_knuckles grow white_." Beautiful traits of pity too, an honest pity.
Balder "the white God" dies; the beautiful, benignant; he is the Sungod.

They try all Nature for a remedy; but he is dead. Frigga, his mother,
sends Hermoder to seek or see him: nine days and nine nights he rides

through gloomy deep valleys, a labyrinth of gloom; arrives at the Bridge
with its gold roof: the Keeper says, "Yes, Balder did pass here; but the

Kingdom of the Dead is down yonder, far towards the North." Hermoder rides
on; leaps Hell-gate, Hela's gate; does see Balder, and speak with him:

Balder cannot be delivered. Inexorable! Hela will not, for Odin or any
God, give him up. The beautiful and gentle has to remain there. His Wife

had volunteered to go with him, to die with him. They shall forever remain
there. He sends his ring to Odin; Nanna his wife sends her _thimble_ to

Frigga, as a remembrance.--Ah me!--
For indeed Valor is the fountain of Pity too;--of Truth, and all that is

great and good in man. The robusthomely vigor of the Norse heart attaches
one much, in these delineations. Is it not a trait of right honest

strength, says Uhland, who has written a fine _Essay_ on Thor, that the old
Norse heart finds its friend in the Thunder-god? That it is not frightened

away by his thunder; but finds that Summer-heat, the beautiful noble
summer, must and will have thunder withal! The Norse heart _loves_ this

Thor and his hammer-bolt; sports with him. Thor is Summer-heat: the god
of Peaceable Industry as well as Thunder. He is the Peasant's friend; his

true henchman and attendant is Thialfi, _Manual Labor_. Thor himself
engages in all manner of rough manual work, scorns no business for its

plebeianism; is ever and anon travelling to the country of the Jotuns,
harrying those chaotic Frost-monsters, subduing them, at least straitening

and damaging them. There is a great broad humor in some of these things.
Thor, as we saw above, goes to Jotun-land, to seek Hymir's Caldron, that

the Gods may brew beer. Hymir the huge Giant enters, his gray beard all
full of hoar-frost; splits pillars with the very glance of his eye; Thor,

after much rough tumult, snatches the Pot, claps it on his head; the
"handles of it reach down to his heels." The Norse Skald has a kind of

loving sport with Thor. This is the Hymir whose cattle, the critics have
discovered, are Icebergs. Huge untutored Brobdignag genius,--needing only

to be tamed down; into Shakspeares, Dantes, Goethes! It is all gone now,
that old Norse work,--Thor the Thunder-god changed into Jack the

Giant-killer: but the mind that made it is here yet. How strangely things
grow, and die, and do not die! There are twigs of that great world-tree of

Norse Belief still curiously traceable. This poor Jack of the Nursery,
with his miraculous shoes of swiftness, coat of darkness, sword of

sharpness, he is one. _Hynde Etin_, and still more decisively _Red Etin of
Ireland_, _in_ the Scottish Ballads, these are both derived from Norseland;

_Etin_ is evidently a _Jotun_. Nay, Shakspeare's _Hamlet_ is a twig too of
this same world-tree; there seems no doubt of that. Hamlet, _Amleth_ I

find, is really a mythic personage; and his Tragedy, of the poisoned
Father, poisoned asleep by drops in his ear, and the rest, is a Norse

mythus! Old Saxo, as his wont was, made it a Danish history; Shakspeare,
out of Saxo, made it what we see. That is a twig of the world-tree that

has _grown_, I think;--by nature or accident that one has grown!
In fact, these old Norse songs have a _truth_ in them, an inward perennial

truth and greatness,--as, indeed, all must have that can very long preserve
itself by tradition alone. It is a greatness not of mere body and gigantic

bulk, but a rude greatness of soul. There is a sublime uncomplaining
melancholy traceable in these old hearts. A great free glance into the

very deeps of thought. They seem to have seen, these brave old Northmen,
what Meditation has taught all men in all ages, That this world is after

all but a show,--a phenomenon or appearance, no real thing. All deep souls
see into that,--the Hindoo Mythologist, the German Philosopher,--the

Shakspeare, the earnest Thinker, wherever he may be:
"We are such stuff as Dreams are made of!"

One of Thor's expeditions, to Utgard (the _Outer_ Garden, central seat of
Jotun-land), is remarkable in this respect. Thialfi was with him, and

Loke. After various adventures, they entered upon Giant-land; wandered
over plains, wild uncultivated places, among stones and trees. At

nightfall they noticed a house; and as the door, which indeed formed one
whole side of the house, was open, they entered. It was a simple

habitation; one large hall, altogether empty. They stayed there. Suddenly
in the dead of the night loud noises alarmed them. Thor grasped his

hammer; stood in the door, prepared for fight. His companions within ran
hither and thither in their terror, seeking some outlet in that rude hall;

they found a little closet at last, and took refuge there. Neither had
Thor any battle: for, lo, in the morning it turned out that the noise had

been only the _snoring_ of a certain enormous but peaceable Giant, the
Giant Skrymir, who lay peaceably sleeping near by; and this that they took

for a house was merely his _Glove_, thrown aside there; the door was the
Glove-wrist; the little closet they had fled into was the Thumb! Such a

glove;--I remark too that it had not fingers as ours have, but only a
thumb, and the rest undivided: a most ancient, rustic glove!

Skrymir now carried their portmanteau all day; Thor, however, had his own
suspicions, did not like the ways of Skrymir; determined at night to put an

end to him as he slept. Raising his hammer, he struck down into the
Giant's face a right thunder-bolt blow, of force to rend rocks. The Giant

merely awoke; rubbed his cheek, and said, Did a leaf fall? Again Thor
struck, so soon as Skrymir again slept; a better blow than before; but the

Giant only murmured, Was that a grain of sand? Thor's third stroke was
with both his hands (the "knuckles white" I suppose), and seemed to dint

deep into Skrymir's visage; but he merely checked his snore, and remarked,
There must be sparrows roosting in this tree, I think; what is that they

have dropt?--At the gate of Utgard, a place so high that you had to "strain
your neck bending back to see the top of it," Skrymir went his ways. Thor

and his companions were admitted; invited to take share in the games going
on. To Thor, for his part, they handed a Drinking-horn; it was a common

feat, they told him, to drink this dry at one draught. Long and fiercely,
three times over, Thor drank; but made hardly any impression. He was a

weak child, they told him: could he lift that Cat he saw there? Small as
the feat seemed, Thor with his whole godlike strength could not; he bent up

the creature's back, could not raise its feet off the ground, could at the
utmost raise one foot. Why, you are no man, said the Utgard people; there

is an Old Woman that will wrestle you! Thor, heartilyashamed, seized this
haggard Old Woman; but could not throw her.

And now, on their quitting Utgard, the chief Jotun, escorting them politely
a little way, said to Thor: "You are beaten then:--yet be not so much

ashamed; there was deception of appearance in it. That Horn you tried to
drink was the _Sea_; you did make it ebb; but who could drink that, the

bottomless! The Cat you would have lifted,--why, that is the _Midgard-
snake_, the Great World-serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds and keeps up

the whole created world; had you torn that up, the world must have rushed
to ruin! As for the Old Woman, she was _Time_, Old Age, Duration: with

her what can wrestle? No man nor no god with her; gods or men, she
prevails over all! And then those three strokes you struck,--look at these

_three valleys_; your three strokes made these!" Thor looked at his
attendant Jotun: it was Skrymir;--it was, say Norse critics, the old

chaotic rocky _Earth_ in person, and that glove-_house_ was some
Earth-cavern! But Skrymir had vanished; Utgard with its sky-high gates,

when Thor grasped his hammer to smite them, had gone to air; only the
Giant's voice was heard mocking: "Better come no more to Jotunheim!"--

This is of the allegoric period, as we see, and half play, not of the
prophetic" target="_blank" title="a.预言(家)的；预示的">prophetic and entirely devout: but as a mythus is there not real antique

Norse gold in it? More true metal, rough from the Mimer-stithy, than in
many a famed Greek Mythus _shaped_ far better! A great broad Brobdignag

grin of true humor is in this Skrymir; mirth resting on earnestness and
sadness, as the rainbow on black tempest: only a right valiant heart is

capable of that. It is the grim humor of our own Ben Jonson, rare old Ben;
runs in the blood of us, I fancy; for one catches tones of it, under a

still other shape, out of the American Backwoods.
That is also a very strikingconception that of the _Ragnarok_,

Consummation, or _Twilight of the Gods_. It is in the _Voluspa_ Song;
seemingly a very old, prophetic" target="_blank" title="a.预言(家)的；预示的">prophetic idea. The Gods and Jotuns, the divine

Powers and the chaotic brute ones, after long contest and partial victory
by the former, meet at last in universal world-embracing wrestle and duel;

World-serpent against Thor, strength against strength; mutually extinctive;
and ruin, "twilight" sinking into darkness, swallows the created Universe.