Wayland the Smith

thumb|Wayland in Fredrik Sander's 1893 Swedish edition of the [[Poetic Edda]]

Wayland the Smith (; ) is a legendary master blacksmith in Norse and Germanic mythology, renowned for his craftsmanship, cunning, and the saga surrounding his captivity and revenge.

Wayland's story is most clearly told in the Old Norse sources Völundarkviða (a poem in the Poetic Edda) and Þiðreks saga. In them, Wayland is a smith who is enslaved by a king. Wayland takes revenge by killing the king's sons and then escapes by crafting a winged cloak and flying away. Other sources clearly allude to similar stories, most prominently the Old English poem Deor and the Franks Casket. Wayland is also mentioned in passing in a wide range of texts, such as the Old English Waldere and Beowulf, as the maker of weapons and armour.

Name

The name "Wayland" originates from Proto-Germanic *Wēlandaz, deriving from *Wilą-ndz (literally "crafting one"). It appears in Old Norse as "Vǫlundr" or "Velent", in Old Frisian as "Wela(n)du", in Old High German as "Wiolant" (compare modern German ), and in Old French as "Galans" or "Galant".

Attestations

Earliest evidence

thumb|Gold solidius dated AD 575−625; wela(n)du in runes of the [[Elder Futhark. Found near Schweindorf, East Frisia, Germany.]]

The oldest reference known to Wayland the Smith is possibly a gold solidus with a Frisian runic inscription 'wayland'. It is not certain whether the coin depicts the legendary smith or bears the name of a moneyer who happened to be called Wayland (perhaps because he had taken the name of the legendary smith as an epithet). The coin was found near Schweindorf, in the region Ostfriesland in north-west Germany, and is dated AD 575–625.

Scandinavian

thumb|right|Völund's smithy in the centre, Niðhad's daughter to the left, and Niðhad's dead sons hidden to the right of the smithy. Between the girl and the smithy, Völund can be seen in a [[fjaðrhamr flying away. From the Ardre image stone VIII.]]

Visual

Wayland's legend is depicted on Ardre image stone VIII,

Völundarkviða

According to Völundarkviða, the king of the Finns (the Old Norse term for the Finnish people, Baltic Finnic peoples and Sámi) had three sons: Völundr (Wayland) and his two brothers Egil and Slagfiðr. In one version of the myth, the three brothers lived with three Valkyries: Ölrún, Hervör alvitr and Hlaðguðr svanhvít. After nine years, the Valkyries left their lovers. Egil and Slagfiðr followed, never to return. In another version, Völundr married the swan maiden Hervör, and they had a son, Heime, but Hervör later left Völundr. In both versions, his love left him with a ring. In the former myth, he forged seven hundred duplicates of this ring.

Later, King Niðhad captured Völundr in his sleep in Nerike and ordered him hamstrung and imprisoned on the island of Sævarstöð. There Völundr was forced to forge items for the king. Völundr's wife's ring was given to the king's daughter, Böðvildr. Niðhad wore Völundr's sword.

In revenge, Völundr killed the king's sons when they visited him in secret, and fashioned goblets from their skulls, jewels from their eyes, and a brooch from their teeth. He sent the goblets to the king, the jewels to the queen and the brooch to the king's daughter. When Böðvild takes her ring to Völundr for mending, he tricks and seduces her, and gets her pregnant. Later, he flies to Niðhad's hall where he explains how he has murdered the king's sons, fashioned jewelry from their bodies and fathered a child with Böðvild. The crying king laments that his archers and horsemen can't reach Völundr, as the smith flies away never to be seen again. Niðhad summons his daughter, asking her if Völundr's story was true. The poem ends with Böðvild stating that she was unable to protect herself from Völundr as he was too strong for her.

Þiðreks saga

thumb|Böðvild in Wayland's forge

Þiðreks saga also includes a version of the story of Wayland (). This part of the saga is sometimes called Velents þáttr smiðs.

The events described at King Niðung's court (identifiable with Niðhad in the Eddic lay) broadly follow the version in the Poetic Edda (though in the saga his brother, Egil the archer, is present to help him to make his wings and to help Velent escape It also tells of how he came to be with King Niðung, crossing the sea in a hollow log, and how he forged the sword Mimung as part of a bet with the king's smith. And it also tells about the argument that led to Niðung's hamstringing of Wayland, and ultimately to Wayland's revenge: Niðung had promised to give Wayland his daughter in marriage and also half his kingdom, and then went back on this promise.

The saga elaborates on the flying contraption he builds using feathers collected by Egil; the contraption was called the flygil which suggests it was a pair of wings ( He settles in his native Sjoland and eventually marries the princess with the blessing of her brother who became the next king after Niðung's death.

This son inherits the sword Mimung, and goes on to become one of Þidrek/Didrik's warriors.

Other

In Icelandic manuscripts from the fourteenth century onwards, the terms Labyrinth and Domus Daedali ('home of Daedalus') are rendered Vǫlundarhús ('house of Vǫlundr'). This shows that Völundr was seen as equivalent to, or even identical with, the classical hero Daedalus.

In Þorsteins saga Víkingssonar, Völundr is the manufacturer of the magic sword Gram (also named Balmung and Nothung) and the magic ring that Þorsteinn retrieves.

English

Visual

thumb|upright=1.3|The smith Wayland from the front of the eighth-century Northumbrian [[Franks Casket in the British Museum.]]

The Franks Casket is one of a number of other early English references to Wayland, whose story was evidently well known and popular, although no extended version in Old English has survived. In the front panel of the Franks Casket, incongruously paired with an Adoration of the Magi, Wayland stands at the extreme left in the forge where he is held as a slave by King Niðhad, who has had his hamstrings cut to hobble him. Below the forge is the headless body of Niðhad's son, whom Wayland has killed, making a goblet from his skull; his head is probably the object held in the tongs in Wayland's hand. With his other hand Wayland offers the goblet to Böðvildr, Niðhad's daughter. Another female figure is shown in the centre; perhaps Wayland's helper, brother Egil, or Böðvildr again. To the right of the scene his brother catches birds, from whose feathers he makes wings with which he escapes.

During the Viking Age in northern England, Wayland is depicted in his smithy, surrounded by his tools, at Halton, Lancashire, and fleeing from his royal captor by clinging to a flying bird, on a cross at Leeds Minster, West Yorkshire, and stone carvings at Sherburn, North Yorkshire and Bedale, also in North Yorkshire.

English local tradition placed Wayland's forge in a Neolithic long barrow mound known as Wayland's Smithy, close to the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire. If a horse to be shod, or any broken tool, were left with a sixpenny piece at the entrance of the barrow the repairs would be executed.

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Weland had fashioned the mail shirt worn by Beowulf according to lines 450–455 of the epic poem of the same name:

The reference in Waldere is similar to that in Beowulf – the hero's sword was made by Weland – while Alfred the Great in his translation of Boethius asks plaintively: "What now are the bones of Wayland, the goldsmith preeminently wise?"

Swords fashioned by Wayland are regular properties of medieval romance. King Rhydderch Hael gave one to Merlin, and Rimenhild made a similar gift to Child Horn. English literature was also aware of the character Wade, whose name is similar to that of Vaði, the father of Wayland in Þiðreks saga.

In the ITV series Robin of Sherwood, Wayland the Smith was credited for creating seven swords charged with "the Power of Light and Darkness".

Of the seven, the protagonist Robin of Loxley is given Albion by Herne the Hunter at the beginning of the series.

In Gene Wolfe's book The Wizard Knight, Weland the smith was the forger of the sword Eterne, which forms a central part of the novel's plot.

In the Rivers of London book series, the Sons of Weyland are a modern day magical blacksmithing society responsible for creation of magical artefacts in the United Kingdom.

Wayland the Smith

Name

Attestations

Earliest evidence

Scandinavian

Visual

Völundarkviða

Þiðreks saga

Other

English

Visual

See also

References

Citations

Bibliography

Further reading

External links