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9. Freyr's Solar Power and the Purifying Sword The Waning Sword E Conversion Imagery and Celestial Myth in Beowulf DWARD The Waning Sword Conversion Imagery and EDWARD PETTIT P The image of a giant sword mel� ng stands at the structural and thema� c heart of the Old ETTIT Celestial Myth in Beowulf English heroic poem Beowulf. This me� culously researched book inves� gates the nature and signifi cance of this golden-hilted weapon and its likely rela� ves within Beowulf and beyond, drawing on the fi elds of Old English and Old Norse language and literature, liturgy, archaeology, astronomy, folklore and compara� ve mythology. In Part I, Pe� t explores the complex of connota� ons surrounding this image (from icicles to candles and crosses) by examining a range of medieval sources, and argues that the giant sword may func� on as a visual mo� f in which pre-Chris� an Germanic concepts and prominent Chris� an symbols coalesce. In Part II, Pe� t inves� gates the broader Germanic background to this image, especially in rela� on to the god Ing/Yngvi-Freyr, and explores the capacity of myths to recur and endure across � me. Drawing on an eclec� c range of narra� ve and linguis� c evidence from Northern European texts, and on archaeological discoveries, Pe� t suggests that the T image of the giant sword, and the characters and events associated with it, may refl ect HE an elemental struggle between the sun and the moon, ar� culated through an underlying W myth about the the� and repossession of sunlight. ANING The Waning Sword: Conversion Imagery and Celesti al Myth in Beowulf is a welcome contribu� on to the overlapping fi elds of Beowulf-scholarship, Old Norse-Icelandic literature and Germanic philology. Not only does it present a wealth of new readings that shed light on the cra� of the Beowulf-poet and inform our understanding of the poem’s S major episodes and themes; it further highlights the merits of adop� ng an interdisciplinary WORD approach alongside a compara� ve vantage point. As such, The Waning Sword will be compelling reading for Beowulf-scholars and for a wider audience of medievalists. As with all Open Book publica� ons, this en� re book is available to read for free on the publisher’s website. Printed and digital edi� ons can also be found at www.openbookpublishers.com Cover image: Freyr, adapted from an illustrati on by Johannes Gehrts (1855-1921), public domain, htt ps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Freyr_by_Johannes_Gehrts.jpg Cover design: Anna Gatti book ebooke and OA edi� ons also available OPEN ACCESS www.openbookpublishers.com EDWARD PETTIT OBP https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2020 Edward Pettit This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Edward Pettit, The Waning Sword: Conversion Imagery and Celestial Myth in Beowulf. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2020, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0190 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https://doi. org/10.11647/OBP.0190#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi. org/10.11647/OBP.0190#resources Some of the images have been reproduced at 72 dpi in the digital editions of this book due to copyright restrictions. Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-827-3 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-828-0 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-829-7 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-830-3 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-831-0 ISBN Digital (XML): 978-1-78374-832-7 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0190 Cover image: Freyr, adapted from an illustration by Johannes Gehrts (1855-1921). Wikimedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Freyr_by_Johannes_Gehrts.jpg Cover design by Anna Gatti. 9. Freyr’s Solar Power and the Purifying Sword This chapter examines a variety of Old Norse sources to demonstrate the solar and related attributes of (Ingvi/Yngvi-)Freyr and his sword.1 We shall see that in Skírnir’s hands this weapon probably symbolizes a purifying sunbeam. These findings will inform our understanding of Hrunting and the giant sword as comparable weapons. Solar Aspects of Freyr in the Eddas In Gylfaginning, Snorri describes Freyr and his sister Freyja as fǫgr álitum ok máttug ‘fair in appearance and mighty’,2 before continuing: Freyr er hinn ágætasti af Ásum. Hann ræðr fyrir regni ok skini sólar ok þar með ávexti jarðar, ok á hann er gott at heita til árs ok friðar. Hann ræðr ok fésælu manna.3 Freyr is the most excellent of Æsir/gods. He rules over the rain and the sun’s shining and therewith the earth’s produce, and to him it is good to pray for fruitfulness and peace. He also rules the wealth of men. Elsewhere, in chapter 10 of Ynglinga saga, Snorri describes Freyr as a king of the Swedes, a people who loved and worshipped him above other gods because they believed he brought them peace and good harvests, even after his death. They called him veraldargoð ‘god of the world’ and sacrificed to him til árs ok friðar ‘for a good harvest and peace’.4 1 See also Andrén, Tracing, 155–7, 189. 2 SnEGylf, 24. 3 SnEGylf, 24. 4 Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, Heimskringla, I, 23–5. © Edward Pettit, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0190.09 226 The Waning Sword From these passages it appears clear that Freyr was an important fertility deity who could bestow benign growing weather, of which sunshine was a fundamental aspect. In Skáldskaparmál Snorri adds that Freyr rode, by night and day across sky and sea, a boar called Gullinbu(r)sti ‘Golden-Bristle(d)’ whose bristles illuminated the darkest places.5 Among Snorri’s sources of information were Vǫluspá and Grímnismál, two of the most important mythological Eddic poems. They provide further details. Vǫluspá 53 indicates that at Ragnar k Freyr will advance bjartr ‘bright’ against Surtr, before whom he will fall. The first half of the ǫ preceding stanza reads Surtr ferr sunnan með sviga lævi, / scínn af sverði sól valtíva, an ambiguous passage. It could mean either ‘Surtr fares from the south with the fraud/treason/bane of switches,6 the sun shines from the sword of the gods of the slain’ or ‘Surtr fares from the south with the fraud/treason/bane of switches, the sun of the gods of the slain shines from the sword’. Either way, the unique expression sviga lævi is usually interpreted as a kenning for ‘fire’, but it might more specifically be a kenning for a fiery twig-sword, specifically the solar sword of the following line.7 In that case, sviga lævi would be suggestive of Lævateinn, the probably radiant sword guarded by ‘Surtr’s Sinmara’ in Svipdagsmál. This, we have seen, may well be a mistletoe-weapon that at one time came into the possession of Svipdagr, a figure analogous to Skírnir and to Freyr. Grímnismál 43 refers to skírum Frey ‘clear/bright/shining Freyr’. Additionally, this poem’s fifth stanza records that Freyr owned Álfheimr ‘Elf-Home’, the world of elves. The intimacy of this race of creatures 5 SnESkáld, I, 18, 42; cf. Tolkien, Saga, 31. According to the Eddic poem Hyndluljóð 7, Freyja also rode a boar with golden bristles. On boars in Germanic myth and legend, see R. North, ‘You Sexy Beast: The Pig in a Villa in Vandalic North Africa, and Boar- Cults in Old Germanic Heathendom’, in M. D. J. Bintley and T. J. T. Williams (ed.), Representing Beasts in Early Medieval England and Scandinavia (Woodbridge, 2015), 151–75; A. Thompson, ‘The Boar’, http://thethegns.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/boar. html 6 ‘Switch’ in the sense ‘thin, flexible twig’. 7 For an argument that Surtr’s use of a fiery sword at Ragnar k has a basis in Anglo- Saxon or related homiletic traditions about the fiery sword of God on Doomsday, see K. Samplonius, ‘The Background and Scope of Vǫluspá’ǫ , in T. Gunnell and A. Lassen (ed.), The Nordic Apocalypse: Approaches to ‘Vǫluspá’ and Nordic Days of Judgement (Turnhout, 2013), 113–45 at 117–126. 9. Freyr’s Solar Power and the Purifying Sword 227 with the sun is indicated by the sun’s designation as álfrǫðull ‘elf-halo’ in two Eddic poems (Vafþrúðnismál 47; Fǫr Skírnis 4).8 Skírnir as Purifier Further support for the concept of Freyr’s giant-fighting sword and the gambanteinn (and therefore, by likely analogy, Beowulf’s Hrunting and giant sword) as solar weapons exists in the name of their wielder, Skírnir. This word’s closest relatives are ON skírna ‘to become clear, brighten’ and skírn ‘baptism’. Another close relative is skírr ‘clear/bright/shining’, an adjective used of the sun and which we have just seen applied to Freyr in Grímnismál 43, and which also has the metaphorical sense ‘cleansed from guilt’.9 We may infer that Skírnir was a shining, purificatory 8 Also SnESkáld, I, 85.
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