NORSE MYTHOLOGY
Thor Fighting The Giants.
NORSE MYTHOLOGY;
OR,
THE RELIGION OF OUR FOREFATHERS,
CONTAINING ALL THE
MYTHS OF THE EDDAS,
SYSTEMATIZED AND INTERPRETED.
WITH
AN INTRODUCTION, VOCABULARY AND INDEX.
By
R. B. ANDERSON, A.M.,
PROFESSOR OF THE SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
WISCONSIN, AUTHOR OF “AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY
COLUMBUS,” “DEN NORSKE MAALSAG,” ETC.
SECOND EDITION.
CHICAGO:
S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY.
LONDON TRÜBNER & CO.
1876.
Copyright 1875.
By S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY.
ELECTROTYPED BY ZEESE & CO.
TO
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW,
THE AMERICAN POET,
WHO HAS NOT ONLY REFRESHED HIMSELF AT THE CASTALIAN FOUNTAIN, BUT
ALSO COMMUNED WITH BRAGE, AND TAKEN DEEP DRAUGHTS
FROM THE WELLS OF URD AND MIMER,
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED,
WITH THE GRATEFUL REVERENCE OF
THE AUTHOR.
I think Scandinavian Paganism, to us here, is more interesting than any other. It is, for one thing, the latest; it continued in these regions of Europe till the eleventh century: eight hundred years ago the Norwegians were still worshipers of Odin. It is interesting also as the creed of our fathers; the men whose blood still runs in our veins, whom doubtless we still resemble in so many ways. Strange: they did believe that, while we believe so differently. Let us look a little at this poor Norse creed, for many reasons. We have tolerable means to do it; for there is another point of interest in these Scandinavian mythologies: that they have been preserved so well.
Neither is there no use in knowing something about this old Paganism of our fathers. Unconsciously, and combined with higher things, it is in us yet, that old faith withal. To know it consciously brings us into closer and clearer relations with the past,—with our own possessions in the past. For the whole past, as I keep repeating, is the possession of the present. The past had always something true, and is a precious possession. In a different time, in a different place, it is always some other side of our common human nature that has been developing itself.
—Thomas Carlyle.
PREFACE.
America Not Discovered by Columbus having been so favorably received by the press generally, as well as by many distinguished scholars, who have expressed themselves in very flattering terms of our recent début in English, we venture to appear again; and, although the subject is somewhat different, it still (as did the first) has its fountain head in the literature of the North.
We come, this time, encouraged by all your kind words, with higher aspirations, and perhaps, too, with less timidity and modesty. We come to ask your opinion of Norse mythology. We come to ask whether Norse mythology is not equally as worthy of your attention as the Greek. Nay, we come to ask whether you will not give the Norse the preference. We propose to call your attention earnestly, in this volume, to the merits of our common Gothic or Teutonic inheritance, and to chat a few hours with you about the imaginative, poetic and prophetic period of our Gothic history.
We are well aware that we are here giving you a book full of imperfections so far as style, originality, arrangement and external adornment of the subject is concerned, and we shall not take it much to heart, even if we are severely criticised in these respects; we shall rather take it as an earnest admonition to study and improve in language and composition for the future.
But, if the spirit of the book, that is, the cause which we have undertaken to plead therein,—if that be frowned down, or rejected, or laughed at, we shall be the recipient of a most bitter disappointment, and yet we shall not wholly despair. The time must come, when our common Gothic inheritance will be loved and respected. There will come men—ay, there are already men in our midst who will advocate and defend its rights on American soil with sharper steel than ours. And, though we may find but few roses and many thorns on our pathway, we shall not suffer our ardor in our chosen field of labor to be diminished. We are determined not to be discouraged.
What we claim for this work is, that it is the first complete and systematic presentation of the Norse mythology in the English language; and this we think is a sufficient reason for our asking a humble place upon your book-shelves. And, while we make this claim, we fully appreciate the value of the many excellent treatises and translations that have appeared on this subject in England. We do not undervalue the labors of Dasent, Thorpe, Pigott, Carlyle, etc., but none of these give a comprehensive account of all the deities and the myths in full. There is, indeed, no work outside of Scandinavia that covers the whole ground. So far as America is concerned, the only work on Norse mythology that has hitherto been published in this country is Barclay Pennock’s translation of the Norse Professor Rudolph Keyser’s Religion of the Northmen. This is indeed an excellent and scholarly work, and a valuable contribution to knowledge; but, instead of presenting the mythology of the Norsemen, it interprets it; and Professor Keyser is yet one of the most eminent authorities in the exposition of the Asa doctrine. Pennock’s translation of Keyser is a book of three hundred and forty-six pages, and of these only sixteen are devoted to a synopsis of the mythology; and it is, as the reader may judge, nothing but a very brief synopsis. The remaining three hundred and thirty pages contain a history of Old Norse literature, an interpretation of the Odinic religion, and an exhibition of the manner of worship among the heathen Norsemen. In a word, Pennock’s book presupposes a knowledge of the subject; and for one who has this, we would recommend Pennock’s Keyser as the best work extant in English. We are indebted to it for many valuable paragraphs in this volume.
This subject has, then, been investigated by many able writers; and, in preparing this volume, we have borrowed from their works all the light they could shed upon our pathway. The authors we have chiefly consulted are named in the accompanying list. While we have used their very phrase whenever it was convenient, we have not followed them in a slavish manner. We have made such changes as in our judgment seemed necessary to give our work harmony and symmetry throughout. We at first felt disposed to give the reader a mere translation either of N. M. Petersen, or of Grundtvig, or of P. A. Munch; but upon further reflection we came to the conclusion that we could treat the subject more satisfactorily to ourselves, and fully as acceptably to our readers, by sketching out a plan of our own, and making free use of all the best writers upon this subject. And as we now review our pages, we find that N. M. Petersen has served us the most. Much of his work has been appropriated in an almost unchanged form.
Although many of the ideas set forth in this work may seem new to American readers, yet they are by no means wholly original. Many of them have for many years been successfully advocated in Scandinavian countries, and to some extent, also, in Germany and England. Our aim has not at present been so much to make original investigations, as—that which is far more needed and to the purpose—to give the fruits of the labors performed in the North, and call the attention of the American public earnestly to the wealth stored up in the Eddas and Sagas of Iceland. No one can doubt the correctness of our position in this matter, when he reflects that we now drawing near the close of the nineteenth century, and have not yet had a complete Norse mythology in the English language, while the number of Greek and Roman mythologies is legion. Bayard Taylor said to us, recently, that the Scandinavian languages, in view of their rich literature, in view of the light which this literature throws upon early English history, and in view of the importance of Icelandic in a successful study of English and Anglo-Saxon, ought to be taught in every college in Vinland; and that is the very pith of what we have to say in this preface.
We have had excellent aid from Dr. S. H. Carpenter, who combines broad general culture with a thorough knowledge of Old English and Anglo-Saxon. He has read every page of this work, and we hereby thank him for the generous sympathy and advice which he has invariably given us. To President John Bascom we are under obligations for kind words and valuable suggestions. We hereby extend heartfelt thanks to Professor Willard Fiske, of Cornell University, for aid and encouragement; to Mrs. Ole Bull, for free use of her excellent library; and to the poet, H. W. Longfellow, for permitting us to make extracts from his works, and to inscribe this volume to him as the Nestor among American writers on Scandinavian themes. May the persons here named find that this our work, in spite of its faults, advances, somewhat, the interest in the studies of Northern literature in this country.
While Mallet’s Northern Antiquities is a very valuable work, we cannot but make known our regrets that Blackwell’s edition of it ever was published. Mr. Blackwell has in many ways injured the cause which he evidently intended to promote. While we, therefore, urge caution in the use of Mallet’s Northern Antiquities by Blackwell, we can with all our heart recommend such writers upon the North as Dasent, Laing, Thorpe, Gosse, Pennock, Boyesen, Marsh, Fiske, the Howitts, Pigott, Lord Dufferin, Maurer, Möbius, Morris, Magnússon, Vigfusson, Hjaltalin, and several others.
It is sincerely hoped that by this our effort we may, at least for the present, fill a gap in English literature, and accomplish something in awakening among students some interest in Norse mythology, history, literature and institutions. Let it be remembered, that Carlyle, and many others of our best scholars, claim that it is from the Norsemen we have derived our vital energy, our freedom of thought, and, in a measure that we do not yet suspect, our strength of speech.
We are conscious that our work contains many imperfections, and that others might have performed the task better; and thus we commend this volume to the kind indulgence of the critic and the reader.
R. B. ANDERSON.
University of Wisconsin, May 15, 1875.
LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED.
The following authors have been consulted in preparing this work, and to them the reader is referred, if he wishes to make special study of the subject of Norse mythology.
Of the Elder Edda we have used Benjamin Thorpe’s translation and Sophus Bugge’s edition of the original. It has been found necessary to make a few alterations in Thorpe’s translation. Of the Younger Edda we have used Dasent’s translation and Sveinbjorn Egilsson’s edition of the original. Of modern Scandinavian writers we have confined ourselves mainly to N. M. Petersen, N. F. S. Grundtvig, P. A. Munch, Rudolph Keyser, Finn Magnússon, and Christian Winther. Other authors borrowed from more or less are: H. W. Longfellow, H. G. Möller, R. Nyerup, E. G. Geier, M. Hammerich, F. J. Mone, Jacob Grimm, Thomas Keightly, Thomas Carlyle, Max Müller, and Geo. W. Cox.
The recent excellent work of Alexander Murray has been referred to on the subject of Greek mythology. It claims on its title-page to give an account of Norse mythology; but we were surprised to find that the author dismisses the subject with fifteen pages and a few wood-cuts of questionable value.
The philological notes are chiefly based upon the Icelandic Dictionary recently published by Macmillan & Co., and edited by Gudbrand Vigfusson, of Oxford University, England. We object to the price of it, which is thirty-two dollars, but it is indeed a scholarly work, and marks a new epoch in the study of the Icelandic language.
For the engraving opposite the title-page we are indebted to Mr. James R. Stuart, who has devoted many years in America and Europe to the study of his art. The painting, from which the engraving is made, is wholly original, and was made expressly for this work. We hereby extend our thanks to Mr. Stuart, and hope some day to see more of Norse mythology treated by his brush.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
WHAT IS MYTHOLOGY, AND WHAT IS NORSE MYTHOLOGY?
The myth the oldest form of truth—The Unknown God—Ingemund the Old—Thorkel Maane—Harald Fairfax—Every cause in nature a divinity—Thor the thunder-storm—Prominent faculties impersonated—These gods worthy of reverence—Church ceremonies—Different religions—Hints to preachers—The mythology of our ancestors—In its oldest form it is Teutonic—What Dasent says—Thomas Carlyle, 23
WHY CALL THIS MYTHOLOGY NORSE? OUGHT IT NOT RATHER TO BE CALLED GOTHIC OR TEUTONIC?
Introduction of Christianity—The Catholic priests—The Eddas—Mythology in its Germanic form—Thor not the same in Norway and Denmark—Norse mythology—Max Müller, 41
NORSE MYTHOLOGY COMPARED WITH GREEK.
Norse and Greek mythology differ—Balder and Adonis—Greek gods free from decay—The Deluge—Not the same but a similar tradition—The hand stone weeps tears—The separate groups exquisite—Greek mythology an epic poem—Theoktony—The Norse yields the prize to the Greek—Depth of Norse and Christian thought—Naastrand—Outward nature influences the mythology—Visit Norseland—Norse scenery—Simple and martial religion—Sincerity and grace—Norse and Greek mythology, 51
ROMAN MYTHOLOGY.
Oxford and Cambridge—The Romans were robbers—We must not throw Latin wholly overboard—We must study English and Anglo-Saxon—English more terse than Latin—Greek preferable to Hebrew or Latin—Shakespeare—He who is not a son of Thor, 71
INTERPRETATION OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY.
Aberration from the true religion—Historical interpretation—Ethical interpretation—Physical interpretation—Odin, Thor, Argos, Io—Our ancestors not prosaic—The Romans again—Physical interpretation insufficient—Natural science—Historical prophecy—A complete mythology, 80
THE NORSE MYTHOLOGY FURNISHES ABUNDANT AND EXCELLENT MATERIAL FOR THE USE OF POETS, SCULPTORS AND PAINTERS.
How to educate the child—Ole Bull—Men frequently act like ants—Oelenschlæger—Thor’s fishing—The dwarfs—Ten stanzas in Danish—The brush and the chisel—Nude art—The germ of the faith—We Goths are a chaste race—Dr. John Bascom—We are growing too prosaic and ungodly, 94
THE SOURCES OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY AND INFLUENCE OF THE ASA-FAITH.
The Elder Edda—Icelandic poetry—Beowulf’s Drapa and Niebelungen-Lied—Influence of the Norse mythology—Influence of the Asa-faith—Samuel Laing—Odinic rules of life—Hávamál—The lay of Sigdrifa—Rudolph Keyser—The days of the week, 116
THE CREATION AND PRESERVATION OF THE WORLD.
THE CREATION.
Section i. The original condition of the world—Ginungagap. Section ii. The origin of the giants—Ymer. Section iii. The origin of the crow Audhumbla and the birth of the gods—Odin, Vile and Ve. Section iv. The Norse deluge and the origin of heaven and earth. Section v. The heavenly bodies, time, the wind, the rainbow—The sun and moon—Hrimfaxe and Skinfaxe—The seasons—The Elder Edda—Bil and Hjuke. Section vi. The Golden Age—The origin of the dwarfs—The creation of the first man and woman—The Elder Edda. Section vii. The gods and their abodes. Section viii. The divisions of the world, 171
THE PRESERVATION.
The ash Ygdrasil—Mimer’s fountain—Urd’s fountain—The norns or fates—Mimer and the Urdar-fountain—The norns, 188
EXEGETICAL REMARKS UPON THE CREATION AND PRESERVATION OF THE WORLD.
Pondus iners—The supreme god—The cow Audhumbla—Trinity—The Golden Age—Creation of man—The giants—The gods kill or marry the giants—Elves and hulders—Trolls—Nisses and necks—Merman and mermaid—Ygdrasil—Mimer’s fountain—The norns, 192
THE LIFE AND EXPLOITS OF THE GODS.
ODIN.
Section i. Odin. Section ii. Odin’s names. Section iii. Odin’s outward appearance. Section iv. Odin’s attributes. Section v. Odin’s journeys. Section vi. Odin and Mimer. Section vii. Hlidskjalf. Section viii. The historical Odin. Section ix. Odin’s wives. Section x. Frigg’s maid-servants. Section xi. Gefjun—Eir. Section xii. Rind. Section xiii. Gunlad—The origin of poetry. Section xiv. Saga. Section xv. Odin as the inventor of runes. Section xvi. Valhal. Section xvii. The valkyries, 215
HERMOD, TYR, HEIMDAL, BRAGE AND IDUN.
Section i. Hermod. Section ii. Tyr. Section iii. Heimdal. Section iv. Brage and Idun. Section v. Idun and her apples, 270
BALDER AND NANNA, HODER, VALE AND FORSETE.
Section i. Balder. Section ii. The death of Balder the Good. Section iii. Forsete, 279
THOR, HIS WIFE SIF AND SON ULLER.
Section i. General synopsis—Thor, Sit and Uller. Section ii. Thor and Hrungner. Section iii. Thor and Geirrod. Section iv. Thor and Skrymer. Section v. Thor and the Midgard-serpent (Thor and Hymer). Section vi. Thor and Thrym, 298
VIDAR, 337
THE VANS.
Section i. Njord and Skade. Section ii. Æger and Ran. Section iii. Frey. Section iv. Frey and Gerd. Section v. Worship of Frey. Section vi. Freyja. Section vii. A brief review, 341
THE DEVELOPMENT OF EVIL, LOKE AND HIS OFFSPRING.
Section i. Loke. Section ii. Loke’s children—The Fenriswolf. Section iii. Jormungander or the Midgard-serpent. Section iv. Hel. Section v. The Norsemen’s idea of death. Section vi. Loke’s punishment. Section vii. The iron post. Section viii. A brief review, 371
RAGNAROK AND REGENERATION.
RAGNAROK, 413
REGENERATION, 428
[Vocabulary], 439
[Index], 462
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I.
WHAT IS MYTHOLOGY AND WHAT IS NORSE MYTHOLOGY?
The word mythology (μυθολογόα, from μῦθος, word, tale, fable, and λόγοc, speech, discourse,) is of Greek origin, and our vernacular tongue has become so adulterated with Latin and Greek words; we have studied Latin and Greek in place of English, Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Gothic so long that we are always in a quandary (qu’en dirai-je?), always tongue-tied when we attempt to speak of something outside or above the daily returning cares of life. Our own good old English words have been crowded out by foreign ones; this is our besetting sin. But, as the venerable Professor George Stephens remarks in his elaborate work on Runic Monuments, we have watered our mother tongue long enough with bastard Latin; let us now brace and steel it with the life-water of our own sweet and soft and rich and shining and clear-ringing and manly and world-ranging, ever-dearest English.
Mythology is a system of myths; a collection of popular legends, fables, tales, or stories, relating to the gods, heroes, demons or other beings whose names have been preserved in popular belief. Such tales are not found in the traditions of the ancient Greeks, Hindoos and Egyptians, only, but every nation has had its system of mythology; and that of the ancient Norsemen is more simple, earnest, miraculous, stupendous and divine than any other mythological system of which we have record.
The myth is the oldest form of truth; and mythology is the knowledge which the ancients had of the Divine. The object of mythology is to find God and come to him. Without a written revelation this may be done in two ways: either by studying the intellectual, moral and physical nature of man, for evidence of the existence of God may be found in the proper study of man; or by studying nature in the outward world in its general structure, adaptations and dependencies; and truthfully it may be said that God manifests himself in nature.
Our Norse forefathers (for it is their religion we are to present in this volume) had no clearly-defined knowledge of any god outside of themselves and nature. Like the ancient Greeks, they had only a somewhat vague idea about a supreme God, whom the rhapsodist or skald in the Elder Edda (Hyndluljóð 43, 44) dare not name, and whom few, it is said, ever look far enough to see. In the language of the Elder Edda:
Then one is born
Greater than all;
He becomes strong
With the strengths of earth;
The mightiest king
Men call him,
Fast knit in peace
With all powers.
Then comes another
Yet more mighty;
But him dare I not
Venture to name.
Few further may look
Than to where Odin
To meet the wolf goes.
Odin goes to meet the Fenriswolf in Ragnarok (the twilight of the gods; that is, the final conflict between all good and evil powers); but now let the reader compare the above passage from the Elder Edda with the following passage from the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles:
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ Hill and said: Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious; for as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
It was of this same unknown God that one of the ancient Greek poets had said, that in him we live and move and have our being. Thus did the Greeks find Jehovah in the labyrinth of their heathen deities; and when we claim that the Norse mythology is more divine than any other system of mythology known, we mean by this assertion, that the supreme God is mentioned and referred to oftener, and stands out in bolder relief in the Norseman’s heathen belief, than in any other.
It is a noticeable fact that long before Christianity was introduced or had even been heard of in Iceland, it is recorded that Ingemund the Old, a heathen Norseman, bleeding and dying, prayed God to forgive Rolleif, his murderer.
Another man of the heathen times, Thorkel Maane, a supreme judge of Iceland, a man of unblemished life and distinguished among the wisest magistrates of that island during the time of the republic, avowed that he would worship no other God but him who had created the sun; and in his dying hour he prayed the Father of Light to illuminate his soul in the darkness of death. Arngrim Jonsson tells us that when Thorkel Maane had arrived at the age of maturity and reflection, he disdained a blind obedience to traditionary custom, and employed much of his time in weighing the established tenets of his countrymen by the standard of reason. He divested his mind of all prejudice; he pondered on the sublimity of nature, and guided himself by maxims founded on truth and reason. By these means he soon discovered not only the fallacy of that faith which governed his countrymen, but became a convert to the existence of a supreme power more mighty than Thor or Odin. In his maker he acknowledged his God, and to him alone directed his homage from a conviction that none other was worthy to be honored and worshiped. On perceiving the approach of death, this pious and sensible man requested to be conveyed into the open air, in order that, as he said, he might in his last moments contemplate the glories of Almighty God, who has created the heavens and the earth and all that in them is.
Harald Fairfax (Haarfager), the first sovereign of Norway, the king that united Norway under his scepter in the year 872, is another remarkable example in this respect. He was accustomed to assist at the public offerings made by his people in honor of their gods. As no better or more pure religion was known in those days, he acted with prudence in not betraying either contempt or disregard for the prevailing worship of the country, lest his subjects, stimulated by such example, might become indifferent, not only to their sacred, but also to their political, duties. Yet he rejected from his heart these profane ceremonies, and believed in the existence of a more powerful god, whom he secretly adored. I swear, he once said, never to make my offerings to an idol, but to that God alone whose omnipotence has formed the world and stamped man with his own image. It would be an act of folly in me to expect help from him whose power and empire arises from the accidental hollow of a tree or the peculiar form of a stone.
Such examples illustrate how near the educated and reflecting Norse heathen was in sympathy with Christianity, and also go far toward proving that the object of mythology is to find God and come to him.
Still we must admit that of this supreme God our forefathers had only a somewhat vague conception; and to many of them he was almost wholly unknown. Their god was a natural human god, a person. There can be no genuine poetry without impersonation, and a perfect system of mythology is a finished poem. Mythology is, in fact, religious truth expressed in poetical language. It ascribes all events and phenomena in the outward world to a personal cause. Each cause is some divinity or other—some god or demon. In this manner, when the ancients heard the echo from the woods or mountains, they did not think, as we now do, that the waves of sound were reflected, but that there stood a dwarf, a personal being, who repeated the words spoken by themselves. This dwarf had to have a history, a biography, and this gave rise to a myth. To our poetic ancestors the forces of nature were not veiled under scientific names. As Carlyle truthfully remarks, they had not yet learned to reduce to their fundamental elements and lecture learnedly about this beautiful, green, rock-built, flowery earth, with its trees, mountains and many-sounding waters; about the great deep sea of azure that swims over our heads, and about the various winds that sweep through it. When they saw the black clouds gathering and shutting out the king of day, and witnessed them pouring out rain and ice and fire, and heard the thunder roll, they did not think, as we now do, of accumulated electricity discharged from the clouds to the earth, and show in the lecture room how something like these powerful shafts of lightning could be ground out of glass or silk, but they ascribed the phenomenon to a mighty divinity—Thor—who in his thunder-chariot rides through the clouds and strikes with his huge hammer, Mjolner. The theory of our forefathers furnishes food for the imagination, for our poetical nature, while the reflection of the waves of sound and the discharge of electricity is merely dry reasoning—mathematics and physics. To our ancestors Nature presented herself in her naked, beautiful and awful majesty; while to us in this age of Newtons, Millers, Oersteds, Berzeliuses and Tyndalls, she is enwrapped in a multitude of profound scientific phrases. These phrases make us flatter ourselves that we have fathomed her mysteries and revealed her secret workings, while in point of fact we are as far from the real bottom as our ancestors were. But we have robbed ourselves to a sad extent of the poetry of nature. Well might Barry Cornwall complain:
O ye delicious fables! where the wave
And the woods were peopled, and the air, with things
So lovely! Why, ah! why has science grave
Scattered afar your sweet imaginings?
The old Norsemen said: The mischief-maker Loke cuts for mere sport the hair of the goddess Sif, but the gods compel him to furnish her new hair, Loke gets dwarfs to forge for her golden hair, which grows almost spontaneously. We, their prosaic descendants, say: The heat (Loke) scorches the grass (Sif’s hair), but the same physical agent (heat) sets the forces of nature to work again, and new grass with golden (that is to say bright) color springs up again.
Thus our ancestors spoke of all the workings of nature as though they were caused by personal agents; and instead of saying, as we now do, that winter follows summer, and explaining how the annual revolutions of the earth produce the changes that are called seasons of the year, they took a more poetical view of the phenomenon, and said that the blind god Hoder (winter) was instigated by Loke (heat) to slay Balder (the summer god).
This idea of personifying the visible workings of nature was so completely developed that prominent faculties or attributes of the gods also were subject to impersonation. Odin, it was said, had two ravens, Hugin and Munin; that is, reflection and memory. They sit upon his shoulders, and whisper into his ears. Thor’s strength was redoubled whenever he girded himself with Megingjarder, his belt of strength; his steel gloves, with which he wielded his hammer, produced the same effect. Nay, strength was so eminent a characteristic with Thor that it even stands out apart from him as an independent person, and is represented by his son Magne (strength), who accompanies him on his journeys against the frost-giants.
In this manner a series of myths were formed and combined into a system which we now call mythology; a system which gave to our fathers gods whom they worshiped, and in whom they trusted, and which gives to us a mirror in which is reflected the popular life, the intellectual and moral characteristics of our ancestors. And these gods were indeed worthy of reverence; they were the embodiments of the noblest thoughts and purest feelings, but these thoughts and feelings could not be awakened without a personified image. As soon as the divine idea was born, it assumed a bodily form, and, in order to give the mind a more definite comprehension of it, it was frequently drawn down from heaven and sculptured in wood or stone. The object was by images to make manifest unto the senses the attributes of the gods, and thus the more easily secure the devotion of the people. The heathen had to see the image of God, the image of the infinite thought embodied in the god, or he would not kneel down and worship. This idea of wanting something concrete, something within the reach of the senses, we find deeply rooted in human nature. Man does not want an abstract god, but a personal, visible god, at least a visible sign of his presence. And we who live in the broad daylight of revealed religion and science ought not to be so prone to blame our forefathers for paying divine honors to images, statues and other representations or symbols of their gods, for the images were, as the words imply, not the gods themselves to whom the heathen addressed his prayers and supplications, but merely the symbols of these gods; and every religion, Christianity included, is mythical in its development. The tendency is to draw the divine down to earth, in order to rise with it again to heaven. When God suffers with us, it becomes easier for us to suffer; when he redeems us, our salvation becomes certain. God is in all systems of religion seen, as it were, through a glass—never face to face. No one can see Jehovah and live.
Even as in our present condition our immortal soul cannot do without the visible body, and cannot without this reveal itself to its fellow-beings, so our faith requires a visible church, our religion must assume some form in which it can be apprehended by the senses. Our faith is made stronger by the visible church in the same manner as the mind gains knowledge of the things about us by means of the bodily organs. The outward rite or external form and ceremonial ornament, which are so conspicuous in the Roman and Greek Catholic churches, for instance, serve to awaken, edify and strengthen the soul and assist the memory in recalling the religious truths and the events in the life of Christ and of the saints more vividly and forcibly to the mind; besides, pictures and images are to the unlettered what books are to those educated in the art of reading. Did not Christ himself combine things supersensual with things within the reach of the senses? The purification and sanctification of the soul he combined with the idea of cleansing the body in the sacrament of baptism. The remembrance of him and of his love, how he gave his body and blood for the redemption of fallen man, he combined with the eating of bread and drinking of wine in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. He gave his religion an outward, visible form; and, just as the soul is mirrored in the eyes, in the expression of the countenance, in the gestures and manners of the body, so our faith is reflected in the church. This is what is meant by mythical development; and when we discover this tendency to cling to visible signs and ceremonies manifesting itself so extensively even in the Christian church of our own time, it should teach us to be less severe in judging and blaming the heathen for their idol-worship.
As long as the nations have inhabited the earth, there have been different religions among men; and how could this be otherwise? The countries which they have inhabited; the skies which they have looked upon; their laws, customs and social institutions; their habits, language and knowledge; have differed so widely that it would be absurd to look for uniformity in the manner in which they have found, comprehended and worshiped God. Nay, this is not all. Even among Christians, and, if we give the subject a careful examination, even among those who confess one and the same faith and are members of one and the same church, we find that the religion of one man is never perfectly like that of another. They may use the same prayers, learn and subscribe to the same confession, hear the same preacher and take part in the same ceremonies, but still the prayer, faith and worship of the one will differ from the prayer, faith and worship of the other. Two persons are never precisely alike, and every one will interpret the words which he hears and the ceremonies in which he takes part according to the depth and breadth of his mind and heart—according to the extent and kind of his knowledge and experience, and according to other personal peculiarities and characteristics. Even this is not all. Every person changes his religious views as he grows older, as his knowledge and experience increase, so that the faith of the youth is not that of the child, nor does the man with silvery locks approach the altar with precisely the same faith as when he knelt there a youth. For it is not the words and ceremonies, but the thoughts and feelings, that we combine with these symbols, that constitute our religion; it is not the confession which we learned at school, but the ideas that are suggested by it in our minds, and the emotions awakened by it in our hearts, that constitute our faith.
If the preachers of the Christian religion realized these truths more than they generally seem to do, they would perhaps speak with more charity and less scorn and contempt of people who differ from them in their religious views. They would recognize in the faith of others the same connecting link between God and man for them, as their own faith is for themselves. They would not hate the Jew because he, in accordance with the Mosaic commandment, offers his prayers in the synagogue to the God of his fathers; nor despise the heathen because he, in want of better knowledge, in childlike simplicity lifts his hands in prayer to an image of wood or stone; for, although this be perishable dust, he still addresses the prayer of his inmost soul to the supreme God, even as the child, that kisses the picture of his absent mother, actually thinks of her.
The old mythological stories of the Norsemen abound in poetry of the truest and most touching character. These stories tell us in sublime and wonderful speech of the workings of external nature, and may make us cheerful or sad, happy or mournful, gay or grave, just as we night feel, if from the pinnacle of Gausta Fjeld we were to watch the passing glories of morning and evening tide. There is nothing in these stories that can tend to make us less upright and simple, while they contain many thoughts and suggestions that we may be the better and happier for knowing. All the so-called disagreeable features of mythology are nothing but distortions, brought out either by ill-will or by a superficial knowledge of the subject; and, when these distortions are removed, we shall find only things beautiful, lovely and of good report. We shall find the simple thoughts of our childlike, imaginative, poetic and prophetic forefathers upon the wonderful works of their maker, and nothing that we may laugh at, or despise, or pity. These words of our fathers, if read in the right spirit, will make us feel as we ought to feel when we contemplate the glory and beauty of the heavens and the earth, and observe how wonderfully all things are adapted to each other and to the wants of man, that the thoughts of him who stands at the helm of this ship of the universe (Skidbladner) must be very deep, and that we are sensible to the same joys and sufferings, are actuated by the same fears and hopes and passions, that were felt by the men and women who lived in the dawn of our Gothic history. We will begin to realize how the great and wise Creator has led our race on—slowly, perhaps, but nevertheless surely—to the consciousness that he is a loving and righteous Father, and that he has made the sun and moon and stars, the earth, and all that in them is, in their season.
The Norse mythology reflects, then, the religious, moral, intellectual and social development of our ancestors in the earliest period of their existence. We say our ancestors, for we must bear in mind that in its most original form this mythology was common to all the Teutonic nations, to the ancestors of the Americans and the English, as well as to those of the Norsemen, Swedes and Danes. Geographically it extended not only over the whole of Scandinavia, including Iceland, but also over England and a considerable portion of France and Germany. But it is only in Iceland, that weird island of the icy sea, with the snow-clad volcano Mt. Hecla for its hearth, encircled by a wall of glaciers, and with the roaring North Sea for its grave,—it is only in Iceland that anything like a complete record of this ancient Teutonic mythology was put in writing and preserved; and this fact alone ought to be quite sufficient to lead us to cultivate a better acquaintance with the literature of Scandinavia. To use the words of that excellent Icelandic scholar, the Englishman George Webbe Dasent: It is well known, says he, that the Icelandic language, which has been preserved almost incorrupt in that remarkable island, has remained for many centuries the depository of literary treasures, the common property of all the Scandinavian and Teutonic races, which would otherwise have perished, as they have perished in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and England. There was a time when all these countries had a common mythology, when the royal race each of them traced its descent in varying genealogies up to Odin and the gods of Asgard. Of that mythology, which may hold its own against any other that the world has seen, all memory, as a systematic whole, has vanished from the mediæval literature of Teutonic Europe. With the introduction of Christianity, the ancient gods had been deposed and their places assigned to devils and witches. Here and there a tradition, a popular tale or a superstition bore testimony to what had been lost; and, though in this century the skill and wisdom of the Grimms and their school have shown the world what power of restoration and reconstruction abides in intelligent scholarship and laborious research, even the genius of the great master of that school of criticism would have lost nine-tenths of its power had not faithful Iceland preserved through the dark ages the two Eddas, which present to us, in features that cannot be mistaken, and in words which cannot die, the very form and fashion of that wondrous edifice of mythology which our forefathers in the dawn of time imagined to themselves as the temple at once of their gods and of the worship due to them from all mankind on this middle earth. For man, according to their system of belief, could have no existence but for those gods and stalwart divinities, who, from their abode in Asgard, were ever watchful to protect him and crush the common foes of both, the earthly race of giants, or, in other words, the chaotic natural powers. Any one, therefore, that desires to see what manner of men his forefathers were in their relation to the gods, how they conceived their theogony, how they imagined and constructed their cosmogony, must betake himself to the Eddas, as illustrated by the Sagas, and he will there find ample details on all these points; while the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic literatures only throw out vague hints and allusions. As we read Beowulf and the Traveler’s Song, for instance, we meet at every step references to mythological stories and mythical events, which would be utterly unintelligible were it not for the full light thrown upon them by the Icelandic literature. Thus far Dasent’s opinion.
The Norse mythology, we say, then, shows what the religion of our ancestors was; and their religion is the main fact that we care to know about them. Knowing this well, we can easily account for the rest. Their religion is the soul of their history. Their religion tells us what they felt; their feelings produced their thoughts, and their thoughts were the parents of their acts. When we study their religion, we discover the unseen and spiritual fountain from which all their outward acts welled forth, and by which the character of these was determined.
The mythology is neither the history nor the poetry nor the natural philosophy of our ancestors; but it is the germ and nucleus of them all. It is history, for it treats of events; but it is not history in the ordinary acceptance of that word, for the persons figuring therein have never existed. It is natural philosophy, for it investigates the origin of nature; but it is not natural philosophy according to modern ideas, for it personifies and deifies nature. It is metaphysics, for it studies the science and the laws of being; but it is not metaphysics in our sense of the word, for it rapidly overleaps all categories. It is poetry in its very essence; but its pictures are streams that flow together. Thus the Norse mythology is history, but limited to neither time nor place; poetry, but independent of arses or theses; philosophy, but without abstractions or syllogisms.
We close this chapter with the following extract from Thomas Carlyle’s essays on Heroes and Hero-worship; an extract that undoubtedly will be read with interest and pleasure:
In that strange island—Iceland—burst up, the geologists say, by fire, from the bottom of the sea; a wild land of barrenness and lava; swallowed, many months of the year, in black tempests, yet with a wild, gleaming beauty in summer-time; towering up there, stern and grim, in the North Ocean; with its snow-jökuls, roaring geysers, sulphur pools and horrid volcanic chasms, like the waste, chaotic battle-field of frost and fire—where of all places we least looked for literature or written memorials; the record of these things was written down. On the seaboard of this wild land is a rim of grassy country, where cattle can subsist, and men, by means of them and of what the sea yields; and it seems they were poetic men, these—men who had deep thoughts in them, and uttered musically their thoughts. Much would be lost had Iceland not been burst up from the sea—not been discovered by the Northmen! The old Norse poets were many of them natives of Iceland.
Sæmund, one of the early Christian priests there, who perhaps had a lingering fondness for paganism, collected certain of their old pagan song, just about becoming obsolete then—poems or chants, of a mythic, prophetic, mostly all of a religious, character: this is what Norse critics call the Elder or Poetic Edda. Edda, a word of uncertain etymology, is thought to signify Ancestress. Snorre Sturleson, an Iceland gentleman, an extremely notable personage, educated by this Sæmund’s grandson, took in hand next, near a century afterwards, to put together, among several other books he wrote, a kind of prose synopsis of the whole mythology, elucidated by new fragments of traditionary verse; a work constructed really with great ingenuity, native talent, what one might call unconscious art; altogether a perspicuous, clear work—pleasant reading still. This is the Younger or Prose Edda. By these and the numerous other Sagas, mostly Icelandic, with the commentaries, Icelandic or not, which go on zealously in the North to this day, it is possible to gain some direct insight even yet, and see that old system of belief, as it were, face to face. Let as forget that it is erroneous religion: let us look at it as old thought, and try if we cannot sympathize with it somewhat.
The primary characteristic of this old Northland mythology I find to be impersonation of the visible workings of nature—earnest, simple recognition of the workings of physical nature, as a thing wholly miraculous, stupendous and divine. What we now lecture of as science, they wondered at, and fell down in awe before, as religion. The dark, hostile powers of nature they figured to themselves as Jötuns (giants), huge, shaggy beings, of a demoniac character. Frost, Fire, Sea, Tempest, these are Jötuns. The friendly powers, again, as Summer-heat, the Sun, are gods. The Empire of this Universe is divided between these two; they dwell apart in perennial internecine feud. The gods dwell above in Asgard, the Garden of the Asas, or Divinities; Jötunheim, a distant, dark, chaotic land, is the home of the Jötuns.
Curious, all this; and not idle or inane if we will look at the foundation of it. The power of Fire or Flame, for instance, which we designate by some trivial chemical name, thereby hiding from ourselves the essential character of wonder that dwells in it, as in all things, is, with these old Northmen, Loge, a most swift, subtle demon, of the brood of the Jötuns. The savages of the Ladrones Islands, too (say some Spanish voyagers), thought Fire, which they had never seen before, was a devil, or god, that bit you sharply when you touched it, and lived there upon dry wood. From us, too, no chemistry, if it had not stupidity to help it, would hide that flame is a wonder. What is flame? Frost the old Norse seer discerns to be a monstrous, hoary Jötun, the giant Thrym, Hrym, or Rime, the old word, now nearly obsolete here, but still used is Scotland to signify hoar-frost. Rime was not then, as now, a dead chemical thing, but a living Jötun, or Devil; the monstrous Jötun Rime drove home his horses at night, sat combing their manes;—which horses were Hail-clouds, or fleet Frost-winds. His cows—no, not his, but a kinsman’s, the giant Hymer’s cows—are Icebergs. This Hymer looks at the rocks with his devil-eye, and they split in the glance of it.
Thunder was then not mere electricity, vitreous or resinous; it was the god Donner (Thunder), or Thor,—god, also, of the beneficent Summer-heat. The thunder was his wrath; the gathering of the black clouds is the drawing down of Thor’s angry brows; the fire-bolt bursting out of heaven is the all-rending hammer flung from the hand of Thor. He urges his loud chariot over the mountain tops—that is the peal; wrathful he blows in his red beard—that is the rustling storm-blast before the thunder begins. Balder, again, the White God, the beautiful, the just and benignant, (whom the early Christian missionaries found to resemble Christ,) is the sun—beautifulest of visible things: wondrous, too, and divine still, after all our astronomies and almanacs! But perhaps the notablest god we hear tell of is one of whom Grimm, the German etymologist, finds trace: the god Wünsch, or Wish. The god Wish, who could give us all that we wished! Is not this the sincerest and yet the rudest voice of the spirit of man? The rudest ideal that man ever formed, which still shows itself in the latest forms of our spiritual culture. Higher considerations have to teach us that the god Wish is not the true God.
Of the other gods or Jötuns, I will mention, only for etymology’s sake, that Sea-tempest is the Jötun Ægir, a very dangerous Jötun; and now to this day, on our river Trent, as I learn, the Nottingham bargemen, when the river is in a certain flooded state (a kind of back-water or eddying swirl it has, very dangerous to them), call it Eager. They cry out, Have a care! there is the Eager coming! Curious, that word surviving, like the peak of a submerged world! The oldest Nottingham barge-men had believed in the god Ægir. Indeed, our English blood, too, in good part, is Danish, Norse,—or rather, at the bottom, Danish and Norse and Saxon have no distinction except a superficial one—as of Heathen and Christian, or the like. But all over our island we are mingled largely with Danes proper—from the incessant invasions there were; and this, of course, in a greater proportion along the east coast; and greatest of all, as I find, in the north country. From the Humber upward, all over Scotland, the speech of the common people is still in singular degree Icelandic; its Germanism has still a peculiar Norse tinge. They, too, are Normans, Northmen—if that be any great beauty!
Of the chief god, Odin, we shall speak by-and-by. Mark, at present, so much: what the essence of Scandinavian, and, indeed, of all paganism, is: a recognition of the forces of nature as godlike, stupendous, personal agencies—as gods and demons. Not inconceivable to us. It is the infant thought of man opening itself with awe and wonder on this ever stupendous universe. It is strange, after our beautiful Apollo statues and clear smiling mythuses, to come down upon the Norse gods brewing ale to hold their feast with Aegir, the Sea-Jötun; sending out Thor to get the caldron for them in the Jötun country; Thor, after many adventures, clapping the pot on his head, like a huge hat, and walking off with it—quite lost in it, the ear of the pot reaching down to his heels! A kind of vacant hugeness, large, awkward gianthood, characterizes that Norse system; enormous force, as yet altogether untutored, stalking helpless, with large, uncertain strides. Consider only their primary mythus of the Creation. The gods having got the giant Ymer slain—a giant made by warm winds and much confused work out of the conflict of Frost and Fire—determined on constructing a world with him. His blood made the sea; his flesh was the Land; the Rocks, his bones; of his eyebrows they formed Asgard, their gods’ dwelling; his skull was the great blue vault of Immensity, and the brains of it became the Clouds. What a Hyper-Brobdignagian business! Untamed thought; great, giantlike, enormous; to be tamed, in due time, into the compact greatness, not giantlike, but godlike, and stronger than gianthood of the Shakespeares, the Goethes! Spiritually, as well as bodily, these men are our progenitors.
CHAPTER II.
WHY CALL THIS MYTHOLOGY NORSE? OUGHT IT NOT RATHER TO BE CALLED GOTHIC OR TEUTONIC?
In its original form, the mythology, which is to be presented in this volume, was common to all the Teutonic nations; and it spread itself geographically over England, the most of France and Germany, as well as over Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland. But when the Teutonic nations parted, took possession of their respective countries, and began to differ one nation from the other, in language, customs and social and political institutions, and were influenced by the peculiar features of the countries which they respectively inhabited, then the germ of mythology which each nation brought with it into its changed conditions of life, would also be subject to changes and developments in harmony and keeping with the various conditions of climate, language, customs, social and political institutions, and other influences that nourished it, while the fundamental myths remained common to all the Teutonic nations. Hence we might in one sense speak of a Teutonic mythology. That would then be the mythology of the Teutonic peoples, as it was known to them while they all lived together, some four or five hundred years before the birth of Christ, in the south-eastern part of Russia, without any of the peculiar features that have been added later by any of the several branches of that race. But from this time we have no Teutonic literature. In another sense, we must recognize a distinct German mythology, a distinct English mythology, and even make distinction between the mythologies of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.
That it is only of the Norse mythology we have anything like a complete record, was alluded to in the first chapter; but we will now make a more thorough examination of this fact.
The different branches of the Teutonic mythology died out and disappeared as Christianity gradually became introduced, first in France, about five hundred years after the birth of Christ; then in England, one or two hundred years later; still later, in Germany, where the Saxons, Christianized by Charlemagne about A.D. 800, were the last heathen people.
But in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland, the original Gothic heathenism lived longer and more independently than elsewhere, and had more favorable opportunities to grow and mature. The ancient mythological or pagan religion flourished here until about the middle of the eleventh century; or, to speak more accurately, Christianity was not completely introduced in Iceland before the beginning of the eleventh century; in Denmark and Norway, some twenty to thirty years later; while in Sweden, paganism was not wholly eradicated before 1150.
Yet neither Norway, Sweden nor Denmark give us any mythological literature. This is furnished us only by the Norsemen, who had settled in Iceland. Shortly after the introduction of Christianity, which gave the Norsemen the so-called Roman alphabetical system instead of their famous Runic futhorc, there was put in writing in Iceland a colossal mythological and historical literature, which is the full-blown flower of Gothic paganism. In the other countries inhabited by Gothic (Scandinavian, Low Dutch and English) and Germanic (High German) races, scarcely any mythological literature was produced. The German Niebelungen-Lied and the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf’s Drapa are at best only semi-mythological. The overthrow of heathendom was too abrupt and violent. Its eradication was so complete that the heathen religion was almost wholly obliterated from the memory of the people. Occasionally there are found authors who refer to it, but their allusions are very vague and defective, besides giving unmistakable evidence of being written with prejudice and contempt. Nor do we find among the early Germans that spirit of veneration for the memories of the past, and desire to perpetuate them in a vernacular literature; or if they did exist, they were smothered by the Catholic priesthood. When the Catholic priests gained the ascendancy, they adopted the Latin language and used that exclusively for recording events, and they pronounced it a sin even to mention by name the old pagan gods oftener than necessity compelled them to do so.
Among the Norsemen, on the other hand, and to a considerable extent among the English, too, the old religion flourished longer; the people cherished their traditions; they loved to recite the songs and Sagas, in which were recorded the religious faith and brave deeds of their ancestors, and cultivated their native speech in spite of the priests. In Iceland at least, the priests did not succeed in rooting out paganism, if you please, before it had developed sufficiently to produce those beautiful blossoms, the Elder and Younger Eddas. The chief reason of this was, that the people continued to use their mother-tongue, in writing as well as in speaking, so that Latin, the language of the church, never got a foothold. It was useless for the monks to try to tell Sagas in Latin, for they found but few readers in that tongue. An important result of this was, that the Saga became the property of the people, and not of the favored few. In the next place, our Norse Icelandic ancestors took a profound delight in poetry and song. The skald sung in the mother-speech, and taking the most of the material for his songs and poems from the old mythological tales, it was necessary to study and become familiar with these, in order that he might be able, on the one hand, to understand the productions of others, and, on the other, to compose songs himself. Among the numerous examples which illustrate how tenaciously the Norsemen clung to their ancient divinities, we may mention the skald Hallfred, who, when he was baptized by the king Olaf Tryggvesson, declared bravely to the king, that he would neither speak ill of the old gods, nor refrain from mentioning them in his songs.
The reason, then, why we cannot present a complete and thoroughly systematic Teutonic or German or English or Danish or Swedish Mythology, is not that these did not at some time exist, but because their records are so defective. Outside of Norway and Iceland, Christianity, together with disregard of past memories, has swept most of the resources, with which to construct them, away from the surface, and there remain only deeply buried ruins, which it is difficult to dig up and still more difficult to polish and adjust into their original symmetrical and comprehensive form after they have been brought to the surface. It is difficult to gather all the scattered and partially decayed bones of the mythological system, and with the breath of human intellect reproduce a living vocal organism. Few have attempted to do this with greater success than the brothers Grimm.
For the elucidation of our mythology in its Germanic form, for instance, the materials, although they are not wholly wanting, are yet difficult to make use of, since they are widely scattered, and must be sought partly in quite corrupted popular legends, partly in writings of the middle ages, where they are sometimes found interpolated, and where we often least should expect to find them. But in its Norse form we have ample material for studying the Asa-mythology. Here we have as our guide not only a large number of skaldic lays, composed while the mythology still flourished, but even a complete religious system, written down, it is true, after Christianity had been introduced in Iceland, still, according to all evidence, without the Christian ideas having had any special influence upon its delineation, or having materially corrupted it. These lays, manuscripts, etc., which form the source of Norse mythology, will be more fully discussed in another chapter of this Introduction.
We may add further, that if we had, in a complete system, the mythology of the Germans, the English, etc., we should find, in comparing them with the Norse, the same correspondence and identity as see find existing between the different branches of the Teutonic family of languages. We should find in its essence the same mythology in all the Teutonic countries, we should find this again dividing itself into two groups, the Germanic and the Gothic, and the latter group, that is, the Gothic, would include the ancient religion of the Scandinavians, English, and Low Dutch. If we had sufficient means for making a comparison, we should find that any single myth may have become more prominent, may have become more perfectly developed by one branch of the race than by another; one branch of the great Teutonic family may have become more attached to a certain myth than another, while the myth itself would remain identical everywhere. Local myths, that is, myths produced by the contemplation of the visible workings of external nature, are colored by the atmosphere of the people and country where they are fostered. The god Frey received especial attention by the Asa-worshipers in Sweden, but the Norse and Danish Frey are still in reality the same god. Thunder produces not the same effect upon the people among the towering and precipitous mountains of Norway and the level plains of Denmark, but the Thor of Norway and of Denmark are still the same god; although in Norway he is tall a mountain, his beard is briers, and he rushes upon his heroic deeds with the strength and frenzy of a berserk, while in Denmark he wanders along the sea-shore, a youth, with golden looks and downy beard.
It is the Asa-mythology, as it was conceived and cherished by the Norsemen of Norway and Iceland, which the Old Norse literature properly presents to us, and hence the myths will in this volume be presented in their Norse dress, and hence its name, Norse Mythology. From what has already been said, there is no reason to doubt that the Swedes and Danes professed in the main the same faith, followed the same religious customs, and had the same religious institutions; and upon this supposition other English writers upon this subject, as for instance Benjamin Thorpe, have entitled their books Scandinavian Mythology. But we do not know the details of the religious faith, customs and institutions of Sweden and Denmark, for all reliable inland sources of information are wanting, and all the highest authorities on this subject of investigation, such as Rudolph Keyser, P. A. Munch, Ernst Sars, N. M. Petersen and others, unanimously declare, that although the ancient Norse-Icelandic writings not unfrequently treat of heathen religious affairs in Sweden and Denmark, yet, when they do, it is always in such a manner that the conception is clearly Norse, and the delineation is throughout adapted to institutions as they existed in Norway. We are aware that there are those who will feel inclined to criticise us for not calling this mythology Scandinavian or Northern (a more elastic term), but we would earnestly recommend them to examine carefully the writings of the above named writers before waxing too zealous on the subject.
As we closed the previous chapter, with an extract from Thomas Carlyle, so we will close this chapter with a brief quotation frown an equally eminent scholar, the author of Chips from a German Workshop. In the second volume of that work Max Müller says:[[1]]
There is, after Anglo-Saxon, no language, no literature, no mythology so full of interest for the elucidation of the earliest history of the race which now inhabits these British isles as the Icelandic. Nay, in one respect Icelandic beats every other dialect of the great Teutonic family of speech, not excepting Anglo-Saxon and Old High German and Gothic. It is in Icelandic alone that we find complete remains of genuine Teutonic heathendom. Gothic as a language, is more ancient than Icelandic; but the only literary work which we we possess in Gothic is a translation of the Bible. The Anglo-Saxon literature, with the exception of the Beowulf, is Christian. The old heroes of the Niebelunge, such as we find them represented in the Suabian epic, have been converted into church-going knights; whereas, in the ballads of the Elder Edda, Sigurd and Brynhild appear before us in their full pagan grandeur, holding nothing sacred but their love, and defying all laws, human and divine, in the name of that one almighty passion. The Icelandic contains the key to many a riddle in the English language and to many a mystery in the English character. Though the Old Norse is but a dialect of the same language which the Angles and Saxons brought to Britain, though the Norman blood is the same blood that floods and ebbs in every German heart, yet there is an accent of defiance in that rugged northern speech, and a spring of daring madness in that throbbing northern heart, which marks the Northman wherever he appears, whether in Iceland or in Sicily, whether on the Seine or on the Thames. At the beginning of the ninth century, when the great northern exodus began, Europe, as Dr. Dasent remarks, was in danger of becoming too comfortable. The two nations destined to run neck-and-neck in the great race of civilization, Frank and Anglo-Saxon, had a tendency to become dull and lazy, and neither could arrive at perfection till it had been chastised by the Norsemen, and finally forced to admit an infusion of northern blood into its sluggish veins. The vigor of the various branches of the Teutonic stock may be measured by the proportion of Norman blood which they received; and the national character of England owes more to the descendants of Hrolf Ganger[[2]] than to the followers of Hengist and Horsa.
But what is known of the early history of the Norsemen? Theirs was the life of reckless freebooters, and they had no time to dream and ponder on the past, which they had left behind in Norway. Where they settled as colonists or as rulers, their own traditions, their very language, were soon forgotten. Their language has nowhere struck root on foreign ground, even where, as in Normandy, they became earls of Rouen, or, as in these isles, kings of England. There is but one exception—Iceland. Iceland was discovered, peopled and civilized by Norsemen in the ninth century; and in the nineteenth century the language spoken there is still the dialect of Harald Fairhair, and the stories told there are still the stories of the Edda, or the Venerable Grandmother. Dr. Dasent gives us a rapid sketch of the first landings of the Norse refugees on the fells and forths of Iceland. He describes how love of freedom drove the subjects of Harald Fairhair forth from their home; how the Teutonic tribes, though they loved their kings, the sons of Odin, and sovereigns by the grace of God, detested the dictatorship of Harald. He was a mighty warrior, so says the ancient Saga, and laid Norway under him, and put out of the way some of those who held districts, and some of them he drove out of the land; and besides, many men escaped out of Norway because of the overbearing of Harald Fairhair, for they would not stay to be subjects to him. These early emigrants were pagans, and it was not till the end of the tenth century that Christianity reached the Ultima Thule of Europe. The missionaries, however, who converted the freemen of Iceland, were freemen themselves. They did not come with the pomp and the pretensions of the church of Rome. They preached Christ rather than the Pope; they taught religion rather than theology. Nor were they afraid of the old heathen gods, or angry with every custom that was not of Christian growth. Sometimes this tolerance may have been carried too far, for we read of kings, like Helge, who mixed in their faith, who trusted in Christ, but at the same time invoked Thor’s aid whenever they went to sea or got into any difficulty. But on the whole, the kindly feeling of the Icelandic priesthood toward the national traditions and customs and prejudices of their converts must have been beneficial. Sons and daughters were not forced to call the gods whom their fathers and mothers had worshiped, devils; and they were allowed to use the name of Allfadir, whom they had invoked in the prayers of their childhood, when praying to Him who is our Father in Heaven.
The Icelandic missionaries had peculiar advantages in their relation to the system of paganism which they came to combat. Nowhere else, perhaps, in the whole history of Christianity, has the missionary been brought face to face with a race of gods who were believed by their own worshipers to be doomed to death. The missionaries had only to proclaim that Balder was dead, that the mighty Odin and Thor were dead. The people knew that these gods were to die, and the message of the One Everliving God must have touched their ears and their hearts with comfort and joy. Thus, while in Germany the priests were occupied for a long time in destroying every trace of heathenism, in condemning every ancient lay as the work of the devil, in felling sacred trees and abolishing national customs, the missionaries of Iceland were able to take a more charitable view of the past, and they became the keepers of those very poems and laws and proverbs and Runic inscriptions which on the continent had to be put down with inquisitorial cruelty. The men to whom the collection of the ancient pagan poetry of Iceland is commonly ascribed were men of Christian learning: the one,[[3]] the founder of a public school; the other,[[4]] famous as the author of a history of the North, the Heimskringla (the Home-Circle—the World). It is owing to their labors that we know anything of the ancient religion, the traditions, the maxims, the habits of the Norsemen. Dr. Dasent dwells most fully on the religious system of Iceland, which is the same, at least in its general outline, as that believed in by all the members of the Teutonic family, and may truly be called one of the various dialects of the primitive religious and mythological language of the Aryan race. There is nothing more interesting than religion in the whole history of man. By its side, poetry and art, science and law, sink into comparative insignificance.
CHAPTER III.
NORSE MYTHOLOGY COMPARED WITH THE GREEK.
Dr. Dasent says the Norse mythology may hold its own against any other in the world. The fact that it is the religion of our forefathers ought to be enough to commend it to our attention; but it may be pardonable in us to harbor even a sense of pride, if we find, for instance, that the mythology of our Gothic ancestors suffers nothing, but rather is the gainer in many respects by a comparison with that world-famed paganism of the ancient Greeks. We would therefore invite the attention of the reader to a brief comparison between the Norse and Greek systems of mythology.
A comparison between the two systems is both interesting and important. They are the two grandest systems of cosmogony and theogony of which we have record, but the reader will generously pardon the writer if he ventures the statement already at the outset, that of the two the Norse system is the grander. These two, the Greek and the Norse, have, to a greater extent than all other systems of mythology combined, influenced the civilization, determined the destinies, socially and politically, of the European nations, and shaped their polite literature. In literature it might indeed seem that the Greek mythology has played a more important part. We admit that it has acted a more conspicuous part, but we imagine that there exists a wonderful blindness, among many writers, to the transcendent influence of the blood and spirit of ancient Norseland on North European, including English and American, character, which character has in turn stamped itself upon our literature (as, for instance, in the case of Shakespeare, the Thor among all Teutonic writers); and, furthermore, we rejoice in the absolute certainty to which we have arrived by studying the signs of the times, that the comparative ignorance, which has prevailed in this country and in England, of the history, literature, ancient religion and institutions of a people so closely allied to us by race, national characteristics, and tone of mind as the Norsemen, will sooner or later be removed; that a school of Norse philology and antiquities will ere long flourish on the soil of the Vinland of our ancestors, and that there is a grand future, not far hence, when Norse mythology will be copiously reflected in our elegant literature, and in our fine arts, painting, sculpturing and music.
The Norse mythology differs widely from the Greek. They are the same in essence; that is to say, both are a recognition of the forces and phenomena of nature as gods and demons; but all mythologies are the same in this respect, and the differences, between the various mythological systems, consist in the different ways in which nature has impressed different peoples, and in the different manner in which they have comprehended the universe, and personified or deified the various forces and phenomena of nature. In other words, it is in the ethical clothing and elaboration of the myths, that the different systems of mythology differ one from the other. In the Vedic and Homeric poets the germs of mythology are the same as in the Eddas of Norseland, but this common stock of materials, that is, the forces and phenomena of nature, has been moulded into an infinite variety of shapes by the story-tellers of the Hindoos, Greeks and Norsemen.
Memory among the Greeks is Mnemosyne, the mother of the muses, while among the Norsemen it is represented by Munin, one of the ravens perched upon Odin’s shoulders. The masculine Heimdal, god of the rainbow among the Norsemen, we find in Greece as the feminine Iris, who charged the clouds with water from the lakes and rivers, in order that it might fall again upon the earth in gentle fertilizing showers. She was daughter of Thaumas and Elektra, granddaughter of Okeanos, and the swift-footed gold-winged messenger of the gods. The Norse Balder is the Greek Adonis. Frigg, the mother of Balder, mourns the death of her son, while Aphrodite sorrows for her special favorite, the young rosy shepherd, Adonis. Her grief at his death, which was caused by a wild boar, was so great that she would not allow the lifeless body to be taken from her arms until the gods consoled her by decreeing that her lover might continue to live half the year, during the spring and summer, on the earth, while she might spend the other half with him in the lower world. Thus Balder and Adonis are both summer gods, and Frigg and Aphrodite are goddesses of gardens and flowers. The Norse god of Thunder, Thor (Thursday), who, among the Norsemen, is only the protector of heaven and earth, is the Greek Zeus, the father of gods and men. The gods of the Greeks are essentially free from decay and death. They live forever on Olympos, eating ambrosial food and drinking the nectar of immortality, while in their veins flows not immortal blood, but the imperishable ichor. In the Norse mythology, on the other hand, Odin himself dies, and is swallowed by the Fenriswolf; Thor conquers the Midgard-serpent, but retreats only nine paces and falls poisoned by the serpent’s breath; and the body of the good and beautiful Balder is consumed in the flames of his funeral pile. The Greek dwelt in bright and sunny lands, where the change from summer to winter brought with it no feelings of overpowering gloom. The outward nature exercised a cheering influence upon him, making him happy, and this happiness he exhibited in his mythology. The Greek cared less to commune with the silent mountains, moaning winds, and heaving sea; he spent his life to a great extent in the cities, where his mind would become more interested in human affairs, and where he could share his joys and sorrows with his kinsmen. While the Greek thus was brought up to the artificial society of the town, the hardy Norseman was inured to the rugged independence of the country. While the life and the nature surrounding it, in the South, would naturally have a tendency to make the Greek more human, or rather to deify that which is human, the popular life and nature in the North would have a tendency to form in the minds of the Norsemen a sublimer and profounder conception of the universe. The Greek clings with tenacity to the beautiful earth; the earth is his mother. Zeus, surrounded by his gods and goddesses, sits on his golden throne, on Olympos, on the top of the mountain, in the cloud. But that is not lofty enough for the spirit of the Norsemen. Odin’s Valhal is in heaven; nay, Odin himself is not the highest god; Muspelheim is situated above Asaheim, and in Muspelheim is Gimle, where reigns a god, who is mightier than Odin, the god whom Hyndla ventures not to name.
In Heroes and Hero Worship, Thomas Carlyle makes the following striking comparison between Norse and Greek mythology: To me, he says, there is in the Norse system something very genuine, very great and manlike. A broad simplicity, rusticity, so very different from the light gracefulness of the old Greek paganism, distinguishes this Norse system. It is thought, the genuine thought of deep, rude, earnest minds, fairly opened to the things about them, a face-to-face and heart-to-heart inspection of things—the first characteristic of all good thought in all times. Not graceful lightness, half sport, as in the Greek paganism; a certain homely truthfulness and rustic strength, a great rude sincerity, discloses itself here. Thus Carlyle.
As the visible workings of nature are in the great and main features the same everywhere; in all climes we find the vaulted sky with its sun, moon, myriad stars and flitting clouds; the sea with its surging billows; the land with its manifold species of plants and animals, its elevations and depressions; we find cold, heat, rain, winds, etc., although all these may vary widely in color, brilliancy, depth, height, degree, and other qualities; and as the minds and hearts of men cherish hope, fear, anxiety, passion, etc., although they may be influenced and actuated by them in various ways and to various extents; and as mythology is the impersonation of nature’s forces and phenomena as contemplated by the human mind and heart, so all mythologies, no matter in what clime they originated and were fostered, must of necessity have their stock of materials, their ground-work or foundation and frame in common, while they may differ widely from each other in respect to peculiar characteristics, both in the ethical elaboration of the myth and in the architectural effect of the tout ensemble. Thus we have a tradition about a deluge, for instance, in nearly every country on the globe, but no two nations tell it alike. In Genesis we read of Noah and his ark, and how the waters increased greatly upon the earth, destroying all flesh that moved upon the earth excepting those who were with him in the ark. In Greece, Deukalion and his wife Pyrrha become the founders of a new race of men. According to the Greek story, a great flood had swept away the whole human race, except one pair, Deukalion and Pyrrha, who, as the flood abated, landed on Mt. Parnassos, and thence descending, picked up stones and cast them round about, as Zeus had commanded. From these stones sprung a new race—men from those cast by Deukalion, and women from those cast by his wife. In Norseland, Odin and his two brothers, Vile and Ve, slew the giant Ymer, and when he fell, so much blood flowed from his wounds, that the whole race of frost-giants was drowned, except a single giant, who saved himself with his household in a skiff (ark), and from him descended a new race of frost-giants. Now this is not a tradition carried from one place to the other; it is a natural expression of the same thought; it is a similar effort to account for the origin of the land and the race of man. A people develops its mythology in the same manner as it develops its language. The Norse mythology is related to the Greek mythology to the same extent that the Norse language is related to the Greek language, and no more; and comparative mythology, when the scholar wields the pen, is as interesting as comparative philology.
The Greeks have their chaos, the all-embracing space, the Norsemen have Ginungagap, the yawning abyss between Niflheim (the nebulous world) and Muspelheim (the world of fire). The Greeks have their titans, corresponding in many respects to the Norse giants. The Greeks tell of the Melian nymphs; the Norsemen of the elves, etc.; but these comparisons are chiefly interesting for the purpose of studying the differences between the Norse and Greek mind, which reflects itself in the expression of the thought.
The hard stone weeps tears, both in Greece and in Norseland; but let us notice how differently it is expressed. In Greece, Niobe, robbed of her children, was transformed into a rugged rock, down which tears trickled silently. She becomes a stone and still continues her weeping—
Et lacrymas etiamnum marmora manant,
as the poet somewhere has it. In Norseland all nature laments the sad death of Balder, even the stones weep for him (gráta Baldr).
Let us take another idea, and notice how differently the words symbolize the same truth or thought in the Bible, in Greece, and in Norseland. In the Bible:
And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. And he called unto him his disciples and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: for all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.
In Greece:
A rich Thessalian offered to the temple at Delphi one hundred oxen with golden horns. A poor citizen from Hermion took as much meal from his sack as he could hold between two fingers, and he threw it into the fire that burned on the altar. Pythia said, that the gift of the poor man was more pleasing to the gods than that of the rich Thessalian.
In Norseland the Elder Edda has it:
Knowest thou how to pray?
Knowest thou how to offer?
Better not pray at all
Than to offer too much,
Better is nothing sent
Than too much consumed.
In these few and simple words are couched the same thought as in the Jewish and Greek accounts just given. It is this identity in thought, with diversity of depth, breadth, beauty, simplicity, etc., in the expression or symbol that characterizes the differences between all mythological systems. Each has its own peculiarities stamped upon it, and in these peculiarities the spirit of the people, their tendency to thorough investigation or superficiality, their strength or weakness, their profoundness or frivolity, are reflected as in a mirror.
The beauty of the Greek mythology consists not so much in the system, considered as a whole, as in the separate single groups of myths. Each group has its own center around which it revolves, each group moves in its own sphere, and there develops its own charming perfection, without regard to the effect upon the system of mythology considered as a whole. Each group is exquisite, and furnishes an inexhaustible fountain of legendary narrative, but the central thought that should bind all these beautiful groups into one grand whole is weak. Nay, the complex multiplicity into which it constantly kept developing, as long as the Greek mind was in vigorous activity, was the cause that finally shattered it. Is not this the same spirit, which we find so distinctly developed in the Greek mythology, this want of a centralizing thought, most wonderfully and perfectly reflected in the social and political characteristics of the Greek states, and in all the more recent Romance nations? Each Greek state developed a peculiar beauty and perfection of its own; but between the different states (Sparta, Athens, etc.,) there was no strong bond of union which could keep them together, and hence all the feuds and civil wars and final dissolution. In the Norse mythology, on the other hand, the centralizing idea or thought is its peculiar feature; in it lies its strength and beauty. In the Norse mythology, the one myth and the one divinity is inextricably in communion with the other; and thus, also, the idea of unity, centralization, is a prominent feature, and one of the chief characteristics of the Teutonic nations. While the Greek mythology foreshadowed all the petty states of Greece, as well as those of South Europe and South America, the Norse mythology foreshadowed the political and social destinies of united Scandinavia, united Great Britain, united Germany, and the United States of North America. When the Greeks unite, they fall. We Northerners live only to be united.
As we would be led to suppose, from a study of the physical and climatical peculiarities of Greece and Norseland, we find that the Greek mythology forms an epic poem, and that the Norse is a tragedy. Not only the mythology, considered as a whole, but even the character of its speech, and of its very words and phrases, must necessarily be suggested and modified by the external features of the country. Thus in Greece, where the sun’s rays never scorch, and where the northern winds never pierce, we naturally find in the speech of the people, brilliancy rather than gloom, life rather than decay, and constant renovation rather than prolonged lethargy. But in the frozen-bound regions of the North, where the long arms of the glaciers clutch the valleys in their cold embrace, and the death-portending avalanches cut their way down the mountain-sides, the tongue of the people would, with a peculiar intensity of feeling, dwell upon the tragedy of nature.
The Danish poet Grundtvig expressed a similar idea more than sixty years ago, when he said that the Asa-Faith unfolds in five acts the most glorious drama of victory that ever has been composed, or ever could be composed, by any mortal poet. And Hauch defines these five acts as follows:
Act I. The Creation.
Act II. The time preceding the death of Balder.
Act III. The death of Balder.
Act IV. The time immediately succeeding the death of Balder.
Act V. Ragnarok, the Twilight of the gods, that is, the decline and fall immediately followed by the regeneration of the world.
It is an inestimable peculiarity of the Norse mythology, that it, in addition to beginning with a theogony (birth of the gods), also ends with a theoktony (death of the gods). In the Greek mythology, the drama lacks the fifth or final act, and we have only a prosaic account of how the people at length grew tired of their gods, and left them when they became old and feeble. But the Eddas have a theoktonic myth, in which the heroic death of the gods is sung with the same poetic spirit as their youthful exploits and victories. As the shades of night flee before the morning dawn, thus Valhal’s gods had to sink into the earth, when the idea, that an idol is of no consequence in this world, first burst upon the minds of the idol-worshipers. This idea spontaneously created the myth of Ragnarok. All the elements of its mythical form were foreshadowed in the older group of Norse conceptions. The idea of Ragnarok was suggested already in the Creation; for the gods are there represented as proceeding from giants, that is, from an evil, chaotic source, and, moreover, that which can be born must die. The Greeks did not release the titans from their prisons in Tartaros and bring them up to enter the last struggle with the gods. Signs of such a contest flitted about like clouds in the deep-blue southern sky, but they did not gather into a deluging thunder-storm. The ideas were too broken and scattered to be united into one grand picture. The Greek was so much allured by the pleasures of life, that he could find no time to fathom its depths or rise above it. And hence, when the glories of this life had vanished, there remained nothing but a vain shadow, a lower world, where the pale ghosts of the dead knew no greater happiness than to receive tidings from this busy world.
The Norseman willingly yields the prize to the Greek when the question is of precision in details and external adornment of the figures; but when we speak of deep significance and intrinsic power, the Norseman points quietly at Ragnarok, the Twilight of the gods, and the Greek is silent.
The Goth, as has before been indicated, concentrated life; the Greek divided it into parcels. Thus the Greek mythology is frivolous, the Norse is profound. The frivolous mind lives but to enjoy the passing moment; the profound mind reflects, considers the past and the future. The Greek abandoned himself wholly to the pleasures of this life, regardless of the past or future. The Norseman accepted life as a good gift, but he knew that he was merely its transient possessor. Over every moment of life hangs a threatening sword, which may in the next moment prove fatal. Life possesses no hour of the future. And this is the peculiar characteristic of the heroic life in the North, that our ancestors were powerfully impressed with the uncertainty of life. They constantly witnessed the interchange of life and death, and this nourished in them the thought that life is not worth keeping, for no one knows how soon it may end. Life itself has no value, but the object constantly to be held in view is to die an honorable death. While we are permitted to live, let us strive to die with honor, it is said in Bjarkemaal; and in the lay of Hamder of the Elder Edda we read:
Well have we fought;
On slaughtered Goths we stand,
On those fallen by the sword,
Like eagles on a branch.
Great glory we have gained;
Though now or to-morrow we shall die,—
No one lives till eve
Against the norns’ decree.
It is this same conception of the problem of life that in the Christian religion has assumed a diviner form. Though his ideas were clothed in a ruder form, the Norseman still reached the same depth of thought as when the Christian says: I am ready to lay down my life, if I may but die happy, die a child of God; for what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
The Norseman always concentrated his ideas as much as possible. For this reason he knew but three sins—perjury, murder, and adultery; that is, sin against God, sin against the state, and sin against fellow-man; and all these are in fact but one sin—deceitfulness. In the same manner the Norseman concentrated his ideas in regard to the punishment of sin. When the Eddas tell us about the punishment of the wicked, they sum it all up in Naastrand (the strand of corpses), that place far from the sun, that large and terrible cave, the doors of which open to the north. This cave is built of serpents wattled together, and the heads of all the serpents turn into the cave, filling it with streams of poison, in which perjurers, murderers and adulterers have to wade. The suffering is terrible; gory hearts hang outside of their breasts; their faces are dyed in blood; strong venom-dragons fiercely run through their hearts; their hands are riveted together with ever-burning stones; their clothes a wrapped in flames; remorseless ravens tear their eyes from their heads:
But all the horrors
You cannot know,
That Hel’s condemned endure;
Sweet sins there
Bitterly are punished,
False pleasures
Reap true pain.
The point to be observed is, that all the punishment here described is the same for all the wicked.
But with this, the versatile Greek is not content. He multiplies the sins and the punishments. Tartaros is full of despair and tears, and the wicked there suffer a variety of tortures. Enormous vultures continually gnaw the liver of Tityos, but it always grows again. Ixion is lashed with serpents to a wheel, which a strong wind drives continually round and round. Tantalos suffers from an unceasing dread of being crushed by a great rock that hangs over his head; he stands in a stream of water that flows up to his throat, and he almost perishes from thirst; whenever he bends his head to drink the water recedes; delicious fruits hang over his head, whenever he stretches out his hand they evade his grasp. Thus it is to be tantalized. The Danaïdes must fill a cistern that has holes in the bottom; all the water they pour in runs out equally fast. Sisyphos, sweating and all out of breath, rolls his huge stone up the mountain side; when he reaches the summit, the stone rolls down again.
The fundamental idea is always the same. It is always punishment for sin; but it is expressed and illustrated in many different ways. The variety enhances the beauty. The Greek mythology is rich, for profuseness of illustration is wealth. The Norse mythology is poor, because it is so strong; it consumes all its strength in the profoundness of its thought. The Norse mythology excels in the concentratedness and strength of the whole system; the Greek excels in the beauty of the separate groups of myths. The one is a religion of strength, the other of beauty.
The influence that the outward features of a country exercise upon the thoughts and feelings of men, especially during the vigorous, imaginative, poetic and prophetic childhood of a nation, can hardly be overestimated. Necessarily, therefore, do we find this influence affecting and modifying a nation’s mythology, which is a child-like people’s thoughts and feelings, contemplating nature reflected in a system of religion. Hence, it is eminently fitting, in comparing the Norse mythology with the Greek, to take a look at the home of the Norsemen. We, therefore, cordially invite the traveler from the smooth-beaten tracks of southern Europe to the mountains, lakes, valleys and fjords of Norseland. You may come in midsummer, when Balder (the summer sunlight) rules supreme, when the radiant dawn and glowing sunset kiss each other and go hand in hand on the mountain tops; but we would also invite you to tarry until Balder is slain, when the wintry gloom, with its long nights, sits brooding over the country, and Loke (Thok, fire) weeps his arid tears (sparks) over the desolation he has wrought.
Norway is dark, cloudy, severe, grand, and majestic. Greece is light, variegated, mild, and beautiful. No one can long more deeply for the light of summer, with its mild and gentle breezes from the south, than the Norseman. When he has pondered on his own thoughts during the long winter, when the sun entirely or nearly disappeared from above the horizon, and nothing but northern lights flickered and painted the colors of the rainbow over his head, he welcomes the spring sun with enthusiastic delight. It was this deep longing for Balder that drove swarms of Norsemen on viking expeditions to France, Spain, and England; through the pillars of Hercules to Italy, Greece, Constantinople and Palestine, and over the surging main to Iceland, Greenland and Vinland. It is this deep longing for Balder that every year brings thousands of Norsemen to alight upon our shores and scatter themselves to their numberless settlements in these United States. Still every Norse emigrant, if he has aught in him worthy of his race, thinks he shall once more see those weird, gigantic, snow-capped mountains, that stretched their tall heads far above the clouds and seemed to look half anxiously, half angrily after him as his bark was floating across the deep sea.
There is something in the natural scenery of Norway—a peculiar blending of the grand, the picturesque, the gigantic, bewildering and majestic. There is something that leaves you in bewildering amazement, when you have seen it, and makes you ask yourself, Was it real or was it only a dream? Norway is in fact one huge imposing rock, and its valleys are but great clefts in it. Through these clefts the rivers, fed by vast glaciers upon the mountains, find their way to the sea. They come from the distance, now musically and chattingly meandering their way beneath the willows, now tumbling down the slopes, reeking and distorted by the rocks that oppose them, until they reach some awful precipice and tumble down some eight hundred to a thousand feet in a single leap into the depths below, where no human being ever yet set his foot. We are not overdrawing the picture. You cannot get to the foot of such falls as the Voring Force or Rjukan Force, but you may look over the precipice from above and see the waters pouring like fine and fleecy wool into the seething caldron, where you can discern through the vapory mists shoots of foam at the bottom, like rockets of water, radiating in every direction. You hear a low rumbling sound around you, and the very rock vibrates beneath your feet; and as you hang half giddy over the cliff, clasping your arms around some young birch-tree that tremblingly leans over the brink of the steep, and turn your eyes to the huge mountain mass that breasts you,—its black, melancholy sides seemingly within a stone’s throw, and its snow-white head far in the clouds above,—your thoughts involuntarily turn to him, the God, whom the skald dare not name, to him at whose bidding Gausta Fjeld and Reeking Force sprang from Ginungagap, from the body of the giant Ymer, from chaos. You look longer upon this wonderful scene, and you begin to think of Ragnarok, of the Twilight of the gods. Once seen, and the grand picture, which defies the brush of the painter, will forever afterwards float before your mind like a dream.
Make a journey by steamer on some of those noble and magnificent fjords on the west coast of Norseland. The whole scenery looks like a moving panorama of the finest description. The dark mountains rise almost perpendicularly from the water’s edge to an enormous height; their summits, crowned with ice and snow, stand out sharp and clear against the bright blue sky; and the ravines on the mountain tops are filled with huge glaciers, that clasp their frosty arms around the valley, and send down, like streams of tears along the weather-beaten cheeks of the mountains, numerous waterfalls and cascades, falling in an endless variety of graceful shapes from various altitudes into the fjord below. Sometimes a solitary peak lifts its lordly head a thousand feet clear above the surrounding mountains, and towering like a monarch over all, it defiantly refuses to hold communion with any living thing save the eagle. Here and there a force appears, like a strip of silvery fleecy cloud, suspended from the brow of the mountain, and dashing down more than two thousand feet in one leap; and all this marvelously grand scenery, from base to peak, stands reflected, as deep as it is lofty, in the calm, clear, sea-green water of the fjord, perfect as in a mirror.
There is no storm; the deep water of the fjord is silent and at rest. Not even the flight of a single bird ruffles its glassy surface. As the steamer glides gently along between the rocky walls, you hear no sound save the monotonous throbbing of the screw and the consequent splashing of the water. All else is still as death. The forces hang in silence all around, occasionally overarched by rainbows suspended in the rising mist. The naked mountains have a sombre look, that would make you melancholy were it not for the overpowering grandeur. Sunshine reaches the water only when the sun’s rays fall nearly vertically, in consequence of the immense height of the mountains’ sides, whose enormous shadows almost perpetually overshade the narrow fjord. The noonday sun paints a streak of delicate palish green on one side, forming a striking contrast to the other dark overshadowed side of the profound fjord. It is awe-inspiring. It is stupendous. It is solemnly grand. You can but fancy yourself in a fairy land, with elves and sprites and neckens and trolls dancing in sportive glee all around you.
Words can paint no adequate picture of the stupendousness, majesty and grandeur of Norse scenery; but can the reader wonder any longer that this country has given to the world such marvelous productions in poetry, music and the fine arts? Nay, what is more to our purpose at present, would you not look for a grand and marvelous mythological system from the poetic and imaginative childhood of the nation that inhabits this land? Knock, and it shall be opened unto you! and entering the solemn halls and palaces of the gods, where all is cordiality and purity, you will find there perfectly reflected the wild and tumultuous conflict of the elements, strong rustic pictures, full of earnest and deep thought, awe-inspiring and wonderful. You will find that simple and martial religion which inspired the early Norsemen and developed them like a tree full of vigor extending long branches over all Europe. You will find that simple and martial religion which gave the Norsemen that restless unconquerable spirit, apt to take fire at the very mention of subjection and constraint; that religion which forged the instruments that broke the fetters manufactured by the Roman emperors, destroyed tyrants and slaves, and taught men that nature having made all free and equal, no other reason but their mutual happiness could be assigned for making them dependent. You will find that simple and martial religion which was cherished by those vast multitudes which, as Milton says, the populous North
——poured from her frozen loins to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the South and spread
Beneath Gibraltar and the Libyan sands.
But it may be necessary for the reader to refresh himself with a few draughts of that excellent beverage kept in Minter’s gushing fountain, and drink with his glittering horn, before he will be willing to accept these and many more such statements that we will make in thee course of this introduction.
To return to our theme. The gods of Norseland are stern and awe-inspiring; those of Greece are gentle and lovely. In the Norse mythology we find deep devotion, but seldom tears. In the Greek, there are violent emotions and the fears flow copiously. In Norseland, there is plenty of imagination; but it is not of that light, variegated, butterfly, soap-bubble nature as in Greece. In the Norse mythology there is plenty of cordiality and sincerity, and the gods treat you hospitably to flesh of the boar, Sæhrimner; and the valkyries will give you deep draughts from bowls flowing with ale. In Greece there is gracefulness, a perfect etiquette, and you dine on ambrosia and nectar; there Eros and Psyche, the graces and muses, hover about you like heavenly cherubs. Graces and muses are wanting in Norseland. The Norse mythology is characterized throughout by a deep and genuine sincerity; the Greek, on the other hand, by a sublime gracefulness; but, with Carlyle, we think that sincerity is better than grace.
But the comparison between Norse and Greek mythology is too vast a field for us to attempt to do justice to it in this volume. It would be an interesting work to show how Norse and Greek mythologies respectively have colored the religious, social, political and literary character of Greek and Romance peoples on the one hand, and Norsemen and Teutons on the other. Somebody will undoubtedly in due time be inspired to undertake such a task. We must study both, and when they are harmoniously blended in our nature, we must let them together shape our political, social and literary destinies, and, tempered by the Mosaic-Christian religion, they may be entitled to some consideration even in our religious life.
CHAPTER IV.
ROMAN MYTHOLOGY.
In all that has been said up to this time Roman mythology has not once been mentioned. Why not? Properly speaking, there is no such thing. It is an historical fact, that nearly the whole Roman literature, especially that part of it which may be called belles-lettres, is scarcely anything but imitation. It did not, like the Greek and Old Norse, spring from the popular mind, by which it was cherished through centuries; but at least a large portion of it was produced for pay and for ornament, mostly in the time of the tyrant Augustus, to tickle his ear and gild those chains that were artfully forged to fetter the peoples of southern Europe. This is a dry but stubborn truth, and it is wonderful with what tenacity the schools in all civilized lands have clung to the Roman or Latin language, after it had become nothing but a corpse; as though it could be expected that any genuine culture could be derived from this dead monster.
It is, however, an encouraging fact that the Teutonic races are indicating a tendency to emancipate themselves from the fetters of Roman bondage, and happy should we be if our English words were emancipated therefrom. We should then use neither emancipate, nor tendency, nor indicate, but would have enough of Gothic words to use in place of them. Ay, the signs of the times are encouraging. Look at what is being done at Oxford and Cambridge, in London and in Edinburgh. Behold what has been done during these later years by Dasent, Samuel Laing, Thorpe, Carlyle, Max Müller, Cleasby, Vigfusson, Magnússon, Morris, Hjaltalin, and others. And look at the publications of the Clarendon press, which is now publishing Icelandic Sagas in the original text. This is right. Every scrap of Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon literature must be published, for we must see what those old heroes, who crushed Rome and instituted a new order of things, thought in every direction. We must find out what their aspirations were. To the credit of the Scandinavians it must here be said, that they began to appreciate their old Icelandic literature much sooner than the rich Englishman realized the value of the Anglo-Saxon, and that the English are indebted to Rasmus Rask, the Danish scholar, for the most valuable contribution to Anglo-Saxon studies; but it must also be admitted, in the first place, that the Scandinavians have done far too little for Icelandic, and, in the next place, that without a preparation in Icelandic, but little progress could be made in the study of Anglo-Saxon. But England, with its usual liberality in literary matters, is now rapidly making amends for the past. And well she might. In the publication of the Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon literature she is the greatest gainer, for it is nothing less than a bridge, that will unite her present and past history. Maurer and Möbius are watching with Argos eyes the interests of Teutonic studies in Germany.
Greek should be studied, for that is no imitation. It is indigenous. It is a crystal clear stream flowing unadulterated from the Castalian fountain of Parnassos. Our warfare, therefore, is not against Greek, but against Latin. We have suffered long enough with our necks under the ponderous Roman yoke in all its venous forms; take it as fetters forged by the Roman emperors, as crosiers in the hands of the Roman popes, or as rods in the hands of the Roman school-masters. The Goths severed the fetters of the Roman emperors, Luther and the Germans broke the crosiers of the Roman popes, but all the Teutons have submissively kissed the rod of the Roman school-master, although this was the most dangerous of the three: it was the deadly weapon concealed in the hand of the assassin.
The Romans were a people of robbers both in political and in a literary sense. Nay, the Roman writers themselves tell us that the divine founder of the city, Romulus, was a captain of robbers; that Mars, the god of war, was his father; and that a wolf (rapacity), descending from the mountains to drink, ran at the cry of the child and fed him under a fig-tree, caressing and licking him as if he had been her own son, the infant hanging on to her as if she had been his mother. This Romulus began his great exploits by killing his own brother. When the new city seemed to want women, to insure its duration, he proclaimed a magnificent feast throughout all the neighboring villages, at which feast were presented, among other things, the terrible shows of gladiators. While the strangers were most intent upon the spectacle, a number of Roman youths rushed in among the Sabines, seized the youngest and fairest of their wives and daughters, and carried them off by violence. In vain the parents and husbands protested against this breach of hospitality. This same Romulus ended his heroic career by being assassinated by his friends, or, as others say, torn in pieces in the senate-house. Certain it is that the Romans murdered him, and then declared him the guardian spirit of the city; thus worshiping as a god, by name Quirinus, him whom they could not bear as a king. Such falsehoods as the one the senate invented, when they said that Romulus, whom they had murdered, had been taken up into heaven, the Roman writers tell us were constantly taught to the Romans by Numa Pompilius, and by other Sabine and Etrurian priests; and such instruction laid the foundation of their myths. The history of Romulus is, in fact, in miniature, the history of Rome.
But in spite of this, and much else that can in justice be said against Rome and Latin, we cannot afford to throw the language and literature of the Romans entirely overboard. Their history was too remarkable for that; besides, many scribbled in Latin down through the middle ages, and the Latin language has played so conspicuous a part in English literature, and in the sciences, that no educated man can very well do without it. What we respectfully object to is making it the foundation of all education, this bringing the scholar up, so to speak, on Latin language, history and literature; this nourishing and moulding the tender heart and mind on Roman thought,—thus making the man, intellectually and morally, a slave bound in Roman chains, while we free-born Goths, the descendants of Odin and Thor, ought to begin our education and receive our first impressions from our own ancestors. The tree should draw its nourishment from its own roots; and we Americans are the youngest and most vigorous branch of that glorious Gothic tree, the beautiful and noble Ygdrasil in the Norse cosmogony, whose three grand roots strike down among the Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavians, and Germans. In order fully to comprehend the man, we must study the life of the child; and in order to comprehend ourselves as a people, we must study our own ancient history and literature and make ourselves thoroughly acquainted with the imaginative and prophetic childhood of the Teutonic race. We must give far more attention than we do, first, to English and Anglo-Saxon, and we must, as we have heard Dr. S. H. Carpenter, of the University of Wisconsin most truthfully remark, begin with the most modern English, and then follow it step by step, century by century, back to the most ancient Anglo-Saxon. A living language can be learned ten times as fast as a dead one, and we would apply Dr. Carpenter’s[[5]] principle still further. We would make one of the living Romantic languages (French, Italian, or Spanish,) a key to the Latin; and above all, we would make modern Greek a preparation for old classic Greek. It cannot be controverted that children learn to read and write a language much sooner and easier if they first learn to speak it, even though the book-speech may differ considerably from the dialect which the child learned from his mother; ample evidence of which fact may be found in the different counties of England and Scotland and throughout the European countries.
In the next place, that is, next after English and Anglo-Saxon, we must study German, Mæso-Gothic and the Scandinavian languages, and especially Icelandic, which is the only living key to the history of the middle ages, and to the Old Norse literature. It is the only language now in use in an almost unchanged form, through a knowledge of which we can read the literature of the middle ages. We must by no means forget that we have Teutonic antiquities to which we stand in an entirely different and far closer relation than we do to Greece or Rome. And the Norsemen have an old literature, which the scholar must of necessity be familiar with in order to comprehend the history of the middle ages.
When we have thus done justice to our own Teutonic race we may turn our attention to the ancient peoples around the Mediterranean Sea, the most important of which in literary and historical respects are the Hebrews, Greeks and Romans. The antiquities of these peoples will always form important departments in our colleges and universities, and it is our duty to study them; but they should not, as they still to a great extent do, constitute the all-absorbing subject of our attention, the summa summarum, the foundation and superstructure of our education and culture.
It has been argued by some that the Latin is more terse than English; but did the reader ever reflect that it takes about sixty syllables in Latin to express all that we can say in English with forty syllables? The large number of inflectional endings have also been lauded as a point of superior excellence in the Latin; but as a language grows and makes progress, it gradually emancipates itself from the thraldom of inflection and contents itself with the abstract, spiritual chain that links the words together into sentences; and did the reader ever run across this significant truth, expressed by George P. Marsh, who says that in Latin you have to be able to analyse and parse a sentence before you can comprehend it, while in English you must comprehend the sentence before you can analyse or parse? Forward has been and will forever be the watchword of languages. They must either progress or die.
When the question is asked, whether Hebrew, Greek or Latin should be preferred by the student, we answer that the choice is not a difficult one to make, and our opinion has in fact already been given. Latin is the language of a race of robbers; most of it is nothing but imitation, and besides it is a mere corpse, while Greek is the only one of the three that is still living, and modern Greek—for that is what we must begin with—is the key to the old Greek literature with its rich, beautiful and original store of mythology, poetry, history, oratory, and philosophy. As Icelandic in the extreme north of Europe is the living key to the middle ages and to the celebrated Old Norse Eddas and Sagas, so modern Greek in the far south is the living language, that introduces us to the spirit of Homer, Herodotus, Demosthenes, and Plato; and thus the norns or fates, who preside over the destinies of men and nations, have in a most wonderful manner knit, or rather woven, us together with the Greeks, and the more we investigate the development and progress of nations and civilization, the more vividly the truth will flash upon our minds, that the Greek and the Icelandic are two silver-haired veterans, who hold in their hands two golden keys,—the one to unlock the treasures of ancient times, the other those of the middle ages; the one the treasures of the south and the other those of the north of Europe. But we must free ourselves from the bondage of Rome!
When we get away from Rome, where slaves were employed as teachers, and pay more attention to the antiquities of Greece, where it was the highest honor that the greatest, noblest and most eloquent men could attain to, to be listened to by youths eager to learn and to be taught, then the present slavery both of the teacher and of the student will cease, but scarcely before then.
The case of Shakespeare is an eminent example to us of what the Goth is able to accomplish, when he breaks the Roman chains. His works are not an imitation of Seneca or Æschylus, nor are they the fruit of a careful study of the Ars Poetica or Gradus ad Parnassum. No, he knew but little Latin and less Greek, but what made him the undisputed Hercules in English literature was the heroic spirit of Gothdom which flowed in his veins, and which drove him away from the Latin school before his emotional nature had been flogged and tortured out of him. Shakespeare, and not Roman literature and scholasticism, is the lever that has raised English literature and given it the first rank among all the Teutons. It is not, we repeat, the deluge of Latin words that flood it, that has given this preëminence to English, but it is the genuine Gothic strength that everywhere has tried to break down the Roman walls. The slaves of Latin will find it difficult enough to explain how Shakespeare, who was not for an age, but for all time,—he whose Latin was small and whose Greek was less,—how he, the star of poets, the sweet swan of Avon, was made as well as born. Ay, he was made. He was also one of those who, to cast a living line had to sweat, and strike the second heat upon the Muses’ anvil. It is true that Shakespeare did not arrive at a full appreciation of the Gothic spirit, for he did not have an opportunity to acquaint himself thoroughly with the Gothic myths; but then they ever haunted him like the ghost of Hamlet, accusing their murderer, without finding any avenger. We therefore count Shakespeare on our side of this great question.
May the time speedily come, nay, the time must come, when Greek and Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse and Gothic and German will shake hands over the bloody chasm of Roman vandalism!
We fancy we see more than one who reads this chapter, and does not remember that he is a son of Thor, stretch out his hand for Mjolner, that huge and mighty hammer of Thor, to swing it at us for what we have said and have not said about Rome, Roman mythology, and the Latin language and literature; but, alas! for him, and fortunately for us, the Roman school-master took Thor’s hammer away from him and whipped the strength wherewith to wield it out of him. We only repeat that we know nothing of Roman mythology, but the Greek and Norse are twin sisters, and with the assistance of the Mosaic-Christian religion they have a grand mission in the Gothic-Greek development of the world.
CHAPTER V.
INTERPRETATION OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY.
Considerable has been said on this subject in the preceding pages, and the interpretation which will be adhered to in this volume has been clearly indicated. We propose now to give a general synopsis of the more prominent methods of interpreting Norse mythology.
In one thing all undoubtedly agree, namely, that all mythologies embody religious faith. As we, to this day, each in his own way, seek to find God by philosophical speculation (natural theology), by our emotions, by good deeds, or by all these at one time; and as we, when we have found him, rest upon his breast, although we do not fully agree as to our conception of him, each one of us having his own God as each has his own rainbow; thus our forefathers sought God everywhere—in the rocks, in the babbling stream, in the heavy ear of grain, in the star-strewn sky of night, and in the splendor of the sun. It was revelations of divinity that they looked for. The fundamental element in their mythology was a religious one, and this fact must never be lost sight of. To interpret a myth, then, is not only to give its source, but also its aim and object, together with the thoughts and feelings that it awakens in the human breast.
Some writers (William and Mary Howitt and others) maintain that the Norse mythology is a degradation of, or aberration from, the true religion, which was revealed to man in the earliest period of the history of the human race and is found pure and undefiled in the Bible; that it presents sparkling waters from the original fountain of tradition. They point with seriousness to it as something that bears us on toward the primal period of one tongue and one religion. In reference to the Elder Edda, they say that it descended through vast ages, growing, like all traditions, continually darker, and accumulating lower matter and more divergent and more pagan doctrines, as the walls of old castles become covered with mosses and lichens, till it finally assumed the form it which it was collected from the mouths of the people, and put in a permanent written form. These interpreters claim that through all mythologies there run certain great lines, which converge toward one common center and point to an original source of a religious faith, which has grown dimmer and more disfigured, the further it has gone. The geographical center, they say, from which all these systems of heathen belief have proceeded is the same—Central Asia; they point to the eastern origin of the Norseman; they assert, with full confidence, that the religious creed of the Norseman is the faith of Persia, India, Greece, and every other country, transferred to the snow-capped mountains of Norway and jokuls of Iceland, having only been modified there, so as to give it an air of originality without destroying its primeval features. They argue that Loke of the Norsemen, Pluto of the Greeks, Ahriman of the Persians, Siva of the Hindoos, etc., are all originally the devil of the Bible, who has changed his name and more or less his personal form and characteristics. The biblical Trinity is degenerated into the threefold trinity of Odin, Vile, and Ve; Odin, Hœner, and Loder; and Odin, Thor, and Balder. They find in the Norse cosmogony, in a somewhat mutilated and interpolated condition, the Scripture theory of the creation, preservation, destruction and regeneration of the world. Ygdrasil is the tree of life in the garden of Eden; Ask and Embla, the first human pair, are Adam and Eve; the blood of the slain giant Ymer, in which the whole race of frost-giants was drowned, (excepting one pair, who were saved, and from whom a new giant race descended,) is the flood of Noah, the deluge; the citadel called Midgard is the tower of Babel; in the death of Balder, by Hoder, who was instigated by Loke, they find the crucifixion of Christ by Judas, instigated by the devil, etc.; displaying a vast amount of erudition, profoundness and ingenuity, that might have been applied to some good purpose. We refrain from giving more of the results of their learned and erudite investigations, from fear of seducing ourselves or our readers into the adoption of their absurdities.
Other scholars (Snorre Sturleson, Saxo Grammaticus, Suhm, Rask, and others,) give us what is called an historical interpretation, asserting that Odin, Thor, Balder, and the other deities that figure in the Norse mythology, are veritable ancestors of the Norsemen,—men and women who have lived in the remote past; and as distance lends enchantment to the view, so the ordinary kings and priests of pre-historic times have been magnified into gods. Odin and the other divinities are in Snorre Sturleson’s Heimskringla represented as having come to Norseland from the great Svithiod, a country lying between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. According to the historical interpretation the mythical worlds are real countries that can be pointed out on the map. This was the prevailing view taken during the last two centuries, and even that sagacious scholar of the earlier part of this century, Professor Rasmus Rask, adheres almost exclusively to the historical interpretation.
It is curious to read these old authors and observe how sincerely they have looked upon Odin as an extraordinary and enterprising person who formerly ruled in the North and inaugurated great changes in the government, customs and religion of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. They speak of the great authority which he enjoyed, and how he even had divine honors paid to him. They ingeniously connect Odin with the Roman Commonwealth, with Mithridates and Pompey (see p. [232]). This historical sketch of Odin will be given in connection with the Odinic myth; suffice it here to say that the king of Pontus and all his barbarian allies were obliged to yield to the genius of Pompey. And here it is said that Odin was one of the number defeated by Pompey. He was obliged to withdraw himself by flight from the vengeance of the Romans! Odin came to Norway by way of Holstein and Jutland. On his way through Denmark he founded the city Odinse, and placed his son Skjold upon the Danish throne. How profound! What erudition! How much like the enthusiastic work of the Swede Rudbeck, who makes out the Atlantis of Plato to be Sweden, and shows that Japhet, son of Noah, came there and settled with his family! What profound learning (gelahrtheit) these men must have possessed! We are amazed and confounded at the vast amount of mental force that has been brought into activity, at the untiring zeal and the marvelous ingenuity, with which these theories have been set up; but we cannot witness all this without a feeling of deep regret that so much erudition and ingenuity, so much mental strength, was so fruitlessly thrown away. They were generally profound Latin scholars, and wrote the most of their books in Latin; but those ponderous tomes make their authors fools in folios in the light of modern historical knowledge. They studied by that kind of lamp that illuminates a small spot on the table, but leaves the whole room dark. A more careful and enlightened study of our early literature has of course given the death-blow to so prosaic an interpretation of the Norse mythology as the purely historical one is.
Then we are met by the so-called ethical interpretation of mythology, seeking its origin in man’s peculiar nature, especially in a moral point of view. The advocates of this theory claim that mythology is a mere fiction created to satisfy man’s spiritual, moral, and emotional nature. The gods according to this interpretation represent man’s virtues and vices, emotions, faculties of mind and muscle, etc., personified. Odin, they say, is wisdom; Balder is goodness; Thor is strength; Heimdal is grace, etc. Again: Thor is the impersonation of strength and courage; the giants represent impotent sloth and arrogance; the conflicts between Thor and the giants are a struggle going on in the human breast. And again: the mischief-maker Loke instigated the blind Hoder to kill the good Balder; Nanna, Balder’s wife, took her husband’s death so much to heart, that she died of grief; Hoder is afterwards slain by Odin’s son Vale; all nature weeps for Balder, but still he is not released from Hel (hell). That is, physical strength with its blind earthly desires (Hoder), guided by sin (Loke), unconsciously kills innocence, (Balder). Love (Nanna) dies broken-hearted; reflection (Vale) is aroused and subdues physical strength (Hoder); but innocence (Balder) has vanished from the world to remain in Hel’s regions until the earth is regenerated, after Ragnarok. The ethical interpretation makes the gods the faculties of the spirit, and the giants the faculties of the body, in man; and between the two, soul and body, there is a constant struggle for supremacy. This interpretation is very good, because it is very poetic, but it has more to do with the application of the myths than with their primary source.
Finally, an interpretation, that has frequently been alluded to in the preceding pages of this introduction, is the physical, or interpretation from nature,—impersonation of the visible workings of nature. The divinities are the forces and phenomena of nature personified; and evidence of the correctness of this view can be abundantly presented by defining etymologically names of the several divinities, their attributes, dwellings and achievements, and by showing how faithfully the works of the gods correspond with the events and scenes of the outward world. There is no doubt that this is the true interpretation of all mythologies; and that it is, so to speak, the key to the Norse mythology, it is hoped will be sufficiently demonstrated in the second part of this book in connection with the myths themselves; but the ethical, or perhaps better the spiritual, interpretation must by all means be added. The spiritual or ethical and the physical interpretation must be combined. In other words, we can scarcely make the interpretation too anthropomorphic. The phenomena and forces of nature have been personified by our forefathers into deities, but the myths have been elaborated to suit and correspond with the moral, intellectual and emotional nature,—the inner life of man. The deities have been conceived in a human form, with human attributes and affections. The ancient Norsemen have made their mythology reflect human nature, and have clothed the gods with their own faculties of mind and body in respect to good and evil, virtue and vice, right and wrong. As Rudolf Keyser beautifully expresses himself:
The gods are the ordaining powers of nature clothed in personality. They direct the world, which they created; but beside them stand the mighty goddesses of fate and time, the great norns, who sustain the world-structure, the all-embraceing tree of the world (Ygdrasil). The life of the world is a struggle between the good and light gods on the one side, and the offspring of chaotic matter, the giants, nature’s disturbing forces, on the other. This struggle extends also into man’s being: the spirit proceeds from the gods, the body belongs to the world of the giants; they struggle with each other for the supremacy. If the spirit conquers by virtue and bravery, man goes to heaven after death, to fight in concert with the gods against the evil powers; but if the body conquers and links the spirit to itself by weakness and low desires, then man sinks after death to the world of the giants in the lower regions, and joins himself with the evil powers in the warfare against the gods.
Nature is the mother at whose breast we all are nourished. In ancient times she was the object of childlike contemplation, nay, adoration. Nature and men were in close communion with each other, much closer than we are now. They had a more delicate perception of, and more sympathy for, suffering nature; and it were well if some of the purity of this thought could be breathed down to us, their prosaic descendants, who have abandoned the offerings to give place to avarice (die Habsucht nahm zu, als die Opfer aufhörten.—Grimm).
It was a beautiful custom, which is still preserved in some parts of Norway, to fasten a bundle of grain to a long pole, which on Christmas eve was erected somewhere in the yard, or on the top of the house or barn, for the wild birds to feed upon early on Christmas-day morning,—(our heathen ancestors also had the Christmas or Yule-tide festival). In our degenerate times we think of chickens and geese and turkeys, but who thinks of the innocent and a suffering little birds? Nay, our ancestors lay nearer to nature’s breast. Have we had our hearts hardened by the iron yoke of civilized government? We certainly need to ask ourselves that question.
The contemplation of the heavens produced the myth about Odin, and the thunder-storm suggested Thor, as in the Greek mythology Argos with his hundred eyes represents the starry heavens, and the wandering Io, whom Hera had set him to watch, is the wandering moon. But stopping here would be too prosaic; it would be leaving out the better half; it would be giving the empty shell and throwing away the kernel; it would be giving the skull of the slain warrior without any ale in it; it would be doing great injustice to our forefathers and robbing ourselves of more than half of the intellectual pleasure that a proper study of their myths afford. The old Frisians contemplated the world as a huge ship, by name Mannigfual (a counterpart of our ash-tree Ygdrasil); the mountains were its masts; the captain must go from one place to another of the ship, giving his orders, on horseback; the sailors go aloft as young men to make sail, and when they come down again their hair and beard are white. Ay, we are all sailors on board this great ship, and we all have enough to do, each in his own way, to climb its rope ladders and make and reef its sails, and ere we are aware of it our hairs are gray; but take the anthropomorphic element out of this myth, and what is there left of it?
Our ancestors were not prosaic. They were poetic in the truest sense of that word. Our life is divided between the child, the vigorous man, and old age,—the imaginative and prophetic child, the emotional and active man, and the reflecting elder. So a nation, which like the ancient Greek and Norse, for instance, has had a natural growth and development, has first its childhood of imagination and prophecy, producing poetry (Homer and the Eddas); then its manhood of emotion and activity, producing history (Herodotus and the Sagas); and then its old age of mature reflection, producing philosophy (Socrates). Dividing the three periods in Greek history more definitely, we will find that imagination and poetry predominated during the whole time before Solon; emotion, activity and history during the time between Solon and Alexander the Great; and then reflection and philosophy, such as they were, from Alexander to the collapse of the Greek states.
Even among the Romans, the most prosaic of all peoples, that nation of subduers, enslavers and robbers, traces of this growth from poetic childhood through historic manhood to philosophic old age can be found, which proves moreover that this is a law of human development that cannot be eradicated, although it may be perverted. That of the Romans is a most distorted growth, showing that as the twig is bent the tree is inclined. Ut sementem feceris, ita metes—as you sow, so will you reap,—to quote the Romans’ own words against them. The Romans had their poetic and prophetic age during the reign of the seven kings; their emotional and historical age during the most prosperous and glorious epoch of the republic; and finally, their age of reflection and philosophy began with the time of the elder Cato. Rome took a distorted, misanthropic course from the beginning, so that her profoundest and most poetic myth is that of the warlike Mars and the rapacious wolf, the father and nurse of the fratricide Romulus. This myth is prophetic, and in it the whole history of Rome is reflected as in a mirror. The Romans themselves claim that their Sibylline books (prophecy) belong to the time of their kings. When, during the transition period from the emotional to the philosophic age, Rome was to have dramatic writers, she produced in comedy the clumsy Plautus, whom the Romans employed in turning a hand-mill; and in tragedy the flat Ennius, whose works were lost; so that her only really poetical tragedy is the fate of her dramatic poets. Her other poetical works, of which the world has boasted so much, came later, after the death of Cicero, their most famous orator, during the life of the crowned Augustus; they came like an Iliad after Homer, and the most of them was a poor imitation of Greek literature, just as this book is a poor imitation of Scandinavian literature. Ex ipso fonte dulcius bibuntur aquæ—go to the fountain itself if you want to drink the pure and sparkling water. The Roman literature is eminently worthy of the consideration of the historical philosopher, but it ought not to be canonized and used to torture the life out of students with.
The Hebrews have their imaginative, poetic and prophetic age from Genesis to Moses; their emotional and historical age from Moses to Solomon, and then begins their age of reflection and philosophy.
Taking a grand, colossal, general view of the history of the world, we would say that the ancients belong chiefly to the poetic age, the middle ages to the emotional and modern times to the reflecting age, of the human race. Thus the life of the individual is, in miniature, the life of a people or of the whole human family.
This was a digression, and we confess that it is not the first one we have made; but in the world of thought, as in the world of music, monotony is tedious; and the reader having perhaps refreshed his mind by the interlude, we will proceed to discuss further the union of the ethical with the physical interpretation of mythology. Physical interpretation alone is the shell without the kernel. Nature gives us only the source of the myth; but we want its value in the minds and hearts of a people in their childhood. The touching gracefulness of Nanna, and of Idun reclining on Brage’s breast, was not suggested by nature alone, but the pictures of these reflect corresponding natures in our ancestors. To explain a myth simply by the phenomenon in external nature (be it remembered, however, that man also constitutes a part of nature) that suggested it to the ancients, would be reducing mythology to a natural science and it is sad to witness how the beautiful and poetical Eddas, in the hands of some, have dwindled down into the dry chemistry, chronology, electro-magnetism, mathematics, astronomy, or, if you please, the almanacs, of our forefathers, instead of being presented as the grand, prophetic drama which foreshadowed the heroic and enterprising destiny of the Teutonic nations. The twelve dwellings of the gods, they say, represent the twelve signs of the zodiac; Balder they make the constellation of the lion; Odin’s twelve names, they say, are the twelve months of the year; his fifty-two names, which he himself enumerates in Grimnismaal, are the fifty-two weeks in the year; the thirteen valkyries are the thirteen new moons in the year. How profound! How perfectly everything adapts itself to the theory! This invaluable discovery was made on the seventh of December, 1827. It ought to be a legal holiday! The one ox, three measures of mead and eight salmon which Thor, according to the Elder Edda, consumed, when he had come to Jotunheim to fetch his hammer, they claim also represent the year’s twelve months, for 1 + 3 + 8 = 12. Furthermore, the three gods, Haar, Jafnhaar, and Thride, are the three fundamental elements, sulphur, mercury, and salt; Odin, Vile, and Ve, are the three laws of the universe, gravity, motion, and affinity. Thor is electricity; his belt is an electric condenser, his gloves an electric conductor. Hrungner, with whom he contends, is petrifaction; the Mokkerkalfe, whom Thjalfe slew, is the magnetic needle. Gunlad is oxygen, Kvaser is sugar, etc. But this will do. Are not these golden keys, with which to unlock the secret chambers of the Eddas!
All the deities do not represent phenomena and forces of nature, and this fact gives if possible still more importance to the anthropomorphic interpretation. Some myths are mere creations of the imagination, to give symmetry and poetical finish to the system, or we might say to the drama—to complete the delineations of the characters that appear on the stage of action. Hermod, for instance, is no phenomenon in physical nature: he is the servant of Odin in the character of the latter as the god of war. Odin is the god of the heavens, but it is not in this capacity he sends out the valkyries to pick up the fallen heroes on the field of battle.
In rejecting the historical interpretation, we do by no means mean to deny the influence of the mythology upon the social, religious, political and literary life of the Norsemen. But this is not an explanation of the mythology itself, but of its influence upon the minds of the people. If we mean it in a prophetic sense, the Norse mythology has also an historical interpretation. In it was mirrored the grand future of the Norse spirit; by it the Norsemen were taught to make those daring expeditions to every part of the civilized world, making conquests and planting colonies; to cross the briny deep and open the way to Iceland, Greenland and America; to take possession of Normandy in France, subdue England and make inroads into Spain and Italy; to pass between the pillars of Hercules, devastate the classic fields of Greece, and carve their mysterious runes on the marble lion in Athens; to lay the foundations of the Russian Empire, penetrate the walls of Constantinople and swing their two-edged battle-axes in its streets; to sail up the rivers Rhine, the Scheldt, the Seine, and the Loire, conquering Cologne and Aachen and besieging Paris; to lead the van of the chivalry of Europe in rescuing the holy sepulchre and rule over Antioch and Tiberias under Harald; to sever the fetters forged by the Roman emperors, break the crosiers in the hands of the Roman popes and infuse a nobler and freer spirit into the nations of the earth; and by their mythology they were taught to give to the world that germ of liberty that struck root in the earliest literature of France, budded in the Magna Charta of England, and developed its full-blown flowers in the American Declaration of Independence.
The principal object of the second part of this volume is to give a faithful, accurate and complete presentation of the myths; but interpretations and reflections will be freely indulged in. The basis of the interpretation will be the physical and ethical combined, the two taken as a unit. The reflections will consist in pointing out occasionally the fulfilment of the prophecies historically, or rather the application of the myths to historical philosophy. When only the physical source of the myth is given, its anthropomorphic element must be supplied in the mind of the reader. When Thor is given as the impersonation of thunder, and Heimdal as the rainbow, clothed with personality, then the reader must consider what sensations would be awakened in his own breast by these phenomena if he had been taught to regard them as persons. And when he has given them stature, gait, clothing, bearing, expression of the eye and countenance, and personal character corresponding with their lofty positions in the management of the affairs of the world, then he can form some idea of these deities as contemplated by the ancient Norsemen.
CHAPTER VI.
THE NORSE MYTHOLOGY FURNISHES ABUNDANT AND EXCELLENT MATERIAL FOR THE USE OF POETS, SCULPTORS AND PAINTERS.
In a previous chapter it was claimed that the time must come when Norse mythology will be copiously reflected in our elegant literature and is our fine arts; and we insist that we who are Goths, and branches of the noble ash Ygdrasil, ought to develop some fibre, leaves, buds and flowers with nourishment drawn from the roots of our own tree of existence, and not be constantly borrowing from our neighbors. If our poets would but study Norse mythology, they would find in it ample material for the most sublime poetry. The Norse mythology is itself a finished poem, and has been most beautifully presented in the Elder Edda, but it furnishes at the same time a variety of themes that can be combined and elaborated into new poems with all the advantages of modern art, modern civilization and enlightenment. With the spirit of Christianity, a touch of beauty and grandeur can be unconsciously thrown over the loftiness of stature, the growth of muscle, the bold masses of intellectual masonry, the tempestuous strength of passions, those gods and heroes of impetuous natures and gigantic proportions, those overwhelming tragedies of primitive vigor, which are to be found in the Eddas. If our American poet would but pay a visit to Urd’s fountain, to Time’s morning in our Gothic history, and tarry there until the dawn tinges the horizon with crimson and scarlet and the sun breaks through the clouds and sends its inspiring rays into his soul,—then his poetry and compositions would reflect those auroral rays with intensified effulgence; it would shine upon and enlighten and gladden a whole nation. We need poets who can tell us, in words that burn, about our Gothic ancestors, in order that we may be better able to comprehend ourselves. It has heretofore been explained how the history of nations divides itself into three periods—the imaginative, the emotional, and reflective; poetry, history, and philosophy; and how these have their miniature counterparts in the life of any single person—childhood, manhood, and old age; and now we are prepared to present this claim, that the poetic, imaginative and prophetic period of our race should be compressed into the soul of the child. The poetic period of his own race should be melted and moulded into poetry, touched by a spark of Christian refinement and love, and then poured, so to speak, into the soul of the child. The child’s mind should feed upon the mythological stories and the primitive folklore of his race. It should be nourished with milk from its own mother’s breast. Does any one doubt this? Let him ask the Scandinavian poets: ask what kindled the imaginative fancy of Welhaven; ask what inspired the force and simplicity of phrase in Oelenschlæger’s poetry; ask what produced the unadorned loveliness with which Björnstjerne Björnson expresses himself, and the mountain torrent that rushes onward with impetuous speed in Wergeland; ask what produced the refinement of phrase of Tegner, and the wild melodious abandon of Ibsen;—and they will tell him that in the deep defiles of that sea-girt and rock-bound land called Norseland, where the snow-crowned mountains tower like castle-walls, they found in a leafy summer bower a Saga-book full of magic words and beautiful pictures, and, like Alexander of old, they made this wonderful book their pillow. They may tell you that the Scandinavian schools, like the American, are pretty thoroughly Latinized, but that they stole out of the school-room, studied this Saga-book, and from it they drew their inspiration.
The writer once asked the famous Norse violinist, Ole Bull, what had inspired his musical talent and given his music that weird, original, inexplicable expression and style. He said, that from childhood he had taken a profound delight in the picturesque and harmonious combination of grandeur, majesty, and gracefulness of the flower-clad valleys, the silver-crested mountains, the singing brooks, babbling streams, thundering rivers, sylvan shores and smiling lakes of his native land. He had eagerly devoured all the folk-lore, all the stories about trolls, elves and sprites that came within his reach; he had especially reveled in all the mythological tales about Odin, Thor, Balder, Ymer, the Midgard-serpent, Ragnarok, etc.; and these things, he said, have made my music. Truthfully has our own poet Longfellow, who has himself taken more than one draft from Mimer’s fountain, and communed more than once with Brage—said of Ole Bull:
He lived in that ideal world
Whose language is not speech, but song;
Around him evermore the throng
Of elves and sprites their dances whirled;
The Strömkarl sang, the cataract hurled
Its headlong waters from the height,
And mingled in the wild delight
The scream of sea-birds in their flight,