Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

on horseback, with wisdom in their countenances, with helmets on their heads, and with
shields before them," are near the king. The latter hears that Göndul, "leaning on her
spear," says to Skögul that the wound is to cause the king's death, and now a conversation
begins between Hakon and Skögul, who confirms what Göndul has said, and does so with
the following words:
Ríða við nú skulum,
kvað hin ríka Skögul,
græna heima goða
Óðni að segja,
að nú mun alvaldr koma
á hann sjálfan að sjá.
"Now we two (Göndul and Skögul) shall ride, said the mighty Skögul, over green
realms (or worlds) of the gods in order to say to Odin that now a great king is coming to
see him."
Here we get definite information in regard to which way the valkyries journey
between Asgard and Midgard. The fields through which the road goes, and which are
beaten by the hoofs of their horses, are green realms of the gods (worlds, heimar).
With these green realms, Eyvind has not meant the blue ether. He distinguishes
between blue and green. The sea he calls blue (blámær - see Heimskringla, Hákonar
Saga Aþalsteinsfóstra, ch. 28). 35 What he expressly states, and to which we must confine
ourselves, is that, according to his cosmological conception and that of his heathen
fellow-believers, there were realms clothed in green and inhabited by divinities on the
route the valkyries had to take when they proceeded from a battlefield in Midgard back to
Valhall and Asgard. But as valkyries and the elect ride on Bifröst up to Valhal, Bifröst,
which goes down to Urd's well, must be the connecting link between the realms decked
with green and Asgard. The grænir heimar through which the valkyries have to pass are
therefore the realms of the lower world.
Among the realms or "worlds" which constituted the mythological universe, the
realms of bliss in the lower world were those which might particularly be characterized as
the green. Their groves and blooming meadows and fields of waving grain were never
touched by decay or frost, and as such they were cherished by the popular fancy for
centuries after the introduction of Christianity. The Low German language has also
rescued the memory thereof in the expression gróni godes wang (Heliand, Fitt 37, line
3082). 36 That the green realms of the lower world are called realms of the gods is also
35 At least two versions of this stanza are known, one in Heimskringla and one in Landnámabók 54 where it
is attributed to a different poet; the latter according according to Vigfusson's Dictionary (see blá-mær). In
one ms. the word in question reads blámœr ("blue-moor"), and in the other borðmærar ("plank-moor").
Both are used as part of a kenning for ship, referred to as a skær ("steed") of the b. mær. Of the two,
borðmærar ("plank-moor" i.e. "shipside-land") makes the best sense. Thus a ship is "the steed of the
shipside-land," a kenning which has many parallels. As there are no similar kennings meaning "the steed of
the blue-land," this reading may be based on the faulty transcription or a damaged manuscript.
36 Lines 3080-3082: themu is himilrîki, antloken liohto mêst endi lîf êuuig, grôni godes uuang, "for him
heaven stands unlocked --eternal life in the greatest of worlds on God's green meadow." (G. Ronald
Murphy, translation). Throughout the work, Hel is presented as a fiery pit, after the Christian teachings.