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/404

 times, followed their master on the funeral pile, the motive must have been that they would continue to serve him in the future life, or their throwing themselves on their master's funeral pile could have no meaning whatever.

The old Norsemen had many beautiful ideas in connection with death. Thus in the lay of Atle it is said of him who dies that he goes to the other light. That the dead in the mounds were a state of consciousness is illustrated by the following passages from Fridthiof's Saga:

Now, children, lay us in two lofty graves Down by the sea-shore, near the deep-blue waves: Their sounds shall to our souls be music sweet, Singing our dirge as on the strand they beat.

When round the hills the pale moonlight is thrown And midnight dews fall on the Bautn-stone, We'll sit, O Thorsten, in one rounded graves And speak together o'er the gentle waves.

Finally, it is a beautiful thought that there was a sympathetic union between the dead and the living. As the Persians believed that the rivers of the lower world grew by the tears of the living and interfered with the happiness of the departed, so the Norse peasant still believes that when a daughter weeps for the death of her father she must take care that no tear falls on his corpse, for thereby the peace of the deceased would he disturbed. We find this same thought expressed in the Elder Edda, where Helge says to Sigrun:

Thou alone causest, Sigrun From Sevafjeld, That Helge is bathed In sorrow's dew.