History of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, Vol. 2 (of 2)

by S. A. Dunham

6. The Giants and Giantesses; the descendants of Bergelmer and his wife.

7. The Black Elves, or Dwarfs, male and female.

8. The subjects of Hela.

9. The nondescripts, that it would puzzle the best antiquaries to say what they are.

With most of these we have little acquaintance. A few of the Light Elves are to be found in the palaces of the Asyniar; but none of Muspel’s sons do we encounter. Of the Vanir in general, we know little; but half a dozen of the race are venerated or esteemed in Asgard. Utgard and its sons were well known, from their intercourse, whether hostile, or friendly, with the Aser; and still better known is Asgard. The land of the Black Elves was frequently visited by men and gods. The realms of Hela were but once visited by living feet,—by those of Hermod.[^[39]] Of men we can mention such only as came into contact with beings of a higher or lower nature. Most of these classes, therefore, may be dismissed with a few general observations. Details respecting individuals, in most of these classes, will be found under the names of the chief Aser, or gods.

Whether the Aser were gods, or mortals only, or men who had been deified, has been long and zealously disputed. Each party gives elaborate reasons for its own hypothesis, and they have been convincing to itself if not to others. On a subject which requires the aid of the imagination to understand it, and to which speculation only can be applied, this diversity was inevitable. Within the last twenty years, however, a more careful examination of the pagan monuments of antiquity, and a more extended acquaintance with the religious systems of other people, have led to the conclusion that the Aser, like the Vaner, never existed on earth, and that they are purely mythologic. There is certainly much reason for the conclusion. The satisfactory way in which functions of the deities have been resolved into physical qualities may well fortify it. Still there are difficulties—we think insuperable ones—to be removed. The account which, in the former volume of this work[^[40]], we have given of Odin, Niord, Freyr, and Baldur, will scarcely countenance the hypothesis. The circumstances which attended Odin’s progress; those which accompanied and followed his arrival in the north; his temporal even more than his spiritual policy; his extraordinary success; the thrones which he established; the sons whom he left; the universal anxiety of the northern princes—even those of Saxony—to claim him as their ancestor, and an ancestor too only a few generations removed from them[^[41]]; afford, we think, evidence enough of his mortal career. Nor should we overlook the fact that both Saxo Grammaticus and Snorro Sturleson,—the former well acquainted with the tradition and history of his country; the latter most deeply versed in the religion and literature of the Scythian conquerors—contended for the mortal character of the Aser. In their days, this was not a new interpretation of the subject: ascend the stream of time as far as we can, and still we find that Odin and his pontiff-chiefs were regarded as men whom credulity had deified. Such was the opinion of Adam of Bremen in the eleventh century; of the biographer of St. Anscar in the ninth; of St. Kentigern in the sixth. In one of his sermons to the pagans of south-eastern Scotland, the last-named saint upbraided them with their folly for worshipping one (Odin or Woden) whom they themselves acknowledged to have lived on earth,—to have been a Saxon king,—to have paid the common debt of nature,—one whose bones had long before been confounded with the dust. Men of learning, who lived so much nearer to the times when the pontiff-king reigned in the north—who, for any thing we know to the contrary, had better evidence than tradition for his actions, young as that tradition was, have thought the same. It has been said, that even the least of those actions were of too superhuman a character ever to have been attributed to a mortal; and that the being concerning whom they were invented, must have been mythologic. But the assertion would not have been made, had the memory been consulted: it would have furnished personages, indisputably historic, concerning whom wilder legends (if legends can be wilder) have been invented than concerning the Asiatic conqueror. What have the ancient Romans or the modern Persians to say of their kings? What has been said of Attila? What of Arthur? What of Macbeth and of Don Sebastian? There are indeed few eminent characters in the history of the middle ages concerning whom supernatural tales have not been invented and believed. Perhaps, however, the term invented may be too severe a one; for in general the actions or qualities of personages much more ancient have been transferred to those of recent date.

These difficulties have appeared so formidable to most of the advocates for the mythological system, that they have been induced to admit the hypothesis of two Odins, who appeared in the north at different intervals;—the former a pontiff, whom superstition afterwards deified; the other a king, yet the chief of religion, who, seeing the veneration in which his predecessor was held, boldly declared himself an incarnation of the same being. This hypothesis, which is purely arbitrary, so far from diminishing the difficulty, greatly increases it, and is not, in other respects, worth another moment’s consideration. A second is more plausible, and not so arbitrary. It represents the pontiff-warrior—the second Odin—as assuming the name, and laying claim to the attributes, of another Odin, long received as a god. In this case, the god must have been incarnate in the person of this Scythian warrior; yet we have not even the shadow of a proof that metempsychosis was a doctrine ever received by the Scandinavians, or by any nation of the Goths. The Celts had it[^[42]]; yet this wide distinction between the two races has not prevented them from being confounded. As well confound the Caffre with the Cherokee. The Eddas assure us that, when a mortal paid the debt of nature, or fell in battle, he went at once to Helheim or Valhalla. Still there are two or three instances in which a transmigration into other bodies was effected; and though they are manifestly at variance with the religious creed of the north, and must be regarded merely as extraordinary exceptions, we are not disposed to reject the hypothesis that Odin assumed, or rather, after death, his people conferred upon him, the name of the god whom they had so long worshipped. It receives no little confirmation from the facts stated by Snorro, that in Asia the pontiff-king was known by the name of Sigoe. The truth is, that transmigration being an article of the Celtic creed, Odin might so far avail himself of it as to pass for the incarnate god. In either case, however, unless we reject Snorro and Saxo, and the Saxon Chronicle, and Adam of Bremen, and a host of writers in the middle ages, we adopt the conclusion that Odin lived, and reigned, and conquered, in the north.

Advocating then, as we deliberately do, the historical interpretation, we have yet to account for the extraordinary powers attributed to mere mortals; for the extraordinary difference of their religion; for the still more extraordinary doctrines of that religion, as contained in the Eddas. The subject is not without its difficulties; but probably they may be removed by a few natural reflections. That Odin and his twelve pontiff-chiefs found, on their arrival in the north, some kind of religious worship established, nobody will deny. What were the doctrines of that religion? Here conjecture only can guide us: we have no written, no traditionary, monuments of that antecedent worship. We read only that the Aser—the Scythian bands from Asia—had to contend with the native authorities; but that having in so great a degree the superiority of wisdom, they compelled the natives to receive their spiritual, no less than their temporal, yoke. Their arms, no doubt, effected more than their arguments; but to suppose that they could extirpate the dominant faith—if indeed there were not several established modes of worship in different provinces of the north—would be very irrational in itself, and irreconcilable with all the known facts of history. Pagan conquerors have always been disposed to respect the gods of other people. Every region was believed to have its own peculiar deities; and to honour them was necessary, if that region were to be either permanently or prosperously held. On the other hand, the natives themselves would, in a superstitious age, be sufficiently disposed to respect the gods of their victors; for human prosperity was always regarded as the work of heaven. If they still retained their own, they would not refuse homage to the more powerful stranger gods whose shrines were now transported among them, and whom they must, by degrees, consider as their own tutelary divinities. Hence the union of the two religions; not indeed wholly, but certainly in a very considerable degree. Their gods would be joined; so would such dogmas as were not absolutely irreconcilable with one another; and in a few, a very few, generations, both would be received by priest and people as if they had always been identical and indissoluble. That this has been the case in other countries, we know from authentic history. It was so with the Greeks; it was so with the Romans; it has been so since their conquests with several Asiatic nations. And reason tells us that this must always be the natural progress of events.

But on this subject we have more than conjecture, or even reason; we have facts. There are in the Eddas, and still more in the Scaldic interpretations, principles too repugnant to each other ever completely to harmonise. We know that Thor was more esteemed in Norway than Odin; and that in Denmark, no less than in Sweden, Odin was more highly venerated than Thor. The reason is, that the Goths, or, we should rather say, the last swarm of them that arrived with Odin, had more influence in these latter kingdoms than in the former. Thor, indeed, was almost exclusively worshipped by the Norwegians, who invoked Odin only on the eve of a battle. They held the former to be immeasurably the superior of the other; and, in contradiction to the Swedes and Danes, contended that Odin was the son of Thor. The elder Edda calls him the most powerful of the gods; and in the Sagas, by the most ancient Scalds, he is represented as frequently hostile to the other deity. Considering these facts, and the universal homage still paid to Thor by the Finns and Lapps—people of the same race with the Norwegians—we are of opinion that Thor was the native, Odin the foreign, divinity. The giants, too, appear to have been of native, perhaps of Celtic, origin, and to have been adopted by the Scythian Goths, after their arrival; while the black dwarfs, whose habitation was in the bowels of the earth, were introduced by the latter, and soon made a portion of the native creed. The white, or benevolent elves, were universally received by the Goths; but the dark, the malignant elves, seem to have been brought from an eastern region. It is in the highest degree absurd to suppose that if there had been no foreign admixture with that creed, and a very large admixture, we should have nine different worlds, with their complicated, often dissonant relation to one another. Where this complexity, and, still more, this evident dissonance between the elements, are found to exist, we may safely conclude that they have been introduced at different periods; that the mighty and irregular edifice has been reared by different hands. But if there were no other argument to establish the dissonance for which we contend, and the forcible union of opinions never intended to harmonise, it would be sufficiently obvious from the distinction between the two great systems of creation to which we have already alluded—the Ymerian or animal, and Yggdrasil or vegetable.[^[43]] Beyond all doubt, they were as distinct in their origin as in their nature; and were long held by the people essentially different. We are strongly disposed to regard the Ymerian as the native, the Yggdrasil as the foreign, system. Giants were more kindred with the Celtic than with the Gothic creed. By the latter, indeed, they were hated even more than feared. Whoever will peruse with attention those passages of the two Eddas where giants are mentioned, will probably arrive at the same conclusion with ourselves—that they were foreign to the genius of the Scythians. We may adore what we fear; but we never adore what we hate, still less what we despise. The same may be observed in regard to the magical rites of the two people. Of dark magic we read every where amongst the people of the former race. We meet with it in districts where the Scythian Goth never inhabited—in the more remote districts of Lapland and Finland. The rites, the opinions, of the people in these districts, were also, we believe, the rites, the opinions, of all the people that inhabited Norway and Sweden. Some of them, we know, were disliked by the followers of Odin. It was not Odinian, that is Gothic, or white (innocent) magic, that was professed by Raude of Norway.[^[44]] It was not Odinian, or Gothic, magic that caused Harald Harfager to be captivated so long and so fatally by the daughter of the Finnish Swaso.[^[45]] In the latter case, nothing can be more evident than that it was the native, black magic, which produced this effect. Hence the detestation with which that monarch, pagan as he was, regarded the art.[^[46]] It was not Odin’s magic which Egill practised when he left Norway, outlawed by Eric of the Bloody Axe. Before he finally left the coast, he fixed the head of a horse on one of the oars of the vessel, and raising it aloft, exclaimed, “Here I erect the rod of vengeance against king Eric and queen Gunhilda!” Turning the horse’s head in another direction, he exclaimed “I direct this curse also against the tutelary deities of Norway, that they shall wander, in pain, and have no rest for the soles of their feet, until they have expelled the king and queen!” This strange imprecation he then carved in runic characters upon the oar, and placed it in the cleft of a rock, where it was not likely to be found, or the spell to be dissolved. It was native magic that distinguished Gunhilda, wife of Eric with the Bloody Axe.[^[47]] More than one king who worshiped Odin punished with death the observers of these rites. And in most of the Gothic writers, pagan or christian, the palm of superiority in magic is awarded to native professors. The magic of the latter might be darker, more inhuman, more diabolical, but it was also admitted to be more profound and more potent. We agree with Magnussen in the conclusion that there was a union, more or less complete, of two schools of magic, as well as of two religions. But there were tenets which could not be reconciled, and the natives, by adhering to their own, caused a system to be perpetuated essentially at variance with that of the conquerors.

These facts, these arguments, will be admitted to have considerable weight. We shall adduce another which, joined with the preceding, should set the subject as to the fact of a religion having been dominant in the north anterior to the Odinic, and essentially different from it. Rude stones and rocks—so rude as scarcely to have a form—were lately, and probably are now, worshipped by the more remote Finns and Lapps. This idol they term the Storjunkar, or great ruler; they offer sacrifices upon it (generally the rein-deer), and prostrate before it, in certain mountainous districts, far from the usual habitations of men.[^[48]] This worship is a relic of the idolatry once common to the Norwegians, no less than to the Finns and Laps, who are of the same origin. That it was celebrated in Norway is certain; for we find it in Iceland as late as the close of the tenth century. Indrid was the mortal enemy of Thorstein; and one night he left his house to murder him. The latter entered a temple where he was accustomed to worship, prostrated himself before a stone, and prayed to know his fate. The stone replied, in a kind of chant, that his feet were already in the grave; that his fatal enemy was at hand, and that he would never see the rising of the next morning’s sun. All such stones, all such gods, were foreign to the Scythian Goths; and this relation, connected with others which might be easily extracted, proves that the Norwegians, who had felt little of the Asiatic yoke, had retained many of their gods, many of their religious rites, in defiance of opposition.