{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_tml_tml29_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_tml_tml29_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_neu_tml_tml29_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/tml/tml29.htm","summary":"This is an early 20th-century retelling of Norse/Germanic mythological legends, drawn from the tradition of Saxo Grammaticus and related medieval sources, compiled and narrated by Donald A. Mackenzie. The chapter follows King Gorm of Denmark and his navigator Thorkill on a perilous expedition into the frozen, lightless lands at the edge of the world, where they seek the lair of the giant Geirrod. The journey takes them through encounters with island giants demanding human tribute, a deceptive giant lord named Gudmund who offers enchanted food and brides to trap mortals in his realm forever, and finally into a nightmarish city of the undead \u2014 a fog-shrouded, filth-covered place populated by shrieking shades. Mackenzie presents the mythology as a coherent cosmological vision in which the mortal world borders on realms of giants, the dead, and supernatural darkness, with the travelers surviving only through Thorkill's strict protocols against eating, speaking to, or touching anything in these lands. The work's most distinctive quality is its atmospheric, proto-gothic rendering of Hel and the giant-world as genuinely horrifying landscapes rather than merely archaic curiosities, heightened by an interpolated Shelley quotation that bridges ancient myth and Romantic sensibility. Readers interested in Norse cosmology, comparative mythology, or early popular mythology writing will find this a vivid if somewhat dated secondary source.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Teutonic Myth and Legend: Chapter XXIV. Land of the Not-d...","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","translated_text":null,"word_count":7649}