Swans and Valkyries

I just finished a paper. It is a huge, huge subject. To do it justice , one could probably write a book. Valkyries are a Northern concept; they belong to the Viking Age. No other culture has the armoured, beautiful battle maidens in their mythology. At least no conclusive evidence for them has been found. The three valkyries in Volundarkvida are also swan maidens. There is a lot of philological evidence that Latin for white 'albus', elf 'alp', and swan 'alpt' have a common Indo-European root.

The only named elf in Old Norse is Volund. In the few other stories, where he is mentioned, he is not called an elf but he is clearly and Otherworldy being even in the other stories. His extra-ordinary skill as a smith sets him apart and his ability to fly. The Wayland/Volund story is so old but scholars can't agree if he had a wife before he was taken captive by Nidud. I think he did. I think the swan maidens were valkyries because the daughters of elves could be valkyries and she was so very white as were all the other valkyries in Norse myth. You don't get that sense reading them in translation because hvitr is often translated as fair or radiant. It fires the imagination to think of what people made of swans so that they are related etymologically to elves.

Mother's Night

I have already written a bit about Yule which was, more or less a month or season in the Icelandic calender. There were some mid-winter sacrifices made to some female deities called the 'disarblot'. There is little information about what or who the 'disir' are but the Venerable Bede wrote a small chapter on the months of the Angles in his book De Temporum Ratione, it is a book about time and calendars.

In Chapter 15, he wrote that November was 'Blod-monath' and December, as well as January, was 'Guili' (the g is pronounced as a 'y'). He also mentioned that the night of Christmas, December 25th, was called Modranicht, or 'Mother's Night', Bede suspected it was called this due to some ceremonies on that night. It was also the beginning of the new year. It is a shame he did not say more about these winter celebrations. We can only speculate what went on.

The Franks Casket

In the holistic view of things, that everything is interrelated, I am going to agree that all the sides of the carved box have something to do with each other. Many scholars think the right side depicts the burial of Sigurd, which doesn't make sense to me. I like a suggestion from Thomas Bredehof that it is rather Hengist and Horsa, which balances out the left side which shows Romulus and Remus, the twin founders of Rome, being suckled by the she wolf. Hengist and Horsa are the twins who founded the kingdoms of the English.

My interest in the casket is due to the depiction on the front of Wayland the Smith and his brother Egil appears on the lid. The casket is from early 8th century Northumbria and is now housed at the British Museum. Here is a site that discusses the casket with good photos of all sides.

Since sides and portions mirror and complement each other, I am going to go out on a limb and say that the swan/goose on the front panel with the Magi hints that Wayland may have had a swan bride early on.

For those of you who are not familiar with the story of Egil, that is because his story has been taken over by William Tell.

The Wild Man of Orford

Ralph of Coggeshall was another medieval chronicler who, after he was finished writing the doings of the wealthy and powerful, collected curious little tales he had heard. He is the source for the story of the green children of Woolpit and this interesting story about the wild man of Orford. In his words, more or less, as I translate from the latin.

"At the time of King Henry II when Bartholomew de Glanville kept the castle at Orford, it happened one day that some fishermen who were fishing, caught a wild man in their net. They handed him over to Bartholomew to admire. The wild man was completely nude, and appeared as a human in all his parts. He had hair on his head, but ruined and wrecked in appearance. He had a really long beard, and he was really too hairy and shaggy on his chest. Bartholomew had him guarded for a time, day and night, so that he could not go back to the sea. Whatever was brought to him, he ate avidly. Indeed he ate fishes raw rather than cooked, but he would squeeze the raw fish between his hands and suck the juice out and thus he would eat. He emitted not one word either because he did not want to or he could not, even when he was suspended by his feet and subjected to frequent dire tortures. Although he was brought to church, he showed no signs of veneration or any sign of belief, by either bending the knee or inclining the head with which one could discern something holy. He always eagerly sought his bedchamber when the sun went down and would lie there until the sun came up.

It happened one day, that they brought him to the sea and set him in the sea, held on to by a net, three lines thick. Who, seeking the deepest part of the sea, passing through the net, was emerging again and again from the bottom of the sea and was looking at those watching from the shore of the sea a long while. Often he dipped down and blow out a bit of water as if insulting those watching because he escaped their net. And when he played in the sea thus a while and now all hope was gone that they would recapture him, suddenly he came, swimming in the waves, again all the way to them. And he remained with them again for two months. But when those keeping him became negligent and showed distaste for him, he fled in secret to the sea and never appeared afterwards. If however he existed as a mortal man, presenting himself as some human type of fish, as if an evil spirit was hiding in the body of the submerged man, just as may be read in the life of St. Audoeni, one cannot easily categorize him. Most of all because so many wonders are being told by so many about these events."

That was a quick and dirty translation on my part. The story seems part Gollum, part Free Willy. I couldn't say for sure that Tolkien had read Chronicon Anglicanum (it is not a particularly obscure text) and that this incident inspired his portrayal of Gollum (Gollum was not this hairy) but it struck me as very similar.