Murder and Vengeance among the Gods: Baldr in Scandinavian Mythology 9514108094, 9789514108099

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements 7
Ch. 1. Æsir and Vanir: Religion, Myth, Mythology, Mythography 9
The World of the Mythology 13
Baldr 20
Interpretation 28
Ch. 2. Baldr, Hǫðr, Loki: Baldr's Death 39
Ch. 3. Odin and Hyrrokkin: Baldr's Funeral 69
Ch. 4. Frigg and Hermóðr, Loki and Hel: Attempted Retrieval 101
Ch. 5. Váli and Hǫðr, the Æsir and Loki: Vengeance 131
Ch. 6. Baldr and Hǫðr: Ragnarǫk and Reconciliation 164
References 183
Index 201

Citation preview

SUOMALAINEN TIEDEAKATEMIA ACADEMIA SCIENTIARUM FENNICA Mariankatu 5 • 00170 Helsinki • Suomi - Finland

FF COMMUNICATIONS Editor: Prof. Dr. Laurt H onko Satakielenkatu 8 • 20610 Turku • Suomi - Finland Editorial Secretary: A nneli H onko

MURDER AND VENGEANCE AMONG THE GODS

FF COMMUNICATIONS No. 262

MURDER AND VENGEANCE AMONG THE GODS Baldr in Scandinavian Mythology

BY

JOHN LINDOW

HELSINKI 1997 SUOMALAINEN TIEDEAKATEMIA ACADEMIA SCIENTIARUM FENNICA

Folklore Fellows7 Communications is part of the publishing cooperation between the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters and the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters.

Copyright © 1997 by Academia Scientiarum Fennica and John Lindow

ISSN 0014-5815 ISBN 951-41-0809-4 Vammala 1997 Vammalan Kiijapaino Oy

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements...............................................................................

7

Ch. 1. Æsir and Vanir: Religion, Myth, Mythology, Mythography .. The World of the Mythology ................................................... Baldr......................................................................................... Interpretation ..........................................................................

9 13 20 28

Ch. 2. Baldr, HQÖr, Loki: Baldr’s Death............................................

39

Ch. 3 Odin and Hyrrokkin: Baldr’s Funeral.....................................

69

Ch. 4. Frigg and Hermóðr, Loki and Hel: Attempted Retrieval.......

101

Ch. 5. Váli and HQÖr, the Æsir and Loki: Vengeance.......................

131

Ch. 6. Baldr and HqÖh RagnarQk and Reconciliation......................

164

References..................................................................................

183

Index......................................................................................................

201

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work has been some time in the making, and along the way I have accumulated many obligations. Although I had long been interested in Scandinavian mythology, it was not until I was fortunate enough to receive a University of California President’s Fellowship in the Humanities in 1990-91 that I could spend full time thinking about it. The result was not, as I had expected, a book on the entire mythology, but rather a decision to write up parts of my thinking in discrete portions. This, the first such larger portion, I wrote into essentially final form during a generous sabbatical leave granted by my institution in Fall 1994. My thinking had been helped by the invitation of the Australian Academy of the Humanities to deliver the 1993 Triebel lecture on foreign languages, which I devoted to the prob­ lem of Baldr, and I am pleased to be able to thank that organization here. In addition, smaller sections of the book have been ventilated over the years at such venues as the annual meetings of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study and the paper series of the Group in Medieval Stud­ ies at UC Berkeley, and not least in my classes, and I am grateful for all the comments I have received. With special pleasure I cite the encourage­ ment of my colleagues Frederic Amory, Carol Clover, Margaret Clunies Ross, Gary Holland, and Elaine Tennant; of my wife Kitty and my daugh­ ters Megan and Devin, and of my parents. The book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Wesley Lindow. A few pages of the Triebel lecture (Lindow 1994a) are repeated below in chapters one and five, and parts of chapter five were previously pub­ lished in alvíssmál: Forschungen zur mittelalterlichen Kultur Skandinavi­ ens (Lindow 1995a). Passages from both sources are printed here with per­ mission. Berkeley, California, October 1996

Chapter 1 ÆSIR AND VANIR: RELIGION, MYTH, MYTHOLOGY, MYTHOGRAPHY

A few years ago at a dinner party, one of the guests repeated a story she had heard while walking her dog in a park in San Francisco: a couple, friends of friends of the narrator and dog people themselves, had seen and rescued a waterlogged dog, of a species they did not recognize, while out sailing on San Francisco Bay. When they put the dog in the cabin, it ate all the food there, and when they took it home and put it in the basement, it chewed through a door to eat up all the contents of a pantry. They took it to their vet, who told them it was not a dog, but a Burmese rat, that had probably jumped off a ship. After the general expressions of amazement had passed around the table, I pointed out that I had read many similar stories in the folklore literature, and that folklorists would refer to the sto­ ry with the catch phrase “The Mexican Pet” (Brunvand 1986). The narra­ tor looked at me in astonishment and said: “You mean it’s a myth?” By using the term “myth” in this way - and I am quite certain that such is the prevailing use in spoken North American English today - we refer to something plausible but untrue, something the uninformed may accept while those in the know smile and shake their heads. It is not far from this usage to a general definition of myth which many academics find useful: stories about gods. Here again we, the informed, look on at materials that people, we think, believe or believed in, but the narratives treat gods we from outside the culture are quite certain are only products of imagina­ tion. Turning the definition to Christianity makes people uneasy and is therefore ordinarily only done within the academy, but it is useful because it demonstrates that one person’s myths may be another person’s religion - or that first person’s religion. Although forever intertwined, myth and religion, by this definition, can get along separately. To further compli­ cate the issue, some anthropologists define myth as stories set when the world was in formation and coming to be the way it is; this view presup­

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poses an ineluctable connection between the world then and the world now, and, in its extreme view, need not concern times very long ago or people out of the ordinary, since the notion of “the world” may be explained very locally. Edmund Leach uses the example of stories explaining the tradi­ tions of a soccer team: “My category of myth includes the oral traditions of my local village football club. Every football game that is played on the local field is a ritual enactment of that myth” (Leach 1982: 6). This definition of myth presupposes a direct connection between narrative and action, and Leach differentiates it sharply from the loose notion of stories about gods. Scandinavian or Norse mythology fits in some ways all these definitions. Virtually no one today thinks Thor really existed (or exists still), any more than his fellow comic book heroes Superman or Spiderman do, and again we have the dichotomy between ourselves, those who know, and some peo­ ple who lived long ago and far away - in the popular imagination, belli­ cose savages in the frozen North who went about in skins and helmets with horns. That the stories we have about Thor and the others are about gods seems pretty clear, both in, say, a Peoria children’s library and in Widener Library at Harvard. Some of the primary sources call them gods (in far from simple ways; see Kuhn 1978); every handbook does; and the hand­ books always give as much information as they can on the worship of the gods, in other words, on the religion attaching to them. Finally, these texts account for the creation on the cosmos, and two of them, both called Edda, present a procession from these stories of gods to stories of human heroes, from which one might perhaps (wrongly, I believe) infer a connection be­ tween an ancient time when the cosmos and social customs were created and a world in which humans lived. The actual situation is a bit more complex. Scandinavian or Norse my­ thology - a set of stories about gods - consists of a slim body of texts com­ posed mostly in Iceland between the tenth and thirteenth or even fourteenth centuries, recorded there beginning in the thirteenth century and now avail­ able in manuscripts dating from the latter half of the thirteenth century at the earliest and extending considerably later, subsequently printed in works of humanist scholarship, discovered by European romantics and translat­ ed into world languages in the eighteenth century and later, from which time various artistic adaptations have continued. Since Iceland had con­ verted to Christianity in 1000 C.e. (999 by contemporary reckoning), there can be no real question of belief or religion among those who first wrote down the myths, although some have tried to argue the contrary view (Kuhn 1942; cf. Kuhn 1971). What we know about the religion of ancient Scan­ dinavia - and we think we know quite a lot - is based on archaeological and onomastic interpretations based on these written texts. What we know of the myths used by actual believers in these gods is limited to a tiny set

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of materials in the skaldic meters; that is, poems, or parts or fragments of poems, in complex meters and highly formal diction. These are seldom easy to interpret, although some pieces of verse addressed directly to Thor are at least linguistically quite straightforward (Lindow 1988). Far more straightforward, as narratives, are the materials gathered in two works from the thirteenth century in Iceland, both called Edda after the statement of one manuscript of one of them (Snorra Edda) and the misconception of a seventeenth-century antiquary (the Poetic Edda). Although the main man­ uscript of the latter work dates from the second half of the thirteenth cen­ tury, it is a copy of a manuscript from the middle of the century, and the format - a collection of short narrative poems in meters like those of the other Germanic languages on heroic subjects - goes back to the beginning of that century (Lindblad 1977; cf. Lindblad 1954), at least for materials dealing with heroic subjects. The recording of myths in this form, howev­ er, is not likely to have taken place before the third decade of the thirteenth century or so, probably, in the view of Gustav Lindblad, just after Snorri Sturluson composed his Edda, ca. 1220-30. There are less than a dozen mythological poems, found mostly but not all in the main manuscript of the Poetic Edda. The dates of composition are all matters for interpreta­ tion. The uneasy consensus datings of many of the poems are subject to fairly frequent challenges. Some hold up well, e.g., that of Vqluspá, the first poem in the extant collection, to ca. 1000, but others seem fairly des­ perate. Even the original place of composition of the various poems offers a subject for scholarly contemplation and debate, with Norway the prime challenger to Iceland, the Danelaw and Sweden not far behind, and practi­ cally everywhere else where Scandinavians or even other speakers of Ger­ manic languages were to be found as additional possibilities - the manu­ script even labels two heroic poems “Greenlandic.” Given the near cer­ tainty that Eddie poetry, like skaldic poetry, was retained for centuries in oral tradition, the discussions of dating and origins may be misplaced in any case, for every performance of items in oral tradition represents both a drawing on tradition and the creative impulses of the performer, as guided by the audience. One of the major questions of Norse mythology, then, asks why or how such texts could have been retained and performed in Chris­ tian contexts. The question is perhaps even even more knotty if one asks how a poem could come to be first composed in, say, the twelfth century, well after the conversion of all the Scandinavian polities. No such problems of dating and localizing beset Snorra Edda, which took its final form ca. 1220-30 somewhere in the extensive landholdings Snorri had in western Iceland. The work was meant as a handbook of po­ etics, and as such it contains, besides a Prologue, three parts: a frame nar­ rative in which are presented many of the stories necessary to unravel skaldic kennings (two-part metaphors like “ship of the desert” for camel),

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called Gylfaginning (“deluding of Gylfi”) after the main character, a pre­ historic Swedish king who is “deluded” when three wizards recount the old myths to him; an account of the language of poetry (Skáldskaparmál) with both some additional framed narratives and extensive lists, semanti­ cally organized, of kennings and heiti (“poetic synonyms”); and Háttatal (“enumeration of meters”), a praise poem to the young Norwegian king Hákon Hákonarson and his regent, the jarl Skuli, equipped with a com­ mentary on the metric and stylistic variations employed in it. Snorri is to be regarded as a mythographer, and one fond of system and consistency. Although he retains ancient materials and seems to be motivated by a de­ sire to save skaldic poetry from fading from fashion (it did not, whatever Snorri’s role may have been), he displayed an awareness of contemporary European intellectual trends (Clunies Ross 1987) alongside his dazzling stylistic virtues. Since we cannot be certain of the place of origin of much of the earliest skaldic poetry, it seems safest to speak of Norse mythology (with Norse having the sense “language of medieval Iceland and Norway”) or Scandi­ navian mythology than of Icelandic mythology, even though Iceland is the only place where we know that people wrote down the texts and where we know and can accurately date the composition of the first piece of mythography. Scandinavian mythology is perhaps to be preferred, however, since the other major source of stories about gods derives not from west Scandinavia and Norse-Icelandic, but from Denmark and Latin, namely the Gesta Danorum of Saxo Grammaticus, the first eight books of which con­ tain a number of narratives about the Norse gods. This work precedes Snorri’s by about a generation and differs greatly from it in intent, for Saxo seems to use a complex organizational pattern typical of the European Middle Ages (Johannesson 1978). He aims at a traditional European history of the patria and therefore places his char­ acters in a world in which kings make battle for the sake of kingdoms (Skovgaard-Petersen 1969; cf. Skovgaard-Petersen 1975). Although his po­ sition on the pagan gods is quite clear - they are just humans elevated to the status of deity by euhemerism - he does grant to Baldr the status of demigod. Although Saxo used Icelandic sources (on which see Bjarni Guðnason 1981), the extent to which he transmits Danish as opposed to Norwegian-Icelandic traditions has remained an open question, not least as regards Baldr. Taken together, these texts - the primary sources of Scandinavian my­ thology - could all be contained between the covers of one thick volume. They pose extensive problems of interpretation, not least because of the gap between the time of composition and the time when some of the texts were composed and when many of the stories may have circulated in some form or another (see further Lindow 1985).

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The World of the Mythology Despite the broad time span and variation in genres used, the Icelandic texts vary only regarding details (Saxo’s world is another). On the following es­ sentials, they agree closely (see further Clunies Ross 1994a: 42-84 et pas­ sim). The world is inhabited by various groups of beings, two of which are prominent, the æsir and the jQtnar (other named groups include dwarfs, elves, humans, and the dead, of which only the dwarfs exert a serious claim to independent existence). Since áss (singular) refers to a deity, and since there is evidence for cult activity surrounding some (but by no means all) of the æsir in the mythology, this group is frequently known as “the gods.” Jqtunn (singular) is used only for members of the opposite group; the ety­ mology of the word is unknown - “eater” is often suggested but offers no semantic fit -, but cognates such as Swedish jätte and perhaps Old Eng­ lish eoten mean “giant,” and therefore this group is frequently referred to as “the giants,” despite the general lack of evidence that they were physi­ cally any larger than the æsir. The æsir consist of the æsir proper and an assimilated and hierarchical­ ly lower group, the vanir; the jQtnar, too, may consist of various groups, for there are terms that may or may not be synonymous with Old Icelan­ dic jQtnar ([hrím-]þursar, berg-risaryetc.), but they do not appear to be arranged hierarchically. The lack of information on hierarchy among the jQtnar indicates their inferior status in the mythology; they are the oppo­ nents of the æsir. The numbers involved are relatively small. We know fewer than two dozen æsir by name, and only half of these - if that - play any real role in the mythology: Odin and Thor are by far the most impor­ tant. As befits the inferior status of the jQtnar, we have less detail on indi­ viduals, and no jQtunn (except Loki, whose status I take up below, in ch. 5) dominates that group the way Odin and Thor do the æsir. Instead, the lesser figures of the æsir, and all the vanir, jQtnar, and dwarfs (and even humans) tend to appear in one narrative only: Freyr (marriage to Gerðr), NjQrðr (marriage to Skaði), Vafþrúðnir (verbal duel with Odin), Grimnir (visited by Odin for wisdom performance), Alviss (verbal duel with Thor), Hrungnir (formal duel with Thor), Midgard serpent (fished up by Thor), and so forth. As these examples, taken both from Eddie poems and from Snorra Edda, serve to show, the narratives tend to focus on an encounter, often agonis­ tic, between two individuals. Even narratives of apparently different na­ ture follow this rule (cf. Olrik’s [1992] law of two to a scene): Vqluspá, for example, arguably the most famous of the Eddie poems, presents the entire curve of the mythology, from cosmogony to the end of the order of the gods. Formally, however, it is a dialogue in which one partner, Odin, is silent, and the other partner, the seeress, does all the talking, at Odin’s

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behest.1 Similarly, Lokasenna presents itself as a series of encounters be­ tween Loki and various opponents: the servant whom he slays, the owner of the hall, and the various guests who engage him, one by one, in verbal duel. Snorri, too, followed this dyadic principle. He did so not only in the frame narrative of Gylfaginning, in which the wizards address Gylfi seri­ ally, never together, but also in the individual narratives. For example, when Thor has his duel with Hrungnir, he is seconded by his assistant Þjálfi, who frequently accompanies the god. The jQtnar present two challengers, Hrung­ nir and MQkkrkálfi. In the preliminary encounter, Þjálfi gives misinforma­ tion to Hrungnir. In the main encounter, Thor kills Hrungnir. In the final encounter, Þjálfi kills MQkkrkálfi. Thus a duel with seconds is presented as a set of individual battles. The same principle is shown - perhaps most clearly - in Snorri’s treatment of Thor’s visit with Útgarða-Loki, for here Thor has not one but several companions: Loki, Þjálfi, and the girl RQskva. In this narrative, instead of bookending the major encounters, those in which Thor figures, Snorri builds up to them: first Loki against Logi in an eating contest, then Þjálfi against Hugi in a footrace, finally Thor’s con­ tests of drinking, strength, and wrestling, each of which turns out to be a duel with cosmic consequences: against the sea (the realm of the Midgard serpent), against the serpent itself, against old age. Only the last of these appears initially to be a dyadic struggle (Thor vs. Elli), but all are unveiled as such at the end, when Útgarða-Loki reveals that it was with himself, disguised as Skrýmir, that Thor struggled on the journey thither. The whole story, then, despite the initial deliberate lack of clarity, follows the nor­ mal organizing principle of the mythology. Discernment of this principle is less straightforward in the older skaldic texts, which pose considerable linguistic and narrative difficulties. Axel Olrik (1918) wished to distinguish the narrative and dualistic mythology of Eddie poetry and Snorra Edda from that of the skalds, a difference he attributed to differing authorial constraints. Nevertheless, the overwhelm­ ing popularity of one motif in contemporary decorative art and skaldic verse demonstrates the presence and importance of the “eddic” organizing prin­ ciple in late paganism, namely the very moment when Thor has hooked the Midgard serpent and the eyes of the two adversaries are locked in fierce opposition. Here all the other elements of the narrative as we know it from numerous sources are frozen: the jQtunn Hymir in the boat with Thor, the source of the bait, the location of the fishing grounds, even the ultimate fate of the serpent, at the moment when the defender of gods and men and1

1 The situation o f Vqluspá at the beginning of Codex Regius o f the Poetic Edda fol­ lows an organizing principle o f placing synoptic poems at the head o f sections (cf., e.g., Grípisspá, etc.) and does so not only for all the mythological poems, but also for the Odin poems that follow ( Vafþrúðnismál, Grímnismál, Hárbarðsljóð ).

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the threat from the watery deep square off. Another set of archaeologi­ cal evidence, the numerous so-called Thor’s hammers, small amulets pop­ ular during the Viking Age, verifies the importance of this moment, since many of them are equipped with two glaring eyes on the cross piece. Plas­ tic art, then, boils the story down to the four eyes of the two adversaries, and the relationship between verbal skaldic art and plastic art is a close one, not only because skalds often describe decorative scenes, but also be­ cause they appear to adopt a linguistic strategy that parallels the decora­ tive strategy of artists carving in wood and stone (Lie 1952, 1957, Marold 1976). Even without the evidence of stones and amulets, however, it would be possible to trace the dyadic narrative principle to skaldic mythological verse. Consider, for example, the one stanza about Gefjon in Bragi Boddason’s Ragnarsdrápa, which bears some importance in the later prose sources; it is the only dróttkvœtt stanza in Gylfaginning (Lindow 1977) and clearly played into Snorri’s agenda there and in Heimskringla (Clunies Ross 1978). Given, further, Bragi’s claim to primacy among the skalds, the narratives he takes up are of some importance, even when, as in this case, only one relevant stanza remains. Gefjon dró fra Gy Ifa glQÖ djúprQÖuls, óðla, svát af rennirauknum rauk, Danmarkar auka; bQru øxn ok átta ennitungl þars gingu fyr vineyjar viðri vallrauf fjQgur haufuð. [Finnur Jónsson 1912-15: B l, 3.] Rejoicing in the deep-circle (gold), Gefjon quickly drew an increase of Denmark from Gylfi, so that that draft animals were steaming; the oxen had eight forehead-stars (eyes) and four heads, there where they were going before the wide earth-rift of the meadow-island (where the grass was pulled up). Although the second helming makes it clear that other beings are in­ volved, namely the four oxen (like those of Thor and the Midgard serpent, their eyes, too, are singled out for mention) who are, Snorri explained, Gefjon’s sons by a giant, the very first line draws the listener’s attention im­ mediately and irretrievably to the dyad, Gefjon and Gylfi, who are even linked by alliteration. What Gefjon drew from Gylfi is not specified until the end of the helming, but the dyadic nature of the narrative is made clear from the start. In the mythology the major form of dyadic interaction occurs when an áss contests in some way with a jQtunn. As a rule the áss wins, but always the contest is close, and sometimes one’s assignment of the victory depends as much on a knowledge that the æsir are to win as on anything else, or

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on intuitions about the mythology as a whole. An example of the latter would be the marriage of NjQrðr to Skaði, which according to Snorri’s ac­ count is arranged in connection with the jQtunn warrior maiden’s request for compensation for her father, who was slain by the æsir. In giving way to her suit, the æsir might appear to show themselves hierarchically be­ neath the jQtnar, or at least weak, but the incident may be recorded in the victory column of the æsir in any case if one considers that exogamy in the mythology only works one way: when the æsir obtain women from the jQtnar, the world is right, but should the jQtnar obtain even one woman from the æsir, it would be turned upside down (see Clunies Ross 1994a: 88-102). The fact that Loki’s genitals are threatened in the story may serve to reinforce this reading (see also Clunies Ross 1989 and Lindow 1992). More difficult calls come, of course, at RagnarQk, but even here things re­ solve themselves in favor of the æsir, as I will show below (ch. 6). In their encounters with the jQtnar, the æsir show various specialities: Odin is good with words, Thor with weapons, NjQrðr with his feet (or at least Skaði must have thought so), and so on. Not surprisingly, the jQtnar show less specialization, but Vafþrúðnir is the wisest of jQtnar and Hrungnir the strongest, thus making them suitable adversaries for Odin and Thor re­ spectively. We may infer that Útgarða-Loki controls magic better than most beings, jQtnar included, and that Gerðr possesses considerable sexual charm, but beyond that the distinctions break down. Not all encounters are between æsir and jQtnar. Odin mounts a wisdom performance when visiting the human king Geirrpðr, and Thor keeps a pesky dwarf busy providing poetic synonyms all night long, until the dawn kills the dwarf and removes the threat he posed to Thor’s daughter and hence to the æsir as a whole; Thor, indeed, has a special relationship with his women (Clunies Ross 1994b). We may understand both cases as es­ tablishing hierarchical superiority of the æsir over other groups. Similar­ ly, we should probably understand the Eddie poem Hárbarðsljóð, in which Odin humiliates Thor in a bizarre exchange over a boat ride - perhaps re­ vealing Thor’s ignorance of poetic form (Clover 1979) - , as establishing or making manifest the hierarchy obtaining between the two major figures from among the æsir. It must now be apparent that I regard the mythology as, in one sense at least, about the establishing and maintenance of hierarchical social struc­ tures. Such a concern is also at the heart of the Icelandic family sagas and contemporary sagas and must also have been central to the stateless com­ munity of the Icelandic commonwealth and to the self-help society that pre­ vailed in Iceland throughout the Middle Ages; that is the thrust of Wil­ liam Ian Miller’s 1990 study of the family sagas and it must be central to any reading of the mythology (Lindow 1995a). Self-help societies use var­ ious mechanisms in place of central authority to resolve disputes; one of

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them, feud, carries particular weight in Scandinavian mythology and man­ ifests itself most clearly in the Baldr story. The æsir live at various homesteads, the names of which are enumerat­ ed in the Eddie wisdom poem Grímnismál, and later by Snorri. For exam­ ple, Freyr lives at Álfheimr, Baldr at Breiðablik, Heimdallr at HiminbjQrg, and so on. According to Grímnismál 7, Odin and Sága drink at and pre­ sumably inhabit SQkkvabekkr, and this is an indication of the nature of the units that make up these homesteads, namely families, presumably extended families including minor and perhaps even some grown children as well as servants (e.g., Skirnir) and domestic animals. These households paral­ lel those of medieval Scandinavia, including Iceland (Miller 1990: 11138), the repository of the tradition. As in the real medieval world, the myth­ ological beings live close enough together to be in regular contact one with another, contact of both a friendly and unfriendly nature. The basis of much of this contact is hospitality, which indeed functioned in medieval Norwe­ gian law as a metaphor for participation in society: a slave freed by his master became fully free only after holding a feast (cf. Lindow 1991). The Norwegian king exercised his rule by traveling from manor to manor host­ ing large feasts, and the Icelandic family sagas show that hospitality was central to the congening of that society as well. Hospitality functions even in the mythology when it is uneasy or forced (e.g., the banquet of Lokasenna, Hrungnir’s visit to Ásgarðr), for without it there would be no society. There are, however, other worlds. In them lived the Other beings, with strange and terrible powers. Among humans, these were supernatural be­ ings like trolls and dwarfs, and members of other ethnic groups, such as Saamis. The two are in fact neatly conflated in the early stanzas of Ynglingatal; in one a Saami princess sends a nightmare to attack a Swedish king, her unfaithful lover, and in another a dwarf takes a different Swed­ ish king into the rock to be with him. These demonstrate a remarkable con­ tinuity within Scandinavian folk belief and narrative tradition (Lindow 1995b). A similar ambiguity surrounds the world of the jQtnar in Scandi­ navian mythology; things are not quite as they seem, and they are certain­ ly dangerous. This other world, that of the jQtnar, is located near but not in the areas where the æsir dwell. Following the theories of Mircea Eliade (1959), the world of the æsir represents the sacred center, which is sur­ rounded by the more dangerous profane areas. Recent analyses agree that this center represents the intersection of vertical and horizontal axes (Meletinskij 1973-74, Hastrup 1985, Schjødt 1990, Clunies Ross 1994a), but leaving out the vertical axis, one arrives at a very close fit to the real world of men and women living in Northern Europe in the Middle Ages; Lars Lönnroth (1976: 57-58), envisages an arrangement of concentric circles conceptually surrounding the Icelandic farmstead, each more remote and dangerous, an idea perhaps also to be perceived in manuscript labyrinths

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(Simek 1993). Scandinavian mythology places the jQtnar in two different remote locations: on the beach, and to the east. The first location presup­ poses a world like that of a medieval map, with Jerusalem in the center, the land of the three continents surrounding it, and the sea encircling the land. Such maps are attested from medieval Scandinavia, not least in Ice­ landic manuscripts (Simek 1990), and it is perhaps not surprising that Snorra Edda, with its learned background, presents it. The second location is frequently Thor’s destination when he sets out to do battle with jQtnar. It seems to set the mythology in Norway (a Snorronic joke?), where the mountains to the east of the settled coastal regions provided unexplored territory where monsters might indeed make their homes, but it conflicts with the generally charged nature of north in this and other northern my­ thologies and ignores the evidence of RagnarQk, when some of the forces of evil disembark from the south on their murderous journey to the world of the æsir. The social semantics of the cardinal directions are a complex matter (cf. Lindow 1994c) and in any case probably not relevant to the is­ sue at hand here: the point is that, like men and women (A. Gurevich 1969, 1978: 43-97, 1992), the æsir inhabit the center of their universe, and sur­ rounding them are the dwelling places of inimical beings, dangerous and forboding but accessible for all that. A less ambiguous other world, in the mythological and many other kinds of texts, is the world of the dead, which the living can visit to try to re­ trieve precious things, such as weapons or wisdom.2 Heroes visit graves to do battle with revenants or to retrieve a famous sword; visionaries visit Hell and Paradise and report back to the living on what they have seen; Odin visits and awakens a dead seeress to obtain information about Baldr’s fate, and Hermóðr visits Hel to try to retrieve the dead god. Besides these visits of æsir and humans to the respective other worlds near them, it can happen that the Other beings come to the dwellings of those at the Center, and when this happens it must be understood as dis­ ruptive and threatening - as in the death of King Vanlandi, mentioned above, who was killed by a nightmare, and from whom a line goes straight to more recent legends in which these visits routinely attach to changing of children or kidnapping of adults. Besides throwing additional light on the story of Skaði’s husband-wooing, the characteristics of this pattern il­ luminate particularly the narrative that motivates Thor’s duel with Hrungnir. It should be stressed that what I am calling visits here is no more than what I called encounters in the preceding paragraphs; although narratives of such events are relatively uncommon in the literature the Icelanders re­

2 According to recent theory, this world connects to the vertical axis, but it is difficult to make such a connection outside the mythology.

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corded about themselves (family sagas and þættir), they provide most of the contents of the mythology. What the visits have in common, whether they take place on the periph­ ery or at the Center, is the sense of uncertainty, potential, even danger that obtains when the worlds meet. The rules are never quite clear, and the Oth­ ers seem to be able to change them, as does, for example, Útgarða-Loki. Indeed, the worlds can to some extent be seen to interact at most times in the form of magic objects such as special weapons and the like; sometimes the prescient use these objects in their attempts to gain knowledge (Odin, the seeresses in descriptions of seiðr), but more often the object is simply of interest for its special powers themselves. As a rule, the mythological texts display more magic objects than do texts describing the recogniza­ ble world of the Icelanders (scil., the so-called family sagas or sagas of Icelanders and the þættir). Texts set outside of Iceland, either in the past (i.e., the fornaldarsögui) or in less well defined time (the riddarasögur or romances), are more likely to avail themselves of magic objects (Egg­ ers 1932). When certain men and women and figures in the mythology can see the future or otherwise possess gifts of prophecy, they connect themselves with a less well defined world of the spirits. Sometimes this connection is plain, as when Odin consults with the pickled head of Mimir, but otherwise one senses it in the visions seen by the prescient; these present a future world, peopled with beings related but not identical to those of the world in which the prophet(ess) dwells. As a meeting of worlds, these moments too are marked off as special, laden with potential, and perhaps dangerous. Per­ sons endowed with the gift of prophecy were respected and feared in me­ dieval Iceland, according to every kind of literary evidence, and the gift seems also to have been prized among the æsir. It is, of course, one of Od­ in’s major weapons, but others possess it as well, and poets make clear its power. (Err ertu, Loki, er þú yðra telr lióta leiðstafi; ørlQg Frigg hugg ec at q11 viti, þótt hon siálfgi segi. [Lokasenna 29, Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 102.] You are crazy, Loki, when you recount such terrible things; I think that Frigg knows all that is fated, even if she does not say it herself. Freyja is admonishing Loki, and she uses Frigg’s dark, unused powers as a threat. This, then, is the world in which the mythology plays itself out. It looks much like that in which lived the tradition participants - those who told, listened to, and ultimately recorded the texts. These same people created and consumed other narratives touching on the concerns of the mytholo­

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gy: the struggle of individuals and groups for status, power, ultimately for life and death, in a world where magic and prophecy were taken for grant­ ed, where the worlds might come into contact at any time. Baldr Like all but the big three of Eddie mythology (Odin, Thor, and Loki) and like most of the jQtnar, dwarfs, and the like -, Baldr is a one-story god. That story is told with surprising economy in the older sources, giv­ en its later popularity. A reckoning of the texts relevant to Baldr begins logically with the Húsdrápa (“house-lay”) of Úlfr Uggason, an Icelandic skald who lived through the conversion of Iceland to Christianity around the year 1000. According to Laxdœla saga he composed a poem relating in part the stories portrayed on the elaborate carvings of a new hall built in Hjarðarholt for the chief­ tain Óláfr pái (the peacock) around 985. Among the stanzas of the poem retained in the later Icelandic manuscript tradition are six half-stanzas de­ scribing Baldr’s funeral. The emphasis is on the arrival of the guests: Freyr, Odin, with a train of valkyries and ravens, and Heimdallr, but one half­ stanza appears to allude to the launching of Baldr’s funeral ship by the gi­ antess Hyrrokkin and the killing of her mount (later taken by Snorri Sturlu­ son to be a wolf), and one is very obscure. These are stanzas 7-12 in the conventional numbering used in editions of the poem, for which there is no medieval authority. From roughly the same time period, that is, the years just before or around the conversion of Iceland, comes at least according to the conven­ tional dating the most important of the Scandinavian Baldr texts, namely the anonymous Voluspá (“sibyl’s prophecy”). It too is most likely Iceland­ ic, and it is not difficult to imagine it recited in an environment like that of Óláfr’s hall, although we have so little contextual information about the poem that it has been not wholly implausibly assigned to areas as far re­ moved as Northumbria and Norway. Now it stands first in Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda, arguably the most important medieval Icelandic man­ uscript, where it provides a synopsis of the entire curve of the mythology and functions as a kind of prelude to the mythological and heroic poems that follow it. The Codex Regius Vqluspá devotes six of its 66 stanzas in fornyrðislag, the standard epic metre, to the episode. The presence of the refrain (“Vitoð þér enn eða hvat”) (“would you know yet more”) divides these stanzas into two groups, 29-33 and 34-35 in the usual numbering system. The first group begins with a reference to, presumably, Odin’s inducements to the sibyl to prophesy. There follows a stanza devoted to the arrival of valkyries, here named, and then a stanza in which it is revealed that a hidden fate

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awaits Baldr, in the form of mistletoe. In the pivotal 32nd stanza the sibyl reveals that from mistletoe a shot was made, that HQÖr threw it, and that Baldr’s brother was born; here we must understand that Baldr has died and that an avenger was sired. The last stanza of this group reports that this avenger abstained from personal grooming until Baldr’s killer was him­ self slain. The shorter second group devotes one stanza to Vali, elsewhere named as the avenger, and one to Loki, elsewhere named as a conspirator in Baldr’s murder and here fettered under the unpleased eye of his wife Sigyn. Finally, a stanza following RagnarQk reports that unsown fields will grow, all evil will be bettered, Baldr will return, and he and HQÖr will in­ habit the dwellings of Odin. Vqluspá also appears in another manuscript, Hauksbók (“Haukr’s book”). The reference is to Haukr Erlendsson, an Icelandic lawman who flourished around 1300 and himself penned most of this manuscript, thus making his the earliest identifiable hand in Iceland, although the hand that copied Vqluspá is not that of Haukr and is not otherwise identified. What makes this version of the poem significantly different is the absence of Baldr. The sibyl jumps directly from the war of the gods to the beginning of RagnarQk, the end of the world, and only material from the second group of the Re­ gius Baldr stanzas is included, namely the information about Váli and Sigyn; Loki is not named; the post-RagnarQk stanza is included. A third poetic source is devoted exclusively to the Baldr material, namely Baldrs draumar(“Baldr’s dreams”), which is found in AM 748 4to, the other major source of eddic poetry. Its fourteen stanzas in fornyrðislag provide a prophecy of the Baldr story in the form of a contest of wisdom between Odin and a sibyl whom the god has awakened from the dead af­ ter a journey down from an assembly of the gods followed by an encoun­ ter with a hellhound. The sibyl asks the first question (“Who are you”), but then Odin, calling himself Vegtamr (“way-accustomed”), becomes the questioner and she the answerer. Odin puts four questions: For whom is the hall of the dead prepared? (answer: Baldr); who will kill Baldr? (answer: HQÖr); who will avenge Baldr? (answer: omitted ametrically in the poem but generally surmised to be Vali, on metrical and sense grounds); who are those maidens, who cast aloft their kerchiefs (or sails) and weep?3 (an­ swer: you are not Vegtamr, you are Odin). A curious final exchange con­ cerns the identity of the protagonists. The dating of Baldrs draumar is quite unknown, with plausible guesses ranging from the tenth to the twelfth cen­ tury. There is no reason to assume that the poem is anything but Icelandic. Before proceeding to the high medieval synthesizers of the Baldr tradi­ tion, Snorri Sturluson and Saxo the Grammarian, let us briefly consider what these early poetic sources agree on. Baldr has a hidden fate (Vqluspá), 3 This line, which is not w ell understood, will be treated below (ch. 2).

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apparently that he will die (Baldrs draumar). A weapon will be fashioned from mistletoe and HQÖr will fling it (Vqluspá); HQÖr will (thus) kill Baldr (Baldrs draumar). Odin will sire a half-brother to Baldr, who will avenge him (Baldrs draumar). A funeral will be held for Baldr which creatures of various mythological races will attend (Húsdrápd). Equivocal evidence sug­ gests that the name of the avenger may be Váli (name omitted in Baldrs draumar, interruption of refrain in Vqluspå) and that the fettering of Loki was involved (Vqluspå, after the refrain). Besides this bare account of the plot, we may also surmise the close interest of Odin in the fate of Baldr, since he was responsible for invoking the seeresses of both eddic poems, and he uses, apparently, some aspect of the Baldr story as an epiphany (Baldrs draumarmd elsewhere). Furthermore, two additional poetic sources are relevant: in Skírnismál 21-22, Freyr’s servant Skimir offers as a sexu­ al bribe to the giantess Gerðr, whom his master Freyr fancies, a ring burned with the young son of Odin and clearly identifiable as Odin’s ring Draupnir; and in Lokasenna 28, Loki states his responsibility for Baldr’s ab­ sence. Thus Baldr’s funeral and Odin’s interest in it are verified, and Loki’s role in the matter is guaranteed (at least in the eyes of one poet). The culmination of these Icelandic poetic sources occurred in the Snorra Edda. In Gylfaginning (“deluding of Gylfi”), the second of the four parts of the work, Snorri had three pagan wizards explicate much of Norse my­ thology to the prehistoric Swedish king Gylfi, including information about Baldr. The first reference to Baldr is minor, but it is telling. Toward the end of the cosmogonic sections of their narrative, the wizards turn to cos­ mology, and mention of the bridge BifrQst leads Jafnhár to a listing of the horses of the æsir. This list begins with Sleipnir, best of horses, and runs to eleven mounts. The expected twelfth, however, is missing; instead, Jafnhár notes that “Baldrs hestr var brenndr með honum” (normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 22-23) (“Baldr’s horse was burned with him”). Jafnhár goes on to add that Thor walks to the judgment place and must cross a number of rivers, the names of which he supplies by quoting a stan­ za from Grímnismál. Like the other æsir, then, Thor arrives, if in his own way, when the community is to gather. Baldr, on the other hand, never does. He is the absent figure, the one missing, sometimes also missed. He is con­ spicuously omitted from the guest list Snorri compiled for Ægir’s banquet at the beginning of Skáldskaparmál, and Frigg regrets his absence from the same host’s banquet as described in Lokasenna. This absence gives a somewhat puzzling sense to Hár’s description of Baldr in Gylfaginning, which occurs in connection with his enumeration of the æsir, for by his use of the present tense he obscures Baldr’s salient feature, his absence. Annarr sonr Óðins er Baldr, ok er frá honum gott at segja; hann er beztr ok hann lofa allir; hann er sva fagr álitum ok bjartr, svå at lysir af hon­ um, ok eitt gras er svå hvitt, at jafnat er til Baldrs brár; þat er allra gra-

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sa hvitast, ok þar eptir máttu marka [fegrð] hans, bæði á hár ok á líki; hann er vitrastr ásanna ok fegrst talaðr, ok líknsamastr, en sú náttura fylgir honum, at engi má haldask dómr hans. Hann býr þar sem heitir Breiðablikk; þat er á himni; í þeim stað má ekki vera óhreint, svá sem hér segir... [Here follows a citation from VafþrúÖnismál] [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 29.] Another son of Odin is Baldr, and about him there is good to report; he is the best, and all praise him; he is so fair of face and bright that he seems to shine, and one plant is so white that it is compared to Baldr’s brows; that is the whitest of all plants, and from it you can note his beau­ ty, both of hair and of body; he is the wisest of the æsir and the most eloquent, and the most merciful, but that nature accompanies him, that none of his judgments stands. He lives where it is called Breiðablik; that is in heaven; in that place nothing can be nothing impure, as it says here... These lines have invited all sorts of speculation about the original na­ ture of Baldr, the beautiful, wise, eloquent, and perhaps overly merciful one, whose judgements are problematic. A few pages later the catalogue reaches Forseti. Forseti heitir sonr Baldrs ok Ncjnnu Nepsdóttir; hann á þann sal á him­ ni, er Glitnir heitir, en allir, er til hans koma með sakar vandræði, þá fara allir sáttir a braut; sá er dómstaðr beztr með goðum ok mQnnum; svá segir hér... [Here follows a citation from Vafþrúðnismál] [Normal­ ized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 33-34.] Forseti is the name of the son of Baldr and Nanna Nepsdóttir; he owns that hall in heaven which is called Glitnir, and all who come to him with difficulty in law go away reconciled; that is the best judgment seat among gods and men, as it says here... Snorri situated his actual narrative of Baldr’s death, to which he devot­ ed something like 10% of the total text of Gylfaginning (including the ex­ tended story about the fettering of Loki, about seven of the 69 pages as the text is set in the standard edition), between the story of Thor’s encounter with the Midgard serpent - did he have Húsdrápain mind? - and RagnarQk, with which he ends the section. The introduction of the text here is not well motivated. Gylfi/Gangleri asks lamely: “Hafa nQkkur meiri tíðendi orðit með ásunum? Allmikit þrekvirki vann Þórr í þessi ferð.” (“Did anything else happen among the gods? Thor carried out a mighty deed on that journey.”) Hár, the most talkative of the three wizards, begins his answer: “Vera mun at segja frá þeim tíðendum, er meira þótti vert ásunum. En þat er upphaf þeirar SQgu, at Baldr inn góða dreymði drauma stóra ok hættiliga urn líf sitt.” [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 63.] “There is something to tell about that seemed of greater moment to the gods. The beginning of the saga [he uses the word] is that Baldr the good dreamt dreams great and threatening to his life.”

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Since Snorri arranged his material in a curve, from cosmogony to RagnarQk, we may assume that he saw the Baldr story as leading into the destruction of the cosmos. In any case, his version of the story is what eve­ rybody knows, so a relatively brief summary will suffice. It begins, as we have seen, with the information that Baldr the good has suffered disquieting dreams. The gods agree that oaths should be request­ ed of every kind of dangerous thing not to harm him, and Frigg, Odin’s consort and the mother of Baldr, extracts these promises. While the rest of the gods amuse themselves by flinging weapons and hacking at Baldr, Loki is annoyed, and in the form of a woman he learns from Frigg that she neglected to extract an oath from mistletoe. He fashions a dart from mistletoe and induces HQÖr, Baldr’s blind half-brother, to throw it at Baldr; it pierces the doubtless surprised god, and he dies. The gods are struck dumb with woe until Frigg asks for a volunteer to ride the road to Hel and try to get Baldr back. Hermóðr the bold, yet another of Odin’s sons (or, possibly, his servant, as one manuscript has it; see below, ch. 4), offers his services. Meanwhile, the gods transport Baldr’s lifeless body to the sea and place it aboard a funeral ship but cannot launch the ship. They send to giantland, and Hyrrokkin arrives riding a wolf, which Odin’s berserks slay (the only practical way they can think of to look after it, as Odin has asked them to do). She sends the ship racing down the rollers with such force that Thor loses his self-control and must be restrained from bashing her head (his speciality). Baldr’s wife Nanna dies of grief and joins her hus­ band on the funeral ship. As the ship is set on fire, the frustrated Thor kicks a luckless dwarf into the fire. Everyone who was anyone was at that fu­ neral. Valuable objects are deposited on the pyre. Snorri now switches to tell about Hermóðr, who is challenged by a maid­ en guarding the bridge to the world of the dead and then must leap the gate surrounding Hel’s abode (luckily, he is riding Sleipnir, Odin’s horse, which jumps surprisingly well for an eight-legged nag). Hel agrees to re­ lease Baldr if every creature, living and dead, will weep for him, and Hermóðr returns home with souvenir gifts for the gods. The universal weep­ ing is soon arranged, but it proves to be incomplete when one old giantess refuses. She calls herself pQkk (“Thanks”) and, when asked to weep for Baldr, unburdens herself of a verse to the effect that she will not do so. Hár passes along the community opinion that the old woman may have been Loki. So much for Baldr’s death, his funeral, and attempts to retrieve him from the world of the dead. As the frame resumes, Gangleri asks whether venge­ ance was not taken on him for killing Baldr and keeping him dead. Hár begins another narrative, the last before RagnarQk. Loki flees into the wil­ derness and constructs a house with doors looking out at the four cardinal

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directions. From time to time he changes himself into a salmon, and he also knots the first fishing net. When the æsir are at hand he burns the net and leaps into the nearby falls. Kvasir, however, recognizes the pattern of the ashes, and the æsir fashion a net which they use in due course to cap­ ture Loki; the details of the hunt and capture make up the longest part of the narrative. Thereafter the æsir take Loki and his two sons, Vali and Náli, to a mountaintop. There they transform Váli into a wolf, and he tears apart his brother. The æsir use Náli’s guts to bind Loki atop three sharp stones, and Skaði hangs a poisonous snake above his face. Sigyn holds a bowl to catch the venom, but when she goes to empty it, his struggles cause earth­ quakes. Finally, concerning RagnarQk, Hár tells of the æsir who will survive: Víðarr and Vali, who will dwell at IðavQllr, Móði and Magni, who will posses the hammer MjQllnir, and then: Par næst koma Baldr ok HQÖr frá Heljar; setjask þá allir samt ok talask við ok minnask á rúnar sínar ok rœða of tíðendi þau, er fyrrum hQfðu verit, of Miðgarðsorm ok um Fenrisúlf; þá finna þeir í grasinu gulltQflur þær, er æsimir hQfðu átt. Svá er sagt... [Here follows a citation from Vqluspa\ [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931:75.] Next come Baldr and HQÖr from Hel; they sit together and converse and remember their runes and speak of those events which happened long ago, of the Midgard serpent and of the Fenris wolf; then they find in the grass those gold playing pieces, which the æsir had had. Thus it is said... Here at last Baldr gathers with the other æsir. A later skaldic poem mentioning the Baldr drama is Málsháttakvæði, which is from around the late twelfth or early thirteenth century and which may have been composed by an Orkneyan biship. It appears to draw on a version of the story quite similar to that to that told by Snorri, for in the one relevant stanza it mentions Frigg, Hermóðr’s journey attempting to re­ trieve Baldr from Hel, and the later incomplete weeping that fails to re­ store Baldr. The version of the events in the first half of Book III of the Gesta Danorum of the Danish cleric Saxo Grammaticus, probably written sometime during the first decades of the thirteenth century, shows tantalizing simi­ larities with these vernacular (mostly Icelandic) sources. Saxo’s longwindedness compels me to offer only a very truncated summary here. Høtherus, the foster-son of King Gevarus and a man of a great many talents, has conceived a mutual passion for his foster-sister Nanna. Bald­ erus, the son of Othinus, has conceived an unrequited passion for the same girl after seeing her in her bath. This fact is revealed to Høtherus by some maidens in a strangely altered forest, along with the fact that Balderus is a demi-god, secretly conceived by Othinus. Gevarus advises Høtherus to ob-

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tain a sword forged by the smith Mimingus, who lives in a cold and dead northern world. Using the strategy advanced by Gevarus, Høtherus wins the sword and a magic ring. The Saxon king Geldus attempts to steal it but, again following the advice of Gevarus, Høtherus defeats Geldus in bat­ tle and then befriends him. Høtherus then pleads for and obtains the hand of Thora, the daughter of Kuso the king of the Finns, on behalf of Helgi, king of Hålogaland. Balderus now presses his suit with Nanna, who refus­ es him on the grounds of the incompatibility of demi-gods and humans. Helgi and Høtherus engage Balderus and the gods in a sea battle and emerge victorious after Høtherus uses his magic sword to slice the handle of Thor’s hammer, the gods’ major weapon. Høtherus marries Nanna but is subsequently defeated in battle by the forces of Balderus. Balderus, however, has little joy from the outcome, for he is plagued by dreams of his desired Nanna. After the fall of his rival Rolvo, Høtherus is chosen king of the Danes, but in his absence the Danes vote again and now choose Balderus. The two meet once more in battle and this time Høtherus is forced to flee. Wandering in exile, Høtherus again meets the strange forest maidens and learns from them that he can defeat Balderus by obtaining the secret food of the demi-god. Again his forces meet those of Balderus, and in the dark after a day of fighting, Høtherus finds the nymphs who prepare the secret food of Balderus. In the ensuing battle he deals to Balderus a mortal wound in the side. After dreaming of Proserpina, Balderus dies and is interred in a mound. This much of the story is generally cited in the handbooks in discus­ sions of Baldr. Saxo goes on, however, to discuss at equal length the ad­ ventures of Othinus in begetting an avenger for Balderus on Rinda, the daughter of the king of the Russians, as a sorcerer has advised him to do. Three times Othinus tries to win the hard-hearted girl, each time in a dif­ ferent disguise: first as a warrior, then as a smith, then as a knight. Each time she rejects him. Othinus returns a fourth time, now as a woman, and becomes a serving maid to the princess. When she falls sick, Othinus is able to get beyond the lascivious foot-washing that up to now has marked high water for him. As a trusted servant with a healing touch, he prescribes a tonic with a taste so nasty that the girl will have to be bound in order to gag it down. The result of his rape of the bound and drugged girl is Bous, who engages Høtherus soon after Othinus has returned from a lengthy ex­ ile imposed on him by the gods for the shame of wearing a skirt. Bous kills Høtherus but dies of the wounds he has received. The differences between this and the vernacular versions of the story are so great - Inge Skovgaard-Petersen (1981) argued that Saxo knew no more about Baldr and HQÖr than we do - that it is perhaps worth stressing the similarities; Margaret Clunies Ross (1992) offers a more complete and nuanced discussion, stressing the generic differences and mythic similari-

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ties. A magic weapon is involved in both traditions, as well as magic pro­ tection for the ultimate victim. Valkyries play an important role in Norse poetry and in Saxo, as does the siring of an avenger by Odin; these as­ pects are, however, not important in Snorri’s version. Baldr’s funeral, so important to Snorri and his sources, is merely a detail in Saxo’s account. Assuming a connection with RagnarQk in the Norse materials, in both tra­ ditions the killing of Baldr is associated with the defeat of all the gods. This, then, is the Baldr story in the primary sources of Scandinavian mythology, the subject of this book. I do not intend to take up the subject of Baldr in Germany, which quite naturally drew the attention of many German scholars, and not just the authors of handbooks in German (e.g., Rupp 1866, Vetter 1874, Losch 1892, 1900, E. Schröder 1922), not always positively (Helm 1944, 1950). The only textual evidence for Baldr in Ger­ many is the second Merseburg charm, one of two charms recorded in a tenth-century manuscript from that city. It runs as follows. Phol ende uuodan uuorun zi holza. du uuart demo balderes uolon sin uuoz birenkit. thu biguol en sim/igunt, sunna era suister; thu biguol en friia, uolla era suister; thu biguol en uuodan, so he uuola conda: sose benrenki, sose bluotrenki, sose lidirenki: ben zi bena, bluot zi bluoda, lid zi geliden, sose gelimida sin. [Braune & Ebbinghaus 1969: 89.] Phol and Wodan went to the forest. Then Balder’s horse sprained its foot. Then Sinthgunt sang charms, and Sunna her sister; Then Friia sang charms, and Voila her sister; the Wodan sang charms, as he well could: be it bone-sprain, be it blood-sprain, be it limb-sprain: bone to bone, blood to blood, limb to limb, so be they glued together. The text itself of the charm is relatively clear, and Wodan and Friia ap­ pear to be the Old High German reflexes of Odin and Frigg. Voila may be equivalent to Fulla, and Phol, Sinthgunt and Sunna are not known else­ where, although Phol and Voila might possibly be a couple equivalent to Freyr and Freyja (Brate 1919, Genzmer 1948; also Vogt 1928), and an ar­ gument has been put forth for regarding Sinthgunt as a valkyrie figure (Müller 1976). The presence of a figure equivalent to Baldr is far from certain, for scholarship has long derived the name of the Norse god from a noun meaning ‘‘lord,” and it is possible that the charm attests the com­ mon noun and not the proper name. The problem is complicated. Hans Kuhn (1951) launched a spirited attack on the very existence of the noun, and the actual etymology of Baldr remains unknown (de Vries 1962: 24

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s.v. balder); connections with a root meaning “white” or “gleaming” were once popular but are now dismissed, and perhaps an association with roots meaning “brave” or “strong” seems more likely. Still, most observers seek to associate the charm with Baldr and see a general similarity between the death and return in the Norse sources and the implied curing of his horse in the narrative portion of the charm (so Niedner 1899, Gutenbrunner 194344, Kroes 1951, Schröder 1953, Wolff 1963; see Rosenfeld 1973 for a dis­ senting view). Partly on the basis of the charm, Karl Hauck has in numer­ ous publications constructed an entire mythology for the scenes on the bracteates, small stamped disks from the northern European Migration Period. This mythology is centered around Odin as a healing god but involves a great deal of other material parallel to what is retained in the much later Norse sources. Baldr figures in connection with the healing of the horse but also is involved in sacrifice (Hauck 1974; cf. also Hauck 1969, 1970ab, 1983). Hauck’s imposing work (I have cited but a fraction of it) has re­ ceived surprisingly little attention among those writing on Scandinavian mythology, perhaps because the myths themselves, rather than their ori­ gins or supposed earlier forms, are now coming into primary focus. Otto Höfler, himself one of the giants of the field during the middle of the twen­ tieth century, wrote approvingly of Hauck’s program, and, during the same year, peevishly of those who, like Andreas Heusler and Klaus von See, sought to sever aspects of Germanic culture from the realm of the sacred (Höfler 1972a and 1972b). My own interest, at least in the present work, has nothing to do with Germanic culture or Germanic religion - for which Hauck’s work is invaluable - but rather with the myth in the forms in which we have it and the meaning it might have borne for those who knew it in those forms. For that reason, much earlier scholarship is not terribly rele­ vant, and in what follows I give a very curtailed survey. Interpretation Outside of poetic recreations (some of which I have related to modem in­ terpretations of Baldr in Lindow 1994a; see also Nilsson 1935). modem understanding of Baldr and the drama in which he plays his passive role began in the nineteenth century in connection with the growing attention that was being paid to mythology and the comcomitant development of the “science” of mythology (see Clunies Ross 1994a: 11-20. de Vries 1961, Feldman and Richardson 1972; cf. Gruppe 1965 and Détienne 1986). Some of this older material bears reading even today, if only for those with anti­ quarian tastes. N. F. S. Grundtvig saw Baldr’s plight as a metaphor. writh moral overtones, of the struggle between light and darkness (cf. also Losch 1892 and 1900), and nature mythologists like Uhland and Simrock made it a myth of the seasons (also Edzardi 1892). Where others saw only met-

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aphor, Sir James Frazer (1980) saw the added layer of annual rituals of renewal; Karl Mtillenhoff, Viktor Rydberg, Felix Niedner (1898) and lat­ er Alexander Haggerty Krappe (1923) saw the alci or dioscuriU Friedrich Kauffmann (1902) saw the heroic remnants of a royal sacrifice, and Sophus Bugge (1889a) and Kaarle Krohn (1905; cf. Olrik 1907, Setälä 1912: 21064, and Christiansen 1913) saw the greatest sacrifice in western culture, that of the Son of God for mankind, as borrowed into Old Norse myth. The most relevant works, however, are those published during the last fif­ ty years or so. These may, broadly speaking, be classed into categories of Baldr as a borrowing or type of the dying god who guarantees fertility on the one hand and more strictly philologically based interpretations involv­ ing aspects other than fertility on the other. Lately, too, a few readings based on structuralist principles have been advanced; these are the first to drop the supposed connection with ritual, which has driven most modern interpretation of Baldr (Clunies Ross 1994a: 268-70), outside of those which rely heavily on the Christ story (e.g., Mosher 1983) or simply take a different tack, such as Boyer (1981), who suggests a connection between Baldr and a principle of the sun - under which nothing is new: compare Boyer’s reading with those of Schwartz (1885), Niedner (1897a, 1898, 1899), and Döhrung (1902) - or Amtoft (1948), who saw an ethical deri­ vation from the “fire god” Ullr. All interpretations falling into the first category, that of fertility, owe a debt to Gustav Neckel’s Die Überlieferungen vom Gotte Balder (1920), although the line stretches back to Frazer’s realization that Baldr fit nice­ ly into his theories concerning the world-wide distribution of certain veg­ etation customs and his attempt in The Golden Bough to demonstrate the proposition that Baldr was really a personification of oak. Against earlier interpretations, what Neckel had to offer was a plausible thesis, built up by detail upon detail, of the origin of Baldr and the enigmatic tale of his fate, a thesis based not on preconception but on the texts themselves; Neck­ el’s close analysis of the texts in the first three chapters of the book re­ main valuable and in my view has aged far more gracefully than the over­ arching hypothesis. This hypothesis departs from an understanding of the very scant evidence concerning Baldr cult as related to the cults of Freyr, Fróði, and Nerthus.4 According to Neckel, Baldr is a cultural loan from 4 Writing about gods and cult with a decided slant toward the latter, Nils Lid (1942: 91-95) could manage only a few lines on the worship of Baldr. Most of the evidence is from placenames in Norway (Olsen 1928, Normann 1944) and Denmark (Mortensen 1919; cf. Amtoft 1948) and is equivocal at best. The situation is not helped by the possible existence of a common noun baldr (“lord”). Frazer cited Scandinavian mid­ summer customs in which Baldr is named, but the few sources he used go back, ac­ cording to John Stanley Martin (1974), to Esias Tegnér’s romantic poem Fritjofs saga, which dates from 1825.

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the Orient, specifically based on such dying gods as the Syrian Tammuz, the Lydian Attis, the Greek Adonis, the baalim of the ancient Near East. Like them, his name means (or might mean) “lord,” and like them he dies and is universally mourned. Since these gods are responsible for the re­ newal of fertility each year, Neckel assumed that Baldr was too. Myths associated with the cults of the Near Eastern dying gods will have been mediated by the Goths during the end of the Migration Period and reached Scandinavia by the sixth century.5 Related is the hypothesis of F. R. Schröder, advanced first in his Ger­ manentum und Hellenismus (1924) and refined in later articles (e.g., Schröder 1938, 1953, 1960, 1962). Like Neckel, Schröder believed in the dying god, but he was insistent on the attachment to ritual. Schroder’s writ­ ing is powerful and evocative, but it will hardly stand scrutiny. The prob­ lem, of course, is that we know so little about the cult of Baldr, and that the Near Eastern parallels Schröder frequently used can only be typologi­ cal (Schier 1976a, 1992), not genetic. The geographically closer would-be parallel of the death of Lemminkäinen in Kalevala tradition (Schröder 1953; Fromm 1963) is no more convincing (Lindow 1997). Any explanation relying primarily on the notion of Baldr as fertility god will have to provide new and compelling evidence, an unlikely possibility given the amount of energy that has already been spent in the search. It is, indeed, precisely the lack of compelling new evidence that one misses in such works as the otherwise useful and sober monograph of John Stanley Martin (1972). This careful survey proceeds from an assumption that “myth is a dramatic narrative of a unique event on an eternal, supernatural plane, linked intimately with a recurrent ritual programme performed in time” (1972: 11). Operating within this framework he suggests an intimate rela­ tionship between eschatological myth and seasonal ritual of invigoration, including the eschatological motif of Baldr’s return. Otherwise Baldr’s function was soteriological. “Herein lies the original tragedy of his death, which had an impact on gods and men, on animate and inanimate objects. The loss lay not in the death of a good person but in the alienation of na­ ture from the source of life” (Martin 1972: 177). Those who do not accept the objections to the fertility hypothesis may find this explanation attrac­ tive, although many scholars seem willing to abandon a concept of myth which links it so directly and unequivocally to ritual. A sense of the importance of fertility may be glimpsed from the struc­ ture of what is doubtless the most lasting contribution to recent Baldr re­ search, the article on “Der Mythos von Balders Tod” by Jan de Vries

5 Siegfried Gutenbrunner (1956) also entertained the idea of a role for the Goths in con­ nection with a loan.

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(1955), which begins by presenting several persuasive arguments against the fertility hypothesis. Baldr is not one of the vanir; rather he is the son of Odin and Frigg. He is slain by HQÖr, whose name likely means “warri­ or” (< *haþuz). This contradicts the system of the mythology; a vegeta­ tion god ought to be a vanr or at least should be associated with the vanir. Furthermore - and this is the most telling point - Baldr does not return, at least not before the beginning of a new mythological cycle. The import of the entire myth in Snorri and Saxo both is that Baldr’s death is irreversi­ ble in the context of the current cosmic order. These two points alone are sufficient for rejection of the hypothesis of a vegetation god borrowed with his myth from the Near East, at least as it was formulated when de Vries was writing. The only way to salvage the dying god in this context is to follow the above-mentioned lead of Kurt Schier (1976a, 1992) and argue only typological similarity with the oldest Near Eastern dying gods, who, it seems, actually did stay dead; by the time any contact of any sort could have obtained with the Germanic world, they were popping up again with annoying regularity, which explains Schier’s reliance on typology. Schier, too, does not seem to see gods of the Baldr type as having to do primarily with fertility. For him, the search begins with the type of the earliest dying god, the one who stays dead, as does Baldr. The complex of death, mourning, and funeral is a means to help the deity assume a new form of existence in the underworld, one which will help him to act effectively in a new role. Although annual rites of mourning serve to strengthen the god’s ability to intervene in earthly af­ fairs, including fertility, Schier holds that Baldr was originally a local Dan­ ish deity parallel to Freyr in Uppsala, whose power consisted in having founded a dynasty and then dying to assume a role in the underworld. The death of any monarch in the dynasty would have the same effect, thus ex­ plaining the existence of poems that, like Ynglingatal, catalogue the deaths of kings. Schier’s is a hypothesis still in formation, and points may change over time. It depends on a wealth of material, from folklore to the writings of the Scandinavian Reformation, and deserves to be expounded fully before it is subjected to full scrutiny. The troubling parts involve source criticism - Schier must permit Saxo to transmit genuine Danish traditions, not those of the Icelandic sources Saxo mentions in his preface, but at the same time he has to rely on such Icelandic sources as Sqgubrot and the paraphrases of Arngrímur Jónsson. The most troubling points center on the equation between Baldr and Freyr, which is very troublesome from the point of view of the Norse sources: there Freyr seems to have everything to do with fer­ tility and Baldr nothing. There may indeed have been local traditions about Baldr in Denmark, but they cannot go all the way in explaining Baldr in Norse poetry and prose.

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After disposing of fertility in the opening pages of his 1955 article, de Vries presented his own explanation of the myth. The “mythologem” con­ sists of three segments: Baldr’s death, his funeral, and Hermóðr’s journey to the world of the dead (1955: 47). Each had particular mythic signifi­ cance. For de Vries, Baldr’s death represents the first appearance of death in the world, and, simultaneously, provides the paradigmatic model for in­ itiation into Odin cult. Baldr’s funeral, following this first death, establishes the custom of funerary burning; here de Vries has recourse to ch. 8 of Ynglinga saga. According to the key passage there, the euhemerized Odin, a man who lived long ago, established in Scandinavia the customs which had been prevalent among the æsir, including funeral burning on a pyre. Here one should stress again the importance of Baldr’s funeral in the sources. Snorri’s account of the funeral, for example, makes up more than one fifth of all he has to say on the subject of Baldr’s death. It is told with as much detail as the other parts of the story and is one of Snorri’s most effective scenes. In the structure of the story it is central, providing a pivot for the unintended slaying and the unsuccessful attempt to contravene or reverse death, and it offers many symbols central to the story. Outside of Snorri, too, the funeral was perceived as an important scene. As de Vries noted, its inclusion in Ulfr’s Húsdrápa has more than purely textual significance, for it demonstrates that the scene was of sufficient general interest to mer­ it inclusion among the artistic decoration of a great chieftain’s hall (de Vries 1955: 51). Further, the scene of Baldr’s funeral provided the greatest mo­ ment of wisdom lore, the unanswerable question of Odin’s last words to his dead son on the bier. The motif circulated, apparently, in oral tradition independently of a poetic formula, as it is expressed differently in Vafþrúðnismál 54 and the last of the Gestumblinda gåtur. For de Vries, Hermóðr’s journey to the underworld is tied closely to the proto-death; an attempt to overcome or revise death falls before an unfulfillable condition (1955: 5 Iff.). He cites a similar tale from Indonesia which, in isolation, is not wholly convincing. The force of the argument, however, is substantial. The origin of death is a subject so common to world mythology as to approach the universal. Stories from throughout the world could be cited in support of this statement. The basic principle, as in the Baldr story in Snorri, is that death was once something that could have been avoided, but because of some failure or mistake, often on the part of the closest relative of the deceased, death became permanent. And indeed, Baldr’s appears to be the first individual death to occur in the framework of the mythology as it is presented in our Norse sources. Prior to the death of Baldr there is only the killing of the proto-giant Ymir as a prelude to his dismemberment for the formation of the cosmos, and the attempted killing during the war between the æsir and vanir of the en­ igmatic Gullveig, who, however does not stay dead. Thrice burned, thrice

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reborn, she yet lives (Vqluspá 21). Only Baldr dies, is commemorated in funeral ritual, and stays in the world of the dead. This, then, could have been one sense of the myth as told centuries be­ fore our medieval poets reworked the material. If Frigg had been success­ ful in gathering oaths from all creatures, Baldr would not have died, and there would not be death among humans. If Hermóðr and the envoys of the æsir had been successful in persuading all creation to weep - whether the motif is original or borrowed is not relevant to the hypothesis -, Baldr would have returned, and death would not have been permanent. As de Vries noted, the “innere Zusammenhang” of the story is mirrored in this frame: only one plant, only one giantess (1955: 47). Indeed, like the mis­ tletoe, the giantess was almost overlooked. And if Loki belonged to the original form of the myth, he would provide a parallel to the numerous trickster figures who contribute to the establishment of death. Having said all that, I must express my misgivings. These are concerned not so much with the neglect of any source to report that Baldr’s was the first death or that thereafter death was irreversible, despite the apparent fidelity to inherited motifs and narrative structures, nor indeed the lack of cognate myths - citation of an Indonesian text does look rather desperate on the part of de Vries - but rather with context within the mythology it­ self. Hel, it seems, was ready for Baldr, and her readiness is taken for grant­ ed. When Hermóðr approaches Hel’s abode, Móðguðr, the guardian of the bridge, reports that five columns of dead men rode over it the previous day and challenges him with the statement that he lacks the color of a dead man. Perhaps she has learned quickly and these dead men were Baldr’s retinue, but it seems as though the way to Hel is well trodden already. And let us recall that the seeress who informs Odin in Baldrs draumar of the impending death of Baldr must herself be revived from the dead. I don’t wish to impose too much order on the mythology, but it does seem that there is a reasonable doubt that anyone in the Viking Age or later under­ stood Baldr’s as the proto-death until 1955. Furthermore, the inner linking of a lone plant with a lone woman is in fact a regular feature of the mythol­ ogy, which Stjemfelt (1990: 49-52) calls the “minus-one” effect: when there is only one of something, it turns out to be significant: only one giant es­ capes the flood of Ymir’s blood, only one pair of humans survives RagnarQk, and so forth. The “minus-one effect” is paramount in the story of Baldr’s death, but it is a central feature of the mythology as a whole. The instigation of funeral burning is another problem. Although ch. 8 of Ynglinga saga states that Odin’s new burial procedures included the pro­ vision that the ashes of the deceased could be carried out to sea, it does not say how, and the whole issue of ship funerals is a messy one. Certain­ ly Snorri’s emphasis on the launching of the ship by a giantess cannot sim­ ply be explained away as part of the institution of a new form of funeral

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ritual. Yet more troubling, perhaps, are the enigmatic words of Vqluspá concerning Gullveig: three times the æsir stuck her with spears, and three times they burned her in the hall of Hár. It may be usual to regard this burning as another attempt to keep this powerful enemy dead, but could it not also mean that she was, in effect, thrice killed and ritually dispatched to the other world, and yet she lived on. So much for the origin of death and funeral ritual. Like most interpreta­ tions of Baldr the dying god, it has attractive features and contradictory ones. For de Vries a even more salient feature of the myth of Baldr’s death was its putative place within the complex of initiation ritual into the cult of Odin. In this reading, HQÖr is a hypostasis of Odin, who symbolically slays the initiate, his own son. Baldr is then reborn as Váli (< *waihalaz “little warrior”), who effects vengeance when he is two days old, that is, two days after the ritual. This theory too is attractive, particularly because of the many Odinic aspects of the Baldr story. At best, however, it is an unverifiable hypothe­ sis, and it probably deserves to be rejected on closer examination. The cru­ cial missing link is that between Baldr and Váli. No medieval text comes even close to making such an identification, and Snorri, by de Vries’s own admission the best source, ignores Váli altogether in his recounting of the story in Gylfaginning. If, further, the point of the story is that Baldr stays put in the world of the dead, we hardly have any right to equate him with Váli or any other figure who survives his death - especially if Baldr is to return after the destruction of the current order. Interestingly, however, de Vries missed the most telling piece of evidence in this matter. Among the kennings for Váli enumerated in the Skáldskaparmál of Snorra edda in Codex Regius, though not in the other manuscripts, is hefniáss Baldr (“Baldr the avenging god”). The other manuscripts have the expected hefniáss Baldrs (“avenging-god of Baldr”). Probably the scribe of Regius made a mistake, but perhaps he knew more than we do. The aspect of vengeance, too, is troubling in the context of initiation into Odin cult. De Vries draws a parallel to the Sigmundr-SinfjQtli materi­ al discussed in such detail by Otto Höfler (1934: 190ff.). But the tests ad­ ministered to SinfjQtli, even assuming that they do reflect heroicized initi­ ation ritual, share little with the treatment accorded Baldr. To be sure, all manner of weapons are cast at him, but it is all for sport. Matters only be­ come serious when the fatal blow is struck. We can safely assume that if there was any sport to the kind of rites endured by initiates like SinfjQtli, it began only after the ritual was completed. Furthermore, SinfjQtli, at least, does not share the most important moment of Baldr’s brief appearance in the sources: his death. Although it would seem likely that Germanic initi­ ates might, like initiates nearly everywhere, undergo a near or false death, the alleged parallel between SinfjQtli and Baldr founders for lack of the

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shared death. And it is precisely with SinfjQtli that Baldr must find paral­ lels, for SinfjQtli is being prepared expressly for revenge, and Vali’s whole purpose is revenge. Unless vengeance was a primary part of initiation rit­ ual into Odin cult, it would seem to be misplaced effort to seek a ritual background for the myth of Baldr’s death. If it exhibited such power then, we may safely assume that it previously had similar power and that it was perfectly capable of existence independent of a ritual. Thus strong reasons would be necessary to associate the story with a ritual at any time during its history. Indeed, Váli is regularly paired with another god, Víðarr, who cannot possibly represent a reborn initiate who obtains revenge for himself, for Víðarr’s role is to kill the wolf Fenrir to avenge the death of Odin, his fa­ ther. Víðarr and Váli are juxtaposed in several sources, including Snorra Edda and several þulur contained in it. They share, besides the alliterating initial V- (from earlier w-, which therefore provided alliteration with the proto-form of Odin’s name, *wöþanaz), also the attributes of abstention, parentage, and action. Víðarr “the silent” apparently does not speak until he has carried out his vengeance; Váli remains unkempt during this peri­ od. Probably such abstinence has to do with the custom, already noted by Tacitus, of a warrior not cutting his hair until he has slain his first victim in war. Tacitus ascribes this custom to the Chatti (Germania, ch. 31), and one may imagine similar sorts of abstinence elsewhere in the Germanic world. Both Víðarr and Vali are sons of Odin by giantesses, Víðarr by Grimr and Váli by Rindr. Apparently their parentage was among the more important of the scanty characteristics of these two figures, since it is re­ peatedly mentioned (,Snorra Eddaf ed. Finnur Jónsson 1931: 33, 40, 99, etc.). Nevertheless they are regularly listed among the twelve most impor­ tant æsir (Snorra Edda, ed. Finnur Jónsson 1931: 33, 78). Besides their vengeance, the two figures return after RagnarQk to inhabit the holy plac­ es of their ancestors (Vafþrúðnismál 51, cited also by Snorri). None of this is reminiscent of initiation. If the Baldr myth deals with initiation, then the main characters must be divine heroes, as in Saxo, not gods as in Snorri. De Vries argues this point, too, and once again the argument must be rejected. It violates eve­ rything the sources tell us about Baldr, HQÖr, and Váli. To begin with Baldr: Snorri’s account of Baldr’s parentage is widely supported. In Gylfaginning Baldr is introduced following Odin and Thor, as Odin’s son, immediately preceding NjQrðr in the list of the æsir. Also Forseti, the son of Baldr and Nanna, is included in the same list (Snorra Edda, ed. Finnur Jónsson 1931: 33). In Skáldskaparmál we learn that kennings for Baldr include sonr Óðins ok Friggjar (“the son of Odin and Frigg”), and others derived from the myth of his death, e.g., Heljar sinni (“companion of Hel”), gráta guð (“god of mourning”).

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Indeed, kennings offer a convincing argument that Baldr was not re­ garded as a divine hero, at least since the beginning of Norse literary tra­ dition with the skalds. Baldr is perhaps after NjQrðr the most frequently employed god as base word in man kennings (Meissner 1921: 262). In contrast, names of divine heroes are very rare as base words in man ken­ nings: Bjarki and Sigmundr are attested once only, Starkaðr never. The total omission of Starkaðr is perhaps the most telling in this context, for Starkaðr’s role in the slaying of King Vikarr is generally pressed into serv­ ice by those who, like de Vries, make Baldr a sacrifice to Odin. The skaldic evidence is incontrovertible: Baldr was a god, one of the æsir. Noth­ ing by imagination can make him a divine hero and, by extension, an apoth­ eosis of Odin. Nor can HQÖr be regarded as a hypostasis of Odin or as a divine hero. He is listed among the þulur as Odin’s son (IVc). He forms the base word of man kennings used by early poets including at least Egill Skallagrimsson and Hallvarðr Háreksblesi and perhaps two others (Finnur Jónsson 1931: s.v. HQÖr). Furthermore, he is not listed anywhere among the lists of Odin names, neither in Gylfaginning nor in the AM 748 additions. We must con­ clude that HQÖr is a relatively old figure, an áss, and probably a son of Odin (who isn’t?). He was apparently not well known, but nothing in the evidence contradicts the picture given by Snorri. In Skáldskaparmál we read that HQÖr may be called blinda áss (“god of blindness”), Baldrs bani (“Baldr’s killer”), skjótandi mistilteins (“launcher of the mistletoe”), sonr Oðins (“son of Odin”) Heljar sinni (“companion of Hel”), and Vála dolgr (“enemy of Váli”). The entire picture is consistent. The characters in the Baldr story were gods, not divine heroes. Alv Kragerud (1974) offers perhaps the strongest form of the argument associating the Baldr story with ritual. This he accomplishes by means of a point-to-point alignment of the story of the supposedly sham sacrifice of King Vikarr in Gautreks saga with the death of Baldr; the parallel is hard­ ly new (see Polomé 1970: 70-76 for treatment), but Kragerud aligns it with Baldr most skilfully: the sacrifice of Vikarr is unintentionally accomplished by the nearly blind Starkaðr (< *starkhqðr ?) using a reed supplied by an­ other character, Hrosshársgrani, that turns into a weapon, in a situation with ludic aspects. Clunies Ross (1994a: 274, fn. 46) discards a number of the supposed parallels, to which I would add a few additional troubling ques­ tions. If HQÖr is a hypostasis of Odin, is Starkaðr too to be regarded as such a figure? If Hrosshársgrani is actually Odin, is Loki to be taken as Odin or as carrying out the will of Odin? More fundamentally, the argu­ ment requires taking the sagn (“legend” - Kragerud’s word) from Gautreks saga as deeply and unequivocally reflective of a sacrifice, but that seems to me to be precisely what Kragerud has set out to prove in the first place. We must set aside the hypothesis that the Baldr myth reflects ritual, either

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initiation into Odin cult or sacrifice of the king in association with the cult of the fertility god. What, then, does it reflect? Any search for Indo-European cognates is essentially fruitless, as one learns from reading the remarks of the great comparatist Georges Dumézil in the 1959 revision of his survey of the Ger­ manic gods (Dumézil 1973a: 49-65; summarized with a schematic chart in Stjernfelt 1990: 15-19), or the very slight notes gathered in his “Balderiana minora” (1964). Dumézil postulated development from a parent IndoEuropean myth of the eschatological battle between forces of good and evil, culminating in the establishment of a new and better order. The “cognate” texts are on the one hand the epic remnants of the Mahabharata and on the other hand Ossetic folklore gathered primarily in the nineteenth centu­ ry, with supporting evidence from the Avesta and Masdaism. While these offer worthy company to our medieval Icelandic man of letters and our Danish cleric, it is perhaps a telling methodological weakness that recon­ struction is based only on Norse and Indo-Iranian sources. Further, the two aspects of the Baldr myth find respective parallels only in two different branches of Indo-Iranian: Baldr’s death shows similarities to the Ossetic Syrdon’s slaying of Sozryko, and the eschatological aspects answer to the Pandava story from the Mahabharata Dumézil adduces a parallel between HQÖr and the blind Dhrtarastra. When the latter loses, he and the other Pandavas go into exile, an exile which Dumézil finds parallel to Baldr’s irre­ versible sojourn with Hel. Although the eschatological parallel seems rather compelling, the equation of cheating at dice and murdering within a fami­ ly does not, especially because it is Duyodhana, not the blind Dhrtarastra, who actually defeats Yudhisthira at dice. If anything, Dhrtarastra plays Loki’s role, not ÜQÖr’s, and then the shared blindness ceases to have val­ ue. As so often with Dumézil, we must admire the grand scheme and quib­ ble over details. Pending location of the tertium comparationis, most schol­ ars will no doubt continue to seek elsewhere the origin of Baldr’s death. Edgar Polomé (1970) found Dumézil’s connection of Baldr with escha­ tology to be unjustified and offered instead a paraphrase of the ritual in­ terpretation of de Vries, going so far as to imagine the actual ritual scene that the myth might reflect. Here one hardly glimpses “The Indo-Europe­ an Component in Germanic Religion,” as the piece is called. Similarly, Jarich Oosten’s analysis in The War of the Gods (1985: 42-47) is shrewd and, in my view, essentially correct in its view of the Baldr myth as a rep­ resentation of the doomed nature of the æsir. Contrary to its subtitle (“The social code in Indo-European mythology”), however, it does not rely on Indo-European analogues for the actual analysis of Baldr, except as a point of departure: Baldr and HQÖr are divine twins (Polomé made the same point, and this may therefore be the one connection with Indo-European tradition on which Indo-Europeanists could agree, even if the parallel seems

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less clear from the point of view of Norse mythology). Thereafter the anal­ ysis depends on a not altogether obvious parallel with Freyr’s acquisition of Gerðr and the transfer of gold to and from the other world. In this case, then, Oosten’s analysis represents the newer scholarship that interests it­ self more in the recorded texts than in purported origins. In his use of struc­ turalism, Oosten follows a track that has led to useful results in the over­ all understanding of the mythology and in passing has helped illuminate the Baldr story (e.g., Molenaar 1982). Frederik Stjernfelt (1990) has pro­ duced a whole little book on Baldr building on the works of such Franco­ phone structuralists as (in addition to Dumézil) René Girard, Michel Serres, and A. J. Greimas. There is much to praise in this analysis, not least its attempt to link creation, Baldr’s death, and RagnarQk, its provocative ar­ gument for Loki as the center of the Baldr story, and the invitation to re­ gard the mythology as a pessimistic legal philosophy, but in its centering of a (rehabilitated) Girardian theory of scapegoating it leaves the realm of the verifiable.6 Indeed, it may be that the search for a unified Baldr theory is ultimate­ ly too grand an endeavor and should be scaled back to a series of attempts to interpret various texts or traditions. This I will attempt in the following chapters, saving any overall interpretations until it is time to sum up. My approach to Baldr is similar to that of Gro Steinsland (1991: 160-70) and Margaret Clunies Ross (1994a: 268-77). Both see rightly that the prob­ lem involves a killing within a family circle and that the relationship be­ tween the æsir and the jQtnar greatly complicates the issue of vengeance, which is fundamental to the myth. In different ways, each stresses the dy­ nastic implications: for Steinsland, Baldr’s death is the model for the death of a king (cf. Ström 1950, who argues a model for the sacrifice of the sac­ ral king) and plays on themes of a hieros gamos between god and giantess that makes kings in the first place; for Clunies Ross, it is Baldr’s status as the legitimate heir of Odin, his eldest son by his wife Frigg, that signals the downfall of the æsir that accompanies the death of Baldr. Since my own interest is in part to situate the myth with respect to the Icelanders who recorded it during the thirteenth century and owed allegiance, strictly speaking, to no king, my understanding of the material focuses more on the familial and genealogical issues than on the dynastic implications.

6 It is a measure of the attraction of the Baldr story that even René Girard (1982) had a go at it. His reading is aired and rightly criticized by Stjemfelt (1990: 31-35).

Chapter 2 BALDR, HQÐR, LOKI: BALDR’S DEATH “En þat er upphaf þeirar SQgu, at Baldr inn góða dreymði drauma stóra ok hættiliga um líf sitt” (normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 63) (“And that is the beginning of this narrative, that Baldr the good dreamed dreams great and threatening about his life”). So Snorri begins his account of Baldr’s moment in the mythology, and so he signals his death. The dreams must be deep-rooted in the tradition, for Balderus dreams of Proserpina’s embrace and dies soon thereafter in Book 3 of Saxo’s Gesta Danorum “Nec inane somnii præsagium fuit” (“nor was the foreboding of sleep empty”) (Olrik & Ræder, ed. 1931: 69). Although this dream occurs toward the end of the story - Balderus has already been fatally wounded - it is not his only dream: earlier he has been plagued by nightly dreams of the beauti­ ful image of Nanna. Baldr and dreams go together. Medieval Icelandic literature is full of dreams, 530 according to one count (Ehrensperger 1931: 80, Kelchner 1935: 3) that is likely to be on the low side (Schach 1971: 51, Argüelles 1994: 230). Dreams occur in all the major genres, and of course their contents and purposes vary not only according to genre but also according to immediate contextual needs. A great many of them are prophetic, however, and a thread that has remained constant for over a century of scholarship, from Henzen (1890) through Haeckel (1934), to the far more nuanced studies of Glendinning (1974) and Argüelles (1994), is that the prophecies revealed in them are ineluctable. Characters may act on the information they receive, or they may choose to ignore it, but whatever the dream implies, especially as it is understood by wise interpreters of dreams, will come to pass. If a character dreams that his life is threatened or at an end, it is. Baldr, then, is doomed from the start by the literary conventions and possibly even the dreaming con­ ventions that anyone hearing his story in medieval Iceland would have known. This is not to say that dreams were always clear or that the doomed and their families could not attempt evasive actions. In Vápnfirðinga saga(ch.

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13), for example, Brodd-Helgi Þorgilsson finds his foster mother weep­ ing, and she recounts an elaborate dream in which a pale-colored, splen­ did ox from Hof who “bore his horn high” was gored to death by a flock of cattle led by a red-flecked ox and then was avenged by a red ox, who in turn was pursued by a young red bull. The two agree that Brodd-Helgi must be the pale ox (he is descended from Þorsteinn hviti (the white), lives at Hof, and is a great man), and the red-flecked one must be his former friend, now dire enemy, Geitir Lýtingsson. They quarrel, however, on the identity of the red ox who is to avenge him. An unfortunate lacuna inter­ venes in the manuscript at this point, and when the text resumes it is clear that Helgi has indeed been slain by Geitir. As the feud unwinds it becomes apparent that the foster-mother’s reading of the identity of the avenger was the correct one. As an example of evasive actions we may cite Draumr Þorsteins SíðuHallssonar; a short account, perhaps an abstract from a longer work, re­ counting the last days of Þorsteinn Síðu-Hallsson, a chieftain from eastern Iceland who is the subject of a separate saga that is incomplete near the ending (Porsteins saga Síðu-Hallssonar). In Draumr, he is visiting the neighboring farmstead Krossavik when he has disquieting dreams: three women appear to him and warn him that the slave Gilli, whom he has had castrated, is to betray him, and they urge him to kill Gilli. One then re­ cites a forboding skaldic stanza in dróttkvœtt, and on the following nights the other two women recite similar stanzas. The women repeat the last lines of their verses (a feature of such meters as galdralag, or “magic meter”), and in the last two cases they use the short skaldic lines as the beginning of sentences telling Þorsteinn that he is to lose his life. Þorsteinn and later his wife search for the slave, but to no avail. On the fourth night, when bad weather has forced Þorsteinn to prolong his visit, the slave kills him. Þorsteinn’s wife has a hot washbasin placed on the stomach of the slave (who, interestingly, is like Óláfr pái descended from Irish royalty) but re­ moves it when he threatens her progeny with a curse. Gilli dies anyway and his body is cast into a bog. Thus as a narrative mechanism Baldr’s disquieting dreams for his life make it quite clear that he must die, even if the kind of death he is to suf­ fer remains unclear and even if evasive actions are undertaken. In the lat­ ter case the threat might be played down by offering an alternative inter­ pretation or even forbidding the further telling of dreams (this is a com­ mon pattern in tht fornaldarsögur; see Arglielles 1994: 362-78); or hero­ ic posturing might be achieved by ignoring it altogether, perhaps by utter­ ing the laconic phrase “Ekki er mark i draumum” (“there is no meaning [lit. “sign”] in dreams”) (Henzen 1890: 20-22). HjQrtr Hámundarson, a pe­ ripheral character in Njáls saga, expresses it as well as anyone: after be­ ing told of a terrifying dream of Gunnarr af Hlíðarendi in which his heart

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was tom from his chest by wolves and being urged by Gunnarr to put off their impending expedition, HjQrtr replies: “Eigi vil ek þ a t... þótt ek vita vísan bana minn, þá vil ek þér fylgja” (“I do not want that ... Even if I knew my death to be certain I want to go with you”) (Njáls saga, ed. Einar 01. Sveinsson 1954: 156). He does and is killed in the following battle by a massive chest wound. Ever passive, Baldr neither utters a quip nor takes evasive action. That it is Frigg who does so removes the story from most of the 529 other Norse dreams and places it in the realm of myth, where female characters seem­ ingly have more freedom of action. Here one might compare Þiðranda þáttr ok Þorhalls, interwoven into the Great Saga of St. Óláfr and taken to reflect part of the lost Latin life of Óláfr Tryggvason by the monk Gunnlaugr Leifsson (for discussion see Strömbäck 1949). When Síðu-Hallr’s promising son Þiðrandi arrives home from journeys, the prophet Porhallr seems worried about him. Later Þorhallr predicts that a prophet will die at the autumn pagan sacrifice. Síðu-Hallr explains that he will sacrifice an ox named Spámaðr (“prophet”) and thus Þorhallr needn’t worry. Porhallr replies that he is not worried for himself and when the time comes urges that no one go out that night. When Piðrandi answers a knock at the door and goes out and is killed by nine disir in black while nine in white can­ not help, the interpretation is that the women were family spirits (fylgjur) attending both sides of the impending conversion of Iceland to Christiani­ ty. Piðrandi indeed was a prophet, and the vain evasive actions were un­ dertaken on his behalf, by his father, the head of the household, and by Þorhallr, Síðu-Hallr’s guest. The only women in the story are the chthonic attendant spirits. Baldr’s dreams also invoke actions by his father, according to the poem of that name. Baldrs draumar is found in AM 748 I 4to, known as the socalled “Anhang” to the Poetic Edda, although it also contains some rhe­ torical literature and the poem Islendingadrápa. The usual dating of the manuscript is to the early years of the fourteenth century. Baldrs draumar is found between HárbarðsljóÖ, the first retained poem (the beginning of the manuscript is defective) and Skírnismál (after which a lacuna inter­ venes), but AM 748 I lacks the careful plan of the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda (from which Baldrs draumar may have been deliberately excluded; see Harris 1985: 76-78, but cf. Wessén 1946 for an explanation involving carelessness), and this location may not be meaningful. At a mere 14 stanzas of fornyrðislag, Baldrs draumar is short for an eddic poem, but there is no reason to think it incomplete. The current conventional dating of the poem is to the late twelfth century (Schröder 1964, Heine­ mann 1993), but the dating of the poem has always been regarded as dif­ ficult (Heusler 1906). Noting the verbal similarities with Vqluspá and Þrymskviða, for example, Rudolf Simek (1984a: 41) wrote in one hand­

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book entry that Baldrs draumar could hardly be younger than these, but three years later he and Hermann Pálsson found these similarities not use­ ful for dating the poem (Simek & Pálsson 1987: 29). If nothing else, how­ ever, they certainly verify the traditional nature of the poem. Baldrs draumar recounts a myth of an Odinic voyage undertaken for the acquisition of wisdom by means of a confrontation with an Other be­ ing. The problem is set forth in the first stanza, the first six lines of which are identical to Þrymskviða 14, lines 1-6: all the æsir have met in council. In Þrymskviða the problem is the theft of Thor’s hammer; here it is the dreams of Baldr: “hvi væri Baldri ballir draumar (“why there might be por­ tentous dreams for Baldr”). Thus Snorri and the poet of Baldrs draumar began their treatments of the myth in the same way. At this point, howev­ er, they part ways, as in the poem Odin saddles Sleipnir and rides down to Niflhel, where he meets a hellhound (stanza 2) . It bays at Odin but he rides on and comes to the hall of Hel (stanza 3). Riding out to the east of the hall, Odin conjures up a seeress, “unz nauðig reis, nás orð qvað” (“un­ til, compelled, she arose, and spoke the words of a corpse”). The rest of the poem consists of an exchange of questions and answers between Odin and this seeress. She begins by asking who has awakened her from the long sleep of death (stanza 5), to which Odin responds (stanza 6) with a name characteristically chosen for the occasion and yet appropriate to his nature: Vegtamr (“Road-accustomed”), the son of Valtamr (“accustomed to carri­ on”); the name has given the poem the title Vegtamskviða in later paper manuscripts. In the second half of stanza 6 Odin poses the first of his ques­ tions, and it and the rest of the questions are followed by a formulaic ex­ change in which the seeress says that she spoke under duress and would fall silent, and Odin orders her to continue. The pattern is followed for four questions, but the seeress recognizes Odin in the fourth (stanza 12), and their final exchange involves their identities. Baldrs draumar should be regarded first in light of the other Odinic wisdom poems, those gathered at the beginning of Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda. In Vqluspá, he awakens a seeress who speaks only reluctant­ ly and tells of the fate not just of one but of all the gods; although the poem is not formally a dialogue, we can sense Odin’s voice just offstage. In Vafþrúðnismál Odin travels not to the world of the dead but to the land of the jQtnar, and there he engages in a contest of wisdom, a question and answer exchange that ends, like Baldrs draumar, in an epiphany. In Grimnismál he travels among humans, and although there is no dialogue, Grimnir’s attitude toward Odin is clearly adversarial, wisdom is produced, and once again the encounter ends in an epiphany. The wisdom Odin acquires or reveals on these expeditions makes up one of his strongest weapons against the jQtnar and therefore should be regarded as parallel to the wis­ dom he acquired when hung on the tree in his famous self-sacrifice and

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parallel as well to his acquisition of the mead of poetry. Baldrs draumar also is part of the larger tradition of wisdom poetry in which the dead or dying are compelled to answer questions and provide prophecy in so do­ ing. More than half a dozen eddic poems fit this pattern to some extent (Kragerud 1981). The æsir, therefore, need the information Odin seeks to obtain in Baldrs draumar for general strategic reasons in the cosmic struggle. And if Baldr’s dreams are parallel to those of other dreamers in the literary tradition in which this myth is situated, they also need it, we may surmise, to bring to the interpretation of those dreams some degree of clarity. Perhaps Baldr dreamed that he would be gored by a (blind?) bull and would visit a dark and shadowy abode, but that later the bull would be killed by a new-born calf. Odin’s mission here, like that of the wise dream interpreters of the sagas, is to provide precision. Who are the other actors? Like all summaries, the one I offered of Baldrs draumar above in chap­ ter one does no justice to the subtleties. In the first exchange, Odin asks for whom the benches are strewn and the hall adorned, typical prepara­ tions for the reception of an honored guest. The seeress responds that the mead is brewed for Baldr, the clear liquids covered with a shield, and since funerals were drunk, one senses that the seeress has won the first round by drawing explicit attention to the nature of Baldr’s visit. When Odin asks the second question, he puts the death the way Úlfr Uggason did in Húsdrápa, highlighting the father-son relationship: hverr man Baldri at bana verða oc Óðins son aldri ræna? [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 278.] Who will be the killer of Baldr and rob Odin’s son of his life? Her response indicts HQÖr: “HQÖr berr hávan hróðrbarm þinig.” The ex­ act meaning of this line has elicited quite a lot of discussion, but since the seeress goes on to echo the words of Odin’s question (in grammatical form suitably altered, rather like the incremental repetition of ballads), there can be no doubt that she means to say that HQÖr was responsible for the death of Baldr. “HQÖr will bear thither the high hróðrbarmr” she says. The word hróðrbarmr is clearly a compound whose first component is hróðr (“praise”), which is frequently attested in poetic compounds. The second component is ordinarily understood as baðmr (“tree”), a suggestion origi­ nating as far as I know with Sophus Bugge (1885: 241^12). This would yield a compound kenning “praise-tree.” Most observers think it refers to Baldr, an interpretation that is plausible with respect to the poetic language: trees are among the most common base words in man kennings, and hróðr often refers to poetry, the medium in which praise was most frequently forwarded; “tree of poetry” would be a poet, which in turn could be any

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man. The adjective hår (acc. masc. sing, hávari) would make Baldr a tall tree, and certainly his fall resounded loudly in the world of the gods. R. C. Boer (1922: 345) objected mildly to the repetitious nature this reading gives the stanza, which would then say the same thing three times, but such an objection can hardly be taken seriously, and the alternative, which is to read hróðrbarmr as a reference to the mistletoe (perhaps “proud tree;” so Finnur Jónsson 1931: 286 s.v.) invites not just botanical but also rhetori­ cal skepticism, since the base word of the kenning would be the same as its referent. This reading would also eliminate the near pun in hávan: re­ move the final n-, and one has the genitive of Hár, one of Odin’s most important names, an emendation once proposed by the indefatigable Finnur Jónsson, who however went on unnecessarily to emend the unclear com­ pound to hróðrbarn (“proud child”). Assuming that the ordinary reading of “tall tree of praise” (= man, i.e. Baldr) is correct, bera þinig might be understood as parallel to the usual expression bera út (“to carry out the last rights for”). Since bera is frequently used for poetry/praise, the seeress embeds her words in a poetic nexus, and by using the skaldic conven­ tions to refer to Baldr as a poet - Odin’s realm - she wins this round too, I think. With his third question Odin shows some verbal cleverness of his own: hverr man heipt Heði hefnt of vinna, eða Baldrs bana á bál vega? [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 278.] Who will enact vengeance on HQðr, or strike Baldr’s killer onto the pyre? The reference to the pyre of Baldr’s slayer deflects the scene of Baldr’s funeral, so beloved in verse and plastic art, back onto HQÖr. The seeress’s response departs formally from her other responses inso­ far as it includes an extra full line. It deserves quotation in full. Rindr berr Vála 1 i vestrsQlum, sá man Oðins sonr einnættr vega; hQnd urn þvær né hQfuð kembir, áðr á bal um berr Baldrs andscota. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 278-79.] Rindr will bear Vali in the western halls, that son of Odin will kill when one night old; he will neither wash his hands nor comb his hair until he has brought Baldr’s killer onto the pyre. Older scholarship regarded these lines as suspect, since they closely re­ semble Vqluspá 32: 7-8 and 33:1-4, but the similarity might as easily re-1 1 The name Váli is actually missing, as the end of the line is defective, but it can be restored because without it the line lacks alliteration. If it is not restored, the answer must be understood as one born of Rindr, and there is ample evidence that Rindr was Váli’s mother.

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sult from the ordinary application of formulaic language; there is indeed a certain amount of variation, and the lines in question are of course miss­ ing from the Hauksbók version of Vqluspá. The question goes directly to the origin and nature of eddic poetry, which it is not my intention to treat here. I would only point out that the lines make ample sense in the context of Baldrs draumar and, in light of the dreams I mentioned above, which were meant to some extent to be para­ digmatic, they complete the triangle of victim, slayer, and avenger that are at issue in interpretations of dreams of this nature. Furthermore, the addi­ tional lines of Baldrs draumar 11 weight the third of the three responses and thus indicate its final position, as could be induced anyway by means of the Rule of Three. The confrontation is not over, however, and the fourth exchange turns on an obscure question which the seeress in her wisdom recognizes as an epiphany of Odin. hveriar ro þær meyiar, er at muni gráta oc á himin verpa hálsa scautom? [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 279.] These lines mean something like: “who are those maidens who weep as they wish2 and cast to the heavens the sheets/edges of their necks, i.e. ker­ chiefs?” Alternatively, the last part of the stanza may refer not to kerchiefs but to the corners of sails. In either case, the observation of Sophus Bugge (1889b: 253) that meyjar “maidens” might refer to waves seems plausible, for it has the great advantage of agreeing with the use of maidens and women for waves in a number of the riddles of Gestumblindi in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks konungs. If it is their kerchiefs (sheets of the neck) that they cast to the sky, the reference could be to foam or spray; if the corners of sails, the reference would be to stormy weather. Although not everyone has agreed with this assumption (Edzardi 1882, for example, demurred and offered a now-forgotten reading based on a hypothetical nature myth), a century and more of scholarship has failed to produce a better explanation. There re­ mains, however, the question how this riddle makes clear Odin’s identity to the seeress. The simplest explanation is to associate it with the other favorite neck-riddle of Odin: what did Odin speak into the ear of the dead Baldr on the pyre (VafþrúÖnismál 54 and the last of the riddles of the Gestumblinda gåtur). Bearing in mind that the point of riddles is that the “cor­ rect” answer to a riddle, among all the plausible possibilities, can only be the one in the mind of the riddler, and heeding Anne Holtsmark’s admo­

2 The phrase at muni, which I have rendered “as they wish,” has never been satisfacto­ rily explained. Luckily its meaning is not important to the interpretation of the poem as a whole.

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nition (1964a) to the effect that in this particular case we are indeed up against the inscrutable, we may still use the nature of the question in Vafþrúðnismál 54 and the last of the riddles of the Gestumblinda gåtur to presume that the last question in Baldrs draumar has to do with Baldr’s funeral. When Franz Rolf Schröder (1964) offered the plausible sugges­ tion that the waves suggest Baldr’s ship funeral, he did little more than clarify some of the details suggested by Bugge. The type-scene of the unanswerable riddle, a relative commonplace in folklore and one that is relevant to Norse tradition as well (Heusler 1901: 122, de Vries 1934: 37; Tolkien 1960: xx), requires that the identity of the one posing the riddles be recognized by the one solving them. The last two stanzas of Baldrs draumar present this final aspect of the story, again in the form of an agonistic exchange. Once more, however, Baldrs draumar is different, for here it appears that the identity of both characters has been concealed. In the first half of stanza 13, the seeress properly says: Ertattu Vegtamr, sem ec hugða, heldr ertu Óðinn, aldin« gautr. You are not Vegtamr, as I thought, you are rather Odin, the aged god. To this, however, Odin replies in the second half of the stanza: Ertattu vQlva, né vis kona, heldr ertu þriggia þursa móðir. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 279.] You are not a seeress, nor a wise woman, you are rather the mother of three monsters. The most famous cohort of monsters consists of Fenrisulfr (the Fenris wolf), jQrmungandr (the Midgard serpent), and Hel, mistress of the nether world. According to Gylfaginning, Loki begat them on Angrboða, a gýgr i Jqtunheimum (“ogress in jQtunheimar”), and that makes her a good can­ didate for the identity of this seeress. The poetic tradition, however, does not quite verify the relationship. Hyndluljóð 40 reports that Loki got a wolf on Angrboða, presumably Fenrisulfr, but although the seeress goes on to mention Sleipnir, another of Loki’s offspring, she does not mention the other two of the monstruous brood reported by Snorri. The second half of the stanza reports that the worst of female monsters came from the broth­ er of Býleifr, that is, Loki, and this monster might conceivably be Hel, but the Midgard serpent is nowhere to be found. These lines are, however, quite allusive, and the next stanza, for example, reports that Loki became pregant by a bad woman, perhaps from eating her heart, and gave birth to every evil creature (flagð), a myth about which we are otherwise quite unin­ formed. It might perhaps be used in support of Davidson’s suggestion (1979: 9) that the seeress of Baldrs draumar may be Loki, not Angrboða. If so, Odin’s words “móðir þriggja þursa” (“mother of three monsters”)

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should be understood as twisting Loki’s role in their birth into a níð in­ sult, which is certainly justifiable in other cases. In the absence of hard evidence, however, Angrboða seems to me still the better choice. Vqluspá 40 appears to bear on Snorri’s statement that Angrboða is the mother of all three witches. Austr sat in aldna í Iárnviði oc fœddi þar Fenris kindir; verðr af þeim Qllom einna noccorr tungls tiúgari i trollz hami. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 9.] The aged woman sat in Járnviðr and there brought up the kin of Fenrir; of them all one alone will become the swallower of the sun, in the guise of a troll. Little, however, is known about this particular crone. According to Snor­ ri, she is one of a number of Járnviðjuri^Tron-woodites”), troll hags who inhabit that mysterious forest. Her speciality is the upbringing (not neces­ sarily the bearing) of giants’ sons in the form of wolves, and one of them, this and the following stanza report, is to redden the homes of the æsir with the blood of the doomed, destroy the sun, and darken the sky. The point I wish to make here is that only one of the brood is singled out; Snorri calls him Mánagarmr when he cites the stanza, but just úlfrinn (“the w olf’) when describing RagnarQk. From among Angrboða’s offspring, the poetic tradition again singles out only one - the wolf. In the final stanza of Baldrs draumar; the seeress urges Odin to ride home and be proud. Thus may no man (none of the dead? cf. Allén 1961) return when (until?) Loki is loose from his bonds and RagnarQk comes to tear apart the fabric of society. These last lines verify the Regius Vqluspá's and Snorri’s versions of the aftermath of the Baldr story (the binding of Loki) and its connection with RagnarQk, and in my view they therefore make more attractive the possibility that Angrboða is Odin’s interlocutor, since it is Snorri who names the names of all Angrboða’s children. The name Angrboða too admirably suits the context of Baldrs draumar, since it means something like “announcer of grief,” and that is just what she does. However, if read another way, her name could also be connect­ ed with Odin’s last riddling question, assuming that it indeed has to do with waves. Angr is the Norse form of an arm of the Hardanger fjord and is listed among the fjarða heiti (“synonyms for fjord”) in the þulur (IVccc). The masculine form of the second component of her name, boði, can refer to a wave that breaks in otherwise clear water and thus bodes a rock be­ neath the surface. Taken together, these would give a feminine noun mean­ ing something like “fjord-breaker, sea-wave,” and each part would rein­ force the other. Thus if this surmise has any validity (the major problem is the unattested feminine form of the second component), Odin’s last ques­

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tion would signal to the seeress that he knows her identity already and would add a second aspect to the first, namely the connection with Baldr’s funeral. Thus one would find an explanation for her immediate recogni­ tion of Vegtamr as Odin. The next phase of the story involves the evasive actions undertaken by Frigg. To be sure, Snorri (who is the only extent source, although nearly everyone postulates lost eddic verse; see Schneider 1947) writes that it was the æsir as a collective to whom Baldr told the dreams, who reacted by taking counsel together, “ok var þat gQrt at beiða griða Baldri fyrir allz konar háska” (normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 63) (“and it was decided to ask for assurances of non-aggression for Baldr from every kind of danger”). I have clumsily rendered grid “assurances of non-aggression;” the point is a legal agreement that no harm shall be done. It is Frigg who obtains the oaths, and the things that vow to spare Baldr make up, pre­ sumably, some kind of inventory of Norse objective dangers: fire and wa­ ter, iron and every kind of metal, stones, the earth, wood, diseases, ani­ mals, birds, poison, and snakes. Bruce Lincoln (1982) arranged these, with emendations, into a taxonomy of the discursive universe, and although Ri­ chard Dieterle’s (1986) expansion of Lincoln’s findings into an interpre­ tation of the entire Baldr story is not convincing,3 it is comforting to be assured that Frigg’s taking of oaths was very nearly universal. The infor­ mation gleaned by Odin according to Baldrs draumar is clearly not rele­ vant here, however, since Frigg seems worried that Baldr may burn or drown, die in an accident, be felled by disease or killed by an animal. Weapons are not on this list, but perhaps they are covered by the oaths of iron and wood, as Lincoln’s taxonomy would suggest. However, the list contains one large and glaring omission: beings with human form, the æsir and jQtnar, the players in the mythology. This line of thinking certainly departs from the Iceland of the thirteenth century, where individuals, not their weapons or fists, were the responsible agents in cases of injury or manslaughter, and I can only make sense of this departure by assuming that the æsir and specifically Frigg cannot imagine that Baldr has an ene­ my among the æsir or is seriously threatened by the jQtnar. Living in and writing for a society in which individuals did not scruple to torture or kill adversaries who fell into their power, Snorri - whatever his sources - seems

3 Dieterle argues that lopt (“air”) is missing from the list and adduces Loki's by-name Loptr as the reason Loki is free to kill Baldr. Putting aside the etymological difficul­ ties (which he addresses), there is the problem of the lack of association anywhere in the mythology between Loki and the air and the awkward but necessary omission of the role of HQÖr, which is central according to the tradition as a whole. More gener­ ally, the notion that “ballad” singers (long before the thirteenth century?» should control esoteric knowledge gives pause.

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to be playing a game of “what i f ’ - what if an individual were proof against everything on earth? Could even he be vulnerable? That Frigg obtains the oaths is also a bit curious, as I mentioned above; specifically, the vowing of oaths was not something ordinarily overseen by women, in daily life or in ritual (Meyer 1912). Mythologically, Ullr was the named god most associated with oaths, and whether he was also the áss hinn almáttki (“all-powerful god”) of legal formula (so Hermann Pálsson 1956) or it was Odin and/or even Thor (Ólafur M. Ólafsson 1970), this is apparently not a female domain (see Vogt 1937 for general treatment), even if originally all the gods were invoked in the neuter plural, suggest­ ing a collective of male and female (Baetke 1948). From the point of view of the history of religions, Frigg’s role in the Baldr story deviates somewhat from her historical role, which originally was primarily that of the consort of the head of the gods. Her name clear­ ly derives from an Indo-European root meaning “love,” and in the inter­ pretatio germanicaof the names of the week the day of Venus, dies Veneris, became her day, thus verifying her existence and role during the Migra­ tion Period. The Scandinavian borrowing of the name for Friday from Con­ tinental Germanic (*Frijadag), in place of a reformation of the name as occurred with the other deities (*Friggjardagr)y must have to do with the homonynity of Freyja; indeed, assumptions of a crossing with Freyja have long been part of the interpretative process brought to bear on Frigg. As wife of Godanus (Odin) Frigg turns up in the account of the origin of the name of the Langobards in Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum from the end of the eighth century, and their uneasy, even adversarial re­ lationship there is eerily similar to what they display in the prose intro­ duction to Grímnismál, recorded in Iceland nearly half a millennium lat­ er. Saxo painted an even grimmer picture of their marriage, for he has Frigga, as he calls her, strip the gold from a statue of Othinus so as to deco­ rate herself with it and then sleep with a servant in order to get him to help her take down the statue. Even Saxo is aghast at this act of an “in­ digna femina, quae numinis coniugio potiretur” (“a woman unworthy to be taken by a godhead in marriage”) (Gesta Danorum 1:7; Olrik & Ræder, ed. 1931: 25), although he quickly adds that she was no worse than Othi­ nus deserved. Othinus takes the matter close to heart and exiles himself; during his exile Mithothyn takes his place. That Frigg’s relationship with Odin is to be regarded, however, as primarily sexual, is to be seen not only from the etymology of her name but also from numerous other indications of an original association with fertility. A Dumézilian reading of the names of the days of the week, for example, will associate Frigg with fertility, following Týr and Odin for the first two aspects of the function of sover­ eignty and Thor for the function of force (Strutynski 1975), and some placename evidence appears to point in the same direction (see Jungner 1922

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and 1924, also Ekholm 1925), as does the long maintained custom in part of Germany of marrying on Friday (Helm 1953: 270-71). According to Ynglinga saga, ch. 3, when Odin is away, Frigg is possessed by his two brothers Vili and Vé and is then returned to Odin like some kind of street­ walker upon his return (the episode is often equated with that of Frigg, the statue, the slave, and Mithotyn in Gesta Danorum adduced above). Bas­ ing his insult on this episode, which he goes on to mention, Loki tells her in Lokasenna 26 that she has ever been vergiqrn (“eager for a man”). (Per­ haps, however, she was simply filling the role of consort of the chief god[s]). Frigga’s lust for gold in the passage from Gesta Danorum would also associate her with fertility. Indeed, Frigg has been identified in con­ nection with the matrones Isis and Nehallenia on the Domsburg altar (Cramer-Peeters 1972), an identification unthinkable outside the realm of fertility. Such an identification, however, offers a point of contact with the Baldr story, for the matrones attach to fertility through their function as nurtur­ e s . This function appears prominent in the second Merseburg Charm, where Frigg (in the Old High German form Friia) appears in connection with a group of other female healers. Also, Oddrúnargrátr 9 contains a formula apparently associated with a difficult childbirth: Svá hiálpi þér hollar vættir, Frigg oc Freyia oc fleiri goð, sem þú feldir mér får af hQndom. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 235.] May friendly spirits help you, Frigg and Freyja and yet more gods, as you deflected danger from me. In most of her appearances in eddic poetry, however, Frigg is wife (Vafþrúðnismál 1^4) and mother (the references to Baldr in Vqluspá and Baldrs draumar). At the cataclysm of RagnarQk both roles are reflected when Hlin’s (Frigg’s) second sorrow occurs as Odin goes off to meet and be devoured by the wolf (Vqluspá 53); surely her first sorrow was the loss of Baldr. Saxo’s Balderus is immune to weapons, but no explanation for this im­ munity is forthcoming. Høtherus has a cloak of invulnerability given him by three forest maidens, and another set of three serve up special snakeflavored food that increases Baldr’s strength. In these groups of females we surely see the functional role Frigg plays in the Norse versions, and if there is a link it is to be sought in the aspect of fertility that would logi­ cally accompany food and perhaps also groups of women; here we might think of the matrones and even the hypothetical inclusion of Frigg in one group of three of them. Saxo has, of course, already dispatched Frigga, after her indiscretions with the statue and servant in book 1, and she cannot there­ fore be the mother of Balderus, who was conceived in secret (Olrik &

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Ræder, ed. 1931: 64), but even so it seems that the insistence on Frigg’s role in the Norse sources may reveal a special adaptation of the myth there. Baldr’s immunity to weapons offers the kernel of one of the oddest im­ ages in Gylfaginning, as the æsir gathered at assemblies fling weapons at Baldr, hack at him and throw stones, all for his and their amusement (“til skemtun Baldrs ok ásanna”). The reputation of this literature for violence notwithstanding, skemtun is for the most part associated with verbal en­ tertainment - reciting poetry, recounting sagas - and there is a special poignancy that in the house ruled by Odin, god of verbal skills, his one legitimate son and the rest of his followers amuse themselves with a dumb mime of manslaughter. “En hvat sem at var gQrt, sakaði hann ekki, ok þótti þetta Qllom mikill frami” (normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 64) (“and whatever was tried, it did not wound him, and that seemed to all a great cause of fame;” alt. “and to all there seemed great courage in that”). In a culture that prized skills verbal and martial, the heir of the king and queen stands silent and gains renown as weapons and stones bounce off of him, and he does so, apparently, whenever the æsir assemble. This ad­ vances his fame or demonstrates his courage, despite the fact that he con­ tributes nothing but the target. Invulnerability, especially with a degree of weakness, has fascinated lis­ teners, readers, and viewers in characters ranging from Achilles to Super­ man, and in Sigurðr the dragon slayer the Norsemen had their own exam­ ple; but all of these heroes are, unlike Baldr, active in fighting against their enemies. Baldr’s strange passivity has led people to look for all sorts of explanations: Christian legends (Bugge 1889b: 10, 19-20), fertility cult (Neckel 1920: 172), initiation ritual (de Vries 1955), introduction of “a more spectacular and romantic” Scandinavian motif into an original IndoEuropean story of gaming among the gods (Dumézil 1973a: 63), and so on. The fact that Baldr demonstrates his invulnerability at þingum (“at as­ semblies”) does suggest some kind of ritual context, and perhaps this re­ ally is one of those very rare instances in which medieval Icelanders pre­ serve a reminiscence of a pagan ritual. Even if that is so, however, we must recall that by the time of its recording in Snorri it would have been com­ pletely cut off from its original religious context. What Snorri would have known, from the sagas, is the duel, where contestants trade blows in a rit­ ually enclosed space, but here there is no exchange, and the charade is taken up repeatedly at different assemblies, thereby voiding the ability of the duel to resolve a conflict. Friedrich von der Leyen (1899: 20) drew attention to a possible parallel with the einherjar, who fight repeatedly, but it does not fit Baldr’s situation well (Lorenz 1984: 558); nor does the Hjaðningavíg. I am inclined to regard the image as a product of Snorri’s imagination, since it allows the free flinging of weapons in a place where weapons are ordinarily interdicted. Gangleri must have been impressed when he was told it.

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It does, however, indubitably provide the appearance of conflict. There is a certain contradiction here: the æsir, who were so upset by Baldr’s dreams of dying that they called a meeting to work out a remedy, now act out a scene of conflict among themselves, and conflict in this mythology was solved mostly by killing (as it was to some extent as well in the me­ dieval Iceland that continued to consume the mythology). The æsir laugh at death, but the joke is on them. Real conflict enters the text at this point, when Snorri writes: En er þetta sá Loki Laufeyjarson, þá líkaði honum illa, er Baldr sakaði ekki. [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 64.] And when Loki Laufeyjarson saw this, it displeased him, when Baldr was not harmed. Modern readers sometimes think of Loki as being jealous at Baldr’s in­ vulnerability, but the text only says that he is displeased, and it is impos­ sible to discern whether he has always wished Baldr ill or only now gives way to such feelings. The supposed unanimity of the æsir (among whom, according to Snorri, Loki was also numbered) has been shattered. A lack of or failed unanimity is one of the major touchstones of Snorri’s myth of Baldr’s death, for it turns up not only in the oaths but also in the one old woman at the end who will not weep Baldr from Hel (de Vries 1955). Loki is a figure of staggering complexity who has excited as much com­ ment as any figure in the mythology except perhaps Odin. He has been treated from the point of view of folklore (e.g., Celander 1910, Olrik 1908, 1909b, 1911, Rooth 1961), philology (e.g., Gras 1931, de Vries 1933, 1959, Schneider 1938), and the history of religion (e.g., Ström 1950, Dumézil 1948, 1959, 1986 - three ruminations on the same topic - , Drobin 1968, Schjødt 1981a), and the results vary so widely that there is still no real agreement. In the most recent treatment, for example, the linguist Anatoly Liberman (1992) finds that Loki has to do with beginnings and endings. The multiple problems of Loki have largely to do with his origin and history; within the mythology, his attributes and actions are fairly clear. When he introduced Loki, Snorri offered a summary of this enigmatic fig­ ure that would be hard to improve on. Sá er enn talðr með ásum, er sumir kalia rógbera ásanna ok frumkveða flærðanna ok vQmm allra goða ok manna, sá er nefndr Loki eða Loptr, sonr Fárbauta jQtuns. Móðir hans er Laufey eða Nál, brœðr hans eru þeir Býleistr ok Helblindi. Loki er fríðr ok fagr sýnum, illr í skaplyndi, mjQk fiQlbreytinn at háttum. Hann hafði þá speki um framm aðra menn, er slœgð heitir, ok vélar til allra hluta. Hann kom ásum jafnan í füllt vandræði, ok opt ley sti hann þá með vélræðum. [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 34.] That one too is numbered among the æsir whom some call the slander­ er of the æsir and originator of deceptions and a stain of the æsir and

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humans, Loki or Loptr, the son of the jQtunn Fárbauti. His mother is Laufey or Nál, and his brothers are Býleistr and Helblindi. Loki is fair and handsome in appearance, bad of mind, very changeable in his ways. He had that form of wisdom beyond other men, which is called cun­ ning, and he uses tricks in everything. He constantly brought the æsir into great difficulty, and often he rescued them with deceits. When Snorri writes that Loki is also numbered among the æsir, he must mean that somehow Loki is not a true áss or once was not an áss, and the explanation is forthcoming in his genealogy: Loki is the son of the jQtunn Fárbauti, and indeed sonr Farbauta is found apparently as a Loki kenning in Þjóðolfr of Hvin’s Haustlqng 5 and in Úlfr Uggason’s Húsdrápa 2. De­ monstrably, no other member of the æsir has a jQtunn father (although many have jQtunn mothers). Of Loki’s brothers, only Býleistr is known outside of Snorra edda, in the kenning Býleifs bróðir (“brother of Býleifr”) in Vqluspá 5 1 and Hyndluljóð 40. Neither of the references is a happy one: in the first, Loki is leading the forces of chaos at RagnarQk, and in the sec­ ond the poet comments on Loki’s evil offspring. In these contexts it would make sense to use a kenning stressing Loki’s affiliation with the jQtnar; for although Loki may be numbered among the æsir, there is no reason to think that Býleistr is. As a brother of Loki, Helblindi is unknown outside of Snorra Edda, unless he is Odin, Loki’s blood-brother (a point I shall address shortly); Helblindi occurs in the epiphanal list of Odin names in Grímnismál 46 in Codex Regius, but the corresponding passage in AM 748 I 4to has Herblindr. Concerning Loki’s mother, too, the evidence is diffi­ cult. Laufey, or Nál, is a figure (or figures) with no role other than bear­ ing Loki. The author of Sqrla þáttr in the Great Saga of Óláfr Tryggvason in Flateyjarbók makes no distinction between Fárbauti and Laufey, simply calling them karl and kerling (“old man” and “old woman” respectively), and this would suggest that both were jQtnar. E. N. Setälä (1912: 210-64) derives from Laufey the crone Louhi, who in Kalevala presides over Pohjola, a spatial equivalent to jQtunheimar in Scandinavian mythology, and who works against the interests of the Karelian heroes; Axel Olrik (1912) agreed with this derivation. However, none of the proposed etymologies for Laufey makes her sound threatening, and all seem to be more applica­ ble to a goddess than to a creature of chaos (cf. de Vries 1961 347 s.v.; Simek 1984a: 229 s.v.). Loki’s use of the matronymic Laufeyjarson instead of the perhaps expected patronymic Fárbautason is suggestive, for such us­ age ordinarily indicates an absent or irredeemable father. Laufey may just have been less threatening (not likely, given the misogyny of the æsir) than her mate, or she may have been one of the æsir. The evidence is equivocal - little short of silent and analysis of kinship structures cannot help. Kinship analysis is of no use here because of a curious quirk regarding kin reckoning in the mythology, as opposed to what we must presume to

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have been the social reality both in medieval Iceland and in Viking times as well. Medieval Iceland reckoned kin bilaterally, with privileging of ag­ natic connections in some contexts (Hastrup 1985: 70-104, Miller 1990: 139-78), and the old assumption that a unilineal, clan system of German­ ic times gave way to a later bilateral system has been disputed by David Gaunt (1983: 186-210) and Alexander C. Murray (1983); Gaunt calls it “the myth of the kindred society,” and Murray too argues that the system was bilateral from the start (cf. Meinhard 1975). In fact, probably several systems obtained for different purposes: “Early Scandinavian kinship was patrilineal as well as matrilineal and cognatic in a well-structured and non­ contradictory way” (Vestergaard 1988: 190). In the mythology, however, what seems to matter is patriliny only, for Odin gets numerous sons on giantesses who clearly are to be numbered among the æsir. An enumera­ tion of these figures could start with Thor (son of jQrð or earth, a chthonic figure not connected with the æsir), but in the mythological present they would include such vengeance figures as Víðarr and Váli. Furthermore, the affinal relationships created by these relationships, or more important, the marriages between NjQrðr and Skaði and Freyr and Gerðr, are of no im­ portance. Even, then, if Loki’s mother Laufey were one of the æsir, in the mythology he would have to be reckoned a jQtunn. Loki’s many roles in the mythology often appear to be contradictory, for as Snorri says, sometimes he helps the æsir, sometimes he harms them. Indeed, he often does both in the same narrative: he causes Iðunn to be lost and then retrieves her, during the course of which a powerful jQtunn loses his life; he puts Freyja and the sun and moon (markers of time) at risk through his deal with the master builder of the wall of Ásgarðr and then prevents the master builder from fulfilling his half of the deal, during the course of which he bears Sleipnir and the giant is killed; he arranges for the dwarfen creation of great treasures of the gods but causes Thor’s hammer to have a short handle. Eilífr Goðrúnarson’s Þórsdrápa suggests that it was Loki who dispatched Thor to Geirrpðr, where he was humiliat­ ed and in peril, but where he slew more jQtnar, male and female. Some­ times only one aspect stands out: Loki accompanies Thor on his visit to Útgarða-Loki and seems to do his best to help; but he will fight with the forces of evil at RagnarQk and, of course, he was responsible for the de­ mise and permanent removal of Baldr and even boasted about it. Loki’s offspring reflect his duality. I have already mentioned his siring of three monsters on Angrboða, and it is not easy to see anything good about that relationship. It is, however, cosmogonic in the sense that it pro­ vides identities to - rulers of - two of the other worlds, one on each axis: the Midgard serpent sits coiled in the oceans outside the disk on the hori­ zontal axis where humans (and the æsir) live, and Hel presides over the world down the vertical axis whither humans (and some æsir. like Baldr)

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migrate after death. The wolf has a more temporal rather than spatial as­ signment: he rends Týr’s arm from his body to make the god one-armed at the beginning of time and then waits for the end of time, when he will destroy Odin, who shares with Tyr the function of sovereignty in the my­ thology. Cosmogony is as a rule a task of the æsir, not of the jQtnar, and thus Loki’s role here may be somewhat ambiguous. In contrast to his mon­ ster children with the giantess Angrboða, however, he also has what ap­ pear to be perfectly ordinary children as a result of a perfectly ordinary marriage (perfectly ordinary in the mythology at any rate) to Sigyn. Þjóðolfr of Hvin calls Loki the “cargo of the arms of Sigyn” in Haustlqng, so this is no shotgun wedding arranged by Snorri. The form cited in this kenning makes clear the usual understanding of the name as a compound of sigr (“victory”) and vin[r] (“friend”), which is a reasonable name for a god­ dess; and Snorri includes her in various catalogues of the ásynjur. With Loki she has a son named Nari or Narfi, according to Snorri, and later he adds a son Váli (this is confusing), who also appears in Vqluspá 34. There is no reason to imagine that these sons are anything other than ordinary æsir of the younger generation; at least they are, unlike their half-brothers and half-sister, sufficiently well behaved to have excited no comment in the mythology until their one moment arrives, in the scene of the binding of Loki. Þjóðolfr of Hvin once made a kenning for Hel that combined good and bad sons: “jodis ulfs ok Narfa” (“sister of the wolf and of Narfi”) (Ynglingatal 7). This kenning seems to verify Narfi as a son of Loki, but it leaves tantalizingly open the qualities of Narfi. In any case, like Odin, Loki has had sexual relationships with females from inside and outside the cir­ cle of the æsir, but unlike Odin, his children from outside the circle are disasters. At the very beginning of his introduction of Loki, Snorri calls him “slan­ derer of the æsir and originator of deceptions and a stain of the æsir and humans.” Who called him by these kennings is not clear, since they do not turn up in poetry or for that matter in prose either. Anne Holtsmark (1964b: 65-68) constructed a clever but not very convincing argument to the effect that Snorri had Satan in mind here when he used these expres­ sions, as part of his deliberate agenda of euhemerization. Thus Snorri would, according to Holtsmark, have passed along the myths fairly intact but used this occasion of the introduction of the character, and a few other asides, to connect him with Satan. The strongest part of the argument in­ volves the kenning frumkveði flœrðanna, since the word flœrð has a very strong presence in religious literature. But even if Holtsmark is correct about this passage, Snorri’s view of Loki here may not prove helpful to understanding his presentation of the Baldr myth, and the fact remains that these kennings fit Loki rather well. Everyone agrees that he is the slan­ derer of the gods in Lokasenna; deception is his strong suit, and he hardly

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brings honor on the æsir and on humans. And the rest of Snorri’s descrip­ tion of Loki, which follows the brief remarks on his kin, are equally on the mark. The first component of the compound rógberi can mean “strife” as well as “slander,” and the one who bears strife is Odin - as Loki reminds him in Lokasenna 22. Odin too might be regarded as something of a frumkveði, given his claim to great age and his verbal skills, and if one regards gen­ der sliding, unbridled sexuality, necromancy and similar activities as hon­ or-besmirching, he might even be taken for a blot on gods and men - as his banishment following the begetting of Bous in Saxo certainly suggests. I am not suggesting by any means that Loki and Odin are one and the same, merely that their characters overlap at several key points. The author of Sqrla þáttr had in mind a hierarchical relationship between the two, for he states that Loki came to Ásgarðr and became Odin’s man. An impor­ tant piece of poetic evidence, however, namely Lokasenna 9, contradicts the hierarchical nature of the relationship (which would obtain between áss and jQtunn) and suggests instead the fictional kin relationship of bloodbrotherhood: Mantu þat, Óðinn, er við í árdaga blendom blóði saman; q I ví bergia léztu eigi mundo, nema ocr væri báðom borit. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 98.] Recall, Odin, that in days of yore we two mixed our blood together; you said you would never taste beer unless it were brought before both of us. Blood-brotherhood was one of a number of fictive kinship relationships, and indeed the term fóstbróðir (“foster brother”) could be used of blood brothers as well as of foster brothers; the most famous case is that of the foster brothers Þormóðr and Þorgeirr whose relationship gave Fóstbrœðra saga its name. The ritual they used to achieve blood-brotherhood is found in ch. 2, couched in a language of clerical apology: they would give way to no man and thought more of success in this world than glory in the next, and therefore they resolved to take oaths that whoever survived the other would avenge him. This they did, the author reports, even though they were called Christians; but Christianity was young and many sparks of pagan­ ism still smoldered. Hafði sú siðvenja verit hQfð frægra manna, þeira er þat lQgmál settu sin á milli, at så skyldi annars hefna, er lengr lifði, þá skyldu þeir ganga undir þrjú jarðarmen, ok var þat eiðr þeira. Sá leikr var á þá lund, at rista skyldi þrjár torfur ór jQrðu langar; þeira endar skyldu allir fastir i jQrðu ok heimta upp lykkjurnar, svå at menn mætti ganga undir. Þann

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leik frQmðu þeir Þormóðr ok Þorgeirr í sínum fastmælum. [Björn K. Þorolfsson & Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1943: 125.] It has been the custom of famous men who established that legal agree­ ment between themselves, that the one who lived longer should avenge the other, then they were to go under three strips of turf, and that was their oath. The activity was this way, that three long turfs were to be cut from the earth; all their ends were to be fast in the earth and open­ ings were to be made so that men might go underneath them. Þormóðr and Þorgeirr did this in their vows. Gisla saga ch. 6 has a more complex account, for it involves four men, not two, and although it involves only one piece of turf, not three, it adds an aspect that is directly relevant to Loki and Odin. After hearing a proph­ ecy that they are to fall out within three years, the four agree to swear blood brotherhood. Ganga nú út í Eyrarhválsodda ok rísta þar upp ór jQrðu jarðarmen, svá at báðir endar váru fastir í jQrðu, ok settu þar undir málaspjót, þat er maðr mátti taka hendi sinni til geimagla. Þeir skyldu þar fjórir undir gan­ ga, Þorgrímr, Gísli, Þorkell ok Vésteinn. Ok nú vekja þeir sér blóð ok láta renna saman dreyra sinn í þeiri moldu, er upp var skorin undan jarðarmeninu, ok hrœra saman allt, moldina ok blóðit; en síðan fellu þeir allir á kné ok sverja þann eið, at hverr skal annars hefna sem bróður síns, ok nefna q11 goðin í vitni. [Björn K. Þorolfsson & Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1943: 22-23.] They go now out onto Eyrarhválsoddi and there they cut out of the earth a strip of turf, such that both ends were attached to the ground, and un­ der it they put a spear such that a man might reach up to the nails at the head. The four of them were to go under there, Þorgrímr, Gísli, Þorkell and Vésteinn. And now they draw blood from themselves and let their blood run together in the earth that was cut from under the strip of turf, and they blend it all together, the earth and the blood; and then they all fell to their knees and swore that oath, that each should avenge the other like his brother, and they name all the gods in witness. Taken together and regarded from the point of view of the world view expressed in Scandinavian mythology, these descriptions of the blood broth­ er ceremony (the only ones extant, although there are numerous references to the relationship), suggest a ritual in which the participants create a mini­ cosmos with a turf “sky” that inverts the real world, in a parallel to the inversion of status that temporarily obtains and to the symbolic death the participants undergo (de Vries 1928-29). This mini-cosmos surrounds a central pillar, the spear holding up the turf. The spear is reminiscent of the world tree but different in that it is dead, worked wood as opposed to living natural wood, another sign of ritual inversion. In this mini-cosmos the participants mingle their blood in the earth, thus suggesting a relation­ ship that goes back, like that of a real family (de Vries 1928-29), to an­ cestors buried in the earth. Thereafter they emerge, thus suggesting the birth

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of twins from a bloody womb (and further echoing the birth of Thor from earth?). Then - the key point - they swear oaths to avenge one another as if they were brothers. It is to be noted that the relationship is entered into specifically in the context of blood feud, in which vengeance plays a ma­ jor role, and that its aim can be not only to provide an avenger (both cas­ es) but also to avert discord (Gisla saga). Several points need to be stressed about this blood-brother relationship, which is the only plausible explanation for the inclusion of Loki among the æsir despite his jQtunn parentage. Loki and Odin will have conducted the ritual at the dawn of time, during the foundation period when the cos­ mos assumed its shape and things were made the way they are, just as the two rituals in the sagas described above occur at very early stages of the narratives in which they are embedded. Curiously, such a ritual would bind Odin and Loki in a way connected to the essence of it, namely the passing under the turf, which elsewhere (Vatnsdœla saga ch. 33, references else­ where) is undertaken to show humility. William Ian Miller (1988) shows how humiliation and the swearing of blood-brotherhood can both be sub­ sumed under notions of status adjustment and redefinition and relates both to the ordeal of turf, in which the proband passes under a strip of turf and must do so without jarring the pole holding it up. In this broader context, there is something slightly shameful about the ritual a medieval Icelander reader or listener would have assumed that Odin and Loki underwent. Its inversions might perhaps call to mind the sexual inversions shared by Odin and Loki. Indeed, it is possible that the humiliation involved in passing under the turf in Vatnsdœla saga involved anal insult (so Clunies Ross 1973), which would accord with accusations of ergi directed at both Loki and Odin. In the extant examples of blood-brotherhood the participants become fic­ ti ve brothers so as to assume obligations of vengeance on each other’s be­ half, and an argument that the contrary obtained in the case of Odin and Loki would have the burden of proof upon it. Loki characteristically omits reference to this aspect of a blood-brotherhood relationship when he men­ tions it in Lokasenna, which given the circumstances was probably a good strategy. Instead he mentions that they will always drink beer together, or more accurately, that Odin will not drink beer without Loki. As an alco­ holic beverage beer is by nature connected with Odin, who according to Ynglinga saga lives by wine alone,4 and it is in fact a necessity for the kind of wisdom performance in which Odin so frequently indulges in the

4 Wine here is probably metonymic for all intoxicating drink and may also have to do with Snorri’s euhemerization of Odin as an emigrant from the sunny and vinous Med­ iterranean shores and in Sweden a member of the monied class with access to im­ ported delights.

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mythology. In Grímnismál, Vafþrúðnismál, and here too in Lokasenna, the traveler arrives thirsty and demands beer; getting it, he spouts wisdom. What Loki is in effect saying is that he has a right to be present when Odin performs wisdom, which in turn must mean that Odin has few secrets from Loki. Loki’s behavior is indeed Odinic in the Baldr myth. To assuage his an­ ger at the sight of Baldr unharmed in the ring of admiring warriors fling­ ing sticks and stones at him, Loki changes his shape and gender and goes off for a chat with Frigg - just as, for example, Othinus travels off to se­ duce Rinda in Saxo’s account of the siring of the avenger Bous and achieves his goal in part by cross dressing. Loki’s desire with Frigg is not sexual, as is Othinus’s with Rinda, but he approaches Frigg in her role as mother, and just as Othinus takes Rinda’s maidenhead, so Loki is to take Frigg’s son. When the disguised Loki arrives, somehow Frigg does not know (or pre­ tends not to know) what is going on at the þing, and she asks for informa­ tion. This strange request, which has elicited little comment in the vast Baldr literature,5 probably indicates that the activities at the þing take place in the public arena, to which females like Frigg ordinarily do not have ac­ cess. The woman Loki impersonates will presumably have seen them in the course of her travels. However, Frigg’s query turns the encounter be­ tween Loki and Frigg into a dialogue, a question and answer session rath­ er like an abbreviated contest of wisdom. Seen in that light, Loki plays the Odin role, arriving as he does in disguise and answering the first ques­ tion, and Frigg plays the role of the seeress, unwillingly revealing infor­ mation that her adversary needs, and indeed the highly alliterative nature of the language in this dialogue suggests either an underlying eddic poem or a Snorronic desire to have his characters talk as though they were in one. Just as Odin learns from the seeress Angrboða, Loki’s mate, the de­ tails of the death, killer, and avenger of Baldr, so Loki learns from Frigg, Odin’s mate, the details to be used for the slaying of Baldr. Indeed, the parallel runs even deeper, for just as Loki will depose Odin’s son by his interlocutor, Frigg, so Odin has deposed three of Loki’s offspring with his interlocutor, Angrboða, by binding the wolf, casting the Midgard serpent into the sea, and banishing Hel to preside over the realm of the dead. As the focus of these three, especially the sons, is on the end of the world, we may wonder whether Baldr’s focus, too, is there.

5 Polomé (1970: 80) suggests that Frigg would be out o f place at the initiation ritual he believes underlies the myth: “this is a strictly male affair; no women are allowed, a fact that excludes the possibility of a manifestation of a vegetation cult, which would not fit with the activity of the Aesir at the Thing meeting either.”

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Frigg now provides the fatal information: “Vex viðar-teinungr einn fyrir vestan ValhQll: sá er mistilteinn kallaðr; sá þótti mér ungr at krefja eiðsins.” [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 64.] A solitary sprig of wood grows to the west of ValhQll. It is called mis­ tilteinn (“mistletoe”). It seemed young to me to ask for an oath. The mistletoe is one of the most exotic aspects of the myth of Baldr in the medieval Icelandic sources, and it has elicited considerable discussion (ably summarized in Lorenz 1984: 560-62). The more or less modem de­ bate has centered as usual on origins: is the plant mistletoe the original weapon (Gras 1932, Boberg 1943), or is it the sword Saxo has Høtherus use to kill Baldr (Hvidtfeldt 1941), and in either case, what is the relation­ ship of the sword-heiti mistilteinn (þul. IV.1.3) and the swords bearing this name in Hervarar saga and Hrómundar saga Greipsonar to the weapon in the Baldr myth? Those who would argue for the position of mistletoe in some original (or at least very much older) version of the myth can point to Vqluspá 31-32. 31. Ec sá Baldri, blóðgom tivor, Óðins barni, ørlQg fólgin; stóð um vaxinn, vQ llom hæri, miór oc miQc fagr, mistilteinn. 32. Varð af þeim meiði, er mær sýndiz, harmflaug hættlig, HQÖr nam scióta; Baldrs bróðir var of borinn snemma, sá nam Óðins sonr einnættr vega. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 7-8.] 31.1 saw for Baldr, for the bloody god, for the child of Odin, a hidden fate; there stood full grown, higher than the fields, slender and very beautiful, the mistletoe. 32. From that tree, which seemed slender, came a deadly damaging projectile; HQÖr threw it; Baldr’s brother was born early, the one who killed at the age of one night. Although there are botanical misunderstandings here (mistletoe hardly grows taller than the fields, and it is not a tree), it is plain that the poet has in mind something from the plant kingdom. Mistletoe does not, of course, grow on treeless Iceland, but it is important to recall that the story does not take place there, but rather, in the euhemerism of Snorra Edda, somewhere between Asia and Scandinavia. Gylfi, the king of Sweden, would have known it, as would Hár, who delivers the entire Baldr story. Snorri too would have known mistletoe from his travels to Scandinavia, as might some of his audience. Even so, one may agree with Gabriel Turville-Petre (1964: 116): “[t]he Icelanders did not know this plant, and they could believe that a deadly shaft was made of it.”

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For those scholars who see the primacy of the plant, its evergreen char­ acteristics and apparent lack of roots are a plus, but insofar as these char­ acteristics have affected the use of the plant in folklore, they have allowed it to confer health and good fortune, and that is a minus (Kabell 1968). It is in fact difficult to imagine how exactly mistletoe when thrown could penetrate any human body, or what a dart or spear made of mistletoe would look like, but for de Vries (1955) this too was a plus, since it presented a parallel to the reed used in the pretended sacrifice of King Vikarr in Gautreks saga. What this debate appears to boil down to is whether the inter­ preter assigns the Baldr story ultimately to myth or heroic legend: if myth, then mistletoe the plant, with its possible connections to fertility and ritu­ al; if heroic legend, then the sword, which like so many named swords fi­ nally cuts down the hero in battle. But even this apparently reasonable di­ vision will not hold, since some scholars have argued for weapons other than swords (e.g., Detter 1894, who proposes Odin’s spear). Aage Kabell (1968) thought everyone was wrong, including Snorri, who failed to un­ derstand that the kenning viðar teinungr referred not to some plant but to the young HQÖr and concocted the entire mistletoe part of the story. For my part, I am satisfied that the mistletoe, as plant, fits “betwixt and be­ tween” ordinary classification and therefore had special status, a point noted by Rees and Rees (1961: 245-46) and reiterated by Lincoln (1982) and Dieterle (1986). Martin Puhvel (1972) drew attention to the mistletoe as one case of the deicidal otherworld weapon as a possible Indo-European theme in Germanic and Celtic myth. Then there is the method Loki uses to obtain the mistletoe. Snorri writes: Því næst hvarf konan á braut; en Loki tók mistiltein ok sleit upp ok gekk til þings. [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 64.] With that the woman turned away; Loki took the mistletoe and tore it free and went to the assembly. These lines seem quite clear to me, but several commentators have un­ derstood them to mean that Loki tore the mistletoe out of the earth, rather than off a host tree. As Lorenz laconically shows, by citing a student dic­ tionary, such a reading is unnecessary. He goes on to offer one of the more reasonable remarks about this whole tangled issue: Ob nun Snorri (und der Dichter der “VQluspá”) eine exakte Vorstellung von der Mistel hatte oder nicht, ist für den Mythos unwichtig; wichtig ist: Loki besorgt sich die für Baldr tödliche Waffe und geht auf das þing. [Lorenz 1984: 562.] There he finds HQÖr standing outside the ring of men, because he is blind. This is not HQÖr’s first appearance in Gylfaginning: he was intro­ duced in the catalogue of æsir, between Heimdallr and Víðarr, in the eighth position out of the twelve besides Odin enumerated by Hár.

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HQðr heitir einn ássinn; hann er blindr; ærit er hann sterkr, en vilja mundu goðin, at þenna ás þyrfti eigi at nefna, þvíat hans handa-verk munu lengi vera hQfð at minnum með goðum ok mQnnum. [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 33.] A certain áss is named Hqöl He is blind. He is quite strong enough, but the gods would wish that there was no need to name him, because the deeds of his hands will long be held among the things remembered among gods and men. Something of a guileless fool, Gylfi/Gangleri does not ask for further details about this áss whom the gods would rather leave unmentioned. Part of his genealogy may be inferred from Snorri’s remark to the effect that “son of Odin” is a valid HQÖr kenning, and HQÖr is listed among the sons of Odin in þul. 4e. The identity of his mother is left silent. In the context of Gylfaginning, the desire of the æsir to leave this fig­ ure unmentioned can only have to do with his slaying of Baldr, which com­ prises his sole action in Gylfaginning. The slaying is of course also men­ tioned in Vqluspá 32 and Baldrs draumar 9, and Baldrs bani (“killer of Baldr”) is, Snorri writes in Skáldskaparmál, an acceptable kenning for HQÖr, as are skjótandi mistilteins (“launcher of the mistletoe”) and Vála dolgr (“enemy of Vali”), both of which can only relate to the Baldr story as we know it from Snorri and eddic poetry. Also, Snorri lists Haðar dolgr (“enemy of HQÖr”) as a Baldr kenning in Skáldskaparmál Not much of Snorri’s introductory statement about HQÖr’s physical char­ acteristics is independently attested. In Skáldskaparmál, Snorri reports that HQÖr can be called blinda-áss, which I translated in ch. 1 as “god of blind­ ness,” but it might also be read as Blinda-áss, “god of Odin,” since there is evidence that Blindi may be an Odin name; Odin certainly took the name Gestumblindi in his riddling contest in Hervarar saga. The shared vision problems of Odin and his son HQÖr have invited some commentators, de Vries (1955) chief among them, to link the two, especially ritually; if the Baldr story has to do with Odinic ritual, HQÖr might well be a hypostasis or representation of his father. There is no evidence of a mythological link, however. HQÖr is really and truly blind, whereas Odin sacrificed an eye so as to be able see more clearly the important things. HQÖr is strong (this strength, although not mentioned explicitly anywhere else in Norse sources, might be surmised from HQÖr’s ability to kill someone with a limp plant); Odin is old and wise. HQÖr kills by throwing the mistletoe (not a real weap­ on) through his opponent; Odin paralyzes an opposing army by throwing his spear (a real weapon) over it. HQÖr allows himself to be tricked, with words; Odin uses words as a weapon against others. By contrast to the sparsely defined HQÖr, the Høtherus of Book ID of Gesta Danorum has a full set of rather unique characteristics. Explaining that the picture of Høtherus’s later years will gain both beauty and fullness if his early years are not passed over in silence, Saxo offers a rich portrait.

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Adolsecens collacteis ac coævis summa corporis firmitate præstabat. Ceterum ingenium eius crebrae dotaverant artes. Quippe natationis, ar­ cus caestuumque peritia nec non, quantamcumque ea ætas capere poter­ at, agilitate pollebat, haud minus exercitio quam viribus potens. Immat­ uram adhuc aetatem uberrimis animi beneficiis transscendebat. Nemo illo chelis aut lyrae scientior fuerat. Praeterea sistro ac barbito omnique fid­ ium modulatione callebat. Ad quoscumque volebat motus, variis modo­ rum generibus humanos impellebat affectus: gaudio, maestitia, misera­ tione vel odio mortales afficere noverat. Ita aurium voluptate aut horr rore animos implicare solebat. [Olrik & Raeder, ed. 1931: 63.] As a youth he was greatly superior to his foster siblings and those of his own age in strength of body. Otherwise numerous arts endowed his nature. He mastered certainly swimming, archery, boxing, and also was effortlessly capable at whatever his age permitted him to take on, hard­ ly less powerful in effort than in strength. Moreover he transcended his young age through the rich gifts of his soul. No one was more expert in the harp and verse than he. In addition, he excelled beyond everyone with the rattle and lyre and all plucking of strings. Through the various forms of his music he induced people to whatever motion of spirit he desired: he caused people to take on joy, melancholy, pity, and hatred. Thus through the ear he was in the habit of entangling souls in delight or horror. About all this paragon shares with poor HQÖr is his strength, mentioned in the very first part of the description. This strength is appropriate to what is usually taken as the etymology of the name HQÖr, which appears to be related to a well known word meaning “battle” that turns up in numerous compounds in the poetic vocabulary and onomastics of the older German­ ic languages: Old English heaðu-, Old High German hathu-lhadu-, Old Sax­ on hathu-. It is easily related to other words from the Indo-European lan­ guage family, despite a few quibbles over details (de Vries 1961: 278-79, s.v. hQÖ), and there is no reason to doubt that Hqðr (from Germanic *haþuz), originally meant “warrior” and might conceivably even have been understood as such by those familiar with the language of poetry, where Norse attests the simplex form hqð (“battle”). Although he spends his life in battle, like most of the kings in Saxo’s Gesta, however, Høtherus’s endowments seem rather more inclined to the artistic than the martial side. Consider the three deeds he carries through before openly joining battle with Baldr. First, at the suggestion of Gevarus, he travels to the north to obtain from the smith Mimingus the magic sword and ring. Although he pins the smith with his spear and gets what he wants from harsh and threatening words, all his strategy comes from Gevarus. On the way up he mopes about at night like some Werther pining for his Charlotte, but that may just be Saxo’s romantic insertion. The second epi­ sode involves a battle, but here again Høtherus follows the counsel of Ge­ varus, which is to cast no spear until the army of his opponent, Gelderus, has finished its first attack. Høtherus and his men stand safe under their

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shields as the spears rain down and then overrun the enemy, who have wholly depleted their arsenal. As he stands passively with his men, safe from the projectiles being flung at him, Høtherus certainly looks a lot like Baldr in Gylfaginning. Finally, in the third episode, Høtherus woos the daughter of the Finn King Buso on behalf of King Helgi of Hálogaland, whose rasping voice and inept pleading had previously caused him to be rejected. Here Høtherus triumphs by means of his beautiful voice and well chosen words, and at the end of the battle with Gelderus he wins over that defeated king with his eloquence as well. Thus again there is a direct ana­ logue to the Baldr of Gylfaginning, whom Snorri calls fegrst talaðr (“most well-spoken”) of the æsir. Høtherus’s genealogy connects him with figures from legendary prehis­ tory, known from eddic poetry and the fornaldarsögur Athislus, his brother, appears to be identical with the Swedish king Aðils, given Saxo’s state­ ment to the effect that Athislus ruled Sweden and died of an alcohol over­ dose (quoting Ynglinga tal, 21-22, Snorri has Aðils thrown from a horse while riding in the disarsalr, Ynglinga saga, ch. 29; Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, ed. 1941: vol. 1, 56-59). However, Aðils’s genealogy is quite different from that of Athislus. It is worth stressing that Høtherus appears as the brother of Athisl/Aðils only in Gesta Danorum and is otherwise unknown in the Danish/Swedish legendary prehistory (assuming no connection with Hæðcyn in Beowulf, who will be discussed below). In Gesta Danorum, then, Høtherus assumes a number of the character­ istics of Baldr in the Norse sources (cf. Dumézil 1961): mate of Nanna, standing invulnerable under a rain of weapons, eloquent; he even has a cloak of invulnerability which he wears in battle. Like Baldr, too, he finds his actions limited to a single story. He is also, like Baldr - and Saxo stress­ es this - a legitimate king; that is, he is descended directly from a king and rules Denmark not only because of his virtues but also because it is his due (and like a good king he holds forth from atop a mound [Olrik 1909a, Lehmann 1910 and 1912], a topos that may even have survived into Christian poetry [Weber 1970]). Finally, one senses an essential goodness to Høtherus (in contrast to Baldr the good, who never has to chance to live up to his nickname). Unlike either Baldr or HQÖr, however, Høtherus has a foster relationship with a clever counselor (Gevarus) and direct access to chthonic females who inform and advise him; I leave aside his remark­ able musical talents, which no one, sad to say, reliably displays in any Norse source, except for the unaccompanied singing of work songs and incantations (Gade 1994). It is a long way from the paragon in Saxo to the glum figure whom Loki finds standing outside the ring of men at the assembly, honoring Baldr by flinging weapons at him. When Loki asks him why he is not participating, HQÖr responds that he is blind (as Snorri has just reminded his readers),

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and that he is weaponless - an odd dilemma considering that just about anything that can be thrown would do in this case. Loki returns to the cu­ rious honor theme in tricking HQÖr: “gerðu þó i liking annara manna ok veit Baldr sœmð sem aðrir menn; ek mun visa þér til, hvar hann stendr; skjót at honum vendi þessum.” [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 64.] “Behave in the likeness of other men and grant honor to Baldr as other men do; I will show you where he is standing; throw this stick at him.” There is something slightly mocking about the way Loki first addresses HQÖr, as though even if HQÖr does what the others are doing he will only imitate them, never be one of them - always will be outside of their closed circle. Baldr is at the center of the ring, so only someone completely out­ side it would need to be shown where Baldr is standing. HQÖr’s status as outsider likens somewhat that of Loki. When we read this passage we often think of Loki guiding HQÖr’s hand, but in fact all Loki has done is to point out the location of the target and provide the weapon. HQÖr may be deaf as well as blind, since he does not react when Loki refers to the projectile he should use with the word vqndr (“stick, switch”), which hardly bears comparison, we must assume, with whatever else the æsir are flinging at Baldr (we know about the stones, and since some of them are hacking at him, they must be using conven­ tional weapons). To the best of my knowledge, vqndr alone never refers to any weapon; indeed, when a sword bites “no better than a vqndr” (Fritzner 1973: vol. 3, 985, s.v.), proverbial usage seems close at hand. To be sure, when Skirnir threatens Gerðr with a tams-vqndr (“taming-stick”) in Skírnismál 26 he appears to be referring to the sword he mentioned in the previous stanza, which he used, he says, to slay her father, but tamsvqndr may well be a kenning. Indeed, vqndr is very common as a base word in sword kennings, such as wound-stick, edge-stick, and the like, and it al­ most seems that Loki is deliberately leaving the kenning incomplete, draw­ ing on the power of language that he shares, like his blood-brotherhood, with Odin. As in the sagas, the actual killing is almost an anticlimax. HQÖr tók mistiltein ok skaut at Baldri at tilvisun Loka; flaug skotit i gQgnum hann, ok fell hann dauðr til jarðar, ok hefir þat mest óhapp verit unnit með goðum ok mQnnum. [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 64.] HQÖr took the mistletoe and threw it at Baldr at Loki’s direction. The shot went through Baldr, and he fell dead to the ground, and the great­ est misfortune among gods and men was done. Whether the Icelanders misunderstood the nature of mistletoe, or it be­ came a weapon, like the reed that killed King Vikarr, or HQÖr simply threw

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the sprig with supernatural force, Baldr’s fall has a martial ring to it. Baldr’s body has been pierced with a weapon, like that of a warrior, a dueler, or an ambush victim. Saxo, too, allows the actual encounter between the two deadly antagonists to proceed with considerable speed and an uncharac­ teristic lack of detail: returning from a meeting with forest-maidens who prepare Baldr’s magic food (a snake-infested dish that some have related to the vengeance taken on Loki according to Gylfaginning), Høtherus en­ counters Baldr and wounds him in the side; Baldr falls half-dead to the earth. Snorri moves quickly along to the consequences and aftermath of Baldr’s slaying, which begin with a judgmental statement about the action; it was mest ohapp (“the greatest misfortune”), and cosmic, for it affected gods and men, that is, the positive creatures in the full universe. The word ohapp is a typically Norse negated form: “un-luck,” if one uses “luck” to render (inadequately) the reversed noun happ. Ohapp often brings with it the no­ tion of actions that are fated, that occur despite the best intentions of the luckless devil who carries them out (cf. the debate on auðna, gipta, gœfa, and hamingja, in Baetke 1951, Lönnroth 1963-64, Hallberg 1966, Lönnroth 1968, Ejerfeldt 1969-70, Lönnroth 1976: 125-28), and that sense is certainly appropriate in this case. However, Snorri’s use of the term earli­ er in Gylfaginning throws some additional light on the “un-luck” that attends the slaying of Baldr. He has just introduced Loki’s three children by Angrboða - the wolf, the serpent, and Hel. En er goðin vissu til, at þessi þjrú systkin fœddusk upp i jQtunheimum ok goðin rQkðu til spádóma, at af systkinum þessum myndi þeim mikit óhapp standa, ok þótti Qllum illz af væni, fyrst af móðerni ok enn verrra af faðerni, þá sendi AlfQðr til goðin at taka bQmin ok færa sér. [Nor­ malized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 34.] And when the gods learned that these three children had grown up in jQtunheimar and the gods learned through prophecy that from this brood great “un-luck” would arise for them, and the worst seemed to be in the offing for them, first from the mother’s side and yet worse from the fa­ ther’s, then AlfQðr sent the gods to seize the children and transport them to him. Odin then assigns to these creatures their places in the mythic present: he casts the serpent into the sea and sends Hel to preside over the realm of the dead; the story of the binding of the wolf follows. What óhapp did the gods learn of through prophecy? For the male offspring, we have acts in the mythic present and at RagnarQk: the wolf will maim Týr and kill Odin, and the serpent will threaten Thor and finally kill him. Hel, it seems, will play host to Baldr and such heroes as do not come to ValhQll. Thus the óhapp divined when Loki mates with the ogress becomes the ohapp that has happened when Baldr is slain (and as the myth plays itself out, it

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becomes the óhapp reinforced when creation fails to weep Baldr away from Hel). Perhaps Baldr’s dreams had their parallel in the prophecies of ill fate obtained by the gods about Loki’s evil children with the ogress. Further­ more, repetition of the term óhapp and the drawing together of the two myths reveals the parallelism I discussed above between Odin’s treatment of the children of Loki and Angrboða and Loki’s treatment of the child of Odin and Frigg. Snorri’s description of the reaction to Baldr’s slaying goes on: Þá er Baldr var fallinn, þá fellusk Qllum ásum orðtQk ok svå hendr at taka til hans, ok så hverr til annars, ok våru allir með einum hug til þess, er unnit hafði verkit, en engi mátti hefna; þat var svá mikill griðastaðr; en þá er æsirnir freistuðu at mæla þá var hitt þó fyrr, at gråtrinn kom imp, svá at engi mátti QÖrum segja með orðunum frá sínum harmi; en Oðinn bar þeim mun verst þenna skaða, sem hann kunni mesta skyn, hversu mikil aftaka ok missa ásunum var í fráfalli Baldrs. [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 64-65.] When Baldr had fallen, then the æsir lost use of speech and also of their hands to reach out to him, and each looked at the other, and they were all of a single mind concerning who had done the deed, but none could take vengeance, so great was the place of sanctuary; and when the æsir tried to speak it happened instead that weeping intervened, so that no one could tell the others in words of his sorrow; but Odin took this in­ jury the worse, insofar as he understood best, what a great loss and dep­ rivation to the æsir there was in the death of Baldr. The gods are paralyzed. It is as though the mistletoe turned not into a dart or javelin but rather into Odin’s spear Gungnir, as though HQÖr cast it not through Baldr’s body but, like Gungnir, over the corporate body of the æsir. Their amusement is at an end, and the arms they used for fling­ ing sticks and stones now hang motionless and helpless. They cannot speak, and since Snorri repeats this handicap twice in a few sentences, he must have thought it was important. Certainly their lack of speech reinforces the end of skemmtun, which is ordinarily entertainment of a verbal nature, but there must be more. Weeping prevents them from expressing their grief, and here surely Snorri invites us to conclude that the world has been turned topsy-turvy, since lamentation is woman’s work, especially in a feud so­ ciety (Clover 1986a), and Baldr lies encircled by a ring of men. At the same point (Balderus lies half-dead on the earth, wounded in the side), Saxo re­ ports jubilation of Høtherus’s army and general mourning (publicus mæror) among the Danes accompanying Baldr. But in anything connected with Snorri, embedded in a book called Edda (probably from edo “I compose”), in a situation in which Odin plays a prominent role, verse is always close at hand. What Baldr needs now, more than anything else, is a memorial. Anything would do: a skaldic drápa praising the deeds about which we are ignorant, an eddic lay preserving the dying quip he never had time to

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make, or (perhaps best, given the inglorious nature of his fall) a stanza suit­ able for inclusion in some *Ásatal laconically reporting the circumstances of his death, without comment. Even Odin, who Snorri once said speaks in verse alone (Ynglinga saga, ch. 6), utters nothing. Loki is of course missing entirely from Saxo’s account of the death of Balderus, and there is little functionally similar to the role he plays in Snor­ ri, although Dumézil (1961) mounted an interesting argument to the effect that Gevarus plays a role like that of Loki. Since both Baldrs draumar and Vqluspá mention only ÜQÖr as the slayer of Baldr and leave Loki’s con­ nection to the deed unclear, there has naturally arisen a huge debate as to the “original” presence or absence of Loki in the myth. The most extreme and oft-cited argument against an original role for Loki was set forth by Eugen Mogk (1924) as part of his ongoing program to deny Snorri’s knowl­ edge of older religious and mythic traditions and to credit the mythologi­ cal details not found outside his writings to Snorri himself. Mogk’s writ­ ings on this subject now seem polemical and simplistic and his hypothesis exaggerated, even given our greatly enhanced understanding of Snorri’s methods, and in fact the more normal form of the hypothesis asserts that Loki was introduced into the story somewhere between its origin in the Near East and recording in Iceland. Since it is those recordings that inter­ est us here, we will leave Loki’s role intact.

Chapter 3 ODIN AND HYRROKKIN: BALDR’S FUNERAL Only one piece of narrative about Baldr can confidently be dated to pa­ ganism, and it concerns itself not with any detail of Baldr’s death or po­ tential rescue from Hel, nor with the vengeance that other sources recount, but rather with his last rites: I refer to Úlfr Uggason’s Húsdrápa. As men­ tioned above in ch. 1, this skaldic poem celebrates the building of an or­ nate hall (eldhús, lit. “fire-building,” that is, a building or room in which the fire was kept burning, used to denote the living quarters at a farm) by the chieftain Óláfr HQskuldsson pái (“peacock”) in Hjarðarholt, near where the Laxá flows out into Húnafjörður in the Breiðafjörður area of western Iceland. Óláfr had important foreign connections-his mother was the Irish princess Melkorka, taken as a slave by his father, and in his youth he spent time both with his grandfather, the Irish king Mýrkjartan, and with Haraldr gráfeldr (“greycloak”) in Norway. The connections with royalty pre­ sumably gave him a certain prestige over his legitimately conceived halfbrothers and half-sisters and may have turned his mind toward elaborations of a not fully Icelandic nature; his hall was built, according to Laxdœla saga, ch. 29, of wood transported from the forests of Håkon jarl inn riki (“the powerful),” ruler of western Norway. Þat sumar lét Óláfr gera eldhús í Hjarðarholti, meira ok betra en menn hefði fyrr sét. Váru þar markaðar ágætligar sQgur á þilviðinum ok svá á ræfrinu; var þat svá vel smíðat, at þá þótti miklu skrautligra, er eigi váru tjQldin uppi. [Laxdœla saga, ch. 29; ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson 1934: 79.] That summer Óláfr had a hall built in Hjarðarholt, larger and better than people had seen before. In it wondrous tales were inscribed on the wain­ scoting and also on the roof; that was so well crafted, that it looked more splendid when the wall hangings were not up. That fall Óláfr celebrates the marriage of his daughter Þuríðr to Geirmundr, a menacing Norwegian always armed with the sword Fotbitr (“legbiter”) who arranged the marriage by means of monetary inducements to Óláfr’s wife Þorgerðr.

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Þat boð var allfjQlmennt, því at þá var algQrt eldhúsit. Þar var at boði Úlfr Uggason ok hafði ort kvæði [var.: nýorta drápu] um Óláf HQskuldsson ok um SQgur þær, [var.: allar] er skrifaðar váru á eldhúsinu, ok fœrði hann þar at boðinu. Þetta kvæði er kallat Húsdrápa ek er vel ort. Óláfr launaði vel kvæðit. Hann gaf ok stórgjafar qIIu stórmenni, er hann hafði heim sótt. Þótti Óláfr vaxit hafa af þessi veizlu. [Laxdœla saga, ch. 29; ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson 1934: 80.] That party had a great many guests, because the hall was finished. Úlfr Uggason was there at the party and had composed a poem [var: had a newly composed drápa] about Óláfr HQskuldsson and those tales [var: all those tales] which were incised on the hall, and he presented the poem there at the party. That poem is called Húsdrápa and it is well com­ posed. Oláfr gave a good reward for the poem. He also gave great gifts to all the assemblage of important persons, who had visited him. Oláfr seemed to have grown in status from this party. By ca. 985, the time period to which these events in Laxdcela saga are conventionally dated, Christianity was in the wind, and it is interesting to recall that one of the hostages held by Óláfr Tryggvason about fifteen years later in an effort to convince the Icelanders to convert was Kjartan Óláfsson, who had grown up in the hall his father had lavishly decorated with mythological carvings and where Úlfr had recited the Húsdrápa at the wed­ ding of Kjartan’s sister. Kurt Schier (1976b) draws attention to the con­ nections between the content and situation of Húsdrápa and the domain of the Hlaðir jarls, of whom Håkon, whose forest supplied the wood for the hall at Hjarðarholt, was according to the historical tradition a particu­ lar enemy of Óláfr Tryggvason. The missionary king took only four hos­ tages from Iceland, “i.e., one from each quarter” (Jón Jóhannesson 1974: 132), so Hjarðarholt may have functioned, in the mind of King Óláfr or those of the later guardians of historical tradition, as something of a pa­ gan center. For all that, however, neither Óláfr pái nor his son Kjartan left behind an unsavory religious reputation in the extant materials. The cus­ tom of carving scenes from narratives inside of houses indeed lived on in Iceland and was well adapted to Christian topics (e.g., at Flatatunga; see Jón Jóhannesson 1974: 343). The ekphrasis is well known as a skaldic genre and is particularly com­ mon among those earliest skaldic poems that deal with mythological top­ ics: Bragi Boddason’s Ragnarsdrápa, Þjóðólfr of Hvin’s Haustlqng and many additional fragments (Lie 1956). Although Hellmut Rosenfeld (1936) argued for a background in cult for the shield poems, the evidence is scanty at best, and such a background, even if it could be extended to decora­ tions in a dwelling, does not accord well with the presentation of Úlfr’s poem as it is described in Laxdœla saga, even though a passage rite is be­ ing celebrated: the poem was composed “about Óláfr HQskuldsson and those tales [var: all those tales] which were incised on the hall,” not spe­ cifically in connection with the wedding. Indeed, as Roberta Frank shrewdly

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noted, there is an embarrassing lack of fit between the circumstances of the wedding and the scenes that are being described: The Húsdrápa must have made an odd impression on Óláfr’s wedding guests... Þórr’s hammer - traditionally used to hallow the bride at wed­ dings as in the eddic Þrymskviða - is shown crushing the head of the world-serpent, threatening the skull of the giantess Hyrrokin [sic], and blessing a funeral pyre on which a married couple, Baldr and Nanna, lie dead. In this context, the refrain of Húsdrápa is ominous: Hlaut innan svá minnum ‘[the hall] was thus adorned within with remembrances’. The marriage of Óláfr’s daughter turned out to be a disaster. [Frank 1978: 105.] Perhaps the author of Laxdcela saga deliberately exploited this disjunc­ tion; the saga is, after all, a musing on unhappy marriages. There is, how­ ever, little reason to doubt that Húsdrápa describes scenes from plastic art. Not much is known about Úlfr. An Icelander, he is mentioned in Landnámabók and twice in Njáls sagat once in connection with a lawsuit, once - more interestingly - when in a verse exchange he declines to murder the missionary Þangbrandr (the latter incident is also in Kristni saga). About all we can say about him is that he seems to have been a cautious man, perhaps one clever enough to flatter Óláfr pái’s desire to be compared with the royals who lived a century earlier in Norway (Clunies Ross 1993). The text of Húsdrápa is not found in Laxdœla saga, but Skáldskaparmál in Snorra edda scatters 56 lines from it throughout its commentary, most­ ly helmings, and from these the poem one finds in modern editions has been constructed. One stanza (the first in the conventional numbering) an­ nounces that the poet is offering a poem to Óláfr, and another, placed last (no. 12) in the conventional numbering, states that the poet has honored a warrior in verse. Of those that presumably describe the carvings, one (no. 2 in the conventional numbering) apparently deals with the struggle be­ tween the son of Fárbauti (Loki) and the son of nine mothers (Heimdallr) at Singasteini, over the kidney of the sea (often take for the Brisinga men, but see below); a set of verses (3-6 in the conventional numbering) re­ counts Thor’s battle with the Midgard serpent, and the rest (4-11 in the conventional numbering) deal with Baldr’s funeral. With five helmings, the Baldr verses make up the largest section, and in the way editors have arranged them, they include the refrain (stanza 9), thus presenting two stefjubelkir (sections of a drápa separated by a refrain), which again implies that the funeral is the best retained part of the poem. The language of Húsdrápa is relatively straightforward, and uncertainties concern in general only details. In the funeral section, we learn that Freyr, Odin, and Heim­ dallr rode to the funeral, that valkyries and ravens were present, and that a giantess, Hyrrokkin according to Snorri, launched the ship. In the citation of the verses here I follow Turville-Petre 1976: 68-70.

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7. Ríðr á bQrg til borgar bQÖfróðr sonar Óðins Freyr ok folkum stýrir fyrst ok gulli byrstum. The battle-wise Freyr rides on a boar, bristled with gold, first to the pyre of the son of Odin, and leads armies. 8. Ríðr at vilgi víðu víðfrægr - en mér líða Hropta-Týr - of hvapta hróðrmál - sonar báli. The exceedingly widely famous Hropta-Týr [Odin] rides to the pyre of his son; but from me speeches of praise pass over my jaws. 9. Par hykk sigrunni svinnum sylgs valkyrjur fylgja heilags tafns ok hrafna. Hlaut innan svá minnum. There I perceive valkyries and ravens accompany the wise victory-tree [man; here Odin] to the blood of the holy corpse. Thus [the hall] is adorned from within with things remembered. 10. Kostigr ríðr at kesti kynfróðs þeim er goð hlóðu hrafnfreistaðar hesti Heimdallr at mQg fallinn. The excellent Heimdallr rides a horse to that pyre which the gods had built for the fallen son of the very wise tester of the raven [Odin]. 11. FullQflug lét fjalla framm haf-Sleipni þramma Hildr; en Hropts of gildar hjalmelda mar felldu. The very powerful Hildr of the mountains [giantess] caused the seaSleipnir to trudge forward; but the wielders of the helmet flames of Hroptr [Odin] felled her mount. The usual editorial arrangement of these verses, followed above, strikes me as capricious, for it inserts between the helmings presenting the riding of Freyr and Odin on the one hand and Heimdallr on the other the valkyrie and raven stanza - the one ending with the refrain (the order of the stan­ zas in Skáldskaparmál is Odin, valkyries and ravens, Heimdallr, Freyr, Hyrrokkin, but they are dispersed and the location of their citation depends on the poetic point Snorri is trying to make). Since all three of the riding stanzas rely on the same structure, so-and-so rides to the funeral of the son of Odin, they logically belong together, even if valkyries and ravens, who follow Odin in the conventional numbering, are creatures with a special relationship to him. This objection can hardly be pressed, however - in­ deed, no ordering can be defended with any enthusiasm - since Úlfr was presumably attempting to bring linear order to a number of motifs that one

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could perceive more or less simultaneously on the timbers of the hall. Snor­ ri, who must had had some version of Húsdrápa in mind or before him when he wrote his account of Baldr’s death, uses the order Odin, accom­ panied by Frigg and valkyries and ravens, then Freyr, then Heimdallr, then Freyja, who is missing in the extant version of the poem. The stanzas about the assembling of the gods conjure up a majestic pic­ ture. Freyr, characteristically, rides his boar, but he also leads armies; as opposed to Turville-Petre (1976: 68), who constructs the awkward epithet “he who leads armies” out of the phrase ok folkum stýrir, I see the hosts being led by Freyr to the funeral (cf. Finnur Jónsson 1912-15: B l, 129). Odin presumably rides some horse other than Sleipnir, who has set off with Hermóðr to the underworld. He leads a group of mythological women and beasts associated with death, and the epithet víðfrcegr alludes not only to his wisdom but also to his many travels. Here, too, the poet reminds us of his own effort, and therefore in turn of the splendid circumstances under which the poem was first presented; this effort he owes in part to Odin, obtainer of the mead of poetry and god of verse, and thus these most im­ portant aspects of Odin are brought into the procession to the funeral. Heim­ dallr too rides a horse (presumably Gulltoppr). He rides alone, but that is in keeping with his solitary nature, a matter to which I shall shortly re­ turn. His epithet, kostigr, draws on the noun kostr, whose senses include “good things, riches.” The three gods named as attending the funeral are of course only a sub­ set of the entire list of the gods, and Snorri has a far more elaborated guest list. As regards the three Úlfr describes from the carvings, we may note that they are representative of various groups of the family of gods: Odin the chief god and head of all the æsir, Freyr from among the vanir, Heim­ dallr the boundary figure, who sits near the bridge joining earth and heav­ en and will sound his horn before RagnarQk, when one era will give way to another. The common semantic core these verses share involves not only the rid­ ing but also the destination of the riders and the relative identity of the person whom the funeral celebrates. Where the finite verb ríðr (“rides”) is repeated three times, the referent “pyre” is varied with three different words: borg, bál, and kqstr, and the identity of the one to be burned on it is indicated in the only kennings of the three verses: son of Odin, son of Hropta-Tyr, fallen son (mqgr) of the very wise tester of the ravens. What matters here, then, are the assembly of the gods, the funeral pyre, and the fact that it is Odin’s son who will be burned. Verse 9 provides the only crux, in the words sylgs heilags tafns. The noun sylgr is clearly related to the verb svelgja (“to swallow”); the ques­ tion is how. Ordinarily it is related to that which is swallowed, i.e., beer, and then following the principle of substitution in skaldic poetry it can stand

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for any liquid, and of course the most common liquid in skaldic poetry is blood. I have used this meaning in my translation, as do Turville-Petre and Finnur Jónsson (1912-15: B l, 129). Ernst Albin Kock, however, suggest­ ed the agent-noun, “swallower,” which would make the kenning “swallower of the holy body,” i.e,. fire (1923^41: art. 1891), and the only reason to reject this suggestion is the unprecedented nature of the usage Kock pro­ poses. In either case, the expression would be used here with an adverbial (locative) sense, which is itself not very common. Wolfgang Krause (1934) proposed a way out of that problem through one long Odin kenning: “vic­ tory-tree of the slurp of the holy sacrifice.” That proposal has the disad­ vantage, in my view, of eliminating the fourth reference to the pyre in the six funeral helmings; if we stick with the standard reading, we may rest assured that it is the pyre that matters most, for here we have no riding, but rather a shift to creatures not of transport but of death - valkyries and ravens - while the pyre remains constant. The presence of these creatures of death helps make sense of the word tafn, which following Finnur Jónsson I render “corpse.” Turville-Petre translates it with “sacrifice,” and such a translation gives a different enough sense of the kenning and indeed the entire passage to invite some com­ ment. Although writers of prose, especially the translators of religious ma­ terials, do seem to use the term tafn for the sacrificial animals of pagan­ ism (not, let me stress, Scandinavian paganism, but rather that of the ene­ mies of Christianity and the saints as found in the medieval religious liter­ ary tradition), and although elaborate etymological arguments have long been constructed (cf. de Vries 1962: s.v.), the poetic evidence is fairly straightforward. Skalds used the term tafn to refer to the carrion enjoyed by the beasts of battle, wolves and ravens. Finnur Jónsson (1931: s.v.) lists half a dozen or so relevant attestations, and these make up most of those in the skaldic corpus. Baldr is not a sacrificial victim; he is carrion cut down in battle. Or is he? Carrion cut down in battle is tom by the jaws of wolves and the claws of ravens. Although ravens are present in stanza 9, and must therefore have been carved into the Norwegian wood at Hjarðarholt, they are Odin’s ravens, presumably Huginn and Munin, his “mind” and “thought.” Baldr is not to be left on the battlefield but to be dispatched quickly to the other world. As usual, Odin has a plan. Baldr starts his trip to the world of the dead in the last and esthetically most attractive of the funeral stanzas. The beauty is in the kennings. The giantess is “Hildr of the mountains,” and although Hildr is a valkyrie name CSnorra edda, ed. Finnur Jónsson 1931: 40) and functionally stands for any woman, it finds narrative underpinning in the story of the Hjaðningavíg, one which has special relevance to the Baldr myth. This story is among the oldest retained bits of Scandinavian heroic legend, for Bragi Bodda-

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son, traditionally reckoned the first skald, included it in the shield poem Ragnarsdrápa (stanzas 8-12 in the customary arrangement). Snorri cites these lines in Skáldskaparmál, and before doing so he recounts the entire story: Hildr, the daughter of King HQgni, is abducted by Heðinn, another king. HQgni pursues Heðinn up the Norwegian coast and across the North Sea to the Orkneys, where they meet at Háey. HQgni refuses separate at­ tempts at reconciliation made by Hildr and Heðinn and tells the latter that he has already drawn his dwarfen sword, Dáinsleifr, which always finds its man and leaves a wound that never heals. After battle the kings repair to their ships, and Hildr comes to the battlefield and revives the slaugh­ tered, who fight again the next day. So it is to continue, day after day, un­ til RagnarQk. (Snorm Edda, ed. Finnur Jónsson 1931: 153-55.) The story possess numerous similarities to the Baldr story as a whole: the anger and grief of a father at the loss of a child, and his failed attempt to regain that child; a magic weapon; a woman’s pernicious magic; and a situation that can only be resolved by the end of the current world order; furthermore, the unending stalemate of the two armies on the Orkneyan island suggests the plight of the æsir and jQtnar. Snorri adds to these simi­ larities by referring to HQgni as Heðinn’s mágr (“father-in-law”), suggest­ ing that the difficulty, like Baldr’s, takes place within a family. If we take Snorri seriously on this point, we can read a certain skepticism, bordering perhaps on despair, concerning affinal relationships; in the end, they can­ not prevent strife. The Baldr story, as I wish to show in these essays, ex­ presses similar doubts about the power of blood oaths to avert disaster. By calling the giantess “Hildr,” then, Úlfr drew echoes of the entire Baldr story into the climactic scene of the funeral. Another deft stroke is the mod­ ifier to Hildr, namely fjalla, not because jQtnar, trolls, and other evil things live in the mountains, but because the mountains are as far distant from the coast, the scene of the funeral, as one can get. This geographical dis­ placement agrees with her epithet: fullqflug (“very powerful”), which would better suit a male warrior. It is hard to imagine a being more out of place at a seaside funeral than a mountain-Hildr, a powerful woman from ex­ tremely distant parts who will never allow wounds to heal and the dead to rest in peace. What she does, however, is equivocal. When she launches the funeral ship, does she make matters better or worse? At first glance they seem worse, for now the gods are deprived of Baldr seemingly forever (Húsdrápa as we have it makes no reference to Hermóðr or Hel), but they are certainly better, as I noted above, insofar as Baldr’s body is not to be tom apart by carrion animals. Since the Hjaðningar and HQgni’s armies also escaped that fate, the choice of Hildr as the base word of the giantess ken­ ning seems quite important - poignant, indeed, for the Hildr story shows that reviving the dead is no real solution.

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Finally, there is the choice of the ship-kenning: haf-Sleipnir (“sea-Sleipnir”). Although Sleipnir is not named in the Odin stanza in Húsdrápds pres­ entation of the Baldr funeral (perhaps, as I suggested above, because Hermóðr is riding it to Hel), here the eight-legged horse appears in a ken­ ning. What is important in this context is the role of Sleipnir as medium of transport to the world of the dead, which is strengthened by the near certainty of archaeologists and historians of religion that horses were in­ volved in the cult of the dead (Gjessing 1943: esp. 92-105). Death itself draws forth strong emotions in humans for all sorts of reasons, but it also poses the real and immediate problem of the disposal of the remains. By calling the ship “sea-Sleipnir,” Úlfr makes it clear that Baldr’s remains will be properly and fittingly dealt with. That such a solution could be cause for rejoicing as well as grief is suggested by the carvings on the eighthcentury picture stones from the Baltic island of Gotland, where riders on horses, two of them eight-legged like Sleipnir, are greeted by women bear­ ing cups representative, one assumes, of the hospitality the traveler is to enjoy, in the “Sleipnir” cases presumably in the world of the dead. Sever­ al readings may simultaneously be valid in these cases, but in every one I see a joyous arrival (Lindow 1993). Although the launching of the ship provides a ticklish problem, and the uncertainty may be captured in the verb þramma, with its sense of difficult progress, ultimately the solution is the correct one. Properly dispatched to the other world, Baldr’s arrival there should be no less joyous than those of the riders on the Gotland stones. Here too we may recall Eiríksmál, with its atmosphere of anticipa­ tion of the arrival of Eiríkr blóðQx (“blood-axe”) in ValhQll. Those left be­ hind may grieve for the dead warrior and even wish for his return, but nevertheless he is eagerly awaited in the nether world. As a representative of the nether world, the giantess of course has a stake in getting Baldr there properly. Her position is therefore ambiguous, just as is Baldr’s: dead but not buried. Her hierarchical inferiority before the æsir, however, is clear. Like them, she must have ridden to the funeral, but at least the extant stanzas of Húsdrápa do not show us the scene. Second, and more to the point, her mount is felled by Odin’s warriors. The endless struggle between æsir and jQtnar is displaced from the usual high levels because of cooperation there; this too is to some extent a theme of the Baldr story in general, expressed through the motif of sanctuary after the slaying, as will be explored below. The displacement makes a few points: Odin has retainers, the giantess (like most women, and nearly all jQtnar) has not. The æsir enjoy mobility over the landscape, the horizontal plane of the cosmos; the giantess (again like most women and nearly all jQtnar) does not, after her mount is slain. Those few of us with sympathy for the jQtnar are left wondering how or even whether the giantess is to return to the mountains.

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The last stanza of the poem as arranged by modem editors gives appro­ priate closure: Par kømr q , en æri endr bark mærð af hendi, (ofrak svá) til sævar, sverðregns (lofi þegna). [Finnur Jónsson 1912-15: B l, 130.] There the river comes to the sea, and I bear from my hand praise to the messenger of the sword-rain [warrior]; thus I bring up praise of chieftains. Here it may be worth noting that the situation - where a river meets the sea - suits Hjarðarholt but also recalls the site of Baldr’s funeral. This lo­ cation by the sea seems important. Indeed, all three myths recounted in Húsdrápa share the watery environment suggested by this stanza of the poem. If we take seriously this sharing of settings (perhaps brought on by the actual location of Hjarðarholt?), we may find an additional tool for un­ derstanding Baldr’s funeral in Húsdrápa. The myths of Heimdallr and Loki and Thor and the Midgard serpent are joined by important similarities. In each case a god fights with a powerful jQtunn in the watery environment already mentioned: Thor in fishing grounds located farther offshore than usual, Loki and Heimdallr on an is­ land (in the form of seals, according to Snorri’s paraphrase). We know with certainty in Thor’s case and may surmise in Heimdallr’s case that impor­ tant consequences are at stake. If we seek parallels here as well, the myth of Baldr’s funeral should involve a struggle between a single áss and a jQtunn, with important or even cosmic consequences. The repeated items in the verses (the pyre is in every case identified as that of Odin’s son) suggests that Odin is the áss, and only the giantess can fulfill the role of the adversary. Such a struggle would be parallel to the situations in the eddic poems where Odin interacts with a female figure in a non-sexual way: here I have in mind his awakening of the seeresses in Vqluspá and Baldrs draumar. In each case what Odin achieves is help from the seeress, in the form of information concerning matters of cosmic importance. This dif­ fers from the outright confrontations practiced by Heimdallr and Thor and parallels the difference in sex of the jQtunn adversary and more generally reflects Odin’s customary preference of words to weapons. In Baldrs drau­ mar Odin follows his usual pattern of traveling to gain wisdom (cf. Vafþrúðnismál and Grímnismál), but in Vqluspá he apparently summons the seeress to him; otherwise how could she be addressing “allar helgar kindir, meiri ok minni, megir Heimdallar” (“all the holy races, greater and lesser, kin of Heimdallr”)? Thus there is precedent for Odin summoning an enemy female as part of his strategy in the great struggle between æsir and jQtnar. Perhaps if we had more of Húsdrápa, we might hear a verbal exchange between Odin and the giantess, which finally resulted in her launching the funeral ship.

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An alternative here is to imagine that the giantess arrived, like Hrungnir, Loki, and Skaði, uninvited among the æsir, and that Snorri later add­ ed the idea that she was summoned. I am inclined to trust Snorri’s judg­ ment, but I offer the alternative as a way to make clear the nature of the situation: at the funeral of Odin’s son a giantess is present and plays a major role. Skaði’s situation offers the closest parallel, for she was as out of place in her armor as was the Hildr of the mountains at the seashore - and Skaði too proved herself to be a creature with alpine preferences that were so strong, indeed, that they spoiled her marriage to NjQrðr. The parallel is use­ ful in this context because it demonstrates the possibilities of and limita­ tions on cooperation between gods and giants. Such possibilities reinforce the fact that the struggles between æsir and jQtnar are always close, and the particular relevance of that fact is under­ scored by the closeness of the other two struggles represented in Húsdrápa, namely those between Loki and Heimdallr, both of whom apparently sur­ vived to fight another day, and Thor and the Midgard serpent; although I am inclined to accept Preben Meulengracht Sørensen’s suggestion of a de­ velopment in the myth of Thor and the Midgard serpent, from a clear vic­ tory of Thor during the late Viking Age to a later standoff (Meulengracht Sørensen 1986), I am mindful here of the nature of the struggle as it is portrayed both in the skaldic evidence and, especially, in rock carvings: the adversaries are shown locked in combat, the eyes of the one fiercely fixed on those of the other. Certainly it is difficult, too, to determine a mar­ gin of victory in Baldrs draumar and Vqluspá. We may therefore imagine that although Odin triumphs over his female adversary at the funeral, he does so by the slimmest of margins. The consequences of this struggle should be cosmic, as I mentioned above. Again we may begin with the parallels in Húsdrápa. The elusive nature of the myth of Heimdallr’s battle with Loki, and Húsdrápds rela­ tive brevity on the subject, leave unclear the stakes over which the two are at odds. The relevant stanza is as follows. Ráðgegninn bregðr ragna rein at Singasteini frægr við fima slœgjan Fárbauta mQg vári; móðQflugr ræðr mœðra mQgr hafnýra fQgru, kynnik, áðr ok einnar átta, mærðar þQttum. [Finnur Jónsson 1912-15: B l, 128.] The council-wise, famous guardian of the gods’ edge [of land] contends against the shockingly sly son of Fárbauti at Singasteinn; the valiant son of eight and one mothers soon rules the kidney of the sea; I make it known in sections of the verse.

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My translation follows the analysis of Schier (1976c) and therefore re­ quires emendation of rein to reinar in line 2. Schier agrees that Singasteinn is a place name and he shows that hafsnýra (“sea-kidney”) can formally be understood as an unexceptional kenning for “island,” a geography that would accord well with the placename Singasteinn; the brisinga men and seal guise of the antagonists are, Schier believes, read into the story by Snorri. After disposing of a depressing list of interpretations of the possi­ ble underlying myth, of which a surprisingly large number of fairly recent attempts rely on solar mythology, Schier offers a tantalizing possibility: the type of the creation myth of a primeval struggle between a god and his antagonist that takes place on an island which is itself the first part of the cosmos to emerge from the sea.1If the struggle between Loki and Heimdallr alluded to in this verse, and therefore also one of the scenes carved at Hjarðarholt, indeed represents a cosmogonic struggle, its consequences would indeed be of the highest importance. The cosmic consequences of Thor’s battle with the Midgard serpent re­ quire little comment. The salient notion in the context of Baldr’s funeral would be the location and configuration of the serpent, in its coils encir­ cling the earth a threat to or restriction on the movement of ships. Hringhomi is under precisely such a restriction, stuck as it is on the strand, be­ tween land and sea. Just as Thor’s overcoming of the serpent helps open the seaways for men (recall here Helgi the lean, that cautious or cynical seafarer who trusted to Christ when ashore but to Thor when at sea), so Odin’s interaction with the giantess - his overcoming of her, as I would argue - opens the seaway (to Hel) for Baldr. Here the name Snorri gives Baldr’s ship, Hringhorni, is of interest. I will take up the possible mean­ ings of the name below and in this context would only point out that its first component recalls the circular form the serpent takes. According to the line of reasoning I am following here, the Húsdrápa stanzas (and by implication the carvings at Hjarðarholt) present a myth in which Odin and a giantess (following Snorri, let us call her Hyrrokkin) contend over the fate of Baldr’s corpse at an elaborate gathering of the æsir. What seems to be at stake is the proper conduct of the funeral ritual for the slain son of Odin; if the ritual is not properly carried out, if the re­ mains are not properly dealt with, Baldr will be denied his status in the next world - indeed, in any world - and he might even become a revenant, dangerous to the community: Baldr the bad. Were he to go again, someone would have to slay him permanently, as, for example, Grettir did 1 In a lecture on “Loki og Heimdallur” (“Loki and Heimdallr”) delivered at the Snorri Symposium held under the auspices of the Sigurður Nordal Institute in Reykjavik in July 1990, Schier offered an updated version of this hypothesis and pursued some of its implications. Unfortunately, this lecture has not to my knowledge been published.

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with Glámr. The comparison is telling, for if Baldr were to follow in Glámr’s tracks, he would be tracing those of a foreigner and a thrall: a man of no status whatever. In this mythology, of course, the beings that stand first and foremost for those without status are the jQtnar. In other words, if Baldr’s funeral is not conducted in ritually appropriate fashion, he ends up as no more than one of the jQtnar, thus turning the mythology on its head. As I mentioned above in ch. 1,1 do not agree with de Vries that Baldr’s funeral necessarily represents the establishment by Odin of the funeral cus­ tom of cremation. I do agree, however, that the stakes are great, and if Baldr’s remains had been improperly dealt with, the results would have been devastating to the æsir. As a final aspect of this point, I would draw attention to the comparative evidence on feuding, that system of dispute resolution which recent work has proved to be so instrumental to saga Ice­ land. An action group scores extra points if it can not only slay a victim from the other side but also can deny him the last rites. A body left lying unburied, to be, in the heroic idiom so beloved by the Norse heroic poets, despoiled by beasts of battle, is a special sign of shame to the victim’s group. In my view this connection could not have been missed by anyone living in a feud society, which would have read the mythology as an ide­ alized feud between two clearly defined action groups, æsir and jQtnar (Lin­ dow 1995a). Baldr’s killing took place within his own family, and that is a special tragedy; but a failure to deal properly with his corpse would be a large loss of face. By forcing a giantess to participate, Odin turned the game around and fashioned victory out of defeat. That some versions also im­ plicate Loki, who is giant-bom, invites even clearer application of the prin­ ciples of feud. The riding stanzas of Húsdrápa make it clear that Baldr’s remains are to be burned, and cremation of the dead was widely practiced throughout Scandinavia, although there was much local variation. The ship as grave, too, has a long and well elucidated history in the North (Major 1924, Ohlmarks 1946), but one of the realities of the grave ships yielded up from the earth and from literary records is that they do not and have not moved. Erik Moltke (1979-80) asserted that up until ca. 1000 C.e. the grave was imagined as a place in which people stayed; therefore a ship in it would probably not have been conceived as a means of transportation to the oth­ er world. Gisli appears to moor the funeral ship of Porgrimr when he places a large stone in it before the mound is closed up over it (Gisla saga, ch. 17); Albert Wiberg’s contention that the stone was meant as ballast does not persuade (Wiberg 1937), and the Oseberg ship was moored to a cable in the mound (Brøgger & Shetelig 1951). Furthermore, the boat graves were uncrewed, except for the honored dead and, apparently, an occasional ser­ vant, such as the slave on the Oseberg ship or two beheaded males in a

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boat grave from Uppland excavated in 1974 (Hemmendorff 1984); here one might also note that the Hedeby boat grave had armor for three per­ sons, but no skeletons (Müller-Wille 1976). The Viking Age tapestry frag­ ment from Rolsvøy on the Oslo fjord, interpreted by Erland Johansen (1985-86) as a funeral scene, shows a group of five men and two women, apparently the funeral party, gazing at an empty ship - perhaps, according to Johansen, the funeral ship interred nearby in Tune, which now stands in the Viking Ship museum in Oslo. The ships on the Gotland stones, on the other hand, are fully crewed, and the distinction seems significant, for these ships correspond to real ships, under sail (Lindow 1993). As a rule, then, funeral ships did not move. The giantess stanza in Húsdrápa, however, implies that the ship has to move, that the moving is difficult ( þramma), and that the æsir must turn outside their own numbers to achieve that moving. Here the comparison with known burial practices becomes far more troublesome, for evidence of a floating funeral pyre like Baldr’s must forever elude archaeologists. Nor is the literary evidence reassuring. Any discussion of Viking Age funeral practices must include the eye­ witness account reported by the Arab ambassador Ibn Fadlan concerning the ship cremation of a Rus chieftain on the Volga ca. 922 (Giffen 1963). The relevant lines at this point are these: [The ship] had been hauled up on land and supported by four posts of birch and other wood. Around it was arranged what looked like a large pile of wood. The ship was then drawn up and placed on the wood. [Foote & Wilson 1970: 408-09.] In this light, we may wonder whether what Úlfr meant the giantess to do in Húsdrápa was to move the ship up onto the fuel for the burning. The verb þramma will do equally well for such an action as for launching a ship, perhaps better, since launching would involve moving the ship down the strand on rollers, which may be easier than drawing it up onto a rough pile of wood. Although Ibn Fadlan is silent on the matter, ritual theory might indict this move as important and potentially dangerous, for it in­ volved shifting the dead chieftain’s ship from an ordinary trading vessel to a ship of the dead, a passage rite paralleling that of the dead chieftain himself. At such a moment it would not be ritually inappropriate for some­ one from outside the community (like Hyrrokkin) to participate, to deflect danger away from the members of the community. But even putting aside both Ibn Fadlan’s silence on the identity of the person(s) who drew the ship onto the fuel, as well as the general interpretative problems that his account poses, we must accept that Úlfr’s words here are too brief to de­ termine whither the giantess is moving the ship and what her purpose might have been. The point must remain that the ship needed to be moved in or-

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der for the ritual to be carried out properly, that a giantess, not one of the æsir, moved it, and that from the context of the episode in Húsdrápa it appears likely that the giantess moved it as the result of a cosmic struggle she lost with one of the æsir, presumably Odin. The fullest account of the funeral is that of Snorri Sturluson in Gylfaginning. Snorri must have built primarily on Húsdrápa, but beyond that, there exists no real consensus concerning his sources. The lost eddic po­ ems postulated by the older scholarship (Neckel 1920, Olsen 1924, Schröder 1924) were not generally extended to the funeral, but de Vries opened the possibility in his influential 1955 Baldr article, a suggestion not taken up by Franz Rolf Schröder (1962); and oral prose traditions, per­ haps simple descriptions of the carvings at Hjarðarholt, can never be ruled out. Certainly if Snorri was working with no more of Húsdrápa than is now retained in Skáldskaparmál, he added a large number of small details, either from these lost sources or from his imagination. Otto Höfler (1951) made a spectacular attempt to explain these details by assuming that Snorri was actually describing the carvings themselves (or descriptions of them), and by further assuming that these carvings followed in the religious and iconographic tradition of the Bronze Age rock carvings from mainland Scandinavia, especially those of Bohuslän on the Swedish west coast and Østfold on the Oslo fjord. Once these assumptions are made, a whole field of speculation is opened, and Höfler cleverly relates numerous unclear as­ pects of Snorri’s description of the funeral to familiar motifs on the rock carvings. Thus the funeral ship being launched and later set afire could re­ flect, according to this interpretation, the depiction of a ship wagon pulled about the countryside and later set afire; Hyrrokkin will have been the one who pulled it, and Litr a cult dancer leaping high (Snorri will randomly have assigned them these names); the giants at the funeral will have been masked cult participants; Snorri called the ship Hringhorni because it will have have had a sun-ring on its prow; he had the gods kill Hyrrokkin’s horse because the pictorial stone will have shown a ritual slaying of ani­ mals; and he had the gods ride to the funeral because the pictorial source showed numerous small carts around the cult ship wagon. 1500 years separate the Bronze Age rock carvings from the Viking Age wood carvings at Hjarðarholt, and although it is possible to argue some forms of continuity (so Boyer 1981), the degree of cultural change makes it extremely unlikely that similar religious conceptions obtained, even if there was some kind of iconographic continuity. Höfler argued both, in the case of iconography pointing out that vast numbers of wooden carvings from the intervening period could have been lost; he does not address the question of the technological change, from carving in rock to carving in wood, nor the fact that artistic styles changed greatly during the Migra­ tion Period and Viking Age. Overall, the argument here is clever but close

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to circular: Höfler uses ancient rock carvings and Snorri’s alleged misun­ derstandings to reconstruct the carvings at Hjarðarholt, and then uses the reconstruction to serve as evidence of cult continuity. What disqualifies the entire effort, however, is in my view an insufficient degree of atten­ tion to Húsdrápa, which in fact contradicts the argument in places, as when Freyr and Heimdallr explicitly ride boar and horse, respectively, with no mention of carts. In what follows, then, I attempt to make sense of Snor­ ri’s account of the funeral without the use of Höfler’s bold hypothesis. In beginning his account of the funeral with the words “en æsirnir tóku lik Baldrs, ok fluttu til sævar” (“and the æsir took the corpse of Baldr and transported it to the sea”), Snorri connected the funeral with notions of cos­ mology. Baldr was slain in a griðastaðr,2i place so sacred that no blood should have been spilled and where vengeance was impossible: in other words, at the sacred center (Eliade 1959). The funeral, however, takes place at the edge of the sea, at the boundary between water and land, in a loca­ tion in general known in the mythology as a place where jQtnar may dwell. The transport of the body is therefore a move from center to periphery and may be read as a manifestation of the liminal nature of the unburied Baldr. In the terms introduced by van Gennep (1960), it would represent a rite of separation, to be followed by the funeral that incorporates Baldr in his new status and new world. The location of the funeral also draws in echoes of RagnarQk. The final battle must take place near the shore, for the forces of chaos arrive by boat, and that arrival parallels the departure of the slain god that Snorri regards as essential to the funeral. Snorri provides us with the information that Baldr’s ship is named Hringhorni, a fact unattested elsewhere. The name is found among the þulur (IVz2; Finnur Jónsson 1912-15, Bl: 668), in a list, however, of nouns, not named ships. Most of these nouns are relatively rare, and Neckel imag­ ined that Snorri simply took the noun from some lost poetic source and made it the name of the ship. According to Finnur Jónsson, it means “‘med et ringformet horn’, krumhomet, på grund af stævnens form” (1931: 282 s.v.) (“‘with a ring-shaped horn,’ curved-horned, because of the prow’s shape”), which must be essentially correct, despite the problem of the oth­ erwise unattested second component, -horni. One thinks immediately of the Oseberg ship, with its stems terminating in elegant spirals, and per­ haps also of the horns of the oxen that drew land from Gylfi for Gefjon. In this particular context, however, it seems most important that this ship name combines two of the most potent symbols of Odin, a ring (Draupnir, that clones itself at regular intervals and thus is a source of riches) and a horn (the mead of poetry, a potent source of inspiration). In the language of the skalds, inspired mythically by the mead of poetry, rings are also par­ ticularly connected with kings, who dispense them to their followers. Once again the importance of Odin in the Baldr story finds reinforcement, and

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this seems to me further evidence against the hypothesis that notions of fertility are at the heart of the myth. Nor are the ring and the contents of the horn mere symbols. Odin will deposit Draupnir on the pyre, to be con­ sumed, along with Baldr’s horse, not to mention Nanna, in the flames. As for the contents of the horn, it must be recalled that like many if not most important ceremonies in the ancient North, funerals were drunk. Thus the words in the modern languages for funeral, gravøll grav öl (“grave-beer”), and thus the provisions in the older laws. In other words, wherever or how­ ever Snorri got the name Hringhorni for the funeral ship, he succeeded, consciously or not, in hinting at two of the important items consumed at a pagan funeral, riches and beer. When Snorri goes on to call Hringhorni “the greatest of all ships” (allra mesta skipa), he contradicts the usual mythological notion of Skíðblaðnir as the best and foremost of ships (Grímnismál 43-44). What Snorri must have had in mind was the size and especially the weight of Hringhorni, which will render it immobile and force the æsir to send for Hyrrokkin. Hann vildu goðin fram setja, ok gera þar á bálfQr Baldrs, en skipit gekk hvergi fram. [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 65.] The gods wished to put it forward and make Baldr’s pyre on it, but the ship did not go forward at all.I I have translated setja fram literally as “put forward” so as to bring out the possible parallel with Ibn Fadlan’s account of the funeral of the Rus chieftain explored above. In nautical contexts, however, setja fram ought to be understood in the context of the expressions setja á and setja upp used for the hauling of a ship. The ships are hauled up on rollers, gen­ erally for the winter, and then rolled down the rollers (forward) to be launched. Fritzner (1973, vol. 3: 216) has a paragraph on the lexicogra­ phy of the phrase setja fram mentioning a few attestations, but in fact the phrase is quite common. Thus although it might be possible to argue that Snorri expresses the desire of the æsir to move the ship up onto the fuel, as the immediate reference to the pyre might suggest, such an argu­ ment would be difficult to maintain. Snorri, it seems, thought that the fu­ neral ship was to be launched. The only other “floating funeral” recorded in Icelandic also comes from the hand of Snorri Sturluson, in connection with the the death of King Haki, a legendary sea king (like so many figures named Haki). Snorri tells his story in chapters 22-23 of Ynglinga saga. The brother of Hagbarðr (and therefore implicated in the great love story of Hagbard and Signe), Haki was a ferocious warrior with a great army and a hand-picked band of cham­ pions. He attacked Hugleikr, a king of the Swedes given to such degener­ ative pursuits as the entertainment of jesters and the practices of magicians, and defeated him, thus winning the kingdom for himself. A three year pe-

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riod of peace follows, and his champions go off to look for suitable em­ ployment in a more bellicose arena. Two ambitious king’s sons hear of this departure and venture an attack on Haki. Despite being outnumbered (or because of it?), Haki fights fiercely and finally kills one of the upstarts and cuts down their banner; the other, jQrundr, flees to take up a small role in early Swedish legendary history. Haki konungr fekk svá stór sár, at hann så, at hans lífdagar myndi eigi langir verða. Þá lét hann taka skeið, er hann åtti, ok lét hlaða dauðum mQnnum ok våpnum, lét þá flytja ut til hafs ok leggja stýri i lag ok dra­ ga upp segl, en leggja eld í tyrvið ok gera bál á skipinu. Veðr stóð af landi. Haki var þá at kominn dauða eða dauðr, er hann var ligiðr á bálit. Sigldi skipit síðan loganda út í haf, ok var þetta allfrægt lengi síðan. [Heimskringla, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson 1941, vol. 1: 45.] King Haki received such great wounds that he saw that his days were numbered. He had men take a boat that he owned and had it loaded with dead men and weapons, had them transport it out to sea and ship the rudder and raise the sails, but set resinous wood on fire and make a pyre. The wind was blowing from land. Haki was at death’s door or dead when he was placed on the pyre. The ship then sailed burning out to sea, and that was very famous long afterward. Unlike most of the rest of that first saga in Heimskringla, this story is not supported by verse from Ynglingatal, and presumably falls into the cat­ egory of enlargements undertaken, as Snorri put it in his preface to Heim­ skringla, “eptir SQgn fróðra manna” CHeimskringla, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson 1941, vol. 1: 4) (“according to the narratives of learned men”). Saxo’s version of the life of Haco agrees closely with Snorri’s, but not the funeral; here, it has long been agreed, Snorri builds on the account of the funeral of Sigurðr hringr (“ring”) in Skjqldungasaga, the Danish kings’ saga we now know only from its use in later texts and, especially, from the par­ aphrase of Arngrímur Jónsson. Indeed, many of the details of the funeral itself are remarkably similar in Arngrimur’s version. Sigurðr has just de­ feated in battle the brothers Álfr and Yngvi after they refused his suit for the hand of their sister Álfsól. Before the battle, however, the brothers had poisoned Álfsól, lest she should fall into Sigurðr’s hands in the event of defeat. Qvi Alfsolæ funere allato magnam navim mortuorum cadaveribus on­ eratam solus vivorum conscendit, seqve et mortuam Alfsolam in puppi collocans navim pice, bitumine et sulphure incendi jubet; atqve sublatis velis in altum, validis å continente impellentibus ventis, proram dirigit, simulqve manus sibi violentas intulit; sese tot facinorum patratorem, tan­ torum regnorum possessorem, more majorum suorum, regali pompa Odinum Regem (id est inferos) invisere malle qvam inertis senectutis in­ firmitatem perpeti alacri animo ad socios in littore antea relictos praefa­ tus (qvidam narrant eum, anteqvam littus relinqveret, propria se confo­ disse manu). Bustum tamen in littore more sui saeculi congeri fecit, qvod

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Ringshaug apellari jussit; ipse vero tempestatibus ratem gubernantibus Stygias sine mora tranavit undas. [Danakonunga sqgur,; ed. Bjarni Guðnason 1982: 74-75.] And having learned of the death of Alfsola, he had a great ship taken and loaded with dead men and got on the ship himself, the only one of the living. Arranging himself and the dead Alfsola on the afterdeck, he ordered the ship to be kindled with tar, pitch and sulphur; and he or­ dered the sail to be raised, and driven by brisk winds from the land, he steered the prow to sea, while he harmed himself by his own hand. Pre­ viously he had with a hard heart told his men who stood behind on the shore that following the custom of his fathers, he who had done so many bold deeds and ruled so many kingdoms would rather choose to visit the kingdom of Odin (that is, the underworld) with a royal retinue than suffer the ravages of age. (Some say that he had already stabbed him­ self before he left the shore). He had a mound raised on the shore, as was the custom in his day, which he ordered to be called Ringshaug [“Hringr’s mound”]. He himself in fact sailed the boat in storms over the waves without delay to the Stygian realms. In both cases, the funeral is that of a great warrior king who has emerged wounded from a victory over a pair of bold brothers. Each king has the funeral ship prepared himself, and each ship has dead men and kindling aboard. In each case an offshore breeze stirs, and what is noteworthy is not the direction of the wind - any other direction would make the funeral difficult and most would make it impossible - but rather that the author feels compelled to report it. Each author also scrupulously reports the un­ certainty about whether the king died ashore or afloat. Finally, both narra­ tives are situated in Swedish regnal prehistory. The very high status of the king, the orders he gives before death, the placing of precious objects and his body on the ship, and the subsequent departure of the funeral ship for the other world are all also elements shared with the funeral of Scyld Scefing in Beowulf (lines 26-52). Unlike Haki and Sigurðr hringr, however, Scyld is apparently not burned (at least, the poem makes no reference to fuel or pyre), and the lack of such an impor­ tant detail sharply differentiates Scyld’s floating funeral from the three Scandinavian examples. However, Scyld’s funeral does underline the fact that the few floating funerals are celebrated for powerful kings of Scandi­ navian prehistory. The description of Sigurðr hringr’s funeral contains more detail than does that of Haki. Some of these additions simply attach the funeral more closely to archaeology (the mound) or literature (the retinue that will accompany him to the underworld, a motif that well served the poet of Eiríksmál), but others appear more significant, and the role of Álfsól is paramount among these. Here we have both an obvious parallel to the presence of Nanna on Baldr’s last voyage - perhaps even a source - and an obvious difference to the relationship between Baldr and Nanna as Snorri portrays it, for

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Sigurðr never marries Álfsól and is indeed an inappropriate mate for her, being shrivelled with age (“rugosus seni;” Danakonunga sqgur,; ed. Bjarni Guðnason 1982: 73). This potential misalliance recalls rather the relation­ ship between Balderus and Nanna in Saxo’s account, although there the problem is presented as one of a demi-god pursuing a mortal. These few floating funerals do not provide extensive context for the floating funeral that Snorri assigns Baldr; indeed, it is possible that Snorri simply had heard or read about the famous funeral of Sigurðr hringr - who may just have been an elderly innovator in the funereal line - found the idea attractive and used it both for Baldr and later, in a more streamlined form, for Haki. Even that would tell us something, however, namely that Snorri found appropriate the idea that Baldr’s funeral could be modeled on that of a prehistoric Swedish king and that frustrated erotic love could be involved. Alternatively, Baldr’s funeral may early on have taken the form of these legendary royal Swedish floating funerals, and that would attach Baldr more closely to questions of royalty and kingship. According to de Vries, Baldr’s funeral can be read as Odin’s instiga­ tion of the institution of cremation, but given the scarce literary record we have just surveyed - only two other floating cremations, both set in pre­ history - that hypothesis seems unlikely, even if by the nature of things archaeology cannot contribute in this case. But even if we assume a hypo­ thetical shift from floating cremations to landbound cremations, we must recall that what people saw, the palpable tokens of traditions, were mounds, and Baldr’s funeral lacks one. Furthermore, Odin’s role in Snorri’s version of the funeral, which is the text from which de Vries directly worked, seems strangely attenuated. It was the gods (goðiri) collectively who wished to launch Hringhorni, not Odin or for that matter Baldr; here we have a variation from the royal Swed­ ish funerals. And when the ship failed to move, Snorri uses the passive voice to describe the summoning of the giantess: “Þá var sent i jQtunheima eptir gýgi þeiri, er Hyrrokkin hét” (normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 65) (literally “then was sent to jQtunheimar for that giantess, who was called Hyrrokkin”). Apparently Snorri had something else in mind at this point than the struggle between Odin and the giantess I have hypothe­ sized above for the situation in Úlfr’s Húsdrápa, although elsewhere he makes it clear that the drama centers around Odin. The invited but unwanted guest is a gýgr, one of the many terms found in the supernatural fauna of old Scandinavia. It fits into a small category of terms used specifically for threatening female supernatural beings, in­ cluding also flagð, skarsfskass, and skessa. Although the etymologies of many of these terms are unclear or unknown, that of gýgr appears to be unproblematic. Various cognates permit derivation from an Indo-Europe­ an root meaning “to make hidden, to hide” (de Vries 1962: 196 s.v., fol­

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lowing a suggestion going back to Johansson 1893: 53) and thus general­ ly agreeing with at least the semantic sense of the root troll- in the mod­ ern languages in its connection with what we would call magic. Little else about the gýgjar, however, stresses magic. Kennings offer a very standard picture: the “gýgr of the forest” is an ax, thus stressing their destructive nature, and because of that nature, Thor hates them and may therefore be called gýgjar grœtir (“saddener of the gýgr”) (Finnur Jónsson 1931: 211). Nor are they apparently very feminine. In a verse spoken by Brynhildr in Vqlsunga saga, a variant of Sigrdrífumál 17, “the breast of the gygr” is listed along with a set of other powerful objects on which runes are carved, directly between “the point of Gungnir, “ Odin’s spear, and “the nail of the norn” (Vqlsunga saga, ed. Guðni Jónsson 1959, vol 1: 161); the corre­ sponding line in Sigrdrífumál has “the breast of Grani,” Sigurðr’s horse, an unflattering collocation for the gýgjar. This particular gýgr bears the name Hyrrokkin, which observers such as Finnur Jónsson (1931: 306 s.v.) and de Vries (1962: 276 s.v.) read as the simple compound hyr-hrolckin “fire-curled, fire-wrinkled.” Perhaps the fire in question should be understood as that of Baldr’s pyre, or perhaps we should imagine the giantess being cured in a smoke-house in some Odinic ritual way (Tangherlini 1990); or this may simply be the kind of name that builds on the hideous appearance of ogresses, such as Buseyra (possibly “big-eared;” see de Vries 1962: 66 s.v.) or Hengjankjapta (“slack jaw” according to Sturtevant 1952). The latter names share with Hyrrok­ kin the fact that they were enumerated among the list of victims of Thor in the panegyric to the god composed by PorbjQrn dísarskáld (“goddesspoet”) just before the end of the tenth century, although the actual name forms are rather complex (see Lindow 1988). Hyrrokkin, we learn, “do fyrri” (“died before that”); before what is not easy to discern. In any case, Hyrrokkin is more or less alone in the list of victims in being known as an actor in a recorded myth. Neckel (1920: 117) suggested the possibility that Thor killed Hyrrokkin as vengeance for her having been, in some earlier version of the myth, the slayer of Baldr rather than the launcher of his fu­ neral ship. All Neckel’s suggestions should in my view be taken seriously, and even Snorri’s version allows an old woman very like a giantess to play perhaps the major role in keeping Baldr dead. However, even if Hyrrokkin did kill Baldr in some early version of the myth, there remains the fact that an ogress pushes the funeral ship in Húsdrápa, after the god is already dead and on the pyre, and that is our earliest known version of the myth. I prefer to understand Hyrrokkin in the way proposed above with re­ spect to the giantess in Húsdrápa. She is an out of place, hierarchically inferior being, doing the work of the æsir (as Snorri tells us) and thus help­ ing them to conduct the ritual properly. The inappropriateness of her pres­ ence at such a solemn moment is brought forth by the nature of her mount,

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here specifically identified as a wolf reined in with poisonous snakes, both symbols of the unsettled wilderness whence Hyrrokkin and her ilk come and specifically enemies of the æsir, ones indeed that will play a major role at RagnarQk, when a wolf will devour Odin and a serpent kill Thor. At so solemn a moment as the funeral of the son of the head of the æsir, Hyrrokkin’s choice of mount is nothing if not provocative. Once again, Snorri’s language is of interest. en er hon kom ok reið vargi, ok hafði hQggorm at taumun, þá hljóp hon af hestinum, en Óðinn kallaði til berserki fjóra at gæta hestsins. [Nor­ malized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 65.] And when she arrived and was riding a wolf, and had poisonous snakes for the reins, then she got down from the horse, and Odin called on four berserks to take care of the horse. When Snorri twice calls the wolf a horse, he draws attention to the oth­ erness of its rider, who comes from a realm where nature and culture are reversed. Like Skaði, who by dressing as a warrior reversed her gender when she first arrived among the gods, Hyrrokkin turns things upside down. If we think further of Skaði here, we may recall that she went on to gain a spouse from among the æsir and to participate in a flawed marriage. At this point it is possible that Baldr is to become the consort of another in­ imical female, namely Hel, and the periodicity of the marriage between Skaði and NjQrðr - now in the mountains, now by the sea - parallels Baldr’s situation: now about to depart for Hel, but perhaps to return, if Hermóðr’s expedition is successful. Perhaps Odin counters the inversion presented by Hyrrokkin’s mount through one of his own, namely the assigning of ber­ serks - crazed fighters, not stable hands - to look after the “horse.” The re­ sult certainly inverts the supposed intention of the act, for they kill the mount, as their colleagues, “the wielders of the helmet flames of Hroptr,” did in Húsdrápa. Would that the æsir could always slay wolf and snake so easily. Hyrrokkin’s actions embody her otherness and symbolic valence. By having to do with ships in the first place she entered a male domain, and yet she confidently went up to the prow of the vessel and shoved it for­ ward on the first try. Here again there is language suggesting that the ship is launched, not just rolled onto the pyre or put up on rollers, for hrinda (“to push, kick, shove”), the verb in question, is very often used not only of launching ships from the beach but also of floating boats off of ships (see for examples Fritzner 1973, vol. 2: 58, s.v.). But fire does not ordi­ narily issue from the rollers when a ship is launched, nor does the earth shake, as happens here.2 Once again, RagnarQk seems close at hand. 2 Dumézil (1964: 68-70) translates these lines correctly but then (mis-)understands them as referring to thunder, Thor’s domain, so as to be able to offer the rather forced par­ allel of the punishment of Salmoneus by Zeus.

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It is only after the ship is moved by the ogress that Baldr’s body is placed aboard. This seems to me evidence that she indeed launched it, for Haki, whose floating funeral I discussed above, was placed aboard the ship toward the end of the account, after it had been laden with dead men and weapons and been transported to the sea, and there is no reason to doubt that Sigurðr hringr’s floating funeral was any different; certainly there is no mention of launching after he boards the ship. At this point it is worth recalling the uncertainty concerning the state of the two kings to be cremated: Haki was at death’s door or already dead when he was placed aboard the ship, and some people report that Sigurðr hringr had already taken his life before the ship sailed. This indeterminate status between life and death - of the person at the center of the ceremony links the floating funerals strongly with Baldr, because that is precisely the ques­ tion the entire myth poses. Indeed, at the moment of the funeral, Hermóðr has departed for Hel, but Snorri has told us nothing of his dealings with her. Sigurðr hringr’s funeral now becomes directly important again, for it is at the sight of the loading of Baldr’s body on the ship that his wife Nanna Nepsdóttir dies of a broken heart. Snorri wrote “Þá sprakk hon af harmi” (literally “burst from grief’), an expression that is not uncommon in vari­ ous medieval literatures but that occurs only once in eddic poetry, to de­ scribe the grief of Guðrún after the death of Sigurðr the VQlsungr in Guðrúnarkviða 1 2; it is also used in the immediately preceding prose pas­ sage usually titled “Frá dauða Sigurðar” (Edda, ed. Neckel & Kuhn 1962: 201). Once again there is a verbal connection with heroic prehistory, and the event, “[t]he voluntary death of the widow or betrothed of a king or hero who has fallen in battle is found in many heroic stories and also in the legendary sagas, particularly in the case of heroes associated with Odin” (Davidson & Fisher 1980: 33). Saxo even has a case relevant to Nanna: Suanhuita, the grandmother of Høtherus, dies of grief after the death of her husband, Regnerus. Their son Hothbrodus is soon to follow them, and it is here that he fosters his sons Athislus and Høtherus to Nanna’s father Gevarus (Olrik & Ræder, ed. 1931: 48). Sigurðr hringr, it seems, could only possess Álfsól in death, but accord­ ing to Snorri Baldr and Nanna were already married and had in fact pro­ duced a son, Forseti. Saxo’s version of the relationship between the two would better fit the parallel with Sigurðr hringr and Álfsól, but Snorri in­ sists on the marriage, calling Nanna kona hans (“his [Baldr’s] wife”) in the funeral scene and listing the kenning verNqnnu (“husband of Nanna”) as a Baldr kenning in Skáldskaparmál. The kenning is not to my knowl­ edge independently attested, but Nanna appears in most of the list of the ásynjur in Snorra edda, including Þul. IV.h.2, so at least this Nanna, unlike the one in Saxo, could hardly claim incompatibility with a deity.

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Her father according to Snorri, Nepr, is quite unknown, although his name does appear within a list of the the sons of Odin (Pul. IV.e). Baldr appears in the same list, along with Thor and the other usual suspects, which in general confirms one’s notion of Odin as all-father. In any case, the mar­ riage between Baldr and Nanna was one that took place apparently more or less wholly within the family of the æsir. Forseti as the product of this union is not elsewhere attested, but Grímnismál 15 lists his residence, Glitnir, as the tenth of the eleven abodes of the æsir catalogued, another indi­ cation that he belongs among the æsir. Despite her appearance in the list of ásynjur, Nanna merits even less comment from Snorri than a figure like Eir (lœkna bezt “best of physi­ cians”) or Vár (goddess of pledges). Editors ordinarily emend the first word of Hyndluljóð 20 from Manna to Nanna and thus introduce her into the genealogy of the Óttarr celebrated by the poem. Nanna var næst þar, NQcqva dóttir, var mQgr hennar mágr þíns fQður; fyrnd er sú mægð, frem tel ec lengra, kunna ec báða Brodd oc HQrvi; alt er þat ætt þín, Óttarr heimsci. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 291.] Nanna was the next one there [in the list], the daughter of NQkkvi, her son was the male in-law of your father; that relationship is age-old [or forgotten?]; I will enumerate further; I know both Broddr and HQrvir; all that is your family, foolish Ottarr. Although the emendation would restore the missing alliteration of the first line, the line otherwise makes sense as it appears in the manuscript, retaining manna as the first word: “the daughter of NQkkvi was the next female there [in the list].” The name NQkkvi is not otherwise known (as a noun, nqkkvi means “boat”), and there is no particular reason, except per­ haps the alliteration, to associate him with Nepr. Nor, despite the frequent mythological allusions in the poem and its general mythological point of view (Gurevich 1973), are the other kin of this hypothetical Nanna, fig­ ures like Broddr and HQrvir and the others mentioned in the preceding and following stanzas, relevant to the Nanna of the Baldr story. If the emen­ dation is accepted, it can only anchor the name Nanna in a quasi-mythological prehistoric genealogy shot full, too, of heroic references. This would of course accord with her genealogy in Saxo. Nanna’s role, like that of Baldr, is to die. Numerous critics have ob­ served the similarity with the slavegirl in Ibn Fadlan’s account of the Rus funeral, and if it is to be taken seriously, that similarity would again sug­ gest the relevance of Saxo’s presentation of the relationship between Baldr and Nanna as one of impossible opposition of social categories. But Saxo

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never allows Balderus and Nanna to be united, even in death, and the sex­ ual union of the slavegirl in Ibn Fadlan’s account of the funeral is with everyone but her master. If we take the strange kenning nqnnur Herjans, found in Vqluspá 30 for valkyries, as an indication of a common noun, nanna, used of a woman in a dependent relationship, we might be able to imagine some kind of process in which a misunderstanding elevated a slavegirl to a deity. The misunderstanding would presumably have involved a now lost snatch of eddic verse, and it is certainly worth recalling that the relevant stanza in Vqluspá appears to relate to Baldr: the nqnnur (Nannas?) of Odin, namely Skuld, SkQgul, Gunnr, Hildr (!), GQndul and GeirskQgul, are seen by the seeress ready to ride to Goðþjóð, which here must mean the people of the gods. They are, the seeress says, ready to ride the earth. The next stanza is the first to mention Baldr by name (Ec sá Baldri...ørlqg fólgiri) (“I saw for Baldr...a hidden fate”), but it is not sepa­ rated by the refrain from stanza 30. These valkyries may well be those who according to Úlfr’s Húsdrápa 9 accompanied Odin to Baldr’s funeral. The detour into speculation I am allowing myself here, then, would have frag­ ile links joined into a chain of argument that would look something like this: nanna was used as a noun for a female in a dependent relationship to a male authority figure; a slave of Baldr was burned with him; perhaps mindful of the language of Vqluspá but more likely misunderstanding some lost eddic line such as “Baldr’s nanna was burned with him,” or “Baldr loved his nanna,” someone added a woman named Nanna to the story. This would have to have occurred well before the end of the twelfth century so as to enter the versions reported by Saxo and Snorri, and Snorri might have found it attractive in light of the self-immolation of Brynhildr on the pyre of Sigurðr, especially since in the eddic tradition Brynhildr is known as a valkyrie - a nanna ÓÖins. Such devolutionary arguments are flattering neither to our medieval au­ thorities nor to ourselves, however, and I present this one only by way of illustrating the difficulties of interpretation. As a base word in woman kennings, Nanna behaves like any other name but would make little sense if understood as “slave,” “wife,” or even “woman.” Even more problematic is the very real possibility that the name Nanna appears in the placename evidence, which would be inconsistent with a noun indicating a female of low status; indeed, some of the relevant German placenames may even be theophoric (Henning 1908; de Vries 1970, vol. 2: 222-23). Two etymolo­ gies are possible (de Vries 1962: 405 s.v.), one connecting the name with such forms as Swedish dialect nanna (“mother”), the other deriving it from Germanic *nenþö (“powerful” [fern.]). The first etymology would nicely fit the Nanna Snorri describes, the mother of Forseti who cannot abide the passing of her husband. The second, however, reintroduces the problem of a Nanna more like the one in Saxo:

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In dem italienischen Ortsnamen Nanto haben wir die gotische Form des entsprechenden Mannennamens zu sehen und kein Name wäre für eine germanische Frau, die wie eine richtige Hildr den Kampf zweier Brüder verursacht und dem einen im Tode folgt, passender gewesen, als eben dieser, der “die Wagemutige, die Kampfesfrohe” bedeutet, [de Vries 1970, vol. 2: 222-23.] Whatever Nanna’s antecedents, nourishing or bloodthirsty, the fact re­ mains that in Snorri’s account of Baldr’s funeral the pyre is not lit until she has died and been placed on it with Baldr. Were both required, in his mind? Insofar as the myth of Baldr implies dynastic problems (and leav­ ing aside Forseti for the moment), Nanna’s death closes the door on legit­ imate succession, even if she is pregnant at the time. This marriage is to have no further issue. When he has Thor stand by and wave MjQllnir in blessing, Snorri ap­ pears to verify the marriage relationship between Baldr and Nanna. This blessing function of Thor’s hammer is more or less taken for granted in the secondary literature, and an association with marriage, which may be read out of the end of Þrymskviða, has been extended back in time to the Bronze Age and forward to the marriages of Swedish peasants (see e.g. Elgqvist 1934). However, the issue is complicated (Lindow 1994b), and the hammer is probably best seen as a conveyer not of fertility alone but rather of protection against the inimical powers that in the mythology are represented by the jQtnar. Put another way, protection from the forces of chaos enables fertility and the other positive aspects of human social life, and a lack of such protection would disrupt it. Thor’s hammer is the symbol of that protection, and by waving it over the flames of the pyre on which Baldr and Nanna lie, he protects the funeral from whatever might otherwise disrupt it; he assures that it should have a positive outcome. His role is there­ fore quite like what I postulated for Odin in the Húsdrápa account of the funeral. Each acts in his own way and within his own sphere. Odin excels at bending giantesses to his will, Thor at killing them, and indeed this con­ trast is one of the fundamentals of the eddic poem HárbarÖsljóð. We see the contrast expressed here as well, by means of the previous occasion when Thor grasps the hammer, upon the arrival of Hyrrokkin on her lupine mount. Þá varð Pórr reiðr ok greip hamarinn ok myndi þá brjóta hQfuð hennar, áðr goðin q11 báðu henni friðar. [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 65.] Then Thor grew angry and grabbed his hammer and was going to smash her head, until all the gods asked for safe passage for her. The scene is almost a cliché of the mythology, of which the paradig­ matic example may well be Thor’s threatening of Hrungnir when the jQtunn is enjoying the hospitality of the æsir: the giant drinks from Thor’s mugs and threatens the security of the females present (thereby impugning Thor’s

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honor, as Clunies Ross (1994b) demonstrates). In this case, as presumably at Baldr’s funeral, the threatening outsider is Odin’s guest, and Thor must gnash his teeth and await later vengeance. We know the details of his vengeance against Hrungnir; as regards Hyrrokkin we have only the words of ÞorbjQrn dísarskáld that she “died earlier.”3 When Thor threatens the invited guests from jQtunheimar, he acts against what anyone would have understood as the standard rules of hospitality, which required that enmities be suspended. The negotiations that could go on under such circumstances might often be helpful, and it is hardly sur­ prising that Odin, ever the future-focused deep thinker, engages in this form of exchange. Thor’s failure to comprehend it and his attempts to circum­ vent the rules appear clumsy in the context of the mythology, but they re­ flect the understanding people would also have had that sometimes guests could be seized and slain. The heroic demise of Gunnarr and HQgni in the Atli poems of the Poetic Edda provide the most splendid examples; shab­ bier ones abound in the sagas. Thus for once we have a fairly clear exam­ ple of the use of mythological figures to represent alternative possibilities in social action. Thor’s anger and desire for vengeance in the matter of Baldr’s funeral are displaced downward: down Thor’s body to his leg, down the social scale, to the dwarf Litr, whom Thor kicks into the fire when the dwarf runs by after Thor has blessed it with MjQllnir. It appears that MjQllnir is to be reserved for the bashing of giants, for although this is not the only dwarf Thor kills, he does in the other, uncharacteristically, with words: when Alviss sues for the hand of Thor’s daughter, Thor keeps the dwarf up dem­ onstrating his lexical skills until the sun rises and bursts him. Perhaps dwarfs offered targets too small for the mighty hammer. More likely is a hierarchical sense that dwarfs are not creatures of chaos. Indeed, like slaves, they do not seem to count for much. Adding Litr to the fire may have been something like adding a particularly valuable object, like the weapons piled up on the ship next to the burning Haki Hámundarson, but it is perhaps more charitable to compare him to the dead men with whom Haki and Sigurðr hringr both crewed their funeral vessels. On the other hand, dwarfs are creative beings in the mythology, so Snorri may have meant Thor’s slaying of this being as an uncreative act, perhaps intended to contrast Thor with Odin, whose behavior is appropriate in this instance. As a noun, litr means “color” or “appearance,” a not very appropriate name for a dwarf, given the connection of the dwarfen race to the earth and its incompatibility with sunlight; indeed, Siegfried Gutenbrunner (1955: 3 Thor’s threatening of Loki at the end of Lokasenna is related to this pattern but de­ parts from it both because Thor does not obtain ultimate vengeance and because no one intervenes on behalf of the unwanted guest.

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66) even tossed out the idea that the name might have been intended for flattery. In his Religionsgeschickte (1970, vol. 2: 227), de Vries approved a suggestion advanced by Franz Rolf Schröder (1938: 86) that the name belongs to the word family of the adjective litill (“small”), which would fit a dwarf, but he did not even mention this etymology in his etymologi­ cal dictionary (1962: 359 s.v.), which was written after the 1956 edition of the Religionsgeschichte that was printed unaltered as the 1970 third edi­ tion I cite here. Although “little” seems an appropriate basis for the name of a dwarf, size does not appear as one of the eight categories into which Chester N. Gould (1929) divided the 190 dwarf names he found in Old Icelandic, nor does Lotte Motz (1973) use it in her update of Gould’s work. Gould does, however, have a category based on appearance (“lustre”). Whatever the meaning of the name Litr, it also appears in the last stan­ za of the catalogue of dwarf names in Vqluspá 9-12, which would appear to be independent evidence of the existence of this dwarf. The problem is greatly complicated, however, by the appearance of the name Litr in a ken­ ning in Bragi gamli’s Ragnarsdrápa 18, “fangboði flotna forns Litar” (“grasp-offerer of the men of ancient Litr,” that is, one who offers oppor­ tunities to grapple) for Thor. Since it hardly seems possible that Thor would wrestle with dwarfs, the men of Litr must be giants, and he presumably also would be a giant. This possibility may be strengthened by the fact that Litr’s name appears in one version of ÞorbjQrn dísarskáld’s stanza listing Thor’s victims, that of the Uppsala codex of Snorra Edda, where the other versions have the otherwise unknown Lútr; for all the other victims about whom we know anything are jQtnar (Lindow 1988). The problem of the identity of Litr, then, goes beyond Baldr’s funeral. Once again we are faced with the possibility of changes in tradition that precede Snorri and that must remain opaque. Litr’s possible appearance in ÞorbjQm’s stanza, however, may at least be valuable in verifying Thor’s slaying of that being, either in the dwarfen form in which Snorri presents him or in some jQtunn guise of which we are ignorant. If ÞorbjQm praised Thor for killing Litr (not Lutr), and if Snorri is to be trusted, Baldr’s fu­ neral reveals itself as a focus of the worship of Thor during the waning days of paganism in Iceland, in its mention of two of the giants he was praised for slaying. Curiously, it is only after presenting the details of the funeral that Snorri offers the guest list. He appears to be following Húsdrápa, but he either had more of the poem than we do or he added some details. Frigg accom­ panies Odin, for example, along with the valkyries and ravens of Húsdrápa 9, and Freyr rides in a cart pulled by his boar rather than on the boar it­ self. Freyja is added to the guest list, as is “mikit folk hrímþursa, ok bergrisar” (“a great host of frost trolls, and mountain giants”). The presence of the latter could indicate the ambivalence of the relationship between gods

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and giants (Lorenz 1984: 573), especially given Thor’s anger at the arriv­ al of Hyrrokkin. At a moment as solemn as the final passage of the son of the ruler, enmities are temporarily suspended. De Vries (1970, vol. 2: 226) understood the guest list as an indication that those who assembled stood around the grave site, now to be under­ stood as a burial mound, but that seems an almost willful misreading of Snorri’s words: “En þessa brennu sótti margs konar þjóð” (“and to that cre­ mation came people of many kinds”). Neckel (1920: 120-22) saw the as­ sembly as the result of an earlier formal funeral procession, which at least has the advantage of explaining why Snorri put the guest list where he did. Here one can almost sense Snorri’s eyes moving over carvings like those at Hjarðarholt, moving away from the central motif - the ship - to men­ tion those assembled around it before going on to describe their actions. If the Rolsvøy tapestry indeed does present a funeral scene, it could be something like what was carved into the timbers at Hjarðarholt. Those who are gathered on Snorri’s guest list have little to do, and what is omitted has drawn almost as much attention as what is not. For the first time in Snorri’s presentation of the funeral, and in contrast with Úlfr’s fore­ grounding of Baldr’s father, Odin now comes forward, to add to the blaze the ring Draupnir, which produces eight equally valuable copies of itself every ninth night. Here Snorri has the authority of Skírnismál 21: “Baug ec þér þá gef þann er brendr var með ungom Óðins syni; átta ero iafnhQfgir, er af driúpa ina níunda hveria nótt.” [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 73.] Then I will give you the ring that was burned with the young son of Odin; there are eight equally weighty ones that drop from it each ninth night. Skirnir makes this offer just after he has arrived; previously he has of­ fered Gerðr apples, which she refused. After Gerðr refuses Draupnir on the grounds that she has no lack of gold in her father’s house, Skirnir moves on to threats in the exotic dialogue that ultimately leads Gerðr to agree to give herself to Freyr. Clearly the apples and the ring are what the æsir thought would be most attractive to a recalcitrant jQtunn maiden. Whether we understand the apples as eleven in number or giving eternal life (Olsen 1913), as related to those of Iðunn or not (cf. Bugge 1889a), what they share with Draupnir is their cash value, for they are called algullin (“all of gold”). Money, Skirnir must have thought, was the way to this girl’s heart. With this in mind, and recalling that Snorri uses SkírnismáVs adjective jafnhqfgir (“equally heavy,” that is, equally worth their weight in gold) to describe Draupnir’s progeny, we may simply assume that Draupnir was

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meant as an addition to the grave goods of great value. Baldr’s horse seems an afterthought, especially as it is unknown elsewhere and the identity of whoever put it on the pyre is withheld. Horses are of course in addition to their connection with death and funeral also valuables, both in the mythol­ ogy (Sleipnir) and the heroic literature (Grani). Snorri is completely silent on a final, puzzling detail of the funeral, which formed one of the great moments of Odin’s wisdom. It is lore that only Odin knows, and he uses it as his final question to Vafþrúðnir in Vafþrúðnismál 54: FíqIÖ ec for, fÍQlð ec freistaðac, fÍQlð ec reynda regin: hvat mælti Óðinn, áðr á bál stigi, siálfr í eyra syni? [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 55.] Much I have traveled, much experienced, much tested the powers. What said Odin, into the ear of his son, before he went up on the pyre? The same question comprises Odin’s last riddle to King Heiðrekr in the riddling contest he undertakes under the name Gestumblindi in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks konungs. Hvat mælti Óðinn i eyra Baldri, áðr hann væri á bál hafðr? [Tolkien, ed. 1960: 44] What said Odin into the ear of Baldr, before he was raised up on the pyre? As I mentioned in the previous chapter, I think Anne Holtsmark (1964a) was right to advise against trying to determine what it was Odin said into Baldr’s ear; the point is that it cannot be known. Of the various proposals that have been made, however, I find most suggestive that of Helge Rosén (1918: 110-27), who associates the episode with rites intended to dispatch the deceased properly on the road to the world of the dead and avoid any return, for that issue, as I have argued, seems to me central to an under­ standing of Baldr’s funeral. Saxo had far less to say about the funeral, and indeed it is sometimes stated that the closest parallel to Baldr’s funeral in Saxo’s account of the struggle between Høtherus and Balderus is not that of Balderus but of Gelderus, the former enemy whom Høtherus won over to his army through eloquence (see, for example, Davidson & Fisher 1990: 54). Gelderus fell in the first battle between Høtherus and Balderus, in which Balderus and the gods were overcome and fled. Høtherus has Gelderus’s corpse placed above those of his men, on top of a pyre built of ships, and then buries the ashes in a mound, celebrating the whole with a solemn funeral. It is the ships that draw one’s mind to Baldr here, but if the funeral occurred out­

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side the context of the Baldr story it would look like a rather ordinary cel­ ebration of the end of a heroic life. Unlike Baldr*s funeral, in which the participation of an inimical supernatural being survived from late pagan­ ism to the thirteenth century, this one goes off apparently without a hitch. Although Saxo’s account of the funeral of Balderus lacks the element of the ship, the entire sequence of the death and interment of the demi­ god reinforces and complements aspects of the story in the Norse sources. Perhaps most interesting is the parallel to the floating ship funerals of Haki and Sigurðr hringr undertaken by Balderus after Høtherus has dealt him a fearsome blow to the side. The followers of Høtherus rejoice, those of Balderus mourn. Qui cum indubitatum sibi fatum imminere sentiret, dolore vulneris ac­ census die postera proelium renovat. Quo fervente, lectica se in aciem deferri iussit, ne intra tabernaculum obscura morte defungi videretur. [Olrik & Ræder, ed. 1931: 69.] When he realized that his death was imminent, driven by his painful wounds he rejoined battle the next day. He had himself put on a bier into the middle of the battle so that he would not be seen to lie in his tent and die with dishonor. Like Haki and Sigurðr, Balderus has himself placed amidst carnage on a transport when he senses that his death is near. I have already drawn at­ tention to the similarity of Baldr’s situation in Gylfaginning: killed but per­ haps not irretrievably dead. Saxo’s passage reinforces the connection be­ tween Baldr’s and the heroic floating funerals and makes it clear that such a situation is fundamental to conceptions of Baldr. Saxo goes on: after dreaming of the embrace of Proserpina, Balderus dies of his wounds and is given the funeral rites of a king, and a mound is thrown over his grave. It is this mound and not the funeral that attracts Saxo’s attention. During the time of Haraldr, he continues, grave robbers attempted to open the mound but were frightened off by the sight of water gushing from the top of the mound, covering the surrounding fields and everything else in its path. The treasure hunters threw down their spades and ran off, frightened away, Saxo assures his readers, by a vision con­ jured up by the spirits of the mound. Before examining this strange story it is worth recalling Ringshaug, the mound erected by Sigurðr hringr in connection with his floating funeral. Given the existence of other named mounds that may even have literary justification (e.g., Uttarshög near Vendel, which may well be the grave mound of Óttar/Ohtere of prehistoric Swedish fame), it is not inconceiva­ ble that there was once a known Baldr’s mound. Buried treasure actually has a connection to Scandinavian mythology and particularly to Baldr’s lineage, according to Ynglinga saga, ch. 7, and its discussion of Odin:

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Óðinn vissi um allt jarðfé, hvar fólgit var, ok hann kunni þau ljóð, er upp lauksk fyrir honum jQrðin ok bjQrg ok steinar ok haugarnir, ok batt hann með orðum einum þá, er fyrir bjoggu, ok gekk inn ok tók þar slíkt, er hann vildi. [Heimskringla, ed. Bjami Aðalbjamarson 1941, vol. 1: 19.] Odin knew about all treasure, where it was buried, and he knew those charms which opened the earth before him and the stones and the mounds, and with words alone he bound those who dwelt there, and went in and took what he liked. From here to the reverse (Odin’s son knows how to keep people out of his mound) is a small step but one probably too tentative to be worth tak­ ing. What is important is that Saxo felt compelled to go on and say some­ thing about Baldr’s mound and its fame, and this compulsion suggests even in Danish tradition, or in Icelandic heroic tradition if that is what Saxo was following, the importance of Baldr’s death and, more significantly, the proof of that death, the evidence that Baldr is and stays dead. The story itself is a commonplace of legend and many like it survived in folk tradition to be collected in fairly recent times. In my view the means used to disrupt the treasure hunters is seldom random (Lindow 1982) and ordinarily has specific symbolic relevance to the culture that consumed such legends. In this case it seems to me that Saxo may have been drawing on a similar intuition (with or without Axel Olrik’s postulation of a background in hydrological reality; Olrik 1892-94, vol. 1: 42^14, cited in Davidson & Fisher 1980: 56), only in this instance he relates the means to the original owner of the mound. Earlier he had reported that Balderus caused a spring to well up to nourish his army before battle, and now he causes water to well up to protect his treasures in the mound. The existence of the placename Baldersbrønde merits mention in this context, for it appears to mean “Baldr’s spring.” Although this interpretation was dismissed by Gunnar Knudsen (1928), even without it one is left with Saxo’s evidence to the effect of a connection between Balderus and water that spanned his life and death - and there is even the water present at the bath where he first saw and coveted Nanna, a gaze that set in motion the entire story, as well as Saxo’s testimony that the bay where Baldr fled from his first battle with Høtherus still bears evidence of Baldr’s flight in its name. Axel Olrik (1892: 16-19) suggested that this might be Balsnes, near Trondheim, but nes (“headland”) does not accord well with the sense of Latin portus (lit. “port, harbor, river mouth”). The most interesting parallel, however, is the salt water that received his body, at the time with an unknown fate, along with that of Nanna, in the Norse sources. In Saxo, Baldr is dead but still active in the mound; in the Norse sources, he is dead and departing but, accord­ ing to Snorri, there is a chance that he may return. Saxo of course dismisses the water as the work of demons, and we have no idea of the extent, if any, to which his source presented Baldr as living on in the mound. If there was such a conception, we have yet another con­

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nection with heroic literature, for known mound dwellers, like Angantýr, tend to have been great heroes in their lives on earth. I hope to have shown, however, that there is at least a possibility that in Danish tradition, too, the question of Baldr, alive or dead, may have been at issue. That matter is certainly located near the center of the myth of Baldr in Norse sources. The ritual response to such a problem would be a large, ornate funeral, as widely attended as possible. It would enjoy even greater authority if a mem­ ber of the enemy tribe participated in it. Odin’s first question to the seeress in Baldrs draumar asked for whom Hel’s hall was being prepared. Baldr’s funeral gives an unequivocal an­ swer.

Chapter 4 FRIGG AND HERMÓÐR, LOKI AND HEL: ATTEMPTED RETRIEVAL In Book III of Gesta Danorun% after being mortally wounded by Høtherus, Baldrerus has himself transported to the battlefield on a bier. Dreaming of Proserpina, he lingers for three days before he dies. After describing the attempts to plunder Balderus’s grave mound, Saxo Grammaticus has noth­ ing more to say about the demi-god killed by the human Høtherus. The three day interval between the wound and death, while he is on the battle­ field but not participating, while his mind is already with the goddess of death as his body rests on the bier, is the closest analogy in Saxo to the fascinating tale Snorri offers about Hermóðr’s journey to Hel and the at­ tempt to revive Baldr. At the point in Gylfaginning when the gods have fallen silent, aghast at the death of Baldr, after the gods come to their senses it is Frigg who speaks first - not, as one might expect, Odin, who most clearly sees the implica­ tions. Frigg’s presence, after the conversation with the disguised Loki at some distance from the assembly, is not explained, but it is necessary, for the death of Baldr is a blow to all æsir and humans, not just to the ring of male gods who were honoring the supposedly invulnerable Baldr with slings and arrows. Frigg asks: hverr sá væri með ásum, er eignask vildi allar ástir hennar ok hylli ok vili hann ríða á Helveg ok freista, ef hann fái fundit Baldr, ok bjóða Helju útlausn, ef hon vill láta fara Baldr heim í Ásgarð. [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 65.] who that one might be among the æsir, who wished to obtain for him­ self all her love and friendship, and would he ride the road to Hel and see whether he could find Baldr and offer Hel a ransom, if she will let Baldr travel back to Ásgarðr. It is perhaps a bit alarming that Frigg offers ástir, since when used in the plural, as here, this noun often refers to love that includes sexual con­ gress. Even if such an offer seems fitting from the point of view of older

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religious conceptions of Frigg, it does not seem quite wholly consistent with her role as concerned mother.The second noun, hylli, however, has no such sense, and although it rescues the entire offer from the realm of sexual politics, it has the unfortunate characteristic of agreeing with the audacious request for dowry made by Þrymr’s wretched sister to the cross dressed Thor. Inn kom in arma iQtna systir, hin es brúðfiár biðia þorði; “Láttu þér af hQndum hringa rauða, ef þú Qðlaz vill ástir mínar, ástir minar, alla hylli.” [Þrymskviða 29, ed. Neckel & Kuhn 1962: 115.] In came the wretched sister of the giants, she who dared to ask for the dowry. “Take off your arms the gold rings, if you wish to acquire my love, my love, my entire friendship.” Once again the situation is sexually ambiguous, since she is speaking not to a blushing bride but to Thor, whose hammer attack on her takes up all of stanza 32. In Gylfaginning, Snorri is probably quoting a lost eddic poem, drawing on the same formulaic language that Prymskviða used, and attempts have even been made to date Snorri’s source, but establishing a relative chronology between these two passages is a lost cause (and Peter Hallberg’s suggestion [1954] that Snorri may have been the author of Þrymskviða will not stand up to scrutiny [Lindblad 1978]). Resisting the temptation to derive one passage from the other, and regarding the mytho­ logical corpus as closed and intertextual, we may either read Frigg’s use of the formula as an act of desperation or the giantess’s use of it as an act of considerable audacity. Alluring as Frigg’s offer may be, winning her love and friendship will be no easy task. Whoever would do so must travel to the world of the dead and there interact with its leader, who may not feel warmly toward the tribe led by Odin, who exiled her to the wan expanses there. Nor will the nego­ tiations be easy. Frigg wants her emissary to offer Hel a ransom. This makes Baldr a hostage, although the term is not used. In Norse literature, hostage-taking ordinarily occurs in the context of battle, where important people might be seized for future monetary gain. From that perspective, Baldr is a prisoner of war, and that in turn offers up additional incentive for reading the Baldr story as one of group conflict, æsir versus jQtnar. That the situation is topsy-turvy, however, may be indicated by the sex of the two “generals” at this point, Frigg and Hel. Baldr as hostage has dire im­ plications from the point of view of the mythology, for the most famous use of hostages was the exchange that occurred in connection with the truce between the æsir and vanir after their war, when the two groups were to

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come together. Snorri’s accounts in Gylfaginning and Ynglinga saga vary on the number of hostages exchanged, but NjQrðr and Hoenir (who of course was reabsorbed back among the æsir after the truce) make up the core. Thus Odin can test the wisdom of Vafþrúðnir, wisest of the jQtnar, by asking how it happened that NjQrðr came to be among the sons of the æsir, al­ though he was not brought up among them. Vafþrúðnir replies: f Vanaheimi scópo hann vis regin oc seldo at gíslingo goðom; i aldar tqc hann mun aptr koma heim með visom VQnom. [Vajþrúðnismál 39, ed. Neckel & Kuhn 1962: 52.] In Vanaheimr the wise powers created him and sent him in hostage among the gods; at the judgment of time he will return back home among the wise vanir. In other words, only at RagnarQk, at the end of the current world order, when all the current alliances will dissolve, will NjQrðr’s hostage-tainted sojourn come to an end. That casts an ill and forboding light on Baldr’s stay with Hel. Nor does the humiliation that apparently accompanied Njorðr’s origin as a hostage, to which Loki alludes in Lokasenna 34. NjQrðr has just accused Loki of ergi. “Þegi þú, NÍQrðr! Þú vart austr heðan gíls urn sendr at goðom; Hymis meyjar hQfðu þic at hlandtrogi oc þér í munn migo.” [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 103.] “Shut up, NjQrðr! You were from here to the east sent, a hostage for the gods; Hymir’s daughters had you as a latrine and pissed in your mouth.” This allusion is not satisfactorily explained and indeed is often delicately passed over in the scholarship; for example, it receives no mention in the handbook entries on NjQrðr by Halvorsen (1967), Simek (1984a: 286-87), Grimstad (1987) and Polomé (1987). De Vries (1970, vol. 2: 176-77) num­ bers it among the “unbedeutende Einzelheiten” that accrue to NjQrðr and relegates discussion to a footnote. Whatever else it may mean, it certainly does little to enhance the status of mythological hostages and might make the gods uneasy about Baldr’s treatment with Hel. Perhaps ultimately it has to do with the notion prevailing in later folk traditions that the food served in the other world may not be quite what it seems. Regarding the identity of the one who accepts Frigg’s challenge, Co­ dex Regius (Gks 2367 4to), the main manuscript of Snorra edda, reads as follows: “En sá er nefndr Hermóðr inn hvati, sveinn Óðins, er til þeirrar farar varð” (“And that one was called Hermóðr, the sveinn of Odin,

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who undertook that journey”). The word sveinn is problematic here, since it leaves unclear the relationship between Hermóðr and Odin: sveinn ordinarily refers to a boy but seldom to a son, and then only to stress that the child in question is male; in extended senses it can refer to any man and especially to those in a dependent or inferior relationship to another, such as retainers, servants, or even slaves (Fritzner 1973: s.v.). The problem is usually emended away, since the other main manuscripts, including Codex Upsaliensis, which represents the second of the two branches of the manuscript tree, have sonr (“son”) here instead of sveinn, and when Hermóðr arrives in Hel, he saw sitting in the high seat, the place of honor, “Baldr his brother” (Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 67). Still, sveinn is not the same as sonr, and this scribe’s use of the term can offer hints regarding conceptions of the nature of Hermóðr and the way Snorri oper­ ated. If the traditional dating is to be trusted, the first reference to Hermóðr was in the verse of the skald Eyvindr Finnsson skáldaspillir, a court poet to the late tenth-century Norwegian king Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri inn góði (“the good”) (and apparently also to his successor Haraldr gráfeldr). Some time after Håkon’s death in 961, Eyvindr composed a poem in the rarely used but then popular Eddie panegryic style comprising a description of Hákon’s last battle, his discussion with the valkyries sent to choose the dead, and his entry into ValhQll. In the first of the stanzas set in ValhQll, number 14 in the conventional numbering, Eyvindr imagined Hermóðr as a resident of ValhQll, at Odin’s command. Hermóðr ok Bragi, kvað Hroptatýr, gangið i gQgn grami, þvft konungr ferr, sås kappi þykkir, til hallar hinig. [Finnur Jónsson 1912-15, Bl: 59] Hermóðr and Bragi, said Hroptatýr [Odin], go to meet the prince, for a king who appears to be a champion travels hither to the hall. It has been noted that the gods are generally not individually named in this poem, which prefers collectives like œsir (str. 16) or ráð ok regin (str. 19). Indeed, the only named denizens of ValhQll are those to be found in this stanza. One of the conceits of the poem is that Håkon is reluctant to spend any time with Odin (str. 15), which is logical not only because of Odin’s fickle nature, but also because Håkon had been baptized in Eng­ land. Perhaps the delicate situation facing Eyvindr of lauding a Christian king in a pagan form led to the absence of named gods, but the jury is out. The anonymous Eiríksmál, which according to some critics Eyvindr was following (this could have contributed to his nickname, which some read as “the plagiarist”), is limited to the ValhQll scene in its extant form, and

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it agrees with Hákonarmál insofar as it also assigns a speaking part to Bragi, a coincidence that may help explain Eyvindr’s choice of characters. Furthermore, Eiríksmál also does not name gods in ValhQll but does place the human heroes Sigmundr and SinfjQtli there. The poet seems to regard the inhabitants of ValhQll, then, as the einherjar, or fallen heroes who will fight beside Odin at the last battle. The warrior kings Eirikr blóðpx (“bloodax”) and Håkon inn góði should fit right in among the einherjar in ValhQll, awaiting with Odin powerful reinforcements from the carnage of human battlefields. But what, then, of Bragi and Hermóðr? Scholars have long been fairly certain that Bragi, a god of poetry according to Snorri, was in the later tenth century, at least, simply the first skald, elevated to ValhQll (see the discussion in Mogk 1887, Bugge 1888, Mogk 1889). Indeed, it seems reasonable to suppose that this elevation is the direct cause of Snorri’s remarks about Bragi and to dis­ pute Snorri’s notion that Bragi ever really numbered among the æsir. By this reasoning Hermóðr, too, must be an elevated human, presumably a hero, not an ordinary member of the æsir. Here it is very much to the point that one of the uses of sveinn was to refer to the “lads” who made up the retinue of a powerful person and sometimes fought on his behalf. Thus this first dateable attestation of the name Hermóðr presents him as sveinn, not sonr, of Odin. The Eddie poem Hyndluljóð supports the supposition that the name Hermóðr referred to a hero, not a god. In the second stanza the speaker, ordinarily taken to be Freyja, reports that HerjafQðr (i.e., Odin), gives gold to the worthy: 2b. gaf hann Hermóði hiálm ok brynio, enn Sigmundi sverð at þiggia. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 288.] He gave to Hermóðr a helm and byrnie, and to Sigmundr a sword to receive. Here again the name Hermóðr occurs together with that of Sigmundr, and here the accoutrements make it clear that Hermóðr should belong to the heroic sphere rather than the poetic sphere of Bragi. This supposition is supported by the next stanza, which contains a variegated list of things that Odin gives to various kinds of groups and individuals, all of them ap­ parently human. 3. Gefr hann sigr sumom, en sumom aura, mælsco mQrgom oc manvit firom; byri gefr hann brQgnom, en brag scáldom, gefr hann mansemi mQrgom recci. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 288.] He gives victory to some, and to some gold, speech to many and wit to men; he gives favorable winds to princes and verse to skalds, he gives strength to many a warrior.

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The dating of Hyndluljóð, like that of all Eddie poems, is a difficult mat­ ter, and it is made doubly difficult by the obvious combinatory nature of the poem. What we are interested in here is the so-called frame to the genea­ logical stanzas about Óttarr heimski, and it would seem be to be difficult to support an early dating for this frame, despite the assertions of Jere Fleck (1970) and Aron Gurevich (1973) that the poem reflects a cult act. In the most recent encyclopedia article, even Gurevich (1993: 309) admits that most scholars date the poem to the twelfth century, but Rudolf Simek and Her­ mann Pálsson (1987: 186) were more emphatic: origin before the learned Icelandic renaissance of the later twelfth century is hardly possible. If so, Hermóðr as a figure in heroic legend appears to have persisted for some time and still to have been a possibility when Snorri was composing his Edda. Indeed, although ancient skalds put Hermóðr in ValhQll, Snorri does not, except in the Baldr story. Hermóðr is missing from the list of æsir enu­ merated in Gylfaginning in response to Gylfi’s question, “Hver eru nQfn annarra ásanna, eða hvat hafaz þeir at, eða hvat hafa þeir gQrt til frama?” (normalized from Finnur Jónsson 1931: 28) (“What are the names of the other æsir; how did they occupy their time; what glorious things have they done?”). It is plain that Snorri is straining to fill this list, which includes not just the important gods Thor, NjQrðr, Freyr, and Týr, the promoted poet Bragi, the utterly enigmatic Heimdallr and the pale Ullr, but also the frat­ ricide HQÖr and such other second-generation figures as Víðarr, Váli, and Forseti; even Loki, as we have seen, is enumerated among the æsir. The same hungry lot assembles for Ægir’s banquet at the beginning of Skáldskaparmál with Hœnir added; he was mentioned in the Gylfaginning list in connection with the exchange of hostages involving NjQrðr. Hermóðr is missing from this list, and besides him, as far as I can see, only Magni and Móði, the sons of Thor, have been left out. Apparently Snorri’s prin­ ciple, as he ran out of gods for his pantheon, was to mention those con­ nected with Odin: his sons, Víðarr and Vali, his grandson Forseti, and his bloodbrother Loki. If such a principle obtained, Hermóðr may not have been one of the æsir. Because the version of the Baldr story in Gesta Danorum lacks the ex­ pedition to the underworld undertaken to recover the slain demi-god and also lacks the name Hermóðr, it could be possible that Hermóðr’s journey was unknown outside of Iceland. Old English tradition, on the other hand, has the name, in the form of Heremod, who turns up in royal genealogies and in Beowulf. In the genealogies Heremod is a foundation figure (Sisam 1953). In the West Saxon genealogies of the Parker manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, for example, he follows Itermon as the first rec­ ognizably Germanic king; the predecessors are biblical figures, leading back to God himself, and the followers include such figures as Wodæn/Odin. Apparently, however, thirteenth-century learned Icelanders did not equate

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this figure with Hermóðr, for when they borrowed these genealogies (for the dating to the early thirteenth century see Faulkes 1979-80: 105), they did not emend Heremod into Hermóðr. The Prologue to Snorra Edda is one such genealogy (for context and discussion of it and the others see Faulkes 1979-80), and the author frequently makes connections between the name forms he is using and Old Icelandic equivalents: Einn konungr, er þar var, er nefndr Múnón eða Mennón; hann átti dóttur hQfuðkonungsins Príámí; sú hét Tróán; þau áttu son, hann hét Trór, er vér kQllum Þór... f norðrhálfu heims fann hann spákonu þá, er Sibil hét, er vér kQllum Sif, ok fekk hennar... Þeira sonr var Lóriði, er likr var feðr sinum; hans sonr var Einridi; hans sonr Vingeþórr, hans sonr Vingener, hans sonr Moda, hans sonr Magi, hans sonr Seskef, hans sonr Beðvig, hans sonr Athra, er vér kQllum Annan, hans sonr ítrmann, hans sonr Heremóð, hans sonr Skjaldun, er vér kQllum SkjQld, hans sonr Biåf, er vér kQllum Bjår, hans sonr Jåt, hans sonr Guðólfr, hans sonr Finn, hans sonr Friallaf, er vér kQllum Friðleif; hann átti þann son, er nefndr er Vóden, þann kQllum vér Óðin... Kona hans hét Frígíða, er vér kQllum Frigg. [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 4-5.] A king who was there [scil. in Troy] is named Múnón or Mennón. He married the daughter of the arch-king Priam. She was called Troan. They had a son whose name was Trór, whom we call Thor... In the northern half of the world he encountered that seeress, whose name was Sibil, whom we call Sif, and married her... Their son was Lóriði, who resem­ bled his father. His son was Einridi and his his son was Vingeþórr, his son Vingener, his son Móda, his son Magi, his son Seskef, his son Beðvig, his son Athra, whom we call Annar, his son ítrmann, his son Heremóð, his son Skjaldun, whom we call SkjQldr, his son Biáf, whom we call Bjår, his son Jåt, his son Guðólfr, his son Finn, his son Friallaf, whom we call Friðleifr; he had that son, who is named Vóden; we call that one Odin... His wife was named Frígíða, whom we call Frigg. Since more than half of the “Trojan” names here are given Norse equiva­ lents, Hermóðr was either an unimportant figure, or he was kept separate from these royal genealogies, in which case his connection with the reg­ nal prehistory is problematic. Heremod turns up in Beowulf, too, initially as the king apparently held up as an example of a bad ruler in the digressions following Beowulf’s slaying of Grendel and his slaying of the monster’s mother. In the first in­ stance, the poet is paraphrasing the words of a bard celebrating Beowulf’s triumph by comparing it to that of Sigemund, son of Wæls, over the drag­ on. He goes on to compare Sigemund with Heremod: Se wæs wreccena wide mærost ofer werþeode, wigendra hleo, ellendædum (he þæs ær onðah), siððan Heremodes hild sweðrode, eafoð ond ellen. He mid Eotenum wearð on feonda geweald forð forlacen,

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snude forsended. Hine sorhwylmas lemede to lange; he his leodum wearð, eallum æþellingum to aldorceare; swylce oft bemearn ærran mælum swiðferhes sið snotor ceorl monig, se þe him bealwa to bote gelyfde, þæt þæt ðeodnes beam geþeon scolde, fæderæþelum onfon, folc gehealdan, hord ond hleoburh, hæleþa rice, eþel Scyldinga. He þær eallum wearð, mæg Higelaces, manna cynne, froendum gefægra; hine fyren onwod. [Beowulf 898-915, ed. Dobbie 1953.] That one [Sigemund] was of men far and wide the most famous over nations, a prince of warriors, in his deeds of valor - he early prospered - since Heremod’s valor diminished, his strength and bravery. Among the Eotens he was betrayed away into the power of enemies, dispatched straightaway. Waves of sorrow oppressed him for too long; to his peo­ ple, to all the nobles, he turned into a great sorrow; thus oft at an earli­ er time many a wise man, who expected from him compensation for mis­ ery, mourned the course of action of the bold one, that that child of a king should prosper, receive his paternal rank, rule a people, treasure and a stronghold, a kingdom of men, the native land of the Scyldingas. There he, that kinsman of Higelac, became more beloved to all his friends, to the race of men; crime took possession of him. In the second instance, Hroðgar is addressing Beowulf. He tells the hero that he will long be a defender of his people, by the grace of god, unlike Heremod. Ne wearð Heremod swa eaforum Ecgwelan, Arscyldingum; ne geweox he him to willan, ac to wælfealle ond to deaðcwalum Deniga leodum; breat bolgenmod beodgeneatas, eaxlgesteallan, oþþæt he ana hwearf, mære þeoden mondreamum from. Ðeah þe hine mihtig god mægenes wynnun, eafeþum stepte, ofer ealle men forð gefremede, hwæþere him on ferhþe greow breosthord blodreow. Nallas beagas geaf Denem æfter dome; dreamleas gebad þæt he þæs gewinnes weorc þroade, leodbealo longsum. [Beowulf 1709b-22a, ed. Dobbie 1953.] Heremod did not turn out thus among the retainers of Ecgwela, among the Ar-Scyldings; he did not grow according to their will, but to slaughter and to death pains for the people of the Danes; bold in spirit, he cut down his table companions, his shoulder companions, until alone he turned away, the renowned prince, from the joys of men. Although almighty God to the joy of kinsmen raised him in might, advanced forth over all men, yet in his heart his mind grew bloodthirsty. Not at all did he give

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rings to the Danes in pursuit of glory; joyless he experienced that he suffered the labor of that strife, longlasting harm to a people. From the point of view of the Icelandic evidence, what is perhaps most striking about Heremod is that he is directly compared with Sigemund in the first passage, just as Hermóðr occurs together with Sigmundr in Hyndluljóð 2. Whether one postulates a common Germanic background or some kind of Anglo-Scandinavian mutual influence - and despite Sigmundr’s descent from Odin - this conflation strengthens, I think, the notion of Hermóðr/Heremod as something other than a son of Odin, a god acting in the realm of myth. Indeed, the separation of these passages from the one about Herebeald and Hæðcyn, which does relate to the Baldr story, argues further that this Heremod connects more closely to the Hermóðr of heroic legend than that of myth. It has, however, been possible to argue the con­ trary, as, for example, Gustav Neckel did some time ago. Such an argu­ ment depends on reading sið in line 908 as “journey,” rather than “course of action,” as I have rendered it, and it would be strengthened by reading Eotenas as jqtnar (Kaske 1968) and perhaps even by taking feondas as “fiends, demons” rather than “enemies.” Either translation of sið is possi­ ble, but if Heremod undertook a journey here, even if it was among the giants, and even if he was betrayed to the demons, we must assume, if the journey is the same as the one Hermóðr undertook, that many a wise man mourned it because it was unsuccessful. It is, however, difficult to con­ nect the putative journey to retrieve someone from the world of the dead with the theme of bad kingship which interests the poet here. The second passage may allude to a journey in lines 1714-15 (“until alone he turned away, the renowned prince, from the joys of men...”), but what joins the two passages is the unkingly behavior of Heremod, and it seems to me that one could take 1714-15 metaphorically; he turned away from the joys of men when he killed his table companions. This, interest­ ingly, would qualify him in a broad way as a sveinn Oðins, insofar as the most famous Odinic hero, Starkaðr, commited three crimes by killing two of his kings and, arguably, fleeing a third in battle (Dumézil 1970 and nu­ merous other publications), and Odin himself kills Haraldr wartooth when disguised as the king’s charioteer. Outside of the three manuscripts of Gylfaginning with sonr, support for a father-son relationship between Odin and Hermóðr is found in pula IVe, which catalogues sons of Odin. Burir ro Óðins Baldr ok Meili Víðarr ok Nepr Váli, Áli Þórr ok Hildolfr Hermóðr, Sigi, SkjQldr, Ingvifreyr ok ítreksjóð, Heimdallr, Sæmingr, HQÖr ok Bragi. [Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931, Bl: 660.]

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The sons of Odin are Baldr and Meili, Víðarr and Nepr, Váli, Á li, Thor and Hildolfr, Hermóðr, Sigi, SkjQldr, Ingvifreyr and Itreksjóð, Heimdallr, Sæmingr, H q6 t ok Bragi. Interestingly, a slightly later verse (IVg) contains a similar list of æsir: [En skal telja ása heiti.] Þar es Yggr ok Þórr ok Ingvifreyr, Víðarr ok Baldr, Váli ok Heimdallr. þá er Týr ok NjQrðr telk næst Braga, HQðr, Forseti; her es øfstr Loki. [Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931, Bl: 660-61.] [I shall enumerate some more names of Æsir]. There is Yggr ok Thor and Ingvifreyr, Víðarr and Baldr, Vali and Heimdallr. Then there is Týr and NjQrðr. Next I enumerate Bragi, HQÖr, Forseti; here Loki is the last. Hermóðr is among the sons of Odin not repeated in the þula listing the æsir; the other missing sons are Meili, Nepr, Áli, Hildolfr, SkjQldr, ítreksjóð, and Sæmingr - hardly (except for SkjQldr and Sæmingr, both of whom have dynastic credentials) a set of well-known figures in the mythology. Meili is unknown to Snorri, although Haustlqng 14 and Hárbarðsljóð 9 used “brother of Meili” (blóði MeildMeila bróðir) as a kenning for Thor. Nepr is quite unknown, although Snorri twice calls Nanna Nepsdóttir (“daughter of Nepr”; Snorra edda, ed. Finnur Jónsson 1931: 33, 65). Áli could of course be Váli, but since the manucripts also suggest Oli and other forms, we will never know. Hildolfr is unknown except for Hárbarðsljóð 8, in which Hárbarðr/Óðinn claims that the owner of the boat in which he refuses Thor a ride is someone of that name. ítreksjóð makes no sense. If the evidence from these two þulur has any burden, it is that Hermóðr was hardly a famous son of Odin, or perhaps that he was a son of Odin who did not number among the æsir. The problem is further complicated by the suspicions recently raised by Elena Gurevich (1992) about the tra­ ditional nature of the þulur. If, as she argues, they are late texts created out of tradition rather than faithful renditions of tradition, they may be of limited use in elucidating the nature of the relationship between Hermóðr and Odin. Sqgubrot af fornkonungum, a fornaldarsaga dealing with the earliest legendary history and possibly deriving from the lost Skjqldunga saga, makes a brief allusion to Hermóðr in the curious dialogue between King ívarr and his foster-father HQrðr. To the king’s question “Hverr var Helgi inn hvassi með ásum” (“who was Helgi the keen among the æsir”), HQrðr answers “Hann var Hermóðr, er bezt var hugaðr, ok þér óþarfr” (“He was Hermóðr, who was most courageous, and most unnecessary [= harmful] to you”) (Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1959, vol. 1: 348). Helgi’s cognomen recalls that of Hermóðr inn hvati, and that is indeed the point of the clause “er bezt var hugaðr.” Thus Hermóðr is explicitly placed among the æsir - the

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others mentioned are Baldr, Hœnir, and Heimdallr while at the same time this placement occurs in the broader context of the oldest legendary reg­ nal history. The only extant poetic source implicating Hermóðr in the Baldr drama is Málsháttakvœði, the circumstances of transmission and some stylistic features of which have led some commentators to assign it to Bjami Kolbeinsson, who was bishop of the Orkneys from 1188 until his death in 1223; more cautious observers accept the anonymity of the poem and date it to the early thirteenth century (e.g., Frank 1987). The stanza in question is the ninth. Friggjar þótti svipr at syni, så var taldr or miklu kyni, Hermóðr vildi auka aldr, Éljúðnir vann sólginn Baldr, q11 grétu þau eptir hann, aukit var þeim hlátrar bann, heyrinkunn er frá hQnum saga, hvat þarf ek of slikt at jaga. [Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931, B2: 140.] It seemed sad about Frigg’s son, he was said to come from a great fam­ ily, Hermóðr wished to increase his life, Éljúðnir managed to swallow Baldr, all wept after him, the ban on laughter was increased for them, the story about him is known to be heard, why should I pursue such? There certainly seems little doubt that this stanza repeats a version of the Baldr story very close to that told by Snorri. It begins with Frigg and her relationship with Baldr and ends with the failed attempt to weep him back to life. The central couplet reports Hermóðr’s attempt to retrieve Baldr (and thus to lengthen his life), and the outcome: Éljúðnir, Hel’s hall, kept him (swallowed him). Since Éljúðnir is mentioned by name only in this poem and in Gylfaginning, a relationship between the allegedly Orkneyan poem and Snorri’s writing seems close at hand, and this relationship may also be suggested by the fact that Málsháttakvœði only survives in Codex Regius of Snorra Edda Málsháttakvœði is essentially a collection of proverbial sentences, each occupying a verse line. It is indeed possible to imagine any of the lines about Baldr being used proverbially, assuming that the story was well known, as the poet states, but it is best to recall that some of the charac­ ters to whom he alludes elsewhere are unknown (e.g., Brandingi in str. 9), and more generally that he takes an ironic stance toward his material. If the consensus datings of Málsháttakvœði are correct (Hermann Pálsson [1984] suggests the possibility of a later date), two separate concep­ tions of Hermóðr may have obtained in the decades before or around the time when Snorri worked, one associating him with heroic activity, the oth­ er with the mythic sphere of Baldr’s death (the tentative suggestion that

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there may have been two different characters named Hermóðr - so Finnur Jónsson (1931: 246, s.v. Hermóðr) - raises more questions than it answers and need not be taken seriously). If so, these differing conceptions were captured in the scribal tradition, with one scribe opting for sveinn Oðins and the heroic sphere, the others for the mythically more suitable fatherson relationship. As this review of the textual evidence suggests, Hermóðr may well have belonged originally to the heroic sphere, and that possibility has more or less dominated the scholarship on Hermóðr, which has characteristically concerned itself primarily with origins and older versions of the story. Thus Hermóðr may have entered the story when it was heroicized, or he may just be a late addition, or he may even once have been Odin himself. Such speculation does little to advance one’s understanding of the story as it ac­ tually unfolds, however, for whether Hermóðr was once a hero added at some point to the story or whether he was a god, perhaps Odin, there from the start, Snorri’s audience would have had no way of recovering that in­ formation and had to think of him either as Odin’s son or servant. If Hermóðr is Odin’s son, the myth of Baldr’s death (although not his funeral) essentially involves Odin’s family alone; his wife tries initially to avert the catastrophe, his son and blood-brother carry it out, and another son tries unsuccessfully to reverse it; and yet another son carries out venge­ ance. The problem of the slaying within the family is kept wholly within the family, and the story possesses beautiful symmetry: just one weapon, just one old lady - and just one father. This is, I think, the way Snorri read the story as he reworked his sources, a reading that is supported by the fact that sonr is found in three of the four major manuscripts, covering both branches. The source Snorri was following when it comes to Hermóðr’s expedition appears to have been a now lost Eddie lay, which could easily have been in circulation in the later Icelandic Middle Ages, and the scribe of Codex Regius may just have been following it when he emended Snor­ ri’s sonr Oðins to sveinn Oðins. But even without this speculation, there is the fact of the twin traditions about Hermóðr, divine son and human hero. What happens to the Baldr story if we regard it imagining Hermóðr not as Odin’s son but as his sveinn? Such a relationship would invite comparison to stories of other expedi­ tions undertaken by underlings of the gods. Frigg, for example, sends Fulla, eskismey sin (“her chambermaid”), to Geirr0ðr, according to the prose introduction to Grímnismál, and Fulla gives Geirrøbr a false warning about the man with magic powers (Odin in disguise) who has entered his land. Fulla is thus an instrument in a struggle, one that indeed begins agonistically when Odin and Frigg quarrel over their respective human favorites in the prose head to the poem. Frigg’s intention, apparently, is to inter­ vene in the upcoming encounter between Odin and Geirrøbr. Similarly,

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Thor sends Þjálfi to tell Hrungnir to stand atop his shield before the two duel, so as to free up a clear shot at the giant’s thorax. Thor’s ploy works, and Frigg’s does not, but they share the use of the envoy with bad advice. A similar moment occurs in the heroic poetry when Atli sends an emis­ sary to Gunnarr to invite him to an ambush (AtlakviÖa, Atlamál), and the instances in the sagas in which those involved in quarrels or feuds dispatch underlings to no good purpose are too numerous to number. A related ex­ pedition in the mythology involving a form of deception other than bad advice occurs when Odin sends Skirnir, called sendimaðr Freys (Freyr’s emissary) to the dwarfs to obtain the apparently harmless fetter Gleipnir, with which he wishes to bind the Fenris wolf, in a story I have already related situationally to the Baldr myth. The wolf smells a rat, and Týr has to make good the deception, at the cost of his arm. Viewed in the light of the mythological and heroic parallels, then, Hermóðr’s journey occurs in the context of a larger struggle - here specifically, Odin vs. Hel, more gen­ erally, æsir vs. jQtnar - and is in all probability meant to deceive Hel in some way. Indeed, Given Odin’s penchant for deception, Hermóðr’s jour­ ney is wholly Odinic in its purpose and strategy and probably therefore appropriate either to his servant or to his son. Lexically, the closest parallel to Hermóðr as sveinn Óðins is Skirnir, for besides calling him Freyr’s sendimaðr, Snorri also calls him Freyr’s ser­ vant (skósveinn Freys) in his short account of Skirnir’s expedition to jQtunheimar, and the prose header to For Skirnis has the same locution. One probably borrowed from the other, but that is not important. It is enough that it is in Snorri, who is our source for Hermóðr’s journey. And the relationship between Freyr and Skirnir, as Skirnir reminds Freyr in Skírnismál, appears to be nearly close enough to render insignificant the distinction between servant and kin. 5. “Muni þína hycca ec svá micla vera, at þú mér, seggr, né segir; þvíat ungir saman várom i árdaga, vel mættim tveir truazc.” [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 70.] “I do not think that your desires are so great that you, warrior, not tell them; because we were young together in days of yore, well might we two trust one another.” The journeys of Hermóðr and Skirnir share many similarities (cf. Schröder 1924), who sees the influence of an early form of a lost lay of Hermóðr on Skírnismál). Each journey is undertaken when an authority figure to whom the envoy is tightly bound seeks redress from some form of suffering: sexual longing in Freyr’s case, grief (we must assume) in Od­ in’s case. In each case a woman provides the direct motivation. Frigg re­

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cruits Hermóðr; Skaði, according the prose header to Skírnismál, sends Skirnir to find out why Freyr is so peevish. Snorri assigns this role to NjQrðr, perhaps out of an uncertainty or unwillingness to commit himself on the identity of Freyr’s mother. In each case, too, the emissary uses a horse borrowed from his master. More important is the aim of the jour­ ney: both Skirnir and Hermóðr are trying to obtain a human from the oth­ er world. Each uses verbal means, and neither conceals his identity. Each extracts a promise for the removal of the sought-after person to ValhQll, but neither promise is fully successful; Baldr is not to be wept away from Hel; and Freyr’s response to the promise that Gerðr will give herself to him in nine nights is one of exasperation at the seemingly interminable wait. If it is true that Freyr does at last get Gerðr, it is also true that Baldr re­ turns at last. Here, however, the differences become more important. Freyr’s enjoyment of Gerðr occurs during the current mythological order, as Hyndluljóð 30 flatly states, in a list of three áss-jQtunn marriages (the first is Burr and Bestla): Var Baldrs faðir Burs arfþegi, Freyr átti Gerði, hon var Gymis [ms. Geymis] dóttir, ÍQtna ættar, oc Aurboðo; þó var Þiazi [ms Þiassi] þeira frœndi, scautgiam ÍQtunn, hans var Scaði dóttir. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 293.] Baldr’s father was the heir of Burr, Freyr possessed Gerðr, she was the daughter of Gy mir, of the family of the jQtnar, and of Aurboða; and yet Þjazi was their kinsman, the trigger-happy [?] giant, Skaði was his daughter. Snorri lists Gerðr among the asynjur at the beginning of Skáldskaparmál, and in Ynglinga saga, ch. 10, he calls her Freyr’s wife and says that FjQlnir was their son. In contrast, Baldr’s return only occurs after the end of the current mythic order, of the world as the æsir know it, when Freyr and Gerðr will be dead and consumed by flames. This difference points to the major disjunction between the Baldr myth and most of the rest of the my­ thology, which lacks a focus beyond the current world order. Gerðr can change her alliances; Baldr cannot. Still, the story pattern suggested by the Gerðr and Baldr stories contrasts with the other usual acquisition pattern, one of the most common struc­ tures in the mythology. In it the encounter between áss and jQtunn is not directly agonistic but has to do with some precious object, often a defen­ sive weapon of the æsir, either literally, as in the case of Thor’s hammer, or figuratively, as in the case of the mead of poetry, the enabler of Odin’s wisdom, or Iðunn’s apples, their defense against old age. In stories of this kind, the protagonist is a god himself (Odin, Thor, Loki), not an under­

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ling. He sets off to the other world in shape-shifted form (bird, feathersuit, woman’s dress). His object is to acquire or to secure the return of the precious object (mead of poetry, Iðunn’s apples, hammer); in the case of Iðunn’s apples the return focuses on Iðunn, not the apples themselves, but as a rule the threat of removal of ásynjur (ordinarily Freyja is singled out) to jQtunheimar remains no more than a drunken jQtunn boast or is part of a bargain made to be broken. After an encounter with one or more of the jQtnar, the áss acquires the object, and returns it to the world of the æsir, not without difficulty in some cases (mead of poetry, Iðunn, guardian of the apples), in other cases immediately (Thor’s hammer). The aftermath involves the slaying of the jQtunn who possessed the object and by refer­ ence to Ymir’s death and dismemberment certifies the result as positive and creative. Consider now Hermóðr’s journey. Undertaken by an undisguised under­ ling going after not an object but a living being, it escalates the question of acquisition and might bring a kind of foreshadowing to an informed au­ dience, who on the basis of the Skímir/Gerðr story might reasonably as­ sume that whatever retrieval he effects will be tempered by some sort of delay. Those familiar not just with Snorri’s summary of the story but with Skírnismál would expect that the retrieval itself would be a tricky matter, requiring not sweet words or bribes but serious threats. They might also rightly wonder what threats, if any, could be brought to bear on Hel, whose status lacks the sexual uncertainty that Skimir’s threats to Gerðr, especially that of the thistle (Harris 1975), play on. When read against Norse dream traditions, Baldr’s dreams make it clear that he will die; when read against mythological acquisition stories, Hermóðr’s journey should involve an ul­ timate overcoming of the jQtun antagonist, but it leaves open the question of the acquisition of the proximate aim of the journey. Snorri interrupts his account of the journey of Hermóðr at the point when Hermóðr has ridden off on Sleipnir, and here the story of the funeral in­ tervenes. Thus Hermóðr and Baldr are to some extent on parallel tracks, for according to the narrative the hope is that each will journey to the world of the dead and then return. As Hermóðr departs, no funeral has been held for Baldr, so he still hovers between the worlds of the living and the dead. By the time Snorri picks up the thread of the Hermóðr narrative, the fu­ neral has been held and Baldr is no longer liminal. In trying to retrieve someone from the world of the dead Hermóðr traveled a well worn path dug deep by such heroes as Gilgamesh, Orpheus, and countless others from all over the world (Bishop 1975, Hultkrantz 1957), including many shamans (Siikala 1987). A great many more visi­ tors to the other world seek information, and the medieval tradition is par­ ticularly rich in these. Hermóðr’s journey should first, in my view, be set alongside that of Odin in Baldrs draumar. In both instances information

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about Baldr’s fate is the goal: Odin seeks to learn the identity of the trian­ gle in a vengeance story (victim, killer, avenger), and Hermóðr seeks to learn whether Baldr’s death is to be permanent. As a further point of simi­ larity, each voyager rides Sleipnir, and each text offers a bit of informa­ tion about the preparation for the ride: Odin arose and placed a saddle on Sleipnir, and off he rode (Baldrs draumar 2), for Hermóðr Sleipnir was taken and led up, and Hermóðr mounted and galloped off (GyIfaginning). The actual riding is mentioned in each case: Odin simply “reið ... niðr þaðan / Niflheliar til” (“rode down from there to Niflhel”), whereas Hermóðr’s ride gets a more detailed description, through alliteration evoking (if not actually demonstrating its derivation from) eddic poetry: En þat er at segja frá Hermóði, at hann reið níu nætr døkkva dala ok djúpa, svá at hann så ekki, fyrr en hann kom til årinnar Gjallar ok reið á Gjallar-brúna; hon er þQkð lýsigulli. [Normalized from Finnur Jons­ son, ed. 1931: 66.] And regarding Hermóðr it is to be reported that for nine nights he rode dales dark and deep, so that he saw nothing, until he came to the river GjQll and rode on the Gjallar-bridge; it is thatched with bright gold. That Hermóðr rides for nine nights is not surprising in this mythology, in which nine is the favorite number. Examples abound. Freyr’s marriage to Gerðr will be nine nights hence; in their uneasy marriage, NjQrðr and Skaði spend nine nights at the seashore, then nine nights in the mountains; Odin hangs for nine nights on the windy tree in his self-sacrifice; Draupnir makes eight copies of itself every nine nights. Other nines include the mothers of Heimdallr, perhaps the same as the nine daughters of Ægir; Vafþrúðnir traveled nine worlds below Niflhel; and so on. If anything joins these nines (other than the hypothetical connection with lunar calendars that has long been a staple of the scholarship on this topic; e.g., de Vries 1970, vol. 2: 79, Lorenz 1984: 584, Simek 1984a: 283; cf. Dumézil 1947: 231-38, who makes explicit the mythic dimensions), it is a connection with boundaries and edges, which often expresses a liminal time (Odin as the initiand, Gerðr promised to Freyr but not delivered), object (Draupnir as the token of Baldr’s funeral), place (the nine worlds below Niflhel, at the boundary of what can be known about the world,1 Thor’s nine steps away from the Midgard serpent at RagnarQk), or individual (Heimdallr, who sits at the boundary between worlds and sounds his horn at the boundary be­ tween mythic epochs). Adam of Bremen’s account of the pagan rites in Uppsala appears to show the cultic reality of nines: nine males of various species sacrificed every nine years (in ceremonies lasting nine days, ac­ cording to a scholium) (Adam, Book IV, ch. 27; ed. Schmeidler 1917), and 1 I cannot agree with Hahn 1897, who argues that these mean simply an inestimable expanse.

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numerous additional examples from outside the sphere of myth and reli­ gion have been adduced (Weinhold 1897). At the high point of the cultic cycle in Uppsala, expressed by the nine year interval, nine creatures attain the heightened status of the sacrificed and straddle the boundary between men and their gods. By riding for nine nights, then, Hermóðr expresses the liminal status he assumes during his expedition, which itself has to do with the still (at least in the eyes of the gods) liminal status of Baldr. The landscape he traverses, although not featureless, offers nothing to be seen. By depriving Hermóðr temporarily of his vision, it creates an in­ teresting parallel with the onset of the myth: the blind HQÖr despatches Baldr to Hel, and Hermóðr, who sees nothing as he pursues Baldr there, will be unable to retrieve him. In medieval vision literature in general, vi­ sionaries often traverse dark spaces at the beginning of their travels, as when Dante finds himself in a dark forest in the opening lines of Inferno. The learned Christian visionary tradition was available in medieval Ice­ land not only in Latin but also in such translations as Niðrstigningar saga, a rendering of “Descensus Christi ad inferos” from the Gospel of Nicodemus, and Duggals leiðsla, a rendering of the Visio Thnugdali, as well as in translations of the Visio Pauli, Dryhthelms vision, and others (Dinzelbacher 1981, 1993), and it may be worth noting that the topography of pur­ gatory in Drychthelm’s vision is a large dark valley; although the transla­ tion was not undertaken until the fourteenth century (Gering ed. 1882-83: 331), Bede, whose Historia Ecclesiastica has the vision, was widely read, and Alfred included the vision in his translation of Bede. Furthermore, the first landscape Duggall (Tundale) enters after being joined by his angel guardian is a large valley, dark and filled with the blindness of death, where the souls of murderers are being burned, especially patricides and fratri­ cides CDuggals leiðsla, ed. Cahill 1983: 24-27, 114-15). The Norse trans­ lation of Visio Tnugdali almost certainly postdates Snorra Edda, and it would appear to be unlikely that Snorri knew the Latin, and furthermore the alliteration of “døkkva dala ok djupa” suggest an underlying and pre­ sumably older eddic lay. Nevertheless, it remains striking that Hermóðr should travel through the landscape reserved just for those responsible for the kind of crime that consigned Baldr to Hel. This mix of specific Norse mythological detail and medieval vision lit­ erature characterizes all of Snorri’s account of Hermóðr’s journey. It cer­ tainly holds for the river GjQll and its bridge, the Gjallarbru; river and bridge are among the most commonplace elements of medieval vision lit­ erature (Dinzelbacher 1973), and are perhaps best represented in Icelan­ dic tradition by the river and bridge that Eiríkr víðfQrli cannot pass in his attempt to journey to Ódáins akr (“the pasture of immortality”) in Eiriks saga víðfqrla, which however postdates Snorra Edda and is most likely based on learned materials (Simek 1984b); but this particular pair have deep

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and solid roots in the mythology of the North in any case. GjQll is related to the verb gjalla (“to resound, shriek”), an appropriate name for a river that runs in rocky northern landscapes. Despite the prominence Snorri ac­ cords it here, however, it is just one of numerous river names enumerated by Odin in his cosmological wisdom performance in Grímnismál. The riv­ ers are in stanzas 27-29, and GjQll sits in the middle of them, in a stanza apparently devoted to those rivers that fall “gumnom nær, / enn falla til heliar heðan” (Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 63) (“near humans, / they fall further hence to [the abode of] Hel”). Snorri lists GjQll in Gylfaginning last among the rivers flowing from Hvergelmir, apparently the élivágar, and notes that it is “næst helgrindum” (“nearest the gates of [the abode of] Hel”), which agrees with the cosmology he advances in the Hermóðr story. He also has another GjQll, namely the flat stone (“hella”) used to anchor the Fenris wolf’s fetter deep in the earth - where, presumably, the river GjQll flows. River and rock therefore share name and cosmological location, and each has a specific connection with one of Loki’s offspring. That GjQll was a powerful mythological concept is further indicated by the two objects that take their names from it, the bridge Gjallarbru and the horn Gjallarhorn. De Vries (1962: 170 s.v.) separates bridge from horn by deriving the etymology of the horn from the verbal root, and horns do af­ ter all make noise, but etymology was not an advanced science in medie­ val Scandinavia, and the derivation from the river name would lie close at hand. Snorri could certainly have had this derivation in mind when he re­ ported that Mimir acquires wisdom by drinking from Mimisbrunnr (“Mimir’s spring”) with the Gjallarhorn. This spring, Mimisbrunnr, is lo­ cated under the root of Yggdrasill that points toward the jQtnar; under the root leading to Hel is Hvergelmir, whence GjQll flows. At least by means of the name “GjQll,” then, Mimir’s wisdom combines the dead and the jQtnar, two faces of chaos (just as the name “GjQll” joins in the “binding” of two of Loki’s evil offspring). This horn, at least, poorly fits de Vries’s etymology. The same name, however, is given to the horn of Heimdallr, which he will sound at the onset of RagnarQk (Snorra Edda, ed. Finnur Jónsson 1931: 33). Snorri was probably following Vqluspá 46, a notori­ ously difficult stanza (Nordal 1952: 121-24); the second half clearly states that the horn is aloft, and that Heimdallr blows it, but the first half, in which Gjallarhorn is mentioned, has never been satisfactorily explained, and in it the sons of Mimr, presumably a form equivalent to Mimir (Mimi is also attested), play a role. This leaves open several possiblities - including per­ haps even two horns - but does nothing to diminish the possibility that a medieval audience could have connected the Gjallarhorn with the river GjQll. The bridge Gjallarbrú is not found in eddic or skaldic poetry, and Snor­ ri’s may be its first use. His nephew Sturla Þorðarson provides the only

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other attestation in Icelandic, in his Hákonarkviða, one of the four poems this amazingly prolific man of letters, best known for the compilation of Sturlunga saga, composed about Hákon Hákonarson, king of Norway. In stanza 27 Sturla uses the expression “ganga á Gjallarbru” (“to travel the Gjallarbru”) as a metaphor for the dying of Hákon’s father-in-law. If, how­ ever, the term Gjallarbru was a latecomer to Scandinavia, it had staying power, for it survived in the Norwegian Draumkvæde (“dream-ballad”), a fully Christian account of a vision of a journey to Hell (Liestøl 1946, Strömbäck 1946) put together long after the Middle Ages (Barnes 1974) and per­ haps not even strictly speaking a ballad (Alver 1971); the language of bal­ lads has a few other references to the Gjallarbru (Strömbäck 1946). These occurrences could be independent of Snorri, and if so the Gjallarbru could long have been attached to the world of the dead, a topic that was of course popular both in medieval vision literature and in ballad tradition. Both Odin and Hermóðr are challenged along the way, Odin by the bloody hellhound that howls at him but does not stop or even faze him (Baldrs draumar3), Hermóðr by a woman whom he meets at the bridge. This guardian of the entrance to the world of the dead is another common­ place of stories about visits there and belongs to an even larger tradition of the challenges made to heroes by boundary figures. This particular guardian is a maiden named Móðguðr, which transpar­ ently means “bold-battle” (the shared component with Her-móðr is a com­ mon one in the nomenclature of the mythology; it is as if I were being in­ terrogated by a woman named, say, Lynn Johnson). According to form, their encounter might be expected to take the form of a flyting, in which case Móðguðr must lose; when each sex is represented in a flyting, “the woman always loses” (Clover 1980: 449, fn. 15). However, the flyting nev­ er materializes. The exchange looks more like an attenuated contest of wisdom, which is appropriate given Hermóðr’s Odinic attachments. Like the seeress in Baldrs draumar, Móðguðr asks her interlocutor his name and family; unlike Odin, Hermóðr apparently does not conceal it, although we do not hear his response. The apparent willingness to reveal his name sep­ arates the story, as I have argued above, from most other voyages of ac­ quisition in the mythology and brings it closer to medieval vision litera­ ture. If one sticks to the reading in the main manuscript (Codex Regius of Snorra Edda, GkS 2367 4to), Móðguðr goes on to issue a challenge; or perhaps this challenge is part of her initial greeting to Hermóðr. I cite the entire account of her opening speech: hon spurði hann at nafni eða [at] ætt ok sagði, at enn fyrra dag riðu um brúna fimm fylki dauðra manna, “en eigi dynr bruin jafnmjQk undir einum þér ok eigi hefir þú lit dauðra manna; hví ríðr þú hér á helveg?” [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 66.]

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She asks his name and family and said that on the previous day five com­ panies of dead men had ridden over the bridge, “and it does not resound as much under you alone, and you lack the color of dead people; why are you riding the way to Hel?” Editors ordinarily emend “jafnmjQk” (“as much”) to “minnr” (“less”) and get a meaning something like “and it resounds no less under you alone.” Without the emendation, Móðguðr appears simply to be charging Hermóðr with being out of place. Of the other manuscripts, one (Codex Utrechtinus) agrees with Regius, and two have “minnr,” namely Codex Wormianus and Codex Upsaliensis. This covers both manuscript branches, so one cannot insist too strongly on the reading of Regius. Interestingly, the Upp­ sala manuscript makes explicit that the troops were Baldr’s, a fact not di­ rectly attested in the other manuscripts: “Fyrra dag reið Baldr hér med fimm hundruð manna, en eigi glymr miðr undir þér einum”(Grape & al., ed. 1977: 31) (“Yesterday Baldr rode here with five hundred men, and it rattles no less under you alone”). Challenged or not, Hermóðr answers her question ingenuously and now poses one of his own: has she seen Baldr? She has, she says, seen him ride over the bridge, and the way to Hel is down and north. Thus Móðguðr and Hermóðr pose one question each, and the result of their encounter is the acquisition of information by Hermóðr. However, the flaccid nature of their exchange matches the scant value of the information Hermóðr receives. He already knows that Baldr is dead, and where else would Hel’s abode be? Snorri does not seem to have handled this episode with his usual nar­ rative skill and verve. Perhaps the incompatible conflation of several forms, the “native” mythological journey of acquisition or wisdom contest, cou­ pled with the possibility of a flyting, and the “learned” contest of wisdom, proved disruptive. The remainder of Hermóðr’s journey continues this uneasy conflation. According to Snorri’s topology, we must assume that Hermóðr follows the river GjQll (which is “næst helgrindum”) until he comes to the gates that guard the realm of Hel. Gates presuppose a wall, and walls are indeed im­ portant boundary markers in this mythology. Indeed, although in general water, flames and walls “merge into one another without apparent contra­ diction” as barriers to the otherworld in Scandinavian tradition (Stitt 1992: 165), walls have significance that goes beyond their role as encirclers of abodes. The construction of the wall around Ásgarðr was an important as­ pect of cosmology and furthermore created the mechanism for the concep­ tion and birth of Sleipnir, Hermóðr’s mount at this point. Had the jQtunn masterbuilder been able to complete his work, he would have taken Freyja - an inversion of the usual pattern of acquisition - and the sun and moon, thus destroying the cosmos and time reckoning, both products of the crea­ tivity of the æsir; in short, he would have precipitated RagnarQk. Loki’s

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timely intercession involved reversing his human status and his sex and openly committing ergi. In the mythic present, then, the gods have an un­ finished wall (rather like Thor’s short-handled hammer, Odin’s lack of an eye, and Týr’s lack of a hand). When the wall is breached by Hrungnir, who is also riding, chasing Sleipnir, RagnarQk again looms, since the jQtunn threatens again to take Freyja, and he adds Sif to his lust-list and also threat­ ens to invert topography by moving ValhQll to jQtunheimar. Hrungnir’s entry into the abode of the æsir was through the ásgrind, the gate to Asgarðr. These gates, then, are crucial spots, not to be easily penetrated. Like Hrungnir, Hermóðr relies on his horse, but instead of riding through he leaps over, after first dismounting to tighten the saddle, encouraging Sleipnir with his spurs. Thus he makes use of the vertical axis, along which wisdom usually runs, and he denies to some extent the general downward nature of his journey. Once over the gate, Hermóðr rides up to the hall, dismounts, and en­ ters. There he sees not Hel, with whom his mission deals, but rather Baldr, seated in the high seat, indicating that he is either head of household or honored guest. Perhaps here the common role of the companion to the vi­ sionary, from vision literature, thrusts Baldr to the fore, or perhaps Snorri had trouble imagining or portraying a woman in charge anywhere, even in the depths of the world of the dead. In either case, the realm of Hel is por­ trayed not as some grim abode of shades, nor as the paradise that some Christian visionaries are allowed to glimpse briefly before their return to their lives among the living, but rather like what Baldr left behind in Ásgarðr. This should come as no surprise, since ValhQll, the home of the living áss Odin in Ásgarðr, is also a world of the dead for human warri­ ors. Those humans are according to the conceit the best of mortals, and in dying they achieve a new and higher social status. Baldr’s death shares in the notion of bringing high status into the otherworld, but his situation is complicated by the ongoing nature of the struggle between æsir and vanir. What is victory for humans is defeat for gods. The encounter between Hermóðr and Hel is postponed for the night, and when it takes place the following morning it lacks any real tension. Hermóðr simply states his case to Hel, without emoluments or threats. He argues for Baldr’s release on the grounds of the grief, literally the great weeping (“mikill grátr”) of the æsir. En Hel sagði, at þat skyldi svá reyna, hvárt Baldr var svá ástsæll, “sem sagt er, ok ef allir hlutir í heiminum kykvir ok dauðir gráta hann, þá skal hann fara til åsa aptr, en haldask með Helju, ef nQkkurr mælir við eða vill eigi gráta.” [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 67.] And Hel said that it should be tested, whether Baldr was so beloved, “as is said, and if all things on earth, alive and dead, weep over him, then he shall travel back to the æsir, but he shall be kept with Hel, if someone speaks against it or will not weep.”

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What Hel demands is a degree of cooperation that violates every prin­ ciple of the mythology, based as it is on opposition of individuals and groups. The living include not only the æsir and humans, who have every cause to mourn Baldr, but also the jQtnar, who do not. Among the dead, too, there is a division, for although the mythology assigns the dead to var­ ious gods - Odin, Frigg, Freyja, even Thor - Hel by definition rules over at least some of them. If Hel’s demand were to be met, the mythology would dissolve, as it does at RagnarQk. Furthermore, she asks for weep­ ing, that is, a public display of grief. Although Snorri tells us that all the æsir were speechless at Baldr’s murder because of weeping, medieval Ice­ landers knew that such displays were women’s work. Men should keep a stiff upper lip, moving it only to utter a quip in the face of danger or death. Snorri’s audience knew that death could not be reversed in this world, and they knew for any number of reasons, some of which I have enumer­ ated here, that Baldr’s death was no exception. Even so, the charade must be played out. Þá stóð Hermóðr upp, en Baldr leiddi hann ut or hQllinni ok tók hringinn Draupni ok sendi Óðni til minja, en Nanna sendi Frigg ripti ok enn fleiri gjafar, Fullu fingrgull. [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 67.] Then Hermóðr arose, and Baldr led him from the hall and took the ring Draupnir and sent it to Odin as a reminder, and Nanna sent Frigg some linen cloth and yet more gifts, a finger ring to Fulla. Still playing the host, Baldr leads Hermóðr out of Hel’s hall, as any Ice­ landic chieftain would accompany an honored guest outside, and he and Nanna provide Hermóðr with gifts - for others, to be sure, but gifts all the same. Since útlausn, what Hermóðr was supposed to offer Hel for Baldr’s release, may also be used of the ritual gift-giving that accompanied the de­ parture of guests, it would seem that in this action there is yet another sign of the hopelessness of Baldr’s position; he can offer the útlausn of a host, the one who remains behind; Hermóðr did not, as far as the text goes, of­ fer any útlausn to get Baldr away. The proffered gifts are not random. First, Baldr confers Draupnir on Hermóðr, for transport to Odin. Thus the ring makes the full journey that Baldr will not make: it is burned on the funeral pyre and then returned to the world of the living. Baldr sends it to Odin as a reminder, and as such it must become part of the arsenal of mind weapons Odin can deploy in the eternal war against the jQtnar, another mystery, like that of Mimir’s pickled head, that shares attributes of the living and the dead. Nanna sends ripti (“cloth, material,’’ probably linen [Kuhn 1968: 168, s.v.]) or a faldr (“head covering”), depending on which manuscript one follows, to Frigg, and to Fulla she sends a finger ring. The gift to Frigg joins giver and re­ ceiver in traditional roles as wife and mother through the term ripti, a rel­

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atively rare word limited as far as I can see mostly to eddic poetry. The maternal role appears in Rígsþula 21, in which Amma wraps the newborn Karl in ripti. When Karl marries, ripti refers to the bridal veil of Snør, his wife (Rígsþula 23), and when Rigr later comes on Móðir and Faðir, who will bring Kon ungr into the world, he finds the man fashioning a bow and arrow and the woman ironing ripti, apparently a task appropriate to a wealthy woman, wife of the head of the household. Most poignantly, ripti refers to the covers of the marriage bed of Sigurðr and Guðrún, which the poet of Sigurðarkviða in skamma has Sigurðr wrap around Guðrún each evening while the sexually frustrated Brynhildr, outside in the ice and snow, imagines the scene (stanza 8). The other word for Nanna’s gift to Frigg, faldr (“head covering”) found only in Codex Upsaliensis, appears in Rígsþula 29 in the first line following the stanza about Móðir’s ironing the ripti. It is the object of the rare verb keisa, which appears to mean “to put on” (Kuhn 1968: 116, s.v.), and taken together these stanzas appear to suggest that the head covering of stanza 29 was made from the cloth of stanza 28 and therefore attaches to Móðir’s social status. The most famous head covering in the sagas is surely the one in Laxdæla saga. Kjartan Oláfsson brought it back from Norway, an intended wedding gift from IngibjQrg, the sister of King Óláfr Tryggvason, to Guðrún Ósvifsdóttir, but Kjartan gives it instead to Hrefna, whom he marries when he learns that Guðrún has already given herself to his (now former) friend Bolli Þorleiksson. Later it disappears, apparently stolen by or at the behest of Guðrún, as the dis­ putes between the two households escalate toward the climactic killing of Kjartan by Bolli. This precious object is usually called a motr, but on sev­ eral occasions the near-synonym faldr is used for it. Thus, like ripti, the head covering was used as a symbol that centered both on marriage (Kjar­ tan says “ætla ek ok, at þat sé bezt fallit, at ek eiga allt saman, motr ok mey” (Einar 01. Sveinsson, ed. 1934: 133) (“I think it would be best ar­ ranged if I possess both, head covering and maiden”) and on the display of status by women married to prestigious heads of household. The con­ nection with marriage may also be glimpsed in that faldr appears in the first of Guðrún’s prophetic dreams in Laxdæla saga, ch. 33, interpreted by Gestr Oddleifsson as referring to her marriages. In this dream Guðrún re­ moves the head covering and throws it in the water, which Gestr correctly predicts to be an indication of the course of her first marriage; she will have little love for her husband and will leave him. Here faldr is unequivocally a symbol of marriage. Whether she sent Frigg ripti or a faldr, then, the mes­ sage may well be that Nanna is beyond her roles as wife, mother, female head of household, and sexual partner and thus no longer needs the accou­ trements. Frigg’s playing of these roles, however, is reinforced. Saxo’s story of the visit of Hadingus to the other world in Book I of Gesta Danorum, which is the most detailed such story in that work, also

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uses items of feminine clothing to join this world and the next. Hadingus’s guide to the other world is a woman who emerges from the earth near the stove, with winter seeds in the folds of her garment {mundi parte). Learning that Hadingus shares her desire to accompany her to see whence these seeds come, and enfolding him in her mantle {amicula refuga), she descends together with him. The incident has nothing otherwise to do with Hermóðr’s journey, other than through its landscape, as I have already mentioned, and perhaps peripherally through their view of battling warriors who sound quite like the einherjar in her description of them.2 There is no intention of retrieving any person, and in fact the journey appears to lead rather to Paradise than the murky realm of Hel[l]. Still, one senses that the clothing of certain women could have special power, and from there it is a short step to the elaborate description of the clothing worn by the seiðkona (fe­ male shaman) of Eiriks saga rauða, ch. 4. Þá var hon svá búin, at hon hafði yfir sér tuglamQttul blån, ok var settr steinum allt í skaut ofan; hon hafði á halsi sér glertQlur, lambskinnskofra svartan á hQfði ok við innan kattskinn hvít; ok hon hafði staf í hendi, ok var á knappr; hann var búinn með messingu ok settr steinum ofan um knappinn; hon hafði um sik hnjóskulinda, ok var þar á skjóðupungr mikill, ok varðveitti hon þar í tQfr sín, þau er hon þurfti til fróðleiks at hafa. Hon hafði á fótum kálfskinnsskúa loðna ok í þvengi langa, ok á tinknappar miklir á endunum. Hon hafði á hQndum sér kattskinnsglófa, ok váru hvítir innan ok loðnir. [Einar Ól. Sveinsson & Matthias Þorðarson, ed. 1935: 206-07.] At that time she was dressed in such a way, that she had over her a dark blue banded mantle, and stones were set in it all down into the edge; and on her neck she had glass beads, a black hat with white cat fur on the inside; and she had a staff in her hand with a button on it and there were stones set below the button; she had about herself a belt, and on it was a large pouch, and in it she kept the implements she needed for her prophecy. On her feet she had shoes of fleeced calfskin with long thongs and large tin buttons on the ends. On her hands she had gloves of cat fur, and they were white on the inside and fleeced. Strictly speaking, the only part of this description that can be verified from other sources is the staff (Strömbäck 1935), and there is no way to determine whether the description of ÞorbjQrg’s clothing is a projection of Icelandic fantasy onto older times in exotic Greenland or thirteenth-cen­ tury thick description. In any case, the text makes plausible a connection between special clothing, including a covering for the head, and a woman 2 There is a certain ambiguity about the ethical status of these ever-dueling warriors. On the one hand, they are on the far side of the bridge, which in the usual context of wisdom literature would place them in the area reserved for the souls of the saved; on the other hand, Hadingus has already viewed well dressed nobles and passed through a sunny area, which would suggest that the dueling armies are to be regarded negatively. I am inclined to the latter view.

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who can travel between worlds. Nanna’s gift of valuable cloth or elabo­ rate head covering to Frigg may have been colored by such conceptions as well. Snorri says that Nanna sends other gifts but mentions only the finger ring for Fulla. Although the ring may double Draupnir, presumably an arm ring, in a daintier size, and thus point up its importance, why Fulla? Snor­ ri’s language is so lapidary here that an eddic source seems very close at hand. It is always possible that Snorri misread or failed to pass along the determinant of a Frigg kenning for which Fulla served as base, a role she frequently plays in kennings, sometimes with gold or wealth as the deter­ minant (Finnur Jónsson 1931: 157 s.v.). Snorri’s list of Frigg kennings in Skáldskaparmál ends ambiguously: one may call her “sværa NQnnu, dron­ ning ása ok åsynja, Fullu, ok valshams ok Fensala” (normalized from Finnur Jónsson 1931: 110). The first kennings are clear: mother-in-law of Nanna, queen of the æsir and of the ásynjur, but where Fulla intervenes the ambiguity enters: can Frigg also be “queen of Fulla, of falcon shape, and of Fensalir?” Or should Fullu be accusative not genitive, the (inflect­ ed) base word of the kennings “Fulla of the falcon shape” and “Fulla of Fensalir?” Even if Snorri misunderstood something, he still states clearly that Ful­ la as well as Frigg got gifts from Nanna. Fulla’s role as Frigg’s servant, sent off to the world of men by Frigg to deceive Geirrpðr according to the prose header to Grímnismál, has already been mentioned, and perhaps her having undertaken a journey similar to that of Hermóðr was enough to qual­ ify her for a gift. Snorri reinforces the connection between Frigg and Ful­ la in his remarks about Fulla when he introduces her into the list of ásynjur in Gylfaginning. hon er enn mær ok ferr laushár ok gullband um hQfuð; hon berr eski Friggjar ok gætir skóklæða hennar ok veit launráð með henni. [Normal­ ized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 38.] She is still a virgin and goes with her hair unbound and with a gold neck­ lace about her head; she carries Frigg’s [jewelry?] box and looks after her stockings and shoes and knows secret counsels with her. Judging only by this passage, one could conclude that the two recipi­ ents of Nanna’s gifts cover the range of adult female roles, unmarried and married, virgin and wife, maiden and mother, mistress and servant - and together, these two share secret counsels. Such a connection may also be indicated by the second Merseburg charm, in which friia and uolla era suister contribute to the healing of the leg of balderes uolon. If we take the names as their Norse equivalents, Frigg and her sister Fulla helped cure Baldr’s horse. Although the relationship reflects familial roles rather than the poles of a status dyad, together they appear to know healing charms and to share that knowledge with Uodan/Odin.

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The strange lack of focus of the story of Hermóðr’s journey continues when he arrives back among the æsir, for instead of simply repeating Hel’s condition - this is, after all, a laconic literature - Hermóðr “... sagði q11 tíðendi, þau er hann hafði sét ok heyrt” (normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 67) (“told of everything he had said and heard”). The insistence on a full report is that of a visionary, not of an emissary. Hermóðr leaves the story rather as he entered it, a man of unclear status, sent on a mission that seems to have interested its author at least as much for its similarities to Christian wisdom literature as for its role in the great drama of the world being played out by æsir and vanir. The chiasmus of Snorri’s narrative strategy now becomes increasingly apparent. Því næst sendu æsir um alian heim ørendreka at biðja, at Baldr væri grátinn ór Helju, en allir gerðu þat mennirnir ok kykvendin ok jQrðin ok steinarnir ok tré ok alir málmr, svá sem þú munt sét hafa, at þessir hlutir gráta, þá er þeir koma or frosti ok i hita. [Normalized from Finnur Jons­ son, ed. 1931: 67.] Next the æsir sent messengers throughout all the world to ask that Baldr be wept out of Hel, and all did that, men and living creatures and the earth and stones and wood and all metal, as you will have seen, that these things weep, when they emerge from cold into heat. The universal weeping demanded in these lines has routinely been in­ voked in the older nature-mythological interpretation of the entire Baldr myth. It is, however, immediately undermined by Hár’s words directed to Gylfi/Gangleri, which are part of the ongoing word match between the dis­ guised Swedish king and his interlocutors (see Baetke 1950), which Snor­ ri presented ironically (Holtsmark 1964b: 17-21). The most outrageous example occurs when Hár is trying to convince Gylfi/Gangleri of the truth of his statement about the ingredients of the fetter Gleipnir, which was used to bind the Fenris wolf. “Hann var gQrr af sex hlutum, af dyn kattarins ok af skeggi konunnar ok af roturn bjargsins ok af sinum bjamarins ok af anda fisksins ok af fogls hráka; ok þóttu vitir eigi áðr þessi tíðendi, þá máttu nú finna skjótt hér SQnn dœmi, at eigi er logit at þér. Sét munti hafa, at konan hefir ekki skegg ok engi dynr verðr af hlaupi kattarins, ok eigi eru rcetr undir bjarginu, ok þat veit trúa min, at jafnsatt er þat alt, er ek hefi sagt þér, þótt þeir sé sumir hlutir, er þú mátt eigi reyna.” Þá mælti Gangleri: “þetta má ek at visu skilja at satt er; þessa hluti má ek sjá, er þú hefir nu til dcema tekit.” [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson 1931: 36.] “It was made of six things, of the loud noise of the cat and of the beard of a woman and of the roots of a mountain and of the sinews of bear and of the breath of fish and of the spittle of bird. And although you may not have known these tidings before, you can now quickly find true proofs here, that you have not been lied to. Women have no beards, and no noise is made by the running of cats, and there are no roots under

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mountains, and by my faith, everything is true that I have told you, though they be some things that you cannot prove.” Then Ganglerli said “I can certainly understand that it is true. I can see these things, which you have taken as proofs.” These words are somewhat puzzling. Holtsmark (1964b: 21) understands them to mean that the fetter was made of things that no longer exist be­ cause they were used up to make it, but the text does not seem to support that surmise. It almost appears as though Gylfi/Gangleri’s answer to the “proof’ he has been given is sarcastic. In any case, in their “proof’ of the æsir’s attempt to fulfil Hel’s condition, Hår and Snorri reduce the “weep­ ing of nature” to a natural phenomenon that Gylfi or anyone living in a northern climate can see, either on mornings following cold clear nights, or when one brings something into a heated house from the cold outside or from the cellar below (Holtsmark 1964b: 80). The parallelism of the two main parts of the story (the incomplete oath and the incomplete weeping) obscures the fact that the lists of oath-takers and weepers do not coincide exactly. Common to both lists are the earth, stones, wood, and metal, and one assumes that kykvendi (“living things”) of the second list covers the animals, birds, and snakes of the first list, but fire and water are missing among the weepers, and men have been added, thereby rectifying the fatal omission of the first list. Fire and water have at this point already served in the story as the means of transporting Baldr to Hel, by means of the floating cremation, and if we take seriously the notion of their oath to Frigg in this part of the story, that funeral cannot (as I have argued above) have harmed him. Nor, however, would it be easy to imagine either element weeping. As Snorri presents the story, everything has wept for Baldr and the em­ issaries are returning, having well discharged their duty, when they come upon the one creature who will not weep. Calling herself I>Qkk (“thanks”), she recites the famous Ijóðaháttr stanza with which Snorri ends the story. pQkk mun gráta þurrum tårum Baldrs bálfarar; kyks né dauðs nautkak Karls sonar; haldi Hel því er hefir. [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 68.] ÞQkk will weep dry tears about Baldr’s funeral; I had no use for Karl’s son, alive or dead; let Hel keep what she has. The first half line gives the initial impression that she will in fact weep, and the oxymoron “dry tears” suggests a willingness to meet Hel’s condi­ tion that unravels as the phrase is analyzed. As the verse unfolds, then, the affirmative becomes negative, and ÞQkk is seen to be anything but grate­

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ful. Such forced delayed reactions are typical of the Norse poetic ethic, especially in skaldic verse. It is a particularly cruel blow that this myth, which strikes so close to the heart of Odin, is finally ended verbally in the form of communication that is proper to him. He successfully acquired this form from jQtunheimar, after it had been in the hands of the dwarfs; but no one can retrieve his son from Hel. It is tempting to imagine that Loki has learned a thing or two from his blood-brother. The emissaries of the æsir come upon pQkk sitting in a cave. She ap­ pears to be a completely solitary figure who lives outside the usual struc­ ture of household and farmstead; even the giantesses of tht fomaldarsögur often have mates and offspring. Her use of the kenning “Karl’s son” for Baldr may therefore do more than draw attention to the god of poetry ånd his blood relationship with the now permanently removed Baldr, or belit­ tle Odin by calling him Karl, a name identical with a noun that generally refers to the lower social orders (so Lorentz 1984: 580); it may more gen­ erally repudiate this normal mode of life. In medieval Iceland, caves were occasionally inhabited by outlaws, those who literally were outside of so­ ciety, beyond the protection of family and friends, and pQkk appears to fall outside of society as well. Like Hyrrokkin, who launched Baldr’s funeral ship, pQkk is called a gýgr (“ogress”), and a further parallelism arises in her refusal to weep real tears, which she situates not over Baldr’s fallen corpse or his status with Hel, but rather over his funeral (literally, his “pyre-journey”). Thus pQkk joins in her person the old woman (Loki) who presses information from Frigg in the first part of the story and the giantess on whom the æsir relied to launch the funeral ship. If my argument from the context of Húsdrápa is correct, namely that Odin coerced the giantess into launching Baldr’s fu­ neral ship, then the encounters in the story become even more pointed, and like all the other agonisms in the mythologies, these when taken together show that the overall struggle is very close. The Baldr myth suggests a rule in the mythology: no matter the “tribe” of the players, males will tri­ umph over females, even if, like Loki, they must play transsexual games to do so. Snorri’s narrative strategy concerning the identity of pQkk differs sig­ nificantly from the one he used when he told how Loki obtained the se­ cret of the mistletoe. There, we are told, Loki changed himself into the form of a woman. Here, however, we find an alarming conjunction of the distancing strategy typical of saga prose, followed by the kind of value judgment that saga style typically avoids: En þess geta menn, at þar hafi verit Loki Laufeyjarson, er flest hefir illt gQit með ásum. [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 68.] But people think that it may have been Loki Laufeyjarson, who has done the most evil among the æsir.

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Some scholars have taken Snorri’s supposed doubt here at its face val­ ue and, depending on the interpretation they wish to advance for the en­ tire story, have argued that pQkk may really be some other figure such as Hel or Odin himself. Certainly Snorri has formally left the door open, and it is possible to imagine that Hár is trying to cover up some dark secret; or ÞQkk might have been no more than a cranky old ogress who was having a bad day. It is, however, a staple of the modern understanding of saga rhetoric that community opinion ordinarily stands for authorial opinion (Allen 1971: 95-127, Lönnroth 1970, 1976: 88-103), and Loki as Þgkk agrees best, in my view, with his boast in Lokasenna 28 following Frigg’s reference to Baldr. 27. “Veiztu, ef ec inni ættac Ægis hQ llo m i Baldri lican bur, út þú né kvœmir frá ása sonom, oc væri þá at þér vreiðom vegit.” 28. “Enn vill þú, Frigg, at ec fleiri telia mína meinstafi: ec því ræð, er þú ríða sérat síðan Baldr at SQ lom .” [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 102.] [Frigg:] “You know that if I had here inside Ægir’s halls a son like Baldr you would never come out, away from the sons of the æsir and you would be struck in anger.” [Loki:] “You wish, Frigg, that I should recount yet more of my horror stories: I arrange it, that you do not see Baldr riding later [any more] up to the halls.” My translation of the tense and aspect of Loki’s main verb (“I arrange”) is deliberately literal. Commentators ordinarily emend to the past tense (“I arranged”) (e.g., Detter and Heinzel 1903: vol. 2) or paraphrase in ways that the text cannot really support (e.g., “Ich bin daran schuldig” (“it is my fault”) (Boer 1922: 104)). However, if one accepts the formal present tense there are multiple possibilities: historical present (“I arranged”), present progressive (“I am arranging”), iterative (“I arrange it so, and al­ ways do”), simple future (“I will arrange”). The reference is situationally ambiguous with respect to the notion of the bound Loki, and whether one chooses a single reading, and if so, which one, will depend on one’s need for some kind of consistent linear chronology in the mythology. Never­ theless, however one reads the verb he uses Loki is claiming responsibili­ ty for Baldr’s permanent disappearance, and it was ÞQkk, according to Snor­ ri - our best source for Loki’s role - who finally saw to it that Baldr’s stay with Hel was to last until the end of the world. Surely the two figures are one. The doubling of the Loki figure makes it clear that Baldr is, in

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effect, to die a double death, and the story of Hermóðr’s journey to Hel is the story of the doubled death. The outcome of that journey offers the uni­ versal message that grief can never be universal and that life will always go on despite it, and perhaps that message helps account for the populari­ ty of the myth of Baldr’s death beyond medieval Scandinavia. Within the mythology, it may help to show that a mother can protect her offspring no more than a father can. With his remarks on Loki, Snorri brings to an end his account of the death of Baldr, and here many observers end their comments. But Baldr’s dreams did not end here, for they included all three apices of the typical saga narrative triangle: victim, killer, and avenger.

Chapter 5 VÁLI AND HQÐR, THE ÆSIR AND LOKI: VENGEANCE

As Baldr’s body lies lifeless on the field, pierced with the mistletoe, and the assembled æsir are speechless and paralyzed and can only gaze at one another, they are of one mind as to the identity of the killer and their first thoughts are of vengeance. They cannot act, however, so great was the place of sanctuary there (“Þar var svá mikill griðastaðr”) (normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 66). But for this restriction on place, any one of them could have killed HQÖr, within a day if they were operating under the pro­ visions of Grågås (Finsen, ed. 1852-83, vol. IA: 147, 149; vol. 2: 302, 303-4; Miller 1990: 192). The noun griðastaðr is a compound whose second component is simply “place.” The first component is almost certainly the genitive plural of the neuter noun grid, which I have above rendered “assurances of non-aggres­ sion” (it is ordinarily found in the plural); formally the first component might as easily be neuter singular grid (“household”), and the homonymy here serves to underscore the problem facing the æsir, for this is truly a domestic drama. The Old Norwegian Landslag (“national law”) lists a number of occasions when grid (assurances) should be maintained: during national military service (the leidangr), at assemblies, meetings before the lawman, adjudications to be held within a five-day period (the fimmtarstefna); at marriages and Christmas; when herring fishing; and from Maun­ dy Thursday through Easter Week. Bylov adds to the list meetings in Ber­ gen. These occasions fall broadly into categories of gathering for a com­ mon purpose, be it military, legal, or commercial, and ritual high points of the life cycle or of the calendar year. A situation of grid, Landslag con­ tinues, obtains “i allum þessum staðum” (“in all these places”), in language that approaches the compound that Snorri uses. The compound itself, how­ ever, shows relatively limited distribution. According to the glossary ap­ pended to the edition of the older Norwegian laws (Keyser & al., ed. 1846-

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95, vol. 5: 248-49), it refers to a place or time to which are attached higher fines for violation of personal security. This definition clearly varies from what Snorri had in mind, namely asylum or sanctuary, for otherwise HQðr would have been expected to atone for his deed; and indeed, griðastaðr is not attested in Grågås, the Old Icelandic legal compilations. Its most fre­ quent usage is in Norwegian diplomas, where it is clear that the concept is closely associated with the crown - to whom the fines were paid. Although Snorri and others of his family and presumably his audience could claim fa­ miliarity with the Nowegian king, the use of griðastaðr in the myth of Baldr’s death is only indirectly related to the concept as it obtained in Norway. The relatively rare compound is attested in Friðþjófs sagafrœkna, which is extant in two versions (Falk 1890), the older from the late thirteenth cen­ tury or later and the younger probably from the fifteenth century. It is tra­ ditionally numbered among the fornaldarsögw; but Stephen A. Mitchell (1991: 25-29) disqualifies in on a generic basis, and Marianne Kalinke (1990: 109-29) treats it as a romance. Both accept a foreign origin for the plot, a surmise going back to Chester N. Gould (1921-23), but the saga as we have it clearly fits the late medieval Icelandic literary milieu. Early Baldr scholarship concerned itself much with this text, for it contains a site sacred to Baldr and mentions pagan worship there. The site is Baldrshagi (literally “Baldr’s pasture”), which is set near the ancestral lands of the kings Helgi and Hálfdanr in Svigna fylke, Sogn, Norway. The sister of these kings, IngibjQrg, has been wooed by Friðþjófr, who is of humble origin, and when they go off to war, the brothers transport IngibjQrg to Baldrsha­ gi, along with eight women, “því at þar er engi svá djarfr, at þar grandi neinu” (Guðni Jónsson 1959, vol. 3: 80) (“because no one would be so bold as to defile it in any way”). Baldrshagi has a pagan temple intended for unchristian rites, surrounded by a fence, and men and women were not to come together there. After the brothers leave, Friðþjófr and his men come calling on the women. Charged with audacity, Friðþjófr says “Ekki hirði ek urn Baldr eða blót yður. Jafngóðir eru mér þínir málsendar hér sem heima.” [Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1959, vol. 3: 81.] “I don’t care about Baldr or your pagan rituals. Your utterances are as good to me here as at home.” The brothers send Friðþjófr off to the Orkneys to collect treasure and while he is away bum down his farmstead and betroth IngibjQrg to anoth­ er. Upon his return Friðþjófr comes to the brothers in Baldrshagi, smashes the treasure sack into Helgi’s face, knocking out two teeth in the process, starts a fire and runs off. When Helgi comes to his senses he orders his men to go out, “ok hefir sjá maðr fyrirgert sér, er eigi hlífir griðastöðum” (Guðni Jónsson 1959, vol. 3: 95) (“and that man has forfeited himself, who does not heed places of sanctuary”).

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A connection with the actual worship of Baldr or any other pagan deity is no longer seriously considered for this saga, given the foreign origin of its plot and the obvious influence of fairy tale, not to mention the relative­ ly late date of composition. The clustering of the relatively rare compound griðastaðr in Friðþjófs saga frœkna and Snorra edda is probably best explained as the influence of Gylfaginning on the saga author. That Snorra edda was popular in the late Middle Ages in Iceland is suggested by the decision of Magnus Ólafsson to produce a newly edited version, the so-called Laufás edda (Faulkes 1979). Vilhjálmur Finsen remarks that “En kirkelig asylret omtales ikke” (“a law of Church asylum is not mentioned”) in Grågås (1852-83, vol. 3: 628), and indeed the concept is not used much in the íslendingasögur, for obvi­ ous reasons. Sturlunga saga, however, has several instances. Set forth by Miller, they include both cases when sanctuary appears to be taken for granted and others in which it is equally clear that it might be breached. Miller concludes: “the enduring impression is of the remarkableness that sanctuary was respected as often as it was” (1990: 194). Since churches were established and owned by major landowners, church asylum would have been controlled to some extent by them, and this situation would at once separate Icelandic church asylum from that which prevailed elsewhere (and perhaps also draw the concept more closely to the situation that Snorri was describing, in which Odin seems to own most of the property con­ nected with the actions of the æsir). However, readers in the Icelandic Mid­ dle Ages were certainly familiar with the concept as it obtained on the Con­ tinent, as were the numerous pilgrims who had made the lengthy and ar­ duous journey to Rome. Tómas saga erkibyskups, the life and passion of Thomas Becket, was among the earliest saints lives rendered into Icelan­ dic, and it draws for its horror on the concept of violated asylum. In gen­ eral, the list of places of asylum was generally growing during the high Middle Ages, and it was indeed during that period that the concept reached a level of considerable importance (Henssler 1954, Kroeschel 1973, Tim­ bal 1980, Zapp 1980). Snorri seems to combine aspects of both the Norwegian legal concept of the griðastað/; as an occasion of heightened sensitivity to misdeeds, and the Church concept of asylum, where none may be punished. Both of these influences would situate the sanctuary he imagines in the Middle Ages rather than in mythic prehistory. Indeed, his use of griðastaðr looks like a rather feeble attempt to explain the lack of immediate vengeance when Baldr is struck down. But ultimately vengeance is not just a part of the story of Baldr, it is at its heart, despite the attempts of Neckel (1920: 2324) and Schröder (1924: 107) to brush it aside. Had the æsir wished to take immediate vengeance, however, they would have found it difficult to do so even without the inhibitions imposed by

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Snorri’s griðastaör, for they were inhibited as well by the rules of bloodfeud, which made their situation a disaster from which there appeared to be no way out. It is important to stress the rules of bloodfeud, as they have been articulated by anthropologists in various specific cultures and gener­ alized through comparative studies (e.g., Otterbein & Otterbein 1965, Boehm 1987). Some of the most interesting recent work on Old NorseIcelandic literature has involved application of aspects of these rules and their social-historical background, especially to the more traditional saga literature (e.g., Miller 1983a, 1983b, 1986, Clover 1986a, 1986b). The cul­ mination was reached in Miller’s grand study of Bloodtaking and Peace­ making (1990), which considers evidence from the Islendingasögur, set as they are in the past, and numerous kinds of more contemporary materi­ als. Outside my brief study (Lindow 1995a), myth has received little treat­ ment in this debate, set as it is either in a euhemerized past or in illo tem­ pore. Consideration of the relation of the Baldr story to the audience that consumed it, however, requires such an assessment. The point of bloodfeud is that it involves both “the enactment and management of conflict,” to cite Boehm’s subtitle (1987). Miller’s nuanced discussion (1990: 179-220) of the rules as they relate to the Iceland por­ trayed in sagas and laws makes clear that feud was subtle and always open to decisions made by individual actors at specific moments. Nevertheless, it confirms the tentative nine-point definition he offers (1990: 180-81), which may be summarized thus: 1) feud is a relationship between two groups that 2) are recruited according to various principles, with 3) occa­ sional musterings for purposes of controlled violence. 4) Liability is col­ lective within the groups, which 5) take turns exacting vengeance and 6) keep score. 7) Feud is associated with honor. 8) The class of possible expiators is limited. 9) Hostility may be terminated temporarily or perma­ nently. It is not my purpose to repeat the specific details of my findings relat­ ing the mythology as a whole to this scheme (Lindow 1995a). What I wish to stress here is that the mythology invokes a more or less permanent pres­ entation of the state of feud between two groups, which are roughly even, as feud calls for, and that the action of the mythology involves, among other things, hostility and violence between the two groups, with honor among other things certainly and specifically at stake (Clunies Ross 1994b). On the other hand, the groups are more or less fixed, not recruited; turn-tak­ ing appears irrelevant, and score-keeping is not really possible, since, close as the contests are, it is in the end almost always the jQtnar whose blood is shed in the individual encounters. The death of Baldr, however, intro­ duces a completely new situation. The jQtnar have scored, and the æsir, for the first time, are the group that should go on the attack. Although their group has been fixed from the start of mythic time, this first defeat brings

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up the situation when action groups are first recruited (there is also the possibility of each slaying bringing slightly different players into the game; see Miller 1990: 187). It is here that the æsir face disaster. Despite the number of ways that recruiting may be done, the underlying metaphor has to do with kin, since wergild payments were keyed by degree of kinship to the victim. The burden of vengeance ideally fell on a male only one re­ move from him: father, brother, son. In Baldr’s case Odin would be the principal. The problems, however, are two: it is difficult if not impossible to strike a target other than HQðr, since such targets tended to be kin of the offender, and HQÖr’s kin are the æsir; and striking down HQÖr will make the situation even more complex, since Odin - also HQÖr’s father - would become the principal for that slaying as well. He would, in other words, need to direct vengeance toward himself. Although Norse tradition lacks the neat lexicalization of the concept, as in Old Irish fingal (the practice of which disqualified a king from his hon­ or-price and made him liable to overthrow; Kelly 1988: 18), the problem of slaying within a family was far from unknown to medieval Icelandic literature, especially in heroic legend. Indeed, it is central to the legend of the violent story of the attempted vengeance of Hamðir and SQrli on jQrmunrekkr, known in several versions but best expressed in the eddic poem Hamðismál. Incited by their mother Guðrún to avenge their sister Svanhildr, whom JQrmunrekkr had ordered trampled by horses, the two killed their bastard half-brother Erpr, who was born of a different mother, while traveling to JQrmunrekkr’s hall. Later, their vengeance incomplete and their attack unraveling into a doomed defense, Hamðir regrets the frat­ ricide. 28 “Af væri nú haufuð, ef Erpr lifði, bróðir occarr inn bQÖfrœcni, er við á braut vágom, verr inn vígfrœcni - hvQttomc at dísir -, gumi inn gunnhelig - gorðomz at vígi -. 29. Ecci hygg ec ocr vera úlfa dœmi, at vit mynim siálfir um sacaz, sem grey norna, þau er gráðug ero í auðn um alin. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 273.] jQrmunrekkr’s head would be off now, if Erpr lived, our bold brother, whom we killed on the road, the battle-bold man - the disir incited me the battle-holy man - they brought me to the slaying. I do not consider us to be the examples of wolves, that we two ourselves should fight among ourselves, like the dogs of the norns, those ones who were bloodthirsty, raised in the wilderness. It has been plausibly argued that brotherhood is a major theme of the poem (Brodeur & Brady 1940^11), and other sources make Erpr the full

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brother of Hamðir and SQrli, perhaps through misunderstanding Hamðismál (Dronke 1961: 177). Bragi Boddason uses the kenning “Erps barmar” to refer to Hamðir and SQrli in Ragnarsdrápa 3, and although he does not mention the fratricide, he may allude to it in stanza 6 (discussion in Dronke 1961: 204—08). The whole curve of this legend, then, is that Hamðir and SQrli perish, in the course of enacting blood vengeance, because they have killed within their own family. As Guðrún reminds Hamðir and SQrli in the inciting scene at the beginning of Hamðismál, they are the last of her family. 4 “Eptir er ycr þrungit þióðkonunga, lifið einir ér þátta ættar minnar.” [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 269.] “You kings are pushed back, you alone live of the strands of my family.” With the deaths of Hamðir, SQrli, and Erpr, then, the family line comes to an end. Nor does it appear that the feud was continued, since there is no evidence that Guðrún tried to recruit her husband Jónakr or any of his kin to her cause. The impossibility of vengeance comes up in an entirely different con­ text joined to Guðrún’s incitement by repetition of the metaphor she used. When Egill Skallagrímsson lamented in his Sonatorrek the accidental death of his son by drowning, he too referred to a strand of his family. 7. MjQk hefir Rqn of rysktan mik; emk ofsnauðr at ástvinum; sleit marr bQnd minnar ættar, snarran þQtt af sjQlfum mér. 8. Veizt ef SQk sverði of rækak, vas Qlsmið allra tima; hroða vábrœðr ef viða mættak, fork ægis andvigr mani. [Finnur Jónsson 1912-15, Bl: 35.] Much has Rån robbed me; I am bereft of beloved friends; the sea tore the bonds of my family, a strong strand from me myself.

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Know that if I could pursue the case with a sword, time would be up for the ale-smith [Ægir]; if I could do in the woe brother of the storm, I would go in battle against the women of Ægir [waves]. The metaphor of the strands of the family, now unravelling in a situa­ tion in which the possibility of vengeance is at issue, joins these passages. The entire situation is encapsulated in the case of Hreiðmarr, mortally wounded by his son Fáfnir. He calls out to his daughters in distress. One of them, Lyngheiðr, answers thus: 10: 4-6. “Fd mun systir, þótt fQÖur missi, hefna hlýra harms.” [Reginsmál, ed. Neckel & Kuhn 1962: 175.] “Little will a sister, though she lose her father, avenge her loss on her brother.” Having slain his father, Fáfnir changes himself into the form of a drag­ on, thus calling to mind the Midgard serpent and aligning himself with the forces of chaos. Stanzas 22-37 of Sigrdrífumál comprise advice conferred on Sigurðr by Sigrdrifa, whom he has awakened from a deep sleep induced by Odin. These involve such everyday matters (in heroic poetry) as upholding oaths, maintaining one’s honor, speaking carefully, and so forth. Mindful perhaps of Fáfnir, she advises first against slaying in a family. 22. Pat ræð ec þér iþ fyrsta, at þú við frœndr þína vammalauss verir; síðr þú hefnir, þótt þeir sacar gori, þat qveða dauðom duga. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 194.] I advise you first, that toward your kinsmen you be blameless; take no vengeance, even if they harm you; they say it helps the dead. The skald Sighvatr Þorðarson issued a similar warning in connection with his disgust at the slaying of Erlingr Skjálgsson by his cousin Áslákr Fitskalli Askelsson during a battle between the forces of Óláfr Haraldsson (later St. Olaf) and Cnut the Great in 1028. The verse is quoted in Heimskringla and in editions of skaldic poetry comprises stanza 7 of a flokkr Sighvatr is thought to have composed about Erlingr. Áslákr hefir aukit, es vQrðr drepinn HQrða, fåir skyldu svá, foldar,

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frændsekju, styr vekja. Ættvígi má eigi, á líti þeir, níta, frændr skyli bræði bindask bornir, mQl en fornu. [Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, ed. 1941, vol. 2:318-19.] Áslákr has commited an attack on kin; the lord of the HQrðir has been killed; few should thus awaken strife. [That it is] kin-slaying cannot be denied. Kinsmen born should keep themselves from anger; they should trust the old words. Both verses end ambiguously with apparent references to proverbs. Al­ though the actual proverbs cannot be restored with any authority, there can be no doubt that they disfavor kin slaying. Sverre Bagge (1991: 112-13) assembles a number of examples, most from Snorri’s Heimskringla, of a reluctance to participate in kin slaying. When such wisdom is ignored, the result is predictable. Within the íslendingasögur; for example, there is the slaying of Steinólfr Ámórsson by Arngrímr Þorgrímsson, his cousin and foster-brother, in Víga-Glúms saga. In this rather loosely structured narrative, it is the final step leading to the unwinding of Glumr’s prestige (Andersson 1967: 243^15). All these slayings are deliberate, as opposed to the unplanned slaying of Baldr in Snorri’s version. This aspect of Baldr’s death might be com­ pared to the death of Hildibrandr by the hand of his unknowing half-brother Asmundr in Asmundar saga kappabana. At stake is the hand of a woman, as in Saxo’s version of the Baldr story (and of course countless other sto­ ries). Like Baldr, Hildibrandr is invincible before all but one thing, the sword cursed by the dwarf who made it, so that it will kill King Buðli’s most eminent grandson; and like Baldr, he knows that it is his brother who stands armed before him (Mitchell 1991: 119). Like Frigg, Buðli takes eva­ sive action, by sinking the sword in a lake, but Ásmundr later recovers it. Unaware of his relationship to Hildibrandr (just as HQÖr does not know the nature of the weapon he is throwing), Ásmundr pierces Hildibrandr with it, allowing Hildibrandr the opportunity to recite an eddic death song. How­ ever, the differences between the stories are great. For example, there are two swords in Asmundar saga, and comparison of Hildibrandr’s character to Baldr would be fruitless; Hildibrandr fights in a berserk rage and seems to suggest in his death song that he killed his own son. I do not mean to suggest any direct connection between Baldr and Hildibrandr, merely to point out the parallel of a figure of renown killed unwittingly by a halfbrother with a special weapon and to suggest that the problem might be approached in more ways than one. Asmundar saga kappabana exists only in manuscripts from the four­ teenth century and later and is not itself likely to be much older than that (Halvorsen 1951: 5, 51-53, Ciklamini 1966), although much of its verse,

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including Hildibrandr’s death song, may antedate the composition of the saga. Saxo, however, recounts a very similar version of the same story in Book VII of Gesta Danorum. He calls his characters Haldanus and Hildigerus and has Haldanus kill Hildigerus, using a special sword to overcome the supposed invulnerability of his opponent, who can dull weapons through magic. Hildigerus has recognized his brother and repeatedly put off the bat­ tle, for he is torn between thoughts of vengeance (Haldanus’s father killed Hildigerus’s father and decamped with their common mother) and broth­ erly love. Quippe cum ab eo eius patre suum opressum meminisset affectusque geminos, unum paternæ ultionis, alterum fraternæ caritatis haberet, pro­ vocatione cedere quam maximo implicari scelere satius duxit. [Olrik & Ræder, ed. 1931: 203.] He remembered of course that it was Haldanus’s father who had killed his own, and his heart was split in two; in one part he had desire for expiation for his father and in the other love for his brother. And so he held it better to retreat from the provocation rather than to embrace the greatest crime. The dying Hildigerus declaims a death song revealing his kinship with his slayer, and charged by his half-brother for the fatal silence that led to the tragedy, he utters words that repeat the dilemma he has earlier sound­ ed and recall the problem facing the æsir at Baldr’s death. His dictis, cum ab Haidano ob tam seram fraterni vinculi confessionem inertiæ damnaretur, idcirco se silentio usum esse dicebat, ne aut pug­ nam detrectando ignavus aut committendo scelestus existimari posset. [Olrik & Ræder, ed. 1931: 204.] These things having been said, when he was charged by Haldanus with having revealed their fraternal bond so late, he therefore said that his silence was caused by a desire not to be judged a coward if he avoided battle and a scoundrel if he joined it. The superficial similarity of Hildigerus to Baldr thus gives way to a more profound similarity between him and the æsir who survived Baldr. All of them are caught between irreconcilable duties: to extract vengeance on the one hand and to honor the bonds of kinship on the other hand. There is a kind of footnote to this problem, a scenario in which a kill­ ing can occur within a family but the immediate kin be absolved of any need to extract vengeance, namely when two kin kill one another simulta­ neously. The line of Yngling kings, as presented in Snorri’s Ynglinga sagay contains two double fratricides in succeeding generations: Alrekr and Eirikr, the sons of Agni, and Yngvi and Álfr, the sons of Alrekr. Although the first is not directly supported in Þjóðolfr of Hvin’s Ynglingatal, which am­ biguously reports that Alrekr died where Eirikr was killed by his brother’s weapons, and that riding implements were involved, Snorri interprets it with community opinion as a double fratricide:

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Þá var þeira leita farit, ok fundusk þeir báðir dauðir ok lamit hQfuð á báðum, en ekki vápn hQfðu þeir nema bitlana af hestunum, ok þat hyggja menn, at þeir hafi drepizk þar með. [Bjami Aðalbjamarson, ed. 1941, vol. 1: 39-40.] Then people went to look for them, and they were both found dead with their heads bashed in, but they had no weapons other than the bits of their horses, and people think that they will have killed each other with them. Yngvi and Álfr kill each other the old fashioned way, with weapons, after Alfr’s wife compounds her late-night dallying with Yngvi by taunt­ ing Alfr with the remark that it would be a lucky woman indeed who was married to Yngvi and not Álfr. Neither brother covers himself with glory. Yngvi the flirt has a dagger by his knee when his jealous brother draws a hidden sword and strikes Álfr a death blow after Álfr runs him through. They both fall dead onto the floor, in a spectacularly inglorious end. If Snorri is indeed reading a double fratricide into Þjóðolfr’s verse about Alrekr and Eirikr, he may have been influenced not only by the confirmed double fratricide of Alrekr’s sons in Ynglingatal 13 (“þás brœðr tveir / at bQnum urðursk”) (“when two brothers killed each other”), but also by a sense that such a death would fit with most of the other deaths of the Yngling kings, in the circumstances of which vengeance is not a possi­ bility. Of the twelve kings who precede them, eleven die in ways that make vengeance difficult or impossible. Several die of old age: Odin, NjQrðr, Freyr, Dómarr, and Dyggvi. FjQlnir drowns in a vat of beer, into which he falls after a night of drunken revelry; Sveigðir is taken into a rock by a dwarf; and Vanlandi is trod by a nightmare. Of those who are slain by humans, Dómaldi is killed collectively by his subjects, who sac­ rifice him for prosperity, and Dagr is murdered by a thrall and Agni by his wife Skjálf; the unfree and women are generally excluded from feuds. Only Visburr, who is burned in by his illegitimate sons, dies in a way which would invite vengeance, but even there the seiðr of a seeress is involved, and again she is no legitimate target of vengeance (she also prophesies that there shall be killings within the family of the Ynglingar, as comes to pass with the double fratricides). These deaths that are free of the need for vengeance make possible orderly transitions as the line of kings runs its course. Killings within the family turn up with considerable frequency through­ out the wide world of Germanic heroic literature. Everyone agrees that both Asmundar saga kappabana and the Haldanus/Hildigerus story in Gesta Danorum owe a debt to German tradition, as represented in the Old High German Hildebrandslied. In this 68-line alliterative fragment recorded early in the ninth century, Hildebrand and Hadubrand, father and son, confront one another between two armies, and believing his father dead, Hadubrand refuses to accept Hildebrand’s claims of paternity and presses the attack.

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Although the fragment ends before the battle is over, the outcome is like­ ly to be the death of Hildebrand at the hand of his son. The slaying of a father by a son has affinities outside the realm of Freud­ ian psychotherapy, and attempts have been made, for example, to link Hildebrandslied with Indo-European tradition (Hoffmann 1970, Gutenbrunner 1976). The most important point, it seems to me here, is that the German material, which is embedded in the context of the historical fig­ ures Theodoric and Oadoker from the fifth centuries (Hildebrand himself boasts no such attachment), is presumably original, and when Scandinavi­ an tradition reworked it, it changed the actors from father and son to halfbrothers. The generational conflict has given way to sibling rivalry, to ex­ press the issue in today’s language. The situation is somehow more poign­ ant; instead of the hierarchical difference imposed by the structure of the family on son and father, half-brothers are generationally equal, and any difference between them in status could only be expressed through the par­ ent they do not share, a distinction of which little is made in the case of Ásmundr/Hildibrandr and Haldanus/Hildigerus. In the case of HQÖr and Baldr, given the silence of the sources on HQÖr’s mother, we can only con­ clude that the distinction is of little importance. Perhaps the richest case of homicide between full brothers in the Ger­ manic world is the accidental slaying of Herebeald by Hæðcyn in Beowulf 2425-72, an analogue that has long been part of the Baldr dossier because of the similarities of the name components, -beald and Hœð-, to the names of the main players in the Scandinavian versions and the fact that a pro­ jectile was used in both cases. The parallels, however, go beyond the names amd flying agent of death. Like Baldr, Herebeald enters the story only to be cut down, but, like Høtherus, Hæðcyn plays a role in legendary histo­ ry, for he was killed in battle by Ongenðeow at Hrefnuwudu. Herebeald and Hæðcyn are the sons of King Hreðel of the Geats, father of Hygelac and grandfather of Beowulf and thus in the poem the founder of the dy­ nasty, just as Odin stands atop his dynastic line. The griðastaðr of Gylfaginning is repeated in the incident in Beowulf - clarified, as I would ar­ gue - by the focus on the intolerable situation created by this slaying within a family. Þæt wæs feohleas gefeoht, fyrenum gesyngad, hreðre hygemeðe; sceolde hwæðre swa þeah æðeling unwrecen ealdres linnan. [Beowulf 2441-44, ed. Dobbie 1953.] That was an inexpiable quarrel, a great wrong, heart-wearying; nevertheless, the noble had to depart from life unavenged. The poet, or Beowulf, who appears still to be speaking, likens the posi­ tion of Hreðel to that of a old man who sees his son swinging on the gal­

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lows and gives in to his sorrow. A few lines later, Hreðel turns his face to the wall: Swa Wedra helm æfter Herebealde heortan sorge weallende wæg. Wihte ne meahte on ðam feorhbonan fæghðe gebetan; no ðy ær he þone heaðorinc hatian ne meahte laðum dædum, þeah him leof ne wæs. He ða mid þære sorhge, þe him swa sar belamp, gumdream ofgeaf, godes leoht geceas, eaferum læfde, swa deð eadig mon, lond ond leodburig, þa he of life gewat. [Beowulf 2462b71, ed. Dobbie 1953.] Thus the protector of the Wedras bore his heart surging with sorrow for Herebeald. In no way could he punish the slayer by a hostile act; nor yet could he promise the warrior hostile deeds, although he was not dear to him. Then with that sorrow, which affected him so greatly, he gave up the joys of men, chose the light of God, he left to his sons, as a happy man does, his lands and ancestral towns, when he went from life. With the death of Hreðel comes chaos, as the tribe of Ongenðeow of the Swedes attacks the Geats. Bad as this appears to be, it offers an op­ portunity for vengeance to occur as it should. Hæðcyn, now king of the Geats, dies in this unrest, apparently at the hands of Ongonðeow, as we later learn (2925). The sole surviving brother is Hygelac. Hæðcynne wearð, Geata dryhtne, guð onsæge. Þa ic on morgne gefrægn mæg oðeme billes ecgum on bonan stælan, bær Ongenþeow Eofores niosað. [Beowulf 2482b-86, ed. Dobbie 1953.] For Hæðcyn, the king of the Geats, battle was fatal. Then I heard that in the morning one kinsman avenged the other on the slayer with sword’s edge, when Ongenþeow went to meet Eofor. Eofor (“boar”) is ordinarily understood as a Geat warrior who killed Ongonþeow at the behest of Hygelac. Given that reading, from the point of view of a feud, he is a member of the action group recruited by Hreðel. Of course, he might also be some otherwise unknown kinsman of Hæðcyn carrying out the vengeance. In either case, the situation is the normal one with respect to feud and vengeance, for the killer comes from outside the group of his victim. Its inclusion at this point in the poem could easily in-

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dicate the poet’s desire to contrast that situation with the one that obtained when Herebeald died. He has previously portrayed such kin slaying in a decidedly negative light, in the flyting (Clover 1980) between Unferð and Beowulf. Beowulf charges Unferð with having partaken in no deeds so worthy as his own: “Þeah ðu þinum broðrum to banan wurde, heafodmægum.” [Beowulf 587-88, ed. Dobbie 1953.] “Though you became the killer of your brother, a principal kinsman.” For this, Beowulf adds, Unferð is doomed to Hell. Beowulf then goes on to charge that Unferð has done nothing to avert the attacks of Grendel, thus implying that fratricide disqualifies one not only from Heaven but also from the realms of the heroic, the realms wherein honor is to be found. In the long scholarly record on Baldr and on Beowulf, various scenari­ os have been proposed to account for the relationship between the Herebeald-Hæðcyn episode and the myth of Baldr’s death. Neckel (1920: 141ff.) thought that the incident at Hreðel’s court, which he assumed to be based on a real accident, was influenced by the Baldr myth to assume the form it took; Birger Nerman (1915) and Kemp Malone (1962: 160), among oth­ ers, argued that the myth may have been influenced by the historical event. The latest word appears to be that of Ursula Dronke (1968), who finds in the Herebeald-Hæðcyn episode possible evidence that the Beowulf poet had access to at least some of the Norse myths. Clunies Ross (1994a: 272) de­ clines to take a position, but notes that “the core elements of the myth are all present” in Beowulf. These include the problem of a dynastic crisis: Herebeald is Hreðel’s oldest son, and the kingdom is invaded soon after Hreðel’s death. For Clunies Ross this is a center of the myth: Baldr is likely to be Odin’s oldest son and presumptive heir; as a result of the incident Odin loses both Baldr and another heir, HQÖr; he is forced to dispatch a third heir, Hermóðr, on a fruitless journey to the underworld; finally he must sire Vali for the purpose of vengeance. “This activity is certainly ge­ netically expensive and of uncertain return” (Clunies Ross 1994a: 274). Although it should be pointed that HQÖr is a dynastic heir in principle only - his blindness would have disqualified him from most positions of leadership - and that Hermóðr undertakes his journey at the behest of Frigg, a fact that weakens its dynastic implications (putting aside the possibility that Hermóðr was Odin’s servant), the dynastic aspect of the myth deserves attention. The learned prehistory pictures Odin as the found­ er of a vast dynasty all over Scandinavia, and the inclusion of Odin and other gods early in the royal genealogies reinforces this image. Dynastic crisis, according to the Beowulf parallel, leaves a society vulnerable to in­ vasion, and Snorri and many other sources seem to concur that it is not

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long after the death of Baldr that the forces of chaos launch their attack at RagnarQk. But such a crisis would presumably ensue no matter how the presumptive heir died. In his discussion of the society in which Snorri’s Heimskringla is played out, Sverre Bagge (1991: 111-39) begins by analyzing cases in which members of the royal class and aristocracy avoid killings within a family. The Herebeald/Hæðcyn episode in Beowulf and the Baldr myth, to be sure, are rooted in the equivalent social levels of Old English heroic literature and Norse myth, but the problem does not require setting at the highest social level; nor does it by its nature automatically trigger a crisis of suc­ cession, although such a crisis may be implicit, as my review above will have shown. What kin-slaying does trigger in an honor-based society is a crisis of vengeance, whether the killing is intended or not. Herebeald’s com­ pletely accidental death (Herebeald “missed his target”) is one way that fratricide can occur, and in a culture in which intention can be as important as effect, it is at once the most benign and the most difficult, for Hæðcyn is guilty but at the same time innocent. Hreðel shows one possible response, namely giving up, and it is perhaps the most appropriate in this kind of fratricide. That the death of Herebeald was not intentional, then, increases the pathos but does not ease the problem. There is still a victim lying dead, pierced with a weapon, a killer standing by who is responsible for the mans­ laughter whatever his intent, a father and brothers at hand driven at once to and from vengeance, and a society looking on to meter their honor. According to a passage in Grågås, “Þat er mælt, at engi skulu vera váðaverk” (Finsen, ed. 1852-83, vol. 1: 166, vol. 2: 334) (“It is stipulated that there shall be no accidents”). This apparently did not mean, as Miller shows (1990: 65-66), “that in matters of doubt a wrong should be deemed intentional. It simply means that accidents are not to provide a basis for a cause of action. The claim of accident is a defense to an action for an in­ tentional wrong.” Miller goes on. Neither law nor society was especially amenable to claims of accident when made by the injured party. The proper procedure, in court and out, was for the wrongdoer to come forward and offer amends. But when the wrongdoer did not come forward, law and society, though not in­ consistent, may have parted company on the degree of action that should be taken. Some saga instances confirm what the laws prefer: suing for an intentional wrong; a greater number of saga cases, however, includ­ ing examples from both the family sagas and Sturlunga, suggest that blood was an appropriate response.” [Miller 1990: 66.] Grågås is talking primarily about cases of personal injury (Finsen, ed. 1852—83, vol. 3: 686-87, s.v. váði), and Miller uses as the frame for his analysis the case presented in Þorsteins þáttr stangarhqggs, which turns on a blow delivered at a horse fight. In choosing to regard the blow as ac­

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cidental, Þorsteinn defuses a potentially volatile situation but violates the norms Miller infers and sets himself up for later charges of cowardice. One can only presume that in cases of accidental death the tensions would have been much greater. This would be particularly so, since, as Miller argues in his suggestive analysis of Porsteins þáttr stangarhqggs, both sides had good reason to be cautious. Our story shows rather clearly that it was more than a misfortune to be a victim of an accident, it was also a dishonor. And the dishonor need not all be the victim’s. Both sides might look weak if they were too ea­ ger to define the affair as unintentional. [Miller 1990: 66.] When only one side is involved, when bumbler and victim are mem­ bers of the family, the stakes are that much higher. Against this background, Snorri wrote his account of the slaying of Baldr. His account neatly personifies the ambiguities of such a situation: accident (HQÖr) or murder (Loki). This appears to be one of those situa­ tions in which myth (I use the term broadly) allows exploration of com­ plex social issues and articulation of otherwise hidden realities. Although it is difficult to impose the vocabulary of guilt and innocence on unintended and deeply regretted actions, there remain the damage and grief such bum­ bling can cause. Snorri and his fellow plotters who played out their nasty roles during the bloody demise of*the Icelandic commonwealth must have been experts at discerning hidden motives and mustering skepticism in the face of actions or consequences unintended. Every version of the Baldr story makes it clear that vengeance is to be taken, but here Snorri goes his own way, since he has vengeance fall on Loki and leaves out of Gylfaginning the vengeance taken on HQÖr by Vali, to which he made ample reference in Skáldskaparmál. Váli is one of a number of gods in the mythology who belong to the younger generation of the æsir and whose actions span this world and the next. These gods tend to come in alliterative pairs: Víðarr and Váli, who are sons of Odin, and Magni and Móði, sons of Thor. Víðarr, whom Snor­ ri introduces as “inn þQgli áss” (“the silent god”) in the list of æsir in Gylfa­ ginning, directly after HQÖr, has a powerful shoe and is very strong (Snorra edda, ed. Finnur Jónsson 1931: 33). His role is to avenge Odin at RagnarQk. Right after the wolf swallows Odin, Víðarr strides forward, holds down the wolf’s lower jaw with his powerful shoe, grasps the upper jaw and tears his gullet asunder. Snorri appears to be following Vafþrúðnismál 53, and he therefore contradicts Vqluspá 55, which is among the RagnarQk stan­ zas from that poem he quotes in support of his account of RagnarQk; ac­ cording to Vqluspá, Víðarr kills the monster with a sword. That two ver­ sions of Víðarr’s vengeance were available in the eddic corpus suggests the importance of the story, whatever the relationship of the versions.

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Georges Dumézil (1965) offered a reading of this figure making him not a one-story vengeance god but rather a cosmic figure who covers all vertical space (from his foot on the wolf’s lower jaw to his hand on the upper jaw) and horizontal space (by means of his step and strong shoe) and therefore a spatial “dieu cadre” parallel to Heimdallr’s temporal fill­ ing of this role. The significance of Víðarr’s act is to destroy the wolf and thus keep it from destroying the cosmos, which can then be restored in the aftermath of RagnarQk. Dumézil argues further that Visnu is an Indie par­ allel and that both therefore derive from an Indo-European archetype. If this is so - the evidence seems rather slim, and Víðarr’s pairing with Vali would remain unexplained - then Víðarr’s originally cosmic role must have been reinterpreted as centering on vengeance, a reinterpretation that would make sense in a society where vengeance and honor were of great impor­ tance. Magni and Móði, unlike Víðarr, are not listed in Snorri’s catalogue of æsir in Gylfaginning or in the guest list for Ægir’s banquet at the begin­ ning of Skáldskaparmál. Móði is an elusive figure to whom no action is assigned in the extant mythology. Unlike the other three, however, his name is common as the base word in man-kennings in skaldic poetry. Magni’s one act before RagnarQk, like that of Víðarr, has to do with the aftermath of his father’s combat. After Thor has defeated Hrungnir, he lies with his neck pinned under the massive leg of the jQtunn. First Þjálfi, Thor’s sec­ ond, and then the other æsir fail to move the leg. PÁ kom til Magni, sonr Þórs ok JárnsQXu. Hann var þá þrívetr. Hann kastaði fœti Hrungnis af Þór ok mælti: “Sé þar ljótan harm, faðir, er ek kom svá síð; ek hygg, at jQtun þenna myndak hafa lostit í hel med hnefa mínum, ef ek hefða fundit hann.” [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 103.] Then Magni, the son of Thor and Jámsaxa, arrived. He was three years old at that time. He threw the leg of Hrungnir off of Thor and said: “It’s a real pity, father, that I arrived so late; I think I could have beaten the jQtunn to death with my fist, if I had met him.” Magni’s action might be read as a palimpsest of vengeance. Snorri uses the participle “fall inn” (“fallen”) to describe Thor as he lies under Hrungnir’s massive leg, and the verb often is used of those who fall in death. Magni’s precocious words make it clear that if Thor were truly fallen in battle, the three-year old could have avenged him easily. Young as Magni is according to the text I have followed here (Codex Regius of Snorra Edda), in two other manuscripts he is even younger: only three nights. He shares this remarkable youth with the avenger of Baldr, who according to Vqluspa 32 fought at the age of one night. The line is repeated in Baldrs draumar 11 with only a minor variation: since the line involves a prediction, the auxiliary is not nam (here: “did”) but rather man

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(“will”). The next lines are shared as well, with a similar accommodation to tense. Þó hann æva hendr né hQfuð kembði, áðr á bal um bar Baldrs andscota. [Vqluspá 33, ed. Neckel & Kuhn 1962: 8.] He did not wash his hands or comb his hair until he brought onto the bier Baldr’s adversary. ...hQnd urn þvær né hQfuð kembir áðr á bal um berr Baldrs andscota. [Baldrs draumar 11, ed. Neckel & Kuhn 1962: 279.] ...he will not wash his hands nor comb his hair until he has brought onto the bier Baldr’s adversary. As mentioned in ch. 1, these lines are ordinarily understood in light of the description offered by Tacitus (iGermania, ch. 30) of the warriors of the Chatti, who abstained from grooming until they had slain their first vic­ tim in battle. Such a practice may also have characterized initiation ritual, particularly perhaps into the cult of Odin (de Vries 1955). Medieval Ice­ landers with a literary bent, however, might have heard in the lines an echo of the advice given by Hnikarr to Sigurðr in Reginsmál 25. Kemðr oc þveginn seal kœnna hverr oc at momi mettr; þvíat ósýnt er, hvar at apni kømr; illt er fyr heill at hrapa. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 179.] Combed and washed shall each of the boldest be, and filled with food in the morning; for it is unrevealed where he will have come at evening; it is bad to stumble near success. Hnikarr is an Odin name, and the speaker is clearly Odin in disguise. He has taken passage with Reginn and Sigurðr and the stanza in question is the last of a series of six elicited in a Ijóðaháttr stanza (whether the speaker is Reginn or Sigurðr is not clear) asking for advice concerning suc­ cess in battle. The petitioner uses language standard in contests of wisdom, similar to the formulaic first halves of the question stanzas in Baldrs draumar (stanzas 8, 10, and 12). Segðu mér þat, Hnicarr, allz þú hvárttveggia veizt, goða heill ok guma: hver bQzt ero, ef beriaz seal, heill at sverða svipon? [Reginsmál 19, ed. Neckel & Kuhn 1962: 178.] Tell me, Hnicarr, since you know the luck of both gods and men, what are the best signs in battle if one is to fight?

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Compare the formula in Alvíssmál when Thor is questioning the dwarf: Segðu mér þat Alvíss - q11 o f rQc fira voromc, dvergr, at vitir [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 125-29.] Tell me this, Alviss - all the fates of men are for me to know - ... Odin’s questions to Vafþrúðnir in Vafþrúðnismál vary the formula and add numbering. For example: Segðu þat iþ tíunda, allz þik tíva rQk Qll, Vafðrúðnir, vitir... [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 52.] Say this tenth, since all the fates of the gods you, Vafþrúðnir, know... The cardinal number in the first half-line ranges from “first” to “twelfth,” and the second part of the first line displays four variants over the twelve questions; I have chosen to cite here the formula closest to that used in Reginsmál 19. Insofar as his early responses are numbered, then, Hnikarr appears also to be following the conventions of the contest of wisdom, and this context rescues the advice offered in stanza 25 from the banal. In the light of this advice, Vali was rash and in a tremendous hurry when he avenged Baldr. He was perhaps as eager for his moment as Magni was for his. Vali’s disregard for his personal appearance and hygiene might also be set beside the silence of Víðarr. The abstinence of both could once have had to do with vows of initiates or of sons on whom vengeance was in­ cumbent; or it may simply have conveyed a fixed sense of purpose. Snorri enumerates Váli in the catalogue of æsir in Gylfaginning and in the guest list for Ægir’s banquet at the beginning of Skáldskaparmál, in both instances in the slot following Víðarr. His introductory description in the catalogue is as follows. Áli eða Váli heitir einn, sonr Óðins ok Rindar. Hann er djarfr i orrostum ok mjQk happskeytr. [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 33.] One is called Áli or Váli, the son of Odin and Rindr. He is bold in bat­ tles and an an excellent shot. Nothing in this description tallies with the words of the eddic poems about the avenger of Baldr, and given the absence of Váli’s name in Vqluspá and its presence in Baldrs draumar only through emendation, the possibility remains open that Váli and the unkempt infant avenger are not the same individual. Snorri was not interested in such a possibility, since he states unequivocally in Skáldskaparmál that one may refer to Váli as “dólgr Haðar ok bani hans” (“the adversary of HQÖr and his slayer”) (nor­ malized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 99); I have already treated the other

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relevant kenning in this context, hefniáss Baldrs (“avenging god of Baldr”) above. In addition, HQÖr may be called Vála-dólgr (“Vali-adversary”). One of the important tools of scholarship that tries to recover older or more original forms of the Norse gods is etymology, and it is particularly important for figures like Vali with limited roles. In the case of Vali, two of the proposed etymologies that contradict one another are the most im­ portant (for others see de Vries 1961: 641, s.v.). The first goes back to Ed­ uard Sievers (1894; cf. Detter 1894) and associates the name with the root used in the collective noun vanir, the other dates as far as I know back to Rolf Nordenstreng (1924) and derives the name from *waihalaz or *waihulaz (“little warrior”). Although the connection with the vanir proved attractive to a great many scholars, especially those who saw in Baldr a dying fertility god, “little warrior” accords far better with Váli’s actual role and characteristics and makes attractive the hypothesis that at some point in Scandinavian religion the figure of Váli had to do with initiation. In the catalogue of the æsir in Gylfaginning (though not in the guest list at Ægir’s banquet at the beginning of Skáldskaparmát), Snorri states that this figure may be called Áli or Váli. Sievers argued that the forms could be linguistically related, but the evidence is fragile. A misunderstand­ ing seems more likely (de Vries 1933: 189). The method Váli used to kill HQðr is not forthcoming from the sources. In its use of the verb slå (“to strike, kill”) Hyndluljóð 29 suggests that it involved a blow: Vóro ellifo æsir talðir, Baldr er hné við banaþúfo; þess léz Váli verðr at hefna, síns bróður sló hann handbana. Eleven of the æsir were enumerated, Baldr who fell by the mound of death, Váli said he was worthy to avenge this, he struck down the one whose hand killed his brother. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 293.] The epithet happskeytr, however, seems to show that some weapon was flung. I rendered this compound “an excellent shot” in my translation, but it is important to bring out the semantics of the first component. The neu­ ter noun happ, which is related to English happen and happy, refers to suc­ cess, particularly in situations such as battle when one’s honor is on the line; Fritzner’s definition is “hvad der tjener til ens ære eller fordel,” (“what serves to one’s honor or advantage”), especially insofar as it is fated (1973, vol. 1: 730-31, s.v.). Its lack, negation, or opposite, óhapp, is a common concept when things turn out badly, as I have described it above in ch. 2, and applies well to the situation of the æsir when Baldr lies dead, killed by his half-brother. Atlamál 89 offers a direct collocation of vengeance and happ.

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Kómo i hug henni HQgni viðfarar, talði happ hánom, ef hann hefnt ynni; veginn var þá Atli, var þess scamt bíða, sonr vá HQgna oc siálf Guðrún. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 260.] The treatment of HQgni came into her mind, she said it would be happ for him if he could effect vengeance, Atli was killed there, there was little delay, the son struck [him] and Guðrún herself. This son is unknown in AtlakviÖa but found in such other sources as Þriðreks saga, the Faroese ballad Hógnatáttur,; and the Hven Chronicle, according to which the dying HQgni fathers a son who is to become his avenger; this the boy, who has been reared at court, does by locking his father’s killer into a cave with the Niflung treasure. The Atlamál poet clum­ sily adapted this well-known motif in his version of the story (Dronke 1969: 104-05). It is striking that this heroic legend incorporates a parallel to the happskeytr Vali in the special siring of an avenger and his acquisition of success and honor {happ) by the carrying out of vengeance. As for the second component of happskeytr, it is derived from the verb skjóta “to throw a weapon.” The punishment fits the crime. There may also be a Snorronic pun on the participle skeyttr (“bound to”), from the verb skeyta “to give over with legal obligations.” A one-trick god, Vali was bound over to the good fortune of the vengeance he would take. The alliterative pairing of Váli with Víðarr and of Magni with Móði suggests a doubling and must be significant. As a rule, twins are impor­ tant in Indo-European mythology in connection with cosmogony (“man” and “twin” in the proto-sacrifice [Puhvel 1975, 1987: 284-90; Lincoln 1981: 69-95, 1986: 1-64 et passim]) and the “divine twins” represented by such figures as the diouskoroi and the Haddingjar (Ward 1968). This phenomenon is sometimes related to Váli and Víðarr and Magni and Móði (e.g., Niedner 1898, Naumann 1950), but the generally vanic connections of the divine twins (Turville-Petre 1964: 213-20, Dumézil 1970) make little sense in this context. The doubling of these vengeance figures may sim­ ply present them as a contrast to Baldr and Hqöh brothers not given to fratricide. Nor indeed, are Víðarr and Váli twins. Váli’s mother is Rindr, as Baldrs draumar almost certainly states, and Víðarr’s is Gríðr, according to a re­ mark Snorri makes in recounting the myth of Thor’s journey to Geirrøbr in Skáldskaparmál. Þórr kom til gistingar til gýgjar þeirar, er Gríðr er kQlluð. Hon var móðir Víðars ins þQgla. [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 106.] Thor came to say overnight with that ogress, who is called Gríðr. She was the mother of Víðarr the silent.

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Gríðr functions as a donor to Thor, for she equips him with accoutre­ ments and information about Geirrpðr. Still, she is clearly not one of the æsir. She lives near the river Vimur (soon to be swollen by the effluvia of Geirrdðr’s daughters Greip and Gjálp), and she is called a gýgr. Indeed, her position with respect to the æsir shares something with that of that other gýgr Hyrrokkin, given her help to Thor. He seems to have had other con­ tact with giantesses as well (besides killing them), since Jámsaxa, on whom he sired Magni, is listed among the names in the trqllkvenna heiti (“synonyms for troll women”) in the þulur (Ic4). Gríðr, Hyrrokkin, and a host of other giantesses populate these lists as well. Járnsaxa also appears in a list of the mothers of Heimdallr in Hyndluljóð 37, and there she is joined with such figures as Gjálp and Greip, also recognizable giantesses. Thus there seems a be a principle of exogamy at work here; two at least of these second-generation single-purpose (revenge) figures, Víðarr and Magni, are the result of the coupling of a male from among the æsir and a female from outside - by the logic of the mythology, from among the jQtnar (cf. the parallel in Irish tradition pointed out by Wagner 1955, in which the Dagda sires a son on the river goddess Boann). Clearly such a cou­ pling represents a victory for the æsir, and the opposite would hold if any of the jQtnar were ever able to get their sweaty hands on Freyja, as they constantly threaten to do (see further Vestergaard 1991, Clunies Ross 1994a: 85-143). At first it appears that the relationship between the parents of Váli may violate this pattem, for Snorri includes his mother Rindr among the ásynjur. jQrð, móðir Þórs, ok Rindr, móðir Vála, eru taldar með ásynjum. [Nor­ malized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 40.] jQrð (“earth”), the mother of Thor, and Rindr, the mother of Váli, are numbered among the goddesses. However, this language renders the connection suspect, for it echoes Loki’s connection with the æsir (“sá er ok taldr með ásum”), and the chthonic jQrð can hardly have originated among the æsir. Furthermore, the list of Frigg kennings in Skáldskaparmál joins Rindr not only with jQrð but also with Gríðr and GunnlQÖ by calling Frigg the elja of all of these figures (Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 110). The noun refers to a woman who shares with another woman the sexual favors of a man; Skáldskaparmál also reports that a kenning for Sif is 66elja of Járnsaxa” (Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 110). In three of these cases Odin obtained a valuable son: Thor, Víðarr, and Vali. In the fourth, he obtained a valuable object; for Odin slept with GunnlQÖ not for love or lust but as a strategem in obtaining the mead of poetry. The origin of Rindr’s connection with the æsir appears to inform a line of Kormákr Qgmundarson’s SigurÖardrápa, a collection of six half stan­

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zas from Skáldskaparmál and one stanza from Heimskringla celebrating Sigurðr the Hlaðir jarl and ordinarily dated to around 960. Several of the half stanzas use the form Snorri calls hjástœlt (“tagged on”) in his com­ mentary to Háttatal in which the last five syllables take the form of a myth­ ological tag whose connection to the previous 19 is unclear but which seems to play the role of the stef or refrain. The relevant stanza is the third in the conventional numbering, and although the reading of most of it is disput­ ed, the tag is clear: “seið Yggr til Rindar” (“Odin obtained Rindr through sorcery.”). How he did so is made clear in no source, but it is in any case plain that he used her against her will. Indeed, he boasts of his prowess at such matters in Hárbarðsljóð 20, and it seems likely that he obtains the aid and favors of GunnlQÖ by means of some trick, false oath (Hávamál 110), or deliberate manipulation of established forms (Drobin 1991, Clunies Ross 1994a: 120). How far Odin was willing to go to sire an avenger for Baldr is indicated by the account offered by Saxo Grammaticus in Book 3 of Gesta Danorum of the origin of Bous. After his remarks about the grave mound of Balderus, Saxo moves di­ rectly on to the question of vengeance. Othinus seeks out various seers in the matter and finally finds the one he needs in Rostiophus. The name may be equivalent to Norse hross-þjófr (“horse-thief;” references in Herrmann 1922: 238) and might therefore refer to Loki, insofar as he lured away the work horse of the jQtunn masterbuilder of Ásgarðr (so Davidson & Fisher 1980: 38); the name is also included along with Heiðr among the Hrimnis kinder (“races of Hrimnir”) or giants in Hyndluljóð 32. Why Loki should appear in connection with the aftermath of Baldr’s death is not clear (Dav­ idson has in mind the seeress of Baldrs draumar, whom she takes for Loki), and “horse-thief’ - if that is indeed what Rostiophus means - could sim­ ply be an ethnic slur. Rostiophus bears the cognomen Phinnicus (“Finn,” i.e. Saami), and there is a long tradition concerning the magical abilities of ethnic others in Scandinavia (Lindow 1995b). Rostiophus prophecies that Othinus is to sire an avenger on Rinda, the daughter of the king of the Rutenians (inhabitants of Russia). Othinus immediately travels in disguise to the court of Rinda’s father and is taken on to lead forces in battle. With one victory he wins gold and silver and the confidence of the king. Then he single-handedly defeats an entire army and brings up his suit with the king, who looks on it favorably. Rinda, however, rejects him. Othinus slinks off and returns disguised as a smith named Rosterus, which is ordinarily understood as the Odin-name Hroptr (Davidson & Fisher 1980: 57; cf. Herr­ mann 1922: 239). In this guise, too, he wins the favor of the king. He smiths gifts of gold for Rinda, but she rejects him again. On his third visit Othi­ nus returns as a knight. Rinda still is not interested, but he manages to touch her with a stick carved with runes, and this drives her mad, in an episode that is ordinarily understood as parallel to the hjástœlt tag used by

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Kormákr. Now Othinus adopts the guise of a woman and under the name Wecha takes service with the king. This name has since the nineteenth cen­ tury been understood as the reflex of Norse vitki (“magician”; Davidson & Fisher 1980: 57; cf. Herrmann 1922: 239). Othinus/Wecha ultimately becomes the personal servant of Rinda, whose feet he washes daily, an ex­ ercise that allows him to caress her legs, but no more. Finally when Rinda becomes sick - without reference to her madness - Wecha is called on to cure her and prescribes a potion so foul that the patient must be bound in order to have it forced on her. The king has her restrained, and Othinus forces himself instead of the potion on her. Saxo also reports a second ver­ sion of the story, namely that the king simply arranged for the “doctor” to sleep with the patient. Magnus Olsen (1929) thought that this story informed Hávamál 16063, which recount the last four of the 18 stanzas of the Ijóðatal, a collec­ tion of charms beginning in stanza 146 and making up the last section of the poem. 160. Þat kann ec iþ fimtánda, er gól Þióðrprir, dvergr, fyr Dellings durom: afl gól hann ásom, enn álfom frama, hyggio Hroptatý. 161. Þat kann ec iþ sextánda, ef ec vil ins svinna mans hafa geð alt oc gaman: hugi ec hverfi vítarmri kono oc sný ec hennar Qllom sefa. 162. Þat kann ec iþ siautiánda, at mic mun seint firraz iþ mannunga man... 163. Þat kann ec iþ átiánda, er ec æva kennig mey né mannz kono alt er betra, er einn um kann, þat fylgir lióða locom nema þeiri einni, er mic armi verr eða min systir sé. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 44.] 160. I know a fifteenth, which Þióðrprir chanted, the dwarf, before Dellingr’s door: he chanted strength for the æsir, success for the elves, comprehension for Hroptatýr. 161.1 know a sixteenth, if I wish to have the entire mind and the pleasure of the wise maid: I turn the thought of the white-armed woman and twist all her mind. 162.1 know a seventeenth, so that the young maiden will be in no hurry to avoid me... 163.1 know an eighteenth, which I never make known to a maid nor a man’s wife all is better, if one alone knows about it, that accompanies the ends of charms except for that one alone, who embraces me with her arm or may be my sister.

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The connection with Rinda/Rindr begins with the Odin name Hroptatýr in stanza 160, a form that not only recalls Rostiophus/Hroptr but may also have a direct connection to Odin’s desire for vengeance, since Ulfr Uggason used it in Húsdrápa 8 to denote Odin on his way to Baldr’s funeral. Otherwise, this stanza concerns a charm that enhances two groups on the one hand and Odin’s powers of mind on the other, and these powers seem to lead into the next charms, both of which could be relevant to the seduc­ tion of Rinda/Rindr. Finally, the eighteenth charm ends the catalogue in an Odinic way by mentioning the unknowable, for which the archetype is Odin’s remark to Baldr on the funeral pyre (Sturtevant 1911). Olsen’s hy­ pothesis may fall into a similar category, since there is no way to verify it, but it forges another link between the relatively blank slate that is Odin’s seduction of Rindr in the Norse sources and Saxo’s more detailed version. At a minimum, Saxo’s story shares with what little we know of the sir­ ing of Váli both the turn to outside the immediate kin group and the use of magic. It also has several similarities with his seduction of GunnlQÖ, who like Rindr is an elja of Frigg. These would start with Odin’s taking service under an assumed name with Baugi, brother of GunnlQÖ’s father Suttungr, after causing all of Baugi’s nine servants to cut each other down with their scythes as they chase a hone he has tossed into the air (David­ son & Fisher 1980: 57). Shape changing plays a major role in that story as well, although the sequence of reaper, snake, man, eagle is more flamboy­ ant than that of general, smith, knight, and serving-maid. As a powerful liquid to be swallowed, the mead may answer to the ghastly potion pre­ scribed for the ailing woman, and indeed the thought of the mead in the hands of the jQtnar would leave a foul taste in the mouth of the æsir. We do not see GunnlQÖ’s attempts at resistance to Odin, but the twenty or so stanzas directly preceding Hávamál 103-12, where her story is told, con­ tain advice and reminiscences from Odin concerning seduction. 91 admits deceitful speech, and 92 advises gifts, both of which are strategems that Othinus tries unsuccessfully with Rinda. These stanzas culminate in Od­ in’s spectacular failure to seduce the daughter or wife of Billingr, who leaves a bitch bound on the bed. A knowledge of Saxo’s version of the rape of the bound Rinda would make of this trick a particular insult. The same knowledge might also admit a pun in Hávamál 109. Ins hindra dags gengo hrímþursar, Háva ráðs at fregna, Hávo hQllo i; at BQlverki þeir spurðo, ef hann væri með bQndum kominn, eða hefði hánom Suttungr of sóit. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 34.] The next day the hrímþursar went to ask counsel of Hár, in the hall of Hár, they asked about BQlverkr, if he had come among the gods, or if Suttungr had slaughtered him.

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The pun would be in the question posed by the frost giants, whether BQlverkr (the name Odin took in this adventure) had returned among the gods; “ef hann væri með bQndum kominn” might also be taken “if he had come with fetters.” The stanza following this one, Hávamál 110, which ends the account of the acquisition of the mead of poetry involving the seduction of GunnlQÖ, indicates that Odin swore a ring-oath and apparently broke it: “hvat seal hans trygðom trua” (Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 34) (“what good are his promises now”). Although Odin is not known for keeping faith, in the real world oaths were important and to be flouted only at considerable risk. To do so was to risk losing one’s attachment to society and the holy (Vogt 1937). And these attachments are precisely what Othinus forfeited for his rape of Rinda. The gods (euhemerized into Byzantium) depose Othinus from his position of leadership, deprive him of honor and worship, and send him into exile. They replace him with Ollerus, who takes over not only the powers of Othinus but also his name. After ten years, however, Othi­ nus returns and drives Ollerus out of Byzantium and buys back his former glory. Saxo’s language is sarcastic and ironic here, but it fits with his over­ all view of Othinus (Skovgaard-Petersen 1981: 83), who has already been defeated in battle by Høtherus and sunk into shame in his attempts to sire an avenger. The gods (and Saxo) seem to have objected as much to Od­ in’s cross-dressing as to the rape itself, but it does make one wonder wheth­ er these liaisons with females from outside the fold in order to sire a sin­ gle-purpose son may in general have been tinged with shame. In any case, the exile of Odin seems to me to nullify the parallels with fairytale plots that have sometimes been suggested for the Othinus-Rinda story (Herrmann 1922: 240-41) and also the suggested parallels with Skirnir’s wooing of Gerðr for Freyr. VQlundr’s vicious rape of the drugged BQÖvildr would seem to be a closer parallel, especially since Othinus earlier tried to woo the girl in the form of a smith (Davidson & Fisher 1980: 57), but the mo­ tivations and continuations of the two stories are completely different. The exile of Othinus lasts ten years and leaves enough time for Rinda’s son to grow up into a promising warrior. His name is Bous, which is gen­ erally taken to reflect Old Danish Bói or Norse Búi. The name relates to the verb búa (“to dwell, settle”) and the derived participial noun bóndi (búandi) (“farmer, head of household”) and can then be pressed into serv­ ice in connection with interpretations having to do with fertility gods and rituals (references in Herrmann 1922: 242-43; see also Schröder 1938 for a supposed parallel from folk belief). Since Old Danish Bói is unattested, Olrik (1894: 74, 1907: 175-76) tried Bóvi, which he read as “straw fig­ ure, grain spirit,” an interpretation that can only make sense in the context of fertility ritual. Although Bui was a name given to real people, it was more common in figures of legend (Lind 1905-15: 180-81 s.v.). Bui digri

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(“the stout”) of Jomsviking fame may be the best known, but there are oth­ ers, including one listed among the ancestors of Óttarr heimski in Hyndluljóð 23, as are Baldr and Váli six stanzas later. The most intriguing Bui, however, is found in Rígsþula 24 among the sons of Karl and Snør. The names attested along with Bui in Rígsþula 24 are an odd collection and may be significant in connection with Bui/Bous. A number of them are nouns indicating high social status, especially in the context of relation­ ships with chieftains and kings (Lindow 1976): hair, drengr, hqlðr, þegn; seggr (“man, warrior”) too may be relevant in this context. Other nouns indicate status as well, although not as exalted: bóndi and smiör (“smith”). Nearly all the others are adjectives indicating appearance: breiðr (“broad”), bundinskeggi (“with bound beard”), brattskeggr (“steep beard”). Finally, besides Búi, there is the name Boddi, which is not attested as a noun and is of uncertain etymology (de Vries 1961: 47 s.v.). The poet intends Karl to be taken as the noun karl and thus to indicate that the father of all these sons is one free-born but not noble, as opposed to Jarl, the son of Faðir and Móðir. Karl himself is of ruddy complexion and good with animals and tools, a model yeoman; Dumézil (1973b) assigned him to the second function, where Thor reigns, and even if one rejects the attempt to read the poem mythologically, there is nothing Odinic about Karl - except his name. Karl is an Odin name and indeed the one used by pQkk in the verse she utters when she refuses to weep Baldr away from Hel. Insofar as they point toward the comitatus, the names of Karl’s sons are also Odinic, for Odin had a special connection with the Männerbund; Otto Höfler’s work (1934, 1936) has been the most insistent on this point, but others, includ­ ing de Vries, have taken it more or less for granted. A number of Odin’s many names draw attention to his beard: Síðskeggr, Hárbarðr, Langbarðr, Síðgrani. The first Boddi was the father of Bragi, the first to employ Od­ in’s gift of the skaldic mead. Thus there may be reason to connect Bui in Rígsþula 24 with Odin and to wonder whether the stanza provides a Norse attestation of Baldr’s avenger according to Saxo. The name Bundinskeggi is of some additional interest in this context, for it seems to show that a person of achieved social status might bind or tie up in some way his beard, in other words, engage in the kind of grooming that Váli denied himself until he had brought Baldr’s slayer onto the bier. Bous, however, engages in no such denial. Like a hair; drengr, or þegn, he is trained in the use of weapons. Odin summons the boy to himself and reminds him that vengeance is a more noble cause than cutting down in­ nocent victims randomly in battle. Høtherus, meanwhile, has apparently burned alive a retainer of Gevarus who betrayed the old man, and now he too has a premonition of death. Unlike Balderus, Høtherus is able to ar­ range the dynastic succession after his death to his own satisfaction, for his son Røricus is to be chosen king. In the battle that follows, Bous kills

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Høtherus but is himself mortally wounded. He dies the next day, is mourned by the Rustenian army, and is interred in a mound that bears his name. In dying in connection with taking vengeance, Bous differs from Váli, who not only lives on among the æsir in the mythological present but is also to return after RagnarQk. This difference appears to be fundamental but is no greater than that which obtains between Balderus, who disappears from Gesta Danorum with his death, and Baldr, who will return; indeed, Bous is, like Balderus, given a mound through which at least his memory can live on. Ultimately the differences have to do with the nature of Gesta Danorum as a history of the patria as against the Icelandic Baldr materi­ als, which are embedded in a tradition where myth as such was still possi­ ble. Still, there are similarities. Saxo provides us with no more detail of the actual taking of vengeance than does Icelandic tradition. Both tradi­ tions place at least as much emphasis on the question of siring the aveng­ er as on that avenger’s strategy, an emphasis which in its own turn indi­ cates the problem that fell on the man in a feuding society closest to the victim. Whom should he recruit for vengeance, and how? If the slaying is within the family, what is he to do? Odin, at least, turned outside his own kin and got a son whose paternal relationship to his own victim was not to be taken as an impairment. Above I sketched the numerous reasons for grouping Váli with Víðarr and Magni and Móði and regarding the two pairs as second-generation vengeance figures whose special status was in part obtained through an exogamous union of their father, Odin, with a female from among the jQtnar. That status and the vengeance undertaken by the young warriors was wholly appropriate in the cases of Víðarr and Magni, who acted against jQtnar. What Móði did is unknown. Because of the killing within the family, how­ ever, Váli’s vengeance itself created all sorts of structural problems. As the avenger of his half-brother Baldr, Váli behaved properly and acted on the side of his patrimony. As the killer of his half-brother HQðr, Váli be­ haved, one could argue, shamefully and on the side of his matrimonial in­ heritance. If that is so, the basic patrilineal kinship structure of the my­ thology is inverted. Váli’s vengeance on HQÖr may represent a triumph for Odin, but it is hardly a loss for Loki’s paternal kin. HyndluljóÖ 29 says of Váli that he slew the handbani of his brother. The term is sometimes contrasted with ráðbani; the two might be rendered “killer by one’s one hand” and “killer by counsel,” although one arrives at the conclusion that the second involves the notion of a conspirator or inciter rather than the actual killer only by invoking comparative legal evidence (de Vries 1970: vol. 2, 217-18). Although Old Norwegian law prescribes only half a share of compensation from the ráðbani as opposed to the full share of the handbani, Snorri has Gylfi/Gangleri ignore the distinction al­ together and regard the apparent ráðbani Loki as fully responsible. After

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learning of the failed attempt to weep Baldr away from Hel, Gylfi/Gangleri notes that Loki got away with murder and asks whether some form of vengeance was not taken on him. Gylfi has, perhaps, been taken in by Hár’s rhetoric, which wishes to draw attention away from the nasty fact of a kin-slaying avenged by an avenger shamefully sired and who takes vengeance on his own half-brother. Hár tells a lengthy and somewhat unusual story that clearly bears the mark of Snorri’s hand, both in its analyses of motivations and its fond­ ness for etiological tags. Loki runs off and hides himself in a certain moun­ tain (thus retreating to the usual abode of jQtnar and monsters, the source of the fjalla Hildr who launched Baldr’s funeral ship, and so forth). There he makes a house with four doors, so that he may see out in the cardinal directions. He often spends his days disporting in the form of a salmon in Fránangrfors; the last component of the compound, -fors, makes it clear that the place is a waterfall or whitewater section of a river, and the first part may mean something like “gleaming fjord” - Sijmons and Gering thought the entire compound was a fjord name - or “gleaming sorrow” (de­ tails in Lorenz 1984: 585). Considering what tricks the æsir might use to capture him, he knots a linen yarn net, the proto-fishnet, and then tosses it into the fire when he sees the æsir approaching (Odin had spotted him from Hlíðskjálf) and rushes off to the water. Snorri presents this episode fully naturalistically, but the presence of the fire, motivated though it is, recalls Grímnismál, and it is possible that Loki saw the approach of the æsir in an altered state of consciousness. In any case, Loki has another connec­ tion with nets, for he fished up Andvari in one when the dwarf was swim­ ming in the form of a pike (Reginsmál). Upon the arrival of the æsir, Kvasir, “er allra var vitrastr” (“who was wisest of all”), enters the house first and reads in the track of the ashes an invention for catching fish. This is the only time Kvasir gets to use his considerable wisdom; born of the spittle mixed in the truce when the æsir and vanir ended their war (or sent as a hostage to the æsir in connection with that war), Kvasir was murdered by two dwarfs and the mead of poet­ ry concocted from his blood. There is if nothing else a certain irony here, in that a being who is himself to be murdered but his essence retained should be the one to help ensnare Loki, who arranged the murder of Baldr and saw to it that nothing of him was retained. It is also fitting that a be­ ing who is to embody poetry, Odin’s domain, should outwit Loki, particu­ larly if some ecstatic wisdom performance of Loki’s was involved in the creation of the net in the first place. The æsir make a net and set off to catch Loki with it; how they know that he is in the form of a salmon is unclear. Thor holds one end of the net and the rest of the æsir the other, and they begin to pass it through the water. On the first pass Loki hides between two stones, but the æsir weight

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the net, and this time Loki has to jump it. On the third and final pass the æsir split into two groups, with Thor wading out in the middle of the riv­ er. Trapped between the net and the sea, Loki again jumps the net, but this time Thor catches him, getting a firm grip on the back half of the fish, which is why salmon have a tapered shape. The gods have now taken Loki griðalauss- that is, with no assurances whatever of personal safety. Their vengeance consists not of killing the expiator but of submitting him to psychological and physical torture that mirrors his transgressions against them. They transport Loki to a cave, where they knock holes in three large rocks whose edges they have sharp­ ened. Þá váru teknir synir Loka, Váli ok Nari eða Narfi. Brugðu æsir Vála í vargs líki, ok reif hann í sundr Narfa, bróður sinn. Þá tóku æsir þarma hans ok bundu Loka með yfir þá þrjá eggsteina; stendr einn under herðum, annarr undir lendum, þriði undir knés-bótum, ok urðu þau bQnd at járni. [Normalized from Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931: 69.] Then Loki’s sons, Váli and Nari or Narfi, were seized. The æsir turned Váli into the form of a wolf, and he tore apart Narfi, his brother. Then the æsir took his guts and bound Loki with them across the three sharp­ ened stones; one is under his shoulders, the second under his loins, and the third under the hollows behind his knees, and these bonds turned to iron. Skaði then hangs a poisonous snake over Loki, so that the poison will drip down into his face. Sigyn stands by with a bowl to catch it, but when she goes out to empty it the poison falls on Loki’s face, and then he strug­ gles so violently that the earth shakes in what we humans call an earth­ quake. Thus he will be bound until RagnarQk. To read the scholarship on this scene is to be distanced greatly from it, transported in a search for origins to such exotic places as Egypt (Schröder 1924: 111-13, 1929: 415-20), the Near East (Krappe 1940), the Caucasus (Olrik 1922: 133-290), or the neverland of fairytale (von der Leyen 1908). That Loki too is to have a son named Vali draws little comment, except for guesses that something has gone wrong. But if we accept what Snorri tells us, a second Váli appears as a vengeance figure in the Baldr story, this one under duress. He is, in fact, forced to play the role that HQÖr played, that of unwilling killer of his brother. HQÖr killed because he was blind and knew no better; Vali Lokason kills because as a wolf he takes the nature of a predator and knows no better. Loki, like his blood-brother Odin, must watch helplessly as one son slays another, and then any venge­ ance he might consider is rendered impossible when he is bound with the physical remains of his dead son, just as Odin was initially bound by the griðastaðr and later by the conflicting demands of kin loyalty and venge­ ance. According to Saxo, Odin’s solution was a shameful one that caused him to be exiled for a time; now Loki is in the shameful position of sub­

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mitting to torture, and his exile will last as long as Odin’s world order. Bound in the cave, the sharp edges of the rocks cutting into him, Loki re­ calls Rinda, bound in her bed chamber, supposedly in order to drink a hor­ rible tonic, actually to be raped, a more or less innocent bystander swept up in a powerful vendetta; the binding of Loki serves no procreative pur­ pose, but there is a horrible liquid waiting to be served to him, too, and he actually gets some from time to time. While Loki lies bound he can contemplate not only the loss of Nar(f)i, and presumably also of Vali, his legitimate sons with Sigyn, but also of his children with Angrboða. When Loki thinks of Váli the wolf he can think also of Fenrir, bound like himself until the end of the world, and as he gazes up at the poisonous snake above he can think of the Midgard ser­ pent, cast down into the sea. When he considers the entire affair, he can recall Hel, presiding over the world of the dead. Perhaps the thought of Baldr there as well might console him. The presence of Sigyn sometimes occasions comment, often concern­ ing the ability of the ancient inhabitants of the North to imagine a mar­ riage as apparently happy as this one. In my view Sigyn too is to be pit­ ied, and not only because she must work an endlessly boring job in a cave. Her role in a feud society would of course be to incite her menfolk to vengeance, a role that appears doomed to nearly permanent frustration. No wailing, gnashing of teeth, tearing of hair, pithy words or production of bloody garments will do her any good. Like Loki, she must await the end. Her unwavering presence in the cave at least signals the nature of matri­ monial realignments in this mythology to the side of the husband, as does the fact that it is Skaði, herself born among the jQtnar, who suspends the poisonous snake above Loki. In this final act of vengeance for the death of Baldr, as Snorri reports it, female characters are the major players, and the vengeance is played out not in the public arena but far out in the wilderness where there is no public to report the actions and mediate them. By the norms of thirteenth-century Iceland, Loki’s terms were harsh indeed. Snorri did not invent this story, although we owe the details to him. The prose coda to Lokasenna gives an abbreviated version under the rubric “Frá Loka” (“concerning Loki”). It agrees that Loki hid himself in the form of a salmon in Fránangrfors, that the æsir captured him there,1 and that he was bound with the guts of his son Nari. It adds, however, that Narfi (not

1 According to Ludwig Buisson (1976), the scene of the gods fishing for Loki in the form of a salmon is to be seen on the picture stone Ardre VIII from Gotland, among other scenes from myth and heroic legend. If Buisson’s identification is correct (net and salmon are indeed visible, but certain identification of any of the Gotlandic ico­ nography remains controversial), this aspect of Snorri’s story existed during the sec­ ond half of the eighth century on Scandinavia’s eastern periphery.

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Váli) became a wolf, and does not indicate any direct connection between the two sons. It further agrees that Skaði hung the snake over Loki, that Sigyn works the bowl, that Loki’s struggles while she is emptying it and poison falls on him make the earth shake, and that such shakings are called earthquakes. Thus the general contours of my reading of Snorri’s version are present, even if the compiler of the Poetic Edda positions the section in such a way as to indicate that the punishment ensued for Loki’s slan­ dering of the æsir at Ægir’s banquet and not for the death of Baldr - un­ less Klingenberg (1983) is right in reading Lokasenna as Loki’s trial for his role in the slaying of Baldr. Scholars have generally agreed that the binding of Loki was not “originally” connected with the death of Baldr, and it is certain that the redactor of Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda and Snorri applied it to different transgressions of Loki. The matter is complicated by Vqluspá. Both redactions, Regius and Hauksbók, appear to refer to the story in one stanza, but the first halves of the two stanzas vary. Hauksbók’s reference occurs in its 30th stanza, of which the first half comprises number 34 in the Neckel/Kuhn arrangement. Þá kná Vála víg b Q n d snúa, heldr vóro harðgor hQpt, ór þQrmom. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 8.] Then killer-bonds could be twisted for Váli, the fetters were made rather hard, out of guts. The lines are obscure and have occasioned many different interpreta­ tions. The exact significance of vigbqnd remains unclear, since the first component could mean battle, but “killer-bonds” and “battle-bonds” are much the same thing. That bqnd can also mean “gods” is potentially more troubling, but it is difficult to make any sense of the lines using that mean­ ing. The oblique Vála could be dative, as I have rendered it, but it could just as easily be genitive: Vála vigbqnd (“killer-bonds of Vali”). Some ob­ servers (e.g., Sigurður Nordal 1952: 104) prefer to emend Vála to the nom­ inative Váli and allow Váli to twist the bonds himself. The combination of Váli, fetters, and guts points to Snorri’s rendition and supports the ob­ servation that Snorri depended particularly on a version of Vqluspá that was close to the one later recorded in Hauksbók. However one reads the stanza, which goes on to mention Sigyn, as we shall see, it is important to recall that in the Hauksbók Vqluspå Baldr’s death is not mentioned; to judge by the placement of the refrain, this stan­ za is the last of a group describing the war between the æsir and vanir. The equivalent half-stanza in Regius is as follows: Hapt så hon liggia undir hvera lundi, lægiam líki Loca áþeccian. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 8.] She saw a prisoner lying under the grove of kettles, one eager for evil, similar to the form of Loki.

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The subject of the sentence is the seeress who according to the conceit of the poem is speaking its wisdom lore; she refers to herself sometimes in the first person, more often in the third person, as here, especially when she reports not what she remembers but what she sees, a distinction that may be significant (Gutenbrunner 1957). The kenning at the end of the first long line has never been satisfactorily explained. It might be understood “grove of hot springs,” and although such a reading may have been im­ possible when the poem was composed (Kuhn 1945), it would have been a possibility when the poem was recorded, especially in Iceland’s volcan­ ic landscape. The initial half stanzas of both versions are completed by the same sec­ ond half, which ends with the refrain. Þar sitr Sigyn, þeygi um sínom ver velglýiuð - vitoð ér enn, eða hvat? [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 8.] There Sigyn sits, but not well pleased about her husband - would you know yet more? Thus there appears to be a strong and fairly consistent tradition concern­ ing the punishment of Loki, involving his binding (vigbqnd, hqpt in the Hauksbók Vqluspá, haptrin the Regius Vqluspá) and the presence of his displeased wife (both versions in Vqluspá). Both elements are also to be found in the first half of stanza 7 of the Haustlqng of Þjóðólfr of Hvin. Þá varð fastr við fóstra farmr Signýjar arma, sá er q11 regin eygja, Qndurgoðs f bQndum. [Turville-Petre 1976: 9.] Then the cargo of the arms of Sigyn, the one whom all the gods eye in bonds, was made fast to the fosterer of the ski-deity. This stanza occurs at the moment in the story of the rape of Iðunn when Loki has struck Þjazi (the father of Skaði, the ski-goddess) with a pole in anger over the jQtunn’s theft of food from the traveling Loki, Odin, and Hoenir. The pole sticks to Loki, and Þjazi flies off with Loki and ultimate­ ly extracts from him a promise to supply Iðunn. The language of the half stanza thus has immediate reference to its story: Loki, who enjoys the legit­ imate embraces of Sigyn, is to offer up Iðunn to quite illegitimate attentions, and the mechanism is a kind of binding that is parallel to what Loki will suffer when the gods bind and punish him. Still, it is possible to imagine that Þjóðólfr combined Sigyn and Loki’s binding not just through artistic inspiration but also because they were in general combined in tradition. Cer­ tainly the circumlocution for Loki, “the one whom the gods eye in bonds” (Turville-Petre [1976: 9] renders the verb “glare at”), is unusual enough in skaldic diction to suggest that a strong mythic tradition lay behind it.

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Indeed, Loki’s final binding is only the culmination of a set of bindings that occur in his sphere within the mythology, both to his offspring and to him. Among the latter would be numbered the sticking of the pole to Þjazi and perhaps also Loki’s invention of the net; yet another binding occurs when Loki permits his testicles to be tied to the beard of a she-goat in or­ der to make Skaði laugh. These physical bindings suggest his actual bonds: to the jQtnar (Þjazi), to strange sexuality and gender-bending (the she-goat; cf. Clunies Ross 1989, Lindow 1992), to impulsive creative intelligence (the net), and finally to chthonic powers (the rock to which he is finally bound). Adding to the accounts of Loki’s final punishment in the two redactions of Vqluspá the prose versions following Lokasenna and in Gylfaginning suggests three different possibilities for the act that finally triggered the punishment: the war between the æsir and vanir (Hauksbók Vqluspá), mur­ der of servants, uninvited invasion of a banquet, and slandering of the gods CLokasenna prose colophon), and Baldr’s death (Regius Vqluspá, Gylfagin­ ning). Although Loki’s participation in the war between the æsir and vanir is otherwise unknown, the presence of multiple traditions should hardly be surprising, given the general connection of Loki with binding. Equally important may have been the need to bind him finally before RagnarQk. Certainly the Regius Vqluspá and Gylfaginning also associate the death of Baldr with that cataclysm, and there are good reasons to accept such a connection as well founded in the tradition.

Chapter 6 BALDR AND HQÐR: RAGNARQK AND RECONCILIATION

The coming end of the Odinic world order in Scandinavian mythology RagnarQk, the “judgment of the gods” or Ragnarøkkr (“twilight of the gods,” a later term, as Miillenhoff (1873) first saw) - pervades the mythic present and motivates much of the action. As presented in Vqluspá and Gylfaginning, RagnarQk has three stages: the disintegration of cosmos and society, a cataclysmic battle between the æsir and all the forces of chaos, and an aftermath. In the first stage, strange sounds fill the air, as the hound bays and the cock crows, Heimdallr toots his horn, and Odin mutters to the head of Mimir. Murderers are afoot, and the bonds of kinship dissolve. Loki breaks loose to lead the forces of evil, and his lupine son escapes to confront Odin. Hosts of enemies pour toward the home of the æsir. The second stage is characteristically dyadically focused as a series of individ­ ual combats between æsir and jQtnar, and the æsir fall. The earth sinks into the sea and the stars fall from the sky. The final stage sees the earth arise from the sea, with nature restored and culture still in the hands of the æsir. As the seeress in Vqluspá describes it: 59. Sér hon upp koma QÖro sinni ÍQrð ór ægi, iðiagrœna; falla forsar, flýgr Qrn yfir, sá er á fialli fisca veiðir. 60. Finnaz æsir á Iðavelli oc um moldþinur, mátcan, dœma, oc minnaz þar á megindóma oc á Fimbultýs fornar rúnar. 61. Þar muno eptir undrsamligar gullnar tQflor í grasi finnaz, þærs í árdaga áttar hQfðo. 62. Muno ósánir acrar vaxa, bQls mun allz batna, Baldr mun koma; búa þeir HQÖr oc Baldr Hroptz sigtóptir,

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vel, valtívar - vitoð ér enn, eða hvat? [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 14.] 59. She sees come up for a second time the earth from the sea, ever green; rapids fall, the eagle flies over, the one who hunts for fish on the mountain. 60. The æsir meet at IðavQllr, and adjudge the earth-girder, the powerful one, and there they remember great things and the ancient runes of Fimbultýr [Odin]. 61. Behind in the grass wondrous golden playing pieces are found, the ones they had had in days of yore. 62. Unsown fields will grow, all evil will improve, Baldr will arrive; HQðr and Baldr, the dead gods, will well inhabit the glori­ ous victory sites of Hroptr [Odin] - would you know yet more? These four stanzas occur in this order in both versions of the poem, those in Codex Regius and Hauksbók. They make up the end of a long sequence that begins when Surtr travels from the south with fire and that in general details the deaths of the æsir. This sequence is enclosed by the refrain (“Vitoð ér enn eða hvat?”) but is itself broken into two parts by a stanza that is thrice repeated in the poem. 58. Geyr nú Garmr miQC fyr Gnipahelli, festr mun slitna, enn freki renna; fjQlð veit hon frœða, fram sé ec lengra urn ragna tqc, rQmm, sigtýva. [Neckel & Kuhn, ed. 1962: 14.] Garmr howls greatly now before Gnipahellir, bonds will break, and the wolf yet run free; she knows much lore, I see further ahead concerning the fates of the gods, powerful, of the victory gods. The four stanzas of rebirth and redemption follow this stanza. Accord­ ing to the words of the seeress in stanza 58, they too have to do with the fates of the gods. Stanza 59 presents a renewed earth in which nature (and food sources) are still intact. Stanza 60 suggests that some of the old world order has been restored, for æsir are present and at IðavQllr, where they gathered according to stanza 7 of the poem and made cultural artifacts such as wealth and tools. Since the æsir concern themselves with thoughts of the Midgard serpent, a powerful jQtunn, and Odin’s runes, a weapon against the jQtnar, it would appear from this stanza that the old system of opposi­ tion between æsir and jQtnar is still intact. The reclaiming of the golden gaming pieces in stanza 61 gives a similar impression, especially since the æsir apparently played some sort of game (“Tefldo i tiini”) according to Vqluspá 8. A. G. van Hamel (1934) once argued that this was some sort

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of master game that led to RagnarQk, a supposition that no text will sup­ port, but it is certainly logical to join the game in stanza 8 with the pieces in stanza 61. The key phrase in stanza 61 in my view is “í árdaga” (“in days of yore”); the pieces span mythic history from the very beginning to the very end. They are physical remnants of the continuity of the culture of the æsir, parallel to the oral artifacts - the memories - brought forth in stanza 60. They are precious not only because they are made of gold but because they incorporate memory. Up to this point, the account of the third phase of RagnarQk appears to present a recapitulation of the mythic history that preceded it. For all we know, Thor could be talking about the Midgard serpent and Odin casting the pieces. With stanza 62, however, it becomes apparent that the new world is fundamentally different from the one that it replaces. Unsown fields will grow; that is, crops will never fail and food and fodder will always be in good supply. Furthermore, all that is bad will be improved - specifically, Baldr will appear. Just as unsown fields grow, so the dead return. But the bad that is to be improved must include more than the death of Baldr, for HQÖr and Baldr together will inhabit the homestead of their father Odin. The nouns used in this part of the stanza are indicative. HQÖr and Baldr will inhabit Odin’s sigtóptir (literally “victory plots of land”). These are often taken to mean ValhQll: so Finnur Jónsson (1931: 494 s.v. sigtopt), also Hans Kuhn (1968: 184 s. v. sig-tóptir), who offers the picturesque cir­ cumlocution “Ruinen der Siegstätte Odins” (“ruins of the sites of Odin’s victories”), which I think stretches somewhat the sense of the noun topt (a word not commonly found in verse or in particularly metaphorical senses; see for example Fritzner [1973: 712 s.v. topt]). In my view Odin’s victo­ ry-plots might as well be the world as a whole in which the mythology was played out, where Odin won his many victories over the jQtnar. Of course, if the noun is to be taken literally, we may wonder whether these abodes of the new generation of the æsir are to include the griðastaðr in which Baldr was slain, in Odin’s one great defeat; the use of the Odinname Hroptr may be indicative, since it was used (in the form Hroptatýr) by Úlfr in his description of Baldr’s funeral. This defeat is perhaps also suggested here by the noun valtivar (literally “carrion-gods”). It is used once before in Vqluspá, in stanza 52, and in HymiskviÖa 1, in both cases generally for the æsir. Here, however, analyzing the compound brings to mind the fate of Baldr and HQÖr, both the victims of weapons. The important point is of course that HQÖr and Baldr, who by the social code were forever separated when HQÖr struck Baldr down, are now joined and apparently reconciled. Just as unsown fields grow and Baldr returns from the dead, so murderer and victim can together inherit and inhabit their father’s patrimony. Only the end of the former world order can make pos­ sible this “solution” to the problem of a slaying within a family, this final

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