Part 15

Gylfaginning treats Muspel as a place, a realm, the original home of fire and heat (Gylfag., 5). Still, there is a lack of positiveness, for the land in question is in the same work called _Múspellsheimr_ (ch. 5) and _Múspells heimr_ (ch. 8), whence we may presume that the author regarded _Múspell_ as meaning both the land of the fire and the fire itself. The true etymology of _Múspell_ was probably as little known in the thirteenth century, when Gylfaginning was written, as it is now. I shall not speak of the several attempts made at conjecturing the definition of the word. They may all be regarded as abortive, mainly, doubtless, for the reason that Gylfaginning's statements have credulously been assumed as the basis of the investigation. As a word inherited from heathen times, it occurs under the forms _mutspelli_ and _muspilli_ in the Old Saxon poem Heliand and in an Old High German poem on the final judgment, and there it has the meaning of the Lord's day, the doom of condemnation, or the condemnation. Concerning the meaning which the word had among the heathens of the North, before the time of the authors of Völuspa and Lokasenna, all that can be said with certainty is, that the word in the expression "Muspel's sons" has had a special reference to mythical beings who are to appear in Ragnarok fighting there as Loke's allies, that is, on the side of the evil against the good; that these beings were Loke's fellow-prisoners on the rocky isle where he was chained; and that they accompanied him from there on board Nagelfar to war against the gods. As Gylfaginning makes them accompany Surt coming from the South, this must be the result of a confounding of "Muspel's sons" with "Surt's (Suttung's) sons."

A closer examination ought to have shown that Gylfaginning's conception of "Muspel's sons" is immensely at variance with the mythical. Under the influence of Christian ideas they are transformed into a sort of angels of light, who appear in Ragnarok to contend under the command of Surt "to conquer all the idols" (_sigra öll godin_--Gylfag. 4) and carry out the punishment of the world. While Völuspa makes them come with Loke in the ship Nagelfar, that is, from the terrible rocky isle in the sea over which eternal darkness broods, and while Lokasenna makes them come across the Darkwood, whose name does not suggest any region in the realm of light, Gylfaginning tells us that they are celestial beings. Idols and giants contend with each other on Vigrid's plains; then _the heavens_ are suddenly rent in twain, and out of it ride in shining squadrons "Muspel's sons" and Surt, with his flaming sword, at the head of the fylkings. Gylfaginning is careful to keep these noble riders far away from every contact with that mob which Loke leads to the field of battle. It therefore expressly states that they form a fylking by themselves (_I thessum gny Klofnar himininn, ok ridu thadan Muspells synir; Surtr ridr fyrstr, &c. ... enn Muspells synir hafa einir sér fylking, er sá björt mjök_--ch. 56). Thus they do not come to assist Loke, but to put an end to both the idols and the mob of giants. The old giant, Surt, who, according to a heathen skald, Eyvind Skaldaspiller, dwells in _sökkdalir_, in mountain grottoes deep under the earth (see about him, No. 89), is in Gylfaginning first made the keeper of the borders of "Muspelheim," and then the chief of celestial hosts. But this is not the end of his promotion. In the text found in the Upsala Codex, Gylfaginning makes him lord in Gimle, and likewise the king of eternal bliss. After Ragnarok it is said, "there are many good abodes and many bad;" _best it is to be in Gimle with Surt (margar ero vistar gothar og margar illar, bezt er at vera a Gimle medr surtr)_. The name Surt means black. We find that his dark looks did not prevent his promotion, and this has been carried to such a point that a mythologist who honestly believed in Gylfaginning saw in him the Almighty who is to come after the regeneration to equalise and harmonise all discord, and to found holy laws to prevail for ever.

Under such circumstances, it may be suggested as a rule of critical caution not to accept unconditionally Gylfaginning's statement that the world of light and heat which existed before the creation of the world was called Muspel or Muspelheim. In all probability, this is a result of the author's own reflections. At all events, it is certain that no other record has any knowledge of that name. But that the mythology presumed the existence of such a world follows already from the fact that Urd's fountain, which gives the warmth of life to the world-tree, must have had its deepest fountain there, just as Hvergelmer has its in the world of primeval cold, and Mimer has his fountain in that wisdom which unites the opposites and makes them work together in a cosmic world.

Accordingly, we must distinguish between _Múspells megir_, _Múspells synir_, from Surt's clan-men, who are called _Surts ætt_, _synir Suttunga_, _Suttungs synir_ (Skirnismal, 34; Alvissm., 35). We should also remember that _Múspell_ in connection with the words _synir_ and _megir_ hardly can mean a land, a realm, a region. The figure by which the inhabitants of a country are called its sons or descendants never occurs, so far as I know, in the oldest Norse literature.

In regard to the names of the points of the compass in the poetic Edda, _nordan_ and _austan_, it must not be forgotten that the same northern regions in the mythical geography to which various events are referred must have been regarded by the Icelanders as lying to the east from their own northern isle. The _Bjarmia ulterior_, in whose night-shrouded waters mythical adventurers sought the gates to the lower world, lay in the uttermost North, and might still, from an Icelandic and also from a Norwegian standpoint, be designated as a land in the East. According to the sagas preserved by Saxo, these adventurers sailed into the Arctic Ocean, past the Norwegian coast, and eastward to a mythical Bjarmia, more distant than the real Bjarmaland. They could thus come to the coast where a gate to the lower world was to be found, and to the Nastrands, and if they continued this same course to the East, they could finally get to the rocky isle where Loke lay chained.

We have seen that Loke is not alone with Sigyn on that isle where in chains he abides Ragnarok. There were unhappy beings in large numbers with him. As already stated, Saxo speaks of three connected caves of torture there, and the innermost one is Loke's. Of the one nearest to it, Saxo tells nothing else than that one has to wade across a brook or river in order to get there. Of the bound Fenrer, Loke's son, it is said that from his mouth runs froth which forms the river Von (Gylfag., 34). In Lokasenna (34) Frey says to the abusive Loke: "A wolf (that is, Fenrer) I see lying at the mouth of the river until the forces of the world come in conflict; if you do not hold your tongue, you, villain, will be chained _next to him_" (_thvi næst_--an expression which here should be taken in a local sense, as a definite place is mentioned in the preceding sentence). And as we learn from Völuspa, that Freke (the wolf) is with Loke on board Nagelfar, then these evidences go to show that Loke and his son are chained in the same place. The isle where Fenrer was chained is called in Gylfaginning _Lyngvi_, and the body of water in which the isle is situated is called _Amsvartnir_, a suitable name of the sea, over which eternal darkness broods. On the isle, the probably Icelandic author of Völuspa (or its translator or compiler) has imagined a "grove," whose trees consist of jets of water springing from hot fountains (_hvera lundr_). The isle is guarded by _Garmr_, a giant-dog, who is to bark with all its might when the chains of Loke and Fenrer threaten to burst asunder:

Geyr Garmr mjök fyr Gnipahelli Festr man slitna, en Freki renna.

According to Grimnersmal, Garm is the foremost of all dogs. The dogs which guard the beautiful Menglad's citadel are also called Garms (Fjölsvinnsmal). In Gylfaginning, the word is also used in regard to a wolf, Hate Manegarm. _Gnipahellir_ means the cave of the precipitous rock. The adventurers which Thorkil and his men encountered with the flying serpents, in connection with the watching Hel-dog, show that Lyngve is the scene of demons of the same kind as those which are found around the Na-gates of Nifelheim.

Bound hands and feet with the entrails of a "frost-cold son" (Lokasenna, 49), which, after being placed on his limbs, are transformed into iron chains (Gylfag., 54), Loke lies on a weapon (_a hiorvi_--Lokasenna, 49), and under him are three flat stones placed on edge, one under his shoulders, one under his loins, and one under his hams (Gylfag., 54). Over him Skade, who is to take revenge for the murder of her father, suspends a serpent in such a manner that the venom drops in the face of the nithing. Sigyn, faithful to her wicked husband, sits sorrowing by his side (Völuspa) and protects him as well as she is able against the venom of the serpent (Postscript to Lokasenna, Gylfag., 54). Fenrer is fettered by the soft, silk-like chain Gleipner, made by the subterranean artist, and brought from the lower world by Hermod. It is the only chain that can hold him, and that cannot be broken before Ragnarok. His jaws are kept wide open with a sword (Gylfag., 35).

79.

THE GREAT WORLD-MILL. ITS MISTAKEN IDENTITY WITH THE FRODE-MILL.

We have yet to mention a place in the lower world which is of importance to the naïve but, at the same time, perspicuous and imaginative cosmology of Teutonic heathendom. The myth in regard to the place in question is lost, but it has left scattered traces and marks, with the aid of which it is possible to restore its chief outlines.

Poems, from the heathen time, speak of two wonderful mills, a larger and a smaller "Grotte"-mill.

The larger one is simply immense. The storms and showers which lash the sides of the mountains and cause their disintegration; the breakers of the sea which attack the rocks on the strands, make them hollow, and cast the substance thus scooped out along the coast in the form of sand-banks; the whirlpools and currents of the ocean, and the still more powerful forces that were fancied by antiquity, and which smouldered the more brittle layers of the earth's solid crust, and scattered them as sand and mould over "the stones of the hall," in order that the ground might "be overgrown with green herbs"--all this was symbolized by the larger Grotte-mill. And as all symbols, in the same manner as the lightning which becomes Thor's hammer, in the mythology become epic-pragmatic realities, so this symbol becomes to the imagination a real mill, which operates deep down in the sea and causes the phenomena which it symbolizes.

This greater mill was also called _Grædir_, since its grist is the mould in which vegetation grows. This name was gradually transferred by the poets of the Christian age from the mill, which was grinding beneath the sea, to the sea itself.

The lesser Grotte-mill is like the greater one of heathen origin--Egil Skallagrimson mentions it--but it plays a more accidental part, and really belongs to the heroic poems connected with the mythology. Meanwhile, it is akin to the greater. Its stones come from the lower world, and were cast up thence for amusement by young giant-maids to the surface of the earth. A being called _Hengikjöptr_ (the feminine _Hengikepta_ is the name of a giantess--Sn. Edda, i. 551; ii. 471) makes mill-stones out of these subterranean rocks, and presents the mill to King Frode Fridleifson. Fate brings about that the same young giantesses, having gone to Svithiod to help the king warring there, Guthorm (see Nos. 38, 39), are taken prisoners and sold as slaves to King Frode, who makes them turn his Grotte-mill, the stones of which they recognize from their childhood. The giantesses, whose names are Fenja and Menja, grind on the mill gold and safety for King Frode, and good-will among men for his kingdom. But when Frode, hardened by greed for gold, refuses them the necessary rest from their toils, they grind fire and death upon him, and give the mill so great speed that the mill-stone breaks into pieces, and the foundation is crushed under its weight.

After the introduction of Christianity, the details of the myth concerning the greater, the cosmological mill, were forgotten, and there remained only the memory of the existence of such a mill on the bottom of the sea. The recollection of the lesser Grotte-mill was, on the other hand, at least in part preserved as to its details in a song which continued to flourish, and which was recorded in Skaldskaparmal.

Both mills were now regarded as identical, and there sprang up a tradition which explained how they could be so.

Contrary to the statements of the song, the tradition narrates that the mill did not break into pieces, but stood whole and perfect, when the curse of the giant-maids on Frode was fulfilled. The night following the day when they had begun to grind misfortune on Frode, there came a sea-king, Mysing, and slew Frode, and took, among other booty, also the Grotte-mill and both the female slaves, and carried them on board his ship. Mysing commanded them to grind salt, and this they continued to do until the following midnight. Then they asked if he had not got enough, but he commanded them to continue grinding, and so they did until the ship shortly afterwards sank. In this manner the tradition explained how the mill came to stand on the bottom of the sea, and there the mill that had belonged to Frode acquired the qualities which originally had belonged to the vast Grotte-mill of the mythology. Skaldskaparmal, which relates this tradition as well as the song, without taking any notice of the discrepancies between them, adds that after Frode's mill had sunk, "there was produced a whirlpool in the sea, caused by the waters running through the hole in the mill-stone, and from that time the sea is salt."

80.

THE WORLD-MILL (_continued_).

With distinct consciousness of its symbolic signification, the greater mill is mentioned in a strophe by the skald Snæbjorn (Skaldskap., ch. 25). The strophe appears to have belonged to a poem describing a voyage. "It is said," we read in this strophe, "that _Eyludr's_ nine women violently turn the Grotte of the skerry dangerous to man out near the edge of the earth, and that these women long ground Amlode's _lid_-grist."

Hvat kveda hræra Grotta hergrimmastan skerja ut fyrir jardar skauti Eyludrs níu brúdir: thær er .. fyrir laungu lid-meld ..... ......... ... Amloda mólu.

To the epithet _Eyludr_, and to the meaning of _lid_-in _lid_-grist, I shall return below. The strophe says that the mill is in motion out on the edge of the earth, that nine giant-maids turn it (for the lesser Grotte-mill two were more than sufficient), that they had long ground with it, that it belongs to a _skerry_ very dangerous to sea-faring men, and that it produces a peculiar grist.

The same mill is suggested by an episode in Saxo, where he relates the saga about the Danish prince, Amlethus, who on account of circumstances in his home was compelled to pretend to be insane. Young courtiers, who accompanied him on a walk along the sea-strand, showed him a sand-bank and said that it was meal. The prince said he knew this to be so: he said it was "meal from the mill of the storms" (_Hist. Dan._, 141).

The myth concerning the cosmic Grotte-mill was intimately connected partly with the myth concerning the fate of Ymer and the other primeval giants, and partly with that concerning Hvergelmer's fountain. Vafthrudnersmal (21) and Grimnersmal (40) tell us that the earth was made out of Ymer's flesh, the rocks out of his bones, and the sea from his blood. With earth is here meant, as distinguished from rocks, the mould, the sand, which cover the solid ground. Vafthrudnersmal calls Ymer _Aurgelmir_, Claygelmer or Moldgelmer; and Fjölsvinnsmal gives him the epithet _Leirbrimir_, Claybrimer, which suggests that his "flesh" was changed into the loose earth, while his bones became rocks. Ymer's descendants, the primeval giants, Thrudgelmer and Bergelmer perished with him, and the "flesh" of their bodies cast into the primeval sea also became mould. Of this we are assured, so far as Bergelmer is concerned, by strophe 35 in Vafthrudnersmal, which also informs us that Bergelmer was _laid under the mill-stone_. The mill which ground his "flesh" into mould can be none other than the one grinding under the sea, that is, the cosmic Grotte-mill.

When Odin asks the wise giant Vafthrudner how far back he can remember, and which is the oldest event of which he has any knowledge from personal experience, the giant answers: "Countless ages ere the earth was shapen Bergelmer was born. The first thing I remember is when he _á var lúdr um lagidr_."

This expression was misunderstood by the author of Gylfaginning himself, and the misunderstanding has continued to develop into the theory that Bergelmer was changed into a sort of Noah, who with his household saved himself in an ark when Bur's sons drowned the primeval giants in the blood of their progenitor. Of such a counterpart to the Biblical account of Noah and his ark our Teutonic mythical fragments have no knowledge whatever.

The word _lúdr_ (with radical _r_) has two meanings: (1) a wind-instrument, a loor, a war-trumpet; (2) the tier of beams, the underlying timbers of a mill, and, in a wider sense, the mill itself.

The first meaning, that of war-trumpet, is not found in the songs of the Elder Edda, and upon the whole does not occur in the Old Norse poetry. Heimdal's war-trumpet is not called _lúdr_, but _horn_ or _hljód_. _Lúdr_ in this sense makes its first appearance in the sagas of Christian times, but is never used by the skalds. In spite of this fact the signification may date back to heathen times. But however this may be, _lúdr_ in Vafthrudnersmal does not mean a war-trumpet. The poem can never have meant that Bergelmer was laid on a musical instrument.

The other meaning remains to be discussed. _Lúdr_, partly in its more limited sense of the timbers or beams under the mill, partly in the sense of the subterranean mill in its entirety, and the place where it is found, occurs several times in the poems: in the Grotte-song, in Helge Hund. (ii. 2), and in the above-quoted strophe by Snæbjorn, and also in Grogalder and in Fjölsvinnsmal. If this signification is applied to the passage in Vafthrudnersmal: _á var lúdr um lagidr_, we get the meaning that Bergelmer was "laid on a mill," and in fact no other meaning of the passage is possible, unless an entirely new signification is to be arbitrarily invented.

But however conspicuous this signification is, and however clear it is that it is the only one applicable in this poem, still it has been overlooked or thrust aside by the mythologists, and for this Gylfaginning is to blame. So far as I know, Vigfusson is the only one who (in his Dictionary, p. 399) makes the passage _á lúdr lagidr_ mean what it actually means, and he remarks that the words must "refer to some ancient lost myth."

The confusion begins, as stated, in Gylfaginning. Its author has had no other authority for his statement than the Vafthrudnersmal strophe in question, which he also cites to corroborate his own words; and we have here one of the many examples found in Gylfaginning showing that its author has neglected to pay much attention to what the passages quoted contain. When Gylfaginning has stated that the frost-giants were drowned in Ymer's blood, then comes its interpretation of the Vafthrudnersmal strophe, which is as follows: "One escaped with his household: him the giants call Bergelmer. He with his wife betook himself upon his _lúdr_ and remained there, and from them the races of giants are descended" (_nema einn komst undan med sinu hyski: thann kalla jötnar Bergelmi; hann fór upp á lúdr sinn ok kona hans, ok helzt thar, ok eru af theim komnar_), &c.

What Gylfaginning's author has conceived by the _lúdr_ which he mentions it is difficult to say. That he did not have a boat in mind is in the meantime evident from the expression: _hann fór upp á lúdr sinn_. It is more reasonable to suppose that his idea was, that Bergelmer himself owned an immense mill, upon whose high timbers he and his household climbed to save themselves from the flood. That the original text says that Bergelmer was _laid_ on the timbers of the mill Gylfaginning pays no attention to. To go upon something and to be laid on something are, however, very different notions.

An argument in favour of the wrong interpretation was furnished by the Resenian edition of the Younger Edda (Copenhagen, 1665). There we find the expression _fór upp á lúdr sinn_ "amended" to _fór á bát sinn_. Thus Bergelmer had secured a boat to sail in; and although more reliable editions of the Younger Edda have been published since from which the boat disappeared, still the mythologists have not had the heart to take the boat away from Bergelmer. On the contrary, they have allowed the boat to grow into a ship, an ark.

As already pointed out, Vafthrudnersmal tells us expressly that Bergelmer, Aurgelmer's grandson, was "laid on a mill" or "on the supporting timbers of a mill." We may be sure that the myth would not have laid Bergelmer on "a mill" if the intention was not that he was to be ground. The kind of meal thus produced has already been explained. It is the mould and sand which the sea since time's earliest dawn has cast upon the shores of Midgard, and with which the bays and strands have been filled, to become sooner or later green fields. From Ymer's flesh the gods created the oldest layer of soil, that which covered the earth the first time the sun shone thereon, and in which the first herbs grew. Ever since the same activity which then took place still continues. After the great mill of the gods transformed the oldest frost-giant into the dust of earth, it has continued to grind the bodies of his descendants between the same stones into the same kind of mould. This is the meaning of Vafthrudner's words when he says that his memory reaches back to the time when Bergelmer was laid on the mill to be ground. Ymer he does not remember, nor Thrudgelmer, nor the days when these were changed to earth. Of them he knows only by hearsay. But he remembers when the turn came for Bergelmer's limbs to be subjected to the same fate.

"The glorious Midgard" could not be created before its foundations raised by the gods out of the sea were changed to _bjód_ (Völuspa). This is the word (originally _bjódr_) with which the author of Völuspa chose to express the quality of the fields and the fields themselves, which were raised out of the sea by Bor's sons, when the great mill had changed the "flesh" of Ymer into mould. Bjód does not mean a bare field or ground, but one that can supply food. Thus it is used in Haustlaung (_af breidu bjódi_, the place for a spread feast--Skaldskaparmal, ch. 22), and its other meanings (perhaps the more original ones) are that of a board and of a table for food to lie on. When the fields were raised out of Ymer's blood they were covered with mould, so that, when they got light and warmth from the sun, then the _grund_ became _gróin grænum lauki_. The very word _mould_ comes from the Teutonic word _mala_, to grind (cp. Eng. _meal_, Latin _molere_). The development of language and the development of mythology have here, as in so many other instances, gone hand in hand.