Thor afterwards undertook to catch the
Midgard Serpent, using a bull's head for bait. The World-Snake took the
delicious morsel greedily, and, finding itself hooked, writhed and
struggled so that Thor thrust his feet through the bottom of his boat,
in his endeavors to land his prey.
There is a certain grotesque humor in Thor's adventures, which is
missed in his mythologic counterpart of the South, Hercules. It is the
old rich "world-humor" of the North, genial and broad, which still
lives in the creations of the later Teutonic Muse. The dints which Thor
made on the mountain-skull of Skrymir were types and forerunners of the
later feats of the Teutonic race, performed on the rough, shaggy,
wilderness face of this Western hemisphere, channelling it with watery
highways, tunnelling and levelling its mountains, and strewing its
surface with cities. The old Eddas and Voluspas of the North are full
of significant lore for the sons of the Northmen, wherever their lot is
cast. There they will find, that, in colonizing and humanizing the face
of the world, in zoning it with railroads and telegraph-wires, in
bridging its oceans with clipper-ships, and steamboats, and in weaving,
forging, and fabricating for it amid the clang of iron mechanisms, they
are only following out the original bent of the race, and travelling in
the wake of Thor the Hammerer.
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