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PROSE EDDA

afterward, when all the world is burned, and dead are all the gods and all the champions and all mankind? Have ye not said before, that every man shall live in some world throughout all ages?" Then Thridi answered: "In that time the good abodes shall be many, and many the ill; then it shall be best to be in Gimlé in Heaven. Moreover, there is plenteous abundance of good drink, for them that esteem that a pleasure, in the hall which is called Brimir: it stands in Ókólnir. That too is a good hall which stands in Nida Fells, made of red gold; its name is Sindri. In these halls shall dwell good men and pure in heart.

"On Nástrand[1] is a great hall and evil, and its doors face to the north: it is all woven of serpent-backs like a wattle-house; and all the snake-heads turn into the house and blow venom, so that along the hall run rivers of venom; and they who have broken oaths, and murderers, wade those rivers, even as it says here:

I know a hall standing    far from the sun,
In Nástrand: the doors;    to northward are turned;
Venom-drops fill    down from the roof-holes;
That hall is bordered    with backs of serpents.
There are doomed to wade    the weltering streams
Men that are mansworn,    and they that murderers are.

But it is worst in Hvergelmir:

There the cursed snake    tears dead men's corpses."

LIII. Then spake Gangleri: "Shall any of the gods live

  1. Strand of the Dead.