Part 3

The first great conflict in which the warriors of North and West Teutondom fight with the East Teutons ends with the complete victory of Groa's sons. Hadding's fylkings are so thoroughly beaten and defeated that he, after the end of the conflict, is nothing but a defenceless fugitive, wandering in deep forests with no other companion than Vagnhofdi's daughter, who survived the battle and accompanies her beloved in his wanderings in the wildernesses. Saxo ascribes the victory won over Hadding to Loki. It follows of itself that, in a war whose deepest root must be sought in Loki's and Aurboða's intrigues, and in which the clans of gods on both sides take part, Loki should not be excluded by the skalds from influence upon the course of events. We have already seen that he sought to ruin Hadding while the latter was still a boy. He afterwards appears in various guises as evil counsellor, as an evil intriguer, and as a skilful arranger of the fylkings on the field of battle. His purpose is to frustrate every effort to bring about reconciliation, and by means of persuasion and falsehoods to increase the chances of enmity between Halfdan's descendants, in order that they may mutually destroy each other (see below). His activity among the heroes is the counterpart of his activity among the gods. The merry, sly, cynical, blameworthy, annd profoundly evil Mefisto of the Teutonic mythology is bound to bring about the ruin of the Teutonic people like that of the gods of the Teutons.

In the later Icelandic traditions he reveals himself as the evil counsellor of princes in the forms of Blind illi, Blind bölvísi (in Saxo Bolvisus); Bikki; in the German and Old English traditions as Sibich, Sifeca, Sifka. Bikki is a name-form borrowed from Germany. The original Norse Loki-epithet is Bekki, which means "the foe," "the opponent". A closer examination shows that everywhere where this counsellor appears his enterprises have originally been connected with persons who belong to Borgar's race. He has wormed himself into the favour of both the contending parties - as Blind illi with King Hadding - whereof Hromund Greipson's saga has preserved a distorted record - as Bikki, Sibeke, with King Gudhorm (whose identity with Jormunrek shall be established below). As Blind bölvísi he lies in waiting for and seeks to capture the young "Helgi Hundingsbani," that is to say, Halfdan, Hadding's father (Helg. Hund. ii.). Under his own name, Loki, he lies in waiting for and seeks to capture the young Hadding, Halfdan's son. As a cunning general and cowardly warrior he appears in the German saga-traditions, and there is every reason to assume that it is his activity in the first great war as the planner of Gudhorm's battle-line that in the Norse heathen records secured Loki the epithets sagna hrærir and sagna sviptir, the leader of the warriors forward and the leader of the warriors back - epithets which otherwise would be both unfounded and incomprehensible, but they are found both in Thjodolf's poem Haustlaung, and in Eilif Gudrunarson's Þórsdrápa. It is also a noticeable fact that while Loki in the first great battle which ends with Hadding's defeat determines the array of the victorious army - for only on this basis can the victory be attributed to him by Saxo - it is in the other great battle in which Hadding is victorious that Odin himself determines how the forces of his protégé are to be arranged, namely, in that wedge-form which after that time and for many centuries following was the sacred and strictly preserved rule for the battle-array of Teutonic forces. Thus the ancient Teutonic saga has mentioned and compared with one another two different kinds of battle-arrays - the one invented by Loki and the other invented by Odin.

During his wanderings in the forests of the East Hadding has had wonderful adventures and passed through great trials. Saxo tells one of these adventures. He and Hardgrep, Vagnhofdi's daughter, came late one evening to a dwelling where they got lodgings for the night. The husband was dead, but not yet buried. For the purpose of learning Hadding's destiny, Hardgrep engraved speech-runes (see No. 70) on a piece of wood, and asked Hadding to place it under the tongue of the dead one. The latter would in this wise recover the power of speech and prophecy. So it came to pass. But what the dead one sang in an awe-inspiring voice was a curse on Hardgrep, who had compelled him to return from life in the lower world to life on earth, and a prediction that an avenging Niflheim demon would inflict punishment on her for what she had done. A following night, when Hadding and Hardgrep had sought shelter in a bower of twigs and branches which they had gathered, there appeared a gigantic hand groping under the ceiling of the bower. The frightened Haddinng waked Hardgrep. She then rose in all her giant strength, seized the mysterious hand, and bade Hadding cut it off with his sword. He attempted to do this, but from the wounds he inflicted on the ghost's hand there issued matter or venom more than blood, and the hand seized Hardgrep with its iron claws and tore her into pieces (Saxo, Hist., 36 ff.).

When Hadding in this manner had lost his companion, he considered himself abandoned by everybody; but the one-eyed old man had not forgotten his favourite. He sent him a faithful helper, by name Liserus (Saxo, Hist., 40). Who was Liserus in our mythology?

First, as to the name itself: in the very nature of the case it must be the Latinising of some one of the mythological names or epithets that Saxo found in the Norse records. But as no such root as lis or lís is to be found in the old Norse language and as Saxo interchanges the vowels i and y, [*] we must regard Liserus as a Latinising of Lýsir, "the shining one," "the one giving light," "the bright one". When Odin sent a helper thus described to Hadding, it must have been a person belonging to Odin's circle and subject to him. Such a person and described by a similar epithet is inn hvíti áss, hvítastr ása (Heimdall). In Saxo's account, this shining messenger is particularly to oppose Loki (Hist., 40). And in the myth it is the keen-sighted and faithful Heimdall who always appears as the opposite of the cunning and faithless Loki. Loki has to contend with Heimdall when the former tries to get possession of Brísingamen, and in Ragnarok the two opponents kill each other. Hadding's shining protector thus has the same part to act in the heroic saga as the whitest of the Asas in the mythology. If we now add that Heimdall is Hadding's progenitor, and on account of blood kinship owes him special protection in a war in which all the gods have taken part either for or against Halfdan's and Alveig's son, then we are forced by every consideration to regard Liserus and Heimdall as identical (see further, No. 82).

[* Compare the double forms Trigo, Thrygir; Ivarus, Yvarus; Sibbo, Sybbo; Siritha, Syritha; Sivardus, Syvardus ; Hiberniu, Hybernia; Isora, Ysora.]