History of Christian names

by Charlotte M. Yonge

Two swans, parents of all those who dwell on earth, had their home in the holy spring of Urd, beneath the world-tree, Yggdrasil; and the power and fierceness of these magnificent, pure, calm-looking birds connected them with the Valkyrer, who were supposed to have swan wings, and to be able to change themselves into swans. When the Valkyrier began to pass into mere magic ladies, they preserved their power of changing into swans, and by-and-by had swan garments, which they put off when they wished to assume human shapes, and which were now and then captured by some happy mortal, who thus won the owner for his bride. Swanhvit, or Swan white, was thus the suitable name of one of the three Valkyrier who married the sons of Vidja in the Vilkina Saga.

The swan transformations appear again in the beautiful tale, common to all Teutonic countries, of the twelve princes transformed into swans, and of the faithful sister who redeemed them by the nettle shirts that she wove, ever in silence, through every vicissitude of life even to the verge of death.

Svana is an Icelandic name, also Svanlaug, a swan ocean, which has contracted to Svallaug. Svanhild was used both by Norway and Germany, being Swanahilda in the latter, and Svanaburg and Swangarde were also there; but it is strange that so pretty a word for a white-skinned maiden should not have been more frequent. The Erse Gelges imitates the sense, but we have no English swan ladies, for Swanhals was only the epithet of the often commemorated lady, who is said to have discovered the corpse of Harold of Hastings.

For the most part, the swans were left to womankind; but the Germans had a Swanbrecht and Swanahold.

Section IX.—The Serpent.

Either from terror, or from a shadowy remembrance of the original temptation, the implanted enmity between the serpent and man has often resulted in a species of worship.

The North believed in the Jörmungandr, or Midgardsorm, the serpent that encircled the world and was one of the monstrous progeny of Loki.

And even till late in the seventh century the Lombards had a golden image of an enormous viper to which they sacrificed, until St. Barbatus recovered them from the heathenism into which they had relapsed.

One species of ship among the Northmen was called serpent. It was long and low, with the gilded head of a dragon at the prow, a long tail raised and curling over the stern, while with coloured shields ranged along the sides, and thirty oars on either side propelling it, besides the winged sails, it must have been more like a water-dragon than any creature that has ploughed the waves since the Plesiosaurus, and this probably accounts for the prevalence of the name of Orm among the northern nations.

Twenty-two Ormrs appear in the Landnama-bok; Orm and Ormar (Ger. Wurmhar) are both in Domesday. Orm was the founder of the Scottish house of Abernethy. Homer was considered, by the Danes of the middle ages, as the translation into Latin of the name of Ormr.