Norse mythology; or, The religion of our forefathers, containing all the myths of the Eddas, systematized and interpreted

by Rasmus Björn Anderson

With golden tablets in the garden

Glad they played,

Nor was there to the valiant gods

Want of gold.

The rhyme-letters here are those in italics.

The poems of the Elder Edda are in no special connection one with the other, and they may be divided into three classes: purely mythological, mythological-didactic, and mythological-historical poems.

The Elder Edda presents the Norse cosmogony, the doctrines of the Odinic mythology, and the lives and doings of the gods. It contains also a cycle of poems on the demi-gods and mythic heroes and heroines of the same period. It gives us as complete a view of the mythological world of the North as Homer and Hesiod do of that of Greece. But (to use in part the language of the Howitts) it presents this to us not as Homer does, worked up into one great poem, but as the rhapsodists of Greece presented to Homer’s hands the materials for that great poem in the various hymns and ballads of the fall of Troy, which they sung all over Greece. No Homer ever arose in Norseland to mould all these sublime lyrics of the Elder Edda into one lordly epic. The story of Siegfried and Brynhild, which occupies the latter portion of the Elder Edda, was, in later times in Germany moulded into the great and beautiful Niebelungen-Lied; although it was much altered by the German poet or by German tradition. The poems of the Elder Edda show us what the myths of Greece would have been without a Homer. They remain huge, wild and fragmentary; full of strange gaps rent into their very vitals by the strokes of rude centuries; yet like the ruin of the Colosseum or the temples of Pæstum, standing aloft amid the daylight of the present time, magnificent testimonials of the stupendous genius of the race which reared them. There is nothing besides the Bible, which sits in a divine tranquillity of unapproachable nobility like a king of kings amongst all other books, and the poem of Homer itself, which can compare in all the elements of greatness with the Edda. There is a loftiness of stature, and a firmness of muscle about it which no poets of the same race have ever since reached. The only production since, that can be compared with the Elder Edda in profoundness of thought, is that of Shakespeare, the Hercules or Thor in English literature, that heroic mind of divine lineage which passed through the hell-gates of the Roman school-system unscathed. The obscurity which still hangs over some parts of the Elder Edda, like the deep shadows crouching amid the ruins of the past, is the result of neglect, and will in due time be removed; but amid this stand forth the boldest masses of intellectual masonry. We are astonished at the wisdom which is shaped into maxims, and at the tempestuous strength of passions to which all modern emotions seem puny and constrained. Amid the bright sun-light of a far-off time, surrounded by the densest shadows of forgotten ages, we come at once into the midst of gods and heroes, goddesses and fair women, giants and dwarfs, moving about in a world of wonderful construction, unlike any other world or creation which God has founded or man has imagined, but still beautiful beyond conception.

The Elder Edda opens with Völuspá (the vala’s prophecy), and this song may be regarded as one of the oldest, if not the oldest, poetic monument of the North. In it the mysterious vala, or prophetess, seated somewhere unseen in the marvelous heaven, sings an awful song of the birth of gods and men; of the great Ygdrasil, or Tree of Existence, whose roots and branches extend through all regions of space, and concludes her thrilling hymn with the terrible Ragnarok, or Twilight of the gods, when Odin and the other gods perish in the flames that devour all creation, and the new heavens and new earth rise beautifully green to receive the reign of Balder and of milder natures.

The second song in the Elder Edda is Hávamál (the high-song of Odin). Odin himself is represented as its author. It contains a pretty complete code of Odinic morality and precepts of wisdom. The moral and social axioms that are brought together in Hávamál will surprise the reader, who has been accustomed to regard the Norsemen as a rude and half wild race, hunting in the savage forests of the North, or scouring the coasts of Europe in quest of plunder. They contain a profound knowledge, not merely of human nature, but of human nature in its various social and domestic relations. They are more like the proverbs of Solomon than anything in human literature.

The third poem in the Elder Edda is Vafthrudnismál (that is, Vafthrudner’s speech or song). Vafthrudner is derived from vaf, a web or weaving, and thrúð, strong; hence Vafthrudner is the powerful weaver, the one powerful in riddles, and it is the name of a giant, who in the first part of the poem propounds a series of intricate questions or riddles. Odin tells his wife Frigg that he desires to visit the all-wise giant Vafthrudner, to find out from him the secrets of the past and measure strength with him. Frigg advises him not to undertake this journey, saying that she considers Vafthrudner the strongest of all giants. Odin reminds her of his many perilous adventures and experiences, arguing that these are sufficient to secure him in his curiosity to see Vafthrudner’s halls. Frigg wishes him a prosperous journey and safe return, and also the necessary presence of mind at his meeting with the giant. Odin then proceeds on his journey and enters the halls of Vafthrudner in the guise of a mortal wayfarer, by name Gangraad. He greets the lord of the house, and says he is come to learn whether he was a wise or omniscient giant. Such an address vexes Vafthrudner, coming as it did from a stranger, and he soon informs Gangraad that if he is not wiser than himself he shall not leave the hall alive. But the giant, finding, after he had asked the stranger a few questions, that he really had a worthy antagonist in his presence, invites him to take a seat, and challenges him to enter into a disputation, that they might measure their intellectual strength, on the condition that the vanquished party—the one unable to answer a question put to him by the other—should forfeit his head. Odin accepts this dangerous challenge. They accordingly discuss, by question and answer, the principal topics of Norse mythology. The pretended Gangraad asks the giant many questions, which the latter answers correctly; but when the former at length asks his adversary what Odin whispered in the ear of his son Balder before he had been placed on the funeral pile—a question by which the astonished giant becomes aware that his antagonist is Odin himself, who was alone capable of answering it,—the giant acknowledges himself vanquished, and sees with terror that he cannot avoid the death which he in his cruel pride had intended to inflict upon an innocent wanderer.