Part 4

Those hosts which are conducted by their psychopomps to the Thing near Urd's fountain proceed noiselessly. It is a silent journey. The bridge over Gjöll scarcely resounds under the feet of the death-horses and of the dead (Gylfaginning 49). The tongues of the shades are sealed (see No. 70).

This thingstead has, like all others, had its judgment-seats. Here are seats (in Völuspá called rökstólar) for the holy powers acting as judges. There is also a rostrum (þularstóli á, Urðar brunni að - Hávamál 111) and benches or chairs for the dead (compare the phrase falla á helpalla - Sörla þáttur, Chapter 4, and the sitting of the dead one, á norna stóli - Sólarljóð 51). Silent they must receive their doom unless they possess mál-runes (see No. 70).

The dead should come well clad and ornamented. Warriors bring their weapons of attack and defence. The women and children bring ornaments that they were fond of in life. Hades-pictures of those things which kinsmen and friends placed in the grave-mounds accompany the dead (Hákonarmál 17; Gylfaginning 52 [?] ) as evidence to the judge that they enjoyed the devotion and respect of their survivors. The appearance presented by the shades assembled in the Thing indicates to what extent the survivors heed the law, which commands respect for the dead and care for the ashes of the departed.

Many die under circumstances which make it impossible for their kinsmen to observe these duties. Then strangers should take the place of kindred. The condition in which these shades come to the Thing shows best whether piety prevails in Midgard; for noble minds take to heart the advices found as follows in Sigurdrífumál 33-34: "Render the last service to the corpses you find on the ground, whether from sickness they have died, or are drowned, or are from weapons dead. Make a bath for those who are dead, wash their hands and their head, comb them and wipe them dry, ere in the coffin you lay them, and pray for their happy sleep."

It was, however, not necessary to wipe the blood off from the byrnie of one fallen by the sword. It was not improper for the elect to make their entrance in Valhall in a bloody coat of mail. Eyvind Skaldaspillir makes King Hakon come all stained with blood (allur í dreyra drifinn) into the presence of Odin.

When the gods have arrived from Asgard, dismounted from their horses (Gylfaginning) and taken their judges' seats, the proceedings begin, for the dead are then in their places, and we may be sure that their psychopomps have not been slow on their Thing-journey. Somewhere on the way the Hel-shoes must have been tried; those who ride to Valhall must then have been obliged to dismount. The popular tradition first pointed out by Walter Scott and J. Grimm about the need of such shoes for the dead and about a thorn-grown heath, which they have to cross, is not of Christian but of heathen origin. Those who have shown mercy to fellow-men that in this life, in a figurative sense, had to travel thorny paths, do not need to fear torn shoes and bloody feet (W. Scott, Minstrelsy, ii.); and when they are seated on Urd's benches, their very shoes are, by their condition, a conspicuous proof in the eyes of the court that they who have exercised mercy are worthy of mercy.

The Norse tradition preserved in Gisla saga Surssonar in regard to the importance for the dead to be provided with shoes reappears as a popular tradition, first in England, and then several places (Müllenhoff, Deutsche Alt., v. 1, 114; J. Grimm., Myth., iii. 697; nachtr., 349; Weinhold, Altn. Leb., 494; Mannhardt in Zeitschr. f. deutsch. Myth., iv. 420 ; Simrock, Myth., v. 127). Visio Godeschalci describes a journey which the pious Holstein peasant Godeskalk, belonging to the generation immediately preceding that which by Vicelin was converted to Christianity, believed he had made in the lower world. There is mentioned an immensely large and beautiful linden-tree hanging full of shoes, which were handed down to such dead travellers as had exercised mercy during their lives. When the dead had passed this tree they had to cross a heath two miles wide, thickly grown with thorns, and then they came to a river full of irons with sharp edges. The unjust had to wade through this river, and suffered immensely. They were cut and mangled in every limb; but when they reached the other strand, their bodies were the same as they had been when they began crossing the river. Compare with this statement Sólarljóð 42, where the dying skald hears the roaring of subterranean streams mixed with much blood - Gylfar straumar grenjuðu ... blandnir mjög við blóð. The just are able to cross the river by putting their feet on boards a foot wide and fourteen feet long, which floated on the water. This is the first day's journey. On the second day they come to a point where the road forked into three ways - one to heaven, one to hell, and one between these realms (compare Müllenhoff, D. Alt., v. 113, 114). These are all mythic traditions, but little corrupted by time and change of religion. That in the lower world itself Hel-shoes were to be had for those who were not supplied with them, but still deserved them, is probably a genuine mythological idea.

Proofs and witnesses are necessary before the above-named tribunal, for Odin is far from omniscient. He is not even the one who knows the most among the beings of mythology. Urd and Mimir know more than he. With judges on the one hand who, in spite of all their loftiness, and with all their superhuman keenness, nevertheless are not infallible, and with defendants on the other hand whose tongues refuse to serve them, it might happen, if there were no proofs and witnesses, that a judgment, everlasting in its operations, not founded on exhaustive knowledge and on well-considered premises, might be proclaimed. But the judgment on human souls proclaimed by their final irrevocable fate could not in the sight of the pious and believing bear the stamp of uncertain justice. There must be no doubt that the judicial proceedings in the court of death were so managed that the wisdom and justice of the dicta were raised high above every suspicion of being mistaken.

The heathen fancy shrank from the idea of a knowledge able of itself to embrace all, the greatest and the least, that which has been, is doing, and shall be in the world of thoughts, purposes, and deeds. It hesitated at all events to endow its gods made in the image of man with omniscience. It was easier to conceive a divine insight which was secured by a net of messengers and spies stretched throughout the world. Such a net was cast over the human race by Urd, and it is doubtless for this reason that the subterranean Thing of the gods was located near her fountain and not near Mimir's. Urd has given to every human soul, already before the hour of birth, a maid-servant, a hamingja, a norn of lower rank, to watch over and protect its earthly life. And so there was a wide-spread organisation of watching and protecting spirits, each one of whom knew the motives and deeds of a special individual. As such an organisation was at the service of the court, there was no danger that the judgment over each one dead would not be as just as it was unappealable and everlasting.

The hamingja hears of it before anyone else when her mistress has announced dauða orð - the doom of death, against her favourite. She (and the gipta, heill, see No. 64) leaves him then. She is horfin, gone, which can be perceived in dreams (Baldurs Draumar 4) or by revelations in other ways, and this is an unmistakable sign of death. But if the death-doomed person is not a nithing, whom she in sorrow and wrath has left, then she by no means abandons him. They are like members of the same body, which can only be separated by mortal sins (see below). The hamingja goes to the lower world, the home of her nativity (see No. 64), to prepare an abode there for her favourite, which also is to belong to her (Gisla saga Súrssonar). It is as if a spiritual marriage was entered into between her and the human soul.

But on the dictum of the court of death it depends where the dead person is to find his haven. The judgment, although not pronounced on the hamingja, touches her most closely. When the most important of all questions, that of eternal happiness or unhappiness, is to be determined in regard to her favourite, she must be there, where her duty and inclination bid her be - with him whose guardian-spirit she is. The great question for her is whether she is to continue to share his fate or not. During his earthly life she has always defended him. It is of paramount importance that she should do so now. His lips are sealed, but she is able to speak, and is his other ego. And she is not only a witness friendly to him, but, from the standpoint of the court, she is a more reliable one than he would be himself.

In Atlamál 28 there occurs a phrase which has its origin in heathendom, where it has been employed in a clearer and more limited sense than in the Christian poem. The phrase is eg kveð aflima orðnar þér dísir, and it means, as Atlamál uses it, that he to whom the dises (the hamingja and gipt) have become aflima is destined, in spite of all warnings, to go to his ruin. In its very nature the phrase suggests that there can occur between the hamingja and the human soul another separation than the accidental and transient one which is expressed by saying that the hamingja is horfin. Aflima means "amputated," separated by a sharp instrument from the body of which one has been a member. The person from whom his dises have been cut off has no longer any close relation with them. He is for ever separated from them, and his fate is no longer theirs. Hence there are persons doomed to die and persons dead who do not have hamingjur by them. They are those whom the hamingjur in sorrow and wrath have abandoned, and with whom they are unable to dwell in the lower world, as they are nithings and are awaited in Niflhel.

The fact that a dead man sat á nornastóli or á Helpalli without having a hamingja to defend him doubtless was regarded by the gods as a conclusive proof that he had been a criminal.

If we may judge from a heathen expression preserved in strophe 16 of Atlakviða, and there used in an arbitrary manner, then the hamingjur who were "cut off" from their unworthy favourites continue to feel sorrow and sympathy for them to the last. The expression is nornir gráta nái, "the norns (hamingjur) bewail the náir". If the námæli, the ná-dictum, the sentence to Niflhel which turns dead criminals into náir, in the eschatological sense of the word, has been announced, the judgment is attended with tears on the part of the former guardian-spirits of the convicts. This corresponds, at all events, with the character of the hamingjur.

Those fallen on the battlefield are not brought to the fountain of Urd while the Thing is in session. This follows from the fact that Odin is in Valhall when they ride across Bifrost, and sends Asas or einherjes to meet them with the goblet of mead at Asgard's gate (Eiríksmál, Hákonarmál). But on the way there has been a separation of the good and bad elements among them. Those who have no hamingjur must, á nornastóli, wait for the next Thing-day and their judgment. The Christian age well remembered that brave warriors who had committed nithing acts did not come to Valhall (see Hakon Jarl's words in Njála). The heathen records confirm that men slain by the sword who had lived a wicked life were sent to the world of torture (see Harald Harfagri's saga, ch. 27 - the verses about the viking Thorir Wood-beard, who fell in a naval battle with Einar Rognvaldson, and who had been a scourge to the Orkneyings).

The high court must have judged very leniently in regard to certain human faults and frailties. Sitting long by and looking diligently into the drinking-horn certainly did not lead to any punishment worth mentioning. The same was the case with fondness for female beauty, if care was taken not to meddle with the sacred ties of matrimony. With a pleasing frankness, and with much humour, the Asa-father has told to the children of men adventures which he himself has had in that line. He warns against too much drinking, but admits without reservation and hypocrisy that he himself once was drunk, nay, very drunk, at Fjalar's, and what he had to suffer, on account of his uncontrollable longing for Billing's maid, should be to men a hint not to judge each other too severely in such matters (see Hávamál). All the less he will do so as judge. Those who are summoned to the Thing, and against whom there are no other charges, may surely count on a good orðs tírr, if they in other respects have conducted themselves in accordance with the wishes of Odin and his associate judges: if they have lived lives free from deceit, honourable, helpful, and without fear of death. This, in connection with respect for the gods, for the temples, for their duties to kindred and to the dead, is the alpha and the omega of the heathen Teutonic moral code, and the sure way to Hel's regions of bliss and to Valhall. He who has observed these virtues may, as the old skald sings of himself, "glad, with serenity and without discouragement, wait for Hel" (Sonatorrek 25):

Skal eg þó glaður
með góðan vilja
og óhryggur
Heljar bíða.

If the judgment on the dead is lenient in these respects, it is inexorably severe in other matters. Lies uttered to injure others, perjury, murder (secret murder, assassination, not justified as blood-revenge), adultery, the profaning of temples, the opening of grave-mounds, treason, cannot escape their awful punishment. Unutterable terrors await those who are guilty of these sins. Those psychopomps that belong to Niflhel await the adjournment of the Thing in order to take them to the world of torture, and Urd has chains (Heljar reip - Sólarljóð 37; Des Todes Seil - J. Grimm, D. Myth., 805) which make every escape impossible.