Völundr

The most brutal story in the Edda and one of the oldest: Wayland is carved on the Franks Casket in the eighth century, is named in Beowulf and in Deor, and gives his name to a Neolithic long barrow in Berkshire that people were already calling Wayland's Smithy a thousand years ago. The sequence — the crippling, the workshop, the children, the flight — is told without a word of judgement in either direction. He is pan-Germanic and is recorded here under Norse because the Völundarkviða is; the census notes the Continental and English forms.

Domains

• smithing
• vengeance

Sources

• Völundr is the master smith of the Völundarkviða, hamstrung and imprisoned by King Níðuðr, who killed the king's sons, worked their bodies into tableware and jewellery for their own family, took the daughter, and escaped on wings of his own making.: Reference treatments of Völundr, Wayland the Smith and the Völundarkviða. (secondary)