It must have been a peculiarly curious sight, certainly, to see those Giants of the Frost, as they were called, wandering, through the darkness across the boundless plains and along endless shores, under a sky without light, looking for each other from one end of the world to the other. To be sure, they could accomplish the journey in a few long strides, and if they were peculiarly anxious to see each other, face to face, they had only to wait for the chance of a momentary flash or a faint twilight glimmer. The sight was no doubt curious, but there was no one to behold it. This state of things could not last long. With a new god a new world also came into existence. This new god was very different from the first, it was Light itself, condensed at the southern extremity of the heavens, far from this earth inhabited by giants. One fine day--an unlucky day for them, however--these giants noticed that the sky above their heads was suddenly assuming a faint pinkish hue, then violet, and finally purple. At this they rejoiced. But suddenly a ball of fire appeared, and they were terrified. It was Odin, Odin followed {127}by his celestial family, which consisted at least of a dozen principal deities! [Illustration: 147] But no! no! I take it back! I rebel! No one can come in contact with these ancient myths, without knocking against some principle of astronomy. Astronomers find only seven principal deities in Scandinavian mythology, when they are called upon to transform them into planets, and twelve, when the question is about the signs of the Zodiac. That seems to me to make mythology a. little too easy. Does it not look as if the first men had been born with a telescope and a compass in their pocket, and as if they had erected an observatory long before they thought of building huts for themselves? Fortunately I am not bound to follow their footsteps. Certain historians of high authority have found out that Odin lived upon earth before he came to dwell in heaven. He was an illustrious conqueror, {128}very expert at killing men, one of those scourges of God, who fall upon nations in order to break them to pieces. As a matter of course, these nations deified him after his death. [Illustration: 148] I see nothing astronomical in all this. Hence, I return to my own method, and propose to describe him, as he appeared to his Druids, his Scalds, and his worshippers. [Illustration: 149] He arrived from the southern countries, no doubt from the Orient, bringing with him the sun, as an indispensable auxiliary in the great task{129} which {131}he had undertaken, to reform this dark and ice-covered world: “For there was a time,” says the Edda, the bible of the Scandinavians, “when the sun, the moon, and the stars did not know the place they were to occupy. It was then the gods assembled and agreed as to the post which was to be assigned to each one of them.”