AND IT happened that a new day dawned.
Before she was swallowed by the jotun in wolf’s clothing, sun had rapidly given birth to a daughter. The little daughter grew as big and bright as her mother had been, and she rose shining in the sky. A new moon and new stars appeared, and a new rainbow bridged the desolate sea and the high heavens far above the field of Ida.
And slowly a new earth rose from the sea.
It was a green and lovely new earth, where seeds sprouted in unsown fields and eagles soared high over crystal-clear brooks. Again animals roamed through the forests and fields, and fish gamboled in the sea.
Then out of the secret grove of Hodmimir stepped a maiden and a youth. They were Lif and Lifthrasir—“Life” and the “Stubborn Will to Live.” They alone among mankind had escaped the destruction of Ragnarokk. They had hidden under the bark of trees and had found their food in the morning dew. Their descendants would people the new earth.
Lif and Lifthrasir did not lift their heads and hands in prayer to the Aesir gods. They prayed to God Almighty, who had stepped out from above to rule all the worlds in eternity. He would gather around him all good souls to live in glory forever at Gimle, the paradise that gleamed like a jewel in the sky, far above anything else.
The harsh and warlike days of the Aesir world were gone. But for hundreds of years, memories of the Aesir gods and of their foes lived on in the north. People were certain that behind the closed doors of the mountains, jotuns and trolls were hiding. And men, lifting their heads on a stormy night to look at the raging clouds, might glimpse instead a phantom band of wild horsemen, led by “one” on an eight-legged steed.