Snorro Sturlesen informs us that it was Hacon the Good, foster-son of our King Athelstan, who made a law that the great Asa, or heathen festival, which used to be held for three successive days in January, should be transferred to the end of December, and kept so many days as it was usual to keep Christmas in the English Church. His missionaries being Northmen who had resided in England, like St. Augustine, the Apostle of England, accommodated themselves to the superstitions and habits in vogue among the people they came to convert. The great banquets, where people feasted on the flesh of horses and other victims, were turned into eating and drinking bouts of a more godly sort; and the Skaal to Odin assumed the shape of a brimming bowl to the honour of the Redeemer, the Virgin, and the saints. In their cups, no doubt, their ideas would become at times confused, and many a baptized heathen would hiccup a health to Odin and Thor. Even now, as we have seen, after the lapse of so many centuries, much of the old heathen leaven infects their Christianity.

We may here observe that the Norwegian word for Saturday is Löverdag, i.e., washing-day, as a preparation for the Sunday festival, so that the division of time into weeks of seven days must have originated in Norway within the period of its conversion to Christianity. Herein, then, they differed from the Anglo-Saxons, who called it Sæterndæg (Saturns-day); while the South Germans called it after the Jewish Sabbath, Sambaztag, now Samstag. The Scandinavians had exhausted their great gods upon the other days. Sun and Moon, Tyr, Odin, Thor, and Freya, had been used up, so they took the appropriate name Löverdag, above-mentioned.

The following are the old names of the Norsk months:

Gormánaðrfrom Oct. 21 to Nov. 19.
Ýlir” Nov. 20” Dec. 19.
Mörsúgr” Dec. 20” Jan. 18.
Þorri” Jan. 19” Feb. 17.
Goe, or Gœ” Feb. 18” March 19.
Ein mánaðr” March 20” April 18.
Gauk” April 19” May 18.
Skerpla” May 19” June 17.
Sólmánaðr” June 18” July 22.
Heyannir” July 23” Aug. 21.
Tvimánaðr” Aug. 22” Sep. 20.
Haustmánaðr” Sep. 21” Oct. 20.

Some of these names are very appropriate, e.g., Gormánaðr is gore-month, when so many victims were slaughtered. Ýlir, or Jýlir, is the month that prepares for Yule. Mörsúgr refers to the good cheer which people sucked up at that period. Þorri is said to come from Þverra, to get short, because the good things are then nearly run out. Gaukmánaðr is Gauk’s (cuckoo’s) month. Sólmánaðr is the sun’s month. Heyannir is hay-time. Tvimánaðr (from tvi, two) is the second month after midsummer, while Haustmánaðr is harvest (scotticè) “har’st” month.

But our readers will think us becoming prosy, so we will mount the cart, and discarding the society of the fat peasant woman who proposes inflicting herself upon us, accept the kind offer of our intelligent student to accompany us on our journey to Kos-thveit (Kos-thwaite, as we should say in East Anglia), on the Lake of Totak.

“Are there any songs current in the mouths of the peasants here?” I inquired, as we drove very slowly along a narrow road, through morasses, studded with birch. “This is pre-eminently the old fashioned part of Norway, so I suppose if they are anywhere they are here.”

“Oh, yes. There has been a student from Christiania wandering about these parts lately, collecting songs for the purpose of publication. Many of them are dying out fast. Some years ago, the girls used to improvise over the loom. At weddings, lad and lass used to stevne (sing staves) in amœbean fashion, on the spur of the moment.”

Some of these pieces are highly witty and satirical. But the bonders are very averse to repeating them. One of them, on being asked by the student to repeat a stave, replied, “Ieg vil ikke være en Narr for Byen-folk:” (I won’t play the fool to amuse the city folks.)

Here is a specimen of one native to this part done into English.