Part 4

In Sigurdrífumál 12 we read:

Málrúnar skaltu kunna,
ef þú vilt-at magni þér
heiptum gjaldi harm;
þær um vindur,
þær um vefur,
þær um setur allar saman
á því þingi,
er þjóðir skulu
í fulla dóma fara.

"Speech-runes you must know, if you do not wish that the strong one with consuming woe shall requite you for the injury you have caused. All those runes you must wind, weave, and place together in that Thing where the host of people go into the full judgments."

In order to make the significance of this passage clear, it is necessary to explain the meaning of speech-runes or mál-runes.

Several kinds of runes are mentioned in Sigurdrífumál, all of a magic and wonderful kind. Among them are mál-runes (speech-runes). They have their name from the fact that they are able to restore to a tongue mute or silenced in death the power to mæla (speak). Odin employs mál-runes when he rists í rúnum, so that a corpse from the gallows comes and mælir with him (Hávamál 157). According to Saxo (Book I, p. 23), Hadding places a piece of wood risted with runes under the tongue of a dead man. The latter then recovers consciousness and the power of speech, and sings a terrible song. This is a reference to mál-runes. In Guðrúnarkviða in fyrsta it is mentioned how Gudrun, mute and almost lifeless (gerðist að deyja), sat near Sigurd's dead body. One of the kinswomen present lifts the napkin off from Sigurd's head. By the sight of the features of the loved one Gudrun awakens again to life, bursts into tears, and is able to speak. The evil Brynhild then curses the being (vættur) which "gave mál-runes to Gudrun," (23) that is to say, freed her tongue, until then sealed as in death.

Those who are able to apply these mighty runes are very few. Odin boasts that he knows them. Sigurdrifa, who also is skilled in them, is a dis, not a daughter of man. The runes which Hadding applied were risted by Hardgreip, a giantess who protected him. But within the court here in question men come in great numbers (þjóðir), and among them there must be but a small number who have penetrated so deeply into the secret knowledge of runes. For those who have done so it is of importance and advantage. For by them they are able to defend themselves against complaints, the purpose of which is "to requite with consuming woe the harm they have done". In the court they are able to mæla (speak) in their own defence.

Thus it follows that those hosts of people who enter this thing-stead stand there with speechless tongues. They are and remain mute before their judges unless they know the mál-runes which are able to loosen the fetters of their tongues. Of the dead man's tongue it is said in Sólarljóð (stanza 44) that it is til trés metin og kólnað allt fyrir utan.

The sorrow or harm one has caused is requited in this Thing by heiptir, unless the accused is able - thanks to the mál-runes - to speak and give reasons in his defence. In Hávamál 151 the word heiptir has the meaning of something supernatural and magical. It has a similar meaning here, as Vigfusson has already pointed out. The magical mál-runes, wound, woven, and placed together, form as it were a garb of protection around the defendant against the magic heiptir. In the Hávamál strophe mentioned the skald makes Odin paraphrase, or at least partly explain, the word heiptir with mein, which "eat" their victims. It is in the nature of the myth to regard such forces as personal beings. We have already seen the spirits of disease appear in this manner (see No. 60). The heiptir were also personified. They were the Erinnyes ["furies"] of the Teutonic mythology, armed with scourges of thorns (see below).

He who at the Thing particularly dispenses the law of requital is called magni. The word has a double meaning, which appears in the verb magna, which means both to make strong and to operate with supernatural means.

From all this it must be sufficiently plain that the Thing here referred to is not the Althing in Iceland or the Gulathing in Norway, or any other Thing held on the surface of the earth. The thingstead here discussed must be situated in one of the mythical realms, between which the earth was established. And it must be superhuman beings of higher or lower rank who there occupy the judgment-seats and requite the sins of men with heiptir. But in Asgard men do not enter with their tongues sealed in death. For the einherjes who are invited to the joys of Valhall there are no heiptir prepared. Inasmuch as the mythology gives us information about only two thingsteads where superhuman beings deliberate and judge - namely, the Thing in Asgard and the Thing near Urd's fountain - and inasmuch as it is, in fact, only in the latter that the gods act as judges, we are driven by all the evidences to the conclusion that Sigurdrífumál has described to us that very thingstead at which Hvedrung's kinswoman summoned King Halfdan to appear after death.

Sigurdrífumál, using the expression á því, sharply distinguished this thingstead or court from all others. The poem declares that it means that Thing where hosts of people go into full judgments. "Full" are those judgments against which no formal or real protests can be made - decisions which are irrevocably valid. The only kind of judgments of which the mythology speaks in this manner, that is, characterises as judgments that "never die," are those "over each one dead".

This brings us to the well-known and frequently-quoted strophes in Hávamál 76-77:

Deyr fé,
deyja frændur,
deyr sjálfur ið sama;
en orðstírr
deyr aldregi,
hveim er sér góðan getur.

Deyr fé,
deyja frændur,
deyr sjálfur ið sama.
Eg veit einn,
að aldrei deyr,
dómur um dauðan hvern.

(76) "Your cattle shall die; your kindred shall die; you yourself shall die; but the fair fame of him who has earned it never dies."
(77) "Your cattle shall die; your kindred shall die; you yourself shall die; one thing I know which never dies: the judgment on each one dead."

Hitherto these passages have been interpreted as if Odin or Hávamál's skald meant to say - What you have of earthly possessions is perishable; your kindred and yourself shall die. But I know one thing that never dies: the reputation you acquired among men, the posthumous fame pronounced on your character and on your deeds: that reputation is immortal, that fame is imperishable.

But can this have been the meaning intended to be conveyed by the skald? And could these strophes, which, as it seems, were widely known in the heathendom of the North, have been thus understood by their hearers and readers? Did not Hávamál's author, and the many who listened to and treasured in their memories these words of his, know as well as all other persons who have some age and experience, that in the great majority of cases the fame acquired by a person scarcely survives a generation, and passes away together with the very memory of the deceased?

Could it have escaped the attention of the Hávamál skald and his hearers that the number of mortals is so large and increases so immensely with the lapse of centuries that the capacity of the survivors to remember them is utterly insufficient?

Was it not a well-established fact, especially among the Germans, before they got a written literature, that the skaldic art waged, so to speak, a desperate conflict with the power of oblivion, in order to rescue at least the names of the most distinguished heroes and kings, but that nevertheless thousands of chiefs and warriors were after the lapse of a few generations entirely forgotten?

Did not Hávamál's author know that millions of men have, in the course of thousands of years, left this world without leaving so deep footprints in the sands of time that they could last even through one generation?

Every person of some age and experience has known this, and Hávamál's author too. The lofty strains above quoted do not seem to be written by a person wholly destitute of worldly experience.

The assumption that Hávamál with that judgment on each one dead, which is said to be imperishable, had reference to the opinion of the survivors in regard to the deceased attains its climax of absurdity when we consider that the poem expressly states that it means the judgment on every dead person - "dómur um dauðan hvern". In the cottage lying far, far in the deep forest dies a child, hardly known by others than by its parents, who, too, are soon to be harvested by death. But the judgment of the survivors in regard to this child's character and deeds is to be imperishable, and the good fame it acquired during its brief life is to live for ever on the lips of posterity! Perhaps it is the sense of the absurdity to which the current assumption leads on this point that has induced some of the translators to conceal the word hvern (every) and led them to translate the words dómur um dauðan hvern in an arbitrary manner with "judgment on the dead man".

If we now add that the judgment of posterity on one deceased, particularly if he was a person of great influence, very seldom is so unanimous, reliable, well-considered, and free from prejudice that in these respects it ought to be entitled to permanent validity, then we find that the words of the Hávamál strophes attributed to Odin's lips, when interpreted as hitherto, are not words of wisdom, but the most stupid twaddle ever heard declaimed in a solemn manner.

There are two reasons for the misunderstanding - the one is formal, and is found in the word orðs-tírr (str. 76); the other reason is that Gylfaginning, which too long has had the reputation of being a reliable and exhaustive codification of the scattered statements of the mythic sources, has nothing to say about a court for the dead. It knows that, according to the doctrine of the heathen fathers, good people come to regions of bliss, the wicked to Niflhel; but who he or they were who determined how far a dead person was worthy of the one fate or the other, on this point Gylfaginning has not a word to say. From the silence of this authority, the conclusion has been drawn that a court summoning the dead within its forum was not to be found in Teutonic mythology, although other Aryan and non-Aryan mythologies have presented such a judgment-seat, and that the Teutonic fancy, though always much occupied with the affairs of the lower world and with the condition of the dead in the various realms of death, never felt the necessity of conceiving for itself clear and concrete ideas of how and through whom the deceased were determined for bliss or misery. The ecclesiastical conception, which postpones the judgment to the last day of time, and permits the souls of the dead to be transferred, without any special act of judgment, to heaven, to purgatory, or to hell, has to some extent contributed to making us familiar with this idea which was foreign to the heathens. From this it followed that scholars have been blind to the passages in our mythical records which speak of a court in the lower world, and they have either read them without sufficient attention (as, for instance, the above-quoted statements of Ynglingatal, which it is impossible to harmonise with the current conception), or interpreted them in an utterly absurd manner (which is the case with Sigurdrífumál 12), or they have interpolated assumptions, which, on a closer inspection, are reduced to nonsense (as is the case with the Hávamál strophes), or given them a possible, but improbable, interpretation (thus Sonatorrek 20). The compound orðstírr is composed of orð, gen. orðs, and tírr. The composition is of so loose a character that the two parts are not blended into a new word. The sign of the gen. -s is retained, and shows that orðstírr, like lofstírr, is not in its sense and in its origin a compound, but is written as one word, probably on account of the laws of accentuation. The more original meaning of orðstírr is, therefore, to be found in the sense of orðs tírr.

Tírr means reputation in a good sense, but still not in a sense so decidedly good but that a qualifying word, which makes the good meaning absolute, is sometimes added. Thus in lofs-tírr, laudatory reputation; góður tírr, good reputation. In the Hávamál strophe 76, above-quoted, the possibility of an orðs tírr which is not good is presupposed. See the last line of the strophe (hveim er sér góðan getur).

So far as the meaning of orð is concerned, we must leave its relatively more modern and grammatical sense (word) entirely out of the question. Its older signification is an utterance (one which may consist of many "words" in a grammatical sense), a command, a result, a judgment; and these older significations have long had a conscious existence in the language. Compare Fornmannasögur, ii. 237: "The first word: All shall be Christians; the second word: All heathen temples and idols shall be unholy," &c.

In Völuspá 26 orð is employed in the sense of an established law or judgment among the divine powers, á gengust eiðar, orð og særi, where the treaties between the Asas and gods, solemnised by oaths, were broken.

When orð occurs in purely mythical sources, it is most frequently connected with judgments pronounced in the lower world, and sent from Urd's fountain to their destination. Urðar orð is Urd's judgment, which must come to pass (Fjölsvinnsmál 47), no matter whether it concerns life or death. Feigðar orð, a judgment determining death, comes to Fjolnir, and is fulfilled "where Frodi dwelt" (Ynglingatal 1). Dauða orð, the judgment of death, awaited Dag the Wise, when he came to Vorvi (Ynglingatal 8). To a subterranean judgment refers also the expression bana-orð, which frequently occurs.

Vigfusson (Dictionary, p. 467) points out the possibility of an etymological connection between orð and Urður. He compares word (orð) and wurdr (urðr), word and weird (fate, goddess of fate). Doubtless there was, in the most ancient time, a mythical idea-association between them.

These circumstances are to be remembered in connection with the interpretation of orðstírr, orðs-tírr in Hávamál 76. The real meaning of the phrase proves to be: reputation based on a decision, on an utterance of authority.

When orðstírr had blended into a compound word, there arose by the side of its literal meaning another, in which the accent fell so heavily on tírr that orð is superfluous and gives no additional meaning of a judgment on which this tírr is based. Already in Höfuðlausn (str. 26) orðstírr is used as a compound, meaning simply honourable reputation, honour. There is mention of a victory which Erik Blood-axe won, and it is said that he thereby gained orðstírr (renown).

In interpreting Hávamál 76 it would therefore seem that we must choose between the proper and figurative sense of orðstírr. The age of the Hávamál strophe is not known. If it was from it Eyvind Skaldaspillir drew his deyr fé, deyja frændur, which he incorporated in his drapa on Hakon the Good, who died in 960, then the Hávamál strophe could not be composed later than the middle of the tenth century. Höfuðlausn was composed by Egil Skallagrimsson in the year 936 or thereabout. From a chronological point of view there is therefore nothing to hinder our applying the less strict sense, "honourable reputation, honour," to the passage in question.

But there are other hindrances. If the Hávamál skald with orðs-tírr meant "honourable reputation, honour," he could not, as he has done, have added the condition which he makes in the last line of the strophe: hveim er sér góðan getur, for the idea "good" would then already be contained in orðstírr. If in spite of this we would take the less strict sense, we must subtract from orðstírr the meaning of honourable reputation, honour, and conceive the expression to mean simply reputation in general, a meaning which the word never had.

We are therefore forced to the conclusion that the meaning of court-decision, judgment, which orð has not only in Ynglingatal and Fjölsvinnsmál, but also in linguistic usage, was clear to the author of the Hávamál strophe, and that he applied orðs tírr in its original sense and was speaking of imperishable judgments.

It should also have been regarded as a matter of course that the judgment which, according to the Hávamál strophe (77), is passed on everyone dead, and which itself never dies, must have been prepared by a court whose decision could not be questioned or set aside, and that the judgment must have been one whose influence is eternal, for the infinity of the judgment itself can only depend on the infinity of its operation. That the more or less vague opinions sooner or later committed to oblivion in regard to a deceased person should be supposed to contain such a judgment, and to have been meant by the immortal doom over the dead, I venture to include among the most extraordinary interpretations ever produced.

Both the strophes are, as is evident from the first glance, most intimately connected with each other. Both begin: deyr fé, deyja frændur. Orð in the one strophe corresponds to dómur in the other. The latter strophe declares that the judgment on every dead person is imperishable, and thus completes the more limited statement of the foregoing strophe, that the judgment which gives a good renown is everlasting. The former strophe speaks of only one category of men who have been subjected to an ever-valid judgment, namely, of that category to whose honour the eternal judgment is pronounced. The second strophe speaks of both the categories, and assures us that the judgment on the one as on the other category is everlasting.

The strophes are by the skald attributed to Odin's lips. Odin pronounces judgment every day near Urd's fountain at the court to which King Halfdan was summoned, and where hosts of people with fettered tongues await their final destiny (see above). The assurances in regard to the validity of the judgment on everyone dead are thus given by a being who really may be said to know what he talks about (eg veit, &c.), namely, by the judge himself.

In the poem Sonatorrek the old Egil Skallagrimsson laments the loss of sons and kindred, and his thoughts are occupied with the fate of his children after death. When he speaks of his son Gunnar, who in his tender years was snatched away by a sickness, he says (str. 20):

...son minn
sóttar brími
heiptulegr
úr heimi nam,
þann eg veit
að varnaði
vamma varr
við námæli.

"A fatal fire of disease (fever?) snatched from this world a son of mine, of whom I know that he, careful as he was in regard to sinful deeds, took care of himself for námæli."

To understand this strophe correctly, we must know that the skald in the preceding 19th, as in the succeeding 21st, strophe, speaks of Gunnar's fate in the lower world.

The word námæli occurs nowhere else, and its meaning is not known. It is of importance to our subject to find it out.

In those compounds of which the first part is ná-, ná may be the abverbial prefix, which means near by, by the side of, or it may be the substantive nár, which means a corpse, dead body, and in a mythical sense one damned, one who dies for the second time and comes to Niflhel (see No. 60). The question is now, to begin with, whether it is the adverbial prefix or the substantive ná- which we have in námæli.

Compounds which have the adverbial ná as the first part of the word are very common. In all of them the prefix ná- implies nearness in space or in kinship, or it has the signification of something correct or exact.

(1) In regard to space: nábúð, nábúi, nábýli, nágranna, nágranni, nágrennd, nágrenni, nákominn, nákvæma, nákvæmd, nákvæmr, náleið, nálægð, nálægjast, nálægr, námunda, násessi, náseta, násettr, násæti, návera, náverukona, náverandi, návist, návistarkona, návistarmaðr, návistarvitni.

(2) In regard to friendship: náborinn, náfrændi, náfrændkona, námágr, náskyldr, nástædr, náungr.

(3) In regard to correctness, exactness: nákvæmi, nákvæmlega, nákvæmr.

The idea of correctness comes from the combination of ná- and kvæmi, kvæmlega, kvæmr. The exact meaning is - that which comes near to, and which in that sense is precise, exact, to the point.

These three cases exhaust the meanings of the adverbial prefix ná-. I should consider it perilous, and as the abandoning of solid ground under the feet, if we, without evidence from the language, tried, as has been done, to give it another hitherto unknown signification.

But none of these meanings can be applied to námæli. In analogy with the words under (1) it can indeed mean "An oration held near by"; but this signification produces no sense in the above passage, the only place where it is found.

In another group of words the prefix ná- is the noun nár. Here belong nábjargir, nábleikr, nágrindur, nágöll, náreið, nástrandir, and other words.

Mæli means a declamation, an oration, an utterance, a reading, or the proclamation of a law. Mæla, mælandi, formælandi, formæli, nýmæli, are used in legal language. Formælandi is a defendant in court. Formæli is his speech or plea. Nýmæli is a law read or published for the first time.

Mæli can take either a substantive or adjective as prefix. Examples: Guðmæli, fullmæli. Ná from nár can be used as a prefix both to a noun and to an adjective. Examples: nágrindr, nábleikr.

Námæli should accordingly be an oration, a declaration, a proclamation, in regard to nár. From the context we find that námæli is something dangerous, something to look out for. Gunnar is dead and is gone to the lower world, which contains not only happiness but also terrors; but his aged father, who in another strophe of the poem gives to understand that he had adhered faithfully to the religious doctrines of his fathers, is convinced that his son has avoided the dangers implied in námæli, as he had no sinful deed to blame himself for. In the following strophe (21) he expressed his confidence that the deceased had been adopted by Gauta spjalli, a friend of Odin in the lower world, and had landed in the realm of happiness. (In regard to Gauta spjalli, see further on. The expression is applicable both to Mimir and Hoenir.)

Námæli must, therefore, mean a declaration (1) that is dangerous; (2) which does not affect a person who has lived a blameless life; (3) which refers to the dead and affects those who have not been vamma varir, on the look-out against blameworthy and criminal deeds.

The passage furnishes additional evidence that the dead in the lower world make their appearance in order to be judged, and it enriches our knowledge of the mythological eschatology with a technical term (námæli) for that judgment which sends sinners to travel through the Na-gates to Niflhel. The opposite of námæli is orðs tírr, that judgment which gives the dead fair renown, and both kinds of judgments are embraced in the phrase dómur um dauðan. Námæli is a proclamation for náir, just as nágrindur are gates, and nástrandir are strands for náir.