three times over, Thor drank; but made hardly any impression. He was a
weak child, they told him: could he lift that Cat he saw there? Small as
the feat seemed, Thor with his whole godlike strength could not; he bent up
the creature's back, could not raise its feet off the ground, could at the
utmost raise one foot. Why, you are no man, said the Utgard people; there
is an Old Woman that will wrestle you! Thor, heartily ashamed, seized this
haggard Old Woman; but could not throw her.

And now, on their quitting Utgard, the chief Jotun, escorting them politely
a little way, said to Thor: "You are beaten then:--yet be not so much
ashamed; there was deception of appearance in it. That Horn you tried to
drink was the _Sea_; you did make it ebb; but who could drink that, the
bottomless! The Cat you would have lifted,--why, that is the _Midgard-
snake_, the Great World-serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds and keeps up
the whole created world; had you torn that up, the world must have rushed
to ruin! As for the Old Woman, she was _Time_, Old Age, Duration: with
her what can wrestle? No man nor no god with her; gods or men, she
prevails over all! And then those three strokes you struck,--look at these
_three valleys_; your three strokes made these!" Thor looked at his
attendant Jotun: it was Skrymir;--it was, say Norse critics, the old
chaotic rocky _Earth_ in person, and that glove-_house_ was some
Earth-cavern! But Skrymir had vanished; Utgard with its sky-high gates,
when Thor grasped his hammer to smite them, had gone to air; only the
Giant's voice was heard mocking: "Better come no more to Jotunheim!"--

This is of the allegoric period, as we see, and half play, not of the
prophetic and entirely devout: but as a mythus is there not real antique
Norse gold in it? More true metal, rough from the Mimer-stithy, than in
many a famed Greek Mythus _shaped_ far better! A great broad Brobdignag
grin of true humor is in this Skrymir; mirth resting on earnestness and