God, give him up. The beautiful and gentle has to remain there. His Wife
had volunteered to go with him, to die with him. They shall forever remain
there. He sends his ring to Odin; Nanna his wife sends her _thimble_ to
Frigga, as a remembrance.--Ah me!--

For indeed Valor is the fountain of Pity too;--of Truth, and all that is
great and good in man. The robust homely vigor of the Norse heart attaches
one much, in these delineations. Is it not a trait of right honest
strength, says Uhland, who has written a fine _Essay_ on Thor, that the old
Norse heart finds its friend in the Thunder-god? That it is not frightened
away by his thunder; but finds that Summer-heat, the beautiful noble
summer, must and will have thunder withal! The Norse heart _loves_ this
Thor and his hammer-bolt; sports with him. Thor is Summer-heat: the god
of Peaceable Industry as well as Thunder. He is the Peasant's friend; his
true henchman and attendant is Thialfi, _Manual Labor_. Thor himself
engages in all manner of rough manual work, scorns no business for its
plebeianism; is ever and anon travelling to the country of the Jotuns,
harrying those chaotic Frost-monsters, subduing them, at least straitening
and damaging them. There is a great broad humor in some of these things.

Thor, as we saw above, goes to Jotun-land, to seek Hymir's Caldron, that
the Gods may brew beer. Hymir the huge Giant enters, his gray beard all
full of hoar-frost; splits pillars with the very glance of his eye; Thor,
after much rough tumult, snatches the Pot, claps it on his head; the
"handles of it reach down to his heels." The Norse Skald has a kind of
loving sport with Thor. This is the Hymir whose cattle, the critics have
discovered, are Icebergs. Huge untutored Brobdignag genius,--needing only
to be tamed down; into Shakspeares, Dantes, Goethes! It is all gone now,
that old Norse work,--Thor the Thunder-god changed into Jack the
Giant-killer: but the mind that made it is here yet. How strangely things