Völundr

Völundr — England's Wayland — was a smith whose work kings coveted, called in Völundarkviða 'prince of elves.' King Níðuðr solved procurement by force: soldiers took the smith sleeping, a queen's foresight had him hamstrung — cut so he could not run — and he was installed on the island of Sævarstöð to make treasures on demand, his own sword on the king's hip and his wife's ring on the king's daughter's hand.

What Völundr forged on that island was revenge, to jeweller's tolerances. The king's two young sons came secretly, greedy for treasure: he showed them a chest, told them to come back alone and tell no one — craftsman's patience — and killed them at the second visit. Their skulls, silvered, became goblets for their father; their eyes, gems for their mother; their teeth, a brooch for their sister. The princess Böðvildr brought him her broken ring; he mended it, drugged her, and left her pregnant. Then he rose on wings he had forged — the smith who could not walk built himself flight — hovered out of reach, told Níðuðr an itemised account of everything, and flew, laughing.

The Anglo-Saxons carved the scene on the Franks Casket beside the Adoration of the Magi; 'Wayland's Smithy' still names a barrow in Oxfordshire where a horse left overnight with a coin was said to come back shod. Völundr is the craftsman-god the North actually believed in: skill as the one power that captivity cannot confiscate.

The swan-wives and the waiting smith

Völundarkviða — one of the oldest poems in the Poetic Edda, placed among the heroic lays but trailing myth like smoke — opens not with the king but with three brothers and three swan-maidens. Völund and his brothers Egill and Slagfiðr, sons of a Finnish king, found three valkyrie-women by a lakeshore in the Wolfdales, spinning flax, their swan-cloaks beside them. The brothers took them to wife; after seven winters the women flew away to seek battles, as their nature required, and did not return. Two brothers went searching. Völund stayed, hunting bear and forging — the poem counts seven hundred red-gold rings strung on a cord in his hall — waiting for his wife Hervör Alvitr to come home. It is this waiting man, alone and wealthy in the wilderness, that King Níðuðr of the Njárar heard about. The poem calls Völund "prince of elves" (vísi álfa), one of only a handful of glimpses the sources give of the álfar as anything but background — whatever Völund is, he is not entirely human, and his skill is of the other world.

Níðuðr's procurement

The king's men came by night in studded mail, entered the hall while the smith was away, and counted the rings; they took one — the one, it turns out, that Völund read as a sign his wife had returned. He came home, roasted bear-meat, counted his rings, missed the one, and fell asleep hopeful. He woke in fetters. Dragged before Níðuðr, he saw his own sword on the king's hip and, presently, his wife's ring on the arm of the king's daughter Böðvildr. It was the queen who completed the arrangement, with the poem's most chilling line of policy: his eyes glitter like a serpent's when he sees the sword and the ring, she said — his teeth show when he bares them — cut the strength of his sinews. Hamstrung, unable to walk or flee, Völund was installed on the islet of Sævarstöð, forbidden to all but the king, and set to produce treasures on demand. The poem gives him one couplet of open grief — and then he stops sleeping, and the hammer starts.

The revenge, to jeweller's tolerances

What follows is the most cold-blooded masterpiece in Norse poetry, and the poet tells it with a jeweller's own economy. The king's two young sons rowed out secretly to see the treasures; Völund showed them a chest of gold, told them to come back alone, telling no one — and when they bent over the chest a second time, the lid took their heads off. He buried the bodies under the bellows-pit. Then the craftsman went to work on the materials: their skulls, chased in silver, became drinking-goblets for Níðuðr; their eyes, cunning gems for the queen; their teeth, a round brooch for Böðvildr. The family drank from and wore their own children. When Böðvildr herself broke her ring — the ring, Völund's wife's — she brought it secretly to the smith to mend. He mended it, gave her ale until she slept, and wronged her; the poem, and the harsher prose of Þiðreks saga, leave no doubt she was left pregnant.

Then the escape that seals the legend: Völund rose into the air on wings he had forged — the smith whose legs the queen had cut built himself a means of flight beyond legs entirely — settled on the wall of Níðuðr's court, out of reach, and delivered the account. He made the king swear oaths — by ship's side, shield's rim, horse's shoulder, and sword's edge — not to harm Böðvildr or the child she carried. Then he told Níðuðr everything: go to the smithy, find the bellows-pit, look under it; the goblets, the gems, the brooch, itemised; and Böðvildr with child. He laughed, and flew. The poem ends on the girl, telling her father truthfully that she could not withstand the smith — the last of Völund's victims, and mother, in the wider tradition, of his son. Þiðreks saga names that son Viðga (the Anglo-Saxons' Widia): in the German-Norse tradition he becomes a famous champion, the smith's line continuing through the very family that maimed him.

Wayland in England

No Norse figure crossed the North Sea more successfully. The Anglo-Saxons knew him as Wēland: Beowulf's mail-coat is Weland's work; the poem Deor opens with Welund's suffering among his enemies and Beadohild's (Böðvildr's) worse grief, offered as consolation — "that passed, so may this." The Franks Casket, a whalebone box carved in eighth-century Northumbria, places the smith's revenge — Völund at his forge, a headless body at his feet, Böðvildr at the door — directly beside the Adoration of the Magi, pagan and Christian gift-bringers face to face. And on the Berkshire downs, a Neolithic chambered barrow has been "Wayland's Smithy" since at least a tenth-century charter: leave your horse and a coin overnight, the country tradition ran, and find the horse shod at dawn. The smith's business survived his religion by a thousand years.

In the primary sources

Völundarkviða in the Poetic Edda is the core text — archaic, allusive, and probably among the collection's oldest poems. Þiðreks saga af Bern, a thirteenth-century Norse compilation of German legend, retells the story at length with variants (there Völund is apprenticed to the smith Mimir and to dwarves, and his brother Egill the archer is forced to shoot an apple from his own son's head — a William Tell a century before Tell). In Old English, Deor and Beowulf attest the legend's early fame, and the Franks Casket carves it. Völund appears nowhere among the gods in Snorri, yet "Völund's work" remained the skalds' highest compliment for craftsmanship — the smith installed in the language itself.