Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

tramar (evil witches). Morn (a Germanic Eumenides, the agony of the soul personified)
shall fill her with his being. The spirits of sickness - such also dwell there; they once took
an oath not to harm Baldur (Gylfaginning 49) - shall increase her woe and the flood of
her tears. Topi (insanity), Opi (hysteria), Tjosul and Otholi (constant restlessness), shall
not leave her in peace. These spirits are also counted as belonging to the race of thurses,
and thus it is said in the rune-song that þurs veldr kvenna kvillu, "thurs causes sickness of
women." In this connection, it should be remembered that the daughter of Loki, the ruler
of Niflhel, is also the queen of diseases. Gerd's food shall be more loathsome to her than
the poisonous serpent is to man, and her drink shall be the most disgusting. Miserable she
shall crawl among the homes of the Hades giants, and up to a mountain top, where Ari, a
subterranean eagle-demon has his perch (doubtless the same Ari which, according to
Völuspá 50, is to join with his screeches in Rymur's shield-song, when the Midgardserpent
writhes in giant-rage, and the ship of death, Naglfar, gets loose). Up there she
shall sit early in the morning, and constantly turn her face in the same direction - in the
direction where Hel is situated, that is, south over Mt. Hvergelmir, toward the
subterranean regions of bliss. Toward Hel she shall long to come in vain:
Ara þúfu á
skaltu ár sitja,
horfa og snugga Heljar til.
On Ari's perch
Hel.
thou shalt early sit,
turn toward and long to get to
By the phrase snugga Heljar til, the skald has meant something far more concrete
than to "long for death." Gerd is here supposed to be dead, and within the Na-gates. To
long for death, she does not need to crawl up to "Ari's perch." She must subject herself to
these nightly exertions, so that when it dawns in the foggy Niflhel, she may get a glimpse
of that land of bliss to which she may never come; she who rejected a higher happiness -
that of being with the gods and possessing Frey's love.
I have been somewhat elaborate in the presentation of this description in
Skírnismál, which has not previously been understood. I have done so, because it is the
only evidence left to us of how life was conceived in the fore-court of the regions of
torture, Niflhel, the land situated below Yggdrasil's northern root, beyond and below the
mountain, where the root is watered by Hvergelmir. It is plain that the author of
Skírnismál, like that of Vafþrúðnismál, Grímnismál, Vegtamskviða, and Þórsdrápa (as we
have already seen), has used the word Hel in the sense of a place of bliss in the lower
world. It is also evident that with the root under which the frost-giant dwells impossibly
can be meant, as supposed by Gylfaginning, that one under which Mimir's glorious
fountain, and Mimir's grove, and all his treasures stored for a future world, are situated.
61.
THE WORD HEL IN VÖLUSPÁ. WHO THE INHABITANTS OF HEL ARE.
We now pass to Völuspá 40 (Hauksbók; more commonly quoted as Völuspá 47),
where the word Helvegir occurs.