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Phillpottø: Sart.
Ib
Century poem ’Bergbúa þáttr’. As an element in kennings
he appears in Ysp. 47 (’Surtar sefi) and probably from this
passage migrates into a few skaldic poems, which we shall
deal with later.
Surt has usually been taken to be a fire-giant. Grimm
considers him as such, and his opinion is still generally
ac-cepted. It is true that a theory has been brought forward
that Surt is an original light-god ’fallen from his high
estate’, but as this theory is chiefly built up on the strength
of the variant reading in the Upsala Edda alluded to above
it may safely be left out of account.
But nevertheless, the attributes of Surt which have come
down to us are not easy to reconcile with the general
ac-ceptation of him as exactly a fire-giant. The more one
exa-mine8 the evidence the more it seems to point to some
dæ-monic being, closely allied, indeed, to a fire-giant, but by no
means identical with one. The description in Y9IU8P9’ of
the part played by him in the destruction of the world, his
nåme, and the words compounded with it, all seem to point
to one conclusion; — that Surt was a volcano-dæmon or
giant, and that it is specifically through volcanic agency that
the end of the world, as described in Ypluspp’, is brought about.
The first point to consider is the name itself.
Accor-ding to all philologists, Surtr is connected with svartr, ’black,
swarthy’. Grimm says: "Surtr ist der schwarzbraune, von
der Glut gebräunte, verwandt mit ’svartr’ (niger) und doch
verschieden davon". A minor piece of evidence is afforded
by the faet that Surtr occurs as the näme of a black dog.
We may then without fear of contradiction take the word
to mean ’black’, ’swarthy’. But surely one of the last
epi-thet8 which it would occur to any one to give as the chief
and characteristic name for fire is ’dark’, ’swarthy’. It is
true that occasionally fiame finds its way into literature as
’black’; ’black fiame’ occurs once in Yergils Æneid, and once,
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