As we would be led to suppose, from a study of the physical and climatical peculiarities of Greece and Norseland, we find that the Greek mythology forms an epic poem, and that the Norse is a tragedy. Not only the mythology, considered as a whole, but even the character of its speech, and of its very words and phrases, must necessarily be suggested and modified by the external features of the country. Thus in Greece, where the sun’s rays never scorch, and where the northern winds never pierce, we naturally find in the speech of the people, brilliancy rather than gloom, life rather than decay, and constant renovation rather than prolonged lethargy. But in the frozen-bound regions of the North, where the long arms of the glaciers clutch the valleys in their cold embrace, and the death-portending avalanches cut their way down the mountain-sides, the tongue of the people would, with a peculiar intensity of feeling, dwell upon the tragedy of nature. The Danish poet Grundtvig expressed a similar idea more than sixty years ago, when he said that the Asa-Faith unfolds in five acts the most glorious drama of victory that ever has been composed, or ever could be composed, by any mortal poet. And Hauch defines these five acts as follows: Act I. The Creation. Act II. The time preceding the death of Balder. Act III. The death of Balder. Act IV. The time immediately succeeding the death of Balder. Act V. Ragnarok, the Twilight of the gods, that is, the decline and fall immediately followed by the regeneration of the world.