[7] Hel is from the Icl. helja “to conceal.”
[8] Isaiah xxxviii. 18, 19; cf. also Genesis xxxvii. 35; 1 Samuel xxviii. 19. Sheol is misrendered “grave” in our version. It means the place of the dead, not of bodies only.
[9] The fact that the sun dies every day militates against his claim to the rank of a god: otherwise he would probably always receive the greatest meed of worship. As it is, he is often worshipped rather as a hero or demigod than a true immortal.
[10] Fick. “Verg. Wörterbuch der I.-G. Sp.” s.v. mara.
[11] Hesperides. They are, however, called the daughters of Night by Hesiod and others.
[12] Πόντος is from the same root as the Skr. patha, a path, pfad, &c. One might suppose from this that the Greeks were the first adventurers upon the deep waters. While the other Aryan folks called the sea “a death,” they called it a “road.”
[13] There can be no doubt that the cosmology of the Eddas is to some extent infected by the source from which we derive it. The picture of earth, with its mountain Asgard and its surrounding sea, is nearly exactly the picture of Iceland.
[14] So Poseidôn, the god of the sea, is the earth-shaker; earthquakes being apparently attributed to the water under the earth.
[15] Weber in Chambr., 1020.
[16] “The sounding,” from gialla, to sound (yell).