William Sayers Irish Perspectives on Heimdallr n a succinct but thorough entry “Heimdal(l)” in Kulturhistoriskt lexikon för nordisk medeltid, Folke Ström (1961) made a non-controversial observation, but one with important methodological consequences for students of Nordic mythology: Heimdallr was not, to the best of our I 1 knowledge, the object of a cult, but belongs to the world of myth. In another capsule judgment, Jan de Vries (1962) headed a nonetheless rather long entry for Heimdallr in Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch with the summary state- ment: the etymology is opaque (“undurchsichtig”). But if we heed Polomé’s call (1989, 55–58) to break our fixation on etymology (like an atavistic belief that knowledge of the name gives power over the bearer) and investigate the entire file of a given divinity—“myths, rites, cults, toponymic and anthroponymic data . symbols, consecrated animals and so forth”—we are then held to a quite limited body of evidence in the instant case. Limited, but still tantalizing. Heimdallr has generated a considerable quantity of ink, as much a consequence of the scholarly problems we have set ourselves as of agreement with Ellis Davidson (1969, 105–7) that Heimdallr is the most impressive after the great gods and Loki.2 He has been variously interpreted as the god of the heavens, of light, the father of the gods, an emanation of an older god, an equivalent of Varuna, Mithra and Janus, an embodiment of the world tree Yggdrasil, most recently the god of fire (Schröder 1967).3 Our almost exclusively literary evidence can be assigned to some externally determined, rather than inherent, categories. Most numerous, we have the ref- erences in the Edda and other works of Snorri Sturluson. In a strictly narrative 1. A more recent overview in Polomé 1987; more strictly etymological concerns are treated in exemplary fashion and with exemplary purpose in Polomé 1990, 452–53. 2. Fuller treatment in Davidson 1964, 172–76. 3. Schröder returns to the earlier suggested parallel with Indian Agni, on the very slim evidence of the frequent Indian description of Agni as “descendant of waters,” and a Norse heiti, “sævar niðr,” that is not conclusively shown to be a reference to Heimdall; see infra for a review of Heimdallr’s supposed wave-mothers, and of Snorri’s and the skalds’ view of the elements as siblings, which further lightens the weight of Schröder’s argument. alvíssmál 2 (1993): 3–30 4 William Sayers work, such as Gylfaginning, we have come to recognize a degree of subjectivity in Snorri’s accounts, whether we go on to identify this as the result of error, rationalization, or attempted synthesis. An arguably more objective body of data is the list of names, descriptors, and circumlocutions for Heimdallr that are cited in Skáldskaparmál; it may be thought to have been both less open to authorial manipulation and well known to his public, especially his fellow poets. The other primary source for Heimdallr is the Poetic Edda, and its evidence can be judged to complement Snorri’s—at least nothing in these two main sources is directly contradictory. A third category of references to Heimdallr would be allusions in the poems of other skalds, although here, too, we are in the main limited to the citations and paraphrases in Snorri, particularly of Úlfr Uggason’s tenth-century Húsdrápa, which, as a poetic tour de force purportedly describing carved wall panels in Óláfr Hoskuldsson’s new house, portrays select scenes rather than full stories. The larger constraint on further scrutiny of the Heimdallr file is one common to most of our early Norse mythological testimony. Theonyms, even when suc- cessfully interpreted, may neither reveal the original conception of the divine figures nor describe adequately their subsequent early medieval functions/spheres of influence, e.g., Týr < Ti¯waR < IE *dyeus ‘luminous diurnal sky’. Further, many functional domains seem to have been the field of action of more than a single god, and a degree of overlapping between some scholars’ conception of Heimdallr and Freyr is a case in point. Our perspective here is perhaps determined, to a degree unconsciously, by a desire to impose more order—an interpretatio graeca or romana—than the evidence will bear. Some of this functional duplication may have resulted from the Æsir/Vanir fusion, if we see a nuclear historicity here and accept the continuing influence of an Old European mythology, in a northern guise, after the proto-Germanic penetration of Scandinavia. Another trend that we might presume, if not adequately prove, is that gods who became the focus of cultic observance would, over time, gain functional strength at the expense of those that did not. Here, other factors could also come into play, such as geo- graphical preferences, e.g., very roughly, Freyr associated with fertility in the East, Þórr in the West, or even vocational affiliations, e.g., poets under Óðinn’s aegis, controlling the poetic medium, in part determining the textual record, and cele- brating their patron in language as frequently disguised as he. If, then, Heimdallr’s file, in terms of categories if not actual volume, is a rather spare one, if etymological leads end in an impasse, and more general limitations attend our search for a suitable method of more accurately mapping Heimdallr in his several contours, where is one to turn? The comparative method, with its seductive selectivity, has been available since its assumption into mythol- ogy from philology, and not unsurprisingly Heimdallr has been matched up with legendary figures from other cultural communities heirs to the Indo-European patrimony. What is surprising is how often the scholarly gaze has turned toward Irish Perspectives on Heimdallr 5 the Celtic lands. While Heimdallr’s attributes and “biography” will be more fully catalogued below, one can here cite Dumézil’s efforts to make Heimdallr’s nine mothers the waves of the sea, and him, thus, the grandson of Ægir, ruler of the sea. This conclusion was rather shakily buttressed by late and suspect Welsh testimony that the ninth wave was called “the ram,” the animal most surely associated with the Norse god. Since the Rígr of Rígsþula, who fathers the three estates of men, is identified as Heimdallr in the preface to the poem, and since Rígr can be plausibly derived from OIr. rí (gen. ríg), Chadwick could cite the Irish god of the sea, Manannán mac Lir, as a prototype or parallel, calling him, too, a visitor to people’s homes for the purpose of begetting children. Young found other Irish accounts of undersea conception. Again on a point of detail, Turville-Petre focused on Heimdallr’s purported death by means of another’s head, to then call attention to the Irish epic hero Conall Cernach, who had mixed an opponent’s brains with lime to create a souvenir, but then lost his trophy to another who used it as a missle that, embedded in the head of King Conchobar, would eventually cause his death. On another occasion, notes Turville-Petre, Conall, a late arrival in the hall, would throw a severed head across a banquet table to gash the lips of its owner’s brother and thus secure the champion’s portion.4 The comparative method will also be exploited in this article and the chief evidence will be from legendary Ireland, but the methodological objective is to locate and isolate a data set that is both more comprehensive than the above atomistic detail, and internally consistent in Irish tradition — a dense Irish file if you will — with a view to presenting one or more multifaceted figures for comparison with Heimdallr. More specifically, attention will be turned to two apparently discrete, but not unrelated, personages in legendary Irish history, the first a step down from Heimdallr in the hierarchy of beings and literary mode of deployment, the other a step up to a still powerful, although somewhat coarsened, major divinity in lightly euhemerized form. As general familiarity with Heimdallr, for all his mystery, may be expected of this article’s readers, his textual file will be rather summarily reviewed, permitting fuller consideration of the Irish evidence. Drawing on the communal store of knowledge, which does not preclude poetic invention at some stage of its development, Snorri lists the following ways to refer to Heimdallr: Svá, at kalla hann son níu mœðra eða vorð guða, svá sem fyrr er ritað, eða Hvíta ás, Loka dólg, mensæki Freyju. Heimdalar hofuð heitir sverð; svá er sagt, at hann var lostinn manns hofði í gognum. Um hann er kveðit í Heimdalargaldri, ok er síðan kallat hofuð mjotuðr Heimdalar; sverð heitir manns mjotuðr. Heimdalr er eigandi Gulltopps; hann er ok tilsækir Vágaskers ok Singasteins; þá deildi hann við Loka um Brísingamen; 4. The extensive earlier scholarship on Heimdallr, of which the studies this century by Chadwick, Cour, Dumézil, von Friesen, Holthausen, Jessen, Much, Pering, Ohlmarks, Pipping, Rosén, de Vries, and Young serve more as way-markers than definitive statements, is handily characterized in Lindow 1988. Turville-Petre 1964 stays close to the textual evidence and is a useful antidote to much earlier speculation. Briefer recent comment on Heimdallr in Boyer 1983, 125; Schach 1983, 98–99. 6 William Sayers hann heitir ok Vindhlér. Úlfr Uggason kvað í Húsdrápu langa stund eptir þeiri frásogu, ok er þess þar getið, er þeir váru í sela líkjum, ok sonr Óðins. (Skáldskaparmál chap. 16, Jónsson 1931, 98–99, orthography normalized) [By calling him son of nine mothers, guardian of the gods, as was written above, or the white As, Loki’s enemy, recoverer of Freyia’s necklace. A sword is called Heimdall’s head; it is said he was struck through with a man’s head.