33. Hirtir eru ok fjórir,
þeirs af hefingar á
agaghalSir gnaga:
Dáinn ok Dvalinn,
Dvneyr ok Dvraþrór.

33. Hirtir eru ok fjórir,
þeirs af hæfingar
gaghálsir gnaga:
Dáinn ok Dvalinn,
Duneyrr ok Duraþrór.

There are four bow-necked Harts that gnaw the [high shoots]: Dain and Dwalin, Duneyr and Durathror.

34. [1][Four harts also the highest shoots[2]
ay gnaw from beneath:
Dáin and Dvalin,[3] Duneyr and Dyrathror.]
 
[1] The following two stanzas are very likely interpolations.
[2] Conjecturally.
[3] These are, rather, dwarf names.

33. Four the harts who the high boughs
Gnaw with necks thrown back:
Dain and Dvalin,
Duneyr and Durathror.

33. 'There are four harts too, who gnaw with necks thrown back
the highest boughs;
Dain and Dvalin,
Duneyr and Durathror.

33. There are also four stags who
 from [their proper sweet pasture]
[perpetually] nibble with straining neck:
Dead One and Dawdling One,
Downy Beach and Door Stubborn.  

Christian legend concerning the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus may have its chief, if not its only, root in a Germanic myth popularized in Europe in the second half of the fifth or in the first half of the sixth century. At that time large portions of the Germanic tribes had already been converted to Christianity: the Goths, Vandals, Gepidians, Rugians, Burgundians, and Swabians were Christians. Considerable parts of the Roman Empire were settled by the Germans or governed by their swords. The Franks were on the point of entering the Christian Church, and behind them the Alamannians and Longobardians. Their myths and sagas were reconstructed so far as they could be adapted to the new forms and ideas, and if they, more or less transformed, assumed the garb of a Christian legend, then this guise enabled them to travel to the utmost limits of Christendom; and if they also contained ideas that were not entirely foreign to the Greek-Roman world, then they might the more easily acquire the right of Roman nativity.
 
In its oldest form the legend of the “Seven Sleepers" takes the following form in 587 AD  in Gregory of Tours’ De Gloria Martyrum ("The Glory of the Martyrs”) I. 92):
 
Seven brothers (‘germani’) have their place of rest near the city of Ephesus, and the story of them is as follows: In the time of the Emperor Decius, while the persecution of the Christians took place, seven men were captured and brought before the ruler. Their names were Maximianus, Malchus, Martinianus, Constantius, Dionysius, Joannes, and Serapion. All sorts of persuasion was attempted, but they would not yield. The emperor, who was pleased with their courteous manners, gave them time for reflection, so that they should not at once fall under the sentence of death. But they concealed themselves in a cave and remained there many days. Still, one of them went out to get provisions and attend to other necessary matters. But when the emperor returned to the same city, these men prayed to God, asking Him in His mercy to save them out of this danger, and when, lying on the ground, they had finished their prayers, they fell asleep. When the emperor learned that they were in the above-mentioned cave, he, under divine influence, commanded that the entrance of the cave should be closed with large stones, "for," said he, "as they are unwilling to offer sacrifices to our gods, they must perish there." While this transpired a Christian man had engraved the names of the seven men on a leaden tablet, and also their testimony in regard to their belief, and he had secretly laid the tablet in the entrance of the cave before the latter was closed. After many years, the congregations having secured peace and the Christian Theodosius having gained the imperial dignity, the false doctrine of the Sadducees, who denied resurrection, was spread among the people. At this time it happens that a citizen of Ephesus is about to make an enclosure for his sheep on the mountain in question, and for this purpose he loosens the stones at the entrance of the cave, so that the cave was opened, but without his becoming aware of what was concealed within. But the Lord sent a breath of life into the seven men and they arose. Thinking they had slept only one night, they sent one of their number, a youth, to buy food. When he came to the city gate he was astonished, for he saw the glorious sign of the Cross, and he heard people aver by the name of Christ. But when he produced his money, which was from the time of Decius, he was seized by the vendor, who insisted that he must have found secreted treasures from former times, and who, as the youth made a stout denial, brought him before the bishop and the judge. Pressed by them, he was forced to reveal his secret, and he conducted them to the cave where the men were. At the entrance the bishop then finds the leaden tablet, on which all that concerned their case was noted down, and when he had talked with the men a messenger was dispatched to the Emperor Theodosius. He came and kneeled on the ground and worshipped them, and they said to the ruler: "Most august Augustus! There has sprung up a false doctrine which tries to turn the Christian people from the promises of God, claiming that there is no resurrection of the dead. In order that you may know that we are all to appear before the judgment-seat of Christ according to the words of the Apostle Paul, the Lord God has raised us from the dead and commanded us to make this statement to you. See to it that you are not deceived and excluded from the kingdom of God." When the Emperor Theodosius heard this he praised the Lord for not permitting His people to perish. But the men again lay down on the ground and fell asleep. The Emperor Theodosius wanted to make graves of gold for them, but in a vision he was prohibited from doing this. And until this very day these men rest in the same place, wrapped in fine linen mantles.”

However the historian of the Franks, Bishop Gregory of Tours (born 538 or 539), is the first one who presented in writing the legend regarding the seven sleepers. His story is a faithful translation of a tale found less than a century earlier in the homilies of Saint James of Sarugh (452-521 AD), a bishop in Syria, a region also well acquainted with Germanic tribes. His account is not written before the year 571 or 572. As the legend itself claims to date from the first years of the reign of Theodosius, it cannot be older than his kingdom, 379-395 AD.

The next time we learn anything about the seven sleepers in occidental literature is in the Longobardian historian Paul the Deacon (723-799 AD). What he relates has greatly surprised investigators; for although he must have been acquainted with the Christian version in regard to the seven men who sleep for generations in a cave, and although he entertained no doubt as to its truth, he nevertheless relates another - and a Germanic - seven sleepers' legend, the scene of which he places in the remotest part of Germania.  He narrates (I. 4):
 
 "As my pen is still occupied with Germany, I deem it proper, in connection with some other miracles, to mention one which there is on the lips of everybody. In the remotest western boundaries of Germany is to be seen near the sea-strand under a high rock a cave where seven men have been sleeping no one knows how long. They are in the deepest sleep and uninfluenced by time, not only as to their bodies but also as to their garments, so that they are held in great honor by the savage and ignorant people, since time for so many years has left no trace either on their bodies or on their clothes. To judge from their dress they must be Romans. When a man from curiosity tried to undress one of them, it is said that his arm at once withered, and this punishment spread such a terror that nobody has since then dared to touch them. Doubtless it will some day be apparent why Divine Providence has so long preserved them. Perhaps by their preaching - for they are believed to be none other than Christians -- this people shall once more be called to salvation. In the vicinity of this place dwell the race of the Skritobinians ('the Ski-Finns')."

In chapter 6 Paul makes the following additions, which will be found to be of importance to our theme:

"Not far from that sea-strand which I mentioned as lying far to the west (in the most remote Germany), where the boundless ocean extends, is found the unfathomably deep eddy which we traditionally call the navel of the sea. Twice a day it swallows the waves, and twice it vomits them forth again. Often, we are assured, ships are drawn into this eddy so violently that they look like arrows flying through the air, and frequently they perish in this abyss. But sometimes, when they are on the point of being swallowed up, they are driven back with the same terrible swiftness."
 
From what Paul relates we learn that in the eighth century the common belief  ('on the lips of everybody') prevailed among the heathen Germans that in the neighborhood of that ocean-maelstrom, caused by Hvergelmir ("the roaring kettle"), seven men slept from time immemorial under a rock. How far the heathens  believed that these men were Romans and Christians, or whether this feature is to be attributed to a conjecture by Christianized Germans, and came through influence from the Christian version of the legend of the seven sleepers, is a question which it is not necessary to discuss at present. That they are some day to awake to preach Christianity to "the stubborn," still heathen Germanic tribes is manifestly a supposition on the part of Paul himself, and he does not present it as anything else. It has nothing to do with the saga in its heathen form.
 
The first question now is: Has the heathen tradition in regard to the seven sleepers, which, according to the testimony of the Longobardian historian, was common among the heathens of the eighth century, since then disappeared without leaving any traces in our mythic records?

The answer is: Traces of it reappear in Saxo, in Adam of Bremen, in Norse and German popular belief, and in Völuspá. When compared with one another these traces are sufficient to determine the character and original place of the tradition in the epic of the Germanic mythology.

In Saxo's account of King Gorm's and Thorkil's journey to and in the lower world, they and their companions are permitted to visit the abodes of the damned and the fields of bliss, along with the world-fountains, and to see the treasures preserved in their vicinity. In the same realm where these fountains are found there is, says Saxo, a tabernaculum within which still more precious treasures are preserved. It is an uberioris thesauri secretarium, "a private chamber with a yet richer treasure." The Danish adventurers also entered here. The treasury was also an armory, and contained weapons suited to be borne by warriors of superhuman size. The owners and makers of these arms were also there, but they were perfectly quiet and as immovable as lifeless figures. Still they were not dead, but made the impression of being half-dead (semineces). By the enticing beauty and value of the treasures, and partly, too, by the dormant condition of the owners, the Danes were betrayed into an attempt to secure some of these precious things. Even the usually cautious Thorkil set a bad example and put his hand on a garment (amiculo manum inserens). We are not told by Saxo whether the garment covered anyone of those sleeping in the treasury, nor is it directly stated that the touching with the hand produced any disagreeable consequences for Thorkil. But further on Saxo relates that Thorkil became unrecognizable, because a withering or emaciation (marcor) had changed his body and the features of his face.

With this account in Saxo we must compare what we read in Adam of Bremen (Book 4)  about the Frisian adventurers who tried to plunder treasures belonging to giants who in the middle of the day lay concealed in subterranean caves (meridiano tempore latitantes antris subterraneis). This account must also have conceived the owners of the treasures as sleeping while the plundering took place, for not before they were on their way back were the Frisians pursued by the plundered party or by other lower-world beings. Still, all but one succeeded in getting back to their ships. Adam asserts that they were such beings quos nostri cyclopes appellant ("which among us are called cyclops"), that they, in other words, were gigantic smiths, who accordingly themselves had made the untold amount of golden treasures which the Frisians saw there. These northern cyclops, he says, dwelt within solid walls, surrounded by a water, to which, according to Adam of Bremen, one first comes after traversing the land of frost (provincia frigoris), and after passing that Euripus, "in which the water of the ocean flows back to its mysterious fountain" (ad initia quaedam fontis sui arcani recurrens), "this deep subterranean abyss wherein the ebbing streams of the sea, according to report, were swallowed up to return," and which "with most violent force drew the unfortunate seamen down into the lower world" (infelices nautos vehementissimo impetu traxit ad Chaos).

It is evident that what Paul the Deacon, Adam of Bremen, and Saxo here relate must be referred to the same tradition. All three refer the scene of these strange things and events to the "most remote part of Germany". According to all three reports, the boundless ocean washes the shores of this saga-land which has to be traversed in order to get to "the sleepers," to "the men half-dead and resembling lifeless images," to "those concealed in the middle of the day in subterranean caves." Paul assures us that they are in a cave under a rock in the neighborhood of the famous maelstrom which sucks the billows of the sea into itself and spews them out again. Adam makes his Frisian adventurers come near being swallowed up by this maelstrom before they reach the caves of treasures where the cyclops in question dwell; and Saxo locates their tabernacle, filled with weapons and treasures, to a region which we have already recognized as belonging to Mimir's lower-world realm, and situated in the neighborhood of the sacred subterranean fountains (See Gudmund of Glæsisvellir).

In the northern part of Mimir's domain, consequently in the vicinity of the Hvergelmir fountain,  from and to which all waters find their way, and which is the source of the famous maelstrom, there stands, according to Völuspá 37, a golden hall in which Sindri's kinsmen have their home. Sindri is, as we know, like his brother Brokk and others of his kinsmen, an artist of antiquity, a cyclops, to use the language of Adam of Bremen. The Northern records and the Latin chronicles thus correspond in the statement that in the neighborhood of the maelstrom or of its subterranean fountain, beneath a rock and in a golden hall, or in subterranean caves filled with gold, certain men who are subterranean artisans dwell. Paul the Deacon makes a "curious" person who had penetrated into this abode disrobe one of the sleepers clad in "Roman" clothes, and for this he is punished with a withered arm. Saxo makes Thorkil put his hand on a splendid garment which he sees there, and Thorkil returns from his journey with an emaciated body, and is so lean and lank as not to be recognized.
The legend has preserved the connection found in the myth between the above meaning and the idea of a resurrection of the dead. But in the myth concerning Mimir's seven sons (the seven dwarves) this idea is most intimately connected with the myth itself, and is, with epic logic, united with the whole mythological system. In the legend, on the other hand, the resurrection idea is put on as a trade-mark. The seven men in Ephesus are lulled into their long sleep, and are waked again to appear before Theodosius, the emperor, to preach a sermon illustrated by their own fate against the false doctrine which tries to deny the resurrection of the dead.
Gregorius says that he is the first who recorded in the Latin language this miracle, as yet unknown to the Church of Western Europe. As his authority he quotes "a certain Syrian" who had interpreted the story for him. The story appeared in several Syrian sources before Gregory's lifetime (Jacob of Sarug in Acta Santorum, Symeon Metaphrastes, Land's Anecdota, iii. 87ff,  Barhebraeus, Chron. eccles. i. 142ff., and Assemani, Bib. Or. i. 335ff.). Another 6th-century version, in a Syrian manuscript in the British Museum (Cat. Syr. Mss, p. 1090), gives eight sleepers. There are considerable variations as to their names.

Even so, the contents may well be borrowed from the Germanic mythology. That Syria or Asia Minor was the scene of its transformation into a Christian legend is possible, and is not surprising. During and immediately after the time to which the legend itself refers the resurrection of the seven sleepers, the time of Theodosius, the Roman Orient, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt were full of Germanic warriors who had permanent quarters there. A Notitia dignitatu [Register of Dignitaries] from this age speaks of hosts of Goths, Alamannians, Franks, Chamavians, and Vandals, who there had fixed military quarters. There then stood an ala Francorum, a cohors Alamannorum, a cohors Chamavorum, an ala Vandilorum, a cohors Gothorum, and no doubt there, as elsewhere in the Roman Empire, great provinces were colonized by Germanic veterans and other immigrants. Nor must we neglect to remark that the legend refers the falling asleep of the seven men to the time of Decius. Decius fell in battle against the Goths, who, a few years later, invaded Asia Minor and captured among other places also Ephesus. The influence of the Germanic tribes in this region is confirmed by Gibbons in his Of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

In Skáldskaparmál 43, Loki pits two rival bands of smiths against each other. They are the Sons of Ivaldi and the brothers, Brokk and Sindri. The latter forge Thor’s hammer Mjöllnir, and thereby win the competition.  Völuspá 36 informs us that Sindri's golden hall stands on Nidavellir, "Nidi's plains" near the giant Brimir (Mimir or Ymir's) beer-hall in Hel.  There are compelling reasons for assuming that the ancient artisans Brokk and Sindri are identical with Dáinn and Dvalinn, the ancient artisans created by Mimir. This conclusion is based on the following:
 
Dvalinn is mentioned by the side of Dáinn both in Hávamál 143 and in Grímnismál 33; also in the sagas, where they make treasures in company. Both the names are clearly epithets which point to the mythic destiny of the ancient artists in question. Dáinn means "the dead one," and in analogy with this we must interpret Dvalinn as "the dormant one," "the one slumbering" (cp. the Old Swedish dvale, sleep, unconscious condition). Their fates have made them the representatives of death and sleep, a sort of equivalent of the Greek Thanatos and Hypnos.
 
In Hyndluljóð 7, the artists who made Frey's golden boar are called Dáinn and Nabbi. In the Prose Edda (Skáldskaparmál 43) they are called Brokk and Sindri.
 
Thus we arrive at the following parallels:
 
Dáinn and Dvalinn made treasures together;
Brokk and Sindri made Frey's golden boar;
Dáinn and Nabbi made Frey's golden boar; 
 
and the conclusion we draw from this is that in our mythology, in which there is such a plurality of names, Dvalinn, Sindri, and Nabbi are the same person, and that Dáinn and Brokk are identical. It should be noted that while Dáinn while is found as the name for a grazing four-footed animal in Grímnismál 33, that Brokkur too has a similar signification (See Vigfusson, Dictionary, where Brokkr is defined as "trotter" i.e. a horse from the verb brokka, to trot, a word of foreign origin). This may point to an original identity of these epithets. Below, I will present further evidence of this identity.
 
It has already been demonstrated that Dvalinn is a son of Mimir. Sindri-Dvalin and his kinsmen are therefore Mimir's offspring (Míms synir—Völuspá 45). The golden citadel situated near the fountain of the maelstrom is therefore inhabited by the sons of Mimir.
 
According to Sólarljóð 56, the sons of Niði come toward Hel from this region (from the north in Mimir's domain).  They are seven in number, as are the famous band of dwarves in Grimm's fairy-tales:

In the same region Mimir's daughter Night has her hall, where she takes her rest after her journey across the heavens is done. As Mimir's son, Dvalin, "the sleeper," is Night's brother. Her citadel is probably identical with the one in which Dvalin and his brothers sleep.  According to Saxo (Book 8), voices of women are heard in the tabernaculum glittering with weapons and treasures, belonging to men who sleep among weapons too large for those of human stature, when Thorkil and his men come to plunder the treasures there. If not the voices of Night and her sisters, then those of the wave-giantesses who turn the great World-Mill. Solarljóð 57 and 58 speak of these tormented women, slaving near Hvergelmir under Yggdrasil's northern root.
 
Night has her court and her attendant sisters in the Germanic mythology, the daughters of Gudmund-Mimir are said to be twelve in number.  The "sleeping castle" of Germanic mythology is therefore situated in Night's native land.

Mimir, as we know, was the ward of the middle root of the world-tree. His seven sons, representing the changes experienced by the world-tree and nature annually, have with him guarded and tended the holy tree and watered its root with aurgum forsi from the subterranean horn, "Valfather's pledge.' [Völuspá 27 and 28]. When the god-clans became foes, and the Vanir seized weapons against the Aesir, Mimir was slain, and the world-tree, losing its wise guardian, became subject to the influence of time. It suffers in crown and root (Grímnismál), and as it is ideally identical with creation itself, both the natural and the moral, so toward the close of the period of this world it will exhibit the same dilapidated condition as nature and the moral world then are to reveal.

Logic demanded that when the world-tree lost its chief ward, the lord of the well of wisdom, it should also lose that care which under his direction was bestowed upon it by his seven sons. These, voluntarily or involuntarily, retired, and the story of the seven men who sleep in the citadel full of treasures informs us how they thenceforth spend their time until Ragnarok. The details of the myth telling how they entered into this condition cannot now be found; but it may be in order to point out, as a possible connection with this matter, that one of the older Vanir, Njörd's father, and possibly the same as Mundilfari, had the epithet Svafur, Svafurþorinn (Fjölsvinnsmál 8). Svafur means sopitor, the sleeper, and Svafurþorinn seems to refer to svefnþorn, "sleep-thorn." According to the traditions, a person could be put to sleep by laying a "sleep-thorn" in his ear, and he then slept until it was taken out or fell out, (Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans ch. 7 and in Fáfnismál 43).

Popular traditions scattered over Sweden, Denmark, and Germany have to this very day been preserved, on the lips of the common people, of the men sleeping among weapons and treasures in underground chambers or in rocky halls. A Swedish tradition makes them equipped not only with weapons, but also with horses which in their stalls abide the day when their masters are to awake and sally forth. Common to the most of these traditions, both the Northern and the German, is the feature that this is to happen when the greatest distress is at hand, or when the end of the world approaches and the day of judgment comes. Jakob Grimm in  his Deutsche Mythologie, chapter 32, discusses the various legends of heroes sleeping in hills. Of special importance to the subject under discussion, the popular tradition in certain parts of Germany seems to have preserved a feature from the heathen myths. When the heroes who have slept through centuries awake and come forth, the trumpets of the last day sound and a great battle with the powers of evil is imminent, an immensely old tree, which has withered, grows green again, and a happier age begins. The same concepts are contained in the Ragnarök sequence at the end of Völuspá.
 
This immensely old tree, which is withered at the close of the present period of the world, and which is to become green again in a happier age after a decisive conflict between the good and evil, can be no other than the world-tree of Germanic mythology, the Yggdrasil of our Eddas. The angel trumpets, at whose blasts the men who sleep within the mountains sally forth, have their prototype in Heimdall's horn, which proclaims the destruction of the world; and the battle to be fought is the Ragnarök conflict, clad in Christian robes, between the gods and the destroyers of the world.

Here Mimir's seven sons also have their task to perform. The last great struggle also concerns the lower world, whose regions of bliss demand protection against the thurs-clans of Niflhel, the more so since these very regions of bliss constitute the new earth, which after Ragnarok rises from the sea to become the abode of a better race of men. The "wall rock" of the Hvergelmir fountain, known as Nidafjöll ("Nidi's mountains') and its "stone gates" (Völuspá 48 - veggberg, steindyr) require defenders able to wield those immensely large swords which are kept in the sleeping castle on Night's native land, and Sindri-Dvalin is remembered not only as the artist of antiquity, spreader of Mimir's runic wisdom, enemy of Loki, and father of the man-loving dises, but also as a hero. The name of the horse he rode, and probably is to ride in the Ragnarök conflict, is, according to a strophe cited in Skáldskaparmál 72, Móðinn.

This seems to underpin the sense of Völuspá 45:
 

When Ragnarok is at hand, the aged and abused world-tree trembles, and Heimdall's trumpet, until then kept in the deepest shade of the tree, is once more in the hand of the god, and at a world-piercing blast from this trumpet Mimir's seven sons start up from their sleep and arm themselves to take part in the last conflict. This is to end with the victory of the good; the world-tree will grow green again and flourish under the care of its former keepers; "all evil shall then cease, and Baldur shall come back." The Germanic myth in regard to the seven sleepers is thus most intimately connected with the myth concerning the return of the dead Baldur and of the other dead men from the lower world, with the idea of resurrection and the regeneration of the world. It forms an integral part of the great epic of Germanic mythology, and could not be spared. If the world-tree is to age during the historical epoch, and if the present period of time is to progress toward ruin, then this must have its epic cause in the fact that the keepers of the chief root of the tree were severed by the course of events from their important occupation. Therefore Mimir dies; therefore his sons sink into the sleep of ages. But it is necessary that they should wake and resume their occupation, for there is to be a regeneration, and the world-tree is to bloom with new freshness.
 
Dvalinn is mentioned by the side of Dáinn both in Hávamál 143 and in Grímnismál 33; also in the Fornaldarsagas, where they make treasures in company. Both the names are clearly epithets which point to the mythic destiny of the ancient artists in question. Dáinn means "the dead one," and in analogy with this we must interpret Dvalinn as "the dormant one," "the one slumbering" (cp. the Old Swedish dvale, sleep, unconscious condition). Their fates have made them the representatives of death and sleep, a sort of equivalent of the Greek Thanatos and Hypnos. As such they appear in the allegorical strophes incorporated in Grímnismál 33, which, describing how the world-tree suffers and grows old, make Dáinn and Dvalinn, "death" and "slumber," get their food from its branches, while Nidhogg and other serpents devour its roots.