ow as
a thread or a knife-edge, reappear, sometimes in the same words, in
mediaeval legends of journeys to the under world. In an old ballad of
the north of England mention is made of 'the bridge of dread no wider
than a thread.' Tundal sees in purgatory a narrow bridge over a horribly
deep, dark, and malodorous valley, and so forth. The oldest appearance
in legendary literature of this hell-bridge is in Pope Gregory the
Great's Dialogues, dating from the year 594 (lib. iv. cap. 36).[99] But
these mediaeval conceptions, in their turn, are indubitably  by
Oriental traditions. The Jews speak of the thread-like hell-bridge,
and the Mahommedans believe that in the middle of hell all souls must
pass over a bridge narrower than a hair, sharper than a sword, and
darker than night.[100] According to the Avesta, the souls of the old
Parsees, on the third night after death, had to cross the 'high Hara'--a
mountain which surrounds the earth and reaches right to heaven--in order
to arrive at the Tsjinvat-bridge which is guarded by two dogs. In the
Pehlevi writings, this bridge is said to widen out to nearly a parasang
when the souls of the pious pass over it, but it narrows in before the
ungodly until they topple down into hell, which lies right under.[101]

An analogous conception is found (compare Sophus Bugge, _op. cit._) in
the old folk-song 'Draumekvaedi,' as to the Gjallar-bridge on the way to
the land of the dead. It hangs high in air so that one grows dizzy upon
it ('Gjallarbrui, hon henge saa hoegt i vinde'), and in some variants of
the song it is expressly stated to be narrow, whilst in others it is
said to be 'both steep and broad.' In the Eddas we are told that Hermod,
on the way to Hel, rode over the Gjallar-bridge, which was roofed with
shining gold, and which thundered under his horse's hoofs not less than
if five squadrons of dead men (that is to say 250) had been passing over
it.

It seems probable that this belief of the Greenlanders in a narrow
bridge or pass must be  by these European, or partly Oriental,