[24] The name of this giantess is Angurbod: see the Catalogue of proper Names.
[25] Midgard’s snake is the serpent Jormundgard, type of the ocean, which surrounds the earth (Midgard). According to Ling, a Swedish poet, the mythe of Lok and his three offspring, Fenris, Hela and Jormundgard, may be thus explained. Fenris denotes what is destructive or prejudicial in Fire: Hela denotes the deleterious qualities of the Earth, in decomposing substances and causing rottenness: Jormundgard denotes the destructive qualities of Water: all these are caused by the action of Air (Lok or Loptur) mixing with Angurbod (impurity). The amour of Asa-Lok and Angurbod has some resemblance to the amour of the giant Typhon with Echidna, which produced the Chimera, Cerberus and Hydra of the Greek mythology.
[26] The Hell of the Christians is always represented by theologians as a place of eternal fire; yet in the country where the religion of Odin prevailed, the inhabitants, from ancient custom, could not refrain from considering it sometimes as a place of eternal cold. At least, the idea sometimes breaks out in the ballads composed long after the introduction of Christianity. In a Scottish ballad, for instance, inserted by Walter Scott in his “Minstrelsey of the Scottish Border,” there is the following stanza:
O whaten a mountain is yon, she said,
All so dreary wi’ frost and snow?
O yon is the mountain of Hell, he cried,
Where you and I must go.
NOTES TO THE FOURTH CANTO.
Specimen of the original.