Some few animals began soon to stir in the waters, and on the shores of that vast sea; sphinxes and dragons, hydras and griffins, kraken and leviathans, all creatures of a low order, but in their proportions adapted to this colossal world, this world of the infinitely great, and no doubt related in some manner to the antediluvian families of mammoths and pterodactyls, of ichthyosauri and plesiosauri.
A god of the first race, a creator without being created, Ymer naturally did not possess that skill and that cleverness which can only be acquired by long experience. However strange, therefore, it may appear, however inexplicable, the fact is, that this world, fresh with new life and freed from the original mists, was nevertheless covered with darkness. The only light which existed was an occasional phosphorescence of the sea or a few flashes of electric light, such as an aurora borealis sends forth; and this faint glimmer alone illumined the pathway of those vast creatures, those monstrous reptiles, who, dazzled for an instant, plunged back into the lowest depths of the waters, casting up huge waves and tall columns of spray.
It must have been a peculiarly curious sight, certainly, to see those Giants of the Frost, as they were called, wandering, through the darkness across the boundless plains and along endless shores, under a sky without light, looking for each other from one end of the world to the other. To be sure, they could accomplish the journey in a few long strides, and if they were peculiarly anxious to see each other, face to face, they had only to wait for the chance of a momentary flash or a faint twilight glimmer.
The sight was no doubt curious, but there was no one to behold it.
This state of things could not last long. With a new god a new world also came into existence. This new god was very different from the first, it was Light itself, condensed at the southern extremity of the heavens, far from this earth inhabited by giants.
One fine day—an unlucky day for them, however—these giants noticed that the sky above their heads was suddenly assuming a faint pinkish hue, then violet, and finally purple. At this they rejoiced. But suddenly a ball of fire appeared, and they were terrified. It was Odin, Odin followed by his celestial family, which consisted at least of a dozen principal deities!
