but so
startled was he at the sudden change in his appearance that he
stumbled back, and, losing his footing, he fell upon the sharp point
of his own sword and miserably perished.

When his words had been thus fulfilled, Odin turned to Agnar, who,
with the other servants, had rushed into the hall, and bade him take
his rightful place upon his father's throne, and in return for his
kind act in bringing the draught of ale he promised him prosperity and
happiness so long as he should live.

CHAPTER III

How the Queen of the Sky Gave Gifts to Men

_This is the tale which the Northmen tell
of Frigga, Queen of the Asas._

By the side of All-Father Odin, upon his high seat in Asgard, sat
Frigga, his wife, the Queen of the Asas. Sometimes she would be
dressed in snow-white garments, bound at the waist by a golden girdle,
from which hung a great bunch of golden keys. And the earth-dwellers,
gazing into the sky, would admire the great white clouds as they
floated across the blue, not perceiving that these clouds were really
the folds of Frigga's flowing white robe, as it waved in the wind.

At other times she would wear dark grey or purple garments; and then
the earth-dwellers made haste into their houses, for they said, "the
sky is lowering to-day, and a storm is nigh at hand."

Frigga had a palace of her own called Fensalir, or the Hall of Mists,
where she spent much of her time at her wheel, spinning golden thread,
or weaving web after web of many-coloured clouds. All night long she
sat at this golden wheel, and if you look at the sky on a starry night
you may chance to see it set up where the men of the South show a
constellation called the Girdle of Orion.

Husbands and wives who had dwelt lovingly together upon earth were
invited by Frigga to her hall when they died, so that they might be
for ever united within its hospitable walls.

"There in the glen Fensalir stands, the house
Of Frigga, honoured mother of the gods,
And shows its lighted windows, and the open doors."

Frigga was especially interested in all good housewives, and she
herself set them an excellent example in Fensalir. When the snowflakes
fell, the earth-dwellers knew it was Frigga shaking her great feather
bed, and when it rained they said it was her washing day. It was she
who first gave to them the gift of flax that the women upon earth
might spin, and weave, and bleach their linen as white as the clouds
of her own white r