Chapter 25

Niflheimr then, the mist-world, was a cold underground region covered with eternal night, traversed by twelve roaring waters, and feebly lighted here and there by shining gold, i.e. fire. The rivers, especially Giöll, remind us of Lethe, and of Styx, whose holy water gods and men swore by. With Hvergelmir we may connect Helleborne in Brabant, the source of Hellebeke; several places are named Helleput (Wolf's Wodana 1, v. and 35). Helvoetsluis was cited, p. 315 note; the name Helle-voet (-foot) is, we are told, still to be seen on signboards (uithangborden) in the Netherlands (see Suppl.).

Gloomy and joyless as we must imagine Niflheimr, ( 32) there is no mention anywhere of its denizens being punished and tormented; neither is it the wicked especially that are transported thither at the end of their life, but all and sundry, even the noblest and worthiest, as the examples of Brynhildr and Baldr may show. (33) The only exceptions seem to be the heroes that fall in battle, whom Oðinn takes to himself into Valhöll.

In contradiction with this view stands another and, I think, a later one, that presented in Sn. 4: Allfather the highest god has given to all men an immortal soul, though their body rot in the ground or burn to ashes; all good men (rêtt siðaðir) go to him in Gimill or Vingôlf, all the wicked (vâudir) to Niflheimr or hell (conf. Sn. 21 and 75, of which more hereafter). This is already the christian idea, or one extremely like it.

For the old heathen hell, pale and dim, the Christian substituted a pool filled with flames and pitch, in which the souls of the damned burn for ever, at once pitch-black and illumined with a glow. Gehenna is interpreted hellafiuri, MHG. hellefiwer Parz. 116. 18; the poet of the Heliand, when he wants to picture vividly this black and burning hell, turns to the old fem. form into a masc.: 'an thene hêtan hel' 76, 22. 'an thene suartan hel' 103, 9. Erebi fornax, Walther 867. Nay, O. and other OHG. writers make the simle bëh (pix) stand for hell (34): 'in dem beche,' Warnung 547 and Wernher v. Niederrh. 40, 10; 'die pechwelle,' Anegenge 28, 19. It is a fancy widely scattered over Europe: the Mod. Greeks still say pissa for hell, as in a proverb of Alex. Negri: ecei pissan kai paradeison , putting hell and heaven side by side. This pitchy hell the Greeks seem to have borrowed from the Slavs, the O. Sl. péklo meant both pitch and hell (Dobr. instit. 294), so the Boh. peklo, hell, Pol. pieklo, Serv. pakao, Sloven. pekel, some masc., some neuter; Lith. péklà (fem.), O. Pruss. pickullis (pickullien in the Catechism p. 10 is Acc.), the devil himself is in Lith. pyculas, O. Pruss. pickuls, conf. Rausch p. 484. The Hungarians took their pokol, hell, from the Slavic, as our ancestors did 'gaíaínna' and 'infern' from Greek and Latin. And the smela, hell, of the Lüneburg Wends seems allied to the Boh. smola, smula, resin or pitch. With the heat of boiling pitch was also combined an intolerable stench; Reineke 5918: 'it stank dâr alse dat helsche pek.' Conf. generally En. 2845. 3130 (see Suppl.).

Since the conversion to Christianity therefore, there has clung to the notion of hell the additional one of punishment and pain: kvöllheimr, mundus supplicii, in Sôlarl. 53 (Sæm. 127ª) is unmistakably the christian idea. The OHG. hellawîzi, OS. helliwíti, Hel. 44, 17, AS. hellewîte, expresses supplicium inferni, conf. Graff 1, 1117 on wîzi, MHG. wîze, MsH. 2, 105b; upon it are modelled the Icel. helvîti, Swed. helvete, Dan. helvede, which mean simply our hell; from the Swedes the converted Finns received their helwetti (orcus), the Lapps their helvete, and from the Bavarians the Slovèns in Carniola and Styria got their vize (purgatorium), for the Church had distinguished between two fires, the one punitive, the other purgative, and hanging midway betwixt hell and heaven. (35)

But the christians did not alter the position of hell, it still was down in the depths of the earth, with the human world spread out above it. It is therefore called abyssus (Ducange sub v.), and forms the counterpart to heaven: 'a coelo usque in abyssum.' From abyssus, Span. abismo, Fr. abîme, is to be explained the MHG. âbîs (Altd. bl. 1, 295; in âbisses grunde, MsH. 3, 167), later obis, nobis (en âbis, en obis, in abyssum). OS. helligrund, Hel. 44, 22; in afgrunde gân, Roth. 2334; ir verdienet daz afgrunde, 1970; 'varen ter helle in den donkren kelre,' dark cellar, Florîs 1257. (36) AS. se neowla grund (imus abyssus), Cædm. 267, 1. 270, 16; þæt neowle genip (profunda caligo) 271, 7. 275, 31. This neowel, niwel (profundus) may explain an expression in the Frisian Asega-bok (Richth. 130, 10), 'thiu niuent hille,' where a M. Nethl. text has 'de grundlose helle,' bottomless hell. Hell sinking downwards is contrasted with heaven mounting upwards: 'der himel allez ûf gêt, diu helle sîget allez ze tal,' Warnung 3375-81 (see Suppl.).

It appears that men imagined, as lying at the bottom of our earth, like a ceiling or grating of the underworld, a stone, called in MHG. poems dille-stein (fr. dille, diele, deal = tabula, pluteus, OHG. dil, dili, ON. þil, þili): 'grüebe ich ûf den dille-stein,' if I dug down to the d., Schmiede (smithy, forge) 33; 'des hœhe vür der himele dach und durch der helle bodem vert,' its height passes over heaven's roof and through hell's floor, ibid. 1252; 'vür der himele dach dû blickest, u. durch der helle dillestein [is not this floor rather than ceiling?],' MS. 2, 199b; 'wan ez kumt des tiuvels schrei, dâ von wir sîn erschrecket: der dillestein der ist enzwei (in-two, burst), die tôten sint ûf gewecket,' Dietr. drachenk. cod. pal. 226ª This makes me think of the omfaloj at Delphi, a conical stone wrapt in net (Gerhard's Metroon p. 29), still more of the Etruscan mundus, and was lifted off on three holy days every year, so that the souls could mount into the upper world (Festus sub v. mundus) Not only this pit in the earth, but heaven also was called mundus, (37) just as Niflheimr is still a heimr, i.e. a world. And that hell-door (p. 802) is paralleled by the 'descensus Averni,' the 'fauces grave olentis Averni,' the 'atri janua Ditis' in Virgil's description, Aen. 6, 126. 201 (conf. helle înfart,' Veldeck's En. 2878. 2907); fairytales of the Slavs too speak of an entrance to the lower world by a deep pit, Hanusch p. 412 (see Suppl.).

The mouth or jaws of hell were spoken of, p. 314; Hel yawns like her brother Fenrir, and every abyss gapes: (38) os gehennae in Beda 363, 17 is the name of a fire-spouting well (puteus); (39) in an AS. gloss (Mone 887) mûð (os) means orcus. The same Coll. of glosses 742 puts down seáð (puteus, barathrum) for hell, and 2180 cwis for tartarus, 1284 cwis-husle, where undoubtedly we must read cwis-susle. To cwis I can find no clue but the ON. qvis calumnia [quiz, tease ? queror, questus?]; susl is apparently tormentum, supplicium, the dictionaries having no ground for giving it the sense of sulphur (AS. swefel); 'susle ge-innod,' Cædm. 3, 28, I take to be supplicio clausum. The notion of the well agrees remarkably with the fable in the Reinhart, where the hero having fallen into a well wheedles the wolf into the bucket; he pretends he is sitting in paradis down there, only there is no getting to it but by taking 'einen tuk (plunge) in die helle.' The well easily leads to the notion of bathing: 'ze helle baden,' MsH. 2, 254ª; for you can bathe in fire and brimstone too (see Suppl.).

Christian and heathen notions on the punishments of the lost are found mixed in the Sôrlalioð of the Edda, Sæm. 128-9. Snakes, adders, dragons dwell in the christian hell (Cædm. 270-1), as at the Hvergelmir root (p. 796). It is striking how the poem of Oswald (Haupt's Zeitschr. 2, 125) represents a dead heathen woman as a she-wolf, with the devils pouring pitch and brimstone down her throat. Dante in his Purgatorio and Inferno mixes up what he finds handed down by the Mid. Ages and classical literature. Read also the conclusion of Cædmon (Fundgr. 202); and in the Barlaam 310, Rudolf's brief but poetic picture of hell (40) (see Suppl.).

That the heathen Mist-world lying far to the north was not filled with fire, comes out most clearly from its opposite, a Flame-world in the south (p. 558), which the Edda calls Muspell or Muspells-heimr. This is bright and hot, glowing and burning, (41) natives alone can exist in it, hence human beings from our world never pass into it, as into the cold one of the north. It is guarded by a god (?) named Surtr, bearer of the blazing sword.

In the word Muspell we find another striking proof of the prevalence of ON. conceptions all over Teutondom. Not only has the Saxon Heliand a mudspelli 79, 24, mutspelli 133, 4, but a High German poem, probably composed in Bavaria, has at line 62 muspilli (dat. muspille). Besides, what a welcome support to the age and real basis of the Edda, coming from Saxon and Bavarian manuscripts of the 9^th cent. and the 8^th ! Everywhere else the term is extinct: neither Icelanders nor other Scandinavians understand it, in Anglo-Saxon writings it has never shown itself yet, and later specimens of German, High and Low, have lost all knowledge of it. Assuredly a primitive, a heathenish word. (42)

On it general meaning I have already pronounced, p. 601: it can scarcely be other than fire, flame. The Heliand passages tell us: 'mudspelles megin obar man ferid,' the force of fire fareth over men; 'mutspelli cumit an thiustrea naht, al sô thiof ferid darno mid is dâdiun,' fire cometh in dark night, as theif fareth secret and sudden with his deeds (Matth. 24, 43. 2 Pet. 3, 10); and the OHG. poet says: 'dâr ni mac denne mâk andremo helfan vora demo muspille, denna daz preitâ wasal (Graff 1, 1063) allaz varprennit, (43) enti viur enti luft allaz arfurpit,' then no friend can help another for the fire, when the broad shower of glowing embers (?) burns up all, and fire and air purge (furbish) everything.

It must be a compound, whose latter half spilli, spelli, spell we might connect with the ON. spiöll (corruptio), spilla (corrumpere), AS. spillan (perdere), Engl. spill, OHG. spildan, OS. spildian (perdere); (44) ON. mannspiöll is clades hominum, læspiöll (Nialss. c. 158) perhaps bellum. But we are left to guess what mud, mu (mû ?) can be, whether earth, land, or else wood, tree. In the later case, mudspelli is a descriptive epithet of fire, an element aptly named the wood-destroying, tree-consuming, as elsewhere in the Edda it is a bani viðar (percussor, inimicus ligni), grand viðar (perditio ligni), Sn. 126; the Lex Alam. 96, 1 has medela, medula in the sense of lancwitu, lancwit (Gramm. 3, 455), the Lex Rothar. 305 modula, apparently for quercus, robur (Graff 2, 707), and the ON. meiðr. (perh. for meyðr, as seiðr for seyðr) is arbor, Lith. medis [Mongol. modo] arbor, lignum. The other suppostition would make it land-destroying, world-wasting; but still less do I know of any Teutonic word for land or earth that is anything like mud or mu. We may fairly regard it as a much obscured and distorted form; Finn. maa is terra, solum (see Suppl.). (45)

Surtr (gen. Surtar, dat. Surti, Sæm. 9ª) is the swart, swarthy, browned by heat, conn. with svartr (niger), yet distinct from it; (46) it occurs elsewhere too as a proper name, Fornald. sög. 2, 114. Islend. sög. 1, 66. 88. 106. 151. 206; and curiously 'Surtr enn hvîti,' ibid. 1, 212. But there must have been another form Surti, gen. Surta, for in both Eddas we meet with the compound Surtalogi, Sæm. 37b. Sn. 22. 76. 90. A certain resinous charred earth is in the North still called Surtarbrandr (Surti titio, Biörn sub v., F. Magn. lex. 730), a mode of naming indicative of a superior being, as when plants are named after gods. Volcanic rock-caves in Iceland are called Surtarhellir (F. Magn. lex. 729); the Landnâmabôk 3, 10 (Isl. sög. 1, 151) tells how one Thôrvaldr brought to the cave of the iötunn Surtr a song composed about him: 'þâ fôr hann upp til hellisins Surts, oc fœrði þar drâpu þâ, er hann hafði ort um iötuninn î hellinum'; and Sn. 209b 210ª includes Surtr and Svartr among the names of giants. Nowhere in the two Eddas does Surtr appear as a god, but always, like other giants, as an enemy and assailant of the gods. In Völuspâ 48 (Sæm. 8ª) fire is called 'Surta sefi,' Surti amicus; and in 52 (Sæm. 8b) we read:

Surtr fer sunnan með sviga leifi,

skîn af sverði sôl valtîva,
i.e. Surtus tendit ab austro cum vimine gigas, splendet e gladio (ejus) sol deorum: 'leifi' is plainly another word for giant, Sn. 209ª; 'valtîva' can only be a gen. pl. (conf. Sæm. 10ª 52ª) and dependent on sôl, not gen. sing. of valtîvi (which never occurs, p. 194) dep. on sverði; what can be the meaning here of 'svigi' (usually twisted band, wisp ?) I cannot say, one would think it also referred to the brandished sword. Surtr then is expressly called a giant, not a god. Sn. 5 says: 'sâ er Surtr nefndr, er þar sitr â landzenda til landvarnar, hann hefir loganda sverð', Surtus vocatur, qui sedet in fine regionis (i.e. Muspellsheims) ad eam tuendam, ensemque gestat ardentem (see Suppl.).

The authors of the Heliand and the OHG. poem, both christian, but still somewhat versed in heathen poetry, alike introduce muspilli at the end of the world, at the approach of the Judgment day, when the earth and all it contains will be consumed by fire. And that is exactly how the Edda describes the same event: Surtr arises with the sons of muspell, makes war upon all the gods and overcomes them, the whole world perishes by his fire, Sn. 5. 73. When he with his blazing brand comes on from the South, the rocks in the mountains reel, the giantesses flee, men go the way of the dead, heaven cracks asunder, Sæm. 8b; the Ases do battle with Surtr and his host on a holm called Oskopnir (supra p. 144), they are all slain, and the world comes to an end (see Suppl.).




ENDNOTES: