Wayland the Smith

Wayland the Smith — Weland to the Anglo-Saxons, Völundr in the Norse — is the supernatural master-smith of Germanic legend, a figure of dark genius and terrible vengeance. The myth tells how he was captured by a king, hamstrung to keep him captive at the forge, and how he wrought a fearful revenge before escaping into the air on wings of his own making. Anglo-Saxon England knew him well: he is carved on the eighth-century Franks Casket and named in 'Beowulf', where the finest mail-shirt is reckoned 'the work of Weland'.

In Oxfordshire (historically Berkshire) his name clings to Wayland's Smithy, a Neolithic chambered long barrow on the ancient Ridgeway near the Uffington White Horse. Tradition — already old when the Saxons named the place — held that a traveller whose horse had cast a shoe need only leave the beast there with a coin overnight, and by morning the unseen smith would have shod it. The legend binds the old god of the forge to one of the most ancient monuments in the English landscape.