The Edda, Volume 1 | Page 4

my mind told me; but for thee alone I will go away, for I know thou wilt strike." Some of the poem is rather pointless abuse, but much touches points already suggested in the other poems.
Hyndluljod is much later than the others, probably not before 1200. The style is late, and the form imitated from _V?luspa_. It describes a visit paid by Freyja to the Sibyl to learn the genealogy of her favourite Ottar. The larger part deals with heroic genealogies, but there are scanty allusions to Baldr, Frey, Heimdal, Loki's children, and Thor, and a Christian reference to a God who shall come after Ragnar?k "when Odin shall meet the wolf." It tells nothing new.
We have here then, omitting Hyndluljod, five poems (four of them belonging to the first half of the tenth century) which suggest a general outline of Norse mythology: there is a hierarchy of Gods, the Aesir, who live together in a citadel, Odin being the chief. Among them are several who are not Aesir by origin: Nj?rd and his son and daughter, Frey and Freyja, are Vanir; Loki is really an enemy and an agent in their fall; and there are one or two Goddesses of giant race. The giants are rivals and enemies to the Gods; the dwarfs are also antagonistic, but in bondage. The meeting-place of the Gods is by the World-Ash, Yggdrasil, on whose well-being the fate of Gods and men depends; at its root lies the World-Snake. The Gods have foreknowledge of their own doom, Ragnar?k, the great fight when they shall meet Loki's children, the Wolf and the Snake; both sides will fall and the world be destroyed. An episode in the story is the death of Baldr. This we may assume to be the religion of the Viking age (800-1000 A.D.), a compound of the beliefs of various ages and tribes.
_The Aesir._--The number of the Aesir is not fixed. Hyndluljod says there were twelve ("there were eleven Aesir when Baldr went down into the howe"). Snorri gives a list of fourteen Aesir or Gods (Odin, Thor, Baldr, Nj?rd, Frey, Tyr, Bragi, Heimdal, H?d, Vidar, Vali, Ullr, Forseti, Loki), and adds Hoeni in another list, all the fifteen occurring in the poems; and sixteen Goddesses (Asynjor), the majority of whom are merely personified epithets, occurring nowhere else. Of the sixteen, Frigg, Gefion, Freyja and Saga (really an epithet only) are Goddesses in the poems, and Fulla is Frigg's handmaid. In another chapter, Snorri adds Idunn, Gerd, Sigyn and Nanna, of whom the latter does not appear in the Elder Edda, where Idunn, Gerd (a giantess) and Sigyn are the wives of Bragi, Frey and Loki; and two others, the giantess Skadi and Sif, are the wives of Nj?rd and Thor.
A striking difference from classical mythology is that neither Tyr (who should etymologically be the Sky-god), nor Thor (the Thunder-god), takes the highest place. Tyr is the hero of one important episode, the chaining of the Wolf, through which he loses his right hand. This is told in full by Snorri and alluded to in Lokasenna, both in the prose preface ("Tyr also was there, with only one hand; the Fenris-wolf had bitten off the other, when he was bound") and in the poem itself:
Loki. "I must remember that right hand which Fenri bit off thee."
Tyr. "I am short of a hand, but thou of the famous wolf; to each the loss is ill-luck. Nor is the wolf in better plight, for he must wait in bonds till Ragnar?k."
Otherwise, he only appears in connexion with two more popular Gods: he speaks in Frey's defence in Lokasenna, and in Hymiskvida he is Thor's companion in the search for a cauldron; the latter poem represents him as a giant's son.
Thor, on the other hand, is second only to his father Odin; he is the strongest of the Gods and their champion against the giants, and his antagonist at Ragnar?k is to be the World-Snake. Like Odin, he travels much, but while the chief God generally goes craftily and in disguise, to gain knowledge or test his wisdom, Thor's errands are warlike; in Lokasenna he is absent on a journey, in Harbardsljod and Alvissmal he is returning from one. His journeys are always to the east; so in _Harbardsljod_: "I was in the east, fighting the malevolent giant-brides.... I was in the east and guarding the river, when Svarang's sons attacked me." The Giants live in the east (Hymiskvida 5); Thor threatened Loki: "I will fling thee up into the east, and no one shall see thee more" (Lokasenna 59); the fire-giants at Ragnar?k are to come from the east: "Hrym comes driving from the east, he lifts his shield before him.... A ship comes from the east, Muspell's sons will come sailing over