were found again in the green grass of the regenerated earth. From the above it must be clear that the three giant maids, who came from Jotunheim and put an end to the golden age, must be the norns, the all-pervading necessity that develops the child into manhood. It does not follow, therefore, that these maids were giantesses, for the gods themselves descended from the giants. Nor did the norns introduce evil into the world, but they marked out for the gods a career which could not be changed; and immediately after the appearance of the maids from Jotunheim the gods must create man, whose fate those same norns would afterwards determine.
The gods did not create the dwarfs, but only determined that they were to have the form and understanding of men.
Man was made of trees—of the ash and the elm. There is something graceful in this idea. The Norse conception certainly is of a higher order than those which produce man from earth or stones. It is more natural and more noble to regard man as having been made of trees, which as they grow from the earth heavenward show an unconscious attraction to that which is divine, than, as the Greeks do, to make men stand forth out of cold clay and hard stones. We confess that the Norse myth looks Greek and the Greek looks Norse; yet there may be a good reason for it. The plastic Greek regarded man as a statue, which generally was formed of clay or stone, but to which a divine spark of art gave life. The Norsemen knew not the plastic art and therefore had to go to nature, and not to art, for their symbols. The manner in which Odin breathes spirit and life into the trees reminds us very forcibly of the Mosaic narrative. It is interesting
