She who is called Svanfeather, the sun-daughter Svanhild Gold-feather, Hildeburh, Hildigunt, and Hildigun is accordingly a sister of the moon-dis Nanna, and a daughter of the ruler of the atmosphere and of the moon. She is herself a sun-dis. In regard to the composition of the name, we must compare Hildigun, Hiltigunt, with Nanna's surname Sinhtgunt. The Teutonic, or at all events the Norse, mythology knew two divinities of the sun, mother and daughter. Grimnersmal (47) tells us that the older one, Alfraudull, has a daughter, who, not at the present time, but in the future, is to drive the car of the sun (eina dottur berr Alfraudull ...). The elder is the wife of the moon-god. The younger one is the Sunna mentioned in the Merseburg formula (see No. 92), Sinhtgunt-Nanna's sister. As a surname, Sunna also occurs in the Norse literature (Alvissmal, 17; Younger Edda, i. 472, and elsewhere).
In the Beowulf poem and in "Battle of Furnesburg," we find Fin Folcvalding, Hildeburh's husband, as the foe of his father-in-law Hnæf, and conquered by him and Hengest. After a war ending unluckily for him, he makes peace with his victors, breaks the peace, attacks the citadel in the night, and cremates the slain and wounded in an immense funeral pyre. Hnæf is among those fallen, and Hildeburh weeps at his funeral pyre; Hengest escapes and afterwards avenges Hnæf's death. Saxo confirms the fact, that the historified person who in the mythology is the moon-god is attacked and burnt by one of his "satraps," and afterwards avenged. This he tells of his Gevarus, Nanna's father (Hist., 131). The correspondence on this point shows that the episode has its root in the mythology, though it would be vain to try to find out the symbolic significance from a standpoint of physical nature of the fact that the moon-god was attacked and burnt by the husband of his daughter, the sun-dis.
KING SVAFRLAME SECURES THE SWORD TYRFING.
(From a painting by Lorenz Frölich.)
In the Icelandic Hervar's Saga is an account of the mythical sword called Tyrfing, which Odin commanded the dwarfs Durin and Dvalin to forge for his grandson, King Svafrlame. When, against their will, they were compelled to deliver the sword to the king, the dwarfs pronounced a curse upon it, declaring that it should never be drawn from its sheath without causing the death of some one. Soon after Svafrlame was killed by Arngrim and the sword passed to Angantyr, who, in turn, was slain by Hjalmar and, to abate the curse, Tyrfing was buried with him. Angantyr's daughter, Hervor, however, by a spell, exorcised the spirit of her father and obtained the sword, after which it had many owners in succession, but the curse remained, for it brought death as before to every one who unsheathed it.
Meanwhile we obtain from these scattered mythic fragments preserved in the heroic poems, when compared with the statements found in the mythology itself, the following connected story as the myth about the mead:
Originally, the mead, the soma, belongs to Mimer alone. From an unknown depth it rises in the lower world directly under the world-tree, whose middle root is watered by the well of the precious liquid. Only by self-sacrifice, after prayers and tears, is Odin permitted to take a drink from this fountain. The drink increases his strength and wisdom, and enables him to give order to the world situated above the lower regions. From its middle root the world-tree draws liquids from the mead-fountain, which bless the einherjes of Asgard as a beverage, and bless the people of Midgard as a fructifying honey-dew. Still this mead is not pure; it is mixed with the liquids from Urd's and Hvergelmer's fountains. But somewhere in the Jotunheims, the genuine mead was discovered in the fountain Byrger. This discovery was kept secret. The keeper of the secret was Ivalde, the sworn watchman near the Elivagar. In the night he sent his son Slagfin (afterwards called after his adopted father Hjuke) and his daughter Bil (Idun) to dip liquid from the fountain Byrger and bring it to him. But the children never returned. The moon-god had taken them and Byrger's liquids unto himself, and thus the gods of Asgard were able to partake of this drink. Without the consent of the moon-god, Ivalde on his part secured his daughter the sun-dis, and doubtless she bears to him the daughters Idun, Almveig, and other dises of growth and rejuvenation, after he had begotten Slagfin, Egil, and Volund with the giantess Greip. The moon-god and Ivalde have accordingly taken children from each other. The circumstance that the mead, which gives the gods their creative power and wisdom, was robbed from Ivalde—this find which he kept secret and wished to keep for himself alone—makes him the irreconcilable foe of the moon-god, is the cause of the war between them, and leads him to violate the oath which he had taken to him. He attacks Gevar in the night, kills and burns him, and recaptures the mead preserved in the ship of the moon. He is henceforth for ever a foe of the gods, and allies himself with the worst enemies of their world, the powers of frost and fire. Deep down in Hades there has long dwelt another foe of the gods, Surt-Durin, the clan-chief of Suttung's sons, the father of Fjalar. In the oldest time he too was the friend of the gods, and co-operated with Mimer in the first creation (see No. 89). But this bond of friendship had now long been broken. Down into the deep and dark dales in which this clan hostile to the gods dwells, Ivalde brings his mead-treasure into safety. He apparently gives it as the price of Fjalar's daughter Gunlad, and as a pledge of his alliance with the world of giants. On the day of the wedding, Odin comes before him, and clad in his guise, into Surt's halls, marries Gunlad, robs the liquids of Byrger, and flies in eagle guise with them to Asgard. On the wedding day Ivalde comes outside of Surt's mountain-abode, but never enters. A dwarf, the keeper of the halls, entices him into his ruin. It has already been stated that he was probably buried beneath an avalanche.
The myth concerning the carrying of the mead to the moon, and concerning its fate there, has left various traces in the traditions of the Teutonic people. In the North, Hjuke and Bil with their mead-burden were the objects seen in the spots on the moon. In southern Sweden, according to Ling, it was still known in the beginning of this century, that the bucket carried by the figures in the moon was a "brewing kettle," consequently containing or having contained a brewed liquid. According to English traditions, not the two children of Vidfin, but a drunken criminal (Ritson's Ancient Songs; cp. J. Grimm, Deut. Myth., 681), dwelt in the full moon, and that of which he is charged in widely circulated traditions is that he was gathering fagots for the purpose of crime, or in an improper time (on the Sabbath). Both the statements that he is drunk and that his crime consists in the gathering of fagots—lead us to suppose that this "man in the moon" originally was Ivalde, the drink-champion and the mead-robber, who attacked and burnt the moon-god. His punishment is that he will never get to heaven, but will remain in the moon, and there he is for ever to carry a bundle of thorn-fagots (thus according to a German tradition, and also according to a tradition told by Chaucer). Most probably, he has to carry the thorn-rod of the moon-god burnt by him. The moon-god (see Nos. 75, 91) ruled over the Teutonic Erynnies armed with rods (limar), and in this capacity he bore the epithet Eylimi. A Dutch poem from the fourteenth century says that the culprit in duitshe heet Ludergheer. A variation which J. Grimm (Deut. Myth., 683) quotes is Lodeger. The name refers, as Grimm has pointed out, to the Old High German Liutker, the Lüdiger of the German middle-age poem. In "Nibelunge Noth," Lüdiger contends with the Gjukungs; in "Dieterichs Flucht," he abandons Dieterich's cause and allies himself with the evil Ermenrich. Like Liutwar, Lüdiger is a pendant to the Norse Hlaudver, in whom we have already rediscovered Ivalde. While, according to the Younger Edda, both the Ivalde children Hjuke and Bil appear in the moon, according to the English and German traditions it is their criminal father who appears on the scene of the fire he kindled, drunk with the mead he robbed, and punished with the rod kept by his victim.
The statement in Forspjallsljod, that Ivalde had two groups of children, corresponds with the result at which we have arrived. By the giantess Greip he is the father of Slagfin, Egil, and Volund; by the sun-dis Gevar, Nokver's daughter and Nanna's sister, he is the father of dises of growth, among whom are Idun, who first is Volund's beloved or wife, and thereupon is married to Brage. Another daughter of Ivalde is the beloved of Slagfin-Gjuke, Auda, the "frau Ute" of the German heroic saga. A third is Signe-Alveig, in Saxo the daughter of Sumblus Phinnorum (Ivalde). At his wedding with her, Egil is attacked and slain by Halfdan. Hadding is Halfdan's and her son.