Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

Þar munu eftir
undursamlegar
gullnar töflur
í grasi finnast.
There, once again, will
the wonderous
golden tablemen
be found in the grass.
Thus: the tafl game was refound in the grass, in the meadows of the renewed earth,
having from the earliest time been preserved in Mimir's realm. Lif and Leifthrasir are found after
Ragnarok on the earth of the regenerated world, having had their abode there in Mimir's domain
for a long time. Nidi's mountains, and Nidhogg with them, have been raised out of the sea,
together with the rejuvenated earth, since these mountains are located in Mimir's realm. The
earth of the new era -- the era of virtue and bliss -- although concealed, has existed through
thousands of years below the sin-stained earth, as the kernel within the shell.
Remark: Völuspá 60 calls the earth rising from the sea iðja græna:
Sér hún upp koma
öðru sinni
jörð úr ægi
iðja græna.
She sees come up
A second time
Earth out of the sea
iðja green.
The common interpretation is iðjagræna, "the ever green" or "very green," and
this harmonizes well with the idea preserved in the sagas mentioned above, where it was
stated that the winter was not able to devastate Gudmund-Mimir's domain. Thus the idea
contained in the expression óskorið ax Haddingja lands 1 (see Nos. 72, 73) recurs in
Völuspá's statement that the fields unsown yield harvests in the new earth. Meanwhile the
composition iðja-græna has a perfectly abnormal appearance, and awakens suspicion.
Müllenhoff (Deutsche Alt.) reads iðja, græna, and translates "the fresh, the green." As a
conjecture, and without basing anything on the assumption, I may be permitted to present
the possibility that iðja is an old genitive plural of iða, an eddying body of water. Iða has
originally had a j in the stem (it is related to ið and iði), and this j must also have been
heard in the inflections. From various metaphors in the old skalds, we learn that they
conceived the fountains of the lower world as roaring and in commotion (e.g., Óðreris
alda þýtr in Einar Skalaglamm and Boðnar bára tér vaxa in the same skald). 2 If the
conjecture is as correct as it seems probable, then the new earth is characterized as "the
green earth of the eddying fountains," and the fountains are those famous three which
water the roots of the world-tree. 3 56.
THE COSMOGRAPHY. CRITICISM ON GYLFAGINNING'S
COSMOGRAPHY.
1 "uncut corn ear of the Hadding land." Guðrúnakviða II, 22
2 "Odhrerir's wave roars," "Bodn's wave begins to swell," Skáldskaparmál 3, Faulkes edition; 10 Jónsson,
ed.
3 Ursula Dronke also translates Idavellir as the "Eddying plains", but failing to see the Ida-plains as a part
of the present underworld, relates iða fem. "eddy" "to the cyclical ebb and flow of the world (and its gods),
a perpetually returning cosmos." Poetic Edda Vol. II, pg. 118 commentary to Völuspá 7/2.