Part 4

When a deceased who has received a good orðs tírr leaves the Thing, he is awaited in a home which his hamingja has arranged for her favourite somewhere in "the green worlds of the gods". But what he first has to do is to leita kynnis, that is, visit kinsmen and friends who have gone before him to their final destination (Sonatorrek 18). Here he finds not only those with whom he became personally acquainted on earth, but he may also visit and converse with ancestors from the beginning of time, and he may hear the history of his race, nay, the history of all past generations, told by persons who were eye-witnesses. The ways he travels are munvegar (Sonatorrek 10), paths of pleasure, where the wonderful regions of Urd's and Mimir's realms lie open before his eyes.

Those who have died in their tender years are received by a being friendly to children, which Egil Skallagrimson (Sonatorrek 21) calls Gauta spjalli. The expression means "the one with whom Odin counsels," "Odin's friend". As the same poem (str. 23) calls Odin Mimir's friend, and as in the next place Gauta spjalli is characterised as a ruler in Godheim (compare grænir heimar goða - Hákonarmál 12), he must either be Mimir, who is Odin's friend and adviser from his youth until his death, or he must be Hænir, who also is styled Odin's friend, his sessi and máli. That Mimir was regarded as the friend of dead children corresponds with his vocation as the keeper in his grove of immortality, Mimisholt, of the Asa-children, the ásmegir, who are to be the mankind of the regenerated world. But Hæner too has an important calling in regard to children (see No. 95), and it must therefore be left undecided which one of the two is here meant.

Egil is convinced that his drowned son Bodvar found a harbour in the subterranean regions of bliss. [Likewise the warlike skald Kormak is certain that he would have come to Valhall in case he had been drowned under circumstances described in his saga, a work which is, however, very unreliable.] The land to which Bodvar comes is called by Egil "the home of the bee-ship" (býskips bær). The poetical figure is taken from the experience of seamen, that birds who have grown tired on their way across the sea alight on ships to recuperate their strength. In Egil's paraphrase the bee corresponds to the bird, and the honey-blossom where the bee alights corresponds to the ship. The fields of bliss are the haven of the ship laden with honey. The figure may be criticised on the point of poetic logic, but is of a charming kind on the lips of the hardy old viking, and it is at the same time very appropriate in regard to a characteristic quality ascribed to the fields of bliss. For they are the proper home of the honey-dew which falls early in the morning from the world-tree into the dales near Urd's fountain (Völuspá). Lif and Leifthrasir live through ages on this dew (see Nos. 52, 53), and doubtless this same Teutonic ambrosia is the food of the happy dead. The dales of the earth also unquestionably get their share of the honey-dew, which was regarded as the fertilising and nourishing element of the ground. But the earth gets her share directly from Hrimfaxi, the steed of the Hades-goddess Nott. This steed, satiated with the grass of the subterranean meadows, produces with his mouth a froth which is honey-dew, and from his bridle the dew drops "in the dales" in the morning (Vafþrúðnismál 14). The same is true of the horses of the valkyries coming from the lower world. From their manes, when they shake them, falls dew "in deep dales," and thence come harvests among the peoples (Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar 28).