Germany had Heimrod, Heimbert, and Heimfred; but these are not easy to disentangle from the derivatives of the word hun, which are much more in use.[[112]]
[111]. Grimm; Luning; Munter; Munch; Blackwell, Mallet; Ellis, Domesday; Dugdale.
[112]. Michaelis; Pott; Edda.
Section IX.—Will.
This section has thus been headed because the Will was one of the ideas most strongly expressed in various forms in the religion of the high-spirited North.
The word to will is of all tongues; the Greek βουλή, Latin velle or volo, Gothic viljan, Keltic iouli, all show a common origin, and every Teuton language has the derivatives of will, just as the Romance have of volo.
But it is the Teuton who brings the Will into his mythology. When the creation began, the cow Audumbla licked out of the stones a man named Bur, who was the grandfather of the three primeval gods, Odin, Wili, and Vê, the All-pervading, the Will, the Holy; and it was these who together animated the first human pair. We hear no more of Vili or Hœmir, as he is also called after he thus infused feeling and will into the first man; but we meet the word will again forming valjan, to choose, velja in the North.
Thence the home where Odin welcomed his brave descendants was Valhall, the hall of the chosen; and the maidens who chose the happy who were there to dwell, were the Valkyrier, or Walcyrge, the last syllable from kjöra, or curen, to choose, the word whence an electoral prince is called in German, Kürfurst. But the passport to the hall of the chosen was a glorious death on the battle-field; and thus it was that val, vali, wali, belonged to the carnage of the fight, since slaughter did but seal the marks of the Valkyr upon the brave, whose spirits were passing over the rainbow-arch, while the comets marked the course of the chariot which glanced across the sky with weapons forged for their sport in battle and chase.
So the Hall of the Chosen became the Hall of Carnage, the abode of the slain; and it is remarkable that no Christian writer transfers the term to Paradise, although the epithet Schildburg, the castle of shields, is once applied to Heaven as the home of the victors. Indeed, Valhall was not eternal; the warrior there admitted had yet to fight his last fight by Odin’s side, perish with him and his sons, and share with them the renovation of the universe. So deeply interwoven in the ideas of the North was a violent death with the hope of bliss, that crags in Norway affording scope for a desperate leap, were called the vestibule of Valhall, and the preference for a death on the battle-field lingered into Christian days, so that not only did fierce Earl Siward bemoan his fate in dying of sickness, albeit he rose upon his feet to draw his last breath, but even the Chevalier Bayard mourned angrily over the fever that had nearly caused him to pass away like a sick girl in his bed.