The contemplation of the heavens produced the myth about Odin, and the thunder-storm suggested Thor, as in the Greek mythology Argos with his hundred eyes represents the starry heavens, and the wandering Io, whom Hera had set him to watch, is the wandering moon. But stopping here would be too prosaic; it would be leaving out the better half; it would be giving the empty shell and throwing away the kernel; it would be giving the skull of the slain warrior without any ale in it; it would be doing great injustice to our forefathers and robbing ourselves of more than half of the intellectual pleasure that a proper study of their myths afford. The old Frisians contemplated the world as a huge ship, by name Mannigfual (a counterpart of our ash-tree Ygdrasil); the mountains were its masts; the captain must go from one place to another of the ship, giving his orders, on horseback; the sailors go aloft as young men to make sail, and when they come down again their hair and beard are white. Ay, we are all sailors on board this great ship, and we all have enough to do, each in his own way, to climb its rope ladders and make and reef its sails, and ere we are aware of it our hairs are gray; but take the anthropomorphic element out of this myth, and what is there left of it?
Our ancestors were not prosaic. They were poetic in the truest sense of that word. Our life is divided between the child, the vigorous man, and old age,—the imaginative and prophetic child, the emotional and active man, and the reflecting elder. So a nation, which like the ancient Greek and Norse, for instance, has had a natural growth and development, has first its childhood of imagination and prophecy, producing poetry (Homer and the Eddas); then its manhood of emotion and activity, producing history (Herodotus and the Sagas); and then its old age of mature reflection, producing philosophy (Socrates). Dividing the three periods in Greek history more definitely, we will find that imagination and poetry predominated during the whole time before Solon; emotion, activity and history during the time between Solon and Alexander the Great; and then reflection and philosophy, such as they were, from Alexander to the collapse of the Greek states.
Even among the Romans, the most prosaic of all peoples, that nation of subduers, enslavers and robbers, traces of this growth from poetic childhood through historic manhood to philosophic old age can be found, which proves moreover that this is a law of human development that cannot be eradicated, although it may be perverted. That of the Romans is a most distorted growth, showing that as the twig is bent the tree is inclined. Ut sementem feceris, ita metes—as you sow, so will you reap,—to quote the Romans’ own words against them. The Romans had their poetic and prophetic age during the reign of the seven kings; their emotional and historical age during the most prosperous and glorious epoch of the republic; and finally, their age of reflection and philosophy began with the time of the elder Cato. Rome took a distorted, misanthropic course from the beginning, so that her profoundest and most poetic myth is that of the warlike Mars and the rapacious wolf, the father and nurse of the fratricide Romulus. This myth is prophetic, and in it the whole history of Rome is reflected as in a mirror. The Romans themselves claim that their Sibylline books (prophecy) belong to the time of their kings. When, during the transition period from the emotional to the philosophic age, Rome was to have dramatic writers, she produced in comedy the clumsy Plautus, whom the Romans employed in turning a hand-mill; and in tragedy the flat Ennius, whose works were lost; so that her only really poetical tragedy is the fate of her dramatic poets. Her other poetical works, of which the world has boasted so much, came later, after the death of Cicero, their most famous orator, during the life of the crowned Augustus; they came like an Iliad after Homer, and the most of them was a poor imitation of Greek literature, just as this book is a poor imitation of Scandinavian literature. Ex ipso fonte dulcius bibuntur aquæ—go to the fountain itself if you want to drink the pure and sparkling water. The Roman literature is eminently worthy of the consideration of the historical philosopher, but it ought not to be canonized and used to torture the life out of students with.
The Hebrews have their imaginative, poetic and prophetic age from Genesis to Moses; their emotional and historical age from Moses to Solomon, and then begins their age of reflection and philosophy.
Taking a grand, colossal, general view of the history of the world, we would say that the ancients belong chiefly to the poetic age, the middle ages to the emotional and modern times to the reflecting age, of the human race. Thus the life of the individual is, in miniature, the life of a people or of the whole human family.
This was a digression, and we confess that it is not the first one we have made; but in the world of thought, as in the world of music, monotony is tedious; and the reader having perhaps refreshed his mind by the interlude, we will proceed to discuss further the union of the ethical with the physical interpretation of mythology. Physical interpretation alone is the shell without the kernel. Nature gives us only the source of the myth; but we want its value in the minds and hearts of a people in their childhood. The touching gracefulness of Nanna, and of Idun reclining on Brage’s breast, was not suggested by nature alone, but the pictures of these reflect corresponding natures in our ancestors. To explain a myth simply by the phenomenon in external nature (be it remembered, however, that man also constitutes a part of nature) that suggested it to the ancients, would be reducing mythology to a natural science and it is sad to witness how the beautiful and poetical Eddas, in the hands of some, have dwindled down into the dry chemistry, chronology, electro-magnetism, mathematics, astronomy, or, if you please, the almanacs, of our forefathers, instead of being presented as the grand, prophetic drama which foreshadowed the heroic and enterprising destiny of the Teutonic nations. The twelve dwellings of the gods, they say, represent the twelve signs of the zodiac; Balder they make the constellation of the lion; Odin’s twelve names, they say, are the twelve months of the year; his fifty-two names, which he himself enumerates in Grimnismaal, are the fifty-two weeks in the year; the thirteen valkyries are the thirteen new moons in the year. How profound! How perfectly everything adapts itself to the theory! This invaluable discovery was made on the seventh of December, 1827. It ought to be a legal holiday! The one ox, three measures of mead and eight salmon which Thor, according to the Elder Edda, consumed, when he had come to Jotunheim to fetch his hammer, they claim also represent the year’s twelve months, for 1 + 3 + 8 = 12. Furthermore, the three gods, Haar, Jafnhaar, and Thride, are the three fundamental elements, sulphur, mercury, and salt; Odin, Vile, and Ve, are the three laws of the universe, gravity, motion, and affinity. Thor is electricity; his belt is an electric condenser, his gloves an electric conductor. Hrungner, with whom he contends, is petrifaction; the Mokkerkalfe, whom Thjalfe slew, is the magnetic needle. Gunlad is oxygen, Kvaser is sugar, etc. But this will do. Are not these golden keys, with which to unlock the secret chambers of the Eddas!
All the deities do not represent phenomena and forces of nature, and this fact gives if possible still more importance to the anthropomorphic interpretation. Some myths are mere creations of the imagination, to give symmetry and poetical finish to the system, or we might say to the drama—to complete the delineations of the characters that appear on the stage of action. Hermod, for instance, is no phenomenon in physical nature: he is the servant of Odin in the character of the latter as the god of war. Odin is the god of the heavens, but it is not in this capacity he sends out the valkyries to pick up the fallen heroes on the field of battle.
In rejecting the historical interpretation, we do by no means mean to deny the influence of the mythology upon the social, religious, political and literary life of the Norsemen. But this is not an explanation of the mythology itself, but of its influence upon the minds of the people. If we mean it in a prophetic sense, the Norse mythology has also an historical interpretation. In it was mirrored the grand future of the Norse spirit; by it the Norsemen were taught to make those daring expeditions to every part of the civilized world, making conquests and planting colonies; to cross the briny deep and open the way to Iceland, Greenland and America; to take possession of Normandy in France, subdue England and make inroads into Spain and Italy; to pass between the pillars of Hercules, devastate the classic fields of Greece, and carve their mysterious runes on the marble lion in Athens; to lay the foundations of the Russian Empire, penetrate the walls of Constantinople and swing their two-edged battle-axes in its streets; to sail up the rivers Rhine, the Scheldt, the Seine, and the Loire, conquering Cologne and Aachen and besieging Paris; to lead the van of the chivalry of Europe in rescuing the holy sepulchre and rule over Antioch and Tiberias under Harald; to sever the fetters forged by the Roman emperors, break the crosiers in the hands of the Roman popes and infuse a nobler and freer spirit into the nations of the earth; and by their mythology they were taught to give to the world that germ of liberty that struck root in the earliest literature of France, budded in the Magna Charta of England, and developed its full-blown flowers in the American Declaration of Independence.
The principal object of the second part of this volume is to give a faithful, accurate and complete presentation of the myths; but interpretations and reflections will be freely indulged in. The basis of the interpretation will be the physical and ethical combined, the two taken as a unit. The reflections will consist in pointing out occasionally the fulfilment of the prophecies historically, or rather the application of the myths to historical philosophy. When only the physical source of the myth is given, its anthropomorphic element must be supplied in the mind of the reader. When Thor is given as the impersonation of thunder, and Heimdal as the rainbow, clothed with personality, then the reader must consider what sensations would be awakened in his own breast by these phenomena if he had been taught to regard them as persons. And when he has given them stature, gait, clothing, bearing, expression of the eye and countenance, and personal character corresponding with their lofty positions in the management of the affairs of the world, then he can form some idea of these deities as contemplated by the ancient Norsemen.