Völundr (Wayland the Smith)

Völund is the peerless smith of legend — Wayland of the wider Germanic world — and the subject of one of the most savage revenge tales in the Edda. A master craftsman captured by the greedy king Níðuðr, who hamstrings him so he cannot escape and sets him to forge treasures on a lonely island, Völund repays the maiming with a vengeance of cold, total horror: he lures the king's two young sons to his smithy and kills them, makes drinking-cups of their skulls, jewels of their eyes, and brooches of their teeth, and sends these to their unknowing parents; he rapes the king's daughter; and then, having forged himself a pair of wings, he rises into the air to taunt the broken king with everything he has done before flying free. Völund is the corpus's darkest study of revenge — the wronged craftsman whose genius becomes an instrument of atrocity, escaping on wings of his own making.