to cultivate the desert lands and the mountains; thereupon the giants, to subdue the wild beasts; and finally the heroes, to assist the dwarfs against the treacherous giants. While the giants are always hostile to the gods, the dwarfs are usually friendly to them.
Dwarfs. Both giants and dwarfs shun the light. If surprised by the breaking forth of day, they become changed to stone. In one of the poems of the Elder Edda (the Alvismal), Thor amuses the dwarf Alvis with various questions till daylight, and then cooly says to him: With great artifices, I tell you, you have been deceived; you are surprised here, dwarf, by daylight! The sun now shines in the hall. In the Helgakvida Atle says to the giantess Hrimgerd: It is now day, Hrimgerd! But Atle has detained you, to your life's perdition. It will appear a laughable harbor-mark, where you stand as a stoneimage.
In the German tales the dwarfs are described as deformed and diminutive, coarsely clad and of dusky hue: *' a little black man," a little gray man. They are sometimes of the height of a child of four years, sometimes as two spans high, a thumb high (hence, Tom Thumb). The old Danish ballad of Eline of Yillenwood mentions a troll not bigger than an ant. Dvergmål (the speech of the dwarfs) is the Old Norse expression for the echo in the mountains.
In the later popular belief, the dwarfs are generally called the subterraneans, the brown men in the moor, etc. They make themselves invisible by a hat or hood. The women spin and weave, the men are smiths. In Norway rock-crystal is called dwarf-stone. Certain
