an additional precious beverage of their own, which it may safely be
presumed, no mortal on earth has ever tasted. This {183}ambrosia of a
novel nature was obtained by the gods and heroes themselves, on certain
favorable days, from the white substance of the moon. Yes, from the
moon! Did they quaff it in full draughts or did they inhale it through
calumets? We do not know, but the nations of the earth saw in these
periodical bleedings of the moon the reason for her divers phases and
her gradual diminution. When she became reduced to a mere crescent,
fright was seen on all faces and oppressed all hearts. Were the great
people up there forgetting themselves in their celestial orgies, and
would they drink up the moon to the last drop?
It must be borne in mind that they, like the Germans, saw in the moon
nothing but a transparent leathern bottle, filled with sweetened milk,
and phosphorescent.
Let us return now. To hunt the boar, to breakfast on wild boar, to dine
on the same dish, day after day, to drink beer and wine, and from time
to time that mulled egg which the moon furnished, to fight morning
and evening, to die and come to life again, merely for the purpose of
fighting again--these were the amusements of that delightful place. Upon
my word, it took Scandinavians to be content with such pleasures.
If Odin’s paradise appears to us but little attractive, his hell, on the
other hand, seems to have been {184}far from terrible, especially if we
compare it with the hell of some of our great poets, such as Dante and
Milton.
The hell of the Scandinavians occupied the lowest depths of the world
and consisted of two parts, _Nastrond_ and _Niflheim_. The latter is
a kind of dismal vestibule shrouded in darkness, in which are seen
wandering about the mournful seolas of those who have been neither good
nor bad, neither heroes nor scoundrels, and of all who have not fallen
by the sword. To die on one’s bed or in an armchair, was a wrong in
Odin’s eyes, a grievous wrong, though not exactly a crime, since he
punished it only with a temporary detention in those damp, low places,
where darkness, silence, and weariness seemed to combine for their
punishment. The dwellers in Niflheim had scarcely any amusement except
their reciprocal yawns, and from time to time a flash of dim light which
reached there when the little black Alfs came in or went out, busily
engaged in conveying a load of souls.
The great criminals were thrown into Nastrond, the real hell. What
is very remarkable is, that here there were no braziers and burning
gridirons to be seen, no furnaces and masses of flames as in all the
other hells. This was a hell of ice; it froze here hard enough to split
iron, and the damned shivered with cold. Dante mentions something of
{185}the kind in his great work, but between the Florentine and the
Scandinavian there can be no doubt who borrowed from the other.
It was quite natural after all that in these win-tery regions of
Scandinavia, where cold is the greatest evil to be dreaded, intense,
continued, eternal cold should have become the terror and the punishment
of the criminal. The idea of a hell of fire, so far from keeping them
from the fatal slope, might very well have tempted some chilly scoundrel
to commit a great crime.
[Illustration: 205]
The poor wretches who were shivering in Nastrond {186}with stiffened
hands and eyes full of frozen tears, felt their tortures increased
whenever Hela, the pale goddess, the queen of that place, Death itself,
cast upon them a glance from her lack-lustre eyes.
Yes, it was Hela who reigned over this frightful iceberg; her palace is
called Misery, her gate the Precipice, her reception room Grief, her bed
Disease, her table Famine, and her throne Malediction!
The body of this terrible queen is party-colored, half white and half
blue, and her breath is perfumed with that horrible cadaverous odor in
which the Valkyrias delight.
But after all, the names seem to be worse than the sufferings
themselves; for excessive cold paralyzes pain itself, and there is
nothing here to compare with those classic places where lava-baths,
rolling rocks, flaming wheels, horses of red-hot iron, boiling pitch,
fiery arrows and the snake whips of the Eumenides made up an infernal
stock of tortures which might well tempt the imagination of the greatest
of poets.
In Nastrond there were no demons and no Eumenides; to be sure, there was
a Bigvor and a Sisvor, furies if you will have it so, watching at the
gates of hell, with the help of Gaun, the formidable dog, but all three
are forbidden to enter within. {187}The place of missing monsters is
occupied by some of those whom Odin spared on the occasion of his first
campaign against the giant sons of Ymer, and by the wolf Fenris, whom
the Ases had treacherously captured. There are also two other wolves,
convicted of having made an attempt upon the life of the Sun, and all of
these monsters are firmly chained and appear rather as sufferers than as
tormentors.
One of these days, their iron chains will be loosened; one of these days
heaven will turn cold and hell will melt, and--then, woe to the gods!
Listen! The moment is drawing near when all these mysteries are to
be solved. The hour is coming when _you shall hear, when you shall
understand!_ But before uttering these last words, final and at the same
time fatal words, we must mention an event which at that moment
occurred in the open assembly of the gods, filling heaven and earth with
amazement, with pity and horror.
It must be acknowledged that so far the heavenly personages have
appeared to be rather kindhearted and mild. Odin, in spite of his Druids
and their demands for bloody sacrifices, seems to have been full of good
intentions. The god Thor, with all his somewhat brutal ways, rendered
great services to mankind; and the same hammer, which protected them
against the giants, afterwards served, {188}without the aid of
geometry, to mark the boundary lines of their respective properties.
The golden-teethed god, Heimdall, gave most undoubted evidence of his
devotion to the human race and of his self-denial in his visits to the
Grandmother and the Great-grandmother, and so did the other gods. But we
had good reasons for not going through the whole list of the Ases. For
there is one whom we keep in reserve so that he may appear at the right
hour, and that is Loki, the god of evil and the genius of destruction.
Surpassing Odin himself in his magic skill, fair of form and features,
a smile on his lips--thin lips, however, the Edda adds--and apparently
possessed of the most jovial temper so as to make him a most agreeable
person, Loki is in reality a compound of the most hideous vices. He
is the representative of hatred and cruelty, of envy, hypocrisy, and
perversity. In fact, he is our Satan, before the fall. If he had been
king of hell, Miflheim and Nastrond would both have been filled with
more tortures and more horrors than all the other hells which are known
to men.
And yet he was the god upon whom the dwellers in Walhalla counted for
their entertainment, and whom they had surnamed the Clown!
One day an ancient prophetess returns to life, rises in her grave, and
utters a terrible cry: “Balder, {189}fair Balder, is going to die!”
With these words she falls back again upon her mournful couch and dies
again--forever.
[Illustration: 209]
In the meantime this cry has been heard even at the top of the ash
Ygdrasil. The Ases are troubled and amazed; they meet, they look at
each other, thoroughly frightened, for on the life of Balder depends the
existence of all the other gods. Moreover, {190}Balder the Bright is
the glory of heaven and the love of the earth. Can Balder die, the most
charming and the purest as well as the most beautiful of all the sons of
Odin? He, who was so beautiful that Hela herself could not help smiling
when she looked at him--he, so pure that no falsehood could be uttered
in his presence and that a vessel containing an adulterated liquid would
break instantly at his approach--he, so charming that all the gods love
him as their favorite child, and that men have surnamed him Hope? No,
no! Balder shall not die, said the Ases.
His distressed mother Frigg, Odin’s wife, shows her apprehensions by
her intense anguish, and her sobs scarcely allow her to speak. She tells
those who try to laugh at the sudden alarm of all who have heard the
warning of the prophetess, that for several nights already she has
been repeatedly, persistently warned in her dreams of the death of her
well-beloved son. She would not believe it, she adds, but now she does
believe.
The divine sybil Vola, whose predictions have never proved untrue, and
Skulda, the Norn of the Future, are ‘summoned to appear. They consult
with each other and this is their decision:--
“Balder is in danger; Balder will die unless all earthly substances that
can inflict death, are rendered powerless.” {191}Frigg descends to the
earth and speaks to volcanoes and water-spouts, to frost and hail, and
they promise to spare her son. Among the aquatic powers, from the ocean
to the smallest brook, among the stones, from the mightiest rock to the
pebble, and among the metals, from gold to iron, there is none that does
not swear the same oath. The plants also promise, from the oak to the
smallest shrub and down to the humblest grass.
[Illustration: 211]
Triumphantly she returns to heaven to announce the good news. Everybody
is overjoyed. They celebrate the happy result of her journey by a family
dinner, at which Loki succeeds in exhilarating even Odin himself by his
merry jokes. He had never appeared in better spirits; had never seemed
to sympathize more warmly with the happy court.
When the feast was ended and the last cups were drained in honor of
Balder, some one proposed for the general amusement to try how far all
these substances, vegetable or mineral, will be faithful to the oath
they have sworn, when brought face to face with Balder. {192}Beginning
with the most inoffensive of them all, they throw at him a clod of
earth; the clod of earth breaks into a cloud of dust before it touches
him. Then they pour a pitcher of water over him and the water forms a
cascade above him without wetting even his garments. They try to strike
him with a hazel wand; the wand, slipping from the hand that holds
it, breaks in two. Balder is amused by the game and encourages the
bystanders to renew their attacks.
[Illustration: 212]
The skillful Uller shoots at him a pointless arrow, aiming, from
excessive caution, only at his shoulder. The arrow passes at a distance
of twenty feet from its aim and continues its flight through {193}the
air, like a bird in search of its prey beyond the clouds.
Ten other assailants meet the same fate, trying their luck with a
fragment of rock and a heavy branch in the shape of a club. But the
fragment was of stone and remembered the promise given to Frigg, and the
club was cut from a tree and the tree remembered the promise given to
Frigg.
Encouraged by so many reassuring trials, Freyr desired to try his magic
sword, but for once the faithful sword was deaf to his orders. Thor
brandished his hammer, but the hammer suddenly reversed its action and
well nigh made him fall back upon his heels. Freyr’s sword and Thor’s
hammer were both of iron and the iron remembered the promise given to
Frigg.
Loki took care not to appear.
The sport was over, as it seemed, when suddenly the blind god Hoder,
Balder’s own brother, was seen to advance, feeling his way, towards the
bright god. Hoder held in his hand a small bunch of leaves, a bit of
grass, at least it appeared such after the fearful instruments that had
just been brought into play.
Immense laughter, a laughter such as the gods of Homer were in the habit
of enjoying, broke out at the sight; Loki laughed till his sides shook
and Hoder himself shared the general hilarity. {194}But he drew
nearer and nearer, shaking his bit of verdure in the air; then, almost
tottering and having learnt from the bystanders in what direction he
would have to turn, he threw the slender twig against Balder, using his
full force, which was prodigious.
He hit Balder full in the chest and the god fell instantly. That bright
light which was always shining around him became extinct; he closed his
eyes, and lowered his beautiful brow deprived of its glory.....Balder
was dead!
He had been struck by a bit of mistletoe. Frigg had addressed her
prayers to the oak tree, but she had not thought of the mistletoe which
grows on the oak tree; the mistletoe had given no promise to Frigg. Must
we look here for a symbolic meaning? Did this mean, that the Druidical
mistletoe was soon to triumph over the gods of Scandinavia? This could
not be so, for at the time to which we have come, there was no trace
left of the wise worship of the Druids of the first epoch; the Druids of
the second epoch were fast losing their power, and the Scandinavian gods
were daily increasing in popularity, even beyond the banks of the Rhine.
But we ought not to interrupt this account of Balder’s death, which
is as poetical and as touching as the most famous fables of Greece.
{195}When blind Hoder, whose name must not be uttered, you remember,
hears the cries of despair which break out all around him, and encircle
him on all sides with maledictions, he is troubled and seriously
distressed. Then, all of a sudden joining in the distressed cries of the
Ases, he falls utterly overcome upon his brother’s body and denounces
Loki as the author of this calamity. Loki has reproached him for being
the only one who took no part in the amusements by which they thought to
honor Balder, and he it was who had not only given him the fatal
plant but who had also directed his arm. Loki was jealous of all the
perfections of Balder and he hated him as much as the other gods loved
him.
They look for Loki, but he has disappeared. No doubt he has tried to
escape from the vengeance of the Ases by seeking refuge in the mountains
among the giants, his natural allies, or perhaps in the deep sea, with
the serpent Iormungandur.
And whilst they thus lament, inquire, and investigate, Balder’s soul is
carried off by the black Alfs to Niflheim, the dark vestibule of hell.
Odin still cherished hopes that his dead son might be restored to him.
Upon his order Her-mode, the messenger of the gods, mounts his horse
Sleipner and goes to see Hela, but neither promises nor threats can move
the dread goddess. Fate has {196}decided, and Fate is above the gods, as
the gods are above men.
Then Frigg herself goes to see the pale goddess. Frigg weeps and the
merciless goddess is unable to keep her heart from softening when she
sees the tears of such a mother. She says to her:--
“Let all created beings--mind, I say, all created beings!--give a tear
to Balder, a tear such as you have’ shed in my presence, and Balder
shall be restored to you!”
Frigg was unwilling to trust any one but herself with the effort to
realize such hopes. Once more she went over the world, gathering around
her all the races of men, one after the other, and as she mentioned the
name of Balder, tears flowed from all eyes.
For three months she visited all the forests and all the mountains,
the seas and the lakes and the animals that live in the waters and the
mountains; and seas and lakes and mountains wept. She went even to the
abode of the giants, the enemies of the gods, and her grief made the
giants also weep; every tree wept and every rock wept.
Frigg thought her task was accomplished, and was filled with joy; but
she heard that in the far East of Midgard there lived an old woman in
the heart of a forest of iron trees. As she lived alone there, far
from any beaten track, she had never {197}become known to the intrepid
traveller. Now, however, Frigg sought her out by steep paths, cut up
with gullies and fierce torrents, and at last found her. When the mother
told her pitiful tale, the iron trees wept, but the old woman would not
weep.
[Illustration: 217]
{198}They called her Thorck, and her heart was ten times as hard as her
name.
“What do I care for your Balder?” she cried; “what do I care whether he
is dead or alive? You have other sons; I have not one left me. Once I
had four, and all four were my pride, my delight. They were so fair!
They were so tall! Your son Thor killed every one of them. I wept much
at that time. Now, it is all over. Look for tears elsewhere, I have no
tears to give to other people’s sorrows!”
Frigg bowed down before her, begged her, conjured her, and even fell on
her knees before her; but the old woman was inflexible. Balder had to
remain a prisoner with Hela.
Some interpreters of Scandinavian runes have been of the opinion that
the bereaved mother in the forest of iron trees was none other than
Loki himself, changed into an old woman. That thought, however, is
inadmissible. The Ases were beyond the reach of Hela, and Loki’s refusal
would not have rendered void the unanimous vote of all Nature, when
tears of pity and sympathy alone were to be given as votes. It is much
more plausible to suppose, that Loki had induced Thorck to refuse by his
counsels and by his enchantments; through him the heart of the old woman
had’ become iron as well as the trees of the forest in {199}which she
lived. Thus Loki had twice caused the death of Balder!
It was at this time that a strange, almost incredible report was for the
first time heard among men. The Druids whispered it cautiously into
the ears of the initiated, and voices were said to utter it in the air
during the night. This report, a terrible secret, a most unexpected
revelation, stated that the gods were about to die! Thor would die,
after seeing lightning become extinct in his hands; Odin himself would
die, and so would the others. The fate of each one of them was depending
on the fate of this fragile world over which they ruled, and this world
had to perish because Balder had perished.
What? Should the Universe change back into chaos? Was there no
all-powerful will that could arrest the process of destruction before
it was too late? But where could such omnipotent will be found, now that
the gods were no longer to be in existence?
Listen! listen to these verses from the Edda!
“Who is the most ancient among the gods?
“Alfader, that is, the universal father. He has always been and will
ever be; he governs all things, both big and small; he has made the
heavens, the earth and the gods. Odin created man, but Al-fader gave
him his immortal soul!” {200}Thus we come back to the pure essence of
an only god, who is ever the same, whether his name be Teut, Esus, or
Jehovah; the other gods are nothing but emanations proceeding from him,
living symbols intended to live for a few thousand centuries--that is
all.
“Do you hear? Do you understand now?
“Do you understand why the great ash tree Ygdrasil is continually
gnawed at its root by a dragon? Why four famished stags feed upon its
foliage? You understand? Well!
“But by what sign shall we recognize the approaching end of the
gods--that which the Edda calls their _twilight?_
“The most important among all the sacred books of the North, a volume
containing the prophecies of the divine sybil Vola, the _Voluspa,_ will
tell you.
“When the fatal moment draws near, their voice will cease to be able
to utter the accustomed chants, and the luminous brightness radiating
from their bodies will fade away little by little.
“When they leave their bath, their bodies will not dry at once, as they
do now, but remain moist; drops of water will continually drip from
them, and they will in this respect become like unto mortal men.
“In order to overcome these first symptoms of {201}indisposition, the
wife of the god Bragi, Iduna, will give them certain apples to eat,
which she keeps in reserve. These apples will have the effect of
strengthening them and of restoring to them a kind of fictitious youth
for a few thousand years perhaps.
“One day, however, their eyes will begin to wink; the next morning, upon
awaking, their eyelids will be found closed, and then they will turn red
and blear.
“At table, when proceeding to their usual libations, their slightly
tremulous hands will be unable to hold their cups steadily; some of the
wine or the hydromel will escape and their garments will remain stained.
“Woe to them if a grain of dust adheres to these stained garments!
“Woe to them still more, if the wreaths of flowers or of jewels begin to
fade and to wither on their brows!
“Finally, when the sweet perfumes which now are exhaled from their
bodies, change into acrid and sickening odors, there will be nothing
left for them but to make their last will.”
I am well convinced that this last phrase has been stealthily introduced
into the Voluspa by some kind of criminal and fraudulent trick. The
rest, however, is a faithful translation of the original {202}text, as
taken from the best authenticated editions.
[Illustration: 222]
“Then,” the prophecy continues, “then three sacred cocks, dwelling
in the three principal worlds, will crow and reply to each other,
announcing the _Twilight of Greatness._
“Then, everything on earth will be in disorder and confusion; families
will be at variance with {203}each other, the claims of blood will no
longer be acknowledged, and brothers will be arrayed against brothers.
“Adultery and incest, robbery and murder, will prevail among men, and
the age will be an age of barbarism, an age of the sword, an age of
tempests, an age of wolves!
“The wolves will be ready to devour the sun. Three long winters, with
no summers between them, will cover the earth with snow and ice; the
branches of the trees will give way under the immense burden; the sun
will be darkened more and more; the moon will dissolve into vapor and
the stars will go out; the mountains, shaking in their foundations, will
be tossed to and fro like reeds in a river; the earth will reject all
the plants, the trees, and the rocks which it now bears; the waters will
cast the fish upon the shore and with them their algae, their corals,
and even the bodies of shipwrecked men, hideous skeletons, whose
rattling bones will chime in grimly with the warning of the rising
flood.
“Then the sea will grow dark, and upon its waters there will be seen
floating that monstrous ship made of the nails of dead men. At the
rudder, Ymer, the giant, will stand, having been recalled to life for
a time, in order to assist Loki in scaling the heavens by the way of
Bifrost, the {204}rainbow, at the head of the other Giants of the Frost.
“Then Surtur the Black will arrive from the southern regions, from the
realm of fire, with all of his malignant demons, bearing torches and
ready to set heaven and earth on fire.
“Then Hela, the pale goddess of death, will set free her prisoners, the
wolf Fenris first of all, and march at the head of these monsters to
assist the powers of the South.
“Then the gods will take up their arms; Odin will gather them around
him, and with them the heroes from Walhalla; and the last battle will be
fought.”
But Vola’s prophecy has to be fulfilled; the gods must perish, and the
world with them.
Freyr dies in the flames of Surtur the Black; Thor succumbs to
the deadly embrace and the poisonous bites of the great serpent
Iormungandur; but, before dying, he kills it. Odin is torn to pieces by
the wolf Fenris.
During the struggle, the heavens have been scaled and the genii of fire
enter on horseback through the breach, while the giants shake the ash
Ygdrasil, which writhes uttering long sighs, and at last falls with
the heavenly vault which it has been upholding. The conquerors and the
conquered alike are crushed under the ruins, and the world {205}being
set on fire by Surtur the Black, vanishes in smoke.
Thus the night of the gods has to succeed to the twilight of the gods.
“O you, spirits of the mountains, do you know whether anything will
continue to exist?” asks the Voluspa, at the end of these mournful
prophecies.
It must be admitted that this sombre and terrible conception is not
without a certain poetic grandeur, a certain savage heroism, which we
cannot help admiring. In these verses the Edda is in no way inferior to
the most brilliant pictures drawn by Dante or by Milton, and more than
once it approaches nearly to the Apocalypse. Thus, as the inspired
Apostle saw a new heaven and a new earth, the Edda also announces the
coming of a time, when a new earth, more favored and more perfect than
ours, shall succeed the old earth.
“When the earth is thus broken to pieces and devoured by fire, what
shall happen next?
“There will come forth from the sea another earth, more beautiful and
more perfect.
“And will any of the gods survive?
“Balder will be revived and come forth from the place of departed
spirits, to rule over the new world under the guidance of the
imperishable Al-fader. {206}Then will be the reign of Justice.”