Mythology

by Edith Hamilton

  Loki was punished. The gods seized him and bound him in a deep cavern. Above his head a serpent was placed so that its venom fell upon his face, causing him unutterable pain. But his wife, Sigyn, came to help him. She took her place at his side and caught the venom in a cup. Even so, whenever she had to empty the cup and the poison fell on him, though but for a moment, his agony was so intense that his convulsions shook the earth.

  Of the three other great gods, THOR was the Thunder-god, for whom Thursday is named, the strongest of the Aesir; FREYR cared for the fruits of the earth; HEIMDALL was the warder of Bifröst, the rainbow bridge which led to Asgard; TYR was the God of War, for whom Tuesday, once Tyr’s day, was named.

  In Asgard goddesses were not as important as they were in Olympus. No one among the Norse goddesses is comparable to Athena, and only two are really notable. Frigga, Odin’s wife, for whom some say Friday is named, was reputed to be very wise, but she was also very silent and she told no one, not even Odin, what she knew. She is a vague figure, oftenest depicted at her spinning-wheel, where the threads she spins are of gold, but what she spins them for is a secret.

  FREYA was the Goddess of Love and Beauty, but, strangely to our ideas, half of those slain in battle were hers. Odin’s Valkyries could carry only half to Valhalla. Freya herself rode to the battlefield and claimed her share of the dead, and to the Norse poets that was a natural and fitting office for the Goddess of Love. Friday is generally held to have been named for her.

  But there was one realm which was handed over to the solid rule of a goddess. The Kingdom of Death was Hela’s. No god had any authority there, not Odin, even. Asgard the Golden belonged to the gods; glorious Valhalla to the heroes; Midgard was the battlefield for men, not the business of women. Gudrun, in the Elder Edda, says,

  The fierceness of men rules the fate of women.

  The cold pale world of the shadowy dead was woman’s sphere in Norse mythology.

  THE CREATION

  In the Elder Edda a Wise Woman says:—

  Of old there was nothing,

  Nor sand, nor sea, nor cool waves.

  No earth, no heaven above.

  Only the yawning chasm.

  The sun knew not her dwelling,

  Nor the moon his realm.

  The stars had not their places.

  But the chasm, tremendous though it was, did not extend everywhere. Far to the north was Niflheim, the cold realm of death, and far to the south was MUSPELHEIM, the land of fire. From Niflheim twelve rivers poured which flowed into the chasm and freezing there filled it slowly up with ice. From Muspelheim came fiery clouds that turned the ice to mist. Drops of water fell from the mist and out of them there were formed the frost maidens and YMIR, the first Giant. His son was Odin’s father, whose mother and wife were frost maidens.

  Odin and his two brothers killed Ymir. They made the earth and sky from him, the sea from his blood, the earth from his body, the heavens from his skull. They took sparks from Muspelheim and placed them in the sky as the sun, moon, and stars. The earth was round and encircled by the sea. A great wall which the gods built out of Ymir’s eyebrows defended the place where mankind was to live. The space within was called Midgard. Here the first man and woman were created from trees, the man from an ash, the woman from an elm. They were the parents of all mankind. In the world were also DWARFS—ugly creatures, but masterly craftsmen, who lived under the earth; and ELVES, lovely sprites, who tended the flowers and streams.

  A wondrous ash-tree, YGGDRASIL, supported the universe. It struck its roots through the worlds.

  Three roots there are to Yggdrasil

  Hel lives beneath the first.

  Beneath the second the frost-giants,

  And men beneath the third.

  PLATE X

  The death of Ymir and the creation of the world

  It is also said that “one of the roots goes up to Asgard.” Beside this root was a well of white water, URDA’S WELL, so holy that none might drink of it. The three NORNS guarded it, who

  Allot their lives to the sons of men,

  And assign to them their fate.

  The three were URDA (the Past), VERDANDI (the Present), and SKULD (the Future). Here each day the gods came, passing over the quivering rainbow bridge to sit beside the well and pass judgment on the deeds of men. Another well beneath another root was the WELL OF KNOWLEDGE, guarded by MIMIR the Wise.

  Over Yggdrasil, as over Asgard, hung the threat of destruction. Like the gods it was doomed to die. A serpent and his brood gnawed continually at the root beside Niflheim, Hel’s home. Some day they would succeed in killing the tree, and the universe would come crashing down.

  The Frost Giants and the Mountain Giants who lived in Jötunheim were the enemies of all that is good. They were the brutal powers of earth, and in the inevitable contest between them and the divine powers of heaven, brute force would conquer.

  The gods are doomed and the end is death.

  But such a belief is contrary to the deepest conviction of the human spirit, that good is stronger than evil. Even these sternly hopeless Norsemen, whose daily life in their icy land through the black winters was a perpetual challenge to heroism, saw a far-away light break through the darkness. There is a prophecy in the Elder Edda, singularly like the Book of Revelation, that after the defeat of the gods—when

  The sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea,

  The hot stars fall from the sky,

  And fire leaps high about heaven itself

  —there would be a new heaven and a new earth,

  In wondrous beauty once again.

  The dwellings roofed with gold.

  The fields unsowed bear ripened fruit

  In happiness forevermore.

  Then would come the reign of One who was higher even than Odin and beyond the reach of evil—

  A greater than all.

  But I dare not ever to speak his name.

  And there are few who can see beyond

  The moment when Odin falls.

  This vision of a happiness infinitely remote seems a thin sustenance against despair, but it was the only hope the Eddas afforded.

  THE NORSE WISDOM

  Another view of the Norse character, oddly unlike its heroic aspect, is also given prominence in the Elder Edda. There are several collections of wise sayings which not only do not reflect heroism at all, but give a view of life which dispenses with it. This Norse wisdom-literature is far less profound than the Hebrew Book of Proverbs; indeed it rarely deserves to have the great word “wisdom” applied to it, but the Norsemen who created it had at any rate a large store of good sense, a striking contrast to the uncompromising spirit of the hero. Like the writers of Proverbs the authors seem old; they are men of experience who have meditated on human affairs. Once, no doubt, they were heroes, but now they have retired from battlefields and they see things from a different point of view. Sometimes they even look at life with a touch of humor:—

  There lies less good than most believe

  In ale for mortal men.

  A man knows nothing if he knows not

  That wealth oft begets an ape.

  A coward thinks he will live forever

  If only he can shun warfare.

  Tell one your thoughts, but beware of two.

  All know what is known to three.

  A silly man lies awake all night,

  Thinking of many things.

  When the morning comes he is worn with care,

  And his trouble is just as it was.

  Some show a shrewd knowledge of human nature:—

  A paltry man and poor of mind

  Is he who mocks at all things.

  Brave men can live well anywhere.

  A coward dreads all things.

  Now and then they are cheerful, almost light-hearted:—

  I once was young and traveled alone.

  I met another and thought myself rich.

  Man is the joy of man.

  Be a frie
nd to your friend.

  Give him laughter for laughter.

  To a good friend’s house

  The path is straight

  Though he is far away.

  A surprisingly tolerant spirit appears occasionally:—

  No man has nothing but misery, let him be never so sick.

  To this one his sons are a joy, and to that

  His kin, to another his wealth.

  And to yet another the good he has done.

  In a maiden’s words let no man place faith,

  Nor in what a woman says.

  But I know men and women both.

  Men’s mind are unstable toward women.

  None so good that he has no faults,

  None so wicked that he is worth naught.

  There is real depth of insight sometimes:—

  Moderately wise each one should be,

  Not overwise, for a wise man’s heart

  Is seldom glad.

  Cattle die and kindred die. We also die.

  But I know one thing that never dies,

  Judgment on each one dead.

  Two lines near the end of the most important of the collections show wisdom:—

  The mind knows only

  What lies near the heart.

  Along with their truly awe-inspiring heroism, these men of the North had delightful common sense. The combination seems impossible, but the poems are here to prove it. By race we are connected with the Norse; our culture goes back to he Greeks. Norse mythology and Greek mythology together give a clear picture of what the people were like from whom comes a major part of our spiritual and intellectual inheritance.

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