Note to Gestumbl Heiðr 4VIII (Heiðr 51)
[5] tvá munna ‘two mouths’: Archaeological finds and pictorial depictions across Scandinavia and the North from the C9th to C12th are consistent in revealing that hammers, both practical smiths’ tools and ceremonial instruments, such as the so-called Thor’s hammers, were symmetrical in the shape of a T or (particularly in symbolic depictions) an elongated cross. Each side of its double-head is described as a ‘mouth’ in the present riddle. See, for example, the depiction of Weland (ON Vǫlundr) on the front panel of the Franks Casket (Anglo-Saxon, C8th Northumbrian); that of Reginn the smith, foster-father of Sigurðr, on the church at Hylestad, Norway (c. 1200); the Viking Age tool-chest found at Mästermyr, Gotland, Sweden (e.g. Arwidsson and Berg 1983); for Thor’s hammers see e.g. Staecker (1999), Perkins (2001); on finds of possible smiths’ graves see e.g. Wallander (1989).
References
- Bibliography
- Perkins, Richard. 2001. Thor the Wind-Raiser and the Eyrarland Image. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
- Staecker, J. 1999. Rex regum et dominus dominorum. Die wikingerzeitlichen Kreuz- und Kruzifixanhänger als Ausdruck der Mission in Altdänemark und Schweden. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
- Wallander, T. 1989. ‘Smedgrave eller gravar med smidesverktyg?’. Tor. Journal of Archaeology 22, 105-59.
- Internal references
- Not published: do not cite (RunVI)