NORSE MYTHOLOGY
[Illustration: 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.
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I.
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
CHAPTER II.
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
CHAPTER III.
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
CHAPTER IV.
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
CHAPTER V.
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
CHAPTER VI.
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
CHAPTER VII.
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
PART I.
THE CREATION AND PRESERVATION OF THE WORLD.
CHAPTER I.
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
CHAPTER II.
THE PRESERVATION.
The ash Ygdrasil—Mimer’s fountain—Urd’s fountain—The norns or
fates—Mimer and the Urdar-fountain—The norns, 188
CHAPTER III.
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
PART II.
THE LIFE AND EXPLOITS OF THE GODS.
CHAPTER I.
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
CHAPTER II.
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
CHAPTER III.
BALDER AND NANNA, HODER, VALE AND FORSETE.
Section i. Balder. Section ii. The death of Balder the Good. Section
iii. Forsete, 279
CHAPTER IV.
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
CHAPTER V.
VIDAR, 337
CHAPTER VI.
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
CHAPTER VII.
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
PART III.
RAGNAROK AND REGENERATION.
CHAPTER I.
RAGNAROK, 413
CHAPTER II.
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.
Footnote 1:
Max Müller’s Review of Dr. Dasent’s _The Norseman in Iceland_.
Footnote 2:
The founder of Normandy in France.
Footnote 3:
Sæmund the Wise.
Footnote 4:
Snorre Sturleson.
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.
Footnote 5:
Author of _English of the Fourteenth Century_ and of _An Introduction
to the Study of the Anglo-Saxon Language_.
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,
The rumor of the forest trees,
The plunge of the implacable seas,
The tumult of the wind at night,
Voices of eld, like trumpets blowing
Old ballads and wild melodies
Through mist and darkness pouring forth
Like Elivagar’s rivers flowing
Out of the glaciers of the North.
These are the things that make poets, and musicians are poets. Then
continues the same author:
And when he played, the atmosphere
Was filled with music, and the ear
Caught echo of that harp of gold
Whose music had so weird a sound,
The heeled stag forgot to bound,
The leaping rivulet backward rolled,
The bird came down from bush and tree,
The dead came from beneath the sea,
The maiden to the harper’s knee.
Only these few lines make it clear that Longfellow has not only communed
with Brage, but has also refreshed himself at the Castalian fountain;
that he has not only penetrated the mysteries of the Greek mythology,
but has also visited the deities of the North.
If you do not believe that the Norse mythology furnishes suitable themes
for poetry, then do not echo the voice of the multitude and cry the idea
down because it seems new. Men frequently act like ants. When a red ant
appears among the black ones, they all attack it, for they have once for
all made up their minds that all ants must necessarily be black; they
have themselves been black all their lives, and all their ancestors were
black, so far as they know anything about them. Thus it has become a
fixed opinion with many, that mythology necessarily means Greek or
Roman. We said to one of our friends: We are writing a book on Norse
mythology. Says our learned friend: Are not those old stories about
Jupiter and Mars pretty well written up by this time? We said we thought
they were, too much so; but we are writing about Odin and Thor. Then our
learned friend shook his head in surprise and said that he never heard
of those gentlemen before. If our reader’s case is the same as that of
our learned friend, then let him examine the subject for himself. Let
him read the Norse mythology through carefully. Let him then tell us
what themes suggestive of sublime poetry he found in the upper, the
middle and the lower worlds of the Odinic mythology; how he was
impressed with the regions of the gods, of the giants, and of the
dwarfs; what he thought of the various exploits of the gods; how he was
impressed with the great and wise Odin, the good and shining Balder, the
mighty Thor, the subtle and malicious Loke, the queenly Frigg, the
genial Frey, the lovely Idun reclining on the eloquent Brage’s breast,
and the gentle Nanna. Let him read and see whether or not he will be
delighted with all the magnificent scenery of Gladsheim, Valhal,
Midgard, Niflheim, Muspelheim, and Ginungagap; with the norns Urd,
Verdande, and Skuld; with the glorious ash Ygdrasil; with the fountain
of Mimer (let him take a deep drink, while he is there);, with the
heavenly bridge Bifrost (the rainbow), upon which the gods daily descend
to the Urdar-fountain; and with the wild tempest-traversed regions of
Ran (the goddess of the sea, wife of Æger). The celebrated poet
Oelenschlæger found in all these things inexhaustible scope for poetic
embellishments, and he availed himself of it in his work, entitled _Gods
of the North_, with the zeal and power of a genuine poet. He revived the
memories of the past. He bade the gods come forward out of the mists of
the centuries, and he accomplished in less than fifty years what _Latin_
versions of the Eddas had not been able to accomplish in three
centuries. Two of Oelenschlæger’s poems are given translated in _Poets
and Poetry of Europe_, and Mr. Longfellow has given us permission to
present them here. We will now avail ourselves of his kindness and not
discuss this portion of the subject of this chapter any further, knowing
that the reader will find the poems _Thor’s Fishing_ and _The Dwarfs_
far more pleasing and convincing than any additional arguments we might
be able to produce. Here they are:
THOR’S FISHING.
On the dark bottom of the great salt lake
Imprisoned lay the giant snake,
With naught his sullen sleep to break.
Huge whales disported amorous o’er his neck;
Little their sports the worm did reck,
Nor his dark, vengeful thoughts would check.
To move his iron fins he has no power,
Nor yet to harm the trembling shore,
With scaly rings he is covered o’er.
His head he seeks ’mid coral rocks to hide,
Nor e’er hath man his eye espied,
Nor could its deadly glare abide.
His eye-lids half in drowsy stupor close,
But short and troubled his repose,
As his quick heavy breathing shows.
Muscles and crabs, and all the shelly race,
In spacious banks still crowd for place
A grisly beard, around his face.
When Midgard’s worm his fetters strives to break,
Riseth the sea, the mountains quake;
The fiends in Naastrand merry make
Rejoicing flames from Hecla’s caldron flash,
Huge molten stones with deafening crash
Fly out,—its scathed sides fire-streams wash.
The affrighted sons of Ask do feel the shock,
As the worm doth lie and rock,
And sullen waiteth Ragnarok.
To his foul craving maw naught e’er came ill;
It never he doth cease to fill;
Nath’ more his hungry pain can still.
Upward by chance he turns his sleepy eye,
And, over him suspended nigh,
The gory head he doth espy.
The serpent taken with his own deceit,
Suspecting naught the daring cheat,
Ravenous gulps down the bait.
His leathern jaws the barbed steel compress,
His ponderous head must leave the abyss;
Dire was Jormungander’s hiss.
In giant coils he writhes his length about,
Poisonous streams he speweth out,
But his struggles help him naught.
The mighty Thor knoweth no peer in fight,
The loathsome worm, his strength despite,
Now o’ermatched must yield the fight.
His grisly head Thor heaveth o’er the tide,
No mortal eye the sight may hide,
The scared waves haste i’ th’ sands to hide.
As when accursed Naastrand yawns and burns,
His impious throat ’gainst heaven he turns
And with his tail the ocean spurns.
The parched sky droops, darkness enwraps the sun;
Now the matchless strength is shown
Of the god whom warriors own.
Around his loins he draws his girdle tight,
His eye with triumph flashes bright,
The frail boat splits aneath his weight;
The frail boat splits,—but on the ocean’s ground
Thor again hath footing found;
Within his arms the worm is bound.
Hymer, who in the strife no part had took,
But like a trembling aspen shook,
Rouseth him to avert the stroke.
In the last night, the vala hath decreed
Thor, in Odin’s utmost need,
To the worm shall bow the head.
Thus, in sunk voice, the craven giant spoke,
Whilst from his belt a knife he took,
Forged by dwarfs aneath the rock.
Upon the magic belt straight ’gan to file;
Thor in bitter scorn to smile;
Mjolner swang in air the while.
In the worm’s front full two-score leagues it fell;
From Gimle to the realms of hell
Echoed Jormungander’s yell.
The ocean yawned; Thor’s lightnings rent the sky;
Through the storm, the great sun’s eye
Looked out on the fight from high.
Bifrost i’ th’ east shone forth in brightest green;
On its top, in snow-white sheen,
Heimdal at his post was seen.
On the charmed belt the dagger hath no power;
The star of Jotunheim ’gan to lour;
But now, in Asgard’s evil hour,
When all his efforts foiled tall Hymer saw,
Wading to the serpent’s maw,
On the kedge he ’gan to saw.
The Sun, dismayed, hastened in clouds to hide,
Heimdal turned his head aside;
Thor was humbled in his pride.
The knife prevails, far down beneath the main,
The serpent, spent with toil and pain,
To the bottom sank again.
The giant fled, his head ’mid rocks to save,
Fearfully the god did rave,
With his lightnings tore the wave.
To madness stung, to think his conquest vain,
His ire no longer could contain,
Dared the worm to rise again.
His radiant form to its full height he drew,
And Mjolner through the billows blue
Swifter than the fire-bolt flew.
Hoped, yet, the worm had fallen beneath the stroke;
But the wily child of Loke
Waits her turn at Ragnarok.
His hammer lost, back wends the giant-bane,
Wasted his strength, his prowess vain;
And Mjolner must with Ran remain.
THE DWARFS.
Loke sat and thought, till his dark eyes gleam
With joy at the deed he’d done;
When Sif looked into the crystal stream,
Her courage was well-nigh gone
For never again her soft amber hair
Shall she braid with her hands of snow;
From the hateful image she turned in despair,
And hot tears began to flow.
In a cavern’s mouth, like a crafty fox,
Loke sat ’neath the tall pine’s shade,
When sudden a thundering was heard in the rocks,
And fearfully trembled the glade.
Then he knew that the noise good boded him naught,
He knew that ’t was Thor who was coming;
He changed himself straight to a salmon-trout,
And leaped in a fright in the Glommen.[6]
But Thor changed, too, to a huge sea-gull,
And the salmon-trout seized in his beak;
He cried: Thor, traitor, I know thee well,
And dear shalt thou pay thy freak!
Thy caitiff’s bones to a meal I’ll pound,
As a mill-stone crusheth the grain.
When Loke that naught booted his magic found,
He took straight his own form again.
And what if thou scatter’st my limbs in air?
He spake, will it mend thy case?
Will it gain back for Sif a single hair?
Thou’lt still a bald spouse embrace.
But if now thou’lt pardon my heedless joke,—
For malice sure meant I none,—
I swear to thee here, by root, billow and rock,
By the moss on the Bauta-stone,[7]
By Mimer’s well, and by Odin’s eye,
And by Mjolner, greatest of all,
That straight to the secret caves I’ll hie,
To the dwarfs, my kinsmen small;
And thence for Sif new tresses I’ll bring
Of gold ere the daylight’s gone,
So that she will liken a field in spring,
With its yellow-flowered garment on.
Him answered Thor: Why, thou brazen knave,
To my face to mock me dost dare?
Thou know’st well that Mjolner is now ’neath the wave
With Ran, and wilt still by it swear?
O a better hammer for thee I’ll obtain;
And he shook like an aspen-tree,
For whose stroke shield, buckler and greave shall be vain,
And the giants with terror shall flee!
Not so! cried Thor, and his eyes flashed fire;
Thy base treason calls loud for blood,
And hither I’m come with my sworn brother Frey,
To make thee of ravens the food.
I’ll take hold of thy arms and thy coal-black hair,
And Frey of thy heels behind,
And thy lustful body to atoms we’ll tear,
And scatter thy limbs to the wind.
O spare me, Frey, thou great-souled king!
And, weeping, he kissed his feet;
O mercy, and thee I’ll a courser bring,
No match in the wide world shall meet.
Without whip or spur round the earth you shall ride;
He’ll ne’er weary by day nor by night;
He shall carry you safe o’er the raging tide,
And his golden hair furnish you light.
Loke promised as well with his glozing tongue
That the asas at length let him go,
And he sank in the earth, the dark rocks among,
Near the cold-fountain, far below.
He crept on his belly, as supple as eel,
The cracks in the hard granite through,
Till he came where the dwarfs stood hammering steel,
By the light of a furnace blue.
I trow ’t was a goodly sight to see
The dwarfs, with their aprons on,
A-hammering and smelting so busily
Pure gold from the rough brown stone.
Rock crystals from sand and hard flint they made,
Which, tinged with the rosebud’s dye,
They cast into rubies and carbuncles red,
And hid them in cracks hard by.
They took them fresh violets all dripping with dew,
Dwarf-women had plucked them, the morn,—
And stained with their juice the clear sapphires blue,
King Dan in his crown since hath worn.
Then for emeralds they searched out the brightest green
Which the young spring meadow wears.
And dropped round pearls, without flaw or stain,
From widows’ and maidens’ tears.
And all around the cavern might plainly be shown
Where giants had once been at play;
For the ground was with heaps of huge muscle-shells strewn,
And strange fish were marked in the clay.
Here an ichthyosaurus stood out from the wall,
There monsters ne’er told of in story,
Whilst hard by the Nix in the waterfall
Sang wildly the days of their glory.
Here bones of the mammoth and mastodon,
And serpents with wings and with claws;
The elephant’s tusks from the burning zone
Are small to the teeth in their jaws.
When Loke to the dwarfs had his errand made known,
In a trice for the work they were ready;
Quoth Dvalin: O Lopter, it now shall be shown
That dwarfs in their friendship are steady.
We both trace our line from the selfsame stock;
What you ask shall be furnished with speed,
For it ne’er shall be said that the sons of the rock
Turned their backs on a kinsman in need.
They took them the akin of a large wild-boar,
The largest that they could find,
And the bellows they blew till the furnace ’gan roar,
And the fire flamed on high for the wind.
And they struck with their sledge-hammers stroke on stroke,
That the sparks from the skin flew on high,
But never a word good or bad spake Loke,
Though foul malice lurked in his eye.
The thunderer far distant, with sorrow he thought
On all he’d engaged to obtain,
And, as summer-breeze fickle, now anxiously sought
To render the dwarfs’ labor vain.
Whilst the bellows plied Brok, and Sindre the hammer,
And Thor, that the sparks flew on high,
And the sides of the vaulted cave rang with the clamor,
Loke changed to a huge forest-fly.
And he sat him all swelling with venom and spite,
On Brok, the wrist just below;
But the dwarf’s skin was thick, and he recked not the bite,
Nor once ceased the bellows to blow.
And now, strange to say, from the roaring fire
Came the golden-haired Gullinburste,
To serve as a charger the sun-god Frey,
Sure, of all wild-boars this the first.
They took them pure gold from their secret store,
The piece ’t was but small in size,
But ere ’t had been long in the furnace roar,
’T was a jewel beyond all prize.
A broad red ring all of wroughten gold,
As a snake with its tail in its head,
And a garland of gems did the rim enfold,
Together with rare art laid.
’T was solid and heavy, and wrought with care,
Thrice it passed through the white flames’ glow;
A ring to produce, fit for Odin to wear,
No labor they spared, I trow.
They worked it and turned it with wondrous skill,
Till they gave it the virtue rare,
That each thrice third night from its rim there fell
Eight rings, as their parent fair.
’T was the same with which Odin sanctified
God Balder’s and Nanna’s faith;
On his gentle bosom was Draupner laid,
When their eyes were closed in death.
Next they laid on the anvil a steel-bar cold,
They needed nor fire nor file;
But their sledge-hammers, following, like thunder rolled,
And Sindre sang runes the while.
When Loke now marked how the steel gat power,
And how warily out ’t was beat
(’T was to make a new hammer for Ake-Thor),
He’d recourse once more to deceit.
In a trice, of a hornet the semblance he took,
Whilst in cadence fell blow on blow,
In the leading dwarf’s forehead his barbed sting he stuck,
That the blood in a stream down did flow.
Then the dwarf raised his hand to his brow for the smart,
Ere the iron well out was beat,
And they found that the haft by an inch was too short,
But to alter it then ’t was too late.
Now a small elf came running with gold on his head,
Which he gave a dwarf woman to spin,
Who the metal like flax on her spinning wheel laid,
Nor tarried her task to begin.
So she span and span, and the gold thread ran
Into hair, though Loke thought it a pity;
She span and sang to the sledge-hammer’s clang
This strange, wild spinning-wheel ditty;
Henceforward her hair shall the tall Sif wear,
Hanging loose down her white neck behind;
By no envious braid shall it captive be made,
But in native grace float in the wind.
No swain shall it view in the clear heaven’s blue,
But his heart in its toils shall be lost;
No goddess, not e’en beauty’s faultless queen,
Such long glossy ringlets shall boast.
Though they now seem dead, let them touch but her head,
Each hair shall the life-moisture fill;
Nor shall malice nor spell henceforward prevail
Sif’s tresses to work aught of ill.
His object attained, Loke no longer remained
’Neath the earth, but straight hied him to Thor,
Who owned than the hair ne’er, sure, aught more fair
His eyes had e’er looked on before.
The boar Frey bestrode, and away proudly rode,
And Thor took the ringlets and hammer;
To Valhal they hied, where the asas reside,
’Mid of tilting and wassal the clamor.
At a full solemn ting, Thor gave Odin the ring,
And Loke his foul treachery pardoned;
But the pardon was vain, for his crimes soon again
Must do penance the arch-sinner hardened.
For the benefit of those who can read Danish, we will give in the
original the last ten stanzas of the latter poem of Oehlenschlæger,
beginning with the spinning of Sif’s hair:
Nu kom med Guldet en Dværgeflok
Og gave det til Dværginden;
Hun satte, som Hör, det paa sin Rok,
Hvis Hjul hensused for Vinden.
Og spandt og spandt, mens Guldtraaden randt
Til Haar for den deilige Dise;
Hun snurred og sang, ved Kildernes Klang,
En underlig Spindevise:
Gudinden i Vaar skal bære sit Haar
Hel frit for Vinden herefter,
Ei flette det mer, at yndig sig ter
Dets Glands med straalende Kræfter.
Hver Svend, som det saa, fra Himmelens Blaa,
Hans Hjerte skal Haarene fange.
Selv Lokker vist ei paa veneste Frey
Nedbölge saa blöde, saa lange.
Skjönt Guldet er dödt, saasnart det har mödt
Gudindens Tinding, den höie,
Det levende blier og efter sig gier,
Og lader, som Hörren, sig böie.
Beholder sin Glands, i Vindenes Dands,
Og lader sig aldrig udrykke;
Som Middagens Skin, det svöber sig ind
Bag Hjelmens ludende Skygge!—
Saa sang hun og gik med ydmyge Blik
For Thor, og rakte ham Haaret;
Paa Lokken han saa og maatte tilstaa:
Saa fager var ingen baaret.
Fra Bjerget valt nu Frey paa sin Galt
Og Thor med Haaret og Hammer,
Til Valhal de for, hvor Hærfader bor
I Lysets salige Flammer.
Da satte paa Sif lig Tang paa et Rif,
Sig fast Guldhaaret paa stande,
Og monne sig slaa i Lokker saa smaa,
Trindt om den hvælvede Pande.
Paa straalende Thing fik Odin sin Ring,
Man tilgav Loke sin Bröde,
Men snart dog igjen Bjergtroldenes Ven
Maa for sin Trolöshed böde.
There remains now to discuss briefly whether the Norse mythology
furnishes subjects for painting and sculpturing. If the reader has
become convinced that there is material in it worthy of the greatest
poet, then it is not necessary to say much about painting and
sculpturing; for we know that most things that can be said in verse can
be made visible on the canvas, or be chiseled in marble. We shall
therefore be brief on this particular point, but after the presentation
of a few subjects for the painter or sculptor, we shall have something
to say about nude art.
Can the brush or the chisel ask for more suggestive subjects than Odin,
Balder, Thor, Frey, Idun, Nanna, Loke, etc.? or groups like the norns at
the Urdar-fountain? or Urd (the past) and Verdande (the present), who
stretch from east to west a web, which is torn to pieces by Skuld (the
future); the valkyries in the heat of the battle picking up the slain;
or when they carry the fallen Hakon Adelsten to Valhal? Cannot a
beautiful picture be made of Æger and Ran and their daughters, the
waves? of the gods holding their feast with Æger and sending out Thor to
fetch a caldron for them from Jotunheim? or of Thor clapping the pot on
his head like a huge hat and walking off with it? What more touching
scene can be perceived than the death of Balder? Only in that short poem
Hamarsheimt (fetching the hammer) there are no less than three beautiful
subjects: (1) Thor wakes up and misses his hammer; he feels around him
for it; he is surprised and hesitates; he wrinkles his brows and his
head trembles. Loke looks down upon him from above; the rogue is in his
eye; he would like to break out in a roar of laughter, but dare not. (2)
All the gods are engaged in dressing Thor in Freyja’s clothes; he is a
tall straight youth with golden hair and a fine brown beard; lightning
flashes from his eyes; while Fulla puts on him Freyja’s jewels there is
a terrible conflict going on in his breast with this humiliation of his
dignity, which he cannot overcome. Loke stands half-ready near by as
maid-servant; he dresses Thor’s hair and is himself half-covered by the
bridal-veil which Thor is to wear. All take an intense interest in the
work, for they are so anxious to have the stratagem succeed. (3) The
giants have laid the hammer in the lap of the bride; Thor seizes it, and
as he pushes aside the veil he literally grows into his majestic
divinity, for whenever he wields his mighty Mjolner his strength is
redoubled. The disappointed desire of Thrym, the astounded giants, the
amused Loke; all furnish an endless variety of excellent material for
the brush of the painter. The plastic art can find no more exquisite
group than Loke bound upon three stones, and his loving wife, Sigyn,
leaning over him with a dish, wherein she catches the drops of venom
that would otherwise fall into his face and intensify his agonies. A
volume of themes might be presented, but it is not necessary. Suffice it
then to say that for poetry, painting and the plastic arts, there is in
the Norse mythology a fountain of delight whose waters but few have
tasted, but which no man can drain dry.
We promised to say something about nude art. It is this: We Goths are,
and have forever been, a _chaste_ race. We abhor the loathsome nudity of
Greek art. We do not want nude figures, at least not unless they embody
some very sublime thought. The people of southern Europe differ widely
from us Northerners in this respect; and this difference reaches far
back into our respective mythologies, adding additional proof to the
fact that the myths foreshadow the social life of a nation or race of
people. The Greek gods were generally conceived as nude, and hence Greek
art would naturally be nude also. Whether the licentiousness and
lasciviousness of the Greek communities were the primary causes of the
unæsthetical features of their mythology or their Bacchanalian revels
sprang from the mythology, it is difficult to determine. We undoubtedly
come nearest the truth when we say that the same primeval causes
produced both the social life and mythology of the Greeks; that there
thenceforward was an active reciprocating influence between the religion
on the one side and the popular life on the other, an influence that we
may liken unto that which operates between the soul and the body; and
thus it may be said that the mythology and the popular life combined
produced their nude art. To say that the popular character of the
Greeks, taken individually or collectively, was stimulated into life by
their mythology; that the virtues and the vices of the people originated
in it _alone_; would certainly be an incorrect and one-sided view of the
subject. The Greeks brought with them, from their original home into
Greece, the germs of that faith which afterwards became developed in a
certain direction under the influence of the popular life and the action
of external circumstances upon that life, but which in turn reacted upon
the popular life with a power which increased in proportion as the
system of mythology acquired by development a more decided character.
The same is true of the Norsemen and of the Goths in general. When it is
found, for instance, that the mythological representation of Odin as
father of the slain (Val-father), and that Valhal (the hall of the
slain), the valkyries and einherjes, contain a strong incentive to
warlike deeds, then it must not be imagined that this martial spirit,
that displayed itself so powerfully among the Goths generally, and among
the Norsemen particularly, was the offspring of the mythology of our
ancestors; but we may rather conceive that the Norsemen were from the
beginning a race of remarkable physical power, that accidental external
causes, such as severe climate, mountainous country, conflicts with
neighboring peoples, etc., brought this inherent physical force into
activity and thus awakened the warlike spirit; and then it may be said
that this martial spirit stamped itself upon their religious ideas, upon
their mythology, and finally that the mythology, when it had received
this characteristic impress from the people, again reacted to preserve
and even further inflame that martial spirit. And there is no
inconsistency between this view of the subject and that which was
presented in the third chapter.
It was said at the outset that we Goths are a chaste race, and abhor the
loathsome nudity of Greek art. We were a chaste people before our
fathers came under the influence of Christianity. The Elder Edda, which
is the grand depository of the Norse mythology, may be searched through
and through, and there will not be found a single nude myth, not an
impersonation of any kind that can be considered an outrage upon virtue
or a violation of the laws of propriety; and this feature of the Odinic
religion deserves to be urged as an important reason why our painters
and sculptors should look at home for something wherewith to employ
their talent, before they go abroad; look in our own ancient Gothic
history, before going to ancient Greece.
But the artist who is going to chisel out an Odin, a Thor, a Balder, a
Nanna, or a Loke, must not be a mere imitator. He must possess a
creative mind. He must not go to work at a piece of Norse art with his
imagination full of Greek myths, much less must he attempt to apply
Greek principles to a piece of Gothic art. He will find the Norse chisel
a somewhat more ponderous weapon to swing; and you cannot turn as
rapidly with a railroad car as you can with a French _fiacre_ or
American gig. To try to chisel out the gods of _our_ forefathers after
South European patterns would be like attempting to write English with
the mind full of Latin syntax. Hence we repeat, that we do not want an
imitator, but an original genius. Greek mythology has been presented so
many times, and so well, that the imitation, the repetition, is
comparatively easy. He who would bring out Gothic art (and but little of
it has hitherto been brought out) must himself be a poet, and what a
mine of wealth there is open to him! Would that genuine art fever would
attack our artists and that some of the treasures that lie hid in the
granite quarries of the Norse mythology might speedily be exhumed!
In his work, entitled _Science of Beauty_, Dr. John Bascom has taken
decided grounds against nude figures in art. We would recommend the
eighth chapter of that work to the careful consideration of the reader.
We are not able for want of space to give his opinion in full, but make
the following brief extract:
There is one direction in which art has indulged itself in a most
marked violation of propriety, and that too on the side of vice. I
refer to the frequent nudity of its figures. This is a point upon
which artists have been pretty unanimous, and disposed to treat the
opinions of others with _hauteur_ and disdain, as arising at best
from a virtue more itching and sensitive than wise, from instincts
more physical than æsthetical. This practice has been more abused in
painting than in sculpture, both as less needed, and hence less
justifiable, and as ever tending to become more loose and lustful in
the double symbols of color and form, than when confined to the
pure, stern use of the latter in stone or metal. Despite alleged
necessities,—despite the high-toned claims and undisguised contempt
of artists,—our convictions are strongly against the practice, as
alike injurious to taste and morals. Indeed, if injurious to morals,
it cannot be otherwise than injurious to taste, since art has no
more dangerous enemy than a lascivious perverted fancy.
Nay, in the radiant dawn of our Gothic history our poets and artists
may, if they would but look for them, find chaste themes to which they
may consecrate the whole ardor of their souls for the æsthetical
elevation and ennoblement of our race. As a people we are growing too
prosaic and, therefore, too ungodly; we nourish the tender minds of our
children too early and too extensively on dry reasoning, mathematics and
philosophy, instead of strengthening, stimulating and beautifying their
souls with some of the poetic thoughts, some of the mythology and
folk-lore of our forefathers. These mythological stories, these fairy
tales and all this folk-lore, illuminated by the genial rays of the
Christian religion shining upon them, should be made available in our
families and schools, by our poets, painters and sculptors, and then our
children would in turn get their æsthetical natures developed so as to
be able to beautify their own life and that of their posterity with
still finer productions in poetry, painting, and sculpture.
Footnote 6:
A river in Norway.
Footnote 7:
A stone raised over a grave.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SOURCES OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY AND INFLUENCE OF THE ASA-FAITH.
In order to thoroughly comprehend the Odinic mythology it is necessary
to make a careful study of the history, literature, languages and
dialects of the Teutonic races and of their popular life in all its
various manifestations.
The chief depositories of the Norse mythology are the Elder or Sæmund’s
Edda (poetry) and the Younger or Snorre’s Edda (prose). In Icelandic
_Edda_ means _great-grandmother_, and some think this appellation refers
to the ancient origin of the myths it contains. Others connect it with
the Indian _Veda_ and the Norse _vide_ (Swedish _veta_, to know).
I. The Elder Edda.
This work was evidently collected from the mouths of the people in the
same manner as Homer’s _Iliad_, and there is a similar uncertainty in
regard to who put it in writing. It has generally been supposed that the
songs of the Elder Edda were collected by Sæmund the Wise (born 1056,
died 1133), but Sophus Bugge and N. M. Petersen, both eminent Icelandic
scholars, have made it seem quite probable that it was not put in
writing before the year 1240. This is not the place for a discussion of
this difficult question, and the reader is referred to Sophus Bugge’s
Introduction to _Sæmundar Edda_ and to Petersen’s _History of Northern
Literature_, if he wishes to investigate this subject. There are
thirty-nine poems in the Elder Edda, and we have here to look at their
contents. Like the most of the Icelandic poetry, these poems do not
distinguish themselves, as does the poetry of Greece and Rome, by a
metrical system based on quantity, but have an arrangement of their own
in common with the poetry of the other old Gothic nations, the
Anglo-Saxons, etc. This system consists chiefly in the number of _long
syllables_ and in _alliteration_. The songs are divided into strophes
commonly containing eight verses or lines. These strophes are usually
divided into two halves, and each of these halves again into two parts,
which form a fourth part of the whole strophe, and contain two verses
belonging together and united by alliteration.
The alliteration (letter rhyme) is the most essential element in
Icelandic versification. It is found in all kinds of verse and in every
age, the Icelanders still using it; and its nature is this, that in the
two lines belonging together, three words occur beginning with the same
letter, two of which must be in the first line and the third in the
beginning of the second. The third and last of these is called the chief
letter (_höfuðstafr_, head-stave), because it is regarded as ruling over
the two others which depend on it and have the name sub-letters
(_studlar_, supporters). All rhyme-letters must be found in accented
syllables, and no more words in the two lines should begin with the same
letter—at least no chief word, which takes the accent on the first
syllable. This principle is illustrated by the following first half of
the seventh strophe of Völuspá, the oldest song in the Elder Edda:
_T_efldu í _t_úni,
_T_eitir váru;
_V_ar þeim _v_ettugis
_V_ant ór gulli.
Free version in English:
With _g_olden tablets in the _g_arden
_G_lad they played,
Nor _w_as there to the _v_aliant gods
_W_ant of gold.
The rhyme-letters here are those in _italics_.
The poems of the Elder Edda are in no special connection one with the
other, and they may be divided into three classes: purely mythological,
mythological-didactic, and mythological-historical poems.
The Elder Edda presents the Norse cosmogony, the doctrines of the Odinic
mythology, and the lives and doings of the gods. It contains also a
cycle of poems on the demi-gods and mythic heroes and heroines of the
same period. It gives us as complete a view of the mythological world of
the North as Homer and Hesiod do of that of Greece. But (to use in part
the language of the Howitts) it presents this to us not as Homer does,
worked up into one great poem, but as the rhapsodists of Greece
presented to Homer’s hands the materials for that great poem in the
various hymns and ballads of the fall of Troy, which they sung all over
Greece. No Homer ever arose in Norseland to mould all these sublime
lyrics of the Elder Edda into one lordly epic. The story of Siegfried
and Brynhild, which occupies the latter portion of the Elder Edda, was,
in later times in Germany moulded into the great and beautiful
_Niebelungen-Lied_; although it was much altered by the German poet or
by German tradition. The poems of the Elder Edda show us what the myths
of Greece would have been without a Homer. They remain huge, wild and
fragmentary; full of strange gaps rent into their very vitals by the
strokes of rude centuries; yet like the ruin of the Colosseum or the
temples of Pæstum, standing aloft amid the daylight of the present time,
magnificent testimonials of the stupendous genius of the race which
reared them. There is nothing besides the Bible, which sits in a divine
tranquillity of unapproachable nobility like a king of kings amongst all
other books, and the poem of Homer itself, which can compare in all the
elements of greatness with the Edda. There is a loftiness of stature,
and a firmness of muscle about it which no poets of the same race have
ever since reached. The only production since, that can be compared with
the Elder Edda in profoundness of thought, is that of Shakespeare, the
Hercules or Thor in English literature, that heroic mind of divine
lineage which passed through the hell-gates of the Roman school-system
unscathed. The obscurity which still hangs over some parts of the Elder
Edda, like the deep shadows crouching amid the ruins of the past, is the
result of neglect, and will in due time be removed; but amid this stand
forth the boldest masses of intellectual masonry. We are astonished at
the wisdom which is shaped into maxims, and at the tempestuous strength
of passions to which all modern emotions seem puny and constrained. Amid
the bright sun-light of a far-off time, surrounded by the densest
shadows of forgotten ages, we come at once into the midst of gods and
heroes, goddesses and fair women, giants and dwarfs, moving about in a
world of wonderful construction, unlike any other world or creation
which God has founded or man has imagined, but still beautiful beyond
conception.
The Elder Edda opens with Völuspá (the vala’s prophecy), and this song
may be regarded as one of the oldest, if not the oldest, poetic monument
of the North. In it the mysterious vala, or prophetess, seated somewhere
unseen in the marvelous heaven, sings an awful song of the birth of gods
and men; of the great Ygdrasil, or Tree of Existence, whose roots and
branches extend through all regions of space, and concludes her
thrilling hymn with the terrible Ragnarok, or Twilight of the gods, when
Odin and the other gods perish in the flames that devour all creation,
and the new heavens and new earth rise beautifully green to receive the
reign of Balder and of milder natures.
The second song in the Elder Edda is Hávamál (the high-song of Odin).
Odin himself is represented as its author. It contains a pretty complete
code of Odinic morality and precepts of wisdom. The moral and social
axioms that are brought together in Hávamál will surprise the reader,
who has been accustomed to regard the Norsemen as a rude and half wild
race, hunting in the savage forests of the North, or scouring the coasts
of Europe in quest of plunder. They contain a profound knowledge, not
merely of human nature, but of human nature in its various social and
domestic relations. They are more like the proverbs of Solomon than
anything in human literature.
The third poem in the Elder Edda is Vafthrudnismál (that is,
Vafthrudner’s speech or song). Vafthrudner is derived from _vaf_, a web
or weaving, and _thrúð_, strong; hence Vafthrudner is the _powerful
weaver_, the one powerful in riddles, and it is the name of a giant, who
in the first part of the poem propounds a series of intricate questions
or riddles. Odin tells his wife Frigg that he desires to visit the
all-wise giant Vafthrudner, to find out from him the secrets of the past
and measure strength with him. Frigg advises him not to undertake this
journey, saying that she considers Vafthrudner the strongest of all
giants. Odin reminds her of his many perilous adventures and
experiences, arguing that these are sufficient to secure him in his
curiosity to see Vafthrudner’s halls. Frigg wishes him a prosperous
journey and safe return, and also the necessary presence of mind at his
meeting with the giant. Odin then proceeds on his journey and enters the
halls of Vafthrudner in the guise of a mortal wayfarer, by name
Gangraad. He greets the lord of the house, and says he is come to learn
whether he was a wise or omniscient giant. Such an address vexes
Vafthrudner, coming as it did from a stranger, and he soon informs
Gangraad that if he is not wiser than himself he shall not leave the
hall alive. But the giant, finding, after he had asked the stranger a
few questions, that he really had a worthy antagonist in his presence,
invites him to take a seat, and challenges him to enter into a
disputation, that they might measure their intellectual strength, on the
condition that the vanquished party—the one unable to answer a question
put to him by the other—should forfeit his head. Odin accepts this
dangerous challenge. They accordingly discuss, by question and answer,
the principal topics of Norse mythology. The pretended Gangraad asks the
giant many questions, which the latter answers correctly; but when the
former at length asks his adversary what Odin whispered in the ear of
his son Balder before he had been placed on the funeral pile—a question
by which the astonished giant becomes aware that his antagonist is Odin
himself, who was alone capable of answering it,—the giant acknowledges
himself vanquished, and sees with terror that he cannot avoid the death
which he in his cruel pride had intended to inflict upon an innocent
wanderer.
The fourth song is Grimnismál (the song of Grimner). It begins with a
preface in prose, in which it is related that Odin, under the name of
Grimner, visited his foster-son Geirrod, and the latter, deceived by a
false representation by Frigg, takes him for a sorcerer, makes him sit
between two fires and pine there without nourishment for eight days,
until Agnar, the king’s son, reaches him a drinking-horn. Hereupon
Grimner sings the song which bears his name. Lamenting his confinement
and blessing Agnar, he goes on to picture the twelve abodes of the gods
and the splendors of Valhal, which he describes at length, and then
speaks of the mythological world-tree Ygdrasil, of the valkyries, of the
giant Ymer, of the ship Skidbladner, and adds various other cosmological
explanations.
The fifth song is Skirnismál, or För Skirnis (the journey of Skirner).
This gives in the form of a dialogue the story of Frey and Gerd, of his
love to her, and his wooing her through the agency of his faithful
servant Skirner, after whom the song is named.
The sixth is the Lay of Harbard. It is a dialogue between Thor and the
ferryman Harbard, who refuses to carry him over the stream. This
furnishes an occasion for each of them to recount his exploits. They
contrast their deeds and exploits. The contest is continued without
interruption until near the end of the poem, where Thor finally offers a
compromise, again requesting to be taken over the river. Harbard, who is
in fact Odin, again refuses in decided terms. Then Thor asks him to show
him another way. This request Harbard seems in a manner to comply with,
but refers Thor to Fjorgyn, his mother. Thor asks how far it is, but
Harbard makes enigmatical answers. Thor ends the conversation with
threats and Harbard with evil wishes.
The seventh poem is the Song of Hymer. The gods of Asgard are invited to
a banquet with the sea-god Æger. Thor goes to the giant Hymer for a
large kettle, in which to brew ale for the occasion. When Thor has
arrived at the home of Hymer he persuades the giant to take him along on
a fishing expedition, in which Thor fishes up the Midgard-serpent, which
he would have killed had it not been for Hymer, who cut off the
fish-line. Thor succeeds in carrying off the kettle, but has to slay
Hymer and other giants who pursue him.
The eighth is Lokasenna (or Loke’s quarrel.) This poem has a preface in
prose. This is also a banquet at Æger’s. It takes place immediately
after Balder’s death. Loke was present. He slew one of Æger’s servants
and had to flee to the woods, but soon returns, enters Æger’s hall, and
immediately begins to abuse the gods in the most shameful manner: first
Brage, then Idun, Gefjun, Odin, Frigg, Freyja, Njord, and the others,
until Thor finally appears and drives him away. There is a prose
conclusion to this poem, describing Loke’s punishment A profound tragedy
characterizes this poem. Although Loke is abusive, he still speaks the
truth, and he exposes all the faults of the gods, which foreshadow their
final fall. Peace disappeared with the death of Balder, and the gods,
conscious that Ragnarok is inevitable, are overpowered by distraction
and sorrow.
The ninth poem is the Song of Thrym. This gives an account of the loss
of Thor’s hammer, and tells how Loke helped him to get it back from the
giant Thrym.
The tenth is the Song of Alvis (the all-wise). Alvis comes for Thor’s
daughter as his bride. Thor cunningly detains him all night by asking
him questions concerning the various worlds he has visited. Alvis
answers and teaches him the names by which the most important things in
nature are called in the respective languages of different worlds: of
men, of the gods, of the vans, of the giants, of the elves, of the
dwarfs, and finally of the realms of the dead and of the supreme god.
The dwarf, being one of those mythical objects which cannot endure the
light of day, was detained till dawn without accomplishing his object.
The eleventh poem is Vegtam’s Lay. Odin assumes the name Vegtam. In
order to arrive at certainty concerning the portentous future of the
gods, he descends to Niflheim, goes into the abodes of Hel, and calls
the vala up from her grave-mound, asking her about the fate of Balder.
She listens to him indignantly, answers his questions unwillingly, but
at last discovers that Vegtam is the king of the gods, and angrily tells
him to ride home.
We will omit a synopsis of the remainder, and merely give their titles,
as they do not enter so completely into the system of mythology as the
first eleven: (12) Rigsmaal (Song of Rig), (13) The Lay of Hyndla, (14)
The Song of Volund, (15) The Song of Helge Hjorvardson, (16) Song of
Helge Hundingsbane I, (17) Song of Helge Hundingsbane II, (18) Song of
Sigurd Fafnisbane I, (19) Song of Sigurd Fafnisbane II, (20) Song of
Fafner, (21) Song of Sigdrifa, (22) Song of Sigurd, (23) Song of Gudrun
I, (24) Song of Gudrun III, (25) Brynhild’s Ride to Hel, (26) Song of
Gudrun II, (27) Song of Gudrun III, (28) The Weeping of Odrun, (29) The
Song of Atle, (30) The Speech of Atle, (31) The Challenge of Gudrun,
(32) The Song of Hamder, (33) The Song of Grotte, (34) Extracts from the
Younger Edda, (35) Extracts from the Volsunga Saga, (36) Song of Svipdag
I, (37) Song of Svipdag II, (38) The Lay of the Sun, (39) Odin’s
Raven-Cry.
The antiquity of these poems cannot be fixed, but they certainly carry
us back to the remotest period of the settlement of Norway by the Goths.
It may be added here that many of the poems of the Elder Edda, as well
as much of the Old Norse poetry generally, are very difficult to
understand, on account of the bold metaphorical language in which they
are written. The poet did not call an object by its usual name, but
borrowed a figure by which to present it, either from the mythology or
from some other source. Thus he would call the sky _the skull of the
giant Ymer_; the rainbow he called _the bridge of the gods_; gold was
_the tears of Freyja_; poetry, _the present_ or _drink of Odin_. The
earth was called indifferently _the wife of Odin_, _the flesh of Ymer_,
_the daughter of night_, _the vessel that floats on the ages_, or _the
foundation of the air_; herbs and plants were called _the hair_ or _the
fleece of the earth_. A battle was called _a bath of blood_, _the hail
of Odin_, _the shock of bucklers_; the sea was termed _the field of
pirates_, _the girdle of the earth_; ice, _the greatest of all bridges_;
a ship, _the horse of the waves_; the tongue, _the sword of words_, etc.
II. The Younger Edda,
written by Snorre Sturleson, the author of the famous _Heimskringla_
(born 1178, died 1241) is mostly prose, and may be regarded as a sort of
commentary upon the Elder Edda. The prose Edda consists of two parts:
Gylfaginning (the deluding of Gylfe), and the Bragaræður or
Skáldskaparmál (the conversations of Brage, the god of poetry, or the
treatise on poetry). Gylfaginning tells how the Swedish king Gylfe makes
a journey to Asgard, the abode of the gods, where Odin instructs him in
the old faith, and gradually relates to him the myths of the Norsemen.
The manner in which the whole is told reminds us of _A Thousand and One
Nights_, or of poems from a later time, as for instance Boccaccio’s
_Decameron_. It is a prose synopsis of the whole Asa faith, with here
and there a quotation from the Elder Edda by way of elucidation. It
shows a great deal of ingenuity and talent on the part of its author,
and is the most perspicuous and clear presentation of the mythology that
we possess.
But all the material for the correct presentation of the Norse mythology
is not found in the Eddas; or rather we do not perfectly understand the
Eddas, if we confine our studies to them alone. For a full comprehension
of the myths, it is necessary to study carefully all the
semi-mythological Icelandic Sagas, which constitute a respectable
library by themselves; and in connection with these we must read the
Anglo-Saxon _Beowulf’s Drapa_, and the German _Niebelungen-Lied_. In the
next place, we must examine carefully all the folk-lore of the Gothic
race, and we must, in short, study the manifestations of the Gothic mind
and spirit everywhere: in the development of the State and of the
Church, in their poetry and history, in their various languages and
numerous dialects, in their literature, in their customs and manners,
and in their popular belief. If we neglect all these we shall never
understand the Eddas; if we neglect the Eddas we shall never understand
the other sources of mythology. They mutually explain each other, and
the Gothic race must sooner or later begin to study its own history.
That the Odinic mythology exercised a mighty influence in forming the
national character of the Norsemen, becomes evident when we compare the
doctrines of their faith with the popular life as portrayed in the
Sagas. Still we must bear in mind that this national spirit was not
created by this faith. The harsh climate of the North modified not only
the Norse mythology, but also moulded indefinitely the national
character, and then the two, the mythology and the national character,
acted and reacted upon each other. Thus bred up to fight with nature in
a constant battle for existence, and witnessing the same struggle in the
life of his gods, the Norseman became fearless, honest and truthful,
ready to smite and ready to forgive, shrinking not from pain himself and
careless about inflicting it on others. Beholding in external nature and
in his mythology the struggle of conflicting forces, he naturally looked
on life as a field for warfare. The ice-bound fjords and desolate fells,
the mournful wail of the waving pine-branches, the stern strife of frost
and fire, the annual death of the short-lived summer, made the Norseman
sombre, if not gloomy, in his thoughts, and inured him to the rugged
independence of the country. The sternness of the land in which he lived
was reflected in his character; the latter was in turn reflected in the
tales which he told of his gods and heroes, and thus the Norseman and
his mythology mutually influenced each other.
The influence of the Asa faith, says Prof. Keyser, upon the popular
spirit of the Norsemen, must be regarded from quite another point of
view than that of Christianity at a later period. The Asa faith was, so
to speak, inborn with the Norsemen, as it had developed itself from
certain germs and assumed form with the popular life almost
unconsciously to the latter. Christianity, on the other hand, was given
to the people as a religious system complete in itself, intended for all
the nations of the earth; one which by its own divine power opened for
itself a way to conviction, and through that conviction operated on the
popular spirit in a direction previously pointed out by the fundamental
principles of the religion itself. As the system of the Asa faith arose
without any conscious object of affecting the morals, therefore it did
not embrace any actual code of morals in the higher sense of this term.
The Asa doctrine does not pronounce by positive expression what is
virtue and what is vice; it presupposes a consciousness thereof in its
votaries. It only represents virtue as reaping its own rewards and vice
its own punishment, if not here upon the earth, then with certainty
beyond the grave. Thus Keyser.
The Norse system of mythology embodied the doctrine of an imperishable
soul in man; it had Valhal and Gimle set apart for and awaiting the
brave and virtuous, and Helheim and Naastrand for the wicked.
The moral and social maxims of the Norsemen are represented as being
uttered by Odin himself in the Hávamál (high song of Odin), the second
song of the Elder Edda, and by the valkyrie Sigdrifa in the Sigrdrífumál
(the lay of Sigdrifa), the twenty-first poem of the same work. Read
these poems and maxims, and judge whether they will warrant the position
repeatedly taken in this work, that the electric spark that has made
England and America great and free came not from the aboriginal Britons,
not from the Roman enslavers, but must be sought in the prophetic,
imaginative and poetic childhood of the Gothic race. Read these poems
and judge whether the eminent English writer, Samuel Laing, is right
when he says:
All that men hope for of good government and future improvement in
their physical and moral condition,—all that civilized men enjoy at
this day of civil, religious and political liberty,—the British
constitution, representative legislation, the trial by jury,
security of property, freedom of mind and person, the influence of
public opinion over the conduct of public affairs, the Reformation,
the liberty of the press, the spirit of the age,—all that is or has
been of value to man in modern times as a member of society, either
in Europe or in the New World, may be traced to the spark left
burning upon our shores by these northern barbarians.
Read these poems and find truth in the words of Baron Montesquieu, the
admirable author of _The Spirit of Laws_ (L’Esprit des Lois), when he
says: The great prerogative of Scandinavia, and what ought to recommend
its inhabitants beyond every people upon earth, is, that they afforded
the great resource to the liberty of Europe, that is, to almost all the
liberty that is among men; and when he calls the North the forge of
those instruments which broke the fetters manufactured in the South.
In the old Gothic religion were embodied principles and elements which
had a tendency to make its votaries brave, independent, honest, earnest,
just, charitable, prudent, temperate, liberty-loving, etc.; principles
and morals that in due course of time and under favorable circumstances
evolved the Republic of Iceland, the Magna Charta of England, and the
Declaration of Independence.
The rules of life as indicated by the High Song of Odin and in
Sigrdrífumál, in which the valkyrie gives counsel to Sigurd Fafnisbane,
are briefly summed up by Professor Keyser as follows:
1. The recognition of the depravity of human nature, which calls for
a struggle against our natural desires and forbearance toward the
weakness of others.
2. Courage and faith both to bear the hard decrees of the norns and
to fight against enemies.
3. The struggle for independence in life with regard to knowledge as
well as to fortune; an independence which should, therefore, be
earned by a love of learning and industry.
4. A strict adherence to oaths and promises.
5. Candor and fidelity as well as foresight in love, devotion to the
tried friend, but dissimulation toward the false and war to the
death against the implacable enemy.
6. Respect for old age.
7. Hospitality, liberality, and charity to the poor.
8. A prudent foresight in word and deed.
9. Temperance, not only in the gratification of the senses, but also
in the exercise of power.
10. Contentment and cheerfulness.
11. Modesty and politeness in intercourse.
12. A desire to win the good will of our fellow men, especially to
surround ourselves with a steadfast circle of devoted kinsmen and
faithful friends.
13. A careful treatment of the bodies of the dead.
Listen now to Odin himself, as he gives precepts of wisdom to mankind in
HÁVAMÁL:
1. All door-ways
Before going forward,
Should be looked to;
For difficult it is to know
Where foes may sit
Within a dwelling
2. Givers, hail!
A guest is come in:
Where shall he sit?
In much haste is he,
Who on his ways has
To try his luck.
3. Fire is needful
To him who is come in,
And whose knees are frozen;
Food and raiment
A man requires
Who o’er the fell has traveled.
4. Water to him is needful,
Who for refection comes,
A towel and hospitable invitation,
A good reception;
If he can get it,
Discourse and answer.
5. Wit is needful
To him who travels far:
At home all is easy.
A laughingstock is he
Who nothing knows,
And with the instructed sits.[8]
6. Of his understanding
No one should be proud,
But rather in conduct cautious.
When the prudent and taciturn
Come to a dwelling,
Harm seldom befalls the cautious;
For a firmer friend
No man ever gets
Than great sagacity.
7. A wary guest
Who to refection comes
Keeps a cautious silence;
With his ears listens,
And with his eyes observes:
So explores every prudent man.
8. He is happy
Who for himself obtains
Fame and kind words:
Less sure is that
Which a man must have
In another’s breast.
9. He is happy
Who in himself possesses
Fame and wit while living;
For bad counsels
Have oft been received
From another’s breast.
10. A better burthen
No man bears on the way
Than much good sense:
That is thought better than riches
In a strange place;
Such is the recourse of the indigent.
11. A worse provision
On the way he cannot carry
Than too much beer-bibbing;
So good is not,
As it is said,
Beer for the sons of men.
12. A worse provision
No man can take from table
Than too much beer-bibbing,
For the more he drinks
The less control he has
Of his own mind.
13. Oblivion’s heron ’tis called
That over potations hovers;
He steals the minds of men.
With this bird’s pinions
I was fettered
In Gunlad’s dwelling.
14. Drunk I was,
I was over-drunk,
At that cunning Fjalar’s.
It’s the best drunkenness
When every one after it
Regains his reason.
15. Taciturn and prudent,
And in war daring
Should a king’s children be;
Joyous and liberal
Everyone should be
Until his hour of death.
16. A cowardly man
Thinks he will ever live
If warfare he avoids;
But old age will
Give him no peace.
Though spears may spare him.
17. A fool gapes
When to a house he comes,
To himself mutters or is silent;
But all at once,
If he gets drink,
Then is the man’s mind displayed.
18. He alone knows,
Who wanders wide
And has much experienced,
By what disposition
Each man is ruled,
Who common sense possesses.
19. Let a man hold the cup,
Yet of the mead drink moderately,
Speak sensibly or be silent.
As of a fault
No man will admonish thee,
If thou goest betimes to sleep.
20. A greedy man,
If he be not moderate,
Eats to his mortal sorrow.
Oftentimes his belly
Draws laughter on a silly man
Who among the prudent comes.
21. Cattle know
When to go home
And then from grazing cease;
But a foolish man
Never knows
His stomach’s measure.
22. A miserable man,
And ill-conditioned,
Sneers at everything:
One thing he knows not,
Which he ought to know,
That he is not free from faults.
23. A foolish man
Is all night awake,
Pondering over everything;
He then grows tired,
And when morning comes
All is lament as before.
24. A foolish man
Thinks all who on him smile
To be his friends;
He feels it not,
Although they speak ill of him,
When he sits among the clever.
25. A foolish man
Thinks all who speak him fair
To be his friends;
But he will find,
If into court he comes,
That he has few advocates.
26. A foolish man
Thinks he knows everything
If placed in unexpected difficulty;
But he knows not
What to answer
If to the test he is put.
27. A foolish man,
Who among people comes,
Had best be silent;
For no one knows
That he knows nothing
Unless he talks too much.
He who previously knew nothing
Will still know nothing,
Talk he ever so much.
28. He thinks himself wise
Who can ask questions
And converse also;
Conceal his ignorance
No one can,
Because it circulates among men.
29. He utters too many
Futile words
Who is never silent;
A garrulous tongue,
If it be not checked,
Sings often to its own harm.
30. For a gazing-stock
No man shall have another,
Although he come a stranger to his house.
Many a one thinks himself wise,
If he is not questioned,
And can sit in a dry habit.
31. Clever thinks himself
The guest who jeers a guest,
If he takes to flight.
Knows it not certainly
He who prates at meat,
Whether he babbles among foes.
32. Many men are mutually
Well-disposed,
Yet at table will torment each other.
That strife will ever be;
Guest will guest irritate.
33. Early meals
A man should often take,
Unless to a friend’s house he goes;
Else he will sit and mope,
Will seem half famished,
And can of few things inquire.
34. Long is and indirect the way
To a bad friend’s,
Though by the road he dwell;
But to a good friend’s
The paths lie direct,
Though he be far away.
35. A guest should depart,
Not always stay
In one place:
The welcome becomes unwelcome
If he too long continues
In another’s house.
36. One’s own house is best,
Small though it be;
At home is every one his own master.
Though he but two goats possess,
And a straw-thatched cot,
Even that is better than begging.
37. One’s own house is best,
Small though it be;
At home is every one his own master.
Bleeding at heart is he
Who has to ask
For food at every meal-tide.
38. Leaving in the field his arms,
Let no man go
A foot’s length forward;
For it is hard to know
When on his way
A man may need his weapon.
39. I have never found a man so bountiful
Or so hospitable
That he refused a present;
Or of his property
So liberal
That he scorned a recompense.
40. Of the property
Which he has gained,
No man should suffer need;
For the hated oft is spared
What for the dear was destined:
Much goes worse than is expected.
41. With arms and vestments
Friends should each other gladden,
Those which are in themselves most sightly.
Givers and requiters
Are longest friends,
If all else goes well.
42. To his friend
A man should be a friend,
And gifts with gifts requite;
Laughter with laughter
Men should receive,
But leasing with lying.
43. To his friend
A man should be a friend,
To him and to his friend;
But of his foe
No man shall
His friend’s friend be.
44. Know if thou hast a friend
Whom thou fully trustest,
And from whom thou would’st good derive;
Thou should’st blend thy mind with his,
And gifts exchange,
And often go to see him.
45. If thou hast another
Whom thou little trustest,
Yet would’st good from him derive,
Thou should’st speak him fair,
But think craftily,
And leasing pay with lying.
46. But of him yet further
Whom thou little trustest,
And thou suspectest his affection,
Before him thou should’st laugh,
And contrary to thy thoughts speak;
Requital should the gift resemble.
47. I once was young,
I was journeying alone
And lost my way;
Rich I thought myself
When I met another:
Man is the joy of man.
48. Liberal and brave
Men live best,
They seldom cherish sorrow;
But a bare-minded man
Dreads everything;
The niggardly is uneasy even at gifts.
49. My garments in a field
I gave away
To two wooden men:
Heroes they seemed to be
When they got cloaks:[9]
Exposed to insult is a naked man.
50. A tree withers
That on a hill-top stands;
Protects it neither bark nor leaves:
Such is the man
Whom no one favors:
Why should he live long?
51. Hotter than fire
Love for five days burns
Between false friends;
But is quenched
When the sixth day comes,
And friendship is all impaired.
52. Something great
Is not always to be given,
Praise is often for a trifle bought
With half a loaf
And a tilted vessel
I got myself a comrade.
53. Little are the sand grains,
Little the wits,
Little the minds of men;
For all men
Are not wise alike:
Men are everywhere by halves.
54. Moderately wise
Should each one be,
But never over-wise;
For a wise man’s heart
Is seldom glad,
If he is all-wise who owns it.
55. Moderately wise
Should each one be,
But never over-wise:
Of those men
The lives are fairest
Who know much well.
56. Moderately wise
Should each one be,
But never over-wise;
His destiny let know
No man beforehand;
His mind will be freest from care.
57. Brand burns from brand
Until it is burnt out,
Fire is from fire quickened:
Man to man
Becomes known by speech,
But a fool by his bashful silence.
58. He should rise early
Who another’s property or life
Desires to have:
Seldom a sluggish wolf
Gets prey,
Or a sleeping man victory.
59. Early should rise
He who has few workers.
And go his work to see to;
Greatly is he retarded
Who sleeps the morn away.
Wealth half depends on energy.
60. Of dry planks
And roof shingles
A man knows the measure;
Of the firewood
That may suffice
Both measure and time.
61. Washed and refected
Let a man ride to _Thing_,[10]
Although his garments be not too good;
Of his shoes and breeches
Let no one be ashamed,
Nor of his horse,
Although he have not a good one.
62. Inquire and impart
Should every man of sense,
Who will be accounted sage.
Let one only know,
A second may not;
If three, all the world knows.
63. Gasps and gapes,
When to the sea he comes,
The eagle over old ocean;
So is a man
Who among many comes,
And has few advocates.
64. His power should
Every sagacious man
Use with discretion,
For he will find,
When among the bold he comes,
That no one alone is doughtiest.
65. Circumspect and reserved
Every man should be,
And wary in trusting friends;
Of the words
That a man says to another
He often pays the penalty.
66. Much too early
I came to many places,
But too late to others;
The beer was drunk,
Or not ready:
The disliked seldom hits the moment.
67. Here and there I should
Have been invited
If I a meal had needed;
Or two hams had hung
At that true friend’s
Where of one I had eaten.
68. Fire is best
Among the sons of men,
And the sight of the sun,
If his health
A man can have,
With a life free from vice.
69. No man lacks everything,
Although his health be bad.
One in his sons is happy,
One in his kin,
One in abundant wealth,
One in his good works.
70. It is better to live,
Even to live miserably;
A living man can always get a cow.
I saw fire consume
The rich man’s property,
And death stood without his door.
71. The halt can ride on horseback.
The one-handed drive cattle;
The deaf, fight and be useful:
To be blind is better
Than to be burnt:[11]
No one gets good from a corpse.
72. A son is better
Even if born late,
After his father’s departure.
Gravestones seldom
Stand by the way-side
Unless raised by a kinsman to a kinsman.
73. Two are adversaries:
The tongue is the bane of the head:
Under every cloak
I expect a hand.
74. At night is joyful
He who is sure of traveling entertainment;
A ship’s yards are short;
Variable is an autumn night,
Many are the weather’s changes
In five days,
But more in a month.
75. He knows not,
Who knows nothing,
That many a one apes another,
One man is rich,
Another poor:
Let him not be thought blameworthy.
76. Cattle die,
Kindred die,
We ourselves also die;
But the fair fame
Never dies
Of him who has earned it.
77. Cattle die,
Kindred die,
We ourselves also die;
But I know one thing
That never dies,—
Judgment on each one dead.
78. Full storehouses I saw
At Dives’ sons’:
Now bear they the beggar’s staff.
Such are riches,
As is the twinkling of an eye:
Of friends they are most fickle.
79. A foolish man,
If he acquires
Wealth or woman’s love,
Pride grows within him,
But wisdom never:
He goes on more and more arrogant.
80. Thus ’t is made manifest,
If of runes thou questionest him,
Those to the high ones known,
Which the great powers invented,
And the great talker[12] painted,
That he had best hold silence.
81. At eve the day is to be praised,
A woman after she is burnt,[13]
A sword after it is proved,
A maid after she is married,
Ice after it has been crossed,
Beer after it is drunk.
82. In the wind one should hew wood,
In a breeze row out to sea,
In the dark talk with a lass,
Many are the eyes of day.
In a ship voyages are to be made,
But a shield is for protection,
A sword for striking,
But a damsel for a kiss.
83. By the fire one should drink beer,
On the ice slide;
Buy a horse that is lean,
A sword that is rusty;
Feed a horse at home,
But a dog at the farm.
84. In a maiden’s words
No one should place faith,
Nor in what a woman says;
For on a turning wheel
Have their hearts been formed,
And guile in their breasts been laid.
85. In a creaking bow,
A burning flame,
A yawning wolf,
A chattering crow,
A grunting swine,
A rootless tree,
A waxing wave,
A boiling kettle,
86. A flying dart,
A falling billow,
A one night’s ice,
A coiled serpent,
A woman’s bed-talk
Or a broken sword,
A bear’s play
Or a royal child,
87. A sick calf,
A self-willed thrall,
A flattering prophetess,
A corpse newly slain,
A serene sky,
A laughing lord,
A barking dog
And a harlot’s grief,
88. An early-sown field,
Let no one trust,
Nor prematurely in a son:
Weather rules the field,
And wit the son,
Each of which is doubtful.
89. A brother’s murderer,
Though on the high-road met,
A half-burnt house,
An over-swift horse
(A horse is useless
If a leg be broken):
No man is so confiding
As to trust any of these.
90. Such is the love of women,
Who falsehood meditate,
As if one drove not rough-shod
On slippery ice,
A spirited two-year-old
And unbroken horse;
Or as in a raging storm
A helmless ship is beaten;
Or as if the halt were set to catch
A reindeer in the thawing fell.[14]
91. Openly I now speak,
Because I both sexes know;
Unstable are men’s minds toward women;
’Tis then we speak most fair,
When we most falsely think:
That deceives even the cautious.
92. Fair shall speak,
And money offer,
Who would obtain a woman’s love
Praise the form
Of a fair damsel;
He gets, who courts her.
93. At love should no one
Ever wonder
In another:
A beauteous countenance
Oft captivates the wise,
Which captivates not the foolish.
94. Let no one wonder at
Another’s folly,
It is the lot of many.
All-powerful desire
Makes of the sons of men
Fools even of the wise.
95. The mind only knows
What lies near the heart;
That alone is conscious of our affections
No disease is worse
To a sensible man
Than not to be content with himself.
96. That I experienced
When in the reeds I sat
Awaiting my delight.
Body and soul to me
Was that discreet maiden;
Nevertheless I possess her not.
97. Billing’s lass
On her couch I found,
Sun-bright, sleeping.
A prince’s joy
To me seemed naught,
If not with that form to live.
98. Yet nearer eve
Must thou, Odin, come, she said,
If thou wilt talk the maiden over;
All will be disastrous
Unless we alone
Are privy to such misdeed.
99. I returned,
Thinking to love
At her wise desire;
I thought
I should obtain
Her whole heart and love.
100. When next I came,
The bold warriors were
All awake,
With lights burning,
And bearing torches:
101. But at the approach of morn,
When again I came,
The household all was sleeping;
The good damsel’s dog
Alone I found
Tied to the bed.
102. Many a fair maiden,
When rightly known,
Toward men is fickle:
That I experienced
When that discreet maiden
I decoyed into danger:
Contumely of every kind
That wily girl
Heaped upon me;
Nor of that damsel gained I aught.
103. At home let a man be cheerful,
And toward a guest liberal;
Of wise conduct he should be,
Of good memory and ready speech;
If much knowledge he desires,
He must often talk on what is good.
Fimbulfambi he is called
Who little has to say:
Such is the nature of the simple.
104. The old giant I sought;
Now I am come back:
Little got I there by silence;
In many words
I spoke to my advantage
In Suttung’s halls.[15]
105. Gunlad gave me,
On her golden seat,
A draught of the precious mead;
A bad recompense I afterwards made her
For her whole soul,
Her fervent love.
106. Rate’s mouth I caused
To make a space,
And to gnaw the rock;
Over and under me
Were the giant’s ways:
Thus I my head did peril.
107. Of a well assumed form
I made good use:
Few things fail the wise,
For Odrærer is now come up
To men’s earthly dwellings.
108. ’Tis to me doubtful,
That I could have come
From the giant’s courts,
Had not Gunlad aided me,—
That good damsel
Over whom I laid my arm.
109. On the day following
Came the frost-giants
To learn something of the High One
In the High One’s hall;
After Bolverk they inquired,
Whether he with the gods were come,
Or Suttung had destroyed him.
110. Odin I believe
A ring-oath[16] gave.
Who in his faith will trust?
defrauded,
Of his drink bereft,
And Gunlad made to weep!
111. Time ’t is to discourse
From the speaker’s chair.
By the well of Urd
I silent sat,
I saw and meditated,
I listened to men’s words.
112. Of runes I heard discourse,
And of things divine,
Nor of risting[17] them were they silent,
Nor of sage counsels,
At the High One’s hall.
In the High One’s hall
I thus heard say:
113. I counsel thee, Lodfafner,
To take advice;
Thou wilt profit, if thou takest it.
Rise not at night,
Unless to explore,
Or art compelled to go out.
114. I counsel thee, Lodfafner,
To take advice;
Thou wilt profit, if thou takest it.
In an enchantress’ embrace
Thou mayest not sleep,
So that in her arms she clasp thee.
115. She will be the cause
That thou carest not
For _Thing_ or prince’s words;
Food thou wilt shun
And human joys;
Sorrowful wilt thou go to sleep.
116. I counsel thee, Lodfafner,
To take advice;
Thou wilt profit, it thou takest it.
Another’s wife
Entice thou never
To secret converse.
117. I counsel thee, Lodfafner,
To take advice;
Thou wilt profit, if thou takest it.
By fell or firth
If thou have to travel,
Provide thee well with food.
118. I counsel thee, Lodfafner,
To take advice;
Thou wilt profit, if thou takest it.
A bad man
Let thou never
Know thy misfortunes;
For from a bad man
Thou never wilt obtain
A return for thy good will.
119. I saw mortally
Wound a man
A wicked woman’s words;
A false tongue
Caused his death,
And most unrighteously.
120. I counsel thee, Lodfafner,
To take advice;
Thou wilt profit, if thou takest it.
If thou knowest thou hast a friend,
Whom thou well canst trust,
Go oft to visit him;
For with brushwood overgrown
And with high grass
Is the way that no one treads.
121. I counsel thee, Lodfafner,
To take advice;
Thou wilt profit, if thou takest it.
A good man attract to thee
In pleasant converse,
And salutary speech learn, while thou livest.
122. I counsel thee, Lodfafner,
To take advice;
Thou wilt profit, if thou takest it.
With thy friend
Be thou never
First to quarrel.
Care gnaws the heart,
If thou to no one canst
Thy whole mind disclose.
128. I counsel thee, Lodfafner,
To take advice;
Thou wilt profit, if thou takest it.
Words thou never
Shouldst exchange
With a witless fool.
124. For from an ill-conditioned man
Thou wilt never get
A return for good;
But a good man will
Bring thee favor
By his praise.
125. There is a mingling of affection,
Where one can tell
Another all his mind.
Everything is better
Than being with the deceitful.
He is not another’s friend
Who ever says as he says.
126. I counsel thee, Lodfafner,
To take advice;
Thou wilt profit, if thou takest it.
Even in three words
Quarrel not with a worse man:
Often the better yields,
When the worse strikes.
127. I counsel thee, Lodfafner,
To take advice;
Thou wilt profit, if thou takest it.
Be not a shoemaker
Nor a shaftmaker,
Unless for thyself it be:
For a shoe, if ill made,
Or a shaft if crooked,
Will call down evil on thee.
128. I counsel thee, Lodfafner,
To take advice;
Thou wilt profit, if thou takest it.
Wherever of injury thou knowest,
Regard that injury as thy own;
And give to thy foes no peace.
129. I counsel thee, Lodfafner,
To take advice;
Thou wilt profit, if thou takest it.
Rejoiced at evil
Be thou never,
But let good give thee pleasure.
130. I counsel thee, Lodfafner,
To take advice;
Thou wilt profit, if thou takest it.
In a battle
Look not up,[18]
(Like swine[19]
The sons of men then become),
That men may not fascinate thee.
131. If thou wilt induce a good woman
To pleasant converse,
Thou must promise fair,
And hold to it:
No one turns from good, if it can be got.
132. I enjoin thee to be wary,
But not over-wary;
At drinking be thou most wary,
And with another’s wife;
And thirdly,
That thieves delude thee not.
133. With insult or derision
Treat thou never
A guest or wayfarer;
They often little know,
Who sit within,
Of what race they are who come.
134. Vices and virtues
The sons of mortals bear
In their breasts mingled;
No one is so good
That no failing attends him,
Nor so bad as to be good for nothing.
135. At a hoary speaker
Laugh thou never,
Often is good that which the aged utter;
Oft from a shriveled hide
Discreet words issue,
From those whose skin is pendent
And decked with scars,
And who go loitering among the vile.
136. I counsel thee, Lodfafner,
To take advice;
Thou wilt profit, if thou takest it.
Rail not at a guest,
Nor from thy gate thrust him;
Treat well the indigent,
They will speak well of thee.
137. Strong is the bar
That must be raised
To admit all.[20]
Do thou give a penny,
Or they will call down on thee
Every ill on thy limbs.
138. I counsel thee, Lodfafner,
To take advice;
Thou will profit, if thou takest it.
Wherever thou beer drinkest,
Invoke to thee the power of earth;
For earth is good against drink,
Fire for distempers,
The oak for constipation,
A corn-ear for sorcery,
A hall for domestic strife.
In bitter hates invoke the moon;
The bitter for bite-injuries is good,
But runes against calamity;
Fluid let earth absorb.
This is all of the famous Hávamál of the Elder Edda except the so-called
Runic Chapter, which will be given in the second part in connection with
the myth of Odin. Hear now what the valkyrie has to say to Sigurd
Fafnisbane in
SIGRDRÍFUMÁL (_the Lay of Sigdrifa_).
Sigurd rode up the Hindarfiall, and directed his course southward toward
Frankland. In the fell he saw a great light, as if a fire were burning,
which blazed up to the sky. On approaching it, there stood a
_skialdborg_, and over it a banner. Sigurd went into the skialdborg, and
saw a warrior lying within it asleep, completely armed. He first took
the helmet off the warrior’s head, and saw that it was a woman. Her
corselet was as fast as if it had grown to her body. With his sword,
Gram, he ripped the corselet from the upper opening downwards, and then
through both sleeves. He then took the corselet off from her, when she
awoke, sat up, and, on seeing Sigurd, said:
1. What has my corselet cut?
Why from my sleep have I started?
Who has cast from me
The fallow bands?
SIGURD:
1. Sigmund’s son
(Recently did the raven
Feed on carrion)[21]
And Sigurd’s sword.
SHE:
2. Long have I slept,
Long been with sleep oppressed,
Long are mortals’ sufferings!
Odin is the cause
That I have been unable
To cast off torpor.
Sigurd sat down and asked her name. She then took a horn filled with
mead, and gave him the _minnis-cup_ (cup of memory).
SHE:
3. Hail to Day!
Hail to the sons of Day!
To Night and her daughter, hail!
With placid eyes
Behold us here,
And here sitting give us victory.
4. Hail to the gods!
Hail to the goddesses!
Hail to the bounteous earth!
Words and wisdom
Give to us noble twain,
And healing hands while we live.
She was named Sigdrifa, and was a valkyrie. She said that two kings had
made war on each other, one of whom was named Hialmgunnar; he was old
and a great warrior, and Odin had promised him victory. The other was
Agnar, a brother of Aud, whom no divinity would patronize. Sigdrifa
overcame Hialmgunnar in battle; in revenge for which Odin pricked her
with a sleep-thorn, and declared that thenceforth she should never have
victory in battle, and should be given in marriage. But, said she, I
said to him that I had bound myself by a vow not to espouse any man who
could be made to fear. Sigurd answers, and implores her to teach him
wisdom, as she had intelligence from all worlds:
SIGDRIFA:
5. Beer I bear to thee,
Column of battle!
With might mingled,
And with bright glory:
’Tis full of song,
And salutary saws,
Of potent incantations,
And joyous discourses.
6. Sig-runes thou must know,
If victory (_sigr_) thou wilt have,
And on thy sword’s hilt rist them;
Some on the chapes,
Some on the guard,
And twice name the name of Tyr.
7. Öl-(ale-)runes thou must know,
If thou wilt not that another’s wife
Thy trust betray, if thou
In her confide.
On the horn must they be risted,
And on the hand’s back,
And Naud[22] on the nail be scored.
8. A cup must be blessed,
And against peril guarded,
And garlick in the liquor cast;
Then I know
Thou wilt never have
Mead with treachery mingled.
9. Biarg-(help-)runes thou must know,
If thou wilt help
And loose the child from women;
In the palm they must be graven,
And round the joints be clasped,
And the dises prayed for aid.
10. Brim-(sea-)runes thou must know,
If thou wilt have secure
Afloat thy sailing steeds.
On the prow they must be risted,
And on the helm-blade,
And with fire to the oar applied.
No surge shall be so towering,
Nor waves so dark,
But from the ocean thou safe shalt come,
11. Lim-(branch-)runes thou must know.
If thou a leech would be,
And wounds know how to heal.
On the bark they must be risted,
And on the leaves of trees,
Of those whose boughs bend eastward.
12. Mál-(speech-)runes thou must know,
If thou wilt that no one
For injury with hate requite thee.
Those thou must wind,
Those thou must wrap round,
Those thou must altogether place
In the assembly,
Where people have
Into full court to go.
13. Hug-(thought-)runes thou must know,
If thou a wiser man wilt be
Than every other.
Those interpreted,
Those risted,
Those devised Hropt,[23]
From the fluid
Which had leaked
From Heiddraupner’s[24] head,
And from Hoddropner’s horn.
14. On a rock he stood,
With edged sword,
A helm on his head he bore.
Then spake Mimer’s head
Its first wise word,
And true sayings uttered.
15. They are, it is said,
On the shield risted
Which stands before the shining god,
On Aarvak’s[25] ear,
And on Alsvinn’s hoof,
On the wheel which rolls
Under Rogner’s[26] car,
On Sleipner’s teeth,
And on the sledge’s bands.
16. On the bear’s paw,
And on Brage’s tongue,
On the wolf’s claws,
And the eagle’s beak,
On bloody wings,
And on the bridge’s end,
On the releasing hand.
And on healing’s track.
17. On glass and on gold,
On amulets of men,
In wine and in ale,
And in the welcome seat,
On Gungner’s point,
And on Grane’s breast,
On the norn’s nail,
And the owl’s neb.
18. All were erased
That were inscribed,
And mingled with the sacred mead,
And sent on distant ways;
They are with the gods,
They are with the elves;
Some with the wise vans,
Some human beings have.
19. Those are bôk-runes
Those are biarg-runes,
And all öl-(ale-)runes,
And precious megin-(power-)runes
For those who can,
Without confusion or corruption,
Turn them to his welfare.
Use, if thou hast understood them,
Until the powers perish.
20. Now thou shalt choose,
Since a choice is offered thee,
Keen armed warrior!
My speech or silence:
Think over it in thy mind.
All evils have their measure.
SIGURD:
21. I will not flee,
Though thou shouldst know me doomed:
I am not born a craven.
Thy friendly councils all
I will receive,
As long as life is in me.
SIGDRIFA:
22. This I thee counsel first:
That toward thy kin
Thou bear thee blameless.
Take not hasty vengeance,
Although they raise up strife:
That, it is said, benefits the dead.
23. This I thee counsel secondly:
That no oath thou swear,
If it not be true.
Cruel bonds
Follow broken faith:
Accursed is the faith-breaker.
24. This I thee counsel thirdly:
That in the assembly thou
Contend not with a fool;
For an unwise man
Oft utters words
Worse than he knows of.
25. All is vain,
If thou holdest silence;
Then wilt thou seem a craven born,
Or else truly accused.
Doubtful is a servant’s testimony,
Unless a good one thou gettest.
On the next day
Let his life go forth,
And so men’s lies reward.
26. This I counsel thee fourthly:
If a wicked sorceress
Dwell by the way,
To go on is better
Than there to lodge,
Though night may overtake thee.
27. Of searching eyes
The sons of men have need,
When fiercely they have to fight:
Oft pernicious women
By the wayside sit,
Who swords and valor deaden.
28. This I thee counsel fifthly:
Although thou see fair women
On the benches sitting,
Let not their kindred’s silver[27]
Over thy sleep have power.
To kiss thee entice no woman.
29. This I thee counsel sixthly:
Although among men pass
Offensive tipsy talk,
Never, while drunken, quarrel
With men of war:
Wine steals the wits of many.
30. Brawls and drink
To many men have been
A heart-felt sorrow;
To some their death,
To some calamity:
Many are the griefs of men!
31. This I thee counsel seventhly:
If thou hast disputes
With a daring man,
Better it is for men
To fight than to be burnt
Within their dwelling.
32. This I thee counsel eighthly:
That thou guard thee against evil,
And eschew deceit.
Entice no maiden,
Nor wife of man,
Nor to wantonness incite.
33. This I thee counsel ninthly:
That thou corpses bury,
Wherever on the earth thou findest them;
Whether from sickness they have died,
Or from the sea,
Or are from weapons dead.
34. Let a mound be raised
For those departed;
Let their hands and head be washed,
Combed, and wiped dry,
Ere in the coffin they are laid;
And pray for their happy sleep.
35. This I thee counsel tenthly:
That thou never trust
A foe’s kinsman’s promises,
Whose brother thou hast slain,
Or sire laid low:
There is a wolf
In a young son,
Though he with gold be gladdened.
36. Strifes and fierce enmities
Think not to be lulled,
No more than deadly injury.
Wisdom and fame in arms
A prince not easily acquires,
Who shall of men be foremost.
37. This I counsel thee eleventhly:
That thou at evil look,
What course it may take.
A long life, it seems to me,
The prince may [not] enjoy;
Fierce disputes will arise.
Sigurd said: A wiser mortal exists not, and I swear that I will possess
thee, for thou art after my heart. She answered: Thee I will have before
all others, though I have to choose among all men. And this they
confirmed with oaths to each other.
Here ends the lay of Sigdrifa.
The reader may find some of these rules of _Hávamál_ and _Sigrdrífumál_
somewhat inconsistent with our ideas of a supreme deity; but are not
many of these principles laid down in the Odinic morality worthy of a
Christian age and of a Christian people, and do they not all reveal a
profound knowledge of human nature in all its various phases?
These rules of life, says Professor Keyser, were variously understood,
and as variously carried out into practice. But on the whole we find
them reflected in the popular character of the Norsemen, such as history
teaches it to us during heathendom. Bravery, prudence, and a love of
independence are its brightest features, although bravery often
degenerated into warrior fierceness, prudence into dissimulation, and
the love of independence into self-will. If on the one hand we find a
noble self-command, devoted faithfulness in friendship and love,
noble-hearted hospitality and generosity, a love of right and of legal
order, we also see on the other hand, unyielding stubbornness, a fierce
spirit of revenge, a repulsive arrogance, a far-reaching self-interest,
and an excessive dependence upon the formalities of the law. A cold and
unmoved exterior often concealed a soul torn by the bitterest grief, or
stirred up by the wildest passions. A passionate outburst of joy or of
grief was considered undignified. Few words, but energetic action, was
esteemed in conduct, and complaint was silenced in order that vengeance
could strike the more surely and heavily. Under a tranquil, indifferent
mien were concealed the boldest and most deep-laid plans, and the real
intention first came to light in the decisive moment. On the whole,
there was certainly an impress of rigidity, insensibility and
self-goodness stamped upon the popular character, but this stamp was
more upon the outside than in its innermost character, more the result
of inordinate prudence than of an evil disposition; and through all its
failings there shines forth a dignity of soul which ennobled power and
held up glory in this life and in after ages as the highest object of
human undertakings.[28]
The part assigned to the Norsemen in the grand drama of European history
was to free the human mind from the Cæsarian thraldom of Rome, in which
it had so long been chained; to show what marvels self-government and
free institutions can accomplish, and thus hand down to us, their
descendants, a glorious heritage of imperishable principles, which we
must study and in a great measure be guided by.
We retain in the days of the week the remembrance of this religion,
which was brought to England more than fourteen hundred years ago by the
Goths, who came to give that country a new name and a new fate in the
world. The Goths taught the people of Britain to divide tho week into
their _Sun_-day, _Moon_-day, _Tys_-day, _Odin’s_-day, _Thor’s_-day, and
_Frey’s_ or _Freyja’s_-day. The name of Saturday the English owe to the
Roman god Saturnus; but the last day of the week was known among the
early Norsemen, and is still known among them, as _Laugar_-dag,
_Lör_-dag, that is _Washing_-day. It is possible, as E. C. Otté quaintly
remarks, that our Anglo-Saxon forefathers may have wished to change this
name when, in later times, they had ceased to have only _one_
washing-day out of the seven, like their northers ancestors.
We are now prepared to present the Norse mythology, and we shall divide
it into three divisions: THE CREATION AND PRESERVATION, THE LIFE AND
EXPLOITS OF THE GODS, and RAGNAROK AND REGENERATION. These three
divisions we dedicate respectively to URD, VERDANDE, and SKULD, the
three norns, WAS, IS, and SHALL BE, which uphold the world’s structure
and preside over the destinies of gods and men.
Footnote 8:
Beowulf, 1839.
Footnote 9:
The tailor makes the man.
Footnote 10:
The public assembly.
Footnote 11:
That is, _dead_ on the funeral pile.
Footnote 12:
Odin.
Footnote 13:
Dead.
Footnote 14:
Such lines as this show the _Norse_ origin of the Edda.
Footnote 15:
For the story of Suttung and Gunlad, see second part, pp. 246-253.
Footnote 16:
In the North a holy oath was taken on a ring kept in the temple for
that purpose.
Footnote 17:
Carving: runes are risted = runes are carved.
Footnote 18:
In a battle we must not look up, but forward.
Footnote 19:
To become panic-stricken, which the Norsemen called to become swine.
Footnote 20:
The meaning is, it is difficult to show hospitality to everybody. A
door would have to be strong to stand so much opening and shutting.
Footnote 21:
The parenthesis refers to Fafner’s death.
Footnote 22:
The name of a rune; our _N_.
Footnote 23:
Odin.
Footnote 24:
Mimer.
Footnote 25:
The horses of the sun.
Footnote 26:
Odin.
Footnote 27:
Which thou mightest get by marriage.
Footnote 28:
_Religion of the Northmen_, chap. xvii.
NORSE MYTHOLOGY.
Urðar orði
kveðr engi maðr.
Vafin er Verðandi reyk.
Lítið sjáum aptr,
en ekki fram;
skyggir Skuld fyrir sjón.
MATTHIAS JOCHUMSON.
PART I.
THE CREATION AND PRESERVATION OF THE WORLD.
URD.
Urðar orði
kveðr engi maðr.
CHAPTER I.
THE CREATION.
SECTION I. THE ORIGINAL CONDITION OF THE WORLD.
The condition of things before the creation of the world is expressed
negatively. There was nothing of that which sprang into existence. This
transition from empty space into being demands the attention of the
whole human race. Therefore the vala, or wandering prophetess, begins
her mysterious song, the grand and ancient Völuspá, the first lay in the
Elder Edda, as follows:
Give ear
All ye divine races,
Great and small,
Sons of Heimdal!
I am about to relate
The wonderful works of Valfather,
The oldest sayings of men,
The first I remember.
It was Time’s morning
When Ymer lived:
There was no sand, no sea,
No cooling billows;
Earth there was none,
No lofty heaven,
Only Ginungagap,
But no grass.
The beginning was this: Many ages, ere the earth was made, there existed
two worlds. Far to the north was Niflheim (the nebulous world), and far
to the south was Muspelheim (the fire world). Between them was
Ginungagap (the yawning gap). In the middle of Niflheim lay the spring
called Hvergelmer, and from it flowed twelve ice-cold streams, the
rivers Elivagar, of which Gjol was situated nearest Hel-gate. Muspelheim
was so bright and hot that it burned and blazed and could not be trodden
by those who did not have their home and heritage there. In the midst of
this intense light and burning heat sat Surt, guarding its borders with
a flaming sword in his hand.
SECTION II. THE ORIGIN OF THE GIANTS (RHIMTHURSAR).
The first beings came into existence in the following manner: When those
rivers that are called Elivagar, and which flowed from the spring
Hvergelmer, had flowed far from their spring-head the venom which flowed
with them hardened, as does dross that runs from a furnace, and became
ice. And when the ice stood still, and ran not, the vapor arising from
the venom gathered over it and froze to rime, and in this manner were
formed in the yawning gap many layers of congealed vapor piled one over
the other. That part of Ginungagap that lay toward the north was thus
filled with thick and heavy ice and rime, and everywhere within were
fogs and gusts; but the south side of Ginungagap was lightened by the
sparks and flakes that flew out of Muspelheim. Thus while freezing cold
and gathering gloom proceeded from Niflheim, that part of Ginungagap
which looked toward Muspelheim was hot and bright; but Ginungagap was as
light as windless air; and when the heated blast met the frozen vapor it
melted into drops, _and by the might of him who sent the heat_,[29]
these drops quickened into life and were shaped into the likeness of a
man. His name was Ymer, but the frost-giants called him Aurgelmer. Ymer
was not a god; he was bad (evil, _illr_), as were all his kind. When he
slept, he fell into a sweat, and from the pit of his left arm waxed a
man and a woman, and one of his feet begat with the other a son, from
whom descend the frost-giants, and therefore Ymer is called the old
frost-giant (Rhimthurs). Thus the Elder Edda, in the lay of Vafthrudner:
Countless winters
Ere earth was formed,
Was born Bergelmer;
Thrudgelmer
Was his sire,
His grandsire Aurgelmer.
From Elivagar
Sprang venom drops,
Which grew till they became a giant;
But sparks flew
From the south-world:
To the ice the fire gave way.
Under the armpit grew,
’Tis said, of Rhimthurs,
A girl and boy together;
Foot with foot begat,
Of that wise giant,
A six-headed son.
SECTION III. THE ORIGIN OF THE COW AUDHUMBLA AND THE BIRTH OF THE GODS.
On what did the giant Ymer live, is a pertinent question. Here is the
answer: The next thing, when the rime had been resolved into drops, was
that the cow, which is called Audhumbla, was made of it. Four
milk-rivers ran out of her teats, and thus she fed Ymer. On what did the
cow feed? She licked rime-stones, which were salt; and the first day
that she licked the stones there came at evening out of the stones a
man’s hair, the second day a man’s head, and the third day all the man
was there. His name was Bure. He was fair of face, great and mighty. He
begat a son by name Bor. Bor took for his wife a woman whose name was
Bestla, a daughter of the giant Bolthorn, and they had three sons, Odin,
Vile and Ve, the rulers of heaven and earth; and Odin, adds the Younger
Edda, is the greatest and lordliest of all the gods.
The frost-giants were, then, the first race or the first dynasty of
gods. The Elder Edda makes this dynasty embrace three beings, for
Aurgelmer in the passage quoted is the same as Ymer.
Odin descended from the frost-giants, which is also proved by a passage
in the Younger Edda, where Ganglere asks where Odin kept himself ere
heaven and earth were yet made. Then he was, answered Haar, with the
frost-giants (Rhimthursar).
SECTION IV. THE NORSE DELUGE AND THE ORIGIN OF HEAVEN AND EARTH.
Bor’s sons, Odin, Vile and Ve, slew the giant Ymer, but when he fell
there ran so much blood out of his wounds, that with that they drowned
all the race of the frost-giants, save one, who got away with his
household; him the giants call Bergelmer. He went on board his boat, and
with him went his wife, and from them came a new race of frost-giants.
Thus the Elder Edda:
Winters past counting,
Ere earth was yet made,
Was born Bergelmer:
Full well I remember
How this crafty giant
Was stowed safe in his skiff.
Odin, Vile and Ve dragged the body of Ymer into the middle of
Ginungagap, and of it they formed the earth. From Ymer’s blood they made
the seas and waters; from his flesh the land; from his bones the
mountains; from his hair the forests, and from his teeth and jaws,
together with some bits of broken bones, they made the stones and
pebbles. From the blood that ran from his wounds they made the vast
ocean, in the midst of which they fixed the earth, the ocean encircling
it as a ring; and hardy, says the Younger Edda, will he be who attempts
to cross those waters. Then they took his skull and formed thereof the
vaulted heavens, which they placed over the earth, and set a dwarf at
the corner of each of the four quarters. These dwarfs are called East,
West, North, and South. The wandering sparks and red-hot flakes that had
been cast out from Muspelheim they placed in the heavens, both above and
below Ginungagap, to give light unto the world. The earth was round
without and encircled by the deep ocean, the outward shores of which
were assigned as a dwelling for the race of giants. But within, round
about the earth, the sons of Bor raised a bulwark against turbulent
giants, employing for this structure Ymer’s eye-brows. To this bulwark
they gave the name Midgard.[30] They afterwards threw and scattered the
brains of Ymer in the air, and made of them the melancholy clouds. Thus
the Elder Edda, in the lay of Vafthrudner:
From Ymer’s flesh
The earth was formed,
And from his bones the hills,
The heaven from the skull
Of that ice-cold giant,
And from his blood the sea.
And in Grimner’s lay:
Of Ymer’s flesh
Was earth created,
Of his blood the sea,
Of his bones the hills,
Of his hair trees and plants,
Of his skull the heavens,
And of his brows
The gentle powers
Formed Midgard for the sons of men;
But of his brain
The heavy clouds are
All created.
SECTION V. THE HEAVENLY BODIES, TIME, THE WIND, THE RAINBOW.
The heavenly bodies were formed of the sparks from Muspelheim. The gods
did not create them, but only placed them in the heavens to give light
unto the world, and assigned them a prescribed locality and motion. By
them days and nights and seasons were marked. Thus the Elder Edda, in
Völuspá:
The sun knew not
His proper sphere;
The stars knew not
Their proper place;
The moon knew not
Where her position was.
There was nowhere grass
Until Bor’s sons
The expanse did raise,
By whom the great
Midgard was made.
From the south the sun
Shone on the walls;
Then did the earth
Green herbs produce.
The moon went ahead
The sun followed,
His right hand held
The steeds of heaven.
Mundilfare was the father of the sun and moon. It is stated in the
Younger Edda that Mundilfare had two children, a son and a daughter, so
lovely and graceful that he called the boy Maane[31] (moon) and the girl
Sol (sun), and the latter he gave in marriage to Glener (the shining
one).
But the gods, being incensed at Mundilfare’s presumption, took his
children and placed them in the heavens, and let Sol drive the horses
that draw the car of the sun. These horses are called Aarvak (the
ever-wakeful) and Alsvinn (the rapid one); they are gentle and
beautiful, and under their withers the gods placed two skins filled with
air to cool and refresh them, or, according to another ancient
tradition, an iron refrigerant substance called _ísarnkol_. A shield, by
name Svalin (cool), stands before the Sun, the shining god. The
mountains and the ocean would burn up if this shield should fall away.
Maane was set to guide the moon in her course, and regulate her
increasing and waning aspect.
A giant, by name Norve, who dwelt in Jotunheim, had a daughter called
Night (_nótt_), who, like all her race, was of a dark and swarthy
complexion. She was first wedded to a man called Naglfare, and had by
him a son named Aud, and afterward to another man called Annar, by whom
she had a daughter called Earth (_jörd_). She finally espoused Delling
(day-break), of asa-race, and their son was Day (_dagr_), a child light
and fair like his father. Allfather gave Night and Day two horses and
two cars, and set them up in the heavens that they might drive
successively one after the other, each in twenty-four hours’ time, round
the world. Night rides first with her steed Hrimfaxe (rime-fax),[32]
that every morn, as he ends his course, bedews the earth with the foam
from his bit. The steed driven by Day is called Skinfaxe (shining-fax),
and all the sky and earth glistens from his mane. Thus the Elder Edda,
in the lay of Vafthrudner:
Mundilfare hight he
Who the moon’s father is,
And also the sun’s:
Round heaven journey
Each day they must,
To count years for men.
In the lay of Grimner:
Aarvak and Alsvinn,
Theirs it is up hence
Tired the sun to draw
Under their shoulder
These gentle powers, the gods,
Have concealed an iron-coolness.
Svalin the shield is called
Which stands before the sun,
The refulgent deity;
Rocks and ocean must, I ween,
Be burnt,
Fell it from its place.
In the lay of Vafthrudner:
Delling called is he
Who the Day’s father is,
But Night was of Norve born;
The new and waning moons
The beneficent powers created
To count years for men.
Skinfaxe he is named
That the bright day draws
Forth over human kind;
Of coursers he is best accounted
Among faring men;
Ever sheds light that horse’s mane.
Hrimfaxe he is called
That each night draws forth
Over the beneficent powers;
He from his bit lets fall
Drops every morn
Whence in the dells comes dew.
The sun speeds at such a rate as if she feared that some one was
pursuing her for her destruction. And well she may; for he that seeks
her is not far behind, and she has no other way to escape than to run
before him. But who is he that causes her this anxiety? There are two
wolves; the one, whose name is Skol, pursues the sun, and it is he that
she fears, for he shall one day overtake and devour her. The other,
whose name is Hate Hrodvitneson, runs before her and as eagerly pursues
the moon, that will one day be caught by him. Whence come these wolves?
Answer: A giantess dwells in a wood called Jarnved (ironwood). It is
situated east of Midgard, and is the abode of a race of witches. This
old hag is the mother of many gigantic sons, who are all of them shaped
like wolves, two of whom are Skol and Hate. There is one of that race
who is the most formidable of all. His name is Maanagarm
(moon-swallower): he is filled with the life-blood of men who draw near
their end, and he will swallow up the moon, and stain the heavens and
the earth with blood. As it is said in the Völuspá, of the Elder Edda:
Eastward in the Ironwood
The old one sitteth,
And there bringeth forth
Fenrer’s fell kindred.
Of these, one, the mightiest,
The moon’s devourer,
In form most fiend-like,
And filled with the life-blood
Of the dead and the dying,
Reddens with ruddy gore
The seats of the high gods.
Then shall the sunshine
Of summer be darkened,
And fickle the weather.
Conceive ye this or not?
The gods set Evening and Midnight, Morning and Noon, Forenoon and
Afternoon, to count out the year. There were only two seasons, summer
and winter; hence spring and fall must be included in these two. The
father of summer is called Svasud (the mild), who is such a gentle and
delicate being, that what is mild is from him called sweet (_sváslegt_).
The father of winter has two names, Vindlone and Vindsval (the
wind-cool); he is the son of Vasud (sleet-bringing), and, like all his
race, has an icy breath and is of grim and gloomy aspect.
Whence come the winds, that are so strong that they move the ocean and
fan fire to flame, and still are so airy that no mortal eye can discern
them? Answer: In the northern extremity of the heavens sits a giant
called Hræsvelger (corpse-swallower), clad with eagles’ plumes. When he
spreads out his wings for flight, the winds arise from under them.
Which is the path leading from earth to heaven? The gods made a bridge
from earth to heaven and called it Bifrost (the vibrating way). We have
all seen it and call it the rainbow. It is of three hues and constructed
with more art than any other work. But though strong it be, it will be
broken to pieces when the sons of Muspel, after having traversed great
rivers, shall ride over it. There is nothing in nature that can hope to
make resistance when the sons of Muspel sally forth to the great combat.
Now listen to the Elder Edda on some of these subject.
In the lay of Grimner:
Skol the wolf is named
That the fair-faced goddess
To the ocean chases;
Another Hate is called,
He is Hrodvitner’s son:
He the bright maid of heaven shall precede.
In the Völuspá:
Then went the powers all
To their judgment seats,
The all-holy gods,
And thereon held council:
To night and to the waning moon
Gave names;
Morn they named
And mid-day,
Afternoon and eve,
Whereby to reckon years.
In the lay of Vafthrudner:
Vindsval is his name
Who winter’s father is,
And Svasud summer’s father is:
Yearly they both
Shall ever journey,
Until the powers perish.
Hræsvelger is his name
Who at the end of heaven sits,
A giant in an eagle’s plumage:
From his wings comes,
It is said, the wind
That over all men passes.
In reference to Maane, it should be added, that the Younger Edda tells
us, that he once took children from earth. Their names were Bil and
Hjuke. They went from the spring called Byrger, and bore on their
shoulders the bucket called Sæger with the pole called Simul. Their
father’s name was Vidfin. These children follow Maane, as may be seen,
from the earth.
SECTION VI. THE GOLDEN AGE. THE ORIGIN OF THE DWARFS. THE CREATION OF
THE FIRST MAN AND WOMAN.
In the beginning Allfather (Odin) appointed rulers and bade them judge
with him the fate of men and regulate the government of the celestial
city. They met for this purpose in a place called Idavold (the plains of
Ida), which is the center of the divine abode (Asgard, the abode of the
asas). Their first work was to erect a court or hall, where there are
twelve seats for themselves, besides the throne which is occupied by
Allfather. This hall is the largest and most magnificent in the
universe, being resplendent on all sides both within and without with
the finest gold. Its name is Gladsheim (home of gladness). They also
erected another hall for the sanctuary of the goddesses. It is a fair
structure and is called Vingolf (friends’-floor). Thereupon they built a
smithy and furnished it with hammers, tongs and anvils, and with these
made all other requisite instruments with which they worked in metals,
stone and wood, and composed so large a quantity of the metal called
gold, that they made all their house-furniture of it. Hence that age was
called the Golden Age. This was the age that lasted until the arrival of
the women out of Jotunheim, who corrupted it.
Then the gods seating themselves upon their thrones distributed justice,
and remembered how the dwarfs had been bred in the mould of the earth,
just as worms in a dead body. The dwarfs were quickened as maggots in
the flesh of the old giant Ymer, but by the command of the gods they
received the form and understanding of men; their abode was, however, in
the earth and rocks. Four dwarfs, Austre (east), Vestre (west), Nordre
(north), and Sudre (south), were appointed by the gods to bear up the
sky. Of the race of dwarfs Modsogner and Durin are the principal ones.
There were not yet any human beings upon the earth, when one day, as the
sons of Bor (Odin, Hœner and Loder) were walking along the sea-beach,
they found two trees and created from them the first human pair, man and
woman. Odin gave them life and spirit, Hœner endowed them with reason
and the power of motion, and Loder gave them blood, hearing, vision and
a fair complexion. The man they called Ask, and the woman Embla. The
newly created pair received from the gods Midgard as their abode; and
from Ask and Embla is descended the whole human family. Thus the Elder
Edda, in Völuspá.
The asas met
On Ida’s plains;
They altars raised
And temples built;
Furnaces they established,
Precious things forged,
Their strength they tried
In many ways
When making tongs
And forming tools.
On the green they played
In joyful mood,
Nor knew at all
The want of gold,
Until there came
Three giant maids
Exceeding strong
From Jotunheim.
Then all the powers
Went to the throne,
The holy gods,
And held consult
Who should of dwarfs
The race then fashion
From the livid bones
And blood of the giant.
Modsogner, chief
Of the dwarfish race,
And Durin, too,
Were then created;
And like to men
Dwarfs in the earth
Were formed in numbers
As Durin ordered.
And then there came
Out of the ranks,
Powerful and fair,
Three asas home,
And found on shore,
In helpless plight,
Ask and Embla,[33]
Without their fate.
They had not yet
Spirit or mind,
Blood or beauty
Or lovely hue.
Odin gave spirit,
Hœner gave mind,
Loder gave blood
And lovely hue.
SECTION VII. THE GODS AND THEIR ABODES.
In the Old Norse language a god is called _áss_ (pl. _æsir_) and a
goddess _ásynja_. The gods dwell in Asgard. In its midst are the plains
of Ida (_Idavöllr_, the assembling-place of the gods), and Odin’s
high-seat Hlidskjalf, from where he looks out upon all the worlds. But
above the heaven of the asas are higher heavens, and in the highest
stands the imperishable gold-roofed hall Gimle, which is brighter than
the sun.
The gods, to whom divine honors must be rendered, are twelve in number,
and their names are Odin, Thor, Balder, Tyr, Brage, Heimdal, Hoder,
Vidar, Vale, Uller, Forsete, Loke. In this list Njord and Frey are not
mentioned, for they originally belonged to the vans or sea-gods, and
were received among the asas by virtue of a treaty in which Njord was
given as a hostage, and Frey is his son.
Of goddesses we find the number twenty-six, and Vingolf is their hall.
Odin’s hall is the great Valhal. Spears support its ceiling; it is
roofed with shields, and coats of mail adorn its benches. Thither and to
Vingolf Odin invites all men wounded by arms or fallen in battle.
Therefore he is called Valfather (father of the slain), and his invited
guests are called einherjes. They are waited upon by valkyries.
The dwelling of Thor is Thrudvang or Thrudheim. His hall, the immense
Bilskirner. Uller, Thor’s son, lives in Ydaler. Balder lives in
Breidablik, where nothing impure is found. Njord, one of the vans,
dwells in Noatun by the sea. Heimdal inhabits Himinbjorg, which stands
where Bifrost’s bridge approaches heaven. Forsete has Glitner for his
dwelling, whose roof of silver rests on golden columns. The chief
goddess Frigg, wife of Odin, has her dwelling-place in Fensal, and
Freyja, the goddess of love, dwells in Folkvang; her hall is Sessrymner.
Saga dwells in the great Sokvabek under the cool waves; there she drinks
with Odin every day from golden vessels.
We have so far mentioned the following classes of deities: giants, gods,
goddesses, vans (sea-deities), and dwarfs. In addition to these the
Younger Edda mentions two kinds of elves: elves of light and elves of
darkness. The elves of light dwell in Alfheim (home of the elves), but
the elves of darkness live under the earth, and differ from the others
still more in their actions than in their appearance. The elves of light
are fairer than the sun, but the elves of darkness blacker than pitch.
Then we have a lot of inferior spirits, such as trolls, hulder, witches
(_vœttr_), nisses, necks, etc., all of which figure extensively in the
Norse folk-lore, but an extensive description of them will not be
attempted in this work.
SECTION VIII. THE DIVISIONS OF THE WORLD.
Nine worlds are mentioned: Muspelheim, Asaheim, Ljosalfaheim, Vanaheim,
Mannaheim, Jotunheim, Svartalfaheim, Helheim, Niflheim. The highest is
Muspelheim (the fire-world), the realm of Surt, and in its highest
regions it appears that Gimle (heaven) was thought to be situated. The
lowest is Niflheim (the mist-world), the realm of cold and darkness, and
in its midst is the fountain Hvergelmer, where the dragon Nidhug dwells.
Between the two is Mannaheim (the world of man) or Midgard, the round
disk of the earth, surrounded by the great ocean. The gods gave Ask and
Embla, the first human pair, and their descendants, this world to dwell
in. Far above Mannaheim is Asaheim (the world of the gods), forming a
vault above the earth. In the midst of this world is Idavold, the
assembling-place of the gods, and here is also Odin’s lofty throne
Hlidskjalf. Beyond the ocean is Jotunheim (the world of the giants).
This world is separated from Asaheim by the river Ifing, which never
freezes over. Nearest above the earth is Ljosalfaheim (the world of the
light elves), and between it and Asaheim is Vanaheim (the world of the
vans). Proceeding downward, we come first to Svartalfaheim (world of the
dark elves), below Mannaheim, and between Svartalfaheim and Niflheim we
have Helheim (the world of the dead, hell). Thither the way from the
upper worlds led down by the north through Jotunheim over the stream
Gjol, the bridge over which, called Gjallar-bridge, was roofed over with
shining gold.
Footnote 29:
The supreme god.
Footnote 30:
The Tower of Babel.
Footnote 31:
In the Norse language, as also in the Anglo-Saxon, the sun is of the
feminine and the moon of the masculine gender.
Footnote 32:
Fax = mane.
Footnote 33:
Ash and Elm.
CHAPTER II.
THE PRESERVATION.
THE ASH YGDRASIL. MIMER’S FOUNTAIN. URD’S FOUNTAIN. THE NORNS OR FATES.
Ygdrasil is one of the noblest conceptions that ever entered into any
scheme of cosmogony or human existence. It is in fact the great tree of
life, wonderfully elaborated and extended through the whole system of
the universe. It furnishes bodies for mankind from its branches; it
strikes its roots through all worlds, and spreads its life-giving arms
through the heavens. All life is cherished by it, even that of serpents,
which devour its roots and seek to destroy it. It has three grand roots
far apart. One of them extends to the asas, another to the giants in
that very place where was formerly Ginungagap, and the third stands over
Niflheim, and under this root, which is constantly gnawed by the serpent
Nidhug and all his reptile brood, is the fountain Hvergelmer. Under the
root that stretches out toward the giants is Mimer’s fountain, in which
wisdom and wit lie hid. The owner of this fountain is called Mimer. He
is full of wisdom, because he drinks the waters of the fountain every
morning with the Gjallarhorn. Once Odin came and begged a draught of
this water, which he received, but he had to leave one of his eyes in
pawn for it. Thus it is recorded in the Elder Edda:
Full well I know,
Great Odin, where
Thine eye thou lost;
In Mimer’s well,
The fountain pure,
Mead Mimer drinks
Each morning new,
With Odin’s pledge.
Conceive ye this?
Under the root of Ygdrasil, which extends to the asas in heaven, is the
holy Urdar-fountain. Here the gods sit in judgment. Every day they ride
up hither on horseback over Bifrost (the rainbow), which is called the
bridge of the gods (_ásbrú_). Odin rides his gray eight-footed Sleipner,
Heimdal on Goldtop. The other horses are Glad (bright), Gyller (gilder),
Gler (the shining one), Skeidbrimer (fleet-foot), Silfrintop (silver
top), Siner (sinews), Gisl (the sunbeam), Falhofner (pale hoof), Letfet
(light-foot). It has been stated before that the gods worthy of divine
honors were twelve, and here we have ten horses named. Balder’s and
Thor’s are wanting. Balder’s horse was burnt with his master’s body, and
as for Thor, he has to go on foot. He cannot pass the Asabridge, for the
thunder, which he is, would destroy it; therefore he daily wades through
the rivers Kormt, Ormt, and two others called Kerlaug, to get to the
council of the gods.
The giants cannot pass the Asabridge, for the red in it is burning fire
and the waters of heaven roar around it. If it were easy for every one
to walk over it, the giants would go up to heaven by that bridge, and
perhaps succeed in bringing ruin upon the gods.
At the Urdar-fountain dwell also three maidens, named Urd, Verdande and
Skuld (Present, Past and Future). These maidens fix the lifetime of all
men, and are called norns. They guard the fountain, which takes its name
from the first and highest of the three, Urd (Urdar-fount). Besides
these there are other norns, some of which are of heavenly origin, but
others belong to the races of elves and dwarfs. The norns who are of
good origin are good themselves, and dispense good destinies. Those men
to whom misfortunes happen ought to ascribe them to the evil norns. Thus
it is that some men are fortunate and wealthy, while others acquire
neither riches nor honors; some live to a good old age, while others are
cut off in their prime.
Furthermore it must be stated of the ash Ygdrasil, that on its topmost
bough sits an eagle who knows many things, and between the eagle’s eyes
sits a hawk by name Vedfolner. A squirrel, whose name is Ratatosk, runs
up and down the tree, and seeks to cause strife between the eagle and
the serpent Nidhug. Four stags leap about beneath its branches and feed
on its buds. They are called Daain, Dvalin, Duneyr, and Durathror. But
there are so many snakes with Nidhug in the fountain Hvergelmer, that no
tongue can count them. Thus the Elder Edda:
The tree Ygdrasil
Bears a sorer burden
Than men imagine.
Above the stags bite it,
On its sides age rots it,
Nidhug gnaws below.
More serpents lie
Under Ygdrasil’s ash
Than simpletons think of;
Goin and Moin,
The sons of Grafvitner,
Graabak and Grafvollud,
Ofner and Svafner,
Must for aye, methinks,
Gnaw the roots of that tree.
The norns, who dwell by the Urdar-fount, every day draw water from this
spring, and with it, and the clay that lies around the fount, they
sprinkle the ash, in order that the boughs may continue green, and not
rot and wither away. This water is so holy that everything placed in the
spring becomes as white as the film within an egg-shell. Thus the Elder
Edda:
An ash know I standing
Named Ygdrasil,
A stately tree sprinkled
With water, the purest;
Thence come the dewdrops
That fall in the dales;
Ever blooming it stands
O’er the Urdar-fountain.
The dew that falls from the tree on the earth men call honey-dew, and it
is the food of the bees. Finally, two swans swim in the Urdar-fountain,
and they are the parents of the race of swans. Thus all the tribes of
nature partake of the universal tree.
CHAPTER III.
EXEGETICAL REMARKS UPON THE CREATION AND PRESERVATION OF THE WORLD.
In the Norse as in all mythologies, the beginning of creation is a
cosmogony presenting many questions difficult of solution. The natural
desire of knowledge asks for the origin of all things; and as the
beginning always remains inexplicable, the mind tries to satisfy itself
by penetrating as far into the primeval forms of matter and means of
sustaining life as possible. We follow the development of the tree back
to the seed and then to the embryo of the seed, but still we are unable
to explain how a miniature oak can exist in scarcely more than a mere
point in the acorn. We even inspect the first development of the plant
with the microscope, but we acquire knowledge not of the force, but only
of its manifestations or phenomena. Such was also the experience of our
ancestors, when they inquired into the origin of this world. They had
the same desire to know, but were not so well provided with means of
finding out, as we are with our microscopic, telescopic, and spectrum
analysis instruments.
The first effort of the speculative man is to solve the mystery of
existence. The first question is: How has this world begun to be? What
was in the beginning, or what was there before there yet was anything?
In the Greek mythology many forms seem to arise out of night, which
seems to shroud them all. Thus in the Norse mythology the _negative_ is
the first, a _conditio sine qua non_, space we might say, which we must
conceive of as existing, before anything can be conceived as existing in
it. Our ancestors imagined in the beginning only a yawning gap in which
there was absolutely nothing. Wonderfully enough they said that the one
side of this immense gulf extended to the north and the other to the
south, as though there could be such things as _north_ and _south_
before the creation of the world. The north side was cold, the south
warm; and thus we find by closer inspection that this nothing still was
something, that contained in itself opposite forces, cold and heat,
force of contraction and force of expansion, but these forces were in a
state of absolute inertia. Thus also the Greek chaos:
... rudis indigestaque moles,
Nec quidquam nisi pondus iners, congestaque eodem
Non bone junctarum discordia semina rerum.
We cannot conceive how a body containing two forces can be a _pondus
iners_, for every force is infinite and cannot rest unless it is
prisoned by its opposite force, and this is then strife. The Norse view
is, philosophically speaking, more correct. Here the opposite forces are
separated by a gulf, and as they cannot penetrate the empty space, they
remain inert.
It has before been stated that the Norsemen believed in a great and
almighty god, who was greater than Odin. This god appears in the
creation of the world, where he sends the heated blasts from Muspelheim
and imparts life to the melted drops of rime. He will appear again as
the just and mighty one, who is to reign with Balder in the regenerated
earth. He is the true Allfather.
When the thought was directed to inquire into the origin of the world,
one question would naturally suggest another, thus:
Question: What produced the world? Answer: The giant Ymer.
Question: But on what did the giant Ymer live? Answer: On the milk of a
cow.
Question: What did the cow live on? Answer: On salt.
Question: Where did the salt come from? Answer: From the rime.
Question: Whence came the rime? Answer: From ice-cold streams.
Question: Whence came the cold? Answer: From Niflheim.
Question: But what gave life to the rime? Answer: The heat.
Question: Whence came the heat? Answer: From him who sent it.
Here inquiry could go no further. This process brought the inquirer to
the god whom he dared not name, the author and ruler of all things. This
unknown god thus appears only before the creation and after the fall of
the world. He is not a god of time but of eternity. He is from
everlasting to everlasting.
The Elder Edda calls Ymer, Aurgelmer, father of Thrudgelmer and
grandfather of Bergelmer (Berggel-mer.) The first syllables of these
words express the gradual hardening of matter from _aur_ (loose clay) to
_thrud_ (packed, compressed, strong clay), and finally to _berg_ (rock).
Ymer, that is, the first chaotic world-mass, is produced by the union of
frost and fire. The dead cold matter is quickened by the heat into a
huge shapeless giant, which has to be slain; that is, the crude matter
had to be broken to pieces before it could be remodeled into the various
forms which nature since has assumed. This living mass, Ymer, produces
many beings like himself, frost-cold, stone-like, shapeless frost-giants
and mountain giants (icebergs and mountains). In these forms evil is
still predominant. All are allied to the world of cold and darkness. It
is only the lower, the physical, world-life which moves in them.
But a better being, although of animal nature,—the cow Audhumbla—came
into existence from the frozen vapor, as the nurse of Ymer. This power
nourishes the chaotic world, and at the sane time calls forth by its
refining agency—by licking the rime-clumps—a higher spiritual life,
which unfolds itself through several links—through Bure, the bearing
(father), and Bor, the born (son)—until it has gained power sufficient
to overcome chaotic matter—to kill Ymer and his offspring. This
conquering power is divinity itself, which now in the form of a trinity
goes forth as a creative power—as spirit, will and holiness, in the
brothers Odin, Vile and Ve. The spirit quickens, the will arranges, and
holiness banishes the impure and evil. It is however only in the
creation of the world that these three brothers are represented as
coöperating. Vile and Ve are not mentioned again in the whole mythology.
They are blended together in the all-embracing, all-pervading
world-spirit Odin, who is the essence of the world, the almighty god.
This idea of a trinity appears twice more in the Norse mythology. In the
gylfaginning of the Younger Edda, Ganglere sees three thrones, raised
one above the other, and a man sitting on each of them. Upon his asking
what the names of these lords might be, his guide answered: He who
sitteth on the lowest throne is a king, and his name is Haar (the high
or lofty one); the second is Jafnhaar (equally high); but he who sitteth
on the highest throne is called Thride (the third). Then in the creation
of man the divinity appears in the form of a trinity. The three gods,
Odin, Hœner, and Loder, create the first human pair, each one imparting
to them a gift corresponding to his own nature. Odin (_önd_, spirit)
gives them spirit, the spiritual life; he is himself the spirit of the
world, of which man’s is a reflection. Hœner (light) illuminates the
soul with understanding (_ódr_). Loder (fire, Germ. _lodern_, to flame)
gives the warm blood and the blushing color, together with the burning
keenness of the senses. It is evident that Odin’s brothers on these
occasions are mere emanations of his being; they proceed from him, and
only represent different phases of the same divine power. Loder is
probably the same person as afterwards steps forward as an independent
divinity by name Loke. When he was united with Odin in the trinity he
sends a quiet, gentle and invisible flame of light through the veins of
Ask and Embla, that is of mankind. Afterwards, assuming the name of
Loke, he becomes the consuming fire of the earth. Loder produces and
develops life; Loke corrupts and destroys life.
By the creation the elements are separated. Ymer’s body is parceled out;
organic life begins. But the chaotic powers, though conquered, are not
destroyed; a giant escapes in his ark with his family, and from them
comes a new race of giants. Disturbing and deadly influences are
perceptible everywhere in nature, and these influences are represented
by the hostile dispositions of the giants toward the asas and of their
struggles to destroy the work of the latter. The giants have been forced
to fly to Jotunheim, to Utgard, to the outermost deserts beyond the sea;
but still they manage to get within Midgard, the abode of man, and here
they dwell in the rugged mountains, in the ice-clad jokuls and in the
barren deserts, in short, everywhere where any barrenness prevails.
Their agency is perceptible in the devastating storms caused by the
wind-strokes of Hræsvelger, the giant eagle in the North; it is felt in
winter’s cold, snow and ice, and in all the powers of nature which are
unfriendly to fruitfulness and life.
The golden age of the gods, when
On the green they played
In joyful mood,
Nor knew at all
The want of gold,
Until there came
Three giant maids
From Jotunheim,
represents the golden age of the child and the childhood of the human
race. The life of the gods in its different stages of development
resembles the life of men. Childhood innocent and happy, manhood brings
with it cares and troubles. The gods were happy and played on the green
so long as their development had not yet taken any decided outward
direction; but this freedom from care ended when they had to make dwarfs
and men, and through them got a whole world full of troubles and
anxieties to provide for and protect,—just as the golden age ends for
the child when it enters upon the activities of life, and for the race,
when it enters into the many complications and cares of organized
society. The gods played with pieces of gold. The pure gold symbolizes
innocence. These pieces of gold (_gullnar töflur_) were lost, but were
found again in the green grass of the regenerated earth. From the above
it must be clear that the three giant maids, who came from Jotunheim and
put an end to the golden age, must be the norns, the all-pervading
necessity that develops the child into manhood. It does not follow,
therefore, that these maids were giantesses, for the gods themselves
_descended_ from the giants. Nor did the norns introduce evil into the
world, but they marked out for the gods a career which could not be
changed; and immediately after the appearance of the maids from
Jotunheim the gods must create man, whose fate those same norns would
afterwards determine.
The gods did not create the dwarfs, but only determined that they were
to have the form and understanding of men.
Man was made of trees—of the ash and the elm. There is something
graceful in this idea. The Norse conception certainly is of a higher
order than those which produce man from earth or stones. It is more
natural and more noble to regard man as having been made of trees, which
as they grow from the earth heavenward show an unconscious attraction to
that which is divine, than, as the Greeks do, to make men stand forth
out of cold clay and hard stones. We confess that the Norse myth looks
Greek and the Greek looks Norse; yet there may be a good reason for it.
The plastic Greek regarded man as a statue, which generally was formed
of clay or stone, but to which a divine spark of art gave life. The
Norsemen knew not the plastic art and therefore had to go to nature, and
not to art, for their symbols. The manner in which Odin breathes spirit
and life into the trees reminds us very forcibly of the Mosaic
narrative. It is interesting to study the various mythological theories
in regard to the origin of man. The inhabitants of Thibet have a theory
that undoubtedly is of interest to the followers of Darwin. In Thibet
the three gods held counsel as to how Thibet might be peopled. The first
one showed in a speech that the propagation of the human race could not
be secured unless one of them changed himself into an ape. The last one
of the three gods did this, and the goddess Kadroma was persuaded to
change herself into a female ape. The plan succeeded, and they have left
a numerous offspring.[34]
Various classes of beings are mentioned in the mythology. Life is a
conflict between these beings, for the spiritual everywhere seeks to
penetrate and govern the physical; but it also everywhere meets
resistance. The asas rule over heaven and earth, and unite themselves
with the vans, the water divinities. The giants war with the asas and
vans. The elves most properly belong to the asas, while the dwarfs are
more closely allied to the giants, but they serve the asas. The most
decided struggle, then, is between the asas and giants.
The spiritual and physical character of the giants is clearly brought
out in the myths. They constitute a race by themselves, divided into
different groups, but have a common king or ruler. Their bodies are of
superhuman size, having several hands and heads. Sterkodder had six
arms; Hymer had many heads, and they were hard as stones; Hrungner’s
forehead was harder than any kettle. The giantesses are either horribly
ugly or charmingly beautiful. As the offspring of darkness, the giants
prefer to be out at night. The sunlight, and especially lightning,
terrifies them. On land and sea they inhabit large caves, rocks and
mountains. Their very nature is closely allied to stones and mountains.
When Brynhild drove in a chariot on the way to Hel, and passed through a
place in which a giantess dwelt, the giantess said:
Thou shalt not
Pass through
My stone-supported
Dwelling-place.
The weapons of the giants, as the following myths will show, were stones
and rocks; they had clubs and shields of stone. Hrungner’s weapons were
flint-stones. The giants also have domesticated animals. The giant Thrym
sat on a mound plaiting gold bands for his greyhounds and smoothing the
manes of his horses. He had gold-horned cows and all-black oxen. They
possess abundance of wealth and treasures.
The giant is old, strong and powerful, very knowing and wise, but also
severe, proud and boasting. The giantess is violent, passionate and
impertinent. In their lazy rest the giants are good-natured; they may be
as happy as children; but they must not be teased.
The giants representing the wild, disturbing, chaotic forces in nature,
the beneficent gods can subdue or control them in two ways: The one is
to kill them and use their remains for promoting the fruitfulness of the
earth, the other is to unite with them, in other words, to marry them.
This forms the subject of a large number of myths, which, when we have
formed a correct general conception of the giants, need no further
explanation. Odin kills Sokmimer, the destructive maelstrom of the
ocean. Thor crushes Hrungner, the barren mountain. Odin marries Gunlad,
Njord marries Skade, Frey marries Gerd, etc.
When the Odinic mythology was superseded by the Christian religion it
left a numerous offspring of elves, trolls (dwarfs), nisses, necks,
mermaids, princes, princesses, etc., all of which still live in the
memory and traditions of Scandinavia. They may be said to belong to the
fairy mythology of these countries. We give a brief sketch of these
objects of popular belief, chiefly from the excellent work of Thomas
Keightley. A general knowledge of them is necessary in order to
appreciate the rich folk-lore literature of Norseland.
The elves still retain their distinction into _white_ and _black_. The
white or good elves dwell in the air, dance on the grass, or sit in the
leaves of trees; the black or evil elves are regarded as an underground
people, who frequently inflict sickness or injury on mankind, for which
there is a particular kind of doctors and doctresses in most parts of
Scandinavia. The elves are believed to have their kings, and to
celebrate their weddings and banquets, just the same as the dwellers
above ground. There is an interesting intermediate class of them called
in popular tradition hill-people (_haugafolk_), who are believed to
dwell in caves and small hills. When they show themselves they have a
handsome human form. The common people seem to connect with them a deep
feeling of melancholy, as if bewailing a half-quenched hope of
salvation. Their sweet singing may occasionally be heard on summer
nights out of their hills, when one stands still and listens, or, as it
is expressed in the ballads, lays his ear to the elf-hill; but no one
must be so cruel as by the slightest word to destroy their hopes of
salvation, for then the spritely music will be turned into weeping and
lamentation. The Norsemen usually call the elves _hulder_ or
_huldrefolk_, and their music _huldreslaat_. It is in the minor key, and
of a dull and mournful sound. Norse fiddlers sometimes play it, being
thought to have learned it by listening to the underground people among
the hills and rocks. There is also a tune called the elfkings’ tune,
which several of the good fiddlers know right well, but never venture to
play, for as soon as it begins both old and young, and even inanimate
objects, are compelled to dance, and the player cannot stop unless he
can play the air backwards, or that some one comes behind him and cuts
the strings of his fiddle. Ole Bull and Thorgeir Andunson, the people
think, learned to play the fiddle from the hill-people. The little
underground elves, who are thought to dwell under the houses of mankind,
are described as sportive and mischievous, and as imitating all the
actions of men. They are said to love cleanliness about the house and
place, and to reward such servants as are neat and cleanly.
The dwarfs have become trolls. They are not generally regarded as
malignant. They are thought to live inside of hills, mounds and
mountains; sometimes in single families, sometimes in societies. They
figure extensively in the folk-lore. They are thought to be extremely
rich, for when on great occasion of festivity they have their hills
raised up on red pillars, people that have chanced to be passing by have
seen them shoving large chests full of money to and fro, and opening and
clapping down the lids of them. Their dwellings are very magnificent
inside, being decorated with gold and crystal. They are obliging and
neighborly, freely lending and borrowing and otherwise keeping up a
friendly intercourse with mankind. But they have a sad propensity to
stealing, not only provisions, but also women and children. Trolls have
a great dislike to noise, probably from the recollection of the time
when Thor used to be flinging his hammer after them, while this would
indicate that the giants are their true ancestors. The hanging of bells
in the churches has for this reason driven the most of them out of the
country.
The nisse is the German kobold and the Scotch brownie. He seems to be of
the dwarf family, as he resembles them in appearance, and like them has
plenty of money and a dislike to noise and tumult. He is of the size of
a year-old child, but has the face of an old man. His usual dress is
gray, with a pointed red cap, but on Michaelmas day he wears a round hat
like those of the peasants. No farm-house goes on well unless there is a
nisse in it, and well it is for the maids and the men when they are in
favor with him. They may go to their beds and give themselves no trouble
about their work, and yet in the morning the maids will find the kitchen
swept and water brought in, and the men will find the horses in the
stable well cleaned and curried, and perhaps a supply of corn cribbed
for them from the neighbor’s barns. But he punishes them for any
irregularity that takes place.
The neck is the river-spirit. Sometimes he is represented as sitting
during the summer nights on the surface of the water, like a pretty
little boy with golden hair hanging in ringlets, and a red cap on his
head; sometimes as above the water, like a handsome young man, but
beneath like a horse; at other times as an old man with a long beard,
out of which he wrings the water as he sits on the cliffs. The neck is
very severe against any haughty maiden who makes an ill return to the
love of her wooer; but should he himself fall in love with a maid of
human kind, he is the most polite and attentive suitor in the world. The
neck is also a great musician; he sits on the water and plays on his
gold harp, the harmony of which operates on all nature. To learn music
of him, a person must present him with a black lamb and also promise him
resurrection and redemption.
The stromkarl, called in Norway _grim_ or _fosse-grim_ (force-grim), is
a musical genius like the neck. He who has learned from him can play in
such a masterly manner that the trees dance and waterfalls stop at his
music.
The merman is described as of a handsome form with green or black hair
and beard. He dwells either in the bottom of the sea or in cliffs near
the sea-shore, and is regarded as rather a good and beneficent kind of
being.
The mermaid (_haffrue_) is represented in the popular tradition
sometimes as good, at other times as evil and treacherous. Her
appearance is beautiful. Fishermen sometimes see her in the bright
summer’s sun, when a thin mist hangs over the sea, sitting on the
surface of the water, and combing her long golden hair with a golden
comb, or driving up her snow-white cattle to feed on the strands or
small islands. At other times she comes as a beautiful maiden, chilled
and shivering with the cold of the night, to the fires the fishermen
have kindled, hoping by this means to entice them to her love. Her
appearance prognosticates both storm and ill success in their fishing.
People that are drowned, and whose bodies are not found, are believed to
be taken into the dwellings of the mermaids.
It is the prevalent opinion among the common people of the North that
all these various beings were once worsted in a conflict with superior
powers, and condemned to remain until doomsday in certain assigned
abodes. The rocks were given to the dwarfs; the groves and leafy trees
to the elves; the caves and caverns to the hill-people; the sea, lakes
and rivers to the merman, mermaids and necks; and the small forces
(waterfalls) to the fossegrims. Both the Catholic and Protestant priests
have tried to excite an aversion to these beings, but in vain. They
still live and fill the fairy-tales and folk-lore with their strange
characters, and are capable of furnishing a series of unrivaled subjects
for the painter and sculptor. These weird stories are excellently
adapted to adorn our epic and dramatic poetry as well as our historic
novels. But they must be thoroughly understood first, not only by the
poet, but also by his reader. Thomas Keightley, from whom we have given
a short abstract, has given us an excellent work in English on Gothic
fairy mythology, and we would recommend our readers to read his work in
connection with Dr. Dasent’s _Tales from the Fjeld_. _We_ have to
present the original mythology, not its offspring.
Ygdrasil is a most sublime and finished myth. It is a symbol uniting all
the elements of mythology into a poetical system. The tree symbolizes,
and extends its roots and branches into, the whole universe. Its roots
are gnawed by serpents, and stags bite its branches, but the immortal
tree still stands firm and flourishes from age to age. The Norsemen’s
whole experience of life is here presented in a picture that either in
regard to beauty or depth of thought finds no equal in all the other
systems of mythology. Thomas Carlyle says: I like too that
representation they (the Norsemen) have of the tree Ygdrasil: all life
is figured by them as a tree. Ygdrasil, the Ash-tree of Existence, has
its roots deep down in the kingdom of _Hela_, or Death; its trunk
reaches up heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the whole universe. It
is the Tree of Existence. At the foot of it, in the Death-kingdom, sit
three _Nornas_ (fates),—the Past, Present, Future,—watering its roots
from the Sacred Well. Its boughs, with their buddings and
disleafings—events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes,—stretch
through all lands and times. Is not every leaf of it a biography, every
fiber there an act or word? Its boughs are histories of nations; the
rustle of it is the noise of human existence, onwards from of old. It
grows there, the breath of human passion rustling through it; or
storm-tost, the storm-wind howling through it like the voice of all the
gods. It is Ygdrasil, the Tree of Existence. It is the past, the
present, and the future; what was done, what is doing, what will be
done; the infinite conjugation of the verb _to do_. Considering how
human things circulate, each inextricably in communion with all,—how the
word I speak to you to-day is borrowed, not from Ulfila, the Mæso-Goth
only, but from all men since the first man began to speak,—I find no
similitude so true as this of a tree. Beautiful altogether, beautiful
and great. The machine of the universe! Alas, do but think of that in
contrast!
The name Ygdrasil is derived from Odin’s name, _Yggr_ (the deep
thinker), and _drasill_ (carrier, horse). Ygdrasil, therefore, means the
_Bearer of God_, a phrase which finds a literal explanation when Odin
hangs nine nights on this tree before he discovered the runes. Thus the
Elder Edda:
I know that I hung
Nine whole nights,
And to Odin offered,
On that tree,
From what root it springs.
On a wind-rocked tree,
With a spear wounded,
Myself to myself,
Of which no one knows.
All the tribes of nature partake of this universal tree, from the eagle
who sits on the topmost bough down through the different stages of
animal life; the hawk in the lower strata of air, the squirrel who
busily leaps about in the branches, the stags by the fountain, to the
serpents beneath the surface of the earth.
The peculiar feature of this myth is its comprehensiveness. How
beautiful the sight of a large tree! Its far-extending branches, its
moss-covered stem, its high crown and deep roots, remind us of the
infinity of time; it has seen ages roll by before we were born. In the
evening, when our day’s work is done, we lie down in its broad shade and
think of the rest that awaits us when all our troubles are ended. Its
leaves rustle in the breezes and the sunshine; they speak to us of that
which is going on above this sorrow-stricken earth. But the tree is not
the whole symbol. It is connected with the great waters, with the clear
fountain with its egg-white waves, and with the turbulent streams that
flow in the bowels of the earth. While the calm firmness of the tree and
the monotonous rustling of the wind through its leaves invites the soul
to rest, the ceaseless activity of the various tribes of animals that
feed upon its roots and branches remind us of nature never at rest and
never tiring. The tree sighs and groans beneath its burden; the animals
move about in it and around it; every species of animals has its place
and destination; the eagle soars on his broad wings over its top; the
serpent winds his slimy coils in the deep; the swan swims in the
fountain; and while all the tribes of animated life are busily engaged,
the dew-drops fall to refresh and cool the earth and the heart of man.
Nay, this is not all. There is one who has planted the tree, and there
are many who watch and care for it; higher beings protect it. Gods and
men, all that possesses life and consciousness, has its home in this
tree and its work to do. The norns constantly refresh it with water from
the Urdar-fountain; the elves hover about it; Heimdal suspends his
tri-colored arch beneath it; the glory of Balder shines upon it; Mimer
lifts his head in the distance, and the pale Hel watches the shades of
men who have departed this earth and journey through the nine worlds
over Gjallarbro to their final rewards. The picture is so grand that
nothing but an infinite soul can comprehend it; no brush can paint it,
no colors can represent it. Nothing is quiet, nothing at rest; all is
activity. It is the whole world, and it can be comprehended only by the
mind of man, by the soul of the poet, and be symbolized by the ceaseless
flow of language. It is not a theme for the painter or sculptor, but for
the poet. Ygdrasil is the tree of experience of the Gothic race. It is
the symbol of a great race, sprung originally from the same root but
divided into many branches, Norsemen, Englishmen, Americans, etc. It has
three roots, and experience has taught the Goths that there are in
reality but three kinds of people in the world: some that work
energetically for noble and eternal purposes, and their root is in
Asaheim; some that work equally energetically, but for evil and temporal
ends, and their root is in Jotunheim; and many who distinguished
themselves only by sloth and impotence, and their root is in Niflheim
with the goddess Hel or death, in Hvergelmer, where the serpent Nidhug,
with all his reptile brood, gnaws at their lives. Thus the Gothic race
is reflected in Ygdrasil, and if our poets will study it they will find
that this grand myth is itself in fact a root in the Urdar-fountain, and
from it may spring an Ygdrasil of poetry, extending long branches
throughout the poetical world and delighting the nations of the earth.
Beneath that root of Ygdrasil, which shoots down to Jotunheim, there is
a fountain called after its watcher _Mimer’s Fountain_, in which wisdom
and knowledge are concealed. The name Mimer means the _knowing_. The
giants, being older than the asas, looked deeper than the latter into
the darkness of the past. They had witnessed the birth of the gods and
the beginning of the world, and they foresaw their downfall. Concerning
both these events, the gods had to go to them for knowledge, an idea
which is most forcibly expressed in the Völuspá, the first song in the
Elder Edda, where a vala, or prophetess, from Jotunheim is represented
as rising up from the deep and unveiling the past and future to gods and
men. It is this wisdom that Mimer keeps in his fountain. Odin himself
must have it. In the night, when the sun has set behind the borders of
the earth, he goes to Jotunheim. Odin penetrates the mysteries of the
deep, but he must leave his eye in pawn for the drink which he receives
from the fountain of knowledge. But in the glory of morning dawn, when
the sun rises again from Jotunheim, Mimer drinks from his golden horn
the clear mead which flows over Odin’s pawn. Heaven and this lower world
mutually impart their wisdom to each other.
The norns watch over man through life. They spin his thread of fate at
his birth and mark out with it the limits of his sphere of action in
life. Their decrees are inviolable destiny, their dispensations
inevitable necessity. The gods themselves must bow before the laws of
the norns; they are limited by time; they are born and must die. Urd and
Verdande, the Past and Present, are represented as stretching a web from
east to west, from the radiant dawn of life to the glowing sunset, and
Skuld, the Future, tears it to pieces. There is a deeply-laid plan in
the universe, a close union between spirit and matter. There is no such
thing as independent life or action. The ends of the threads wherewith
our life is woven lie deeply hid in the abyss of the beginning.
Self-consciousness is merely an abstraction. The self-conscious
individual is merely a leaf, which imagines itself to be something, but
is in fact only a bud that enfolds itself and falls off from the tree of
the universe. The self-contradiction between absolute necessity and free
will was an unsolved riddle with our heathen ancestors, and puzzles the
minds of many of our most profound thinkers still. Thus, says the Elder
Edda, the norns came to decide the destiny of Helge Hundingsbane:
It was in times of yore,
When the eagles screamed,
Holy waters fell
From the heavenly hills;
Then to Helge,
The great of soul,
Berghild gave birth
In Braalund.
In the mansion it was night:
The norns came,
Who should the prince’s
Life determine;
They him decreed
A prince most famed to be,
And of leaders
Accounted best.
With all their might they span
The fatal threads,
When that he burghs should overthrow
In Braalund.
They stretched out
The golden cord,
And beneath the middle
Of the moon’s mansion fixed it.
East and west
They hid the ends,
Where the prince had
Lands between;
Toward the north
Nere’s sister
Cast a chain,
Which she bade last forever.
Nay, in the Norseman’s faith, man and all things about him were
sustained by divine power. The norns decreed by rigid fate each man’s
career, which not even the gods could alter. Man was free to act, but
all the consequences of his actions were settled beforehand.
Footnote 34:
Wagner, p. 192.
PART II.
THE LIFE AND EXPLOITS OF THE GODS.
VERDANDE.
Vafin er Verðandi reyk.
CHAPTER I.
ODIN.
SECTION I. ODIN.
The first and eldest of the asas is Odin. His name is derived from the
verb _vada_ (imperfect _ód_), to walk, (compare watan, wuot, wuth,
wüthen, wuothan, wodan). He is the all-_pervading_ spirit of the world,
and produces life and spirit (_önd_, _aand_). He does not create the
world, but arranges and governs it. With Vile and Ve he makes heaven and
earth from Ymer’s body; with Hœner and Loder he makes the first man and
woman, and he gives them spirit. All enterprise in peace and in war
proceeds from him. He is the author of war and the inventor of poetry.
All knowledge comes from him and he is the inventor of the runes. As the
spirit of life he permeates all animate and inanimate matter, the whole
universe; he is the infinite wanderer. He governs all things, and
although the other deities are powerful they all serve and obey him as
children do their father. He confers many favors on gods and men. As it
is said in the Elder Edda, in the lay of Hyndla:
FREYJA.
Wake maid of maids!
Wake, my friend!
Hyndla! Sister,
Who in the cavern dwellest.
Now there is dark of darks;
We will both to Valhal ride
And to the holy fane.
Let us Odin pray
Into our minds to enter;
He gives and grants
Gold to the deserving.
He gave Hermod
A helm and corselet,
And from him Sigmund
A sword received.
Victory to his sons he gives,
But to some riches;
Eloquence to the great
And to men wit;
Fair wind he gives to traders,
But visions to skalds;
Valor he gives
To many a warrior.
Especially are the heroes constantly the object of his care. He guides
and protects the brave hero through his whole life; he watches over his
birth and over his whole development; gives him wonderful weapons,
teaches him new arts of war; assists him in critical emergencies,
accompanies him in war, and takes the impetus out of the enemy’s
javelins; and when the warrior has at last grown old, he provides that
he may not die upon his bed, but fall in honorable combat. Finally, he
protects the social organization and influences the human mind. He
revenges murder, protects the sanctity of the oath, subdues hatred, and
dispels anxieties and sorrows.