Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

vegetative and animal elements exclusively asserted themselves. Such an one was always
tormented by animal desire of food, and did not seem to have any feeling for or memory
of bonds tied in life. Saxo (Book 5 ) gives a horrible account of one of this sort. Two
foster-brothers, Asmund and Asvid, had agreed that if the one died before the other the
survivor should confine himself in the foster-brother's grave-chamber and remain there.
Asvid died and was buried with horse and dog. Asmund kept his agreement, and ordered
himself to be confined in the large, roomy grave, but discovered to his horror that his
foster-brother had become a haugbúi of the last-named kind, who, after eating horse and
dog, attacked Asmund to make him a victim of his hunger. Asmund conquered the
haugbúi, cut off his head, and pierced his heart with a pole to prevent his coming to life
again. Swedish adventurers who opened the grave to plunder it freed Asmund from his
prison. In such instances as this it must have been assumed that the lower elements of the
deceased consigned to the grave were never in his lifetime sufficiently permeated by his
óður and önd to enable these qualities to give the corpse an impression of the rational
personality and human character of the deceased. The same idea is the basis of belief of
the Slavic people in the vampire. In one of this sort the vegetative element united with his
dust still asserts itself, so that hair and nails continue to grow as on a living being, and the
animal element, which likewise continued to operate in the one buried, visits him with
hunger and drives him in the night out of the grave to suck the blood of surviving
kinsmen.
The real personality of the dead, the one endowed with litur, óður, and önd, was
and remained in the death kingdom, although circumstances might take place that would
call him back for a short time. The drink which the happy dead person received in Hades
was intended not only to strengthen his litur, but also to soothe that longing which the
earthly life and its memories might cause him to feel. If a dearly-beloved kinsman or
friend mourned the deceased too violently, this sorrow disturbed his happiness in the
death kingdom, and was able to bring him back to earth. Then he would visit his gravemound,
and he and his alter ego, the haugbúi, would become one. This was the case with
Helgi Hundingsbani (Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, 40, etc.). The sorrow of Sigrun, his
beloved, caused him to return from Valhall to earth and to ride to his grave, where Sigrun
came to him and wanted to rest in his arms during the night. But when Helgi had told her
that her tears pierced his breast with pain, and had assured her that she was exceedingly
dear to him, and had predicted that they together should drink the sorrow-allaying liquids
of the lower world, he rode his way again, in order that, before the crowing of the cock,
he might be back among the departed heroes. Prayer was another means of calling the
dead back. At the entrance of his deceased mother's grave-chamber Svipdag beseeches
her to awake. Her ashes kept in the grave-chamber (er til moldar er komin) and her real
personality from the realm of death (er úr ljóðheimum er liðin) then unite, and Groa
speaks out of the grave to her son (Gróugaldur 1, 2). A third means of revoking the dead
to earth lay in conjuration. But such a use of conjuration was a great sin, which relegated
the sinner to the demons. (Cp. Saxo's account of Hardgreip; Book 1.)
Thus we understand why the dead descended to Hades and still inhabited the
grave-mounds. One died "to Hel" and "to the grave" at the same time. That of which
earthly man consisted, in addition to his corporal garb, was not the simple being, "the
soul," which cannot be divided, but there was a combination of factors, which in death
could be separated, and of which those remaining on earth, while they had long been the