the seasons is not at all mysterious to us; but to the
Norsemen it was a wonderful struggle between gods and giants. In the
summer the gods had their triumph, but in the winter the giants had
their way. Year after year and century after century this terrible
warfare went on until a day should come when, in a last great battle,
both gods and giants would be destroyed and a new heaven and earth
arise. These same brave and warlike men believed that the most powerful
fighter among the gods was Thor, and that it was the swinging and
crashing of his terrible hammer which made the lightning and thunder.

The sun, which vanquished the darkness, put out the stars, drove the
cold to the far north, called back the flowers, made the fields fertile,
awoke men from sleep and filled them with courage and hope, was the
centre of mythology, and appears and reappears in a thousand stories in
many parts of the world, and in all kinds of disguises. Now he is the
most beautiful and noble of the Greek gods, Apollo; now he is Odin, with
a single eye; now he is Hercules, the hero, with his twelve great
labours for the good of men; now he is Oedipus, who met the Sphinx and
solved her riddle. In the early times men saw how everything in the
world about them drew its strength and beauty from the sun; how the sun
warmed the earth and made the crops grow; how it brought gladness and
hope and inspiration to men; and they made it the centre of the great
world story, the foremost hero of the great world play. For the myths
form a poetical explanation of the earth, the sea, the sky, and of the
life of man in this wonderful universe, and each great myth was a
chapter in a story which endowed day and night, summer and winter, sun,
moon, stars, winds, clouds, fire, with life, and made them actors in the
mysterious drama of the world. Our Norse forefathers thought of
themselves always as looking on at a terrible fight between the gods,
who were light and heat and fruitfulness, revealed in the beauty of day
and the splendour of summer, and the giants, who were darkness, cold and
barrenness, revealed in the gloom of night and the desolation of winter.
To the Norseman, as to the Greek, the Roman, the Hindu and other
primitive peoples, the world was the scene of a great struggle, the
stage on which gods, demons, and heroes were contending for supremacy;
and they told that story in a thousand different ways. Every myth is a
chapter in that story, and differs fro