THE TEUTONS
The Aryans in Europe.--There is more than one European people which
before it was touched by Roman civilisation had remained for an
indefinite period--a period to be measured probably rather by
millenniums than by centuries--in the state of society described in
last chapter (see above) as occurring when the Aryans dwelt among
those whom they had conquered. In various lands alike we meet with
the combination of the patriarchal household with the village, the
combination of agricultural with pastoral life, to which the Aryans
early settled down among non-Aryan populations. This type of society,
which is the basis of feudalism, is recognised alike in India and in
Germany. It stretches far back into the past, and may even be
recognised in some quarters at the present day.
As with civilisation so with religion. The early faith of the Slavs,
the Celts, and the Teutons is now generally regarded as best
representing that of the Aryans. It was a religion in which rite and
belief were indefinite and variable compared with those of the later
Aryan faiths of India and of Southern Europe, there being neither a
regular priesthood nor the use of writing to impart fixity to
religious forms. The river, the fountain, and the aged oak, each had
its legend and its observance of unknown antiquity. The pre-Aryan and
the Aryan elements of religion acted and reacted on each other, the
Aryan, no doubt, being the element of progress, but blending with the
other in indistinguishable mixture. The spirits of ancestors lived in
the belief and the practice of posterity; a thousand unseen agents in
the sky, and in the earth, and under the earth were believed in and
treated according to tradition, fed or flouted, bribed or exorcised,
as occasion suggested. New gods appeared, or old ones were combined
into new, or a god migrated from one province to another. Here also
myths and rituals were formed by various processes. But a more
constant growth of belief took place in connection with some gods as
larger social organisms came into existence, village communities
combining into tribes, tribes into nations. The great gods of heaven,
whatever the history of their early growth, proved specially fitted
to unite together clans and peoples. These beings received different
names in different countries. Their early history, no doubt, was not
the same in all, yet in each mythology there were figures and stories
which occurred also in others, whether in consequence of parallel
growth out of similar circumstances in each land, or from a process
of borrowing at a later time, or from both, we need not try to
decide.
We give a short account of the religion of the Germans. That of the
Celts, which may be studied in the Hibbert Lectures of Professor
Rhys,[1] or that of the Slavs (of which there is an excellent short
summary by Mr. W. R. Morfill in _Religious Systems of the World_),
would have equally well served the purpose of exhibiting an Aryan
religion at a low stage of development, and held by a people not
thoroughly compacted into a nation. The religion of the Teutons has
the advantage for our study over these others, that it remained
longer unsuppressed by Christianity, and in its Scandinavian branch
put forth a vigorous original growth in comparatively recent times.
The latest paganism which flourished in Europe, it is also the
religion of our ancestors, on which the Christianity of the Northern
lands was grafted, and many a survival of which may still be
recognised in our own land. It therefore possesses for us even in
itself considerable interest.
[Footnote 1: _Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as
illustrated by Celtic Heathendom_, 1886.]
Of the ancient Germans, of the dwellers in the basins of the Rhine
and the Danube, we have accounts by Caesar and by Tacitus.[2] After
this there is a dearth of information; the Christian missionaries to
the Germans thought it their duty to cover the former beliefs and
rites of their converts in oblivion, and abstained from giving
information about them. What we know is drawn from Church writers.
The Eddas belong to a much more developed stage of Teutonic life;
they tell their own tale, which will be noticed in its turn.
[Footnote 2: Caesar, _B. Gall._ vi. 21. Tacitus, _Germania_.]
The early Germans dwelt in scattered settlements surrounded by the
great forests and marshes which then covered Central Europe. Every
one has read the description of the brave and warlike people of whom
the Romans justly stood so much in awe, and knows about their fierce
blue eyes and their fair hair, their tall stature, their battle-cries
and charges, their hardy habits and strict morals. As the Roman
writers describe them, they are by no means savages. They do not live
in towns, but migrate from one spot to another, the community
cultivating the land it takes possession of, on a system of common
ownership with rotation of occupants. The women did the hard work,
Tacitus says; the men spent their time in the chase and in fighting.
They had an organisation beyond that of the village, being arranged
in what we may call hundreds and shires, each district having to
furnish so many men for war, electing its own heads and holding
meetings for various purposes. Amidst these local and tribal
divisions they did not forget that they were a nation different from
other nations, and invasion found them a united people. The religious
expression of this is to be found in the legend which represents the
three great divisions of the nation as descended alike from the god
Mannus, son of the earth-born Tuisco; hymns were sung to the latter
as the father of the German race. It was by hymns that this people
remembered things which were important.
The Early German Gods.--There is a national god, then; and other gods
of whom Tacitus tells us are national too, not local or tribal. The
tribes to the south of the Baltic worship Herthus, which, Tacitus
says, is their name for Terra Mater, Mother Earth. The other gods he
mentions are called by Roman names. They worship Mercury, he says, as
their principal god; on certain days they worship him with human
sacrifices. They also worship Mars and Hercules with animal victims;
and a particular tribe, the Suevi, worship Isis. Caesar says the
Germans worship the sun, and Vulcan, and the moon. Tacitus mentions
other German gods; the two statements are both true. Tacitus gives
the German gods Roman names according to a common practice of
antiquity, which has been the source of much confusion; we shall see
afterwards how the Romans identified the gods of Greece also with
those of Rome.
The equation which Tacitus gives of the German gods with Latin ones
is still in daily use in the names of the days of the week. The
Romans applied the names of the planets, which were the names of
their own gods, to the days of the week as early as the first
Christian century; and in Germany the days were called after the
German gods supposed to answer to the Roman gods in question. Half
Europe to this day calls the days of the week after the Roman, and
the other half after the German gods. We give the Latin names with
the modern French and over against them the English, in which the
names of the German gods appear more clearly than in modern German:--
Dies Solis, the Sun's day=Sunday. (The French _Dimanche_ is from
_Dominicus_, the Lord's Day.)
Dies Lunae (Lundi)=Monday or Moon's day.
Dies Martis (Mardi)=Tuesday, the day of Tiw or Ziu.
Dies Mercurii (Mercredi)=Wednesday, the day of Wodan.
Dies Jovis (Jeudi)=Thursday, the day of Thor. In German this is
_Donnerstag_, the day of Donar=Thor.
Dies Veneris (Vendredi)=Friday, the day of Freya.
Dies Saturni retains the Latin god's name in our Saturday. (The
French _Samedi_ is derived from Sabbath.)
These Teutonic names for the days of the week are common to all the
branches of Teutonic speech, and must have a high antiquity. They
tell us what gods the Germans had in early times, and to what Roman
gods these were believed to correspond; but it would be a vain
endeavour to attempt to deduce from this, or indeed from any early
information we possess on the subject, the origin and nature of these
gods. From Grimm's laborious study of the question (_German
Mythology_, vol. i.) we gather that it is a matter mainly of
speculation what it was in Wodan that led the Romans to identify him
with their Mercury. Thor, who is identified with Jupiter, was
probably a sky-god, while Tiw or Ziu (whom etymology identifies with
Zeus, not Mars) was a god of war, and Freya, like Venus, had to do
with female beauty. We come to know more of these gods when we find
them in the Eddas, but it is scarcely legitimate to fill in the South
German gods of the first century from the North German gods of the
same names of the eleventh or twelfth. We reserve, therefore, our
description of the German gods till we come to the Northern
mythology.
The Roman writers do not furnish any accurate idea of the working
religion of the Germans of their day. Caesar says they were not so
much under the guidance of priests as the Gauls were, and that they
were not greatly addicted to sacrifice; neither statement can be
received without scrutiny. Tacitus idealises the untutored savage as
Rousseau does, in order to rebuke the vices of a luxurious
civilisation; but his statements of actual facts may be trusted.
Knowledge recently acquired of early forest-cults disposes us to
trust him when he speaks, as he does more than once, of the peculiar
sacredness the Germans attached to woods and groves. He is idealising
when he says, "They did not confine their gods in walls nor represent
them under the likeness of men, being led thereto by considering the
greatness of the heavenly beings." A few centuries later at least we
find Christian bishops busy destroying temples of German heathenism
and burning images found in them. Undoubtedly, however, the great
sanctuary of a district was frequently, as he represents, in the
recesses of a wood. Under a mighty tree a tribe would hold its
meetings and sit in judgment and in council; and there were sacred
groves in which no human foot might stray, where the god was supposed
to dwell, where great sacrifices both of animal and of human victims
took place, where the boughs were hung with the bones of former
sacrifices which in war were carried forth at the head of the tribe
as its sacred standards. This was done by the priests, who
accompanied the host to battle, and were charged at such a time with
the infliction of all necessary punishments, since they represented
the god who was supposed to be personally present as commander. The
priests had to work the auguries when consulted on matters of state;
on private matters the paterfamilias might do this himself. The
priests also had charge of the sacred white horses, by whose neighing
the will of the deity became known. Several women are also mentioned
as having enjoyed the reputation of sacred personages; and "even in
their wives they considered that there was a certain holiness and
inspiration."
To judge from Tacitus and from other writers of the first Christian
centuries, there was little system in the religion of Germany in
those days; the gods were not organised in a divine family, the
priests were not a caste like the Druids of France and Britain, and
religious practice was loose and variable. It must also be remembered
that what foreign writers reported on the subject was connected
rather with national and official cults than with popular local
observances. Of the latter there was an abundant growth; a
distinguished foreign writer might not know about it, but the
evidence of it survives in various forms which are only now being
seriously studied. To know the practical religion of early Germany we
have to consult the village festival and legend (as has been done by
Mannhardt in his _Wald- und Feld-kulte_ and Mr. Frazer in _The Golden
Bough_, and many a student of folklore), which, though now apparently
meaningless, were once the serious religious observance and doctrine
of the peasantry. The peasant carried his wishes and prayers to the
familiar wishing-well, and presented offerings to the spirit of the
well by throwing them into the water or hanging them on the
surrounding trees. The fairy rather than far-off Wodan was looked to
for good fortune; the rite of the fabulous village hero, with its
quaint immemorial usages, roused more enthusiasm than the stately
public ceremonial. Another side of the mind of early Germany is to be
gathered from the heroic legends and the fairy tales, many of the
elements of which, we are assured, were even then in existence. Were
these legends formed by a process of degradation; did they begin with
telling about the gods, and were they afterwards applied to heroes
and princes and common men? Or was the process in the opposite
direction from this; were the stories, first of all, those of human
warriors, their wars and loves, and did they then become mixed up
with solar and celestial ideas? Were the fairy tales originally
stories of the gods, and did they by popular and familiar treatment
fall below the dignity of their original themes till they came to be
a debased and broken-down mythology? or were they at first stories
about beasts and about clever tricks, such as savages love to tell,
and did they rise to something more dignified, till in some of them
we may trace the stories of the gods? It is not necessary that we
should answer these questions, which carry us back to an earlier time
than that with which we are concerned; but any one who knows the
tales, and will try to realise the state of mind of those who
received them not as fancy but as serious fact, will know something
of the religion of early Germany; of the strange beings, fairies,
dwarfs, magicians, talking animals, animated sun and moon and winds,
by which the German believed himself to be surrounded.
Later German Religion.--In Southern Germany the introduction of
Christianity early put an end to any development of Teutonic religion
which might have taken place there. The old faith, however, still
maintained itself in more Northern latitudes. It was brought to
Britain by the German invaders, continued there till the seventh
century, and was brought in again in a more Northern form by the
Norsemen, who in their turn "gradually deserted Thor and Odin for the
white Christ."[3] Bede tells hardly anything of the paganism which
had been the religion of England a century before he wrote; in this
he is like other Christian teachers who might have told but did not.
But though it came to an end in England, Teutonic religion continued
to prevail in the countries from which the invaders had come. In
Frisia in the eighth century we hear of a goddess Hulda, a kind
goddess, as her name implies, who sends increase to plants and is a
patroness of fishing. A god called Fosete, or Forsete (Forseti in
modern Icelandic=chairman), identified both with Odin and with
Balder, was worshipped in Heligoland; he had a sacred well there,
from which water had to be drawn in silence. There are temples, often
in the middle of a wood, with priestly incumbents, and rich
endowments, both of lands and treasure; and human sacrifice in
various forms is said to have been in use. Idols are mentioned, even
(at Upsala in Sweden) a trinity of idols; but this is what Church
writers would naturally impute to heathens, and the statement is
discredited. No Teutonic idol has survived; the loss to art may not
be great, but such a relic would have settled the controversy.
[Footnote 3: Kingsley's _Hereward the Wake_.]
Iceland.--Teutonic paganism reached its highest development in
Iceland. Of this branch of it alone is there a literature, for many
of the sagas are the fruit of a literary movement in Iceland anterior
to the establishment of Christianity; and the historian Ari, who
wrote within a century after that event, gives careful information of
the earlier state of affairs. The reader of _Burnt Njal_ sees that
among the Icelanders life was short and precarious. With the spirit
of adventure, which led them to be constantly setting out on warlike
and piratical expeditions, they combined a strong tendency to local
quarrels, which filled up their life at home with a constant series
of blood-feuds. These latter are gone about in a methodical and
business-like way; custom sanctions them, the meetings of the popular
assembly do not seek to suppress or punish them if only they are
conducted according to the rules. No public authority had as yet
arisen to carry out the law between one household and another; the
avenger has his recognised place and duty. Society is patriarchal as
in other Aryan communities; each family is a community of
blood-kindred for mutual defence and also for worship. The leading
cult of Icelandic religion was the domestic worship of ancestors,
conducted by the head of the household. The dead were buried in
knolls or burrows near the dwelling, and their spirits were thought
to inhabit these places; they are said to "die into the hill." Altars
are erected and sacrifices offered there; the blood of the victim
poured out upon the ground is supposed to be enjoyed by them. These
knolls became the sacred places of their district, and many a belief
existed about these quiet neighbours and the help they afforded to
the living. "Elves" they were called, and they were thought of as a
cleanly and kindly race. The spirits of bad men, on the contrary,
lived an uneasy life, as demons, and were the workers of mischief.
Along with this belief in the spirits of the dead as inhabiting the
burial hill of the household, there is another conception, namely,
that the dead go to a distant region of the unseen world. In Homer
also these two conceptions are combined. The Icelandic burial rites
are founded on the latter view. The "departed" is going on a long
journey, and his friends escort him as far as they can; shoes are
bound on his feet, the Hel-shoes, for Hel is the name of the region
of the dead. Gifts are given to him; horses, male and female
attendants, hawks and hounds, are burned with him on the pyre, and
his wife voluntarily accompanies him; all these he is to have with
him in the country beyond.
In addition to the domestic cult we have that of local objects; holy
wells, waterfalls, groves, stones are worshipped. Mother Earth is
called on, so is Thunder, so is Heaven. But besides these minor
worships there is the public one, connected with a large tribe or
with a king's court. A temple on the same plan as a large
dwelling-house forms a place of meeting and of sacrifice, an asylum,
and a place of oaths and covenants. On a table in front of the high
seat stands the bowl which, filled with blood and along with certain
sticks, forms a means of divination. A gold ring also lies there,
which a man puts on when he is about to swear an oath, and which the
priest puts on at meetings.
The priest has the duty of keeping up the building and property of
the temple and of maintaining the sacrifices. At the latter various
rites are done with the blood of victims, and those present feast on
the flesh and drink toasts. The first cup is for Wodan, various other
gods are celebrated, and there is a cup of remembrance for the
departed. Sacrifices are offered for the crops, for victory, for any
great object on which the community is bent. In this ritual there is
no evidence of any idols. Though the Icelanders are not without art,
the great gods have not yet perhaps assumed to their minds such
definite figures as to be thus set forth: no Homer has placed them
clear before the inward eye. The rites are bloody, the altar has ever
anew to be made to shine with the blood of victims. Human sacrifices
are only resorted to in times of great common danger, as a terrible
last resort; the god to whom the human victim is devoted is moved by
the bloodshed to avert his anger, or to make greater exertions for
his people. Bloodshed forms the strongest of all bonds. To link
themselves together in an indissoluble brotherhood, two friends
mingle their blood on the ground and then each of them treads on it.
The shedding of human blood at the launching of a ship or at the
laying of the foundation of a building is also known. Savage and
cruel as this religion is, there are signs that it is softening, and
that some of its darker rites are beginning to admit of commutation.
When Christianity approaches, the Icelanders feel that it must make a
great change, and that some of the cruelties which they regard as the
good old customs, will have to be laid aside. We hear of the
stipulation being made that if they receive baptism they shall not be
required to give up the removal of unpromising children nor the
eating of horseflesh.
The Eddas, in which Scandinavian mythology reaches its ultimate form,
seem to belong to a higher plane of human life than the religion we
have described, and it has appeared to many scholars of late years
that they cannot be regarded as a pure product of paganism, but are
in great part influenced by Christianity both in matter and in
sentiment. The older Edda, written in verse, is said to have been
collected by Saemund Sigfusson the learned, one of the early Christian
priests of Iceland, who lived about the eleventh century. The other
Edda is in prose; it is a collection made about two centuries later.
The form given to the myths in these collections is due to the
Skalds, who flourished in Iceland in the early Middle Ages; but the
legends themselves are older. Nothing is known precisely about their
origin or early diffusion.
The Eddas may be compared in many respects with the Homeric poems. As
in the latter, the gods form a family, the members of which come
together to a certain place for meetings, while individually they
have their own adventures, their loves, their jealousies, their
jokes, their tricks. In the Eddas too we find that the gods are not,
strictly speaking, eternal; they succeeded an older race of gods, and
their turn too may come to pass away. They are called Aesir, which is
the plural of As. The etymology of this is uncertain; compare the
Sanscrit Asura, said to mean the living or breathing one. The Aesir
are spoken of in later times, not in the Eddas, as if they had been a
race of warriors; they are said to have come in to Scandinavia and
got the better of those who lived there before, because they
worshipped a superior set of gods.[4] An historic reminiscence may
lurk here. Before the Aesir there were giants, and the earth with all
its parts is made of the body of one of these giants,[5] whom the new
race superseded as governors of the world. But the giants are still
there and their spirit is unchanged; there is a danger of their
interfering to subvert the rule of their successors.
[Footnote 4: See a similar statement about the Incas, chapter vi.]
[Footnote 5: Compare "Purusha" in the _Rigveda_.]
There are other cosmogonic myths besides that of the division of the
giant Ymir. One is on this wise. Ere this world began, there was on
one side Niflheim, the land of mist and cold, on the other side
Muspelheim, the region of fire; between these two lay Ginnungagap,
the north side of it frozen, the south side glowing hot, and life
originated by the meeting, in one way or another, of the heat and
cold. There are very primitive myths of the shaping of man out of two
pieces of wood, of Night and Day as drivers of chariots and horses,
of the sun and moon fleeing from wolves, and so on. A more poetic
conception is the division of the world into Asgard, the garden of
the Aesir; Midgard, the world of man; and Utgard, the world outside.
In the first Odin has his seat Hlidskjalf; when he sits in it he can
see and understand whatever is happening in any part of the broad
world (is he the sun, then?). The third region is generally called
Joetunheim, the home of the giants, an icy region at the extreme part
of the habitable world. A bridge exists from the dwelling of men to
that of the gods; it is called Bifroest, and is the rainbow.
The gods have various places of meeting; but their principal seat is
under a great tree, the ash. Yggdrasil[6] is a tree worthy of the
gods; it is a world-tree; its roots extend to all the worlds; its
branches spread even over heaven. Under it is the fountain Mimir,
spring of wisdom, from which Odin drinks daily. Near it is the
dwelling of the Norns, fates or weird sisters, who establish laws and
uphold them by their judgments, and allot to every man his span of
life. They are named Urd the past, Verdandi the present, and Skuld
the future. Daily do they water the ash from the spring to keep its
leaves fresh, and help it to contend with its numerous foes, for a
great serpent is continually gnawing at its root, and it has also
other troubles. This myth of Yggdrasil is the apotheosis of Teutonic
tree-worship, and is richly suggestive.[7]
[Footnote 6: Yggdrasil=Odin's horse=the gallows. Is it the cross?]
[Footnote 7: Carlyle in his _Heroes_, p. 18, draws out the spiritual
significance of it and of Norse mythology generally.]
The Gods of the Eddas.--We now come to the gods of the system. Odin
is in the Eddas the founder of the world as now constituted. He has
displaced the old formless race of gods, and is the leader of a new
and vigorous race now ruling in their stead. The old scholars
rationalised Odin into a chief who had led a migration from Asia to
Norway in early times. He is the inventor of the art of writing by
runes and the founder of poetry; thus he has the aspect of a
culture-hero; that is to say, of a man of advanced views who, for the
benefits he conferred on his people, was exalted first to a hero and
then to a god. But the worship of Odin or Wodan is one of the
earliest things we know about the German race. He is the god of the
South-Germans from the very first. His earliest character is that of
a storm-god. Whether his name is connected with the German _wuethen_,
rage (Scot. _wud_) or with the Vedic Vata, who is a god of storm, he
is from the first an impetuous being. The early myth of him is
scarcely dead at this day; the peasant hears him rushing through the
woods at night. That is the "wild hunt of Wodan," he says; the god is
out with his followers, and woe to him who gets in his way! The early
Germans thought of him as a kind being who fulfilled the wishes of
men, and it was probably this side of his character that caused him
to be identified with Mercury. In the Eddic theology he is a patron
of war, as becomes the chief god of a warlike people. He arranges
battle and dispenses victory; the heroes who fall in battle he
receives into his heavenly army; they live with him in Valhalla or
Valhoell, the hall of choice. Odin chooses those who are to go there;
he is assisted in this by the Valkyries or choice-maidens. Life in
Valhalla is a constant round of fighting, the wounds of which are
healed at once, and feasting, the materials for which are ever
renewed. Odin, like other great gods, bears traces of low
surroundings, as if he had once lived among savages. He can turn
himself into an eagle or other animal to gain his object, and he has
engaged in disreputable adventures. But he tends to improve, and the
Eddas show him at his best. Here he is called the All-father, the
Ruler of all, who gave man a soul that shall never perish; and we
hear that he needs no food and takes no share himself in the feasts
of the heroes. All the righteous shall be with him in Vingolf (the
same as Valhalla), but the wicked shall go to Hel, the kingdom of Hel
or Hela, the goddess of the under-world.
Thor or Donar, Thunder, is said to be the mightiest of the gods; he
is identified, as we saw, with Jove, but he is a rougher and more
primitive deity. He drives in a chariot drawn by two goats, and is
possessed of three things which have wonderful properties. The first
is the hammer Mjoelnir, which the Frost- and Mountain-giants cannot
resist when he throws it; the second is the belt of strength, which
makes him twice as strong when he puts it on; and the third a pair of
gauntlets with which he grasps his mallet. Many stories are told of
his prowess, of his conflicts with the giants, who, however, give him
a good deal of trouble with their cunning; and of his catching the
Midgard serpent which surrounds the world at the bottom of the sea.
Being a god of storm, he forms a connection with agriculture, and
thus gains a more sedate aspect; he has also to do with marriage, and
a hammer is used symbolically at Icelandic weddings. Thor is only
half-brother to the other sons of Odin; his mother was Fioergyn, the
earth; the worships of Odin and Thor, originally distinct, seem to
have been united at an early period.
The god Tyr, son of Odin by a giantess, is the Eddic figure of the
German Tiw or Ziu, etymologically equivalent to Zeus or Jupiter, but
identified by the Romans with Mars. His greatness belongs to early
times; he was then a sword-god, and had an extensive worship in
various parts of Europe. In the Eddas he has scarcely any character,
and seldom takes a prominent part in the legend. Loki, by etymology a
fire-god (Germ. _Loehe_, Scot. _Lowe_),[8] is in one account the
brother of Odin, in another his son by a giantess. His character is
fitful; sometimes he acts a brotherly part by the gods and helps them
out of their difficulties by clever devices, and sometimes he
provides entertainment for them; but for the most part he is an
embodiment of cunning and mischief; his course is downwards, he tends
to become a being purely evil, setting himself heartlessly against
the wishes of the other gods, and acting so as to imperil them and
their world till they are obliged to cast him out of heaven. He is
thus a kind of Lucifer or Satan, and like the Christian devil, his
ultimate fate is to be bound till the end of the world shall arrive.
Baldur, the son of Odin and Frigga, is the best and brightest of the
gods. Like Apollo, he has to do with light, and no pollution can come
near him; he has also to do with the administration of justice, and
pronounces sentences which can never be reversed. Heimdall also is a
light and gracious god; he is the warder of the Aesir, and stays near
the bridge Bifroest. Of him it is told that he wants less sleep than a
bird, sees a hundred miles off by night or day, and hears the grass
grow on the ground and the wool on the sheep's back. Bragi is the god
of poetry and eloquence, the best of all skalds.
[Footnote 8: The etymology is not perhaps correct, but it suggested
itself and influenced the view taken of this god, in very early
times.]
Of the goddesses, Frigga, wife of Odin, stands first, an august
matron of mysterious knowledge, whom even gods consult, and by whom
men swear; she has also to do with marriage, and the childless appeal
to her. Etymologically she is scarcely to be distinguished from
Freya, wife of Odur, who, however, is lighter in character, and is
rather a goddess of love. The goddesses in the Eddas are more shadowy
figures than the gods; there are others, and an attempt is made to
reckon up twelve of them to answer to the twelve chief gods, but
their names are taken from the qualities they represent, and they
have little reality.
The story of the death of Baldur, brought about by the evil mind of
Loki in defiance of the whole divine family, sounds the note of
tragedy in the divine family of the Eddas. The gods themselves
suffer, and are unable to retrieve the misfortune which has come upon
them. With one accord they try to get Baldur brought back from the
under-world, but they are foiled by the same agency of evil which
carried him off. With the death of Baldur the gods feel that their
rule, which, we saw, had a beginning, and with it the world they
govern, for the two are inseparably bound up with each other, is
coming to an end. The gods perish in the ruin of the world; and this
is well, for sin cleaves to them and to their house, and they are not
fit to endure. Ragnaroek, the twilight of the gods, comes on; the
universe is burnt up in a mighty conflagration, and while there are
abodes of bliss and abodes of misery where some survive, the universe
as a whole is entirely changed, and a milder race of gods will rule
over a better world.
If this mythology were found to be of native Scandinavian growth, it
would prove that Teutonic religion was capable of lofty development,
and would throw back an interesting light upon its previous history.
Here, it has been maintained, we see the Teutonic faith rising to
monotheism. Odin has among his other titles that of All-father; he is
rising above the other gods to a position of supremacy, which will
fit him, if the process were allowed, as it was not, to advance
somewhat further, to represent pure deity and to attract to himself
an undivided reverence. Here also we find a religion which was
formerly a rude intercourse between barbarous men and savage gods,
clothing itself with an ideal element. As the Greeks found religion
in beauty and the Romans in utility, so did the Germans find it at
last in pathos. They attain to the conception of suffering deity; in
Baldur a god falls victim to malice and wickedness, and the sorrow of
his fall takes possession of the whole of heaven. Thus pain and
sacrifice are hallowed, for man by the history of the gods, and his
intercourse with them leads him into heights and depths unknown
before.
But the conviction is now establishing itself that this phase of
Teutonic religion is borrowed from Christianity, which was then
seriously menacing the existence of the old faith, and that it is the
shadow of their approaching extinction by the new religion, which
occasions among the Northern gods this feeling of sadness. They feel
themselves falling from their position; they are to be gods no
longer, but are to yield to the world-order, based on a deeper law
than theirs, which called them into being and now is preparing their
dismissal. Distinctly Christian ideas enter the old world of gods;
the ideas of sin, of sacrifice, of a final judgment, of a good god
who dies, of an evil spirit who, after prevailing for a time, is
chained up to await his doom. That a sense of guilt rests on the gods
shows that they are abandoning their rule, and they acknowledge that
their successors will be better than they have been.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED
Grimm's _German Mythology_, translated by Stallybrass, 4 vols.
Grimm's _Fairy Tales_. Mr. Lang writes an Introduction to the English
translation in Bell's edition.
Mannhardt, _Germanische Mythen_, 1858, and _Wald- und Feld-kulte_,
1875, 77.
For the later Northern section, Vigfusson and Powell's _Corpus
Poeticum Boreale_, especially the Excursus on Religion, i. 401.
Dasent, _Burnt Njal; or Life in Iceland at the end of the tenth
century_.
Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_.
Thorpe, _Northern Mythology_.
De la Saussaye, _The Religion of the Teutons_, 1902, the most
comprehensive statement of the whole subject.
Ralston, _Songs of Russian People_, and _Russian Folk Tales_.
Simrock, _Handb. der deutschen Mythologie_.
R. M. Meyer, _Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte_, 1910.
Sir John Rhys, _Oxford Proceedings_, p. 201, _sqq._