mentioned already. Baldr's transformation
into a hero (who could only be slain by a sword in the keeping of
a wood-satyr) is almost complete. But Odin and Thor and all the
Gods fight for him against his rival Hother, "so that it might be
called a battle of Gods against men"; and Nanna's excuse to Baldr
that "a God could not wed with a mortal," preserves a trace of his
origin. The chained Loki appears in Saxo as Utgarda-Loki, lying bound
in a cavern of snakes, and worshipped as a God by the Danish king
Gorm Haraldsson. Dr. Eydberg sees the Freyja myth in Saxo's story of
Syritha, who was carried away by the giants and delivered by her lover
Othar (the Od of the Edda): an example, like _Svipdag and Menglad_,
of the complete transformation of a divine into an heroic myth. In
almost all cases Saxo vulgarises the stories in the telling, a common
result when a mythical tale is retold by a Christian writer, though
it is still more conspicuous in his versions of the heroic legends.

Appendix

_Thrymskvida_.

1. Then Wing-Thor was angry when he awoke, and missed his hammer. He
shook his beard, he tossed his hair, the son of Earth groped about
for it.

2. And first of all he spoke these words: "Hear now, Loki, what I
tell thee, a thing that no one in earth or heaven above has heard:
the Asa has been robbed of his hammer!"

3. They went to the dwelling of fair Freyja, and these words he
spoke first of all: "Wilt thou lend me, Freyja, thy feather dress,
to see if I can find my hammer?"

4. _Freyja_. "I would give it thee, though it were of gold; I would
grant it, though it were of silver."

5. Then Loki flew, the feather-coat rustled, until he came out of
Asgard and into Joetunheim.

6. Thrym, lord of the Giants, sat on a howe; he twisted golden bands
for his greyhounds and trimmed his horses' manes.

7. _Thrym_. "How is it with the Aesir? How is it with the Elves? Why
art thou come alone into Joetunheim?"

_Loki_. "It is ill with the Aesir, it is ill with the Elves; hast
thou hidden the Thunderer's hammer?"

8. _Thrym_. "I have hidden the Thunderer's hammer eight miles below the
earth. No man shall bring it back, unless he bring me Freyja to wife."

9. Then Loki flew, the feather-coat rustled, until he came out of
Joetunheim and into Asgard. Thor met him in the middle of the court,
and these words he spoke first:

10. "Hast thou news in proportion to thy toil? Tell me from on high
thy distant tidings, fo