For three months she visited all the forests and all the mountains, the seas and the lakes and the animals that live in the waters and the mountains; and seas and lakes and mountains wept. She went even to the abode of the giants, the enemies of the gods, and her grief made the giants also weep; every tree wept and every rock wept. Frigg thought her task was accomplished, and was filled with joy; but she heard that in the far East of Midgard there lived an old woman in the heart of a forest of iron trees. As she lived alone there, far from any beaten track, she had never {197}become known to the intrepid traveller. Now, however, Frigg sought her out by steep paths, cut up with gullies and fierce torrents, and at last found her. When the mother told her pitiful tale, the iron trees wept, but the old woman would not weep. [Illustration: 217] {198}They called her Thorck, and her heart was ten times as hard as her name. “What do I care for your Balder?” she cried; “what do I care whether he is dead or alive? You have other sons; I have not one left me. Once I had four, and all four were my pride, my delight. They were so fair! They were so tall! Your son Thor killed every one of them. I wept much at that time. Now, it is all over. Look for tears elsewhere, I have no tears to give to other people’s sorrows!” Frigg bowed down before her, begged her, conjured her, and even fell on her knees before her; but the old woman was inflexible. Balder had to remain a prisoner with Hela. Some interpreters of Scandinavian runes have been of the opinion that the bereaved mother in the forest of iron trees was none other than Loki himself, changed into an old woman. That thought, however, is inadmissible. The Ases were beyond the reach of Hela, and Loki’s refusal would not have rendered void the unanimous vote of all Nature, when tears of pity and sympathy alone were to be given as votes. It is much more plausible to suppose, that Loki had induced Thorck to refuse by his counsels and by his enchantments; through him the heart of the old woman had’ become iron as well as the trees of the forest in {199}which she lived. Thus Loki had twice caused the death of Balder! It was at this time that a strange, almost incredible report was for the first time heard among men. The Druids whispered it cautiously into the ears of the initiated, and voices were said to utter it in the air during the night. This report, a terrible secret, a most unexpected revelation, stated that the gods were about to die! Thor would die, after seeing lightning become extinct in his hands; Odin himself would die, and so would the others. The fate of each one of them was depending on the fate of this fragile world over which they ruled, and this world had to perish because Balder had perished.