Page:Norse mythology or, the religion of our forefathers, containing all the myths of the Eddas, systematized and interpreted with an introduction, vocabulary and index.djvu/191

 fair structure and is called Vingolf (friends'-floor). Thereupon they built a smithy and furnished it with hammers, tongs and anvils, and with these made all other requisite instruments with which they worked in metals, stone and wood, and composed so large a quantity of the metal called gold, that they made all their house-furniture of it. Hence that age was called the Golden Age. This was the age that lasted until the arrival of the women out of Jotunheim, who corrupted it.

Then the gods seating themselves upon their thrones distributed justice, and remembered how the dwarfs had been bred in the mould of the earth, just as worms in a dead body. The dwarfs were quickened as maggots in the flesh of the old giant Ymer, but by the command of the gods they received the form and understanding of men; their abode was, however, in the earth and rocks. Four dwarfs, Austre (east), Vestre (west), Nordre (north), and Sudre (south), were appointed by the gods to bear up the sky. Of the race of dwarfs Modsogner and Durin are the principal ones.

There were not yet any human beings upon the earth, when one day, as the sons of Bor (Odin, Hœner and Loder) were walking along the sea-beach, they found two trees and created from them the first human pair, man and woman. Odin gave them life and spirit, Hœner endowed them with reason and the power of motion, and Loder gave them blood, hearing, vision and a fair complexion. The man they called Ask, and the woman Embla. The newly created pair received from the gods Midgard as their abode; and from Ask and Embla is descended the whole human family. Thus the Elder Edda, in Völuspá.