Holt is a grove, or forest, or hold; it was probably a cave.  We shall see that nearly all the legends refer to the caves in which mankind escaped from destruction.

This statement,

“From them are the races descended,”

shows that this is not prophecy, but history; it refers to the past, not to the future; it describes not a Day of Judgment to come, but one that has already fallen on the human family.

Two others, of the godlike race, also escaped in some

[1.  “Norse Mythology” p. 429.]

{p. 151}

way not indicated; Vidar and Vale are their names.  They, too, had probably taken refuge in some cavern.

“Neither the sea nor Surt’s fire had harmed them, and they dwell on the plains of Ida, where Asgard was before.  Thither come also the sons of Thor, Mode, and Magne, and they have Mjolner. Then come Balder and Hoder from Hel.

Mode and Magne are children of Thor; they belong to the godlike race.  They, too, have escaped.  Mjolner is Thor’s hammer.  Balder is the Sun; he has returned from the abode of death, to which the comet consigned him.  Hoder is the Night.

All this means that the fragments and remnants of humanity reassemble on the plain of Ida—­the plain of Vigrid—­where the battle was fought.  They possess the works of the old civilization, represented by Thor’s hammer; and the day and night once more return after the long midnight blackness.

And the Vala looks again upon a renewed and rejuvenated world: 

“She sees arise The second time.  From the sea, the earth, Completely green.  The cascades fall, The eagle soars, From lofty mounts Pursues its prey.”

It is once more the glorious, the sun-lighted world the world of flashing seas, dancing streams, and green leaves; with the eagle, high above it all,

     “Batting the sunny ceiling of the globe
     With his dark wings;”

while

     “The wild cataracts leap in glory.”

{p. 152}

What history, what poetry, what beauty, what inestimable pictures of an infinite past have lain hidden away in these Sagas—­the despised heritage of all the blue-eyed, light-haired races of the world!

Rome and Greece can not parallel this marvelous story: 

     The gods convene
     On Ida’s plains,
     And talk of the powerful
     Midgard-serpent;
     They call to mind
     The Fenris-wolf
     And the ancient runes
     Of the mighty Odin.”

What else can mankind think of, or dream of, or talk of for the next thousand years but this awful, this unparalleled calamity through which the race has passed?

A long-subsequent but most ancient and cultivated people, whose memory has, for us, almost faded from the earth, will thereafter embalm the great drama in legends, myths, prayers, poems, and sagas; fragments of which are found to-day dispersed through all literatures in all lands; some of them, as we shall see, having found their way even into the very Bible revered alike of Jew and Christian: