Teutonic Mythology: Gods and Goddesses of the Northland, Vol. 2

by Viktor Rydberg

When ordstirr had blended into a compound word, there arose by the side of its literal meaning another, in which the accent fell so heavily on tirr that ord is superfluous and gives no additional meaning of a judgment on which this tirr is based. Already in Hofudlausn (str. 26) ordstirr is used as a compound, meaning simply honourable reputation, honour. There is mention of a victory which Erik Blood-axe won, and it is said that he thereby gained ordstirr (renown).

In interpreting Havamál (76) it would therefore seem that we must choose between the proper and figurative sense of ordstirr. The age of the Havamál strophe is not known. If it was from it Eyvind Skaldaspiller drew his deyr fé, deyja frændr, which he incorporated in his drapa on Hakon the Good, who died in 960, then the Havamál strophe could not be composed later than the middle of the tenth century. Hofudlausn was composed by Egil Skallagrimson in the year 936 or thereabout. From a chronological point of view there is therefore nothing to hinder our applying the less strict sense, "honourable reputation, honour," to the passage in question.

But there are other hindrances. If the Havamál skald with ords-tirr meant "honourable reputation, honour," he could not, as he has done, have added the condition which he makes in the last line of the strophe: hveim er ser godan getr, for the idea "good" would then already be contained in ordstirr. If in spite of this we would take the less strict sense, we must subtract from ordstirr the meaning of honourable reputation, honour, and conceive the expression to mean simply reputation in general, a meaning which the word never had.

We are therefore forced to the conclusion that the meaning of court-decision, judgment, which ord has not only in Ynglingatal and Fjölsvinnsmal, but also in linguistic usage, was clear to the author of the Havamál strophe, and that he applied ords tirr in its original sense and was speaking of imperishable judgments.

It should also have been regarded as a matter of course that the judgment which, according to the Havamál strophe (77), is passed on everyone dead, and which itself never dies, must have been prepared by a court whose decision could not be questioned or set aside, and that the judgment must have been one whose influence is eternal, for the infinity of the judgment itself can only depend on the infinity of its operation. That the more or less vague opinions sooner or later committed to oblivion in regard to a deceased person should be supposed to contain such a judgment, and to have been meant by the immortal doom over the dead, I venture to include among the most extraordinary interpretations ever produced.

Both the strophes are, as is evident from the first glance, most intimately connected with each other. Both begin: deyr fæ, deyja frændr. Ord in the one strophe corresponds to domr in the other. The latter strophe declares that the judgment on every dead person is imperishable, and thus completes the more limited statement of the foregoing strophe, that the judgment which gives a good renown is everlasting. The former strophe speaks of only one category of men who have been subjected to an ever-valid judgment, namely of that category to whose honour the eternal judgment is pronounced. The second strophe speaks of both the categories, and assures us that the judgment on the one as on the other category is everlasting.

The strophes are by the skald attributed to Odin's lips. Odin pronounces judgment every day near Urd's fountain at the court to which King Halfdan was summoned, and where hosts of people with fettered tongues await their final destiny (see above.) The assurances in regard to the validity of the judgment on everyone dead are thus given by a being who really may be said to know what he talks about (ec veit, &c.), namely, by the judge himself.

In the poem Sonatorrek the old Egil Skallagrimson laments the loss of sons and kindred, and his thoughts are occupied with the fate of his children after death. When he speaks of his son Gunnar, who in his tender years was snatched away by a sickness, he says (str. 19):