those arts called cunning and perfidy." Simrock says that fire lies at the root of Loki's being as air lies in that of Odin,--fire which has good and evil in it, but most outwardly _destructive_ power; hence the beginning of the idea of his evil-heartedness. From simple nature myths, it is quite easy to conceive that the moral principle, as it grew up in a people, would develop spiritual ones, and the character of the gods would materially alter with the growth of the religion. Good and evil are scarcely conceptions which the wars of the elements give birth to. By the law is the knowledge of sin. The name of Loki, it is said, may mean the bright element. Amongst the goddesses who were called Asyniur, Frigga stands out chief in the _Eddas_ as Odin's wife, but several others are named, and also the Valkyrior, swayers of the battle and heavenly serving maidens. The peace between the Æsir and the Vanir, and the perceptible difference between these races of gods, points to an amalgamation of the religions of two tribes of Teutons in very early times: their faiths would be similar, drawn indeed from one source, but would have been modified by the circumstances and requirements of the divergent tribes. Simrock supposes that the Vanir worshippers may have been dwellers by the sea, and have had a special reverence for wind and water deities--mild, wide, beneficent airs. Their gods are a little milder in nature than those of Asgard, they are also more purely nature deities, with less of the moral element in their characters, which looks as if the two faiths had joined at different stages of development, at different levels one may say, so that the line between them is still discernible. We have seen how Har explains to Gangler the formation of the universe in Ginnungagap out of the strange ice waves; primeval giant; beneficent might of the gods; its endurance, rooted in the mighty Tree, that reached from depth to height,-- "Laved with limpid water, Gnawed by more serpents Than any one would think Of witless mortals."