From all this follows that Leikin is either a side-figure to the daughter of Loke, and like her in all respects, or she and the Loke-daughter are one and the same person. To determine the question whether they are identical, we must observe (1) the definitely representative manner in which Völuspa, by the use of the name Leikin, makes the possessor of this name a mythic person, who visits men with diseases and death; (2) the manner in which Ynglingatal characterises the activity of Loke's daughter with a person doomed to die from disease; she makes him leikinn, an expression which, without doubt, is in its sense connected with the feminine name Leikn, and which was preserved in the vernacular far down in Christian times, and there designated a supernatural visitation bringing the symptoms of mental or physical illness; (3) the Christian popular tradition in which the deformed and disease-bringing horse, which Leikin rides in the myth, is represented as the steed of "death" or "Hel;" (4) that change of meaning by which the name Hel, which in the mythical poems of the Elder Edda designates the whole heathen realm of death, and especially its regions of bliss, or their queen, got to mean the abode of torture and misery and its ruler—a transmutation by which the name Hel, as in Gylfaginning and in the Slesvik traditions, was transferred from Urd to Loke's daughter.
Finally, it should be observed that it is told of Leikin, as of Loke's daughter, that she once fared badly at the hands of the gods, who did not, however, take her life. Loke's daughter is not slain, but is cast into Nifelhel (Gylfaginning, ch. 34). From that time she is gnúpleit—that is to say, she has a stooping form, as if her bones had been broken and were unable to keep her in an upright position. Leikin is not slain, but gets her legs broken.
All that we learn of Leikin thus points to the Loke-maid, the Hel, not of the myth, but of Christian tradition.
68.
THE WAY TO HADES COMMON TO THE DEAD.
It has already been demonstrated that all the dead must go to Hel—not only they whose destination is the realm of bliss, but also those who are to dwell in Asgard or in the regions of torture in Nifelheim. Thus the dead tread at the outset the same road. One and the same route is prescribed to them all, and the same Helgate daily opens for hosts of souls destined for different lots. Women and children, men and the aged, they who have practised the arts of peace and they who have stained the weapons with blood, those who have lived in accordance with the sacred commandments of the norns and gods and they who have broken them—all have to journey the same way as Balder went before them, down to the fields of the fountains of the world. They come on foot and on horseback—nay, even in chariots, if we may believe Helreid Brynhildar, a very unreliable source—guided by various psychopomps: the beautifully equipped valkyries, the blue-white daughter of Loke, the sombre spirits of disease, and the gentle maid-servant of old age. Possibly the souls of children had their special psychopomps. Traditions of mythic origin seem to suggest this; but the fragments of the myths themselves preserved to our time give us no information on this subject.
The Hel-gate here in question was situated below the eastern horizon of the earth. When Thor threatens to kill Loke he says (Lokas., 59) that he will send him á austrvega. When the author of the Sol-song sees the sunset for the last time, he hears in the opposite direction—that is, in the east—the Hel-gate grating dismally on its hinges (str. 39). The gate has a watchman and a key. The key is called gillingr, gyllingr (Younger Edda, ii. 494); and hence a skald who celebrates his ancestors in his songs, and thus recalls to those living the shades of those in Hades, may say that he brings to the light of day the tribute paid to Gilling (yppa gillings gjöldum. See Eyvind's strophe, Younger Edda, i. 248. The paraphrase has hitherto been misunderstood, on account of the pseudo-myth Bragarædur about the mead.) From the gate the highway of the dead went below the earth in a westerly direction through deep and dark dales (Gylfag., ch. 52), and it required several days—for Hermod nine days and nights—before they came to light regions and to the golden bridge across the river Gjoll, flowing from north to south (see No. 59). On the other side of the river the roads forked. One road went directly north. This led to Balder's abode (Gylfag., ch. 52); in other words, to Mimer's realm, to Mimer's grove, and to the sacred citadel of the ásmegir, where death and decay cannot enter (see No. 53). This northern road was not, therefore, the road common to all the dead. Another road went to the south. As Urd's realm is situated south of Mimer's (see Nos. 59, 63), this second road must have led to Urd's fountain and to the thingstead of the gods there. From the Sun-song we learn that the departed had to continue their journey by that road. The deceased skald of the Sun-song came to the norns, that is to say, to Urd and her sisters, after he had left this road behind him, and he sat for nine days and nights á norna stoli before he was permitted to continue his journey (str. 51). Here, then, is the end of the road common to all, and right here, at Urd's fountain and at the thingstead of the gods something must happen, on which account the dead are divided into different groups, some destined for Asgard, others for the subterranean regions of bliss, and a third lot for Nifelhel's regions of torture. We shall now see whether the mythic fragments preserved to our time contain any suggestions as to what occurs in this connection. It must be admitted that this dividing must take place somewhere in the lower world, that it was done on the basis of the laws which in mythological ethics distinguish between right and wrong, innocence and guilt, that which is pardonable and that which is unpardonable, and that the happiness and unhappiness of the dead is determined by this division.
69.
THE TWO THINGSTEADS OF THE ASAS. THE EXTENT OF THE AUTHORITY OF THE ASAS AND OF THE DIS OF FATE. THE DOOM OF THE DEAD.
The Asas have two thingsteads: the one in Asgard, the other in the lower world.