Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

382 CONCLUSIONS.

upon the proposition to dig a tunnel from Dover to Calais, as a source of danger, a means of invasion, a threat 3 and at the end of the island, where the ridge is united to it, they did what England will probably do at the end of the Dover tunnel: they erected fortifications and built a castle, and in it they put a ruler, possibly a sub-king, Heimdal, who constantly, from a high lookout, possibly with a field-glass, watches the coming of the turbulent Goths, or Gauls, or Gael, from afar off. Doubtless the white-headed and red-headed, hungry, breekless savages had the same propensity to invade the civilized, wealthy land, that their posterity had to descend on degenerate Rome.

The word Asas is not, as some have supposed, derived from Asia. Asia is derived from the Asas. The word Asas comes from a Norse word, still in use in Norway, Aas, meaning a ridge of high land.* Anderson thinks there is some connection between Aas, the high ridge, the mountain elevation, and Adlas, who held the world on his shoulders.

The Asas, then, were the civilized race who inhabited a high, precipitous country, the meeting-point of a number of ridges. Atlas was the king, or god, of Atlantis, Tn the old time all kings were gods. They are something more than men, to the multitude, even yet.

And when we reach “ Ragnarok” in these Gothic legends, when the jaw of the wolf Fenris reached from the earth to the sun, and he vomits fire and poison, and when Surt, and all the forces of Muspel, “ride over Bifrost, it breaks to pieces.” That is to say, in this last great catastrophe of the earth, the ridge of land that led from the British Islands to Atlantis goes down for ever.

* “The Younger Edda,” Anderson, note, p. 226.