Part 5

When Menglad requests Svipdag to name his race and his name, she does so because she wants jartegn (legal evidence; compare the expression með vitnum og jartegnum) that he is the one as whose wife she had been designated by the norns (ef eg var þér kván of kveðin - stanza 46), and that her eyes had not deceived her. She also wishes to know something about his past life that may confirm that he is Svipdag. When Svipdag had given as a jartegn his own name and an epithet of his father, he makes only a brief statement in regard to his past life, but to Menglad it is an entirely sufficient proof of his identity with her intended husband. He says that the winds drove him on cold paths from his father's house to frosty regions of the world (47). The word used by him, "drove" (reka), implies that he did not spontaneously leave his home, a fact which we also learn in Gróugaldur. On the command of his stepmother, and contrary to his own will, he departs to find Menglads, "the women fond of ornaments". His answer further shows that after he had left his father's house he had made journeys in frost-cold regions of the world. Such regions are Jotunheim and Niflheim, which was in fact regarded as a subterranean part of Jotunheim (see Nos. 59, 63).

Menglad has eagerly longed for the day when Svipdag should come. Her mood, when Svipdag sees her within the castle wall sitting on "the joyous mount" surrounded by asynjes and dises, is described in the poem by the verb þruma, "to be sunk into a lethargic, dreamy condition". When Fjolsvith approaches her and bids her "look at a stranger who may be Svipdag" (43), she awakes in great agony, and for a moment she can scarcely control herself. When she is persuaded that she has not been deceived either by Fjolsvith's words or by her own eyes, she at once seals the arrival of the youth with a kiss. The words which the poem makes her lips utter testify, like her conduct, that it is not the first time she and Svipdag have met, but that it is a "meeting again," and that she long ere this knew that she possessed Svipdag's love. She speaks not only of her own longing for him, but also of his longing and love for her (48-50), and is happy that "he has come again to her halls" (að þú ert aftur kominn, mögur, til minna sala - stanza 49). This "again" (back), which indicates a previous meeting between Menglad and Svipdag, is found in all the manuscripts of Fjölsvinnsmál, and that it has not been added by any "betterer" trying to mend the metres of the text is demonstrated by the fact that the metre would be improved by the absence of the word aftur.

Meanwhile it appears with certainty from Fjölsvinnsmál that Svipdag never before had seen the castle within whose walls Menglad has ríki, eign og auðsölum (7, 8). He stands before its gate as a wondering stranger, and puts question after question to Fjolsvith in regard to the remarkable sights before his eyes. It follows that Menglad did not have her halls within this citadel, but dwelt somewhere else, at the time when she on a previous occasion met Svipdag and became assured that he loved her.

In this other place she must have resided when Svipdag's stepmother commanded him to find Menglöðum, that is to say, Menglad, but also some one else to whom the epithet "ornament-glad" might apply. This is confirmued by the fact that this other person to whom Gróugaldur's words refer is not at all mentioned in Fjölsvinnsmál. It is manifest that many things had happened, and that Svipdag had encountered many adventures, between the episode described in Gróugaldur, when he had just been commanded by his stepmother to find "those loving ornaments," and the episode in Fjölsvinnsmál, when he seeks Menglad again in Asgard itself.

Where can he have met her before? Was there any time when Freyja did not dwell in Asgard? Völuspá answers this question, as we know, in the affirmative. The event threatening to the gods and to the existence of the world once happened that the goddess of fertility and love came into the power of the giants. Then all the high-holy powers assembled to consider "who had mixed the air with corruption and given Odur's maid to the race of giants". But none of our Icelandic mythic records mentions how and by whom Freyja was liberated from the hands of the powers of frost. Under the name Svipdag our hero is mentioned only in Gróugaldur and Fjölsvinnsmál; all we learn of him under the name Óður and Óttar is that he was Freyja's lover and husband (Völuspá, Hyndluljóð); that he went far, far away; that Freyja then wept for him, that her tears became gold, that she sought him among unknown peoples, and that she in her search assumed many names: Mardöll, Hörn, Gefn, Sýr (Gylfaginning 35). To get further contributions to the Svipdag myth we must turn to Saxo, where the name Svipdag should be found as Svipdagerus, Óttar as Otharus or Hotharus, and Óðurr as Otherus or Hotherus [*].

* In Saxo, as in other sources of about the same time, aspirated names do not usually occur with aspiration. I have already referred to the examples Handuuanus, Andvani, Helias, Elias, Hersbernus, Esbjörn, Hevindus, Eyvindur, Horvendillus, Orvandill, Hestia, Estland, Holandia, Oland.

There cannot be the least doubt that Saxo's Otharus is a figure borrowed from the mythology and from the heroic sagas therewith connected, since in the first eight books of his History not a single person can be shown who is not originally found in the mythology. But the mythic records that have come down to our time know only one Óttarr, and he is the one who wins Freyja's heart. This alone makes it the duty of the mythologist to follow this hint here given and see whether that which Saxo relates about his Otharus confirms his identity with Svipdag-Ottar.

The Danish king Syvaldus had, says Saxo, an uncommonly beautiful daughter, Syritha, who fell into the hands of a giant. The way this happened was as follows: A woman who had a secret understanding with the giant succeeded in nestling herself in Syritha's confidence, in being adopted as her maidservant, and in enticing her to a place where the giant lay in ambush. The latter hastened away with Syritha and concealed her in a wild mountain district. When Otharus learned this he started out in search of the young maiden. He visited every recess in the mountains, found the maiden and slew the giant. Syritha was in a strange condition when Otharus liberated her. The giant had twisted and pressed her locks together so that they formed on her head one hard mass which hardly could be combed out except with the aid of an iron tool. Her eyes stared in an apathetic manner, and she never raised them to look at her liberator. It was Otharus' determination to bring a pure virgin back to her kinsmen. But the coldness and indifference she seemed to manifest toward him was more than he could endure, and so he abandoned her on the way. While she now wandered alone through the wilderness she came to the abode of a giantess. The latter made the maiden tend her goats. Still, Otharus must have regretted that he abandoned Syritha, for he went in search of her and liberated her a second time. The mythic poem from which Saxo borrowed his story must have contained a song, reproduced by him in Latin paraphrases, and in which Otharus explained to Syritha his love, and requested her, "whom he had suffered so much in seeking and finding," to give him a look from her eyes as a token that under his protection she was willing to be brought back to her father and mother. But her eyes continually stared on the ground, and apparently she remained as cold and indifferent as before. Otharus then abandoned her for the second time. From the thread of the story it appears that they were then not far from that border which separates Jotunheim from the other realms of the world. Otharus crossed that water, which in the old records is probably called the Elivagar rivers, on the opposite side of which was his father's home. Of Syritha Saxo, on the other hand, says cautiously and obscurely that "she in a manner that sometimes happened in antiquity hastened far away down the rocks" - more pristino decursis late scopulis (Book VII, p. 209) - an expression which leads us to suppose that in the mythic account she had flown away in the guise of a bird. Meanwhile fate brought her to the home of Otharus' parents. Here she represented herself to be a poor traveller, born of parents who had nothing. But her refined manners contradicted her statement, and the mother of Otharus received her as a noble guest. Otharus himself had already come home. She thought she could remain unknown to him by never raising the veil with which she covered her face. But Otharus well knew who she was. To find out whether she really had so little feeling for him as her manners seemed to indicate, a pretended wedding between Otharus and a young maiden was arranged, whose name and position Saxo does not mention. When Otharus went to the bridal bed, Syritha was probably near him as bridesmaid, and carried the candle. The light or the flame burnt down, so that the fire came in contact with her hand, but she felt no pain, for there was in her heart a still more burning pain. When Otharus then requested her to take care of her hand, she finally raised her gaze from the ground, and their eyes met. Therewith the spell resting on Syritha was broken: it was plain that they loved each other and the pretended wedding was changed into a real one between Syritha and Otharus. When her father learned this he became exceedingly wroth; but after his daughter had made a full explanation to him, his anger was transformed into kindness and graciousness, and he himself thereupon married a sister of Otharus.

In regard to the person who enticed Syritha into the snare laid by the giant, Saxo is not quite certain that it was a woman. Others think, he says, that it was a man in the guise of a woman.

It has long since attracted the attention of mythologists that in this narrative there are found two names, Otharus and Syritha, which seem to refer to the myth concerning Freyja. Otharus is no doubt a Latinised form of Ottar, and, as is well known, the only one who had this name in the mythology is, as stated, Freyja's lover and husband. Syritha, on the other hand, may be a Latinised form of Freyja's epithet Syr, in which Saxo presumably supposed he had found an abbreviated form of Syri (Siri, Sigrid). In Saxo's narrative Syritha is abducted by a giant (gigas), with the aid of an ally whom he had procured among Freyja's attendants. In the mythology Freyja is abducted by a giant, and, as it appears from Völuspá's words, likewise by the aid of some ally who was in Freyja's service, for it is there said that the gods hold council as to who it could have been who "gave," delivered Freyja to the race of the giants (hver hefði ætt jötuns Óðs mey gefna). In Saxo Otharus is of lower descent than Syritha. Saxo has not made him a son of a king, but a youth of humble birth as compared with his bride; and his courage to look up to Syritha, Saxo remarks, can only be explained by the great deeds he had performed or by his reliance on his agreeable manners and his eloquence (sive gestarum rerum magnitudine sive comitatis et facundiæ fiducia accensus). In the mythology Óður was of lower birth than Freyja: he did not by birth belong to the number of higher gods; and Svipdag had, as we know, never seen Asgard before he arrived there under the circumstances described in Fjölsvinnsmál. That the most beautiful of all the goddesses, and the one second in rank to Frigg alone, she who is particularly desired by all powers, the sister of the harvest god Frey, the daughter of Njord, the god of wealth, she who with Odin shares the privilege of choosing heroes on the battlefield - that she does not become the wife of an Asa-god, but "is married to the man called Óður," would long since have been selected by the mythologists as a question both interesting and worthy of investigation had they cared to devote any attention to epic coherence and to premises and dénouement in the mythology in connection with the speculations on the signification of the myths as symbols of nature or on their ethical meaning. The view would then certainly have been reached that this Óður in the epic of the mythology must have been the author of exploits which balanced his humbler descent, and the mythologists would thus have been driven to direct the investigation first of all to the question whether Freyja, who we know was for some time in the power of the giants, but was rescued therefrom, did not find as her liberator this very Óður, who afterwards became her husband, and whether Óður did not by this very act gain her love and become entitled to obtain her hand. The adventure which Saxo relates actually dovetails itself into and fills a gap in that chain of events which are the result of the analysis of Gróugaldur and Fjölsvinnsmál. We understand that the young Svipdag is alarmed, and considers the task imposed on him by the stepmother to find Menglad far too great for his strength, if it is necessary to seek Menglad in Jotunheim and rescue her thence. We understand why on his arrival at Asgard he is so kindly received, after he has gone through the formality of giving his name, when we know that he comes not only as the feared possessor of the Volund sword, but also as the one who has restored to Asgard the most lovely and most beautiful asynja. We can then understand why the gate, which holds fast every uninvited guest, opens as of itself for him, and why the savage wolf-dogs lick him. That his words: þaðan (from his paternal home) rákumk vindar kalda vegu, are to Menglad a sufficient answer to her question in regard to his previous journeys can be understood if Svipdag has, as Ottar, searched through the frost-cold Jotunheim's eastern mountain districts to find Menglad; and we can then see that Menglad in Fjölsvinnsmál can speak of her meeting with Svipdag at the gate of Asgard as a "meeting again," although Svipdag never before had been in Asgard. And that Menglad receives him as a husband to whom she is already married, with whom she is now to be "united for ever" (Fjölsvinnsmál 58), is likewise explained by the improvised wedding which Otharus celebrated with Syrithia before she returns to her father.

The identity of Otharus with the Óttarr-Óður-Svipdagur of the mythology further appears from the fact that Saxo gives him as father an Ebbo, which a comparative investigation proves to be identical with Svipdag's father Orvandil. Of the name Ebbo and the person to whom it belongs I shall have something to say in Nos. 108 and 109. Here it must be remarked that if Otharus is identical with Svipdag, then his father Ebbo, like Svipdag's father, should appear in the history of the mythic patriarch Halfdan and be the enemy of the latter (see Nos. 24, 33). Such is also the case. Saxo produces Ebbo on the scene as an enemy of Halfdan Berggram (Book VII, p. 207). A woman, Groa, is the cause of the enmity between Halfdan and Orvandil. A woman, Sygrutha, is the cause of the enmity between Halfdan and Ebbo. In the one passage Halfdan robs Orvandil of his betrothed Groa; in the other passage Halfdan robs Ebbo of his bride Sygrutha. In a third passage in his history (Book III, p. 83) Saxo has recorded the tradition that Horvendillus (Orvandil) is slain by a rival, who takes his wife, there called Gerutha. Halfdan kills Ebbo. Thus it is plain that the same story is told about Svipdag's father Orvandil and about Ebbo the father of Otharus, and that Groa, Sygrutha, and Gerutha are different versions of the same dis of vegetation.

According to Saxo, Syritha's father was afterwards married to a sister of Otharus. In the mythology Freyja's father Njord marries Skadi, who is the foster-sister and systrunga (the mother's sister's daughter, female cousin) of Ottar-Svipdag (see Nos. 108, 113, 114, 115).

Freyja's surname Hörn (also Horn) may possibly be explained by what Saxo relates about the giant's manner of treating her hair, which he pressed into one snarled, stiff, and hard mass. With the myth concerning Freyja's locks, we must compare that about Sif's hair. The hair of both these goddesses is subject to the violence of the hands of giants, and it may be presumed that both myths symbolised some feature of nature. Loki's act of violence on Sif's hair is made good by the skill and good-will of the ancient artists Sindri and Brokk (Skáldskaparmál 43). In regard to Freyja's locks, the skill of a "dwarf" may have been resorted to, since Saxo relates that an iron instrument was necessary to separate and comb out the horn-hard braids. In Völuspá's list of ancient artists there is a smith by name Hornbori, which possibly has some reference to this.

Reasons have already been given in No. 35 for the theory that it was Gullveig-Heid who betrayed Freyja and delivered her into the hands of the giants. When Saxo says that this treachery was committed by a woman, but also suggests the possibility that it was a man in the guise of a woman, then this too is explained by the mythology, in which Gullveig-Heid, like her fellow culprit, has an androgynous nature. Loki becomes "pregnant of the evil woman" (kviðugur af konu illri). In Fjölsvinnsmál we meet again with Gullveig-Heid, born again and called Aurboda, as one of Freyja's attendants, into whose graces she is nestled for a second time.