stories of the cosmogony-barbarous, grotesque, as Carlyle has described them. The world is the body of a giant. His skull is the heaven, his flesh the earth, his brains are the clouds that move across the sky, under the skull of. Hymir; his blood made the sea; the dwarfs who live in caves were made out of the maggots that bred in him. The stars came otherwise; they are sparks from the great fiery region of Chaos. There is something national and Northern perhaps, as Carlyle thought, perhaps even more of Snorri himself, in the humorous way this story is given in the Edda, but the substance of it comes from a time long before there was any Germania.

Next there are myths of the nature powers, such as one finds in other countries, the favourite god being Thunder, that is, Thor, about whom the greatest number of the most entertaining stories are told. In these one can trace the education of the Northmen, the growth of their theory of life, Thor is the typical Northman of the old sort-bluff, homely, reckless, and fearless-not specially intellectual, sometimes outwitted by the cunning of his adversaries, but good at hard work, and instinctively (one may say) on the side of Reason.

Third, there are the myths of Odin. Woden belongs to all the Germans, but eminently to the Northmen, and to them especially at the time when they were beginning to grow discontented at home and to dream of conquests abroad. Odin is the chief of the gods, but he does not sit apart on an Olympian throne, watching the world spin. Odin is a wanderer on the

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face of the earth, anxious, a seeker for wisdom, a benefactor of mankind; Prometheus in the place of Zeus. He barters one of his eyes for a drink of the well of wisdom; or, according to another story, ventures among the giants and steals the draught of wisdom and poetry, as Prometheus stole the fire of heaven. He descends into the abyss to find out the hidden things of the universe. The quickening of mankind out of brute lumps into reasoning creatures is ascribed by the Greeks to the wise Titan, by the Northmen to Odin and his two companions.

Last of all come the myths of the decay of paganism. It is these that have most impressed the imagination of modern students-the myths of Valhalla and of the Twilight of the Gods. They are not original Teutonic beliefs; they grew up in the period of migration and conquest, when the Northmen first became acquainted vaguely with the ideas of Christianity in the English, French, or Scottish countries where they had found a settlement.

Common to all stages of this mythology and to all the Germans as well, was the conception of the human world as an enclosure defended against Chaos. The human world is Midgarth; in Anglo-Saxon middangeard, the "merry middle-earth" of later ballads. The Edda explains the whole system clearly; it was more clearly worked out in the North than elsewhere. In the full Scandinavian philosophy the human world is contrasted with Asgarth, the citadel of the Anses, the gods, which rises in the centre of the circle of Midgarth; and with Utgarth, the outer

circle, the icy barrier of the world, the home of the Giants (Jötunheim), only one remove from Niflheim and the gulfs of Chaos.

The elements are the same as in Greece, but they are differently mixed, and the import is not the same. The Greeks, like the Northmen, thought of the world as encircled by the Ocean stream; they too, as one sees in the Odyssey, believed in a strange and desolate country out on the verge; the Iliad has knowledge of the ends of the earth not unlike that of the Scandinavian account-the edge, leading down to the depths of Tartarus, a joyless country unblest by wind or sun, the abode of ancient unhappy creatures, Iapetus and Cronus.1 But what is a passing thought in the Greek mind becomes in the Northern a constant and inevitable belief. Through all his daily life the Northman hears the boom of the surges of Chaos on the dykes of the world. The giants are not disposed of, as in Greece, by a decisive conquest early in history. The Olympians broke the backs of their adversaries in a short campaign; the Æsir, the Northern gods, are like Northern rovers in a fortress surrounded by a hostile country. It is part of the life of the gods to keep watch against their enemies, to catch them. asleep if possible; to add to their tale of victories in the unending feud. Thor does most of this work. It 1 οὐδ ̓ εἴ κε τὰ νείατα πείραθ ̓ ἵκηαι

γαίης καὶ πόντοιο, ἵν ̓ Ιαπετός τε Κρόνος τε

ἥμενοι οὔτ ̓ αὐγῇς Ὑπερίονος Ηελίοιο

τέρποντ ̓ οὔτ ̓ ἀνέμοισι, βαθὺς δέ τε Τάρταρος ἀμφίς.

-ll., viii. 478-481.

is told of him repeatedly in the stories that he was away from Asgarth, had gone East to thrash Thor. the trolls (at berja tröll). It is in this sort of business that the Thunder-god acquires his character of hero, and his hold upon the affections of the Northmen. He is a favourite god, a patron, a "friend" (vinr), as the old Northern phrase went.

One of the best of the stories of his warfare is the defeat of the giant Hrungnir, told in the second part of the Edda (Skáldskaparmál, c. 17):—

One day when Thor had gone East to thrash the trolls, Odin mounted Sleipnir and rode into Jötunheim and came to the house of the giant Hrungnir. Hrungnir asks," Who is that in the golden helmet who rides over wind and water? he has a wondrous good horse." Odin said he would wager his head there was not a horse so good in all Jötunheim. Hrungnir was moved by this, and leapt on his horse and rode after Odin as hard as he could. Odin kept before him all the way to Asgard, but Hrungnir came bursting in through the gates-and the Æsir had to make the best of him they could. They brought him plenty to drink, and the giant drank freely. When he was well drunk, there was no want of big words: he said he would take up Valhalla and carry it off to Jötunheim, and throw down Asgarth, and kill the gods and carry off Freyja and Sif.

The gods were very angry at all this. Freyja alone dared to come near him and fill his horn: he said he would drink up all the ale of the gods. The gods were weary of his boasting, and called on

Thor. At that instant Thor appeared in the hall. He had his hammer over his shoulder and was very angry. He asked who had allowed rogues of giants to come and sit at drink, or Freyja to pour out drink for him at the feast of the gods? Hrungnir scowled at Thor, and said Odin had brought him in, and was surety for him. "You shall repent this," says Thor. "Little honour to you," says Hrungnir, "to kill an unarmed giant: it will try your metal to come and fight in single combat. It was a foolish work," he says, "when I left my shield and my club at home, but I will call you a coward if you slay me now when I am without my weapons." Thor accepted the challenge, and Hrungnir went home.

When he got to Jötunheim all the other giants came round about him to hear how he had fared, and he told them the whole story.

The giants took it sadly. If Thor killed Hrungnir their champion, they knew what to expect from him afterwards. So they made a mud giant. He was nine miles high and three broad: but they could not get a heart for him till they took a mare's heart and put it into him: it was not steady when Thor came. Hrungnir had a heart of spiky stone. His head was stone also; so was his shield; his weapon was a hone. So he stood waiting for Thor, and Mistcalf, the mud giant, stood beside him; they say that he bewrayed himself for fear when Thor came. Thor came with his henchman Thialfi: Thialfi ran on in front and cried out, "Better guard, giant, for Thor has seen you, and is coming at you under the earth."