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16
Phillpotts: Sturt. 16
iiearer home, in the old Saxon account of the destruction of
the world (Heliand. v. 4366 ed. Heyne). But though it
does occasionally occur, it seems most improbable and
unsuit-able as the only name of personified fire, and certainly
cannot be paralleled in any other mythology. When
personi-fying a natural object or phenomenon the instinct of all
peoples has been to seize upon the chief characteristic of the
object and name their creation after that, if the name be
etymo-logical at all. ’Bright’, ’gleaming’ or even ’white* would be
natural names for a fire-giant, but certainly not’black’. On
the other hand, this would be the very epithet which an
imaginative people would bestow on a volcano-giant, seeing
that the great characteristic of a volcanic mountain in
acti-vity is the black clouds of smoke which hang over it
and darken the light of the sun. It is true that eruptions
are accompanied by flames, and the expression Surta logi
’the flame of Surt’ found in Yafþrúþnesm^l indicates that he
has fire, or rather flames, at his disposal. And Snorri
de-ficribes him as håving a loganda sverd. Although Snorri
himself is possibly not quite clear as to Surt’s nature, this
de8cription of the traditional nature of the giant is exactly
what one would expect for a volcanic dæmon. For what
could be a better description of personified volcanic activity
than ’a swarthy giant with a flaming sword’?
Again, Icelandic words compounded with the name Surt
Beem to suggest connection with volcanoes rather than with
fire pure and simple. Putting asido Surtar-epli, a botanical
term for the black pod or capsule of the plant equisetum, the
two other Compounds of the name are Surtarhellir and
Surfar-brandr. The first of these occurs in Landnåma (p. 62, F.
Jönsson, 1900), where we are told that Jorvaldr holbarki
placed a ’dråpa’ or laudatory poem which he had made
concerning the giant in hellinum Surts, ’the cave of Surt’.
Finn Magnusson in his Lexicon Mythologicum (p. 729) de-
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