Jotunheim
By Charles R. Tanner
Mr. Carl
Thorne, the well-known authority on folk-lore and
mythology, has recently returned from a trip to Norway
where he went to secure data for a work which he had
long planned, entitled: “The Eddas: Their Origins and
Fact Bases.” He has returned, I say, yet the Carl
Thorne that I saw not long ago at the offices of Dr. J.
Seabright Carroll, the psychiatrist, was quite a
different man from the dapper student whose face has
been made familiar to thousands in the last few years by
that excellent picture which forms a frontispiece to his
splendid work on mythologies.
Indeed, with
his graying hair and clothes which hung loosely on a
form shrunken by loss of weight, the figure which sat
listlessly in one of the chairs in Seabrights’s waiting
room appeared to be a Thorne who had aged by as much as
ten years in the few months he had been away. I had
been honored, in the year or so preceding his departure
on this trip, to count myself among his closer friends,
yet I entered the room that day and seated myself
directly in his line of vision without eliciting the
faintest sign of recognition. For a moment, I thought
he might have been angered at some blunder of mine, for
I am notoriously clumsy and frank in my manners and
Thorne is of a most sensitive type. But I remembered
how friendly he had been the last time I saw him, and
how he had spent several hours in my company, enthusing
over the trip he was about to make, and I felt certain
that we had parted on the very best of terms. So at
last I ventured to speak. He started at the sound of my
voice, raised his head, and I saw the far-away look in
his eyes melt into confused recognition.
He spoke, and
I tried to draw him into conversation, but at the time
he was most elusive and vague. I invited him to call
around and visit me, for I was really anxious to hear
about his trip, but he made confused excuses and even
more confused promises, and finally entered the doctor’s
private office without even bidding me good-bye.
It was several
days before I saw him again. This time he sought me
out, and for a week or so did all he could to keep
constantly in my company. I learned later that this was
at the advice of Dr. Carroll, who had suggested the
well-known Cathartic method of ridding oneself of an
obsession. There is no doubt that Thorne’s experiences
were fast becoming an obsession with him, for he had
kept them a secret since leaving Norway and had brooded
over them night and day for several weeks.
But now, under
Carroll’s suggestion, he talked on the subject
continually, and I had no trouble at all in hearing his
entire story. And at first I was convinced, just as was
Carroll and, to be frank, Thorne himself, that he had
been the victim of a remarkable hallucination. But
lately, through certain facts that he let drop, I have
come to think otherwise, and to form a most remarkable
theory, a theory the acceptance of which has brought
courage and strength back to Carl Thorne, and which has
explained one phenomenon and offered a possible
explanation for at least a dozen others.
Thorne’s story
came to me piece-meal, as stories usually do, but I
offer it here in as balanced a manner as my lack of
literary ability allows me. And at the last, I offer my
theory to you, as I offered it to Thorne, for what it is
worth.
First he had
gone to Denmark, Thorne told me, and after a month or so
there, he had sailed over to Norway and worked his way
gradually north; picking up little known tales and
making notes of the variations found in different
localities until he was well up in the northern part of
Nordland,. He had purposely avoided all the larger
towns, for of course these stories are preserved in far
greater purity among the farm folk and fishermen, he had
picked up a young man in one of the southern towns,
Henrik Aasen by name, who had spent several years in
America and who spoke the sort of dialect that passes
for English among the immigrants of the North Central
States, and this fellow acted as guide, porter and
general factotum, as well as supplying a good many
valuable hints as to where the right sort of information
might be forth-coming. They were approaching a little
village one evening about sun-down (Thorne says he never
did rightly learn the name of the village—he heard it
mentioned several times, but it never registered on his
conscious mind), and Aasen as usual was pointing out
occasional objects of interest, as was his custom.
“Dat hill,
Mister T’horne,” he announced, pointing to a huge
elevation a mile or so beyond the little town. “Dat ban
called ‘Jotunheim.”
In spite of
Thorne’s proficiency in the Scandinavian tongues, Aasen
always addressed him in his execrable English, while
Thorne insisted on answering him in Norwegian. And so:
“Jotunheim!”
Thorne said a little puzzled. “You mean ‘Jotunberg’,
don’t you Henrik?”
“No, sir.
Jotunheim, Ay mean. Home of de yiants, Mister T’horne.
Yoost de same name as de ole frost yiants in de old
stories.”
“Well! And
why do they call it that, Henrik?”
“Ay don’t
rightly know. Ay don’t come from round har, y’ know.
But Ay t’ink mebbe de ol’sters use to believe dat de
frost yiants live on de top of das hill."
Thorne was
interested. He knew that the Mount Olympus of Greek
mythology, the imaginary Mt. Olympus where the gods
dwelt, had an actual, a true counterpart; but never
before had there been a suggestion that there was any
place in these parts named for any of the places of
Norse mythology. This, in a manner of speaking, was
right down his alley, and so it was with an increasing
interest that he hastened toward the town and arranged
to put up for the night at the one small inn that the
town boasted.
He waited no
longer than was necessary to finish a hurried supper
before mingling with the townsfolk about the square and
striving to strike up an acquaintance with the oldest
and grayest one in sight. Thorne knew by experience
that such a one would be most likely to have the old
legends of the place stowed away in his mind, and when
he entered a town he almost invariably followed the same
procedure. And he was not amiss in doing so this time,
for not long after the sun had set, he and Aasen and old
Jan Tonessen were seated in the inn, and over the hot
glasses the old fellow was answering question after
question. Thorne found him an exceedingly interesting
talker, for he was by no means ignorant, having made a
study of the old mythology himself.
“The berg
of Jotunheim,” he was saying, in answer to Thorne’s
request for knowledge of the legends of the place. “All
the legends hereabout deal with it. Ja, plenty
are the old stories about it. Once some of the more
ignorant oldsters really thought that the home of the
frost giants lay on the top of that hill, I think. The
more common story as it is told now tells of a bridge
that leads to Jotunheim. Of course, nobody today
believes such a story, but it is told, like the other
legends.”
“But is there
any basis for the origin of such a story?” queried
Thorne.
“In the
superstitions of the people, ja,” answered
Tonessen. “And also—I do not know, but sometimes, I
think there might be more. For we do not climb
Jotunheim Berg. Men, they say, have tried to climb it
often, in the past. And they do not come back.”
“Have many
people climbed it?”
“No. Not in
recent years. We are far removed from the paths of the
tourists, and our folk sometimes take the stories a
little more seriously than they pretend. They scoff at
the idea that there is anything that could hurt them on
top of the berg. But—they do not climb Jotunheim.”
Thorne
smiled. Such legends were familiar to him, and such
taboos, too. But it was not often that he found such
taboos still existing in a civilized country, and he was
glad to make a note of this one. He questioned Tonassen
further.
“Did you ever
hear of anyone climbing it?”
“The legends
tell of many. Mostly the stories are of foolhardy
youths who are in love, and who climb the hill to show
their maidens how brave they are. Sometimes they fail
to return and the maiden weeps her life away, mourning
for her lover. And sometimes she follows him and
disappears, too. The stories are typical. There is
nothing unusual about them.”
“But, I mean,
has anyone ever tried to climb the hill that you
remember?”
Tonessen
looked at him queerly.
“Ja,”
he said hesitantly. “One tried it. My father told me
about it. It was back in the 1840’s and he was the town
drunkard. He staggered out of this very inn, one night
and wandered off from the town in the direction of the
hill. He was found at the foot of the hill, a couple of
days later, babbling of giants and of monster rats, and
jungles of grass—but of course, there are nothing in the
babblings of a drunken man that could interest you.
Though his story has been added to the legends of the
place, he could not, at the time, even stir the interest
of the people of the town.”
“But how do
you suppose the legend of the hill got started? And how
do you account for the name? Hasn’t any reliable
investigator ever attempted to go up there and find out
what’s there?”
“I think not,
friend Thorne. We are out of the way, here. Nobody
comes here to study our tales. And we of the town—
well; we are not all superstitious and ignorant. But—we
just do not climb Jotunheim. After all, why should we?
If there is nothing there—best to leave it alone.
“And so, we do
not climb Jotunheim.”
“Well, by
George,” stated Thorne firmly, smacking his palm on the
table. “I’m going to climb it, and I’m going to
start first thing tomorrow morning.”
And start he
did, as the sun was peeping over the hills in the east.
He went alone, for neither Aasen nor old Jan Tonessen
expressed the slightest desire to accompany him; but he
went well equipped, for he carried a loaded revolver, a
flashlight, some dinner and a stout stick to help him in
his climb. And by ten o’clock he was well on his way up
the hill.
I say the
“hill”, for as near as I can make out this Jotunheim
could hardly be called a mountain. It was just a big,
sprawling hill, eight or nine hundred feet high, with
but little vegetation on its sides and none on its rough
and jagged top. But Thorne paid little attention to the
terrain; he strode along through the rubble and rough
grass, even whistling a tune as he went. And presently,
when he had ascended about two thirds of the way, he
began to notice the haze.
“It was a
pinkish sort of a mist,” Thorne told me when I
questioned him for details concerning this. “It
was—wispy at first, writhing streamers of haze that
squirmed and twisted about among the rocks and through
the branches of the occasional trees, and that grew and
spread until presently it covered everything. And then
it began to thicken.
“It really was
most strange, you know. Who ever heard of a pink fog?
And from pinkish it turned to a decided red. After a
while, I could hardly see my hand before me. I was
worried, a little; but , what the deuce, I couldn’t give
up and go back to the village with the story that I had
been scared out by a silly fog.”
And so he had
pushed on, and at last, the fog began to lift a bit.
Before it lifted, it grew so thick that he really
couldn’t see his hand before him, he says, and for a
while he kept his bearings only by the grade of the
ground beneath his feet. But it did clear at last, some
little bit, and Thorne could begin to notice things
about him. The rubble through which he had been
striding had disappeared, had given way to coarse gravel
and huge boulders, boulders that ranged from the size of
a pumpkin to a few great fellows as big as a barn.
Thorne thought little of this at the time, he says, for
glacial till is common in Norway; and indeed he failed,
at first, to notice the peculiar vegetation—huge, broad
leaved weeds whose height was at times great than his
own.
“The first
thing that attracted my attention was a bird of some
kind. At first I thought it was an aero plane—some new
type of glider, maybe. The haze was pretty thick, and
it was hard to see well. It swept down out of that red
confusion above me, I saw for a brief moment huge
dark-brown wings above me, vast and sinister, and almost
before I could tell whether they were real or not the
thing had swung into the air again and was gone. I
caught one flash of a beak, and of staring eyes, too,
and I knew that it was no glider I had seen.
“I breathed a
sign of relief and a gasp of amazement in one breath.
Relief that I had escaped the tremendous creature,
whatever it was, and amazement that a bird so large
existed hereabout. I have seen South American condors,
old man, and they’re commonly supposed to be the largest
birds that exist today. But I don’t think the largest
of them would be any bigger than the thing that had
swooped past me.”
He was a
little upset by this phenomenon, coming as it did upon
the heels of the legends of Johunheim, but it didn’t
detract from his determination to explore the hill. He
went on up, and as he went the fog cleared. But the
redness that covered everything didn’t. I have
questioned him very closely about this, as it is
important to my theory, but his is very plain and
clear.
“The fog
cleared up,” he told me. “Positively, old man. There
wasn’t a trace of it after a while. But it left a
redness over everything. As though I were colorblind
and could only distinguish red. The rocks were red,
bricky red, of course, I don’t mean crimson or scarlet,
and the sprawling, big leaved plants were red, a reddish
brown, you know, and even the sky, I’ll swear, had a
reddish-yellow cast about it. Looking back on it, I
can’t remember that there was any color to the scene but
reds and browns and dark, somber saffron’s. Still, that
didn’t seem queer at the time, somehow.”
And then he
came upon a scrub pine, one of those little pine trees
that grow in colder climates and that add so much beauty
to our parks and lawns. It looked like a scrub pine, it
grew like a scrub pine—and it was
sixty feet tall if it
was an inch!
Then, at last,
Thorne realized that something remarkable was
happening. The huge boulders, the huge leaves on the
plants—Thorne recognized the species of several of the
plants now, and knew them for common weeds and
wildflowers grown out of all proportion—and then that
huge bird and this pine. Thorne became absorbed in his
surroundings.
“I had reached
the top of the hill by this time,” he said in his
narration to me. “And I turned around to look back into
the valley. The red haze was gone, and, of course, I
expected to see the village lying below me. I wasn’t in
the least expecting to see the sight that did meet my
eyes. For I stood on the top of a vast mountain and
looked off over a wide bleak terrain that stretched into
the distance across far-off peaks where snow lay—not the
white snow that I have always known, but snow that, like
everything else, had that infernal dusty red shade. And
way off, beyond everything else, laid a horizon of ice,
a boundless glacier that stretched fingers down into the
valleys and surrounded the hills about it—
“I really
became frightened then for the first time, and when I
shivered, I thought it was with fear. But then I
realized that I was cold. Yes, though it was August,
and even in this latitude it gets pretty hot in August,
nevertheless, I was cold. And with the coming of that
knowledge, it seemed that I could almost notice the
temperature drop. I drew my jacket tighter about me and
turned up my collar and pushed on. I was beginning to
think I had come to the land of the frost giants in very
truth.”
“But this
disappearance of the village,” I asked him. “Didn’t it
make any profounder impression on you than that?”
“Well, yes, it
did,” he admitted. “I got a pretty sharp shock when I
first noticed it. But almost immediately came the
thought that it was nothing, that it could be
nothing, but a mirage. I’ve read up on mirages since
then, and I know now that a mirage couldn’t have had the
very definiteness and detail that that scene had, but I
didn’t know that then. And so I went on, and presently
I came across the lemming.”
“The
lemming?”
“Yes, you
know, you’ve heard of those little prairie-dog-like
animals, haven’t you? The ones that are famous for
their migration that leads them into the sea? Well, it
was one of them. I only caught a glimpse of it, for it
saw me first and I suppose I frightened it. Though why
I should have frightened it, I don’t know, for it was as
big as a horse!”
“What!”
“I assure you,
old man, it was. And it was gone in a moment. But it
left me cold with amazed fear, and I came to the
realization that I was standing there muttering over and
over: “Jotunhiem! Jotunheim, indeed!”
And still,
when he recovered from his astonishment, he went on.
For here was a puzzle to be solved, a mystery to be
probed, and Thorne is made of such stuff as makes for
greatness in the world of science. He went down into
the valley on the other side of the hill and did not
even turn back in fear when he came across a wind-blown
snow drift in a sheltered place on the north side of the
hill, and noticed that all the snow flakes were as big
as the palm of a man’s hand. So, at last, he rounded a
huge crag that jutted out of the hill’s side and noted a
lesser peak just beyond. He approached this and was
climbing up, was almost to the top, when suddenly the
giant rose up and faced him.
“The creature
must have been lying on his belly, just beyond this
little height,” said Thorne. “He rose to his elbows and
then on his knees, just as I looked across the hill. He
saw me almost as soon as I saw him. He kept on rising
until he was on his feet, and it seemed to that he would
never stop looming higher and higher. Even on his
knees, he was well over a hundred and fifty feet tall.
And when he stood up— well, truly, old man, not an inch
under two hundred and fifty. I know you’ll think it’s
the old fish story instinct, but—not an inch under two
hundred and fifty feet.”
“Go on,” I
said dazedly. “It really doesn’t make much difference
after you get over ten feet.”
Thorne frowned
and, remembering his sensitiveness, I doubted for a
moment that he would continue. He did go on however, at
last.
“He saw me, as
I say, almost as soon as I saw him, and he gave a deep
bellow and thrust a hand out toward me. A hairy, pudgy
hand, it was, with stubby fingers and broken dirty
nails, a hand that—Lord, the fingers alone were twice as
big as I was. I was frightened then, I tell you. It
was almost instinct alone that made me snatch the
revolver I had brought and fire at those grasping
fingers.
“The giant
snatched back his hand with a low grumble of pained
surprise. He had a very deep voice, so low that at
times I actually felt, rather than heard, his growls,
and now his voice beat down upon me like the lowest
notes of some great organ. But I can assure you, old
man, that I wasn’t paying any attention to the quality
of his voice just then. I turned as soon as he snatched
his hand back, and ran for the nearest shelter, a
thicket of huge grass-like bamboos that grew from fifty
to a hundred feet away. By the time the giant had
recovered from his surprise and pain—I imagine it must
have been something like a bee sting to him—I was well
concealed among the huge grasses, and he was rumbling
and grumbling about, seeking in vain to find me.
“Now while he
searched, I had a good chance to observe him without
danger, and I tell you, he was a queer specimen,
indeed. In the first place, he was naked, and he was
hairy. And in the second place, he was stooped. He
slouched, that is, something like an ape. He had a big
sharpened stick in his hand, and he sort of leaned on it
as he walked. And he had slanting brows and huge brow
ridges, and jaws like no man ever had. Have I made
myself clear, old man?”
“Sounds like
you’re describing an ogre out of Grimm’s fairy tales,” I
told him. “Or maybe a Neanderthal man.”
“There you’ve
hit it! He was, in fact, an enormous specimen of
Homo Neanderthalensis. That in itself would
be incredible, had he been of normal size, but—a
Neanderthal two hundred and fifty feet high! It dawned
on me, hidden there and studying him, that this simply
could not be. This was either a nightmare or a
hallucination, for what I looked on was utterly
impossible.
“But if I
looked upon this huge creature as a hallucination, he
certainly didn’t pay me the same compliment. To him, I
was real, and he had found me interesting and was
determined to find me again. He had been looking all
about, and luckily for me, looking the wrong way; but
now he turned and pretty soon he was getting a little
too close for comfort. I moved cautiously, moved to a
thicker clump of vegetation, and tried to bury myself
under the huge tangled roots. Presently he moved off a
step or two and while he was looking in another
direction, I took advantage of it and began to speed
through the ‘jungle’, determined to put as much distance
as possible between us. I managed to get about a
quarter of a mile away, I guess, when he turned and by
the sheerest accident, spied me.
“I knew it was
hopeless to flee, for a fellow that size could pace off
a mile in about fifty or sixty steps, so I did what most
other small creatures do and froze into immobility. It
worked, too, -- it deceived him; he came close to where
I was and those immense hands of his came fumbling
around on the ground, while he grumbled and growled in
that thunder voice, but by the greatest good chance, I
remained unseen.
“It was all I
could do to remain motionless, for the cold was now
biting into my very bones, but I knew I didn’t dare to
move. Presently he lost his temper and began tearing at
the bamboos or grasses or whatever they were, yanking
them up by the roots and hurling them over his head—it
was inevitable that his hand should at last reach out
for the particular clump that I was hiding under.
“And then
there was nothing that I could do but use my revolver
again. I managed to put three more bullets into his
thumb, but it was a close thing this time. His hand was
closing on the plants before he let out a growl like
distant thunder and jerked the hand back again. He
clapped his thumb to his mouth in the most natural
manner in the world, and while his attention was
attracted, I was off again. This time I managed to get
out of his line of vision by rounding that same crag
that I had passed an hour or two before. It dawned on
me then that I was going back the way I had come, and,
believe me, old man, I didn’t make any attempt to change
my direction. To get back to the village was my one
object in life just then.”
And so he
hastened on, back to the summit of the hill, and after
he had gone a little way, he could look back and see the
giant, looming up against the reddish sky, a great
impossible thing, still stooping and searching—
“You’ve no
idea how I felt,” Thorne exclaimed, when he told me his
story for the first time. “You see, I am no ignorant
peasant. I have knowledge enough to know that the
muscular power required to move a creature about
increases in geometric ratio with its size. Why, a
creature that size, with muscles not much greater than a
man’s, in comparison, wouldn’t have been able to so much
as lift himself to his feet. But there he was, and I
knew he was nothing but a hallucination.”
And so the
fear of the giant began to die out, to be replaced by
the greater fear that something was wrong with his
mind. He grew more careless now, and no longer tried to
conceal himself, for he felt that if this creature was
merely a figment of his mind, he couldn’t hurt him very
much. And he tried to focus his eyes on the huge
boulders and grasses and things, tried to get them in
their proper perspective. But try as he might, they
insisted on remaining as vast as ever. So, presently,
he came to the spot where the red haze began. He had
not noticed it as he wended his way along; looking
ahead, he says, he could not see it at all. Yet
presently he was wandering about in the fog which kept
growing thicker and thicker. And then came the familiar
bass bellow and towering over him, his head almost lost
in the mists was the giant!
And it saw
him! Saw him and with a gurgle of glee, stooped and
clapped a hollowed hand over him.
“I cried out,
in fact, I think I screamed,” says Thorne. “The minute
that hand clapped over me, all thought of the
possibility of the giant’s being a hallucination left
me. I screamed and rushed at his great thumb, kicking
and pounding in the hope that I might hurt him and cause
him to lift his hand. It was solid enough that thumb,
solid and real as a stone wall, no hallucination about
it— then. After a bit I calmed my panic, and then I
noticed a crevasse between his thumb and forefinger, and
instantly slipped through it into the light. Breathless
with fear, I began to run across the rubble, and just as
he saw me and stared to clap a hand down again, I
slipped over a small cliff that I hadn’t been able to
see, in the fog, and end over end I tumbled, over rocks
and stones, tearing my clothes and bruising myself in a
dozen places and finally fetching up against a huge
boulder at the foot of the declivity. The fog was even
denser here, but I could still see the giant above me,
and—he could still see me.
“He hadn’t
given up his attempts to capture me, either, for he
stepped forward and his hand came down again, and
then—well, then occurred the thing that convinced me
that this was certainly naught but the hallucination of
a deranged mind. For his thumb, which a moment before
had so easily resisted my futile kicking and pounding,
came down directly upon me, passed through me, and I
stood directly inside it. I leaped fearfully to one
side,-- turned and fled, and heard, dimly and distantly,
the querulous, puzzled rumblings of the giant as I sped
on down the hill. In a moment his form was lost in the
increasing fog, but I hesitated not for a single
breath. Though my chest was soon pounding in agony, I
kept on fleeing, on and on through the red fog, until
presently it began to clear and I saw a tree—a spruce
tree, and Oh, thank God, a small spruce tree. I
looked about me, and the huge boulders had disappeared,
there were little plants and flowers growing beneath my
feet; and, a mile or so away down the valley, was the
little village from which I had come. . .”
He staggered
into the village, a few minutes later, in the last
stages of exhaustion. He stammered out the story of his
adventure to the first people he met, not even thinking,
at the time, of the effect it might have on them. They
were surprised at first, their superstition got the
better of them and many were the fearful looks that were
cast in the direction of Jotunheim. But presently more
reasonable explanations came, and then the looks became
dubious, and were cast toward Thorne. They brought him
to the village inn, and Aasen took charge of him and
called in the village doctor.
He was in bed
for a week before his strength returned, and then old
Jan Tonessen, who had shown a great interest in him and
who had heard his entire story, took him for a ride
around the mountain and showed him another village, on
the other side of the hill, on almost the exact spot
where his adventure had seemingly occurred. He knew
then that it must have been hallucination, and
the worry and fear settled down on him that had made him
the sorry specimen whom I had seen in the offices of
Seabright Carroll.
“But have you
ever experienced any return of that hallucination?” I
asked him, one night not long ago.
“Not the
slightest,” he answered. “But I live in constant fear,
old man. For all I know, I may at any moment note that
red haze again and—“he covered his eyes and shuddered.
“But—you
haven’t even dreamed, or anything?” I persisted.
“Dreamed? Of
course I’ve dreamed,” he replied, vehemently. “My God,
such dreams! But that doesn’t prove anything. If that
experience had been real, I’d have dreamed about it just
the same, you know.”
I think it was
a night or two after this that I awoke, in the middle of
the night, with my inspiration. You’ve heard of people
doing that, I suppose. I awoke with a vague idea that
relativity had something to do with Thorne’s experience,
and then, suddenly, I was wide awake and the full
significance of the whole thing was right before me. I
hurried to the phone and called Thorne, not hesitation
to waken him out of one of the few sound slumbers that
he had managed to attain. He was testy but I was
enthusiastic.
“I’ve got it,
Thorne, old fellow,” I cried. “Got the whole thing, as
sure as shooting. It’s wonderful, but I believe it’s
true. You’re not crazy, your experience was real, and
I’ll bet anything it’s happened to others. I’ve got a
theory that fits all the facts, that proves you’re of
sound mind and that’ll give you half a dozen chapters
for your new book!”
He sung out
for me to come right over, and in an hour or so, I was
ensconced in his favorite easy chair, while Thorne
leaned eagerly toward me as I expounded my theory.
“To begin
with,” I was saying. “You saw that vast bleak valley
where, a few hours before, you had left a little village
nestling between the hills. And when you came back from
your adventure, Tonessen showed you another village,
almost exactly where you had had your adventure.
Right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Well, two objects cannot occupy the same space at the
same time, unless-- Unless what, Thorne?
He looked at me uncertainly for a moment, and then his
face cleared. “You mean unless there are four
dimensions?”
“That’s it, unless there are four dimensions.”
“Oh but that’s nonsense, you know. This fourth
dimension stuff is just a mathematical dream. Surely
you don’t believe that a man can cross to another
plane—all that story writer’s nonsense—do you?”
“Wait and see,” I replied. “You know, Einstein has
showed us a lot we didn’t know about dimensions.”
“But I thought he merely postulated a fourth dimension
to account for the phenomenon of time.”
“Now you’re getting it,” I cried, excitedly. “Now
listen to this—If it were possible to move from this
plane to another, along the line of a fourth dimension,
we would, almost certainly, find ourselves in another
age, that is, in another plane of the time dimension.
For it’s almost a dead certainly that the fourth
dimension is time.”
“But I wasn’t in another age. I was right here all the
time.”
“How do you know you were? That red fog—was that a
normal phenomenon? I’d say it was something—some
strange gas or natural phenomenon—that transported you
through the fourth dimension. And think about the place
you found yourself in. Remember the cold? And that
vast, bleak scene over which you looked from the top of
the hill? The snow? And last and most important of
all—the Neanderthaler? Thorne, if you weren’t back in
the ice age, I don’t know my geological history.”
Thorne’s dubious look increased.
“You’re overlooking the most important thing of all,” he
complained. “You know as well as I do that the
Neanderthalers were, if anything, smaller than human
beings. Who could even imagine, in his right
mind, a creature two hundred and fifty feet tall?”
I chuckled. “That’s the most wonderful part of it all,”
I said. “Get this, now. It explains your whole
Jotunheim adventure, and, I think, the Norse legends,
and lots of other things. Have you read anything lately
about this apparent expansion of space?”
“Not much,” he confessed. “I believe I’ve read that
astronomers have noted that all the distant nebulae are
receding from our universe at more or less remarkable
speeds.”
“Right. And there’s more to it than that. Physicists
and mathematicians claim that, according to parts of the
relativity theory, the universe of space ought to be
expanding. According to astronomers, all the
nebulae, and most of the more distant stars, are
receding from us. Therefore, it’s reasonable enough to
admit that it is expanding. But remember, Thorne, it’s
empty space that’s expanding, not matter. For if matter
and space were all expanding equally, we would have no
way of telling it. Everything would grow equally and
preserve the same relative size. Get it?”
“I think I do. The fact that we note the expansion of
space shows that it is the distance between bodies, that
is, the empty space, that is increasing in size, and not
matter.”
“That’s right. Only, note this: We would observe
exactly the same phenomena, if space remained the same
size, and matter constantly contracted or shrank.”
“What?”
“I say—if all matter was constantly shrinking in on
itself, occupying less and less space, the phenomena
would seem the same to us as if space were expanding.”
“I get it! I’m beginning to see it!”
“Exactly! If matter and space are constantly altering
their relative proportions so that matter takes up less
and less of the total available space, then, thousands
of years ago, things took up far more space than they do
today.
When you were transported
across the ages, you naturally preserved your same
relative size. That is, the comparative ratio between
you and Absolute Space remained the same. The result
was that you found yourself in a giant world where
everything was literally enormous. See?”
A cloud fell
across Thorne’s face.
“But—if things
ere so huge in those days, if men were hundreds of feet
tall, how is it that we don’t find enormous remains—”
“Oh, be
yourself, Thorne. Remember, they were only huge in
relation to the matter of this age. Since that
day, the earth has contracted, the sun has
contracted—the very atoms that compose the matter of
which they are made up have contracted. And so have the
bones and the fossils, the relics that they left
behind. And so have their descendants.”
“I believe I
understand.”
“Of course,
you do. And get this—remember the redness of
everything? Well it’s evident that the very light waves
themselves were longer and you were looking at greens
and blues that registered red to you because red is a
color of longer wave length than those others.”
“And that
explains the low tones of the giant’s voice, too, don’t
it? I see. Yes it all sounds plausible. And it
explains much, doesn’t it. The Norse legends of
Jotunheim, the cold frost-land where the giants live.
And the disappearance of the many people who climbed the
hill and never came back. And,” his face lights up,
“And the stores of the wise little dwarfs, too, old
man. For if I can go into the past, and see Neanderthal
men, people might come out to f the future and see us of
the present. And they would be smaller than us, and
very clever and wise. It’s possible, isn’t it?”
“So possible,”
I answered, “that in the spring I am going to Norway and
ascend the hill of Jotunheim.”
And I really
think I will.
THE END