Chapter 13

My survey of the gods closed with Oegir and Loki; and the goddesses akin to these shall be the last mentioned here.

To correspond to the ON. Gefjon the Old Saxons had, as far as we know, not a female but a male being, Geban, Geofon (sea, p. 239). With four giant oxen, according to Sn. 1, Gefjon ploughs Zealand out of the Swedish soil, and a lake arises, whose inward bend exactly fits the projecting coast of Zealand. She is described as a virgin, and all maidens who die virgins wait upon her, Sn. 36. Her name is called upon when oaths are taken: sver ek við Gefjon, F. Magn. lex. 386 (see Suppl.). Gefn, a name of Freyja (Sn. 37 and Vigglumss. cap. 27) reminds one of Gefjon.

Rân was the wife of the seagod Oegir, they had nine daughters who are cited by name in the Edda, and called Rânar (or Oegis) dætr. (120) Men who are drowned fall to the shares of Rân, which of itself attests her divinity: fara til Rânar is to get drowned at sea, Fornald. sög. 2, 78; and sitja at Rânar to be drowned, Fornm. sög. 6, 376. Those who were drowned she drew to her in a net, and carried them off, whence the explanation of her name: rân neut. is rapina, ræna rapere, spoliare (see Suppl.).

On the discovery of the rare word rahanen (spoliare) in the Hildebr. lied 57, I build the supposition that other Teutonic lands had also a subst. rahan (rapina, spolium) and a goddess Rahana (conf. Tanfana, Hluodana), as well as an Uogi = Oegir. (121)

As we pass from Oegir (through Forniot and Logi) to Loki, so we may from Rân to Hel, who is no other than Loki's daughter, and like him a dreadful divinity. Rân receives the souls that die by water, Hel those on land, and Freyja those that fall in battle.

The ON. Hel gen. Heljar shows itself in the other Teutonic tongues even less doubtfully than Frigg and Freyja or any of the above-mentioned goddesses: Goth. Halja gen. Haljôs, OHG. Hellia, Hella gen. Hellia, Hella, AS. Hell gen. Helle; only, the personal notion has dropt away, and reduced itself to the local one of halja, hellia, hell, the nether world and place of punishment. Originally Hellia is not death nor any evil being, she neither kills nor torments; she takes the souls of the departed and holds them with inexorable grip. The idea of a place evolved itself, as that of

œgir oceanus out of Oegir, and that of gëban mare from Gëban; the converted heathen without any ado applied it to the christian underworld, the abode of the damned; all Teutonic nations have done this, from the first baptized Goths down to the Northmen, because that local notion already existed under heathenism, perhaps also because the church was not sorry to associate lost spirits with a heathen and fiendish divinity. (122) Thus hellia can be explained from Hellia even more readily than ôstara from Ostara.

In the Edda, Hel is Loki's daughter by a giantess, she is sister to the wolf Fenrir and to a monstrous snake. She is half black and half of human colour (blâ hâlf, en hâlf með hörundar lit), Sn. 33, after the manner of the pied people of the Mid. Ages; in other passages her blackness alone is made a subject of comparison: blâr sem Hel, Nialss. 117. Fornm. sög. 3, 188; conf. Heljarskinn for complexion of deathly hue, Landnâmab. 2, 19. Nialss. cap. 96. Fornald. sög. 2, 59. 60; (123) death is black and gloomy. Her dwelling is deep down in the darkness of the ground, under a root of the tree Yggdrasill, in Niflheim, the innermost part of which is therefore called Niflhel, there is her court (rann), there her halls, Sæm. 6b 44ª 94ª. Sn. 4. Her platter is named hûngr, her knife sultr, synonymous terms to denote her insatiable greed. The dead go down to her, fara til Heljar, strictly those only that have died of sickness or old age, not those fallen in fight, who people Valhalla. Her personality has pretty well disapeared in such phrases as î hel slâ, drepa, berja î hel, to smite into hell, send to Hades; î helju vera, be in Hades, be dead, Fornald. sög. 1, 233. Out of this has arisen in the modern dialects and altogether impersonal and distorted term, Swed. ihjäl, Dan. ihiel, to death. (124) These languages now express the notion of the nether world only by a compound, Swed. helvete, Dan. helvede, i.e., the ON. helvîti [[Hell, the abode of he damned]] (supplicium infernale), OHG. hellawîzi, MHG. hellewîze. One who is drawing his last breath is said in ON. liggja milli heims oc heljar (to lie betwixt home and hell), to be on his way from this world to the other. The unpitying nature of the Eddic Hel is expressly emphasized; what she once has, she never gives back: haldi Hel þvî er hefir, Sn. 68, hefir nu Hel, Sæm. 257ª, like the wolf in the apologue (Reinhart xxxvi), for she is of wolfish nature and extraction; to the wolf on the other hand a hellish throat is attributed (see Suppl.).

Two lays in the Edda describe the way to the lower world, the Helreið Brynhildar and the Vegtamsqviða; in the latter, Oðin's ride on Sleipnir for Baldr's sake seems to prefigure that which hermôðr afterwards undertakes on the same steed in Sn. 65-7. But the incidents in the poem are more thrilling, and the dialogue between Vegtamr (125) and the vala, who says of herself:

var ek snifin sniofi (by snow), ok slegin regni,

ok drifin döggo (be dew), dauð (dead) var ek leingi,

is among the sublimest things the Edda has to shew. This vala must stand in close relationship to Hel herself.

Saxo Gram. p. 43 very aptly uses for Hel the Latin Proserpina, he makes her give notice of Balder's death. In the Danish popular belief Hel is a three-legged horse, that goes round the country, a harbinger of plague and pestilence; of this I shall treat further on. Originally it was no other than the steed on which the goddess posted over land, picking up the dead that were her due; there is also a waggon ascribed to her, in which she made her journeys.

A passage in Beowulf shows how the Anglo-Saxons retained perfectly the old meaning of the word. It says of the expiring Grendel 1698: 'feorh âlegde, hæðene sâwle (vitam deposuit, animam geutilem), þær hine Hel onfêng,' the old-heathen goddess took possession of him.

In Germany too the Mid. Ages still cherished the conception of a voracious, hungry, insatiable Hell, an Orcus esuriens, i.e., the man-devouring ogre: 'diu Helle ferslindet at daz ter lebet, si ne wirdet niomer sat,' N. Cap. 72. 'diu Helle und der arge wân werdent niemer sat,' Welsch. gast. It sounds still more personal, when she has gaping yawning jaws ascribed to her, like the wolf; picture in the MS. of Cædmon represent her simply by a wide open mouth.

Der tobende wuoterîch--------------------The raging tyrant

der was der Hellen gelîch,---------------he was like the Hell

diu daz abgrunde-------------------------who the chasm (steep descent)

begenit mit ir munde---------------------be-yawneth with her mouth

unde den himel zuo der erden.----------from heaven down (126) to earth.

unde ir doch niht ne mac werden,------And yet to her it cannot hap

daz si imer werde vol;-------------------that she ever become full;

si ist daz ungesatlîche hol,--------------she is the insatiable cavern,

daz weder nu noch nie ne sprah:-------that neither now nor ever said

'diz ist des ih niht ne mac.'--------------'this is what I cannot (manage).'

Lampr. Alex 6671-80. Old poems have frequent allusions to the abgrund (chasm, abyss) and the doors of hell: helligruoba, hellagrunt, helliporta, &c. Gramm. 2, 458; der abgrunde tunc, der tiefen helle tunc (the deep hell's dinge, darkness), Mart. 88b 99c.

Of course there are Bible texts that would in the first instance suggest much of this, e.g., about the insatiablness of hell, Prov. 27, 20. 30, 16 (conf. Freidank lxxiv), her being uncovered, Job 26, 6, her opening her mouth, Isaiah 5, 14. But we are to bear in mind, that all these have the masc. adhj or infernus, with which the idea of the Latin Orcus also agrees, and to observe how the German language, true to its idiosyncrasy, was obliged to make use of a feminine word. The images of a door, abyss, wide gaping throat, strength and invincibility (fortis tanquam orcus, Petron. cap. 62), appear so natural and necessary to the notion of a nether world, that they will keep recurring in a similar way among different nations. (see Suppl.).

The essential thing is, the image of a greedy, unrestoring, female deity. (127)

But the higher we are allowed to penetrate into our antiquities, the less hellish and the more godlike may Halja appear. Of this we have a particularly strong guarantee in her affinity to the Indian Bhavani, who travels about and bathes like Nerthus and Holda (p. 268), but is likewise called Kâlî or Mahakâlî, the great black goddess. In the underworld she is supposed to sit in judgment on souls. This office, the similar name and the black hue (kâla niger, conf. caligo and kelainoj) make her exceedingly like Halja. And Halja is one of the oldest and commonest conceptions of our heathenism.




ENDNOTES:

120. Sæm. 79b 144ª 153b 180. Sn. 124-9. 185. Eyrbygg. saga p. 274, and index sub v. Rân. Egilssaga p. 616. Back

121. The Trad. patav. pp. 60-2 assure us of a man's name Raan, Rhaan (Rahan?). An OHG. Rahana rests on a very slender foundation. Back

122. Hel has no affinity at all with ON. hella [[slab of stone]] petra, hellir [[cave, cavern]] antrum, as the Goth. hallus petra shows (from hillan sonare, because a rock resounds): a likelier connexion is that with our höle antrum, OHG. holî, more frequent in neut. hol. for which we should expect a Gothic hul, as in fact a fem. hulundi is caverna, for a cave covers, and so does the nether world (both therefore from hilan celare). Only, the vowels in höle (=huli) and hölle (=halja) do not agree. Back

123. The ancients also painted Demeter, as the wrathful earth-goddess, black (Paus. 8, 42. O. Müller's Eumenides 168, conf. Archæol. p. 509 the black Demeter at Phigalia), and sometimes even her daughter Persephone, the fair maid doomed to the underworld: 'furva Proserpina,' Hor. Od. 2, 13 (Censorin. De die nat. c. 17). Black Aphrodite (Melanis) is spoken of by Pausanias 2, 2. 8, 6. 9, 27 and by Athenæus bk. 13; we know the black Diana of Ephesus, and that in the Mid. Ages black Madonnas were both painted and carved, the Holy Virgin appearing then as a sorrowing goddess of earth or night; such at Loretto, Naples, Einsiedeln, Würzburg (Altd. W. 2, 209. 286), at Oettingen (Goethe's Corresp. with a child 2, 184), at Puy (Büsching's Nachr. 2, 312-333). Marseilles and elsewhere. I think it specially significant, that the Erinnys or Furia dwelling in Tartarus is also represented both as black and as half white half black. Back

124. O. Swed. has more correctly ihæl, i.e., ihäl (Fred. af Normandie 1299. 1356. 1400. 1414). In Östgötalagen p. 8, one reading has already ihiæll for ihæl; they no longer grasped the meaning of the term. Back

125. Oðinn calls himself Vegtamr (way-tame, broke-in to the road, gnarus viae). son of Valtamr (assuetus caedibus), as in other places gângtamr (itineri assuetus) is used of the horse, Sæm. 265b, but Oðinn himself is Gângrâðr or Gângleri. Vegtamr reminds one of the holy priest and minstrel Wechtam in Hunibald. Back

126. I have supposed that 'unde den' is a slip for 'abe dem'.---Trans. Back

127. In the south of Holland, where the Meuse falls into the sea, is a place named Helvoetsluis. I do not know if any forms in old documents confirm the idea contained in the name, of Hell-foot, foot of Hell. The Romans have a Helium here: Inter Helium ac Flevum, ita appellantur ostia, in quae effusus Rhenus, ab septentrione in lacus, ab occidente in amnem Mosam se spargit, medio inter haec ore modicum nomine suo custodiens alveum, Plin. 4, 29. Tac. also says 2, 6: immenso ore. Conf. supra p. 198 on Oegisdyr (see Suppl.). Back

Sunday, 21-Apr-2002 1:17 PM