Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

dis, but who not in the daytime but in the night has to battle on her journey across the
sky, must be a goddess of the moon, a moon-dis. This moon-goddess is the one who is
nearest at hand to bring assistance to Baldur. Thus she can be none else than Nanna, who
we know is the daughter of the owner of the moon-ship. The fact that she has to battle her
way across the sky is explained by the Norse mythic statement, according to which the
wolf-giant Hati is greedy to capture the moon, and finally secures it as his prey (Völuspá,
Gylfaginning). In the poem about Helgi Hjörvarðsson, which is merely a free
reproduction of the materials in the Baldur-myth (which shall be demonstrated in the
second part of this work), the giant Hati is conquered by the hero of the poem, a Baldur
figure, whose wife is a dis, who, "white" herself, has a shining horse (str. 26, 28),
controls weather and harvests (str. 28), and makes nightly journeys on her steed, and
"inspects the harbors" (str. 26).
The name Nanna (from the verb nenna; cp. Vigfusson's Dictionary, Lexicon
Poeticum) 14 means "the brave one." 15 With her husband she has fought the battles of
light, and in the Norse, as in the Germanic, mythology, she was with all her tenderness a
heroine.
The Second Merseburg Charm makes the sun-dis and the moon-dis sisters. The
Norse variation of the Germanic myth has done the same. Vafþrúðnismal 23 and
Gylfaginning 11 inform us that the divinities which govern the chariots of the sun and
moon were brother and sister, but from the masculine form Máni Gylfaginning has drawn
the false conclusion that the one who governed the car of the moon was not a sister but a
brother of the sun. In the mythology a masculine divinity Máni was certainly known, but
he was the father of the sun-dis and moon-dis, and identical with Gevarr-Nökkvi-Nefr,
the owner of the moon-ship. The god Máni is the father of the sun-dis for the same reason
as Nott is the mother of Dag. 16
Vafþrúðnismál informs us that the father of the managers of the sun- and mooncars
was called Mundilföri. We are already familiar with this mythic personality (see
Nos. 81-83) as the one who is appointed to superintend the mechanism of the world, by
whose Möndull the starry firmament is revolved. It is not probable that the power
governing the motion of the stars is any other than the one who under Odin's supremacy
is ruler of the sun and moon, and ward of all the visible phenomena in space, among
which are also the stars. As, by comparison of the old records, we have thus reached the
conclusion that the managers of the sun and moon are daughters of the ward of the
14 Neither Vigfusson or Egilsson associate Nanna with nenna in the sources cited. Vigfusson defines nenna
as "to strive, to travel" and Egilsson as udøve med kraft og raskhed "to exercise with force and speed." The
connection between Nanna and nenna was first made by Grimm in DM Vol. I, Ch. 11: "On mythological
grounds it is even probable: Baldur's wife Nanna is also the bold one from nenna, to dare." Jan De Vries
relates it to the Germanic root nanþ-, giving the meaning "the daring one." (Altergermanishe
Religiongeschichte, Berlin 1970).
15 The word here is behjärtade meaning "the brave one" or "the compassionate one," which explains
Rydberg's following statement.
16 Rydberg accepts Sunna and Nanna as the present representations of the sun and moon. However, this
conclusion is unnecessary since Vafþrúðnismál 47 clearly states that the Sun (alfröðull) will bear a
daughter who shall "ride on her mother's paths when the powers (regin) die." Since Nanna resides in Hel
with Baldur, who will return after Ragnarok, we might safely assume she returns with him. Therefore
Sunna and Nanna are most likely the daughters of the present day Sól and Máni, whose father is
Mundilföri.