[Footnote 1: The word Runes is here used in its original
signification,--that of mystery or secret. Each letter of the Runic
alphabet was supposed to possess a mysterious and magical power. In the
Scandinavian mythology, each Rune was originally dedicated to some
deity; it also denoted some natural quality or object: their Asiatic
origin is now proved beyond doubt. There is a remarkable poem in the
elder Edda--the Song of Brynhilde, in which mention is made of several
kinds of Runes. Among them may be classed numerous amulets of most of
the Asiatic tribes, as well as of the Egyptians, Greeks, &c., on which
these characters were cut or traced. The custom among sailors of
marking their skins with letters and devices may clearly be traced to
Runic origin, and the tattooing among savage tribes is evidently
similarly derived. In Wilson's account of the Pelew Islands, King Abba
Thule is represented as tattooed with two crosses on the breast and two
on one shoulder, with a snake, and these distinct northern Runes
[Illustration of rune]. In the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth
centuries, when superstition dragged her victims to the stake
throughout all Christian Europe, the use of Runes became an especial
object for the persecutions exercised by the authorities and clergy of
Iceland,--the word Rune there signifying a mysterious and magical
character. The songs of the Finns and Laps, which are supposed by them
to possess magic powers, are still called Runes.--_Translator_. Vide
_Professor Finn Magnussen's Notes to the Elder Edda_, vol. iii.]
[Footnote 2: King Eric the Sixth of Denmark, surnamed Plough Penny, the
son and successor of Valdemar the Victorious, was murdered by the
command of his brother, Junker Abel, Duke of Slesvig, under
circumstances of peculiar atrocity, on the 4th of August, 1250. Abel
had frequently rebelled against his brother; but at last finding that
his forces were unequal to the contest, he had recourse to stratagem,
and made overtures of friendship to Eric, who gladly accepted them, and
hesitated not to visit his brother at one of his palaces in Slesvig.
After an apparently cordial reception, however, the duke contrived to
turn the conversation on their former feuds, and reproached the king
with having devastated his territories, saying, "Dost thou not remember
how thou didst plunder my town of Slesvig, and compel my daughter to
fly barefoot to a place of shelter? Thou shalt not do so twice." Eric
was then seized and led to the river Slie, where he was placed in a
boat, beheaded, and his body sunk by stones into the deepest part of
the stream. In order to cover this crime, Duke Abel and twenty-four of
his knights, according to the usage of those times, endeavoured to
clear themselves of suspicion, by solemnly affirming that the king had
met with his death by the upsetting of the boat, but two months
afterwards the headless trunk floated to the river side, and the murder
became known. The body was deposited in St. Benedict's church at
Ringsted, where the Translator not long ago was shown one of the bones
through an aperture of the walled-up niche.]
[Footnote 3: The placing runes upon the tongue was employed in Runic
magic to waken the dead priestess, and compel her to give a prophetic
answer to the magician whose spells had aroused her from the sleep of
death. In the song of Vegtam, in the Elder Edda, known to the English
reader in our poet Gray's fine translation, "The Descent of Odin," the
Scandinavian bard describes the magic power of runes traced on the
ground towards the north, and repeated as incantations, in calling
forth the prophetic response from the tomb.
"Right against the eastern gate,
By the moss-grown pile he sate,
Where long of yore to sleep was laid
The dust of the prophetic maid;
Facing to the northern clime,
Thrice he traced the Runic rhyme;
Thrice pronounced in accents dread,
The thrilling verse that wakes the dead,
Till from out the hollow ground,
Slowly breathed a sullen sound."
_Translator's Note_.]
[Footnote 4: Baldur, the son of Odin, was slain by Hother, a Danish
warrior, his rival in the affections of Nanna, a Norwegian princess.]
[Footnote 5: Fragment of an old Danish ballad entitled "Agnete and the
Merman."]
[Footnote 6: One of the most ancient and characteristic ballads of the
north. It is the subject of one of M. Ohlenschlager's most popular
tragedies.]
[Footnote 7: The superstitious belief in the existence of mermen,
prevailed in Denmark at no very remote period. It seems probable that
the pirates or Vikings of the north availed themselves of this
superstition, by assuming the disguise of mermen to scare the
inhabitants from those coasts it was important they should possess. The
adventures of some Scandinavian pirate and maiden probably gave rise to
the curious old ballad of Agnete and the Merman. See the Danish "Kjaempe
Viser."--_Translator_.]
[Footnote 8: Fragment of an heroic ballad.]
[Footnote 9: Varulve (Manwolf) according to ancient superstition, a man
who had been metamorphosed for a certain time into a wolf. The
superstitions of the Scandinavians, as handed down in the Sagas and
Kempe Vise (heroic ballads), partake so much of the character of
Eastern fable, that there can be little doubt of their Asiatic
origin.--_Translator_.]
[Footnote 10: Nidaros, the ancient name of Drontheim in Norway.]
[Footnote 11: "Vola's qvad," or "The Song of the Prophetess," is one of
the most imaginative poems in the Elder Edda. It opens with an account
of the springing forth of creation from chaos, and after announcing
death as the final doom of all physical nature, ends by foretelling the
rise of a better and brighter world, from the ocean in which the first
had been engulphed.--_Translator_.]
[Footnote 12: The name of the ancient castle of Copenhagen, built by
Bishop Absalon in the thirteenth century as a defence against pirates.]