Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

NIFL-HEL.
803
gates) that is meant in Ssem. 226 a and Fornald. sog. 1, 204.,
where Brynhildr wishes to follow Sigurd in death, lest the door
fall upon his heel : a formula often used on entering a closed
cavern. 1 But HePs kingdom bears the name of Nifllieimr or Nifl-
hel, mist- world,
2
mist-hell, it is the ninth world (as to position),
and was created many ages before the earth (p. 558) ; in the
middle of it is that fountain Hvergelmir,
out of which twelve
rivers flow, Gioll being the one that comes nearest the dwelling
of the goddess, Sn. 4. From this follows plainly what I have
if Gioll and
said : if Hvergelmir forms the centre of Niflheimr,
the other streams pertain exclusively to hell, the goddess Hel s
dominion cannot begin at the hel-grindr/ but must extend to
those f dank dales and deep/ the dense forests of the Latin
poem. Yet I have nothing to say against putting it in this way :
that the dark valleys, like the murky Erebos of the Greeks, are
an intermediate tract, which one must cross to reach the abode
of Aides, of Halja.
personal Hades,
Out of our Halja the goddess, as out of the
the Roman Orcus (orig. uragus, urgus, and in
the Mid. Ages still regarded as a monster and alive, pp. 314,
486) there was gradually evolved the local notion of a dwellingplace
of the dead. The departed were first imagined living with
her, and afterwards in her (it). In the approaches dwelt or
hovered the dark elves (see Suppl.).
Niflheimr then, the mist-world, was a cold underground region
covered with eternal night, traversed by twelve roaring waters,
and feebly lighted here and there by shining gold, i.e. fire. The
rivers, especially Gioll, remind us of Lethe, and of Styx, whose
holy water gods and men swore by.
With Hvergelmir we may
1 The 0. Fr. poem on the quatre fils Aimon (Cod. 7183 fol. 126 b ) makes
Kichart, when about to be hung, offer a prayer, in which we are told that the
Saviour brought back all the souls out of hell except one woman, who would stop
at the door to give hell a piece of her mind, and is therefore doomed to stay there
till the Judgment- day : all were released,
Ne mes que une dame, qui dist une raison :
hai enfer dist ele, con vos remanez solz,
noirs, hisdoz et obscurs, et laiz et tenebrox !
a Ventrer de la porte, si con lisaut trovon.
jusquau terme i sera, que jugerois le mont.
The source of this strange legend is unknown to me.
2 Diu inre helle, wo nebel und finsterS The Lucidarius gives ten names of
hell : stagnum ignis, terra tenebrosa, terra oblivionis, swarziu ginunfje, etc. Mone s
Anz. for 1834, 313 ; conf. expressions in the OS. poet : het endi thiustri, suart
sinnahti, Hel. 65, 12 ; an dalon thiustron, an themo alloro ferrosten feme 65, 9 ;
under ferndalu 33, 16 ; diap dodes dalu 157, 22.