It has also been shown that, according to Solarljod, the sons of Mimer-Nidi come from this region (from the north in Mimer's domain), and that they are in all seven:
Nordan sá ek rida
Nidja sonu
ok váru sjau saman;
that is to say, that they are the same number as the "economical months," or the changes of the year (see No. 87).
In the same region Mimer's daughter Nat has her hall, where she takes her rest after her journey across the heavens is accomplished (see No. 93). The "chateau dormant" of Teutonic mythology is therefore situated in Nat's udal territory, and Dvalin, "the slumberer," is Nat's brother. Perhaps her citadel is identical with the one in which Dvalin and his brothers sleep. According to Saxo, voices of women are heard in the tabernaculum belonging to the sleeping men, and glittering with weapons and treasures, when Thorkil and his men come to plunder the treasures there. Nat has her court and her attendant sisters in the Teutonic mythology, as in Rigveda (Ushas). Simmara (see Nos. 97, 98) is one of the dises of the night. According to the middle-age sagas, these dises and daughters of Mimer are said to be twelve in number (see Nos. 45, 46).
Mimer, as we know, was the ward of the middle root of the world-tree. His seven sons, representing the changes experienced by the world-tree and nature annually, have with him guarded and tended the holy tree and watered its root with aurgom forsi from the subterranean horn, "Valfather's pledge." When the god-clans became foes, and the Vans seized weapons against the Asas, Mimer was slain, and the world-tree, losing its wise guardian, became subject to the influence of time. It suffers in crown and root (Grimnersmal), and as it is ideally identical with creation itself, both the natural and the moral, so toward the close of the period of this world it will betray the same dilapidated condition as nature and the moral world then are to reveal.
Logic demanded that when the world-tree lost its chief ward, the lord of the well of wisdom, it should also lose that care which under his direction was bestowed upon it by his seven sons. These, voluntarily or involuntarily, retired, and the story of the seven men who sleep in the citadel full of treasures informs us how they thenceforth spend their time until Ragnarok. The details of the myth telling how they entered into this condition cannot now be found; but it may be in order to point out, as a possible connection with this matter, that one of the older Vanagods, Njord's father, and possibly the same as Mundilfore, had the epithet Svafr, Svafrthorinn (Fjölsvinnsmal). Svafr means sopitor, the sleeper, and Svafrthorinn seems to refer to svefnthorn, "sleep-thorn." According to the traditions, a person could be put to sleep by laying a "sleep-thorn" in his ear, and he then slept until it was taken out or fell out.
Popular traditions scattered over Sweden, Denmark, and Germany have to this very day been preserved, on the lips of the common people, of the men sleeping among weapons and treasures in underground chambers or in rocky halls. A Swedish tradition makes them equipped not only with weapons, but also with horses which in their stalls abide the day when their masters are to awake and sally forth. Common to the most of these traditions, both the Northern and the German, is the feature that this is to happen when the greatest distress is at hand, or when the end of the world approaches and the day of judgment comes. With regard to the German sagas on this point I refer to Jacob Grimm's Mythology. I simply wish to point out here certain features which are of special importance to the subject under discussion, and which the popular memory in certain parts of Germany has preserved from the heathen myths. When the heroes who have slept through centuries sally forth, the trumpets of the last day sound, a great battle with the powers of evil (Antichrist) is to be fought, an immensely old tree, which has withered, is to grow green again, and a happier age is to begin.
This immensely old tree, which is withered at the close of the present period of the world, and which is to become green again in a happier age after a decisive conflict between the good and evil, can be no other than the world-tree of Teutonic mythology, the Ygdrasil of our Eddas. The angel trumpets, at whose blasts the men who sleep within the mountains sally forth, have their prototype in Heimdal's horn, which proclaims the destruction of the world; and the battle to be fought with Antichrist is the Ragnarok conflict, clad in Christian robes, between the gods and the destroyers of the world. Here Mimer's seven sons also have their task to perform. The last great struggle also concerns the lower world, whose regions of bliss demand protection against the thurs-clans of Nifelhel, the more so since these very regions of bliss constitute the new earth, which after Ragnarok rises from the sea to become the abode of a better race of men (see No. 55). The "wall rock" of the Hvergelmer mountain and its "stone gates" (Völuspa; cp. Nos. 46, 75) require defenders able to wield those immensely large swords which are kept in the sleeping castle on Nat's udal fields, and Sindre-Dvalin is remembered not only as the artist of antiquity, spreader of Mimer's runic wisdom, enemy of Loke, and father of the man-loving dises (see No. 53), but also as a hero. The name of the horse he rode, and probably is to ride in the Ragnarok conflict, is according to a strophe cited in the Younger Edda, Modinn; the middle-age sagas have connected his name to a certain viking, Sindri, and to Sintram of the German heroic poetry.
I now come back to the Völuspa strophe, which was the starting-point in the investigation contained in this chapter:
Leika Mims synir
en mjotudr kyndisk
at hinu gamla
gjallarhorni;
hátt blæss Heimdallr,
horn er á lothi.