of which is prodigiously awful and enormously
disgusting. It is plaited of serpents' backs, wattled together
like wicker work, whose heads turn inwards, vomiting poison. In
the lake of venom thus deposited within these immense wriggling
walls of snakes the worst of the damned wade and swim.

High up in the sky is Odin's hall, the magnificent Valhalla, or
temple of the slain. The columns supporting its ceiling are
spears. It is roofed with shields, and the ornaments on its
benches are coats of mail. The Valkyrs are Odin's battle maids,
choosers of heroes for his banquet rooms. With helmets on their
heads, in bloody harness, mounted on shadowy steeds, surrounded by
meteoric lightnings, and wielding flaming swords, they hover over
the conflict and point the way to Valhalla to the warriors who
fall. The valiant souls thus received to Odin's presence are
called Einheriar, or the elect. The Valkyrs, as white clad virgins
with flowing ringlets, wait on them in the capacity of cup
bearers. Each morning, at the crowing

3 Oehlenschlager, Gods of the North. This celebrated and brilliant
poem, with the copious notes in Frye's translation, affords the
English reader a full conception of the Norse pantheon and its
salient adventures.

of a huge gold combed cock, the well armed Einheriar rush through
Valhalla's five hundred and forty doors into a great court yard,
and pass the day in merciless fighting. However pierced and hewn
in pieces in these fearful encounters, at evening every wound is
healed, and they return into the hall whole, and are seated,
according to their exploits, at a luxurious feast. The
perennial boar Sehrimnir, deliciously cooked by Andrimnir, though
devoured every night, is whole again every morning and ready to be
served anew. The two highest joys these terrible berserkers and
vikings knew on earth composed their experience in heaven: namely,
a battle by day and a feast by night. It is a vulgar error, long
prevalent, that the Valhalla heroes drink out of the skulls of
their enemies. This notion, though often refuted, still lingers in
the popular mind. It arose from the false translation of a phrase
in the death song of Ragnar Lodbrok, the famous sea king, "Soon
shall we drink from the curved trees of the head," which, as a
figure for the usual drinking horns, was erroneously rendered by
Olaus Wormius, "Soon shall we drink from the hollow cups of
skulls." It is not the heads of men, but the horns of beasts