Mannaz
A summary of what the
Norse and Anglo-Saxon texts tell us about this rune
Mannaz is the rune of people, more precisely the one of humanity.
In contrast to racism, humanity embraces anyone who communicates with
other humans and takes pleasure in it. No one is excluded from the status of
being human but some can exclude themselves from humanity when they choose to
scorn others. To some extent, Mannaz declares that the true Untermensch (the ‘under-humans’) are
those who believe to be Übermensch (‘over-humans’).
It is important to notice that my translation leads to thinking that the
idiots, whom the Saying of Hár often makes fun of, are not at all excluded from
humanity. It is arrogance which excludes, not intellectual deficit. Those who
want to use the rune Mannaz should think it over, using it without deep
humility might well be self-cursing.
In opposition to the rune Wunjo which represents the sensual pleasures,
possibly taken at the expense of others, mutual pleasure experienced under the
sign of Mannaz is the pleasure of communicating and sharing, regardless of whether
or not their relation is based on carnal love. The student of Shiatsu is consistently
urged to give the patient a form of ‘universal love’, well symbolized by
Mannaz: instead of feeling tarnished by disease, the patient should feel
appreciated for being human, accepted as a full member of humanity.
As opposed to our modern beliefs, death does not immediately exclude us
from humanity: We still need to honor the promises made and the pledges sworn
during our life. This appears absurd in view of our concept of time, divisible
in separate chunks. This is not absurd at all in view of the teachings of the
rune Naudiz, which teaches us that what we call ‘future’ is completely included
in what we call ‘past’. Humans are responsible for their future, and death adds
nothing to this fact. In modern terms, everyone must anticipate what may
eventually happen, including one’s death, and never betray those to whom oath
has been lent.
All versions of the Nordic myths concur with the idea that the Æsir Gods brought humans their own destiny,
force, breath, senses and color of life. Only the rune poems and the Völuspá,
however, suggest a different version from the traditional statement that humans
were created from trees found on a beach. The Völuspá specifies that Dwarfs
worked human bodies out of soil. I would not insist so much on this detail if
it had not led me to understand the Norse rune poem as a description of our
destiny. We are all created out of soil but not at all returned to earth at
death; at death, we will not turn over to the ground, as is so strongly stated
by the Christians, since the deserving ones are carried in Ódhinn’s “hawk’s
broad claws” towards Freyja’s or Ódhinn’s halls. This rune poem tells us that
Mannaz is the rune showing the way towards deserving such an honor.
Explanations
Cognates: English, man and human; German, der Mensch
(the human being), der Mann (the
man), and Old Norse (ON) maðr. Note
that, while describing this rune, I will always use ‘man/woman’ to speak of a
human of the male/female sex.
The ON name
of this rune is especially interesting. Maðr
is a masculine noun meaning ‘human being’ or even ‘the folk’. It can be used to
speak of a woman as in composed words such as kvennmaðr, and it needs a qualifier to speak of a male such as in karlmaðr. Its older form is mannr, the nominative form of which has
been changed over time into maðr
because ‘nnr’ was pronounced as ‘ðr’. Its declension forms, as accusative mann, or genitive manns etc. keep the ‘nn’. When speaking of Wunjo and Ihwaz, we
already met the word man. This neuter
noun would have been at first used to speak of a war prisoner sold as a slave.
Its meaning passed then to ‘slave woman’, then ‘serving maid’ and even
‘mistress’. It can even mean ‘love’ as it happens with the love-runes, manrúnar. All this underlines that rune
Mannaz is not linked to man, as Wunjo
is, but to mannr or maðr, the human being.
This rune
kept the form 
in all the versions of the ancient Futhark we
are studying here and the English Futhark. In the 16 runes Norse Futhark, its
shape changes completely and becomes the same as ancient Futhark's Algiz:
.
Norse rune poem:
|
mikil er græip á hauki. |
The hawk grasps much [w. for w.: ‘much it grasps in hawk’]. |
Wimmer
gives to this rune the name madhr (maðr, human)
and translates moldar by ‘dust’,
followed by most scholars. It is true that Old English molde means ‘sand, dust, mold, earth’, from which come the various
meanings of English mold or mould. This certainly influenced the translations
and dictionaries which refer to the English meanings. This poem is obviously
not written in Old English but in Old Norse and, in this language, it means
‘earth’ [Note 1], with both the meaning of the planet Earth and that of earth as
in clay, humus. The word used in the poem, moldar, is a plural and I therefore
translate what the skald said, that is ‘soils’.
Analysis of the first line
Many lines
associated with Mannaz are very difficult to interpret. In the present case,
Wimmer and scholars who have followed him, obviously influenced by their own
culture and also perhaps by Þrideilur Rúna, have translated moldar by dust, alluding to destiny as “dust, will go back to dust,”
as Christians state. In order to put this verse back into its Heathen context,
let us recall at first the prevailing Nordic myth relative to humanity’s
origin. Snorri Sturluson’s Gylfaginning states that “Bor’s sons who were
wandering on the seashore fundu þeir tré
tvau ok tóku upp trén ok sköpuðu af menn (found two trees, and clutched
their wood and fashioned humans out of it).”
I am
convinced that this myth has become the official version at Snorri’s time. It
follows the claim that this human couple’s name concurs with this origin: the
man is called Ask and the woman Embla. It is
true that the word askr means
‘ash-tree’ but, in spite of extensive academic efforts to associate embla to a tree name, the meaning of
this word is still mysterious. It is also odd that the poem Völuspá did
not at all allude to such an origin. It even seems to provide a different
version, the one of bodies molded out of soil. The second half of verse 10 of
this poem of primary importance says: þeir mannlícon / mörg
um gorðo, / ór iörðo, / sem Durinn sagði. (‘they human-bodies / many made / the
dwarves, out of earth, / as Durinn has
said’ = the dwarves made many human bodies with soil, as prescribed by Durinn).
A large
part of the misunderstanding of this verse comes from the way mannlícon is translated (I reject the
grammatical and bibliographic details in [Note 2]). For instance, Ursula Dronke
translates it by “figurines” hiding the human shape of these figurines; in
French, Boyer translates by “beings in human shape”; in German, Genzmer, by
“vaguely human shapes”; in English, Hollander, chooses to look at these verses
as independent from the rest of the poem, then called Dvergatal, an editorial invention. He translates by “molded many manlike bodies / the dwarfs under the
earth, as Durinn bade them.” It
follows that the bodies are made under the earth rather than made out of earth.
All this
illustrates the contradiction with Snorri’s version, a fact seemingly hard to
acknowledge. We must know that the word lícon
(or líkon or líkun depending on the editor) can find its root in the word lík meaning a living body or a corpse,
or in the word líki meaning a body or
a shape. The meaning primarily hinted at is the one of ‘body’ and of ‘human
body’ for mannlícon, as I translated
it. As I did for the ON word mold, I
suspect English speakers have let the meaning of ‘like’ to take the better on ON
lík and thus translated mannlícon by ‘manlike’.
Please do
not conclude from this reasoning that Snorri’s myth, the creation of humans out
of trees could be a fake. It seems obvious that the two concurrent myths exist.
The other one is older but is only hinted at by the völva who describes the
creation, and then the destruction of our world, in the Völuspá. She says in
verse 10 that these mannlíkon have
been fashioned by Dwarves and the next six verses provide a long list of
Dwarves’ names. In other words, we can say that verse 17 almost immediately follows
verse 10. In verse 17, the völva says: “Unz
þrír kvámu / ór því liði / … æsir
… / fundo á landi / … / Asc oc Emblo …” (Until three came / out
of this group / Æsir …/ they found on the land / Ask and Embla …). These few
words are worthy of a detailed discussion which will support my hypothesis that
the völva states that Ask and Embla, two mannlíkon
shaped out of soil by the Dwarves, have been given life by the Æsir.
Firstly,
the word land means ‘country, land’
as opposed to the sea. The word used by Snorri, sævarströnd (sævar-strönd),
clearly points to the seaside, the beach, not the land. Thus, the poem underlines that three Æsir, coming from a
group of Dwarves, have been involved. They found Ask and Embla on the land
rather than the seaside. Note that Snorri’s trees could have also been found on
the land that did not lack trees in this time. Since Snorri spoke of seaside,
the myth has changed over time: the völva and Snorri, obviously, refer to
different versions of the same myth.
Secondly,
the word liði (dative neutral of
‘group, troop, people’) is used in accordance with the pronoun því (‘from it’ or ‘from this one’).
Thus, því liði clearly
means ‘this very group’, but which group is spoken of? The answer is given by
verse 14, describing the Dwarves as belonging to Dvalinn’s group (í Dvalins liði). The skald speaks of the
group of Dvalinn in verse 14, pervade verses 14-16 with Dwarves’ names, and
then says in verse 17 that three Æsir come from ‘this’ group. It is then
obvious that he speaks of the same group. What is a bit mysterious is what
could be doing these Æsir within a group of Dwarves? The völva provides no hint
to the answer of this question [Note 3] but this is no reason to refuse to read
what is unambiguously written in the poem.
Analysis of the second
line
With the
classical neo-christian understanding of the first line, the second line seems
to be artificially added here. In contrast, my interpretation of the first line
describing the beginning of life instead of its end, will show how much these
two lines harmoniously act jointly to make up the whole of a Heathen life and
death. The classical interpretation sees the first line as “humans are dust
(and thus will go back to dust).” One might believe that I give a parallel
understanding such as “humans are clay (and thus will go back to clay).” These
lines indeed describe the harsh destiny of humans, but the skald claims none of
these two meanings. In order to understand the skald, let us first recall that
a classical kenning for Ódhinn’s two ravens is “Ódhinn’s hawks.” Thus, the
hawk the second line mentions may be any of the vultures – raven or eagle –
that feed off the battlefield, grasping pieces of the corpses in their large
claws. In our modern imagination, it would be a disgrace to leave a corpse for
the vulture. In the ancient Northern thinking, however, these birds carry the
‘soul’ of the dead warriors to the places reserved for these who died while
fighting.
To summarize, the Norse poem tells us: “Human, you
were made out of soil (clay molded by Dwarves and, as said by the völva, three
Æsir gave you life [Note
3]); you will then die on the battlefield, and be shred to bits by vultures
(meaning: thus earning a welcome in Freyja’s or Ódhinn’s
dwellings).” This Northern view of human fate obviously comprises life and
death. The description given here alludes to a dwarf and an Æsir based creation,
followed by a bold life, ending in a glorious death.
The second line of the Icelandic rune poem gives the
same kind of image, and the other lines provide two images that are more
positive.
Icelandic rune poem:
|
ok moldar auki ok skipa skreytir. |
and
even more soils [or clay, plural] and
who decorates the ships. |
homo (human) mildingr
(generous man )
Commentaries on my translation of the Icelandic rune poem
I said earlier
that moldar is the plural of ‘earth,
clay, compost’.
The word gaman, most often translated by ‘joy’, holds
less mystical meaning. For instance, the locution gamanvísa is a comical vísa
(a poem). Gaman is in fact ‘pleasure,
enjoyment’ together with their unavoidable enlargement in the direction of
sexual pleasure.
Wimmer’s
translation (as well as mine) can mean that human workers manufacture the
decoration of the ships or, as well, that the mere human presence adorns the
ships. The word skreytir comes from
the verb skreyta meaning ‘to dress
fine, to decorate’ and may be the adornments themselves or who creates the
adornments. The text is ambiguous here.
Analysis of the first line
of the Icelandic rune poem:
This first
line cannot be better explained than by the famous verse 47 of Hár Sayings:
|
Ungr var ek forðum, fór ek einn saman: þá varð ek villr vega; |
Young
I have been, I
would walk alone my own way, And
this made a wilder of me. |
[the verb vega
evokes the use of a lever: a possible approximate translation could be: “from
this I used a lever in order to raise my wilderness.”]
|
auðigr þóttumk, er ek annan fann; Maðr er manns gaman. |
Wealthy
we felt to be, When I
met another one; The human
is the pleasure of the human. |
Official
translations give “I felt myself” for þóttumk
, that is a singular reflexive form, because a plural would seem nonsensical to
the scholars. The ending ‘-umk’
clearly points to a plural, and I strongly feel that the singular is real
nonsense! Why the skald would claim that he alone felt wealthy, when it is
obvious that two people are needed to start sharing? It does not preclude the
skald from being the active person who finds another human being, however they
need to be two of them in order to share. This small error in translation is a
striking image of the individualistic prejudices of our modern civilization:
the others are here to be taken pleasure from, not to share pleasure with.
The last
line of verse 47 is the same as the first one of the Icelandic rune poem. We
can understand that the first three lines of verse 47 put into context the
terse form of the Icelandic poem. In this context, pleasure connotes friendly
exchanges among humans, as a means to fight loneliness rather than experiencing
mystical or sensual pleasures.
Analysis of the third line
of the Icelandic rune poem
The double
meaning of “humans decorate ships” is not clear to us because we are used to
looking at a ship as an object. In a nautical civilization, this is not so
true. It is not strange that a mariner could look at himself as being an object
serving a ship that behaves so much like a being endowed with an independent will.
This attitude so full of humility recalls how respectful of the horse are the
myths associated to rune Ehwaz: humans are not as important as they would like
to be. This double meaning is underlined by the late interpretation of the
third line in the Þrideilur
Rúna. In Old Norse,
this version is: “Maðúr (est) skipa skreitir (read skreytir
or skrautir)”(the human being
(is) decoration to the ships ). Its Latin interpretation is: “Maðúr (est) púppiúm pigmentariús” (the human
being is relative to the color of the sterns) that is: the human being gives
its color to the ships’ sterns. In these late interpretations, the human is the
object, and the ship the living being. I suggest understanding both meanings:
“humans produce the ships’ decoration and they themselves serve as decoration.”
Þrideilur Rúna
The Latin
version is as follows:
Maðúr. homo hominem oblectat (the human being
takes pleasure in company the human being) púlveris
additamentúm (addition of dust), púppiúm
pigmentariús (relative to the color of the sterns).
The first
and third statements have already been commented. The second one opposes
clearly my choice of translating moldar by
‘soils’ or ‘muds’. Obviously, I never claimed that the translation by ‘dust’
was absurd: I only state that it is an unusual denotation of the word moldar and that this denotation hints at
a Christian influence, as would be expected for a text that has already
translated ‘Tyr’ by ‘daemon’.
OERP (rune man):
man (human) is pleasure for is beloved
relatives;
he will however have to betray each of them,
when the Lord will judge to hand the miserable flesh
over the earth.
The first
line, speaking of the pleasure to entertain one’s family, speaks again of the
‘pleasure in friendly relationships’ hinted at by verse 47 of Hár Sayings.
The second line contains once more a Christian version of the
brittleness of human life, while I try to give a Heathen version. This version
introduces also a new concept underlining the fact that death is a kind of
treason, in the sense that all oaths brutally become empty at this time. This
poem, by insisting upon this idea, recalls that the dead one was once a member
of humankind and that a bond is cut by this departure, which is felt as treason
by those who remain. We live now in a world where the word given, the oath to
behave according to a contract, has to be enforced by law because they have
become much less important than personal considerations of suitability.
Conversely, the old Germanic world so dearly carries the concept of respect the
given word that the expression ‘word given’ is as significant as ‘noble born’, and
that it should even be honored beyond death. In this spirit, we find an
interesting example of the failure to keep an oath in the first part of the
saga of the People of Varfadardal (Svardæla
saga). In this particular case, the hero, Thorolf, although very wise and
careful, loves his young brother Thorstein so much, that he utters oaths that,
in the future, will reveal themselves to be contradictory. Thorstein guesses
his brother will be forced to break his word in some way and he will die for
it. Thorstein duly warns his brother that his destiny will now be driven by
these contradictory vows. Thus, rather achieving his destiny without being
informed (as in the case of Oedipus, for example), the hero freely chooses his
fate; he knows that failure to keep his word will lead to his death; he thus
utters his vows with a full knowledge of the dramatic consequences. Insofar as
Thorstein and Thorolf had analyzed the situation, and accepted the
consequences, Thorolf then does not feel betrayed by the death of his brother
and he buries him with the greatest of honors.
The moral values underlying this story and
suggested by the OERP are becoming more and more obsolete in our civilization.
The problem of keeping, or not, our word, of accepting, or not, the
consequences of our decisions is not considered as essential in todays’ way of
life. Instead of feeling responsible for our destiny, we always rely more on
various social mechanisms to keep the many small and large contracts in place that
our human relationships are based on. When people betray their word, it undoubtedly
comes from a feeling that they can no longer carry on with a contradiction they
are no longer able tolerate. They feel betrayed by fate and they try to put the
responsibility of their distress on others rather than taking upon themselves the
causes and the consequences of that contradiction. This saga and the OERP advocate
for the opposite kind of behavior based on three points. First is that
betraying your word is always a shame for which you should feel responsible and
should never forget. Second is that when you are truly facing something
impossible to hold, for example when two vows turn out to be contradictory,
then you must analyze the causes of your betrayal and accept the full
consequences of this betrayal. The third and most unusual point is that you are
a traitor unless you can respect your vows whuic go beyond your death. This
means that when making a promise, you have to think of its consequences to come
after your death. In other words, survival is not a goal in itself. Your
survival must be motivated by the effort, until death, to make sure that your
commitments will hold after your death. You may think it is an impossible goal.
Without going into a long digression on old people’s obsessions, what do you
believe the elderly we call ‘crazy’, and who are actually disoriented, are
carrying out? Psychologists call this behavior “trying to reconcile with one’s
past” but this necessary work should not lead to insanity. They seem crazy
because they realize that some of their past decisions are now beyond repair,
that it is now too late to change their past betrayals and the promises given
will forever stay unfulfilled after their death.
All this leads me to consider that the twenty-ninth last rune described
in the OERP, the rune of the earth viewed as ground, is an extension of Mannaz.
This, obviously, coincides with the assumption that humankind was created out
of the ground in this mythology.
OERP (rune ear):
ear: (Earth) [or corn ear, or ocean, the meaning ‘earth, soil’ seems to be the
most probable] is loathsome to each nobleman,
when flesh firmly tries to choose the ground,
fallen fruits as bedmates, joy vanishes,
man turns traitor.
These lines
are somewhat difficult to understand because of their peculiar wording. The
sentence, “fallen fruits as bedmates,” visibly insist on the fact that rotten flesh
becomes your bedmate.
The meaning of this poem becomes clear, if we understand that when “the
flesh firmly tries to choose the ground,” then “man turns traitor” carries a meaning
similar to the one we just commented with the rune man, the remaining survivors’ feeling of being betrayed. The
importance of the respect of the sworn word, even beyond death, is still
stressed.
The general direction of these lines is clear: Earth, which could have
been considered as a provider of riches, is seen as shroud, without the
happiness factors found in Madhr and Man.
Fourteenth verse of
Ljóðatal:
The Old
Nose original reads as:
Þat kann ek it fjögurtánda,
ef ek skal fyrða liði
telja tíva fyrir:
ása ok alfa
ek kann allra skil;
fár kann ósnotr svá.
Its usual
translation, for instance (English) Hollander’s, (German) Genzmer’s or (French)
Boyer’s is as follows:
I know a fourteenth
If I go towards (or I come from) the warriors’ crowd
Tell in front of [or convince] the Gods,
Of the Æsir and the Elves
I am able to analyze [or to understand, or to part] them all;
Very little knows the silly one.
This translation is indeed a correct one. The second and third lines are
even so well known that Cleasby-Vigfusson quotes them in the infinitive and
translates “to tell stories of gods in front of the men.”
I will however propose four different translations of these two lines.
The grammatical arguments that I use are a little complicated and I have pushed
them back to [Note 5].
Hereby my personal translation:
I know a fourteenth,
If I stand [implying: motionless] in front of the warriors’ crowd
Giving an analysis of the deities:
[or
If I go to meet the deities
(and) I speak of the warriors’ crowd:
or
If I steer a course [= I easily move]
carried forward by the warriors’ crowd (toward) the deity:
or
If I steer a course [= I easily move]
carried forward by the deity (toward) the warriors’ crowd:]
Of the Æsir and the Elves
I am able to analyze them all;
Very little knows the silly one.
I claim again that several meanings are coexisting, and were all
understood by the reader of that time when these poems had been created. If
Ódhinn speaks to the warriors, he then belongs to humanity. If he speaks to the
Gods, he is a deity. The ambiguous complex form used by the skald enables us to
understand that Ódhinn claims he is a link between humankind and the Gods, that
he is able to speak to both. The two interpretations in which he moves towards
the humans/Gods under the push of the Gods/humans expresses and ‘proves’ this
role of messenger. For a better understanding of the bond between speech and
the membership of a clan, I will now use stanza 57 of Hár Sayings, which
clearly describes this concept.
|
Hár
Sayings (Hávamál) Verse 57 Brandr af brandi brenn, unz brunninn er, funi kveikisk af funa; maðr af manni verðr at máli kuðr en til dælskr af dul. Word
for word: Brand
by brand burns,
until exhaustion, flame
fuels itself with flame ; human
to human becomes
known by speech however, the envious [or grumpy] by self-conceit. [ON dul means either
concealment or
arrogance, not ‘idiocy’] In
other words: A
brand catches fire from another brand Before
exhausting itself; Flame
fuels another flame; A
human being acknowledges another human being by
their speech, We
recognize the envious by
their arrogant words. Speech goes from one human being
to another and this creates humanity (people) as the flame goes from one tree
to another, creating a forest fire. The babies’ first screams quiet
down when they hear their parents speak because they are thus accepted as
members of humanity – as long as the parents also belong to it. |
|
At first, I wish to explain why I do not translate the last word of this
stanza, dul, by ‘stupid’ or ‘dumb’ or
‘dull’ like the other translators. Hár Saying (Hávamál) is a long poem often
describing the difference between imbecile and intelligent attitudes. This is
testified by a repeatedly used word expressing knowledge and intelligence: snotr. This word is used 12 times to
indicate sharp intelligence (snotr),
3 times to speak of an average intelligence (in meðal-snotr) and 7 times to indicate idiocy (in ó-snotr). I insist on this in order to
underline the fact that a 23rd use would not be surprising and that
in the last one line, en til dælskr af
dul, the skald did not use the words dælskr
and dul without reason. The word dælskr evokes dissimulation, lack of
sincerity, unpleasant behavior. The word dul
evokes also dissimulation but with the connotations of envy and arrogance.
These words obviously are not directly related to lack of intelligence but
flaws in personality. This choice stresses the importance of actions in the
Scandinavian civilization where actions rather than words reveal personality.
This beautiful and celebrated stanza describes speech as the media by which
humankind moves from human to human, creating humankind as fire propagating
from tree to tree, creates a forest fire. Note at first that it does not define
a kind of Untermensch (sub-human), as
the Nazis did, but it acknowledges that some individuals are not able to join
the great fraternity of humankind. Note also that being excluded from humankind
is not based on racial criteria but on cultural relational ones, by the
rejected one’s vanity and arrogance. The skald could not foresee the idiotic
definitions of the future but the God Ódhinn expresses Himself in these verses
and He timelessly defines what He calls a member of humankind.
We still
need to understand why it is important to stress that the brand is completely
burned, as is stated by the second line. To this end, let us first note that Hár
Saying alludes twice to the fact that the dead ones have to be burned:
|
Hár Saying, s. 71 |
… blindr er betri en brenndr séi … |
… blind is better than being burned … |
[that is: Better being blind than being burned (dead) …]
|
Hár
Saying, s. 81 |
… At kveldi skal dag leyfa, konu, er brennd er, |
… When it tends, will the day be praised, the woman, when she is burned, … |
[that is: Praise a
day after it is ended,
Praise a woman after she is burned (dead) …]
The poem announces therefore the ‘complete death’ of the firebrand when
it is consumed in order to recall that, in a similar way, humans leave
humankind by being burned. This points out one of the constant concerns of
primitive civilizations, specifically that the dead ones have to definitively
leave the clan, that their soul must not remain to prowl the living’s dwelling.
As you know, one of the major roles of the shamans is to drive the souls of the
dead to their own dwelling. What seems obvious to us nowadays, as asserted by
rationalism and dominant religions, is the fact that the deceased leave
humankind, what was not obvious in the ancient society. Hár Saying subtly
points out this fact. It says that, in the old Scandinavian civilization, fire
is the way by which the dead leave the place they once had within humankind. It
is well known that this belief had already disappeared in ancient Iceland when
this poem was written, but this shows us that Hár Saying refers to ancient
customs habits, anyhow existing before the 9th century.
This means
that Mannaz is the rune of humankind as a whole, more than the one of each
individual human. As I already said, the Old Norse names of Mannaz, maðr, means also ‘the folk’: the whole
set of texts relative to maðr is
relative to this meaning as well. Speech signifies more than just a communication
media among humans; it creates humanity, as a forest fire is more than just a
burning tree.
Notes
[Note 1] I suspect that modern Icelandic tongue received a strong influence from the English language. For instance, the very British Cleasby-Vigfusson’s Icelandic-English dictionary proposes the two meanings ‘mould, earth’. In contrast, the German language speaks of dust with the word Staub that can hardly be influenced by English ‘mold’. Therefore, de Vries’s altnordisches Wörterbuch or Kock und Meissner’s Skaldisches Lesebuch give to mold only one meaning: Erde (earth). Hugo Gering’s Glossar zu den Liedern der Edda provides an exhaustive list of the words used in the Eddic poems and he also gives the meaning Erde for mold, including composed words such as moldvegr and moldþinur. This last word is translated by ‘the belt of the Earth’ which is a kenning found in verse 60 of Völuspá to designate Jörmungandr, the huge snake that encircles our M