Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

the quoted Vafþrúðnismál strophe, undir hendi hrímþursi vaxa mey og mög saman, 2 are
evidence that the Germans also considered Mimir and his sister as twins.
87.
THE IDENTITY OF MIMIR AND NIDHAD OF THE VÖLUND SAGA.
The condition in which the traditions of the great Völund (Wayland) have come
down to our time is one of the many examples illustrating how, under the influences of a
change of faith, a myth disrobes itself of its purely mythical character and becomes a
heroic saga. The nature of the mythic traditions and songs is not at once obliterated in the
time of transition; there remain marks of their original nature in some or other of the
details as proof of what they have been. Thus that fragment of a Völund saga, turned into
an epic, which the Old Norse literature has preserved for us in Völundarkviða, shows us
that the artist who is the hero of the song was originally conceived not as a son of man,
but as a member of the mythic race of elves which in Völuspá is mentioned in connection
with the Aesir (hvað er með ásum, hvað er með álfum? - str. 48). 3 Völund is an elf-prince
(álfa vísi, álfa ljóði - Völundarkviða 11, 14), and, as shall be shown below, when we
come to consider the Völund myth exhaustively, he and his brothers and their mistresses
have played parts of the very greatest importance in the epic of Germanic mythology.
Under such circumstances it follows that the other persons appearing in Völundarkviða
also were originally mythical characters.
One of these is called Niðaður (Niðuður), king of Njarar, and I am now to
investigate who this Niðaður was in the mythology.
When Völund for the first time appears by this name in the Poetic Edda, he is
sojourning in a distant country, to which it is impossible to come without traversing the
Mirkwood forest famous in the mythology (see No. 78). It is a snow-clad country, the
home of bears and wolves. Völund gets his subsistence by hunting on skis. The Old
English poem, "Deor the Scald's Complaint," confirms that this region was regarded as
very cold (cp. vintercealde vræce). 4 In Völundarkviða it is called Wolfdales (Úlfdalir).
Völund stays here many years in company with his two brothers and with three
swan-maids, their mistresses or wives, but finally alone. Völund passes the time in
smithying, until he is suddenly attacked by Niðaður (Niðuður), "the Njara-king"
(Völundarkviða 7), who puts him in chains and robs him of two extraordinary treasures --
a sword and an arm-ring. Seven hundred arm-rings hung in a string in Völund's hall; but
this one alone seemed to be worth more than all the rest, and it alone was desired by
Niðaður (str. 8, 9, 17).
Before Völund went to the Wolfdales, he had lived a happy life with his people in
a land abounding in gold (str. 14). Not voluntarily, but from dire necessity he had
exchanged his home for the distant wilderness of the Wolfdales. "Deor the Scald's
2 "under the frost-giant's arm grew a man and a maid together."
3 The Aesir and the Elves are frequently named together: Thrymskviða 7; Hávamál 159, 160; Grimnismál
4; Sigurdrífumál 18; Skírnismál 7, 17, and 18; Lokasenna 2, 13, 30.
4 lit. "wintercold exile."