Myths of the Rhine

by X.-B. Saintine

Here he remained three days and three nights.

The Grandmother gave birth to a son, who was called Karl, the free man. Karl was fond of driving oxen under the yoke, of working in wood and in iron, of building boats and houses, and of trading. From him are descended our workmen and artisans, our merchants and builders.

Turning his face towards the south, Heimdall next went to a beautiful mansion, surrounded by magnificent gardens and reflected in the blue waters of a large lake. As the god had only to show his golden teeth in order to be welcomed by every woman he saw, the mistress of this mansion, the Mother, also received him with great delight and tried to do him honor. Dressed in her most costly robes she put an embroidered cloth upon a table of polished wood and offered him in silver dishes all the varieties of fish and game, in which the lake and the park near the house abounded. The Mother did everything to keep the god as long as possible at her house, but, as at the Grandmother’s and at the Great-grandmother’s, so he remained here only three days and three nights.

A son appeared to console the Mother for the departure of her illustrious guest; this child had at its birth already rosy cheeks, long hair, and a haughty look. When he was still a child, he was fond of brandishing his spear and of bending his bow; at fifteen he swam across the blue waters of the lake, or plunged on an unbroken horse into the depths of the forest, riding as fast as the wind. They called him Jarl, the noble.

Some years later Heimdall paid another visit to this country; delighted with the prowess of Jarl, he acknowledged him as his son and taught him the language of birds, which the gods alone understand and fluently speak. He taught him also the science of Runes, of runes of victory which are engraven on the blades of swords; runes of love to be traced upon drinking horns or the thumbnail; runes of the sea, with which the prow and the rudder of ships are decorated—in all cases precautionary measures by which alone ill fortune can be kept at bay.

Besides these gifts of knowledge, he bestowed upon him an inalienable, hereditary domain. This was the first entailed estate ever known in Europe.

Jarl, says the Edda, was a man of eight-horse power. Could we express it better in the noble railway Anglo-Saxon of our day, or does our modern English really go back to the old Scandinavian, as this coincidence would seem to prove?

Jarl’s descendants are the great chieftains, the barons, princes, kings, and Druids, who have all inherited great power from their divine ancestor with the golden teeth. They alone are his legitimate and acknowledged children; the descendants of the grandmother and great-grandmother are illegitimate. Still, whether acknowledged by the law or not, they all form a close chain, a single family, they all spring from the same god! Thus the humblest among them saw his rights secured for the future.

I must confess that, the more carefully I examine these barbarians, whether they were gods or men, the more I am surprised to discover beneath the outward cloak of their fables so many correct ideas of order and of justice. These fables had, of course, their day and then passed away. Up to the present time, it is true, there is not much of the day gone; perhaps also Odin may be blamed for having invented, before the world was a few hundred years old, both the Middle Ages and the Feudal System. But it would be wrong to blame him, for it must be acknowledged, that in spite of the violence of their manners and the bloody nature of their worship, a certain civilization had at last appeared among the Scandinavians. It may be called brutal, I grant; it may be called aggressive even, but it was after all an improvement, and it has held its own in the North, under snow and ice, like the vigorous plants of our Alps. How comes it that the Germans and the Franks, more favored by climate and by contact with highly civilized nations, remained so long inferior to the Scandinavians in this respect? Perhaps they were more liable to be invaded than the Sons of the North; the Scandinavians invaded the continent in all directions, but no one ever dreamt of invading their country.

After having thus established the right of property and a certain social hierarchy, Odin had next instituted marriage with the symbolic ring, and finally courts of justice.