Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

covering of a personal kernel (óður), could themselves in a new combination form
another ego of the person who had descended to Hades.
But that too consisted of several factors, litur, óður, and önd, and they were not
inseparably united. We have already seen that the sinner, sentenced to torture, dies a
second death in the lower world before he passes through the Na-gates, the death from
Hel to Niflhel, so that he becomes a nár, a corpse in a still deeper sense than that which
nár has in a physical sense. The second death, like the first (physical), must consist in the
separation of one or more of the factors from the being that dies. And in the second death,
that which separates itself from the damned one and changes his remains into a lowerworld
nár, must be those factors that have no blame in connection with his sins, and
consequently should not suffer his punishment, and which in their origin are too noble to
become the objects of the practice of demons in the art of torturing. The venom drink
which the damned person has to empty deprives him of that image of the gods in which
he was made, and of the spirit which was the noble gift of the Asa-father. Changed into a
monster, he goes to his destiny fraught with misfortunes. 485
The idea of reincarnation was not foreign to the faith of the Germanic heathens.
To judge from the very few statements we have on this point, it would seem that it was
only the very best and the very worst who were thought to be born anew in the present
world. Gullveig was born again several times by the force of her own evil will. But it is
only ideal persons of whom it is said that they are born again -- e.g., Helgi Hjorvardsson,
Helgi Hundingsbani, and Olaf Geirstadaralf, of whom the last was believed to have risen
again in Saint Olaf. With the exception of Gullveig, the statements in regard to the others
from Christian times are an echo from the Germanic heathen doctrine which it would be
most interesting to become better acquainted with -- also from the standpoint of
comparative Indo-European mythology, since this same doctrine appears in a highlydeveloped
form in the Asiatic-Indo-European group of myths.
485 In Sólarljóð 53, the poet sees "scorched birds, flying numerous as gnats. They were souls." Thus souls
damned to Niflhel were stripped of their litur and left formless to suffer there. I am reminded of modern
images of ghosts depicted as a sort of floating bed-sheet with the vague outlines of a head and arms often
seen at Halloween time. But rather than white, the Sólarljóð poet describes them as "scorched birds."