Teutonic Mythology: Gods and Goddesses of the Northland, Vol. 3

by Viktor Rydberg

The original identity of the mythological Freyja-Mardol, Saxo's Syritha, and the Mærthöll of the Icelandic popular tale is therefore evident.

In Danish and Swedish versions of a ballad (in Syv, Nyerup, Arwidsson, Geijer and Afzelius, Grundtvig, Dybeck, Hofberg; compare Bugge's Edda, p. 352, &c.) a young Sveidal (Svedal, Svendal, Svedendal, Silfverdal) is celebrated, who is none other than Svipdag of the mythology. Svend Grundtvig and Bugge have called attention to the conspicuous similarity between this ballad on the one hand, and Grogalder and Fjölsvinnsmal on the other. From the various versions of the ballad it is necessary to mention here only those features which best preserve the most striking resemblance to the mythic prototype. Sveidal is commanded by his stepmother to find a maiden "whose sad heart had long been longing." He then goes first to the grave of his deceased mother to get advice from her. The mother speaks to him from the grave and promises him a horse, which can bear him over sea and land, and a sword hardened in the blood of a dragon and resembling fire. The narrow limits of the ballad forbade telling how Sveidal came into possession of the treasures promised by the mother or giving an account of the exploits he performed with the sword. This plays no part in the ballad; it is only indicated that events not recorded took place before Sveidal finds the longing maid. Riding through forests and over seas, he comes to the country where she has her castle. Outside of this he meets a shepherd, with whom he enters into conversation. The shepherd informs him that within is found a young maiden who has long been longing for a young man by name Sveidal, and that none other than he can enter there, for the timbers of the castle are of iron, its gilt gate of steel, and within the gate a lion and a white bear keep watch. Sveidal approaches the gate; the locks fall away spontaneously; and when he enters the open court the wild beasts crouch at his feet, a linden-tree with golden leaves bends to the ground before him, and the young maiden whom he seeks welcomes him as her husband.

One of the versions makes him spur his horse over the castle wall; another speaks of seven young men guarding the wall, who show him the way to the castle, and who in reality are "god's angels under the heaven, the blue."

The horse who bears his rider over the salt sea is a reminiscence of Sleipner, which Svipdag rode on more than one occasion; and when it is stated that Sveidal on this horse galloped over the castle wall, this reminds us of Skirner-Svipdag when he leaps over the fence around Gymer's abode, and of Hermod-Svipdag when he spurs Sleipner over the wall to Balder's lower-world castle. The shepherds, who are "god's angels," refers to the watchmen mentioned in Fjölsvinnsmal, who are gods; the wild beasts in the open court to the two wolf-dogs who guard Asgard's gate; the shepherd whom Sveidal meets outside of the wall to Fjölsvin; the linden-tree with the golden leaves to Mimameidr and to the golden grove growing in Asgard. One of the versions makes two years pass while Sveidal seeks the one he is destined to marry.

In Germany, too, we have fragments preserved of the myth about Svipdag and Freyja. These remnants are, we admit, parts of a structure built, so to speak, in the style of the monks, but they nevertheless show in the most positive manner that they are borrowed from the fallen and crumbled arcades of the heathen mythology. We rediscover in them the old medieval poem about "Christ's unsewed grey coat."

The hero of the poem is Svipdag, here called by his father's name Orendel, Orentel—that is, Orvandel. The father himself, who is said to be a king in Trier, has received another name, which already in the most ancient heathen times was a synonym of Orvandel, and which I shall consider below. This in connection with the circumstance that the younger Orentel's (Svipdag's) patron saint is called "the holy Wieland," and thus he has the name of a person who, in the mythology, as shall be shown below, was Svipdag's uncle (father's brother) and helper, and whose sword is Svipdag's protection and pledge of victory, proves that at least in solitary instances not only the events of the myth but also its names and family relations have been preserved in a most remarkable and faithful manner through centuries in the minds of the German people.

In the very nature of things it cannot in the monkish poem be the task of the young Svipdag-Orentel to go in search of the heathen goddess Freyja and rescue her from the power of the giants. In her stead appears a "Frau Breyde," who is the fairest of all women, and the only one worthy to be the young Orentel's wife. In the heathen poem the goddess of fate Urd, in the German medieval poem God Himself, resolves that Orentel is to have the fairest woman as his bride. In the heathen poem Freyja is in the power of giants, and concealed somewhere in Jotunheim at the time when Svipdag is commanded to find her, and it is of the greatest moment for the preservation of the world that the goddess of love and fertility should be freed from the hands of the powers of frost. In the German poem, written under the influence of the efforts of the Christian world to reconquer the Holy Land, Frau Breyde is a princess who is for the time being in Jerusalem, surrounded and watched by giants, heathens, and knights templar, the last of whom, at the time when the poem received its present form, were looked upon as worshippers of the devil, and as persons to be shunned by the faithful. To Svipdag's task of liberating the goddess of love corresponds, in the monkish poem, Orentel's task of liberating Frau Breyde from her surrounding of giants, heathens, and knights templar, and restoring to Christendom the holy grave in Jerusalem. Orentel proceeds thither with a fleet. But although the journey accordingly is southward, the mythic saga, which makes Svipdag journey across the frost-cold Elivagar, asserts itself; and as his fleet could not well be hindered by pieces of ice on the coast of the Holy Land, it is made to stick fast in "dense water," and remain there for three years, until, on the supplication of the Virgin Mary, it is liberated therefrom by a storm. The Virgin Mary's prayers have assumed the same place in the Christian poems as Groa's incantations in the heathen. The fleet, made free from the "dense water," sails to a land which is governed by one Belian, who is conquered by Orentel in a naval engagement. This Belian is the mythological Beli, one of those "howlers" who surrounded Frey and Freyja during their sojourn in Jotunheim and threatened Svipdag's life. In the Christian poem Bele was made a king in Great Babylonia, doubtless for the reason that his name suggested the biblical "Bel in Babel." Saxo also speaks of a naval battle in which Svipdag-Ericus conquers the mythic person, doubtless a storm-giant, who by means of witchcraft prepares the ruin of sailors approaching the land where Frotho and Gunvara are concealed. After various other adventures Orentel arrives in the Holy Land, and the angel Gabriel shows him the way to Frau Breyde, just as "the seven angels of God" in one of the Scandinavian ballads guide Sveidal to the castle where his chosen bride abides. Lady Breyde is found to be surrounded by none but foes of Christianity—knights templar, heathens, and giants—who, like Gunvara's giant surroundings in Saxo, spend their time in fighting, but still wait upon their fair lady as their princess. The giants and knights templar strive to take Orentel's life, and, like Svipdag, he must constantly be prepared to defend it. One of the giants slain by Orentel is a "banner-bearer." One of the giants, who in the mythology tries to take Svipdag's life, is Grep, who, according to Saxo, meets him in derision with a banner on the top of whose staff is fixed the head of an ox.

Meanwhile Lady Breyde is attentive to Orentel. As Menglad receives Svipdag, so Lady Breyde receives Orentel with a kiss and a greeting, knowing that he is destined to be her husband.

When Orentel has conquered the giants he celebrates a sort of wedding with Lady Breyde, but between them lies a two-edged sword, and they sleep as brother and sister by each other's side. A wedding of a similar kind was mentioned in the mythology in regard to Svipdag and Menglad before they met in Asgard and were finally united. The chaste chivalry with which Freyja is met in the mythology by her rescuer is emphasised by Saxo both in his account of Ericus-Svipdag and Gunvara and in his story about Otharus and Syritha. He makes Ericus say of Gunvara to Frotha: Intacta illi pudicitia manet (Hist., 126). And of Otharus he declares: Neque puellam stupro violare sustinuit, nec splendido loco natam obscuro concubitus genere macularet (Hist., 331). The first wedding of Orentel and Breyde is therefore as if it had not been, and the German narrative makes Orentel, after completing other warlike adventures, sue for the hand of Breyde for the second time. In the mythology the second and real wedding between Svipdag and Freyja must certainly have taken place, inasmuch as he became reunited with her in Asgard.