MYTHOLOGY.
The religious conceptions of the most famous nations of antiquity
are connected with the beginnings of civilisation. We are told by
Dr. Wägner, in his work "Asgard and the Gods," of the traditions of
our northern ancestors, the story of the myths and legends of Norse
antiquity. The first of their heroes was Odin, the god of battles,
armed with his war spear, followed by the Walkyries, who consecrate the
fallen heroes with a kiss, and bear them away to the halls of the gods,
where they enjoy the feasts of the blessed. Later, Odin invents the
Runes, through which he gains the power of understanding and ruling all
things. He thus becomes the spirit of nature, the all-father. Then the
ash tree, "Yggdrasil," grew up; the tree of the universe, of time, and
life. The boughs stretched out to heaven, and over-shadowed Walhalla,
the hall of the heroes. This world-tree was evergreen, watered daily by
the fateful Norns, and could not wither until the last battle should be
fought, where life, time, and the world were all to pass away. This was
related by a skald, the northern bard, to the warriors while resting
from the fatigue of fighting, by tables of mead.
The myths were founded on the belief of the Norse people, regarding the
creation of the world, gods, and men, and thus we find them preserved
in the songs of the "Edda. The vague notion of a Deity who created and
ruled over all things had its rise in the impression made upon the
human mind by the unity of nature. The sun, moon, and stars, clouds
and mists, storms and tempests, appeared to be higher powers, and took
distinct forms in the mind of man. The sun was first regarded as a
fiery bird which flew across the sky, then as a horse, and afterwards
as a chariot and horses; the clouds were cows, from whose udders the
fruitful rain poured down. The storm-wind appeared as a great eagle
that stirred the air by the flapping of his enormous wings. These
signs of nature seemed to resemble animals. On further consideration
it was found that man was gifted with the higher mental powers. It
was then acknowledged that the figure of an animal was an improper
representation of a divine being. They thus inverted the words of Holy
writ, that "God created man in his own image," and men now made the
gods in their own likeness, but still regarded them as greater, more
beautiful, and more ideal than themselves.
From the titles of these pagan gods we derive the names of our days
of the week, and thus we continue to perpetuate in our daily life the
story of Norse mythology. The first day of the week was dedicated to
the worship of the sun. The second day to that of the moon. The third
day was sacred to Tyr, the god of war. The fourth day was sacred to
Wodin, or Odin, the chief deity. The fifth day was sacred to Thor,
the god of thunder. The sixth day of the week, Friday, was sacred to
Frigga, the wife of the great Odin. The seventh or last day of the week
was dedicated by the Romans to Saturn, one of the planets, their god of
agriculture, whose annual festival was a time of unrestrained enjoyment.
The "Eddas" were two Scandinavian books, the earlier a collection
of mythological and heroic songs, and the other a prose composition
of old and venerable traditions. These books were meant for the
instruction of the Norse skalds and bards. It is believed that the
learned Icelander, Saemund, the Wise, compiled the older Edda in 1056
from oral traditions, and partly from runic writings. The younger Edda
is supposed to have been compiled by Bishop Snorri Sturlason in 1178,
and this collection goes by the name of Snorra-Edda. The language was
developed by means of the sagas and songs which had been handed down
among the people from generation to generation.
The Norns were the three fatal sisters, who used to watch over the
springs of water, and appeared by the cradle of many a royal infant
to give it presents. On such occasions two of them were generally
friendly to the child, while the third prophesied evil concerning it.
In the pretty story of the "Sleeping Beauty" these Norns appear as the
fairies.
MYTHICAL GODS.
Bragi was the son of the wave maidens and the god of poetry. He was
married to the blooming Induna, who accompanied him to Asgard, where
she gave the gods every morning the apples of eternal youth.
Tyr, the god of war, was tall, slender as a pine, and bravely defended
the gods from the terrible Fenris-Wolf. In doing so he lost his hand,
and was held in high honour by the people. Baldur, the holy one, and
the giver of all good, was the son of Odin. His mother Frigga entreated
all creatures to spare the well-beloved, but she overlooked the weak
mistletoe bough. The gods in boisterous play threw their weapons at
Baldur, and the dart made of the fatal bough was thrown by the blind
Hödur with deadly effect.
Forseti, the son of Baldur, resembled his father in holiness and
righteousness, was the upholder of eternal law. The myth shows him
seated on a throne teaching the Norsemen the benefits of the law,
surrounded by his twelve judges.
Loki, the crafty god, was the father of the Fenris-Wolf, and the snake.
He was the god of warmth and household fire, and was held to be the
corrupter of gods, and the spirit of evil. It was Loki who formed the
fatal dart, which he placed in the hands of the blind Hödur, which
caused the death of Baldur. After the murder of Baldur, Loki conceals
himself on a distant mountain, and hides himself under a waterfall.
Here the avengers catch him in a peculiar net which he had invented
for the destruction of others. They bind him to a rock, where a snake
drops poison upon his face, which makes him yell with pain. His
faithful wife, Sigyn, catches the poison in a cup; but still it drops
upon him whenever the vessel is full. From this myth it is supposed
that Shakspere derived the story of his greatest drama and tragedy,
"Hamlet," of the Prince of Denmark. Our forefathers notion of the last
battle, the single combats of the strong, the burning of the world,
are all to be read in ancient traditions, and we find them described
in the poems of the Skalds. The Norse mythology makes amends for the
tragic end of the divine drama by concluding with a description of the
renewal of the world. The earth rises fresh and green out of its ruin,
as soon as it has been cleansed from sin, refined and restored by fire.
The gods assemble on the plains of Ida, and the sons of Thor bring with
them their father's storm-hammer, a weapon no longer used for fighting,
but only for consecrating what is right and holy. They are joined by
Baldur and Hödur, reconciled and united in brotherly love.
Uller is recorded in the Edda as the cheery and sturdy god of winter,
who cared nothing for wind and snowstorm, who used to go about on long
journeys on his skates or snow-shoes. These shoes were compared to a
shield, and thus the shield is called Uller's Ship in many places. When
the god Uller skated over the ice he carried with him his shield, and
deadly arrows and bow made from the yew-tree. He lived in the Palace
Ydalir, the yew vale. As he protected plants and seeds from the severe
frosts of the north, by covering the ground with a coating of snow,
he was regarded as the benefactor of mortal men, and was called the
friend of Baldur, the giver of every blessing and joy. Uller meant
divine glory, as Vulder, the Anglo-Saxon god, was also characterised.
This was probably because the glory of the northern winter night,
which is often brilliantly lighted by the snow, the dazzling ice, and
the Aurora-borealis, the great northern light. The myths exist in the
present like the stately ruins of a past time, which are no longer
suitable for the use of man. Generations come and go, their views,
actions, and modes of thought change:
"All things change; they come and go;
The pure unsullied soul alone remains in peace."
Thousands of years ago our ancestors prayed to Waruna, the father in
heaven; thousands of years later the Romans entered their temple and
worshipped Jupiter, the father in heaven, while the Teutonic races
worshipped the All-father. After the lapse of centuries now we turn in
all our sorrow and adversities to our Father which is in heaven. In the
thousands of years which may pass we shall not have grown beyond this
central point of religion.
"Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be;
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith; we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from Thee,
A beam in darkness, let it grow!"
In his masterly work on "Hero-Worship," Carlyle traces the growth of
the "Hero as Divinity" from the Norse Mythology in the following words:
"How the man Odin came to be considered a god, the chief god? His
people knew no limits to their admiration of him; they had as yet no
scale to measure admiration by. Fancy your own generous heart's love
of some greatest man expanding till it transcended all bounds, till it
filled and overflowed the whole field of your thought.
Then consider what mere Time will do in such cases; how if a man was
great while living, he becomes tenfold greater when dead.
What an enormous 'camera-obscura' magnifier is Tradition! How a
thing grows in the human memory, in the human imagination, when love,
worship, and all that lies in the human heart, is there to encourage
it. And in the darkness, in the entire ignorance; without date or
document, no book, no Arundel marble: only here and there some dumb
monumental cairn. Why! in thirty or forty years, were there no books,
any great man would grow 'mythic,' the contemporaries who had seen him,
being once all dead: enough for us to discern far in the uttermost
distance some gleam as of a small real light shining in the centre of
that enormous camera-obscura image: to discern that the centre of it
all was not a madness and nothing, but a sanity and something.
This light kindled in the great dark vortex of the Norse mind, dark
but living, waiting only for the light, this is to me the centre of
the whole. How such light will then shine out, and with wondrous
thousand-fold expansion spread itself in forms and colours, depends not
on _it_, so much as in the National Mind recipient of it. Who knows
to what unnameable subtleties of spiritual law all these Pagan fables
owe their shape! The number twelve, divisiblest of all, which could be
halved, quartered, parted into three, into six, the most remarkable
number, this was enough to determine the Signs of the Zodiac, the
number of Odin's sons, and innumerable other twelves.
Odin's Runes are a significant feature of him. Runes, and the miracles
of "magic" he worked by them, make a great feature in tradition. Runes
are the Scandinavian alphabet; suppose Odin to have been the inventor
of letters as well as "magic" among that people. It is the greatest
invention man has ever made, this of marking down the unseen thought
that is in him by written characters. It is a kind of second speech,
almost as miraculous as the first.
You remember the astonishment and incredulity of Atahaulpa the Peruvian
king; how he made the Spanish soldier, who was guarding him, scratch
Dios on his thumb nail, that he might try the next soldier with it, to
ascertain whether such a miracle was possible. If Odin brought letters
among his people, he might work magic enough! Writing by Runes has some
air of being original among the Norsemen; not a Phoenician alphabet,
but a Scandinavian one.
Snorro tells us farther that Odin invented poetry; the music of human
speech, as well as that miraculous runic marking of it.
Transport yourself into the early childhood of nations; the first
beautiful morning light of our Europe, when all yet lay in fresh young
radiance, as of a great sunrise, and our Europe was first beginning to
think,--to be!
This Odin, in his rude semi-articulate way, had a word to speak. A
great heart laid open to take in this great universe, and man's life
here, and utter a great word about it. And now, if we still admire
such a man beyond all others, what must these wild Norse souls,
first awakened with thinking, have made of him! The rough words he
articulated, are they not the rudimental roots of those English words
we still use? He worked so, in that obscure element. But he was as a
light kindled in it, a light of intellect, rude nobleness of heart, the
only kind of lights we have yet: he had to shine there, and make his
obscure element a little lighter, as is still the task of us all.
We will fancy him to be the type Norseman; the finest Teuton whom that
race had yet produced. He is as a root of many great things; the fruit
of him is found growing, from deep thousands of years, over the whole
field of Teutonic life. Our own Wednesday, is it not still Odin's day?
Wednesbury, Wansborough, Wanstead, Wandsworth: Odin grew into England
too, these are still the leaves from that root. He was the chief god to
all the Teutonic peoples; their pattern Norsemen.
The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all Pagan mythologies, we
found to be recognition of the divineness of nature; sincere communion
of man with the mysterious invisible powers, visibly seen at work in
the world around him.
Sincerity is the great characteristic of it. Amid all that fantastic
congeries of associations and traditions in their musical mythologies,
the main practical belief a man could have was of an inflexible
destiny, of the valkyrs and the hall of Odin, and that the one thing
needful for a man was to be brave. The Valkyrs are choosers of the
slain, who lead the brave to a heavenly hall of Odin: only the base
and slavish being thrust elsewhere, into the realms of Hela, the Death
goddess. This was the soul of the whole Norse Belief. Valour is still
valour. The first duty of a man is still that of subduing Fear. Snorro
tells us they thought it a shame and misery not to die in battle; and
if a natural death seemed to be coming on, they would cut wounds in
their flesh that Odin might receive them as warriors slain. Old kings
about to die had their body laid into a ship, the ship sent forth with
sail set and slow fire burning in it; that once out at sea, it might
blaze up into flame, and in such a manner bury worthily the old hero,
at once in the sky and in the ocean."
THE DESCENT OF ODIN.
(From the Norse Tongue.)
By THOMAS GRAY.
Up rose the king of men with speed,
And saddled straight his coal black steed.
Down the yawning steep he rode
That leads to Hela's drear abode.
Him the Dog of Darkness spied;
His shaggy throat he opened wide,
While from his jaws with carnage fill'd,
Foam and human gore distill'd;
Hoarse he bays with hideous din,
Eyes that glow and fangs that grin,
And long pursues with fruitless yell
The father of the powerful spell.
Onward still his way he takes,
(The groaning earth beneath him shakes)
Till full before his fearless eyes
The portals nine of Hell arise.
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.
What call unknown, what charms presume
To break the quiet of the tomb?
Who thus afflicts my troubled sprite
And drags me from the realms of night?
Long on these mouldering bones have beat
The winter's snow, the summer's heat.
The drenching dews, and driving rain,
Let me, let me sleep again.
Who is he with voice unbless'd
That calls me from the bed of rest?
Odin: A traveller to the unknown
Is he that calls; a warrior's son,
Thou the deeds of light shall know;
Tell me what is done below.
For whom yon glittering board is spread,
Dress'd for whom yon golden bed?
Proph: Mantling in the goblet see
The pure beverage of the bee,
O'er it hangs the shield of gold:
'Tis the drink of Balder bold:
Balder's head to death is given:
Pain can reach the sons of heaven!
Unwilling I my lips unclose:
Leave me, leave me to repose.
Odin: Once again my call obey;
Prophetess! arise and say
What dangers Odin's child await,
Who the author of his fate?
Proph: In Hoder's hand the hero's doom;
His brother sends him to the tomb,
Now my weary lips I close,
Leave me, leave me to repose.
Odin: Prophetess! my spell obey;
Once again arise and say
Who th' avenger of his guilt,
By whom shall Hoder's blood be spilt?
Proph: In the caverns of the west,
By Odin's fierce embrace compress'd,
A wondrous boy shall rind a bear,
Who ne'er shall comb his raven hair,
Nor wash his visage in the stream,
Nor see the sun's departing beam,
Till he on Hoder's corpse shall smile,
Flaming on the funeral pile.
Now my weary lips I close,
Leave me, leave me to repose.
Odin: Yet awhile my call obey;
Prophetess awake and say
What virgins these in speechless wo,
That bent to earth their solemn brow,
That their flaxen tresses tear,
And snowy veils that float in air?
Tell me whence their sorrows rose,
Then I leave thee to repose.
Proph: Ha! no traveller art thou:
King of Men I know thee now:
Mightiest of a mighty line.
Odin: No boding maid of skill divine,
Art thou, no prophetess of good,
But mother of a giant brood!
Proph: Hie thee hence, and boast at home,
That never shall enquirer come
To break my iron sleep again,
Till Lok his horse his tenfold chain,
Never till substantial Night,
Has re-assumed her ancient right,
Till wrapped in fumes, in ruin hurl'd,
Sinks the fabric of the world.
Superstitions