Full oft in league is found,
Loves o’er the raging flood
In swift career to bound.
Skimming each billow’s back,
Loud neighs his coal-black steed:
On the calm wave no track
He leaves—so great his speed.[[94]]
Niord was twice married. By his first wife, who was also his sister, and we are distinctly informed that the union of such near relatives was peculiar to the Vanir (the custom, however, was common to the Egyptians, the Persians, and the royal family of Peru), he had two children, Freyr[[95]] and Freya.[[96]] His second wife was Skada, daughter of the giant Thiasse. The circumstances which led to his marriage were these. No sooner did Skada hear that her father had been killed by Thor[[97]], than she armed herself, and proceeded to Asgard to avenge his death. As the condition of peace, the gods proposed that she should take a husband from them, but that, while choosing, she should be blindfolded. She groped about, and at length fixed on one whose feet were small and well formed, whom she thought to be Balder. It was Niord; and the marriage was celebrated. The pair, however, could not agree about their place of residence. The bride could not bear the sea-shore; the waves, she observed, would not let her sleep, and she longed for her native mountains. He was no less hostile to her father’s abode. A compromise was at length effected; the couple were to live nine days in Thrymheim, and three days in Noatun; that is, nine days in the mountains, and three on the sea-coast. But this compromise was of no long duration. The two were so dissimilar in character that they could not agree; there was a separation; and Skada became the wife of Odin.[[98]] Of Niord we shall only add that though little is said of him in the Edda, he must have been a primary deity from the terms of the oath solemnly taken by the Scandinavians:—“So help me Freyr, and Niord, and the mighty Aser!”
Freyr, the son of Niord, has been mentioned as one of the twelve ruling gods of Asgard—as god of sunshine, of rain, and consequently of vegetation. Alfheim, his residence, the kingdom of the light elves, was given him in the morning of time, when he had cut his first tooth. One day he had the presumption to ascend Lidskialf, the awful seat of Odin[[99]]; and he was punished for it by falling in love with Gerda, daughter of the giant Gymer, whom he saw issue from her father’s palace in the North. Surpassing, indeed, was the maiden’s beauty; it was so bright as to enlighten the whole region. He gazed and loved; and after the beautiful vision had departed, he descended, melancholy and miserable, to his own palace. What hope was there of winning a giant maiden? Would the gods themselves sanction such a connection? Sleep and appetite forsook him. In much anxiety, Niord besought his confidential messenger, Skirnir, to draw from Freyr the cause of his affliction. With some persuasion, Skirnir consented, and by much entreaty obtained the secret:
From Gymer’s house