THE KING'S MIRROR 131 



rope, so that they may be ready and able to pull them 

 back if the turbulence of the current should make them 

 dizzy. Now it seems evident to me that wherever such 

 a great violence appears and in such terrible forms, there 

 surely must be places of torment. And God has made 

 such great and terrifying things manifest upon earth to 

 man, not only that men may be the more vigilant, and 

 may reflect that these tortures are indeed heavy to 

 think upon, although after they depart this life they 

 will have to suffer those that they see while still on 

 earth; but even more to make them reflect that greater 

 still are the things invisible, which they are not per- 

 mitted to see. But these things are a testimony, that it 

 is not untrue what we have been told, that those men 

 who will not beware of evil deeds and unrighteousness, 

 while they live on earth, may expect to suffer torment 

 when they leave this world. For many a simple-minded 

 man might think that all this was mere deception un- 

 worthy of notice and told merely to terrify, if there were 

 no such evidence as what we have now pointed out. But 

 now no one can deny what he sees before his own eyes, 

 since we hear exactly the same things about the tor- 

 tures of hell as those which one can see on the island 

 called Iceland: for there are vast and boundless fire, 

 overpowering frost and glaciers, boiling springs, and 

 violent ice-cold streams.* 



But what you suggested just now, namely that this 

 fire is likely to melt and consume the mountains and the 



* The belief that hell was a region of extreme cold as well as of heat was com- 

 mon in the middle ages. The author of the King's Mirror probably derived 

 his ideas of hell in part from the Old Norse version of the Elucidarium of 

 Honorius of Autun. See Annaler for nordisk Oldkyndighed, 1857, 292. 



