Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

It was an old custom, at least in Iceland, that booths for the accommodation of the
visitors were built around a remote thing-stead, or place for holding the parliament.
Gylfaginning 17 makes its Trojan Aesir follow the example of the Icelanders, and put up
houses around the thing-stead, which they selected near Urd's fountain, after they had
succeeded in securing by Bifröst a connection between Troy and heaven. This done,
Gylfaginning distributes as best it can the divine halls and abodes of bliss mentioned in
the mythology between Troy on the earth and the thingstead in heaven. 2
This may be sufficient to show that Gylfaginning's pretended account of the old
mythological cosmography is, on account of its making Troy the starting-point, and
doubtless also to some extent as a result of the Christian methods of thought with which
the author interpreted the heathen myths accessible to him, is simply a monstrous
caricature of the mythology, a caricature which is continued, not with complacency and
assurance, but in a confused and contradictory manner, in the eschatology of
Gylfaginning.
My chief task will now be to review and examine all the passages in the Poetic
Edda's mythological songs, wherein the words Hel and Niflhel occur, in order to find out
in which sense or senses these words are employed there, and at the same time to take
into account all the passages of importance concerning the lower world, which we
encounter on this particular course.
57.
THE WORD HEL IN LINGUISTIC USAGE.
The Norse Hel is the same word as the Gothic Halja, the Old High German Hella,
the Anglo-Saxon Hellia, and the English Hell. On account of its occurrence with similar
signification in different Germanic tongues in their oldest linguistic monuments, scholars
have been able to draw the conclusion that the word points to a primitive Germanic
Halja, meaning lower world, lower world divinity. It is believed to be related to the Latin
occulere (past part. occultus, occult), celare, clam, and to mean the one who "hides,"
"conceals," "preserves." 3
When the books of the New Testament were translated for the first time into a
Germanic tongue, into a Gothic dialect, the translator, Ulfilas, 4 had to find some way of
distinguishing with suitable words between the two realms of the lower world mentioned
in the New Testament, Hades and Gehenna (Greek geenna).
2 Compare Gylfaginning 14 and 17. In 14, the Aesir establish the earthly Asgard-Troy on the Ida-plains.
There they build the halls Vingolf and Gladsheim, the latter being "the best and the biggest that is built on
earth." In 17, the gods establish the halls Himinbjorg, Valaskjalf, and Gimli in heaven near Urd's well.
However, in Gylfaginning 53, Snorri contradicts this by saying that after Ragnarok Vidar and Vali will
again inhabit Gimli, "on Idavoll, where Asgard has previously been," even though the earth at this point has
been destroyed. Compare these statements to Voluspa 60-64, which states that the surviving gods returning
to the Ida-plains will inhabit a hall "at Gimli" (á Gimléi).
3 According to the American Hertiage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
1985, this etymology remains accepted a century after Rydberg wrote these words. (See page 28, kelsecond
entry.)
4 Ulfilas also Ulphilas, c. 311-381 AD.