The different races have this in common, that they are giant races, since they spring from Ymer; but these giant races must at the same time have been widely different intellectually and physically, since the mythology gives them different origins from different limbs of the progenitor. And here, as in Rigveda, it is clear that the lowest race was conceived as proceeding from the feet of the primeval giant. This is stated with sufficient distinctness in Vafthrudnersmal, where we read that a "strangely-headed" monster (Thrudgelmer—see No. 60) was born by them, while "man and maid" were born under the arm of the giant. "The man" and "the maid" must therefore represent a noble race sprung from Ymer, and they can only be Mimer and his sister, Odin's mother. Mimer and his clan constitute a group of ancient powers, who watch over the fountains of the life of the world and care for the perpetuation of the world-tree. From them proceeded the oldest, fairest, and most enduring parts of the creation. For the lower world was put in order and had its sacred fountains and guardians before Bur's sons created Midgard and Asgard. Among them the world-tree grew up from its roots, whose source no one knows (Havamál, 138). Among them those forces are active which make the starry firmament revolve on its axis, and from them come the seasons and the divisions of time, for Nat and nidjar, Mane and Sol, belong to Mimer's clan, and were in the morning of creation named by the oldest "high holy gods," and endowed with the vocation árom at telja (Völuspa). From Mimer comes the first culture, for in his fountain inspiration, spiritual power, man's wit and wisdom, have their source, and around him as chief stand gathered the artists of antiquity by whose hands all things can be smithied into living and wonderful things. Such a giant clan demands another origin than that of the frost-giants and their offspring. As we learn from Vafthrudnersmal that two giant races proceeded from Ymer, the one from a part of his body which in a symbolic sense is more noble than that from which the other race sprang, and that the race born of his feet was the ignoble one hostile to the gods, then the conclusion follows of necessity that "the man and maid" who were born as twins under Ymer's arm became the founders of that noble group of giants who are friendly to the gods, and which confront us in the mythology of our fathers. It has already been shown above (see No. 54) that Jima (Yama) in the Asiatic-Aryan mythology corresponds to Mimer in the Teutonic. Jima is an epithet which means twin. The one with whom Jima was born together was a maid, Yami. The words in the quoted Vafthrudnersmal strophe, undir hendi hrimthursi vaxa mey ok maug saman, are evidence that the Germans also considered Mimer and his sister as twins.
87.
THE IDENTITY OF MIMER AND NIDHAD OF THE VOLUND SAGA.
The condition in which the traditions of the great Volund (Wayland) have come down to our time is one of the many examples illustrating how, under the influences of a change of faith, a myth disrobes itself of its purely mythical character and becomes a heroic saga. The nature of the mythic traditions and songs is not at once obliterated in the time of transition; there remain marks of their original nature in some or other of the details as proof of what they have been. Thus that fragment of a Volund saga, turned into an epic, which the Old Norse literature has preserved for us in Volundarkvida, shows us that the artist who is the hero of the song was originally conceived not as a son of man, but as a member of the mythic race of elves which in Völuspa is mentioned in connection with the Asas (hvat er med asom, hvat er med alfom?—str. 49). Volund is an elf-prince (alfa visi, alfa ljothi—Volund., str. 10, 13), and, as shall be shown below, when we come to consider the Volund myth exhaustively, he and his brothers and their mistresses have played parts of the very greatest importance in the epic of Teutonic mythology. Under such circumstances it follows that the other persons appearing in Volundarkvida also were originally mythical characters.
One of these is called Nidadr (Nidudr), king of Njares, and I am now to investigate who this Nidadr was in the mythology.
When Volund for the first time appears by this name in the Elder Edda, he is sojourning in a distant country, to which it is impossible to come without traversing the Myrkwood forest famous in the mythology (see No. 78). It is a snow-clad country, the home of bears and wolves. Volund gets his subsistence by hunting on skees. The Old English poem, "Deor the Scald's Complaint," confirms that this region was regarded as very cold (cp. vintercealde vræce). In Volundarkvida it is called Wolfdales.
Volund stays here many years in company with his two brothers and with three swan-maids, their mistresses or wives, but finally alone. Volund passes the time in smithying, until he is suddenly attacked by Nidadr (Nidudr), "the Njara-king" (Volundarkv., 6), who puts him in chains and robs him of two extraordinary treasures—a sword and an arm-ring. Seven hundred arm-rings hung in a string in Volund's hall; but this one alone seemed to be worth more than all the rest, and it alone was desired by Nidadr (str. 7, 8, 17).
Before Volund went to the Wolfdales, he had lived with his people a happy life in a land abounding in gold (str. 14). Not voluntarily, but from dire necessity he had exchanged his home for the distant wilderness of the Wolfdales. "Deor the Scald's Complaint" says he was an exile (Veland him be vurman vreces cannade). A German saga of the middle ages, "Anhang des Heldenbuchs," confirms this statement. Wieland (Volund), it is there said, "was a duke who was banished by two giants, who took his land from him," whereupon "he was stricken with poverty," and "became a smith." The Volundarkvida does not have much to say about the reason for his sojourn in the Wolfdales, but strophe 28 informs us that, previous to his arrival there, he had suffered an injustice, of which he speaks as the worst and the most revenge-demanding which he, the unhappy and revengeful man, ever experienced. But he has had no opportunity of demanding satisfaction, when he finally succeeds in getting free from Nidadr's chains. Who those mythic persons are that have so cruelly insulted him and filled his heart with unquenchable thirst for revenge is not mentioned; but in the very nature of the case those persons from whose persecutions he has fled must have been mightier than he, and as he himself is a chief in the godlike clan of elves, his foes are naturally to be looked for among the more powerful races of gods.
And as Volundarkvida pictures him as boundlessly and recklessly revengeful, and makes him resort to his extraordinary skill as a smith—a skill famous among all Teutonic tribes—in the satisfaction which he demands of Nidadr, there is no room for doubt that the many years he spent in Wolfdales, he brooded on plans of revenge against those who had most deeply insulted him, and that he made use of his art to secure instruments for the carrying out of these plans. Of the glittering sword of which Nidadr robbed him, Volund says (str. 18) that he had applied his greatest skill in making it hard and keen. The sword must, therefore, have been one of the most excellent ones mentioned in the songs of Teutonic heathendom. Far down in the middle ages, the songs and sagas were fond of attributing the best and most famous swords wielded by their heroes to the skill of Volund.
In the myths turned by Saxo into history, there has been mentioned a sword of a most remarkable kind, of untold value (ingens præmium), and attended by success in battle (belli fortuna comitaretur). A hero whose name Saxo Latinised into Hotherus (see Hist. Dan., p. 110) got into enmity with the Asa-gods, and the only means with which he can hope to cope with them is the possession of this sword. He also knows where to secure it, and with its aid he succeeds in putting Thor himself and other gods to flight.