Vili and Vé

Summary

Vili and Vé are the brothers of Odin in Norse myth, sons of Borr and of Bestla, daughter of the giant Bölþorn. Borr was the son of Búri, whom the cow Auðhumla licked out of the salty rime-stone in three days. The narrator of Gylfaginning says: "it is my belief that this Odin and his brothers are the rulers of heaven and earth." Gylfaginning 6.

Their story is the making of the world. The three sons of Borr killed the giant Ymir, and so much blood ran from his wounds that it drowned all the frost giants except one, Bergelmir, who climbed with his wife onto his vessel and was saved, and from them the giants came afterwards. Gylfaginning 7. Then they carried Ymir into the middle of Ginnungagap and made the earth from his flesh, the sea and the waters from his blood, the mountains from his bones, and stones from his teeth and broken bones, and they laid the sea in a ring around the earth. They took his skull and made it the sky, set it up on four corners with a dwarf under each, and fixed the sparks flying from Muspelheimr in the sky to give light, so that from then on day and night and the count of years were known. They gave the giants land along the shore in Jötunheimr, built a stronghold for people from Ymir's eyebrows, Midgard, and threw his brain into the air to become the clouds. Gylfaginning 8. Völuspá says: "before the sons of Burr lifted up the lands, they who shaped glorious Midgard, the sun shone from the south on the stones of the earth, and the ground grew green with leek." Völuspá 4.

Then the brothers walked along the seashore and found two trees, took them up and made people of them: the first gave breath and life, the second wit and movement, the third face, speech, hearing and sight; they gave them clothes and names, and the man was Askr and the woman Embla, and from them came the people to whom Midgard was given as a dwelling.

The brothers return in the stories only once, in their brother's absence. Ynglinga saga says that Odin had two brothers, Vé and Vili, who governed the realm when he was away, and that once he was gone so long that the Æsir thought he would never come back; his brothers divided his inheritance and both took his wife Frigg. A little later Odin came home and took his wife back. When Odin set out for the North he put his brothers in charge of Asgard. Ynglinga saga 3 and 5, Old Norse text. With this Loki taunts Frigg at Ægir's feast: "Be silent, Frigg, you are Fjörgynn's daughter and have ever been man-crazed, when you took Vé and Vili, Viðrir's wife, both to your bosom." Lokasenna 26.

The idea the story turns on is that the world is the work of three brothers, who kill the first ancestor on their mother's side, the giant, divide his body into earth, sea and sky, and then give humans breath, mind and face. Yet memory keeps the name of only one of them, Odin, and the other two stay in the shadow: they are named only at the creation, and when the eldest brother is away, when they stand in his place in his realm and his house, until he returns and takes back what is his. They are the brothers who fill the place of the absent one.

We read the names in the Arabic tongue like this, as a proposal on the method, since the essay mentions "the sons of Borr (Odin, Vili, Vé)" but does not read the two names. The final i of Vili is the nominative ending of weak nouns; in the accusative and genitive it becomes Vilja, as in Lokasenna, so the word has w, l and y. It is Arabic waliya and walī, letter for letter. In Lane waliya al-amra is "he held command or authority over it, had charge of it", a country or a town, "as a prefect, governor, lord, or manager"; wālāhu, "he befriended him"; awlāhu maʿrūfan, "he conferred upon him a favour"; and walāʾ, relationship, and the right to an inheritance. The Norse word vili means will and desire, good-will and favour. The two dictionaries meet in good-will and favour, and the story makes Vili the walī: he takes charge of his brother's realm in his absence, inherits his property and takes his wife. Vé goes back to Germanic *wīh-, with a throat sound at the end that Gothic keeps in weihs, "holy", and Norse drops; it has w, a long vowel, and h. It is Arabic wajh: j becomes y in the Juthoor table, and h is h. The Norse word vé means a house, then a sanctuary, and in Lane wijha is "a place towards which one tends, repairs, or betakes himself". In Gylfaginning man received the "face" from the third brother, and Vé is the third in the order of the brothers.

Linguistic Root

Vili and walī

Cleasby and Vigfusson say that vili is "sounded vilji", genitive vilja, Gothic wilja, and means "will, a wish, desire", then "good-will, liking, favour", as in "if that is your will", and in old poets "delight, joy". Orel derives it from Germanic *weljōn, which also gives Old English willa and Old High German willo, "desire, wish".

Lane gives waliya al-amra and waliya ʿalayhi, "he held command or authority over it; had charge of it", a country, province or town, "as a prefect, commander, governor, lord, prince, king, administrator, or manager"; wālāhu, "he befriended him"; awlāhu maʿrūfan, "he conferred upon him a benefit, or favour, as though he made it cleave to him"; and walāʾ, relationship, and the right to inherit the property of a freed slave. Lane, w-l-y. The comparison is regular: Arabic w belongs to the lip-sound group that surfaces as w or v in Europe, l is l, and the y is visible in Germanic itself, in vilja and wilja. The Norse sense, will, is not the Arabic sense, taking charge and nearness; they meet in good-will and favour.

Vé and wajh

Cleasby and Vigfusson give vé first as "a mansion, house", then "a sanctuary, temple"; among their examples are "the home of men", the earth, "the mansion of the gods", the heavens, and "the outer mansion, of the outskirt of the earth, where the giants live", and the law phrase for one who "slew a man in a sanctuary" and became an outlaw. Snorri says the gods would not defile their sanctuaries with the blood of the wolf Fenrir. Gylfaginning 34. The dictionary sets the word beside Latin vicus and Greek oikos, "house", and takes the name of Odin's brother from another word, Véi, "a priest". Orel derives vé from Germanic *wīxan, "temple", from *wīxaz, "holy", Gothic weihs.

Lane gives wijha, "a place towards which one tends, repairs, or betakes himself"; wajīh, "worthy of regard"; and aslamtu wajhī lillāh, "I resigned myself to God", where wajh stands for the whole person "because it is the most noble part". Lane, w-j-h. The comparison keeps w, turns j into y, as the Juthoor table records that Arabic j surfaces as j, g or y in Europe, and keeps h in Gothic while Norse drops it. The Germanic sense, house, sanctuary, holy, meets wijha, the place one betakes oneself to, and meets the face itself only in the creation story. This is the weak point of the reading.

We also read the name as waqā: in Lane waqāhu Allāh is "God preserved him", and ittaqā, "he guarded himself", from which comes taqwā, piety, close to the sense of the holy and guarded in Gothic weihs. But in w-q-y the q comes before the y, while in Germanic the throat sound comes after the long vowel, so the order is reversed.

The two roots meet in Arabic in wallā wajhahu, "he turned his face towards it"; Lane records that wallā means both to turn towards and to turn away.

Key Mythic Narratives

Another three in Völuspá

Völuspá tells the making of humans with other names: three of the Æsir came to the house and found Askr and Embla on the land, of little strength and without fate, with no breath, no spirit, no blood and no good colour; Odin gave breath, Hœnir gave spirit, and Lóðurr gave blood and good colour. The poet makes the three Odin, Hœnir and Lóðurr, while Snorri makes them the sons of Borr and does not say which brother gave which gift, counting only the first, the second and the third.

The three brothers' names

Odin's name lost its initial w in Norse, which Old English keeps in Wōden. So the three brothers' names once all began with w, as words in Norse verse are bound by their opening sounds, and the names formed a set: inspiration, will, and sanctuary.

Symbolic Reading

The essay Rereading Norse Myths names the sons of Borr, Odin, Vili and Vé, in its account of creation, and reads the making of the world from Ymir's body as "an anatomical geographical description": his flesh is the soil, his blood the seas and rivers, his bones the mountains, his skull the sky, his eyebrows Midgard, so that the Scandinavian explains his land by comparing it to a giant's body, "an embodied map". On this reading the three brothers are the makers of the map, and the first killing is the dividing of the land into its places.

The texts support a reading from people's lives: brothers who take charge of their absent brother's realm, share out his inheritance when he is thought not to be coming back, take his wife, and give her back when he returns, picture what happens in a house whose head is gone on a long journey. Ynglinga saga tells it as a matter of inheritance, not of betrayal.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In Enūma eliš Marduk kills Tiamat, the first mother, splits her in two, makes the sky from one half and the earth from the other, and then humans are made from the blood of the defeated Kingu. The sons of Borr kill Ymir, the first ancestor on their mother's side, and make the whole world from his body, then make humans from trees. Both stories begin with the killing of the first body and its division, and they part over the material of man: a slain god's blood there, two trees on the shore here.

The Greeks have three other brothers, the sons of Kronos: Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. They overcame the older generation and then drew lots for the world: the sky to Zeus, the sea to Poseidon, the darkness to Hades. In the Iliad Poseidon grows angry when Zeus commands him and says he holds an equal share, and the messenger reminds him of the elder brother's right. Odin's brothers share out the elder brother's inheritance in his absence and give it back when he returns.

The making of the world from Ymir's body is a witness of the cosmic body pattern; lifting the lands and setting up the skull as sky belong to the separation of heaven and earth; the brothers' gifts to Askr and Embla belong to the making of the first humans; and the blood that drowned the giants except Bergelmir and his wife is set by the Arabic essay beside the flood of Noah.