What then is the significance of this remarkable cycle? The explanation must be sought in the pagan-Christian overlap, at the time when the symbols of Norse mythology were being homologised with those of the Christian faith.
“Three mighty children to my father Lok
Did Angerbode, the giantess, bring forth—
Fenris the wolf, the serpent huge, and me.
Of these the serpent in the sea ye cast,
Who since in your despite hath wax’d amain,
And now with gleaming ring enfolds the world.
Me on this cheerless nether world he threw,
And gave me nine unlighted realms to rule.
While, on his island in the lake, afar,
Made fast to the bored crag, by wile not strength
Subdued, with limber chains lives Fenris bound.”
So, in the words of Matthew Arnold, spoke Hela to Hermod on his quest for the restoration of the slain Balder.
At the crack of doom, the Ragnaroks, Frey, Woden, Thor, and Tyr, are predestined to perish. A wolf shall devour the sun, and another shall swallow the moon, and the stars shall vanish out of heaven. Woden shall go first, and shall encounter Fenriswolf, but the wise, one-eyed god shall die. The hammer of the “friend of man” shall not avail against the sea-dragon, and though Thor fights Midgarthsorm, and shall slay him, he himself shall fall dead from the serpent’s venom. Garm, the hell-hound, shall fasten upon the one-handed Tyr, and each shall kill the other. Frey shall fall before Swart, the giant with the flaming sword. Then shall Vidar spring forward, the mighty son of the Father of Victory, and shall rend the wolf asunder. “Vidar shall inhabit the city of the gods when all is over,” as the giant said to Woden. “Vidar, who outlived the earth-fall, became,” says Professor Stephens,[113] “a fitting emblem for that Almighty Lord who overcame Sin and Death,” and he is represented on some sculptured stones as a divine Hart, trampling on Fenriswolf and Midgarthsorm.
These strangled wolves and writhing snakes of Scandinavian art represent the portentous struggle of the powers of darkness with the gods when “the Wolf shall devour the Sire of Men; but Vid shall avenge him, and shall rend the cold jaws of the Beast.” But the new religion possessed a somewhat analogous imagery, and the symbolism of the one readily passed into that of the other. Whether pagan or Christian, the symbolic animal was attacked by the plaited thong or twisted fibres, and the secular handicraft choked the religious idea. Such a hold had this technique on the mind of the people that it predominated all their art, and even led to the extinction of religious symbolism.
There was, however, another means by which the pagan dragon crept into Christian art. I refer to the legend of Sigurd and Fafni, which was introduced into sepulchral and ecclesiastical carving as late as the fourteenth century by followers of the new faith. I cannot now detail the foundation story of the Nibelungen Lied; the point which at present concerns us is the slaying of Fafni in the form of a dragon or serpent by Sigurd with his magic sword.
This and other incidents of the legend are carved on wooden portals or door-pillars of churches, on fonts, and on Christian crosses of stone in many parts of Sweden and Norway, and also in some parts of England, as on the Hatton Cross in Lancaster.
Fafni is often seen passing into a maze of beautiful scroll-work, and in the Hatton Cross he is solely represented by a twisted knot.
Under monkish influence, no doubt, the whole story came by degrees to be looked upon as containing types and proofs of the younger religion. Sigurd became the Christian soldier, forging the sword of the spirit, and his defeat of the serpent could readily be adopted into Christian symbolism.[114]