Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

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.

_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.