released from their bodies left on earth, which descend to the kingdom of
death and get their various abodes there. How far our heathen ancestors
had a more or less _material_ conception of the soul is a question which
it is not necessary to discuss here (see on this point No. 95). Howsoever
they may have regarded it, the very existence of a Hades in their
mythology demonstrates that they believed that a conscious and sentient
element in man was in death separated from the body with which it had
been united in life, and went down to the lower world. That the body from
which this conscious, sentient element fled was not removed to Hades,
but went in this upper earth to its disintegration, whether it was burnt
or buried in a mound or sunk to the bottom of the sea, this our heathen
ancestors knew just as well as we know it. The people of the stone-age
already knew this.
The phrase Na-gates does not stand alone in our mythological eschatology.
One of the abodes of torture lying within the Na-gate is called Nastrands
(_Nástrandir_), and is described in Völuspa as filled with terrors. And
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).