Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

giants, Niflhel, Niflheim, extends over the whole lower world, the latter being regarded as
identical with Niflheim and the places of punishment connected with it.
This result carries with it another. The goddess of the lower world, and
particularly of its domain of bliss, was in the mythology, as shall be shown below, the
goddess of fate and death, Urd, also called Hel, when named after the country over which
she ruled. In a local sense, the name Hel could be applied partly to the whole lower
world, which rarely happened, partly to Urd's and Mimir's realms of bliss, which was
more common. Hel was then the opposite of Niflhel, which was solely the home of
misery and torture. Evidence of this shall be given below. But when the lower world had
been changed to a sort of hell, the name Hel, both in its local and in its personal sense,
must undergo a similar change, and since Urd (the real Hel) was transferred to the
heavens, there was nothing to hinder Gylfaginning from substituting Loki's daughter, cast
down into Niflhel, for the queen of the lower world and giving her the name Hel and the
scepter over the whole lower world.
This method is also pursued by Gylfaginning's author without hesitation, although
he had the best of reasons for suspecting its correctness. A certain hesitancy might have
been in order here. According to the mythology, the pure and pious Asa-god Baldur
comes to Hel, that is to say, to the lower world, and to one of its realms of bliss. But after
the transformation to which the lower world had been subjected in Gylfaginning's system,
the descent of Baldur to Hel had to mean a descent to and a remaining in the world of
misery and torture, and a relation of subject to the daughter of Loki. This should have
awakened doubts in the mind of the author of Gylfaginning. But even here he had the
courage to be true to his premises, and without even thinking of the absurdity in which he
involves himself, he goes on and endows the sister of the Midgard-serpent and of the
Fenris-wolf with that perfect power which before belonged to Destiny personified, so that
the same gods who before had cast the horrible child of Loki down into the ninth region
of Niflhel are now compelled to send a minister-plenipotentiary to her majesty to
negotiate with her and pray for Baldur's liberation.
But finally, there comes a point where the courage of consistency fails
Gylfaginning. The manner in which it has placed the roots of the world-tree makes us
first of all conceive Yggdrasil as lying horizontal in space. An attempt to make this
matter intelligible can produce no other picture of Yggdrasil, in accord with the
statements of Gylfaginning, than the following: