Weland the Smith

With the possible exception of Alfred the Cake-burner, the only English folk heroes to live in the public consciousness are Robin Hood and his meinie. (King Arthur was a Celt celebrated by Frenchmen.) In the epoch of synthetic mythology, from Tolkien to Star Wars to Pokemon, Weland the Smith is no better remembered by every school kid than the lame artificers of classical antiquity, Vulcan and Hephaistos.

In modern literature, so far as I know he appears twice. Walter Scott is underrated as the novelist of contemporary Scotland, but his gadzookery no one can underrate. Kenilworth will not reintroduce Weland to the wider public.

Kipling translated Weland to Sussex and indeed described his mythological waning. That many children are encouraged to read Puck of Pook's Hill nowadays, we may doubt.

Somewhere, Terry Pratchett alludes to the story without naming the smith. In the Discworld version, if you leave your horse and sixpence overnight, both will have inexplicably disappeared by morning. (By the way, when the Pratchett oeuvre becomes thesis fodder, some academic drudge will have to correlate Kipling's account of Weland's divine impotence with the para-theology of Small Gods or jargon to that effect.)

So who was Weland when his demi-godhood waxed? In Anglo-Saxon literature there are a few references. Before fighting Grendel, Beowulf makes one specific bequest. If he is killed, his breastplate, his finest piece of armour, an heirloom from his grandfather Hrethell, is to go to his Lord, Hrethell's son, Hygelac. It is "Welandes geweorc", Weland's craftsmanship.
Weland was the archetypal craftsman. In the real King Alfred's Boethius "Ubi nunc sunt ossa Fabricii" is rendered as  "where now are the bones of Weland once the cunning goldsmith of old".  Out of context - anyone with a copy of De consolatione Philosophiae to hand may care to verify this - Fabricius seems to be a proper name which Alfred with etymological precision, took to be a particular Smith.

The most copious and least comprehensible reference comes in Deor, perhaps the most satisfyingly melancholic Anglo-Saxon poem.  Deor, an unemployed minstrel cheers himself up by recounting the misfortunes of others and repeating the refrain
Thaes ofereode: thisses swa maeg
That ended, so this may
One of these unfortunates is Weland. "The strong-minded warrior knew exile, exile cold as winter, and suffered hardships, lonely and sad. He was in deep trouble after Nithad neatly handicapped him, a better man.
That ended, so this may
Her brothers' death did not upset Beadohilde so much as her own condition when she realised she was pregnant. When she knew that she could not contemplate the future steadily.
That ended, so this may
Foreign sources, the Elder Edda and an Icelandic saga, make sense of these allusions. (The names have been left in Anglo-Saxon forms. Pedants may complain about this. Pedants may also complain about the use of  "Anglo-Saxon" rather than "Old-English".  Their complaints will be joyously ignored, as I don't have to pass an exam.)
Weland was one of three brothers married to Valkyries who were destined to leave them after nine years. The other brothers followed them, but Weland stayed at his smithy. He was captured by Nithad, hamstrung and set to work on an island whence he escaped by flying. He killed Nithad's sons, made drinking cups of their skulls, for their father and ornaments from their eyes and teeth for their mother and sister. The sister, Beadohilde, he raped. For her, presumably, the consolation was an heroic son with a magic boat, Wade whose reputation lasted till Chaucer's time.
Weland was remembered in Berkshire long enough for Camden, the Elizabethan antiquary to record his legend rather condescendingly in Britannia. The smithy is so called "by the vulgar from an idle tradition about an invisible smith replacing lost horse-shoes there."
By modern heathens, I learned from a website, because of his metalworking and flying skills, Weland is regarded as the patron of the aircraft industry.

Peter Gould