Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

uttering a sound; but, when the spirits of torture so desire, and force and egg them on,
they can produce a howl (mugitus). There broods a sort of muteness over the forecourt of
the domain of torture, the Niflheim inhabited by the frost-giants, according to
Skírnismál's description thereof (see No. 60). Skirnir threatens Gerd that she, among her
kindred there, shall be more widely hated than Heimdall himself; but the manner in
which they express this hate is with staring eyes, not with words (á þig Hrímnir hari, á
þig hotvetna stari - str. 28).
74.
AFTER THE JUDGEMENT. THE LOT OF THE BLESSED.
When a deceased person who has received a good orðs tírr leaves the Thing, he is
awaited in a home which his hamingja has arranged for her favorite somewhere in "the
green worlds of the gods." But what he first has to do is to leita kynnis, that is, visit
kinsmen and friends who have gone before him to their final destination (Sonatorrek 18).
Here he finds not only those with whom he became personally acquainted on earth, but
he may also visit and converse with ancestors from the beginning of time, and he may
hear the history of his race, nay, the history of all past generations, told by persons who
were eyewitnesses. The ways he travels are munvegar (Sonatorrek 10), paths of pleasure,
where the wonderful regions of Urd's and Mimir's realms lie open before his eyes.
Those who have died in their tender years are received by a being friendly to
children, which Egil Skallagrimson (Sonatorrek 21) calls Gauta spjalli. The expression
means "the one with whom Odin counsels," "Odin's friend." As the same poem (str. 23)
calls Odin Mimir's friend, and as in the next place Gauta spjalli is characterized as a ruler
in Godheim (compare grænir heimar goða - Hákonarmál 12), he must either be Mimir,
who is Odin's friend and adviser from his youth until his death, or he must be Hoenir,
who also is styled Odin's friend, his sessi and máli. That Mimir was regarded as the
friend of dead children corresponds with his vocation as the keeper in his grove of
immortality, Mimisholt, of the Asa-children, the ásmegir, who are to be the mankind of
the regenerated world. But Hoenir too has an important calling in regard to children (see
No. 95), and it must therefore be left undecided which one of the two is here meant. 2
Egil is convinced that his drowned son Bodvar found a harbor in the subterranean
regions of bliss. (Likewise the warlike skald Kormak is certain that he would have come
to Valhall in case he had been drowned under circumstances described in his saga, a work
which is, however, very unreliable.) The land to which Bodvar comes is called by Egil
"the home of the bee-ship" (býskips bær). 3 The poetical figure is taken from the
2 Gauta spjalli likely refers to Odin. As a clear indication of this, the stanza states: "I still remember, when
"Gauta spjalli" took my son "up into the god-world". The poet is surely referring to his son as being in
heaven. The Odin-name Gautatýr, god of the Gautar, also supports such a reading. Gautar were the
inhabitants of Götland in Sweden and, like many similar proper names, can be used in skaldic poetry as a
synonym for men. As leita kynnis occurs in the same strophe, this invalidates it as proof for Rydberg's
conclusion above regarding the dead visiting relatives in the lower world.
3 Rydberg's explanation is as imaginative as it is unlikely, however the strophe is untranslatable without
emendation. The line actually reads bir er bískips. Bir is meaningless, and "ship of bee" is very irregular for