Aurvandill
Aurvandill is a figure in Germanic mythology. In Norse mythology, the god Thor tosses Aurvandill's toe – which had frozen while the thunder god was carrying him in a basket across the Élivágar rivers – into the sky to form a star called Aurvandils-tá. In wider medieval Germanic-speaking cultures, he was known as Ēarendel in Old English, Aurendil in Old High German, Auriwandalo in Lombardic, and possibly as auzandil in Gothic. An Old Danish latinized version, Horwendillus, is also the name given to the father of Amlethus in Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum.
Comparative studies have led scholars to reconstruct a Common Germanic mythic figure, *Auza-wandilaz, associated with brightness and dawn-light imagery. On the basis of the Old English and Gothic evidence, and to a lesser degree the Old Norse text, this figure has been interpreted as relating to the rising light of the morning, sometimes identified with the Morning Star. The German and Old Danish material, however, is more difficult to integrate into this interpretative model.
Name and origin
Etymology
The Old Norse name Aurvandill stems from a Proto-Germanic form reconstructed as *Auza-wandilaz, *Auzi-wandalaz, or *Auzo-wandiloz. It is cognate with Old English Ēarendel, Old High German Aurendil, and Lombardic Auriwandalo. The Gothic word auzandil, which can be read in the Gothica Bononiensia according to the interpretation of several experts, is probably another cognate.Main interpretation
The exact meaning of the Proto-Germanic name has been the subject of sustained scholarly discussion. Most scholars favour a connection with dawn-light imagery, making Aurvandill a figure associated with brightness, the morning star, or a celestial phenomenon.A commonly cited interpretation, first proposed by Rudolf Much in 1934, analyses Auza-wandilaz as a compound meaning 'light-beam' or 'ray of light'. In this view, the prefix auza- is derived from Proto-Germanic auzom, while the second element -wandilaz is traced to *wanđuz. The latter likely originates from the verb *wenđanan, carrying connotations of suppleness and flexibility, that is, something that bends or moves with ease.
On this basis, Proto-Germanic *Auza-wandilaz may be interpreted as denoting the 'Morning Star' or, more broadly, the 'rising light of the morning', a meaning that would be semantically parallel to Latin lucifer. Support for this interpretation comes from its descendant cognates, particularly the Old English figure Ēarendel, whose name is associated with the idea of 'rising light'. Ēarendel has been variously translated as 'brillance, ray of light', 'dawn, sunrise', and 'morning star', and is attested as a rendering of Latin lūcifer in the Blickling Homilies. Further evidence have been drawn from the Gothic word wikt:????????, which translates the Koine Greek word heōsphóros in the Septuagint, itself rendered in Latin as lūcifer. In Old Norse tradition, Aurvandill is likewise connected with a star, though its identity remains uncertain.
Alternative theories
Other etymologies have been suggested. A different line of interpretation takes the prefix aur- from Proto-Germanic *aura-, rendering the name as 'gravel-beam' or 'swamp-wand'. Christopher R. Fee thinks that this may imply the idea a phallic figure related to fertility, and notes that the name of Aurvandill's spouse, Gróa, literally meaning 'Growth'. Rudolph Much initially suggested to derive the second element from *wanđilaz, with Auza-wandilaz interpreted as 'the shining Vandal', although this has been rejected by later scholarship.More recently, Piotr Gąsiorowski has proposed deriving the name from a Pre-Proto-Germanic form *h₂au̯sro-u̯óndh-elo-s, yielding interpretations such as 'shining wanderer' or 'wandering light'. However, this raises phonological difficulties, since regular Gothic sound laws would be expected to produce **aurawandils rather than auzandil. Alternatively, Stefan Schaffner has posited an original form *h₂au̯s-ont-eló-s, with a diminutive suffix -eló.
Origin
Commentators since at least the time of Jacob Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie, published in 1835, have emphasized the great age of the tradition reflected in the mythological material associated with this name, without being able to fully reconstruct the motifs of a Common Germanic myth. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that the narratives surrounding Orendel and Horwendillus appear to be unrelated to those of Ēarendel and Aurvandill. However, some scholars, including Georges Dumézil and Stefan Schaffner, have attempted to demonstrate that Saxo's Horwendillus and Snorri's Aurvandill may ultimately derive from a shared archetypal myth.The apparent discrepancies may be partly explained by the occurrence of derivatives of Auza-wandilaz as personal names in the Lombardic and German traditions. Such usage is attested by historical figures named Auriwandalo and Aurendil in the 8th century AD, suggesting that the name circulated beyond a strictly mythological context. From this perspective, the Orendel of the Middle High German epic could represent an independent figure who bore the same name and developed independently. Although some scholars have also conjectured that he may constitute a saga-figure derived from the myth, they acknowledge that no substantive correspondences with the Old Norse tradition can be established.
Nevertheless, Rudolf Simek and John Lindow argue that the linguistic relationship between the Old Norse and Old English names still points to a Common Germanic origin of the myth, despite the absence of Aurvandill from the Poetic Edda. They maintain that Aurvandill was probably already associated with a star in the original tradition, and that Snorri, in order to explain the name Aurvandils tá, may have reshaped the narrative on the model of the tale in which Thor casts Þjazi's eyes into the sky to form stars.
Attestations
Old Norse
The Old Norse figure Aurvandill is mentioned only once in Norse mythology, in Skáldskaparmál, a book of Snorri Sturluson's 13th-century Prose Edda. In the passage, Thor tells to Aurvandill's wife Gróa that he waded through the river Élivágar, coming from the north, while carrying Aurvandill in a basket on his back. During the crossing, one of Aurvandill's toes protruded from the basket, froze, and broke off. Thor then picked up the severed toe and threw it into the sky, where it became a star known as Aurvandils tá.Thor went home to Thrúdvangar, and the hone remained sticking in his head. Then came the wise woman who was called Gróa, wife of Aurvandill the Valiant: she sang her spells over Thor until the hone was loosened. But when Thor knew that, and thought that there was hope that the hone might be removed, he desired to reward Gróa for her leech-craft and make her glad, and told her these things: that he had waded from the north over Icy Stream and had borne Aurvandill in a basket on his back from the north out of Jötunheim. And he added for a token, that one of Aurvandill's toes had stuck out of the basket, and became frozen; wherefore Thor broke it off and cast it up into the heavens, and made thereof the star called Aurvandill's Toe. Thor said that it would not be long ere Aurvandill came home: but Gróa was so rejoiced that she forgot her incantations, and the hone was not loosened, and stands yet in Thor's head. Therefore it is forbidden to cast a hone across the floor, for then the hone is stirred in Thor's head.
According to Georges Dumézil, this passage appears to be part of a broader story in which Aurvandill is abducted by the jǫtnar. The thunder-god Thor confronts one of them and ultimately frees Aurvandill, but departs with the jǫtunn
At the end of the story, Aurvandill's frost-bitten toe is made into a new star by Thor. However, it is not clear what celestial object is indicated in this passage. Guesses as to its identity have included Sirius or the planet Venus. Aurvandilstá has also been identified with blue-white star Rigel, which could be viewed as forming the foot of the constellation Orion.
Christopher R. Fee has proposed that the myth reflects an ancient Indo-European fertility tradition, in which the jötnar represent chaotic natural forces embodied as arctic cold that threaten agricultural fertility. Gróa's practice of seiðr associates her with the fertility gods of the Vanir, and the toe could be associated with the frozen phallus of the captive Aurvandill.
''Gothica Bononiensia''
The oldest attestation of this name may occur in the Gothica Bononiensia, a sermon from Ostrogothic Italy written in the Gothic language not later than the first half of the 6th century, and discovered in 2009.On folio 2 recto, within a quotation of Isaiah 14:12, the linguist P. A. Kerkhof proposed reading the word ???????? in a difficult-to-decipher part of the palimpsest. This interpretation has been accepted by several experts, including Carla Falluomini, Stefan Schaffner, and Roland Schuhmann. Some scholar have suggested emending the form to *auzandils to better account for its etymological relationship with other Germanic names. The term translates the Koine Greek word ἑωσφόρος from the Septuagint, which is rendered in Latin as lūcifer. In this passage, auzandil corresponds precisely to Old English ēarendel, which likewise serves as a translation of Latin lucifer in the Blickling Homilies.
... ...
... how Lucifer did fall from heaven, he who emerges in the morning...