Back in the days before Christianity came to these shores, the Saxon bards would delight in standing before a blazing fire to tell elaborate tales of their gods and heroes. One can imagine the scene as one of these tales unfolded: the tale of Wayland the Smith. Wayland was the son of the great God-Giant, Wade, King of the Finns. When he was very young his father sent him to be apprenticed to the greatest of master metalworkers, the dwarves of the Icelandic Mountains. Wayland learnt quickly and, as he grew up, he began to outshine even his tutors. When his apprenticeship came to an end, Wayland went to live with his two brothers, Egil and Slagfid, at their hunting lodge deep in the Forest of Wolfdales. Every day the three brothers set out on their skates to go hunting. One particularly frosty morning, however, it was not deer or boar that they discovered in the wilderness, but three lovely princesses. These three beauties sat very quietly, spinning on the shores of Lake Wolfsiar. Egil recognised them at once as being no ordinary Royal ladies. They were swan-maidens who had flown in from Murkwood. Their swan-forms lay down by the water’s edge. Creeping through the reeds, the three brothers seized these magical skins and thus the maidens too, for without their avine halves they were powerless to escape
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