Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

With this we must compare a mythic fragment preserved in Gylfaginning 11.
There a fountain called Byrgir is mentioned. Two children, a lass by name Bil and a lad
by name Hjuki, whose father was named Viðfinnur, had come with a pail to this fountain
to fetch water. 12 The allegory in which the tradition is incorporated calls the pail Sægur,
"the one seething over its brinks," 13 and calls the pole on which the pail is carried Simul
(according to one manuscript Sumul; cp. Suml, brewing ale, mead). 14 Bil, one of the two
children is put in connection with the drink of poetry. The skalds pray that she may be
gracious to them. Ef unna ítr vildi Bil skáldi, "if the noble Bil will favor the skald," is a
wish expressed in a strophe in the Prose Edda, ii. 363. 15 Byrgir is manifestly a fountain
of the same kind as the one referred to by Egil, and containing the skaldic mead. Byrgir's
fountain must have been kept secret, it must have been a "concealed find," for it is in the
night, while the moon is up, that Vidfinn's children are engaged in filling their pail from
it. This is evident from the fact that Máni sees the children. When they have filled the
pail, they are about to depart, presumably to their home, and to their father Vidfinn. But
they do not get home. While they carry the pail with the pole on their shoulders Máni
takes them unto himself, and they remain with him, together with their precious burden.
From other mythic traditions which I shall consider later (see Nos. 121-123), we learn
that the moon-god adopts them as his children, and Bil afterwards appears as an ásynja
(Gylfaginning 35).
If we now compare Egil's statements with the mythic fragment about Bil and
Hjuki, we find in both a fountain mentioned which contains the liquid of inspiration
found in Mimir's fountain, without being Mimir's well-guarded or unapproachable
"well." 16 In Egil the find is "kept secret." In Gylfaginning the children visit it in the night.
Egil says the liquid was carried from Jotunheim; Gylfaginning says that Bil and Hjuki
carried it in a pail. Egil makes the liquid transferred from Jotunheim to Nökkvi's ship;
Gylfaginning makes the liquid and its bearer's be taken aloft by the moon-god to the
moon, where we still, says Gylfaginning, can see Bil and Hjuki (in the moon-spots).
There can therefore be no doubt that Nökkvi's ship is the silvery craft of the
moon, sailing in space over sea and land on a course marked out for it, and that Nökkvi is
the moon-god. As in Rigveda, so in the Germanic mythology, the ship of the moon was
for a time the place where the liquid of inspiration, the life- and strength-giving mead,
was concealed. The myth has ancient Indo-European roots.
On the myth concerning the mead-carrying ship, to which the Aesir come to
drink, rests the paraphrase for composing, for making a song, which Einar Skalaglamm
once used (Skáldskaparmál 9). To make songs he calls "to dip liquid out of Her-Tyr's
12 Here Anderson, through his choice of words, clearly accepts the popular belief that Bil and Hjuki are the
Jack and Jill of Nursery rhyme.
13 Sægur is a name for the ocean (cp. AS gar-secg), meaning "sleet, wet, pouring," and can also mean "a
swarm" (Vigfusson's Dict.)
14 Eysteinn Björnsson suggests a possible reading of sí-mul, "the ever grinding one, the constant crusher",
thus a name of the world-mill. In this case, Sægur might refer to Hvergelmir and Símul, the pole, to
möndull in the name Mundilföri.
15 This passage is not included in modern editions of the Prose Edda and it's source is unknown. Bil
frequently occurs in kennings for women.
16 As Rydberg's translation of the Sonatorrek passage is faulty, the evidence of the tale of Hjuki and Bil
must stand on its own, weakening the conclusion.