The one great enjoyment of all who dwell in Walhalla was combat and strife. That is a matter of taste, but did they not carry combat and strife a little too far? They fought there for hours and hours, with eagerness, with fury, even piercing each other and cutting each other to pieces to their hearts’ delight. It is true, that as soon as the dinner hour came the blood ceased to flow, the wounds closed their gaping lips, the {179}limbs that had been lopped off by the swords returned to their place, the broken heads and exposed entrails were restored without the surgeon’s aid, not leaving a scar behind, and the heroes went arm in arm to dinner, looking forward with joy to a repetition of the same merry sport as soon as the meal should be finished. The fare at this table of gods and heroes does not seem to have been peculiarly wholesome; at all events it was not very varied. The pork-butchers’ business was at that time uncommonly flourishing both in heaven and on earth. Tacitus tells us that among the races of the North, as far as the borders of the Baltic Sea, chieftains and matrons alike loved to wear suspended around their neck a small image of a pig as an emblem of abundance and fecundity. Rich and poor, all looked upon pork as the main supply of their pantry. The pig, however, was not deemed worthy to appear on Odin’s table, and its place was taken by the boar: the gods lived upon wild boar, men upon domestic pig, that was the whole difference. I am often tempted to eat pork, and I am occasionally enabled to taste wild boar; but I must solemnly confess, swearing if needs be by my stomach, that in my opinion, the gods and the heroes had by no means the best of it. It may {180}be, however, that wild boars here below are not quite equal to heavenly boars. [Illustration: 200] However that may be, there appeared every morning upon the edge of one of the marvelous forests to be found in Walhalla, an enormous colossal boar, a very mammoth of a boar. The {181}heroes proceeded to hunt it, accompanied at times by Thor, by Vali, the skillful archer, or by Tyr, the one-handed god, who nevertheless wielded his sword with power and accuracy. Then the monster was killed, cut up and roasted, and all dined together. [Illustration: 201] The next day there appeared on the edge of the marvelous forest another wild boar, quite as fat and quite as enormous, in fact in every respect as attractive as the boar of the day before--some think it was always the same animal, come to life again. Then a new hunt and a new dinner upon roasted wild boar. Surely we poor people might become disgusted for the rest of our lives, one would imagine,--and those were immortal gods! What taste!