The angry fairy, who had not been invited to the christening, foretold that when the Rose Maiden had reached her fifteenth birthday she would be pricked with a spindle and fall down dead; but this terrible sentence the other fairies were able to commute to a sleep of one hundred years. All happened as it was foretold, although, to escape from fate, the king had, after the decree of the fairies, ordered every spinning-wheel throughout the land to be destroyed. The king and queen chanced to go out upon the very day on which the maiden attained her fifteenth year, and she, wandering about alone, came to an unused tower of the castle, and there found an old dame sitting alone and spinning. This dame is Fate.' 'What are you doing there?' said the king's daughter. Spinning,' said the old crone, and nodded her head. 'How prettily the wheel turns round.' Then the princess took the wheel and began to spin; but scarcely had she done so than the prophecy was fulfilled. She pricked her hand and fell down in a deep sleep. And all the court fell asleep too, and at last a thick thorn hedge grew up about the palace and quite hid it from view. But still the tale lived on in the neighbourhood of how there was a beautiful maiden sleeping behind the hedge. At last, when her fate was accomplished, came the prince, the Sigurd of this fairy story, and broke through the hedge of thorn and kissed the maiden back into life. So much for the visits of gods and men to the world of death. We have now to look on a still more awful picture, which we might call the visit of the World of Death to Mannheimar and Asgard. This is, in fact, the longforeseen, long vainly guarded against Last Day, when the powers of darkness and chaos are to rise against order and light, and bring destruction on the whole earth. But she is also the same as Angrbodha. See what was said in Chap. VI. of the spinning of Circê and of Calypso. A gaping gap and nowhere grass. This is the primal condition of things whereof the Edda speaks; or of nothings, for the gaping gap (Ginnungagap) is a translation almost exactly of the Greek chaos, and means but void space. But imagination cannot dwell with mere negation, so that the picture of Ginnungagap actually given us is of a deep pit in the midst of which welled up, at once and ever,' a mighty spring called Hvergelmir. From Hvergelmir flowed many streams, which rolled venom in their course, and anon these hardened into ice, and the vapour which rose from them hardened into rime. Thus on one side of Hvergelmir were peaks of snow and ice; but on the other side was a fiery region called Mûspell's-heim, old as the great gap itself, and old as Niflhel (Mist-hell), which lay beneath the earth. This Mûspell's-heim was a land too glowing to be entered by any save those who were native there. He who sits on the land's end to guard Mûspell's-heim is called Surtr (Swart). He bears a flaming sword in his hand, and one day he shall come forth to fight and vanquish all the gods, and consume the world with fire.'2 Fire and ice, which are thus shown as earlier than the ordered world, were destined to outlive that world, and be the chief agents in its destruction. Fire and cold were to the Norseman the two great symbols of death-one the funeral fire through which men passed to the other world, and the other the chill of the tomb. It was from the meeting of the heated air from Mûspell's-heim with the icy vapour from Hvergelmir that the giant race came into being; and that swart god Surtr, who was the leader of the sons of Mûspell, was himself a king of death. In the account of Ragnarök we see ranged under the leadership 1 χάω, aor. ἔχαδον, to gape. Thus Simrock derives 'ginnung,' Vigfusson, however, prefers to connect it with the A. S. beginnan, Eng, begin. Vigfusson and Cleasby's Icl. Dict. s. v. ginn. ? Edda Snorra, 4. of the giants of cold and fire all minor images of destruction, the sun and moon-devouring wolves, the sea monster, the Fenrisûlfr, and Garm the hell hound. The forewarning of the end of the world was to be the great winter, three years in duration, which the Eddas call Fimbulwinter. Every man's hand shall be turned against his brother, and sisters' children shall their kinship rend asunder; no man shall another spare.’2 An axe age, a brand age; shields shall be sundered; 3 Three cocks, it is said, are to proclaim to the world the dawning of the Last Day: over the Æsir shall crow the gold-bright Gullinkambi; in the bird wood over Mannheimr, a bright red cock; and beneath the earth, to rouse the troops of ghosts, a cock of sooty red. When he hears these, the giantesses' watch, the eagle, makes reply.1 There on a hill sat, and his harp struck, The giant race rejoices and the central tree takes fire. Heimdal, who had been set to guard the rainbow, now blows loud his gjallar-horn to warn the gods that danger is near; for in truth Surtr is hastening with his fiery bands from Mûspell's home towards the Esirs' bridge. Then the gods take counsel together, and ride down to meet the foe on Vîgrîd's plain. Odhinn consults Mîm's head. Can the danger yet be averted? Time is drawing to an end. Curiously enough, the same tradition of the awful winter which was to herald the Last Day existed among the Persians. 2 Völuspá, 46 (Lüning). • Völuspâ, 34. 3 Gold-combed. Loud-sounding horn. Heimdal is a kind of Memnon. RAGNARÖK. Yggdrasill trembles; though the ash still stands, Yet groans that ancient tree. The jötun is loosened; The fetter breaks and the wolf3 runs free.1 421 Now from the east comes sailing a ship; Hrym (Rime) steers it, and all the frost giants are within. Another ship, Naglfar, made of the nails of dead men, brings the troops of ghosts, and that Loki steers.5 Surtr rides over Asbrû, which takes fire beneath his tread and is burnt up; men tread hell's way, and heaven itself is cloven in twain. Surt from the south fares, the giant with the sword; Rocks are shaken, and giantesses totter. Heroes fare to hell, and heaven is cleft atwain. The opposing powers meet in middle earth. On the one side are Odhinn with the other Esir and the Einheriar-that is to say, the heroes who have been taken to Valhöll-on the other side are the giants and the ghosts with Loki and his progeny, and with Surtr and his band of fire. The field of battle is Vigrid's plain. How fares it with the Esir? how with the Alfar? And the dwarfs are moaning before their stony doors ye The three great combats of Ragnarök are between Odhinn and the wolf Fenrir, between Thorr and the Midgard serpent, and between Freyr and Surtr. 1 Loki. 2 Garm, a hound who will devour the moon, and who is in nature comparable to Fenrir. 3 Fenrir. 4 Völ. 48 (Lüning). The two Eddas give different accounts of the sailing of Naglfar. The Younger Edda confuses this ship with the one steered by Hrim, the King of Frost Giants, the power of cold. • Völ. 51. 7 Ibid. 52. Now arises Hlin's second grief, When Odhinn goes with the wolf to fight Hlin is Frigg; the bright slayer of Beli is Freyr. In each of these battles there is a fitness. Fenrir is the type not so much of destruction as of emptiness and the wide mouth of the tomb, and so he is the natural antagonist of Odhinn, the fount of all existence. Thorr is a kind of sun god, analogous to Apollo or Hêraclês, and like them he combats the great sea or river serpent. Still more appropriate is it that Freyr, god of the spring-time and of the newness of life, should be opposed to Surt, the god of death. Freyr,' says the Younger Edda, would have been victorious had he not given away his sword to Skirnir what time he was a-wooing Gerd;' and the nature myth underlying this saying is not difficult to interpret. To these three combats recorded in the Völuspâ the Younger Edda adds a fourth-namely, of Tyr with Garm—and in this instance, as in so many others, Tyr is but a pale shadow of Odhinn, for Garm cannot be essentially different from Fenrir. When Odhinn has been killed by Fenrir he is revenged by Vidar, who strikes his sword into the heart of the wolf. Thorr kills Jörmungandr; but, suffocated by the dragon's poisonous breath, he recoils nine paces and falls dead. Tyr and Garm slay one another. fight; each kills the other. unhindered over earth and, consumes it all. Last of all Loki and Heimdall And now Death (Surtr) stalks spreading flame on every side, The sun darkens; the earth sinks in the sea. The fire-wind storms round the all-nourishing tree; The flame assails high heaven itself." 1 Völ. 53 Surtr is scarcely to be distinguished from Loki; each of them conducts the sons of Mûspell (Völ. 50; Edda Snorra, 4). Völ. 56. |