“Sköll the wolf is named
That the fair-faced goddess
To the ocean chases;
Another Hati hight,
He is Hrodvitnir’s son;
He the bright maid of heaven shall precede.”
Sæmund’s Edda (Thorpe’s tr.).
At times, they said, the wolves overtook and tried to swallow their prey, thus producing an eclipse of the radiant orbs. Then the terrified people raised such a deafening clamor that the wolves, frightened by the noise, hastily dropped them. Thus rescued, Sun and Moon resumed their course, fleeing more rapidly than before, the hungry monsters rushing along in their wake, anxious for the time when their efforts would prevail and the end of the world would come. For the Northern nations all believed that as their gods had sprung from an alliance between the divine element (Börr) and the mortal (Bestla), they were finite, and doomed to perish with the world they had made.
“But even in this early morn
Faintly foreshadowed was the dawn