Part 4

The account now given of the myths concerning the lower world shows that the hierologists and skalds of our heathendom had developed the doctrine in a perspicuous manner even down to the minutest details. The lower world and its kingdom of death were the chief subjects with which their fancy was occupied. The many sagas and traditions which flowed from heathen sources and which described Svipdag's, Hadding's, Gorm's, Thorkil's, and other journeys down there are proof of this, and the complete agreement of statements from totally different sources in regard to the topography of the lower world and the life there below shows that the ideas were reduced to a systematised and perspicuous whole. Svipdag's and Hadding's journeys in the lower world have been incorporated as episodes in the great epic concerning the Teutonic patriarchs, the chief outlines of which I have presented in the preceding pages. This is done in the same manner as the visits of Ulysses and Æneas in the lower world have become a part of the great Greek and Roman epic poems.

Under such circumstances it may seem surprising that Icelandic records from the middle ages concerning the heathen belief in regard to the abodes after death should give us statements which seem utterly irreconcilable with one another. For there are many proofs that the dead were believed to live in hills and rocks, or in grave-mounds where their bodies were buried. How can this be reconciled with the doctrine that the dead descended to the lower world, and were there judged either to receive abodes in Asgard or in the realms of bliss in Hades, or in the world of torture?

The question has been answered too hastily to the effect that the statements cannot be harmonised, and that consequently the heathen-Teutonic views in regard to the day of judgment were in this most important part of the religious doctrine unsupported.

The reason for the obscurity is not, however, in the matter itself, which has never been thoroughly studied, but in the false premises from which the conclusions have been drawn. Mythologists have simply assumed that the popular view of the Christian Church in regard to terrestrial man, conceiving him to consist of two factors, the perishable body and the imperishable soul, was the necessary condition for every belief in a life hereafter, and that the heathen Teutons accordingly also cherished this idea.

But this duality did not enter into the belief of our heathen fathers. Nor is it of such a kind that a man, having conceived a life hereafter, in this connection necessarily must conceive the soul as the simple, indissoluble spiritual factor of human nature. The division into two parts, líf og sála, líkami og sála, body and soul, came with Christianity, and there is every reason for assuming, so far as the Scandinavian peoples are concerned, that the very word soul, sála, sál, is, like the idea it represents, an imported word. In Old Norse literature the word occurs for the first time in Olaf Tryggvason's contemporary Hallfred, after he had been converted to Christianity. Still the word is of Teutonic root. Ulfilas translates the New Testament psyche with saiwala, but this he does with his mind on the Platonic New Testament view of man as consisting of three factors: spirit (pneuma), soul (psyche), and body (soma). Spirit (pneuma) Ulfilas translates with ahma.

Another assumption, likewise incorrect in estimating the anthropological-eschatological belief of the Teutons, is that they are supposed to have distinguished between matter and mind, which is a result reached by the philosophers of the Occident in their abstract studies. It is, on the contrary, certain that such a distinction never enitered the system of heathen Teutonic views. In it all things were material, an efni of coarse or fine grain, tangible or intangible, visible or invisible. The imperishable factors of man were, like the perishable, material, and a force could not be conceived which was not bound to matter, or expressed itself in matter, or was matter.

The heathen Teutonic conception of human nature, and of the factors composing it, is most like the Aryan-Asiatic as we find the latter preserved in the traditions of Buddhism, which assume more than three factors in a human being, and deny the existence of a soul, if this is to mean that all that is not corporal in man consists of a single simple, and therefore indissoluble, element, the soul.

The anthropological conception presented in Völuspá is as follows: Man consists of six elements, namely, to begin with the lower and coarser and to end with the highest and noblest:

(1) The earthly matter of which the body is formed.
(2) A formative vegetative force.
(3) and (4) Lodur's gifts.
(5) Hoenir's gifts.
(6) Odin's gifts.

Völuspá's words are these: The gods -

The two lowest factors, the earthly material and the vegetative force, were already united in Ask and Embla when the three gods found them "growing as trees". These elements were able to unite themselves simply by the course of nature without any divine interference. When the sun for the first time shone from the south on "the stones of the hall," the vegetative force united with the matter of the primeval giant Ymir, who was filled with the seed of life from Audhumla's milk, and then the "ground was overgrown with green herbs".

Thus man was not created directly from the crude earthly matter, but had already been organised and formed when the gods came and from the trees made persons with blood, motion, and spiritual qualities. The vegetative force must not be conceived in accordance with modern ideas, as an activity separated from the matter by abstraction and at the same time inseparably joined with it, but as an active matter joined with the earthly matter.

Lodur's first gift lá with læti makes Ask and Embla animal beings. Egilsson's view that lá means blood is confirmed by the connection in which we find the word used. The læti united with lá (compare the related Swedish word "later," manners) means the way in which a conscious being moves and acts. The blood and the power of a motion which is voluntary were to the Teutons, as to all other peophe, the marks distinguishing animal from vegetable life. And thus we are already within the domain of psychical elements. The inherited features, growth, gait, and pose, which were observed as forming race- and family-types, were regarded as having the blood as efni and as being concealed therein. The blood which produced the family-type also produced the family-tie, even though it was not acquired by the natural process of generation. A person not at all related to the family of another man could become his blóði, his blood-kinsman, if they resolved að blanda blóði saman. They thereby entered into the same relations to each other as if they had the same mother and father.

Lodur also gave at the same time another gift, litur goða. To understand this expression (hitherto translated with "good complexion"), we must bear in mind that the Teutons, like the Hellenes and Romans, conceived the gods in human form, and that the image which characterises man was borne by the gods alone before man's creation, and originally belonged to the gods. To the hierologists and the skalds of the Teutons, as to those of the Greeks and Romans, man was created in effigiem deorum and had in his nature a divine image in the real sense of this word, a litur goða. Nor was this litur goða a mere abstraction to the Teutons, or an empty form, but a created efni dwelling in man and giving shape and character to the earthly body which is visible to the eye. The common meaning of the word litur is something presenting itself to the eye without being actually tangible to the hands. The Gothic form of the word is wlits, which Ulfilas uses in translating the Greek prosopon - look, appearance, expression. Certain persons were regarded as able to separate their litur from its union with the other factors of their being, and to lend it, at least for a short time, to some other person in exchange for his. This was called to skipta litum, víxla litum. It was done by Sigurd and Gunnar in the song of Sigurd Fafnisbani (Grípisspá 37-42). That factor in Gunnar"s being which causes his earthly body to present itself in a peculiar individual manner to the eyes of others is transmitted to Sigurd, whose exterior, affected by Gunnar's litur, accommodates itself to the latter, while the spiritual kernel in Sigurd's personality suffers no change (str. 39):

Lit hefir þú Gunnars
og læti hans,
mælsku þína
og meginhyggjur.

Thus man has within him an inner body made in the image of the gods and consisting of a finer material, a body which is his litur, by virtue of which his coarser tabernacle, formed from the earth, receives that form by which it impresses itself on the minds of others. The recollection of the belief in this inner body has been preserved in a more or less distorted form in traditions handed down even to our days (see for example, Hylten-Cavallius, Värend och Virdarne, i. 343-360; Rääf in Småland, Beskr. öfver Ydre, p. 84).

The appearance of the outer body therefore depends on the condition of the litur, that is, of the inner being. Beautiful women have a "joyous fair litur" (Hávamál 93). An emotion has influence upon the litur, and through it on the blood and the appearance of the outward body. A sudden blushing, a sudden paleness, are among the results thereof and can give rise to the question, Hefir þú lit brugðið? - Have you changed your litur? (Fornald., i. 426). To translate this with, Have you changed colour? is absurd. The questioner sees the change of colour, and does not need to ask the other one, who cannot see it.

On account of its mythological signification and application, it is very natural that the word litur should in every-day life acquire on the one hand the meaning of complexion in general, and on the other hand the signification of hamur, guise, an earthly garb which persons skilled in magic could put on and off. Skipta litum, víxla litum, have in Christian times been used as synonymous with skipta hömum, víxla hömum.

In physical death the coarser elements of an earthly person's nature are separated from the other constituent parts. The tabernacle formed of earth and the vegetative material united therewith are eliminated like the animal element and remain on earth. But this does not imply that the deceased descend without form to Hades. The form in which they travel in "deep dales," traverse the thorn-fields, wade across the subterranean rivers, or ride over the gold-clad Gjallar-bridge, is not a new creation, but was worn by them in their earthly career. It can be none other than their litur, their umbra et imago. It also shows distinctly what the dead man has been in his earthly life, and what care has been bestowed on his dust. The washing, combing, dressing, ornamenting, and supplying with Hel-shoes of the dead body has influence upon one's looks in Hades, on one's looks when he is to appear before his judge.

Separated from the earthly element, from the vegetative material, and from the blood, the litur is almost imponderable, and does not possess the qualities for an intensive life, either in bliss or in torture. Five fylkes of dead men who rode over the Gjallar-bridge produced no greater din than Hermod alone riding on Sleipnir; and the woman watching the bridge saw that Hermod's exterior was not that of one separated from the earthly element. It was not litur dauðra manna (Gylfaginning). But the litur of the dead is compensated for what it has lost. Those who in the judgment on dauðan hvern are pronounced worthy of bliss are permitted to drink from the horn decorated with the serpent-symbol of eternity, the liquids of the three world-fountains which give life to all the world, and thereby their litur gets a higher grade of body and nobler blood (see Nos. 72, 73). Those sentenced to torture must also drink, but it is a drink eitri blandinn mjög, "much mixed with venom," and it is illu heilli, that is, a warning of evil. This drink also restores their bodies, but only to make them feel the burden of torture. The liquid of life which they imbibe in this drink is the same as that which was thought to flow in the veins of the demons of torture. When Hadding with his sword wounds the demon-hand which grasps after Hardgreip and tears her into pieces (see No. 41), there flows from the wound "more venom than blood" (plus tabi quam cruoris - Saxo, Book I, p. 24).

When Lodur had given Ask and Embla litur goða, an inner body formed in the image of the gods, a body which gives to their earthly tabernacle a human-divine type, they received from Hoenir the gift which is called óður. In signification this word corresponds most closely to the Latin mens, the Greek nous (cp. Vigfusson's Lexicon), and means that material which forms the kernel of a human personality, its ego, and whose manifestations are understanding, memory, fancy, and will.

Vigfusson has called attention to the fact that the epithet langifótur and aurkonungr, "Long-leg" and "Mire-king" applied to Hoenir, is applicable to the stork, and that this cannot be an accident, as the very name Hænir suggests a bird, and is related to the Greek kuknos and the Sanscrit sakunas (Corpus Poet. Bor., i. p. cii.). [*]

* There is a story of the creation of man by three wandering gods, who become in mediaeval stories Jesus and SS. Peter and Paul walking among men, as in Champfleury's pretty apologue of the bonhomme misere, so beautifully illustrated by Legros. In the eddic legend one of these gods is called Hæne; he is the speech-giver of Wolospa, and is described in praises taken from lost poems as "the long-legged one" [langifótr], "the lord of the ooze" [aurkonungr]. Strange epithets, but easily explainable when one gets at the etymology of Hæne = hohni = Sansc. sakunas = Gr. kuknos = the white bird, swan, or stork, that stalks along in the mud, lord of the marsh; and it is now easy to see that this bird is the Creator walking in chaos, brooding over the primitive mish-mash or tohu-bohu, and finally hatching the egg of the world. Hohni is also, one would fancy, to be identified with Heimdall, the walker, who is also a creator-god, who sleeps more lightly than a bird, who is also the "fair Anse," and the "whitest of the Anses," the "waker of the gods," a celestial chanticleer as it were (Vigfusson, Corpus Poeticum Boreale, vol. i., Introduction, p. cii., quoted by the translator).

It should be borne in mind in this connection that the stork even to this day is regarded as a sacred and protected bird, and that among Scandinavians and Germans there still exists a nursery tale telling how the stork takes from some saga-pond the little fruits of man and brings them to their mothers. The tale which now belongs to the nursery has its root in the myth, where Hoenir gives our first parents that very gift which in a spiritual sense makes them human beings and contains the personal ego. It is both possible and probable that the conditions essential to the existence of every person were conceived as being analogous with the conditions attending the creation of the first human pair, and that the gifts which were then given by the gods to Ask and Embla were thought to be repeated in the case of each one of their descendants - that Hoenir consequently was believed to be continually active in the same manner as when the first human pair was created, giving to the mother-fruit the ego that is to be. The fruit itself out of which the child is developed was conceived as grown on the world-tree, which therefore is called manna mjötuður (Fjölsvinnsmál 22). Every fruit of this kind (aldin) that matured (and fell from the branches of the world-tree into the mythic pond [?]) is fetched by the winged servants of the gods, and is born á eld into the maternal lap, after being mentally fructified by Hoenir.

Út af hans (Mímameiðs) aldni
skal á eld bera
fyr kelisjúkar konur;
utar hverfa
þess þær innar skýli,
sá er hann með mönnum mjötuður.

Above, in No. 83, it has been shown that Lóðurr is identical with Mundilföri, the one producing fire by friction, and that Hænir and Lóðurr are Odin's brothers, also called Véi and Vili. With regard to the last name it should be remarked that its meaning of "will" developed out of the meaning "desire," "longing," and that the word preserved this older meaning also in the secondary sense of cupido, libido, sexual desire. This epithet of Lóðurr corresponds both with the nature of the gifts he bestows on the human child which is to be - that is, the blood and the human, originally divine, form - and also with his quality of fire-producer, if, as is probable, the friction-fire had the same symbolic meaning in the Teutonic mythology as in the Rigveda. Like Hoener, Lodur causes the knitting together of the human generations. While the former fructifies the embryo developing on the world-tree with óður, it receives from Lodur the warmth of the blood and human organism. The expression Vilja byrðr, "Vili's burden," "that which Vili has produced," is from this point of view a well-chosen and at the same time an ambiguous paraphrase for a human body. The paraphrase occurs in Ynglingatal (Ynglingasaga 14). When Visbur loses his life in the flames it is there said of him that the fire consumed his Vilja byrði, his corporal life.

To Lodur's and Hoenir's gifts the highest Asa-god adds the best element in human nature, önd, spirit, that by which a human being becomes participator in the divine also in an inner sense, and not only as to form. The divine must here, of course, be understood in the sense (far different from the ecclesiastical) in which it was used by our heathen ancestors, to whom the divine, as it can reveal itself in men, chiefly consisted in power of thought, courage, honesty, veracity, and mercy, but who knew no other humility than that of patiently bearing such misfortunes as cannot be averted by human ingenuity.

These six elements, united into one in human nature, were of course constantly in reciprocal activity. The personal kernel óður is on the one hand influenced by önd, the spirit, and on the other hand by the animal, vegetative, and corporal elements, and the personality being endowed with will, it is responsible for the result of this reciprocal activity. If the spirit becomes superior to the other elements then it penetrates and sanctifies not only the personal kernel, but also the animal, vegetative, and corporal elements. Then human nature becomes a being that may be called divine, and deserves divine honour. When such a person dies the lower elements which are abandoned and consigned to the grave have been permeated by, and have become participators in, the personality which they have served, and may thereafter in a wonderful manner diffuse happiness and blessings around them. When Halfdan the Black died different places competed for the keeping of his remains, and the dispute was settled by dividing the corpse between Hadaland, Hringariki, and Vestfold (Fagurskinna, Heimskringla). The vegetative force in the remains of certain persons might also manifest itself in a strange manner. Thorgrim's grave-mound in Gisli's saga was always green on one side, and Laugarbrekku-Einar's grave-mound was entirely green both winter and summer (Landnáma, ii. 7).

The elements of the dead buried in the grave continued for more or less time their reciprocal activity, and formed a sort of unity which, if permeated by his óður and önd, preserved some of his personality and qualities. The grave-mound might in this manner contain an alter ego of him who had descended to the realm of death. This alter ego, called after his dwelling haugbúi, hill-dweller, was characterised by his nature as a draugur, a branch which, though cut off from its life-root, still maintains its conisistency, but gradually, though slowly, pays tribute to corruption and progresses toward its dissolution. In Christian times the word draugur acquired a bad, demoniacal meaning, which did not belong to it exclusively in heathen times, to judge from the compounds in which it is found: éldraugur, herdraugur, hirðidraugur, which were used in paraphrases for "warriors"; óðaldraugur, "rightful owner," &c. The alter ego of the deceased, his representative dwelling in the grave, retained his character: was good and kind if the deceased had been so in life; in the opposite case, evil and dangerous. As a rule he was believed to sleep in his grave, especially in the daytime, but might wake up in the night, or could be waked by the influence of prayer or the powers of conjuration. Ghosts of the good kind were hollar vættir, of the evil kind óvættir. Respect for the fathers and the idea that the men of the past were more pious and more noble than those of the present time caused the alter egos of the fathers to be regarded as beneficent and working for the good of the race, and for this reason family grave-mounds where the bones of the ancestors rested were generally near the home. If there was no grave-mound in the vicinity, but a rock or hill, the alter egos in question were believed to congregate there when something of importance to the family was impending. It might also happen that the lower elements, when abandoned by óður and önd, became an alter ego in whom the vegetative and animal elements exclusively asserted themselves. Such an one was always tormented by animal desire of food, and did not seem to have any feeling for or memory of bonds tied in life. Saxo (Book V) gives a horrible account of one of this sort. Two foster-brothers, Asmund and Asvid, had agreed that if the one died before the other the survivor should confine himself in the foster-brother's grave-chamber and remain there. Asvid died and was buried with horse and dog. Asmund kept his agreement, and ordered himself to be confined in the large, roomy grave, but discovered to his horror that his foster-brother had become a haugbúi of the last-named kind, who, after eating horse and dog, attacked Asmund to make him a victim of his hunger. Asmund conquered the haugbúi, cut off his head, and pierced his heart with a pole to prevent his coming to life again. Swedish adventurers who opened the grave to plunder it freed Asmund from his prison. In such instances as this it must have been assumed that the lower elements of the deceased consigned to the grave were never in his lifetime sufficiently permeated by his óður and önd to enable these qualities to give the corpse an impression of the rational personality and human character of the deceased. The same idea is the basis of belief of the Slavic people in the vampire. In one of this sort the vegetative element united with his dust still asserts itself, so that hair and nails continue to grow as on a living being, and the animal element, which likewise continued to operate in the one buried, visits him with hunger and drives him in the night out of the grave to suck the blood of surviving kinsmen.

The real personality of the dead, the one endowed with litur, óður, and önd, was and remained in the death kingdom, although circumstances might take place that would call him back for a short time. The drink which the happy dead person received in Hades was intended not only to strengthen his litur, but also to soothe that longing which the earthly life and its memories might cause him to feel. If a dearly-beloved kinsman or friend mourned the deceased too violently, this sorrow disturbed his happiness in the death kingdom, and was able to bring him back to earth. Then he would visit his grave-mound, and he and his alter ego, the haugbúi, would become one. This was the case with Helg Hundingsbani (Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, 40, &c.). The sorrow of Sigrun, his beloved, caused him to return from Valhall to earth and to ride to his grave, where Sigrun came to him and wanted to rest in his arms during the night. But when Helgi had told her that her tears pierced his breast with pain, and had assured her that she was exceedingly dear to him, and had predicted that they together should drink the sorrow-allaying liquids of the lower world, he rode his way again, in order that, before the crowing of the cock, he might be back among the departed heroes. Prayer was another means of calling the dead back. At the entrance of his deceased mother's grave-chamber Svipdag beseeches her to awake. Her ashes kept in the grave-chamber (er til moldar er komin) and her real personality from the realm of death (er úr ljóðheimum er liðin) then unite, and Groa speaks out of the grave to her son (Gróugaldur 1, 2). A third means of revoking the dead to earth lay in conjuration. But such a use of conjuration was a great sin, which relegated the sinner to the demons. (Cp. Saxo's account of Hardgreip.)

Thus we understand why the dead descended to Hades and still inhabited the grave-mounds. One died "to Hel" and "to the grave" at the same time. That of which earthly man consisted, in addition to his corporal garb, was not the simple being, "the soul," which cannot be divided, but there was a combination of factors, which in death could be separated, and of which those remaining on earth, while they had long been the covering of a personal kernel (óður), could themselves in a new combination form another ego of the person who had descended to Hades.

But that too consisted of several factors, litur, óður, and önd, and they were not inseparably united. We have already seen that the sinner, sentenced to torture, dies a second death in the lower world before he passes through the Na-gates, the death from Hel to Niflhel, so that he becomes a nár, a corpse in a still deeper sense than that which nár has in a physical sense. The second death, like the first (physical), must consist in the separation of one or more of the factors from the being that dies. And in the second death, that which separates itself from the damned one and changes his remains into a lower-world nár, must be those factors that have no blame in connection with his sins, and consequently should not suffer his punishment, and which in their origin are too noble to become the objects of the practice of demons in the art of torturing. The venom drink which the damned person has to empty deprives him of that image of the gods in which he was made, and of the spirit which was the noble gift of the Asa-father. Changed into a monster, he goes to his destiny fraught with misfortunes.

The idea of a regeneration was not foreign to the faith of the Teutonic heathens. To judge from the very few statements we have on this point, it would seem that it was only the very best and the very worst who were thought to be born anew in the present world. Gullveig was born again several times by the force of her own evil will. But it is only ideal persons of whom it is said that they are born again - e.g., Helgi Hjorvardsson, Helgi Hundingsbani, and Olaf Geirstadaralf, of whom the last was believed to have risen again in Saint Olaf. With the exception of Gullveig, the statements in regard to the others from Christian times are an echo from the heathen Teutonic doctrine which it would be most interesting to become better acquainted with - also from the standpoint of comparative Aryan mythology, since this same doctrine appears in a highly-developed form in the Asiatic-Aryan group of myths.