Our Norse forefathers thought of
themselves always as looking on at a terrible fight between the gods,
who were light and heat and fruitfulness, revealed in the beauty of day
and the splendour of summer, and the giants, who were darkness, cold and
barrenness, revealed in the gloom of night and the desolation of winter.
To the Norseman, as to the Greek, the Roman, the Hindu and other
primitive peoples, the world was the scene of a great struggle, the
stage on which gods, demons, and heroes were contending for supremacy;
and they told that story in a thousand different ways. Every myth is a
chapter in that story, and differs from other stories and legends
because it is an explanation of something that happened in earth, sea,
or sky.
If the men who created the myths had set to work to make wonder tales as
stories are sometimes made to instruct while they entertain children,
they would have left a mass of very dull tales which few people would
have cared to read. They had no idea of doing anything so artificial and
mechanical; they made these old stories because all life was a story to
them, full of splendid or terrible figures moving across the sky or
through the sea and in the depths of the woods, and whichever way they
looked they saw or thought they saw mysterious and wonderful things
going on. They were as much interested in their world as we are in ours;
we write hundreds of scientific books every year to explain our world;
they told hundreds of stories every year to explain theirs.
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