Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

Billing dwells in the western halls and is remembered in the Anglo-Saxon mythic
fragments as the ruler of the Varnians or Varinians, and as, furthermore, Varinsfjörður
and Varinsey are connected with adventures in which there occur several names of
mythic persons belonging to Billing's clan, then this proves absolutely an original mythic
connection between Billing and his western halls and those western halls in whose
regions Varna viður and Varinsvík are situated, and where the divinities of light, their
journey across the sky accomplished, find defenders and can take their rest. And when we
add to this that Delling, Mimir's kinsman and eastern neighbor, is the lord of morning and
the rosy dawn, and that Billing is Mimir's kinsman and western neighbor, then it follows
that Billing, from the standpoint of a symbol of nature, represents the evening and the
glow of twilight, and that in the epic he is ruler of those regions of the world where the
divinities of light find rest and peace. The description which Hávamál strophes 97-101
give us of life in Billing's halls corresponds most perfectly with this view. Through the
epic presentation there gleams, as it seems, a conscious symbolizing of nature, which
paints to the fancy the play of colors in the west when the sun is set. When eventide
comes Billing's lass, "the sun-glittering one," sleeps on her bed (Billings mey eg fann
beðjum á sólhvíta sofa -- str. 97). In his halls Billing has a body-guard of warriors, his
saldrótt, vígdrótt 13 (str. 100, 101), in whom we must recognize those Varnians who
protect the divinities of light that come to his dwelling, and these warriors watch far into
the night, "with burning lights and with torches in their hands," over the slumbering
"sólhvíta" maiden. But when day breaks their services are no longer necessary. Then they
in their turn go to sleep (og nær morgni . . . þá var saldrótt um sofin -- str. 101). 14
When the Aesir -- all on horseback with the exception of Thor -- on their daily
journey to the thingstead near Urd's fountain, have reached the southern rune-carved
bridgehead of Bifröst, they turn to the north and ride through a southern Hel-gate into the
lower world proper. Here, in the south, and far below Jormungrund's southern zone, we
must conceive those "deep dales" where the fire-giant Surt dwells with his race, Suttung's
sons (not Muspel's sons). The idea presented in Gylfaginning's cosmogony, according to
which there was a realm of fire in the south and a realm of cold in the north of that
Ginnungagap in which the world was formed, is certainly a genuine myth, resting on a
view of nature which the very geographical position forced upon the Teutons. Both these
border realms afterwards find their representatives in the organized world: the realm of
fire in Surt's Sökkdalir, and the realm of frost in the Niflhel incorporated with the
eschatological places; and as the latter constitutes the northern part of the realm of death,
we may in analogy herewith refer the dales of Surt and Suttung's sons to the south, and
we may do this without fear of error, for Völuspá 52 states positively that Surt and his
descendants come from the south to the Ragnarok conflict (Surtur fer sunnan med sviga
lævi). While the northern bridge-head of Bifröst is threatened by the frost-giants, the
southern is exposed to attacks from Suttung's sons. In Ragnarok the gods have to meet
storms from both quarters, and we must conceive the conflict as extending along
Jormungrund's outer zone and especially near both ends of the Bifröst bridge. The plain
around the south end of Bifröst where the gods are to "mix the liquor of the sword with
Surt" is called Óskópnir in a part of a heathen poem incorporated with Fáfnismál. Here
Frey with his hosts of einherjes meets Surt and Suttung's sons, and falls by the sword
13 saldrótt, "hall-host," household; vígdrótt, "battle-host," company of warriors.
14 "But at the approach of morn, …the household all was sleeping." Thorpe tr.