which are said in our 'Draumekvædi' to lie in the neighbourhood of the Gjallar-bridge, and into which the wicked sink.[1]
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Hög'e æ den Gjallarbrui, |
High is the Gjallar-bridge; it hangs, |
In Denmark, too, popular legend speaks of these hell-bogs or hell-mosses. Thus it seems that here again we can trace the influence of the ancient Scandinavians, to whom the conception of such penitential swamps in the under-world no doubt came from the ecclesiastical vision-fictions of the middle ages.
When kaiak-men are at sea, they believe themselves to be surrounded by the so-called ignerssuit (the plural of ignerssuak, which means 'great fire'). These are for the most part good spirits, inclined to help men. The entrance to their dwellings is on the sea shore. 'The first earth which came into existence had neither seas nor mountains, but was quite smooth. When the One above was displeased with the people upon it, he destroyed the world. It burst open, and the people fell down into the rifts and
