Saxo's description of that house of torture, which is found within the city, is not unlike Völuspa's description of that dwelling of torture called Nastrand. In Saxo the floor of the house consists of serpents wattled together, and the roof of sharp stings. In Völuspa the hall is made of serpents braided together, whose heads from above spit venom down on those dwelling there. Saxo speaks of soot a century old on the door frames; Völuspa of ljórar, air- and smoke-openings in the roof (see further Nos. 77 and 78).
Saxo himself points out that the Geruthus (Geirrödr) mentioned by him, and his famous daughters, belong to the myth about the Asa-god Thor. That Geirrod after his death is transferred to the lower world is no contradiction to the heathen belief, according to which beautiful or terrible habitations await the dead, not only of men but also of other beings. Compare Gylfaginning, ch. 46, where Thor with one blow of his Mjolner sends a giant nidr undir Niflhel (see further, No. 60).
As Mimer's and Urd's fountains are found in the lower world (see Nos. 63, 93), and as Mimer is mentioned as the guardian of Heimdal's horn and other treasures, it might be expected that these circumstances would not be forgotten in those stories from Christian times which have been cited above and found to have roots in the myths.
When in Saxo's saga about Gorm the Danish adventurers had left the horrible city of fog, they came to another place in the lower world where the gold-plated mead-cisterns were found. The Latin word used by Saxo, which I translate with cisterns of mead, is dolium. In the classical Latin this word is used in regard to wine-cisterns of so immense a size that they were counted among the immovables, and usually were sunk in the cellar floors. They were so large that a person could live in such a cistern, and this is also reported as having happened. That the word dolium still in Saxo's time had a similar meaning appears from a letter quoted by Du Cange, written by Saxo's younger contemporary, Bishop Gebhard. The size is therefore no obstacle to Saxo's using this word for a wine-cistern to mean the mead-wells in the lower world of Teutonic mythology. The question now is whether he actually did so, or whether the subterranean dolia in question are objects in regard to which our earliest mythic records have left us in ignorance.
In Saxo's time, and earlier, the epithets by which the mead-wells—Urd's and Mimer's—and their contents are mentioned in mythological songs had come to be applied also to those mead-buckets which Odin is said to have emptied in the halls of the giant Fjalar or Suttung. This application also lay near at hand, since these wells and these vessels contained the same liquor, and since it originally, as appears from the meaning of the words, was the liquor, and not the place where the liquor was kept, to which the epithets Odrærir, Bodn, and Son applied. In Havamál (107) Odin expresses his joy that Odrærir has passed out of the possession of the giant Fjalar and can be of use to the beings of the upper world. But if we may trust Bragar, (ch. 5), it is the drink and not the empty vessels that Odin takes with him to Valhal. On this supposition, it is the drink and not one of the vessels which in Havamál is called Odrærir. In Havamál (140) Odin relates how he, through self-sacrifice and suffering, succeeded in getting runic songs up from the deep, and also a drink dipped out of Odrærir. He who gives him the songs and the drink, and accordingly is the ruler of the fountain of the drink, is a man, "Bolthorn's celebrated son." Here again Odrærer is one of the subterranean fountains, and no doubt Mimer's, since the one who pours out the drink is a man. But in Forspjalsljod (2) Urd's fountain is also called Odrærer (Odhrærir Urdar). Paraphrases for the liquor of poetry, such as "Bodn's growing billow" (Einar Skalaglam) and "Son's reedgrown grass edge" (Eilif Gudrunson), point to fountains or wells, not to vessels. Meanwhile a satire was composed before the time of Saxo and Sturlason about Odin's adventure at Fjalar's, and the author of this song, the contents of which the Younger Edda has preserved, calls the vessels which Odin empties at the giant's Odhrærir, Bodn, and Són (Brogarædur, 6). Saxo, who reveals a familiarity with the genuine heathen, or supposed heathen, poems handed down to his time, may thus have seen the epithets Odrærir, Bodn, and Són applied both to the subterranean mead-wells and to a giant's mead-vessels. The greater reason he would have for selecting the Latin dolium to express an idea that can be accommodated to both these objects.
Over these mead-reservoirs there hang, according to Saxo's description, round-shaped objects of silver, which in close braids drop down and are spread around the seven times gold-plated walls of the mead-cisterns.[35]
Over Mimer's and Urd's fountains hang the roots of the ash Ygdrasil, which sends its root-knots and root-threads down into their waters. But not only the rootlets sunk in the water, but also the roots from which they are suspended, partake of the waters of the fountains. The norns take daily from the water and sprinkle the stem of the tree therewith, "and the water is so holy," says Gylfaginning (16), "that everything that is put in the well (consequently, also, all that which the norns daily sprinkle with the water) becomes as white as the membrane between the egg and the egg-shell." Also the root over Mimer's fountain is sprinkled with its water (Völusp., Cod. R., 28), and this water, so far as its colour is concerned, seems to be of the same kind as that in Urd's fountain, for the latter is called hvítr aurr (Völusp., 18) and the former runs in aurgum forsi upon its root of the world-tree (Völusp., 28). The adjective aurigr, which describes a quality of the water in Mimer's fountain, is formed from the noun aurr, with which the liquid is described which waters the root over Urd's fountain. Ygdrasil's roots, as far up as the liquid of the wells can get to them, thus have a colour like that of "the membrane between the egg and the egg-shell," and consequently recall both as to position, form, and colour the round-shaped objects "of silver" which, according to Saxo, hang down and are intertwined in the mead-reservoirs of the lower world.
Mimer's fountain contains, as we know, the purest mead—the liquid of inspiration, of poetry, of wisdom, of understanding.
Near by Ygdrasil, according to Völuspa (27), Heimdal's horn is concealed. The seeress in Völuspa knows that it is hid "beneath the hedge-o'ershadowing holy tree."
Veit hon Heimdallar
hljod um fólgit
undir heidvönum
helgum badmi.