By the creation the elements are separated. Ymer’s body is parceled out; organic life begins. But the chaotic powers, though conquered, are not destroyed; a giant escapes in his ark with his family, and from them comes a new race of giants. Disturbing and deadly influences are perceptible everywhere in nature, and these influences are represented by the hostile dispositions of the giants toward the asas and of their struggles to destroy the work of the latter. The giants have been forced to fly to Jotunheim, to Utgard, to the outermost deserts beyond the sea; but still they manage to get within Midgard, the abode of man, and here they dwell in the rugged mountains, in the ice-clad jokuls and in the barren deserts, in short, everywhere where any barrenness prevails. Their agency is perceptible in the devastating storms caused by the wind-strokes of Hræsvelger, the giant eagle in the North; it is felt in winter’s cold, snow and ice, and in all the powers of nature which are unfriendly to fruitfulness and life. The golden age of the gods, when On the green they played In joyful mood, Nor knew at all The want of gold, Until there came Three giant maids From Jotunheim, represents the golden age of the child and the childhood of the human race. The life of the gods in its different stages of development resembles the life of men. Childhood innocent and happy, manhood brings with it cares and troubles. The gods were happy and played on the green so long as their development had not yet taken any decided outward direction; but this freedom from care ended when they had to make dwarfs and men, and through them got a whole world full of troubles and anxieties to provide for and protect,—just as the golden age ends for the child when it enters upon the activities of life, and for the race, when it enters into the many complications and cares of organized society. The gods played with pieces of gold. The pure gold symbolizes innocence. These pieces of gold (_gullnar töflur_) were lost, but were found again in the green grass of the regenerated earth. From the above it must be clear that the three giant maids, who came from Jotunheim and put an end to the golden age, must be the norns, the all-pervading necessity that develops the child into manhood. It does not follow, therefore, that these maids were giantesses, for the gods themselves _descended_ from the giants. Nor did the norns introduce evil into the world, but they marked out for the gods a career which could not be changed; and immediately after the appearance of the maids from Jotunheim the gods must create man, whose fate those same norns would afterwards determine. The gods did not create the dwarfs, but only determined that they were to have the form and understanding of men.