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YGGDEASttL. 121
to mark out with it the limits of his sphere of action
in life.
" They laid down laws,
They selected life
For the children of Time
The destinies of men,''
says the Voluspa of the three great Norns. Their
decrees (log) are inviolable Destiny (orlog), their
dispensations (stop) inevitable Necessity (nauSr).
The relation between these beings and the ^sir
is but obscurely stated in the Asa Mythology. It
appears to represent the Norns as being fostered
among the Jotuns and independent of the iEsir.
The judgment seat of the ^^sir is near the Ur^ar
fount; hence their decrees are passed imder the
supervision of the Norns. The ^Esir themselves
must bow before the laws of the Norns ; they were
also limited by Time,—they were born and were
to die. However, the relation between Time and
Eternity, Divinity and Fate, was to the Asa wor-
shipers, as to many other heathen people, only a
dark riddle which they, indeed, dared to ponder
upon, but could not solve. It formed a germ of
self-contradiction in their Mythology which might
well call far deeper thinkers to look beyond the
perishable .iEsir, and betrays, though indistinctly,
the traces of a purer religion which the people had
inherited.
The Myth of YggdrasiU, taken as a whole, is one
of the sublimest in the Asa Mythology. It evinces
clear and profound thought, which has seen through
the inmost essence of the ^sir faith, and compressed
its whole doctrine into one grand image.
—
'