Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

With this must be compared what Tacitus relates concerning the views and
customs of the Germans in regard to crime and punishment. He says:
"The nature of the crime determines the punishment. Traitors and deserters they
hang on trees. Cowards and those given to disgraceful debauchery they smother in filthy
pools and marshes, casting a hurdle (crates) over them. The dissimilarity in these
punishments indicates a belief that crime should be punished in such a way that the
penalty is visible, while scandalous conduct should be punished in such a way that the
debauchee is removed from the light of day" (Germania, ch. 12.).
This passage in Germania is a commentary on Saxo's descriptions, and on the
Völuspá strophe in the form resulting from my investigation. What might naturally seem
probable is corroborated by Germania's words: that the same view of justice and
morality, which obtained in the camp of the Teutons, found its expression, but in gigantic
exaggeration, in their doctrines concerning eschatological rewards and punishments. It
should, perhaps, also be remarked that a similar particularism prevailed through
centuries. The hurdle (crates) which Saxo mentions as being placed over the venom and
filth-drinking criminals in the hall of Nastrands has its earthly counterpart in the hurdle
(also called crates), which, according to the custom of the age of Tacitus, was thrown
over victims smothered in the cesspools and marshes (ignavos et imbelles et corpore
infames cæno ac palude injecta insuper crate mergunt). Those who were sentenced to
this death were, according to Tacitus, cowards and debauchees. Among those who
received a similar punishment in the Germanic Gehenna were partly those who in a secret
manner had committed murder and tried to conceal their crime (such were called
morðvargar), partly debauchees who had violated the sacredness of matrimony. The
descriptions in the Völuspá strophe and in Saxo show that also in the hall of the
Nastrands the punishment is in accordance with the nature of the crime. All are punished
terribly; but there is a distinction between those who had to drink the serpent venom
unmixed and those who receive the mixed potion, and finally those who get the awful
liquid over themselves and doubtless within themselves.
In closing this chapter, I will quote a number of Völuspá strophes, which refer to
Germanic eschatology. In parallel columns I print the strophes as they appear in Codex
Regius, and in the form they have assumed as the result of an investigation of which I
shall give a full account in the future. I trust it will be found that the restoration of á fellur
austan um eitrdala into á fellur austr eitrdæla, and the introducing of these words before
þanns annars glepur eyrarúnu not only restores to the strophe in which these words occur
a regular structure and a sense which is corroborated by Saxo's eschatological sources
and by the Germania of Tacitus, but also supplies the basis and conditions on which other
strophes may get a regular structure and intelligible contents.