d people; there is an Old Woman that will wrestle you! Thor,
heartily ashamed, seized this haggard Old Woman; but could not throw
her.

And now, on their quitting Utgard, the Chief Joetun, 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 Joetun: 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 skyhigh 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 Joetunheim!"--

This is of the allegoric period, as we see, and half play, not of the
prophetic and entirely devout: but as a mythus is there not real
antique Norse gold in it? More true metal, rough from the Mimerstithy,
than in many a famed Greek Mythus _shaped_ far better! A great broad
Brobdignag grin of true humour 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 humour 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 striking conception, that of the _Ragnaroek_,
Consummation, or _Twilight of the Gods_. It is in the _Voeluspa_ Song;
seemingly a very old, prophetic idea. The Gods and Joetuns, 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. The old Universe with its
Gods is sunk; but it