Ol ulf Loki
vid Angrbodu,
(enn Sleipni gat
vid Svadilfara);
eitt thotti skars
allra feiknazst
that var brodur fra
Byleistz komit.
Loki af hiarta
lindi brendu,
fann hann haalfsuidinn
hugstein konu;
vard Loptr kvidugr
af konu illri;
thadan er aa folldu
flagd hvert komit.
From the account we see that an evil female being (ill kona) had been burnt, but that the flames were not able to destroy the seed of life in her nature. Her heart had not been burnt through or changed to ashes. It was only half-burnt (hálfsvidinn hugsteinn), and in this condition it had together with the other remains of the cremated woman been thrown away, for Loke finds and swallows the heart.
Our ancestors looked upon the heart as the seat of the life principle, of the soul of living beings. A number of linguistic phrases are founded on the idea that goodness and evil, kindness and severity, courage and cowardice, joy and sorrow, are connected with the character of the heart; sometimes we find hjarta used entirely in the sense of soul, as in the expression hold ok hjarta, soul and body. So long as the heart in a dead body had not gone into decay, it was believed that the principle of life dwelling therein still was able, under peculiar circumstances, to operate on the limbs and exercise an influence on its environment, particularly if the dead person in life had been endowed with a will at once evil and powerful. In such cases it was regarded as important to pierce the heart of the dead with a pointed spear (cp. Saxo, Hist., 43, and No. 95).
The half-burnt heart, accordingly, contains the evil woman's soul, and its influence upon Loke, after he has swallowed it, is most remarkable. Once before when he bore Sleipner with the giant horse Svadilfare, Loke had revealed his androgynous nature. So he does now. The swallowed heart redeveloped the feminine in him (Loki lindi af brendu hjarta). It fertilised him with the evil purposes which the heart contained. Loke became the possessor of the evil woman (kvidugr af konu illri), and became the father of the children from which the trolls (flagd) are come which are found in the world. First among the children is mentioned the wolf, which is called Fenrir, and which in Ragnarok shall cause the death of the Asa-father. To this event point Njord's words about Loke, in Lokasenna, str. 33: ass ragr er hefir born of borit. The woman possessing the half-burnt heart, who is the mother or rather the father of the wolf, is called Angerboda (ól ulf Loki vid Angrbodu). N. M. Peterson and other mythologists have rightly seen that she is the same as "the old one," who in historical times and until Ragnarok dwells in the Ironwood, and "there fosters Fenrer's kinsmen" (Völuspa, 39), her own offspring, which at the close of this period are to issue from the Ironwood, and break into Midgard and dye its citadels with blood (Völuspa, 30).
The fact that Angerboda now dwells in the Ironwood, although there on a former occasion did not remain more of her than a half-burnt heart, proves that the attempt to destroy her with fire was unsuccessful, and that she arose again in bodily form after this cremation, and became the mother and nourisher of were-wolves. Thus the myth about Angerboda is identical with the myth about Gulveig-Heid in the two characteristic points:
Unsuccessful burning of an evil woman.
Her regeneration after the cremation.
These points apply equally to Gulveig-Heid and to Angerboda, "the old one in the Ironwood."
The myth about Gulveig-Heid-Angerboda, as it was remembered in the first period after the introduction of Christianity, we find in part recapitulated in Helgakvida Hundingsbane, i. 37-40, where Sinfjotle compares his opponent Gudmund with the evil female principle in the heathen mythology, the vala in question, and where Gudmund in return compares Sinfjotle with its evil masculine principle, Loke.
Sinfjotle says:
Thu vart vaulva
i Varinseyio,
scollvis kona
bartu scrauc saman;
Thu vart, en scetha,
scass valkyria,
autul, amátlig
at Alfaudar;
mundo einherjar
allir beriaz,
svevis kona,
um sakar thinar.
Nio attu vith
a neri Sagu
ulfa alna
ec var einn fathir theirra.