Nor radiance fair
Of gentle Summer’s soft’ning light,
Tempered this dreadful glacial night.”
Valhalla (J. C. Jones).
This severe winter lasted during three whole seasons without a break, and was followed by three others, equally severe, during which all cheer departed from the earth, where the crimes of men increased with fearful rapidity, and where, in the general struggle for life, the last feelings of humanity and compassion disappeared.
The wolves let loose.
In the dim recesses of the Ironwood the giantess Iarnsaxa or Angur-boda diligently fed the wolves Hati, Sköll, and Managarm, the progeny of Fenris, with the marrow of murderers’ and adulterers’ bones; and such was the prevalence of these vile crimes, that the almost insatiable monsters were never stinted in food, and daily gained more strength to pursue Sol and Mani, whom they finally overtook and devoured, deluging the earth with the blood from their dripping jaws.
“In the east she was seated, that aged woman, in Jarnrid,
And there she nourished the posterity of Fenrir;
He will be the most formidable of all, he