Page:Norse mythology or, the religion of our forefathers, containing all the myths of the Eddas, systematized and interpreted with an introduction, vocabulary and index.djvu/272

 thirty-six rivers that issuing thence flow twelve to the abodes of the gods, twelve to the abodes of men, and twelve to Niflheim.

Ah! our ancestors were uncultivated barbarians, and that is proved by the life in Valhal, where the heroes ate pork and drank mead! But what are we, then, who do the same thing? Let us look a little more carefully at the words they used. Food they called flesh, and drink, mead,—expressions taken from life; but they connected an infinitely higher idea with the heavenly nourishment. Although but few know what the einherjes eat, we ought to know it. When we hear the word ambrosia, we think of a very fine nourishment, although we do not know what it was. In the Iliad (14, 170), it is used of pure water. The words used in the Norse mythology in reference to the food and drink of the gods are very simple, And-hrimner, Eld-hrimner, and Sæ-hrimner. Hrim (rime) is the first and most delicate transition from a liquid to a solid; hrimner is the one producing this transition. The food was formed, as the words clearly show, by air (and, önd, aande, breath), by fire (eld), and by water (sæ, sea). We have here the most delicate formation of the most delicate elements. There is nothing earthly in it. The fundamental element is water boiled by the fire, which is nourished by the air; and the drink is the clear stream, which flows from the highest abodes of heaven, the pure ethereal current, which comes from the distant regions where the winds are silent. Nay, we cannot even call it a drink, but it is the purest and most delicate breath of the air, that fills the lungs of the immortal heroes in Valhal.

A mighty band of men there is in Valhal, and Odin must indeed be a great chieftain to command such a