Part 2

It has already been demonstrated that _Dvalinn_ is a son of Mimer (see No. 53). Sindre-Dvalin and his kinsmen are therefore Mimer's offspring (_Mims synir_). The golden citadel situated near the fountain of the maelstrom is therefore inhabited by the sons of Mimer.

It has also been shown that, according to Solarljod, the sons of _Mimer-Nidi_ come from this region (from the north in Mimer's domain), and that they are in all seven:

Nordan sá ek rida Nidja sonu ok váru sjau saman;

that is to say, that they are the same number as the "economical months," or the changes of the year (see No. 87).

In the same region Mimer's daughter Nat has her hall, where she takes her rest after her journey across the heavens is accomplished (see No. 93). The "chateau dormant" of Teutonic mythology is therefore situated in Nat's udal territory, and Dvalin, "the slumberer," is Nat's brother. Perhaps her citadel is identical with the one in which Dvalin and his brothers sleep. According to Saxo, voices of women are heard in the _tabernaculum_ belonging to the sleeping men, and glittering with weapons and treasures, when Thorkil and his men come to plunder the treasures there. Nat has her court and her attendant sisters in the Teutonic mythology, as in Rigveda (_Ushas_). _Simmara_ (see Nos. 97, 98) is one of the dises of the night. According to the middle-age sagas, these dises and daughters of Mimer are said to be twelve in number (see Nos. 45, 46).

Mimer, as we know, was the ward of the middle root of the world-tree. His seven sons, representing the changes experienced by the world-tree and nature annually, have with him guarded and tended the holy tree and watered its root with _aurgom forsi_ from the subterranean horn, "Valfather's pledge." When the god-clans became foes, and the Vans seized weapons against the Asas, Mimer was slain, and the world-tree, losing its wise guardian, became subject to the influence of time. It suffers in crown and root (Grimnersmal), and as it is ideally identical with creation itself, both the natural and the moral, so toward the close of the period of this world it will betray the same dilapidated condition as nature and the moral world then are to reveal.

Logic demanded that when the world-tree lost its chief ward, the lord of the well of wisdom, it should also lose that care which under his direction was bestowed upon it by his seven sons. These, voluntarily or involuntarily, retired, and the story of the seven men who sleep in the citadel full of treasures informs us how they thenceforth spend their time until Ragnarok. The details of the myth telling how they entered into this condition cannot now be found; but it may be in order to point out, as a possible connection with this matter, that one of the older Vanagods, Njord's father, and possibly the same as Mundilfore, had the epithet _Svafr_, _Svafrthorinn_ (Fjölsvinnsmal). _Svafr_ means _sopitor_, the sleeper, and _Svafrthorinn_ seems to refer to _svefnthorn_, "sleep-thorn." According to the traditions, a person could be put to sleep by laying a "sleep-thorn" in his ear, and he then slept until it was taken out or fell out.

Popular traditions scattered over Sweden, Denmark, and Germany have to this very day been preserved, on the lips of the common people, of the men sleeping among weapons and treasures in underground chambers or in rocky halls. A Swedish tradition makes them equipped not only with weapons, but also with horses which in their stalls abide the day when their masters are to awake and sally forth. Common to the most of these traditions, both the Northern and the German, is the feature that this is to happen when the greatest distress is at hand, or when the end of the world approaches and the day of judgment comes. With regard to the German sagas on this point I refer to Jacob Grimm's _Mythology_. I simply wish to point out here certain features which are of special importance to the subject under discussion, and which the popular memory in certain parts of Germany has preserved from the heathen myths. When the heroes who have slept through centuries sally forth, the trumpets of the last day sound, a great battle with the powers of evil (Antichrist) is to be fought, _an immensely old tree, which has withered, is to grow green again_, and a happier age is to begin.

This immensely old tree, which is withered at the close of the present period of the world, and which is to become green again in a happier age after a decisive conflict between the good and evil, can be no other than the world-tree of Teutonic mythology, the Ygdrasil of our Eddas. The angel trumpets, at whose blasts the men who sleep within the mountains sally forth, have their prototype in Heimdal's horn, which proclaims the destruction of the world; and the battle to be fought with Antichrist is the Ragnarok conflict, clad in Christian robes, between the gods and the destroyers of the world. Here Mimer's seven sons also have their task to perform. The last great struggle also concerns the lower world, whose regions of bliss demand protection against the thurs-clans of Nifelhel, the more so since these very regions of bliss constitute the new earth, which after Ragnarok rises from the sea to become the abode of a better race of men (see No. 55). The "wall rock" of the Hvergelmer mountain and its "stone gates" (Völuspa; cp. Nos. 46, 75) require defenders able to wield those immensely large swords which are kept in the sleeping castle on Nat's udal fields, and Sindre-Dvalin is remembered not only as the artist of antiquity, spreader of Mimer's runic wisdom, enemy of Loke, and father of the man-loving dises (see No. 53), but also as a hero. The name of the horse he rode, and probably is to ride in the Ragnarok conflict, is according to a strophe cited in the Younger Edda, _Modinn_; the middle-age sagas have connected his name to a certain viking, _Sindri_, and to Sintram of the German heroic poetry.

I now come back to the Völuspa strophe, which was the starting-point in the investigation contained in this chapter:

Leika Mims synir en mjotudr kyndisk at hinu gamla gjallarhorni; hátt blæss Heimdallr, horn er á lothi.

"Mimer's sons spring up, for the fate of the world is proclaimed by the old gjallar-horn. Loud blows Heimdal--the horn is raised."

In regard to _leika_, it is to be remembered that its old meaning, "to jump," "to leap," "to fly up," reappears not only in Ulfilas, who translates _skirtan_ of the New Testament with _laikan_ (Luke i. 41, 44, and vi. 23; in the former passage in reference to the child slumbering in Elizabeth's womb; the child "leaps" at her meeting with Mary), but also in another passage in Völuspa, where it is said in regard to Ragnarok, _leikr hár hiti vid himin sjalfan_--"high leaps" (plays) "the fire against heaven itself." Further, we must point out the preterit form _kyndisk_ (from _kynna_, to make known) by the side of the present form _leika_. This juxtaposition indicates that the sons of Mimer "rush up," while the fate of the world, the final destiny of creation _in advance_ and immediately beforehand, was proclaimed "by the old gjallarhorn." The bounding up of Mimer's sons is the effect of the first powerful blast. One or more of these follow: "Loud blows Heimdal--the horn is raised; and Odin speaks with Mimer's head." Thus we have found the meaning of _leika Mims synir_. Their waking and appearance is one of the signs best remembered in the chronicles in popular traditions of Ragnarok's approach and the return of the dead, and in this strophe Völuspa has preserved the memory of the "chateau dormant" of Teutonic mythology.

Thus a comparison of the mythic fragments extant with the popular traditions gives us the following outline of the Teutonic myth concerning the seven sleepers:

The world-tree--the representative of the physical and moral laws of the world--grew in time's morning gloriously out of the fields of the three world-fountains, and during the first epochs of the mythological events (_ár alda_) it stood fresh and green, cared for by the subterranean guardians of these fountains. But the times became worse. The feminine counterpart of Loke, Gulveig-Heid, spreads evil runes in Asgard and Midgard, and he and she cause disputes and war between those god-clans whose task it is to watch over and sustain the order of the world in harmony. In the feud between the Asas and Vans, the middle and most important world-fountain--the fountain of wisdom, the one from which the good runes were fetched--became robbed of its watchman. Mimer was slain, and his seven sons, the superintendents of the seven seasons, who saw to it that these season-changes followed each other within the limits prescribed by the world-laws, were put to sleep, and fell into a stupor, which continues throughout the historical time until Ragnarok. Consequently the world-tree cannot help withering and growing old during the historical age. Still it is not to perish. Neither fire nor sword can harm it; and when evil has reached its climax, and when the present world is ended in the Ragnarok conflict and in Surt's flames, then it is to regain that freshness and splendour which it had in time's morning.

Until that time Sindre-Dvalin and Mimer's six other sons slumber in that golden hall which stands toward the north in the lower world, on Mimer's fields. Nat, their sister, dwells in the same region, and shrouds the chambers of those slumbering in darkness. Standing toward the north beneath the Nida mountains, the hall is near Hvergelmer's fountain, which causes the famous maelstrom. As sons of Mimer, the great smith of antiquity, the seven brothers were themselves great smiths of antiquity, who, during the first happy epoch, gave to the gods and to nature the most beautiful treasures (Mjolner, Brisingamen, Slidrugtanne, Draupner). The hall where they now rest is also a treasure-chamber, which preserves a number of splendid products of their skill as smiths, and among these are weapons, too large to be wielded by human hands, but intended to be employed by the brothers themselves when Ragnarok is at hand and the great decisive conflict comes between the powers of good and of evil. The seven sleepers are there clad in splendid mantles of another cut than those common among men. Certain mortals have had the privilege of seeing the realms of the lower world and of inspecting the hall where the seven brothers have their abode. But whoever ventured to touch their treasures, or was allured by the splendour of their mantles to attempt to secure any of them, was punished by the drooping and withering of his limbs.

When Ragnarok is at hand, the aged and abused world-tree trembles, and Heimdal's trumpet, until then kept in the deepest shade of the tree, is once more in the hand of the god, and at a world-piercing blast from this trumpet Mimer's seven sons start up from their sleep and arm themselves to take part in the last conflict. This is to end with the victory of the good; the world-tree will grow green again and flourish under the care of its former keepers; "all evil shall then cease, and Balder shall come back." The Teutonic myth in regard to the seven sleepers is thus most intimately connected with the myth concerning the return of the dead Balder and of the other dead men from the lower world, with the idea of resurrection and the regeneration of the world. It forms an integral part of the great epic of Teutonic mythology, and could not be spared. If the world-tree is to age during the historical epoch, and if the present period of time is to progress toward ruin, then this must have its epic cause in the fact that the keepers of the chief root of the tree were severed by the course of events from their important occupation. Therefore Mimer dies; therefore his sons sink into the sleep of ages. But it is necessary that they should wake and resume their occupation, for there is to be a regeneration, and the world-tree is to bloom with new freshness.

Both in Germany and in Sweden there still prevails a popular belief which puts "the seven sleepers" in connection with the weather. If it rains on the day of the seven sleepers, then, according to this popular belief, it is to rain for seven weeks thereafter. People have wondered how a weather prophecy could be connected with the sleeping saints, and the matter would also, in reality, be utterly incomprehensible if the legend were of Christian origin; but it is satisfactorily explained by the heathen-Teutonic mythology, where the seven sleepers represent those very seven so-called economic months--the seven changes of the weather--which gave rise to the division of the year into the months--_gormánudr_, _frerm._, _hrútm._, _einm._, _sólm._, _selm._, and _kornskurdarmánudr_. Navigation was also believed to be under the protection of the seven sleepers, and this we can understand when we remember that the hall of Mimer's sons was thought to stand near the Hvergelmer fountain and the Grotte of the skerry, "dangerous to seamen," and that they, like their father, were lovers of men. Thorkil, the great navigator of the saga, therefore praises Gudmund-Mimer as a protector in dangers.

The legend has preserved the connection found in the myth between the above meaning and the idea of a resurrection of the dead. But in the myth concerning Mimer's seven sons this idea is most intimately connected with the myth itself, and is, with epic logic, united with the whole mythological system. In the legend, on the other hand, the resurrection idea is put on as a trade-mark. The seven men in Ephesus are lulled into their long sleep, and are waked again to appear before Theodosius, the emperor, to preach a sermon illustrated by their own fate against the false doctrine which tries to deny the resurrection of the dead.

Gregorius says that he is the first who recorded in the Latin language this miracle, not before known to the Church of Western Europe. As his authority he quotes "a certain Syrian" who had interpreted the story for him. There was also need of a man from the Orient as an authority when a hitherto unknown miracle was to be presented--a miracle that had transpired in a cave near Ephesus. But there is no absolute reason for assuming that Gregorius presents a story of his own invention. The reference of the legend to Ephesus is explained by the antique saga-variation concerning Endymion, according to which the latter was sentenced to confinement and eternal sleep in a cave in the mountain Latmos. Latmos is south of Ephesus, and not very far from there. This saga is the antique root-thread of the legend, out of which rose its localisation, but not its contents and its details. The contents are borrowed from the Teutonic mythology. That Syria or Asia Minor was the scene of its transformation into a Christian legend is possible, and is not surprising. During and immediately after the time to which the legend itself refers the resurrection of the seven sleepers, the time of Theodosius, the Roman Orient, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt were full of Teutonic warriors who had permanent quarters there. A _Notitia dignitatum_ from this age speaks of hosts of Goths, Alamannians, Franks, Chamavians, and Vandals, who there had fixed military quarters. There then stood an _ala Francorum_, a _cohors Alamannorum_, a _cohors Chamavorum_, an _ala Vandilorum_, a _cohors Gothorum_, and no doubt there, as elsewhere in the Roman Empire, great provinces were colonised by Teutonic veterans and other immigrants. Nor must we neglect to remark that the legend refers the falling asleep of the seven men to the time of Decius. Decius fell in battle against the Goths, who, a few years later, invaded Asia Minor and captured among other places also Ephesus.

[1] For "brothers" the text, perhaps purposely, used the ambiguous word _germani_. This would, then, not be the only instance where the word is used in both senses at the same time. Cp. Quintil, 8, 3, 29.

95.

ON THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE MYTHOLOGY.

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 seems 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, _lif ok sála_, _líkamr ok 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 Trygveson's contemporary Halfred, 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 entered the system of heathen Teutonic views. In it all things were _material_, an _efni_ of course 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 Völuspa 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) Loder's gifts. (5) Honer's gifts. (6) Odin's gifts.

Völuspa's words are these: The gods

fundu á landi found on the land litt megandi with little power, Ask ok Embla Ask and Embla orlauglausa. without destiny. Aund thau ne átto, Spirit they had not, óth thau ne haufdo, "ódr" they had not, la ne læti, neither "lá" nor "læti," ne lito goda. nor the form of the gods.

Aund gaf Odin, Spirit gave Odin, oth gaf Henir, "ódr" gave Honer, la gaf Lodur "lá" gave Loder ok lito goda. and the form of 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 Ymer, who was filled with the seed of life from Audhumbla'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.

Loder'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 people, 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 _blódi_, his blood-kinsman, if they resolved _at blanda blódi saman_. They thereby entered into the same relations to each other as if they had the same mother and father.