Norsery Rhymes from A to Z
Happy Thorsday - Earendel, The Valiant and Brave Star Toe of the Morning
Well here we are another Thor’s Day and another 20 min sketch of a Norse (and Germanic) mythological characters. This week it looks like we’re finally out of the D’s and onto the few E’s there are. It’s Earendel / Earendil / Earendell / Aurvandel / Aurvandill / Aurendil / Auriwandalo / and Auzandil mentioned in the Prose Edda's Skáldskaparmál, Gothica Bononiensia and the Old English Corpus in various forms.
Known as ‘The Valiant’ and ‘The Brave’, he’s also called ‘The Luminous Wanderer’ and ‘The Light of the Morning’, ‘The Radiant’, and ‘The Brilliant Traveler’.
His name despite all of the various regional versions all mean some variation of a rising or shining ray of light. Depending on which version it can more specifically be translated as ‘the dawn bringer’, ‘the rising light’, or ‘the brilliance’, or ‘the ray of light’, or ‘the shining beam of light’, or most commonly ‘the light of the morning star’. It can also have connotations with ‘wandering’, ‘travelling’ or ‘adventuring’.
Married to the witch and Seidhr sorceress (soothsaying, or seer) Gróa / Groa (Gefion), and possibly father to Svipgar the hero of the Grógaldr and Fjölsvinnsmál.
Earendel was implied to be a hero and adventurer in his own right. But he is best well known for his traveling's with his friend Thor. Who had been taken captive by the stone Jötunn Hrungnir. After which, while returning from their adventure from defeating the giant in Jotenheim. Thor had shards of a magic whetstone in his head that Hrungnir had thrown at him but had been shattered by Mjolnir. Earendil on his way home and Thor travelling with him so that his wife Groa could use her power to remove the shards and heal him.
When they came to the Élivágar river in Ginnungagap, Thor who was immune to the effects of this river from before time, decided to carry Earendel across in an basket to protect him from the cold. So with Earendel in to the basket, Thor wasn’t careful about how he was squished in there and his big toe was exposed to the cold of the primordial river and got frostbite. Thor not wanting to see the damage spread, broke off his toe and threw it in the sky where it became the bright morning (or other) star. Once Earendil could walk Thor went on ahead to Groa to have the stone shards removed. But while she was weaving the incantation to remove them he started her with the tale of the toe and her husbands immanent return which caused her to falter and made the stone get stuck there beyond her ability to help.
And to reuse my joke from my Aurvandil post. Earendel may have been luminous and valiant. But he forgot the first rule of adventuring... Bring warm socks. It also wouldn’t hurt to have a towel.
