326 
The former passage seems to be genuine, the writer appearing 
to be conscious of a mightier Being than the nature-power- 
gods, who necessarily will be involved in the ruin of nature ; 
but the latter is more probably a Christian addition to the 
Voluspa, and is not found either in the oldest restored text 
or in the Copenhagen MS. Thorpe and Anderson, however, 
accept it. 
The wonderful kosmogony works out thus : — At the earliest 
period we can imagine, there existed the potentialities of heat 
and not-heat (Surtr being the personified genius of the former), 
and an unknown power the Heat- sender. The combination of 
heat and not-heat, which was arranged by the Heat- sender, 
produced Chaos, which has two great aspects, (1) an evil one, 
as being the opponent of order, and hence of light and good — 
Ymir ; (2) a good one, as the mother and precursor of a better 
state of things — Audhumbla.* Hence, under the influence of 
Audhumbla, appears a being in human form, a father (Buri), 
who forms a triad with a son (Bor), and personified Desire 
(Bestla), i.e.j wish to benefit all things, godlike love. From 
these spring a second triad, Odhinn, Vili, and Ye, i.e. } the 
pervading will of the Sacred One, which makes Chaos into 
Kosmos, so that both Ymir and Audhumbla pass away. Buri, 
Bor, and Bestla, have no history ; they are not personages, 
but anthropomorphic expressions by which man's struggling 
sense endeavours dimly to indicate the progress of divine 
energy in the universe. Yili and Ye are likewise only expres- 
sions and personifications of the same sacred action ; but 
Odhinn is a personage to the mind of the Norseman, and so 
rises higher in the religious scale, and becomes identified with 
the All-Father, the Asa-Asura, Zeus-Tyr. Yggdrasil is a 
pictorial representation of the present kosmos, or orderly 
heaven and earth ; and as the Alfadir fills these, so he is said 
to hang upon Yggdrasil.f This is the grand meaning of the 
mysterious verse in which Odhinn declares 
* The nourishing power (cow) through motion (salt) produced hair, head 
and human form ; or vegetable, intellectual, and animal life (vide Thorpe, 
Northern Mythology , i. 140). 
f “ This mighty ash-tree in Grimm’s belief is only another form of the 
colossal Irminsul, the pillar which sustains the whole Kosmos, as Atlas bears 
up the heaven. Virgil speaks of the ash-tree as stretching its roots as far 
down into earth as its branches soar towards heaven” (Sir G. W. Cox, 
Mythology of the Aryan Nations , ii. 19). “ According to the old scholiast 
on Adam of Bremen such a tree [ i.e . with three roots] — which was green both 
summer and winter — stood near the ancient temple at Upsala ; near which 
was the sacred spring, into which the offerings were sunk ” (Thorpe, Northern 
Mythology, i. 155). Thorpe adds, u The myth is both Indian and Lamaic. 
The tree of life gathers around it all higher creatures in one worship, as 
the earthly offering-tree assembled all followers of the same faith under 
its overshadowing branches.”) 
