TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

AKI, UOKI, OEGIR, FIFEL, GEOFON, HLER. 239
would of all others wear the glittering helmet which takes its
name from him. From all we can find, his name in OHG. must
have been Aki or Uoki ; and it requires no great boldness to
suppose that in the Ecke of our heroic legend, a giant all over, we
see a precipitate of the heathen god. Ecke s mythical nature is
confirmed by that of his brothers Fasolt and Abentrot, of whom
more hereafter. As the Greek Okeanos has rivers given him for
sons and daughters, the Norse Oegir has by Ban nine daughters,
whose names the Edda applies to waters and waves. We might
expect to find that similar relations to the seagod were of old
ascribed to our own rivers also, most of which were conceived of as
female [and still bear feminine names].
And there is one such local name in which he may be clearly
recognised. The Eider, a river which divides the Saxons from the
Northmen, is called by the Frankish annalists in the eighth and
ninth centuries Egidora, Agadora, Aegidora (Pertz 1. 355-70-86.
2, 620-31) ; Helmold 1, 12. 50 spells Egdora. The ON. writers
more plainly write Oegisdyr (Fornm. sog. 11, 28. 31, conf. Geogr. of
a Northman, ed. by Werlauff p. 15), i.e., ocean s door, sea-outlet,
ostium, perhaps
even here with a collateral sense of the awful.
Again, a place called Oegisdyr is mentioned in Iceland, Landn. 5,
2, where we also find 3, 1 an Oegissifta, latus oceani. Further, it
comes out that by the AS. name Fifeldor in Cod. exon. 321, 8 and
by the Wieglesdor in Dietmar of Merseb. ad ann. 975, p. 760 is
meant the Eider again, still the aforesaid Oegisdyr ; while a various
reading in Dietmar agrees
with the annalist Saxo ad ann. 975 in
giving Heggedor = Eggedor, Egidor. Now, seeing that elsewhere
the AS. poems use Fifelstream, Fifelwseg (Boeth. 26, 51. El. 237)
for the ocean, and Fifelcynnes eard (Beow. 208) for the land of the
ocean-sprites, we may suppose Fifel and its corruption Wiegel to be
another and an obsolete name of Oegir.
The same may hold good of the AS. Geofon, OS. Geban, a being
whose godhead is sufficiently manifest from the ON. Gefjun, who is
reckoned among the Asynior, though she bore sons to a giant.
The Saxon Geban however was a god ; the Heliand shows only the
compound Gebenesstrom 90, 7. 131, 22, but the AS. poets, in
addition to Geofenes begang, Beow. 721, Geofenes staft, Caedm. 215,
8, and the less personal geofonhus (navis), Csedm. 79, 34, geofonflod,
Cod. exon. 193, 21, have also a Geofon standing independently in