Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

a judgment-seat, and that the Germanic imagination, though always much occupied with
the affairs of the lower world and with the condition of the dead in the various realms of
death, never felt the necessity of conceiving for itself clear and concrete ideas of how and
through whom the deceased were determined for bliss or misery. The ecclesiastical
conception, which postpones the judgment to the last day of time, and permits the souls
of the dead to be transferred, without any special act of judgment, to heaven, to
purgatory, or to hell, has to some extent contributed to making us familiar with this idea
which was foreign to the heathens. 3 From this it followed that scholars have been blind to
the passages in our mythical records which speak of a court in the lower world, and they
have either read them without sufficient attention (as, for instance, the above-quoted
statements of Ynglingatal, which it is impossible to harmonize with the current
conception), or interpreted them in an utterly absurd manner (which is the case with
Sigurdrífumál 12), or they have interpolated assumptions, which, on a closer inspection,
are reduced to nonsense (as is the case with the Hávamál strophes), or given them a
possible, but improbable, interpretation (thus Sonatorrek 20). The compound orðstírr is
composed of orð, gen. orðs, and tírr. The composition is of so loose a character that the
two parts are not blended into a new word. The sign of the gen. -s is retained, and shows
that orðstírr, like lofstírr, is not in its sense and in its origin a compound, but is written as
one word, probably on account of the laws of accentuation. The more original meaning of
orðstírr is, therefore, to be found in the sense of orðs tírr. 4
Tírr means reputation in a good sense, but still not in a sense so decidedly good
but that a qualifying word, which makes the good meaning absolute, is sometimes added.
Thus in lofs-tírr, laudatory reputation; góður tírr, good reputation. In the Hávamál
strophe 76, above-quoted, the possibility of an orðs tírr which is not good is presupposed.
See the last line of the strophe (hveim er sér góðan getur).
So far as the meaning of orð is concerned, we must leave its relatively more
modern and grammatical sense (word) entirely out of the question. Its older signification
is an utterance (one which may consist of many "words" in a grammatical sense), a
command, a result, a judgment; and these older significations have long had a conscious
existence in the language. Compare Fornmannasögur, II. 237: "The first word: All shall
be Christians; the second word: All heathen temples and idols shall be unholy," etc. 5
3 Although this concept may not be familiar to many Christians, the belief is stated directly in the Bible.
Jude 14-15 "Behold the Lord came with his holy myriads to execute judgement on all"; Revelation 20: 12-
13 "I saw the dead great and small standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book
was opened which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what
they had done. And the sea gave up the dead in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were
judged by what they had done ….and if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was
thrown into the lake of fire."
Thus the heathen doctrine teaches that each individual soul will be judged upon its mortal death, while
Christianity teaches that all souls will be judged individually, but only after the Apokolips.
4 The -s may have been retained simply because of the difficulty pronouncing ð followed by t.
5 This occurs in chapter 228 of the Saga of King Olaf Tryggvason. The version in Heimskringla however
contains only 113 chapters. The passage reads: Það var hið fyrsta orð: að allir menn skyldu kristnir vera á
Íslandi og skírn taka, þeir er áður voru óskírðir; það var annað: að óheilög skyldu vera hof öll og
skurðgoð; það var hið þriðja orð: að fjörbaugsgarð skyldi varða blót öll, ef váttnæmd yrði.
"The first word: that all men in Iceland shall be Christian, and that all shall be baptized, who were not
baptized already; the second word: that all heathen temples and idols shall be unholy; the third word: that
all heathen worship, corroborated by a witness, shall be punished by an exile of three years." (Eysteinn
Björnsson translation).