CHAPTER X.
This myth about Frey and Gerd is the subject of one of the most fascinating poems in the Elder Edda, the Journey of Skirner. It is, as Auber Forestier, in Echoes from Mistland, says, the germ of the Niblung story. Frey is Sigurd or Sigfrid, and Gerd is Brynhild. The myth is also found in another poem of the Elder Edda, the Lay of Fjolsvin, in which the god himself—there called Svipday (the hastener of the day)—undertakes the journey to arouse from the winter sleep the cold giant nature of the maiden Menglad (the sun-radiant daughter), who is identical with Freyja (the goddess of spring, promise, or of love between man and woman, and who can easily be compared with Gerd). Before the bonds which enchain the maiden can in either case be broken, Bele (the giant of spring storms, corresponding to the dragon Fafner in the Niblung story,) must be conquered, and Wafurloge (the wall of bickering flames that surrounded the castle) must be penetrated. The fanes symbolize the funeral pyre, for whoever enters the nether world must scorn the fear of death. (Auber Forestier’s Echoes from Mistland; Introduction, xliii, xliv.) We also find this story repeated again and again, in numberless variations, in Teutonic folk-lore; for instance, in The Maiden on the Glass Mountain, where the glass mountain takes the place of the bickering flame.