[ENEA.]
The Enea mentioned in the Foreword to Gylfe’s Fooling refers to the settlement of western Europe, where Æneas is said to have founded a city on the Tiber. Bergmann, however, in his Fascination de Gulfi, page 28, refers it to the Thracian town Ainos.
[HERIKON.]
Herikon is undoubtedly a mutilated form for Erichthonios. The genealogy here given corresponds with the one given in the Iliad, Book 20, 215.
[THE HISTORICAL ODIN.]
The historical or anthropomorphized Odin, described in the Foreword to the Fooling of Gylfe, becomes interesting when we compare it with Snorre’s account of that hero in Heimskringla, and then compare both accounts with the Roman traditions about Æneas. Of course the whole story is only a myth; but we should remember that in the minds and hearts of our ancestors it served every purpose of genuine history. Our fathers accepted it in as good faith as any Christian ever believed in the gospel of Christ, and so it had a similar influence in moulding the social, religious, political and literary life of our ancestors. We become interested in this legend as much as if it were genuine history, on account of the influence it wielded upon the minds and hearts of a race destined to act so great a part in the social, religious and political drama of Europe. We look into this and other ancestral myths, and see mirrored in them all that we afterward find to be reliable history of the old Teutons. In the same manner we are interested in the story told about Romulus and Remus, about Mars and the wolf. This Roman myth is equally prophetic in reference to the future career of Rome. The warlike Mars, the rapacity of the wolf, and the fratricide Romulus, form a mirror in which we see reflected the whole historical development of the Romans; so that the story of Romulus is a vest-pocket edition of the history of Rome.
There are many points of resemblance between this old story of Odin and the account that Virgil gives us of Æneas, the founder of the Latin race; and it is believed that, while Virgil imitated Homer, he based his poem upon a legend current among his countrymen. The Greeks in Virgil’s poem are Pompey and the Romans in our Teutonic story. The Trojans correspond to Mithridates and his allies. Æneas and Odin are identical. Just as Odin, a heroic defender of Mithridates, after traversing various unknown countries, finally reaches the north of Europe, organizes the various Teutonic kingdoms, settles his sons upon the thrones of Germany, England, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and instructs his people to gather strength and courage, so as eventually to take revenge on the cursed Romans; so Æneas, one of the most valiant defenders of Troy, after many adventures in various lands, at length settles in Italy, and becomes the founder of a race that in course of time is to wreak vengeance upon the Greeks. The prophecy contained in the Roman legend was fulfilled by Metellus and Mummius, in the years 147 and 146 before Christ, when the Romans became the conquerors of Greece. The prophecy contained in our Teutonic legend foreshadowed with no less unrelenting necessity the downfall of proud Rome, when the Teutonic commander Odoacer, in the year 476 after Christ, dethroned, not Romulus, brother of Remus, but Romulus Augustulus, son of Orestes. Thus history repeats itself. Roman history begins and ends with Romulus; and we fancy we can see some connection between Od-in and Od-oacer. “As the twig is bent the tree is inclined.”
It might be interesting to institute a similar comparison between our Teutonic race-founder Odin and Ulysses, king of Ithaca, but the reader will have to do this for himself.
In one respect our heroes differ. The fall of Troy and the wanderings of Ulysses became the theme of two great epic poems among the Greeks. The wanderings and adventures of Æneas, son of Anchises, were fashioned into a lordly epic by Virgil for the Romans. But the much-traveled man, the ἀνὴρ πολύτροπος the weapons and the hero, Odin, who, driven by the norns, first came to Teutondom and to the Baltic shores, has not yet been sung. This wonderful expedition of our race-founder, which, by giving a historic cause to all the later hostilities and conflicts between the Teutons and the Romans, might, as suggested by Gibbon, supply the noble ground-work of an epic poem as thrilling as the Æneid of Virgil, has not yet been woven into a song for our race, and we give our readers this full account of Odin from the Heimskringla in connection with the Foreword to Gylfe’s Fooling, with the hope that among our readers there may be found some descendant of Odin, whose skaldic wings are but just fledged for the flights he hopes to take, who will take a draught, first from Mimer’s gushing fountain, then from Suttung’s mead, brought by Odin to Asgard, and consecrate himself and his talents to this legend with all the ardor of his soul. For, as William Morris so beautifully says of the Volsung Saga, this is the great story of the Teutonic race, and should be to us what the tale of Troy was to the Greeks, and what the tale of Æneas was to the Romans, to all our race first and afterward, when the evolution of the world has made the Teutonic race nothing more than a name of what it has been; a story, too, then, should it be to the races that come after us, no less than the Iliad, and the Odyssey and the Æneid have been to us.[101] We sincerely trust that we shall see Odin wrought into a Teutonic epic, that will present in grand outline the contrast between the Roman and the Teuton. And now we are prepared to give the Heimskringla account of the historical Odin. We have adopted Samuel Laing’s translation, with a few verbal alterations where such seemed necessary.
It is said that the earth’s circle (Heimskringla), which the human race inhabits, is torn across into many bights, so that great seas run into the land from the out-ocean. Thus it is known that a great sea goes into Njorvasound,[102] and up to the land of Jerusalem. From the same sea a long sea-bight stretches toward the northeast, and is called the Black Sea, and divides the three parts of the earth; of which the eastern part is called Asia, and the western is called by some Europe, by some Enea.[103] Northward of the Black Sea lies Svithjod the Great,[104] or the Cold. The Great Svithjod is reckoned by some not less than the Saracens’ land,[105] others compare it to the Great Blueland.[106] The northern part of Svithjod lies uninhabited on account of frost and cold, as likewise the southern parts of Blueland are waste from the burning sun. In Svithjod are many great domains, and many wonderful races of men, and many kinds of languages. There are giants,[107] and there are dwarfs,[108] and there are also blue men.[109] There are wild beasts and dreadfully large dragons. On the north side of the mountains, which lie outside of all inhabited lands, runs a river through Svithjod, which is properly called by the name of Tanais,[110] but was formerly called Tanaquisl or Vanaquisl, and which falls into the ocean at the Black Sea. The country of the people on the Vanaquisl was called Vanaland or Vanaheim, and the river separates the three parts of the world, of which the easternmost is called Asia and the westernmost Europe.