Northern mythology

;
;:
NORTHERN MYTHOLOGY,
•
9
altars and temples
upraised high,
fui'naces constructed,
forged precious things,
fashion'd tongs,
and fabricated tools.
At dice they played
in their dwelhng joyful
rich too they were
in ruddy gold,
until thither three
Thurs-maidens came
all-powerful
from Jotunheim.
Then the gods sitting on their thrones held counsel.
They
considered how the dwarfs had been quickened in the
mould down in the earthy like maggots in a dead body ^
for the dwarfs had been first created^, and received life in
the carcase of Ymir^ and were then maggots ; but now, by
the decree of the gods, they received human understanding
and human bodies, though they dwell in the earth and in
stones^. Modsognir (Mo'Ssognir) was the chief, the second
Durin, as it is said in the Voluspa'^:— " The holy gods deliberated
who should create the race of dwarfs, from Ymir-'s
blood and livid (blue) bones/^ The dwarfs of Lofar^s race
betook themselves from the Rocky Hall (Salar-Steinn) over
the earth-fiekFs regions (Aurvangur) to Jora^s plains (J6-
^
For hold, bodi/, dead carcase, some MSS. read bloH, Hood.
2 According to Snorri's Edda the dwarfs were created after mankind,
while in the other Edda it is the reverse.
' In the German tales the dwarfs are described as deformed and dimi-
'*
nutive, coarsely clad and of dusky hue : a little black man ;" " a little grey
man." They are sometimes described of the height of a child of four years
sometimes as two spans high, a thumb high (hence Tom Thumb). The old
Danish ballad of Eline af Villenskov mentions a trold * ' not bigger than
an ant. Danske Viser, i. p. 1 76. Dvergmal (the speech of the dwarfs) is the
Old Norse expression for the echo in the mountains. Grimm, D, M. p. 421.
* Str. 10.
B 5