from the bosom of the waves* adorned with
green meadows: the fields there bring forth
without culture; calamities are there unknown;
and a palace is there raised more
shining than the sun* all covered with gold.
This is the place that the just will inhabit*
where they will enjoy delights for evermore.
Then the powerful, the valiant, he who
governs all things, comes forth from his
lofty abodes to render divine justice. He
pronounces decrees. He establishes the
sacred destinies which shall endure for
ever. There is also an abode remote from
the sun, the gates of which face the north,
and poison rains there through a thousand
openings. Through this place, which is all
composed of the carcasses of serpents, run
certain torrents, in which are plunged perjurers,
assassins, and those who seduce
married women. A black-winged dragon
flies incessantly around, and devours the
bodies of the wretched who are there imprisoned.”
From this slight sketch it appears that
the northern nations believed in the immortality
of the soul, as well as in the existence
of a future state of happiness and misery;
and, moreover, that there were two abodes
destined for each of these states. To the
former belonged Valhala, the palace of Odin,
where all were admitted who had died* a
violent death, from the time of the creation
of the world to the period of the universal
dissolution of nature, and Gimle, or the
palace covered with gold, where the just
were to enjoy delights for ever. On the
* “ The heroes,” says the Edda, “ who are received
ihto the palace of Odin, have every day the pleasure of
arming themselves, of passing in review, of ranging
themselves in order of battle, and of cutting
one another in pieces 5 but, as soon as the hour of
repast approaches, they return on horseback, all safe
and sound, back to the hall of Odin, and fall to eating
and drinking. Though the number of them cannot
be counted, the flesh of the boar, Servimner, is sufficient
for them all; every day it is served up at table,
and every day it is renewed entire. Their beverage is
beer and mead; one single goat, whose milk is excellent
mead, furnishes enough of that liquor to intoxicate
all the heroes: their cups are the skulls of
enemies they have slain. Odin alone, who sits at a
table by himself, drinks wine for his entire liquor. A
crowd of virgins wait upon the heroes at table, and fill
their cups as fast as they empty them.” Northern
Antiquities, v. 1. p. 120, and Edda Iceland. Mythol. 31,
33, 34, and 35.