Introduction

        It is evident that the author of Béowulf was familiar with a Christian English poem on the creation of the world. In Béow., 88-98, we read that a poet (scop) sang to the music of the harp in the hall of the Danish king: 'He who could give an account of the creation of men from the most remote times, sang of how the Almighty created the earth, the radiant plain encircled by water, how the Glorious One established sun and moon to shine for the inhabitants of the world, and adorned the corners of the earth with branches and foliage, and likewise created life for all races, who live and move.' Here also the epithet, 'the Almighty,' points to a Christian poem.
        I conjecture that the heathen Norse poet who composed Völuspá in the tenth century in England was familiar, when he celebrated the creation of the world, with a Christian poem on the same theme, by which he was to some extent influenced. This English epic poem, now lost, to which Béowulf points, also stood in historical connection with the North-German poem presupposed by the Wessobrunner-Gebet.
        I conjecture, further, that the model of these poems, the oldest Christian Germanic poem on the creation of the world, was composed somewhat after the year 700, when English missionaries worked in North Germany.
        A remarkable mythological word connects the heathen old Norse works on the fate of the wold with the oldest Christian North-German works on its destruction. The beings who shall lay waste the world with fire are called, in O.N. works, 'the sons of Múspell.' In the Old Saxon Hêliand (which dates from the first half of the ninth century), in a passage which attaches itself to the words: 'So shall it be in the end of this world' (Matt. xiii. 40), we read: 'Mûdspelles might comes over men, the end of this world' (v. 2591; mudspelles, Cod. Monac., mutspelles, Cotton.); and in another place (v. 4358): 'mûtspelli comes as a thief in the dark night.' In a Bavarian Christian poem, written in the first half of the ninth century, the destruction of the world by fire, or the fire which shall destroy the world, is called mûspille.
        This word was originally North-German, Old Saxon. The Old High German word is borrowed from the Old Saxon. The O.N. word is probably derived from an A.S. word, now lost, that corresponded to the Old Saxon. The word became widespread in Christian works that predicted the destruction of the world by fire. Its oldest form was probably mûðspelli, or mûðspilli. I was the first to point out that the word had nothing to do with O.S. spildian, 'to harm,' but that it is derived from spell, 'speech, tidings, prediction, prophecy.' Detter has explained the first part of *mûðspilli as derived from mûð, 'mouth,' and has compared the A.S. mûðhæl, 'salutary words,' O.N. munnræða, 'speech,' etc. He regards *mûðspilli, which really means 'oral prediction,' as a Christian word which is a free reproduction of Latin prophetia. Following Vigfusson, I thought previously that in the first part of the word we had the Latin mundus, so that mûðspelli would mean 'the prediction, prophecy of the world, of mundi consummatio.'
        In Völuspá the influence of Christian English works is very clear in the description of the first eras of the world. We read that the gods gave names to the different divisions of time. 'Then the Asir assembled on Ida-plain, they who erected high altars and temples. They built smithies and forged treasures; they made tongs and fashioned tools; they played "tables" (draughts); they lacked nothing from gold' (Vpá., sts. 7, 8). This was, then, the golden age of Paradise. In the new world of the remote future, the Asir shall again assemble on Ida-Plain, and there the golden 'tables,' which in the morning of time they had possessed, they shall find lying in the grass (Vpá., Cod. Reg., sts. 57, 58).
        For the name á Iðavelli (with short i), Völuspá is our only authority. This word contains a reconstruction of the name Eden, which name the heathen Scandinavians heard in England from Christian Englishmen. Ed- in Eden was reproduced by Ið-, because of the relation between A.S. ed-, 'again,' and the corresponding O.N. ið-. The Scandinavians doubtless connected Iðavöllr as the name of the place where the gods shall assemble in the new (A.S. ed-nîwe) world with the O.N. ið-, 'again.' The -n in Eden doubtless fell away because the name was treated as an A.S. form (e.g. a genitive) in -an, to which corresponded an O.N. form in -a. Thus A.S. eorcnanstân was changed in O.N. into jarknasteinn. The second part of Iðavöllr, viz. völlr, 'plain,' corresponds in meaning to A.S. wong, which was used of Paradise. In like manner the Norwegian place-name Leikvangr has been changed in modern times into Leikvoll. (5)
        In the description of the first eras of the world in Völuspá, there are, as E.H. Meyer has pointed out several agreements in poetic phraseology with A.S. poems. In Vpá., 8 we read of the gods in the morning of time: var þeim vettergis vant ór gulli, 'they lacked nothing from gold.' In the A.S. poem, 'The Wonders of Creation,' (6) we read of the blessed who dwell with God: nis him wihte won, etc., 'they lack nothing.' Of the first ages of the world, we find in Vpá., 3: jörð fannsk æva, ..... en gras hvergi, and in st. 4: þá var grund gróin---grænum lauki; compare A.S.: Folde wæs þâ gyt---græs ungrêne, Genesis, 116 f. With Vpá., 5: máni þat ne vissi---hvat hann megins átti,---stjörnur þat ne vissu,----hvar þær staði áttu, compare A.S.: þonne stedeléase steorran hréosað---.......ne se môna næfð nânne mihte wiht, in the poem on the Day of Judgment, (7) of the year 971.
        These agreements are certainly not accidental. They are easily explained on the theory that Völuspá was composed by a Norseman in England under the influence of English poems, though not exactly those here quoted.
        In the passage dealing with the occupation of the gods on Ida-plain, are used the words teflðu, 'they played tables,' toflur, 'tables.' According to Rígsþula, Earl's sons learn to play tafl. These words (which became familiar throughout the North), though ultimately of Latin origin, were derived, at all events in part, from England. A.S. tæfl translates Lat. alea; tæflan means 'to play.'
        With reference to the building of altars or temples, the word hátimbra is used in Völuspá and in Grimnismál 16. As far as its composition is concerned, it could be genuine Norse; but while it does not occur elsewhere in Norse, we find pretty often in A.S. héahgetimbru, 'high buildings,' particularly of Heaven, with gen. pl. héahtimbra, and the participle héahtimbrod. In Old High German hôhgizimbri is explained by 'pergama, capitolia.'
        The theory that it was in the West that the Norse poet sang, in Völuspá, of the first eras of the world, is strengthened by the fact that he uses an Irish word. In Vpá., 4, he calls the earth and the other component parts of the world bjöðum (dat. pl.), which is borrowed from Irish bioth, bith, 'world.' In later Icelandic poems, bjöð was adopted from Völuspá and used in the meaning 'earth,' e.g., by the skald Kormak (note the Irish name) who was on a warlike expedition in Scotland, and who uses several Irish and English words.
        Towards the end of Völuspá, the influence of Christian conceptions becomes still more evident. I will call attention to certain bits of linguistic testimony which show that these conceptions were taken from Christian Anglo-Saxons.
        We have indisputable evidence of this fact, as has often been pointed out, in the last strophe of the poem: þar kemr enn dimmi dreki fljúgandi, 'there comes the dark dragon flying'; for dreki is certainly a foreign word. Nor can it be doubted that the word in Völuspá is due to English influence; for A.S. draca (8) occurs earlier in English than the corresponding word in Old Norse. And, moreover, a 'flying dragon' plays an important part in the national epic Béowulf.
        The A.S. draca is, in its turn, taken from Lat. draco; but the context in which the word dragon occurs in the last strophe of Völuspá shows that dreki in this passage has nothing to do with draco in the Latin sense of 'the standard of a cohort.' In Vpá., we read: 'There comes the gloomy dragon flying, the shining serpent, up from "Nitha-fells"; with corpses on his wings, Niðhöggr flies over the plain; now shall he sink.' Here, then, the dragon comes up from the deep with corpses on his wings. Down below he has torn to pieces the bodies of the wicked. But this idea of dragons tearing to pieces the bodies of the wicked is, as I have shown in the First Series of my Studies (pp. 453 ff), a Christian conception which in the Middle Ages was well known in western Europe, and therefore in Ireland and England.
        After the Sibyl has described the renewed earth and the splendid dwellings of the good in Gimlé, and after she has proclaimed that the Mighty One shall come, she announces in conclusion that she sees the dragon rise from the deep, only to sink for ever. E.H. Meyer (9) thinks that this vision is based on the prediction of St. John (Rev. XX. 1-3) that 'the dragon, that old serpent,' after having been cast into the bottomless pit, and bound a thousand years, 'must be loosed a little season.' This seems to me possible, although the statement in Völuspá that Níðhöggr sucks bodies on Ná-strandir (i.e. Corpse-strands), has its origin in other conceptions than those regarding the dragon in the above-cited passage from the Apocalypse.
        We read that the dragon comes flying frá Niðafjöllum. This, I believe, means 'from the fells (mountains) below, in the deep,' even as the designation of the place where a golden hall stands, viz. á Niðavöllum, Vpá., 37, means 'on plains in the deep.' The word is to be explained by the A.S. nið, neut., 'deep, abyss.' (10)
        There is another word in the Sibyl's description of the last ages of the world which betrays definite Christian influence from England.
        The hall, fairer than the sun, thatched with gold, in which the good and upright shall dwell in the renewed world and enjoy gladness for ever, is said to be í Gimlée, i.e. 'the secure home adorned with precious stones.' The last part of the word is hlé, 'shelter, protection.' The place cannot have received its name Gimlé before the Scandinavians had borrowed their word gimr (masc., in Vkv.), as in gimsteinn, 'precious stone,' from Englishmen who had themselves borrowed it (A.S. gim, gimm, masc.) from Lat. gemma, most likely through the Irish gemm. Thus, since the name Gimlé necessarily presupposes influence from Christian peoples, we have every reason to find in this home of the righteous in the new world, 'Gem-shelter,' the hall of which is fairer than the sun and thatched with gold, a reproduction, altered by passing through several intermediaries, of the holy Jerusalem of which St. John says (Rev. xxi. II ff): 'Her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal.' 'And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold like unto clear glass. And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones.' 'And the street of the city was pure gold.' 'And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it.'
        The statement in the Scandinavian poet, that the hall in Gimlé is 'thatched with gold,' is even closer to a passage in Gregory the Great (Dial. iv., chap. 36), who in a vision says that in Paradise are to be seen various resplendent dwellings, in the midst of them a shining house with golden tiles.
        We have a reflection of the holy Jerusalem in several German works also; among others in the following description by a MHG poet: 'In the kingdom of heaven stands a house. A golden road leads to it. The pillars are of marble; Our Lord adorns them with precious stones.'
        Other evidence that outside of Scandinavia the holy Jerusalem of the Apocalypse became a heathen Paradise, may be seen in the story of how the devil shows Radbot, King of the Frisians, a golden house in which he shall dwell if he will not give up the heathen faith: the house shines like gold, and before it is a street paved with gold and precious stones.
        As examples of how the most important Old Norse mythological stories, as we know them from the Eddic poems and from Snorri's Edda, arose under the profound influence of Jewish-Christian tales which the Scandinavians heard among the English and Irish, I shall now briefly examine some of the leading features of the stories of Baldr and Loki.

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