“We have, here, the early history of the Scandinavians traced in a few lines; but these are strongly marked, and confirmed by all the traditions of the ancient north, respecting the different races of men by which the country was successively occupied.[37] The first Gothic emigrants subdued the Celto-Finnish tribes, who were the primitive inhabitants of the country, and reduced them to servitude, or drove them, first, to the mountains, and then to the desert wilds and fastnesses of Norrland, Lapland, and Finland. Here the Jötnar, as they were called by their Gothic invaders, continued to adhere to the grovelling superstition of their fathers, which was that form of polytheism which has been called Fetichism, or the adoration of beasts and birds, of stocks and stones, all the animate and inanimate works of creation. The antipathy between these two races, so continually alluded to in the songs and sagas of the mythic and heroic age, is significantly expressed in the legend of Njördr, who dwelt by the sea-side, and Skade, a mountain-nymph of the rival race of the Jötnar, whom he had espoused. She very naturally prefers her native abode on the Alpine heights, whilst he insists on dwelling where he can hear the roar of the ocean billows. At last, they compromise this matrimonial dissension by agreeing to pass nine nights alternately among the mountains, and three on the sea-shore. But Njördr soon tires of this compact, and vents his dissatisfaction in a lay to this effect:—‘How do I hate the mountain wilds! I have only passed nine nights there; but how long and tedious did they seem! There one hears nothing but the howling of wolves, instead of the sweet notes of the swan.’ To which Skade extemporises this response:—‘How can I rest on the sandy sea-shore, where my slumbers are every morning broken by the hideous screaming of the sea-gulls?’ The result is, that she deserts her husband, and returns to the mountains, where her father dwells: there, snatching up her bow, and fastening on her snow-skates, she bounds over the hills in pursuit of the wild beasts.”[38]