In regard to the person who enticed Syritha into the snare laid by the giant, Saxo is not quite certain that it was a woman. Others think, he says, that it was a man in the guise of a woman.
It has long since attracted the attention of mythologists that in this narrative there are found two names, Otharus and Syritha, which seem to refer to the myth concerning Freyja. Otharus is no doubt a Latinised form of Ottar, and, as is well known, the only one who had this name in the mythology is, as stated, Freyja's lover and husband. Syritha, on the other hand, may be a Latinised form of Freyja's epithet Syr, in which Saxo presumably supposed he had found an abbreviated form of Syri (Siri, Sigrid). In Saxo's narrative Syritha is abducted by a giant (_gigas_), with the aid of an ally whom he had procured among Freyja's attendants. In the mythology Freyja is abducted by a giant, and, as it appears from Völuspa's words, likewise by the aid of some ally who was in Freyja's service, for it is there said that the gods hold council as to who it could have been who "gave," delivered Freyja to the race of the giants (_hverr hefdi ætt jötuns Óds mey gefna_). In Saxo Otharus is of lower descent than Syritha. Saxo has not made him a son of a king, but a youth of humble birth as compared with his bride; and his courage to look up to Syritha, Saxo remarks, can only be explained by the great deeds he had performed or by his reliance on his agreeable manners and his eloquence (_sive gestarum rerum magnitudine sive comitatis et facundiæ fiducia accensus_). In the mythology _Ódr_ was of lower birth than Freyja: he did not by birth belong to the number of higher gods; and Svipdag had, as we know, never seen Asgard before he arrived there under the circumstances described in Fjölsvinnsmal. That the most beautiful of all the goddesses, and the one second in rank to Frigg alone, she who is particularly desired by all powers, the sister of the harvest god Frey, the daughter of Njord, the god of wealth, she who with Odin shares the privilege of choosing heroes on the battlefield--that she does not become the wife of an Asa-god, but "is married to the man called _Odr_," would long since have been selected by the mythologist as a question both interesting and worthy of investigation had they cared to devote any attention to epic coherence and to premises and _dénouement_ in the mythology in connection with the speculations on the signification of the myths as symbols of nature or on their ethical meaning. The view would then certainly have been reached that this _Odr_ in the epic of the mythology must have been the author of exploits which balanced his humbler descent, and the mythologists would thus have been driven to direct the investigation first of all to the question whether Freyja, who we know was for some time in the power of the giants, but was rescued therefrom, did not find as her liberator this very _Odr_, who afterwards became her husband, and whether _Odr_ did not by this very act gain her love and become entitled to obtain her hand. The adventure which Saxo relates actually dovetails itself into and fills a gap in that chain of events which are the result of the analysis of Grogalder and Fjölsvinnsmal. We understand that the young Svipdag is alarmed, and considers the task imposed on him by the stepmother to find Menglad far too great for his strength, if it is necessary to seek Menglad in Jotunheim and rescue her thence. We understand why on his arrival at Asgard he is so kindly received, after he has gone through the formality of giving his name, when we know that he comes not only as the feared possessor of the Volund sword, but also as the one who has restored to Asgard the most lovely and most beautiful asynje. We can then understand why the gate, which holds fast every uninvited guest, opens as of itself for him, and why the savage wolf-dogs lick him. That his words: _thadan_ (from his paternal home) _rákumk vinda kalda vegu_, are to Menglad a sufficient answer to her question in regard to his previous journeys can be understood if Svipdag has, as Ottar, searched through the frost-cold Jotunheim's eastern mountain districts to find Menglad; and we can then see that Menglad in Fjölsvinnsmal can speak of her meeting with Svipdag at the gate of Asgard as a "meeting again," although Svipdag never before had been in Asgard. And that Menglad receives him as a husband to whom she is already married, with whom she is now to be "united for ever" (Fjölsvinnsmal, 58), is likewise explained by the improvised wedding which Otharus celebrated with Syritha before she returns to her father.
