Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

that is to say, that they are the same number as the "economical months," or the
changes of the year (see No. 87).
In the same region Mimir's daughter Nott has her hall, where she takes her rest
after her journey across the heavens is accomplished (see No. 93). The "chateau
dormant" 1 of Germanic mythology is therefore situated in Nott's native land, and Dvalin,
"the slumberer," is Nat's brother. Perhaps her citadel is identical with the one in which
Dvalin and his brothers sleep. According to Saxo, voices of women are heard in the
tabernaculum belonging to the sleeping men, and glittering with weapons and treasures,
when Thorkil and his men come to plunder the treasures there. Nott has her court and her
attendant sisters in the Germanic mythology, as in Rigveda (Ushas). Sinmara (see Nos.
97, 98) is one of the dises of the night. According to the Middle-Age sagas, these dises
and daughters of Mimir are said to be twelve in number (see Nos. 45, 46).
Mimir, as we know, was the ward of the middle root of the world-tree. His seven
sons, representing the changes experienced by the world-tree and nature annually, have
with him guarded and tended the holy tree and watered its root with aurgum forsi from
the subterranean horn, "Valfather's pledge." 2 When the god-clans became foes, and the
Vanir seized weapons against the Aesir, Mimir was slain, and the world-tree, losing its
wise guardian, became subject to the influence of time. It suffers in crown and root
(Grímnismál), and as it is ideally identical with creation itself, both the natural and the
moral, so toward the close of the period of this world it will betray the same dilapidated
condition as nature and the moral world then are to reveal.
Logic demanded that when the world-tree lost its chief ward, the lord of the well
of wisdom, it should also lose that care which under his direction was bestowed upon it
by his seven sons. These, voluntarily or involuntarily, retired, and the story of the seven
men who sleep in the citadel full of treasures informs us how they thenceforth spend their
time until Ragnarok. The details of the myth telling how they entered into this condition
cannot now be found; but it may be in order to point out, as a possible connection with
this matter, that one of the older Vanir, Njörd's father, and possibly the same as
Mundilfari, had the epithet Svafur, Svafurþorinn (Fjölsvinnsmál 8). Svafur means sopitor,
the sleeper, and Svafurþorinn seems to refer to svefnþorn, "sleep-thorn." According to the
traditions, a person could be put to sleep by laying a "sleep-thorn" in his ear, and he then
slept until it was taken out or fell out. 3
Popular traditions scattered over Sweden, Denmark, and Germany have to this
very day been preserved, on the lips of the common people, of the men sleeping among
weapons and treasures in underground chambers or in rocky halls. A Swedish tradition
makes them equipped not only with weapons, but also with horses which in their stalls
abide the day when their masters are to awake and sally forth. Common to the most of
these traditions, both the Northern and the German, is the feature that this is to happen
when the greatest distress is at hand, or when the end of the world approaches and the day
of judgment comes. With regard to the German sagas on this point I refer to Jakob
Grimm's Mythology. 4 I simply wish to point out here certain features which are of special
1 "the sleeping castle"
2 Völuspá 27 & 28.
3 Sleep-thorns appear in Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans ch. 7 and in Fáfnismál 43.
4 Grimm fully discusses the various legends of heroes sleeping in hills in DM, chapter 32. Several of these
tales involve the regeneration of a tree.