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Aurvandill (Old Norse) is a figure in Germanic mythology. In Norse mythology, the god Thor tosses Aurvandill's toe – which had frozen while the thunder god was carrying him in a basket across the Élivágar rivers – into the sky to form a star called Aurvandils-tá ('Aurvandill's toe'). In wider medieval Germanic-speaking cultures, he was known as Ēarendel in Old English, Aurendil in Old High German, Auriwandalo in Lombardic, and possibly as 𐌰𐌿𐌶𐌰𐌽𐌳𐌹𐌻 (auzandil) in Gothic. An Old Danish Latinized version, Horwendillus (Ørvendil), is also the name given to the father of Amlethus (Amleth) in Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum.[1][2][3]
Comparative studies of the various myths where the figure is involved have led scholars to reconstruct a Common Germanic mythical figure named *Auza-wandilaz, meaning 'light-beam' or 'ray of light' (from *auza- 'shiny [liquid]' attached to *wanđ- '[flexible] rod'). According to the Old English and Gothic sources, and to a lesser degree the Old Norse text (where a star is mentioned without additional details), this figure seems to have personified the 'rising light' of the morning, possibly the Morning Star (Venus). However, the German and Old Danish evidence remain difficult to interpret in this model.[4][5][2][6]
- ^ de Vries 1962, p. 20.
- ^ a b Simek 1984, pp. 31–32.
- ^ Falluomini 2017, pp. 288–291.
- ^ de Vries 1957, pp. 137–138.
- ^ Dumézil 1970, p. 1171.
- ^ Lindow 2001, p. 65.