Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

itself was in motion. Mani's course lay below Asgard. When Thor in his thunder-chariot
descends to Jotunheim the path of Mani thunders under him (en dundi Mána vegur und
Meila bróður - Haustlöng 14). 2 No definite statement in our mythical records informs us
whether the way of the sun was over or under Asgard.
But high above Asgard is the starry vault of heaven, and to the Teutons as well as
to other people that sky was not only an optical but a real vault, which daily revolved
around a stationary point. Sol and Mani might be conceived as traversing their appointed
courses independently, and not as coming in contact with vaults, which by their motions
from east to west produced the progress of sun and moon. The very circumstance that
they continually changed position in their relation to each other and to the stars seemed to
prove that they proceeded independently in their own courses. With the countless stars
the case was different. They always keep at the same distance and always present the
same figures on the canopy of the nocturnal heavens. They looked like glistening heads
of nails driven into a movable ceiling. Hence the starlit sky was thought to be in motion.
The sailors and shepherds of the Teutons very well knew that this revolving was round a
fixed point, the polar star, and it is probable that veraldar nagli, the world-nail, the
world-spike, an expression preserved in Eddu-brot II, designates the northstar. 3
Thus the starry sky was the movable part of the universe. And this motion is not
of the same kind as that of the winds, whose coming and direction no man can predict or
calculate. The motion of the starry firmament is defined, always the same, always in the
same direction, and keeps equal step with the march of time itself. It does not, therefore,
depend on the accidental pleasure of gods or other powers. On the other hand, it seems to
be caused by a mechanism operating evenly and regularly.
The mill was for a long time the only kind of mechanism on a large scale known
to the Teutons. Its motion was a rotating one. The movable mill-stone was turned by a
handle or sweep which was called möndull. The mill-stones and the möndull might be
conceived as large as you please. Fancy knew no other limits than those of the universe.
There was another natural phenomenon, which also was regular, and which was
well known to the seamen of the North and to those Teutons who lived on the shores of
the North Sea, namely, the rising and falling of the tide. Did one and the same force
produce both these great phenomena? Did the same cause produce the motion of the
starry vault and the ebb and flood of the sea? In regard to the latter phenomenon, we
already know the naive explanation given in the myth concerning Hvergelmir and the
Grotti-mill. And the same explanation sufficed for the former. There was no need of
another mechanism to make the heavens revolve, as there was already one at hand, the
influence of which could be traced throughout that ocean in which Midgard was simply
2 "The path of the moon clattered beneath Meili's brother" (i.e. Thor)
3 Eddu-brot indicates Eddaic passages from "non-standard" manuscripts that have been exluded from the
diplomatic editions. The term veraldar nagli is found on the very last page of the paper Edda mss referred
to as AM 748 I 4to, published in vol. II of the so-called Copenhagen edition of Snorri's Edda. (Facsimile
edition: "Fragments of the Elder and Younger Edda", Copenhagen, 1945 --Corpus Codicum Islandicorum
Medii Aevi, XVII). There, an old-icelandic poet wrote out lists of poetic synonyms; among them we find a
list of synonyms for nails: "..... regingaddi, farnagli, stagnagli, varnagli, veraldarnagli."