SOURCES OF TEUTONIC MYTHS 47 



torrents and waterfalls. Out of the dark forests, the 

 naked rock rose in endless fantastic and suggestive 

 shapes. The valleys were strewn with blocks of every 

 size detached from the cliffs above. Mounds of earth 

 and stones, like huge graves, mottled the lower 

 grounds over which they had been dropped by old 

 glaciers and ice-sheets. It was a region difficult of 

 access and hard to traverse, stern and forbidding in 

 aspect, abounding in gigantic, fantastic, and uncouth 

 features, while the harshness of its topography was 

 but little tempered by that atmospheric softness which 

 sometimes veils the rocky nakedness of sunnier climes. 

 Away from the great mountain-tracts of Norway, 

 though the topography was on a diminished scale, 

 there were many features similar in kind, and fitted 

 to awaken like fancies in the minds of those who 

 dwelt among them. The hill groups that rise out of 

 the great Germanic plain, such as the Hartz and the 

 detached heights of central Scotland, though far less 

 imposing than the Scandinavian fjelds abound never- 

 theless in picturesque details. Along the sides of their 

 cliffs, especially in the narrow valleys by which they 

 are traversed, crags and pinnacles of odd and often 

 imitative shapes rise one above another. Solitary 

 boulders, unlike any of the rocks around, are strewn 

 over the hills and scattered far across the plains. 

 Green, grassy mounds, like gigantic earthworks, or 

 groups of sepulchral tumuli, stand conspicuously on 

 the bare heathy moors. And when to these singular 

 natural features there is added the strangely impressive 

 influence of the clouds, mists, and other meteorological 

 conditions that mark the changeful climate of western 



