Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

the Frisians pursued by the plundered party or by other lower-world beings. Still, all but
one succeeded in getting back to their ships. Adam asserts that they were such beings
quos nostri cyclopes appellant ("which among us are called cyclops"), that they, in other
words, were gigantic smiths, who accordingly themselves had made the untold amount of
golden treasures which the Frisians saw there. These northern cyclops, he says, dwelt
within solid walls, surrounded by a water, to which, according to Adam of Bremen, one
first comes after traversing the land of frost (provincia frigoris), and after passing that
Euripus, "in which the water of the ocean flows back to its mysterious fountain" (ad initia
quaedam fontis sui arcani recurrens), "this deep subterranean abyss wherein the ebbing
streams of the sea, according to report, were swallowed up to return," and which "with
most violent force drew the unfortunate seamen down into the lower world" (infelices
nautos vehementissimo impetu traxit ad Chaos).
It is evident that what Paulus Diaconus, Adam of Bremen, and Saxo here relate
must be referred to the same tradition. All three refer the scene of these strange things
and events to the "most remote part of Germany" (cp. Nos. 45, 46, 48, 49). According to
all three reports, the boundless ocean washes the shores of this saga-land which has to be
traversed in order to get to "the sleepers," to "the men half-dead and resembling lifeless
images," to "those concealed in the middle of the day in subterranean caves." Paulus
assures us that they are in a cave under a rock in the neighborhood of the famous
maelstrom which sucks the billows of the sea into itself and spews them out again. Adam
makes his Frisian adventurers come near being swallowed up by this maelstrom before
they reach the caves of treasures where the cyclops in question dwell; and Saxo locates
their tabernacle, filled with weapons and treasures, to a region which we have already
recognized (see Nos. 45-51) as belonging to Mimir's lower-world realm, and situated in
the neighborhood of the sacred subterranean fountains.
In the northern part of Mimir's domain, consequently in the vicinity of the
Hvergelmir fountain (see Nos. 59, 93), from and to which all waters find their way, and
which is the source of the famous maelstrom (see Nos. 79, 80, 81), there stands,
according to Völuspá, a golden hall in which Sindri's kinsmen have their home. Sindri is,
as we know, like his brother Brokk and others of his kinsmen, an artist of antiquity, a
cyclops, to use the language of Adam of Bremen. The Northern records and the Latin
chronicles thus correspond in the statement that in the neighborhood of the maelstrom or
of its subterranean fountain, beneath a rock and in a golden hall, or in subterranean caves
filled with gold, certain men who are subterranean artisans dwell. Paulus Diaconus makes
a "curious" person who had penetrated into this abode disrobe one of the sleepers clad in
"Roman" clothes, and for this he is punished with a withered arm. Saxo makes Thorkil
put his hand on a splendid garment which he sees there, and Thorkil returns from his
journey with an emaciated body, and is so lean and lank as not to be recognized.
There are reasons for assuming that the ancient artisan Sindri is identical with
Dvalinn, the ancient artisan created by Mimir. I base this assumption on the following
circumstances:
Dvalinn is mentioned by the side of Dáinn both in Hávamál 143 and in
Grímnismál 33; also in the sagas, where they make treasures in company. Both the names
are clearly epithets which point to the mythic destiny of the ancient artists in question.
Dáinn means "the dead one," and in analogy with this we must interpret Dvalinn as "the