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They went to the dwelling of fair Freyja, and these words he spoke first of all: "Wilt thou lend me, Freyja, thy feather dress, to see if I can find my hammer?" Freyja. "I would give it thee, though it were of gold; I would grant it, though it were of silver." Then Loki flew, the feather-coat rustled, until he came out of Asgard and into Jötunheim.
It was a firm belief of the northern nations that a time would come when all the visible creation, the gods of Valhalla and Niffleheim, the inhabitants of Jotunheim, Alfheim, and Midgard, together with their habitations, would be destroyed. The fearful day of destruction will not, however, be without its forerunners.
But cunning Loki said, "I have thought of a trick that may win back the hammer from stupid Thrym. Let us pretend to send Freya to Jötunheim as a bride for him. But let one of the Gods go in Freya's veil and dress." "Which of the Gods would bring himself to do so shameful a thing?" said those in the Council.
Some hewed at him with their swords, others threw stones at him, some shot arrows pointed with steel, and Thor continually swung Miolnir at his head. "Well," said Loki to himself, "if this is the sport of Asgard, what must that of Jotunheim be? I wonder what Father Odin and Mother Frigga would say if they were here?"
He talked to Thor of the adventures they had together in Jötunheim. Thor would now roar with laughter when he talked of the time when he went as a bride to Thrym the Giant. Loki was able to persuade him to make another journey to Jötunheim. "And I want to speak to you of what I saw in Gerriöd's dwelling," he said. "I saw there the hair of Sif, your wife."
But Skrymir had vanished; Utgard with its sky-high gates, when Thor grasped his hammer to smite them, had gone to air; only the Giant's voice was heard mocking: "Better come no more to Jotunheim!" This is of the allegoric period, as we see, and half play, not of the prophetic and entirely devout: but as a mythus is there not real antique Norse gold in it?
The first of these was Fenris, the wolf; the second was Jörmungand, the Midgard serpent; and the third was Hela, death. Very soon did the gods become aware of this evil progeny which was being reared in Jotunheim, and by divination they discovered that they must receive great injury from them.
"Baldur is dead!" they cried to the sea, and to Jotunheim across the sea; and when the giants understood it, even they wept, whilst the sea rained spray to heaven.
Then the goats were driven out, urged forward in their harness; well must they run. Rocks were riven, the earth burned in name: Odin's son was driving into Jötunheim. Then spoke Thrym, lord of the Giants: "Stand up, giants, and strew the benches! They are bringing me now Freyja my bride, Njörd's daughter from Noatun. "Gold-horned kine run in the court, oxen all-black, the giant's delight.
Little Hnossa, the youngest of the Dwellers in Asgard, was there, standing beside Heimdall, the Watcher for the Gods and the Keeper of the Bridge to Urda's Well, when Odin All-Father and Frigga, his Queen, went through the great gate with heads bent. "Tomorrow," Hnossa heard Odin say, "tomorrow I shall be Vegtam the Wanderer upon the ways of Midgard and Jötunheim."
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