Wayland the Smith

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

The oldest possible reference known to Wayland the Smith is a gold solidus with a Frisian runic inscription ᚹᛖᛚᚩᛞᚢ wela[n]du 'wayland'.[5] 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.[6]

Wayland's legend is depicted on Ardre image stone VIII and, probably, on a tenth-century copper mount found in Uppåkra in 2011.[7] A number of other possible visual representations exist in early medieval Scandinavia, but are harder to verify as they do not contain enough distinctive features corresponding to the story of Wayland found in textual sources.[8]

According to Völundarkviða, the king of the Finns 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 her into drinking beer and she passes out. While Böðvild lies unconscious Völundr rapes her. As she wakes up a laughing Völundr 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.

Völundr made the magic sword Gram (also named Balmung and Nothung) and the magic ring that Thorsten retrieved.

The Scandinavian Thidrekssaga/Didrikssaga also includes a version of Wayland's story.[9] This part of the saga is sometimes called Velents þáttr smiðs. The events described at King Niðung's (Nidhad's) court 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 him escape). However, the rest of the story is different. It tells of how Wayland was the son of a giant named Wade, and how he was taught to smith by two dwarfs. It also tells of how he came to be with King Nidung, 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 Nidung's hamstringing of Wayland, and ultimately to Wayland's revenge: Nidung had promised to give Wayland his daughter in marriage and also half his kingdom, and then went back on this promise. The saga also tells of the birth of a son, Wideke/Viðga, to Wayland and Nidung's daughter. This son goes on to become one of Thidrek/Didrik's warriors.[10]

Panel Civ (south face, lowest panel) of the c. tenth-century Leeds Cross, depicting Wayland (below) holding Beaduhild/Bǫðvildr above his head, at a right angle. Wayland's head has been lost, but his wings are visible to the left and right, and his tools at the bottom of the panel.

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, containing drugged beer, to Böðvildr, Niðhad's daughter, whom he then rapes when she is unconscious. Another female figure is shown in the centre; perhaps Wayland's helper, or Böðvildr again. To the right of the scene Wayland (or his brother) catches birds; he then makes wings from their feathers, with which he is able to escape.[11]

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 crosses at Leeds, West Yorkshire, and at Sherburn-in-Elmet and Bedale, both in North Yorkshire.[12]

The Old English poem Deor, which recounts the famous sufferings of various figures before turning to those of Deor, its author, begins with "Welund":

Welund tasted misery among snakes.

The stout-hearted hero endured troubles

had sorrow and longing as his companions

cruelty cold as winter - he often found woe

Once Nithad laid restraints on him,

supple sinew-bonds on the better man.

That went by; so can this.

To Beadohilde, her brothers' death was not

so painful to her heart as her own problem

which she had readily perceived

that she was pregnant; nor could she ever

foresee without fear how things would turn out.

That went by, so can this.[13]

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

No need then

to lament for long or lay out my body.

If the battle takes me, send back

this breast-webbing that Weland fashioned

and Hrethel gave me, to Lord Hygelac.

Fate goes ever as fate must.

(Heaney trans.)

The reference in Waldere is similar to that in Beowulf – the hero's sword was made by Weland[14] – while Alfred the Great in his translation of Boethius asks plaintively: "What now are the bones of Wayland, the goldsmith preeminently wise?"[15]^{:p. 29}

Swords fashioned by Wayland are regular properties of mediaeval romance. King Rhydderch Hael gave one to Merlin, and Rimenhild made a similar gift to Child Horn. English local tradition placed Wayland Smith's forge in a cave 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 cave the repairs would be executed.[4] English literature was also aware of the character Wade, whose name is similar to that of Vaði, the father of Wayland in Þiðreks saga.[3]

Wayland is known by the name Wieland in line 965 of the Latin epic Waltharius, a literary composition based on Old High German oral tradition, as the smith who made the poem's eponymous protagonist's armor:

Et nisi duratis Wielandia fabrica giris

Obstaret, spisso penetraverit ilia ligno.

(And had not Weland's work obstructed with hardened rings,

He would have pierced his guts with the tough wood.)