Ice River

The **Ice River** (Danish: *Isfloden*) is a river in Hell, whose waters turn anything to ice the moment it touches it. It is long, wide and flows to the right of the devil city, in front of the mountains that form the wall encircling Hell. The Ice River marks the end of Hell, and on the other side of it the Purgatory mountain located, which is made entirely of everlasting black fire, which lights the grooved mountainsides with a strange dark-light, that glitters like the darkness between the stars in the sky, and creates odd white shadows in the rocky crevasses.

The Ice River is long, winding, wide, black, deep and flows steadily. The water in the river does not behave naturally. It looks cold, and is in fact even colder than ice. Though it never freezes itself, it freezes anything else that touches it instantly. It is dark, thick as oil, smooth as a mirror and is completely still, with no waves or ripples disturbing it. If something falls into the water, there is no splash as it hits the surface, and no rings or ripples, but the river simply absorbs the thing as thick oil and then becomes smooth as a river again.

In addition to being Hell's border, the Ice River is used as a place of punishment for condemned liars, frauds, and traitors, people who come with friendship in one hand and a blunt knife in the other. It is the voices of these condemned, golden as honey, that thicken and darken the water of the river. In the ice cold water the condemned drift as dark figures. Their bodies are frozen blue. From time to time a condemned may drift to the surface, and when a part of their body break through the surface, it is thawed. As soon as they sink again, their body is completely frozen once more. Their frozen bodies make them heavy as statues, which causes them to sink and mostly remain below the surface of the Ice River.

There are no bridges across the river, as otherwise the condemned would attempt to flee, as Hell does not reach further than opposite bank of the Ice River. The Ice River is guarded by a river demon called Geryon, who will also swim people across the river on his back, if their words are honest.

## Known condemned in the Ice River

* Judas Iscariot, the man and disciple who betrayed Jesus for thirty silver coins.
* Delilah, the woman who tempted Samson to tell her the secret that his superhuman strength lay in his hair, and then ordered her servants to cut it off. Delilah alternates repeatedly between the Ice River and Maim Street, as punishment for her many crimes, including many previous betrayals commited against Samson, her lover. She is kept in the river until her hair has grown long and thick and then she ius sent to Maim Street, where is trampled on, until her hair is gone and her scalp bleeds, then she goes back to the river and this procedure will be repeated forever.

## Appearances

### *The Great Devil War*

* *The Devil's Apprentice* (not named)
* *The Die of Death*

## Background

### Dante Alighieri's *Divine Comedy*

The Ice River is a reference to the lake Cocytus which appears in Dante Alighieri's epic poem *The Divine Comedy*, more precisely in the first canto, *Inferno*, or *Hell*. Dante in turn based his lake on the river Cocytus from Greek mythology, which flows through the Greek underworld of Hades, but he chose to change it to a frozen lake, even though it is described as originating in the same place as his other infernal rivers, the tears of a statue called the Old Man of Crete, which represents the sins of humanity. The other rivers are also based on the rivers of Hades in Greek myth (except Eunoë). These rivers, including Cocytus, also make appearances in *The Great Devil War*, and are all located in Hades. Dante places the lake in the 9th and lowest circle of his Hell. Here, Dante, and his guide Virgil, is placed by the giant Antaeus, and at the rim of the lake they find several other giants who stand chained. Antaeus are not chained, as he died before the Gigantomachy, the war between the Olympian gods and the giants. Like the Ice River, the lake Cocytus is described as the home of condemned traitors, and in addition people guilty of complex fraud. Depending on the form of treachery, the inhabitants are buried in ice in varying degrees, anywhere from to the neck to being completely submerged in ice. Cocytus is divided into four descending "rounds", or sections:

* Caina, after the Biblical Cain. For those who commit treachery against blood relatives.
* Antenora, after Antenor from the *Iliad*.For those who commit treachery against their country.
* Ptolemea, efter Ptolemy, the Maccabee lord and governor of Jericho, who murdered his guests (1 Book of Macabees, The Hebrew Bible). For those who commit treachery against guests. Here it is said that a soul of a traitor may sometimes fall to Hell before Atropos cuts the thread and pushes them, and their body is taken over by a friend.
* Judecca, after Judas Iscariot. For those who commit treachery gainst their masters and benefactors.

Dante places his Satan in the center of the circle, in the middle of the lake Cocytus, buried to the waist in ice. He is described as having three faces and mouths. The central mouth gnaws on Judas Iscariot, head foremost with the feet protruding while Satan's claws tears his back, and in the mouths at the sides he gnaws on Brutus and Cassius, the leading assassins of Julius Caesar, foremost on their feet with their heads protruding. Under each chin Satan flaps a pair of wings, which only creates even colder winds in Cocytus, and further imprisons him and the other traitors. Like at Ice River in *The Great Devil War*, Purgatory is located beyond the ice lake of Cocytus, or rather below it. By climbing down Satan's back, Dante and Virgil travels through the center of Earth, whereafter they continue up through the southern part of the globe and comes out on the surface at the southern hemisphere, where they find Purgatory, which, like in *The Great Devil War*, is depicted as a mountain.

The guardian of the Ice River, Geryon, is based on a monster that also appears in Dante's *Inferno*, and who bear the same name. Dante's Geryon dwells in the shadowed depths between the 7th and 8th circle of Hell, which is the abode of the condemned guilty of violence and simple fraud respectively.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Kenneth B. Andersen. *The Die of Death*. Høst & Søn, October 19, 2018 (English print-on-demand paperback). Høst & Søn, October 11 2018 (English e-book). (Original Danish version published August 31, 2007 by Høst & Søn)
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Kenneth B. Andersen. *The Devil's Apprentice*. Høst & Søn, October 19, 2018 (English print-on-demand paperback). Høst & Søn, October 11 2018 (English e-book). (Original Danish version published September 30, 2005 by Høst & Søn)