And now, in the second place, for that particular branch of the Aryan
race, in which this peculiar development of the common tradition has
arisen, which we are to consider as “Norse Popular Tales”.
Whatever disputes may have existed as to the mythology of other
branches of the Teutonic subdivision of the Aryan race—whatever
discussions may have arisen as to the position of this or that divinity
among the Franks, the Anglo-Saxons, or the Goths—about the Norsemen
there can be no dispute or doubt. From a variety of circumstances, but
two before all the rest—the one their settlement in Iceland, which
preserved their language and its literary treasures incorrupt; the
other their late conversion to Christianity—their cosmogony and
mythology stands before us in full flower, and we have not, as
elsewhere, to pick up and piece together the wretched fragments of a
faith, the articles of which its own priests had forgotten to commit to
writing, and which those of another creed had dashed to pieces and
destroyed, wherever their zealous hands could reach. In the two Eddas,
therefore, in the early Sagas, in Saxo’s stilted Latin, which barely
conceals the popular songs and legends from which the historian drew
his materials, we are enabled to form a perfect conception of the creed
of the heathen Norsemen. We are enabled to trace, as has been traced by
the same hand in another place,[21] the natural and rational
development of that creed from a simple worship of nature and her
powers, first to monotheism, and then to a polytheistic system. The
tertiary system of Polytheism is the soil out of which the mythology of
the Eddas sprang, though through it each of the older formations crops
out in huge masses which admit of no mistake as to its origin. In the
Eddas the natural powers have been partly subdued, partly thrust on one
side, for a time, by Odin and the Aesir, by the Great Father and his
children, by One Supreme and twelve subordinate gods, who rule for an
appointed time, and over whom hangs an impending fate, which imparts a
charm of melancholy to this creed, which has clung to the race who once
believed in it long after the creed itself has vanished before the
light of Christianity. According to this creed, the Aesir and Odin had
their abode in Asgard, a lofty hill in the centre of the habitable
earth, in the midst of Midgard, that _middle earth_ which we hear of in
early English poetry, the abode of gods and men. Round that earth,
which was fenced in against the attacks of ancient and inveterate foes
by a natural fortification of hills, flowed the great sea in a ring,
and beyond that sea was Utgard, the outlying world, the abode of Frost
Giants, and Monsters, those old-natural powers who had been
dispossessed by Odin and the Aesir when the new order of the universe
arose, and between whom and the new gods a feud as inveterate as that
cherished by the Titans against Jupiter was necessarily kept alive. It
is true indeed that this feud was broken by intervals of truce during
which the Aesir and the Giants visit each other, and appear on more or
less friendly terms, but the true relation between them was war; pretty
much as the Norseman was at war with all the rest of the world. Nor was
this struggle between two rival races or powers confined to the gods in
Asgard alone. Just as their ancient foes were the Giants of Frost and
Snow, so between the race of men and the race of Trolls was there a
perpetual feud. As the gods were men magnified and exaggerated, so were
the Trolls diminished Frost Giants; far superior to man in strength and
stature, but inferior to man in wit and invention. Like the Frost
Giants, they inhabit the rough and rugged places of the earth, and,
historically speaking, in all probability represent the old aboriginal
races who retired into the mountainous fastnesses of the land, and
whose strength was exaggerated, because the intercourse between the
races was small. In almost every respect they stand in the same
relations to men as the Frost Giants stand to the Gods.
There is nothing, perhaps, more characteristic of a true, as compared
with a false religion, than the restlessness of the one when brought
face to face with the quiet dignity and majesty of the other. Under the
Christian dispensation, our blessed Lord, his awful sacrifice once
performed, “ascended up on high”, having “led captivity captive”, and
expects the hour that shall make his foes “his footstool”; but false
gods, Jupiter, Vishnu, Odin, Thor, must constantly keep themselves, as
it were, before the eyes of men, lest they should lose respect. Such
gods being invariably what the philosophers call _subjective_, that is
to say, having no existence except in the minds of those who believe in
them; having been created by man in his own image, with his own desires
and passions, stand in constant need of being recreated. They change as
the habits and temper of the race which adores them alter; they are
ever bound to do something fresh, lest man should forget them, and new
divinities usurp their place. Hence came endless avatars in Hindoo
mythology, reproducing all the dreamy monstrosities of that passive
Indian mind. Hence came Jove’s adventures, tinged with all the lust and
guile which the wickedness of the natural man planted on a hot-bed of
iniquity is capable of conceiving. Hence bloody Moloch, and the foul
abominations of Chemosh and Milcom. Hence, too, Odin’s countless
adventures, his journeys into all parts of the world, his constant
trials of wit and strength, with his ancient foes the Frost Giants, his
hair-breadth escapes. Hence Thor’s labours and toils, his passages
beyond the sea, girt with his strength-belt, wearing his iron gloves,
and grasping his hammer which split the skulls of so many of the
Giant’s kith and kin. In the Norse gods, then, we see the Norseman
himself, sublimed and elevated beyond man’s nature, but bearing about
with him all his bravery and endurance, all his dash and spirit of
adventure, all his fortitude and resolution to struggle against a
certainty of doom which, sooner or later, must overtake him on that
dread day, the “twilight of the gods”, when the wolf was to break
loose, when the great snake that lay coiled round the world should lash
himself into wrath, and the whole race of the Aesirs and their
antagonists were to perish in internecine strife.
Such were the gods in whom the Norseman believed—exaggerations of
himself, of all his good and all his bad qualities. Their might and
their adventures, their domestic quarrels and certain doom, were sung
in venerable lays, now collected in what we call the Elder, or Poetic
Edda; simple majestic songs, whose mellow accents go straight to the
heart through the ear, and whose simple severity never suffers us to
mistake their meaning. But, besides these gods, there were heroes of
the race whose fame and glory were in every man’s memory, and whose
mighty deeds were in every minstrel’s mouth. Helgi, Sigmund, Sinfjötli,
Sigurd, Signy, Brynhildr, Gudrun; champions and shield-maidens,
henchmen and corse-choosers, now dead and gone, who sat round Odin’s
board in Valhalla. Women whose beauty, woes, and sufferings were beyond
those of all women; men whose prowess had never found an equal. Between
these, love and hate; all that can foster passion or beget revenge. Ill
assorted marriages; the right man to the wrong woman, and the wrong man
to the right woman; envyings, jealousies, hatred, murders, all the
works of the natural man, combine together to form that marvellous
story which begins with a curse—the curse of ill-gotten gold—and ends
with a curse, a widow’s curse, which drags down all on whom it falls,
and even her own flesh and blood, to certain doom. Such was the theme
of the wondrous Volsung Tale, the far older, simpler and grander
original of that Nibelungen Need of the thirteenth century, a tale
which begins with the slaughter of Fafnir by Sigurd, and ends with
Hermanaric, “that fierce faith-breaker”, as the Anglo-Saxon minstrel
calls him, when he is describing, in rapid touches, the mythic glories
of the Teutonic race.
This was the story of the Volsungs. They traced themselves back, like
all heroes, to Odin, the great father of gods and men. From him sprung
Sigi, from him Rerir, from him Volsung, ripped from his mother’s womb
after a six years’ bearing, to become the Eponymus of that famous race.
In the centre of his hall grew an oak, the tall trunk of which passed
through the roof, and its boughs spread far and wide in upper air. Into
that hall, on a high feast day, when Signy, Volsung’s daughter, was to
be given away to Siggeir, King of Gothland, strode an old one-eyed
guest. His feet were bare, his hose were of knitted linen, he wore a
great striped cloak, and a broad flapping hat. In his hand he bore a
sword, which, at one stroke, he drove up to the hilt in the oak trunk.
“There”, said he, “let him of all this company bear this sword who is
man enough to pull it out. I give it him, and none shall say he ever
bore a better blade.” With these words he passed out of the hall, and
was seen no more. Many tried, for that sword was plainly a thing of
price, but none could stir it, till Sigmund, the best and bravest of
Volsung’s sons, tried his hand, and, lo! the weapon yielded itself at
once. This was that famous blade _Gram_, of which we shall hear again.
Sigmund bore it in battle against his brother-in-law, who quarrelled
with him about this very sword, when Volsung fell, and Sigmund and his
ten brothers were taken and bound. All perished but Sigmund, who was
saved by his sister Signy, and hidden in a wood till he could revenge
his father and brethren. Here with Sinfjötli, who was at once his son
and nephew, he ran as a werewolf through the forest, and wrought many
wild deeds. When Sinfjötli was of age to help him, they proceed to
vengeance, and burn the treacherous brother-in-law alive, with all his
followers. Sigmund then regains his father’s kingdom, and in extreme
old age dies in battle against the sons of King Hunding. Just as he was
about to turn the fight, a warrior of more than mortal might, a
one-eyed man in a blue cloak, with a flapping hat, rose up against him
spear in hand. At that outstretched spear Sigmund smites with his
trusty sword. It snaps in twain. Then he knows that his luck is gone;
he sees in his foe Odin the giver of the sword, sinks down on the gory
battle-field, and dies in the arms of Hjordis, his young wife, refusing
all leechcraft, and bowing his head to Odin’s will. By the fortune of
war, Hjordis, bearing a babe under her girdle, came into the hands of
King Hialprek of Denmark, there she bore a son to Sigmund, Sigurd, the
darling of Teutonic song and story. Regin, the king’s smith, was his
foster-father, and as the boy grew up the fairest and stoutest of all
the Volsungs, Regin, who was of the dwarf race, urged him day by day to
do a doughty deed, and slay Fafnir the Dragon. For Fafnir, Regin, and
Otter had been brothers, sons of Reidmar. In one of their many
wanderings, Odin, Loki, and Haenir came to a river and a forge. There,
on the bank under the forge, they saw an otter with a salmon in its
mouth, which it ate greedily with its eyes shut. Loki took a stone,
threw it, and killed the beast, and boasted how he had got both fish
and flesh at one throw. Then the Aesir passed on and came at night to
Reidmar’s house, asked a lodging, got it, and showed their spoil.
“Seize and bind them lads”, cried Reidmar; “for they have slain your
brother Otter”. So they were seized and bound by Regin and Fafnir, and
offered an atonement to buy off the feud, and Reidmar was to name the
sum. Then Otter was flayed, and the Aesir were to fill the skin with
red gold, and cover it without, that not a hair could be seen. To fetch
the gold Odin sent Loki down to the abodes of the Black Elves; there in
a stream he caught Andvari the Dwarf, and made him give up all the gold
which he had hoarded up in the stony rock. In vain the Dwarf begged and
prayed that he might keep one ring, for it was the source of all his
wealth, and ring after ring dropped from it. “No; not a penny should he
have” said Loki. Then the dwarf laid a curse on the ring, and said it
should be every man’s bane who owned it. “So much the better” said
Loki; and when he got back, Odin saw the ring how fair it was, and kept
it to himself, but gave the gold to Reidmar. So Reidmar filled the skin
with gold as full as he could, and set it up on end, and Odin poured
gold over it, and covered it up. But when Reidmar looked at it he saw
still one grey hair, and bade them cover that too, else the atonement
was at an end. Then Odin drew forth the ring and laid it over the grey
hair. So the Aesir was set free, but before they went, Loki repeated
the curse which Andvari had laid upon the ring and gold. It soon began
to work. First, Regin asked for some of the gold, but not a penny would
Reidmar give. So the two brothers laid their heads together and slew
their sire. Then Regin begged Fafnir to share the gold with him. But
“no”, Fafnir was stronger, and said he should keep it all himself, and
Regin had best be off, unless he wished to fare the same way as
Reidmar. So Regin had to fly, but Fafnir took a dragon’s shape; “and
there”, said Regin, “he lies on the ‘Glistening Heath’, coiled round
his store of gold and precious things, and that’s why I wish you to
kill him.” Sigurd, told Regin who was the best of smiths, to forge him
a sword. Two are made, but both snap asunder at the first stroke.
“Untrue are they like you and all your race” cries Sigurd. Then he went
to his mother and begged the broken bits of _Gram_, and out of them
Regin forged a new blade, that clove the anvil in the smithy, and cut a
lock of wool borne down upon it by a running stream. “Now, slay me
Fafnir”, said Regin; but Sigurd must first find out King Hunding’s
sons, and avenge his father Sigmund’s death. King Hialprek lends him
force; by Odin’s guidance he finds them out, routs their army, and
slays all those brothers. On his return, his foster-father still eggs
him on to slay the Dragon, and thus to shew that there was still a
Volsung left. So, armed with Gram, and mounted on Gran, his good steed,
whom Odin had taught him how to choose, Sigurd rode to the “Glistening
Heath”, dug a pit in the Dragon’s path, and slew him as he passed over
him down to drink at the river. Then Regin came up, and the old feeling
of vengeance for a brother’s blood grew strong, and as an atonement,
Sigurd was to roast Fafnir’s heart, and carry it to Regin, who swilled
his fill of the Dragon’s blood, and lay down to sleep. But as Sigurd
roasted the heart, and wondered if it would soon be done, he tried it
with his finger to see if it were soft. The hot roast burned his
finger, and he put it into his mouth, and tasted the life-blood of the
Dragon. Then in a moment he understood the song of birds, and heard how
the swallows over his head said one to the other, “There thou sittest,
Sigurd, roasting Fafnir’s heart. Eat it thyself and become the wisest
of men.” Then another said “There lies Regin, and means to cheat him
who trusts him.” Then a third said “Let Sigurd cut off his head then,
and so own all the gold himself.” Then Sigurd went to Regin and slew
him, and ate the heart, and rode on Gran to Fafnir’s lair, and took the
spoil and loaded his good steed with it, and rode away.
And now Sigurd was the most famous of men. All the songs and stories of
the North made him the darling of that age. They dwell on his soft
hair, which fell in great locks of golden brown, on his bushy beard of
auburn hue, his straight features, his ruddy cheeks, his broad brow,
his bright and piercing eye, of which few dared to meet the gaze, his
taper limbs and well knit joints, his broad shoulders, and towering
height. “So tall he was, that as he strode through the full-grown rye,
girt with Gram, the tip of the scabbard just touched the ears of corn.”
Ready of tongue too, and full of forethought. His great pleasure was to
help other men, and to do daring deeds; to spoil his foes, and give
largely to his friends. The bravest man alive, and one that never knew
fear. On and on he rode, till on a lone fell he saw a flickering flame,
and when he reached it, there it flamed and blazed all round a house.
No horse but Gran could ride that flame; no man alive but Sigurd sit
him while he leaped through it. Inside the house lay a fair maiden,
armed from head to foot, in a deep sleep. Brynhildr, Atli’s sister, was
her name, a Valkyrie, a corse-chooser; but out of wilfulness she had
given the victory to the wrong side, and Odin in his wrath had thrust
the horn of sleep into her cloak, and laid her under a curse to slumber
there till a man bold enough to ride through that flame came to set her
free, and win her for his bride. So then she woke up, and taught him
all runes and wisdom, and they swore to love each other with a mighty
oath, and then Sigurd left her and rode on.
So on he rode to King Giuki’s hall, Giuki the Niflung, King of
Frankland, whose wife was Grimhildr, whose sons were Gunnar and Hogni,
whose stepson was Guttorm, and whose daughter was the fair Gudrun. Here
at first he was full of Brynhildr, and all for going back to fetch his
lovely bride from the lone fell. But Grimhildr was given to dark arts;
she longed for the brave Volsung for her own daughter, she brewed him
the philtre of forgetfulness, he drained it off, forgot Brynhildr,
swore a brother’s friendship with Gunnar and Hogni, and wedded the fair
Gudrun. But now Giuki wanted a wife for Gunnar, and so off set the
brothers and their bosom friend to woo, but whom should they choose but
Brynhildr, Atli’s sister, who sat there still upon the fell, waiting
for the man who was bold enough to ride through the flickering flame.
She knew but one could do it, and waited for that one to come back. So
she had given out whoever could ride that flame should have her to
wife. So when Gunnar and Hogni reached it, Gunnar rode at it, but his
horse, good though it was, swerved from the fierce flame. Then by
Grimhild’s magic arts, Sigurd and Gunnar changed shapes and arms, and
Sigurd leapt up on Gran’s back, and the good steed bore him bravely
through the flame. So Brynhildr the proud maiden was won and forced to
yield. That evening was their wedding; but when they lay down to rest,
Sigurd unsheathed his keen sword _Gram_, and laid it naked between
them. Next morning when he arose, he took the ring which Andvari had
laid under the curse, and which was among Fafnir’s treasures, and gave
it to Brynhildr as a “morning gift”, and she gave him another ring as a
pledge. Then Sigurd rode back to his companions and took his own shape
again, and then Gunnar went and claimed Brynhildr, and carried her home
as his bride. But no sooner was Gunnar wedded, than Sigurd’s eyes were
opened, and the power of the philtre passed away, he remembered all
that had passed, and the oath he had sworn to Brynhildr. All this came
back upon him when it was too late, but he was wise and said nothing
about it. Well, so things went on, till one day Brynhildr and Gudrun
went down to the river to wash their hair. Then Brynhildr waded out
into the stream as far as she could, and said she wouldn’t have on her
head the water that streamed from Gudrun’s; for hers was the braver
husband. So Gudrun waded out after her, and said the water ought to
come on her hair first, because her husband bore away the palm from
Gunnar, and every other man alive, for he slew Fafnir and Regin and
took their inheritance. “Aye”, said Brynhildr, “but it was a worthier
deed when Gunnar rode through the flame, but Sigurd dared not try!”
Then Gudrun laughed, and said “Thinkst thou that Gunnar really rode the
flame? I trow _he_ went to bed with thee that night, who gave me this
gold ring. And as for that ring yonder which you have on your finger,
and which you got as your ‘morning-gift’; its name is Andvari’s-spoil,
and _that_ I don’t think Gunnar sought on the ‘Glistening Heath’”. Then
Brynhildr held her peace and went home, and her love for Sigurd came
back, but it was turned to hate, for she felt herself betrayed. Then
she egged on Gunnar to revenge her wrong. At last the brothers yielded
to her entreaties, but they were sworn brothers to Sigurd, and to break
that oath by deed was a thing unheard of. Still they broke it in
spirit; by charms and prayers they set on Guttorm their half-brother,
and so at dead of night, while Gudrun held the bravest man alive fast
locked in her white arms, the murderer stole to the bedside and drove a
sword through the hero. Then Sigurd turned and writhed, and as Guttorm
fled he hurled Gram after him, and the keen blade took him asunder at
the waist, and his head fell out of the room and his heels in, and that
was the end of Guttorm. But with revenge Brynhildr’s love returned, and
when Sigurd was laid upon the pile her heart broke; she burst forth
into a prophetic song of the woes that were still to come, made them
lay her by his side with Gram between them, and so went to Valhalla
with her old lover. Thus Andvari’s curse was fulfilled.
Gudrun, the weary widow, wandered away. After a while, she accepts
atonement from her brothers for her husband’s loss, and marries Atli,
the Hun King, Brynhildr’s brother. He cherished a grudge against
Giuki’s sons for the guile they had practised against their
brother-in-law, which had broken his sister’s heart, and besides he
claimed, in right of Gudrun, all the gold which Sigurd won from the
Dragon, but which the Niflung Princes had seized when he was slain. It
was in vain to attack them in fair fight, so he sent them a friendly
message, and invited them to a banquet; they go, and are overpowered.
Hogni’s heart is cut out of him alive, but he still smiles; Gunnar is
cast into a pit full of snakes, but even then charms them to sleep with
his harp, all but one, that flies at his heart and stings him to death.
With them perished the secret of the Dragon’s hoard, which they had
thrown into the Rhine as they crossed it on the way to Hunland. Now
comes horror on horror. Revenge for her brothers now belongs to Gudrun;
she slays with her own hand her two sons by Atli, makes him eat their
flesh, and drink their blood out of their skulls, and, while the king
slept sound, slew him in his bed by the help of her brother Hogni’s
son. Then she set the hall a-blaze, and burnt all that were in it.
After that she went to the sea-shore, and threw herself in to drown.
But the deep will not have her, the billows bear her over to King
Jonakr’s land. He marries her, and has three sons by her, Saurli,
Hamdir, and Erp, black-haired as ravens, like all the Niflungs.
Svanhild, her daughter by Sigurd, who had her father’s bright and
terrible eyes, she has still with her, now grown up to be the fairest
of women. So when Hermanaric the mighty, the great Gothic king, heard
of Svanhild’s beauty, he sent his son Randver to woo her for him, but
Bikki the False said to the youth: “Better far were this maiden for
thee than for thy old father”; and the maiden and the prince thought it
good advice. Then Bikki went and told the king, and Hermanaric bade
them take and hang Randver at once. So on his way to the gallows, the
prince took his hawk and plucked off all its feathers, and sent it to
his father. But when his sire saw it, he knew at once that, as the hawk
was featherless and unable to fly, so was his realm defenceless under
an old and sonless king. Too late he sent to stop the hanging; his son
was already dead. So one day as he rode back from hunting, he saw fair
Svanhild washing her golden locks, and it came into his heart how there
she sat, the cause of all his woe; and he and his men rode at her and
over her, and their steeds trampled her to death. But when Gudrun heard
this, she set on her three Niflung sons to avenge their sister. Byrnies
and helms she gave them so true that no sword would bite on them. They
were to steal on Hermanaric as he slept; Saurli was to cut off his
hands, Hamdir his feet, and Erp his head. So as the three went along,
the two asked Erp what help he would give them when they got to
Hermanaric. “Such as hand lends to foot” he said. “No help at all” they
cried; and passing from words to blows, and because their mother loved
Erp best, they slew him. A little further on Saurli stumbled and fell
forward, but saved himself with one hand, and said “Here hand helps
foot: better were it that Erp lived.” So they came on Hermanaric as he
slept, and Saurli hewed off his hands, and Hamdir his feet, but he
awoke and called for his men. Then said Hamdir: “Were Erp alive, the
head would be off, and he couldn’t call out.” Then Hermanaric’s men
arose and took the twain, and when they found that no steel would touch
them, an old one-eyed man gave them advice to stone them to death. Thus
fell Saurli and Hamdir, and soon after Gudrun died too, and with her
ends the Volsung and the Niflung tale.
And here it is worth while to say, since some minds are so narrowly
moulded as to be incapable of containing more than one idea, that
because it has seemed a duty to describe in its true light the old
faith of our forefathers, it by no means follows that the same eyes are
blind to the glorious beauty of Greek Mythology. That had the rare
advantage of running its course free and unfettered until it fell
rather by natural decay than before the weapon of a new belief. The
Greeks were Atheists before they became Christian. Their faith had
passed through every stage. We can contemplate it as it springs out of
the dim misshapen symbol, during that phase when men’s eyes are fixed
more on meaning and reality than on beauty and form, we can mark how it
gradually looks more to symmetry and shape, how it is transfigured in
the Arts, until, under that pure air and bright sky, the glowing
radiant figures of Apollo and Aphrodite, of Zeus and Athene—of perfect
man-worship and woman-worship, stand out clear and round in the
foreground against the misty distance of ancient times. Out of that
misty distance the Norseman’s faith never emerged. What that early
phase of faith might have become, had it been once wedded to the Muses,
and learnt to cultivate the Arts, it is impossible to say. As it is,
its career was cut short in mid-course. It carried about with it that
melancholy presentiment of dissolution which has come to be so
characteristic of modern life, but of which scarce a trace exists in
ancient times, and this feeling would always have made it different
from that cheerful carelessness which so attracts us in the Greeks; but
even that downcast brooding heart was capable of conceiving great and
heroic thoughts, which it might have clothed in noble shapes and forms,
had not the axe of Providence cut down the stately sapling in the North
before it grew to be a tree, while it spared the pines of Delphi and
Dodona’s sacred oaks, until they had attained a green old age. And so
this faith remained rude and rough; but even rudeness has a simplicity
of its own, and it is better to be rough and true-hearted than polished
and false. In all the feelings of natural affection, that faith need
fear no comparison with any other upon earth. In these respects it is
firm and steadfast as a rock, and pure and bright as a living spring.
The highest God is a father, who protects his children; who gives them
glory and victory while they live, and when they die, takes them to
himself; to those fatherly abodes Death was a happy return, a glorious
going home. By the side of this great father stands a venerable
goddess, dazzling with beauty, the great mother of gods and men. Hand
in hand this divine pair traverse the land; he teaching the men the use
of arms and all the arts of war,—for war was then as now a noble
calling, and to handle arms an honourable, nay necessary, profession.
To the women she teaches domestic duties and the arts of peace; from
her they learn to weave, and sew, and spin; from her, too, the
husbandman learns to till his fields. From him springs poetry and song;
from her legend and tradition. Nor should it ever be forgotten that the
footsteps of Providence are always onward, even when they seem taken in
the dark, and that their rude faith was the first in which that
veneration for woman arose, which the Western nations may well claim as
the brightest jewel in their crown of civilization; that while she was
a slave in the East, a toy to the Greeks, and a housewife to the
Romans, she was a helpmeet to the Teuton, and that those stern warriors
recognized something divine in her nature, and bowed before her clearer
insight into heavenly mysteries. The worship of the Virgin Mary was
gradually developed out of this conception of woman’s character, and
would have been a thing absurd and impossible, had Christianity clung
for ever to Eastern soil. And now to proceed, after thus turning aside
to compare the mythology of the Greek with the faith of the Norseman.
The mistake is to favour one or the other exclusively instead of
respecting and admiring both; but it is a mistake which those only can
fall into, whose souls are narrow and confined, who would say this
thing and this person you shall love, and none other; this form and
feature you shall worship and adore, and this alone; when in fact the
whole promised land of thought and life lies before us at our feet, our
nature encourages us to go in and possess it, and every step we make in
this new world of knowledge brings us to fresh prospects of beauty, and
to new pastures of delight.
Such were the gods, and such the heroes of the Norseman; who, like his
own gods, went smiling to death under the weight of an inevitable
destiny. But that fate never fell on their gods. Before this subjective
mythological dream of the Norsemen could be fulfilled, the religious
mist in which they walked was scattered by the sunbeams of
Christianity. A new state and condition of society arose, and the creed
which had satisfied a race of heathen warriors, who externally were at
war with all the world, became in time an object of horror and aversion
to the converted Christian. This is not the place to describe the long
struggle between the new and the old faith in the North; how kings and
queens became the foster-fathers and nursing-mothers of the Church; how
the great chiefs, each a little king in himself, scorned and derided
the whole scheme as altogether weak and effeminate; how the bulk of the
people were sullen and suspicious, and often broke out into heathen
mutiny; how kings rose and kings fell, just as they took one or the
other side; and how, finally, after a contest which had lasted
altogether more than three centuries, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and
Sweden—we run them over in the order of conversion—became faithful to
Christianity, as preached by the missionaries of the Church of Rome.
One fact, however, we must insist on, which might be inferred, indeed,
both from the nature of the struggle itself, and the character of Rome;
and that is, that throughout there was something in the process of
conversion of the nature of a compromise—of what we may call the great
principle of “give and take”. In all Christian churches, indeed, and in
none so much as the Church of Rome, nothing is so austere, so
elevating, and so grand, as the uncompromising tone in which the great
dogmas of the Faith are enunciated and proclaimed. Nothing is more
magnificent, in short, than the theory of Christianity; but nothing is
more mean and miserable than the time-serving way in which those dogmas
are dragged down to the dull level of daily life, and that sublime
theory reduced to ordinary practice. At Rome, it was true that the Pope
could congratulate the faithful that whole nations in the barbarous and
frozen North had been added to the true fold, and that Odin’s grim
champions now universally believed in the gospel of peace and love. It
is so easy to dispose of a doubtful struggle in a single sentence, and
so tempting to believe it when once written. But in the North, the
state of things, and the manner of proceeding, were entirely different.
There the dogma was proclaimed, indeed; but the manner of preaching it
was not in that mild spirit with which the Saviour rebuked the disciple
when he said “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that
take the sword shall perish with the sword.” There the sword was used
to bring converts to the font, and the baptism was often one rather of
blood than of water. There the new converts perpetually relapsed,
chased away the missionaries and the kings who sheltered them, and only
yielded at last to the overwhelming weight of Christian opinion in the
Western world. St Olof, king and martyr, martyred in pitched battle by
his mutinous allodial freemen, because he tried to drive rather than to
lead them to the cross; and another Olof, greater than he, Olof
Tryggvason, who fell in battle against the heathen Swedes, were men of
blood rather than peace; but to them the introduction of the new faith
into Norway is mainly owing. So also Charlemagne, at an earlier period,
had dealt with the Saxons at the Main Bridge, when his ultimatum was
“Christianity or death”. So also the first missionary to Iceland—who
met, indeed, with a sorry reception—was followed about by a stout
champion named Thangbrand, who, whenever there was what we should now
call a missionary meeting, challenged any impugner of the new doctrines
to mortal combat on the spot. No wonder that, after having killed
several opponents in the little tour which he made with his missionary
friend through the island, it became too hot to hold him, and he, and
the missionary, and the new creed, were forced to take ship and sail
back to Norway.
“Precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little and there a
little”, was the motto of Rome in her dealings with the heathen
Norsemen, and if she suited herself at first rather to their habits and
temper than to those of more enlightened nations, she had an excuse in
St Paul’s maxim of making herself “all things to all men.” Thus, when a
second attempt to Christianize Iceland proved more successful—for in
the meantime, King Olof Tryggvason, a zealous Christian, had seized as
hostages all the Icelanders of family and fame who happened to be in
Norway, and thus worked on the feelings of the chiefs of those families
at home, who in their turn bribed the lawman who presided over the
Great Assembly to pronounce in favour of the new Faith—even then the
adherents of the old religion were allowed to perform its rites in
secret, and two old heathen practices only were expressly prohibited,
the exposure of infants and the eating of horseflesh, for horses were
sacred animals, and the heathen ate their flesh after they had been
solemnly sacrificed to the gods. As a matter of fact, it is far easier
to change a form of religion than to extirpate a faith. The first
indeed is no easy matter, as those students of history well know who
are acquainted with the tenacity with which a large proportion of the
English nation clung to the Church of Rome, long after the State had
declared for the Reformation. But to change the faith of a whole nation
in block and bulk on the instant, was a thing contrary to the ordinary
working of Providence and unknown even in the days of miracles, though
the days of miracles had long ceased when Rome advanced against the
North. There it was more politic to raise a cross in the grove where
the Sacred Tree had once stood, and to point to the sacred emblem which
had supplanted the old object of national adoration, when the populace
came at certain seasons with songs and dances to perform their heathen
rites. Near the cross soon rose a church; and both were girt by a
cemetery, the soil of which was doubly sacred as a heathen fane and a
Christian sanctuary, and where alone the bodies of the faithful could
repose in peace. But the songs and dances, and processions in the
church-yard round the cross, continued long after Christianity had
become dominant. So also the worship of wells and springs was
christianized when it was found impossible to prevent it. Great
churches arose over or near them, as at Walsingham, where an abbey, the
holiest place in England, after the shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury,
threw its majestic shade over the heathen wishing-well, and the
worshippers of Odin and the Nornir were gradually converted into
votaries of the Virgin Mary. Such practices form a subject of constant
remonstrance and reproof in the treatises and penitential epistles of
medieval divines, and in some few places and churches, even in England,
such rites are still yearly celebrated.[22]
So, too, again with the ancient gods. They were cast down from honour,
but not from power. They lost their genial kindly influence as the
protectors of men and the origin of all things good; but their
existence was tolerated; they became powerful for ill, and degenerated
into malignant demons. Thus the worshippers of Odin had supposed that
at certain times and rare intervals the good powers shewed themselves
in bodily shape to mortal eye, passing through the land in divine
progress, bringing blessings in their train, and receiving in return
the offerings and homage of their grateful votaries. But these were
naturally only exceptional instances; on ordinary occasions the pious
heathen recognized his gods sweeping through the air in cloud and
storm, riding on the wings of the wind, and speaking in awful accents,
as the tempest howled and roared, and the sea shook his white mane and
crest. Nor did he fail to see them in the dust and din of battle, when
Odin appeared with his terrible helm, succouring his own, striking fear
into their foes, and turning the day in many a doubtful fight; or in
the hurry and uproar of the chase, where the mighty huntsman on his
swift steed, seen in glimpses among the trees, took up the hunt where
weary mortals laid it down, outstripped them all, and brought the noble
quarry to the ground. Looking up to the stars and heaven, they saw the
footsteps of the gods marked out in the bright path of the Milky Way;
and in the Bear they hailed the war-chariot of the warrior’s god. The
great goddesses, too, Frigga and Freyja, were thoroughly old-fashioned
domestic divinities. They help women in their greatest need, they spin
themselves, they teach the maids to spin, and punish them if the wool
remains upon their spindle. They are kind, and good, and bright, for
_Holda_, _Bertha_, are the epithets given to them. And so, too, this
mythology which, in its aspect to the stranger and the external world,
was so ruthless and terrible, when looked at from within and at home,
was genial, and kindly, and hearty, and affords another proof that men,
in all ages and climes, are not so bad as they seem; that after all,
peace and not war is the proper state for man, and that a nation may
make war on others and exist; but that unless it has peace within, and
industry at home, it must perish from the face of the earth. But when
Christianity came, the whole character of this goodly array of
divinities was soured and spoilt. Instead of the stately procession of
the God, which the intensely sensuous eye of man in that early time
connected with all the phenomena of nature, the people were led to
believe in a ghastly grisly band of ghosts, who followed an infernal
warrior or huntsman in hideous tumult through the midnight air. No
doubt, as Grimm rightly remarks,[23] the heathen had fondly fancied
that the spirits of those who had gone to Odin followed him in his
triumphant progress either visibly or invisibly; that they rode with
him in the whirlwind, just as they followed him to battle, and feasted
with him in Valhalla; but now the Christian belief, when it had
degraded the mighty god into a demon huntsman, who pursued his nightly
round in chase of human souls, saw in the train of the infernal master
of the hunt only the spectres of suicides, drunkards, and ruffians;
and, with all the uncharitableness of a dogmatic faith, the spirits of
children who died unbaptized, whose hard fate had thrown them into such
evil company. This was the way in which that wide-spread superstition
arose, which sees in the phantoms of the clouds the shapes of the Wild
Huntsman and his accursed crew, and hears, in spring and autumn nights,
when sea-fowl take the wing to fly either south or north, the strange
accents and uncouth yells with which the chase is pressed on in upper
air. Thus, in Sweden it is still Odin who passes by; in Denmark it is
King Waldemar’s Hunt; in Norway it is _Aaskereida_, that is _Asgard’s
Car_ ; in Germany, it is Wode, Woden, or Hackelberend, or Dieterich of
Bern; in France it is Hellequin, or King Hugo, or Charles the Fifth,
or, dropping a name altogether, it is _Le Grand Veneur_ who ranges at
night through the Forest of Fontainebleau. Nor was England without her
Wild Huntsman and his ghastly following. Gervase of Tilbury, in the
twelfth century, could tell it of King Arthur, round whose mighty name
the superstition settled itself, for he had heard from the foresters
how, “on alternate days, about the full of the moon, one day at noon,
the next at midnight when the moon shone bright, a mighty train of
hunters on horses was seen, with baying hounds and blast of horns; and
when those hunters were asked of whose company and household they were,
they replied ‘of Arthur’s’.” We hear of him again in _The Complaynt of
Scotland_, that curious composition attributed by some to Sir David
Lyndsay of the Mount in Fife, and of Gilmerton in East Lothian, pp. 97,
98, where he says:
Arthur knycht, he raid on nycht,
With gyldin spur and candil lycht.
Nor should we forget, when considering this legend, that story of Herne
the Hunter, who
Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,
Doth all the winter time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg’d horns;
And there he blasts the trees, and takes the cattle,
And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner.
_Merry Wives of Windsor_, act. iv, sc. 4.
And even yet, in various parts of England, the story of some great man,
generally a member of one of the county families, who drives about the
country at night, is common. Thus, in Warwickshire, it is the
“One-handed Boughton”, who drives about in his coach and six, and makes
the benighted traveller hold gates open for him; or it is “Lady
Skipwith”, who passes through the country at night in the same manner.
This subject might be pursued to much greater length, for popular
tradition is full of such stories; but enough has been said to show how
the awful presence of a glorious God can be converted into a gloomy
superstition; and, at the same time, how the majesty of the old belief
strives to rescue itself by clinging, in the popular consciousness, to
some king or hero, as Arthur or Waldemar, or, failing that, to some
squire’s family, as Hackelberend, or the “one-handed Boughton”, or even
to the Keeper Herne.
Odin and the Aesir then were dispossessed and degraded by our Saviour
and his Apostles, just as they had of old thrown out the Frost Giants,
and the two are mingled together, in medieval Norse tradition, as
Trolls and Giants, hostile alike to Christianity and man. Christianity
had taken possession indeed, but it was beyond her power to kill. To
this half-result the swift corruption of the Church of Rome lent no
small aid. Her doctrines, as taught by Augustine and Boniface, by
Anschar and Sigfrid, were comparatively mild and pure; but she had
scarce swallowed the heathendom of the North, much in the same way as
the Wolf was to swallow Odin at the “Twilight of the Gods”, than she
fell into a deadly lethargy of faith, which put it out of her power to
digest her meal. Gregory the Seventh, elected pope in 1073, tore the
clergy from the ties of domestic life with a grasp that wounded every
fibre of natural affection, and made it bleed to the very root. With
the celibacy of the clergy he established the hierarchy of the church,
but her labours as a missionary church were over. Henceforth she worked
not by missionaries and apostles, but by crusades and bulls. Now she
raised mighty armaments to recover the barren soil of the Holy
Sepulchre, or to annihilate heretic Albigenses. Now she established
great orders, Templars and Hospitallers, whose pride and luxury, and
pomp, brought swift destruction on one at least of those fraternities.
Now she became feudal,—she owned land instead of hearts, and forgot
that the true patrimony of St Peter was the souls of men. No wonder
that, with the barbarism of the times, she soon fulfilled the Apostle’s
words, “She that liveth in luxury is dead while she liveth”, and became
filled with idle superstitions and vain beliefs. No wonder, then, that
instead of completing her conquest over the heathen, and carrying out
their conversion, she became half heathen herself; that she adopted the
tales and traditions of the old mythology, which she had never been
able to extirpate, and related them of our Lord and his Apostles. No
wonder, then, that having abandoned her mission of being the first
power of intelligence on earth, she fell like Lucifer when the mist of
medieval feudalism rolled away, and the light of learning and education
returned—fell before the indignation of enlightened men, working upon
popular opinion. Since which day, though she has changed her plans, and
remodelled her superstitions to suit the times, she has never regained
the supremacy which, if she had been wise in a true sense, she seemed
destined to hold for ever.