Part 5

The mythic story about Svipdag and Freyja has been handed down in popular tales and songs, even to our time, of course in an ever varying and corrupted form. Among the popular tales there is one about Mærthöll, put in writing by Konrad Maurer, and published in Modern Icelandic Popular Tales.

The wondrous fair heroine in this tale bears Freyja's well-known surname, Mardol, but little changed. And as she, like Freyja, weeps tears that change into gold, it is plain that she is originally identical with the Vana-dis, a fact which Maurer also points out.

Like Freyja, she is destined by the norn to be the wife of a princely youth. But when he courted her, difficulties arose which remind us of what Saxo relates about Otharus and Syritha.

As Saxo represents her, Syritha is bound as it were by an enchantment, not daring to look up at her lover or to answer his declarations of love. She flies over the mountains more pristino, "in the manner usual in antiquity," consequently in all probability in the guise of a bird. In the Icelandic popular tale Marthol shudders at the approaching wedding night, since she is then destined to be changed into a sparrow. She is about to renounce the embrace of her lover, so that he may not know anything about the enchantment in which she is fettered.

In Saxo the spell resting on Syritha is broken when the candle of the wedding night burns her hand. In the popular tale Marthol is to wear the sparrow guise for ever if it is not burnt on the wedding night or on one of the two following nights.

Both in Saxo and in the popular tale another maiden takes Mardol's place in the bridal bed on the wedding night. But the spell is broken by fire, after which both the lovers actually get each other.

The original identity of the mythological Freyja-Mardol, Saxo's Syritha, and the Mærthöll of the Icelandic popular tale is therefore evident.

In Danish and Swedish versions of a ballad (in Syv, Nyerup, Arwidsson, Geijer and Afzelius, Grundtvig, Dybeck, Hofberg; compare Bugge's Edda, p. 352, &c.) a young Sveidal (Svedal, Svendal, Svedendal, Silfverdal) is celebrated, who is none other than Svipdag of the mythology. Svend Grundtvig and Bugge have called attention to the conspicuous similarity between this ballad on the one hand, and Gróugaldur and Fjölsvinnsmál on the other. From the various versions of the ballad it is necessary to mention here only those features which best preserve the most striking resemblance to the mythic prototype. Sveidal is commanded by his stepmother to find a maiden "whose sad heart had long been longing". He then goes first to the grave of his deceased mother to get advice from her. The mother speaks to him from the grave and promises him a horse, which can bear him over sea and land, and a sword hardened in the blood of a dragon and resembling fire. The narrow limits of the ballad forbade telling how Sveidal came into possession of the treasures promised by the mother or giving an account of the exploits he performed with the sword. This plays no part in the ballad; it is only indicated that events not recorded took place before Sveidal finds the longing maid. Riding through forests and over seas, he comes to the country where she has her castle. Outside of this he meets a shepherd, with whom he enters into conversation. The shepherd informs him that within is found a young maiden who has long been longing for a young man by name Sveidal, and that none other than he can enter there, for the timbers of the castle are of iron, its gilt gate of steel, and within the gate a lion and a white bear keep watch. Sveidal approaches the gate; the locks fall away spontaneously; and when he enters the open court the wild beasts crouch at his feet, a linden-tree with golden leaves bends to the ground before him, and the young maiden whom he seeks welcomes him as her husband.

One of the versions makes him spur his horse over the castle wall; another speaks of seven young men guarding the wall, who show him the way to the castle, and who in reality are "god's angels under the heaven, the blue".

The horse who bears his rider over the salt sea is a reminiscence of Sleipnir, which Svipdag rode on more than one occasion; and when it is stated that Sveidal on this horse galloped over the castle wall, this reminds us of Skirnir-Svipdag when he leaps over the fence around Gymir's abode, and of Hermod-Svipdag when he spurs Sleipnir over the wall to Baldur's lower-world castle. The shepherds, who are "god's angels," refer to the watchmen mentioned in Fjölsvinnsmál, who are gods; the wild beasts in the open court to the two wolf-dogs who guard Asgard's gate; the shepherd whom Sveidal meets outside of the wall to Fjolsvith; the linden-tree with the golden leaves to Mímameiður and to the golden grove growing in Asgard. One of the versions makes two years pass while Sveidal seeks the one he is destined to marry.

In Germany, too, we have fragments preserved of the myth about Svipdag and Freyja. These remnants are, we admit, parts of a structure built, so to speak, in the style of the monks, but they nevertheless show in the most positive manner that they are borrowed from the fallen and crumbled arcades of the heathen mythology. We rediscover in them the old medieval poem about !Christ's unsewed grey coat".

The hero in the poem is Svipdag, here called by his father's name Orendel, Orentel - that is, Orvandil. The father himself, who is said to be a king in Trier, has received another name, which already in the most ancient heathen times was a synonym of Orvandil, and which I shall consider below. This in connection with the circumstance that the younger Orentel's (Svipdag's) patron saint is called "the holy Wieland," and thus has the name of a person who, in the mythology, as shall be shown below, was Svipdag's uncle (father's brother) and helper, and whose sword is Svipdag's protection and pledge of victory, proves that at least in solitary instances not only the events of the myth but also its names and family relations have been preserved in a most remarkable and faithful manner through centuries in the minds of the German people.

In the very nature of things it cannot in the monkish poem be the task of the young Svipdag-Orentel to go in search of the heathen goddess Freyja and rescue her from the power of the giants. In her stead appears a "Frau Breyde," who is the fairest of all women, and the only one worthy to be the young Orentel's wife. In the heathen poem the goddess of fate Urd, in the German medieval poem God Himself, resolves that Orentel is to have the fairest woman as his bride. In the heathen poem Freyja is in the power of giants, and concealed somewhere in Jotunheim at the time when Svipdag is commanded to find her, and it is of the greatest moment for the preservation of the world that the goddess of love and fertility should be freed from the hands of the powers of frost. In the German poem, written under the influence of the efforts of the Christian world to reconquer the Holy Land, Frau Breyde is a princess who is for the time being in Jerusalem, surrounded and watched by giants, heathens, and knights templar, the last of whom, at the time when the poem received its present form, were looked upon as worshippers of the devil, and as persons to be shunned by the faithful. To Svipdag's task of liberating the goddess of love corresponds, in the monkish poem, Orentel's task of liberating Frau Breyde from her surrounding of giants, heathens, and knights templar, and restoring to Christendom the holy grave in Jerusalem. Orentel proceeds thither with a fleet. But although the journey accordingly is southward, the mythic saga, which makes Svipdag journey across the frost-cold Elivagar, asserts itself; and as his fleet could not well be hindered by pieces of ice on the coast of the Holy Land, it is made to stick fast in "dense water," and remain there for three years, until, on the supplication of the Virgin Mary, it is liberated therefrom by a storm. The Virgin Mary's prayers have assumed the same place in the Christian poems as Groa's incantations in the heathen. The fleet, made free from the "dense water," sails to a land which is governed by one Belian, who is conquered by Orentel in a naval engagement. This Belian is the mythological Beli, one of those "howlers" who surrounded Frey and Freyja during their sojourn in Jotunheim and threatened Svipdag's life. In the Christian poem Beli was made a king in Great Babylonia, doubtless for the reason that his name suggested the biblical "Bel in Babel". Saxo also speaks of a naval battle in which Svipdag-Ericus conquers the mythic person, doubtless a storm-giant, who by means of witchcraft prepares the ruin of sailors approaching the land where Frotho and Gunvara are concealed. After various other adventures Orentel arrives in the Holy Land, and the angel Gabriel shows him the way to Frau Breyde, just as "the seven angels of God" in one of the Scandinavian ballads guide Sveidal to the castle where his chosen bride abides. Lady Breyde is found to be surrounded by none but foes of Christianity - knights templar, heathens, and giants - who, like Gunvara's giant surroundings in Saxo, spend their time in fighting, but still wait upon the fair lady as their princess. The giants and knights templar strive to take Orentel's life, and, like Svipdag, he must constantly be prepared to defend it. One of the giants slain by Orentel is a "banner-bearer". One of the giants, who in the mythology tries to take Svipdag's life, is Grepp, who, according to Saxo, meets him in derision with a banner on the top of whose staff is fixed the head of an ox.

Meanwhile Lady Breyde is attentive to Orentel. As Menglad receives Svipdag, so Lady Breyde receives Orentel with a kiss and a greeting, knowing that he is destined to be her husband.

When Orentel has conquered the giants he celebrates a sort of wedding with Lady Breyde, but between them lies a two-edged sword, and they sleep as brother and sister by each other's side. A wedding of a similar kind was mentioned in the mythology in regard to Svipdag and Menglad before they met in Asgard and were finally united. The chaste chivalry with which Freyja is met in the mythology by her rescuer is emphasised by Saxo both in his account of Ericus-Svipdag and Gunvara and in his story about Otharus and Syritha. He makes Ericus say of Gunvara to Frotho: Intacta illi pudicitia manet (Book V, p. 132). And of Otharus he declares: Neque puellam stupro violare sustinuit, nec splendido loco natam obscuro concubitus genere macularet (Book VII, p. 208). The first wedding of Orentel and Breyde is therefore as if it had not been, and the German narrative makes Orentel, after completing other warlike adventures, sue for the hand of Breyde for the second time. In the mythology the second and real wedding between Svipdag and Freyja must certainly have taken place, inasmuch as he becamne reunited with her in Asgard.

The sword which plays so conspicuous a part in Svipdag's fortunes has not been forgotten in the German medieval tale. It is mentioned as being concealed deep down in the earth, and as a sword that is always attended by victory.

On one occasion Lady Breyde appears, weapon in hand, and fights by the side of Orentel, under circumstances which remind us of the above-cited story from Saxo (see No. 102), when Ericus-Svipdag, Gunvara-Freyja, and Rollerus-Ull are in the abode of a treacherous giant, who tries to persuade Svipdag to deliver Gunvara to him, and when Bracus-Thor breaks into the giant abode, and either slays the inmates or puts them to flight. Gunvara then fights by the side of Ericus-Svipdag, muliebri corpore virilem animum æquans (Book V, p. 140).

In the German Orentel saga appears a "fisherman," who is called master Yse. Orentel has at one time been wrecked, and comes floating on a plank to his island, where Yse picks him up. Yse is not a common fisherman. He has a castle with seven towers, and eight hundred fishermen serve under him. There is good reason for assuming that this mighty chieftain of fishermen originally was the Asa-god Thor, who in the northern ocean once had the Midgard-serpent on his hook, and that the episode of the picking up of the wrecked Orentel by Yse has its root in a tradition concerning the mythical adventure, when the real Orvandil, Svipdag's father, feeble and cold, was met by Thor and carried by him across the Elivagar. In the mythology, as shall be shown hereafter, Orvandil the brave was Thor's "sworn" man, and fought with him against giants before the hostility sprang up between Ivaldi's sons and the Asa-gods. In the Orentel saga Yse also regands Orentel as his "thrall". The latter emancipates himself from his thraldom with gold. Perhaps this ransom is a reference to the gold which Freyja's tears gave as a ransom for Svipdag.

Orentel's father is called Eigel, king in Trier. In Vilkinasaga we find the archer Egil, Volund's brother, mentioned by the name-variation Eigill. The German Orentel's patron saint is Wieland, that is, Volund. Thus in the Orentel saga as in the Völundarkviða and in Vilkinasaga we find both these names Egil and Volund combined, and we have all the more reason for regarding King Eigel in Trier as identical with the mythological Egil, since the latter, like Orvandil, is a famous archer. Below, I shall demonstrate that the archer Orvandil and the archer Egil actually were identical in the mythology.

But first it may be in order to point out the following circumstances. Tacitus tells us in his Germania (3): "Some people think, however, that Ulysses, too, on his long adventurous journeys was carried into this ocean (the Germanic), and visited the countries of Germany, and that he founded and gave name to Asciburgium, which is situated on the Rhine, and is still an inhabited city; nay, an altar consecrated to Ulysses, with the name of his father Laertes added, is said to have been found there". To determine the precise location of this Asciburgium is not possible. Ptolemy (ii. 11, 28), and after him Marcianus Heracleota (Peripl., 2, 36), inform us that an Askiburgon was situated on the Rhine, south of and above the delta of the river. Tabula Peutingeriana locates Asceburgia between Gelduba (Gelb) and Vetera (Xanten). But from the history of Tacitus it appears (iv. 33) that Asciburgium was situated between Neuss and Mainz (Mayence). Read the passage: Aliis a Novæsio, aliis a Mogontiaco universas copias advenisse credentibus.

The passage refers to the Roman troops sent to Asciburgium and there attacked - those troops which expect to be relieved from the nearest Roman quarters in the north or south. Its location should accordingly be looked for either on or near that part of the Rhine, which on the east bordered the old archbishopric Trier.

Thus the German Orentel saga locates King Eigel's realm and Orentel's native country in the same regions, where, according to Tacitus' reporter, Ulysses was said to have settled for some time and to have founded a citadel. As is well known, the Romans believed they found traces of the wandering Ulysses in well-nigh all lands, and it was only necessary to hear a strange people mention a far-travelled mythic hero, and he was at once identified either as Ulysses or Hercules. The Teutonic mythology had a hero à la Ulysses in the younger Orentel, Odur-Svipdag-Heremod, whom the Beowulf poem calls "incomparably the most celebrated traveller among mankind" (wreccena wide mærost ofer wer-þeóde). Mannhardt has already pointed out an episode (Orentel's shipwreck and arrival in Yse's land) which calls to mind the shipwreck of Odysseus and his arrival in the land of the Pheaces. Within the limits which the Svipdag-myth, according to my own investigations, proves itself to have had, other and more conspicuous features common to both, but certainly not borrowed from either, can be pointed out, for instance Svipdag's and Odysseus' descent to the lower world, and the combat in the guise of seals between Heimdal and Loki, which reminds us of the conflict of Menelaos clad in seal-skin with the seal-watcher Proteus (Odyss., iv. 404, &c.). Just as there are words in the Aryan languages that in their very form point to a common origin, but not to a borrowing, so there are also myths in the Aryan religions which in their very form reveal their growth from an ancient common Aryan root, but produce no suspicion of their being borrowed. Among these are to be classed those features of the Odysseus and Svipdag myths which resemble each other.

It has already been demonstrated above, that Germania's Mannus is identical with Halfdan of the Norse sources, and that Yngvi-Svipdag has his counterpart in Ingævo (see No. 24). That informer of Tacitus who was able to interpret Teutonic songs about Mannus and his sons, the three original race heroes of the Teutons, must also in those very songs have heard accounts of Orvandil's and Svipdag's exploits and adventures, since Orvandil and Svipdag play a most decisive part in the fortunes of Mannus-Halfdan. If the myth about Svipdag was composed in a later time, then Mannus-Halfdan's saga must have undergone a change equal to a complete transformation after the day of Tacitus, and for such an assumption there is not the slightest reason. Orvandil is not a mythic character of later make. As already pointed out, and as shall be demonstrated below, he has ancient Aryan ancestry. The centuries between Tacitus and Paulus Diaconus are unfortunately almost wholly lacking in evidence concerning the condition of the Teutonic myths and sagas; but where, as in Jordanes, proofs still gleam forth from the prevailing darkness, we find mention of Arpantala, Amala, Fridigernus, Vidigoia (Jord., v.). Jordanes says that in the most ancient times they were celebrated in song and described as heroes who scarcely had their equals (quales vix heroas fuisse miranda jactat antiquitas). Previous investigators have already recognised in Arpantala Orvandil, in Amala Hamal, in Vidigoia Wittiche, Wieland's son (Vidga Volundson), who in the mythology are cousins of Svipdag (see No. 108). Fridigernus, Fridgjarn, means "he who strives to get the beautiful one," an epithet to which Svipdag has the first claim among ancient Teutonic heroes, as Freyja herself has the first claim to the name Fríð (beautiful). In Fjölsvinnsmál it belongs to a dis, who sits at Freyja's feet, and belongs to her royal household. This is in analogy with the fact that the name Hlín belongs at the same time to Frigg herself (Völuspá 53), and to a goddess belonging to her royal household (Gylfaginning 35).

What Tacitus tells about the stone found at Asciburgium, with the names of Ulysses and Laertes inscribed thereon, can of course be nothing but a conjecture, based on the idea that the famous Teutonic traveller was identical with Odysseus. Doubtless this idea has been strengthened by the similarity between the names Óður, Goth. Vods, and Odysseus, and by the fact that the name Laertes (acc. Laerten) has sounds in common with the name of Svipdag's father. If, as Tacitus seems to indicate, Asciburgium was named after its founder, we would find in Asc- an epithet of Orvandil's son, common in the first century after Christ and later. In that case it lies nearest at hand to think of aiska (Fick, iii. 5), the English "ask," the Anglo-Saxon ascian, the Swedish äska, "to seek," "search for," "to try to secure," which easily adapted itself to Svipdag, who goes on long and perilous journeys to look for Freyja and the sword of victory. I call attention to these possibilities because they appear to suggest an ancient connection, but not for the purpose of building hypotheses thereon. Under all circumstances it is of interest to note that the Christian medieval Orentel saga locates the Teutonic migration hero's home to the same part of Germany where Tacitus in his time assumed that he had founded a citadel. The tradition, as heard by Tacitus, did not however make the regions about the Rhine the native land of the celebrated traveller. He came thither, it is said in Germania, from the North after having navigated in the Northern Ocean. And this corresponds with the mythology, which makes Svipdag an Inguæon, and Svion, a member of the race of the Skilfing-Ynglings, makes him in the beginning fight on the side of the powers of frost against Halfdan, and afterwards lead not only the north Teutonic (Inguæonian) but also the west Teutonic tribes (the Hermiones) against the east Teutonic war forces of Hadding (see Nos. 38-40).

Memories of the Svipdag-myth have also been preserved in the story about Hamlet, Saxo's Amlethus (Snæbjorn's Amlóði), son of Horvendillus (Orvandil). In the medieval story Hamlet's father, like Svipdag's father in the mythology, was slain by the same man, who marries the wife of the slain man, and, like Svipdag in the myth, Hamlet of the medieval saga becomes the avenger of his father Horvendillus and the slayer of his stepfather. On more than one occasion the idea occurs in the Norse sagas that a lad whose stepfather had slain his father broods over his duty of avenging the latter, and then plays insane or half idiot to avoid the suspicion that he may become dangerous to the murderer. Svipdag, Orvandil's son, is reared in his stepfather's house amid all the circumstances that might justify or explain such a hypocrisy. Therefore he has as a lad received the epithet Amlóði, the meaning of which is "insane," and the myth having at the same time described him as highly-gifted, clever, and sharp-witted, we have in the words which the mythology has attributed to his lips the key to the ambiguous words which make the cleverness, which is veiled under a stupid exterior, gleam forth. These features of the mythic account of Svipdag have been transferred to the middle-age saga anent Hamlet - a saga which already in Saxo's time had been developed into an independent narrative. I shall return to this theme in a treatise on the heroic sagas. Other reminiscences of the Svipdag-myth reappear in Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian ballads. The Danish ballads, which, with surprising fidelity, have preserved certain fundamental traits and details of the Svipdag-myth even down to our days, I have already discussed. The Norwegian ballad about "Hermod the Young" (Landstad Norske Folkeviser, p. 28), and its Swedish version, "Bergtrollet," which corresponds still more faithfully with the myth (Arvidson, i. 123), have this peculiar interest in reference to mythological synonymies and the connection of the mythic fragments preserved, that Svipdag appears in the former as in the Beowulf poem and in the Younger Edda under the name Hermod, and that both versions have for their theme a story, which Saxo tells about his Otharus when he describes the flight of the latter through Jotunheim with the rediscovered Syritha. It has already been stated above (No. 100) that after Otharus had found Syritha and slain a giant in whose power she was, he was separated from her on their way home, but found her once more and liberated her from a captivity into which she had fallen in the abode of a giantess. This is the episode which forms the theme of the ballad about "Hermod the Young," and of the Swedish version of it. Brought together, the two ballads give us the following contents:

The young Hermod secured as his wife a beautiful maiden whom he liberated from the hands of a giantess. She had fallen into the hands of giants through a witch, "gigare," originally gýgur, a troll-woman, Aurboda, who in a great crowd of people had stolen her out of a church (the divine citadel Asgard is changed into a "house of God"). Hermod hastens on skees "through woods and caverns and recesses," comes to "the wild sea-strand" (Elivagar) and to the "mountain the blue," where the giantess resides who conceals the young maiden in her abode. It is Christmas Eve. Hermod asks for lodgings for the night in the mountain dwelling of the giantess and gets it. Resorting to cunning, he persuades the giantess the following morning to visit her neighbours, liberates the fair maiden during her absence, and flies on his skees with her "over the high mountains and down the low ones". When the old giantess on her return home finds that they have gone she hastens (according to the Norwegian version accompanied by eighteen giants) after those who have taken flight through dark forests with a speed which makes every tree bend itself to the ground. When Hermod with his young maiden had come to the salt fjord (Elivagar) the giantess is quite near them, but in the decisive moment she is changed to a stone, according to the Norse version, by the influence of the sun, which just at that time rose; according to the Swedish version, by the influence of a cross which stood near the fjord and its "long bridge".

The Swedish version states, in addition to this, that Hermod had a brother; in the mythology, Ull the skilful skee-runner. In both the versions, Hermod is himself an excellent skee-man. The refrains in both read: "He could so well on the skees run". Below, I shall prove that Orvandil, Svipdag's and Ull's father, is identical with Egil, the foremost skee-runner in the mythology, and that Svipdag is a cousin of Skadi, "the dis of the skees". Svipdag-Hermod belongs to the celebrated skee-race of the mythology, and in this respect, too, these ballads have preserved a genuine trait of the mythology.

In their way, these ballads, therefore, give evidence of Svipdag's identity with Hermod, and of the latter's identity with Saxo's Otherus.

Finally, a few words about the Svipdag synonyms. Of these, Óður and Hermóður (and in the Beowulf poem Svidferhd) form a group, which, as has already been pointed out above, refer to the qualities of his mind. Svipdag ("the glimmering day") and Skirnir ("the shining one") form another group, which refers to his birth as the son of the star-hero Orvandil, who is "the brightest of stars," and "a true beam from the sun" (see above). Again, anent the synonym Eirekur, we should bear in mind that Svipdag's half-brother Gudhorm had the epithet Jörmunrekur, and the half-brother of the latter, Hadding, the epithet Þjóðrekur. They are the three half-brothers who, after the patriarch Mannus-Halfdan, assume the government of the Teutons; and as each one of them has large domains, and rules over many Teutonic tribes, they are, in contradistinction to the princes of the separate tribes, great kings or emperors. It is the dignity of a great king which is indicated, each in its own way, by all these parallel names - Eirekur, Jörmunrekur, and Þjóðrekur.