Part 4

The moon-god, like Nott, Dag, and Sol, is by birth and abode a lower-world divinity. As such, he too had his importance in the Teutonic eschatology. The god who on his journeys on "Nokkvi's holy way" serves öldum að ártali (Vafþrúðnismál 23) by measuring out to men time in phases of the moon, in months, and in years has, in the mythology also, received a certain influence in inflicting suffering and punishment on sinners. He is lord of the heiptir, the Teutonic Erinnyes (see No. 75), and keeps those limar (bundles of thorns) with which the former are armed, and in this capacity he has borne the epithet Eylimi, which reappears in the heroic songs in a manner which removes all doubt that Nanna's father was originally meant. (See in Saxo and in Helgi Hjorvardsson's saga [kviða?]. To the latter I shall return in the second part of this work, and I shall there present evidence that the saga is based on episodes taken from the Baldur myth, and that Helgi Hjorvardsson is himself an imitation of Baldur). In his capacity of lord of the Heiptir the moon-god is the power to whom prayers are to be addressed by those who desire to be spared from those sufferings which the Heiptir represent (heiptum skal mána kveðja - Hávamál 137). His quality as the one who keeps the thorn-rods of the heiptir still survives in a great part of the Teutonic world in the scattered traditions about "the man in the moon," who carries bundles of thorns on his back (J. Grimm, Myth., 680 ; see No. 123).