A NÁLISIS RETROSPECTIVO MICRO MICROPROYECTO 1: GUSTO MUSICAL

And all that night he rode, and journeyed so, Nine days, nine nights, toward the northern ice, Through valleys deep-engulfed, by roaring streams. And on the tenth morn he beheld the bridge

Which spans with golden arches Giall’s stream, And on the bridge a damsel watching armed, In the strait passage, at the farther end,

Where the road issues between wailing rocks.1

In the wake of the god Baldr’s manslaughter, Hermóðr rides to Hel (the realm of the dead), so Snorri tells us, to plead with (the goddess) Hel for Baldr’s release. This particular mythological fiction requires Hel to be the location of the action and one of the story’s protagonists at the same time. Hermóðr’s ride is the first of Snorri’s narratives of the gods to take place within the underworld; it is thus the first occasion upon which Hel is envisioned as a place in Gylfaginning:

En þat er at segja frá Hermóði at hann reið níu nætr døkkva dala ok djúpa svá at hann sá ekki fyrr en hann kom til árinnar Gjallar ok reið á Gjallar brúna. Hon er þokð lýsigulli. Móðguðr er nefnd mær sú er gætir brúarinnar. Hon spurði hann at nafni eða ætt ok sagði at hinn fyrra dag riðu um brúna fimm fylki dauðra manna,

1 _{Matthew Arnold, Balder Dead, Book II, lines 82-9. Quoted from The Poems of Matthew}

The Imaginary Landscape of Hel 174

‘ “En eigi dynr brúin minnr undir einum þér ok eigi hefir þú lit dauðra manna. Hví ríðr þú hér á Helveg?”

‘Hann svarar at “ek skal ríða til Heljar at leita Baldrs. Eða hvárt hefir þú nakkvat sét Baldr á Helvegi?”

‘En hon sagði at Baldr hafði þar riðit um Gjallar brú, “en niðr ok norðr liggr Helvegr.”

‘Þá reið Hermóðr þar til er hann kom at Helgrindum. Þá sté hann af hestinum ok gyrði hann fast, steig upp ok keyrði hann sporum. En hestrinn hljóp svá hart ok yfir grindina at hann kom hvergi nær. Þá reið Hermóðr heim til hallarinnar ok steip af hesti, gekk inn í hollina, sá þar sitja í ondugi Baldr bróður sinn, ok dvalðisk Hermóðr þar um nóttina.2

In this one episode we find something that resembles an iconography of Hel, albeit rather a sparse one. The journey Hermóðr makes along the Helvegr takes him through deep and dark valleys; after nine days’ ride a river named Gjoll has to be crossed en route, although it does not seem that it actually forms the border of Hel’s lands: the female

2 _{SnE I, 47: ‘But there is this to tell of Hermóðr that he rode for nine nights through}

valleys dark and deep so that he saw nothing until he came to the river Gjoll and rode onto the Gjoll bridge. It is covered with glowing gold. There is a maiden guarding the bridge called Móðguðr. She asked him his name and lineage and said that the other day there had ridden over the bridge five battalions of dead men.

“But the bridge resounds no less under just you, and you do not have the colour of dead men. Why are you riding here on the road to Hel?”

He replied: “I am to ride to Hel to seek Baldr. But have you seen anything of Baldr on the road to Hel?”

And she said that Baldr had ridden there over Gjoll bridge, “but downwards and northwards lies the road to Hel.”

Then Hermóðr rode on until he came to Hel’s gates. Then he dismounted from the horse and tightened its girth, mounted and spurred it on. The horse jumped so hard and over the gate that it came nowhere near. Then Hermóðr rode up to the hall and dismounted from his horse, went into the hall, saw sitting there in the seat of honour his brother Baldr; and Hermóðr stayed there the night.’

The Imaginary Landscape of Hel 175

guardian of the golden bridge, Móðguðr, implies that there is some distance still to travel when she says niðr ok norðr liggr Helvegr. From this reply we also learn of the spatial location of Hel, downwards and to the north. When Hermóðr achieves his destination, Hel is presented as a settlement or stronghold, a series of halls, with a set of what are presumably extremely high gates: it is only because of the supernatural qualities of Hermóðr’s borrowed mount – Óðinn’s Sleipnir3 _{– that he is} able to enter Hel’s dominion.

An iconography of this sort may belong to the ‘myth’ of Hel, information derived from a stable body of mythological lore, or it may be part of Snorri’s ‘fiction’ of Hermóðr’s ride. I suspect on this occasion that there is reason to credit Snorri with a good deal of originality in the telling of this particular tale. Although the sequence of events leading up to, and following on from, Baldr’s death is absolutely central to

Gylfaginning’s eschatological progression, because it ultimately precipitates Ragnarok, there is no eddic text which narrates precisely the same story. There is only one verse cited in the sequence prior to the extensive quotation of Voluspá which accompanies the prose’s account of the events at the end of the world: this stanza, in which Þokk refuses to weep Baldr out of Hel, is not part of any known eddic poem. In the Codex Regius, Hermóðr is nowhere even named: he appears, paired with the human hero Sigmundr, only in Hyndluljóð 2, which is found in

Flateyarbók:

Biðiom Heriafoðr í hugom sitia! hann geldr og gefr gull verðugom; gaf hann Hermóði hiálm oc brynio,

3 _{Called the ‘best of horses’ (because he has eight legs) by Snorri at SnE I, 17: ‘Sleipnir}

er baztr – hann á Óðinn, hann hefir átta foetr’, and in Grímnismál 44: Ascr Yggdrasils, hann er œztr viða / enn Scíðblaðnir scipa / Óðinn ása, enn ióa Sleipnir (‘The ash Yggdrasil, that is the best of trees, and Scíðblaðnir of ships; Óðinn of the Æsir and Sleipnir of horses.’) Snorri quotes this stanza in Gylfaginning (SnE I, 34).

The Imaginary Landscape of Hel 176

enn Sigmundi sverð at þiggia.4

Hermóðr, as we have seen, also welcomes Hákon into Valholl in stanza 14 of Eyvindr’s Hákonarmál, in which he is paired with Bragi, the mythical poet-god, who, it might be argued, is not numbered among the ‘official’ total of the Æsir: Bragi and Sigmundr are ‘elevated humans’, in John Lindow’s term, rather than gods in the true sense of the word.5 Whatever the truth of the matter, Hermóðr barely features in pre- Christian poetry, despite the centrality of his role to the narrative of Baldr’s death as told in Gylfaginning. In post-conversion skaldic verse, there is one text which mentions Hermóðr, and which associates him closely with Baldr’s death. This is stanza 9 of the Málsháttakvæði, a poem which is usually dated to the early thirteenth century.6

Friggjar þótti svipr at syni sá var taldr ór miklu kyni, Hermóðr vildi auka aldr Éljúðnir vann sólginn Baldr, oll grétu þau eptir hann, aukit var þeim hlátrar bann, heyrinkunn er frá hónum saga,

4 _{‘Let us ask to sit in the lord of hosts’ affection! He pays and gives out gold to the}

deserving; he gave Hermóðr a helmet and corselet as a gift, and to Sigmundr a sword.’

Hyndluljóð is probably one of the later compositions in the Codex Regius collection: it is usually dated to the twelfth century, and Simek and Hermann Pálsson, Lexikon, p. 186, argue that it can hardly have originated before the so-called Icelandic renaissance of the latter half of that century. See also Gurevich, ‘Hyndluljóð’.

5 _{Lindow, Murder and Vengeance, pp. 103-5. Lindow emphasises that the relationship}

between Óðinn and Hermóðr alluded to in the Codex Regius version of Snorra Edda

(SnE I, 46: ‘En sá er nefndr Hermóðr inn hvati, sveinn Óðins, er til þeirar farar varð’ (‘Hermóðr the bold, Óðinn’s boy, is the name of the one who undertook this journey’)), is ambiguously described. Sveinn could mean ‘son’, or it could imply ‘servant’.

The Imaginary Landscape of Hel 177

hvat þarf ek of slíkt at jaga.7

All the principals of Snorri’s story are included here: Eljúðnir is the name given to Hel’s hall in Gylfaginning (SnE I, p. 27). Frigg initiates Hermóðr’s quest to Hel, Baldr is the object of the quest, and Hermóðr the character that rises to the challenge. The phrase oll grétu þau eptir hann

implies that Hel’s conditions for the release of Baldr were the same as in Snorri’s account; essentially, then, this stanza agrees in its outline with the events Gylfaginning describes in the aftermath of Baldr’s death. It does not, however, contain any of the details of Hermóðr’s hel-ride which make Snorri’s narrative so richly atmospheric. The Málshættakvæði-poet seems to imply that his tale was sufficiently well known for him not to have to elaborate on this verse (lines 7-8). While there is no reason to doubt it, the evidence for knowledge of the myth is hardly widespread, and is only found in works by Christian Icelanders, working a full two centuries after the conversion.

The discrepancy between the paltry number of references to the mythological fiction of Hermóðr in Hel and its apparent importance to Snorri’s conception of the mythology has led some scholars to postulate the existence of an eddic poem, now lost, on which Snorri drew in the composition of his narrative. The stanza which Þokk speaks has sometimes been regarded as the sole remnant of this poem, which Schröder – whose opinion was that the Codex Regius currently lacks two necessary and integral poems: one on Baldr’s death, as well as one which described ‘Hermods Helfahrt’ – chose to call for Hermóðs. By analogy with the Þokk-stanza, Schröder hypothesised a dialogic form of poem in

málaháttr, which would have resembled Skírnismál.8 _{Richard Dieterle,} 7 _{Skjald B II, 140: ‘Frigg’s son seemed a loss, he was said to come from a great family;}

Hermóðr wished to increase his life, Eljúðnir managed to swallow Baldr, all wept for him, the ban on laughter was increased for them, the story about him is often heard, why should I harp on about this?’

8 _{Schröder, Germanentum und Hellenismus, pp. 96-102; see also Lindow, Murder and}

The Imaginary Landscape of Hel 178

too, has argued that ‘the myth belongs within the elder Eddic tradition, and is in fact a noninnovative and rather close prose translation of an earlier poem’: he identifies a ‘chiastic structure’ within Snorri’s narrative of the events surrounding Baldr’s death that may best be explained by a single lost poetic source for this whole section of Gylfaginning.9 _{Such a} hypothesis can of course never entirely be dismissed, but the burden of proof must rest with those who argue in favour of a lost eddic original. In the absence of such a text, the question that suggests itself is this: if Snorri himself is responsible for the fiction of Hermóðr’s hel-ride in its extant form, may we identify other sources for its mythological content and imagery, without taking the easier option of inventing a single poetic precursor? As we will see, there are enough significant parallels between Snorri’s iconography of Hel and both pagan and Christian traditions associated with death and the underworld to suggest that no one source would likely have contained all the necessary elements, and that – once again – Snorri’s strategy has been to synthesise disparate elements into a coherent whole.

THEVALLEY

The valleys through which Hermóðr rides for nine nights are hardly distinctive: they are deep, and they are dark – so dark, in fact, that Hermóðr rides blind for the duration of this part of his journey. Lindow points out that there are many examples in medieval Christian vision literature of travellers traversing dark spaces at the beginnings of their journeys. He also draws attention to the existence of a large dark valley in Dryhthelm’s vision and the Visio Tnugdali, both of which popular Latin

9 _{Dieterle, ‘The Song of Baldr’, p. 291; this view was shared by Olsen, ‘Om Balder-}

digtning og Balder-kultus’, p. 151. Bugge, Studier over de nordiske gude- og heltesagns oprindelse, p. 48, attempted to reconstruct a portion of Snorri’s supposed lost source.

The Imaginary Landscape of Hel 179

visions were translated into Old Norse.10 _{In fact, the deep or dark valley} is a standard part of the Christian visionary landscape, found in many of the most popular medieval descriptions of hell.11 _{Sometimes the valley is} understood to be hell, or to contain it, as in Bede’s account of Dryhthelm’s vision.

Incedebamus autem tacentes, ut uidebatur mihi, contra ortum solis solstitialem; cumque ambularemus, deuenimus ad uallem multae latitudinis ac profunditatis, infinitae autem longitudinis, quae ad leuam nobis sita unum latus flammis feruentibus nimium terribile, alterum furenti grandine ac frigore niuium omnia perflante atque uerrente non minus intolerabile praeferebat.12

The valley Dryhthelm sees has more than its impressive dimensions in common with that through which Hermóðr rides; later on in the description of his vision, it is the complete darkness that confronts him that causes Dryhthelm to panic:

At cum me hoc spectaculo tam horrendo perterritum paulatim in ulteriora produceret, uidi subito ante nos

10 _{Lindow, Murder and Vengeance, p. 117. The Visio Tnugdali is an Irish vision of}

heaven and hell dating from the mid-twelfth century that achieved great popularity during a period in which interest in this genre reached its zenith. Dryhthelm’s vision, which is supposed to have occurred in 731, is recorded by Bede in Historia Ecclesiastica

V.12.

11 _{For plentiful examples of the appearance of valleys in visions of hell see Patch, Other}

World, pp. 87, 95, and 100-33.

12 _{Bede’s Ecclesiastical History V.12, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, p. 488: ‘We went in}

silence in what appeared to be the direction of the rising of the sun at the summer solstice. As we walked we came to a very deep and broad valley of infinite length. It lay on our left and one side of it was exceedingly terrible with raging fire, while the other was no less intolerable on account of the violent hail and icy snow which was drifting and blowing everywhere.’

The Imaginary Landscape of Hel 180

obscurari incipere loca, et tenebris omnia repleri. Quas cum intraremus, in tantum paulisper condensatae sunt, ut nihil praeter ipsas aspicerem, excepta dumtaxat specie et ueste eius, qui me ducebat. Et cum progrederemur “sola sub nocte per umbras”, ecce subito apparent ante nos crebri flammarum tetrarum globi ascendentes quasi de puteo magno rursumque decidentes in eundem.13

Sola sub nocte per umbras is a quotation from Vergil’s Aeneid VI, line 268. Aeneas’s journey into the world of the shades became one of the most important archetypes for medieval underworld-descent narratives. Whether because of textual influence from Vergil or a simple shared conception of the infernal realm as a dark place (which is a perfectly straightforward extrapolation of the belief that hell was somewhere under the earth), many journeys of this nature begin with the visionary in a state of total darkness. Elsewhere in the Historia (III. 19) Bede records the vision of an Irishman named Fursa, whose trip to the otherworld includes an aerial view of ‘some sort of dark valley’: uidit quasi uallem tenebrosam subtus.14 _{Bede’s works did circulate in medieval Iceland in} some form, although it has been shown that the Old Norse version of Dryhthelm’s vision, translated in the fourteenth century, was known in Iceland through its inclusion in Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum historiale.15 _{A few scholars have regarded this sort of anecdotal material} 13 _{Ibid., p. 490: ‘When he had gradually led me further on, utterly terrified by this awful}

spectacle, I suddenly saw that the places in front of us began to grow dimmer until darkness covered everything. As we entered this darkness, it quickly grew so thick that I could see nothing else except the shape and the garment of my guide. As we went on “through the shades in the lone night”, there suddenly appeared before us masses of noisome flame, constantly rising up as if from a great pit and falling into it again.’

14_{Ibid., p. 272.}

15 _{Islendsk æyventyri, ed. Gering, p. 331. Bede was best known in Scandinavia for his}

chronological work, although homilies attributed (both accurately and spuriously) to him were also influential. There is no firm evidence to prove that the Historia Ecclesiastica was known in Iceland or Norway, although Benedikz, ‘Bede in the

The Imaginary Landscape of Hel 181

drawn from standard Latin authors – Gregory the Great is another whose works contain accounts of otherworld-visions that probably circulated in medieval Iceland – as potentially an important model for Snorri’s narratives in Gylfaginning.16 _{As Margaret Clunies Ross has put it, ‘only,} perhaps, in the Latin and translated vernacular exempla or illustrative anecdotes from hagiography, sermon literature, compendia of universal history and other learned genres, do we find a potential model for the kind of illustratory mythic narrative that Snorri uses so skilfully throughout the Edda’.17 _{In this case, however, the shared topographical} feature of a valley is not nearly sufficient to prove direct borrowing from Bede.

The phrase that narrates the initial phase of Hermóðr’s journey –

hann reið níu nætr døkkva dala ok djúpa – has been regarded as supporting the thesis of a pre-existing poetic source on stylistic grounds:

Uttermost North’, p. 340, speculates that Ari inn fróði and other early Icelandic historians might have had some knowledge of that text. Fry, ‘Bede’, p. 37, concluded that ‘medieval Scandinavians revered Bede for his reputation but had limited direct contact with his works’.

16 _{It is Gregory’s Dialogues which provide some of the most influential early examples of}

infernal visions. They were very popular throughout Europe, and Iceland was no exception to this trend. The Dialogues were certainly translated into Old Norse before 1190: their influence on ‘native’ Old Norse literature has often been suspected, and occasionally proven: see Wolf, ‘Gregory and Old Norse Religious Literature’, pp. 266-9; also Boyer, ‘Influence of Pope Gregory’s Dialogues’. Although no complete manuscript copy survives, there is plentiful evidence from book-lists and extant fragments that Gregory’s Dialogues circulated widely in Iceland. The remnants of eight fragments of an