The Edda, Volume 1 | Page 9

both with the Midsummer fires, originally part of an
agricultural ritual, can hardly be doubted.
* * * * *
Loki, or Lopt, is a strange figure. He is admitted among the Aesir,
though not one of them by birth, and his whole relation to them points
to his being an older elemental God. He is in alliance with them against
the giants; he and Odin have sworn blood-brothership, according to
Lokasenna, and he helps Thor to recover his hammer that Asgard may
be defended against the giants. On the other hand, while in present
alliance with the Gods, he is chief agent in their future destruction, and
this they know. In Snorri, he is a mischievous spirit of the fairy-tale
kind, exercising his ingenuity alternately in getting the Gods into
difficulties, and in getting them out again. So he betrays Idunn to the
giants, and delivers her; he makes the bargain by which Freyja is
promised to the giant-builders of Valhalla, and invents the trick by
which they are cheated of their prize; by killing the otter he endangers
his own head, Odin's and Hoeni's, and he obtains the gold which buys
their atonement. Hence, in the systematising of the Viking religion, the
responsibility for Baldr's death also was transferred to him. At the

coming of the fire-giants at Ragnarök, he is to steer the ship in which
Muspell's sons sail (_Völuspa_), further evidence of his identity as a
fire-spirit. Like his son the Wolf, he is chained by the Gods; the
episode is related in a prose-piece affixed to _Lokasenna_:
"After that Loki hid himself in Franangr's Foss in the form of a salmon.
There the Aesir caught him. He was bound with the guts of his son Nari,
but his son Narfi was changed into a wolf. Skadi took a poisonous
snake and fastened it up over Loki's face, and the poison dropped down.
Sigyn, Loki's wife, sat there and held a cup under the poison. But when
it was full she poured the poison away, and meanwhile poison dropped
on Loki, and he struggled so hard that all the earth shook; those are
called earthquakes now."
_Völuspa_ inserts lines corresponding to this passage after the Baldr
episode, and Snorri makes it a consequence of Loki's share in that
event.
He is more especially agent of the doom through his children: at
Ragnarök, Fenri the Wolf, bound long before by Tyr's help, will be
freed, and swallow the sun (_Vafthrudnismal_) and Odin
(Vafthrudnismal and _Völuspa_); and Jörmungandr, the Giant-Snake,
will rise from the sea where he lies curled round the world, to slay and
be slain by Thor. The dragon's writhing in the waves is one of the
tokens to herald Ragnarök, and his battle with Thor is the fiercest
combat of that day. Only _Völuspa_ of our poems gives any account of
it: "Then comes the glorious son of Hlodyn, Odin's son goes to meet
the serpent; Midgard's guardian slays him in his rage, but scarcely can
Earth's son reel back nine feet from the dragon."
When Thor goes fishing with the giant Hymi, he terrifies his
companion by dragging the snake's head out of the sea, but he does not
slay it; it must wait there till Ragnarök:
"The protector of men, the only slayer of the Serpent, baited his hook
with the ox's head. The God-hated one who girds all lands from below
swallowed the bait. Doughtily pulled mighty Thor the poison-streaked
serpent up to the side; he struck down with his hammer the hideous

head of the wolf's companion. The monster roared, the wilderness
resounded, the old earth shuddered all through. The fish sank back into
the sea. Gloomy was the giant when they rowed back, so that he spoke
not a word."
There is nothing to suggest that Jörmungandr, to whom the word
World-Snake (Midgardsorm) always refers in the Edda, is the same as
Nidhögg, the serpent that gnaws at Yggdrasil's roots; but both are relics
of Snake-worship.
* * * * *
_The World-Ash_, generally called Yggdrasil's Ash, is one of the most
interesting survivals of tree-worship. It is described by the Sibyl in
_Völuspa_: "I know an ash called Yggdrasil, a high tree sprinkled with
white moisture (thence come the dews that fall in the dales): it stands
ever-green by Urd's spring. Thence come three maids, all-knowing,
from the hall that stands under the tree"; and as a sign of the
approaching doom she says: "Yggdrasil's ash trembles as it stands; the
old tree groans." Grimnismal says that the Gods go every day to hold
judgment by the ash, and describes it further:
"Three roots lie three ways under Yggdrasil's ash: Hel dwells under one,
the frost-giants under the second, mortal men under the third. The
squirrel is called Ratatosk who shall