Chapter XXXVIII: Section III: Heimdal. (heimdallr)

Heimdal is the son of Odin, and is called the white god (_hvíti áss_, the pure, innocent god). He is the son of nine virgins, who were sisters, and is a very sacred and powerful deity. Thus he says in the Elder Edda:

Born was I of mothers nine,
Son I am of sisters nine.

He also bears the appellation of the gold-toothed, for his teeth were of pure gold, and the appellation Hallinskide (_hallinskiði_, the owner of the vaulted arch). His horse is called Gulltop (_goldtop_), and he dwells in Himminbjorg, the mountains of heaven, at the end of Bifrost, the rainbow. He is the warder of the gods, and is therefore placed on the borders of heaven to prevent the giants from forcing their way over the bridge. He requires less sleep than a bird and sees by night as well as by day a hundred miles around him. So acute is his ear that no sound escapes him, for he can even hear the grass growing on the earth and the wool on a sheep’s back. He has a horn called Gjallar-horn, which is heard throughout the universe. Thus the Elder Edda, in the lay of Grimner:

’Tis Himminbjorg called
Where Heimdal they say
Hath dwelling and rule.
There the gods’ warder drinks
In peaceful old halls
Gladsome the good mead.

Heimdal has a sword called Hofud (head); he figures at the death of Balder and appears in Ragnarok. Physically interpreted, Heimdal is the god of the rainbow, but the brilliant rainbow most beautifully symbolizes the favoring grace of the gods. The rainbow itself is called _ásbrú_ (asabridge) or Bifrost (the trembling way), and he who has seen a perfect rainbow can appreciate how this resplendent arch among all races has served as a symbol of peace, the bridge between heaven and earth, the bridge connecting the races of the earth with the gods. Did not God in Genesis set his bow in the cloud that it should be for a token of a covenant between him and the earth? And when our poor laboring masses get their taste cultivated for poetry, art, and mythological lore,—when they have learned to appreciate our common inheritance,—they will find that our Gothic history, folk-lore and mythology together form

A link
That binds us to the skies,
A bridge of _rainbows_ thrown across
The gulf of tears and sighs.[55]

In Greece we find the goddess Iris as the impersonation of the rainbow; while in the Bible the rainbow is not personified, and in no mythological system does the graceful divinity of the rainbow enter so prominently into the affairs of men as does our Heimdal. In the first verse of Völuspá, all mankind is called the sons of Heimdal, and this thought is developed in a separate lay in the Elder Edda, called Rigsmál, the lay of Rig (Heimdal), to which the reader is referred.