Völundr
Norse · numen · mythic prehistoric · numen
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
- Reference treatments of Völundr, Wayland the Smith and the Völundarkviða.