TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

LOKI, GKENDEL, SATUEN. 243
of the Norse daemon, which is found among the other Teutonic
races. If Logi comes from liuhan (lucere), Lold will apparently
fall to the root lukan (claudere, conf. claudus lame) ; the ON. lok
means finis, consummatio, and loka repagulum, because a bolt or
bar closes. In Beowulf we come upon an odious devilish spirit, a
thyrs (Beow. 846) named Grendel t and his mother, Grendeles modor
(4232-74), a veritable devil s mother arid giant s mother. An AS.
document of 931 in Kemble 2,
Grendles mere (Grendeli palus).
172 mentions
Now the AS.
a place
grindel,
called
OHG.
so the name
krintil, MHG. grintcl is precisely repagulum, pessulus ;
Grendel seems related to grindel (obex) in the same way as Loki to
loka ; the ON. grind is a grating, which shuts one in like bolt and
bar. Gervase of Tilbury (in Leibn. 1, 980) tells of an English firedemon
named Grant. It is very remarkable, that we Germans have
still in use a third synonymous expression for a diabolic being, its
meaning heightened no doubt by composition with hell ; hollriegel
vectis infernalis, hell-bar, a hell-brand, devil or the devil s own ; a
shrewish old hag is styled hollriegel or the devil s grandmother ;
and Hugo von Langenstein (Martina 4b
) already used this Jiellerigcl
as a term of abuse. Now hell was imagined as being tightly bolted
when Christ, says Fundgr. 1, 178, went down to Hades
and barred ;
in the strength of a lion, he made die grintel brechen . Lastly,
we may even connect the OHG. dremil (pessulus, Graff 5, 531) with
the ON. trami or tremill, which mean both cacodaernon and also, it
seems, clathri, cancelli : tramar gneypa J?ik skulo ! Stem. 85 a
and in the Swedish song of Torkar, trolltram is an epithet of the
devil who stole the hammer. As this is the Thrymr of the Edda,
one might guess that trami stands for J?rami, with which our dremil
would more exactly accord. Thus from several sides we see the
mythical notions that prevailed on this subject joining hands, and
the merging of Logi into Loki must be of high antiquity. Foersom
(on Jutl. superstit. p. 32) alleges, that the devil is conceived of in
the form of a lassetra, i.e., the pole with which a load is tied down.
Beside Loki the as, Snorri sets another before us in the Edda,
Utyar&aloki, as a king whose arts and power deceive even godlike
Thorr ; it was one of his household that outdid the other
Loki himself, Sn. 54 seq. 1
Saxo, who in the whole of his work
1 Thorlacius s theory, of an older nature- worship supplanted by the Ases,
rests mainly on the antithesis of an Oku]?6rr to Asaf>6rr, of Logi to Loki, and
probably of Hler to Oegir, each pair respectively standing for thunder, fire,
;