The _Younger Edda_ is a very queer old lady indeed. She begins by telling a sort of story. She says "there was once a King called Gylfi, renowned for his wisdom and skill in magic;" he being seized with a desire to know all about the gods, and wishing also to get his information first-hand, sets off on a journey to Asgard itself, the gods' own abode. When he gets there he finds a mysterious Three seated upon three thrones--the High, the Equally High, and the Third. The story-teller is supposed to have taken this picture from a temple at Upsal, where the thrones of Odin, Thor, and Frey were placed in the same manner, one above another. Gylfi introduces himself as Gangler, a name for traveller (connected with the present Scotch word gang), and proceeded to question the Three upon the origin of the world, the nature and adventures of the gods, &c., &c. Gangler's questions, and the answers which he receives, will, with reference to the _Elder Edda_ tales, help us to get just the short summary we want of the Scandinavian mythology--the mythology grown up and old, and frozen tight, as we find it in the _Eddas_. "What was the beginning of things?" asks Gangler; and Har (the highest of the Three), replying in the words of an ancient poem, says,-- "Once was the age When all was not-- No sand, nor sea, No salt waves, No earth was found, Nor over-skies, But yawning precipice And nowhere grass." This nothingness was called Ginnungagap, the gap of gaps, the gaping of the chasms: and Har goes on to relate what took place in it. On the north side of Ginnungagap, he says, lay Niflheim, the shadowy nebulous home of freezing cold and gathering gloom; but on the south lay the glowing region of Muspellheim. There was besides a roaring cauldron called Hvergelmir, which seethed in the middle of Niflheim, and sent forth twelve rivers called the strange waves; these flowed into the gap and froze there, and so filled the gap with ice: but sparks and flakes of fire from Muspellheim fell upon the ice. Ginnungagap on the north side was now filled with ice and vapour and fleeting mists and whirlwinds, but southwards with glowing radiancy, with calm and light and wind--still air; and so, continues Har, the heat met the frost, the frost melted into drops, the drops quickened into life, and there was a human form called Ymir, a giant. "Was he a god?" asks Gangler. "Oh! dear no," answers Har; "we are very far indeed from believing him to have been a god; he was wicked and the father of all the Frost Giants." "I wonder what he ate?" said Gangler. "There was a cow," Har went on to explain; "she was made out of the drops, too, and the giant fed upon her milk." "Good," answered Gangler; "but what fed the cow?" "She licked the stones of Ginnungagap, which were covered with salt hoar frost;" and then Har goes on to relate how by degrees a man, Bur, grew up out of the stones as the cow licked them, good, not like Ymir, but the father of