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804 TIME AND WOELD.
connect Helleborne in Brabant,, the source of Hellebelce ; several
places are named Helleput (Wolfs Wodana 1, v. and 35). Hel-
voetsluis was cited, p. 315 note; the name Helle-voet (-foot) is,
we are told, still to be seen on signboards (uithangborden) in the
Netherlands (see Suppl.).
Gloomy and joyless as we must imagine Niflheimr, 1 there is no
mention anywhere of its denizens being punished and tormented ;
neither is it the wicked especially that are transported thither at
the end of their life, but all and sundry, even the noblest and
worthiest, as the examples of Brynhildr and Baldr may shew. 2
The only exceptions seem to be the heroes that fall in battle,
whom 0$inn takes to himself into Yalholl.
In contradiction with this view stands another and, I think,
a later one, that presented in Sn. 4 : Allfather the highest god
has given to all men an immortal soul, though their body rot in
the ground or burn to ashes; all good men (rett srSaiSir) go to
him in Gimill or Vingolf, all the wicked (vaiidir) to Niflheimr or
hell (conf. Sn. 21 and 75, of which more hereafter). This is
like it.
already the Christian idea, or one extremely
For the old heathen hell, pale and dim, the Christian substi
tuted a pool filled with flames and pitch, in which the souls of
the damned burn for ever, at once pitch-black and illumined
with a glow. Gehenna is interpreted hellafiuri, MHG. hellefiwer
Parz. 116. 18; the poet of the Heliand, when he wants to picture
vividly this black and burning hell, turns the old fern, form into
a masc. :
f
an thene hetan hel 3
76, 22. an thene suartan lid
103, 9. Erebi fornax, Walther 867. Nay, 0. and other OHG.
writers make the simple beh (pix) stand for hell 3 : in dem beche,
1 Csedmon still pictures the witehus (house of torment) as deop, dreama leas,
sinnihte beseald. Striking images occur in a doc. of the llth cent. (Zeitschr. f.
d. a. 3 445) : swevilstank, genibele, todes scategruobe, wallente stredema, etc.
2 So all the Greek heroes sink into Hades house under the earth. But it is
hard to distinguish from it Tartarus, which lies lower down the abyss, and where
the subjugated giants sit imprisoned. This denoted therefore, at least in the later
times, a part of the underworld where the wicked dwelt for their punishment, which
answers to the Christian hell. But that the roots of earth and sea from above
grow down into Tartarus (Hes. Theog. 728) suggests our Norse ashtree, whose
root reaches down to Niflheim. Conf. also Ovid s description of the underworld
(Met. 4, 432 seq.), where Styx nebulas exhalat iners fits in with the conception
of Niflheim.
3 Quotations in my ed. of the Hymns p. 51. Add Muspilli 5, on which Schm.
quotes a line from Walafrid : At secum infelix piceo spatiatur averno. Eugenius
in Dracont. p. m. 30 : Ut possiin picei poenam vitare barathri.