Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

Surt's spirit, or kinsman (sefi may mean either), is the fire, as has also previously
been supposed. The final episode in the conflict on Vigrid's plain is that the Muspelflames
destroy the last remnant of the contending giants. The terror which took
possession of the inhabitants of Hel, when the world-tree quaked and the unnamed giant
got loose, continues so long as the conflict is undecided. Valfather falls, Frey and Thor
likewise; no one can know who is to be victorious. But the terror ceases when on the one
hand the liberated giant-monster is destroyed, and on the other hand Vidar and Vali,
Modi and Magni, survive the conflict and survive the flames, which do not penetrate to
Baldur and Hodur amid their protégés in Hel. The word þann (him), which occurs in the
seventh line of the strophe (in the last of the translation) can impossibly refer to any other
than the giant mentioned in the fourth line (jötunn). In the strophe, there are only two
masculine words to which the masculine þann can referred - jötunn and Yggdrasils askur.
Jötunn, which stands nearest to þann, thus has the preference; and as we have seen that
the world-tree falls by neither fire nor edge (Fjölsvinnsmál 20), and as it, in fact, survives
the conflagration of Surt, then þann must naturally be referred to the jötunn.
Here Völuspá has furnished us with evidence in regard to the position of Hel's
inhabitants towards the contending parties in Ragnarok. They who are frightened when a
giant-monster -- a most dangerous one, as it previously had been chained -- gets free from
its fetters, and they whose fright is allayed when the monster is destroyed in the
conflagration of the world, such beings could not possibly have followed this monster
and its fellow warriors with their good wishes. Their hearts are on the side of the good
powers, which are friendly to mankind. But they do not take an active part in their behalf;
they take no part whatever in the conflict. This is manifest from the fact that their fright
does not cease before the conflict is ended. Now we know that among the inhabitants in
Hel are the ásmegir Lif and Leifthrasir and their offspring, and that they are not
herþarfir; they are not to be employed in war, since their very destiny forbids their taking
an active part in the events of this period of the world (see No. 53). But the text does not
permit us to think of them alone when we are to determine who the beings á Helvegum
are. For the text says that all, who are á Helvegum, are alarmed until the conflict is
happily ended. What the interpreters of this much abused passage have failed to see, the
seeress in Völuspá has not forgotten, that, namely, during the lapse of countless
thousands of years, innumerable children and women, and men who never wielded the
sword, have descended to the kingdom of death and received dwellings in Hel, and that
Hel - -in the limited local sense which the word previously has appeared to have in the
songs of the gods -- does not contain warlike inhabitants. Those who have fallen on the
battle-field come, indeed, as shall be shown later, to Hel, but not to remain there; they
continue their journey to Asgard, for Odin chooses one half of those slain on the
battlefield for his dwelling, and Freyja the other half (Grímnismál 14). The chosen
accordingly have Asgard as their place of destination, which they reach in case they are
not found guilty by a sentence which neutralizes the force and effect of the previous
choice (see below), and sends them to die the second death on crossing the boundary to
Niflhel. Warriors who have not fallen on the battlefield are as much entitled to Asgard as
those fallen by the sword, provided they have acquired fame and honor as heroes. It
might, of course, happen to the greatest general and the most distinguished hero, the