According to this mythology, there is coming a time in which the world will be destroyed by fire and afterward renewed.  This will be, preceded by awful disasters; dreadful winters; wars, and desolations on earth; cruelty and deceit; the sun and moon will be devoured, the stars hurled from the sky, and the earth violently shaken.  The Wolf (Fenrir), the awful Midgard Serpent, Loki, and Hela come to battle with the gods.  The great Ash-tree will shake with fear.  The Wolf (Fenrir) breaks loose, and opens his enormous mouth.  The lower jaw reaches to the earth, and the upper to heaven.  The Midgard Serpent, by the side of the Wolf, vomits forth floods of poison.  Heaven is rent in twain, and Surtur and the sons of Muspell ride through the breach.  These are the children of Light and Fire, who dwell in the South, and who seem to belong neither to the race of gods nor to that of giants, but to a third party, who only interfere at the close of the conflict.  While the battle goes on between the gods and the giants they keep their effulgent bands apart on the field of battle.  Meantime Heimdall—­doorkeeper of the gods—­sounds his mighty trumpet, which is heard through the whole universe, to summon the gods to conflict.  The gods, or AEsir, and all the heroes of Valhalla, arm themselves and go to the field.  Odin fights with the Wolf; Thor with the Midgard Serpent, whom he kills, but being suffocated with the floods of venom dies himself.  The Wolf swallows Odin, but at that instant Vidar sets his foot on its lower jaw, and laying hold of the upper jaw tears it apart.  He accomplishes this because he has on the famous shoe, the materials of which have been collecting for ages, it being made of the shreds of shoe-leather which are cut off in making shoes, and which, on this account, the religious Scandinavians were careful to throw away.  Loki and Heimdall fight and kill each other.  After this Surtur darts fire over the whole earth, and the whole universe is consumed.  But then comes the restitution of all things.  There will rise out of the sea a new heaven and a new earth.  Two gods, Vidar and Vali, and two human beings, a man and woman, survive the conflagration, and with their descendants occupy the heavens and earth.  The suns of Thor come with their father’s hammer and put an end to war.  Baldur, and Hodur, the blind god, come up from Hell, and the daughter of the Sun, more beautiful than its mother, occupies its place in the skies.

Sec. 4.  The Gods of Scandinavia.

We can give no better account of the Norse pantheon than by extracting the passages from the prose Edda, which describe the gods.  We take the translation in Mallet’s Northern Antiquities:—­

   “OF ODIN.

   “‘I must now ask thee,’ said Gangler, ’who are the gods that men are
   bound to believe in?’

   “‘There are twelve gods,’ replied Har, ’to whom divine honors ought to
   be rendered.’

   “‘Nor are the goddesses,’ added Jafhhar, ‘less divine and mighty.’