Classic Illustrations from Norse Mythology

Völuspá 21-22:

Þat man hon
folkvíg fyrst í heimi,
er Gullveigu
geirum studdu
ok í höll Hárs
hana brenndu -
þrysvar brenndu
þrysvar borna,
opt, ósjaldan -
þó hon enn lifir.

She remembers
the world’s first war,
when Gullveig
was pierced with spears
in the High One’s hall
she was burnt.
Thrice burnt,
thrice born,
often, not seldom,
yet she still lives.

Heiði hana hétu
hvars til húsa kom,
völu vel spá,
vitti hon ganda.
Seið hon kunni,
seið hon leikin,
æ var hon angan
illrar þjóðar. Heid they called her
Wherever she visited,
a far-sighted seeress,
she conjured with wands,
in magic she was versed,
in magic she was deft,
always cherished
by evil people.

Völuspá 21-22: The Aesir Burn Gullveig
1885 Lorenz Frølich (and below)



Völuspá 24: Odin Declares War on the Vanir

Gullveig's acts in antiquity as the founder of the diabolical magic art, as one who awakens man's evil passions and produces strife in Asgard causing conflict between the Aesir and Vanir. Ynglingasaga (ch. 4) relates a tradition that Freyja kendi fyrst med Ásum seið, that Freyja was the first to practice sorcery in Asgard. There is no doubt that the statement is correct. For we have seen that Gullveig-Heid, the sorceress and spreader of sorcery in antiquity, succeeded in getting admission to Asgard, and that Aurboda is particularly mentioned as belonging to the circle of serving dises who attend Freyja. As this giantess was so zealous in spreading her evil arts among the inhabitants of Midgard, it would be strange if the myth did not make her, after she had gained Freyja's confidence, try to betray her into practicing the same arts.

Doubtless Völuspá and Saxo have reference to Gullveig-Heid-Aurboda when they say that Freyja, through some treacherous person among her attendants, was delivered into the hands of the giants. In his historical account relating how Freyja (Syritha) was robbed from Asgard and came to the giants but was afterwards saved from their power, Saxo says that a woman, who was secretly allied with a giant, had succeeded in ingratiating herself in her favor, and for some time performed the duties of a maid-servant at her home; but this she did in order to cunningly entice her away from her safe home to a place where the giant lay in ambush and carried her away to the recesses of his mountain country. Thus Saxo informs us that it was a woman among Freyja's attendants who betrayed her, and that this woman was allied with the giant world, which is hostile to the gods, while she held a trusted servant's place with the goddess. Aurboda is the only woman connected with the giants in regard to whom our mythic records inform us that she occupied such a position with Freyja; and as Aurboda's character and part, played in the epic of the myth, correspond with such an act of treason, there is no reason for assuming the mere possibility that the betrayer of Freyja may have been some one else who is neither mentioned nor known. With this, it is important to compare Völuspá 25-26, which not only mention the fact that Freyja came into the power of the giants through treachery, but also informs us how the treason was punished.

Why have the Vanir objected to the killing of Gullveig-Heid? Should this clan of gods, celebrated in song as benevolent, useful, and pure, be kindly disposed toward the evil and corrupting arts of witchcraft? This cannot have been the meaning of the myth. The explanation of the fact is that Frey, on account of a passion of which he is the victim (probably through Aurboda's sorcery), was driven to marry the giant maid Gerd, whose kin in that way became friends of the Vanir. Frey is obliged to demand satisfaction for a murder perpetrated on a kinswoman of his wife. The kinship of blood demands its sacred right, and according to Germanic ideas of law, the Vanir must act as they do regardless of the moral character of his mother-in-law.

Aurboda is Frey's mother-in-law, consequently his close relation; and it must have been on behalf of a near relation that Frey and Njörd demanded satisfaction from the Aesir when the Aesir slew Gullveig-Heid. We must consider that nearly all mythic characters are polyonomous, and that the Germanic mythology particularly, is burdened with a highly-developed polyonomy. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to regard them as otherwise than identical. Thus, when the gods capture and burn Gullveig for spreading witchcraft among mankind and giving Freyja to the giants, the Vanir object and demand weregild.

THE MOTHER OF THREE MONSTERS
LOKI'S OTHER HALF

The Poetic Edda, Hyndluljóð 38:

From the account, we see that an evil female being (ill kona) had been burnt, but that the flames were not able to destroy the seed of life in her nature. Her heart had not been burnt through or changed to ashes. It was only half-burnt (hálfsviðinn hugsteinn), and in this condition it had been thrown away together with the other remains of the cremated woman, for Loki finds and swallows the heart.

The half-burnt heart contained the evil woman's soul, and its influence upon Loki, after he swallowed it, was most remarkable. Once before he bore Sleipnir with the giant horse Svaðilfari, the witch's heart redeveloped the feminine in him (Loki lindi af brendu hjarta). It fertilized him with the evil purposes which the heart contained. Loki became the "father" of the children from which all trolls (flagð) came into the world. First among the children is mentioned the wolf, which is named Fenrir, and which shall cause the death of the All-Father in Ragnarok. Njörd's words about Loki, in Lokasenna 33 point to this event: áss ragr er hefir börn of borið. The woman possessing the half-burnt heart, who is the mother or rather the father of the wolf, is called Angurboða (ól úlf Loki við Angurboðu). N. M. Petersen and other mythologists have rightly seen that she is the same as "the old one in the Ironwood" and "there fosters Fenrir's kinsmen" (Völuspá 40), her own offspring, which at the end of this age are to issue from the Ironwood, and break into Midgard and dye its citadels with blood (Völuspá 41).

As Gullveig was burnt and reborn three times, Loki appears to have found and eaten the half-burnt heart each time, bearing a monster each time.

Snorri's Edda, Gylfaginning 34: Yet more children had Loki. Angrboda was the name of a certain giantess in Jötunheim, with whom Loki begat three children: one was Fenris-Wolf, the second Jörmungandr--that is the Midgard Serpent,--the third is Hel. But when the gods learned that this kindred was fed in Jötunheim, and when the gods perceived by prophecy that from this kindred great misfortune should befall them; and since it seemed to all that there was great prospect of ill —(first from the mother's blood, and yet worse from the father's)— then Allfather sent gods thither to take the children and bring them to him. When they came to him, straightway he cast the serpent into the deep sea, where he lies about all the land; and this serpent grew so greatly that he lies in the midst of the ocean encompassing all the land, and bites upon his own tail. Hel he cast into Niflheim, and gave to her power over nine worlds, to apportion all abodes among those that were sent to her: that is, men dead of sickness or of old age. ... The Wolf the Æsir brought up at home, and Týr alone dared go to him to give him meat."