ld he lift that Cat he saw there? Small as the feat seemed, Thor
with his whole godlike strength could not; he bent up the creature's
back, could not raise its feet off the ground, could at the utmost raise
one foot. Why, you are no man, said the Utgard people; there is an Old
Woman that will wrestle you! Thor, heartily ashamed, seized this haggard
Old Woman; but could not throw her.

And now, on their quitting Utgard, the chief Jotun, escorting them
politely a little way, said to Thor: "You are beaten then:--yet be not
so much ashamed; there was deception of appearance in it. That Horn you
tried to drink was the _Sea_; you did make it ebb; but who could drink
that, the bottomless! The Cat you would have lifted,--why, that is the
_Midgard-snake_, the Great World-serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds
and keeps up the whole created world; had you torn that up, the world
must have rushed to ruin! As for the Old Woman, she was _Time_, Old Age,
Duration: with her what can wrestle? No man nor no god with her; gods
or men, she prevails over all! And then those three strokes you
struck,--look at these _three valleys_; your three strokes made these!"
Thor looked at his attendant Jotun: it was Skrymir;--it was, say Norse
critics, the old chaotic rocky _Earth_ in person, and that glove-_house_
was some Earth-cavern! But Skrymir had vanished; Utgard with its
sky-high gates, when Thor grasped his hammer to smite them, had gone to
air; only the Giant's voice was heard mocking: "Better come no more to
Jotunheim!"--

This is of the allegoric period, as we see, and half play, not of the
prophetic and entirely devout: but as a mythus is there not real antique
Norse gold in it? More true metal, rough from the Mimer-stithy, than in
many a famed Greek Mythus _shaped_ far better! A great broad Brobdignag
grin of true humor is in this Skrymir; mirth resting on earnestness and
sadness, as the rainbow on black tempest: only a right valiant heart is
capable of that. It is the grim humor of our own Ben Jonson, rare old
Ben; runs in the blood of us, I fancy; for one catches tones of it,
under a still other shape, out of the American Backwoods.

That is also a very striking conception that of the _Ragnarok_,
Consummation, or _Twilight of the Gods_. It is in the _Voluspa_ Song;
seemingly a very old, prophetic idea. The Gods and Jotuns, the divine
Powers and the chaotic brute ones, after long contest and partial
victory by the former, meet at last i