Dagr

• 1. Introduction

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  Dagr is the Old Norse word for day, and in Norse mythology it is also the name of a god who gives daylight a face and a family. In the Poetic Edda, Odin travels in disguise under the name Gagnráðr and puts a question to the jötunn Vafþrúðnir. Where, he asks, does the day come from? He asks the same of night and its tides. The giant's reply names a father and a gleaming horse, and it leaves the listener with loose ends. Who exactly was the mother of the day? Did the medieval writers who copied these stories agree on her? And is this bright god related to a hero who turns up in other texts under a name that also means a kind of dawn?

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• 2. Day in the Poems

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  Vafþrúðnir answers Odin in stanza 25 with a verse about parentage: "Delling hight he who the day's father is, but night was of Nörvi born." The same verse says that beneficent powers made the new and waning moons so that men could count the years.

  These lines survive in the Poetic Edda, a collection compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources. Earlier in the same poem, in stanza 12, Vafþrúðnir speaks of the horse Skinfaxi. His mane gleams, and he draws day to mankind.

  Dagr surfaces in a stranger place in Sigrdrífumál. The hero Sigurd has just woken the valkyrie Sigrdrífa from a sleep curse, and he asks her name. She gives him a memory-drink, a drinking horn full of mead, and then speaks a prayer. Its first verse refers to the sons of Dagr and to the female relative of Nótt. The Old Norse word for that relative is nipt, which can mean either niece or daughter.

  The poem Hrafnagaldr Óðins paints the most visual picture. The son of Delling urges on a horse adorned with precious jewels, and the horse's mane shines over Mannheim. A chariot completes the scene.

  Snorri Sturluson, also writing in the 13th century, gave the day a fuller family and a daily route in his Prose Edda.

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• 3. Odin's Sky Chariots

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  In chapter 10 of Gylfaginning, a book of the Prose Edda, the enthroned figure called High lays out where Dagr comes from. Dagr is the son of Dellingr of the Æsir and of Dellingr's wife, Nótt, whose name means night. High describes the boy as being as bright and beautiful as his father's people.

  Then comes the arrangement that keeps the sky moving. Odin takes Dagr and his mother Nótt and gives each of them a chariot and a horse. Dagr receives Skinfaxi, whose mane lights up the whole sky and the Earth. Odin places the pair in the heavens, and they ride around the Earth every 24 hours.

  Elsewhere in the Prose Edda the same word does ordinary work. In chapter 58 of Skáldskaparmál, "Skinfaxi or Glad" is named as the horse that pulls the day forth. Chapter 64 lists Dagr among various words for time, and across Old Norse writing the word simply means day.

  Who stood beside Dellingr as Dagr's mother, though, depends on which medieval manuscript a reader happens to open.

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• 4. Whose Son Is Day

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  Chapter 24 of Skáldskaparmál calls Dagr a brother of Jörð, the personified Earth, which points to a different family from the one High described. The puzzle sharpens inside Gylfaginning itself. The scholar Haukur Thorgeirsson notes that the four manuscripts of that book disagree about the relations among Nótt, Jörð, Dagr and Dellingr.

  The oldest manuscript, labelled U, makes Jǫrð the wife of Dellingr and the mother of Dagr. The other three, labelled R, W and T, give that role to Nótt. So the Prose Edda offers either Earth or night as the mother of day.

  Haukur argues that the version in U arose by accident. In his view, the writer of U or an earlier copy shortened a text much like the one in RWT. He adds that "the results of this accident made their way into the Icelandic poetic tradition."

  A different scholar, Otto Höfler, looked past the manuscripts altogether and asked whether Dagr had a double.

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• 5. The Suddenly Dawning Hero

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  Svipdagr is a hero whose name means "the suddenly dawning day," and Otto Höfler theorized that he may be related to Dagr or even the same figure. Svipdagr is attested in several places. Two poems compiled together in the Poetic Edda are known as Svipdagsmál, and he also appears in the Prologue to the Prose Edda. In the mythical genealogies of the Anglian houses of Anglo-Saxon England, he goes by the name Swæfdæg.

  Höfler also proposed that Svipdagr might have been a "Dagr of the Suebi." He read further meaning into the names around the hero. Sólbjartr, which means "the sun-light," suggests a possible god of the skies. Gróa, meaning "growth," suggests a possible goddess of growth. From these clues Höfler suggested that Svipdagr may have been a fertility god.

  Other connections have been proposed between Dagr and similarly named figures in Germanic mythology. At the end of Svipdagr's chain of names stands Menglöð, the woman he woos, whom many identify with the goddess Freyja.

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