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/253

 *season. By his all-powerful witchcraft he must dissolve and as it were melt her stubborn mind. Finally she gives birth to Vale, the strong warrior.

In the incantation of Groa, in the Elder Edda, this is the first song that the mother sings to her son:

I will sing to thee first One that is thought most useful, Which Rind sang to Ran; That from thy shoulders thou shouldst cast What to thee seems irksome: Let thyself thyself direct. (Be independent!)

What is it that seems so irksome to Rind and Ran, and that both cast from their shoulders in order to become independent? It is the ice. When Rind had thrown it off she requested the sea-goddess Ran to do likewise.

The Greeks have a myth corresponding somewhat to this. The god of the heavens, Zeus, comes down in the rain into Hera's lap; but when she resisted his entreaties Zeus let fall a shower of rain, while she was sitting on the top of a mountain, and he changed himself to a nightingale (a symbol of spring-time). Then Hera compassionately took the wet and dripping bird into her lap. But look at the difference! Hera soon gives way and pities, but our Norse Rind makes a desperate resistance. It repeatedly looks as if Odin had conquered, but the maid reassumes her stubborn disposition. How true this is of the climate in the northern latitudes! Rind is not inapplicable to our Wisconsin winters.

Such is the physical interpretation of Odin's relation to Frigg and Rind. Heaven and earth are wedded together; and upon this marriage earth presents itself in two forms: fruitful and blest, unfruitful and imprisoned