could bring
myself to go to them on their mountaintop."

Long ere this, when the wall around their City was not yet built, and
when the Gods had set up only the court with their twelve seats and the
Hall that was for Odin and the Hall that was for the Goddesses, there
had come into Asgard Three Giant Women.

They came after the Gods had set up a forge and had begun to work metal
for their buildings. The metal they worked was pure gold. With gold they
built Gladsheim, the Hall of Odin, and with gold they made all their
dishes and household ware. Then was the Age of Gold, and the Gods did
not grudge gold to anyone. Happy were the Gods then, and no shadow nor
foreboding lay on Asgard.

But after the Three Giant Women came the Gods began to value gold and to
hoard it. They played with it no more. And the happy innocence of their
first days departed from them.

At last the Three were banished from Asgard. The Gods turned their
thoughts from the hoarding of gold, and they built up their City, and
they made themselves strong.

And now Freya, the lovely Vanir bride, thought upon the Giant Women and
on the wonderful things of gold they had flashed through their hands.
But not to Odur, her husband, did she speak her thoughts; for Odur, more
than any of the other dwellers in Asgard, was wont to think on the days
of happy innocence, before gold came to be hoarded and valued. Odur
would not have Freya go near the mountaintop where the Three had their
high seat.

But Freya did not cease to think upon them and upon the things of gold
they had. "Why should Odur know I went to them?" she said to herself.
"No one will tell him. And what difference will it make if I go to them
and gain some lovely thing for myself? I shall not love Odur the less
because I go my own way for once."

Then one day she left their palace, leaving Odur, her husband, playing
with their little child Hnossa. She left the palace and went down to the
Earth. There she stayed for a while, tending the flowers that were her
charge. After a while she asked the Elves to tell her where the mountain
was on which the Three Giant Women stayed.

The Elves were frightened and would not tell her, although she was queen
over them. She left them and stole down into the caves of the Dwarfs. It
was they who showed her the way to the seat of the Giant Women, but
before they showed her the way they made her feel shame and misery.

"We will show you the way if you stay with