To pieces flew Svolner’s widow
When the span of goats
Drew the sublime chariot
And its divine master
To the meeting with Hrungner.
The most prominent feature of this myth is the lightning which strikes down among the rocks and splits them. Hrungner (from hruga, to wrinkle, to heap up) is the naked, wrinkled mountains with their peaks. Everything is made of stone. Hrungner’s heart and head and shield and weapon were all of stone; beside him stands the clayey mountain (Mokkerkalfe) clad in mist (mökkr), and the contest is at Grjottungard, on the boundary of the stone-covered field. Thor crushes the mountain to make way for agriculture. Thjalfe is the untiring labor, which prepares the rock for cultivation. He advises Hrungner to protect himself from below with his shield. The cultivation of the mountain must begin at the foot of it; there labors the industrious farmer. When he looks up the mountain lifts its rocky head like a huge giant of stone, but the clouds gather around the giant’s head, the lightnings flash and split it. Thjalfe may also be regarded as a concomitant of the thunderstorm, and would then represent the pouring rain, as Thor had got him from a peasant by the sea, and he contends with the mountain of clay, from which the water pours down. Thor’s forehead may also represent the face of the earth, from which he rises as the son of earth, and we know that Minerva sprang forth full-grown and equipped from the brain of Zeus. Orvandel[[66]] and Groa (to grow) refer to the seed sprouting (Orvandel) and growing. Thor carries the seed in his basket over the ice-cold streams (Elivagar), that is, he preserves plant-life through the winter; the sprout ventures out too early in the spring and a toe freezes off; and it is a beautiful idea that the gods make shining stars of everything in the realm of giants that has became useless on earth, and what more charming theme can the painter ask for than Thor carrying on his divine shoulders the reckless Orvandel wading through the ice streams of winter?
Before proceeding to the next myth, we will pause here for a moment and take a cursory look at history, to see whether a few outlines of it do not find their completest reflection in this stone-hearted myth about Hrungner and Thor.
Hrungner on his horse Goldfax, racing with Odin and Sleipner, in the most perfect manner represents the Roman poetastry, reveling in the wealth robbed from the nations of the earth, in rivalry with the genuine Greek poetry and philosophy; for Sleipner is Pegasos; and when the Roman poetasters are in the hight of their glory Hrungner is entertained at Asgard, drunk and crazy, bragging and swearing that he will put all the gods to death excepting Sif (Fortuna) and Freyja (Venus), destroy Asgard and move Valhal to Jotunheim; or, in other words, Venus and Fortuna are the only divinities that shall be worshiped; all religion (Asgard) shall be rooted out and history (Valhal) shall only serve to glorify Rome.
But in the course of time the North begins to take part in determining the destinies of the world; Thor comes home, and shortly afterwards a duel is fought between the Goth and Roman (Vandal) in which Rome is worsted, which could not be expressed more fitly than by the fortunate blow of Mjolner, which crushes the stone-hearted and stone-headed Giant (Roman Vandalism).
But the Goth becomes Romanized, he becomes a slave of Roman thought and Roman civilization, and thus Hrungner falls upon Thor, with his foot upon Thor’s neck, until his son Magne comes and takes it away. Magne is the Anglo-Saxon who created a Gothic Christianity and a Gothic book-speech; and well might the Anglo-Saxon be called Magne, son of Asathor and the hag Jarnsaxa, for Magne is the mythical representation of the mechanical arts, which have received their most perfect development in England and America (the Anglo-Saxons). And we need only to look at the literature of England and America to observe with what pleasure Magne (the Anglo-Saxon) is a great child, who rides the horse Goldfax (the Latin language), at which Odin (the Goth) may well complain that it was wrongfully done, although the spirit of the North (Odin) might rather envy the horse (Romanism) its rider than the rider (the Anglo-Saxon) his horse.