on, and stars
were the eyes of heaven; there was a pious custom to greet the stars
before going to bed. Still earlier, they were sparks of fire from
Muspilli, to light the gods home. Night, day, and the sun had their
cars--night and day with one horse, the sun with two: sunrise brought
sounds sweeter than the song of birds or strings; the rising sun, it
was said, rings for joy, murmuring daybreak laughs.[5]

Day brought joy, night sorrow; the first was good and friendly, the
second bad and hostile. The birds greeted daytime and summer with
songs of delight, but grieved in silence through night and winter:
the first swallow and stork were hailed as spring's messengers. May
with greening woods led in beloved summer, frost and snow the winter.

So myth, fable, and legend were interlaced in confusion; who can
separate the threads?

At any rate, the point of view which they indicate remained the
common one even far into the Middle Ages, and shewed simple familiar
intercourse with Nature. Even legal formulae were full of pictures
from Nature. In the customary oath to render a contract binding, the
promise is to hold, so it runs, 'so long as the sun shines and rivers
flow, so long as the wind blows and birds sing, so far off as earth
is green and fir trees grow, so far as the vault of heaven reaches.'
As Schnaase says,[6] though with some exaggeration, such formulae, in
their summary survey of earth and sky, often give a complete
landscape poem in a few words. He points out that in northern, as
opposed to classic mythology, Nature was considered, not in the
cursory Hebrew way, that hurried over or missed detail, but as a
whole, and in her relation to man's inner life.

'The collective picture of heaven and earth, of cloud movement, of
the mute life of plants--that side of Nature which had almost escaped
the eye of antiquity--occupied the Northerner most of all.

'The _Edda_ even represents all Nature together in one colossal
form--the form of the giant Ymir, whom the sons of Boer slew, in
order to make the mountains from his bones, the earth from his flesh,
the skies from his skull.'

A still grander mythical synthesis was the representation of the
whole world under the form of the sacred ash tree Yggdrasil. This was
the world tree which united heaven, earth, and hell. Its branches
stretched across the world and reached up to the skies, and its roots
spread in different directions--one toward the race of Asa in heaven,