Then Gangleri asked, ‘What will be after heaven and earth and the whole world are burned? All the gods will be dead, together with the Einherjar and the whole of mankind. Didn’t you say earlier that each person will live in some world throughout all ages?’
And Third replied, ‘There will be, at that time, many good places to live. So also there will be many evil ones. It is best to be in Gimle in heaven. For those who take pleasure in good drink, plenty will be found in the hall called Brimir.1 It stands at the place Okolnir [Never Cold]. There is likewise a splendid hall standing on Nidafjoll [Dark Mountains]. It is made of red gold and is called Sindri [Sparkling]. In this hall, good and virtuous men will live. On Nastrandir [Corpse Strands]2 there is a large, foul hall whose doors look to the north. It is constructed from the spines of snakes like a house with walls woven from branches.3 The heads of all the snakes turn into the house, spitting venom so that a river of poison runs through the hall, and down it must wade those who are oath breakers and murderers. As it says here:
I know a hall, standing far from the sun on Corpse Strand. The doors face north. Poison drips in through the smoke hole. Walls of that hall are woven from snakes’ spines. There oath breakers and murderers wade through heavy streams.
(The Sibyl’s Prophecy. 38–39)
‘But the worst place is in Hvergelmir.
There Nidhogg torments the corpses of the dead.’
(The Sibyl’s Prophecy. 39)
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the hall called Brimir : In The Sibyl’s Prophecy Brimir is not the hall, but the name of the giant that owns the hall. The name Sindri, a few lines later, is the name of a dwarf. ↩
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Nastrandir [Corpse Strands] : The Old Norse word nár had two meanings. It meant corpse, that is, an actual dead body, but the word also had the more general meaning of a deceased person. With the second, more general meaning in mind, the Corpse Strands, that is, the beaches of the dead, might be another realm of the dead. Strand is plural in the prose and singular in the verse immediately following. ↩
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walls woven from branches : The text reads sem vandahús (like a wattle house), a building whose walls are made from poles and thin branches covered with mud. Here the wattle is live snakes. ↩