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She came within and she had her seat amongst the Æsir and the Vanir. She walked through Asgard with a smile upon her face, and where she walked and where she smiled Care and dire Foreboding came. Those who felt the care and the foreboding most deeply were Bragi the Poet and his wife, the fair and simple Iduna, she who gathered the apples that kept age from the Dwellers in Asgard.
They tracked Loki on that fair morning when he led Idun beyond the gates; they seized him and brought him into solemn council, and when he read in their haggard faces the deadly hate which flamed in all their hearts against his treachery, his courage failed, and he promised to bring Idun back to Asgard if the goddess Freyja would lend him her falcon guise.
"Call all our folk together!" commanded Odin. "The wily Mischief-maker plots our hurt. He must be driven from his hiding-place, and put where he can do no further harm." Great stir was there then in Asgard. Every one hastened to answer Odin's call, and to join in the quest for the Mischief-maker.
Let me stay in Asgard. I will strive to win Iduna back." "The judgment of the Gods," said Thor, "is that thou, the cunning one, shouldst go to Jötunheim, and by thy craft win Iduna back from the Giants. Go or else I shall hurl thee into a chasm and crush thee with my thunder." "I will go," said Loki. From Frigga, the wife of Odin, Loki borrowed the dress of falcon feathers that she owned.
And the eyes of the Dwellers in Asgard lightened up when they saw Thor with the hammer Miölnir in his hands; their eyes lightened up and from their lips came the cry, "This is a wonder, a wonder indeed! With this hammer in his hand none can withstand Thor, our Champion. No greater thing has ever come into Asgard than the hammer Miölnir."
AEger, after he had thought a moment, "will you get me a kettle?" Thor was always ready for any hard or dangerous thing. "Of course I will," was his quick reply, "only tell me where to get one." That, however, was no easy thing to do. Kettles big enough to brew ale for Asgard were not to be picked up at a moment's notice.
Now Thor was by no means small; indeed, in Asgard, the city of the AEsir, he was regarded as a giant; but here in Utgard Skrymir told him he had better not give himself any airs, for the people of that city would not tolerate any assumption on the part of such a mannikin!
In a deep ravine by the side of a roaring torrent, he built himself a house of iron and stone, and placed a door on each of its four sides, so that he could see whatever passed around him. There, for many winters, he lived in lonely solitude, planning with himself how he might baffle his enemies and regain his old place in Asgard.
But if he was to be bound they would bind him far from Asgard. Lyngvi was an island that they often went to to make sport, and they spoke of going there. Fenrir growled that he would go with them. He came and he sported in his own terrible way. And then as if it were to make more sport, one of the Æsir shook out the smooth cord and showed it to Fenrir.
The empire of this Universe is divided between these two; they dwell apart, in perennial internecine feud. The Gods dwell above in Asgard, the Garden of the Asen, or Divinities; Jotunheim, a distant dark chaotic land, is the home of the Jotuns. Curious all this; and not idle or inane, if we will look at the foundation of it!
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