gelmir, where the serpent Nidhug ceased for a
moment gnawing the root of the tree Yggdrasil to feed upon their bones.

"A hall standing
Far from the sun
In Nastroend;
Its doors are northward turned,
Venom-drops fall
In through its apertures;
Entwined is that hall
With serpents' backs.
She there saw wading
The sluggish streams
Bloodthirsty men
And perjurers,
And him who the ear beguiles
Of another's wife.
There Nidhog sucks
The corpses of the dead."

Saemund's Edda (Thorpe's tr.).

Pestilence and Famine

Hel herself was supposed occasionally to leave her dismal abode to
range the earth upon her three-legged white horse, and in times of
pestilence or famine, if a part of the inhabitants of a district
escaped, she was said to use a rake, and when whole villages and
provinces were depopulated, as in the case of the historical epidemic
of the Black Death, it was said that she had ridden with a broom.

The Northern races further fancied that the spirits of the dead were
sometimes allowed to revisit the earth and appear to their relatives,
whose sorrow or joy affected them even after death, as is related
in the Danish ballad of Aager and Else, where a dead lover bids his
sweetheart smile, so that his coffin may be filled with roses instead
of the clotted blood drops produced by her tears.

"'Listen now, my good Sir Aager!
Dearest bridegroom, all I crave
Is to know how it goes with thee
In that lonely place, the grave.'

"'Every time that thou rejoicest,
And art happy in thy mind,
Are my lonely grave's recesses
All with leaves of roses lined.'

"'Every time that, love, thou grievest,
And dost shed the briny flood,
Are my lonely grave's recesses
Filled with black and loathsome blood.'"

Ballad of Aager and Else (Longfellow's tr.).

CHAPTER XX: AEGIR

The God of the Sea

Besides Nioerd and Mimir, who were both ocean divinities, the one
representing the sea near the coast and the other the primaeval ocean
whence all things were supposed to have sprung, the Northern races
recognised another sea-ruler, called AEgir or Hler, who dwelt either
in the cool depths of his liquid realm or had his abode on the Island
of Lessoe, in the Cattegat, or Hlesey.

"Beneath the watery dome,
With crystalline splendour,
In radiant grandeu