Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/42

24 cussion with all the gods and goddesses and says many hard things to them and about them. Very satirical is also the poem Hárbarðsljoð, a dialogue between Thor and Odin, who disguised persuades Thor to describe his achivementsachievements [sic] in such a manner that he puts himself in a very comical light as a vain and boasting fool. In contrast with these two poems, which evidently owe their origin to an age when the faith in the older gods had been changed into contempt, we must call attention to the gem among all the humorous lays in the Elder Edda, the splendid poem about Thrym. This magnificent and humorous poem about Thrym describes in vivid colors and in a most amusing manner how Thor gets back his hammer Mjolner, which the giant Thrym had stolen and concealed deep in the earth. Only on the condition that Freyja becomes his bride, will the giant give back the hammer, and the goddess refusing to consent to this, Thor himself disguised as a woman with Loke as his maid servant, proceeds to the land of the giants, where Thor as Thrym's bride recovers his hammer and with it destroys him and all his race. As a poem remarkable for its great lyric beauty and glowingly passionate style we may mention the lay of Skirner, Frey's servant, who rides to Jotunheim and brings the beloved Gerd back as his master's bride. A peculiar position in the Elder Edda is occupied by the poem Hávamál (The song of the high one). It is a didactic poem or rather fragments of a series of such poems, in which in terse, vigorous sentences a number of maxims of life and rules of conduct are presented, which furnish us a most interesting glimpse of the moral code and ethical principles of the ancient inhabitants of the North.

The remarkable poem, Rigsmál, on Heimdal, in which this divinity is described as the originator of the different classes of society, is not found in the manuscripts of the Elder Edda (it is preserved in the so-called Codex Wormianus of the Younger or Snorre's Edda), but its whole character shows that it belongs there, and the same is true of another