Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

RAGNAROK. 149

This probably refers to the iron-stained red clay cast down by the Comet over a large part of the earth; the “seats of the gods” means the home of the god-like race, which was doubtless covered, like Europe and America, with red clay ; the waters which ran from it must have been the color of blood.

“ The sunshine blackens In the summers thereafter, And the weather grows bad.”

In the Younger Edda (p. 57) we are given a still more precise description of the Ice age:

* Replied Har, explaining, that as soon as the streams, that are called Elivogs” (the rivers from under ice), “had e me so far that the venomous yeast ” (the clay ?) “ which flowed with them hardened, as does dross that runs from the fire, then it turned ” (as) “into ice. And when this ice stopped and flowed no more, then gathered over it the drizzling rain that arose from the venom” (the clay), “and froze into rime” (ice), “and one layer of ice was laid upon another clear into the Ginungagap.”

Ginungagap, we are told,* was the name applied in the eleventh century by the Northmen to the ocean between Greenland and Vinland, or America. It doubtless meant originally the whole of the Atlantic Ocean. The clay, when it first fell, was probably full of chemical elements, which rendered it, and the waters which filtered through it, unfit for human use ; clay waters are, to this day, the worst in the world.

“Then said Jafnhar: ‘All that part of Ginungagap that turns to the north’ (the north Atlantic) ‘was filled with thick and heavy ice and rime, and everywhere within were drizzling rains and gusts. But the south part of Ginungagap was lighted up by the glowing sparks that flew out of Muspelheim.’”

* ‘“Norse Mythology,” p. 447. °