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All fashions of arms, the Arab turban and swift scimetar, Thor's strong hammer smiting down Jotuns, shall be welcome. Luther's battle-voice, Dante's march-melody, all genuine things are with us, not against us. We are all under one Captain, soldiers of the same host. Let us now look a little at this Luther's fighting; what kind of battle it was, and how he comported himself in it.
"Ifing the stream is called which earth divides between the Jotuns and the gods. Open it shall run throughout all time. On that stream no ice shall he." It will be observed that, having gone down or across this stream, Pulewech finds himself in the country of the Evil sorcerers; that is, Jotunheim.
The dark, hostile powers of nature, such as frost and fire, are represented as giants, "jotuns," huge, chaotic demons; while the friendly powers, the sun, the summer heat, all vivifying principles, were gods.
In this legend the hero passes the mysterious river which separates in several Indian tales the ordinary world from that where the evil giants, Jotuns, sorcerers, or witches live. It appears to correspond exactly to "the stream called Ifing, which divides the earth between the Jotuns and the Gods." "Fire, thou art hot, and much too great; flame, let us separate."
In both stories there is a "Chenoo," and in both there is atonement with mankind and the higher powers. It may be observed that while the Chenoo is a giant with a heart of ice as hard as stone, the giant Hrungnir, of the Edda, has a heart of stone. The Chenoo agrees with the Jotuns in many respects. The Story of the Great Chenoo, as told by the Passamaquoddies.
"Though we are but small in comparison with the Jötuns," said he angrily, "we are by no means to be despised, but are gifted with powers that may surprise you." "Really!" answered Utgarda Loke, raising his eyebrows. And then he and his courtiers laughed louder than before.
The assaults of the Typhons and Jötuns upon the celestial dynasty, and their attempts to scale the fiery citadels of the gods by making ladders of mountains, indicate clearly enough the different revolutions read by geology in the various strata and rocky layers piled upon the primitive granite of the globe, the bursting through of eruptions from the central fire, extruding and uplifting mountains, and the subsidence of the ocean from one ripple-marked sea-beach to another lower down.
The Jinn appear to have been similarly degraded on the rise of Mohammedanism. But the Trolls were always imps of darkness. They are descended from the Jotuns, or Frost-Giants of Northern paganism, and they correspond to the Panis, or night-demons of the Veda. In many Norse tales they are said to burst when they see the risen sun.
Over the cornices of the mountain-walls, hovering at least two thousand feet above, gleamed here and there the scattered snowy jötuns of the highest fjeld. The pass gradually opened into a narrow valley, where we found a little cultivation again. Here was the post of Drivstuen, kept by a merry old lady.
And when I had told her of Niflheim and Muspell, of the birth of the giant Ymir from the snowflakes, of the cow Andhumbla, and of Fenrir and Loki and the frozen Jotuns as I say, when I had told her of all this, and of Thor and Odin and our own Valhalla, she clapped her hands and cried out, with sparkling eyes: "Oh, you barbarian! You great child! You yellow giant-thing of the frost!
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