Part 5

Svipdag's father, Orvandil, must have been a mortal enemy of Halfdan, who abducted his wife Groa. But hitherto it is his son Svipdag whom we have seen carry out the feud of revenge against Halfdan. Still, it must seem incredible that the brave archer himself should remain inactive and leave it to his young untried son to fight against Thor's favourite, the mighty son of Borgar. The epic connection demands that Orvandil also should take part in this war and it is necessary to investigate whether our mythic records have preserved traces of the satisfaction of this demand in regard to the mythological epic.

As his name indicates, Orvandil was a celebrated archer. That Ör- in Orvandil, in heathen times, was conceived to be the word ör, "arrow" - though this meaning does not therefore need to be the most original one - is made perfectly certain by Saxo, according to whom Örvandill's father was named Geirvandill (Gervandillus, Book III, p. 82). Thus the father is the one "busy with the spear," the son "the one busy with the arrow".

Taking this as the starting point, we must at the very threshold of our investigation present the question: Is there among Halfdan's enemies mentioned by Saxo anyone who bears the name of a well-known archer?

This is actually the fact. Halfdan Berggram has to contend with two mythic persons, Toko and Anundus, who with united forces appear against him (Book VII, p. 205). Toko, Tóki, is the well-known name of an archer. In another passage in Saxo (Book VI, p. 168) one Anundus, with the help of Avo (or Ano) sagittarius, fights against one Halfdan. Thus we have the parallels:

The archer Orvandil is an enemy of Halfdan.
The man called archer Toko and Anundus are enemies of Halfdan.
The archer Avo and Anundus are enemies of Halfdan.

What at once strikes us is the fact that both the one called Toko (an archer's name) and the archer Avo have as comrade one Anundus in the war against Halfdan. Whence did Saxo get this Anundus? We are now in the domain of mythology related as history, and the name Anund must have been borrowed thence. Can any other source throw light on any mythic person by this name?

There was actually an Anund who held a conspicuous place in mythology, and he is none other than Volund. Völundarkviða informs us that Volund was also called Anund. When the three swan-maids came to the Wolfdales, where the three brothers, Volund, Egil, and Slagfin, had their abode, one of them presses Egil "in her white embrace," the other is Slagfin's beloved, and the third "lays her arms around Anund's white neck".

en in þriðja
þeirra systir
varði hvítan
háls Önundar.

Volund is the only person by name Anund found in our mythic records. If we now eliminate - of course only for the present and with the expectation of confirmatory evidence - the name Anund and substitute Volund, we get the following parallels:

Volund and Toko (the name of an archer) are enemies of Halfdan.
Volund and the archer named Avo are enemies of Halfdan.
The archer Orvandil is an enemy of Halfdan.

From this it would appear that Volund was very intimately associated with one of the archers of the mythology, and that both had some reason for being enemies of Halfdan. Can this be corroborated by any other source?

Volund's brothers are called Egill and Slagfiður (Slagfinnur) in Völundarkviða. The Icelandic-Norwegian poems from heathen times contain paraphrases which prove that the mythological Egil was famous as an archer and skee-runner. The bow is "Egil's weapon," the arrows are "Egil's weapon-hail" (Skáldskaparmál 61), and "the swift herring of Egil's hands" (Har. Gr., p. 18). A ship is called Egil's skees, originally because he could use his skees also on the water. In Völundarkviða he makes hunting expeditions with his brothers on skees. Vilkinasaga also (29, 30) knows Egil as Volund's brother, and speaks of him as a wonderfully skilful archer.

The same Volund, who in Saxo under the name Anund has Toko (the name of an archer) or the archer Avo by his side in the conflict with Halfdan, also has the archer Egil as a brother in other sources.

Of an archer Toko, who is mentioned in Hist., 487-490, Saxo tells the same exploit as Vilkinasaga attributes to Volund's brother Egil. In Saxo it is Toko who performs the celebrated masterpiece which was afterwards attributed to William Tell. In Vilkinasaga it is Egil. The one like the other, amid similar secondary circumstances, shoots an apple from his son's head. Egil's skill as a skee-runner and the serviceableness of his skees on the water have not been forgotten in Saxo's account of Toko. He runs on skees down the mountain, sloping precipitously down to the sea, Kullen in Scania, and is said to have saved himself on board a ship. Saxo's Toko was therefore without doubt identical with Volund's brother Egil, and Saxo's Anund is the same Volund of whom the Völundarkviða testifies that he also had this name in the mythology.

Thus we have demonstrated the fact that Volund and Egil appeared in the saga of the Teutonic patriarch Halfdan as the enemies of the latter, and that the famous archer Egil occupied the position in which we would expect to find the celebrated archer Orvandil, Svipdag's father. Orvandil is therefore either identical with Egil, and then it is easy to understand why the latter is an enemy of Halfdan, who we know had robbed his wife Groa; or he is not identical with Egil, and then we know no motive for the appearance of the latter on the same side as Svipdag, and we, moreover, are confronted by the improbability that Orvandil does nothing to avenge the insult done to him.

Orvandil's identity with Egil is completely confirmed by the following circumstances.

Orvandil has the Elivagar and the coasts of Jotunheim as the scene of his exploits during the time in which he is the friend of the gods and the opponent of the giants. To this time we must refer Horvendillus' victories over Collerus (Kollur) and his sister Sela (cp. the name of a monster Selkolla - Biskupa Sögur, i. 605) mentioned by Saxo (Book III, p. 83). His surname inn frækni, the brave, alone is proof that the myth refers to important exploits carried out by him, and that these were performed against the powers of frost in particular - that is to say, in the service of the gods and for the good of Midgard - is plain from the narrative in Skáldskaparmál 25. This shows, as is also demanded by the epic connection, that the Asa-god Thor and the archer Orvandil were at least for a time confidential friends, and that they had met each other on their expeditions for similar purposes in Jotunheim. When Thor, wounded in his forehead, returns from his combat with the giant Hrungnir to his home, Þrúðvangur (Þrúðvangar, Þrúðheimur), Orvandil's wife Groa was there and tried to help him with healing sorcery, wherein she would also have succeeded if Thor could have made himself hold his tongue for a while concerning a report he brought with him about her husband, and which he expected would please her. And Groa did become so glad that she forgot to continue the magic song and was unable to complete the healing. The report was, as we know, that, on the expedition to Jotunheim from which he had now come home, Thor bad met Orvandil, carried him in his basket across the Elivagar, and thrown a toe which the intrepid adventurer had frozen up to heaven and made a star thereof. Thor added that before long Orvandil would come "home"; that is to say, doubtless, "home to Thor," to fetch his wife Groa. It follows that, when he had carried Orvandil across the Elivagar, Thor had parted with him somewhere on the way, in all probability in Orvandil's own home, and that while Orvandil wandered about in Jotunheim, Groa, the dis of growth, had a safe place of refuge in the Asa-god's own citadel. A close relation between Thor and Orvandil also appears from the fact that Thor afterwards marries Orvandil's second wife Sif, and adopts his son Ull, Svipdag's half-brother (see No. 102), in Asgard.

Consequently Orvandil's abode was situated south of the Elivagar (Thor carried him norðan úr Jötunheimum), in the direction Thor had to travel when going to and from the land of the giants, and presumably quite near or on the strand of that mythic water-course over which Thor on this occasion carried him. When Thor goes from Asgard to visit the giants he rides the most of the way in his chariot drawn by the two goats Tanngnjóstur and Tanngrisnir. In the poem Haustlaung there is a particularly vivid description of his journey in his thunder chariot through space when he proceeded to the meeting agreed upon with the giant Hrungnir, on the return from which he met and helped Orvandil across Elivagar (Skáldskaparmál 25). But across this water and through Jotunheim itself Thor never travels in his car. He wades across the Elivagar, he travels on foot in the wildernesses of the giants, and encounters his foe face to face, breast to breast, instead of striking him from above with lightning. In this all accounts of Thor's journeys to Jotunheim agree. Hence south of the Elivagar and somewhere near them there must have been a place where Thor left his chariot and his goats in safety before he proceeded farther on his journey. And as we already know that the archer Orvandil, Thor's friend, and like him hostile to the giants, dwelt on the road travelled by the Asa-god, and south of the Elivagar, it lies nearest at hand to assume that Orvandil's castle was the stopping-place on his journey, and the place where he left his goats and car.

Now in Hymiskviða (7, 37, 38) we actually read that Thor, on his way to Jotunheim, had a stopping-place, where his precious car and goats were housed and taken care of by the host, who accordingly had a very important task, and must have been a friend of Thor and the Asa-gods in the mythology. The host bears the archer name Egil. From Asgard to Egil's abode, says Hymiskviða, it is about one day's journey for Thor when he rides behind his goats on his way to Jotunheim. After this day's journey he leaves the draught-animals, decorated with horns, with Egil, who takes care of them, and the god continues his journey on foot. Thor and Tyr being about to visit the giant Hymir -

Fóru drjúgum
dag þann fram
Ásgarði frá,
unz til Egils komu;
hirði hann hafra
horngöfgasta,
hurfu að höllu,
er Hymir átti.

("Nearly all the day they proceeded their way from Asgard until they came to Egil's. He gave the horn-strong goats care. They (Thor and Tyr) continued to the great hall which Hymir owned.")

From Egil's abode both the gods accordingly go on foot. From what is afterwards stated about adventures on their way home, it appears that there is a long distance between Egil's house and Hymir's (cp. 35 - fóru lengi, áður &c.). It is necessary to journey across the Elivagar first - býr fyr austan Élivoga hundvís Hymir (5). In the Elivagar Hymir has his fishing-grounds, and there he is wont to catch whales on hooks (cp. 17 - á vog róa); but still he does not venture far out upon the water (see 20), presumably because he has enemies on the southern strand where Egil dwells. Between the Elivagar and Hymir's abode there is a considerable distance through woody mountain recesses (holtriði - 27) and past rocks in whose caverns dwell monsters belonging to Hymir's giant-clan (35). Thor resorts to cunning in order to secure a safe retreat. After he has been out fishing with the giant, instead of making his boat fast in its proper place on the strand, as Hymir requests him to do, he carries the boat with its belongings all the difficult way up to Hymir's hall. He is also attacked on his way home by Hymir and all his giant-clan, and, in order to be able to wield Mjolnir freely, he must put down the precious kettle which he has captured from the frost-giant and was carrying on his broad shoulders (35, 36). But the undisturbed retreat across the Elivagar he has secured by the above-mentioned cunning.

Egil is called hraunbúi (38), an epithet the ambiguous meaning of which should not be unobserved. It is usually translated with rock-dweller, but it here means "he who lives near or at Hraunn" (Hrönn). Hraunn is one of the names of the Elivagar (see Nos. 59, 93; cp. Skáldskaparmál 33 with Grímnismál 28).

After their return to Egil's, Thor and Tyr again seat themselves in the thunder-chariot and proceed to Asgard with the captured kettle. But they had not driven far before the strength of one of the horn-decorated draught animals failed, and it was found that the goat was lame (37). A misfortune had happened to it while in Egil's keeping, and this had been caused by the cunning Loki (37). The poem does not state the kind of misfortune - the Younger Edda gives us information on this point - but if it was Loki's purpose to make enmity between Thor and his friend Egil he did not succeed this time. Thor, to be sure, demanded a ransom for what had happened, and the ransom was, as Hymiskviða informs us, two children who were reared in Egil's house. But Thor became their excellent foster-father and protector, and the punishment was therefore of such a kind that it was calculated to strengthen the bond of friendship instead of breaking it.

Gylfaginning also (Gylfaginning 44, &c.) has preserved traditions showing that when Thor is to make a journey from Asgard to Jotunheim it requires more than one day, and that he therefore puts up in an inn at the end of the first day's travel, where he eats his supper and stops over night. There he leaves his goats and travels the next day eastward (north), "across the deep sea" (hafið það hið djúpa), on whose other side his giant foes have their abode. The sea in question is the Elivagar, and the tradition correctly states that the inn is situated on its southern (western) side.

But Gylfaginning has forgotten the name of the host in this inn. Instead of giving his name it simply calls him a búandi (peasant); but it knows and states on the other hand the names of the two children there reared, Thjalfi and Roskva; and it relates how it happened that one of Thor's goats became lame, but without giving Loki the blame for the misfortune. According to Gylfaginning the event occurred when Thor was on his way to Utgarda-Loki. In Gylfaginning, too, Thor takes the two children as a ransom, and makes Thjalfi (Þjálfi) a hero, who takes an honourable part in the exploits of the god.

As shall be shown below, this inn on the road from Asgard to Jotunheim is presupposed as well known in Eilif Gudrunarson's Þórsdrápa, which describes the adventures Thor met with on his journey to the giant Geirrod. Þórsdrápa gives facts of great mythological importance in regard to the inhabitants of the place. They are the "sworn" helpers of the Asa-gods, and when it is necessary Thor can thence secure brave warriors, who accompany him across Elivagar into Jotunheim. Among them an archer plays the chief part in connection with Thjalfi (see No. 114).

On the north side of Elivagar dwell accordingly giants hostile to gods and men; on the south side, on the other hand, beings friendly to the gods and bound in their friendship by oaths. The circumstance that they are bound by oaths to the gods (see Þórsdrápa) implies that a treaty has been made with them and that they owe obedience. Manifestly the uttermost picket guard to the north against the frost-giants is entrusted to them.

This also gives us an explanation of the position of the star-hero Orvandil, the great archer, in the mythological epic. We can understand why he is engaged to the dis of growth Groa, as it is his duty to defend Midgard against the destructions of frost; and why he fights on the Elivagar and in Jotunheim against the same enemies as Thor; and why the mythology has made him and the lord of thunder friends who visit each other. With the tenderness of a father, and with the devotion of a fellow-warrior, the mighty son of Odin bears on his shoulders the weary and cold star-hero over the foggy Elivagar, filled with magic terrors, to place him safe by his own hearth south of this sea after he has honoured him with a token which shall for ever shine on the heavens as a monument of Orvandil's exploits and Thor's friendship for him. In the meantime Groa, Orvandil's wife, stays in Thor's halls.

But we discover the same bond of hospitality between Thor and Egil. According to Hymiskviða it is in Egil's house, according to Gylfaginning in the house in which Thjalfi is fostered, where the accident to one of Thor's goats happens. In one of the sources the youth whom Thor takes as a ransom is called simply Egil's child; in the other he is called Thjalfi. Two different mythic sources show that Thjalfi was a waif, adopted in Egil's house, and consequently not a real brother, but a foster-brother of Svipdag and Ull. One source is Göngu-Hrólfs saga 2, where it is stated that Groa in a flæðarmál found a little boy and reared him together with her own son. Flæðarmál is a place which a part of the time is flooded with water and a part of the time lies dry. The other source is the Longobard saga, in which the mythological Egil reappears as Agelmund, the first king of the Longobardians who emigrated from Scandinavia (Origo Longob., Paulus Diac., 14, 15; cp. No. 112). Agelmund, it is said, had a foster-son, Lamicho (Origo Longob.), or Lamissio (Paulus Diac.), whom he found in a dam and took home out of pity. Thus in the one place it is a woman who bears the name of the archer Orvandil's wife, in the other it is the archer Egil himself, who adopts as foster-son a child found in a dam or in a place filled with water. Paulus Diaconus says that the lad received the name Lamissio to commemorate this circumstance, "since he was fished up out of a dam or dyke," which in their (the Longobardian) language is called lama (cp. lehm, mud). The name Thjalfi (Þjálfi) thus suggests a similar idea. As Vigfusson has already pointed out, it is connected with the English delve, a dyke; with the Anglo-Saxon delfan; the Dutch delven, to work the ground with a spade, to dig. The circumstances under which the lad was found presaged his future. In the mythology he fells the clay-giant Mökkukálfi (Skáldskaparmál 24). In the migration saga he is the discoverer of land and circumnavigates islands (Korm., 19, 3; Younger Edda, i. 496), and there he conquers giants (Hárbarðsljóð 39) in order to make the lands inhabitable for immigrants. In the appendix to the Gotland law he appears as Thjelvar, who lands in Gotland, liberates the island from trolls by carrying fire, colonises it and becomes the progenitor of a host of emigrants, who settle in southern countries. In Paulus Diaconus he grows up to be a powerful hero; in the mythology he develops into the Asa-god Thor's brave helper, who participates in his and the great archer's adventures on the Elivagar and in Jotunheim. Paulus (ch. 15) says that when Agelmund once came with his Longobardians to a river, "amazons" wanted to hinder him from crossing it. Then Lamissio fought, swimming in the river, with the bravest one of the amazons, and killed her. In the mythology Egil himself fights with the giantess Sela, mentioned in Saxo as an amazon: piraticis exercita rebus ac bellici perita muneris (Book III, p. 83), while Thjalfi combats with giantesses on Hlesey (Hárbarðsljóð 39), and at the side of Thor and the archer he fights his way through the river waves, in which giantesses try to drown him (Þórsdrápa). It is evident that Paulus Diaconus' accounts of Agelmund and Lamissio are nothing but echoes related as history of the myths concerning Egil and Thjalfi, of which the Norse records fortunately have preserved valuable fragments.

Thus Thjalfi is the archer Egil's and Groa's foster-son, as is apparent from a bringing together of the sources cited. From other sources we have found that Groa is the archer Orvandil's wife. Orvandil dwells near the Elivagar and Thor is his friend, and visits him on his way to and from Jotunheim. These are the evidences of Orvandil's and Egil's identity which lie nearest at hand.

It has already been pointed out that Svipdag's father Orvandil appears in Saxo by the name Ebbo (see Nos. 23, 100). It is Otharus-Svipdag's father whom he calls Ebbo (Book VII, pp. 207-209). Halfdan slays Orvandil-Ebbo, while the latter celebrates his wedding with a princess Sygrutha (see No. 23). In the mythology Egil had the same fate: an enemy and rival kills him for the sake of a woman. "Franks Casket," an old work of sculpture now preserved in England, and reproduced in George Stephens' great work on the runes [Runic Monuments], represents Egil defending his house against a host of assailants who storm it. Within the house a woman is seen, and she is the cause of the conflict. Like Saxo's Halfdan, one of the assailants carries a tree or a branched club as his weapon. Egil has already hastened out, bow in hand, and his three famous arrows have been shot. Above him is written in runes his name, wherefore there can be no doubt about his identity. The attack, according to Saxo, took place, in the night (noctuque nuptiis superveniens - p. 207).

In a similar manner, Paulus Diaconus relates the story concerning Egil-Agelmund's death (ch. 16). He is attacked, so it is stated, in the night time by Bulgarians, who slew him and carried away his only daughter. During a part of their history the Longobardians had the Bulgarians as neighbours, with whom they were on a war-footing. In the mythology it was "Borgarians," that is to say, Borgar's son Halfdan and his men, who slew Orvandil. In history the "Borgarians" have been changed into Bulgarians for the natural reason that accounts of wars fought with Bulgarians were preserved in the tradititions of the Longobardians.

The very name Ebbo reappears also in the saga of the Longobardians. The brothers, under whose leadership the Longobardians are said to have emigrated from Scandinavia, are in Saxo (Book VIII, p. 260) called Aggo and Ebbo; in Origo Longobardorum, Ajo and Ybor; in Paulus (ch. 7), Ajo and Ibor. Thus the namne Ebbo is another form for Ibor, the German Ebur, the Norse Jöfurr, "a wild boar". The Ibor of the Longobard saga, the emigration leader, and Agelmund, the first king of the emigrants, in the mythology, and also in Saxo's authorities, are one and the same person. The Longobardian emigration story, narrated in the form of history, thus has its root in the universal Teutonic emigration myth, which was connected with the enmity caused by Loki between the gods and the primeval artists - an enmity in which the latter allied themselves with the powers of frost, and, at the head of the Skilfing-Yngling tribes, gave the impetus to that migration southward which resulted in the populating of the Teutonic continent with tribes from South Scandia and Denmark (see Nos. 28, 32).

Nor is the mythic hero Ibor forgotten in the German sagas. He is mentioned in Notker (about the year 1000) and in the Vilkinasaga. Notker simply mentions him in passing as a saga-hero well known at that time. He distinguishes between the real wild boar (Eber) roaming in the woods, and the Eber (Ebur) who "wears the swan-ring". This is all he has to say of him. But, according to Völundarkviða, the mythological Ebur-Egil is married to a swanmaid, and, like his brother Volund, he wore a ring. The signification of the swan-rings was originally the same as that of Draupnir: they were symbols of fertility, and were made and owned for this reason by the primeval artists of mythology, who, as we have seen, were the personified forces of growth in nature, and by their beloved or wives, the swan-maids, who represented the saps of vegetation, the bestowers of the mythic "mead" or "ale". The swan-maid who loves Egil is, therefore, in Völundarkviða called Olrun, a parallel to the name Olgefjun, as Groa, Orvandil's wife, is called in Haustlaung (Skáldskaparmál 30). Saxo, too, has heard of the swan-rings, and says that from three swans singing in the air fell a cingulum inscribed with names down to King Fridlevus (Njord), which informed him where he was to find a youth who had been robbed by a giant, and whose liberation was a matter of great importance to Fridlevus. The context shows that the unnamed youth was in the mythology Fridlevus-Njord's own son Frey, the lord of harvests, who had been robbed by the powers of frost. Accordingly, a swan-ring has co-operated in the mythology in restoring the fertility of the earth.

In Vilkinasaga appears Villifer. The author of the saga says himself that this name is identical with Wild-Ebur, wild boar. Villifer, a splendid and noble-minded youth, wears on his arm a gold ring, and is the elder friend, protector, and saviour of Vidga Volundson. Of his family relations Vilkinasaga gives us no information, but the part it gives him to play finds its explanation in the myth, where Ebur is Volund's brother Egil, and hence the uncle of his favourite Vidga.

If we now take into consideration that in the German Orentel saga, which is based on the Svipdag-myth, the father of the hero is called Eigel (Egil), and his patron saint Wieland (Volund), and that in the archer, who in Saxo fights by the side of Anund-Volund against Halfdan, we have re-discovered Egil where we expected Orvandil; then we here find a whole chain of evidence that Ebur, Egil, and Orvandil are identical, and at the same time the links in this chain of evidence, taken as they are from the Icelandic poetry, and from Saxo, from England, Germany, and Italy, have demonstrated how widely spread among the Teutonic peoples was the myth about Orvandil-Egil, his famous brother Volund, and his no less celebrated son Svipdag. The result gained by the investigation is of the greatest importance for the restoration of the epic connection of the mythology. Hitherto the Völundarkviða with its hero has stood in the gallery of myths as an isolated torso with no trace of connection with the other myths and mythic sagas. Now, on the other hand, it appears, and as the investigation progresses it shall become more and more evident, that the Volund-myth belongs to the central timbers of the great epic of Teutonic mythology, and extends branches through it in all directions.

In regard to Svipdag's saga, the first result gained is that the mythology was not inclined to allow Volund's sword, concealed in the lower world, to fall into the hands of a hero who was a stranger to the great artist and his plans. If Volund forged the sword for a purpose hostile to the gods, in order to avenge a wrong done him, or to elevate himself and his circle of kinsmen among the elves at the expense of the ruling gods, then his work was not done in vain. If Volund and his brothers are those Ivaldi sons who, after having given the gods beautiful treasures, became offended on account of the decision which placed Sindri's work, particularly Mjolnir, higher than their own, then the mythology has also completely indemnified them in regard to this insult. Mjolnir is broken by the sword of victory wielded by Volund's nephew; Asgard trembles before the young elf, after he had received the incomparable weapon of his uncle; its gate is opened for him and other kinsmen of Volund, and the most beautiful woman of the world of gods becomes his wife.