The primary characteristic of this old Northland Mythology I find to be Impersonation of the visible workings of Nature. Earnest simple recognition of the workings of Physical Nature, as a thing wholly miraculous, stupendous and divine. What we now lecture of as Science, they wondered at, and fell down in awe before, as Religion The dark hostile Powers of Nature they figure to themselves as "Jotuns," Giants, huge shaggy beings of a demonic character. Frost, Fire, Sea-tempest; these are Jotuns. The friendly Powers again, as Summer-heat, the Sun, are Gods. The empire of this Universe is divided between these two; they dwell apart, in perennial internecine feud. The Gods dwell above in Asgard, the Garden of the Asen, or Divinities; Jotunheim, a distant dark chaotic land, is the home of the Jotuns.
Curious all this; and not idle or inane, if we will look at the foundation of it! The power of Fire, or Flame, for instance, which we designate by some trivial chemical name, thereby hiding from ourselves the essential character of wonder that dwells in it as in all things, is with these old Northmen, Loke, a most swift subtle Demon, of the brood of the Jotuns. The savages of the Ladrones Islands too (say some Spanish voyagers) thought Fire, which they never had seen before, was a devil or god, that bit you sharply when you touched it, and that lived upon dry wood. From us too no Chemistry, if it had not Stupidity to help it, would hide that Flame is a wonder. What is Flame?—Frost the old Norse Seer discerns to be a monstrous hoary Jotun, the Giant Thrym, Hrym; or Rime, the old word now nearly obsolete here, but still used in Scotland to signify hoar-frost. Rime was not then as now a dead chemical thing, but a living Jotun or Devil; the monstrous Jotun Rime drove home his Horses at night, sat "combing their manes,"—which Horses were Hail-Clouds, or fleet Frost-Winds. His Cows—No, not his, but a kinsman's, the Giant Hymir's Cows are Icebergs: this Hymir "looks at the rocks" with his devil-eye, and they split in the glance of it.