POLYNESIAN ORNAMENT. EVOLUTION OF THE ZIGZAG.
The old Norse sagas and the songs of Edda give the whole Norse scheme of the universe. "Igdrasil, the great ash tree of the universe of time and of life. The boughs stretched out into heaven, its highest point, and overshadowed Walhalla, the hall of the heroes. Its three roots reached down to dark Hel, to Jötunheim, the land of the Hrimthurses, and to Midgard, the dwelling-place of the children of men. The world-tree was ever green, for the fateful Norns sprinkled it daily with the water of life from the fountain of Urd, which flowed in Midgard. But the goat Heidrun, from whom was obtained the mead that nourished the heroes, and the stag Eikthyrnir browsed upon the leaf-buds, and upon the bark of the tree, while the roots down below are gnawed by the dragon Nidhögg and innumerable worms: still the ash could not wither until the last battle should be fought, where life, time and the world were all to pass away. So the eagle sang its song of creation and destruction on the highest branch of the tree."[10]
It is interesting to compare such a conception with the ancient Hindu idea of the world, which indeed may have been its original form as the earlier Aryan conception. There is no tree, but the great snake of time compasses all; the serpent with its tail in its mouth, an emblem of continuous time which still survives. Upon this rests the tortoise, which seems to correspond with the Norsemen's dragon, though here it may serve as the solid basis of the world. The world appears as a sort of dome in three tiers, reminding us of the Norsemen's three circles. This is supported upon the backs of three elephants, which seem here to fill the position of the Norns or the Fates.
The ash tree Igdrasil, the sustainer of the Norse universe, reminds one of the eastern tree of life—the tree of life of the garden of Eden, and the fountain of the rivers of the Asiatic paradise which, with the figures of Adam and Eve, the typical father and mother of the whole human race, have so constantly figured in art of all kinds, both eastern and western, and continue to stand in the midst of the garden in endless designs and pictures, surrounded by the birds and beasts, as the type and emblem of the origin of the world in the Christian cosmos.
HINDU SYMBOL OF THE UNIVERSE.
The ancient Egyptians, whose art was almost entirely in the nature of a symbolic language, when they wished to express the divine creative power which sustains the universe, designed a winged globe encircled or upborne by two serpents—here we get, perhaps, the snake of time again. Sometimes the scarabæus, or sacred beetle, emblem of transformation and immortality, is represented covering an egg and supporting the sun, and they are the wings of the scarabæus which are given to the globe. This emblem is frequently carved over the gateways to their temples.
Then the Egyptians had an elaborate symbolism connected with death and the passage of the soul. The coffins and mummy cases are painted all over with symbolic devices, figures, birds, and animals having a sacred significance.