and origin are described in 2. 3. 5–18. The Nordic hero Orvar-Odd fought
with an oaken club (Edd. min. 58). The legendary Danish prince Gram,
ignorant of iron, was armed with a wooden club, to which he attached a
golden stud on learning that his enemy, the Swede Sigtrug, could only be
vanquished by gold (Saxo 1. 4. 11 f. pp. 17 f.). Haldan used an oak cudgel with
iron studs (7. 2. 1 p. 183).
To swing or hurl a massive club of wood, stone, or metal is a token of great
strength. Even more so, to uproot a tree for the purpose. This is something of
a commonplace. In Greek myth and art the Centaurs fight with fir trunks torn
up from the ground. In the Indian epics it is a recurrent motif that mighty
trees are pulled up from their roots and used, stripped or not of their
branches and leaves, as bludgeons or missiles.^40 Similarly in an Ossetic tale
about the hero Batradz: he is fighting the giant Tichifirt, and when they come
to a wood, they tear up hundred-year-old trees, roots and all, and hurl them
at each other.^41 In the Armenian epic David pulls up a tree to make a club
(Sassountsy David 218, cf. 235, 349). In the Irish saga Fled Bricrenn (81) a
giant comes to attack a fort, ‘his hands full of stripped oaks, each of which
would form a burden for a wagon-team of six’, and starts casting them. Saxo’s
Haldan more than once pulls up an oak and fashions it into a club (7. 2. 9 f.
pp. 185 f.; 7. 9. 11 p. 203).
The hero is often represented as possessing a unique weapon or piece of
armour of a kind or quality not now available. Ajax is renowned for his great
shield, constructed of bronze backed with seven layers of ox-hide from sturdy
bulls (Il. 7. 219–23). Cú Chulainn’s cuirass was made to a similar formula,
being ‘of hard leather, tough and tanned, made from the choicest part of
seven yearling ox-hides’ (Táin (I) 2219–21). Swords are of a wonderful
sharpness, for which there is a distinctive criterion: the edge would cut a
hair that floated against it on a stream. This is common to Irish and Norse
literature, and we find something very similar in a Nart tale from the
Caucasus. Socht’s sword ‘shone at night like a candle... It would sever a hair
(floating) on water’.^42 Sigurd’s sword Gram ‘was so keen that he held it down
in the Rhine and let a tuft of wool drift on the current, and the tuft parted like
the water’.^43 In the Abaza story Sosruquo is trying to gain access to a giant’s
(^40) MBh. 3. 12. 39–49, 154. 46–51, 270. 13, 272. 14; 4. 22. 18–24; Rm. 3. 29. 16–19; 4. 16. 21;
(^41) Sikojev (1985), 180; cf. Colarusso (2002), 305.
(^42) Echtra Cormaic i Tir Tairngiri 59 (Irische Texte, iii. 199); cf. Togail bruidne Dá Derga 128
(1230 Knott). The same is predicated of Cú Chulainn’s shield-rim, Táin (I) 2235; of the barbs
on the five prongs of Fer Maisse’s javelin, Acallam na Senórach p. 196 Dooley–Roe. Cú Roí’s axe
was so sharp that it would cut hairs blown against it, Fled Bricrenn 91.
(^43) Prose after Reginsmál 14; cf. Skáldsk. 40; Þiðreks saga 103–6.
- Arms and the Man 461