Northern mythology

158 NORTHERN MYTHOLOGY.
Mimir is also called Hoddmimir*, wliicli lias been rendered
Circle-Mimir or Bphere-Mhnir, as alluding to the circle
of the horizon. Awaiting the regeneration of mankind,
the original matter of the new human race will be preserved
in Hoddmimir^s holt or wood^. This explanation
is confirmed by the Solarljo^^, where it is said, "in full
horns they drank the pure mead from the
ring- (circle-)
god's fountain." According to a popular belief in Germany,
Denmark and England, a golden cup, or hidden
treasure lies where the rainbow apparently touches the
horizon. This seems a remnant of the belief in Mimir's
spring, in which wisdom's golden treasure was concealed^.
War burst forth in the world when men pierced Gullveig
(gold) through with their spears, and burnt her in
the high one's halF. That is, when they hammered and
forged gold, and bestowed on it
a certain value, then the
^
It is far from certain that Mimir and Hoddmimir are identical.
- Page 84. 3 str. 56.
^
The name Mimir signifies having hiowledye, and seems identical with
A. S. meomer, Lat. memor. The giants, who are older than the ^Esir,
saw further into the darkness of the past. They had witnessed the creation
of the yEsir and of the world, and foresaw their destruction. On
both points the /Esir must seek knowledge from them, a thought repeatedly
expressed in the old mythic poems, but nowhere more clearly than
in the Voluspa, in which a Vala or prophetess, reared among the giants,
is represented rising from the deep to unveil time past and future to gods
and men. It is then this wisdom of the deep that Mimir keeps in his
well. The heavenly god Odin himself must fetch it thence, and this takes
place in the night, when the sun, heaven's eye, is descended behind the
brink of the disk of earth into the giants' world. Then Odin explores the
secrets of the deep, and his eye is there pledged for the drink he obtains
from the fount of knowledge. But in the brightness of dawn, when the
sun again ascends from the giants' world, then does the guardian of the
fount drink from a golden horn the pure mead that flows over Odin's
pledge. Heaven and the nether world communicate mutually their wisdom
to each other. Through a literal interpretation of the foregoing myth
Odin is represented as one-eyed. Keyser, Rehg. Forfatn. pp. 25, 20.
'"
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