Of this mythos the physical meaning is dark; and this darkness is probably owing to the fondness with which the northern scalds added extraneous circumstances for the sake of embellishment. Nothing, indeed, is more hopeless than the attempt to restore these ancient pieces to the original fragmentary state in which they were left by the priests of Thor and of Odin. The scald has, by embellishing, concealed the priest; the fabulist concealed the philosophic theologian. All that we can safely assert is, that there is here a physical contest between heat and cold, between evaporation and congelation; that the sun (Thor), having drunk up all the streams of the earth, now invades the dominions of frost and snow. The bursting of the vessels under the glance of Hymir, is a notion universally diffused in the northern latitudes. Thus, the two magicians the suitors of Gunhilda, could destroy every thing by their glance.[[75]] The meaning doubtless is, that excessive frost makes every thing brittle, and may therefore be said to split every thing.
If the scalds took such liberties with the ancient or poetic Edda, as often to bury the sun, they were more licentious still in regard to the younger or prose Edda. This work was evidently compiled to explain the former. With it a licence still more dangerous has been taken; so that, in many instances, it bears little conformity with the preceding work. We may add, that by modernising, paraphrasing, and embellishing the prose Edda, Ohlenschlager has done no service to the ancient mythology of his country: he cannot be followed by any one that would form a correct notion of the subject. In the same manner as the compilers of the second Edda deviated from the spirit of the first, so has the celebrated Danish poet deviated from them.[[76]] For the sake of illustrating this divergence, let us advert for a moment to the same adventure in the prose Edda and in the version of Ohlenschlager: it will be found to have lost its mythical character in proportion to the improvement of its fable.
When Thor reflected on the gross impositions which Utgardelok had practised on him, he was apprehensive, and not without reason, that gods and men would take him for a fool. To vindicate his merits, he ventured again to visit Utgard, and without Loke, whose honour he justly suspected. This time he would, like them, change his form, and he obtained from Odin, in the shape of ointment, power that would enable him to do so. Leaving behind his car and his goats—
O’er Dovre’s ridge[[77]] he strode,
For cliff nor torrent slack’d;
The tall pines, where he trode,
Like field of stubble crack’d.
Sneehattan’s peak of snow,
And Jotunfieldt he past,
Then sought the plains below,