Loki is the Fire-God, that delights in mischief, bene servit, male imperat. When by immoderate heat he has burned off the hair of Sif, her husband compels him so by temperate heat to warm the moisture of the earth, that its former products may spring up more beautiful than ever. The boar is given to Freyr, to whom and his sister Freya, as the gods of animal and vegetable fecundity, the northern people offered that animal, as the Italian people did, to the earth. Loki s bringing the gifts from the under-ground people seems to indicate a belief that metals were prepared by subterranean fire, and perhaps the forging of Thor s hammer, the mythic emblem of thunder, by a terrestrial demon, on a subterranean anvil, may suggest that the natural cause of thunder is to be sought in the earth. It would carry all the Aeser and their arms, and when not in use it could be taken asunder and put in a purse.
Mythologists say it is the clouds.
E. The Bruiser or Crusher, from Myla, to bruise or crush. Little the Fancy know of the high connexions of their phrase Mill. Edda Resenii, Daemisaga 59.