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They lived in Jotunheim, the land of frost and darkness, and their hearts were evil. Next came the gods, the good Æsir, who made earth and sky and sea, and who dwelt in Asgard, above the heavens. Then were created the queer little dwarfs, who lived underground in the caverns of the mountains, working at their mines of metal and precious stones.
Oh, black and direful was it in Asgard, the day that Loki ate the heart that the flames would not devour! He stole Frigga's dress of falcon feathers. Then as a falcon he flew out of Asgard. Jötunheim was the place that he flew toward. The anger and the fierceness of the hawk was within Loki as he flew through the Giants' Realm.
He saw Freya as she went upon her wanderings, and he marked that her face was turned toward Asgard and that her steps were leading toward the City of the Gods. "I have contented myself by looking from Hlidskjalf," said Frey to himself, "and no harm has come to me." But even as he spoke his gaze was drawn to a dwelling that stood in the middle of the ice and snow of Jötunheim.
"True," said Thor unhappily, "and is this, thinkst thou, Loki, the only way to win back Miölnir from Thrym?" "It is the only way, O Thor," said the cunning Loki. So Thor and Loki set out for Jötunheim and the dwelling of Thrym.
Over Tvindehoug they faded like flying scud on the moorlands, on to the gloomy distance, away toward Jotunheim, the home of the Evil Spirits, the Land of the Lasting Snow. Their every sign and trail was wiped away by the drifting storm, and the end of them no man knows. The Norse folk awoke as from a horrid nightmare.
The gods dwelt above, in Asgard, the garden of the Asen or the Divinities; the home of the giants, with whom they were in perpetual war, was Jotunheim, a distant, dark, chaotic land, of which Utgard was the chief seat.
So do we all get us mallets ingeniously forged by the dark elves; we try a race with human thought, and look vainly to come out ahead; we laugh at things because they are old, but with which we struggle to no purpose; and the cup which we confidently put to our lips has no bottom; in fact, the great world of Jötunheim has grown for so long a time and so widely that it is quite too much for us, and its tall people, though we come down upon them, like Thor and his companions, from celestial heights, are too stout for our mallet.
Then Loki, tiring of the wastes of Jötunheim, flew to the burning South. As a lizard he lived amongst the rocks of Muspelheim, and he made the Fire Giants rejoice when he told them of the loss of Frey's sword and of Tyr's right hand. But still in Asgard there was one who wept for Loki Siguna, his wife. Although he had left her and had shown his hatred for her, Siguna wept for her evil husband.
In Jötunheim a cock crew, Fialar, the crimson cock, and at his crowing the Giants aroused themselves. High up in Asgard a cock crew, the golden cock Gullinkambir, and at his crowing the Champions in Valhalla bestirred themselves. A dog barked; deep down in the earth a dog barked; it was Garm, the hound with bloody mouth, barking in Gnipa's Cave.
His mighty horse trod the earth of Midgard, and swam the river that divides Midgard, the World of Men, from Jötunheim, the Realm of the Giants. He rode on heedlessly and recklessly, as he did all things. Then out of the iron forests came the monstrous wolves of Jötunheim, to tear and devour him and his mighty horse. It was well for Skirnir that he had in his belt Frey's magic sword.
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