Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

found in the Upsala Codex, Gylfaginning makes him lord in Gimli, and likewise the king
of eternal bliss. After Ragnarok it is said, "there are many good abodes and many bad";
best it is to be in Gimli with Surt (margar eru vistar góðar og margar illar, bezt er að
vera á Gimli með Surti). The name Surt means black. We find that his dark looks did not
prevent his promotion, and this has been carried to such a point that a mythologist who
honestly believed in Gylfaginning saw in him the Almighty who is to come after the
regeneration to equalize and harmonize all discord, and to found holy laws to prevail
forever.
Under such circumstances, it may be suggested as a rule of critical caution not to
accept unconditionally Gylfaginning's statement that the world of light and heat which
existed before the creation of the world was called Muspell or Muspellsheim. In all
probability, this is a result of the author's own reflections. At all events, it is certain that
no other record has any knowledge of that name. But that the mythology presumed the
existence of such a world follows already from the fact that Urd's fountain, which gives
the warmth of life to the world-tree, must have had its deepest fountain there, just as
Hvergelmir has its in the world of primeval cold, and Mimir has his fountain in that
wisdom which unites the opposites and makes them work together in an ordered world.
Accordingly, we must distinguish between Múspells megir, Múspells synir, from
Surt's clan-men, who are called Surts ætt, synir Suttunga, Suttungs synir (Skírnismál 34;
Alvíssmál 34). We should also remember that Muspell in connection with the words synir
and megir hardly can mean a land, a realm, a region. The figure by which the inhabitants
of a country are called its sons or descendants never occurs, so far as I know, in the oldest
Norse literature.
In regard to the names of the points of the compass in the Poetic Edda, norðan
and austan, it must not be forgotten that the same northern regions in the mythical
geography to which various events are referred must have been regarded by the
Icelanders as lying to the east from their own northern isle. The Bjarmia ulterior, in
whose night-shrouded waters mythical adventurers sought the gates to the lower world,
lay in the uttermost North, and might still, from an Icelandic and also from a Norwegian
standpoint, be designated as a land in the East. According to the sagas preserved by Saxo,
these adventurers sailed into the Arctic Ocean, past the Norwegian coast, and eastward to
a mythical Bjarmia, more distant than the real Bjarmaland. They could thus come to the
coast where a gate to the lower world was to be found, and to the Nastrands, and if they
continued this same course to the East, they could finally get to the rocky isle where Loki
lay chained.
We have seen that Loki is not alone with Sigyn on that isle where in chains he
abides Ragnarok. There were unhappy beings in large numbers with him. As already
stated, Saxo speaks of three connected caves of torture there, and the innermost one is
Loki's. Of the one nearest to it, Saxo tells nothing else than that one has to wade across a
brook or river in order to get there. Of the bound Fenrir, Loki's son, it is said that from his
mouth runs froth which forms the river Ván (Gylfaginning 34). In Lokasenna 41 Frey
says to the abusive Loki: "A wolf (that is, Fenrir) I see lying at the mouth of the river
until the forces of the world come in conflict; if you do not hold your tongue, you, villain,
will be chained next to him" (því næst - an expression which here should be taken in a
local sense, as a definite place is mentioned in the preceding sentence). And as we learn
from Völuspá, that Freki (the wolf) is with Loki on board Naglfar, then these evidences