Note VII.—Thrym (Thr. 5,1).

Thrym or Hrym. Rime, the old word, now nearly obsolete, but still used in Scotland to signify hoar-frost. Rime was not then as now, a dead chemical thing, but a living Iötun or Devil; the monstrous Iötun Rime drove home his horses at night, sat "combing their manes," which horses were hail-clouds, or fleet frost-winds. (Carlyle's Hero Worship, Lect. 1,57.) Simrock derives the word from thruma (tonitru), and considers Thrym himself as originally identical with Thor, and one of the older gods, in whose hands the thunder had been before the coming of the Æsir. (Simrock's Edda, 4,39.)