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The Heroes of Asgard: Tales from Scandinavian Mythology

by Annie Keary · English · Gutenberg #41283 · 343,903 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Heroes of Asgard: Tales from Scandinavian Mythology

Author: Annie Keary
        Eliza Keary

Illustrator: L. Huard


        
Release date: November 3, 2012 [eBook #41283]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEROES OF ASGARD: TALES FROM SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY ***

                THE
          HEROES OF ASGARD

 _TALES FROM SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY_


 BY A. & E. KEARY

 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY HUARD

 New York

 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

 LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

 1909

 _All rights reserved_


 New edition September, 1906. Reprinted July, 1909.

 Norwood Press:

 Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.




PREFACE.


In preparing the Second Edition of this little volume of tales from
the Northern Mythology for the press, the Authors have thought it
advisable to omit the conversations at the beginning and end of the
chapters, which had been objected to as breaking the course of the
narrative. They have carefully revised the whole, corrected many
inaccuracies and added fresh information drawn from sources they had
not had an opportunity of consulting when the volume first appeared.
The writers to whose works the Authors have been most indebted, are
Simrock, Mallet, Laing, Thorpe, Howitt and Dasent.




CONTENTS.


                                                            PAGE

 INTRODUCTION,                                                 9


 CHAPTER I. THE ÆSIR.

 PART I.--A GIANT--A COW--AND A HERO,                         41
     II.--AIR THRONE, THE DWARFS, AND THE LIGHT ELVES,        51
    III.--NIFLHEIM,                                           59
     IV.--THE CHILDREN OF LOKI,                               67
      V.--BIFRÖST, URDA, AND THE NORNS,                       72
     VI.--ODHÆRIR,                                            81


 CHAPTER II. HOW THOR WENT TO JÖTUNHEIM.

 PART I.--FROM ASGARD TO UTGARD,                             109
     II.--THE SERPENT AND THE KETTLE,                        130


 CHAPTER III. FREY.

 PART I.--ON TIPTOE IN AIR THRONE,                           147
     II.--THE GIFT,                                          152
    III.--FAIREST GERD,                                      157
     IV.--THE WOOD BARRI,                                    163


 CHAPTER IV. THE WANDERINGS OF FREYJA.

 PART I.--THE NECKLACE BRISINGAMEN,                          169
     II.--LOKI--THE IRON WOOD--A BOUNDLESS WASTE,            177
    III.--THE KING OF THE SEA AND HIS DAUGHTERS,             185


 CHAPTER V. IDŪNA'S APPLES.

 PART I.--REFLECTIONS IN THE WATER,                          191
     II.--THE WINGED-GIANT,                                  198
    III.--HELA,                                              212
     IV.--THROUGH FLOOD AND FIRE,                            218


 CHAPTER VI. BALDUR.

 PART I.--THE DREAM,                                         231
     II.--THE PEACESTEAD,                                    240
    III.--BALDUR DEAD,                                       247
     IV.--HELHEIM,                                           250
      V.--WEEPING,                                           256


 CHAPTER VII. THE BINDING OF FENRIR.

 PART I.--THE MIGHT OF ASGARD,                               263
     II.--THE SECRET OF SVARTHEIM,                           272
    III.--HONOUR,                                            279


 CHAPTER VIII. THE PUNISHMENT OF LOKI,                       285


 CHAPTER IX. RAGNARÖK.

 OR, THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS,                               295


 INDEX OF NAMES, WITH MEANINGS,                              315




List of Illustrations.


                                                            PAGE

 GIANT SUTTUNG AND THE DWARFS,                                86

 GIANT SKRYMIR AND THOR,                                     115

 FREYJA IN THE DWARFS' CAVE,                                 172

 IDUNA GIVING THE MAGIC APPLES,                              195

 SKADI CHOOSING HER HUSBAND,                                 227

 TYR FEEDING FENRIR,                                         265

 THE PUNISHMENT OF LOKI,                                     292




THE HEROES OF ASGARD.




INTRODUCTION.


If we would understand the religion of the ancient Scandinavians, we
ought to study at the same time the myths of all Teutonic nations. A
drawing together of these, and a comparison of one with another, has
been most beautifully effected by Simrock, in his _Handbuch der
Deutschen Mythologie_, where he tells us that whilst the Scandinavian
records are richer and more definite, they are also younger than
those of Germany, which latter may be compared to ancient half
choked-up streams from which the fuller river flows, but which, it is
to be remarked, that river has mingled in its flowing. Grimm says
that both religions--the German and the Northern--were in the main
identical, though in details they varied; and as heathenism lingered
longer in Scandinavia than in any other part of Europe, it is not
surprising that there, rather than anywhere else, we should find the
old world wants and hopes and fears, dark guesses, crude imaginings,
childlike poetic expressions, crystallised into a pretty definite
system of belief and worship. Yes, we can walk through the glittering
ice halls of the old frozen faith, and count its gems and wonder at
its fearful images; but the warm heart-reachings from which they
alike once flowed, we can only darkly feel, at best but narrowly pry
into here and there. Ah! if we could but break up the poem again into
the syllables of the far off years.

The little tales which follow, drawn from the most striking and
picturesque of the Northern myths, are put together in the simplest
possible form, and were written only with a design to make the
subject interesting to children. By-and-bye, however, as we through
their means become in a slight degree acquainted with the characters
belonging to, and the parts played by, the various deities of this
mythology, it will not be uninteresting to consider what their
meaning may be, and to try if we can trace the connection of one with
another. At present it seems best, as an introduction to them--and
without it they would be scarcely intelligible--to give a very slight
sketch of the Northern mythology, as it is gathered from the earliest
Scandinavian sources, as well as a short account of the sources from
which it is gathered.

Laing, in the introduction to his Translation of the Heimskringla
Saga, says,--"A nation's literature is its breath of life, without
which a nation has no existence, is but a congregation of
individuals. During the five centuries in which the Northmen were
riding over the seas, and conquering wheresoever they landed, the
literature of the people they overcame was locked up in a dead
language, and within the walls of monasteries. But the Northmen had a
literature of their own, rude as it was." Songs and sagas, mythical
and heroic, were the staple of this literature of the north; and
these appear to have been handed down by word of mouth from skald to
skald until about the beginning of the twelfth century. Then Sæmund
the Learned, and others, began to commit them to writing. Sæmund the
Learned was born in Iceland about the year 1057, fifty years after
Christianity had been positively established in that island. He
passed his youth in Germany, France, and Italy, studying at one time
with a famous master, "by whom he was instructed in every kind of
lore." So full, indeed, did Sæmund's head become of all that he had
learnt, that he frequently "forgot the commonest things," even his
own name and identity, so that when asked who he was, he would give
the name of any one he had been reading about. He was also said to be
an astrologer, and a charming little anecdote is related of him in
this capacity, which, however, would be out of place here. When he
went back to Iceland, he became priest of Oddi, instructed the people
about him, studied the old religion, and, besides writing a history
of Norway and Iceland, which has been lost, transcribed several of
the mythic and heroic songs of the North, which together form a
collection known by the name of the _Poetic_, _Elder_, or _Sæmund's
Edda_. The songs themselves are supposed to date from about the
eighth century; Sæmund wrote them down in the twelfth. The oldest
copy of his original MS. is of the fourteenth century, and this copy
is now in the Royal Library of Copenhagen. A few years ago they were
translated into English by B. Thorpe. So much for the history of the
_Elder Edda_--great-grandmother the name is said to mean, but after
all she scarcely seems old enough to be called a great-grandmother.
We have traced her growing up, and seen how she has dressed herself,
and we begin to think of her almost as a modern young lady. When we
listen to the odd jumble of tales she tells us, too, we are more than
half inclined to quarrel with her, though without exactly knowing
whether it is with her youth or her age that we find fault. You are
too young to know what you are talking about, great-grandmother, we
complain; but, oh dear! you mumble so and make use of such odd
old-fashioned words we can scarcely understand you. Sæmund was not
the only man who wrote down songs and sagas; he had some
contemporaries, many successors; and, about fifty years after his
death, we hear of Snorro Sturleson, a rich man, twice Supreme
Magistrate of the Icelandic Republic, who also lived for some time at
Oddi, and who has left many valuable additions to the stock of
Icelandic written lore. Laing says of him--"Snorro Sturleson has done
for the history of the Northmen, what Livy did for the history of the
Romans." Amongst other things, he wrote a sort of commentary or
enlargement of Sæmund's _Edda_, probably drawn from MSS. of Sæmund
and of others, which were preserved at Oddi. This is called the
_Prose_, _Younger_, or _Snorro's Edda_, and was translated many years
ago by M. Mallet into French. Added to these two sources of
information respecting the Scandinavian mythology, there are many
allusions to the myths scattered through the heroic lays with which
Northern literature abounds.

The _Poetic Edda_ consists of two parts--the mythological and the
heroic. The mythological songs contain an account of the formation
and destruction of the world, of the origin, genealogies, adventures,
journeys, conversations of the gods, magic incantations, and one lay
which may be called ethical. This portion of the _Edda_ concludes
with a song called "The Song of the Sun," of which it is supposed
Sæmund himself was the author. Thorpe, the English translator, says,
"It exhibits a strange mixture of Christianity and heathenism, whence
it would seem that the poet's own religion was in a transition state.
We may as well remark here that the only allusion to Christianity in
the _Elder Edda_, with the exception of this last song, which stands
quite alone, is a single strophe in an incantation:--

    "An eighth I will sing to thee,
    If night overtake thee,
    When out on the misty way,
    That the dead Christian woman
    No power may have to do thee harm."

Which savours curiously of the horror which these heathens then
evidently felt of the new faith.

The _Younger Edda_ is a very queer old lady indeed. She begins by
telling a sort of story. She says "there was once a King called
Gylfi, renowned for his wisdom and skill in magic;" he being seized
with a desire to know all about the gods, and wishing also to get his
information first-hand, sets off on a journey to Asgard itself, the
gods' own abode. When he gets there he finds a mysterious Three
seated upon three thrones--the High, the Equally High, and the Third.
The story-teller is supposed to have taken this picture from a temple
at Upsal, where the thrones of Odin, Thor, and Frey were placed in
the same manner, one above another. Gylfi introduces himself as
Gangler, a name for traveller (connected with the present Scotch word
gang), and proceeded to question the Three upon the origin of the
world, the nature and adventures of the gods, &c., &c. Gangler's
questions, and the answers which he receives, will, with reference to
the _Elder Edda_ tales, help us to get just the short summary we want
of the Scandinavian mythology--the mythology grown up and old, and
frozen tight, as we find it in the _Eddas_.

"What was the beginning of things?" asks Gangler; and Har (the
highest of the Three), replying in the words of an ancient poem,
says,--

    "Once was the age
    When all was not--
    No sand, nor sea,
    No salt waves,
    No earth was found,
    Nor over-skies,
    But yawning precipice
    And nowhere grass."

This nothingness was called Ginnungagap, the gap of gaps, the gaping
of the chasms: and Har goes on to relate what took place in it. On
the north side of Ginnungagap, he says, lay Niflheim, the shadowy
nebulous home of freezing cold and gathering gloom; but on the south
lay the glowing region of Muspellheim. There was besides a roaring
cauldron called Hvergelmir, which seethed in the middle of Niflheim,
and sent forth twelve rivers called the strange waves; these flowed
into the gap and froze there, and so filled the gap with ice: but
sparks and flakes of fire from Muspellheim fell upon the ice.
Ginnungagap on the north side was now filled with ice and vapour and
fleeting mists and whirlwinds, but southwards with glowing radiancy,
with calm and light and wind--still air; and so, continues Har, the
heat met the frost, the frost melted into drops, the drops quickened
into life, and there was a human form called Ymir, a giant. "Was he a
god?" asks Gangler. "Oh! dear no," answers Har; "we are very far
indeed from believing him to have been a god; he was wicked and the
father of all the Frost Giants." "I wonder what he ate?" said
Gangler. "There was a cow," Har went on to explain; "she was made out
of the drops, too, and the giant fed upon her milk." "Good," answered
Gangler; "but what fed the cow?" "She licked the stones of
Ginnungagap, which were covered with salt hoar frost;" and then Har
goes on to relate how by degrees a man, Bur, grew up out of the
stones as the cow licked them, good, not like Ymir, but the father of
the gods; and here we may remark that the giant and the god equally
were the sole progenitors of their immediate descendants. Ymir was
the father of the first giant, Bur had a son called Bör. But after
that the races mix to a certain extent, for Bör married a giantess
and became the father of three sons, Odin, Vili and Ve.

"Was there any degree of good understanding between these two races?"
asks Gangler. "Far from it," replies Har; and then he tells how the
sons of the god slew all the frost giants but one, dragged the body
of old Ymir into the middle of Ginnungagap, made the earth out of
it,--"from his blood the seas, from his flesh the land, from his
bones the mountains, of his hair the trees, of his skull the heavens
and of his brains the clouds. Then they took wandering flakes from
Muspellheim, and placed them in the heavens." Until this time, says
the _Völuspá_.

    "The sun knew not
    Where she a dwelling had,
    The moon knew not
    What power he possessed,
    The stars knew not
    Where they had a station."

About this time it happened that the sons of the god took a walk
along the sea-beach, and there found two stems of wood which they
fashioned into the first man and woman:--

    "Spirit gave them Odin
    Sense gave Hœnir
    Blood gave Lodin (Loki)
    And goodly colour."

After this it is said that the all-holy gods, the Æsir, the Lords,
went to their judgment seats, held council, and gave names to the
"night and to the waning moon, morn, midday, afternoon, and eve
whereby to reckon years." Then they built a city called Asgard in the
middle of the earth, altars and temples, "made furnaces, forged tongs
and fabricated tools and precious things;" after which they stayed at
home and played joyously with tables. This was the golden age of the
gods; they were happy. "To them," says the old song, "was naught the
want of gold, until there came three maids all powerful from the
giants."

In some mysterious way it appears that a desire for gold seized upon
the gods in the midst of their innocent golden play. Then they formed
the dwarfs, in order that these might get gold for them out of the
earth. The dwarfs till then had been just like maggots in Ymir's dead
flesh, but now received human likeness. A shadow begins to creep over
the earth, the golden age is past. At the same time three things
happen. The gods discover the use or want of gold; the first war
breaks out, as it is said, "Odin hurled his spear amid the people,
and then was the first war;" and the three all-powerful giant maids
appear. "Gold," says the old song (and calls her by a name as if she
were a person), "they pierced with lances,--

    "And in the High one's Hall
    Burnt her once,
    Burnt her thrice,
    Oft not seldom,
    Yet she still lives.
    Wolves she tamed,
    Magic arts she knew, she practised,
    Ever was she the joy
    Of evil people."

The three giant maidens are the three Fates--the sisters,--Past,
Present and Future. They came from giant land, which in this place
typifies the first mixed cause of all things; they came at the moment
when the golden age was disappearing; they stand upon the very edge
of its existence, at once the bringers and the avengers of evil. "The
golden age ceased when gold was invented," is an old saying. "After
the golden age, time begins," is another, or, in the words of a
German proverb, "To the happy no hour strikes." And now let us see
what sort of looking world these giants, gods, men, dwarfs and
fateful maids whom Har has been talking about were living in.

"Round without," Har says so; but a _flat_ round. The outmost circle
a frozen region full of frost giants; inside that circle, the sea; in
the middle of the sea, the earth in which men live, called Midgard,
and made out of Ymir's eyebrows; in the midst of the earth Asgard,
the city of the gods. It seems to be rather a disputed point whether
or not Asgard was on the top of a hill. Heavenly mountains are
mentioned in the _Edda_, but they are placed at the edge of heaven
under one end of the rainbow, not at all near Asgard, if Asgard was
in the middle of the earth. However, to make the city more
conspicuous we have placed it on the summit of a hill in the picture
of the Scandinavian World which stands at the beginning of this
chapter, and here remark that this picture must not be looked at
exactly in a geographical light even from a Scandinavian point of
view. It is rather an expression of ideas than of places, for we have
tried to figure by it what is said about the great World Tree
Yggdrassil and its three roots. "That ash," says Har, which was
indeed the earth-bearer, "is the greatest and best of all trees." Its
branches spread over the whole world and even reach above heaven. It
has three roots, very wide asunder. One of them goes down to
Ginnungagap. The frost giants live over it, and over this root is a
deep well which we shall hear more of by-and-bye. In the picture this
root could not be shown, but the branches which encircle the ice
region are supposed to spring from it. Another root extends to
Niflheim, the old roaring cauldron lies under it, a great snake
called Nidhögg gnaws it night and day as the old lay says.
"Yggdrasil's ash suffers greater hardship than men know of. Nidhögg
tears it." Under this root also lies Helheim, a home of the dead. The
third root is in heaven: gods and men live under it, in Asgard and
Midgard; the giant fate-sisters also live under it, at the top of the
Rainbow's arch in their palace very beauteous, which stands by the
Holy Urda Fount. They water the tree every day with the holy water,
so that ever "it stands green over Urda's Fount."

These maidens are called Norns;--they fix the destinies of men, Har
says; "but besides them," he adds, "there are a great many other
norns--indeed, for each man that is born there is a norn to decide
his fate."

"Methinks, then," says Gangler, "that these Norns were born far
asunder; they are not of the same race." "Some belong to the Æsir,
some come from the Elves, and some are dwarfs' daughters." Besides
these wonders, we are told that an eagle perched amongst the highest
branches of Yggdrasil with a hawk between his eyes, four harts ran
amongst the branches and bit off the buds, and a squirrel called
Ratatösk or branch borer ran up and down, carrying messages between
the Eagle and Nidhögg, as one account says, causing strife between
them--a kind of typical busybody, in fact.

Such is the myth of Yggdrasil, of which Jacob Grimm remarks "it bears
the stamp of a very high antiquity, but does not appear to be fully
unfolded." Of course, it was only the symbol of a thought, the
Scandinavians could not have believed that there was such a tree. But
of what thought was it the symbol? The editor of Mallet's _Northern
Antiquities_ says, "We are inclined to regard this mythic Tree as the
symbol of ever-enduring time, or rather of universal nature, ever
varying in its aspects but subsisting throughout eternity." It is
called somewhere "Time's hoary nurse," and we see the principles of
destruction and of renovation acting upon it. One root in the
formless elemental abyss, one in the formed ice-frozen-over
giant land, its branches spreading over the whole world; one
reaching up to the unseen. Its name means "Ygg"--terror, horror,
fear--"drasil"--horse or bearer--and the first syllable is one of the
names of Odin the chief god. We must not omit to mention that our
Maypoles and the German Christmas trees are offshoots of Yggdrasil,
"that ash, the greatest and best of trees."

"But who is the first and eldest of the gods?" Gangler asks. "We call
him Allfather," says Har, "but besides this he has twelve names."

Allfather, Odin or Woden, the eldest son of Bör by a giantess, is the
chief god of the _Eddas_, and it is quite true, as Har says, that he
has many names. He was called Allfather--the father of gods and men,
and Valfather or the chooser, because he chose which of the slain in
battle should come and live with him in heaven; he called himself by
many names when he travelled, he was known as Ygg, but generally,
chiefly, he was Odin. The meaning of the first syllable of this last
name is terror (like Ygg), or violent emotion. Simrock says that air
in calm or storm lies at the root of Odin's being; from this he grew
up to be a god of the spirit, a king of gods, "as in the simple ideas
of the people," he says, "nature and spirit are inseparable; he
became as much a commander of the spirits of men as of the forces of
nature." Air, widespread and most spiritual of the elements, how
naturally akin it seems to that wind, blowing where it listeth, which
moves in hidden ways the spirits of men. Inspiration, madness,
poetry, warrior-rage, the storm of wind, the storm of mind--we find
Odin in them all. Thor the thunder-god stood next in importance to
Odin. Odin was his father, and he had a giantess mother, Jörd (the
earth). Besides these Har enumerates Baldur, Tyr, Vidar, Vali, Hödur,
Bragi, all called sons of Odin;--we shall hear the stories that
belong to them by-and-bye.

All these were of the race of the Æsir or Asgard gods; there were
other deities counted amongst them, and yet kept a little
distinct--the Vanir gods and goddesses. These were of a different
race, and it is not clear how and when they became mixed with the
Æsir. What the _Eddas_ say about it is simply this, that the Æsir
made peace with the Vanir and exchanged hostages with them. Amongst
these we find Niörd a kind of sea-coast god, the original of Nipen
still known in Norway, his son and daughter Frey and Freyja,
"beauteous and mighty,"--Frey presiding over rain, sunshine, and the
fruits of the earth; Freyja goddess of the beautiful year and of
love, and Heimdall, a god who lived upon the heavenly hills at one
end of the rainbow. A sea-king called Ægir, whose nature is not
quite defined whether he belonged to the god or the giant is
occasionally mentioned in the _Edda_ tales, and also a wise giant
Mimer. But there is besides a mysterious being whom we name last
because he requires a little explanation. This is Loki. He was one of
the Æsir; we read of his being with Odin when that god took his
fateful walk along the seashore and made man, he helped Odin in the
work; we come upon him frequently travelling with the gods, sometimes
at least as a friend, and yet it is evident that Loki was looked upon
as an evil being. "Some call him the calumniator of the gods," says
Har, "the contriver of all fraud and mischief, the disgrace of gods
and men. Loki is handsome," he adds, "and well made, but of a very
fickle mood and most evil disposition. He surpasses all beings in
those arts called cunning and perfidy." Simrock says that fire lies
at the root of Loki's being as air lies in that of Odin,--fire which
has good and evil in it, but most outwardly _destructive_ power;
hence the beginning of the idea of his evil-heartedness. From simple
nature myths, it is quite easy to conceive that the moral principle,
as it grew up in a people, would develop spiritual ones, and the
character of the gods would materially alter with the growth of the
religion. Good and evil are scarcely conceptions which the wars of
the elements give birth to. By the law is the knowledge of sin. The
name of Loki, it is said, may mean the bright element.

Amongst the goddesses who were called Asyniur, Frigga stands out
chief in the _Eddas_ as Odin's wife, but several others are named,
and also the Valkyrior, swayers of the battle and heavenly serving
maidens. The peace between the Æsir and the Vanir, and the
perceptible difference between these races of gods, points to an
amalgamation of the religions of two tribes of Teutons in very early
times: their faiths would be similar, drawn indeed from one source,
but would have been modified by the circumstances and requirements of
the divergent tribes. Simrock supposes that the Vanir worshippers may
have been dwellers by the sea, and have had a special reverence for
wind and water deities--mild, wide, beneficent airs. Their gods are a
little milder in nature than those of Asgard, they are also more
purely nature deities, with less of the moral element in their
characters, which looks as if the two faiths had joined at different
stages of development, at different levels one may say, so that the
line between them is still discernible. We have seen how Har explains
to Gangler the formation of the universe in Ginnungagap out of the
strange ice waves; primeval giant; beneficent might of the gods; its
endurance, rooted in the mighty Tree, that reached from depth to
height,--

    "Laved with limpid water,
    Gnawed by more serpents
    Than any one would think
    Of witless mortals."

He had also something to say concerning the future of the world.
"What hast thou to tell me about it?" said Gangler; and Har
replied,--"In the first place there will come a winter;" and then he
described the destruction of the world--flood and storm, and ice and
fire, and warfare, a supreme conflict; all the powers of evil, the
chaotic powers--primeval chaos surging again out of Niflheim and
Muspellheim--on one side, the gods, the forming orderly principle of
the course of the universe, on the other--all rage within, and
through the mighty ash, which itself trembles, "Groans that aged
tree." Monsters and gods alike fall, killing each other, and one
cannot say with whom the victory lies; for though the sun, moon, and
stars are made away with, and the earth sinks into the flood, it soon
emerges again, "beauteously green," destined, as it would seem, to
run a second course. Brighter, purer? The account is so mixed that
one cannot say, and why should we puzzle over it; perhaps they knew
as little what they thought and hoped as we know about them--those
old song-singers and myth-spinners of days gone by, as one of them
says,--

    "Few may see
    Further forth
    Than when Odin
    Meets the wolf."

Notwithstanding, we cannot help feeling, as we contemplate this myth,
that there was something noble, very grimly courageous in its
fatalism. Simrock says, "the course of Northern mythology is like a
drama." The world's beginning, the golden years, the first shadow of
evil, evil that came with times, evil fated to come, the troubles of
various kinds, all death shadows which fell upon the gods (we shall
trace them in the following tales); and above all, hanging over all,
crowning all, the twilight, the struggle, the end, the renewing; for
it is not, be it observed, the end of the world, of time, of
succession of events that is recorded in this myth (called the
Ragnarök Myth), but rather of the struggling powers that had been
brought by these, that had formed these. Looking through this drama
two things chiefly strike us, fatalism and combat. The two do not
contradict one another. The gods fight the giants from the earliest
times; they go on fighting them in a thousand ways, even though they
know that their own final defeat and destruction are fixed--they ward
off the evil day as far as possible, hoping through its shadow again
and again, dauntless to the end. It is impossible to help admiring
the impulses which led to the building up, and dictated the worship
of this idea,--the worship of the gods who were to die, who were, in
spite of most courageous defiance of it, after all but the servants
of the inevitable. Of course it was perfectly simple and natural that
this conception of unceasing strife, of the alternate victory and
defeat of light and darkness, cold and heat, should arise in the
minds of any worshippers of the natural world, but it must, one would
think, have acquired some moral significance to these heathen
Northmen by the time that Odin had come to be Allfather, even
Valfather, and Frigga, through the nourishing earth, the lady of
married love and of the hearth. A good deal of this courageous spirit
of conflict and self-surrender comes into the Scandinavian myths and
heroic tales. We read of one of the gods' messengers, who, when
implored to desist from an undertaking because danger threatened,
replied, "For one day was my age decreed and my whole life
determined." In a lay of Odin, it says, "We ourselves die, but the
fair fame never dies of him who has earned it;" and this reminds us
of the Scandinavian custom of engraving the records of their warlike
deeds upon their shields. "When a young warrior was at first
enlisted," it is said, "they gave him a white and smooth buckler,
which was called the 'shield of expectation,' which he carried until
he had earned its record." It is related of one of the celebrated
Jomsburg sea-rovers called Bui, that finding himself defeated in an
engagement, and seeing that all further resistance was fruitless, he
took his treasure--two chests full of gold--and, calling out
"Overboard all Bui's men," plunged into the sea and perished. But
better far is the following:--"A warrior having been thrown upon his
back in wrestling with his enemy, and the latter finding himself
without arms, the vanquished person promised to wait without changing
his posture while the other fetched a sword to kill him, and he
faithfully kept his word."

Such traits as these lie on the light side of the Northern character,
pity that the other side is such a dark one. Craft, avarice,
cruelty--we cannot shut our eyes to them--cropping up everywhere, in
the stories of the gods, and still more frequently in the sagas whose
details are sometimes most revolting. Amongst other stories, we have
one of a young sea-rover, called Sigurd, by-the-bye, a son of that
very Bui mentioned above. Sigurd and his companions had been taken
prisoners, and were condemned to be beheaded. They were all seated on
a log of wood, and one after another had his head struck off, whilst
king Hakon their capturer looked on; the account says, that he came
out after breakfast to watch the execution. The sea-rovers all met
their fate with unflinching courage, and as the executioner asked
each one, before he struck the blow, what he thought of death, each
gave some fierce mocking answer; but when it came to Sigurd's turn,
and he was asked what he thought of death, he answered, "I fear not
death, since I have fulfilled the greatest duty of life, but I must
pray thee not to let my hair be touched by a slave, or stained with
my blood." The story tells us he had long fair hair, as fine as silk,
flowing in ringlets over his shoulders. One of the cruel king Hakon's
followers, being moved, it seems, either with pity for Sigurd's hair
or admiration of his courage, stept forward and held the ringlets
whilst the executioner struck, upon which Sigurd twitched his head
forward so strongly that the warrior who was holding his hair had
both his hands cut off, "and this practical joke so pleased the
king's son," continues the tale, "that he gave Sigurd his life."

"Thou tellest me many wonderful things," said Gangler; "what are the
names of the Homesteads in heaven?" In answer, Har tells him about
Odin's halls, and Thor's, and Baldur's, and Frigga's, and many
another bounteous, wide-spreading, golden-roofed mansion; amongst
them of Valhalla, which Odin had prepared especially for warriors who
fell in battle and who were thenceforth to be his sons, called
Einherjar, heroes, champions. "Methinks," said Gangler, "there must
be a great crowd in Valhalla, and often a great press at the door
among such a number of people constantly thronging in and out." "Why
not ask," says Har, "how many doors there are?--

    "Five hundred doors
    And forty eke
    I think are in Valhall.

"But what does Odin give the warriors to eat?" asked Gangler. "The
flesh of the good boar Sæhrimnir, and this is more than enough
(though few know how much is required for heroes), for in spite of
its being eaten every day it becomes whole again every night; truly
it is the best of flesh." "And what have the heroes to drink?" asked
Gangler "for they must require a plentiful supply; do they drink only
water?" "A silly question that," replied Har; "dost thou imagine that
Allfather would invite kings and jarls and other great men and give
them nothing to drink but water? In that case the heroes would think
they had paid dearly to get to Valhall, enduring great hardships and
receiving deadly wounds; they would find they had paid too great a
price for water drink. No, no, the case is quite otherwise, in
Valhall there is a famous goat that supplies mead enough for all the
heroes and to spare." "Mighty things these," said Gangler; "but how
do the heroes amuse themselves when they are not drinking?" "Every
day they ride into the court and fight till they cut each other in
pieces, this is their pastime; but when meal-tide approaches they
return to drink in Valhall." "Odin is great and mighty," answered
Gangler, "as it is said in one of the Æsir's own poems,--

    "The ash Yggdrasill
    Is the first of Trees,
    As Skidbladnir of ships,
    Odin of Æsir
    Sleipnir of steeds,
    Bifrost of bridges,
    Bragi of Bards,
    Habrok of hawks
    And Garm of hounds is."

"But do all the dead go to Valhalla?" No; down below in Niflheim
there was another home of the dead which was ruled over by the
underworld goddess Hela, and called after her Helheim. Coldness and
discomfort, according to one account, were rather its characteristics
than actual suffering; and as all the dead were said to go there who
died of sickness or old age, it was probably at one time regarded
more as a place of misfortune than of punishment. The cold,
hidden-away condition of the dead, separated from the bright, warm
life of the upper world, would naturally suggest their being
consigned to the keeping of some under-world deity, unless, indeed,
they could lay claim to a second higher life by virtue of any great
warlike deed done up here. By degrees misfortune must have deepened
into suffering; and, as the moral sense quickened, the idea would
arise of there being a retribution for misdeeds done on earth as well
as an emptiness of its missed glories. There is a description given
of some place of punishment--it is not quite clear what place it
refers to--in these words,--

    "A hall standing
    Far from the sun
    In Nastrond,
    Its doors turn northward,
    Venom drops fall
    Through its apertures;
    The Hall is twined
    With serpents' backs.

    There she saw wading,
    Through sluggish streams,
    Bloodthirsty men
    And perjurers;
    There Nidhög sucks
    The corpse of the dead
    The wolf tears men--
    Understand ye yet, or what?"

"Now," says Har; that was when he had finished his description of
Ragnarök, "If thou, Gangler, hast any more questions to ask, I know
not who can answer thee, for I never heard tell of any one who could
relate what will happen in the other ages of the world." "Upon
which," the story says, "Gangler heard a terrible noise all round
him; he looked everywhere, but could see neither palace, nor city,
nor any thing save a vast plain. He therefore set out on his return
home." And so disappears king Gylfi.

But we, who are not so presumptuous as to enquire into the future of
the ages, and are neither learned nor over inquisitive like king
Gylfi, will go on listening to the great-grandmothers' stories, giant
stories and god stories--a little bit that one remembers, and a
little bit that another remembers, and so on; and all the time we
will try to make the story tellers clear to one another and to
ourselves as they go on, translating their old fashioned words into
our own common every day words and modes of speech, so that we may
have at least a chance of understanding them.




CHAPTER I.

THE ÆSIR.


PART I. A GIANT--A COW--AND A HERO.

In the beginning of ages there lived a cow, whose breath was sweet,
and whose milk was bitter. This cow was called Audhumla, and she
lived all by herself on a frosty, misty plain, where there was
nothing to be seen but heaps of snow and ice piled strangely over one
another. Far away to the north it was night, far away to the south it
was day; but all around where Audhumla lay a cold, grey twilight
reigned. By-and-by a giant came out of the dark north, and lay down
upon the ice near Audhumla. "You must let me drink of your milk,"
said the giant to the cow; and though her milk was bitter, he liked
it well, and for him it was certainly good enough.

After a little while the cow looked all round her for something to
eat, and she saw a very few grains of salt sprinkled over the ice; so
she licked the salt, and breathed with her sweet breath, and then
long golden locks rose out of the ice, and the southern day shone
upon them, which made them look bright and glittering.

The giant frowned when he saw the glitter of the golden hair; but
Audhumla licked the pure salt again, and a head of a man rose out of
the ice. The head was more handsome than could be described, and a
wonderful light beamed out of its clear blue eyes. The giant frowned
still more when he saw the head; but Audhumla licked the salt a third
time, and then an entire man arose--a hero majestic in strength and
marvellous in beauty.

Now, it happened that when the giant looked full in the face of that
beautiful man, he hated him with his whole heart, and, what was still
worse, he took a terrible oath, by all the snows of Ginnungagap,
that he would never cease fighting until either he or Bur, the hero,
should lie dead upon the ground. And he kept his vow; he did not
cease fighting until Bur had fallen beneath his cruel blows. I cannot
tell how it could be that one so wicked should be able to conquer one
so majestic and so beautiful; but so it was, and afterwards, when the
sons of the hero began to grow up, the giant and his sons fought
against them, too, and were very near conquering them many times.

But there was of the sons of the heroes one of very great strength
and wisdom, called Odin, who, after many combats, did at last slay
the great old giant, and pierced his body through with his keen
spear, so that the blood swelled forth in a mighty torrent, broad and
deep, and all the hideous giant brood were drowned in it excepting
one, who ran away panting and afraid.

After this Odin called round him his sons, brothers, and cousins, and
spoke to them thus: "Heroes, we have won a great victory; our enemies
are dead, or have run away from us. We cannot stay any longer here,
where there is nothing evil for us to fight against."

The heroes looked round them at the words of Odin. North, south,
east, and west there was no one to fight against them anywhere, and
they called out with one voice, "It is well spoken, Odin; we follow
you."

"Southward," answered Odin, "heat lies, and northward night. From the
dim east the sun begins his journey westward home."

"Westward home!" shouted they all; and westward they went.

Odin rode in the midst of them, and they all paid to him reverence
and homage as to a king and father. On his right hand rode Thor,
Odin's strong, warlike, eldest son. On his left hand rode Baldur, the
most beautiful and exalted of his children; for the very light of the
sun itself shone forth from his pure and noble brow. After him came
Tyr the Brave; the Silent Vidar; Hödur, who, alas! was born blind;
Hermod, the Flying Word; Bragi, Hœnir, and many more mighty lords
and heroes; and then came a shell chariot, in which sat Frigga, the
wife of Odin, with all her daughters, friends, and tirewomen.

Eleven months they journeyed westward, enlivening the way with
cheerful songs and conversation, and at the twelfth new moon they
pitched their tents upon a range of hills which stood near the
borders of an inland sea. The greater part of one night they were
disturbed by mysterious whisperings, which appeared to proceed from
the sea-coast, and creep up the mountain side; but as Tyr, who got up
half a dozen times, and ran furiously about among the gorse and
bushes, always returned saying that he could see no one, Frigga and
her maidens at length resigned themselves to sleep, though they
certainly trembled and started a good deal at intervals. Odin lay
awake all night, however; for he felt certain that something unusual
was going to happen. And such proved to be the case; for in the
morning, before the tents were struck, a most terrific hurricane
levelled the poles, and tore in pieces the damask coverings, swept
from over the water furiously up the mountain gorges, round the base
of the hills, and up again all along their steep sides right in the
faces of the heroes.

Thor swung himself backwards and forwards, and threw stones in every
possible direction. Tyr sat down on the top of a precipice, and
defied the winds to displace him; whilst Baldur vainly endeavoured to
comfort his poor mother, Frigga. But Odin stepped forth calm and
unruffled, spread his arms towards the sky, and called out to the
spirits of the wind, "Cease, strange Vanir (for that was the name by
which they were called), cease your rough play, and tell us in what
manner we have offended you that you serve us thus."

The winds laughed in a whispered chorus at the words of the brave
king, and, after a few low titterings, sank into silence. But each
sound in dying grew into a shape: one by one the strange,
loose-limbed, uncertain forms stepped forth from caves, from gorges,
dropped from the tree tops, or rose out of the grass--each wind-gust
a separate Van.

Then Niörd, their leader, stood forward from the rest of them, and
said, "We know, O mighty Odin how you and your company are truly the
Æsir--that is to say, the lords of the whole earth--since you slew
the huge, wicked giant. We, too, are lords, not of the earth, but of
the sea and air, and we thought to have had glorious sport in
fighting one against another; but if such be not your pleasure, let
us, instead of that, shake hands." And, as he spoke, Niörd held out
his long, cold hand, which was like a windbag to the touch. Odin
grasped it heartily, as did all the Æsir; for they liked the
appearance of the good-natured, gusty chief, whom they begged to
become one of their company, and live henceforth with them.

To this Niörd consented, whistled good-bye to his kinsfolk, and
strode cheerfully along amongst his new friends. After this they
journeyed on and on steadily westward until they reached the summit
of a lofty mountain, called the Meeting Hill. There they all sat
round in a circle, and took a general survey of the surrounding
neighbourhood.

As they sat talking together Baldur looked up suddenly, and said, "Is
it not strange, Father Odin, that we do not find any traces of that
giant who fled from us, and who escaped drowning in his father's
blood?"

"Perhaps he has fallen into Niflheim, and so perished," remarked
Thor.

But Niörd pointed northward, where the troubled ocean rolled, and
said, "Yonder, beyond that sea, lies the snowy region of Jötunheim.
It is there the giant lives, and builds cities and castles, and
brings up his children--a more hideous brood even than the old one."

"How do you know that, Niörd?" asked Odin.

"I have seen him many times," answered Niörd, "both before I came to
live with you, and also since then, at night, when I have not been
able to sleep, and have made little journeys to Jötunheim, to pass
the time away."

"This is indeed terrible news," said Frigga; "for the giants will
come again out of Jötunheim and devastate the earth."

"Not so," answered Odin, "not so, my dear Frigga; for here, upon this
very hill, we will build for ourselves a city, from which we will
keep guard over the poor earth, with its weak men and women, and
from whence we will go forth to make war upon Jötunheim."

"That is remarkably well said, Father Odin," observed Thor, laughing
amidst his red beard.

Tyr shouted, and Vidar smiled, but said nothing; and then all the
Æsir set to work with their whole strength and industry to build for
themselves a glorious city on the summit of the mountain. For days,
and weeks, and months, and years they worked, and never wearied; so
strong a purpose was in them, so determined and powerful were they to
fulfil it. Even Frigga and her ladies did not disdain to fetch stones
in their marble wheelbarrows, or to draw water from the well in
golden buckets, and then, with delicate hands, to mix the mortar upon
silver plates. And so that city rose by beautiful degrees, stone
above stone, tower above tower, height above height, until it crowned
the hill.

Then all the Æsir stood at a little distance, and looked at it, and
sighed from their great happiness. Towering at a giddy height in the
centre of the city rose Odin's seat, called Air Throne, from whence
he could see over the whole earth. On one side of Air Throne stood
the Palace of Friends, where Frigga was to live; on the other rose
the glittering Gladsheim, a palace roofed entirely with golden
shields, and whose great hall, Valhalla, had a ceiling covered with
spears, benches spread with coats of mail, and five hundred and forty
entrance-gates, through each of which eight hundred men might ride
abreast. There was also a large iron smithy, situated on the eastern
side of the city, where the Æsir might forge their arms and shape
their armour. That night they all supped in Valhalla, and drank to
the health of their strong, new home, "The City of Asgard," as Bragi,
their chief orator, said it ought to be called.


PART II. AIR THRONE, THE DWARFS, AND THE LIGHT ELVES.

In the morning Odin mounted Air Throne, and looked over the whole
earth, whilst the Æsir stood all round waiting to hear what he
thought about it.

"The earth is very beautiful," said Odin, from the top of his throne,
"very beautiful in every part, even to the shores of the dark North
Sea; but, alas! the men of the earth are puny and fearful. At this
moment I see a three-headed giant striding out of Jötunheim. He
throws a shepherd-boy into the sea, and puts the whole of the flock
into his pocket. Now he takes them out again one by one, and cracks
their bones as if they were hazel-nuts, whilst, all the time, men
look on, and do nothing."

"Father," cried Thor in a rage, "last night I forged for myself a
belt, a glove, and a hammer, with which three things I will go forth
alone to Jötunheim."

Thor went, and Odin looked again.

"The men of the earth are idle and stupid," said Odin. "There are
dwarfs and elves, who live amongst them, and play tricks which they
cannot understand, and do not know how to prevent. At this moment I
see a husbandman sowing grains of wheat in the furrows, whilst a
dwarf runs after him, and changes them into stones. Again, I see two
hideous little beings, who are holding under water the head of one,
the wisest of men, until he dies; they mix his blood with honey; they
have put it into three stone jars, and hidden it away."

Then Odin was very angry with the dwarfs, for he saw that they were
bent on mischief; so he called to him Hermod, his Flying Word, and
despatched him with a message to the dwarfs and light elves, to say
that Odin sent his compliments, and would be glad to speak with them,
in his palace of Gladsheim, upon a matter of some importance.

When they received Hermod's summons the dwarfs and light elves were
very much surprised, not quite knowing whether to feel honoured or
afraid. However, they put on their pertest manners, and went
clustering after Hermod like a swarm of ladybirds.

When they were arrived in the great city they found Odin descended
from his throne, and sitting with the rest of the Æsir in the
Judgment Hall of Gladsheim. Hermod flew in, saluted his master, and
pointed to the dwarfs and elves hanging like a cloud in the doorway
to show that he had fulfilled his mission. Then Odin beckoned the
little people to come forward. Cowering and whispering they peeped
over one another's shoulders; now running on a little way into the
hall, now back again, half curious, half afraid; and it was not until
Odin had beckoned three times that they finally reached his
footstool. Then Odin spoke to them in calm, low, serious tones about
the wickedness of their mischievous propensities. Some, the very
worst of them, only laughed in a forward, hardened manner; but a
great many looked up surprised and a little pleased at the novelty of
serious words; whilst the light elves all wept, for they were
tender-hearted little things. At length Odin spoke to the two dwarfs
by name whom he had seen drowning the wise man. "Whose blood was it,"
he asked, "that you mixed with honey and put into jars?"

"Oh," said the dwarfs, jumping up into the air, and clapping their
hands, "that was Kvasir's blood. Don't you know who Kvasir was? He
sprang up out of the peace made between the Vanir and yourselves, and
has been wandering about these seven years or more; so wise he was
that men thought he must be a god. Well, just now we found him lying
in a meadow drowned in his own wisdom; so we mixed his blood with
honey, and put it into three great jars to keep. Was not that well
done, Odin?"

"Well done!" answered Odin. "Well done! You cruel, cowardly, lying
dwarfs! I myself saw you kill him. For shame! for shame!" and then
Odin proceeded to pass sentence upon them all. Those who had been the
most wicked, he said, were to live, henceforth, a long way
underground, and were to spend their time in throwing fuel upon the
great earth's central fire; whilst those who had only been
mischievous were to work in the gold and diamond mines, fashioning
precious stones and metals. They might all come up at night, Odin
said; but must vanish at the dawn. Then he waved his hand, and the
dwarfs turned round, shrilly chattering, scampered down the
palace-steps, out of the city, over the green fields, to their
unknown, deep-buried earth-homes. But the light elves still lingered,
with upturned, tearful, smiling faces, like sunshiny morning dew.

"And you," said Odin, looking them through and through with his
serious eyes, "and you----"

"Oh! indeed, Odin," interrupted they, speaking all together in quick,
uncertain tones; "Oh! indeed, Odin, we are not so very wicked. We
have never done anybody any harm."

"Have you ever done anybody any good?" asked Odin.

"Oh! no, indeed," answered the light elves, "we have never done
anything at all."

"You may go, then," said Odin, "to live amongst the flowers, and play
with the wild bees and summer insects. You must, however, find
something to do, or you will get to be mischievous like the dwarfs."

"If only we had any one to teach us," said the light elves, "for we
are such foolish little people."

Odin looked round inquiringly upon the Æsir; but amongst them there
was no teacher found for the silly little elves. Then he turned to
Niörd, who nodded his head good-naturedly, and said, "Yes, yes, I
will see about it;" and then he strode out of the Judgment Hall,
right away through the city gates, and sat down upon the mountain's
edge.

After awhile he began to whistle in a most alarming manner, louder
and louder, in strong wild gusts, now advancing, now retreating; then
he dropped his voice a little, lower and lower, until it became a
bird-like whistle--low, soft, enticing music, like a spirit's call;
and far away from the south a little fluttering answer came, sweet
as the invitation itself, nearer and nearer until the two sounds
dropped into one another. Then through the clear sky two forms came
floating, wonderfully fair--a brother and sister--their beautiful
arms twined round one another, their golden hair bathed in sunlight,
and supported by the wind.

"My son and daughter," said Niörd, proudly, to the surrounding Æsir,
"Frey and Freyja, Summer and Beauty, hand in hand."

When Frey and Freyja dropped upon the hill Niörd took his son by the
hand, led him gracefully to the foot of the throne, and said, "Look
here, dear brother Lord, what a fair young instructor I have brought
for your pretty little elves."

Odin was very much pleased with the appearance of Frey; but, before
constituting him king and schoolmaster of the light elves, he desired
to know what his accomplishments were, and what he considered himself
competent to teach.

"I am the genius of clouds and sunshine," answered Frey; and as he
spoke, the essences of a hundred perfumes were exhaled from his
breath. "I am the genius of clouds and sunshine, and if the light
elves will have me for their king I can teach them how to burst the
folded buds, to set the blossoms, to pour sweetness into the swelling
fruit, to lead the bees through the honey-passages of the flowers, to
make the single ear a stalk of wheat, to hatch birds' eggs, and teach
the little ones to sing--all this, and much more," said Frey, "I
know, and will teach them."

Then answered Odin, "It is well;" and Frey took his scholars away
with him to Alfheim, which is in every beautiful place under the
sun.


PART III. NIFLHEIM.

Now, in the city of Asgard dwelt one called Loki, who, though amongst
the Æsir, was not of the Æsir, but utterly unlike to them; for to do
the wrong, and leave the right undone, was, night and day, this
wicked Loki's one unwearied aim. How he came amongst the Æsir no one
knew, nor even whence he came. Once, when Odin questioned him on the
subject, Loki stoutly declared that there had been a time when he was
innocent and noble-purposed like the Æsir themselves; but that, after
many wanderings up and down the earth, it had been his misfortune,
Loki said, to discover the half-burnt heart of a woman; "since when,"
continued he, "I became what you now see me, Odin." As this was too
fearful a story for any one to wish to hear twice over Odin never
questioned him again.

Whilst the Æsir were building their city, Loki, instead of helping
them, had been continually running over to Jötunheim to make friends
amongst the giants and wicked witches of the place. Now, amongst the
witches there was one so fearful to behold in her sin and her
cruelty, that one would have thought it impossible even for such an
one as Loki to find any pleasure in her companionship: nevertheless,
so it was that he married her, and they lived together a long time,
making each other worse and worse out of the abundance of their own
wicked hearts, and bringing up their three children to be the plague,
dread, and misery of mankind. These three children were just what
they might have been expected to be from their parentage and
education. The eldest was Jörmungand, a monstrous serpent; the second
Fenrir, most ferocious of wolves; the third was Hela, half corpse,
half queen. When Loki and his witch-wife looked at their fearful
progeny they thought within themselves, "What would the Æsir say if
they could see?" "But they cannot see," said Loki; "and, lest they
should suspect Witch-wife, I will go back to Asgard for a little
while, and salute old Father Odin bravely, as if I had no secret
here." So saying, Loki wished his wife good-morning, bade her hide
the children securely in-doors, and set forth on the road to Asgard.

But all the time he was travelling Loki's children went on growing,
and long before he had reached the lofty city Jörmungand had become
so large, that his mother was obliged to open the door to let his
tail out. At first it hung only a little way across the road; but he
grew, Oh, how fearfully Jörmungand grew! Whether it was from sudden
exposure to the air, I do not know; but, in a single day he grew from
one end of Jötunheim to the other, and early next morning began to
shoot out in the direction of Asgard. Luckily, however, just at that
moment Odin caught sight of him, when, from the top of Air Throne,
the eyes of this vigilant ruler were taking their morning walk.
"Now," said Odin, "it is quite clear, Frigga, that I must remain in
idleness no longer at Asgard, for monsters are bred up in Jötunheim,
and the earth has need of me." So saying, descending instantly from
Air Throne, Odin went forth of Asgard's golden gates to tread the
earth of common men, fighting to pierce through Jötunheim, and slay
its monstrous sins.

In his journeyings Odin mixed freely with the people of the countries
through which he passed; shared with them toil and pleasure, war and
grief; taught them out of his own large experience, inspired them
with his noble thoughts, and exalted them by his example. Even to the
oldest he could teach much; and in the evening, when the labours of
the day were ended, and the sun cast slanting rays upon the village
green, it was pleasant to see the sturdy village youths grouped round
that noble chief, hanging open mouthed upon his words, as he told
them of his great fight with the giant of long ago, and then pointing
towards Jötunheim, explained to them how that fight was not yet over,
for that giants and monsters grew round them on every side, and they,
too, might do battle bravely, and be heroes and Æsir of the earth.

One evening, after thus drinking in his burning words they all
trooped together to the village smithy, and Odin forged for them all
night arms and armour, instructing them, at the same time, in their
use. In the morning he said, "Farewell, children; I have further to
go than you can come; but do not forget me when I am gone, nor how to
fight as I have taught you. Never cease to be true and brave; never
turn your arms against one another; and never turn them away from the
giant and the oppressor."

Then the villagers returned to their homes and their field-labour,
and Odin pressed on, through trackless uninhabited woods, up silent
mountains, over the lonely ocean, until he reached that strange,
mysterious meeting-place of sea and sky. There, brooding over the
waters like a grey sea fog, sat Mimer, guardian of the well where wit
and wisdom lie hidden.

"Mimer," said Odin, going up to him boldly, "let me drink of the
waters of wisdom."

"Truly, Odin," answered Mimer, "it is a great treasure that you seek,
and one which many have sought before, but who, when they knew the
price of it, turned back."

Then replied Odin, "I would give my right hand for wisdom willingly."

"Nay," rejoined the remorseless Mimer, "it is not your right hand,
but your right eye you must give."

Odin was very sorry when he heard the words of Mimer, and yet he did
not deem the price too great; for plucking out his right eye, and
casting it from him, he received in return a draught of the
fathomless deep. As Odin gave back the horn into Mimer's hand he felt
as if there were a fountain of wisdom springing up within him--an
inward light; for which you may be sure he never grudged having given
his perishable eye. Now, also, he knew what it was necessary for him
to do in order to become a really noble Asa,[1] and that was to push
on to the extreme edge of the earth itself, and peep over into
Niflheim. Odin knew it was precisely that he must do; and precisely
that he did. Onward and northward he went over ice-bound seas,
through twilight, fog, and snow, right onward in the face of winds
that were like swords until he came into the unknown land, where
sobs, and sighs, and sad, unfinished shapes were drifting up and
down. "Then," said Odin, thoughtfully, "I have come to the end of all
creation, and a little further on Niflheim must lie."

 [1] Asa--the singular of Æsir.

Accordingly he pushed on further and further until he reached the
earth's extremest edge, where, lying down and leaning over from its
last cold peak, he looked into the gulf below. It was Niflheim. At
first Odin imagined that it was only empty darkness; but, after
hanging there three nights and days, his eye fell on one of
Yggdrasil's mighty stems. Yggdrasil was the old earth-tree, whose
roots sprang far and wide, from Jötunheim, from above, and this, the
oldest of the three, out of Niflheim. Odin looked long upon its
time-worn, knotted fibres, and watched how they were for ever gnawed
by Nidhögg the envious serpent, and his brood of poisonous diseases.
Then he wondered what he should see next; and one by one spectres
arose from Naströnd, the Shore of Corpses--arose and wandered pale,
naked, nameless, and without a home. Then Odin looked down deeper
into the abyss of abysses, and saw all its shapeless, nameless ills;
whilst far below him, deeper than Naströnd, Yggdrasil, and Nidhögg,
roared Hvergelmir, the boiling cauldron of evil. Nine nights and days
this brave wise Asa hung over Niflheim pondering. More brave and more
wise he turned away from it than when he came. It is true that he
sighed often on his road thence to Jötunheim; but is it not always
thus that wisdom and strength come to us weeping.


PART IV. THE CHILDREN OF LOKI.

When, at length, Odin found himself in the land of giants--frost
giants, mountain giants, three-headed and wolf-headed giants,
monsters and iron witches of every kind--he walked straight on,
without stopping to fight with any one of them, until he came to the
middle of Jörmungand's body. Then he seized the monster, growing
fearfully as he was all the time, and threw him headlong into the
deep ocean. There Jörmungand still grew, until, encircling the whole
earth, he found that his tail was growing down his throat, after
which he lay quite still, binding himself together; and neither Odin
nor any one else has been able to move him thence. When Odin had
thus disposed of Jörmungand, henceforth called the Midgard Serpent,
he went on to the house of Loki's wife. The door was thrown open, and
the wicked Witch-mother sat in the entrance, whilst on one side
crouched Fenrir, her ferocious wolf-son, and on the other stood Hela,
most terrible of monsters and women. A crowd of giants strode after
Odin, curious to obtain a glance of Loki's strange children before
they should be sent away. At Fenrir and the Witch-mother they stared
with great eyes, joyfully and savagely glittering; but when he looked
at Hela each giant became as pale as new snow, and cold with terror
as a mountain of ice. Pale, cold, frozen, they never moved again; but
a rugged chain of rocks stood behind Odin, and he looked on fearless
and unchilled.

"Strange daughter of Loki," he said, speaking to Hela, "you have the
head of a queen, proud forehead, and large, imperial eyes; but your
heart is pulseless, and your cruel arms kill what they embrace.
Without doubt you have somewhere a kingdom; not where the sun shines,
and men breathe the free air, but down below in infinite depths,
where bodiless spirits wander, and the cast-off corpses are cold."

Then Odin pointed downwards towards Niflheim, and Hela sank right
through the earth, downward, downward, to that abyss of abysses,
where she ruled over spectres, and made for herself a home called
Helheim, nine lengthy kingdoms wide and deep.

After this, Odin desired Fenrir to follow him, promising that if he
became tractable and obedient, and exchanged his ferocity for
courage, he should not be banished as his brother and sister had
been. So Fenrir followed, and Odin led the way out of Jötunheim,
across the ocean, over the earth, until he came to the heavenly
hills, which held up the southern sky tenderly in their glittering
arms. There, half on the mountain-top and half in air, sat Heimdall,
guardian of the tremulous bridge Bifröst, that arches from earth to
heaven.

Heimdall was a tall, white Van, with golden teeth, and a wonderful
horn, called the Giallar Horn, which he generally kept hidden under
the tree Yggdrasil; but when he blew it the sound went out into all
worlds.

Now, Odin had never been introduced to Heimdall--had never even seen
him before; but he did not pass him by without speaking on that
account. On the contrary, being altogether much struck by his
appearance, he could not refrain from asking him a few questions.
First, he requested to know whom he had the pleasure of addressing;
secondly, who his parents were, and what his education had been; and
thirdly, how he explained his present circumstances and occupation.

"My name is Heimdall," answered the guardian of Bifröst, "and the son
of nine sisters am I. Born in the beginning of time, at the
boundaries of the earth, I was fed on the strength of the earth and
the cold sea. My training, moreover, was so perfect, that I now need
no more sleep than a bird. I can see for a hundred miles around me as
well by night as by day; I can hear the grass growing and the wool on
the backs of sheep. I can blow mightily my horn Giallar, and I for
ever guard the tremulous bridge-head against monsters, giants, iron
witches, and dwarfs."

Then asked Odin, gravely, "Is it also forbidden to the Æsir to pass
this way, Heimdall? Must you guard Bifröst, also, against them?"

"Assuredly not," answered Heimdall. "All Æsir and heroes are free to
tread its trembling, many-coloured pavement, and they will do well to
tread it, for above the arch's summit I know that the Urda fountain
springs; rises, and falls, in a perpetual glitter, and by its sacred
waters the Nornir dwell--those three mysterious, mighty maidens,
through whose cold fingers run the golden threads of Time."

"Enough, Heimdall," answered Odin. "Tomorrow we will come."


PART V. BIFRÖST, URDA, AND THE NORNS.

Odin departed from Heimdall, and went on his way, Fenrir obediently
following, though not now much noticed by his captor, who pondered
over the new wonders of which he had heard. "Bifröst, Urda, and the
Norns--what can they mean?"

Thus pondering and wondering he went, ascended Asgard's Hill, walked
through the golden gates of the City into the palace of Gladsheim,
and into the hall Valhalla, where, just then, the Æsir and Asyniur[2]
were assembled at their evening meal. Odin sat down to the table
without speaking, and, still absent and meditative, proceeded to
carve the great boar, Sæhrimnir, which every evening eaten, was
every morning whole again. No one thought of disturbing him by asking
any questions, for they saw that something was on his mind, and the
Æsir were well-bred. It is probable, therefore, that the supper would
have been concluded in perfect silence if Fenrir had not poked his
nose in at the doorway, just opposite to the seat of the lovely
Freyja. She, genius of beauty as she was, and who had never in her
whole life seen even the shadow of a wolf, covered her face with her
hands, and screamed a little, which caused all the Æsir to start and
turn round, in order to see what was the matter. But Odin directed a
reproving glance at the ill-mannered Fenrir, and then gave orders
that the wolf should be fed; "after which," concluded he, "I will
relate my adventures to the assembled Æsir."

 [2] Asyniur--Goddesses.

"That is all very well, Asa Odin," answered Frey; "but who, let me
ask, is to undertake the office of feeding yon hideous and unmannerly
animal?"

"That will I, joyfully," cried Tyr, who liked nothing better than an
adventure; and then, seizing a plate of meat from the table, he ran
out of the hall, followed by Fenrir, who howled, and sniffed, and
jumped up at him in a most impatient, un-Æsir-like manner.

After the wolf was gone Freyja looked up again, and when Tyr was
seated once more, Odin began. He told them of everything that he had
seen, and done, and suffered; and, at last, of Heimdall, that strange
white Van, who sat upon the heavenly hills, and spoke of Bifröst, and
Urda, and the Norns. The Æsir were very silent whilst Odin spoke to
them, and were deeply and strangely moved by this conclusion to his
discourse.

"The Norns," repeated Frigga, "the Fountain of Urd, the golden
threads of time! Let us go, my children," she said, rising from the
table, "let us go and look at these things."

But Odin advised that they should wait until the next day, as the
journey to Bifröst and back again could easily be accomplished in a
single morning.

Accordingly, the next day the Æsir and Asyniur all rose with the
sun, and prepared to set forth. Niörd came from Noatun, the mild
sea-coast, which he had made his home, and with continual gentle
puffings out of his wide, breezy mouth, he made their journey to
Bifröst so easy and pleasant, that they all felt a little sorry when
they caught the first glitter of Heimdall's golden teeth. But
Heimdall was glad to see them; glad, at least, for their sakes. He
thought it would be so good for them to go and see the Norns. As far
as he himself was concerned he never felt dull alone. On the top of
those bright hills how many meditations he had! Looking far and wide
over the earth how much he saw and heard!

"Come already!" said Heimdall to the Æsir, stretching out his long,
white hands to welcome them; "come already! Ah! this is Niörd's
doing. How do you do, cousin," said he; for Niörd and Heimdall were
related.

"How sweet and fresh it is up here!" remarked Frigga, looking all
round, and feeling that it would be polite to say something. "You are
very happy, Sir," continued she, "in having always such fine scenery
about you, and in being the guardian of such a bridge."

And in truth Frigga might well say "such a bridge;" for the like of
it was never seen on the ground. Trembling and glittering it swung
across the sky, up from the top of the mountain to the clouds, and
down again into the distant sea.

"Bifröst! Bifröst!" exclaimed the Æsir, wonderingly; and Heimdall was
pleased at their surprise.

"At the arch's highest point," said he, pointing upward, "rises that
fountain of which I spoke. Do you wish to see it to-day?"

"That do we, indeed," cried all the Æsir in a breath. "Quick,
Heimdall, and unlock the bridge's golden gate."

Then Heimdall took all his keys out, and fitted them into the diamond
lock till he found the right one, and the gate flew open with a sound
at the same time sad and cheerful, like the dripping of leaves after
a thunder-shower.

The Æsir pressed in; but, as they passed him, Heimdall laid his hand
upon Thor's shoulder, and said "I am very sorry, Thor; but it cannot
be helped. You must go to the fountain alone by another way; for you
are so strong and heavy, that if you were to put your foot on
Bifröst, either it would tremble in pieces beneath your weight, or
take fire from the friction of your iron heels. Yonder, however, are
two river-clouds, called Körmt and Ermt, through which you can wade
to the Sacred Urd, and you will assuredly reach it in time, though
the waters of the clouds are strong and deep."

At the words of Heimdall Thor fell back from the bridge's head, vexed
and sorrowful. "Am I to be sent away, then, and have to do
disagreeable things," said he, "just because I am so strong? After
all, what are Urda and the Norns to me, and Körmt and Ermt? I will go
back to Asgard again."

"Nay, Thor," said Odin, "I pray you, do not anything so foolish.
Think again, I beseech you, what it is that we are going to see and
hear. Körmt and Ermt lie before you, as Bifröst before us. It is
yonder, above both, that we go. Neither can it much matter, Thor,
whether we reach the Fountain of Urd over Bifröst or through the
cloud."

Then Thor blushed with shame at his own weakness, which had made him
regret his strength; and, without any more grumbling or hanging back,
he plunged into the dreadful river-clouds, whose dark vapours closed
around him and covered him. He was hidden from sight, and the Æsir
went on their way over the glittering bridge.

Daintily and airily they trod over it; they swung themselves up the
swinging arch; they reached its summit on a pale, bright cloud. Thor
was there already waiting for them, drenched and weary, but cheerful
and bold. Then, all together, they knocked at the door of the pale,
bright cloud; it blew open, and they passed in. Oh! then what did
they see! Looking up to an infinite height through the purple air,
they saw towering above them Yggdrasil's fairest branches, leafy and
of a tender green, which also stretched far and wide; but, though
they looked long, the Æsir could distinguish no topmost bough, and it
almost seemed to them that, from somewhere up above, this mighty
earth-tree must draw another root, so firmly and so tall it grew. On
one side stood the Palace of the Norns, which was so bright that it
almost blinded them to look at it, and on the other the Urda fountain
plashed its cool waters--rising, falling, glittering, as nothing ever
glitters on this side the clouds. Two ancient swans swam under the
fount, and around it sat Three. Ah! how shall I describe them--Urd,
Verdandi, Skuld. They were mighty, they were wilful, and one was
veiled. Sitting upon the Doomstead, they watched the water as it rose
and fell, and passed golden threads from one to another. Verdandi
plucked them with busy fingers from Skuld's reluctant hand, and wove
them in and out quickly, almost carelessly; for some she tore and
blemished, and some she cruelly spoiled. Then Urd took the woof away
from her, smoothed its rough places, and covered up some of the torn,
gaping holes; but she hid away many of the bright parts, too, and
then rolled it all round her great roller, Oblivion, which grew
thicker and heavier every moment. And so they went on, Verdandi
drawing from Skuld, and Urd from Verdandi; but whence Skuld drew her
separate bright threads no one could see. She never seemed to reach
the end of them, and neither of the sisters ever stopped or grew
weary of her work.

The Æsir stood apart watching, and it was a great sight. They looked
in the face of Urd, and fed on wisdom; they studied the countenance
of Verdandi, and drank bitter strength; they glanced through the veil
of Skuld, and tasted hope. At length, with full hearts, they stole
away silently, one by one, out by the pale, open door, re-crossed the
bridge, and stood once more by the side of Heimdall on the heavenly
hills; then they went home again. Nobody spoke as they went; but ever
afterwards it was an understood thing that the Æsir should fare to
the Doomstead of the Nornir once in every day.


PART VI. ODHÆRIR.

Now upon a day it happened that Odin sat silent by the Well of Urd,
and in the evening he mounted Air Throne with a troubled mind.
Allfather could see into Dwarf Home from his high place, as well as
over man's world; his keen eye pierced, also, the mountains and
darkness of Jötunheim.

On this evening, a tear, the fate-sisters' gift, swam across his
vision, and--behold, is that an answering tear which he sees down
there in Dwarf Home, large, luminous, golden, in the dark heart of
the earth? "Can dwarfs weep?" exclaimed Allfather, surprised as he
looked a second and a third time, and went on looking. Fialar and
Galar, the cunning dwarfs who had killed Kvasir, were kneeling
beside the tear. "Is it theirs?" said Allfather again, "and do they
repent?" No; it was not a tear; Odin knew it at last. More precious
still, it was Kvasir's blood--golden mead now, because of the
honey-drops from Earth's thousand bees and flowers which these
thoughtless mischief-schemers, but wonder workers, had poured into
it. "It is three," said Odin, "three precious draughts!--Odhærir is
its name--and now the dwarfs will drink it, and the life and the
light, and the sweetness of the world will be spilt, and the heart of
the world will die!" But the dwarfs did not drink it; they could only
sip it a little, just a drop or two at a time. The Father of Hosts
watched how they were amusing themselves.

Fialar and Galar, and a whole army of the little blackfaced,
crooked-limbed creatures, were tilting the big jars over to one side,
whilst first one, and then another, sucked the skim of their golden
sweetness, smacking their lips after it, grinning horribly, leaping
up into the air with strange gestures; falling backwards with shut
eyes some of them, as if asleep; tearing at the earth and the stones
of their cavern homes others, like wild beasts; rolling forth
beautiful, senseless, terrible words.

It was Fialar and Galar who did that; and behold, in a little while,
one after another, the dwarfs gathered round them as they spoke, and
listened, open-mouthed, with clenched fists, stamping, and roaring
applause until at last they seized the weapons that lay near, cocked
their earth caps, each alit with a coloured star, and marched in
warlike fashion, led on by Fialar and Galar, straight up through
their cavernous ways, to Manheim, and across it into the Frozen Land.

Giant Vafthrûdnir, that "Ancient Talker," he who sits ever in his
Hall weaving new and intricate questions for the gods, saw them; and
looking up towards the brooding heavens, he exchanged glances with
the Father of Hosts. But the dwarfs did not come near Vafthrüdnir's
Halls; they never looked aside at him, nor up to the Air Throne of
the Asa; only rushed heedlessly on till they stumbled over the Giant
Gilling, who was taking a nap upon the green bank of Ifing. Ifing
looks a lazy stream; one can hardly see at first sight that it flows
at all; but it flows, and flows quietly, unceasingly, and is so deep
that neither god nor giant has ever yet been able to fathom it. It
is, in fact, that stream which divides for ever the Jötuns from the
Gods, and of it Odin himself once said:--

    "Open shall it run
    Throughout all time,
    On that stream no ice shall be."

So the dwarfs found Gilling asleep; they knew how deep Ifing was,
they knew that if they could once roll the giant Gilling in there he
would never get out again, and then they should have done something
worth speaking about.

"I have killed a giant," each dwarf might say, and, who knows, even
the Æsir might begin to feel a little afraid of them.

"It all comes from drinking Kvasir's blood," they said, and then with
their thousand little swords and spears, and sticks and stones, they
worked away until they had plunged the sleeping giant into the
stream. Allfather's piercing eye saw it all, and how the silly dwarfs
jumped and danced about afterwards, and praised themselves, and
defied the whole world, gods, giants and men.

"It is not for us," they said, "any more to run away before Skinfaxi
the shining horse that draws day over humankind, whose mane sheds
light instead of dew; we will dance before him and crown ourselves
with gold, as the gods and as men do every morning."

But, in the midst of all their gleeful folly, the ground they stood
upon began to shake under them, and an enormous darkness grew between
them and the sky. Then the dwarfs stopped their rejoicing as if a
spell had fallen upon them, dropping their weapons, huddling close to
one another, cowering, whispering. Giant Suttung, son of that Gilling
whom they had just slain, was coming upon them in great fury to
avenge his father's death. They were dreadfully frightened; Giant
Gilling asleep had been easy to manage, but a giant awake, a giant
angry--they were not the same dwarfs that they had seemed half an
hour ago--and so it happened that they quite easily let Suttung carry
them all off to a low rock in the sea which was dry just then, but
would be washed over by the morning tide. "There you are," said
Suttung as he threw them all down upon the rock, "and there you shall
stay until the hungry grey wave comes." "But then we shall be
drowned," they all screeched at once, and the seamews started from
their nests ashore and swooped round the lonely rock, and screeched
as well. Suttung strode back to the shore and sat on the high rocks
over the seamews' nests, and poked his fingers into the nests and
played with the grey-winged birds, and paddled his feet in the
breakers, and laughed and echoed the dwarfs and the seamews.
"Drowned, drowned, yes, then you will be drowned." Then the dwarfs
whispered together and consulted, they all talked at once, and every
one of them said a different thing, for they were in fact a little
intoxicated still by the sips they had taken of Odhærir. At last
Fialar and Galar said the same same thing over so often that the
others began to listen to them. "The sky is getting quite grey," they
said, "and the stars are going out, and Skinfaxi is coming, and the
waves are gathering and gathering and gathering; hoarse are the
voices of the Seaking's daughters; but why do we all sit chattering
here instead of getting away as we might easily do if we did but
bribe the giant Suttung with a gift." "Yes, yes, yes," shouted the
silly little people, "shall we give him our cap jewels, or our
swords, or our pick-axes, or our lanterns, or shall we promise to
make him a necklace out of the fire of the sun and the flowers of the
earth, or shall we build him a ship of ships?"

[Illustration: GIANT SUTTUNG AND THE DWARFS.]

"Nonsense," said Fialar and Galar; "How should a giant care for such
things as these? Our swords could not help him; he does not want
pick-axes nor lanterns who lives amongst the mountain snows, nor
ships who can stride across the sea, nor necklaces--Bah! A giant
loves life, he drinks blood, he is greedy besides and longs to taste
the gold mead of the gods."

Then all the dwarfs shouted together, "Let us give him our gold mead,
our wondrous drink, Odhærir, our Kvasir's blood in the three stone
jars."

Odin heard from Air Throne's blue deep. He brooded over the scene.
"The sweetness, and the life, and the light of the world, then," he
said, "are to satiate a giant's greediness of food and blood"--and
it was for mankind that he became Terror in the trembling Height.
Allfather feared nothing for the gods at that time: could he not
pierce into Jötunheim, and Svartheim, and Manheim alike? Suttung
heard also from the Rock.--"And what may this Odhærir be worth that
you boast of so much?" he shouted to the dwarfs. "Wisdom, and labour,
and fire, and life, and love," said the dwarfs. "Tut, tut, tut!"
answered Suttung. "Does it taste well?" "Honey and wine; like the
blood of a God and the milk of the Earth." Then Suttung got up slowly
from the rock, pressing it down with his hands into two little dells
as he rose, and strode to the island, from which he took up all the
dwarfs at a grasp--they clinging to his fists and wrists like needles
to a magnet; and, with one swoop, threw them ashore just as the
hungry waves began to lap and wash about the dwarf's-peril. So the
dwarfs jumped, and leaped, and laughed, and sang, and chattered
again, and ran on before Suttung, to fetch him the golden mead,
Odhærir. Three big stone jars, all full. The Spirit-mover, the
Peace-offer, the Peace-kiss. Suttung lifted the lids, and looked into
the jars. "It doesn't look much," he said; "and, after all, I don't
know that I shall care to taste it; but I'll take the jars home to my
daughter Gunnlöd, and they will make a pretty treasure for her to
keep."

Odin brooded over the scene. It was a grey winter's morning in
Jötunheim--ice over all the rivers, snow upon the mountains,
rime-writing across the woods, weird hoar letters straggling over the
bare branches of the trees, writing such as giants and gods can read,
but men see it only as pearl-drops of the cold. Suttung could read it
well enough as he trudged along to his Mountain Home--better than he
had ever read it before; for was he not bearing upon his shoulders
the wondrous Kvasir's life-giving blood, Odhærir. Odin read it, "This
is ominous, Odin; this is dark. Shall the gold mead be made captive
in frozen halls?" For behold, the life-tear becomes dark in the dark
land, as Suttung's huge door opened to let him in, him and his
treasure, and then closed upon them both, Suttung gave the mead to
his daughter Gunnlöd to keep, to guard it well, and--the heart of
Manheim trembled, it was empty and cold. Then Odin looked north and
south and east and west, over the whole world. "Come to me," he said,
and two swift-winged ravens flew towards him. It seemed as if they
came out of nothing; for in a moment they were not there and they
were there. Their names were Hugin and Munin, and they came from the
ends of the earth, where Odin sent them every morning. Every evening
he was wont to say of them,--

    "I fear me for Hugin,
    Lest he come not back,
    But much more for Munin."

Yet they never failed to come back, both of them, at the dim hour in
which they recounted to the Father of Hosts the history of the day
that was past, and the hope of the day that was to come. On this
evening, Munin's song was so terrible that only the strength of a god
could possibly have endured to its end. Hugin struck another note,
profounder and sweet. Then said Odin, when cadence after cadence had
filled his ears, and he had descended from Air Throne, "Night is the
time for new counsels; let each one reflect until the morrow who is
able to give advice helpful to the Æsir."

But when the jewelled horse ran up along the sky, from whence his
mane shed light over the whole world, when giants and giantesses, and
ghosts and dwarfs crouched beneath Yggdrasil's outer Root, when
Heimdall ran up Bifrost and blew mightily his horn in Heaven's
height, there was only one found who gave counsel to Odin, and that
was Odin himself. "Odhærir," he said, "which is a god-gift, must come
up to men's earthly dwellings. Go forth, Hugin, go forth, Munin,"
said the Asa, and he also went forth alone, none knowing where he
went, nor how.

So Odin journeyed for a long, long while towards Suttung's Hall,
across the windy, wintry ways of Jötunheim, seeing well before him
the yellow mead as he went, through rocks, and woods, and rivers, and
through night itself, until at last it happened that Odin came into a
meadow upon a summer morning in Giant Land. Nine slaves were mowing
in the meadow, whetting some old rusty scythes which they had,
working heavily, for they were senseless fellows, and the summer day
grew faster upon them than their labour grew to completion. "You seem
heavy-hearted," said Odin to the thralls; and they began to explain
to him how rusty and old their scythes were, and that they had no
whetstone to sharpen them with. Upon this Odin offered to whet their
scythes for them with his whetstone: and no sooner had he done so
than the scythes became so sharp that they could have cut stones as
easily as grass. Instead of mowing, however, the thralls began to
clamour round Odin, beseeching him to give his whetstone to them.
"Give it to me! give it to me: give it to me!" cried one and another;
and all the time Odin stood quietly amongst them, throwing his
whetstone up in the air, and catching it as it fell. Then the thralls
tried if they could catch it, leaning stupidly across one another,
with their scythes in their hands. Was Allfather surprised at what
happened next? He could hardly have been that; but he was sorry when,
looking down as the whetstone fell, he saw all the thralls lying dead
at his feet, killed by each other's sharpened weapons. "This is an
Evil Land," said Odin, as he looked down on the dead thralls, "and I
am a bringer of evil into it."

So he journeyed on till he came to the house of Suttung's brother,
Baugi. Odin asked Baugi to give him a night's lodging, and Baugi,
who knew no more than the thralls had done who this traveller was,
consented, and began to talk to Odin of the trouble he was in. "This
is hay harvest," he said, "as you must have seen, walking here
through the meadows; and I have a mighty field to gather in, but how
to do it puzzles me, because my nine slaves whom I sent out sound and
well this morning, all fell dead about the middle of the day. How
they managed it, I can't imagine, and it puts me out sadly, for
summer days don't last long in Jötunheim." "Well," said Odin, "I'm
not a bad hand at mowing, and I don't mind undertaking to do the work
of nine thralls for you, Baugi, for a certain reward you may give me,
if you will." "What is that?" inquired Baugi, eagerly. "A draught of
that golden mead, Odhærir, which Suttung obtained from the dwarfs,
and which his daughter Gunnlöd keeps for him." "Oh! that," said
Baugi, "isn't so good as my homebrewed for a thirsty mower; but you
shall have it. It is a bargain between us." So Odin worked for Baugi
the whole summer through with the labour of nine instead of with the
labour of one; and when the last field was reaped, and wintry mists
were gathering, the god and the giant began to talk over their
bargain again. "We will come together to Suttung's house," said
Baugi, "and my brother shall give you the draught which you desire so
much." But when the two came to Suttung's house, and asked him for
the mead, Suttung was exceedingly angry, and would not hear a word
about it from either of them. "You don't drink it yourself, brother,"
pleaded Baugi, "although you might do so every day if you liked,
without asking anybody's leave, or doing one stroke of work for it,
whilst this man has toiled night and day for nine months that he
might taste it only once." "Odhærir is for us giants, nevertheless,"
answered Suttung, "and well does my daughter Gunnlöd guard it from
dwarfs and from men, from spectres, from Asyniur, and from Æsir. Have
I not sworn that so it shall be guarded by all the snows of
Jötunheim, and by the stormy waves, and by the yawning chasm of the
abyss." Then Baugi knew that nothing more was to be said, and he
advised Odin to go back with him at once, and drink beer. But Odin
was not to be turned from his purpose so easily. "You promised me a
draught of the gold mead, Baugi," he said, "and I can see it through
the rock in its three treasure jars; sit down by me and look through
the rock till you can see it too." So Odin and Baugi sat down
together, and pierced the rock with their glances all that day until
they had made a small hole in it; and at night, when Suttung was
asleep, and when Gunnlöd was asleep, and whilst the gold mead shone
steadily in the heart of the cave, Odin looked up towards Asgard, and
said,--

    "Little get I here by silence:
    Of a well-assumed form I will make good use;
    For few things fail the wise."

And then this strong wise Asa picked up from the ground the little,
mean, wriggling form of a worm and put it on and crept noiselessly
into the hole which he and Baugi had made,--

    "The giant's ways are under me,
    The giant's ways are over me,"

said Odin as he wriggled through the stone, but when he had got quite
through to the inner side, to Gunnlöd's room, Odin took his proper
form again.

"I see her upon her golden seat," he said as he looked upon the
sleeping Gunnlöd where she lay, and Odin was surprised to see a
giant-maid so beautiful. Surprised and sorry. "For I must leave her
weeping," he mused. "How shall she not weep, defrauded of her
treasure in an Evil Land." And Odin loved and pitied the beautiful
maiden so much, that he would have returned to Asgard without the
mead had that been possible. Alas for Gunnlöd, it was less possible
than ever since Allfather had seen her. For Gunnlöd awoke in the
light of Odin's glance and trembled, she did not know why, she did
not know at first that he was an Asa, but, when he asked her for her
treasure she could not keep it from him, she could not have kept
anything from him. She rose from her golden couch, her blue eyes
melted into the tenderness of a summer sky, she undid the bars and
bolts and coverings of Odhærir, which she had guarded so faithfully
till then, and knelt before Odin and stretched her hands towards him
and said, "Drink, for I think you are a god."

A draught, a draught, a long, deep draught, and the spirit of the Asa
was shaken through its height and through its depth, and again a
draught of love flowing forth to the outermost, to the abysses, and
one draught again--peace--in rushing, still.

Why are you weeping so, Gunnlöd? Oh! Why do you weep? Did you not
give him your whole treasure, "your fervent love, your whole soul;"
you kept nothing back, and Odhærir is for ever the inheritance of the
gods. The dwarfs sold it for their lives, the giantess lost it of her
love, gods win it for the world.

"It is for the Æsir, it is for men," said Odin. "It is Odin's booty,
it is Odin's gift;" and immediately, in haste to share it, the Asa
spread eagle's wings, and flew far up, away from the barren rock, and
the black, cold halls of Suttung, towards his heavenly home. Alas for
Gunnlöd! she has lost her treasure and her Asa too. How cold the
cavern is now in which she sits! her light is gone out; she is left
alone; she is left weeping upon her golden throne. But Odin soared
upwards--flew on toward Asgard, and the Æsir came crowding upon the
city's jewelled walls to watch his approach. And soon they perceived
that two eagles were flying towards the city, the second pursuing the
first. The pursuing eagle was Suttung, who, as soon as he found that
his mead was gone, and that Odin eagle-wise had escaped his
vengeance, spread also _his_ eagle's wings, very strong and very
swift, in pursuit. Suttung appeared to gain upon Odin. Frigga feared
for her beloved. The Asyniur and the Æsir watched breathlessly. Frost
giants and Storm giants came crowding up from the deeps to see. "Does
Odin return amongst the gods?" they asked, "or will Suttung destroy
him?" It was not possible, however, that the struggle should end in
any way but one. The Divine bird dropped from the height upon his
Hall--the High One's Hall--and then there burst from him such a flood
of song that the widest limits of Æsir Land were overflowed--some
sounds even spilt themselves upon the common earth. "It is Poetry
herself, it is Odin's booty, it is Odin's gift. It is for the Æsir,
it is for the Æsir," said a thousand and a thousand songs. "And for
men," answered Allfather, with his million ringing, changing voices;
"it is for men." "Such as have sufficient wit to make a right use of
it," said Loki. And this was the first discordant note that troubled
Asgard after Odin's return.

       *       *       *       *       *

In this tale, or rather in this arrangement of tales, most of the
chief gods are named, and one or two of the myths concerning them are
hinted at. The sweet mixture made out of Kvasir's blood, and given to
the giant Suttung to keep, was called, as we have seen, Odhærir. It
was kept in three jars, and though the name of it as a whole was
Odhærir, the portion in the second jar was also called "Sohn," and
that in the third jar "Bohn." Odhærir is mentioned in two of the
_Elder Edda_ Songs, and in the _Younger Edda_ an account is given of
Odin bringing it up to Asgard. Neither of the _Eddas_, it must be
remarked, mentions the banishment of the dwarfs and elves in
connection with Kvasir's death. The golden mead, Odhærir, is supposed
to signify poetry. The first syllable of the name means mind and
feeling. Odhærir, spirit mover. "Sohn" means reconciliation, or the
_offer_ of peace. "Bohn" means the _acceptance_ of peace,--these two
latter names referring to the origin of Kvasir, who was created out
of the peace made between the Æsir and the Vanir.

Simrock thinks that "Kvasir," meaning fermentation, implies the
excitement necessary to poetry; that Odin, labouring for a draught of
the precious mead, suggests that poetry can only be possessed through
labour, and that his receiving it from the beautiful Gunnlöd,
expresses it as the gift and crown of love. Odin drinking it three
times signifies the _intensity_ through which poetry lives,--it is
intoxication. Odin appears to have felt very wise after his three
draughts; for he is made to say--

    "Potent songs I learned,
    And a draught obtained
    Of the precious mead,
    Then I began to bear fruit
    And to know many things.
          Word by word
          I sought out words,
          Fact by fact
          I sought out facts.
    Runes I graved,
    Very large characters,
    Very potent characters."

One of the _Edda_ songs is called the "High One's Lay." So we may
conclude it was inspired by Suttung's mead. One or two of the
strophes are worth quoting, just to show what the lay is like. The
following are selected from different places and have no connection
with one another.

    "At eve the day is to be praised,
    A sword after it is proved;
    Ice after it has passed away,
    Beer after it is drunk."

    "Cattle die,
    Kindred die,
    We ourselves also die;
    But I know one thing
    That never dies--
    Judgment on each one dead."

    "I was once young,
    I was journeying alone,
    And lost my way;
    Rich I thought myself
    When I met another.
    Man is the joy of man."

Here is a contrast--

    "Two are adversaries;
    The tongue is the bane of the head;
    Under every cloak
    I expect a hand."

    "A firmer friend
    No man ever gets
    Than great sagacity."

    "Givers and requiters
    Are longest friends."

    "A worse provision
    No man can carry
    Than too much beer-bibbing;
    So, good is not, as it is said,
    Beer for the sons of men."

    "My garments in a field
    I gave away
    To two wooden men;
    Heroes they seemed to be
    When they got cloaks."

    "Much too early
    I came to many places
    But too late to others;
    The beer was drunk,
    Or not ready
    The disliked seldom hits the moment."

We often read of Odin disguising himself, sometimes in animal, more
frequently in human form. He wanders about the world, and very
curious stories are told about his adventures. Sometimes he asks his
wife's leave before setting off,--

    "Counsel thou me now, Frigg!
    As I long to go
    An all-wise giant to visit."

And Frigg answers,--

    "In safety mayest thou go,
    In safety return;
    In safety on thy journeyings be;
    May thy wit avail thee
    When thou, father of men! shalt
    Hold converse with the giant."

But Odin was not obliged to take long journeys himself when he wanted
to know what was going on in the world,--he had, as we have seen, two
messengers whom he sent out daily,--the Ravens Hugin and Munin,
thought and memory,--

    "Hugin and Munin
    Each dawn take their flight
    Earth fields over;
    I fear me for Hugin
    Lest he come not back,
    But much more for Munin."

Perhaps because of Munin being memory he was expected to fail first.

Odin looking over into Niflheim, is thus alluded to in an old song.
The god is made to say,--

    "I know that I hung
    On a wind-rocked tree
    Nine whole nights.
    Downward I peered,
    To runes applied myself,
    Wailing learnt them,
    Then fell down thence."

The next strophe tells how he got the draught of the precious mead.
In this myth, it seems as if Odin hung upon Yggdrassil. Simrock
mentions a singular little German tale which may possibly have some
connection with it, and has evidently an Eastern origin. "A man," it
says, "in danger of falling into a brook, held fast with one hand to
a shrub whilst his feet rested on a small piece of grass. In this
predicament, he saw two mice (day and night) gnawing at the root of
the shrub, and the grass undermined by four worm heads. Then a
dragon appeared and opened his mouth to swallow him up, whilst an
elephant reached his trunk towards him. At the same time he seized
with eager mouth some honey which dropt from the tree." Simrock says
that the eating of the honey is like people being occupied with
frivolity whilst the world-battle goes on, but may not the story
possibly have a little to do with Odin and Yggdrassil and Odhærir.

We heard before that Odin was connected with Air. We see him here
on his High Throne looking over all worlds, wandering over the
earth, piercing even to the deep, giving his eye to Mimer for
wisdom--consequently having only one eye, one Sun in Heaven--some
suppose that the pledged eye means the setting of the Sun nightly.
Mimer, who guards the well, means the remembrance of the origin of
things which was water--the strange waves that flowed into
Ginnungagap. An odd story is told of Mimer, who was originally a
giant though received by the Æsir, viz., that he was sent as a
hostage to the Vanir, who cut off his head and sent it back to Odin.
The head remained so wise that the father of the gods used to
consult it on all important occasions; as the lay says--

    "Odin speaks
    With Mim's head."

Heimdall, guardian of the Bridge (whose exact name was "trembling
rest") was perhaps the most important of the Vanir. He is represented
in one old lay as travelling about the world by himself, which is a
sure sign that he was originally a very great god indeed. Upon this
journey he became the father of the three races of men, the Thralls,
the Karls and the Jarls. The way in which these three races are
compared with one another is very curious.

The Thralls are described with "shrivelled skin, knotty knuckles,
thick fingers, hideous faces, curved backs and protruding heels, they
are made to erect fences, manure fields, tend swine, keep goats and
dig turf." The Karls' children are said to be clothed in linen, to be
ruddy headed and have twinkling eyes, and they grow up to "tame oxen,
make ploughs, build houses, make carts and farm;" but the favoured,
useless Jarls, "Light of hair, bright cheeks, eyes piercing as a
serpent's," grow up to "shake the shield, to brandish spears,

    "Horses to ride,
    Dogs to slip,
    Swords to draw,
    Swimming to practise."

Heimdall keeps the bridge alike from thunder god and frost giants,
but at Ragnarök, the swarthy god Surtur, who lives on the borders of
Muspellheim, will ride over it and shatter it to pieces. Heimdall's
horn is mentioned,--this is supposed to mean the crescent moon, and
Mimer's drinking horn also means the moon. Later, when the stories of
the gods had dwindled down into weird, unholy legends, and Odin had
sunk into the wild Huntsman, the crescent moon was his horn. One of
Heimdall's names was Irmin, and this means "Shining." The milky way
is called Irmin strasse or Irmin's way, and the wild hunt was
supposed to go over the milky way, which is also called Waldemar's
way in Denmark, and Waldemar is a common name of hunters.

Loki and his children in these myths are evidently the destructive
principle, either physically, or morally, or both. Jörmungand and
Fenrir are much alike. Jörmungand means "the universal Wolf," and of
Fenrir it is said "he goes about revengeful, with open jaws devouring
all things." Hela had originally another side to her character, but
here as Loki's daughter she has only the nature of his other
children.

The myth about Loki finding the half-burnt heart of a woman is said
to be a very young one; and so perhaps it is not worth considering
the meaning of.

The god about whom, next to Odin, most stories are told, is Thor. In
some parts of the north he was a more prominent object of worship
even than Odin, Norway and Iceland being especially devoted to his
service.

       *       *       *       *       *

Let us now hear how Thor went to Jötunheim.




CHAPTER II.

HOW THOR WENT TO JÖTUNHEIM.


PART I. FROM ASGARD TO UTGARD.

Once on a time, Asa Thor and Loki set out on a journey from Asgard to
Jötunheim. They travelled in Thor's chariot, drawn by two milk-white
goats. It was a somewhat cumbrous iron chariot, and the wheels made a
rumbling noise as it moved, which sometimes startled the ladies of
Asgard, and made them tremble; but Thor liked it, thought the noise
sweeter than any music, and was never so happy as when he was
journeying in it from one place to another.

They travelled all day, and in the evening they came to a
countryman's house. It was a poor, lonely place; but Thor descended
from his chariot, and determined to pass the night there. The
countryman, however, had no food in his house to give these
travellers; and Thor, who liked to feast himself and make every one
feast with him, was obliged to kill his own two goats and serve them
up for supper. He invited the countryman and his wife and children to
sup with him; but before they began to eat he made one request of
them.

"Do not, on any account," he said, "break or throw away any of the
bones of the goats you are going to eat for supper."

"I wonder why," said the peasant's son, Thialfi, to his sister Roska.
Roska could not think of any reason, and by-and-bye Thialfi happened
to have a very nice little bone given him with some marrow in it.
"Certainly there can be no harm in my breaking just this one," he
said to himself; "it would be such a pity to lose the marrow;" and as
Asa Thor's head was turned another way, he slyly broke the bone in
two, sucked the marrow, and then threw the pieces into the goats'
skins, where Thor had desired that all the bones might be placed. I
do not know whether Thialfi was uneasy during the night about what he
had done; but in the morning he found out the reason of Asa Thor's
command, and received a lesson on "wondering why," which he never
forgot all his life after.

As soon as Asa Thor rose in the morning he took his hammer, Miölnir,
in his hand, and held it over the goat-skins as they lay on the
floor, whispering runes the while. They were dead skins with dry
bones on them when he began to speak; but as he said the last word,
Thialfi, who was looking curiously on, saw two live goats spring up
and walk towards the chariot, as fresh and well as when they brought
the chariot up to the door Thialfi hoped. But no; one of the goats
limped a little with his hind leg, and Asa Thor saw it. His brow grew
dark as he looked, and for a minute Thialfi thought he would run far,
far into the forest, and never come back again; but one look more at
Asa Thor's face, angry as it was, made him change his mind. He
thought of a better thing to do than running away. He came forward,
threw himself at the Asa's feet, and, confessing what he had done,
begged pardon for his disobedience. Thor listened, and the displeased
look passed away from his face.

"You have done wrong, Thialfi," he said, raising him up; "but as you
have confessed your fault so bravely, instead of punishing you, I
will take you with me on my journey, and teach you myself the lesson
of obedience to the Æsir which is, I see, wanted."

Roska chose to go with her brother, and from that day Thor had two
faithful servants, who followed him wherever he went.

The chariot and goats were now left behind: but, with Loki and his
two new followers, Thor journeyed on to the end of Manheim, over the
sea, and then on, on, on in the strange, barren, misty land of
Jötunheim, Sometimes they crossed great mountains; sometimes they had
to make their way among torn and rugged rocks, which often, through
the mist, appeared to them to wear the forms of men, and once for a
whole day they traversed a thick and tangled forest. In the evening
of that day, being very much tired, they saw with pleasure that they
had come upon a spacious hall, of which the door, as broad as the
house itself, stood wide open.

"Here we may very comfortably lodge for the night," said Thor; and
they went in and looked about them.

The house appeared to be perfectly empty; there was a wide hall, and
five smaller rooms opening into it. They were, however, too tired to
examine it carefully, and as no inhabitants made their appearance,
they ate their supper in the hall, and lay down to sleep. But they
had not rested long before they were disturbed by strange noises,
groanings, mutterings, and snortings, louder than any animal that
they had ever seen in their lives could make. By-and-bye the house
began to shake from side to side, and it seemed as if the very earth
trembled. Thor sprang up in haste, and ran to the open door; but,
though he looked earnestly into the starlit forest, there was no
enemy to be seen anywhere. Loki and Thialfi, after groping about for
a time, found a sheltered chamber to the right, where they thought
they could finish their night's rest in safety; but Thor, with
Miölnir in his hand, watched at the door of the house all night. As
soon as the day dawned he went out into the forest, and there,
stretched on the ground close by the house, he saw a strange,
uncouth, gigantic shape of a man, out of whose nostrils came a breath
which swayed the trees to their very tops. There was no need to
wonder any longer what the disturbing noises had been. Thor
fearlessly walked up to this strange monster to have a better look at
him; but at the sound of his footsteps the giant-shape rose slowly,
stood up an immense height, and looked down upon Thor with two great
misty eyes, like blue mountain-lakes.

[Illustration: GIANT SKRYMIR AND THOR.]

"Who are you?" said Thor, standing on tiptoe, and stretching his neck
to look up; "and why do you make such a noise as to prevent your
neighbours from sleeping?"

"My name is Skrymir," said the giant sternly; "I need not ask yours.
You are the little Asa Thor of Asgard; but pray, now, what have you
done with my glove?"

As he spoke he stooped down, and picked up the hall where Thor and
his companions had passed the night, and which, in truth, was
nothing more than his glove, the room where Loki and Thialfi had
slept being the thumb.

Thor rubbed his eyes, and felt as if he must be dreaming. Rousing
himself, however, he raised Miölnir in his hand, and, trying to keep
his eyes fixed on the giant's face, which seemed to be always
changing, he said, "It is time that you should know, Skrymir, that I
am come to Jötunheim to fight and conquer such evil giants as you
are, and, little as you think me, I am ready to try my strength
against yours."

"Try it, then," said the giant.

And Thor, without another word, threw Miölnir at his head.

"Ah! Ah!" said the giant; "did a leaf touch me?"

Again Thor seized Miölnir, which always returned to his hand, however
far he cast it from him, and threw it with all his force.

The giant put up his hand to his forehead. "I think," he said, "that
an acorn must have fallen on my head."

A third time Thor struck a blow, the heaviest that ever fell from
the hand of an Asa; but this time the giant laughed out loud.

"There is surely a bird on that tree," he said, "who has let a
feather fall on my face."

Then, without taking any further notice of Thor, he swung an immense
wallet over his shoulder, and, turning his back upon him, struck into
a path that led from the forest. When he had gone a little way he
looked round, his immense face appearing less like a human
countenance than some strange, uncouthly-shaped stone toppling on a
mountain precipice.

"Ving-Thor,"[3] he said, "let me give you a piece of good advice
before I go. When you get to Utgard don't make much of yourself. You
think me a tall man, but you have taller still to see; and you
yourself are a very little mannikin. Turn back home whence you came,
and be satisfied to have learned something of yourself by your
journey to Jötunheim."

 [3] Ving-Thor--Winged-Thor.

"Mannikin or not, _that_ will I never do," shouted Asa Thor after the
giant. "We will meet again, and something more will we learn, or
teach each other."

The giant, however, did not turn back to answer, and Thor and his
companions, after looking for some time after him, resumed their
journey. Before the sun was quite high in the heavens they came out
of the forest, and at noon they found themselves on a vast barren
plain, where stood a great city, whose walls of dark, rough stone
were so high, that Thor had to bend his head quite far back to see
the top of them. When they approached the entrance of this city they
found that the gates were closed and barred; but the space between
the bars was so large that Thor passed through easily, and his
companions followed him. The streets of the city were gloomy and
still. They walked on for some time without meeting any one; but at
length they came to a very high building, of which the gates stood
open.

"Let us go in and see what is going on here," said Thor; and they
went.

After crossing the threshold they found themselves in an immense
banqueting hall. A table stretched from one end to the other of it;
stone thrones stood round the table, and on every throne sat a giant,
each one, as Thor glanced round, appearing more grim, and cold, and
stony than the rest. One among them sat on a raised seat, and
appeared to be the chief; so to him Thor approached and paid his
greetings.

The giant chief just glanced at him, and, without rising, said, in a
somewhat careless manner, "It is, I think, a foolish custom to tease
tired travellers with questions about their journey. I know without
asking that you, little fellow, are Asa Thor. Perhaps, however, you
may be in reality taller than you appear; and as it is a rule here
that no one shall sit down to table till he has performed some
wonderful feat, let us hear what you and your followers are famed
for, and in what way you choose to prove yourselves worthy to sit
down in the company of giants."

At this speech, Loki, who had entered the hall cautiously behind
Thor, pushed himself forward.

"The feat for which I am most famed," he said, "is eating, and it is
one which I am just now inclined to perform with right good will. Put
food before me, and let me see if any of your followers can despatch
it as quickly as I can."

"The feat you speak of is one by no means to be despised," said the
King, "and there is one here who would be glad to try his powers
against yours. Let Logi," he said to one of his followers, "be
summoned to the hall."

At this, a tall, thin, yellow-faced man approached, and a large
trough of meat having been placed in the middle of the hall, Loki sat
to work at one end, and Logi at the other, and they began to eat. I
hope _I_ shall never see any one eat as they ate; but the giants all
turned their slow-moving eyes to watch them, and in a few minutes
they met in the middle of the trough. It seemed, at first, as if they
had both eaten exactly the same quantity; but, when the thing came to
be examined into, it was found that Loki had, indeed, eaten up all
the meat, but that Logi had also eaten the bones and the trough. Then
the giants nodded their huge heads, and determined that Loki was
conquered. The King now turned to Thialfi, and asked what he could
do.

"I was thought swift of foot among the youth of my own country,"
answered Thialfi; "and I will, if you please, try to run a race with
any one here."

"You have chosen a noble sport, indeed," said the King; "but you must
be a good runner if you could beat him with whom I shall match you."

Then he called a slender lad, Hugi by name, and the whole company
left the hall, and, going out by an opposite gate to that by which
Thor had entered, they came out to an open space, which made a noble
race-ground. There the goal was fixed, and Thialfi and Hugi started
off together.

Thialfi ran fast--fast as the reindeer which hears the wolves howling
behind; but Hugi ran so much faster that, passing the goal, he turned
round, and met Thialfi half-way in the course.

"Try again, Thialfi," cried the King; and Thialfi, once more taking
his place, flew along the course with feet scarcely touching the
ground--swiftly as an eagle when, from his mountain-crag, he swoops
on his prey in the valley; but with all his running he was still a
good bow-shot from the goal when Hugi reached it.

"You are certainly a good runner," said the King; "but if you mean to
win you must do a little better still than this; but perhaps you wish
to surprise us all the more this third time."

The third time, however, Thialfi was wearied, and though he did his
best, Hugi, having reached the goal, turned and met him not far from
the starting-point.

The giants again looked at each other, and declared that there was no
need of further trial, for that Thialfi was conquered.

It was now Asa Thor's turn, and all the company looked eagerly at
him, while the Utgard King asked by what wonderful feat he chose to
distinguish himself.

"I will try a drinking-match with any of you," Thor said, shortly;
for, to tell the truth, he cared not to perform anything very worthy
in the company in which he found himself.

King Utgard appeared pleased with this choice, and when the giants
had resumed their seats in the hall, he ordered one of his servants
to bring in his drinking-cup, called the "cup of penance," which it
was his custom to make his guests drain at a draught, if they had
broken any of the ancient rules of the society.

"There!" he said, handing it to Thor, "we call it well drunk if a
person empties it at a single draught. Some, indeed, take two to it;
but the very puniest can manage it in three."

Thor looked into the cup; it appeared to him long, but not so very
large after all, and being thirsty he put it to his lips, and thought
to make short work of it, and empty it at one good, hearty pull. He
drank, and put the cup down again; but, instead of being empty, it
was now just so full that it could be moved without danger of
spilling.

"Ha! ha! You are keeping all your strength for the second pull I
see," said Utgard, looking in. Without answering, Thor lifted the cup
again, and drank with all his might till his breath failed; but, when
he put down the cup, the liquor had only sunk down a little from the
brim.

"If you mean to take three draughts to it," said Utgard, "you are
really leaving yourself a very unfair share for the last time. Look
to yourself, Ving-Thor; for, if you do not acquit yourself better in
other feats, we shall not think so much of you here as they say the
Æsir do in Asgard."

At this speech Thor felt angry, and, seizing the cup again, he drank
a third time, deeper and longer than he had yet done; but, when he
looked into the cup, he saw that a very small part only of its
contents had disappeared. Wearied and disappointed he put the cup
down, and said he would try no more to empty it.

"It is pretty plain," said the King, looking round on the company,
"that Asa Thor is by no means the kind of man we always supposed him
to be."

"Nay," said Thor, "I am willing to try another feat, and you
yourselves shall choose what it shall be."

"Well," said the King, "there is a game at which our children are
used to play. A short time ago I dare not have named it to Asa Thor;
but now I am curious to see how he will acquit himself in it. It is
merely to lift my cat from the ground--a childish amusement truly."

As he spoke a large, grey cat sprang into the hall, and Thor,
stooping forward, put his hand under it to lift it up. He tried
gently at first; but by degrees he put forth all his strength,
tugging and straining as he had never done before; but the utmost he
could do was to raise one of the cat's paws a little way from the
ground.

"It is just as I thought," said King Utgard, looking round with a
smile; "but we all are willing to allow that the cat _is_ large, and
Thor but a little fellow."

"Little as you think me," cried Thor, "who is there who will dare to
wrestle with me in my anger?"

"In truth," said the King, "I don't think there is any one here who
would choose to wrestle with you; but, if wrestle you must, I will
call in that old crone Elli. She has, in her time, laid low many a
better man than Asa Thor has shown himself to be."

The crone came. She was old, withered, and toothless, and Thor shrank
from the thought of wrestling with her; but he had no choice. She
threw her arms round him, and drew him towards the ground, and the
harder he tried to free himself, the tighter grew her grasp. They
struggled long. Thor strove bravely, but a strange feeling of
weakness and weariness came over him, and at length he tottered and
fell down on one knee before her. At this sight all the giants
laughed aloud, and Utgard coming up, desired the old woman to leave
the hall, and proclaimed that the trials were over. No one of his
followers would _now_ contend with Asa Thor, he said, and night was
approaching. He then invited Thor and his companions to sit down at
the table, and spend the night with him as his guests. Thor, though
feeling somewhat perplexed and mortified, accepted his invitation
courteously, and showed, by his agreeable behaviour during the
evening, that he knew how to bear being conquered with a good grace.

In the morning, when Thor and his companions were leaving the city,
the King himself accompanied them without the gates; and Thor,
looking steadily at him when he turned to bid him farewell,
perceived, for the first time, that he was the very same Giant
Skrymir with whom he had met in the forest.

"Come, now, Asa Thor," said the giant with a strange sort of smile on
his face, "tell me truly, before you go, how you think your journey
has turned out, and whether or not I was right in saying that you
would meet with better men than yourself in Jötunheim."

"I confess freely," answered Asa Thor, looking up without any false
shame on his face, "that I have acquitted myself but humbly, and it
grieves me; for I know that in Jötunheim henceforward it will be said
that I am a man of little worth."

"By my troth! no," cried the giant, heartily. "Never should you have
come into my city if I had known what a mighty man of valour you
really are; and now that you are safely out of it, I will, for once,
tell the truth to you, Thor. All this time I have been deceiving you
by my enchantments. When you met me in the forest, and hurled
Miölnir at my head, I should have been crushed by the weight of your
blows had I not skilfully placed a mountain between myself and you,
on which the strokes of your hammer fell, and where you cleft three
deep ravines, which shall henceforth become verdant valleys. In the
same manner I deceived you about the contests in which you engaged
last night. When Loki and Logi sat down before the trough, Loki,
indeed, eat like hunger itself; but Logi is fire, who, with eager,
consuming tongue, licked up both bones and trough. Thialfi is the
swiftest of mortal runners; but the slender lad, Hugi, was my
thought; and what speed can ever equal his? So it was in your own
trials. When you took such deep draughts from the horn, you little
knew what a wonderful feat you were performing. The other end of that
horn reached the ocean, and when you come to the shore you will see
how far its waters have fallen away, and how much the deep sea itself
has been diminished by your draught. Hereafter, men watching the
going out of the tide will call it the ebb, or draught of Thor.
Scarcely less wonderful was the prowess you displayed in the second
trial. What appeared to you to be a cat, was, in reality, the Midgard
serpent, which encircles the world. When we saw you succeed in moving
it we trembled lest the very foundations of earth and sea should be
shaken by your strength. Nor need you be ashamed of having been
overthrown by the old woman Elli, for she is old age; and there never
has, and never will be, one whom she has not the power to lay low. We
must now part, and you had better not come here again, or attempt
anything further against my city; for I shall always defend it by
fresh enchantments, and you will never be able to do anything against
me."

At these words Thor raised Miölnir, and was about to challenge the
giant to a fresh trial of strength; but, before he could speak,
Utgard vanished from his sight; and, turning round to look for the
city, he found that it, too, had disappeared, and that he was
standing alone on a smooth, green, empty plain.

"What a fool I have been," said Asa Thor, aloud, "to allow myself to
be deceived by a mountain giant!"

"Ah," answered a voice from above, "I told you, you would learn to
know yourself better by your journey to Jötunheim. It is the great
use of travelling."

Thor turned quickly round again, thinking to see Skrymir behind him;
but, after looking on every side, he could perceive nothing, but that
a high, cloud-capped mountain, which he had noticed on the horizon,
appeared to have advanced to the edge of the plain.


PART II. THE SERPENT AND THE KETTLE.

Thor turned away from Giant-land, and on the road homeward he passed
through the Sea-King's dominions. There he found that Ægir the Old
was giving a banquet to all the Æsir in his wide coral-caves. At a
little distance Thor stood still to listen and to look. It was a fair
sight: cave within cave stretched out before him decked with choicest
shells, whilst far inward lay the banqueting-hall, lighted with
shining gold; white and red coral-pillars stood at uneven distances;
the bright-browed Æsir reclined at the board on soft water couches;
Ægir's daughters--the fair-haired waves--murmured sweet music as they
waited on their guests; and little baby-ripples ran about laughing
in all the corners. Thor walked through the caves and entered the
hall. As he did so Odin looked up from his place at Ægir's right
hand, and said,--

"Good evening, son Thor; how has it fared with you in Jötunheim?"

Thor's face grew a little cloudy at this question, and he only
answered,--

"Not as it ought to have done, father." Then he placed himself
amongst Ægir's guests.

"In my dominions," said King Ægir, looking all round, "an
extraordinary thing has happened."

"And what may that be, brother?" asked Niörd.

"From the shores of Jötunheim," answered Ægir, "the sea has run back
a quarter of a mile, drawing itself away as if a giant were drinking
it in."

"Is that all you have got to say, father?" said a tall Wave, as she
swept her hair over the Sea-King's shoulder, and peeped up from
behind him; "is that all you know of the wonders which are going on
in your deep home? Listen."

Then Ægir bent forward on his seat; the Æsir all ceased speaking,
and drew in their breath; the waves raised their arched necks, and
were still, listening. From a great way off came the sound of a
sullen swell.

"Who is that speaking?" asked Odin.

"That is Jörmungand speaking," said Thor.

"And what does he say, Thor?"

"He says that I could not conquer him."

"Pass round the foaming mead," cried Ægir, who saw that it was time
to turn the conversation.

But alas! Ægir's mead-kettle was so small, that before it had gone
half down the table it stood empty before Tyr.

"There is a giant called Hymir," remarked Tyr, "who lives far over
the stormy waves to eastward at the end of heaven."

The Æsir all looked up.

"He has a kettle," Tyr went on to say, "which is a mile deep, and
which would certainly hold mead enough for all this company."

"If Hymir would lend it to us," said Ægir, "we could finish our
supper; but who would go to the end of heaven to borrow a kettle?"

Then Thor rose from the table, and began to tighten round him his
belt of power; he put on his iron gloves, and took Miölnir in his
hand.

"What! off again to Giant-land, Ving-Thor?" cried Ægir.

"Didn't you say you wanted Mile-deep?" said Thor. "I am going to
borrow it of Hymir for you. Will you come with me, Tyr?"

Tyr sprang up joyfully, and the two brothers started on their
journey. When they arrived at Hymir's dwelling, which was a
roughly-hewn cavern on the shore of a frozen sea, the first person
they met was a wonderful giantess with nine hundred heads, in which
glittered fiery eyes, and which grew out from all parts of her body,
so that it was impossible to tell whether she was walking upon her
head or her heels. As Thor and Tyr were looking at her trying to
discover this, a woman came out of the giant's home quite as lovely
as the giantess was hideous. She greeted them on the threshold. Her
golden hair fell thick upon her shoulders; her mild eyes shone upon
them; and with words of welcome she held out her hands and led them
into the cavern. There she offered them meat and drink, and bade them
rest until her husband, Hymir, should come home. As the darkness came
on, however, and the time of his expected return drew near, she
became silent and anxious; and at last she said, "I am very much
afraid that my husband will be angry if he sees strangers here when
he comes in. Take my advice, now, Asa Thor and Asa Tyr, and hide
behind one of these pillars in the rock. My lord, I assure you, is
surly sometimes, and not nearly so hospitable as I could wish."

"We are not accustomed to hide ourselves," remarked Thor.

"But you shall come forth when I call you," answered the woman.

So the Æsir did as she desired. By-and-bye they heard heavy footsteps
far off, over the frozen sea, coming nearer and nearer every moment.
The distant icebergs resounded, and at last Hymir burst open the door
of his cavern, and stalked angrily in. He had been unsuccessful that
day in the chase, his hands were frost-bitten, and a "hard-frozen
wood stood upon his cheek."

As soon as the fair-browed woman saw what mood he was in she went
gently towards him, placed her hand in his, and told him of the
arrival of the guests; then, with a sweet smile and voice, she
entreated him to receive the strangers kindly, and entertain them
hospitably.

Hymir made no answer; but, at one glance of his eye towards the place
where the Æsir were hidden, the pillar burst asunder, and the
cross-beam which it supported fell with a crash to the ground. Eight
ponderous kettles had been hanging on the beam, and all but one were
shivered to atoms.

Thor and Tyr then stepped forth into the middle of the hall, and
Hymir received them civilly, after which he turned his attention to
supper; and, having cooked three whole oxen, he invited the Æsir to
eat with him. Thor fell to work with great relish, and when he had
eaten the whole of one ox, prepared to cut a slice out of another.

"You eat a great deal," said Hymir, sulkily, but Thor was still very
hungry, and went on with his supper until he had eaten two entire
oxen. Then said Hymir, "Another night, Ving-Thor, you must provide
your own supper; for I can't undertake to keep so expensive a guest."

Accordingly, early the next morning, Hymir prepared to go out
fishing, and offered Thor a place in his boat. On their way to the
shore they passed a herd of oxen feeding.

"Have you provided a bait for me?" said Thor to the giant.

"You must get one for yourself," answered Hymir, surlily.

So Thor was obliged to cut off the head of one of the oxen for a
bait.

"You'll never be able to carry _that_ head," said Hymir; for, in
truth, the ox to which it had belonged was an enormous animal, called
"Heaven Breaking."

But Thor made nothing of the head, slung it over his shoulder, and
carried it down to the boat. As they got under weigh, Thor and Hymir
each took an oar; but Thor pulled so fast, and with such mighty
strokes, that the giant was obliged to stop for breath, and beg that
they might go no further.

"We have already reached the spot," he said, "where I always catch
the finest whales."

"But I want to go further out to sea," said Thor.

"That will be dangerous, Ving-Thor," said Hymir; "for if we row any
further we shall come to the waters under which Jörmungand lies."

Thor laughed, and rowed on. At last he stopped, baited his hook with
the ox's head, and cast the line out into the sea, whilst Hymir leant
over the other side of the boat, and caught two whales.

Now, when the great Jörmungand smelt Thor's bait he opened wide his
monstrous jaws, and eagerly sucked in both head, and hook, and line;
but no sooner did he feel the pain than he struggled so fiercely, and
plunged so wildly, that Thor's hands were in an instant dashed
against the sides of the boat. Still Thor did not lose his hold, but
went on pulling with such wondrous force that his feet burst through
the boat, and rested on the slippery rocks beneath. At last the
venomous monster's mountain-high head was hauled above the waves, and
then, indeed, it was a dreadful sight to see Thor, in all the power
of his god-like strength, casting his fiery looks on the serpent, and
the serpent glaring upon him, and spitting forth poisoned venom. Even
Hymir's sun-burnt cheek changed colour as he beheld beneath his feet
the sinking boat, and at his side the deadliest monster of the deep.
At last, in the wildness of his fear, he rushed before Thor, and cut
his line in sunder. Immediately the serpent's head began to sink; but
Thor hurled Miölnir with fearful force after it into the waters.

Then did the rocks burst; it thundered through the caverns; old
mother earth all shrank; even the fishes sought the bottom of the
ocean; but the serpent sank back, with a long, dull sound, beneath
the waves, a deep wound in his head, and smothered vengeance in his
heart.

Ill at ease and silent, Hymir then turned to go home, and Thor
followed him, carrying boat and oars, and everything else, on his
shoulders. Now, every fresh sight of Thor increased the giant's envy
and rage; for he could not bear to think that he had shown so little
courage before his brave guest, and, besides, losing his boat and
getting so desperately wet in his feet by wading home through the
sea, did not by any means improve his temper. When they got home,
therefore, and were supping together, he began jeering and taunting
Thor.

"No doubt, Asa Thor," he said, "you think yourself a good rower and a
fine fisher, though you did not catch anything to-day; but can you
break that drinking-cup before you, do you think?"

Thor seized the cup, and dashed it against an upright stone. But, lo!
the stone was shattered in pieces, and the cup unbroken. Again, with
greater strength, he hurled the cup against the pillars in the rock:
it was still without a crack.

Now, it happened that the beautiful woman was sitting spinning at her
wheel just behind where Thor was standing. From time to time she
chanted snatches of old runes and sagas in soft tones; and now, when
Thor stood astonished that the cup was not broken, the woman's voice
fell on his ear, singing low the following words:--

    "Hard the pillar, hard the stone,
    Harder yet the giant's bone.
    Stones shall break and pillars fall;
    Hymir's forehead breaks them all."

Then Thor once more took the cup, and hurled it against the giant's
forehead. The cup was this time shivered to pieces; but Hymir himself
was unhurt, and cried out, "Well done at last, Ving-Thor; but can you
carry that mile-deep kettle out of my hall, think you?"

Tyr tried to lift it, and could not even raise the handle.

Then Thor grasped it by the rim, and, as he did so, his feet pressed
through the floor. With a mighty effort he lifted it; he placed it on
his head, while the rings rang at his feet; and so in triumph he bore
off the kettle, and set out again for Ægir's Hall.

After journeying a little way he chanced to look round, and then he
saw that a host of many-headed giants, with Hymir for their leader,
were thronging after him. From every cavern, and iceberg, and jagged
peak some hideous monster grinned and leered as a great wild beast
waiting for his prey.

"Treachery!" cried Thor, as he raised Miölnir above his head, and
hurled it three times among the giants.

In an instant they stood stiff, and cold, and dead, in rugged groups
along the shore; one with his arm raised; another with his head
stretched out; some upright, some crouching; each in the position he
had last assumed. And there still they stand, petrified by ages into
giant rocks; and, still pointing their stony fingers at each other,
they tell the mighty tale of Thor's achievements, and the wondrous
story of their fate.

"Pass round the foaming mead," cried King Ægir, as Thor placed
"Mile-deep" on the table; and this time it happened that there was
enough for every one.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thor, as his name implies, was the thunder god; his realm was called
Thrudvang, which is said to mean the "Region of Fortitude." Of his
hall, Bilskirnir (storm-serene), Odin says, "Five hundred floors, and
forty eke, has Bilskirnir with its windings. Of all the roofed
houses that I know is my son's the greatest." His hammer, Miölnir,
"To pound, or grind,"--Megingjardir, his belt of prowess--his goats,
whose names signify "To crack, grind, gnash" and "race at
intervals"--his attendant Thialfi, the swift falling thunder shower,
all help to picture him in this character; but he ought to be
understood, also, in the larger sense of a god of cultivation and the
order of nature, in opposition to the whole tribe of the Hrimthursar,
frost-giants, mountain-giants, fog-enchantments, and the like sterile
portions and retarding forces of the physical world. The principle of
combat in the physical world, Thor appears also as the chief hero-god
and warrior; his victories are moral as well as physical--his life
was unceasing warfare.

In the _Edda_ account of Thor going to Utgard, the giant-king whom he
finds there is called Utgard-_Loki_; and it is to be observed that
Loki, who, we saw, had his own root in fire, is in Utgard opposed to
Logi who is also fire, so that in this myth Loki stands in opposition
to two beings nearly akin to himself. This may be explained as
follows. Utgard, outer-world, or under-world, means outside of both
the human and godly regions, and reminds us of the chaotic,
elementary powers. Utgard-Loki, or out-worldly-Loki, represents
outside of human world in its evil aspect--the destructive apart from
the formative principle. Connected with him appears elementary fire
(Logi), and Loki is opposed to the latter because at the time this
myth was conceived he had come to mean evil _in_ the world rather
than that elementary double-natured fire out of which the idea of his
evil had originally crept. This view of Utgard, viz., its connection
with the chaotic powers, explains the apparent defeats of Thor during
his visit there, for Thor is a deity of the formed universe, he can
subdue _that_ to his will, not the first double-natured elements out
of which it was built up.

How naturally would the dark frozen land and misty mountain shapes of
the north, suggest to the ancient song singers these ideas concerning
outworldly and inworldly giants and wild unfathomable powers and
enchanted combatants.

It must be confessed that Asa Thor does not always appear in the
favourable light in which the tales given here represent him. There
are one or two very uncomfortable stories about him, bringing out
those dark traits of craft and cruelty which, as we saw before, so
often stained the bright shields of northern warriors. In particular,
there is a story of his losing his hammer and going to Jötunheim to
recover it, disguised as Freyja. When his craft had succeeded, and he
felt the hammer in his grasp again, "Loud laughed," says the lay,
"the fierce hearted one's soul in his breast." After which he slew,
first the giant who had robbed him, then _all_ the giant's race.
Perhaps, even so far as that we could have forgiven him, but--the
giant, it is said, had "a luckless sister, an aged sister," and the
hero-god must need slay her too. "Blows she got, a hammer's stroke,"
and "so," ends the lay, "did Odin's son get his hammer back,"
apparently well satisfied with the whole performance. But are the
Warrior-god's descendants so very different from himself--the giant's
sister, the aged, luckless sister, who does not seem as if she could
do anybody much harm, is she not apt even now to fall beneath the
vengeful hammers of our modern Thors, remorselessly stricken down
after the real battle has been fought and won?

       *       *       *       *       *

From the fierce thunder deity we turn to Njord's bright children,
Frey and Freyja, "Beauteous and mighty."




CHAPTER III.

FREY.


PART I. ON TIPTOE IN AIR THRONE.

I told you, some time ago, how Van Frey went away into Alfheim with
the light elves, of whom Odin made him king and schoolmaster.

You have heard what Frey was like, and the kind of lessons he
promised to teach his pupils, so you can imagine what pleasant times
they had of it in Alfheim.

Wherever Frey came there was summer and sunshine. Flowers sprang up
under his footsteps, and bright-winged insects, like flying flowers,
hovered round his head. His warm breath ripened the fruit on the
trees, and gave a bright yellow colour to the corn, and purple bloom
to the grapes, as he passed through fields and vineyards.

When he rode along in his car, drawn by the stately boar, Golden
Bristles, soft winds blew before him, filling the air with fragrance,
and spreading abroad the news, "Van Frey is coming!" and every
half-closed flower burst into perfect beauty, and forest, and field,
and hill, flushed their richest colours to greet his presence.

Under Frey's care and instruction the pretty little light elves
forgot their idle ways, and learned all the pleasant tasks he had
promised to teach them. It was the prettiest possible sight to see
them in the evening filling their tiny buckets, and running about
among the woods and meadows to hang the dew-drops deftly on the
slender tips of the grass-blades, or to drop them into the
half-closed cups of the sleepy flowers. When this last of their day's
tasks was over they used to cluster round their summer-king, like
bees about the queen, while he told them stories about the wars
between the Æsir and the giants, or of the old time when he lived
alone with his father Niörd, in Noatun, and listened to the waves
singing songs of far distant lands. So pleasantly did they spend
their time in Alfheim.

But in the midst of all this work and play Frey had a wish in his
mind, of which he could not help often talking to his clear-minded
messenger and friend Skirnir. "I have seen many things," he used to
say, "and travelled through many lands; but to see all the world at
once, as Asa Odin does from Air Throne, _that_ must be a splendid
sight."

"Only Father Odin may sit on Air Throne," Skirnir would say; and it
seemed to Frey that this answer was not so much to the purpose as his
friend's sayings generally were.

At length, one very clear summer evening, when Odin was feasting with
the other Æsir in Valhalla, Frey could restrain his curiosity no
longer. He left Alfheim, where all the little elves were fast asleep,
and, without asking any one's advice, climbed into Air Throne, and
stood on tiptoe in Odin's very seat. It was a clear evening, and I
had, perhaps, better not even try to tell you what Frey saw.

He looked first all round him over Manheim, where the rosy light of
the set sun still lingered, and where men, and birds, and flowers
were gathering themselves up for their night's repose; then he
glanced towards the heavenly hills where Bifröst rested, and then
towards the shadowy land which deepened down into Niflheim. At length
he turned his eyes northward to the misty land of Jötunheim. There
the shades of evening had already fallen; but from his high place
Frey could still see distinct shapes moving about through the gloom.
Strange and monstrous shapes they were, and Frey stood a little
higher, on tiptoe, that he might look further after them. In this
position he could just descry a tall house standing on a hill in the
very middle of Jötunheim. While he looked at it a maiden came and
lifted up her arms to undo the latch of the door. It was dusk in
Jötunheim; but when this maiden lifted up her white arms, such a
dazzling reflection came from them, that Jötunheim, and the sky, and
all the sea were flooded with clear light. For a moment everything
could be distinctly seen; but Frey saw nothing but the face of the
maiden with the uplifted arms; and when she had entered the house and
shut the door after her, and darkness fell again on earth, and sky,
and sea,--darkness fell, too, upon Frey's heart.


PART II. THE GIFT.

The next morning, when the little elves awoke up with the dawn, and
came thronging round their king to receive his commands, they were
surprised to see that he had changed since they last saw him.

"He has grown up in the night," they whispered one to another
sorrowfully.

And in truth he was no longer so fit a teacher and playfellow for the
merry little people as he had been a few hours before.

It was to no purpose that the sweet winds blew, and the flowers
opened, when Frey came forth from his chamber. A bright white light
still danced before him, and nothing now seemed to him worth looking
at. That evening when the sun had set, and work was over, there were
no stories for the light elves.

"Be still," Frey said, when they pressed round, "If you will be still
and listen, there are stories enough to be heard better than mine."

I do not know whether the elves heard anything; but to Frey it seemed
that flowers, and birds, and winds, and the whispering rivers, united
that day in singing one song, which he never wearied of hearing.

"We are fair," they said; "but there is nothing in the whole world so
fair as Gerda, the giant-maiden whom you saw last night in
Jötunheim."

"Frey has dew-drops in his eyes," the little elves said to each other
in whispers as they sat round looking up at him, and they felt very
much surprised; for only to men and the Æsir is it permitted to be
sorrowful and weep.

Soon, however, wiser people noticed the change that had come over the
summer king, and his good-natured father, Niörd, sent Skirnir one
day into Alfheim to inquire into the cause of Frey's sorrow.

He found him walking alone in a shady place, and Frey was glad enough
to tell his trouble to his wise friend.

When he had related the whole story, he said,--

"And now you will see that there is no use in asking me to be merry
as I used to be; for how can I ever be happy in Alfheim, and enjoy
the summer and sunshine, while my dear Gerd, whom I love, is living
in a dark, cold land, among cruel giants?"

"If she be really as beautiful and beloved as you say," answered
Skirnir, "she must be sadly out of place in Jötunheim. Why do not you
ask her to be your wife, and live with you in Alfheim?"

"That would I only too gladly do," answered Frey; "but if I were to
leave Alfheim only for a few hours, the cruel giant, Ryme,[4] would
rush in to take my place; all the labours of the year would be undone
in a night, and the poor, toiling men, who are watching for the
harvest, would wake some morning to find their corn-fields and
orchards buried in snow."

 [4] Ryme--the Frost Giant.

"Well," said Skirnir, thoughtfully, "I am neither so strong nor so
beautiful as you, Frey; but, if you will give me the sword that hangs
by your side, I will undertake the journey to Jötunheim; and I will
speak in such a way of you, and of Alfheim, to the lovely Gerd, that
she will gladly leave her land and the house of her giant-father to
come to you."

Now, Frey's sword was a gift, and he knew well enough that he ought
not to part with it, or trust it in any hands but his own; and yet
how could he expect Skirnir to risk all the dangers of Jötunheim for
any less recompense than an enchanted sword? and what other hope had
he of ever seeing his dear Gerda again?

He did not allow himself a moment to think of the choice he was
making. He unbuckled his sword from his side and put it into
Skirnir's hands; and then he turned rather pettishly away, and threw
himself down on a mossy bank under a tree.

"You will be many days in travelling to Jötunheim," he said, "and
all that time I shall be miserable."

Skirnir was too sensible to think this speech worth answering. He
took a hasty farewell of Frey, and prepared to set off on his
journey; but, before he left the hill, he chanced to see the
reflection of Frey's face in a little pool of water that lay near. In
spite of its sorrowful expression, it was as beautiful as the woods
are in full summer, and a clever thought came into Skirnir's mind. He
stooped down, without Frey's seeing him, and, with cunning touch,
stole the picture out of the water; then he fastened it up carefully
in his silver drinking-horn, and, hiding it in his mantle, he mounted
his horse and rode towards Jötunheim, secure of succeeding in his
mission, since he carried a matchless sword to conquer the giant, and
a matchless picture to win the maiden.


PART III. FAIREST GERD.

I told you that the house of Gymir, Gerda's father, stood in the
middle of Jötunheim, so it will not be difficult for you to imagine
what a toilsome and wondrous journey Skirnir had. He was a brave
hero, and he rode a brave horse; but, when they came to the barrier
of murky flame that surrounds Jötunheim, a shudder came over both.

"Dark it is without," said Skirnir to his horse, "and you and I must
leap through flame, and go over hoar mountains among Giant Folk. The
giants will take us both, or we shall return victorious together."

Then he patted his horse's neck, and touched him with his armed heel,
and with one bound he cleared the barrier, and his hoofs rang on the
frozen land.

Their first day's journey was through the land of the Frost Giants,
whose prickly touch kills, and whose breath is sharper than swords.
Then they passed through the dwellings of the horse-headed and
vulture-headed giants,--monsters terrible to see. Skirnir hid his
face, and the horse flew along swifter than the wind.

On the evening of the third day they reached Gymir's house. Skirnir
rode round it nine times; but though there were twenty doors, he
could find no entrance; for fierce three-headed dogs guarded every
door-way.

At length he saw a herdsman pass near, and he rode up and asked him
how it was possible for a stranger to enter Gymir's house, or get a
sight of his fair daughter Gerd.

"Are you doomed to death, or are you already a dead man," answered
the herdsman, "that you talk of seeing Gymir's fair daughter, or
entering a house from which no one ever returns?"

"My death is fixed for one day," said Skirnir, in answer, and his
voice, the voice of an Asa, sounded loud and clear through the misty
air of Jötunheim. It reached the ears of the fair Gerd as she sat in
her chamber with her maidens.

"What is that noise of noises," she said, "that I hear? The earth
shakes with it, and all Gymir's halls tremble."

Then one of the maidens got up, and peeped out of the window.

"I see a man," she said; "he has dismounted from his horse, and he is
fearlessly letting it graze before the door."

"Go out and bring him in stealthily, then," said Gerda; "I must again
hear him speak; for his voice is sweeter than the ringing of bells."

So the maiden rose, and opened the house-door softly, lest the grim
giant, Gymir, who was drinking mead in the banquet-hall with seven
other giants, should hear and come forth.

Skirnir heard the door open, and understanding the maiden's sign, he
entered with stealthy steps, and followed her to Gerda's chamber. As
soon as he entered the doorway the light from her face shone upon
him, and he no longer wondered that Frey had given up his sword.

"Are you the son of an Asa, or an Alf, or of a wise Van?" asked
Gerda; "and why have you come through flame and snow to visit our
halls?"

Then Skirnir came forward and knelt at Gerda's feet, and gave his
message, and spoke as he had promised to speak of Van Frey and of
Alfheim.

Gerda listened; and it was pleasant enough to talk to her, looking
into her bright face; but she did not seem to understand much of what
he said.

He promised to give her eleven golden apples from Idūna's grove if
she would go with him, and that she should have the magic ring
Draupnir from which every day a still fairer jewel fell. But he found
there was no use in talking of beautiful things to one who had never
in all her life seen anything beautiful.

Gerda smiled at him as a child smiles at a fairy tale.

At length he grew angry. "If you are so childish, maiden," he said,
"that you can believe only what you have seen, and have no thought of
Æsirland or the Æsir, then sorrow and utter darkness shall fall upon
you; you shall live alone on the Eagle Mount turned towards Hel.
Terrors shall beset you; weeping shall be your lot. Men and Æsir will
hate you, and you shall be doomed to live for ever with the Frost
Giant, Ryme, in whose cold arms you will wither away like a thistle
on a house-top."

"Gently," said Gerd, turning away her bright head, and sighing. "How
am I to blame? you make such a talk of your Æsir and your Æsir; but
how can I know about it, when all my life long I have lived with
giants?"

At these words, Skirnir rose as if he would have departed, but Gerda
called him back.

"You must drink a cup of mead," she said, "in return for your
sweet-sounding words."

Skirnir heard this gladly, for now he knew what he would do. He
took the cup from her hand, drank off the mead, and, before he
returned it, he contrived cleverly to pour in the water from his
drinking-horn, on which Frey's image was painted; then he put the
cup into Gerda's hand, and bade her look.

She smiled as she looked; and the longer she looked, the sweeter grew
her smile; for she looked for the first time on a face that loved
her, and many things became clear to her that she had never
understood before. Skirnir's words were no longer like fairy tales.
She could now believe in Æsirland, and in all beautiful things.

"Go back to your master," she said, at last, "and tell him that in
nine days I will meet him in the warm wood Barri."

After hearing these joyful words, Skirnir made haste to take leave,
for every moment that he lingered in the giant's house he was in
danger. One of Gerda's maidens conducted him to the door, and he
mounted his horse again, and rode from Jötunheim with a glad heart.


PART IV. THE WOOD BARRI.

When Skirnir got back to Alfheim, and told Gerd's answer to Frey, he
was disappointed to find that his master did not immediately look as
bright and happy as he expected.

"Nine days!" he said; "but how can I wait nine days? One day is long,
and three days are very long, but 'nine days' might as well be a
whole year."

I have heard children say such things when one tells them to wait for
a new toy.

Skirnir and old Niörd only laughed at it; but Freyja and all the
ladies of Asgard made a journey to Alfheim, when they heard the
story, to comfort Frey, and hear all the news about the wedding.

"Dear Frey," they said, "it will never do to lie still here, sighing
under a tree. You are quite mistaken about the time being long; it is
hardly long enough to prepare the marriage presents, and talk over
the wedding. You have no idea how busy we are going to be; everything
in Alfheim will have to be altered a little."

At these words Frey really did lift up his head, and wake up from his
musings. He looked, in truth, a little frightened at the thought;
but, when all the Asgard ladies were ready to work for his wedding,
how could he make any objection? He was not allowed to have much
share in the business himself; but he had little time, during the
nine days, to indulge in private thought, for never before was there
such a commotion in Alfheim. The ladies found so many things that
wanted overlooking, and the little light elves were not of the
slightest use to any one. They forgot all their usual tasks, and went
running about through groves and fields, and by the sedgy banks of
rivers, peering into earth-holes, and creeping down into flower-cups
and empty snail-shells, every one hoping to find a gift for Gerda.

Some stole the light from glow-worms' tails, and wove it into a
necklace, and others pulled the ruby spots from cowslip leaves, to
set with jewels the acorn cups that Gerda was to drink from; while
the swiftest runners chased the butterflies, and pulled feathers from
their wings to make fans and bonnet-plumes.

All the work was scarcely finished when the ninth day came, and Frey
set out from Alfheim with all his elves, to the warm wood Barri.

The Æsir joined him on the way, and they made, together, something
like a wedding procession. First came Frey in his chariot, drawn by
Golden Bristles, and carrying in his hand the wedding-ring, which was
none other than Draupnir, the magic ring of which so many stories are
told.

Odin and Frigga followed with their wedding gift, the Ship
Skidbladnir, in which all the Æsir could sit and sail, though it
could afterwards be folded up so small, that you might carry it in
your hand.

Then came Idūna, with eleven golden apples in a basket on her fair
head, and then two and two all the heroes and ladies with their
gifts.

All round them flocked the elves, toiling under the weight of their
offerings. It took twenty little people to carry one gift, and yet
there was not one so large as a baby's finger. Laughing, and singing,
and dancing, they entered the warm wood, and every summer flower sent
a sweet breath after them. Everything on earth smiled on the
wedding-day of Frey and Gerda, only--when it was all over, and every
one had gone home, and the moon shone cold into the wood--it seemed
as if the Vanir spoke to one another.

"Odin," said one voice, "gave his eye for wisdom, and we have seen
that it was well done."

"Frey," answered the other, "has given his sword for happiness. It
may be well to be unarmed while the sun shines and bright days last;
but when Ragnarök has come, and the sons of Muspell ride down to the
last fight, will not Frey regret his sword?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Frey appears as the summer god, and the Boar was sacred to him
because, from its tearing up the earth with its tusks, it typified
agriculture and return of the seed-sowing time. Gerda is supposed to
represent the frozen earth, which Summer seeing from far off loves
and woos to his embrace. The lighting of the sky by the uplifted
giant maiden's arms is explained to mean the Northern Lights glancing
from one end of heaven to the other. Frey parts with his sword in
order to win Gerda--this is alluded to in both _Eddas_ as if it were
wrong or at any rate highly imprudent. "When the sons of Muspell come
at Ragnarök," it is said, and Frey shall have to meet Surtur in
battle, "then will thou, unhappy, not have wherewith to fight." The
ship Skidbladnir was said to have been made by four dwarfs in the
beginning of time; it is alluded to in a poem quoted before. Draupnir
is not mentioned in the _Edda_ in connection with Frey and Gerda.

The Northmen had three grand religious festivals in their year: they
all took place in the winter half of the year, between the harvest
and seed time. One was celebrated in midwinter about the turn of the
day, and from so very nearly coinciding with our Christmas, its name,
"Yule," came to be applied to the Christian festival. Yule is derived
from a name of Odin, but it is said by Laing that this winter feast
was held in honour of Thor. In Fouqué's writings a custom is named
which the Scandinavians had of making vows to accomplish some great
enterprise before another new year, over a golden boar's head at this
winter feast; the mention of the golden boar seems to connect the
festival with the god Frey, probably it was a general propitiation of
the summer deities for the coming year; the second festival was in
honour of the goddesses; the third, about spring, in honour of Odin,
because at this season warlike expeditions began to be undertaken.




CHAPTER IV.

THE WANDERINGS OF FREYJA.


PART I. THE NECKLACE BRISINGAMEN.

Now, though Frey was made king and schoolmaster of the light elves,
and spent the greater part of his time with them in Alfheim, his
sister Freyja remained in the city of Asgard, and had a palace built
for her named Folkvang. In this palace there was one very beautiful
hall, Sessrymnir--the "Roomy Seated"--where Freyja entertained her
guests, and she had always plenty of them; for every one liked to
look at her beautiful face, and listen to her enchanting music which
was quite superior to anybody else's. She had, moreover, a wonderful
husband named Odur, who was one of the sons of the immortals, and had
come from a long way off on purpose to marry her. Freyja was a little
proud of this, and used often to speak of it to Frigga and the other
ladies of Asgard. Some of them said she was a very fortunate person;
but some were a little jealous of her, whilst Frigga always gravely
warned her not to be vain on account of her happiness, lest sorrow
should overtake her unawares.

Everything went on quite smoothly, however, for a long time, Freyja
leading a very gay and beautiful life in the sunshine of her
happiness, and herself a very radiant joy to every one around her.
But one day, one unlucky day, Freyja, this fair and sunshiny young
Vana, went out alone from Asgard to take a walk in Alfheim. She hoped
to meet somewhere thereabouts her dear brother Frey, whom she had not
seen for a long time, and of whom she wanted to ask a very particular
favour. The occasion for it was this;--Heimdall and Ægir were
expected to dine at Valhalla the next day, and Freyja and her husband
were invited to meet them. All the lords and ladies of Asgard were to
be there. Niörd, too, was coming, with his new wife, Skadi, the
daughter of a giant.

"Every one will be beautifully dressed," said Freyja, "and _I_ have
not a single ornament to wear."

"But you are more beautiful than any one, Freyja," said her husband;
"for you were born in the spacious Wind-Home."

"All are not so high-minded as you, Odur," answered his wife; "and if
I go to Valhalla without an ornament of any kind I shall certainly be
looked down upon."

So saying, Freyja set off, as I told you, to Alfheim, determined to
ask of her good-natured brother a garland of flowers at, least. But
somehow or other she could not find Frey anywhere. She tried to keep
in Alfheim--she thought she was there; but all the time she was
thinking of her dress and her ornaments, planning what she should
wear, and her steps went downward, downward, away from Alfheim to the
cavern of four dwarfs.

"Where am I?" said Freyja to herself, as she at last lost the light
of day, and went down, wandering on deeper and deeper between the
high walls, and under the firm roof of rock. "Why, surely this must
be Svartheim; and yet it is not unpleasant, nor quite dark here,
though the sun is not shining."

And in truth it was not dark; for, far on before her, winding in and
out through the cavern's innermost recesses, were groups of little
men, who had each a lantern in his cap and a pickaxe in his hand; and
they were working hard, digging for diamonds, which they piled up the
walls, and hung across the roof in white and rose-coloured coronets,
marvellously glittering.

Four clever little dwarf-chiefs were there directing the labours of
the rest; but, as soon as they caught sight of Freyja, they sat down
in the centre of the cavern, and began to work diligently at
something which they held between them, bending over it with
strange chattering and grimaces. Freyja felt very curious to see what
it was; but her eyes were so dazzled with the blaze of diamonds and
lanterns, that she was obliged to go nearer in order to distinguish
it clearly. Accordingly, she walked on to where the four dwarfs were
sitting, and peeped over their shoulders. Oh! brilliant! exquisitely
worked! bewildering!

[Illustration: FREYJA IN THE DWARFS' CAVE.]

Freyja drew back again with almost blinded eyes; for she had looked
upon the necklace Brisingamen, and at the same moment a passionate
wish burst forth in her heart to have it for her own, to wear it in
Valhalla, to wear it always round her own fair neck. "Life to me,"
said Freyja, "is no longer worth having without Brisingamen." Then
the dwarfs held it out to her, but also looked cunningly at one
another as they did so, and burst into a laugh so loud that it rang
through the vaulted caverns, echoed and echoed back again from side
to side, from dwarf to dwarf, from depth to depth.

Freyja, however, only turned her head a little on one side, stretched
out her hand, grasped the necklace with her small fingers, and then
ran out of the cavern as quickly as ever she could, up again to the
green hill-side. There she sat down and fitted the brilliant ornament
about her neck, after which she looked a little shyly at the
reflection of herself in a still pool that was near, and turned
homewards with an exulting heart. She felt certain that all was well
with her; nevertheless, all was not well, but very miserable indeed.
When Freyja was come back to Asgard again, and to her palace of
Folkvang, she sought her own private apartments, that she might see
Odur alone, and make him admire her necklace Brisingamen. But Odur
was not there. She searched in every room, hither and thither; but
alas! he was not to be found in any room or any hall in all the
palace of Folkvang. Freyja searched for him in every place; she
walked restlessly about, in and out, among the places of the "Roomy
Seated." She peered wistfully, with sad eyes, in the face of every
guest; but the only face she cared to see, she never saw.

Odur was gone, gone back for ever to the home of the Immortals.
Brisingamen and Odur could not live together in the palace of
Folkvang. But Freyja did not know this; she did not know why Odur was
gone, nor where he was gone; she only saw he was not there, and she
wrung her hands sadly, and watered her jewels with salt, warm tears.

As she sat thus and mourned in the entrance of her palace, all the
ladies of Asgard passed by on their way to Valhalla, and looked at
her. Some said one thing, some another; but no one said anything at
all encouraging, or much to the purpose. Frigga passed by last of
all, and she raised her head with a little severe shake, saying
something about beauty, and pride, and punishment, which sank down so
deeply into the heart of the sorrow-stricken young Vana that she got
up with a desperate resolution, and, presenting herself before the
throne of Asa Odin, spoke to him thus: "Father of Æsir, listen to my
weeping, and do not turn away from me with a cruel frown. I have
searched through my palace of Folkvang, and all through the city of
Asgard, but nowhere is Odur the Immortal to be found. Let me go,
Father Odin, I beseech you, and seek him far and near, across the
earth, through the air, over the sea, even to the borders of
Jötunheim."

And Odin answered, "Go, Freyja, and good fortune go with you."

Then Freyja sprang into her swift, softly-rolling chariot, which was
drawn by two cats, waved her hand as she rose over the city, and was
gone.


PART II. LOKI--THE IRON WOOD--A BOUNDLESS WASTE.

The cats champed their bright bits, and skimmed alike over earth and
air with swift, clinging steps, eager and noiseless. The chariot
rolled on, and Freyja was carried away up and down into every part of
the world, weeping golden tears wherever she went; they fell down
from her pale cheeks, and rippled away behind her in little sunshiny
rivers, that carried beauty and weeping to every land. She came to
the greatest city in the world, and drove down its wide streets.

"But none of the houses here are good enough for Odur," said Freyja
to herself; "I will not ask for him at such doors as these."

So she went straight on to the palace of the king.

"Is Odur in this palace?" she asked of the gate-keeper. "Is Odur, the
Immortal, living with the king?"

But the gate-keeper shook his head, and assured her that his master
had never even heard of such a person.

Then Freyja turned away, and knocked at many other stately doors,
asking for Odur; but no one in all that great city so much as knew
her husband's name.

Then Freyja went into the long, narrow lanes and shabby streets,
where the poor people lived, but there it was all the same; every one
said only, "No--not here," and stared at her.

In the night-time Freyja went quite away from the city, and the
lanes, and the cottages, far off to the side of a lake, where she lay
down and looked over into the water.

By-and-bye the moon came and looked there too, and the Queen of Night
saw a calm face in the water, serene and high; but the Queen of
Beauty saw a troubled face, frail and fair.

Brisingamen was reflected in the water too, and its rare colours
flashed from the little waves. Freyja was pleased at the sight of her
favourite ornament, and smiled even in the midst of her tears; but as
for the moon, instead of Brisingamen, the deep sky and the stars were
around her.

At last Freyja slept by the side of the lake, and then a dark shape
crept up the bank on which she was lying, sat down beside her, and
took her fair head between its hands. It was Loki, and he began to
whisper into Freyja's ear as she slept.

"You were quite right, Freyja," he said, "to go out and try to get
something for yourself in Svartheim, instead of staying at home with
your husband. It was very wise of you to care more for your dress and
your beauty than for Odur. You went down into Svartheim, and found
Brisingamen. Then the Immortal went away; but is not Brisingamen
better then he? Why do you cry, Freyja? Why do you start so?"

Freyja turned, moaning, and tried to lift her head from between his
hands; but she could not, and it seemed in her dream as if a terrible
nightmare brooded over her.

"Brisingamen is dragging me down," she cried in her sleep, and laid
her little hand upon the clasp without knowing what she was doing.

Then a great laugh burst forth in Svartheim, and came shuddering up
through the vaulted caverns until it shook the ground upon which she
lay. Loki started up, and was gone before Freyja had time to open her
eyes.

It was morning, and the young Vana prepared to set out on her
journey.

"Brisingamen is fair," she said, as she bade farewell to her image in
the lake. "Brisingamen is fair; but I find it heavy sometimes."

After this, Freyja went to many cities, and towns, and villages,
asking everywhere for Odur; but there was not one in all the world
who could tell her where he was gone, and at last her chariot rolled
eastward and northward to the very borders of Jötunheim. There Freyja
stopped; for before her lay Jarnvid, the Iron Wood, which was one
road from earth to the abode of the giants, and whose tall trees,
black and hard, were trying to pull down the sky with their iron
claws. In the entrance sat an Iron Witch, with her back to the forest
and her face towards the Vana. Jarnvid was full of the sons and
daughters of this Iron Witch; they were wolves, and bears, and foxes,
and many-headed ravenous birds.

"Eastward," croaked a raven as Freyja drew near--

    "Eastward in the Iron Wood
    The old one sitteth;"

and there she did sit, talking in quarrelsome tones to her wolf-sons
and vulture-daughters, who answered from the wood behind her,
howling, screeching, and screaming all at the same time. There was a
horrible din, and Freyja began to fear that her low voice would never
be heard. She was obliged to get out of her chariot, and walk close
up to the old witch, so that she might whisper in her ear.

"Can you tell me, old mother," she said, "where Odur is? Have you
seen him pass this way?"

"I don't understand one word of what you are saying," answered the
iron woman; "and if I did, I have no time to waste in answering
foolish questions."

Now, the witch's words struck like daggers into Freyja's heart, and
she was not strong enough to pull them out again; so she stood there
a long time, not knowing what she should do.

"You had better go," said the crone to her at last; "there's no use
in standing there crying." For this was the grandmother of
strong-minded women, and she hated tears.

Then Freyja got into her chariot again, and went westward a long way
to the wide, boundless land where impenetrable forests were growing,
and undying nature reigned in silence. She knew that the silent Vidar
was living there; for, not finding any pleasure in the gay society of
Asgard, he had obtained permission from Father Odin to retire to this
place. "He is one of the Æsir, and perhaps _he_ will be able to help
me," said the sad-hearted young Vana, as her chariot rolled on
through empty moor-lands and forests, always in twilight Her ear
heard no sound, her eye saw no living shape; but still she went on
with a trembling hope till she came to the spot

    "Begrown with branches
    And high grass,
    Which was Vidar's dwelling."

Vidar was sitting there firm as an oak, and as silent as night. Long
grass grew up through his long hair, and the branches of trees
crossed each other over his eyes; his ears were covered with moss,
and dewdrops glistened upon his beard.

"It is almost impossible to get to him," sighed Freyja, "through all
these wet leaves, and I am afraid his moss-covered ears are very
deaf." But she threw herself down on the ground before him, and said,
"Tell me, Vidar, does Odur hide among thick trees? or is he wandering
over the broad west lands?"

Vidar did not answer her--only a pale gleam shot over his face, as if
reflected from that of Freyja, like sunshine breaking through a wood.

"He does not hear me," said Freyja to herself, and she crushed
nearer to him through the branches. "Only tell me, Vidar," she said,
"is Odur here?" But Vidar said nothing, for he had no voice.

Then Freyja hid her face in her lap, and wept bitterly for a long
time. "An Asa," she said, at last, looking up, "is no better to one
than an Iron Witch when one is really in trouble;" and then she
gathered her disordered dress about her, threw back her long bright
hair, and, springing into her chariot, once again went wearily on her
way.


PART III. THE KING OF THE SEA AND HIS DAUGHTERS.

At last she came to the wide sea-coast, and there everything was
gloriously beautiful. It was evening, and the western sky looked like
a broad crimson flower. No wind stirred the ocean, but the small
waves rippled in rose-coloured froth on the shore, like the smiles of
a giant at play.

Ægir, the old sea-king, supported himself on the sand, whilst the
cool waters were laving his breast, and his ears drank their sweet
murmur; for nine waves were his beautiful daughters, and they and
their father were talking together. Now, though Ægir looked so stormy
and old, he was really as gentle as a child, and no mischief would
ever have happened in his kingdom if he had been left to himself. But
he had a cruel wife, called Ran, who was the daughter of a giant, and
so eagerly fond of fishing that, whenever any of the rough winds came
to call upon her husband, she used to steal out of the deep sea-caves
where she lived, and follow ships for miles under the water, dragging
her net after her, so that she might catch any one who fell
overboard.

Freyja wandered along the shore towards the place where the Sea King
was lying, and as she went she heard him speaking to his daughters.

"What is the history of Freyja?" he asked.

And the first wave answered,--

"Freyja is a fair young Vana, who once was happy in Asgard."

Then the second wave said,--

"But she left her fair palace there, and Odur, her Immortal Love."

Third wave,--

"She went down to the cavern of dwarfs."

Fourth wave,--

"She found Brisingamen there, and carried it away with her."

Fifth wave,--

"But when she got back to Folkvang she found that Odur was gone."

Sixth wave,--

"Because the Vana had loved herself more than Immortal Love."

Seventh wave,--

"Freyja will never be happy again, for Odur will never come back."

Eighth wave,--

"Odur will never come back as long as the world shall last."

Ninth wave,--

"Odur will never return, nor Freyja forget to weep."

Freyja stood still, spell-bound, listening, and when she heard the
last words, that Odur would never come back, she wrung her hands, and
cried,--

"O, Father Ægir! trouble comes, comes surging up from a wide sea,
wave over wave, into my soul." And in truth it seemed as if her
words had power to change the whole surface of the ocean--wave over
wave rose higher and spoke louder--Ran was seen dragging her net in
the distance--old Ægir shouted, and dashed into the deep--sea and sky
mixed in confusion, and night fell upon the storm. Then Freyja sank
down exhausted on the sand, where she lay until her kind daughter,
the sleepy little Siofna, came and carried her home again in her
arms. After this the beautiful Vana lived in her palace of Folkvang,
with friends and sisters, Æsir and Asyniur, but Odur did not return,
nor Freyja forget to weep.

       *       *       *       *       *

Freyja, as she appears in the Edda, was the goddess of the beautiful
year and of all sorts of love. The story of her marriage with Odur is
extremely obscure; it is even thought that Odur is only a form of
Odin, and, in like manner, that Freyja and Frigga are very intimately
connected.

Frigga was the patroness of married love, of the happiness and duties
of the home (originally, she and Freyja and all the great goddesses
were probably personifications of the earth); but Freyja, as goddess
of love, is less developed in idea than Frigga, she has more of the
nature goddess, less of the woman in her. She was said to divide the
spoil with Odin in battle, taking half the slain for herself and
leaving him the other half, which points to her having been at one
time his wife and sharing all with him. Supposing her to have been
the beautiful year, or rather the earth during the beautiful part of
the year, Odur leaving her would imply the beginning of the
shortening of the days at midsummer. The source of summer flies,
Summer seeks him weeping golden tears. Do these mean Autumn's golden
leaves and falling fruits? or that the Sun's beautiful gifts must
ever follow him.

This myth of Summer's source, the Sun, declining from the year has,
it is supposed, been given to Odur because it was not important
enough to belong to the greatest of the gods, although it was really
wrapped up in his nature, and the names Odur and Odin are identical
in German. Simrock says, "Every mythology tells us of the death of
the beautiful part of the year like the flight of a god, who is
mourned by his wife or his beloved." Looked at from this point of
view, we see the summerly earth vaunting and decking herself with her
richest jewels in the deepest pride of her delight at the very moment
when the spirit of her existence is stealing away from her. The
summer-decked earth, without the sun of her life, is soulless, has
become mortal. But it must be confessed that the _Edda_ is very
obscure about Brisingamen, and does not mention the necklace in
connection with Odur's departure. The Iron Witch was the mother of
two wolves who devoured the sun and the moon at Ragnarök, she is not
mentioned in the myth of Freyja, but in another lay. It has been
suggested that Freyja's tears may be dew, and she in the character of
Aurora when she sheds them, weeping for some star god of the night.

       *       *       *       *       *

We shall now hear the story of Idūna--a dwarf's daughter, the wife of
Bragi and goddess of Spring, the renewing of life.




CHAPTER V.

IDŪNA'S APPLES.


PART I. REFLECTIONS IN THE WATER

Of all the groves and gardens round the city of Asgard--and they were
many and beautiful--there was none so beautiful as the one where
Idūna, the wife of Bragi, lived. It stood on the south side of the
hill, not far from Gladsheim, and it was called "Always Young,"
because nothing that grew there could ever decay, or become the least
bit older than it was on the day when Idūna entered it. The trees
wore always a tender, light green colour, as the hedges do in spring.
The flowers were mostly half-opened, and every blade of grass bore
always a trembling, glittering drop of early dew. Brisk little winds
wandered about the grove, making the leaves dance from morning till
night and swaying backwards and forwards the heads of the flowers.

"Blow away!" said the leaves to the wind, "for we shall never be
tired."

"And you will never be old," said the winds in answer. And then the
birds took up the chorus and sang,--

"Never tired and never old."

Idūna, the mistress of the grove, was fit to live among young birds,
and tender leaves, and spring flowers. She was so fair that when she
bent over the river to entice her swans to come to her, even the
stupid fish stood still in the water, afraid to destroy so beautiful
an image by swimming over it; and when she held out her hand with
bread for the swans to eat, you would not have known it from a
water-lily--it was so wonderfully white.

Idūna never left her grove even to pay a visit to her nearest
neighbour, and yet she did not lead by any means a dull life; for,
besides having the company of her husband, Bragi, who must have been
an entertaining person to live with; for he is said to have known a
story which never came to an end, and yet which never grew wearisome.
All the heroes of Asgard made a point of coming to call upon her
every day. It was natural enough that they should like to visit so
beautiful a grove and so fair a lady; and yet, to confess the truth,
it was not quite to see either the grove or Idūna that they came.

Idūna herself was well aware of this, and when her visitors had
chatted a short time with her, she never failed to bring out from the
innermost recess of her bower a certain golden casket, and to
request, as a favour, that her guests would not think of going away
till they had tasted her apples, which, she flattered herself, had a
better flavour than any other fruit in the world.

It would have been quite unlike a hero of Asgard to have refused such
courtesy; and, besides, Idūna was not as far wrong about her apples
as hostesses generally are, when they boast of the good things on
their tables.

There is no doubt her apples _had_ a peculiar flavour; and if any one
of the heroes happened to be a little tired, or a little out of
spirits, or a little cross, when he came into the bower, it always
followed that, as soon as he had eaten one apple, he found himself as
fresh, and vigorous, and happy as he had ever been in his life.

So fond were the heroes of these apples, and so necessary did they
think them to their daily comfort, that they never went on a journey
without requesting Idūna to give them one or two, to fortify them
against the fatigues of the way.

[Illustration: IDUNA GIVING THE MAGIC APPLES.]

Idūna had no difficulty in complying with this request; she had no
fear of her store ever failing, for as surely as she took an apple
from her casket another fell in; but where it came from Idūna could
never discover. She never saw it till it was close to the bottom of
the casket; but she always heard the sweet tinkling sound it made
when it touched the golden rim. It was as good as play to Idūna to
stand by her casket, taking the apples out, and watching the fresh
rosy ones come tumbling in, without knowing who threw them.

One spring morning Idūna was very busy taking apples out of her
casket; for several of the heroes were taking advantage of the fine
weather to journey out into the world. Bragi was going from home for
a time; perhaps he was tired of telling his story only to Idūna,
and perhaps she was beginning to know it by heart; and Odin, Loki,
and Hœnir had agreed to take a little tour in the direction of
Jötunheim, just to see if any entertaining adventure would befall
them. When they had all received their apples, and taken a tender
farewell of Idūna, the grove--green and fair as it was--looked,
perhaps, a little solitary.

Idūna stood by her fountain, watching the bright water as it danced
up into the air and quivered, and turned, and fell back, making a
hundred little flashing circles in the river; and then she grew
tired, for once, of the light and the noise, and wandered down to a
still place, where the river was shaded by low bushes on each side,
and reflected clearly the blue sky overhead.

Idūna sat down and looked into the deep water. Besides her own fair
face there were little, wandering, white clouds to be seen reflected
there. She counted them as they sailed past. At length a strange form
was reflected up to her from the water--large, dark, lowering wings,
pointed claws, a head with fierce eyes--looking at her.

Idūna started and raised her head. It was above as well as below; the
same wings--the same eyes--the same head--looking down from the blue
sky, as well as up from the water. Such a sight had never been seen
near Asgard before; and, while Idūna looked, the thing waved its
wings, and went up, up, up, till it lessened to a dark spot in the
clouds and on the river.

It was no longer terrible to look at; but, as it shook its wings a
number of little black feathers fell from them, and flew down towards
the grove. As they neared the trees, they no longer looked like
feathers--each had two independent wings and a head of its own; they
were, in fact, a swarm of Nervous Apprehensions; troublesome little
insects enough, and well-known elsewhere, but which now, for the
first time, found their way into the grove.

Idūna ran away from them; she shook them off; she fought quite
bravely against them; but they are by no means easy to get rid of;
and when, at last, one crept within the folds of her dress, and
twisted itself down to her heart, a new, strange feeling thrilled
there--a feeling never yet known to any dweller in Asgard. Idūna did
not know what to make of it.


PART II. THE WINGED-GIANT.

In the meantime Odin, Loki, and Hœnir proceeded on their journey.
They were not bound on any particular quest. They strayed hither and
thither that Odin might see that things were going on well in the
world, and his subjects comporting themselves in a becoming manner.
Every now and then they halted while Odin inspected the thatching of
a barn, or stood at the smithy to see how the smith wielded his
hammer, or in a furrow to observe if the ploughman guided his
plough-share evenly through the soil. "Well done," he said if the
workman was working with all his might; and he turned away, leaving
something behind him, a straw in the barn, a piece of old iron at
the forge-door, a grain in the furrow--nothing to look at; but ever
after the barn was always full, the forge-fire never went out, the
field yielded bountifully.

Towards noon the Æsir reached a shady valley, and, feeling tired and
hungry, Odin proposed to sit down under a tree, and while he rested
and studied a book of runes which he had with him, he requested Loki
and Hœnir to prepare some dinner.

"I will undertake the meat and the fire," said Hœnir; "you, Loki,
will like nothing better than foraging about for what good things you
can pick up."

"That is precisely what I mean to do," said Loki. "There is a
farm-house near here, from which I can perceive a savoury smell. It
will be strange, with my cunning, if I do not contrive to have the
best of all the dishes under this tree before your fire is burnt up."

As Loki spoke he turned a stone in his hand, and immediately he
assumed the shape of a large black cat. In this form he stole in at
the kitchen-window of a farm-house, where a busy housewife was
intent on taking pies and cakes from a deep oven, and ranging them on
a dresser under the window. Loki watched his opportunity, and
whenever the mistress's back was turned he whisked a cake or a pie
out of the window.

"One, two, three. Why, there are fewer every time I bring a fresh one
from the oven!" cried the bewildered housewife. "It's that thieving
cat. I see the end of her tail on the window-sill." Out of the window
leant the housewife to throw a stone at the cat, but she could see
nothing but a thin cow trespassing in her garden; and when she ran
out with a stick to drive away the cow, it, too, had vanished, and an
old raven, with six young ones, was flying over the garden-hedge.

The raven was Loki, the little ones were the pies; and when he
reached the valley, and changed himself and them into their proper
shapes, he had a hearty laugh at his own cleverness, and at the old
woman's dismay.

"Well done, Loki, king of thieves," said a chorus of foxes, who
peeped out of their holes to see the only one of the Æsir whose
conduct they could appreciate; but Odin, when he heard of it, was
very far from thinking it well done. He was extremely displeased with
Loki for having disgraced himself by such mean tricks.

"It is true," he said, "that my subjects may well be glad to furnish
me with all I require, but it should be done knowingly. Return to the
farmhouse, and place these three black stones on the table from
whence you stole the provisions."

Loki--unwilling as he was to do anything he believed likely to bring
good to others--was obliged to obey. He made himself into the shape
of a white owl, flew once more through the window, and dropped the
stones out of his beak; they sank deep into the table, and looked
like three black stains on the white deal-board.

From that time the housewife led an easy life; there was no need for
her to grind corn, or mix dough, or prepare meat. Let her enter her
kitchen at what time of day she would, stores of provisions stood
smoking hot on the table. She kept her own counsel about it, and
enjoyed the reputation of being the most economical house-keeper in
the whole country-side; but one thing disturbed her mind, and
prevented her thoroughly enjoying the envy and wonder of the
neighbouring wives. All the rubbing, and brushing, and cleaning in
the world would not remove the three black stains from her kitchen
table, and as she had no cooking to do, she spent the greater part of
her time in looking at them.

"If they were but gone," she said, a hundred times every day, "I
should be content; but how is one to enjoy one's life when one cannot
rub the stains off one's own table?"

Perhaps Loki foresaw how the good wife would use her gift; for he
came back from the farm-house in the best spirits. "We will now, with
Father Odin's permission, sit down to dinner," he said; "for surely,
brother Hœnir, while I have been making so many journeys to and fro,
you have been doing something with that fire which I see blazing so
fiercely, and with that old iron pot smoking over it."

"The meat will be by this time ready, no doubt," said Hœnir. "I
killed a wild ox while you were away, and part of it has been now for
some time stewing in the pot."

The Æsir now seated themselves near the fire, and Hœnir lifted up
the lid of the pot. A thick steam rose up from it; but when he took
out the meat it was as red and uncooked as when he first put it into
the pot.

"Patience," said Hœnir; and Odin again took out his book of Runes.
Another hour passed, and Hœnir again took off the lid, and looked at
the meat; but it was in precisely the same state as before. This
happened several times, and even the cunning Loki was puzzled; when,
suddenly, a strange noise was heard coming from a tree near, and,
looking up, they saw an enormous human-headed eagle seated on one of
the branches, and looking at them with two fierce eyes. While they
looked it spoke.

"Give me my share of the feast," it said, "and the meat shall
presently be done."

"Come down and take it--it lies before you," said Loki, while Odin
looked on with thoughtful eyes; for he saw plainly that it was no
mortal bird who had the boldness to claim a share in the Æsir's
food.

Undaunted by Odin's majestic looks, the eagle flew down, and, seizing
a large piece of meat, was going to fly away with it, when Loki,
thinking he had now got the bird in his power, took up a stick that
lay near, and struck a hard blow on the eagle's back. The stick made
a ringing sound as it fell; but, when Loki tried to draw it back, he
found that it stuck with extraordinary force to the eagle's back;
neither could he withdraw his own hands from the other end.

Something like a laugh came from the creature's half-human,
half-bird-like mouth; and then it spread its dark wings and rose up
into the air, dragging Loki after.

"It is as I thought," said Odin, as he saw the eagle's enormous bulk
brought out against the sky; "it is Thiassi, the strongest giant in
Jötunheim, who has presumed to show himself in our presence. Loki has
only received the reward of his treachery, and it would ill-become us
to interfere in his behalf; but, as the monster is near, it will be
well for us to return to Asgard, lest any misfortune should befall
the city in our absence."

While Odin spoke, the winged creature had risen up so high as to be
invisible even to the eyes of the Æsir; and, during their return to
Asgard, he did not again appear before them; but, as they approached
the gates of the city, they were surprised to see Loki coming to meet
them. He had a crest-fallen and bewildered look; and when they
questioned him as to what had happened to him since they parted in
such a strange way, he declared himself to be quite unable to give
any further account of his adventures than that he had been carried
rapidly through the air by the giant, and, at last, thrown down from
a great height near the place where the Æsir met him.

Odin looked steadfastly at him as he spoke, but he forbore to
question him further: for he knew well that there was no hope of
hearing the truth from Loki, and he kept within his own mind the
conviction he felt that some disastrous result must follow a meeting
between two such evil-doers as Loki and the giant Thiassi.

That evening, when the Æsir were all feasting and telling stories to
each other in the great hall of Valhalla, Loki stole out from
Gladsheim, and went alone to visit Idūna in her grove. It was a
still, bright evening. The leaves of the trees moved softly up and
down, whispering sweet words to each other; the flowers, with
half-shut eyes, nodded sleepily to their own reflections in the
water, and Idūna sat by the fountain, with her head resting in one
hand, thinking of pleasant things.

"It is all very well," thought Loki; "but I am not the happier
because people can here live such pleasant lives. It does not do me
any good, or cure the pain I have had so long in my heart."

Loki's long shadow--for the sun was setting--fell on the water as he
approached, and made Idūna start. She remembered the sight that had
disturbed her so much in the morning; but when she saw only Loki, she
looked up and smiled kindly; for he had often accompanied the other
Æsir in their visits to her grove.

"I am wearied with a long journey," said Loki abruptly, "and I would
eat one of your apples to refresh me after my fatigue." The casket
stood by Idūna's side, and she immediately put in her hand and gave
Loki an apple. To her surprise, instead of thanking her warmly, or
beginning to eat it, he turned it round and round in his hand with a
contemptuous air.

"It is true then," he said, after looking intently at the apple for
some time, "your apples are but small and withered in comparison. I
was unwilling to believe it at first, but now I can doubt no longer."

"Small and withered!" said Idūna, rising hastily. "Nay, Asa Odin
himself, who has traversed the whole world, assures me that he has
never seen any to be compared to them."

"That will never be said again," returned Loki; "for this very
afternoon I have discovered a tree, in a grove not far from Asgard,
on which grow apples so beautiful that no one who has seen them will
ever care again for yours."

"I do not wish to see or hear of them," said Idūna, trying to turn
away with an indifferent air; but Loki followed her, and continued
to speak more and more strongly of the beauty of this new fruit,
hinting that Idūna would be sorry that she had refused to listen when
she found all her guests deserting her for the new grove, and when
even Bragi began to think lightly of her and of her gifts. At this
Idūna sighed, and Loki came up close to her, and whispered in her
ear,--

"It is but a short way from Asgard, and the sun has not yet set. Come
out with me, and, before any one else has seen the apples, you shall
gather them, and put them in your casket, and no woman shall ever
have it in her power to boast that she can feast the Æsir more
sumptuously than Idūna."

Now Idūna had often been cautioned by her husband never to let
anything tempt her to leave the grove, and she had always been so
happy here, that she thought there was no use in his telling her the
same thing so often over; but now her mind was so full of the
wonderfully beautiful fruit, and she felt such a burning wish to get
it for herself, that she quite forgot her husband's commands.

"It is only a little way," she said to herself; "there can be no harm
in going out just this once;" and, as Loki went on urging her, she
took up her casket from the ground hastily, and begged him to show
her the way to this other grove. Loki walked very quickly, and Idūn
had not time to collect her thoughts before she found herself at the
entrance of Always Young. At the gate she would gladly have stopped a
minute to take breath; but Loki took hold of her hand, and forced her
to pass through, though, at the very moment of passing, she half drew
back; for it seemed to her as if all the trees in the grove suddenly
called out in alarm, "Come back, come back, Oh, come back, Idūna!"
She half drew back her hand, but it was too late; the gate fell
behind her, and she and Loki stood together without the grove.

The trees rose up between them and the setting sun, and cast a deep
shadow on the place where they stood; a cold, night air blew on
Idūna's cheek, and made her shiver.

"Let us hasten on," she said to Loki; "let us hasten on, and soon
come back again."

But Loki was not looking on, he was looking up. Idūna raised her eyes
in the direction of his, and her heart died within her; for there,
high up over her head, just as she had seen it in the morning, hung
the lowering, dark wings--the sharp talons--the fierce head, looking
at her. For one moment it stood still above her head, and then lower,
lower, lower, the huge

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