Chapter 12

Bragi appears to have stood in some pretty close relation to Oegir, and if an analogy between them could be established, which however is unsupported hitherto on other grounds, then by the side of 'briga brag' the root 'braga brôg' would present itself, and the AS. brôga (terror), OHG. pruoko, bruogo, be akin to it. The connexion of Bragi with Oegir may be seen by Bragi appearing prominently in the poem Oegisdrecka, and by his sitting next to Oegir in Sn. 80, so that in intimate converse with him he brings out stories of the gods, which are thence called Bragaræður, speeches of Bragi. It is with great propriety, no doubt, that these narratives, during which Oegir often interrupts him with questions (Sn. 93), as Ganglêri does Hâr when holding forth in the first part of the Edda, were put in the mouth of the patron of poetry.

This Oegir, an older god of the giant kind, not ranked among the Ases, but holding peacable intercourse with them, bears the name of the terrible, the awful. The root 'aga ôg' had given birth to plenty of derivatives in our ancient speech: Goth. agis fÒbrj, ôg fobšomai, OHG. akiso, egiso, AS. egesa horror, OHG. akî, ekî, AS. ege (êge? awe) terror, ON. œgja [[to scare, frighten]] terrori esse, which can only be spelt with œ, not æ. To the proper name Oegir would correspond a Goth. Ôgeis, AS. Êge, OHG. Uogi, instead of which I can only lay my hand on the weak form Uogo, Oago. But œgir also signifies the sea itself: sôl gengr î œginn, the sun goes into the sea, sets; œgi-siôr pelagus is like the Goth. mari-sáivs; the AS. eagor and êgor (mare) is related to êge, as sigor to sige. I attach weight to the agreement of the Greek çkeanÒj, 'WkeanÒj and 'Wghn, whence the Lat. oceanus, Oceanus was borrowed, but aequor (mare placidum) seems not cognate, being related to aequus, not to aqua and Goth. ahva (see Suppl.). (10)

The boisterous element awakened awe, and the sense of a god's immediate presence. As Wôden was also called Wôma (p. 144), and Oðinn Omi and Yggr, so the AS. poets use the terms wôma, swêg, brôga and egesa almost synonymously for ghostly and divine phenomena (Andr. and El. pp. xxx--xxxii). Oegir was therefore a highly appropriate name, and is in keeping with the notions of fear and horror developed on p. 207-8.

This interpretation is strikingly confirmed by other mythical conceptions. The Edda tells us of a fear-inspiring helmet, whose name is Oegishialmr: er öll qvikvendi brœðast at siâ, Sn. 137; such a one did Hreiðmar wear, and then Fafnir when he lay on the gold and seemed the more terrible to all that looked upon him, Sæm. 188ª; vera (to be) under Oegishialmi, bera Oegishialm yfir einum, means to inspire with fear or reverence, Laxd. saga, p. 130. Islend. sög. 2, 155; ek bar Oegishialm yfir alla folki, Fornald. sög. 1, 162; hafa Oegishialm î augum, ibid. 1, 406, denotes that terrible piercing look of the eyes, which others cannot stand, and the famous basilisk-glance, ormur î auga, was something similar. (11) Now I find a clear trace of this Norse helmet in the OHG. man's name Egihelm (Trad. fuld. 1, 97; in Schannat no. 126, p. 286 Eggihelm), i.e. Agihelm, identical with the strengthened-vowel form Uogihelm, which I am unable to produce. But in the Eckenlied itself Ecke's costly magic helmet, and elsewhere even Ortnit's and Dietrich's, are called Hildegrîm, Hildegrîn; and the ON. grîma mask or helmet (in Sæm. 51ª a name for night) has now turned up in a Fulda gloss, Dronke p. 15: 'scenici = crîmûn' presupposes a sing. krîmâ larva, persona, galea; so we can now understand Krîmhilt (Gramm. 1, 188) the name of a Walkurie armed with the helmet of terror, and also why 'daemon' in another gloss is rendered by egisgrîmolt. The AS. egesgrîme is equally a mask, and in El. 260 the helmet that frightens by its figure of a boar is called a grîmhelm. I venture to guess, that the wolf in our ancient apologue was imagined wearing such a helmet of dread, and hence his name of Isangrîm, iron-mask, Reinh. ccxlii (see Suppl.). Nor have we yet come to the end of fancies variously playing into one another: as the god's or hero's helmet awakened terror, so must his shield and sword; and it looks significant, that a terrific sword fashioned by dwarfs should likewise be named in the two forms, viz. in the Vilkinasaga Eckisax, in Veldek's Eneit Uokesahs (not a letter may we alter), in the Eckenlied Ecken sahs, as Hildegrîn was Ecken helm, Eckes helm. In the Greek a„g…j I do not look for any verbal affinity, but this shield of ZeÝj a„g…ocoj (Il. 15, 310. 17, 593), wielded at times by Athena (2, 447. 5, 738) and Apollo (15, 229. 318. 361. 24, 20), spreads dismay around, like Oegishialmr, Hildegrîm and Eckisahs; Pluto's helmet too, which rendered invisible, may be called to mind.----That ancient god of sea, Oceanus and Oegir (see Suppl.), whose hall glittered with gold, Sæm. 59, (12) would of all others wear the glittering helmet which takes its name from him. From all we can find, his name in OHG. must have been Aki or Uoki; and it requires no great boldness to suppose that in the Ecke of our heroic legend, a giant all over, we see a precipitate of the heathen god. Ecke's mythical nature is confirmed by that of his brother Fasolt and Abentrôt, of whom more hereafter. As the Greek Okeanos has rivers given him for sons and daughters, the Norse Oegir has by Rân nine daughters, whose names the Edda applies to waters and waves. We might expect to find that similar relations to the seagod were of old ascribed to our own rivers also, most of which were conceived of as female [and still bear feminine names].

And there is one such local name in which he may be clearly recognised. The Eider, a river which divides the Saxons from the Northmen, is called by the Frankish annalists in the eighth and ninth centuries Egidora, Agadora, Aegidora (Pertz 1, 355-70-86. 2, 620-31); Helmold 1, 12. 50 spells Egdora. The ON. writers more plainly write Oegisdyr (Fornm. sög. 11, 28. 31, conf. Georg. of a Northman, ed. by Werlauff p. 15), i.e., ocean's door, sea-outlet, ostium, perhaps even here with a collateral sense of the awful. Again, a place called Oegisdyr is mentioned in Iceland, Landn. 5, 2, where we also find 3, 1 an Oegissîða, latus oceani. Further, it comes out that by the AS. name Fîfeldor in Cod. exon. 321, 8 and by the Wieglesdor in Dietmar of Merseb. ad ann. 975, p. 760 is meant the Eider again, still the aforesaid Oegisdyr; while a various reading in Dietmar agrees with the annalist Saxo ad ann. 975 in giving Heggedor = Eggedor, Egidor. Now, seeing that elsewhere the AS. poems use Fifelstreám, Fîflwæg (Boeth. 26, 51. El. 237) for the ocean, and Fîfelcynnes eard (Beow. 208) for the land of the ocean-sprites, we may suppose Fîfel and its corruption Wiegel to be another an an obsolete name of Oegir.

The same may hold good of the AS. Geofon, OS. Geban, a being whose godhead is sufficiently manifest from the ON. Gefjun, who is reckoned among the Asynior, though she bore sons to a giant. The Saxon Gëban however was a god; the Heliand shows only the compound Gebenesstrôm 90, 7. 131, 22, but the AS. poets, in addition to Geofenes begang, Beow. 721, Geofenes stað, Cædm. 215, 8, and the less personal geofonhûs (navis), Cædm. 79, 34, geofonflôd, Cod. exon. 193, 21, have also a Geofon standing independently in the nom., Cædm. 206, 6, and gifen geotende, Beow. 3378. An OHG. Këpan is nowhere found, even in proper names, though Stählin 1, 598 gives a Gebeneswîlare. I know not whether to take for the root the verb giban to give, in which case Gibika (p. 137) and Wuotan's relation to Neptune (pp. 122, 148) would come in here; or to look away to the Greek cièn fem. [ci#èn, hib-ernus?] and the notion of snow and ice giants.

And the North itself furnishes some names which are synonymous with Oegir. In the Fundinn Noregr (Sn. 369. Fornald. sög. 2, 17) we read: Forniotr âtti 3 syni, hêtt einn Hlêr, er ver köllum Oegi (one hight Hler, whom we call Oegir), annarr Logi, þridji Kari (Rask, afh. 1, 95: Kâri). Hlêr, gen. Hlês, appears from this to have been the older name, in use among the giants, by which Oegir is spoken of in Sn. 79, and after which his dwelling-place was named Hlês-ey (Sæm. 78b 159b 243b), now Lässöe in the Cattegat.




ENDNOTES:

10. Oegir is also called Gymir, Sæm. 59. Gûmir, Sn. 125. 183 possibly epulator? but I know no other meaning of the ON. gaumr [[heed, attention]] than cura, attentio, though the OHG. gouma, OS. gôma means both cura and epulae, the AS. gýming both cura and nuptiae. Back

11. Fornm. sög. 9, 513: gekk alvaldr und Ýgishialmi. The spelling with ý goes to confirm our œ, and refute æ, as an ý can only stand for the former, not for the latter; conf. môr and the deriv. mýri = mœri, Gramm. 1, 473. Back

12. In the great feast which he gave to the gods, the ale come up of itself (sialft barsc þar öll, Sæm. 59), as Hephæstus's tripods ran aÝtom£toi in and out of the qe‹on ¢gîna, Il. 18, 376. Even so Freyr had a sword er sialft vegiz (that swings itself), Sæm. 82ª, and Thôr's Miölnir comes back of itself everytime it is thrown. Back