That is to say, the comet extends from the earth to the sun.

“He would open it still wider had he room.”

That is to say, the space between the sun and earth is not great enough; the tail of the comet reaches even beyond the earth.

“Fire flashes from his eyes and nostrils.”

A recent writer says: 

“When bright comets happen to come very near to the sun, and are subjected to close observation under the

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advantages which the fine telescopes of the present day afford, a series of remarkable changes is found to take place in their luminous configuration.  First, jets of bright light start out from the nucleus, and move through the fainter haze of the coma toward the sun; and then these jets are turned backward round the edge of the coma, and stream from it, behind the comet, until they are fashioned into a tail."[1]

“The Midgard-serpent vomits forth venom, defiling all the air and the sea; he is very terrible, and places himself side by side with the wolf.”

The two comets move together, like Biela’s two fragments; and they give out poison—­the carbureted-hydrogen gas revealed by the spectroscope.

“In the midst of this clash and din the heavens are rent in twain, and the sons of Muspelheim come riding through the opening.”

Muspelheim, according to Professor Anderson,[2] means the day of judgment.” Muspel signifies an abode of fire, peopled by fiends.  So that this passage means, that the heavens are split open, or appear to be, by the great shining comet, or comets, striking the earth; it is a world of fire; it is the Day of Judgment.

“Surt rides first, and before him and after him flames burning fire.”

Surt is a demon associated with the comet;[3] he is the same as the destructive god of the Egyptian mythology, Set, who destroys the sun.  It may mean the blazing nucleus of the comet.

“He has a very good sword that shines brighter than the sun.  As they ride over Bifrost it breaks to pieces, as has before been stated.”

[1.  “Edinburgh Review,” October, 1874, p. 207.

2.  “Norse Mythology,” p. 454.

3.  Ibid., p. 458.]

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Bifrost, we shall have reason to see hereafter, was a prolongation of land westward from Europe, which connected the British Islands with the island-home of the gods, or the godlike race of men.

There are geological proofs that such a land once existed.  A writer, Thomas Butler Gunn, in a recent number of an English publication,[1] says: 

“Tennyson’s ‘Voyage of Maeldune’ is a magnificent allegorical expansion of this idea; and the laureate has also finely commemorated the old belief in the country of Lyonnesse, extending beyond the bounds of Cornwall: