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802 TIME AND WOKLD.
In the plains of Up. Germany we sometimes find it called todtenweg
(Mone s Anz. 1838. pp. 225. 316). The ON. poetry makes
the dead ride or drive to the underworld, fara til heljar or til
Heljar, to the death-goddess : Brynhildr, after she is burnt,
travels to Hel in an ornamental car, ( 6k me$ rerSinni a lielveg,
and the poem bears the title Helrei&, Sasm. 227. In our Freidauk
105, 9. 151, 12 it is the Christian notion that is expressed by
zer helle varn and dri straze zer helle gant/ For the rest, a
hellweg would necessarily bring with it a hellwagen (p. 314), just
as we meet with a Wodan s way and waggon both (p. 151).
Nay, the Great Bear is not only called himelwagen and herren-
wagen, but in the Netherlands hellewagen (Wolf
s Wodana i. iii.
iv.) ; see a Wolframus dictus hellewagen/ MB. 25, 123 A.D. 1314
(see Suppl.).
The 0. Saxons at first, while their own hellia still sounded too
heathenish, preferred to take from the Latin Bible in fern, gen.
infernes, e.g. Hel. 44, 21, and even shortened it down to fern,
Hel. 27, 7. 103, 16. 104, 15. 164, 12 ; so that the poet cited by
Widekind may actually have said infer n instead of hellia. 1
The heathen hellia lay low down toward the North; when
Hermoftr was sent after Baldr, he rode for nine nights through
valleys dark and deep (dokva dala ok diupa), the regions peopled
by the dark elves (p. 445) ; he arrived at the river Gioll (strepens),
over which goes a bridge covered with shining gold a maiden
;
named MoSgirbY guards the bridge, and she told him that five
fylki of dead men 2 had come over it the day before, and that
from this bridge the hellway ran ever lower and northwarder :
niSr ok norSr liggr helvegr. This I understand of the proper
hall and residence of the goddess, where she is to be met with,
for all the country he had been crossing was part of her kingdom.
This palace is surrounded by lofty railings (hel-grindr), Sn. 33.
67. The hall is named Eliuffnir (al. ElvrSnir), the threshold
fallanda for ad (al. the palisade is fallanda forad, the threshold
folmoSnir), the curtain blikjandi bol, Sn. 33. It is probably a
door of this underworld (not of Valholl, which has 540 huge
1 A place Infernisi (Erhard p. 140, A.D. 1113) ; Gael, ifrinn, Ir. ifearn, Wei.
yfern, uff ern.
2 A fylki contains 50 (EA. 207), so that Baldr rode down with an escort of 250,
though
one MS. doubles the number : rei S Baldr her meS 500 manna.