The fact, that Sif was worshipped in Norway alone, of all the Scandinavian regions, is another argument in favour of her husband’s supreme worship, long before the arrival of the Aser. A still stronger one is to be found in the fact, that Thrudheim, or Thrudvang, was the name of a district in that kingdom, no less than of a palace in heaven: and the strongest of all is, the peculiar affection with which he was regarded by the Norwegians, who held him to be their native, their tutelary god. He seems to have had some attributes of the Roman thunderer: the same day (Thursday), and the same planet (Jupiter), were sacred to him. The giants of whom Thor was thus the natural, the everlasting enemy, were, as we have frequently observed, the offspring of Bergelmer, the old man of the mountains, and of his wife, who escaped the destruction of their race by the blood of Ymer, only because they chanced to be at sea, fishing, when the giant was slain. Repairing to the dark lower region which lies within the polar seas, they soon peopled it. Darkness, indeed, was the element of these beings: no sun enlightened or cheered them. When they visited earth, it was during the night, for then their power was the greatest. In magic they surpassed all other beings: they possessed many secrets, relating to the origin and nature of things, unknown to the wisest of the gods. With them the three Nornies, or destinies,—with them Vala herself, the great prophetess of heaven, was educated. They regarded the Aser with dislike,—as usurpers of a world which rightly belonged to them; and towards the sons of Askur, the creation of the gods, they bore equal dislike. This feeling, indeed, did not prevent the Aser from occasionally intermarrying with them; but the marriages were never well assorted. The king of this vast gloomy region was Ugarthiloc, or, more correctly, Utgardelok, viz. the Loke of Utgard, the monarch of the outer world. The notion entertained of this personage, and of the whole race, by the Danes, we have shown on a former occasion.[59] Wild as the legends there related may seem, they have their meaning. The reader will not fail to observe, that these original inhabitants of the earth—this people destroyed by the Aser, and exiled into the dreary wastes of the North, were the original Finnish, or rather Celtic race, whom the Goths expelled. The mythology of that race was full of giants; the Druids boasted of an acquaintance with nature denied to the rest of mankind; and the boast was probably a just one. The testimony borne by Cæsar to the extensive character of their knowledge, will abundantly illustrate this part of the historical question. Again, the Celts pretended to mystical science: in proof of it, look to Cæsar, to the traditions rife wherever the Celts have been located, and, above all, to the fragments of the ancient Welsh bards preserved in the Archæologia of the principality. The Eddas are filled with Celtic mythological allusions.