Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

conscious cunning. Nevertheless, he shows unlimited patience when the guests insult him
by accepting nothing of what he offers. When he comes down to the beach, where Gorm's
ships are anchored, he is greeted by the leader of the discoverers with joy, because he is
"the most pious being and man's protector in perils." He conducts them in safety to his
castle. When a handful of them returns after the attempt to plunder the treasury of the
lower world, he considers the crime sufficiently punished by the loss of life they have
suffered, and takes them across the river to his own safe home; and when they, contrary
to his wishes, desire to return to their native land, he loads them with gifts and sees to it
that they get safely on board their ships. It follows that Saxo s sources have described
Gudmund as a kind and benevolent person. Here, as in the legend about Helgi Thorisson,
the shadow has been thrown by younger hands upon an older background painted in
bright colors.
Hervör's saga says that Gudmund was wise, mighty, in a heathen sense pious ("a
great sacrificer"), and so honored that sacrifices were offered to him, and he was
worshipped as a god after death. Bosi's saga says that he was greatly skilled in magic arts,
which is another expression for heathen wisdom, for fimbul-songs, runes, and
incantations.
The change for the worse which Gudmund's character seems in part to have
suffered is confirmed by a change, connected with and running parallel to it, in the
conception of the forces in those things which belonged to the lower world of the
Germanic heathendom and to Gudmund's domain. In Saxo, we find an idea related to the
antique Lethe 4 myth, according to which the liquids and plants which belong to the lower
world produce forgetfulness of the past. Therefore, Thorkil (Thorkillus) warns his
companions not to eat or drink any of that which Gudmund offers them. In
Guðrúnarkviða in forna 21, and elsewhere, we meet with the same idea. I shall return to
this subject (see No. 72).
50.
ANALYSIS OF THE SAGAS MENTIONED IN NOS. 44-48.
THE QUESTION IN REGARD TO THE IDENTIFICATION OF
ODAINSAKUR.
Is Gudmund an invention of Christian times, although he is placed in an
environment which in general and in detail reflects the heathen mythology? Or is there to
be found in the mythology a person who has precisely the same environment and is
endowed with the same attributes and qualities?
These form an exceedingly strange ensemble, and can therefore easily be
recognized: A ruler in the lower world, and at the same time a giant. Pious and still a
giant. King in a domain to which winter cannot penetrate. Within that domain an
enclosed place, whose bulwark neither sickness, nor age, nor death can surmount. It is
left to his power and pleasure to give admittance to the mysterious meadows, where the
mead-cisterns of the lower world are found, and where the most precious of all horns, a
wonderful sword, and a splendid arm-ring are kept. Old as the hills, but yet subject to
4 Lethe, an underworld river in Greek mythology whose water causes forgetfulness of the pains and
sorrows of earthly life.