der god staggers and falls
dead. Fenris swallows Odin, but is instantly rent in twain by
Vidar, the strong silent one, Odin's dumb son, who well avenges
his father on the wolf by splitting the jaws that devoured him.
Then Surtur slings fire abroad, and the reek rises around all
things. Iggdrasill, the great Ash Tree of Existence, totters, but
stands. All below perishes. Finally, the unnamable Mighty One
appears, to judge the good and the bad. The former hie from fading
Valhalla to eternal Gimle, where all joy is to be theirs forever;
the latter are stormed down from Hela to Nastrond, there, "under
curdling mists, in a snaky marsh whose waves freeze black and thaw
in blood, to be scared forever, for punishment, with terrors ever
new." All strife vanishes in endless peace. By the power of All
Father, a new earth, green and fair, shoots up from the sea, to be
inhabited by a new race of men free from sorrow. The foul, spotted
dragon Nidhogg flies over the plains, bearing corpses and Death
itself away upon his wings, and sinks out of sight.10

It has generally been asserted, in consonance with the foregoing
view, that the Scandinavians believed that the good and the bad,
respectively in Gimle and Nastrond, would experience everlasting
rewards and punishments. But Blackwell, the recent editor of
Percy's translation of Mallet's Northern Antiquities as published
in Bohn's Antiquarian Library, argues with great force against the
correctness of the assertion.11 The point is

9 Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, s. 775, note.

10 Keyser, Religion of the Northmen, part i. ch. vi.

11 Pp. 497-503.

dubious; but it is of no great importance, since we know that the
spirit and large outlines of their faith have been reliably set
forth. That faith, rising from the impetuous blood and rude mind
of the martial race of the North, gathering wonderful
embellishments from the glowing imagination of the Skalds,
reacting, doubly nourished the fierce valor and fervid fancy from
which it sprang. It drove the dragon prows of the Vikings
marauding over the seas. It rolled the Goths' conquering squadrons
across the nations, from the shores of Finland and Skager Rack to
the foot of the Pyrenees and the gates of Rome. The very ferocity
with which it blazed consumed itself, and the conquest of the
flickering faith by Christianity was easy. During the dominion of
this religion, the earnest sincerity with which its disciples
received it appears alike