the victims, which Nidhog, the winged demon of the lower world, there
sucks, are called _náir framgenga_, "the corpses of those departed."

It is manifest that the word _nár_ thus used cannot have its common
meaning, but must be used in a special mythological sense, which had its
justification and its explanation in the heathen doctrine in regard to
the lower world.

It not unfrequently happens that law-books preserve ancient
significations of words not found elsewhere in literature. The Icelandic
law-book Grágás (ii. 185) enumerates four categories within which the
word _nár_ is applicable to a person yet living. Gallows-_nár_, can be
called, even while living, the person who is hung; grave-_nár_, the
person placed in a grave; skerry-_nár_ or rock-_nár_ may, while yet
alive, he be called who has been exposed to die on a skerry or rock. Here
the word _nár_ is accordingly applied to persons who are conscious and
capable of suffering, but on the supposition that they are such persons
as have been condemned to a punishment which is not to cease so long as
they are sensitive to it.

And this is the idea on the basis of which the word _náir_ is
mythologically applied to the damned and tortured beings in the lower
world.

If we now take into account that our ancestors believed in a _second_
death, in a slaying of souls in Hades, then we find that this same use of
the word in question, which at first sight could not but seem strange,
is a consistent development of the idea that those banished from Hel's
realms of bliss die a second time, when they are transferred across the
border to Nifelhel and the world of torture. When they are overtaken
by this second death they are for the second time _náir_. And, as this
occurs at the gates of Nifelhel, it was perfectly proper to call the
gates _nágrindr_.

We may imagine that it is terror, despair, or rage which, at the sight
of the Na-gates, severs the bond between the damned spirit and his
Hades-body, and that the former is anxious to soar away from its terrible
destination. But however this may be, the avenging powers have runes,
which capture the fugitive, put chains on his Hades-body, and force him
to feel with it. The Sun-song, a Christian song standing on the scarcely
crossed border of heathendom, speaks of damned ones whose breasts were
risted (carved) with bloody runes, and Havamál of runes which restore
consciousness to _náir_. Such runes are known by Odin. If he sees in a
tree a gallows-nár (_virgil-nár_), then he can rist runes so that the
body comes down to him and talks with him (see No. 70).

  Ef ec se a tre uppi
  vafa virgilná,
  sva ec rist
  oc i runom fác,
  at sa gengr gumi
  oc mælir vith mic (Havamál, 157).

Some of the subterranean _náir_ have the power of motion, and are doomed
to wade in "heavy streams." Among them are perjurers, murderers, and
adulterers (Völuspa, 38). Among these streams is Vadgelmer, in which
they who have slandered others find their far-reaching retribution
(Sigurdarkv., ii. 4). Other _náir_ have the peculiarity which their
appellation suggests, and receive quiet and immovable, stretched on iron
benches, their punishment (see below). Saxo, who had more elaborate
descriptions of the Hades of heathendom than those which have been handed
down to our time, translated or reproduced in his accounts of Hadding's
and Gorm's journeys in the lower world the word _náir_ with _exsanguia
simulacra_ (p. 426).

That place after death with which Skirner threatens the stubborn Gerd is
also situated within the Na-gates, but still it has another character
than Nastrands and the other abodes of torture which are situated below
Nifelhel. It would also have been unreasonable to threaten a person
who rejects a marriage proposal with those punishments which overtake
criminals and nithings. The Hades division, which Skirner describes as
awaiting the giant-daughter, is a subterranean Jotunheim, inhabited by
deceased ancestors and kinsmen of Gerd.

Mythology has given to the giants as well as to men a life hereafter.
As a matter of fact, mythology never destroys life. The horse which was
cremated with its master on his funeral pyre, and was buried with him
in his grave-mound, afterwards brings the hero down to Hel. When the
giant who built the Asgard wall got into conflict with the gods, Thor's
hammer sent him "down below Nifelhel" (_nidr undir Niflhel_--Gylfag.,
ch. 43.) King Gorm saw in the lower world the giant Geirrod and both
his daughters. According to Grimnersmal (str. 31), frost-giants dwell
under one of Ygdrasil's roots--consequently in the lower world; and
Forspjallsljod says that hags (giantesses) and thurses (giants), _náir_,
dwarfs, and swarthy elves go to sleep under the world-tree's farthest
root on the north border of Jormungrund[9] (the lower world), when Dag on
a chariot sparkling with precious stones leaves the lower world, and when
Nat after her journey on the heavens has returned to her home (str. 24,
28). It is therefore quite in order if we, in Skirner's description of
the realm which after death awaits the giant-daughter offending the gods,
rediscover that part of the lower world to which the drowned primeval
ancestors of the giant-maid were relegated when Bor's sons opened the
veins of Ymer's throat (Sonatorr., str. 3) and then let the billows of
the ocean wash clean the rocky ground of earth, before they raised the
latter from the sea and there created the inhabitable Midgard.

The frost-giants (rimethurses) are the primeval giants (_gigantes_)
of the Teutonic mythology, so called because they sprang from the
frost-being Ymer, whose feet by contact with each other begat their
progenitor, the "strange-headed" monster Thrudgelmer (Vafthr. 29, 33).
Their original home in chaos was Nifelheim. From the Hvergelmer fountain
there the Elivagar rivers flowed to the north and became hoar-frost and
ice, which, melted by warmth from the south, were changed into drops of
venom, which again became Ymer, called by the giants Aurgelmer (Vafthr.,
31; Gylfag., 5). Thrudgelmer begat Bergelmer countless winters before
the earth was made (Vafthr., 29; Gylf., ch. 7). Those members of the
giant race living in Jotunheim on the surface of the earth, whose memory
goes farthest back in time, can remember Bergelmer when he _a var ludr um
lagidr_. At least Vafth-rudmer is able to do this (Vafthr., 35).

When the original giants had to abandon the fields populated by Bor's
sons (Völuspa, 4), they received an abode corresponding as nearly as
possible to their first home, and, as it seems, identical with it,
excepting that Nifelheim now, instead of being a part of chaos, is an
integral part of the cosmic universe, and the extreme north of its Hades.
As a Hades-realm it is also called Nifelhel.

In the subterranean land with which Skirner threatens Gerd, and which
he paints for her in appalling colours, he mentions three kinds of
beings--(1) frost-giants, the ancient race of giants; (2) demons; (3)
giants of the later race.

The frost-giants occupy together one abode, which, judging from its
epithet, hall (_höll_), is the largest and most important there; while
those members of the younger giant clan who are there, dwell in single
scattered abodes, called gards.[10] Gerd is also there to have a separate
abode (str. 28).

Two frost-giants are mentioned by name, which shows that they
are representatives of their clan. One is named Rimgrimner
(_Hrímgrimnir_--str. 35), the other Rimner (_Hrímnir_--str. 28).

Grimner is one of Odin's many surnames (Grimnersmal, 47, and several
other places; cp. Egilsson's Lex. Poet.). Rimgrimner means the same
as if Odin had said Rim-Odin, for Odin's many epithets could without
hesitation be used by the poets in paraphrases, even when these referred
to a giant. But the name Odin was too sacred for such a purpose. Upon
the whole the skalds seem piously to have abstained from using that name
in paraphrases, even when the latter referred to celebrated princes
and heroes. Glum Geirason is the first known exception to the rule. He
calls a king _Málm-Odinn_. The above epithet places Rimgrimner in the
same relation to the frost-giants as Odin-Grimner sustains to the asas;
it characterises him as the race-chief and clan-head of the former,
and in this respect gives him the same place as Thrudgelmer occupies
in Vafthrudnersmal. Ymer cannot be regarded as the special clan-chief
of the frost-giants, since he is also the progenitor of other classes
of beings (see Vafthr., 33, and Völuspa, 9; cp. Gylfag., ch. 14). But
they have other points of resemblance. Thrudgelmer is "strange-headed"
in Vafthrudnersmal; Rimgrimner is "three-headed" in Skirnersmal (str.
31; cp. with str. 35). Thus we have in one poem a "strange-headed"
Thrudgelmer as progenitor of the frost-giants; in the other poem a
"three-headed" Rimgrimner as progenitor of the same frost-giants.
The "strange-headed" giant of the former poem, which is a somewhat
indefinite or obscure phrase, thus finds in "three-headed" of the latter
poem its further definition. To this is to be added a power which is
possessed both by Thrudgelmer and Rimgrimner, and also a weakness for
which both Thrudgelmer and Rimgrimner are blamed. Thrudgelmer's father
begat children without possessing _gygjar gaman_ (Vafthr., 32). That
Thrudgelmer inherited this power from his strange origin and handed
it down to the clan of frost-giants, and that he also inherited the
inability to provide for the perpetuation of the race in any other way,
is evident from Allvismal, str. 2. If we make a careful examination, we
find that Skirnersmal presupposes this same positive and negative quality
in Rimgrimner, and consequently Thrudgelmer and Rimgrimner must be
identical.

Gerd, who tries to reject the love of the fair and blithe Vana-god,
will, according to Skirner's threats, be punished therefor in the lower
world with the complete loss of all that is called love, tenderness, and
sympathy. Skirner says that she either must live alone and without a
husband in the lower world, or else vegetate in a useless cohabitation
(_nara_) with the three-headed giant (str. 31). The threat is gradually
emphasised to the effect that she _shall_ be possessed by Rimgrimner, and
this threat is made immediately after the solemn conjuration (str. 34) in
which Skirner invokes the inhabitants of Nifelhel and also of the regions
of bliss, as witnesses, that she shall never gladden or be gladdened by a
man in the physical sense of this word.

  Hear, ye giants,                      Heyri iotnar,
  Hear, frost-giants,                   heyri hrimthursar,
  Ye sons of Suttung--                  synir Suttunga,
  Nay, thou race of the Asa-god![11]--  sjalfir áslithar
  how I forbid,                         hve ec fyr byd,
  how I banish                          hve ec fyrir banna
  man's gladness from the maid,         manna glaum mani
  man's enjoyment from the maid!        manna nyt mani.
  Rimgrimner is the giant's name        Hrímgrimner heiter thurs,
  who shall possess thee                er thic hafa scal
  below the Na-gates.                   fyr nagrindr nedan.

More plainly, it seems to me, Skirner in speaking to Gerd could not have
expressed the negative quality of Rimgrimner in question. Thor also
expresses himself clearly on the same subject when he meets the dwarf
Alvis carrying home a maid over whom Thor has the right of marriage. Thor
says scornfully that he thinks he discovers in Alvis something which
reminds him of the nature of thurses, although Alvis is a dwarf and
the thurses are giants, and he further defines wherein this similarity
consists: _thursa lici thicci mér á ther vera; erat thu till brudar
borinn_: "Thurs' likeness you seem to me to have; you were not born to
have a bride." So far as the positive quality is concerned it is evident
from the fact that Rimgrimner is the progenitor of the frost-giants.

Descended to Nifelhel, Gerd must not count on a shadow of friendship and
sympathy from her kinsmen there. It would be best for her to confine
herself in the solitary abode which there awaits her, for if she but
looks out of the gate, staring gazes shall meet her from Rimner and all
the others down there; and she shall there be looked upon with more
hatred than Heimdal, the watchman of the gods, who is the wise, always
vigilant foe of the rime-thurses and giants. But whether she is at home
or abroad, demons and tormenting spirits shall never leave her in peace.
She shall be bowed to the earth by _tramar_ (evil witches). _Morn_ (a
Teutonic Eumenides, the agony of the soul personified) shall fill her
with his being. The spirits of sickness--such also dwell there; they
once took an oath not to harm Balder (Gylf., ch. 50)--shall increase her
woe and the flood of her tears. Tope (insanity), Ope (hysteria), Tjausul
and Othale (constant restlessness), shall not leave her in peace. These
spirits are also counted as belonging to the race of thurses, and hence
it is said in the rune-song that _thurs veldr kvenna kvillu_, "thurs
causes sickness of women." In this connection it should be remembered
that the daughter of Loke, the ruler of Nifelhel, is also the queen of
diseases. Gerd's food shall be more loathsome to her than the poisonous
serpent is to man, and her drink shall be the most disgusting. Miserable
she shall crawl among the homes of the Hades giants, and up to a mountain
top, where Are, a subterranean eagle-demon has his perch (doubtless the
same Are which, according to Völuspa [47], is to join with his screeches
in Rymer's shield-song, when the Midgard-serpent writhes in giant-rage,
and the ship of death, Naglfar, gets loose). Up there she shall sit early
in the morning, and constantly turn her face in the same direction--in
the direction where Hel is situated, that is, south over Mt. Hvergelmer,
toward the subterranean regions of bliss. Toward Hel she shall long to
come in vain:

  Ara thufo á
  scaltu ár sitja
  horfa ok snugga Heljar til.

"On Are's perch thou shalt early sit, turn toward Hel, and long to get to
Hel."

By the phrase _snugga Heljar til_, the skald has meant something far more
concrete than to "long for death." Gerd is here supposed to be dead, and
within the Na-gates. To long for death, she does not need to crawl up to
"Are's perch." She must subject herself to these nightly exertions, so
that when it dawns in the foggy Nifelhel, she may get a glimpse of that
land of bliss to which she may never come; she who rejected a higher
happiness--that of being with the gods and possessing Frey's love.

I have been somewhat elaborate in the presentation of this description
in Skirnersmal, which has not hitherto been understood. I have done so,
because it is the only evidence left to us of how life was conceived in
the forecourt of the regions of torture, Nifelhel, the land situated
below Ygdrasil's northern root, beyond and below the mountain, where
the root is watered by Hvergelmer. It is plain that the author of
Skirnersmal, like that of Vafthrudnersmal, Grimnersmal, Vegtamskvida,
and Thorsdrapa (as we have already seen), has used the word Hel in the
sense of a place of bliss in the lower world. It is also evident that
with the root under which the frost-giant dwells that one, referred to
by Gylfaginning, can impossibly be meant under which Mimer's glorious
fountain, and Mimer's grove, and all his treasures stored for a future
world, are situated.

[9] With this name of the lower world compare Gudmund-Mimer's abode _á
Grund_ (see No. 45), and _Helligrund_ (Heliand., 44, 22), and _neowla
grund_ (Caedmon, 267, 1, 270, 16).

[10] Compare the phrase _iotna gaurthum i_ (str. 30, 3) with _til
hrimthursa hallar_ (30, 4).

[11] With race of the Asa-god _áslidar_ there can hardly be meant others
than the _ásmegir_ gathered in the lower world around Balder. This is the
only place where the word _áslidar_ occurs.

61.

    THE WORD HEL IN VÖLUSPA. WHO THE INHABITANTS OF HEL ARE.

We now pass to Völuspa, 40 (Hauk's Codex), where the word _Helvegir_
occurs.

One of the signs that Ragnarok and the fall of the world are at hand, is
that the mighty ash Ygdrasil trembles, and that a fettered giant-monster
thereby gets loose from its chains. Which this monster is, whether it is
Garm, bound above the Gnipa cave, or some other, we will not now discuss.
The astonishment and confusion caused by these events among all the
beings of the world, are described in the poem with but few words, but
they are sufficient for the purpose and well calculated to make a deep
impression upon the hearers. Terror is the predominating feeling in those
beings which are not chosen to take part in the impending conflict. They,
on the other hand, for whom the quaking of Ygdrasil is the signal of
battle for life or death, either arm themselves amid a terrible war-cry
for the battle (the giants, str. 41), or they assemble to hold the last
council (the Asas), and then rush to arms.

Two classes of beings are mentioned as seized by terror--the dwarfs, who
stood breathless outside of their stone-doors, and those beings which are
_á Helvegum_. _Helvegir_ may mean the paths or ways in Hel: there are
many paths, just as there are many gates and many rivers. _Helvegir_ may
also mean the regions, districts in Hel (cp. _Austrvegr_, _Sudrvegr_,
_Norvegr_; and Allvism., 10, according to which the Vans call the earth
_vegir_, ways). The author may have used the word in either of these
senses or in both, for in this case it amounts to the same. At all events
it is stated that the inhabitants in Hel are terrified when Ygdrasil
quakes and the unnamed giant-monster gets loose.

  Skelfr Yggdrasils         Quakes Ygdrasil's
  askr standandi,           Ash standing,
  ymr hid alldna tre        The old tree trembles,
  enn iotunn losnar;        The giant gets loose;
  hrædaz allir              All are frightened
  a Helvegum                On the Helways (in Hel's regions)
  adr Surtar thann          ere Surt's spirit (or kinsman)
  sevi of gleypir.          swallows him (namely, the giant).

Surt's spirit, or kinsman (_sevi_, _sefi_ may mean either), is, as has
also hitherto been supposed, the fire. The final episode in the conflict
on Vigrid's plain is that the Muspel-flames destroy the last remnant
of the contending giants. The terror which, when the world-tree quaked
and the unnamed giant got loose, took possession of the inhabitants of
Hel continues so long as the conflict is undecided. Valfather falls,
Frey and Thor likewise; no one can know who is to be victorious. But
the terror ceases when on the one hand the liberated giant-monster is
destroyed, and on the other hand Vidar and Vale, Mode and Magne, survive
the conflict and survive the flames, which do not penetrate to Balder and
_Hödr_ and their protegés in Hel. The word _thann_ (him), which occurs
in the seventh line of the strophe (in the last of the translation) can
impossibly refer to any other than the giant mentioned in the fourth
line (_iotunn_). There are in the strophe only two masculine words to
which the masculine _thann_ can be referred--_iotunn_ and _Yggdrasils
askr_. _Iotunn_, which stands nearest to _thann_, thus has the
preference; and as we have seen that the world-tree falls by neither fire
nor edge (Fjolsv., 20), and as it, in fact, survives the conflagration of
Surt, then _thann_ must naturally be referred to the _iotunn._

Here Völuspa has furnished us with evidence in regard to the position
of Hel's inhabitants towards the contending parties in Ragnarok. They
who are frightened when a giant-monster--a most dangerous one, as it
hitherto had been chained--gets free from its fetters, and they whose
fright is allayed when the monster is destroyed in the conflagration
of the world, such beings can impossibly follow this monster and its
fellow warriors with their good wishes. Their hearts are on the side of
the good powers, which are friendly to mankind. But they do not take an
active part in their behalf; they take no part whatever in the conflict.
This is manifest from the fact that their fright does not cease before
the conflict is ended. Now we know that among the inhabitants in Hel are
the _ásmegir_ Lif and Leifthraser and their offspring, and that they are
not _hertharfir_; they are not to be employed in war, since their very
destiny forbids their taking an active part in the events of this period
of the world (see No. 53). But the text does not permit us to think of
them alone when we are to determine who the beings _á Helvegum_ are. For
the text says that _all_, who are _á Helvegum_, are alarmed until the
conflict is happily ended. What the interpreters of this much abused
passage have failed to see, the seeress in Völuspa has not forgotten,
that, namely, during the lapse of countless thousands of years,
innumerable children and women, and men who never wielded the sword, have
descended to the kingdom of death and received dwellings in Hel, and that
Hel--in the limited local sense which the word hitherto has appeared to
have in the songs of the gods--does not contain warlike inhabitants.
Those who have fallen on the battle-field come, indeed, as shall be shown
later, to Hel, but not to remain there; they continue their journey to
Asgard, for Odin chooses one half of those slain on the battlefield for
his dwelling, and Freyja the other half (Grimnersmal, 14). The chosen
accordingly have Asgard as their place of destination, which they reach
in case they are not found guilty by a sentence which neutralises the
force and effect of the previous choice (see below), and sends them to
die the second death on crossing the boundary to Nifelhel. Warriors who
have not fallen on the battlefield are as much entitled to Asgard as
those fallen by the sword, provided they as heroes have acquired fame and
honour. It might, of course, happen to the greatest general and the most
distinguished hero, the conqueror in hundreds of battles, that he might
die from sickness or an accident, while, on the other hand, it might be
that a man who never wielded a sword in earnest might fall on the field
of battle before he had given a blow. That the mythology should make
the latter entitled to Asgard, but not the former, is an absurdity as
void of support in the records--on the contrary, these give the opposite
testimony--as it is of sound sense. The election contained for the
chosen ones no exclusive privilege. It did not even imply additional
favour to one who, independently of the election, could count on a
place among the einherjes. The election made the person going to battle
_feigr_, which was not a favour, nor could it be considered the opposite.
It might play a royal crown from the head of the chosen one to that of
his enemy, and this could not well be regarded as a kindness. But for the
electing powers of Asgard themselves the election implied a privilege.
The dispensation of life and death regularly belonged to the norns; but
the election partly supplied the gods with an exception to this rule, and
partly it left to Odin the right to determine the fortunes and issues of
battles. The question of the relation between the power of the gods and
that of fate--a question which seemed to the Greeks and Romans dangerous
to meddle with and well-nigh impossible to dispose of--was partly solved
by the Teutonic mythology by the naïve and simple means of dividing the
dispensation of life and death between the divinity and fate, which, of
course, did not hinder that fate always stood as the dark, inscrutable
power in the background of all events. (On election see further, No. 66).

It follows that in Hel's regions of bliss there remained none that were
warriors by profession. Those among them who were not guilty of any of
the sins which the Asa-doctrine stamped as sins unto death passed through
Hel to Asgard, the others through Hel to Nifelhel. All the inhabitants
on Hel's elysian fields accordingly are the _ásmegir_, and the women,
children, and the agents of the peaceful arts who have died during
countless centuries, and who unused to the sword, have no place in the
ranks of the einherjes, and therefore with the anxiety of those waiting
abide the issue of the conflict. Such is the background and contents of
the Völuspa strophe. This would long since have been understood, had not
the doctrine constructed by Gylfaginning in regard to the lower world,
with Troy as the starting-point, bewildered the judgment.

62.

    THE WORD HEL IN ALLVISMAL. THE CLASSES OF BEINGS IN HEL.

In Allvismal occurs the phrases: those _i helio_ and _halir_. The premise
of the poem is that such objects as earth, heaven, moon, sun, night,
wind, fire, &c., are expressed in six different ways, and that each
one of these ways of expression is, with the exclusion of the others,
applicable within one or two of the classes of beings found in the world.
For example, Heaven is called--

  Himinn among men,
  Lyrner among gods,
  Vindofner among Vans,
  Uppheim among giants.
  Elves say Fager-tak (Fairy-roof),
  dwarfs Drypsal (dropping-hall) (str. 12).

In this manner thirteen objects are mentioned, each one with its six
names. In all of the thirteen cases man has a way of his own of naming
the objects. Likewise the giants. No other class of beings has any of the
thirteen appellations in common with them. On the other hand, the Asas
and Vans have the same name for two objects (moon and sun); elves and
dwarfs have names in common for no less than six objects (cloud, wind,
fire, tree, seed, mead); the dwarfs and the inhabitants of the lower
world for three (heaven, sea, and calm). Nine times it is stated how
those in the lower world express themselves. In six of these nine cases
Allvismal refers to the inhabitants of the lower world by the general
expression "those in Hel;" in three cases the poem lets "those in Hel" be
represented by some one of those classes of beings that reside in Hel.
These three are _upregin_ (str. 10), _ásasynir_ (str. 16), and _halir_
(str. 28).

The very name _upregin_ suggests that it refers to beings of a certain
divine rank (the Vans are in Allvismal called _ginnregin_, str. 20, 30)
that have their sphere of activity in the upper world. As they none the
less dwell in the lower world, the appellation must have reference to
beings which have their homes and abiding places in Hel when they are not
occupied with their affairs in the world above. These beings are Nat,
Dag, Mane, Sol.

_Ásasynir_ has the same signification as _ásmegir_. As this is the
case, and as the _ásmegir_ dwell in the lower world and the _ásasynir_
likewise, then they must be identical, unless we should be credulous
enough to assume that there were in the lower world two categories of
beings, both called sons of Asas.

_Halir_, when the question is about the lower world, means the souls of
the dead (Vafthr., 43; see above).

From this we find that Allvismal employs the word Hel in such a manner
that it embraces those regions where Nat and Dag, Mane and Sol, the
living human inhabitants of Mimer's grove, and the souls of departed
human beings dwell. Among the last-named are included also souls of the
damned, which are found in the abodes of torture below Nifelhel, and it
is within the limits of possibility that the author of the poem also
had them in mind, though there is not much probability that he should
conceive them as having a nomenclature in common with gods, _ásmegir_,
and the happy departed. At all events, he has particularly--and probably
exclusively--had in his mind the regions of bliss when he used the word
Hel, in which case he has conformed in the use of the word to Völuspa,
Vafthrudnersmal, Grimnersmal, Skirnersmal, Vegtamskvida, and Thorsdrapa.

63.

    THE WORD HEL IN OTHER PASSAGES. THE RESULT OF THE INVESTIGATION
    FOR THE COSMOGRAPHY AND FOR THE MEANING OF THE WORD HEL. HEL IN
    A LOCAL SENSE THE KINGDOM OF DEATH, PARTICULARLY ITS REALMS OF
    BLISS. HEL IN A PERSONAL SENSE IDENTICAL WITH THE GODDESS OF
    FATE AND DEATH, THAT IS, URD.

While a terrible winter is raging, the gods, according to
Forspjallsljod,[12] send messengers, with Heimdal as chief, down to a
lower-world goddess (dis), who is designated as _Gjöll's_ (the lower
world river's) _Sunna_ (Sol, sun) and as the distributor of the divine
liquids (str. 9, 11) to beseech her to explain to them the mystery of
creation, the beginning of heaven, of Hel, and of the world, life and
death, if she is able (_hlyrnis_, _heliar_, _heims of vissi_, _ártith_,
_æfi_, _aldrtila_). The messengers get only tears as an answer. The poem
divides the universe into three great divisions: heaven, Hel, and the
part lying between Hel and heaven, the world inhabited by mortals. Thus
Hel is here used in its general sense, and refers to the whole lower
world. But here, as wherever Hel has this general signification, it
appears that the idea of regions of punishment is not thought of, but is
kept in the background by the definite antithesis in which the word Hel,
used in its more common and special sense of the subterranean regions
of bliss, stands to Nifelhel and the regions subject to it. It must be
admitted that what the anxious gods wish to learn from the wise goddess
of the lower world must, so far as their desire to know and their fears
concern the fate of Hel, refer particularly to the regions where Urd's
and Mimer's holy wells are situated, for if the latter, which water the
world-tree, pass away, it would mean nothing less than the end of the
world. That the author should make the gods anxious concerning Loke's
daughter, whom they had hurled into the deep abysses of Nifelhel, and
that he should make the wise goddess by _Gjöll_ weep bitter tears over
the future of the sister of the Fenris-wolf, is possible in the sense
that it cannot be refuted by any definite words of the old records; but
we may be permitted to regard it as highly improbable.

Among the passages in which the word Hel occurs in the poetic Edda's
mythological songs we have yet to mention Harbardsljod (str. 27), where
the expression _drepa i Hel_ is employed in the same abstract manner as
the Swedes use the expression "at slå ihjäl," which means simply "to
kill" (it is Thor who threatens to kill the insulting Harbard); and also
Völuspa (str. 42), Fjöllsvinnsmal (str. 25), and Grimnersmal (str. 31).

Völuspa (str. 42), speaks of Goldcomb, the cock which, with its crowing,
wakes those who sleep in Herfather's abode, and of a sooty-red cock
which crows under the earth near Hel's halls. In Fjöllsvinnsmal (str.
25), Svipdag asks with what weapon one might be able to bring down to
Hel's home (_á Heljar sjöt_) that golden cock Vidofner, which sits in
Mimer's tree (the world-tree), and doubtless is identical with Goldcomb.
That Vidofner has done nothing for which he deserves to be punished in
the home of Loke's daughter may be regarded as probable. _Hel_ is here
used to designate the kingdom of death in general, and all that Spivdag
seems to mean is that Vidofner, in case such a weapon could be found,
might be transferred to his kinsman, the sooty-red cock which crows below
the earth. Saxo also speaks of a cock which is found in Hades, and is
with the goddess who has the cowbane stalks when she shows Hadding the
flower-meadows of the lower world, the Elysian fields of those fallen
by the sword, and the citadel within which death does not seem able to
enter (see No. 47). Thus there is at least one cock in the lower world's
realm of bliss. That there should be one also in Nifelhel and in the
abode of Loke's daughter is nowhere mentioned, and is hardly credible,
since the cock, according to an ancient and wide-spread Aryan belief,
is a sacred bird, which is the special foe of demons and the powers of
darkness. According to Swedish popular belief, even of the present time,
the crowing of the cock puts ghosts and spirits to flight; and a similar
idea is found in Avesta (Vendidad, 18), where, in str. 15, Ahuramazda
himself translates the morning song of the cock with the following words:
"Rise, ye men, and praise the justice which is the most perfect! Behold
the demons are put to flight!" Avesta is naïvely out of patience with
thoughtless persons who call this sacred bird (_Parodarsch_) by the
so little respect-inspiring name "Cockadoodledoo" (_Kahrkatâs_). The
idea of the sacredness of the cock and its hostility to demons was also
found among the Aryans of South Europe and survived the introduction of
Christianity. Aurelius Prudentius wrote a _Hymnus ad galli cantum_, and
the cock has as a token of Christian vigilance received the same place on
the church spires as formerly on the world-tree. Nor have the May-poles
forgotten him. But in the North the poets and the popular language
have made the red cock a symbol of fire. Fire has two characters--it
is sacred, purifying, and beneficent, when it is handled carefully and
for lawful purposes. In the opposite case it is destructive. With the
exception of this special instance, nothing but good is reported of the
cocks of mythology and poetry.

Grimnersmal (str. 31) is remarkable from two points of view. It
contains information--brief and scant, it is true, but nevertheless
valuable--in regard to Ygdrasil's three roots, and it speaks of Hel in an
unmistakable, distinctly personal sense.

In regard to the roots of the world-tree and their position, our
investigation so far, regardless of Grimnersmal (str. 31), has produced
the following result:

Ygdrasil has a northern root. This stands over the vast reservoir
Hvergelmer and spreads over Nifelhel, situated north of Hvergelmer and
inhabited by frost-giants. There nine regions of punishment are situated,
among them Nastrands.

Ygdrasil's second root is watered by Mimer's fountain and spreads over
the land where Mimer's fountain and grove are located. In Mimer's grove
dwell those living (not dead) beings called _Ásmegir_ and _Ásasynir_, Lif
and Leifthraser and their offspring, whose destiny it is to people the
regenerated earth.

Ygdrasil's third root stands over Urd's fountain and the subterranean
thingstead of the gods.

The lower world consists of two chief divisions: Nifelhel (with the
regions thereto belonging) and Hel,--Nifelhel situated north of the
Hvergelmer mountain, and Hel south of it. Accordingly both the land where
Mimer's well and grove are situated and the land where Urd's fountain is
found are within the domain Hel.

In regard to the zones or climates, in which the roots are located,
they have been conceived as having a southern and northern. We have
already shown that the root over Hvergelmer is the northern one. That
the root over Urd's fountain has been conceived as the southern one
is manifest from the following circumstances. Eilif Gudrunson, who was
converted to Christianity--the same skald who wrote the purely heathen
Thorsdrapa--says in one of his poems, written after his conversion, that
Christ sits _sunnr at Urdarbrunni_, in the south near Urd's fountain, an
expression which he could not have used unless his hearers had retained
from the faith of their childhood the idea that Urd's fountain was
situated south of the other fountains. Forspjallsljod puts upon Urd's
fountain the task of protecting the world-tree against the devastating
cold during the terrible winter which the poem describes. _Othhrærir
skyldi Urthar geyma mættk at veria mestum thorra._--"Urd's Odreirer
(mead-fountain) proved not to retain strength enough to protect against
the terrible cold." This idea shows that the sap which Ygdrasil's
southern root drew from Urd's fountain was thought to be warmer than the
saps of the other wells. As, accordingly, the root over Urd's well was
the southern, and that over Hvergelmer and the frost-giants the northern,
it follows that Mimer's well was conceived as situated between those two.
The memory of this fact Gylfaginning has in its fashion preserved, where
in chapter 15 it says that Mimer's fountain is situated where Ginungagap
formerly was--that is, between the northern Nifelheim and the southern
warmer region (Gylfaginning's "Muspelheim").

Grimnersmal (str. 31) says:

  Thrir rætr standa        Three roots stand
  a thria vega             on three ways
  undan asci Yggdrasils:   below Ygdrasil's ash:
  Hel byr und einni,       Hel dwells under one,
  annari hrimthursar,      under another frost-giants,
  thridio mennzkir menn.   under a third human-"men."

The root under which the frost-giants dwell we already know as the root
over Hvergelmer and the Nifelhel inhabited by frost-giants.

The root under which human beings, living persons, _mennskir menn_, dwell
we also know as the one over Mimer's well and Mimer's grove, where the
human beings Lif and Leifthraser and their offspring have their abode,
where _jörd lifanda manna_ is situated.

There remains one root: the one under which the goddess of fate, Urd, has
her dwelling. Of this Grimnersmal says that she who dwells there is named
Hel.

Hence it follows of necessity that the goddess of fate, Urd, is identical
with the personal Hel, the queen of the realm of death, particularly
of its regions of bliss. We have seen that Hel in its local sense has
the general signification, the realm of death, and the special but most
frequent signification, the elysium of the kingdom of death. As a person,
the meaning of the word Hel must be analogous to its signification as a
place. It is the same idea having a personal as well as a local form.

The conclusion that Urd is Hel is inevitable, unless we assume that
Urd, though queen of her fountain, is not the regent of the land where
her fountain is situated. One might then assume Hel to be one of Urd's
sisters, but these have no prominence as compared with herself. One of
them, Skuld, who is the more known of the two, is at the same time one
of Urd's maid-servants, a valkyrie, who on the battlefield does her
errands, a feminine psycho-messenger who shows the fallen the way to
Hel, the realm of her sisters, where they are to report themselves ere
they get to their destination. Of _Verdandi_ the records tell us nothing
but the name, which seems to preclude the idea that she should be the
personal Hel.

This result, that Urd is identical with Hel; that she who dispenses life
also dispenses death; that she who with her serving sisters is the ruler
of the past, the present, and the future, also governs and gathers in her
kingdom all generations of the past, present, and future--this result
may seem unexpected to those who, on the authority of Gylfaginning,
have assumed that the daughter of Loke cast into the abyss of Nifelhel
is the queen of the kingdom of death; that she whose threshold is
called Precipice (Gylfag., 34) was the one who conducted Balder over
the threshold to the subterranean citadel glittering with gold; that
she whose table is called Hunger and whose knife is called Famine was
the one who ordered the clear, invigorating mead to be placed before
him; that the sister of those foes of the gods and of the world, the
Midgard-serpent and the Fenris-wolf, was entrusted with the care of at
least one of Ygdrasil's roots; and that she whose bed is called Sickness,
jointly with Urd and Mimer, has the task of caring for the world-tree and
seeing that it is kept green and gets the liquids from their fountains.

Colossal as this absurdity is, it has been believed for centuries. And in
dealing with an absurdity which is centuries old, we must consider that
it is a force which does not yield to objections simply stated, but must
be conquered by clear and convincing arguments. Without the necessity
of travelling the path by which I have reached the result indicated,
scholars would long since have come to the conviction that Urd and the
personal Hel are identical, if Gylfaginning and the text-books based
thereon had not confounded the judgment, and that for the following
reasons:

The name _Urdr_ corresponds to the Old English _Vurd_, _Vyrd_, _Vird_,
to the Old Low German _Wurth_, and to the Old High German _Wurt_. The
fact that the word is found in the dialects of several Teutonic branches
indicates, or is thought by the linguists to indicate, that it belongs to
the most ancient Teutonic times, when it probably had the form _Vorthi_.

There can be no doubt that Urd also among other Teutonic branches than
the Scandinavian has had the meaning of goddess of fate. Expressions
handed down from the heathen time and preserved in Old English documents
characterise Vyrd as tying the threads or weaving the web of fate (Cod.
Ex., 355; Beowulf, 2420), and as the one who writes that which is to
happen (Beowulf, 4836). Here the plural form is also employed, _Vyrde_,
the urds, the norns, which demonstrates that she in England, as in the
North, was conceived as having sisters or assistants. In the Old Low
German poem "Heliand," Wurth's personality is equally plain.

But at the same time as _Vyrd_, _Wurth_, was the goddess of fate, she
was also that of death. In Beowulf (4831, 4453) we find the parallel
expressions:

  him vas Vyrd ungemete neah: Urd was exceedingly near to him;
  vas deád ungemete neah: death was exceedingly near.

And in Heliand, 146, 2; 92, 2:

  Thiu Wurth is at handun: Urd is near;
  Dôd is at hendi: death is near.

And there are also other expressions, as _Thiu Wurth nâhida thus_: Urd
(death) then approached; _Wurth ina benam_: Urd (death) took him away
(cp. J. Grimm, _Deutsche Myth._, i. 373).

Thus Urd, the goddess of fate, was, among the Teutonic branches in
Germany and England, identical with death, conceived as a queen. So also
in the North. The norns made laws and chose life and _örlög_ (fate) for
the children of time (Völuspa). The word _örlög_ (Nom. Pl.; the original
meaning seems to be _urlagarne_, that is, the original laws) frequently
has a decided leaning to the idea of death (cp. Völuspa: _Ek sá Baldri
örlög fólgin_). Hakon Jarl's _örlög_ was that Kark cut his throat (Nj.,
156). To receive the "judgment of the norns" was identical with being
doomed to die (Yng., Heimskringla, ch. 52). Fate and death were in the
idea and in usage so closely related, that they were blended into one
personality in the mythology. The ruler of death was that one who could
resolve death; but the one who could determine the length of life, and
so also could resolve death, and the kind of death, was, of course, the
goddess of fate. They must blend into one.

[Illustration: THOR DESTROYS THE GIANT THRYM.

_From an etching by Lorenz Frölich_

To protect themselves against the giants of Jotunheim, the gods decided
to build a wall around Asgard, and through the persuasion of treacherous
Loke, they engaged Thrym, who appeared before them as a tall, stately
man, to do the work. An agreement was made whereby Thrym was to receive
as his reward--provided the wall and gates were completed in a single
winter--the beautiful Freya for wife, and the moon and stars were to be
given him for light to work by. With the aid of his horse Swadilfari
Thrym performed all that was required of him except the placing of one
gate when discovery was made by the gods that Thrym was a giant in
disguise. Thereupon they cried aloud for Thor to defend Asgard against
this invasion, who immediately appeared amid thunder and lightning, and
recognizing Thrym, despite the form he had taken, flung his hammer with
such force that the giant's head was broken in many pieces and his soul
cast into Nifelhel.]

In the ancient Norse documents we also find the name Urd used to
designate death, just as in Heliand and Beowulf, and this, too, in such
a manner that Urd's personal character is not emphasised. Ynglingatal
(Heimskr., ch. 44) calls Ingjald's manner of death his _Urdr_, and to
determine death for anyone was to _draga Urdr_ at him.

Far down in the Christian centuries the memory survived that Urd was the
goddess of the realm of death and of death. When a bright spot, which
was called Urd's moon, appeared on the wall, it meant the breaking out
of an epidemic (Eyrbyggia Saga, 270). Even as late as the year 1237 Urd
is supposed to have revealed herself, the night before Christmas, to
Snobjorn to predict a bloody conflict, and she then sang a song in which
she said that she went mournfully to the contest to choose a man for
death. Saxo translates _Urdr_ or _Hel_ with "Proserpina" (_Hist._, i. 43).

[12] Of the age and genuineness of Forspjallsljod I propose to publish a
separate treatise.

64.

    URD'S MAID-SERVANTS: (1) MAID-SERVANTS OF LIFE--NORNS, DISES
    OF BIRTH, HAMINGJES, GIPTES, FYLGIES; (2) MAID-SERVANTS OF
    DEATH--VALKYRIES, THE PSYCHO-MESSENGERS OF DISEASES AND
    ACCIDENTS.

As those beings for whom Urd determines birth, position in life, and
death, are countless, so her servants, who perform the tasks commanded by
her as queen, must also be innumerable. They belong to two large classes:
the one class is active in her service in regard to life, the other in
regard to death.

Most intimately associated with her are her two sisters. With her
they have the authority of judges. Compare Völuspa, 19, 20, and the
expressions _norna dómr_, _norna kvidr_. And they dwell with her under
the world-tree, which stands for ever green over her gold-clad fountain.

As maid-servants under Urd there are countless hamingjes (fylgjes) and
giptes (also called gafes, audnes, heilles). The hamingjes are fostered
among beings of giant-race (who hardly can be others than the norns and
Mimer). Three mighty rivers fall down into the world, in which they
have their origin, and they come wise in their hearts, soaring over the
waters to our upper world (Vafthr., 48, 49). There every child of man
is to have a hamingje as a companion and guardian spirit. The testimony
of the Icelandic sagas of the middle ages in this regard are confirmed
by phrases and forms of speech which have their root in heathendom. The
hamingjes belong to that large circle of feminine beings which are called
dises, and they seem to have been especially so styled. What Urd is on
a grand scale as the guardian of the mighty Ygdrasil, this the hamingje
is on a smaller scale when she protects the separate fruit produced
on the world-tree and placed in her care. She does not appear to her
favourite excepting perhaps in dreams or shortly before his death (the
latter according to Helgakv. Hjörv. the prose; Njal, 62; Hallf, ch. 11;
proofs from purely heathen records are wanting). In strophes which occur
in Gisle Surson's saga, and which are attributed (though on doubtful
grounds) to this heathen skald, the hero of the saga, but the origin of
which (from a time when the details of the myth were still remembered)
is fully confirmed by a careful criticism, it is mentioned how he stood
between good and evil inspirations, and how the _draumkona_ (dream-woman)
of the good inspirations said to him in sleep: "Be not the first cause
of a murder! excite not peaceful men against yourself!--promise me this,
thou charitable man! Aid the blind, scorn not the lame, and insult not a
Tyr robbed of his hand!" These are noble counsels, and that the hamingjes
were noble beings was a belief preserved through the Christian centuries
in Iceland, where, according to Vigfusson, the word _hamingja_ is still
used in the sense of Providence. They did not usually leave their
favourite before death. But there are certain phrases preserved in the
spoken language which show that they could leave him before death. He who
was abandoned by his hamingje and gipte was a lost man. If the favourite
became a hideous and bad man, then his _hamingja_ and _gipta_ might even
turn her benevolence into wrath, and cause his well-deserved ruin. _Uvar
'ro disir_, angry at you are the dises! cries Odin to the royal nithing
Geirrod, and immediately thereupon the latter stumbles and falls pierced
by his own sword. That the invisible hamingje could cause one to stumble
and fall is shown in Fornm., iii.

The _giptes_ seem to have carried out such of Urd's resolves, on account
of which the favourite received an unexpected, as it were accidental,
good fortune.

Not only for separate individuals, but also for families and clans, there
were guardian spirits (_kynfylgjur_, _ættar-fylgjur_).

Another division of this class of maid-servants under Urd are those who
attend the entrance of the child into the world, and who have to weave
the threads of the newborn babe into the web of the families and events.
Like Urd and her sisters, they too are called norns. If it is a child
who is to be a great and famous man, Urd herself and her sisters may be
present for the above purpose (see No. 30 in regard to Halfdan's birth).

A few strophes incorporated in Fafnersmal from a heathen didactic poem,
now lost (Fafn., 12-15), speak of norns whose task it is to determine and
assist the arrival of the child into this world. _Nornir, er naudgaunglar
'ro oc kjósa mædr frá maugum._ The expression _kjósa mædr frá maugum_,
"to choose mothers from descendants," seems obscure, and can under all
circumstances not mean simply "to deliver mothers of children." The word
_kjósa_ is never used in any other sense than to choose, elect, select.
Here it must then mean to choose, elect as mothers; and the expression
"from descendants" is incomprehensible, if we do not on the one hand
conceive a crowd of eventual descendants, who at the threshold of life
are waiting for mothers in order to become born into this world, and on
the other hand women who are to be mothers, but in reference to whom
it has not yet been determined which descendant each one is to call
hers among the great waiting crowd, until those norns which we are here
discussing resolve on that point, and _from_ the indefinite crowd of
waiting _megir_ choose mothers _for_ those children which are especially
destined for them.

These norns are, according to Fafn., 13, of different birth. Some are
Asa-kinswomen, others of elf-race, and again others are daughters of
Dvalin. In regard to the last-named it should be remembered that Dvalin,
their father, through artists of his circle, decorated the citadel,
within which a future generation of men await the regeneration of the
world, and that the mythology has associated him intimately with the
elf of the morning dawn, Delling, who guards the citadel of the race of
regeneration against all that is evil and all that ought not to enter
(see No. 53). There are reasons (see No. 95) for assuming that these
dises of birth were Honer's maid-servants at the same time as they were
Urd's, just as the valkyries are Urd's and Odin's maid-servants at the
same time (see below).

To the other class of Urd's maid-servants belong those lower-world beings
which execute her resolves of death, and conduct the souls of the dead to
the lower world.

Foremost among the psycho-messengers (psycho-pomps), the attendants of
the dead, we note that group of shield-maids called valkyries. As Odin
and Freyja got the right of choosing on the battlefield, the valkyries
have received Asgard as their abode. There they bring the mead-horns to
the Asas and einherjes, when they do not ride on Valfather's errands
(Völuspa, 31; Grimnersmal, 36; Eiriksm., 1; Ulf Ugges. Skaldsk., 238).
But the third of the norns, Skuld, is the chief one in this group
(Völuspa, 31), and, as shall be shown below, they for ever remain in the
most intimate association with Urd and the lower world.

65.

    ON THE COSMOGRAPHY. THE WAY OF THOSE FALLEN BY THE SWORD TO
    VALHAL IS THROUGH THE LOWER WORLD.

The modern conception of the removal of those fallen by the sword to
Asgard is that the valkyries carried them immediately through blue space
to the halls above. The heathens did not conceive the matter in this
manner.

It is true that the mythological horses might carry their riders through
the air without pressing a firm foundation with their hoofs. But such a
mode of travel was not the rule, even among the gods, and, when it did
happen, it attracted attention even among them. Compare Gylfaginning,
i. 118, which quotes strophes from a heathen source. The bridge Bifrost
would not have been built or established for the daily connection between
Asgard and Urd's subterranean realm if it had been unnecessary in the
mythological world of fancy. Mane's way in space would not have been
regarded as a road in the concrete sense, that quakes and rattles when
Thor's thunder-chariot passes over it (Haustl., Skaldsk., ch. 16), had
it not been thought that Mane was safer on a firm road than without one
of that sort. To every child that grew up in the homes of our heathen
fathers the question must have lain near at hand, what such roads and
bridges were for, if the gods had no advantage from them. The mythology
had to be prepared for such questions, and in this, as in other cases, it
had answers wherewith to satisfy that claim on causality and consistency
which even the most naïve view of the world presents. The answer was: If
the Bifrost bridge breaks under its riders, as is to happen in course of
time, then their horses would have to _swim_ in the sea of air (_Bilraust
brotnar, er their á bru fara, oc svima i modo marir_--Fafn., 15., compare
a strophe of Kormak, Kormak's Saga, p. 259, where the atmosphere is
called the fjord of the gods, _Dia fjördr_). A horse does not swim as
fast and easily as it runs. The different possibilities of travel are
associated with different kinds of exertion and swiftness. The one method
is more adequate to the purpose than the other. The solid connections
which were used by the gods and which the mythology built in space are,
accordingly, objects of advantage and convenience. The valkyries, riding
at the head of their chosen heroes, as well as the gods, have found solid
roads advantageous, and the course they took with their favourites was
not the one presented in our mythological text-books. Grimnersmal (str.
21; see No. 93) informs us that the breadth of the atmospheric sea is too
great and its currents too strong for those riding on their horses from
the battlefield to wade across.

In the 45th chapter of Egil Skallagrimson's saga we read how Egil saved
himself from men, whom King Erik Blood-axe sent in pursuit of him to
Saud Isle. While they were searching for him there, he had stolen to
the vicinity of the place where the boat lay in which those in pursuit
had rowed across. Three warriors guarded the boat. Egil succeeded in
surprising them, and in giving one of them his death-wound ere the latter
was able to defend himself. The second fell in a duel on the strand.
The third, who sprang into the boat to make it loose, fell there after
an exchange of blows. The saga has preserved a strophe in which Egil
mentions this exploit to his brother Thorolf and his friend Arinbjorn,
whom he met after his flight from Saud Isle. There he says:

  at thrymreynis thjónar
  thrir nökkurrir Hlakkar,
  til hásalar Heljar
  helgengnir, för dvelja.

"Three of those who serve the tester of the valkyriedin (the warlike Erik
Blood-axe) will late return; they have gone to the lower world, to Hel's
high hall."

The fallen ones were king's men and warriors. They were slain by weapons
and fell at their posts of duty, one from a sudden, unexpected wound, the
others in open conflict. According to the conception of the mythological
text-books, these sword-slain men should have been conducted by valkyries
through the air to Valhal. But the skald Egil, who as a heathen born
about the year 904, and who as a contemporary of the sons of Harald
Fairhair must have known the mythological views of his fellow-heathen
believers better than the people of our time, assures us positively that
these men from King Erik's body-guard, instead of going immediately
to Valhal, went to the lower world and to Hel's high hall there. He
certainly would not have said anything of the sort, if those for whom
he composed the strophe had not regarded this idea as both possible and
correct.

The question now is: Does this Egil's statement stand alone and is it
in conflict with those other statements touching the same point which
the ancient heathen records have preserved for us? The answer is, that
in these ancient records there is not found a single passage in conflict
with Egil's idea, but that they all, on the contrary, fully agree with
his words, and that this harmony continues in the reports of the first
Christian centuries in regard to this subject.

All the dead and also those fallen by the sword come first to Hel. Thence
the sword-slain come to Asgard, if they have deserved this destiny.

In Gisle Surson's saga (ch. 24) is mentioned the custom of binding
Hel-shoes on the feet of the dead. Warriors in regard to whom there was
no doubt that Valhal was their final destiny received Hel-shoes like all
others, _that er tidska at binda mönnum helskó, sem menn, skulo á ganga
till Valhallar_. It would be impossible to explain this custom if it had
not been believed that those who were chosen for the joys of Valhal were
obliged, like all others, to travel _á Helvegum_. Wherever this custom
prevailed, Egil's view in regard to the fate which immediately awaited
sword-fallen men was general.

When Hermod betook himself to the lower world to find Balder he came,
as we know, to the golden bridge across the river _Gjöll_. Urd's
maid-servant, who watches the bridge, mentioned to him that the day
before five _fylki_ of dead men had rode across the same bridge.
Consequently all these dead are on horseback and they do not come
separately or a few at a time, but in large troops called _fylki_,
an expression which, in the Icelandic literature, denotes larger or
smaller divisions of an army--legions, cohorts, maniples or companies
in battle array; and with _fylki_ the verb _fylkja_, to form an army or
a division of an army in line of battle, is most intimately connected.
This indicates with sufficient clearness that the dead here in question
are men who have fallen on the field of battle and are on their way to
Hel, each one riding, in company with his fallen brothers in arms, with
those who belonged to his own _fylki_. The account presupposes that men
fallen by the sword, whose final destination is Asgard, first have to
ride down to the lower world. Else we would not find these _fylkes_ on a
Helway galloping across a subterranean bridge, into the same realm as had
received Balder and Nanna after death.

It has already been pointed out that Bifrost is the only connecting
link between Asgard and the lower regions of the universe. The air was
regarded as an ether sea which the bridge spanned, and although the
horses of mythology were able to swim in this sea, the solid connection
was of the greatest importance. The gods used the bridge every day
(Grimnismal, Gylfaginning). Frost giants and mountain-giants are anxious
to get possession of it, for it is the key to Asgard. It therefore
has its special watchman in the keen-eyed and vigilant Heimdal. When
in Ragnarok the gods ride to the last conflict they pass over Bifrost
(Fafnersmal). The bridge does not lead to Midgard. Its lower ends were
not conceived as situated among mortal men. It stood outside and below
the edge of the earth's crust both in the north and in the south. In the
south it descended to Urd's fountain and to the thingstead of the gods
in the lower world (see the accompanying drawing, intended to make these
facts intelligible). From this mythological topographical arrangement it
follows of necessity that the valkyries at the head of the chosen slain
must take their course through the lower world, by the way of Urd's
fountain and the thingstead of the gods, if they are to ride on Bifrost
bridge to Asgard, and not be obliged to betake themselves thither on
swimming horses.

There are still two poems extant from the heathen time, which describe
the reception of sword-fallen kings in Valhal. The one describes the
reception of Erik Blood-axe, the other that of Hakon the Good.

When King Erik, with five other kings and their attendants of fallen
warriors, come riding up thither, the gods hear on their approach a
mighty din, as if the foundations of Asgard trembled. All the benches of
Valhal quake and tremble. What single probability can we now conceive as
to what the skald presupposed? Did he suppose that the chosen heroes came
on horses that swim in the air, and that the movements of the horses
in this element produced a noise that made Valhal tremble? Or that it
is Bifrost which thunders under the hoofs of hundreds of horses, and
quakes beneath their weight? There is scarcely need of an answer to this
alternative. Meanwhile the skald himself gives the answer. For the skald
makes Brage say that from the din and quaking it might be presumed that
it was Balder who was returning to the halls of the gods. Balder dwells
in the lower world; the connection between Asgard and the lower world is
Bifrost: this connection is of such a nature that it quakes and trembles
beneath the weight of horses and riders, and it is predicted in regard
to Bifrost that in Ragnarok it shall break under the weight of the host
of riders. Thus Brage's words show that it is Bifrost from which the
noise is heard when Erik and his men ride up to Valhal. But to get to
the southern end of Bifrost, Erik and his riders must have journeyed in
Hel, across Gjoll, and past the thingstead of the gods near Urd's well.
Thus it is by this road that the psychopomps of the heroes conduct their
favourites to their final destination.

In his grand poem "Hákonármal," Eyvind Skaldaspiller makes Odin send
the valkyries Gandul and Skagul "to choose among the kings of Yngve's
race some who are to come to Odin and abide in Valhal." It is not said
by which road the two valkyries betake themselves to Midgard, but when
they have arrived there they find that a battle is imminent between
the Yngve descendants, Hakon the Good, and the sons of Erik. Hakon is
just putting on his coat-of-mail, and immediately thereupon begins the
brilliantly-described battle. The sons of Erik are put to flight, but
the victor Hakon is wounded by an arrow, and after the end of the battle
he sits on the battlefield, surrounded by his heroes, "with shields cut
by swords and with byrnies pierced by arrows." Gandul and Skagul, "maids
on horseback, with wisdom in their countenances, with helmets on their
heads, and with shields before them," are near the king. The latter hears
that Gandul, "leaning on her spear," says to Skagul that the wound is to
cause the king's death, and now a conversation begins between Hakon and
Skagul, who confirms what Gandul has said, and does so with the following
words:

  Rida vit nú skulum,
  kvad hin rika Skagul,
  græna heima goda
  Odni at segja,
  at un mun allvaldr koma
  á hann sjálfan at sjá.

"We two (Gandul and Skagul) shall now, quoth the mighty Skagul, _ride
o'er green realms_ (or worlds) _of the gods_ in order to say to Odin that
now a great king is coming to see him."

Here we get definite information in regard to which way the valkyries
journey between Asgard and Midgard. The fields through which the road
goes, and which are beaten by the hoofs of their horses, are _green
realms of the gods_ (worlds, _heimar_).

With these green realms Eyvind has not meant the blue ether.
He distinguishes between blue and green. The sea he calls blue
(_blámær_--see Heimskringla). What he expressly states, and to which we
must confine ourselves, is that, according to his cosmological conception
and that of his heathen fellow-believers, there were realms clothed in
green and inhabited by divinities on the route the valkyries had to
take when they from a battlefield in Midgard betook themselves back to
Valhal and Asgard. But as valkyries and the elect ride on Bifrost up to
Valhal, Bifrost, which goes down to Urd's well, must be the connecting
link between the realms decked with green and Asgard. The _grænar heimar_
through which the valkyries have to pass are therefore the realms of the
lower world.

Among the realms or "worlds" which constituted the mythological
universe, the realms of bliss in the lower world were those which might
particularly be characterised as the green. Their groves and blooming
meadows and fields of waving grain were never touched by decay or frost,
and as such they were cherished by the popular fancy for centuries after
the introduction of Christianity. The Low German language has also
rescued the memory thereof in the expression _gróni godes wang_ (Hel.,
94, 24). That the green realms of the lower world are called realms of
the gods is also proper, for they have contained and do contain many
beings of a higher or lower divine rank. There dwells the divine mother
Nat, worshipped by the Teutons; there Thor's mother and her brother and
sister Njord and Fulla are fostered; there Balder, Nanna, and _Hödr_
are to dwell until Ragnarok; there Delling, Billing, Rind, Dag, Mane,
and Sol, and all the clan of artists gathered around Mimer, they who
"smithy" living beings, vegetation, and ornaments, have their halls;
there was born Odin's son Vale. Of the mythological divinities, only
a small number were fostered in Asgard. When Gandul and Skagul at the
head of sword-fallen men ride "o'er the green worlds of the gods," this
agrees with the statement in the myth about Hermod's journey to Hel, that
"fylkes" of dead riders gallop over the subterranean gold-bridge, on the
other side of which glorious regions are situated, and with the statement
in Vegtamskvida that Odin, when he had left Nifelhel behind him, came to
a _foldvegr_, a way over green plains, by which he reaches the hall that
awaits Balder.

In the heroic songs of the Elder Edda, and in other poems from the
centuries immediately succeeding the introduction of Christianity, the
memory survives that the heroes journey to the lower world. Sigurd
Fafnersbane comes to Hel. Of one of Atle's brothers who fell by Gudrun's
sword it is said, _i Helju hon thana hafdi_ (Atlam., 51). In the same
poem, strophe 54, one of the Niflungs says of a sword-fallen foe that
they had him _lamdan til Heljar_.

The mythic tradition is supported by linguistic usage, which, in such
phrases as _berja i Hel_, _drepa i Hel_, _drepa til Heljar_, _færa til
Heljar_, indicated that those fallen by the sword also had to descend to
the realm of death.

The memory of valkyries, subordinate to the goddess of fate and death,
and belonging with her to the class of norns, continued to flourish in
Christian times both among Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians. Among the
former _välcyrge_, _välcyrre_ (valkyrie) could be used to express the
Latin _parca_, and in Beowulf occur phrases in which _Hild_ and _Gud_
(the valkyries _Hildr_ and _Gunnr_) perform the tasks of _Vyrd_. In
Atlamal (28), the valkyries are changed into "dead women," inhabitants
of the lower world, who came to choose the hero and invite him to their
halls. The basis of the transformation is the recollection that the
valkyries were not only in Odin's service, but also in that of the lower
world goddess Urd (compare Atlamal, 16, where they are called norns), and
that they as psychopomps conducted the chosen Heroes to Hel on their way
to Asgard.

66.

    THE CHOOSING. THE MIDDLE-AGE FABLE ABOUT "RISTING WITH THE
    SPEAR-POINT."

If death on the battle-field, or as the result of wounds received on
the field of battle, had been regarded as an inevitable condition for
the admittance of the dead into Asgard, and for the honour of sitting
at Odin's table, then the choosing would under all circumstances have
been regarded as a favour from Odin. But this was by no means the case,
nor could it be so when regarded from a psychological point of view (see
above, No. 61). The poems mentioned above, "Eiriksmál" and "Hakonarmal,"
give us examples of choosing from a standpoint quite different from that
of favour. When one of the einherjes, Sigmund, learns from Odin that
Erik Blood-axe has fallen and is expected in Valhal, he asks why Odin
robbed Erik of victory and life, _although_ he, Erik, possessed Odin's
friendship. From Odin's answer to the question we learn that the skald
did not wish to make Sigmund express any surprise that a king, whom
Odin loves above other kings and heroes, has died in a lost instead of
a won battle. What Sigmund emphasises is, that Odin did not rather take
unto himself a less loved king than the so highly appreciated Erik, and
permit the latter to conquer and live. Odin's answer is that he is hourly
expecting Ragnarok, and that he therefore made haste to secure as soon as
possible so valiant a hero as Erik among his einherjes. But Odin does not
say that he feared that he might have to relinquish the hero for ever, in
case the latter, not being chosen on this battlefield, should be snatched
away by some other death than that by the sword.

Hakonarmal gives us an example of a king who is chosen in a battle in
which he is the victor. As conqueror the wounded Hakon remained on the
battlefield; still he looks upon the choosing as a disfavour. When he had
learned from Gandul's words to Skagul that the number of the einherjes is
to be increased with him, he blames the valkyries for dispensing to him
this fate, and says he had deserved a better lot from the gods (_várun
thó verdir gagns frá godum_). When he enters Valhal he has a keener
reproach on his lips to the welcoming Odin: _illúdigr mjók thykkir oss
Odinn vera, sjám ver hans of hugi_.

Doubtless it was for our ancestors a glorious prospect to be permitted to
come to Odin after death, and a person who saw inevitable death before
his eyes might comfort himself with the thought of soon seeing "the
benches of Balder's father decked for the feast" (Ragnar's death-song).
But it is no less certain from all the evidences we have from the heathen
time, that honourable life was preferred to honourable death, although
between the wars there was a chance of death from sickness. Under these
circumstances, the mythical eschatology could not have made death from
disease an insurmountable obstacle for warriors and heroes on their way
to Valhal. In the ancient records there is not the faintest allusion to
such an idea. It is too absurd to have existed. It would have robbed
Valhal of many of Midgard's most brilliant heroes, and it would have
demanded from faithful believers that they should prefer death even
with defeat to victory and life, since the latter lot was coupled with
the possibility of death from disease. With such a view no army goes
to battle, and no warlike race endowed with normal instincts has ever
entertained it and given it expression in their doctrine in regard to
future life.

The absurdity of the theory is so manifest that the mythologists who
have entertained it have found it necessary to find some way of making
it less inadmissible than it really is. They have suggested that Odin
did not necessarily fail to get those heroes whom sickness and age
threatened with a straw-death, nor did they need to relinquish the joys
of Valhal, for there remained to them an expedient to which they under
such circumstances resorted: they risted (marked, scratched) themselves
with the spear-point (_marka sik geirs-oddi_).

_If_ there was such a custom, we may conceive it as springing from a
sacredness attending a voluntary death as a sacrifice--a sacredness
which in all ages has been more or less alluring to religious minds. But
all the descriptions we have from Latin records in regard to Teutonic
customs, all our own ancient records from heathen times, all Northern
and German heroic songs, are unanimously and stubbornly silent about
the existence of the supposed custom of "risting with the spear-point,"
although, if it ever existed, it would have been just such a thing as
would on the one hand be noticed by strangers, and on the other hand
be remembered, at least for a time, by the generations converted to
Christianity. But the well-informed persons interviewed by Tacitus,
they who presented so many characteristic traits of the Teutons, knew
nothing of such a practice; otherwise they certainly would have mentioned
it as something very remarkable and peculiar to the Teutons. None of
the later classical Latin or middle age Latin records which have made
contributions to our knowledge of the Teutons have a single word to say
about it; nor the heroic poems. The Scandinavian records, and the more or
less historical sagas, tell of many heathen kings, chiefs, and warriors
who have died on a bed of straw, but not of a single one who "risted
himself with the spear-point." The fable about this "risting with the
spear-point" has its origin in Ynglingasaga, ch. 10, where Odin, changed
to a king in Svithiod, is said, when death was approaching, to have let
_marka sik geirs-oddi_. Out of this statement has been constructed a
custom among kings and heroes of anticipating a straw-death by "risting
with the spear-point," and this for the purpose of getting admittance
to Valhal. Vigfusson (Dictionary) has already pointed out the fact that
the author of Ynglingasaga had no other authority for his statement than
the passage in Havamál, where Odin relates that he wounded with a spear,
hungering and thirsting, voluntarily inflicted on himself pain, which
moved Bestla's brother to give him runes and a drink from the fountain
of wisdom. The fable about the spear-point risting, and its purpose,
is therefore quite unlike the source from which, through ignorance and
random writing, it sprang.

67.

    THE PSYCHO-MESSENGERS OF THOSE NOT FALLEN BY THE SWORD. LOKE'S
    DAUGHTER (PSEUDO-HEL IN GYLFAGINNING) IDENTICAL WITH LEIKIN.

The psychopomps of those fallen by the sword are, as we have seen,
stately dises, sitting high in the saddle, with helmet, shield, and
spear. To those not destined to fall by the sword Urd sends other
maid-servants, who, like the former, may come on horseback, and who, as
it appears, are of very different appearance, varying in accordance with
the manner of death of those persons whose departure they attend. She who
comes to those who sink beneath the weight of years has been conceived
as a very benevolent dis, to judge from the solitary passage where she
is characterised, that is in Ynglingatal and in Ynglingasaga, ch. 49,
where it is said of the aged and just king Halfdan Whiteleg, that he was
taken hence by the woman, who is helpful to those bowed and stooping
(_hallvarps hlífinauma_). The burden which Elli (age), Utgard-Loke's
foster-mother (Gylfag., 47), puts on men, and which gradually gets too
heavy for them to bear, is removed by this kind-hearted dis.

Other psychopomps are of a terrible kind. The most of them belong to
the spirits of disease dwelling in Nifelhel (see No. 60). King Vanlande
is tortured to death by a being whose epithet, _vitta vættr_ and
_trollkund_, shows that she belongs to the same group as _Heidr_, the
prototype of witches, and who is contrasted with the valkyrie Hild by the
appellation _ljóna lids bága Grimhildr_ (Yngl., ch. 16). The same _vitta
vættr_ came to King Adils when his horse fell and he himself struck his
head against a stone (Yngl., ch. 33). Two kings, who die on a bed of
straw, are mentioned in Ynglingasaga's Thjodolf-strophes (ch. 20 and 52)
as visited by a being called in the one instance Loke's kinswoman (_Loka
mær_), and in the other Hvedrung's kinswoman (_Hvedrungs mær_). That this
Loke's kinswoman has no authority to determine life and death, but only
carries out the dispensations of the norns, is definitely stated in the
Thjodolf-strophe (ch. 52), and also that her activity, as one who brings
the invitation to the realm of death, does not imply that the person
invited is to be counted among the damned, although she herself, the
kinswoman of Loke, the daughter of Loke, surely does not belong to the
regions of bliss.

  Ok til things
  thridja jöfri
  hvedrungs mær
  or heimi baud,
  thá er Hálfdan,
  sa er á Holti bjó
  norna dóms
  um notit hafdi.

As _all_ the dead, whether they are destined for Valhal or for Hel (in
the sense of the subterranean realms of bliss), or for Nifelhel, must
first report themselves in Hel, their psychopomps, whether they dwell in
Valhal, Hel, or Nifelhel, must do the same. This arrangement is necessary
also from the point of view that the unhappy who "die from Hel into
Nifelhel" (Grimnersmal) must have attendants who conduct them from the
realms of bliss to the Na-gates, and thence to the realms of torture.
Those dead from disease, who have the subterranean kinswoman of Loke as
a guide, may be destined for the realms of bliss--then she delivers them
there; or be destined for Nifelhel--then they die under her care and are
brought by her through the Na-gates to the worlds of torture in Nifelhel.

Far down in Christian times the participle _leikinn_ was used in a
manner which points to something mythical as the original reason for
its application. In Biskupas, (i. 464) it is said of a man that he was
_leikinn_ by some magic being (_flagd_). Of another person who sought
solitude and talked with himself, it is said in Eyrbyggja (270) that
he was believed to be _leikinn_. Ynglingatal gives us the mythical
explanation of this word.

In its strophe about King Dyggve, who died from disease, this poem says
(Yngling., ch. 20) that, as the lower world dis had chosen him, Loke's
kinswoman came and made him _leikinn (Allvald Yngva thjodar Loka mær um
leikinn hefir)_. The person who became _leikinn_ is accordingly visited
by Loke's kinswoman, or, if others have had the same task to perform,
by some being who resembled her, and who brought psychical or physical
disease.

In our mythical records there is mention made of a giantess whose very
name, _Leikin_, _Leikn_, is immediately connected with that activity
which Loke's kinswoman--and she too is a giantess--exercises when she
makes a person _leikinn_. Of this personal _Leikin_ we get the following
information in our old records:

1. She is, as stated, of giant race (Younger Edda, i. 552).

2. She has once fared badly at Thor's hands. He broke her leg (_Leggi
brauzt thu Leiknar_--Skaldsk., ch. 4, after a song by Vetrlidi).

3. She is _kveldrida_. The original and mythological meaning of
_kveldrida_ is a horsewoman of torture or death (from _kvelja_, to
torture, to kill). The meaning, a horsewoman of the night, is a
misunderstanding. Compare Vigfusson's Dict., _sub voce_ "Kveld."

4. The horse which this woman of torture and death rides is black,
untamed, difficult to manage (_styggr_), and ugly-grown (_ljótvaxinn_).
It drinks human blood, and is accompanied by other horses belonging to
Leikin, black and bloodthirsty like it. (All this is stated by Hallfred
Vandradaskald.)[13] Perhaps these loose horses are intended for those
persons whom the horsewomen of torture causes to die from disease, and
whom she is to conduct to the lower world.

Popular traditions have preserved for our times the remembrance of the
"ugly-grown" horse, that is, of a three-legged horse, which on its
appearance brings sickness, epidemics, and plagues. The Danish popular
belief (Thiele i. 137, 138) knows this monster and the word Hel-horse has
been preserved in the vocabulary of the Danish language. The diseases
brought by the Hel-horse are extremely dangerous, but not always fatal.
When they are not fatal the convalescent is regarded as having ransomed
his life with that tribute of loss of strength and of torture which the
disease caused him, and in a symbolic sense he has then "given death a
bushel of oats" (that is, to its horse). According to popular belief in
Slesvik (Arnkiel, i. 55; cp. J. Grimm, _Deutsche Myth_, 804), Hel rides
in the time of a plague on a three-legged horse and kills people. Thus
the ugly-grown horse is not forgotten in traditions from the heathen time.

Völuspa inform us that in the primal age of man, the sorceress Heid went
from house to house and was a welcome guest with evil women, since she
_seid Leikin_ (_sida_ means to practise sorcery). Now, as Leikin is the
"horsewoman of torture and death," and rides the Hel-horse, then the
expression _sida Leikin_ can mean nothing else than by sorcery to send
Leikin, the messenger of disease and death, to those persons who are the
victims of the evil wishes of "evil women;" or, more abstractly, to bring
by sorcery dangerous diseases to men.[14]

From all this follows that Leikin is either a side-figure to the daughter
of Loke, and like her in all respects, or she and the Loke-daughter are
one and the same person. To determine the question whether they are
identical, we must observe (1) the definitely representative manner in
which Völuspa, by the use of the name Leikin, makes the possessor of this
name a mythic person, who visits men with diseases and death; (2) the
manner in which Ynglingatal characterises the activity of Loke's daughter
with a person doomed to die from disease; she makes him _leikinn_, an
expression which, without doubt, is in its sense connected with the
feminine name Leikn, and which was preserved in the vernacular far down
in Christian times, and there designated a supernatural visitation
bringing the symptoms of mental or physical illness; (3) the Christian
popular tradition in which the deformed and disease-bringing horse,
which Leikin rides in the myth, is represented as the steed of "death"
or "Hel;" (4) that change of meaning by which the name Hel, which in the
mythical poems of the Elder Edda designates the whole heathen realm of
death, and especially its regions of bliss, or their queen, got to mean
the abode of torture and misery and its ruler--a transmutation by which
the name Hel, as in Gylfaginning and in the Slesvik traditions, was
transferred from Urd to Loke's daughter.

Finally, it should be observed that it is told of Leikin, as of Loke's
daughter, that she once fared badly at the hands of the gods, who
did not, however, take her life. Loke's daughter is not slain, but
is cast into Nifelhel (Gylfaginning, ch. 34). From that time she is
_gnúpleit_--that is to say, she has a stooping form, as if her bones had
been broken and were unable to keep her in an upright position. Leikin is
not slain, but gets her legs broken.

All that we learn of Leikin thus points to the Loke-maid, the Hel, not of
the myth, but of Christian tradition.

[13]

  _Tidhöggvit lét tiggi
  Tryggvar sonr fyrir styggvan
  Leiknar hest á leiti
  ljotvaxinn hræ Saxa.

  Vinhrödigr gaf vida
  visi margra Frísa
  blókku brûnt at derkka
  blöd kvellridu stódi._

[14] Völuspa 23, Cod. Reg., says of Heid:

  _seid hon kuni,
  seid hon Leikin_.

The letter _u_ is in this manuscript used for both _u_ and _y_ (compare
Bugge, Sæmund Edd., Preface x., xi.), and hence _kuni_ may be read
both _kuni_ and _kyni_. The latter reading makes logical sense. _Kyni_
is dative of _kyn_, a neuter noun, meaning something sorcerous,
supernatural, a monster. _Kynjamein_ and _kynjasött_ mean diseases
brought on by sorcery. _Seid_ in both the above lines is past tense of
the verb _sida_, and not in either one of them the noun _seidr_.

There was a sacred sorcery and an unholy one, according to the purpose
for which it was practised, and according to the attending ceremonies.
The object of the holy sorcery was to bring about something good either
for the sorcerer or for others, or to find out the will of the gods and
future things. The sorcery practised by _Heidr_ is the unholy one, hated
by the gods, and again and again forbidden in the laws, and this kind
of sorcery is designated in Völuspa by the term _sida kyni_. Of a thing
practised with improper means it is said that it is not _kynja-lauss_,
kyn-free.

The reading in Cod. Hauk., _seid hon hvars hon kunni, seid hon
hugleikin_, evidently has some "emendator" to thank for its existence who
did not understand the passage and wished to substitute something easily
understood for the obscure lines he thought he had found.

68.

    THE WAY TO HADES COMMON TO THE DEAD.

It has already been demonstrated that all the dead must go to Hel--not
only they whose destination is the realm of bliss, but also those who
are to dwell in Asgard or in the regions of torture in Nifelheim. Thus
the dead tread at the outset the same road. One and the same route is
prescribed to them all, and the same Helgate daily opens for hosts of
souls destined for different lots. Women and children, men and the aged,
they who have practised the arts of peace and they who have stained
the weapons with blood, those who have lived in accordance with the
sacred commandments of the norns and gods and they who have broken
them--all have to journey the same way as Balder went before them, down
to the fields of the fountains of the world. They come on foot and on
horseback--nay, even in chariots, if we may believe _Helreid Brynhildar_,
a very unreliable source--guided by various psychopomps: the beautifully
equipped valkyries, the blue-white daughter of Loke, the sombre spirits
of disease, and the gentle maid-servant of old age. Possibly the souls of
children had their special psychopomps. Traditions of mythic origin seem
to suggest this; but the fragments of the myths themselves preserved to
our time give us no information on this subject.

The Hel-gate here in question was situated below the eastern horizon of
the earth. When Thor threatens to kill Loke he says (Lokas., 59) that he
will send him _á austrvega_. When the author of the Sol-song sees the
sunset for the last time, he hears in the opposite direction--that is,
in the east--the Hel-gate grating dismally on its hinges (str. 39). The
gate has a watchman and a key. The key is called _gillingr_, _gyllingr_
(Younger Edda, ii. 494); and hence a skald who celebrates his ancestors
in his songs, and thus recalls to those living the shades of those in
Hades, may say that he brings to the light of day the tribute paid to
Gilling (_yppa gillings gjöldum_. See Eyvind's strophe, Younger Edda,
i. 248. The paraphrase has hitherto been misunderstood, on account of
the pseudo-myth _Bragarædur_ about the mead.) From the gate the highway
of the dead went below the earth in a westerly direction through deep
and dark dales (Gylfag., ch. 52), and it required several days--for
Hermod nine days and nights--before they came to light regions and to
the golden bridge across the river Gjoll, flowing from north to south
(see No. 59). On the other side of the river the roads forked. One road
went directly north. This led to Balder's abode (Gylfag., ch. 52); in
other words, to Mimer's realm, to Mimer's grove, and to the sacred
citadel of the _ásmegir_, where death and decay cannot enter (see No.
53). This northern road was not, therefore, the road common to all the
dead. Another road went to the south. As Urd's realm is situated south
of Mimer's (see Nos. 59, 63), this second road must have led to Urd's
fountain and to the thingstead of the gods there. From the Sun-song we
learn that the departed had to continue their journey by that road.
The deceased skald of the Sun-song came to the norns, that is to say,
to Urd and her sisters, after he had left this road behind him, and he
sat for nine days and nights _á norna stoli_ before he was permitted to
continue his journey (str. 51). Here, then, is the end of the road common
to all, and right here, at Urd's fountain and at the thingstead of the
gods something must happen, on which account the dead are divided into
different groups, some destined for Asgard, others for the subterranean
regions of bliss, and a third lot for Nifelhel's regions of torture.
We shall now see whether the mythic fragments preserved to our time
contain any suggestions as to what occurs in this connection. It must be
admitted that this dividing must take place somewhere in the lower world,
that it was done on the basis of the laws which in mythological ethics
distinguish between right and wrong, innocence and guilt, that which is
pardonable and that which is unpardonable, and that the happiness and
unhappiness of the dead is determined by this division.

69.

    THE TWO THINGSTEADS OF THE ASAS. THE EXTENT OF THE AUTHORITY OF
    THE ASAS AND OF THE DIS OF FATE. THE DOOM OF THE DEAD.

The Asas have two thingsteads: the one in Asgard, the other in the lower
world.

In the former a council is held and resolutions passed in such matters as
pertain more particularly to the clan of the Asas and to their relation
to other divine clans and other powers. When Balder is visited by ugly
dreams, Valfather assembles the gods to hold counsel, and all the Asas
assemble _á thingi_, and all the asynjes _á máli_ (Vegtamskv., 1;
Balder's Dr., 4). In assemblies here the gods resolved to exact an oath
from all things for Balder's safety, and to send a messenger to the lower
world to get knowledge partly about Balder, partly about future events.
On this thingstead efforts are made of reconciliation between the Asas
and the Vans, after Gulveig had been slain in Odin's hall (Völuspa, 23,
24). Hither (á thing goda) comes Thor with the kettle captured from
Hymer, and intended for the feasts of the gods (Hymerskv., 39); and
here the Asas hold their last deliberations, when Ragnarok is at hand
(Völuspa, 49: _Æsir 'ro a thingi_). No matters are mentioned as discussed
in this thingstead in which any person is interested who does not dwell
in Asgard, or which are not of such a nature that they have reference to
how the gods themselves are to act under particular circumstances. That
the thingstead where such questions are discussed must be situated in
Asgard itself is a matter of convenience, and is suggested by the very
nature of the case.

It follows that the gods assemble in the Asgard thingstead more for the
purpose of discussing their own interests than for that of judging in
the affairs of others. They also gather there to amuse themselves and to
exercise themselves in arms (Gylfaginning, 50).

Of the other thingstead of the Asas, of the one in the lower world, it
is on the other hand expressly stated that they go thither to sit in
judgment, to act as judges; and there is no reason for taking this word
_dæma_, when as here it means activity at a thingstead, in any other than
its judicial and common sense.

What matters are settled there? We might take this to be the proper
place for exercising Odin's privilege of choosing heroes to be slain by
the sword, since this right is co-ordinate with that of the norns to
determine life and dispense fate, whence it might seem that the domain
of the authority of the gods and that of the norns here approached
each other sufficiently to require deliberations and decisions in
common. Still it is not on the thingstead at Urd's fountain that Odin
elects persons for death by the sword. It is expressly stated that it
is in his own home in Valhal that Odin exercises his right of electing
(Grimnersmal, 8), and this right he holds so independently and so
absolutely that he does not need to ask for the opinion of the norns.
On the other hand, the gods have no authority to determine the life and
death of the other mortals. This belongs exclusively to the norns. The
norns elect for every other death but that by weapons, and their decision
in this domain is never called a decision by the gods, but _norna domr,
norna kvidr, freigdar ord, Dauda ord_.

If Asas and norns did have a common voice in deciding certain questions
which _could_ be settled in Asgard, then it would not be in accordance
with the high rank given to the Asas in mythology to have them go to the
norns for the decision of such questions. On the contrary, the norns
would have to come to them. Urd and her sisters are beings of high rank,
but nevertheless they are of giant descent, like Mimer. The power they
have is immense; and on a closer investigation we find how the mythology
in more than one way has sought to maintain in the fancy of its believers
the independence (at least apparent and well defined, within certain
limits) of the gods--an independence united with the high rank which they
have. It may have been for this very reason that the youngest of the
dises of fate, Skuld, was selected as a valkyrie, and as a maid-servant
both of Odin and of her sister Urd.

The questions in which the Asas are judges near Urd's fountain must
be such as _cannot_ be settled in Asgard, as the lower world is their
proper forum, where both the parties concerned and the witnesses are to
be found. The questions are of great importance. This is evident already
from the fact that the journey to the thingstead is a troublesome one for
the gods, at least for Thor, who, to get thither, must wade across four
rivers. Moreover, the questions are of such a character that they occur
every day (Grimnersmal, 29, 31).

At this point of the investigation the results hitherto gained from the
various premises unite themselves in the following manner:

The Asas _daily_ go to the thingstead near Urd's fountain. At the
thingstead near Urd's fountain there _daily_ arrive hosts of the dead.

The task of the Asas near Urd's fountain is to judge in questions of
which the lower world is the proper forum. When the dead arrive at Urd's
fountain their final doom is not yet sealed. They have not yet been
separated into the groups which are to be divided between Asgard, Hel,
and Nifelhel.

The question now is, Can we conceive that the daily journey of the
Asas to Urd's fountain and the daily arrival there of the dead have no
connection with each other?--That the judgments daily pronounced by the
Asas at this thingstead, and that the daily event in accordance with
which the dead at this thingstead are divided between the realms of
bliss and those of torture have nothing in common?

That these mythological facts should have no connection with each other
is hard to conceive for anyone who, in doubtful questions, clings to that
which is probable rather than to the opposite. The probability becomes a
certainty by the following circumstances:

Of the kings Vanlande and Halfdan, Ynglingatal says that after death they
met Odin. According to the common view presented in our mythological
text-books, this should not have happened to either of them, since both
of them died from disease. One of them was visited and fetched by that
choking spirit of disease called _vitta vættr_, and in this way he was
permitted "to meet Odin" (_kom a vit Vilja brodur_). The other was
visited by _Hvedrungs mær_, the daughter of Loke, who "called him from
this world to Odin's Thing."

  Ok til things
  thridja jöfri
  Hvedrungs mær
  or heimi baud.

_Thing-bod_ means a legal summons to appear at a Thing, at the seat of
judgment. _Bjoda til things_ is to perform this legal summons. Here it is
Hvedrung's kinswoman who comes with sickness and death and _thing-bod_
to King Halfdan, and summons him to appear before the judgment-seat of
Odin. As, according to mythology, all the dead, and as, according to the
mythological text-books, at least all those who have died from disease
must go to Hel, then certainly King Halfdan, who died from disease, must
descend to the lower world; and as there is a Thing at which Odin and
the Asas daily sit in judgment, it must have been this to which Halfdan
was summoned. Otherwise we would be obliged to assume that Hvedrung's
kinswoman, Loke's daughter, is a messenger, not from the lower world and
Urd, but from Asgard, although the strophe further on expressly states
that she comes to Halfdan on account of "the doom of the norns;" and
furthermore we would be obliged to assume that the king, who had died
from sickness, after arriving in the lower world, did not present himself
at Odin's court there, but continued his journey to Asgard, to appear at
some of the accidental deliberations which are held at the thingstead
there. The passage proves that at least those who have died from sickness
have to appear at the court which is held by Odin in the lower world.

70.

    THE DOOM OF THE DEAD (_continued_). SPEECH-RUNES ORDS TÍRR
    NÁMÆLI.

In Sigrdrifumal (str. 12) we read:

  Málrunar skaltu kunna,
  vilt-ar magni ther
  heiptom gjaldi harm;
  thær um vindr,
  thær um vefr,
  thær um setr allar saman
  a thvi thingi,
  er thjothir scolo
  i fulla doma fara.

"Speech-runes you must know, if you do not wish that the strong one with
consuming woe shall requite you for the injury you have caused. All those
runes you must wind, weave, and place together in that Thing where the
host of people go into the full judgments."

In order to make the significance of this passage clear, it is necessary
to explain the meaning of speech-runes or mal-runes.

Several kinds of runes are mentioned in Sigrdrifumal, all of a magic
and wonderful kind. Among them are mal-runes (speech-runes). They have
their name from the fact that they are able to restore to a tongue mute
or silenced in death the power to _mæla_ (speak). Odin employs mal-runes
when he rists _i runom_, so that a corpse from the gallows comes and
_mælir_ with him (Havam., 157). According to Saxo (i. 38), Hadding places
a piece of wood risted with runes under the tongue of a dead man. The
latter then recovers consciousness and the power of speech, and sings a
terrible song. This is a reference to mal-runes. In Gudrunarkvida (i.)
it is mentioned how Gudrun, mute and almost lifeless (_hon gordiz at
deyja_), sat near Sigurd's dead body. One of the kinswomen present lifts
the napkin off from Sigurd's head. By the sight of the features of the
loved one Gudrun awakens again to life, bursts into tears, and is able
to speak. The evil Brynhild then curses the being (_vettr_) which "gave
mal-runes to Gudrun," that is to say, freed her tongue, until then sealed
as in death.

Those who are able to apply these mighty runes are very few. Odin boasts
that he knows them. Sigrdrifva, who also is skilled in them, is a dis,
not a daughter of man. The runes which Hadding applied were risted by
Hardgrep, a giantess who protected him. But within the court here in
question men come in great numbers (_thjódir_), and among them there
must be but a small number who have penetrated so deeply into the secret
knowledge of runes. For those who have done so it is of importance
and advantage. For by them they are able to defend themselves against
complaints, the purpose of which is "to requite with consuming woe the
harm they have done." In the court they are able to _mæla_ (speak) in
their own defence.

Thus it follows that those hosts of people who enter this thingstead
stand there with speechless tongues. They are and remain mute before
their judges unless they know the mal-runes which are able to loosen
the fetters of their tongues. Of the dead man's tongue it is said in
Solarljod (44) that it is _til trés metin ok kolnat alt fyr utan_.

The sorrow or harm one has caused is requited in this Thing by _heiptir_,
unless the accused is able--thanks to the mal-runes--to speak and give
reasons in his defence. In Havamál (151) the word _heiptir_ has the
meaning of something supernatural and magical. It has a similar meaning
here, as Vigfusson has already pointed out. The magical mal-runes,
wound, woven, and placed together, form as it were a garb of protection
around the defendant against the magic _heiptir_. In the Havamál strophe
mentioned the skald makes Odin paraphrase, or at least partly explain,
the word _heiptir_ with _mein_, which "eat" their victims. It is in
the nature of the myth to regard such forces as personal beings. We
have already seen the spirits of disease appear in this manner (see No.
60). The _heiptir_ were also personified. They were the Erinnyes of the
Teutonic mythology, armed with scourges of thorns (see below).

He who at the Thing particularly dispenses the law of requital is called
_magni_. The word has a double meaning, which appears in the verb
_magna_, which means both to make strong and to operate with supernatural
means.

From all this it must be sufficiently plain that the Thing here referred
to is not the Althing in Iceland or the Gulathing in Norway, or any other
Thing held on the surface of the earth. The thingstead here discussed
must be situated in one of the mythical realms, between which the earth
was established. And it must be superhuman beings of higher or lower rank
who there occupy the judgment-seats and requite the sins of men with
_heiptir_. But in Asgard men do not enter with their tongues sealed in
death. For the einherjes who are invited to the joys of Valhal there are
no _heiptir_ prepared. Inasmuch as the mythology gives us information
about only two thingsteads where superhuman beings deliberate and
judge--namely, the Thing in Asgard and the Thing near Urd's fountain--and
inasmuch as it is, in fact, only in the latter that the gods act as
judges, we are driven by all the evidences to the conclusion that
Sigrdrifumal has described to us that very thingstead at which Hvedrung's
kinswoman summoned King Halfdan to appear after death.

Sigrdrifumal, using the expression _á thvi_, sharply distinguished this
thingstead or court from all others. The poem declares that it means
_that_ Thing where hosts of people go into _full_ judgments. "Full"
are those judgments against which no formal or real protests can be
made--decisions which are irrevocably valid. The only kind of judgments
of which the mythology speaks in this manner, that is, characterises as
judgments that "never die," are those "over each one dead."

This brings us to the well-known and frequently-quoted strophes in
Havamál:

Str. 76.

  Deyr fæ,
  deyja frændr,
  deyr sialfr it sama;
  enn orztirr
  deyr aldregi
  hveim er ser godan getr.

Str. 77.

  Deyr fæ,
  deyja frændr,
  deyr sialfr it sama;
  ec veit einn
  at aldri deyr:
  domr um daudan hvern.

(76) "Your cattle shall die; your kindred shall die; you yourself shall
die; but the fair fame of him who has earned it never dies."

(77) "Your cattle shall die; your kindred shall die; you yourself shall
die; one thing I know which never dies: the judgment on each one dead."

Hitherto these passages have been interpreted as if Odin or Havamál's
skald meant to say--What you have of earthly possessions is perishable;
your kindred and yourself shall die. But I know one thing that never
dies: the reputation you acquired among men, the posthumous fame
pronounced on your character and on your deeds: that reputation is
immortal, that fame is imperishable.

But can this have been the meaning intended to be conveyed by the skald?
And could these strophes, which, as it seems, were widely known in the
heathendom of the North, have been thus understood by their hearers and
readers? Did not Havamál's author, and the many who listened to and
treasured in their memories these words of his, know as well as all other
persons who have some age and experience, that in the great majority of
cases the fame acquired by a person scarcely survives a generation, and
passes away together with the very memory of the deceased?

Could it have escaped the attention of the Havamál skald and his hearers
that the number of mortals is so large and increases so immensely with
the lapse of centuries that the capacity of the survivors to remember
them is utterly insufficient?

Was it not a well-established fact, especially among the Germans, before
they got a written literature, that the skaldic art waged, so to speak,
a desperate conflict with the power of oblivion, in order to rescue at
least the names of the most distinguished heroes and kings, but that
nevertheless thousands of chiefs and warriors were after the lapse of a
few generations entirely forgotten?

Did not Havamál's author know that millions of men have, in the course of
thousands of years, left this world without leaving so deep footprints
in the sands of time that they could last even through one generation?

Every person of some age and experience has known this, and Havamál's
author too. The lofty strains above quoted do not seem to be written by a
person wholly destitute of worldly experience.

The assumption that Havamál with that judgment on each one dead, which is
said to be imperishable, had reference to the opinion of the survivors in
regard to the deceased attains its climax of absurdity when we consider
that the poem expressly states that it means the judgment on _every_
dead person--"_domr um daudan hvern_." In the cottage lying far, far
in the deep forest dies a child, hardly known by others than by its
parents, who, too, are soon to be harvested by death. But the judgment
of the survivors in regard to this child's character and deeds is to be
imperishable, and the good fame it acquired during its brief life is to
live for ever on the lips of posterity! Perhaps it is the sense of the
absurdity to which the current assumption leads on this point that has
induced some of the translators to conceal the word _hvern_ (every) and
led them to translate the words _domr um daudan hvern_ in an arbitrary
manner with "judgment on the dead man."

If we now add that the judgment of posterity on one deceased,
particularly if he was a person of great influence, very seldom is so
unanimous, reliable, well-considered, and free from prejudice that in
these respects it ought to be entitled to permanent validity, then we
find that the words of the Havamál strophes attributed to Odin's lips,
when interpreted as hitherto, are not words of wisdom, but the most
stupid twaddle ever heard declaimed in a solemn manner.

There are two reasons for the misunderstanding--the one is formal, and
is found in the word _ords-tirr_ (str. 76); the other reason is that
Gylfaginning, which too long has had the reputation of being a reliable
and exhaustive codification of the scattered statements of the mythic
sources, has nothing to say about a court for the dead. It knows that,
according to the doctrine of the heathen fathers, good people come to
regions of bliss, the wicked to Nifelhel; but who he or they were who
determined how far a dead person was worthy of the one fate or the other,
on this point Gylfaginning has not a word to say. From the silence of
this authority, the conclusion has been drawn that a court summoning
the dead within its forum was not to be found in Teutonic mythology,
although other Aryan and non-Aryan mythologies have presented such a
judgment-seat, and that the Teutonic fancy, though always much occupied
with the affairs of the lower world and with the conditions of the dead
in the various realms of death, never felt the necessity of conceiving
for itself clear and concrete ideas of how and through whom the deceased
were determined for bliss or misery. The ecclesiastical conception, which
postpones the judgment to the last day of time and permits the souls
of the dead to be transferred, without any special act of judgment, to
heaven, to purgatory, or to hell, has to some extent contributed to
making us familiar with this idea which was foreign to the heathens. From
this it followed that scholars have been blind to the passages in our
mythical records which speak of a court in the lower world, and they
have either read them without sufficient attention (as, for instance,
the above-quoted statements of Ynglingatal, which it is impossible to
harmonise with the current conception), or interpreted them in an utterly
absurd manner (which is the case with Sigrdrifumal, str. 12), or they
have interpolated assumptions, which, on a closer inspection, are reduced
to nonsense (as is the case with the Havamál strophes), or given them
a possible, but improbable, interpretation (thus Sonatorrek, 19). The
compound _ordstirr_ is composed of _ord_, _gen_, _ords_, and _tirr_. The
composition is of so loose a character that the two parts are not blended
into a _new_ word. The sign of the gen. _-s_ is retained, and shows that
_ordstirr_, like _lofstirr_, is not in its sense and in its origin a
compound, but is written as one word, probably on account of the laws of
accentuation. The more original meaning of _ordstirr_ is, therefore, to
be found in the sense of _ords tirr_.

_Tirr_ means reputation in a good sense, but still not in a sense so
decidedly good but that a qualifying word, which makes the good meaning
absolute, is sometimes added. Thus in _lofs-tirr_, laudatory reputation;
_gódr tirr_, good reputation. In the Havamál strophe 76, above-quoted,
the possibility of an _ords tirr_ which is not good is presupposed. See
the last line of the strophe.

So far as the meaning of _ord_ is concerned, we must leave its relatively
more modern and grammatical sense (word) entirely out of the question.
Its older signification is an utterance (one which may consist of many
"words" in a grammatical sense), a command, a result, a judgment; and
these older significations have long had a conscious existence in the
language. Compare Fornmanna, ii. 237: "The first word: All shall be
Christians; the second word: All heathen temples and idols shall be
unholy," &c.

In Völuspa (str. 27) _ord_ is employed in the sense of an established law
or judgment among the divine powers, _a gengoz eidar, ord oc særi_, where
the treaties between the Asas and gods, solemnised by oaths, were broken.

When _ord_ occurs in purely mythical sources, it is most frequently
connected with judgments pronounced in the lower world, and sent from
Urd's fountain to their destination. _Urdar ord_ is Urd's judgment, which
must come to pass (Fjölsvinnsm., str. 48), no matter whether it concerns
life or death. _Feigdar ord_, a judgment determining death, comes to
Fjolner, and is fulfilled "where Frode dwelt" (Yng.-tal, Heimskr., 14).
_Dauda ord_, the judgment of death, awaited Dag the Wise, when he came to
Vorva (Yng.-tal, Heimskr., 21). To a subterranean judgment refers also
the expression _bana-ord_, which frequently occurs.

Vigfusson (Dict., 466) points out the possibility of an etymological
connection between _ord_ and _Urdr_. He compares _word_ (_ord_) and
_wurdr_ (_urdr_), _word_ and _weird_ (fate, goddess of fate). Doubtless
there was, in the most ancient time, a mythical idea-association between
them.

These circumstances are to be remembered in connection with the
interpretation of _ordstirr_, _ords-tirr_ in Havamál, 76. The real
meaning of the phrase to be; reputation based on a decision, on an
utterance of authority.

When _ordstirr_ had blended into a compound word, there arose by the side
of its literal meaning another, in which the accent fell so heavily on
_tirr_ that _ord_ is superfluous and gives no additional meaning of a
judgment on which this _tirr_ is based. Already in Hofudlausn (str. 26)
_ordstirr_ is used as a compound, meaning simply honourable reputation,
honour. There is mention of a victory which Erik Blood-axe won, and it is
said that he thereby gained _ordstirr_ (renown).

In interpreting Havamál (76) it would therefore seem that we must choose
between the proper and figurative sense of _ordstirr_. The age of the
Havamál strophe is not known. If it was from it Eyvind Skaldaspiller drew
his _deyr fé, deyja frændr_, which he incorporated in his drapa on Hakon
the Good, who died in 960, then the Havamál strophe could not be composed
later than the middle of the tenth century. Hofudlausn was composed by
Egil Skallagrimson in the year 936 or thereabout. From a chronological
point of view there is therefore nothing to hinder our applying the less
strict sense, "honourable reputation, honour," to the passage in question.

But there are other hindrances. If the Havamál skald with _ords-tirr_
meant "honourable reputation, honour," he could not, as he has done,
have added the condition which he makes in the last line of the strophe:
_hveim er ser godan getr_, for the idea "good" would then already be
contained in ordstirr. If in spite of this we would take the less strict
sense, we must subtract from _ordstirr_ the meaning of _honourable_
reputation, _honour_, and conceive the expression to mean simply
reputation in general, a meaning which the word never had.

We are therefore forced to the conclusion that the meaning of
court-decision, judgment, which _ord_ has not only in Ynglingatal and
Fjölsvinnsmal, but also in linguistic usage, was clear to the author of
the Havamál strophe, and that he applied _ords tirr_ in its original
sense and was speaking of imperishable judgments.

It should also have been regarded as a matter of course that the judgment
which, according to the Havamál strophe (77), is passed on everyone dead,
and which itself never dies, must have been prepared by a court whose
decision could not be questioned or set aside, and that the judgment
must have been one whose influence is eternal, for the infinity of the
judgment itself can only depend on the infinity of its operation. That
the more or less vague opinions sooner or later committed to oblivion
in regard to a deceased person should be supposed to contain such a
judgment, and to have been meant by the immortal doom over the dead, I
venture to include among the most extraordinary interpretations ever
produced.

Both the strophes are, as is evident from the first glance, most
intimately connected with each other. Both begin: _deyr fæ, deyja
frændr_. _Ord_ in the one strophe corresponds to _domr_ in the other.
The latter strophe declares that the judgment on _every_ dead person
is imperishable, and thus completes the more limited statement of the
foregoing strophe, that the judgment which gives a good renown is
everlasting. The former strophe speaks of only _one_ category of men who
have been subjected to an ever-valid judgment, namely of that category
to whose honour the eternal judgment is pronounced. The second strophe
speaks of both the categories, and assures us that the judgment on the
one as on the other category is everlasting.

The strophes are by the skald attributed to Odin's lips. Odin pronounces
judgment every day near Urd's fountain at the court to which King Halfdan
was summoned, and where hosts of people with fettered tongues await their
final destiny (see above.) The assurances in regard to the validity of
the judgment on everyone dead are thus given by a being who really may be
said to know what he talks about (_ec veit_, &c.), namely, by the judge
himself.

In the poem Sonatorrek the old Egil Skallagrimson laments the loss of
sons and kindred, and his thoughts are occupied with the fate of his
children after death. When he speaks of his son Gunnar, who in his tender
years was snatched away by a sickness, he says (str. 19):

  Son minn
  sóttar brimi
  heiptuligr
  ór heimi nam,
  thann ec veit
  at varnadi
  vamma varr
  vid námæli.

"A fatal fire of disease (fever?) snatched from this world a son of mine,
of whom I know that he, careful as he was in regard to sinful deeds, took
care of himself for _námæli_."

To understand this strophe correctly, we must know that the skald in the
preceding 17th, as in the succeeding 20th, strophe, speaks of Gunnar's
fate in the lower world.

The word _námæli_ occurs nowhere else, and its meaning is not known. It
is of importance to our subject to find it out.

In those compounds of which the first part is _ná-_, _ná_ may be the
adverbial prefix, which means _near by_, _by the side of_, or it may be
the substantive _nár_, which means a corpse, dead body, and in a mythical
sense one damned, one who dies for the second time and comes to Nifelhel
(see No. 60). The question is now, to begin with, whether it is the
adverbial prefix or the substantive _ná-_ which we have in _námæli_.

Compounds which have the adverbial _ná_ as the first part of the word are
very common. In all of them the prefix _ná-_ implies nearness in space or
in kinship, or it has the signification of some thing correct or exact.

(1) In regard to space: _nábúd_, _nábúi_, _nábýli_, _nágranna_,
_nágranni_, _nágrennd_, _nágrenni_, _nákommin_, _nákvæma_, _nákvæmd_,
_nákvæmr_, _náleid_, _nálægd_, _nálægjast_, _nálægr_, _námunda_,
_násessi_, _náseta_, _násettr_, _násæti_, _návera_, _náverukona_,
_náverandi_, _návist_, _návistarkona_, _návistarmadr_, _návistarvitni_.

(2) In regard to friendship: _náborinn_, _náfrændi_, _náfrændkona_,
_námagr_, _náskyldr_, _nástædr_, _náongr_.

(3) In regard to correctness, exactness: _nákvæmi_, _nákvæmliga_,
_nákvæmr_.

The idea of correctness comes from the combination of _ná-_ and _kvæmi_,
_kvæmliga_, _kvæmr_. The exact meaning is--_that which comes near to_,
and which in that sense is precise, exact, to the point.

These three cases exhaust the meanings of the adverbial prefix _ná_-. I
should consider it perilous, and as the abandoning of solid ground under
the feet, if we, without evidence from the language tried, as has been
done, to give it another hitherto unknown signification.

But none of these meanings can be applied to _námæli_. In analogy with
the words under (1) it can indeed mean "An oration held near by;" but
this signification produces no sense in the above passage, the only place
where it is found.

In another group of words the prefix _ná_-is the noun _nár_. Here belong
_nábjargir_, _nábleikr_, _nágrindr_, _nágöll_, _náreid_, _nástrandir_,
and other words.

_Mæli_ means a declamation, an oration, an utterance, a reading, or
the proclamation of a law. _Mæla_, _mælandi_, _formælandi_, _formæli_,
_nymæli_, are used in legal language. _Formælandi_ is a defendant in
court. _Formæli_ is his speech or plea. _Nymæli_ is a law read or
published for the first time.

_Mæli_ can take either a substantive or adjective as prefix. Examples:
_Gudmæli_, _fullmæli_. _Ná_ from _nár_ can be used as a prefix both to a
noun and to an adjective. Examples: _nágrindr_, _nábleikr_.

_Námæli_ should accordingly be an oration, a declaration, a proclamation,
in regard to _nár_. From the context we find that _námæli_ is something
dangerous, something to look out for. Gunnar is dead and is gone to the
lower world, which contains not only happiness but also terrors; but his
aged father, who in another strophe of the poem gives to understand that
he had adhered faithfully to the religious doctrines of his fathers, is
convinced that his son has avoided the dangers implied in _námæli_, as
he had no sinful deed to blame himself for. In the following strophe
(20) he expressed his confidence that the deceased had been adopted by
_Gauta spjalli_, a friend of Odin in the lower world, and had landed in
the realm of happiness. (In regard to _Gauta spjalli_ see further on. The
expression is applicable both to Mimer and Honer).

_Námæli_ must, therefore, mean a declaration (1) that is dangerous; (2)
which does not affect a person who has lived a blameless life; (3) which
refers to the dead and affects those who have not been _vamma varir_, on
the look-out against blameworthy and criminal deeds.

The passage furnishes additional evidence that the dead in the lower
world make their appearance in order to be judged, and it enriches
our knowledge of the mythological eschatology with a technical term
(_námæli_) for that judgment which sends sinners to travel through the
Na-gates to Nifelhel. The opposite of _námæli_ is _ords tirr_, that
judgment which gives the dead fair renown, and both kinds of judgments
are embraced in the phrase _domr um daudan_. _Námæli_ is a proclamation
for _náir_, just as _nágrindr_ are gates and _nástrandir_ are strands for
_náir_.

71.

    THE DOOM OF THE DEAD (_continued_). THE LOOKS OF THE
    THINGSTEAD. THE DUTY OF TAKING CARE OF THE ASHES OF THE DEAD.
    THE HAMINGJE AT THE JUDGMENT. SINS OF WEAKNESS. SINS UNTO DEATH.

Those hosts which are conducted by their psychopomps to the Thing near
Urd's fountain proceed noiselessly. It is a silent journey. The bridge
over _Gjöll_ scarcely resounds under the feet of the death-horses and of
the dead (Gylfaginning). The tongues of the shades are sealed (see No.
70).

This thingstead has, like all others, had its judgment-seats. Here are
seats (in Völuspa called _rökstólar_) for the holy powers acting as
judges. There is also a rostrum (_á thularstóli at Urdar brunni_--Havam.,
111) and benches or chairs for the dead (compare the phrase, _falla
á Helpalla_--Fornald., i. 397, and the sitting of the dead one, _á
nornastóli_--Solarlj., 51). Silent they must receive their doom unless
they possess mal-runes (see No. 70).

The dead should come well clad and ornamented. Warriors bring their
weapons of attack and defence. The women and children bring ornaments
that they were fond of in life. Hades-pictures of those things which
kinsmen and friends placed in the grave-mounds accompany the dead
(Hakonarm., 17; Gylfaginning, 52) as evidence to the judge that they
enjoyed the devotion and respect of their survivors. The appearance
presented by the shades assembled in the Thing indicates to what extent
the survivors heed the law, which commands respect for the dead and care
for the ashes of the departed.

Many die under circumstances which make it impossible for their kinsmen
to observe these duties. Then strangers should take the place of kindred.
The condition in which these shades come to the Thing shows best whether
piety prevails in Midgard; for noble minds take to heart the advices
found as follows in Sigrdrifumal, 33, 34: "Render the last service to the
corpses you find on the ground, whether from sickness they have died,
or are drowned, or are from weapons dead. Make a bath for those who are
dead, wash their hands and their head, comb them and wipe them dry, ere
in the coffin you lay them, and pray for their happy sleep."

It was, however, not necessary to wipe the blood off from the byrnie of
one fallen by the sword. It was not improper for the elect to make their
entrance in Valhal in a bloody coat of mail. Eyvind Skaldaspiller makes
King Hakon come all stained with blood (_allr i dreyra drifinn_) into the
presence of Odin.

When the gods have arrived from Asgard, dismounted from their horses
(Gylfag.) and taken their judges' seats, the proceedings begin, for the
dead are then in their places, and we may be sure that their psychopomps
have not been slow on their Thing-journey. Somewhere on the way the
Hel-shoes must have been tried; those who ride to Valhal must then have
been obliged to dismount. The popular tradition first pointed out by
Walter Scott and J. Grimm about the need of such shoes for the dead and
about a thorn-grown heath, which they have to cross, is not of Christian
but of heathen origin. Those who have shown mercy to fellowmen that in
this life, in a figurative sense, had to travel thorny paths, do not need
to fear torn shoes and bloody feet (W. Scott, _Minstrelsy_, ii.); and
when they are seated on Urd's benches, their very shoes are, by their
condition, a conspicuous proof in the eyes of the court that they who
have exercised mercy are worthy of mercy.

The Norse tradition preserved in Gisle Surson's saga in regard to the
importance for the dead to be provided with shoes reappears as a popular
tradition, first in England, and then several places (Müllenhoff,
_Deutsche Alt._, v. 1, 114; J. Grimm., _Myth._, iii. 697; nachtr., 349;
Weinhold, _Altn. Leb._, 494; Mannhardt in _zeitschr. f. deutsch. Myth._,
iv. 420; Simrock, _Myth._, v. 127). _Visio Godeschalci_ describes a
journey which the pious Holstein peasant Godeskalk, belonging to the
generation immediately preceding that which by Vicelin was converted to
Christianity, believed he had made in the lower world. There is mentioned
an immensely large and beautiful linden-tree hanging full of shoes, which
were handed down to such dead travellers as had exercised mercy during
their lives. When the dead had passed this tree they had to cross a
heath two miles wide, thickly grown with thorns, and then they came to
a river full of irons with sharp edges. The unjust had to wade through
this river, and suffered immensely. They were cut and mangled in every
limb; but when they reached the other strand, their bodies were the same
as they had been when they began crossing the river. Compare with this
statement Solarljod, 42, where the dying skald hears the roaring of
subterranean streams mixed with much blood--_Gylfar straumar grenjudu,
blandnir mjök ved blód_. The just are able to cross the river by putting
their feet on boards a foot wide and fourteen feet long, which floated on
the water. This is the first day's journey. On the second day they come
to a point where the road forked into three ways--one to heaven, one to
hell, and one between these realms (compare Müllenhoff, _D. Alt._, v.
113, 114). These are all mythic traditions, but little corrupted by time
and change of religion. That in the lower world itself Hel-shoes were
to be had for those who were not supplied with them, but still deserved
them, is probably a genuine mythological idea.

Proofs and witnesses are necessary before the above-named tribunal, for
Odin is far from omniscient. He is not even the one who knows the most
among the beings of mythology. Urd and Mimer know more than he. With
judges on the one hand who, in spite of all their loftiness, and with
all their superhuman keenness, nevertheless are not infallible, and with
defendants on the other hand whose tongues refuse to serve them, it
might happen, if there were no proofs and witnesses, that a judgment,
everlasting in its operations, not founded on exhaustive knowledge and on
well-considered premises, might be proclaimed. But the judgment on human
souls proclaimed by their final irrevocable fate could not in the sight
of the pious and believing bear the stamp of uncertain justice. There
must be no doubt that the judicial proceedings in the court of death were
so managed that the wisdom and justice of the _dicta_ were raised high
above every suspicion of being mistaken.

The heathen fancy shrank from the idea of a knowledge able of itself
to embrace all, the greatest and the least, that which has been, is
doing, and shall be in the world of thoughts, purposes, and deeds. It
hesitated at all events to endow its gods made in the image of man with
omniscience. It was easier to conceive a divine insight which was
secured by a net of messengers and spies stretched throughout the world.
Such a net was cast over the human race by Urd, and it is doubtless for
this reason that the subterranean Thing of the gods was located near
her fountain and not near Mimer's. Urd has given to every human soul,
already before the hour of birth, a maid-servant, a hamingje, a norn of
lower rank, to watch over and protect its earthly life. And so there
was a wide-spread organization of watching and protecting spirits, each
one of whom knew the motives and deeds of a special individual. As such
an organisation was at the service of the court, there was no danger
that the judgment over each one dead would not be as just as it was
unappealable and everlasting.

The hamingje hears of it before anyone else when her mistress has
announced _dauda ord_--the doom of death, against her favourite. She (and
the _gipte, heille_, see No. 64) leaves him then. She is _horfin_, gone,
which can be perceived in dreams (Balder's Dream, 4) or by revelations
in other ways, and this is an unmistakable sign of death. But if the
death-doomed person is not a nithing, whom she in sorrow and wrath has
left, then she by no means abandons him. They are like members of the
same body, which can only be separated by mortal sins (see below). The
hamingje goes to the lower world, the home of her nativity (see No. 64),
to prepare an abode there for her favourite, which also is to belong to
her (Gisle Surson's saga.) It is as if a spiritual marriage was entered
into between her and the human soul.

But on the dictum of the court of death it depends where the dead
person is to find his haven. The judgment, although not pronounced
on the hamingje, touches her most closely. When the most important
of all questions, that of eternal happiness or unhappiness, is to be
determined in regard to her favourite, she must be there where her duty