Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

goða, 4 points in the same direction. The word hodd means that which is concealed (the
treasure), and at the same time a protected sacred place. In the German poem Heliand, 5
the word hord, corresponding to hodd, is used of the holiest of holies in the Jerusalem
temple. As we already know, there is a place in the lower world to which these references
apply, namely, the citadel guarded by Delling, the elf of dawn, and decorated by the
famous artists of the lower world - a citadel in which the ásmegir and Baldur - and
probably Hodur too, since he is transferred to the lower world, and with Baldur is to
return thence -- await the end of the historical time and the regeneration. The word goða
in hodd goða shows that the place is possessed by, or entrusted to, beings of divine rank.
From what has here been stated in regard to Hvergelmir, it follows that the mighty
fountain was conceived as situated on a high watershed, far up in a subterranean
mountain range, from where those rivers of which it is the source flow down in different
directions to different realms of Hades. Of several of these rivers, it is said that they in
their upper courses, before they reach Hel, flow in the vicinity of mankind (gumnum nær
-- 28:11), which naturally can have no other meaning than that the high land through
which they flow after leaving Hvergelmir has been conceived as lying not very deep
below the crust of Midgard (the earth). Hvergelmir and this high land are not to be
referred to that division of the lower world which in Grímnismál is called Hel, for not
until after the rivers have flowed through the mountain landscape, where their source is,
are they said to falla til Heljar.
Thus: (1) In the lower world there is a mountain ridge, a high land, where
Hvergelmir, the source of all waters, is found; (2) This mountain, which for now we may
call Mount Hvergelmir, is the watershed of the lower world, from which rivers flow in
different directions; and (3) that division of the lower world which is called Hel lies
below one side of Mount Hvergelmir, and receives many rivers from there. What that
division of the lower world which lies below the other side of Mount Hvergelmir is called
is not stated in Grímnismál. But from Vafþrúðnismál and Vegtamskviða, we already
know that Hel is bounded by Niflhel. In Vegtamskviða, Odin rides through Niflhel to Hel;
in Vafþrúðnismál, halir die from Hel to Niflhel. Hel and Niflhel thus appear to be each
other's opposites, and to complement each other, and combined they form the whole
lower world. Therefore it follows that the land on the other side of the Hvergelmir
mountain is Niflhel.
It also seems necessary that both these Hades realms should in the mythology be
separated from each other not only by an abstract boundary line, but also by a natural
boundary -- a mountain or a body of water -- which would prohibit the crossing of the
boundary by persons who neither had a right nor were obliged to cross. The tradition on
which Saxo's account of Gorm's journey to the lower world is based makes Gorm and his
men, when they wish to visit the abodes of the damned from Gudmund-Mimir's realm,
4 Rydberg takes the descripitive phrase hodd goða, which he renders Hodd-goða, as a proper placename. If
this were the case, it would have to be written as hoddgoðu. The meaning "treasure of the gods" however is
correct.
5 An anonymous Old Saxon poem composed in the first half of the 9 th century, after the forced conversion
of the Saxons to Christianity by Charlemange. The poem retells the life and works of Christ in a Germanic
context, creating a unique synthesis between the Christian and Germanic cultures. The poem is divided into
71 Fitts (songs), and was likely meant to be sung in a mead-hall or monastery over a series of successive
nights. For an excellent translation and commentary see The Heliand, The Saxon Gospel by G. Ronald
Murphy, S.J., Oxford University Press, 1992.