rners of
the earth and kept on falling for three seasons. Winds came and blew
everything away. And the people of the world who had lived on in spite
of the snow and the cold and the winds fought each other, brother
killing brother, until all the people were destroyed.

Also there was another earth at that time, an earth green and beautiful.
But the terrible winds that blew leveled down forests and hills and
dwellings. Then fire came and burnt the earth. There was darkness, for
the Sun and the Moon were devoured. The Gods had met with their doom.
And the time in which all these things happened was called Ragnaroek, the
Twilight of the Gods.

Then a new Sun and a new Moon appeared and went traveling through the
heavens; they were more lovely than Sol and Mani, and no wolves followed
behind them in chase. The earth became green and beautiful again, and in
a deep forest that the fire had not burnt a woman and a man wakened up.
They had been hidden there by Odin and left to sleep during Ragnaroek,
the Twilight of the Gods.

Lif was the woman's name, and Lifthrasir was the man's. They moved
through the world, and their children and their children's children made
people for the new earth. And of the Gods were left Vidar and Vali, the
sons of Odin, and Modi and Magni, the sons of Thor; on the new earth
Vidar and Vali found tablets that the older Gods had written on and had
left there for them, tablets telling of all that had happened before
Ragnaroek, the Twilight of the Gods.

And the people who lived after Ragnaroek, the Twilight of the Gods, were
not troubled, as the people in the older days were troubled, by the
terrible beings who had brought destruction upon the world and upon men
and women, and who from the beginning had waged war upon the Gods.

[Illustration]

THE BUILDING OF THE WALL

Always there had been war between the Giants and the Gods--between the
Giants who would have destroyed the world and the race of men, and the
Gods who would have protected the race of men and would have made the
world more beautiful.

There are many stories to be told about the Gods, but the first one that
should be told to you is the one about the building of their City.

The Gods had made their way up to the top of a high mountain and there
they decided to build a great City for themselves that the Giants could
never overthrow. The City they would call "Asgard," which means the
Place of the Gods. They would build it