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The Edda

II

The Heroic Mythology of the North

By
Winifred Faraday, M.A.

Published by David Nutt, at the Sign of the Phœnix, Long Acre, London
1902

Author's Note

The present study forms a sequel to No. 12 (The Edda: Divine Mythology of the North), to which the reader is referred for introductory matter and for the general Bibliography. Additional bibliographical referencesare given, as the need occurs, in the notes to the present number.

Manchester,
July 1902.

The Heroic Mythology of the North

Sigemund the Waelsing and Fitela, Aetla, Eormanric the Goth and Gifica of Burgundy, Ongendtheow and Theodric, Heorrenda andthe Heodenings, and Weland the Smith: all these heroes of Germanic legend were known to the writers of our earliest Englishliterature. But in most cases the only evidence of this knowledge is a word, a name, here and there, with no hint of the storyattached. For circumstances directed the poetical gifts of the Saxons in England towards legends of the saints and Biblicalparaphrase, away from the native heroes of the race; while later events completed the exclusion of Germanic legend from ourliterature, by substituting French and Celtic romance. Nevertheless, these few brief references in Beowulf and in the small group of heathen English relics give us the right to a peculiar interest in the hero-poems of the Edda.Page 4In studying these heroic poems, therefore, we are confronted by problems entirely different in character from those whichhave to be considered in connexion with the mythical texts. Those are in the main the product of one, the Northern, branchof the Germanic race, as we have seen (No. 12 of this series), and the chief question to be determined is whether they represent,however altered in form, a mythology common to all the Germans, and as such necessarily early; or whether they are in substance,as well as in form, a specific creation of the Scandinavians, and therefore late and secondary. The heroic poems of the Edda,on the contrary, with the exception of the Helgi cycle, have very close analogues in the literatures of the other great branchesof the Germanic race, and these we are able to compare with the Northern versions.

The Edda contains poems belonging to the following heroic cycles:

(a) Weland the Smith.—Anglo-Saxon literature has several references to this cycle, which must have been a very popular one; and there is alsoa late Continental German version preserved in an Icelandic translation. But the poem in the Edda is the oldest connectedform of the story.

(b) Sigurd and the Nibelungs.—Again the oldest reference is in Anglo-Saxon. There Page 5are two well-known Continental German versions in the Nibelungen Lied and the late Icelandic Thidreks Saga, but the Edda, on the whole, has preserved an earlier form of the legend. With it is loosely connected

(c) The Ermanric Cycle.—The oldest references to this are in Latin and Anglo-Saxon. The Continental German version in the Thidreks Saga is late, and, like that in the Edda, contaminated with the Sigurd story, with which it had originally nothing to do.

(d) Helgi.—This cycle, at least in its present form, is peculiar to the Scandinavian North.

All the above-named poems are contained in Codex Regius of the Elder Edda. From other sources we may add other poems whichare Eddic, not Skaldic, in style, in which other heroic cycles are represented. The great majority of the poems deal withthe favourite story of the Volsungs, which threatens to swamp all the rest; for one hero after another, Burgundian, Hun, Goth,was absorbed into it. The poems in this part of the MS. differ far more widely in date and style than do the mythologicalones; many of the Volsung-lays are comparatively late, and lack the fine simplicity which characterises the older popularpoetry.

Völund.—The lay of Völund, the wonderful smith, the Weland of the Old English poems and Page 6the only Germanic hero who survived for any considerable time in English popular tradition, stands alone in its cycle, andis the first heroic poem in the MS. It is in a very fragmentary state, some of the deficiencies being supplied by short piecesof prose. There are two motives in the story: the Swan-maids, and the Vengeance of the Captive Smith. Three brothers, Slagfinn,Egil and Völund, sons of the Finnish King, while out hunting built themselves a house by the lake in Wolfsdale. There, earlyone morning, they saw three Valkyries spinning, their swancoats lying beside them. The brothers took them home; but afterseven years the swan-maidens, wearied of their life, flew away to battle, and did not return.

“Seven years they stayed there, but in the eighth longing seized them, and in the ninth need parted them.” Egil and Slagfinnwent to seek their wives, but Völund stayed where he was and worked at his forge. There Nithud, King of Sweden, took him captive:

They took him away and imprisoned him, ham-strung, on an island to forge treasures for his captors. Then Völund planned vengeance:

Nithud's children came to see him in his smithy: the two boys he slew, and made drinking-cups for Nithud from their skulls;