And now, on their quitting Utgard, the Chief Jötun, 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 Jötun: 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 skyhigh 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 Jötunheim!"--
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 Mimerstithy, than in many a famed Greek Mythus _shaped_ far better! A great broad Brobdignag grin of true humour 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 humour 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 _Ragnarök_, Consummation, or _Twilight of the Gods_. It is in the _Völuspa_ Song; seemingly a very old, prophetic idea. The Gods and Jötuns, the divine Powers and the chaotic brute ones, after long contest and partial victory by the former, meet at last in universal world-embracing wrestle and duel; World-serpent against Thor, strength against strength; mutually extinctive; and ruin, 'twilight' sinking into darkness, swallows the created Universe. The old Universe with its Gods is sunk; but it is not final death: there is to be a new Heaven and a new Earth; a higher supreme God, and Justice to reign among men. Curious: this law of mutation, which also is a law written in man's inmost thought, had been deciphered by these old earnest Thinkers in their rude style; and how, though all dies, and even gods die, yet all death is but a phoenix fire-death, and new-birth into the Greater and the Better! It is the fundamental Law of Being for a creature made of Time, living in this Place of Hope. All earnest men have seen into it; may still see into it.