Wayland, the Smith (A.S. Veland; old Norse, Völundr; Ger. Wieland), a hero of German saga, who was originally a kind of demi-god in popular mythology, with points of identity with the Greek Hephæstus and Dædalus. He was son of the sea-giant Wade, a nephew of King Wilkinus, and was first bound apprentice to the famous smith Mimir. Then he was carried across the sea to the dwarfs, whom he soon surpassed in their own science. He dwelt a long time in Ulfðaler along with his two brothers, Eigil, the best archer, and Slagfðir, and here they met three swan-maidens, with whom they lived for seven years, until these flew away to follow battles as Walkyries. Afterwards Wayland came to King Nidung, who cut the sinews of his feet and put him in prison, for which he revenged himself by putting the king's two sons to death, and violating his daughter Baduhild, who afterwards gave birth to Wittich. Wayland then flew away in a feather-robe, which he himself manufactured, and which his brother Eigil had tried first, only to be precipitated to the ground. By skilfully piecing together the various old legends, Simrock has produced the Saga of Wayland as a whole in his poem Wieland der Schmied (1835), and in the 4th part of his Heldenbuch (1843). The legend is often alluded to in Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, English, and German poems, and even old French poems tell of Galant the smith. Wayland Smith's Cave, a two-chambered megalithic monument, near the White Horse in Berkshire, is immortalised in Kenilworth.
See Depping and Michel, Veland le Forgeron (1838); Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie; Muller, Mythologie der deutschen Heldensage (1886); and Golther, Die Wielandsage (Germania, vol. xxxiii.).