the ransom for Thor's hammer, which he had hidden, and how Loki and
Thor outwitted him; and Snorri says the giants bargained for her as
the price for building Valhalla, but were outwitted. Sir G.W. Dasent
notices in the folk-tales the eagerness of trolls and giants to learn
the details of the agricultural processes, and this is probably the
clue to the desire of the Frost-Giants in the Edda for the possession
of Freyja. Idunn, the wife of Bragi, and a purely Norse creation, seems
to be a double of Freyja; she, too, according to Snorri, is carried
away by the giants and rescued by Loki. The golden apples which she
is to keep till Ragnarök remind us of those which Frey offered to
Gerd; and the gift of eternal youth, of which they are the symbols,
would be appropriate enough to Freyja as an agricultural deity.

The great necklace Brising, stolen by Loki and won back in fight
by Heimdal (according to the tenth-century Skalds Thjodulf and Ulf
Uggason), is Freyja's property. On this ground, she has been identified
with the heroine of _Svipdag and Menglad_, a poem undoubtedly old,
though it has only come down in paper MSS. It is in two parts, the
first telling how Svipdag aroused the Sibyl Groa, his mother, to
give him spells to guard him on his journey; the second describing
his crossing the wall of fire which surrounded his fated bride
Menglad. If Menglad is really Freyja, the "Necklace-glad," it is a
curious coincidence that one poem connects the waverlowe, or ring of
fire, with Frey also; for his bride Gerd is protected in the same way,
though his servant Skirni goes through it in his place:

_Skirni_. "Give me the horse that will bear me through the dark magic
waverlowe, and the sword that fights of itself against the giant-race."

_Frey_. "I give thee the horse that will bear thee through the dark