Part 4

The regions over which the flock of demons fly are the same as those which the author of Skírnismál has in view when Skirnir threatens Gerd with sending her to the realms of death. It is the home of the frost-giants, of the subterranean giants, and of the spirits of disease. Here live the offspring of Ymir's feet, the primeval giants strangely born and strangely bearing, who are waiting for the quaking of Yggdrasil and for the liberation of their chained leader, in order that they may take revenge on the gods in Ragnarok, and who in the meantime contrive futile plans of attack on Hvergelmir's fountain or on the north end of the Bifrost bridge. Here the demons of restless uneasiness, of mental agony, of convulsive weeping, and of insanity (Otholi, Morn, Opi, and Topi) have their home; and here dwells also their queen, Loki's daughter, Leikin, whose threshold is precipice and whose bed is disease. According to the authority used by Saxo in the description of Gorm's journey, the country is thickly populated. Saxo calls it urbs, oppidum (cp. Skírnismál's words about the giant-homes, among which Gerd is to drag herself hopeless from house to house). The ground is a marsh with putrid water (putidum cænum), which diffuses a horrible stench. The river Slid flowing north out of Hvergelmir there seeks its way in a muddy stream to the abyss which leads down to the nine places of punishment. Over all hovers Niflheim's dismal sky.

The mortals who, like Gorm and his men, have been permitted to see these regions, and who have conceived the idea of descending into those worlds which lie below Niflheim, have shrunk back when they have reached the abyss in question and have cast a glance down into it. The place is narrow, but there is enough daylight for its bottom to be seen, and the sight thereof is terrible. Still, there must have been a path down to it, for when Gorm and his men had recovered from the first impression, they continued their journey to their destination (Geirrod's place of punishment), although the most terrible vapour (teterrimus vapor) blew into their faces. The rest that Saxo relates is unfortunately wanting both in sufficient clearness and in completeness. Without the risk of making a mistake, we may, however, consider it as mythically correct that some of the nine worlds of punishment below Niflheim, or the most of them, are vast mountain caves, mutually united by openings broken through the mountain walls and closed with gates, which do not, however, obstruct the course of Slid to the Nastrands and to the sea outside. Saxo speaks of a perfractam scopuli partem, "a pierced part of the mountain," through which travellers come from one of the subterranean caves to another, and between the caves stand gatekeepers (janitores). Thus there must be gates. At least two of these "homes" have been named after the most notorious sinner found within them. Saxo speaks of one called the giant Geirrod's, and an Icelandic document of one called the giant Geitir's. The technical term for such a cave of torture was gnýskúti (clamour-grotto). Saxo translates skúti with conclave saxeum. "To thrust anyone before Geitir's clamour-grotto" - reka einn fyrir Geitis gnýskúta - was a phrase synonymous with damning a person to death and hell.

The gates between the clamour-grottos are watched by various kinds of demons. Before each gate stand several who in looks and conduct seem to symbolise the sins over whose perpetrators they keep guard. Outside of one of the caves of torture Gorm's men saw club-bearers who tried their weapons on one another. Outside of another gate the keepers amused themselves with "a monstrous game" in which they "mutually gave their ram-backs a curved motion". It is to be presumed that some sort of perpetrators of violence were tortured within the threshold, which was guarded by the club-bearers, and that the ram-shaped demons amused themselves outside of the torture-cave of debauchees. It is also probable that the latter is identical with the one called Geitir's. The name Geitir comes from geit, goat. Saxo, who Latinised Geitir into Götharus, tells adventures of his which show that this giant had tried to get possession of Freyja, and that he is identical with Gymir, Gerd's father. According to Skírnismál 35, there are found in Niflhel goats, that is to say, trolls in goat-guise, probably of the same kind as those above-mentioned, and it may be with an allusion to the fate which awaits Gymir in the lower world, or with a reference to his epithet Geitir, that Skirnir threatens Gerd with the disgusting drink (geita hland) which will there be given her by "the sons of misery" (vílmegir). One of the lower-world demons, who, as his name indicates, was closely connected with Geitir, is called "Geitir's Howl-foot" (Geitis Gnýfeti); and the expression "to thrust anyone before Geitir's Howl-foot" thus has the same meaning as to send him to damnation.

Continuing their journey, Gorm and his men came to Geirrod's skúti (see No. 46).

We learn from Saxo's description that in the worlds of torture there are seen not only terrors, but also delusions which tempt the eyes of the greedy. Gorm's prudent captain Thorkil (see No. 46) earnestly warns his companions not to touch these things, for hands that come in contact with them are fastened and are held as by invisible bonds. The illusions are characterised by Saxo as ædis supellectilis, an expression which is ambiguous, but may be an allusion that they represented things pertaining to temples. The statement deserves to be compared with Sólarljóð's strophe 65, where the skald sees in the lower world persons damned, whose hands are riveted together with burning stones. They are the mockers at religious rites (they who minnst vildu halda helga daga) who are thus punished. In the mythology it was probably profaners of temples who suffered this punishment.

The Nastrands and the hall there are thus described in Völuspá 38, 39:

Sal sá hún standa
sólu fjarri
Náströndu á,
norður horfa dyr.
Féllu eiturdropar
inn um ljóra,
sá er undinn salur
orma hryggjum.

Sá hún þar vaða
þunga strauma
menn meinsvara
og morðvarga
og þanns annars glepur
eyrarúnu.
Þar saug Niðhöggur
nái framgengna,
sleit vargur vera.

"A hall she saw standing far from the sun on the Nastrands; the doors opened to the north. Venom-drops fell through the roof-holes. Braided is that hall of serpent-backs."
"There she saw perjurers, murderers, and they who seduce the wife of another (adulterers) wade through heavy streams. There Nidhogg sucked the náir of the dead. And the wolf tore men into pieces."

Gylfaginning 52 assumes that the serpents, whose backs, wattled together, form the hall, turn their heads into the hall, and that they, especially through the openings in the roof (according to Codex Ups. and Codex Hypnones.), vomit forth their floods of venom. The latter assumption is well founded. Doubtful seems, on the other hand, Gylfaginning's assumption that "the heavy streams," which the damned in Nastrands have to wade through, flow out over the floor of the hall. As the very name Nastrands indicates that the hall is situated near a water, then this water, whether it be the river Slid with its eddies filled with weapons or some other river, may send breakers on shore and thus produce the heavy streams which Völuspá mentions. Nevertheless Gylfaginning's view may be correct. The hall of Nastrands, like its counterpart Valhall, has certainly been regarded as immensely large. The serpent-venom raining down must have fallen on the floor of the hall, and there is nothing to hinder the venom-rain from being thought sufficiently abundant to form "heavy streams" thereon (see below).

Saxo's description of the hall in Nastrands - by him adapted to the realm of torture in general - is as follows: "The doors are covered with the soot of ages; the walls are bespattered with filth; the roof is closely covered with barbs; the floor is strewn with serpents and bespawled with all kinds of uncleanliness". The last statement confirms Gylfaginning's view. As this bespawling continues without ceasing through ages, the matter thus produced must grow into abundance and have an outlet. Remarkable is also Saxo's statement, that the doors are covered with the soot of ages. Thus fires must be kindled near these doors. Of this more below.