The Treasures of the Gods

Summary

The treasures of the gods in Norse myth are six things the dwarves made because of an offence of Loki's: hair of gold for Sif, Thor's wife; the spear Gungnir for Odin; the ship Skíðblaðnir for Freyr; the gold-bristled boar Gullinbursti for Freyr; the ring Draupnir for Odin; and the hammer Mjöllnir for Thor. Snorri Sturluson tells their story in Skáldskaparmál in answer to the question: why do poets call gold "Sif's hair"? Skáldskaparmál 35 in Faulkes's edition, 43 in the Northern Tales numbering.

Loki cut off all of Sif's hair out of malice. When Thor learned of it he seized him and would have broken every bone in him, until Loki swore to get the dark elves to make hair of gold that would grow like any other hair. He went to dwarves called the sons of Ívaldi, who made the hair, and with it the ship Skíðblaðnir and the spear that became Odin's, called Gungnir. Then Loki wagered his head with a dwarf named Brokkr that his brother Eitri could not make three treasures as good. At the forge Eitri laid a pigskin in the fire and told Brokkr to blow the bellows and not stop until he took out what he had put in. When Eitri had gone out, a fly settled on Brokkr's hand and stung him, but he kept blowing until the smith took out a boar with bristles of gold. Next he laid in gold; the fly settled on Brokkr's neck and stung twice as hard, and he kept blowing until the smith took out a gold ring called Draupnir. Then he laid in iron and said that everything would be spoilt if the blowing failed. The fly settled between Brokkr's eyes and stung his eyelids; blood ran into his eyes so that he could not see, and he snatched at the fly as fast as he could while the bellows sank down. The smith came in and said that everything in the forge had nearly been spoilt, and took out a hammer.

Then the gods sat on their judgment seats and gave the verdict to Odin, Thor and Freyr. Loki gave Odin the spear, which never stops in its thrust; Thor the hair, which grew into the flesh as soon as it touched Sif's head; and Freyr the ship, which has a fair wind wherever it is to go as soon as its sail is raised, and can be folded like a cloth and kept in a pouch. Brokkr gave Odin the ring, saying that every ninth night eight rings as heavy as itself would drip from it; Freyr the boar, which could run over air and sea, by night and day, faster than any horse, and never was the night or the worlds of darkness so dark that its bristles did not give light enough; and Thor the hammer, with which he could strike as hard as he wished and it would not break, which would never miss when thrown and never fly so far that it would not come back to his hand, and which could be made small enough to carry inside his shirt; its one flaw was that the handle was rather short. They judged the hammer the best of the treasures and the greatest defence against the frost giants, and the dwarf won the wager.

Loki offered to redeem his head; the dwarf refused. "Take me, then," said Loki, and when the dwarf reached for him he was far away, for he had shoes in which he ran over air and sea. The dwarf asked Thor to catch him, and he did; the dwarf was about to cut off his head, but Loki said the head was his, not the neck. So the dwarf took a thong and a knife to pierce Loki's lips and sew up his mouth, but the knife would not cut; he said an awl would serve better, and as soon as he named it, the awl was there and pierced the lips. He sewed the mouth shut, and Loki tore the stitches out. The thong is called Vartari.

The idea the story turns on is that the gods' weapons are not born with them: they are made by the people of the earth, who grew in Ymir's flesh, and Loki brings them out of his offence and his wager. The gods judge and receive, the dwarves make, and Loki saves his head by a quibble. The best treasure came out flawed because the work stopped for a moment. Each treasure then acts in other stories: Odin lays Draupnir on the pyre of his son Baldr, and Baldr sends it back from Hel's house with Hermóðr; Skírnir offers it to Gerðr, who refuses it; Gullinbursti draws Freyr's chariot to Baldr's funeral; and at the end of time Odin rides to battle with Gungnir in his hand.

Of the names we read the ring's first in the Arabic tongue, as a reading proposed on the method, since the project's essays do not read the names of these treasures. Draupnir is built on draup, the past of drjúpa, "to drip", and Snorri describes the ring with that very verb: every ninth night eight rings "drip" from it. Its Arabic counterpart is dharafa: in Lane dharafa al-damʿ is "the tears flowed", dharafat ʿaynuhu "his eye shed tears", istadhrafahu "he desired its dripping, or flowing", and istadhrafa al-ḍarʿ "the udder invited one to milk it, and to desire its dripping". Dh becomes d as the Juthoor laws say, r is r, and f stands for the p Arabic lacks. So the ring is "the dripper", which drips gold as an udder drips milk, and its gold comes by drops, not by count: eight every nine nights.

The project's Norse Semitic-reading essay reads Sif's name as sayf, "sword", the golden hair being like a drawn sword, and Lane records that sayf is said of the hair of a horse's tail and sīf of the fibres at the base of palm fronds, so the root holds both blade and hair, as Sif's story does.

Linguistic Root

Draupnir and dharafa

Cleasby and Vigfusson give drjúpa, past draup, plural drupu, "to drip", comparing English drip, and Orel gives Germanic *dreupanan, "to drip", Old English dreópan, Old High German triofan. In Gylfaginning Snorri describes the ring with the same verb in the past: drupu af honum, eight rings "dripped from it". In Lane dharafa al-damʿ is "the tears flowed", dharafat al-ʿaynu damʿahā "the eye made its tears flow", and istadhrafa al-ḍarʿ "the udder invited one to milk it, and to desire its dripping".

The three letters stand in one order: dh for d, r for r, f for p. The Juthoor table makes dh become d in the European languages, and f become f in thirty-nine of its witnesses and p in thirty-one. The Grimm's-law table in the project's sound-change laws sets a Germanic p against Arabic b, so what supports f for p here is the Juthoor table. The meaning is the same in both tongues: dripping, which is what the ring does.

Skíðblaðnir and shaẓiyya

The Norse dictionary gives skíð as "a billet of wood, fire-wood", its root verb Gothic skaidan, "to separate", and Latin scindere, "to split", beside it; Orel gives Old English scíd as "a piece of wood split thin". In Lane shaẓiya is said of a stick or piece of wood, "it was split"; tashaẓẓā, it split into splinters; and shaẓiyya is "a splinter, or piece split off, of a staff, or stick, or of wood, or of a reed, or of bone". On this reading Freyr's ship is made of thin splinters of wood, which is why it folds like a cloth. The reading is proposed on the method, and its weak point is two letters: Arabic sh answers Norse sk, the s and k that became sh in English, as Norse skip is English ship, a pairing the Juthoor table does not count; and ẓ answers Norse ð. Blað, "leaf", is not yet read.

The brother's name

In the Codex Wormianus Brokkr's brother is Eitri; in the Codex Regius the name was left blank and filled in later as Sindri; the other two manuscripts do not name him. So Faulkes calls him Eitri in his edition, other translations call him Sindri, and other pages of this wiki know him by that name. The Norse dictionary gives eitr as "poison" and Sindri as "a forger".

Key Mythic Narratives

The ship in Grímnismál

In Grímnismál the disguised Odin says that the sons of Ívaldi went in the days of old to make Skíðblaðnir, best of ships, for shining Freyr. Then he lists the best of each kind: Yggdrasil foremost of trees, Skíðblaðnir of ships, Odin of the Æsir, Sleipnir of horses.

Hair and gold

In Snorri's book the whole story is the answer to a question about the poets' language: poets call gold "Sif's hair", and Snorri tells the tale to explain the kenning.

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Norse myths reads Freyr's treasures from everyday life: the ship that holds the gods and folds into a pocket is the trading ship that the Norse took apart and carried overland between rivers, and the golden boar is wealth from pig-keeping, the chief source of meat there. It makes the hammer both the thunderbolt and a real hammer, and glosses its name "the crusher".

The essay rereading the Greek myths reads the Cyclopes, who made Zeus's thunderbolt, as smiths who shut one eye to protect their sight from the sparks, and their making of the thunderbolt as the invention of smelting. The maker of the hammer in the North is a smith too, and the fly stung his helper's eyelids until blood ran into his eyes, so the hammer came out flawed.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In Greece the Cyclopes made the weapons of the three great gods at one time. Apollodorus tells that Zeus loosed their bonds in the war against the Titans, and they gave him thunder, lightning and the thunderbolt, gave Pluto a helmet and Poseidon a trident, and with these the gods overcame the Titans. In both stories makers who are not gods make the weapons of three gods at once, the greatest of them the thunder god's. The chief craftsman of the Greek gods is Hephaestus, who builds their houses and makes tripods on golden wheels that go to the gathering of the gods and come back of themselves, and handmaidens of gold who think and speak, as the dwarves make a boar that runs through the air and a ship that folds up.

At Ugarit Kothar-wa-Khasis makes Baal two clubs and names them, and with the second Baal defeats Yamm; then Kothar casts silver and gold into furniture for Athirat, so that she will plead with El for a house for Baal. In both stories the made gifts are offered to win a judgment: the dwarves' treasures are set before a court of gods, and Kothar's furniture is given to the one who carries the request to El.

Loki's whole part, from cutting the hair to the wager to "the head but not the neck", belongs to the trickster: he spoils, then repairs more than he spoiled, then escapes by a trick of words. The makers of the treasures are among the culture heroes who give craft and do not fight.