from Ivaldi - 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-Durinn, 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 Mimir 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, Ivaldi brings his mead-treasure into safety. He apparently gives it as the price of Fjalar's daughter Gunnlöd, 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 Gunnlöd, robs the liquids of Byrgir, and flies in eagle guise with them to Asgard. On the wedding day Ivaldi 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, Hjuki 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 Vidfinn, 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 Ivaldi, 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," Ludiger contends with the Gjukungs; in "Dieterichs Flucht," he abandons Dieterich's cause and allies himself with the evil Ermenrich. Like Liutwar, Ludiger is a pendant to the Norse Hlödver, in whom we have already rediscovered Ivaldi. While, according to the Younger Edda, both the Ivaldi children Hjuki 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 Forspjallsljóð, that Ivaldi had two groups of children, corresponds with the result at which we have arrived. By the giantess Greip he is the father of Slagfinn, Egil, and Völund; by the sun-dis, Gevar-Nökkver's daughter and Nanna's sister, he is the father of dises of growth, among whom are Idunn, who first is Völund's beloved or wife, and thereupon is married to Bragi. Another daughter of Ivaldi is the beloved of Slagfinn-Gjuki, Auda, the "frau Ute" of the German heroic saga. A third is Signy-Alveig, in Saxo the daughter of Sumblus Phinnorum (Ivaldi). At his wedding with her, Egil is attacked and slain by Halfdan. Hadding is Halfdan's and her son.

Several things indicate that, when their father became a foe of the gods, Ivaldi's sons were still their friends, and that Slagfinn particularly was on the side of his foster-father in the conflict with Ivaldi. With this corresponds also the conduct of the Gjukungs toward Valtarius, when he takes flight with Hildigunn. In the Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, the name Hengest is borne by the person who there takes Slagfinn's place as Hnæf-Gevar's nearest man. The introduction to the Younger Edda has from its English authorities the statement that Heingestur (Hengest) was a son of Vitta and a near kinsman of Svipdag. If, as previous investigators have assumed, Vitta is Vadi, then Hengest is a son of Ivaldi, and this harmonises with the statement anent his kinship with Svipdag, who is a grandson of Ivaldi. The meaning of the word Hengest refers of itself to Slagfinn-Geldr. The name Geldr is a participle of gelda, and means castratus. The original meaning of Hengest is "a gelding," equus castratus (in the modern German the word got for the first time its present meaning). That the adjective idea castratus was transferred to the substantive equus castratus is explained by the fact that Gils, Gisl, a mythic name for a horse (Gylfaginning 15, Nafnaþulur), was also a Gjukung name. One of Hengest's ancestors in his genealogy in Beda and in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is called Vict-gils; one of Slagfinn-Gjuki's sons is named Gilser. A neither mythic nor historic brother of Hengest added in later times is named Horsa. The Ravenna geography says that when the Saxons left their old abodes on the continent, they marched cum principe suo Anschis, and with their chief Ans-gisl, who therefore here appears in the place of Hengest. Synonymous with Hengest is the Norse Jálkur, equus castratus, and that some member of the mythological group of ski-runners, that is, some one of the male members of the Ivaldi race, in the Norse version of the Teutonic mythology, bore this epithet is proved by the paraphrase öndur-Jálkur, "the equus castratus of the skirunners". The cause of the designation is found in the event described above, which has been handed down by the poem "Valtarius Manufortis". The chief one of the Gjukungs, originally Gjuki himself, there fights with Valtarius, who in the mythology was his father, and receives in the conflict a wound "clean to the thigh-bone". This wound may have symbolic significance from the fact that the fight is between father and son. According to the English chronicler Nennius, Hengest had two brothers, Ochta and Ebissa. In spite of their corruption these names remind us of Slagfinn's brothers, Aggo-Ajo (Völund) and Ibor-Ebbo (Egil).

According to the historified saga, Hengest was the leader of the first Saxon army which landed in Britain. All scholars have long since agreed that this Hengest is a mythical character. The migration saga of the Teutonic mythology was transferred by the heathen Saxons to England, and survived there until Christian times. After the names of the real leaders of the Saxon immigration were forgotten, Hengest was permitted to take their place, because in the mythology he had been a leader of the Saxon emigrants from their original country, the Scandian peninsula (see No. 16), and because this immigration was blended in Christian times with the memory of the emigration from Germany to Britain. Thus, while the Longobardians made Völund and Egil (Ajo and Ibor) the leaders of their emigration, the Saxons made Völund's and Egil's brother Slagfinn (Hengest-Gjuki) their leader. The Burgundians also regarded Slagfinn (Gjuki) as their emigration hero and royal progenitor. Of this there is evidence partly in Lex Burgundionum, the preface of which enumerates Burgundian kings who have Gjukung names; partly in Middle High German poem, which makes the Gjukungs Burgundian kings. The Saxon migration saga and the Burgundian are therefore, like those of the other Teutonic races, connected with the Ivaldi race and with the fimbul-winter.