Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

importance to the subject under discussion, and which the popular memory in certain
parts of Germany has preserved from the heathen myths. When the heroes who have slept
through centuries sally forth, the trumpets of the last day sound, a great battle with the
powers of evil (Antichrist) is to be fought, an immensely old tree, which has withered, is
to grow green again, and a happier age is to begin.
This immensely old tree, which is withered at the close of the present period of
the world, and which is to become green again in a happier age after a decisive conflict
between the good and evil, can be no other than the world-tree of Germanic mythology,
the Yggdrasil of our Eddas. The angel trumpets, at whose blasts the men who sleep
within the mountains sally forth, have their prototype in Heimdall's horn, which
proclaims the destruction of the world; and the battle to be fought with Antichrist is the
Ragnarok conflict, clad in Christian robes, between the gods and the destroyers of the
world. Here Mimir's seven sons also have their task to perform. The last great struggle
also concerns the lower world, whose regions of bliss demand protection against the
thurs-clans of Niflhel, the more so since these very regions of bliss constitute the new
earth, which after Ragnarok rises from the sea to become the abode of a better race of
men (see No. 55). The "wall rock" of the Hvergelmir mountain and its "stone gates"
(Völuspá 48 - veggberg, steindyr; cp. Nos. 46, 75) require defenders able to wield those
immensely large swords which are kept in the sleeping castle on Nott's native land, and
Sindri-Dvalin is remembered not only as the artist of antiquity, spreader of Mimir's runic
wisdom, enemy of Loki, and father of the man-loving dises (see No. 53), but also as a
hero. The name of the horse he rode, and probably is to ride in the Ragnarok conflict, is,
according to a strophe cited in Skáldskaparmál 72, Móðinn; the Middle-Age Sagas have
connected his name to a certain viking, Sindri, and to Sintram of the German heroic
poetry. 5 I now come back to the Völuspá strophe, which was the starting-point in the
investigation contained in this chapter:
Leika Míms synir,
en mjötuður kyndist
að inu gamla
Gjallarhorni;
hátt blæs Heimdallur,
horn er á lofti.
"Mimir's sons spring up, for the fate of the world is proclaimed by the old
Gjallarhorn. Loud blows Heimdall -- the horn is raised."
In regard to leika, it is to be remembered that its old meaning, "to jump," "to
leap," "to fly up," reappears not only in Ulfilas, who translates skirtan of the New
Testament with laikan. (Luke I. 41, 44, and VI. 23; in the former passage in reference to
the child slumbering in Elizabeth's womb; the child "leaps" at her meeting with Mary),
but also in another passage in Völuspá, where it is said in regard to Ragnarok, leikur hár
5 Rydberg fully discusses the correspondences between the dwarf Sindri and hero Sintram in Volume 2 of
this work "Brisingamen's Smiths."