| Page | |
| VOL. III. | |
| Thor's Journey to Geirrodsgard | [Frontispiece] |
| Idun Brought Back to Asgard | [807] |
| Thor, Hymir, and the Midgard Serpent | [915] |
| King Svafrlame Secures the Sword Tyrfing | [1003] |
THE MYTH IN REGARD TO THE LOWER WORLD.
(Part IV. Continued from Volume II.)
94.
THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.
Völuspa gives an account of the events which forebode and lead up to Ragnarok. Among these we also find that leika Mims synir, that is, that the sons of Mimer "spring up," "fly up," "get into lively motion." But the meaning of this has hitherto been an unsolved problem.
In the strophe immediately preceding (the 44th) Völuspa describes how it looks on the surface of Midgard when the end of the world is at hand. Brothers and near kinsmen slay each other. The sacred bonds of morality are broken. It is the storm-age and the wolf-age. Men no longer spare or pity one another. Knives and axes rage. Volund's world-destroying sword of revenge has already been fetched by Fjalar in the guise of the red cock (str. 41), and from the Ironwood, where it hitherto had been concealed by Angerboda and guarded by Egther; the wolf-giant Hate with his companions have invaded the world, which it was the duty of the gods to protect. The storms are attended by eclipses of the sun (str. 40).
Then suddenly the Hjallar-horn sounds, announcing that the destruction of the world is now to be fulfilled, and just as the first notes of this trumpet penetrate the world, Mimer's sons spring up. "The old tree," the world-tree, groans and trembles. When Mimer's sons "spring up" Odin is engaged in conversation with the head of their father, his faithful adviser, in regard to the impending conflict, which is the last one in which the gods are to take a hand.
I shall here give reasons for the assumption that the blast from the Hjallar-horn wakes Mimer's sons from a sleep that has lasted through centuries, and that the Christian legend concerning the seven sleepers has its chief, if not its only, root in a Teutonic myth which in the second half of the fifth or in the first half of the sixth century was changed into a legend. At that time large portions of the Teutonic race had already been converted to Christianity: the Goths, Vandals, Gepidians, Rugians, Burgundians, and Swabians were Christians. Considerable parts of the Roman empire were settled by the Teutons or governed by their swords. The Franks were on the point of entering the Christian Church, and behind them the Alamannians and Longobardians. Their myths and sagas were reconstructed so far as they could be adapted to the new forms and ideas, and if they, more or less transformed, assumed the garb of a Christian legend, then this guise enabled them to travel to the utmost limits of Christendom; and if they also contained, as in the case here in question, ideas that were not entirely foreign to the Greek-Roman world, then they might the more easily acquire the right of Roman nativity.