Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

According to Sólarljóð, the mill-stones are stained with blood. In the mythology,
they crush the bodies of the first giants and revolve in Ymir's blood. It is also in perfect
harmony with the mythology that the meal becomes mould, and that the mould serves as
food. But the cosmic signification is obliterated in Sólarljóð, and it seems to be the
author's idea that men who have died in their heathen belief are to eat the mould which
women who have died in heathendom industriously grind as food for them.
The myth about the greater Grotti, as already indicated, has also been connected
with the Hvergelmir myth. Sólarljóð has correctly stated the location of the mill on the
border of the realm of torture. The mythology has located Hvergelmir's fountain there
(see No. 59); and as this vast fountain is the mother of the ocean and of all waters, and
the ever open connection between the waters of heaven, of the earth, and of the lower
world, then this furnishes the explanation of the apparently conflicting statements, that
the mill is situated both in the lower world and at the same time on the bottom of the sea.
Of the mill it is said that it is dangerous to men, dangerous to fleets and to crews, and that
it causes the maelstrom (svelgr) when the water of the ocean rushes down through the eye
of the mill-stone. The same was said of Hvergelmir, that causes ebb and flood and
maelstrom, when the water of the world alternately flows into and out of this great
source. To judge from all this, the mill has been conceived as so made that its foundation
timbers stood on solid ground in the lower world, and thence rose up into the sea, in
which the stones resting on this substructure were located. The revolving "eye" of the
mill-stone was directly above Hvergelmir, and served as the channel through which the
water flowed to and from the great fountain of the world's waters.
81.
THE WORLD-MILL (continued). THE WORLD-MILL MAKES
THE CONSTELLATIONS REVOLVE. MUNDILFARI.
But the colossal mill in the ocean has also served other purposes than that of
grinding the nourishing mould from the limbs of the primeval giants.
The Teutons, like all people of antiquity, and like most men of the present time,
regarded the earth as stationary. And so, too, the lower world (jörmungrund -
Hrafnagalður Óðins 25) on which the foundations of the earth rested. Stationary was also
that heaven in which the Aesir had their citadels, surrounded by a common wall, for the
Asgard-bridge, Bifröst, had a solid bridge-head on the southern and another on the
northern edge of the lower world, and could not change position in its relation to them.
All this part of creation was held together by the immovable roots of the world-tree, or
rested on its invisible branches. Sol and Mani had their fixed paths, the points of
departure and arrival of which were the "horse-doors" (jódyr), which were hung on the
eastern and western mountain-walls of the lower world. The god Mani and the goddess
Sol were thought to traverse these paths in shining chariots, and their daily journeys
across the heavens did not to our ancestors imply that any part of the world-structure