S C A N D I N A V I A.
The Edda, forming the mythological history of the ancient people of the North, is a complete receptacle of poetry no less than of history: and forms of itself a work of great interest.
The most important of the gods of Scandinavia is Odin, who was in all probability one of their kings, and whose amours, as numerous as those of Jupiter, are perpetuated in a thousand legends. Like Jupiter too, he married his sister Frea, and in the sacred books of the priesthood, he is known by upwards of a hundred names, all of them high sounding and magnificent.
His adventures, which are numberless, are interwoven with the whole of the Scandinavian history.
Frigga or Frea, his wife, was the most powerful of the goddesses, and by many supposed to be identical with Ceres, or the Earth; the future was as familiar to her as to Odin, with whom she is seated upon his throne, and whose government of the remaining deities she shared.
When the warriors of the land seek glory in battle, she sends an inferior goddess to watch over the safety of those whom she favours, while they who fall, are honoured by the mighty mother Frigga, herself mourning over their fate, not indeed for their sake, but for the sake of the country they would have adorned and the land for which they fought.