Northern mythology

180 NORTHERN MYTHOLOGY.
lias well explained to be skates, whicli in tlie earliest times
were made of the bones of horses or oxen^
Loki is lire. In the beginning of time he was_, as Lodur'^,
the milcl_, beneficent warmth^ united with All-father ;
but afterwards, like a fallen angel, having descended on
earth, he became crafty, devastating and evil, like the desolating
flame. There he was born in the foliage, and
had the wind for his father^. His brothers are devastation
and ruin. At one time he flutters^ like a bird, up
along a wall, beats with his wings, and peeps in at a
window, but his heavy feet cling to the earth ^ ; sometimes
he flies, whirled by the storm-wind, over stock and
stone, floating between heaven and earth ^ ; but while, as
Lopt, he is traversing the free air, he, nevertheless, suffers
himself to be shut up and tamed by hunger "^ ; the humid
grass can bind his mouth, and yet his heart is not consumed.
It became so when he wrought and begat children
' And so in Iceland, even at the present day. The words of Saxo are :
Fama est, ilium adeo praestigiarum usu calluisse, ut ad trajicienda maria
esse, quod diris carminibus obsignavisset, navigii loco uteretur, nee eo
segnius quam reraigio pra^jecta aquarum obstacula superaret. p. 131.
That such was also the custom in our own country in the 12th century,
appears from a curious passage in Fitzstephen's Description of London, of
which the following is a translation :
" When that great pool, which
washes the northern wall of the city is frozen, numerous bodies of young
men go out to sport on the ice. These gaining an accelerated motion by
running, with their feet placed at a distance from each other, and one side
put forwards, glide along a considerable space. Others make themselves
seats of ice like great millstones, when one sitting is drawn by many running
before, holding each other's hands. During this rapid motion they
sometimes all fall on their faces. Others, more skilled in sporting on
the ice fit to their feet and bind under their heels the bones, i. e. the legbones,
of animals, and holding in their hands poles with iron points, which
they occasionally strike on the ice, are borne away with a speed Uke that
of a bird flying, or an arrow from a bow." The great pool above alluded
to afterwards gave place and name to Afoor-fields.
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