Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

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Under such circumstances it may seem surprising that Icelandic records from the Middle Ages concerning the heathen belief in regard to the abodes after death should give us statements which seem utterly irreconcilable with one another. For there are many proofs that the dead were believed to live in hills and rocks, or in grave-mounds where their bodies were buried. How can this be reconciled with the doctrine that the dead descended to the lower world, and were there judged either to receive abodes in Asgard or in the realms of bliss in Hades, or in the world of torture? The question has been answered too hastily to the effect that the statements cannot be harmonized, and that consequently the heathen-Germanic views in regard to the day of judgment were in this most important part of the religious doctrine unsupported. The reason for the obscurity is not, however, in the matter itself, which has never been thoroughly studied, but in the false premises from which the conclusions have been drawn. Mythologists have simply assumed that the popular view of the Christian Church in regard to terrestrial man, conceiving him to consist of two factors, the perishable body and the imperishable soul, was the necessary condition for every belief in a life hereafter, and that the heathen Teutons accordingly also cherished this idea. But this duality did not enter into the belief of our heathen fathers. Nor is it of such a kind that a man, having conceived a life hereafter, in this connection necessarily must conceive the soul as the simple, indissoluble spiritual factor of human nature. The division into two parts, líf og sála, líkami og sála, body and soul, came with Christianity, and there is every reason for assuming, so far as the Scandinavian peoples are concerned, that the very word soul, sála, sál, is, like the idea it represents, an imported word. In Old Norse literature the word occurs for the first time in Olaf Tryggvason's contemporary Hallfred, after he had been converted to Christianity. Still the word is of Germanic root. Ulfilas translates the New Testament psyche with saiwala, but this he does with his mind on the Platonic New Testament view of man as consisting of three factors: spirit (pneuma), soul (psyche), and body (soma). Spirit (pneuma) Ulfilas translates with ahma. Another assumption, likewise incorrect in estimating the anthropologicaleschatological belief of the Teutons, is that they are supposed to have distinguished between matter and mind, which is a result reached by the philosophers of the Occident in their abstract studies. It is, on the contrary, certain that such a distinction never entered the system of heathen Germanic views. In it all things were of a material, an efni 12 of a rough or fine grain, tangible or intangible, visible or invisible. The imperishable factors of man were, like the perishable, material, and a force could not be conceived which was not bound to matter, or expressed itself in matter, or was matter. The Germanic heathen conception of human nature, and of the factors composing it, is most like the Indo-European-Asiatic as we find the latter preserved in the traditions of Buddhism, which assume more than three factors in a human being, and deny the existence of a soul, if this is to mean that all that is not corporal in man consists of a single simple, and therefore indissoluble, element, the soul. 12 "Efni n. [Swedish ämne=stuff, materia and Danish ævne=achievement]: -a stuff, originally like Latin materia, timber; and so the stuff or material out of which a thing is wrought." Vigfusson's Dictionary, p. 116.
The anthropological conception presented in Völuspá is as follows: Man consists of six elements, namely, to begin with the lower and coarser and to end with the highest and noblest: (1) The earthly matter of which the body is formed. (2) A formative vegetative force. (3) and (4) Lodur's gifts. (5) Hoenir's gifts. (6) Odin's gifts. Völuspá's words are these: The gods - fundu á landi lítt megandi Ask og Emblu örlöglausa. Önd þau né áttu, óð þau né höfðu, lá né læti, né litu goða. Önd gaf Óðinn, óð gaf Hænir, lá gaf Lóður og litu goða. found on the land the powerless Ask and Embla without destiny. Spirit they had not, óður they had not, neither lá nor læti nor the litu goða. Spirit gave Odin, óður gave Hoenir, lá gave Lodur and the litu goða. The two lowest factors, the earthly matter and the vegetative force, were already united in Ask and Embla when the three gods found them "growing as trees." These elements were able to unite themselves simply by the course of nature without any divine interference. When the sun for the first time shone from the south on "the stones of the hall," the vegetative force united with the matter of the primeval giant Ymir, who was filled with the seed of life from Audhumla's milk, and then the "ground was overgrown with green herbs." 1 Thus man was not created directly from the crude earthly matter, but had already been organized and formed when the gods came and from the trees made persons with blood, motion, and spiritual qualities. The vegetative force must not be conceived in accordance with modern ideas, as an activity separated from the matter by abstraction and at the same time inseparably joined with it, but as an active matter joined with the earthly matter. Lodur's first gift lá with læti makes Ask and Embla animal beings. Egilsson's view that lá means blood is confirmed by the connection in which we find the word used. 2 The læti united with lá (compare the related Swedish word later) 3 means the way 1 Völuspá 4 2 Unlike læti, there is no universally accepted definition of the word lá today. The LaFarge-Tucker Glossary defines lá uncertainly as "blood, ruddiness or vital warmth (?)" Ursula Dronke, following
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Undersökningar i Germanisk Mytolog
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myth, we shall discover an Erik who
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y a sacred order unlawful for the f
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there, the woman brought him to a p
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That these last ideas have been inf
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The river which is mentioned in Eri
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egg and the egg-shell." Also the ro
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conscious cunning. Nevertheless, he
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51 GUDMUND'S IDENTITY WITH MIMIR. T
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egins. They have explained Mimir's
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elapse into the faults of the forme
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and Leifthrasir were still remember
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the ásmegir demands that he must h
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immortality. In the Germanic mythol
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In the Norse sagas of the Middle Ag
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journey around the world. From a my
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There can be no doubt that "the ás
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Hakon's men are designated in the s
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which calls them ásliðar, a word
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youth of fifteen years. The evil cr
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square, to be an abode for men; an
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there comes a great conflagration a
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carried his prey to Nastrond (Völu
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In regard to the position of Yggdra
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giants, Niflhel, Niflheim, extends
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6. Under the third (subterranean) r
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Hades, the middle condition, and th
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2. Reið hann niður þaðan Niflhe
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In Grímnismál, the word Hel occur
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first cross a river and then come t
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creative force, over which the "ove
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oaths to serve the gods. Their chie
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Tamsvendi eg þig drep, en eg þig
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appellation suggests, and receive t
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Gerd, who tries to reject the love
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One of the signs that Ragnarok and
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conqueror in hundreds of battles, t
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While a terrible winter is raging,
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dead) beings called ásmegir and á
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in the dialects of several Germanic
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As maid-servants under Urd, there a
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30; Grímnismál 36; Skáldskaparm
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final destiny received Hel-shoes li
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on horseback, with wisdom in their
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THE CHOOSING. THE MIDDLE-AGE FABLE
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67. THE PSYCHOPOMPS OF THOSE NOT FA
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In our mythical records there is me
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sorcery is designated in Völuspá
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dead. Another road went to the sout
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The Aesir go to the thingstead near
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unes which Hadding applied were car
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majority of cases the fame acquired
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In Völuspá 26 orð is employed in
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To understand this strophe correctl
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life. Hades-images of those things
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The hamingja hears of it before any
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He who has observed these virtues m
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it is said that an immense subterra
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The author of the second song about
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him (in the capacity of hilmir Fán
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uttering a sound; but, when the spi
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Their way from Urd's well goes to t
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grotto" - reka einn fyrir Geitis gn
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is also Saxo's statement, that the
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and in one of the dotted lines the
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Saxo further says that the floor is
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Codex Regius (36) A fellr austan vm
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78. THE PLACES OF PUNISHMENT (conti
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There are at least three caves of t
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itself. 5 The true etymology of Mú
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go to show that Loki and his son ar
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tradition explained how the mill ca
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Vafþrúðnismál does not mean a w
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In its character as an institution
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According to Sólarljóð, the mill
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an isle, and which around this isla
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corrupted by contact with improper
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instructed men in praying and sacri
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Point by point the descriptions of
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or turn, wind, to turn anything aro
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element (see No. 35) was not only i
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this race has its chieftain, and th
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22). During the war between the Aes
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85. NARFI, NOTT'S FATHER, IDENTICAL
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Tveggja bága Njörva nipt á nesi
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(e) As the father of Nott, living i
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The discrepancy shows that the auth
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patronymic or, in other respects, o
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The two fundamental ideas of the my
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the quoted Vafþrúðnismál stroph
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Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

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