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He leaned forward to give her a kiss, raising a corner of her veil; but his hand dropped suddenly, and he started up in terror, for he had caught the angry flash of Thor's eye, which was glaring at him through the bridal veil. Thor was longing for his hammer. "Why has Freia so sharp a look?" Thrym cried. "It pierces like lightning and burns like fire."
He makes a pact with the giants the Titan forces of the earth that be will give them Freia if they build him a castle, Valhalla, which he intends to fill with slain warriors in sufficient numbers to keep down his foes. This is his primary, essential, fatal blunder; for unless the gods eat of Freia's apples every day they must wither and their powers decay.
Eating this fruit maintains her kinsmen in unwaning youth. Were Freia removed, they must age and fade. Wherefore let Freia be seized! Wotan frets underbreath, "Loge is long acoming!" Freia's cries, as the giants lay hands upon her, bring her brothers Donner and Froh the god of Thunder and the god of the Fields quickly to her side.
Loki was now all eagerness, for he loved difficulties which would set his wit in play and bring other folk into danger. "Look, now," he said. "We must go to Freia and borrow her falcon dress. But you must ask; for she loves me so little that she would scarce listen to me." So first they made their way to Folkvang, the house of maidens, where Freia dwelt, the loveliest of all in Asgard.
We discover at this point that she is no Christian like the rest; that the secret gods of the secret sorceress are the old superseded ones, Wotan and Freia. For that reason it was the Silver Knight did not impress her as he did the others.
Then he spoke suddenly, as if the idea had just come into his mind. "I will name my price, friends," he said; "a small price for so great a deed. I ask you to give me Freia for my wife, and those two sparkling jewels, the Sun and Moon." At this demand the gods looked grave; for Freia was their dearest treasure.
The essence of the laws lies in the sanctity of compacts, and so we first hear its representative theme when the Giants come to claim Freia as payment for the building of the Burg: it makes its appearance quietly, unobtrusively, almost apologetically, and might be, as I have said, a fragment from Spohr or Weber.
Wotan refuses to let Freia go, and Froh and Donner come to the protection of their sister. The giants are prepared to fight for their rights, but the entrance of Loge fortunately effects a diversion.
Freia gone, the gods begin to wither and age: her golden apples, which they so lightly bargained away, they now find to be a matter of life and death to them; for not even the gods can live on Law and Godhead alone, be their castles ever so splendid.
"Not happy is Freia, hanging on the back of the rough ones as they wade through the Rhine...." Her dejected kindred wince. The heavy footsteps die away. Loge returning his attention to the gods, voices his amazement at the sight which meets him: "Am I deceived by a mist? Am I misled by a dream? How wan and fearful and faded you do look!
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