NOTES TO THE SIXTH CANTO.
Specimen of the original.
Da nu den Helt hi̱n svare
Midt udi Marken stod,
Alt under Himlen klare,
Med Blomster ved sin Fod, etc.
[35] The circumstance of the dwarf’s face being veiled, means, that the thought of Utgard-Lok could not be divined by Thor.
[36] It was a saying in the pagan time, when the ebb began, “Thor drinks.”
The Author has adhered closely to the prosaic Edda in his narration of Thor’s adventure in Utgard.
With respect to the two Loks, and the difference between them, it is not a little curious to find that in the gospel of Nicodemus (one of those rejected by the council of Nice, chap. xx, verses 2 and following), Satan and the prince of hell are described as two distinct persons; and when Satan informs the latter, that he has achieved for him a great conquest, by bringing captive to his realm no less a personage than Jesus Christ, the prince of hell, instead of thanking Satan for that service, loads him with reproaches for his unpardonable thoughtlessness, in bringing into his dominions a person by whom he (the prince of hell) had sustained a serious detriment, in the loss of sundry souls, whom Jesus Christ, in escaping from hell, had carried off with him, and who, but for that visit, would still have remained there.
It is singular that this comparison should have escaped the notice, not only of Finn Magnussen, but that of all the other commentators of the Edda, when discussing the subject of the two Loks. I stumbled by mere chance three years ago on a copy of the apocryphal New Testament in German, and on reading the chapter above quoted, the idea of this analogy immediately and forcibly struck me.