About eight years ago, I made a summer tour in Denmark and Sweden, and when at Copenhagen, I became acquainted with Finn Magnussen, the celebrated antiquarian, and with the poet Œhlenschläger himself, most of whose works I had previously read with unbounded admiration and delight, and among which, this poem, “The Gods of the North,” had excited my peculiar attention. Thus prepared, I determined on undertaking a metrical version of the whole of this work, one canto of which (the 12th) I had previously translated, and published anonymously in a Parisian weekly review, in 1835.
In my translation, I was further encouraged by the idea that I was thereby contributing to spread among my countrymen a taste for the mythology and general literature of Scandinavia, which is capable of furnishing to the painter or the sculptor a series of subjects not less interesting than those derived from the classic sources of Greece or Rome. I recommend, also, to the attention of scholars, the study of the Danish and Swedish languages, as the key to an historical literature extremely rich and diversified, interesting to the readers of every European nation, but more particularly so to the English reader, who is desirous of forming an intimate acquaintance with the arcana of his own language, and with his own early history, laws, customs, manners, and legends. The history of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden is as captivating as a romance, and it presents an astonishing variety of the most singular events, which would afford admirable subjects for epic and dramatic poetry, as well as for the historical novel. The English reader will perceive, likewise, that the Scandinavian mythology is the fountain head of many of the most popular tales, legends, and ballads of his own country. It will interest him to mark the effect of the introduction of the Christian religion upon the Scandinavian polytheism, as therein he may trace the origin of many of our own superstitions and fabulous traditions. At the appearance of the Cross, the proud edifice of Valhalla, not seldom, alas! polluted with human gore, crumbles into dust. Asagard, with all its palaces and gardens, dissolves in air! The mighty Odin himself, the wise, the just, the beneficent Odin, degenerates into a common-place demon, liable to be exorcised by a parish priest. The Nornor, or Fates, the solemn, majestic, and impartial Nornor, though stern, yet beautiful to behold, become changed to disgusting and wrinkled witches, and figure as such in the weird sisters of Macbeth. The awful giants of Utgard sink into the ogres of a fairy tale; Thor, deprived of his belt, his hammer, his gauntlets, and his car, dwindles into Jack the Giant-killer,[10] the familiar hero of our days of childhood; and from the graa gaas (grey goose), a name given to a collection of ancient legends in the Icelandic tongue, from the circumstance of great longevity being attributed to that bird, may be traced our old nursery acquaintance and monitress, Mother Goose.[11] I have only to add, that I began the translation of this poem towards the end of the year 1836, and finished it in the autumn of 1837; but I was compelled by circumstances to delay the publication of it until the present year.
W. E. Frye.
Paris, January 1845.
[1] This may be the origin of the term Ace in cards.
[2] In the prosaic Edda is this remarkable passage, wherein the name of Odin is given to Alfader, the supreme god. “We suppose that he (Odin, the god) must have been so called, for so is called the man, the greatest and the most glorious that we know, and well may mankind let him bear that name.”
[3] The figure given to the devil by the imagination of the northern nations is a confirmation of this hypothesis; whereas the Orientals give to him a more seducing form; but in modern times the least cultivated minds reject the northern type, as Göthe says in his drama of Faust:
Das nordische Phantom ist jetzt nicht mehr zu schauen,