Of course the Eddas do not say anything about Odin seeing Ragnarök in a dream, or about his having any idea of a light that was to come; but, divested of this slender veil, the story as it here stands is almost an exact likeness of the northern myth. In one Edda it is given as the prophecy of a Vala or seeress, and the last line is "Now she will descend," meaning that the Vala had finished her prophesying, and would come down from her high seat.
We have now heard a little about the Æsir, those gods in whom Har said we were to believe; and, are they like each other or unlike? we ask ourselves. At first we say unlike, but after thinking about them a little while, very much alike indeed. It is certain that the Eddas speak of them as distinct, but then, as we saw before, the Eddas are not really very old; compared with the religion they explain, they are almost young.
Simrock points out clearly the likenesses between the gods—a very few of them we touch upon. Let us begin, by putting in a line for ourselves to look at, Odin, Tyr, Heimdall, Thor, Frey, and Baldur. Odin—air, stormy and serene, the heavens with sun, moon and stars; Odin the wanderer; Odin on Air-throne, seeing over the whole world; Odin, the Summer, as Odur; the patron of battles, the chooser of the slain, the pledger of one eye, drinking from Mimer's horn. Tyr, the shining, the warrior god, the pledger of one hand. Heimdall, as Irmin, the shining, a dweller upon heavenly mountains, who sees and hears far off, who wanders over the earth, blows his golden horn. Thor, whose dwelling is the heavens; god of the storm, of cultivation; the warrior, the chooser of the slain; for it is said that whilst Odin had all the Jarls that fell in battle, Thor claimed the Thralls for his share. Frey, the Summer, god of the fruitful year, the pledger of his sword. It is supposed that Frey was once the husband of Freyja, and that it was their separation which founded the myth of Freyja's wanderings and tears; this would connect him with Odur or Odin. Baldur, Summer, or Sun god, pledges his life to the under-world. In leaving the earth to weep for him, he recalls the desertion of Freyja and her tears. Turning to the goddesses, we see Jörd or the earth spoken of as a wife of Odin; Rind, the winterly earth; Freyja, so nearly joined to Frigg, the summerly earth; Idūna, the spring of the earth; Gerda, also the winterly earth; Hela, the under-world. What strikes us through all this is that it would be natural for the early earth dwellers first to worship the heavens with all that they contain and suggest, whilst the action of heavenly influences upon the earth would reveal her to them as the great mother, stern, cold, tender, fruitful, consuming, embosoming, reproducing all in one. There are many ways in which gods and goddesses multiply. In the first place Gylfis will begin to ask questions and pry into first causes and ways and means of existence, whence would easily arise a division of nature into elementary powers, air, water, fire, to say nothing of the giants and chaotic regions which would suggest themselves. One side or another of life must always be uppermost, and nature in its differences grows into new personalities; from nature myths again moral ones easily [develop], and new variations meet the new requirements. Again, tribe joins tribe and pantheons mingle, the chief god of one race becoming the son, say, or the brother, of another tribe's chief god, and so on.
The fact of Thor receiving Thralls in battle whilst Odin claimed the Jarls, looks as if Thor had fallen at one time from the first to a second place. Simrock says that Tyr answers to Zeus, and that perhaps he was the oldest of the Asgard gods; but he says also that Odin has gathered up into himself all the highest attributes of the gods. The only allusions that can be relied on as genuine which the Eddas contain to a higher god than Odin is one very obscure strophe in the Voluspa which says speaking of Ragnarök,—
"Then comes the Mighty One,
To the great judgment,
The powerful from above
Who rules over all.
He shall doom pronounce
And strifes allay,
Holy peace establish
Which shall ever be."
Another still more difficult to understand in Hyndla's lay,
"Then shall another come,
Yet mightier,
Although I dare not
His name declare.
Few may see
Further forth
Than when Odin
Meets the Wolf."
Simrock, however, thinks that he sees some gleams of a higher unseen Hidden Power very faintly here and there, and between this Being and Odin he also fancies that he can trace some connection. But he is very uncertain on the point.
Simrock says of the goddesses in the Scandinavian mythology that they most of them represent only one side of the original Earth Mother, dividing the double nature between them; so we see some personating the fruitful, beneficent, life-giving renovating earth, whilst Hela has only the dark side left in her nature. It is, however, to be observed that whilst half a corpse she is half a woman. Gerda and Idūna are mixed in nature, also Rinda and others of Odin's giantess wives. He says, also, that Hela is the eldest of the goddesses, and that the root idea remains with her,—a receiver of the dead, as earth is,—though she became so degraded. Odin gave her power over nine worlds, and here we see a trace of the old idea of her being the great Earth Mother. "From a goddess of the underworld to a goddess of death is one step. A goddess of the underworld should be life-giving as well as destroying; but soon the heathen horror of death appears, and the destroyer is looked upon as the ender only, not the fresh begetter;" she becomes a hunger that will not be satisfied, and hence Hela is a daughter of Loki.
Out of the flood, into the flood again,—Niflheim and Muspelheim join hands in the twilight. As in the first beginning of things we saw the strange waves alternately frozen and melted by these antagonistic powers, and out of this antagonism a form—so in Ragnarök we see the flood once more supreme, the rival forces, cold and heat, both fighting against the formed, ordered world—both, because both alike represent elemental forces which must precede formation. So, also, a second time the world emerges out of the struggle, Simrock thinks, a renewed world morally and physically; and certainly it does seem to have made some advance upon the old order of things,—it stands forth beautiful at once. But does this mean any more, we wonder, than the golden age come back, with fate in the back-ground. So many of the same powers seem to be at work in the two worlds, that we can only think of a succession of events in looking at the picture. We see again the golden tables, we see Hödur as well as Baldur. There is one very obscure verse which seems to imply that the giant fate-maidens are in the renewed world. Sons succeed their fathers. Odin's sons inherit Odin's hall; the two mentioned are Vali and Vidar, who were both descended from giantesses, and giants always typify the baser part of nature. Thor's sons retain the badge of warfare. On the other hand, it is said that Höd and Baldur come up peacefully together from the deep; it has been remarked, also, that no Vanir gods (inferior to those of Asgard) are mentioned. There is also a strophe in the Völuspa which talks of peace established, and of heavenly Gimill, gold bedecked, where the righteous people are to dwell for evermore, and enjoy happiness—