Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

Beyla, too, gets her share of Loki's abuse. The least disgraceful thing he says of
her is that she is a deigja (a slave, who has to work at the mill and in the kitchen), and
that she is covered with traces of her occupation in dust and dirt.
As we see, Loki characterizes Byggvir as a servant taking charge of the mill under
Frey, and Byggvir characterizes himself as one who grinds, and is able to crush an "evil
crow" limb by limb with his mill-stones. As the one who with his mill makes vegetation,
and so also bread and malt, possible, he boasts of it as his honor that the gods are able to
drink ale at a banquet. Loki blames him because he is not able to divide the food among
men. The reproach implies that the distribution of food is in his hands. The mould which
comes from the great mill gives different degrees of fertility to different fields, and
rewards abundantly or niggardly the toil of the farmer. Loki doubtless alludes to this
unequal distribution, else it would be impossible to find any sense in his words.
In the Poetic Edda we still have another reminiscence of the great mill which is
located under the sea, and at the same time in the lower world (see below), and which
"grinds mould into food." It is in a poem, whose skald says that he has seen it on his
journey in the lower world. In his description of the "home of torture" in Hades,
Sólarljóð's Christian author has taken all his materials from the heathen mythological
conceptions of the worlds of punishment, though the author treats these materials in
accordance with the Christian purpose of his song. When the skald dies, he enters the
Hades gate, crosses bloody streams, sits for nine days á norna stóli, is thereupon seated
on a horse, and is permitted to make a journey through Mimir's domain, first to the
regions of the happy and then to those of the damned. In Mimir's realm he sees the "stag
of the sun" and Nidi's (Mimir's) sons, who "drink the pure mead from Baugregin's well."
When he approached the borders of the world of the damned, he heard a terrible din,
which silenced the winds and stopped the flow of the waters. The mighty din came from
a mill. Its stones were wet with blood, but the grist produced was mould, which was to be
food. Fickle-wise (svipvísar, heathen) women of dark complexion turned the mill. Their
bloody and tortured hearts hung outside of their breasts. The mould which they ground
was to feed their husbands (Sólarljóð 57-58). 1
This mill, situated at the entrance of hell, is here represented as one of the agents
of torture in the lower world. To a certain extent this is correct even from a heathen
standpoint. It was the lot of slave-women to turn the hand-mill. In the heroic poem the
giant-maids Fenja and Menja, taken prisoners and made slaves, have to turn Frodi's
Grotti. In the mythology "Eyluður's nine women," thurs-maids, were compelled to keep
this vast mechanism in motion, and that this was regarded as a heavy and compulsory
task may be assumed without the risk of being mistaken.
1 57. "The wind was silent, the waters stopped their course; then I heard a doleful sound: for their husbands
false-faced women ground earth for food"
58. "Gory stones those dark women turned sorrowfully; bleeding hearts hung out of their breasts, faint
with much affliction." Thorpe tr.