Svalinn is a legendary shield in

Nordic mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology, is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia as the Nordic folklore of the modern period. The ...

which stands in front of

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

, protecting the world from her heat. It has been suggested to be part of a continuous tradition of solar imagery dating back to the

Nordic Bronze Age The Nordic Bronze Age (also Northern Bronze Age, or Scandinavian Bronze Age) is a period of Scandinavian prehistory from . The Nordic Bronze Age culture emerged about 1750 BC as a continuation of the Late Neolithic Dagger period, which is root ...

Etymology

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

translates as "cold" or "chill" and is derived from the verb , meaning "to cool", in turn from the adjective ('cool'), from from ("to burn slowly, create a burningly cold sensation") from

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

: '*swel-' ("to shine, warm up, burn").

Attestations

Grímnismál

Grímnismál ''Grímnismál'' (Old Norse: ; 'The Lay of Grímnir') is one of the mythological poems of the '' Poetic Edda''. It is preserved in the Codex Regius manuscript and the AM 748 I 4to fragment. It is spoken through the voice of ''Grímnir'', one ...

Odin Odin (; from ) is a widely revered god in Norse mythology and Germanic paganism. Most surviving information on Odin comes from Norse mythology, but he figures prominently in the recorded history of Northern Europe. This includes the Roman Em ...

gives the role of Svalinn as part of his description of the cosmology:

Nafnaþulur

In the

Nafnaþulur ''Nafnaþulur'' (Old Norse: ) is a subsection of the ''Prose Edda'', the last part of the ''Skáldskaparmál''. It is a listing in verse of names that may be used in poetry for various items, such as gods A deity or god is a supernatural bei ...

section of the

Prose Edda The ''Prose Edda'', also known as the ''Younger Edda'', ''Snorri's Edda'' () or, historically, simply as ''Edda'', is an Old Norse textbook written in Iceland during the early 13th century. The work is often considered to have been to some exten ...

Snorri Sturluson Snorri Sturluson ( ; ; 1179 – 22 September 1241) was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was elected twice as lawspeaker of the Icelandic parliament, the Althing. He is commonly thought to have authored or compiled portions of th ...

records Svalinn in a list of shields:

Sigrdrífumál

Sigrdrífumál (also known as ) is the conventional title given to a section of the ''Poetic Edda'' text in . It follows without interruption, and it relates the meeting of Sigurðr with the valkyrie Brynhildr, here identified as ("driver to victory"). ...

runes Runes are the Letter (alphabet), letters in a set of related alphabets, known as runic rows, runic alphabets or futharks (also, see ''#Futharks, futhark'' vs ''#Runic alphabets, runic alphabet''), native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were ...

are described as being carved on a shield, identified with Svalinn, along with the horses that draw

's chariot.

Interpretation and symbolism

The association between the sun and shields is noted both in

Þórsdrápa ''Þórsdrápa'' (also ''Thorsdrapa''; Old Norse: 'The Lay of Thor') is a skaldic poetry, skaldic poem by Eilífr Goðrúnarson, a poet in the service of Jarl Hákon Sigurðarson. The poem is noted for its creative use of kennings and other meta ...

, in which the sun is described as 'the splendid sky-shield', and in

Skáldskaparmál ''Skáldskaparmál'' (Old Norse: 'Poetic Diction' or 'The Language of Poetry'; ; ) is the second part of the ''Prose Edda'', compiled by Snorri Sturluson. It consists of a dialogue between Ægir, the divine personification of the sea, and Bra ...

, in which a

kenning A kenning ( Icelandic: ) is a figure of speech, a figuratively-phrased compound term that is used in place of a simple single-word noun. For instance, the Old English kenning () means , as does (). A kenning has two parts: a base-word (a ...

for 'shield' is the "sun of the ship" (). This relationship between ships, shields and the sun has been suggested to originate in the

, in which all three form part of the sun myth. Ritual shields dating to the Bronze Age have also been discovered in Scandinavia which have been noted by scholars to resemble the sun and were possibly used to represent it in a religious context. In the Nordic Bronze Age, the sun could be depicted as a

wheel cross A sun cross, solar cross, or wheel cross is a solar symbol consisting of an equilateral cross inside a circle. The design is frequently found in the symbolism of prehistoric cultures, particularly during the Neolithic to Bronze Age periods of ...

or a disc, as with the

Trundholm sun chariot The Trundholm sun chariot () is a Nordic Bronze Age artifact discovered in Denmark. It is a representation of the sun chariot, a bronze statue of a horse and a large bronze disk, which are placed on a device with spoked wheels. The sculpture ...

. It has been argued that the disc later ceased to be seen as a representation of the sun god herself and instead as it appears in the sky, as a round shield. By this theory, the role of the shield in preventing the world from overheating came later to explain its presence.

Etymology

Attestations

Grímnismál

Nafnaþulur

Sigrdrífumál

Interpretation and symbolism

See also

Explanatory notes

Citations

References

Primary

Secondary