The primary characteristic of this old Northland mythology I find to be impersonation of the visible workings of nature—earnest, simple recognition of the workings of physical nature, as a thing wholly miraculous, stupendous and divine. What we now lecture of as science, they wondered at, and fell down in awe before, as religion. The dark, hostile powers of nature they figured to themselves as _Jötuns_ (giants), huge, shaggy beings, of a demoniac character. Frost, Fire, Sea, Tempest, these are _Jötuns_. The friendly powers, again, as Summer-heat, the Sun, are gods. The Empire of this Universe is divided between these two; they dwell apart in perennial internecine feud. The gods dwell above in _Asgard_, the Garden of the _Asas_, or Divinities; _Jötunheim_, a distant, dark, chaotic land, is the home of the Jötuns. Curious, all this; and not idle or inane if we will look at the foundation of it. The power of _Fire_ or _Flame_, for instance, which we designate by some trivial chemical name, thereby hiding from ourselves the essential character of wonder that dwells in it, as in all things, is, with these old Northmen, _Loge_, a most swift, subtle demon, of the brood of the Jötuns. The savages of the Ladrones Islands, too (say some Spanish voyagers), thought Fire, which they had never seen before, was a devil, or god, that bit you sharply when you touched it, and lived there upon dry wood. From us, too, no chemistry, if it had not stupidity to help it, would hide that flame is a wonder. What is flame? Frost the old Norse seer discerns to be a monstrous, hoary Jötun, the giant _Thrym_, _Hrym_, or _Rime_, the old word, now nearly obsolete here, but still used is Scotland to signify hoar-frost. _Rime_ was not then, as now, a dead chemical thing, but a living Jötun, or Devil; the monstrous Jötun _Rime_ drove home his horses at night, sat combing their manes;—which horses were _Hail-clouds_, or fleet _Frost-winds_. His cows—no, not his, but a kinsman’s, the giant Hymer’s cows—are _Icebergs_. This Hymer looks at the rocks with his devil-eye, and they _split_ in the glance of it.