I have already given above (No. 46) the main features of Saxo's account of King Gorm's and Thorkil's journey to and in the lower world. With their companions they are permitted to visit the abodes of torture of the damned and the fields of bliss, together with the gold-clad world-fountains, and to see the treasures preserved in their vicinity. In the same realm where these fountains are found there is, says Saxo, a tabernaculum within which still more precious treasures are preserved. It is an uberioris thesauri secretarium. The Danish adventurers also entered here. The treasury was also an armoury, and contained weapons suited to be borne by warriors of superhuman size. The owners and makers of these arms were also there, but they were perfectly quiet and as immovable as lifeless figures. Still they were not dead, but made the impression of being half-dead (semineces). By the enticing beauty and value of the treasures, and partly, too, by the dormant condition of the owners, the Danes were betrayed into an attempt to secure some of these precious things. Even the usually cautious Thorkil set a bad example and put his hand on a garment (amiculo manum inserens). We are not told by Saxo whether the garment covered anyone of those sleeping in the treasury, nor is it directly stated that the touching with the hand produced any disagreeable consequences for Thorkil. But further on Saxo relates that Thorkil became unrecognisable, because a withering or emaciation (marcor) had changed his body and the features of his face. With this account in Saxo we must compare what we read in Adam of Bremen about the Frisian adventurers who tried to plunder treasures belonging to giants who in the middle of the day lay concealed in subterranean caves (meridiano tempore latitantes antris subterraneis). This account must also have conceived the owners of the treasures as sleeping while the plundering took place, for not before they were on their way back were the Frisians pursued by the plundered party or by other lower-world beings. Still, all but one succeeded in getting back to their ships. Adam asserts that they were such beings quos nostri cyclopes appellant ("which among us are called cyclops"), that they, in other words, were gigantic smiths, who, accordingly, themselves had made the untold amount of golden treasures which the Frisians there saw. These northern cyclops, he says, dwelt within solid walls, surrounded by a water, to which, according to Adam of Bremen, one first comes after traversing the land of frost (provincia frigoris), and after passing that Euripus, "in which the water of the ocean flows back to its mysterious fountain" (ad initia quædam fontis sui arcani recurrens), "this deep subterranean abyss wherein the ebbing streams of the sea, according to report, were swallowed up to return," and which "with most violent force drew the unfortunate seamen down into the lower world" (infelices nautos vehementissimo impetu traxit ad Chaos).

It is evident that what Paulus Diaconus, Adam of Bremen, and Saxo here relate must be referred to the same tradition. All three refer the scene of these strange things and events to the "most remote part of Germany" (cp. Nos. 45, 46, 48, 49). According to all three reports the boundless ocean washes the shores of this saga-land which has to be traversed in order to get to "the sleepers," to "the men half-dead and resembling lifeless images," to "those concealed in the middle of the day in subterranean caves." Paulus assures us that they are in a cave under a rock in the neighbourhood of the famous maelstrom which sucks the billows of the sea into itself and spews them out again. Adam makes his Frisian adventurers come near being swallowed up by this maelstrom before they reach the caves of treasures where the cyclops in question dwell; and Saxo locates their tabernacle, filled with weapons and treasures, to a region which we have already recognised (see Nos. 45-51) as belonging to Mimer's lower-world realm, and situated in the neighbourhood of the sacred subterranean fountains.

In the northern part of Mimer's domain, consequently in the vicinity of the Hvergelmer fountain (see Nos. 59, 93), from and to which all waters find their way, and which is the source of the famous maelstrom (see Nos. 79, 80, 81), there stands, according to Völuspa, a golden hall in which Sindre's kinsmen have their home. Sindre is, as we know, like his brother Brok and others of his kinsmen, an artist of antiquity, a cyclops, to use the language of Adam of Bremen. The Northern records and the Latin chronicles thus correspond in the statement that in the neighbourhood of the maelstrom or of its subterranean fountain, beneath a rock and in a golden hall, or in subterranean caves filled with gold, certain men who are subterranean artisans dwell. Paulus Diaconus makes a "curious" person who had penetrated into this abode disrobe one of the sleepers clad in "Roman" clothes, and for this he is punished with a withered arm. Saxo makes Thorkil put his hand on a splendid garment which he sees there, and Thorkil returns from his journey with an emaciated body, and is so lean and lank as not to be recognised.

There are reasons for assuming that the ancient artisan Sindre is identical with Dvalinn, the ancient artisan created by Mimer. I base this assumption on the following circumstances:

Dvalinn is mentioned by the side of Dáinn both in Havamál (43) and in Grimnersmal (33); also in the sagas, where they make treasures in company. Both the names are clearly epithets which point to the mythic destiny of the ancient artists in question. Dáinn means "the dead one," and in analogy herewith we must interpret Dvalinn as "the dormant one," "the one slumbering." (cp. the Old Swedish dvale, sleep, unconscious condition). Their fates have made them the representatives of death and sleep, a sort of equivalents of Thanatos and Hypnos. As such they appear in the allegorical strophes incorporated in Grimnersmal, which, describing how the world-tree suffers and grows old, make Dáinn and Dvalinn, "death" and "slumber," get their food from its branches, while Nidhog and other serpents wound its roots.

In Hyndluljod (6) the artists who made Frey's golden boar are called Dáinn and Nabbi. In the Younger Edda (i. 340-342) they are called Brokkr and Sindri. Strange to say, on account of mythological circumstances not known to us, the skalds have been able to use Dáinn as a paraphrase for a rooting four-footed animal, and Brokkr too has a similar signification (cp. the Younger Edda, ii. 490, and Vigfusson, Dict., under Brokkr). This points to an original identity of these epithets. Thus we arrive at the following parallels:

and the conclusion we draw herefrom is that in our mythology, in which there is such a plurality of names, Dvalinn, Sindri, and Nabbi are the same person, and that Dáinn and Brokkr are identical. I may have an opportunity later to present further evidence of this identity.

The primeval artist Sindre, who with his kinsmen inhabits a golden hall in Mimer's realm under the Hvergelmer mountains, near the subterranean fountain of the maelstrom, has therefore borne the epithet Dvalinn, "the one wrapped in slumber." "The slumberer" thus rests with his kinsmen, where Paulus Diaconus has heard that seven men sleep from time out of mind, and where Adam of Bremen makes smithying giants, rich in treasures, keep themselves concealed in lower-world caves within walls surrounded by water.

It has already been demonstrated that Dvalinn is a son of Mimer (see No. 53). Sindre-Dvalin and his kinsmen are therefore Mimer's offspring (Mims synir). The golden citadel situated near the fountain of the maelstrom is therefore inhabited by the sons of Mimer.