Originally the Romans did not divide time into weeks of seven days.

Instead, they had weeks of eight days, and the farmer worked the seven

days and went on the eighth to the market. But the week of seven days

had been in existence for a very long time among certain Semitic

peoples, and already in the time of the Roman republic many Jews lived

in Rome and in Italy. Through them the week of seven days became

generally known. The Jewish custom of observing the sacredness of the

Sabbath, the first day of the week, by abstaining from all labour, could

not fail to be noticed by the strangers among whom they dwelt. The Jews

had, however, no special name for each day of the week. But the

Oriental, Egyptian, and Greek astrologers and astronomers, who in large

numbers sought their fortunes in Rome, did more than the Jews to

introduce the week of seven days among all classes of the metropolis,

and the astrologers had special names for each of the seven days of the

week. Saturday was the planet's and the planet-god Saturnus' day;

Sunday, the sun's; Monday, the moon's; Tuesday, Mars'; Wednesday,

Mercury's; Thursday, Jupiter's; Friday, Venus' day. Already in the

beginning of the empire these names of the days were quite common in

Italy. The astrological almanacs, which were circulated in the name of

the Egyptian Petosiris among all families who had the means to buy them

contributed much to bring this about. From Italy both the taste for

astrology and the adoption of the week of seven days, with the

above-mentioned names, spread not only into Spain and Gaul, but also

into those parts of Germany that were incorporated with the Roman

Empire, Germania superior and inferior, where the Romanising of the

people, with Cologne (_Civitas Ubiorum_) as the centre, made great

progress. Teutons who had served as officers and soldiers in the Roman

armies, and were familiar with the everyday customs of the Romans, were

to be found in various parts of the independent Teutonic territory, and

it is therefore not strange if the week of seven days, with a separate

name given to each day, was known and in use more or less extensively

throughout Teutondom even before Christianity had taken root east of the

Rhine, and long before Rome itself was converted to Christianity. But

from this introduction of the seven-day week did not follow the adoption

of the Roman names of the days. The Teutons translated the names into

their own language, and in so doing chose among their own divinities

those which most nearly corresponded to the Roman. The translation of

the names is made with a discrimination which seems to show that it was

made in the Teutonic border country, governed by the Romans, by people

who were as familiar with the Roman gods as with their own. In that

border land there must have been persons of Teutonic birth who

officiated as priests before Roman altars. The days of the sun and moon

were permitted to retain their names. They were called Sunday and

Monday. The day of the war-god Mars became the day of the war-god Tyr,

Tuesday. The day of Mercury became Odin's day, Wednesday. The day of the

lightning-armed Jupiter became the day of the thundering Thor, Thursday.

The day of the goddess of love Venus became that of the goddess of love

Freyja, Friday. Saturnus, who in astrology is a watery star, and has his

house in the sign of the waterman, was among the Romans, and before them

among the Greeks and Chaldaeans, the lord of the seventh day. Among the

North Teutons, or at least, among a part of them, his day got its name

from laug,[6] which means a bath, and it is worthy of notice in this

connection that the author of the Prose Edda's Foreword identifies

Saturnus with the sea-god Njord.

Here the Latin scholars had what seemed to them a complete proof that

the Odin of which their stories of the past had so much to tell was--and

was so recognised by their heathen ancestors--the same historical person

as the Romans worshipped by the name Mercury.

At first sight it may seem strange that Mercury and Odin were regarded

as identical. We are wont to conceive Hermes (Mercury) as the Greek

sculptors represented him, the ideal of beauty and elastic youth, while

we imagine Odin as having a contemplative, mysterious look. And while

Odin in the Teutonic mythology is the father and ruler of the gods,

Mercury in the Roman has, of course, as the son of Zeus, a high rank,

but his dignity does not exempt him from being the very busy messenger

of the gods of Olympus. But neither Greeks nor Romans nor Teutons

attached much importance to such circumstances in the specimens we have

of their comparative mythology. The Romans knew that the same god among

the same people might be represented differently, and that the local

traditions also sometimes differed in regard to the kinship and rank of

a divinity. They therefore paid more attention to what Tacitus calls

_vis numinis_--that is, the significance of the divinity as a symbol of

nature, or its relation to the affairs of the community and to human

culture. Mercury was the symbol of wisdom and intelligence; so was

Odin. Mercury was the god of eloquence; Odin likewise. Mercury had

introduced poetry and song among men; Odin also. Mercury had taught men

the art of writing; Odin had given them the runes. Mercury did not

hesitate to apply cunning when it was needed to secure him possession of

something that he desired; nor was Odin particularly scrupulous in

regard to the means. Mercury, with wings on his hat and on his heels,

flew over the world, and often appeared as a traveller among men; Odin,

the ruler of the wind, did the same. Mercury was the god of martial

games, and still he was not really the war-god; Odin also was the chief

of martial games and combats, but the war-god's occupation he had left

to Tyr. In all important respects Mercury and Odin, therefore, resembled

each other.

To the scholars this must have been an additional proof that this, in

their eyes, historical chief, whom the Romans called Mercury and the

Teutons Odin, had been one and the same human person, who had lived in a

distant past, and had alike induced Greeks, Romans, and Goths to worship

him as a god. To get additional and more reliable information in regard

to this Odin-Mercury than what the Teutonic heathen traditions could

impart, it was only necessary to study and interpret correctly what

Roman history had to say about Mercury.

As is known, some mysterious documents called the Sibylline books were

preserved in Jupiter's temple, on the Capitoline Hill, in Rome. The

Roman State was the possessor, and kept the strictest watch over them,

so that their contents remained a secret to all excepting those whose

position entitled them to read them. A college of priests, men in high

standing, were appointed to guard them and to consult them when

circumstances demanded it. The common opinion that the Roman State

consulted them for information in regard to the future is incorrect.

They were consulted only to find out by what ceremonies of penance and

propitiation the wrath of the higher powers might be averted at times

when Rome was in trouble, or when prodigies of one kind or another had

excited the people and caused fears of impending misfortune. Then the

Sibylline books were produced by the properly-appointed persons, and in

some line or passage they found which divinity was angry and ought to be

propitiated. This done, they published their interpretation of the

passage, but did not make known the words or phrases of the passage, for

the text of the Sibylline books must not be known to the public. The

books were written in the Greek tongue.

The story telling how these books came into the possession of the Roman

State through a woman who sold them to Tarquin--according to one version

Tarquin the Elder, according to another Tarquin the Younger--is found in

Roman authors who were well known and read throughout the whole middle

age. The woman was a Sibylla, according to Varro the Erythreian, so

called from a Greek city in Asia Minor; according to Virgil the Cumaean,

a prophetess from Cumae in southern Italy. Both versions could easily be

harmonised, for Cumae was a Greek colony from Asia Minor; and we read in

Servius' commentaries on Virgil's poems that the Erythreian Sibylla was

by many regarded as identical with the Cumaean. From Asia Minor she was

supposed to have come to Cumae.

In western Europe the people of the middle age claimed that there were

twelve Sibyllas: the Persian, the Libyan, the Delphian, the Cimmerinean,

the Erythreian, the Samian, the Cumaean, the Hellespontian or Trojan, the

Phrygian and Tiburtinian, and also the Sibylla Europa and the Sibylla

Agrippa. Authorities for the first ten of these were the Church father

Lactantius and the West Gothic historian Isodorus of Sevilla. The last

two, Europa and Agrippa, were simply added in order to make the number

of Sibyllas equal to that of the prophets and the apostles.

But the scholars of the middle ages also knew from Servius that the

Cumaean Sibylla was, in fact, the same as the Erythreian; and from the

Church father Lactantius, who was extensively read in the middle ages,

they also learned that the Erythreian was identical with the Trojan.

Thanks to Lactantius, they also thought they could determine precisely

where the Trojan Sibylla was born. Her birthplace was the town

Marpessus, near the Trojan Mount Ida. From the same Church father they

learned that the real contents of the Sibylline books had consisted of

narrations concerning Trojan events, of lives of the Trojan kings, &c.,

and also of prophecies concerning the fall of Troy and other coming

events, and that the poet Homer in his works was a mere plagiator, who

had found a copy of the books of the Sibylla, had recast and falsified

it, and published it in his own name in the form of heroic poems

concerning Troy.

This seemed to establish the fact that those books, which the woman from

Cumae had sold to the Roman king Tarquin, were written by a Sibylla who

was born in the Trojan country, and that the books which Trojan bought

off her contained accounts and prophecies--accounts especially in regard

to the Trojan chiefs and heroes afterwards glorified in Homer's poems.

As the Romans came from Troy, these chiefs and heroes were their

ancestors, and in this capacity they were entitled to the worship which

the Romans considered due to the souls of their forefathers. From a

Christian standpoint this was of course idolatry; and as the Sibyllas

were believed to have made predictions even in regard to Christ, it

might seem improper for them to promote in this manner the cause of

idolatry. But Lactantius gave a satisfactory explanation of this matter.

The Sibylla, he said, had certainly prophesied truthfully in regard to

Christ; but this she did by divine compulsion and in moments of divine

inspiration. By birth and in her sympathies she was a heathen, and when

under the spell of her genuine inspirations, she proclaimed heathen and

idolatrous doctrines.

In our critical century all this may seem like mere fancies. But careful

examinations have shown that an historical kernel is not wanting in

these representations. And the historical fact which lies back of all

this is that the Sibylline books which were preserved in Rome actually

were written in Asia Minor in the ancient Trojan territory; or, in

other words, that the oldest known collection of so-called Sibylline

oracles was made in Marpessus, near the Trojan mountain Ida, in the time

of Solon. From Marpessus the collection came to the neighbouring city

Gergis, and was preserved in the Apollo temple there; from Gergis it

came to Cumae, and from Cumae to Rome in the time of the kings. How it

came there is not known. The story about the Cumaean woman and Tarquin is

an invention, and occurs in various forms. It is also demonstrably an

invention that the Sibylline books in Rome contained accounts of the

heroes in the Trojan war. On the other hand, it is absolutely certain

that they referred to gods and to a worship which in the main were

unknown to the Romans before the Sibylline books were introduced there,

and that to these books must chiefly be attributed the remarkable change

which took place in Roman mythology during the republican centuries. The

Roman mythology, which from the beginning had but few gods of clear

identity with the Greek, was especially during this epoch enlarged, and

received gods and goddesses who were worshipped in Greece and in the

Greek and Hellenised part of Asia Minor where the Sibylline books

originated. The way this happened was that whenever the Romans in

trouble or distress consulted the Sibylline books they received the

answer that this or that Greek-Asiatic god or goddess was angry and must

be propitiated. In connection with the propitiation ceremonies the god

or goddess was received in the Roman pantheon, and sooner or later a

temple was built to him; and thus it did not take long before the

Romans appropriated the myths that were current in Greece concerning

these borrowed divinities. This explains why the Roman mythology, which

in its oldest sources is so original and so unlike the Greek, in the

golden period of Roman literature comes to us in an almost wholly Greek

attire; this explains why Roman and Greek mythology at that time might

be regarded as almost identical. Nevertheless the Romans were able even

in the later period of antiquity to discriminate between their native

gods and those introduced by the Sibylline books. The former were

worshipped according to a Roman ritual, the latter according to a Greek.

To the latter belonged Apollo, Artemis, Latona, Ceres, Hermes, Mercury,

Proserpina, Cybile, Venus, and Esculapius; and that the Sibylline books

were a Greek-Trojan work, whose original home was Asia Minor and the

Trojan territory, was well known to the Romans. When the temple of the

Capitoline Jupiter was burned down eighty-four years before Christ, the

Sibylline books were lost. But the State could not spare them. A new

collection had to be made, and this was mainly done by gathering the

oracles which could be found one by one in those places which the Trojan

or Erythreian Sibylla had visited, that is to say, in Asia Minor,

especially in Erythrae, and in Ilium, the ancient Troy.

So far as Hermes-Mercury is concerned, the Roman annals inform us that

he got his first lectisternium in the year 399 before Christ by order

from the Sibylline books. Lectisternium was a sacrifice: the image of

the god was laid on a bed with a pillow under the left arm, and beside

the image was placed a table and a meal, which as a sacrifice was

offered to the god. About one hundreds years before that time,

Hermes-Mercury had received his first temple in Rome.

Hermes-Mercury seemed, therefore, like Apollo, Venus, Esculapius, and

others, to have been a god originally unknown to the Romans, the worship

of whom the Trojan Sibylla had recommended to the Romans.

This was known to the scholars of the middle age. Now, we must bear in

mind that it was as certain to them as an undoubted scientific fact that

the gods were originally men, chiefs, and heroes, and that the deified

chief whom the Romans worshipped as Mercury, and the Greeks as Hermes,

was the same as the Teutons called Odin, and from whom distinguished

Teutonic families traced their descent. We must also remember that the

Sibylla who was supposed to have recommended the Romans to worship the

old king Odin-Mercurius was believed to have been a Trojan woman, and

that her books were thought to have contained stories about Troy's

heroes, in addition to various prophecies, and so this manner of

reasoning led to the conclusion that the gods who were introduced in

Rome through the Sibylline books were celebrated Trojans who had lived

and fought at a time preceding the fall of Troy. Another inevitable and

logical conclusion was that Odin had been a Trojan chief, and when he

appears in Teutonic mythology as the chief of gods, it seemed most

probable that he was identical with the Trojan king Priam, and that

Priam was identical with Hermes-Mercury.

Now, as the ancestors of the Romans were supposed to have emigrated from

Troy to Italy under the leadership of AEneas, it was necessary to assume

that the Romans were not the only Trojan emigrants, for, since the

Teutons worshipped Odin-Priamus-Hermes as their chief god, and since a

number of Teutonic families traced their descent from this Odin, the

Teutons, too, must have emigrated from Troy. But, inasmuch as the

Teutonic dialects differed greatly from the Roman language, the Trojan

Romans and the Trojan Teutons must have been separated a very long time.

They must have parted company immediately after the fall of Troy and

gone in different directions, and as the Romans had taken a southern

course on their way to Europe, the Teutons must have taken a northern.

It was also apparent to the scholars that the Romans had landed in

Europe many centuries earlier than the Teutons, for Rome had been

founded already in 754 or 753 before Christ, but of the Teutons not a

word is to be found in the annals before the period immediately

preceding the birth of Christ. Consequently, the Teutons must have made

a halt somewhere on their journey to the North. This halt must have been

of several centuries' duration, and, of course, like the Romans, they

must have founded a city, and from it ruled a territory in commemoration

of their fallen city Troy. In that age very little was known of Asia,

where this Teutonic-Trojan colony was supposed to have been situated,

but, both from Orosius and, later, from Gregorius of Tours, it was known

that our world is divided into three large divisions--Asia, Europe, and

Africa--and that Asia and Europe are divided by a river called Tanais.

And having learned from Gregorius of Tours that the Teutonic Franks were

said to have lived in Pannonia in ancient times, and having likewise

learned that the Moeotian marshes lie east of Pannonia, and that the

Tanais empties into these marshes, they had the course marked out by

which the Teutons had come to Europe--that is, by way of Tanais and the

Moeotian marshes. Not knowing anything at all of importance in regard to

Asia beyond Tanais, it was natural that they should locate the colony of

the Teutonic Trojans on the banks of this river.

I think I have now pointed out the chief threads of the web of that

scholastic romance woven out of Latin convent learning concerning a

Teutonic emigration from Troy and Asia, a web which extends from

Fredegar's Frankish chronicle, through the following chronicles of the

middle age, down into Heimskringla and the Foreword of the Younger Edda.

According to the Frankish chronicle, _Gesta regum Francorum_, the

emigration of the Franks from the Trojan colony near the Tanais was

thought to have occurred very late; that is, in the time of

Valentinianus I., or in other words, between 364 and 375 after Christ.

The Icelandic authors very well knew that Teutonic tribes had been far

into Europe long before that time, and the reigns they had constructed

in regard to the North indicated that they must have emigrated from the

Tanais colony long before the Franks. As the Roman attack was the cause

of the Frankish emigration, it seemed probable that these

world-conquerors had also caused the earlier emigration from Tanais;

and as Pompey's expedition to Asia was the most celebrated of all the

expeditions made by the Romans in the East--Pompey even entered

Jerusalem and visited its Temple--it was found most convenient to let

the Asas emigrate in the time of Pompey, but they left a remnant of

Teutons near the Tanais, under the rule of Odin's younger brothers Vile

and Ve, in order that this colony might continue to exist until the

emigration of the Franks took place.

Finally, it should be mentioned that the Trojan migration saga, as born

and developed in antiquity, does not indicate by a single word that

Europe was peopled later than Asia, or that it received its population

from Asia. The immigration of the Trojans to Europe was looked upon as a

return to their original homes. Dardanus, the founder of Troy, was

regarded as the leader of an emigration from Etruria to Asia (_AEneid_,

iii. 165 ff., Serv. Comm.). As a rule the European peoples regarded

themselves in antiquity as autochthones if they did not look upon

themselves as immigrants from regions within Europe to the territories

they inhabited in historic times.

[Footnote 5:

"Mennor der erste was genant,

Dem diutische rede got tet bekant."

Later on in this work we shall discuss the traditions of the Mannussaga

found in Scandinavia and Germany.]

[Footnote 6: Saturday is in the North called Loeverdag, Loerdag--that is,

Laugardag=bathday.--TR.]

13.

THE MATERIALS OF THE ICELANDIC TROY SAGA.

We trust the facts presented above have convinced the reader that the

saga concerning the immigration of Odin and the Asas to Europe is

throughout a product of the convent learning of the middle ages. That

it was born and developed independently of the traditions of the

Teutonic heathendom shall be made still more apparent by the additional

proofs that are accessible in regard to this subject. It may, however,

be of some interest to first dwell on some of the details in the

Heimskringla and in the Younger Edda and point out their source.

It should be borne in mind that, according to the Younger Edda, it was

Zoroaster who first thought of building the Tower of Babel, and that in

this undertaking he was assisted by seventy-two master-masons. Zoroaster

is, as is well known, another form for the Bactrian or Iranian name

Zarathustra, the name of the prophet and religious reformer who is

praised on every page of Avesta's holy books, and who in a prehistoric

age founded the religion which far down in our own era has been

confessed by the Persians, and is still confessed by their descendants

in India, and is marked by a most serious and moral view of the world.

In the Persian and in the classical literatures this Zoroaster has

naught to do with Babel, still less with the Tower of Babel. But already

in the first century of Christianity, if not earlier, traditions became

current which made Zoroaster the founder of all sorcery, magic, and

astrology (Plinius, _Hist. Nat._, xxx. 2); and as astrology particularly

was supposed to have had its centre and base in Babylon, it was natural

to assume that Babel had been the scene of Zoroaster's activity. The

Greek-Roman chronicler Ammianus Marcellinus, who lived in the fourth

century after Christ, still knows that Zoroaster was a man from Bactria,

not from Babylon, but he already has formed the opinion that Zoroaster

had gotten much of his wisdom from the writings of the Babylonians. In

the Church fathers the saga is developed in this direction, and from the

Church fathers it got into the Latin chronicles. The Christian historian

Orosius also knows that Zoroaster was from Bactria, but he already

connects Zoroaster with the history of Nineveh and Babylon, and makes

Ninus make war against him and conquer him. Orosius speaks of him as the

inventor of sorcery and the magic arts. Gregorius of Tours told in his

time that Zoroaster was identical with Noah's grandson, with Chus, the

son of Ham, that this Chus went to the Persians, and that the Persians

called him Zoroaster, a name supposed to mean "the living star."

Gregorius also relates that this Zoroaster was the first person who

taught men the arts of sorcery and led them astray into idolatry, and as

he knew the art of making stars and fire fall from heaven, men paid him

divine worship. At that time, Gregorius continues, men desired to build

a tower which should reach to heaven. But God confused their tongues and

brought their project to naught. Nimrod, who was supposed to have built

Babel, was, according to Gregorius, a son of Zoroaster.

If we compare this with what the Foreword of the Younger Edda tells,

then we find that there, too, Zoroaster is a descendant of Noah's son

Cham and the founder of all idolatry, and that he himself was worshipped

as a god. It is evident that the author of the Foreword gathered these

statements from some source related to Gregorius' history. Of the 72

master-masons who were said to have helped Zoroaster in building the

tower, and from whom the 72 languages of the world originated, Gregorius

has nothing to say, but the saga about these builders was current

everywhere during the middle ages. In the earlier Anglo-Saxon literature

there is a very naive little work, very characteristic of its age,

called "A Dialogue between Saturn and Solomon," in which Saturnus tests

Solomon's knowledge and puts to him all sorts of biblical questions,

which Solomon answers partly from the Bible and partly from sagas

connected with the Bible. Among other things Saturnus informs Solomon

that Adam was created out of various elements, weighing altogether eight

pounds, and that when created he was just 116 inches long. Solomon tells

that Shem, Noah's son, had thirty sons, Cham thirty, and Japhet

twelve--making 72 grandsons of Noah; and as there can be no doubt that

it was the author's opinion that all the languages of the world, thought

to be 72, originated at the Tower of Babel, and were spread into the

world by these 72 grandsons of Noah, we here find the key to who those

72 master-masons were who, according to the Edda, assisted Zoroaster in

building the tower. They were accordingly his brothers. Luther's

contemporary, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, who, in his work _De occulta

Philosophia_, gathered numerous data in regard to the superstition of

all ages, has a chapter on the power and sacred meaning of various

numbers, and says in speaking of the number 72: "The number 72

corresponds to the 72 languages, the 72 elders in the synagogue, the 72

commentators of the Old Testament, Christ's 72 disciples, God's 72

names, the 72 angels who govern the 72 divisions of the Zodiac, each

division of which corresponds to one of the 72 languages." This

illustrates sufficiently how widespread was the tradition in regard to

the 72 master-masons during the centuries of the middle ages. Even

Nestor's Russian chronicle knows the tradition. It continued to enjoy a

certain authority in the seventeenth century. An edition of Sulpicius

Severus' _Opera Omnia_, printed in 1647, still considers it necessary to

point out that a certain commentator had doubted whether the number 72

was entirely exact. Among the doubters we find Rudbeck in his

_Atlantica_.

What the Edda tells about king Saturnus and his son, king Jupiter, is

found in a general way, partly in the Church-father Lactantius, partly

in Virgil's commentator Servius, who was known and read during the

middle age. As the Edda claims that Saturnus knew the art of producing

gold from the molten iron, and that no other than gold coins existed in

his time, this must be considered an interpretation of the statement

made in Latin sources that Saturnus' was the golden age--_aurea secula,

aurea regna_. Among the Romans Saturnus was the guardian of treasures,

and the treasury of the Romans was in the temple of Saturnus in the

Forum.

The genealogy found in the Edda, according to which the Trojan king

Priam, supposed to be the oldest and the proper Odin, was descended in

the sixth generation from Jupiter, is taken from Latin chronicles.

Herikon of the Edda, grandson of Jupiter, is the Roman-Greek

Erichtonius; the Edda's Lamedon is Laomedon. Then the Edda has the

difficult task of continuing the genealogy through the dark centuries

between the burning of Troy and the younger Odin's immigration to

Europe. Here the Latin sources naturally fail it entirely, and it is

obliged to seek other aid. It first considers the native sources. There

it finds that Thor is also called Lorride, Indride, and Vingthor, and

that he had two sons, Mode and Magne; but it also finds a genealogy made

about the twelfth century, in which these different names of Thor are

applied to different persons, so that Lorride is the son of Thor,

Indride the son of Lorride, Vingthor the son of Indride, &c. This mode

of making genealogies was current in Iceland in the twelfth century, and

before that time among the Christian Anglo-Saxons. Thereupon the Edda

continues its genealogy with the names Bedvig, Atra, Itrman, Heremod,

Skjaldun or Skold, Bjaef, Jat, Gudolf, Fjarlaf or Fridleif, and finally

Odin, that is to say, the younger Odin, who had adopted this name after

his deified progenitor Hermes-Priam. This whole genealogy is taken from

a Saxon source, and can be found in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle name for

name. From Odin the genealogy divides itself into two branches, one from

Odin's son, Veggdegg, and another from Odin's son, Beldegg or Balder.

The one branch has the names Veggdegg, Vitrgils, Ritta, Heingest. These

names are found arranged into a genealogy by the English Church

historian Beda, by the English chronicler Nennius, and in the

Anglo-Saxon chronicle. From one of these three sources the Edda has

taken them, and the only difference is that the Edda must have made a

slip in one place and changed the name Vitta to Ritta. The other branch,

which begins with Balder or Beldegg, embraces eight names, which are

found in precisely the same order in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle.

In regard to Balder, the Edda says that Odin appointed him king in

Westphalia. This statement is based on the tradition that Balder was

known among the heathen Germans and Scandinavians by the name Fal

(_Falr_, see No. 92), with its variation Fol. In an age when it was

believed that Sweden got its name from a king Sven, Goetaland from a king

Goet, Danmark from a king Dan, Angeln from a king Angul, the Franks from

a duke Francio, it might be expected that Falen (East- and West-Phalia)

had been named after a king Fal. That this name was recognised as

belonging to Balder not only in Germany, but also in Scandinavia, I

shall give further proof of in No. 92.

As already stated, Thor was, according to the Edda, married to Sibil,

that is to say, the Sibylla, and the Edda adds that this Sibil is called

Sif in the North. In the Teutonic mythology Thor's wife is the goddess

Sif. It has already been mentioned that it was believed in the middle

age that the Cumaean or Erythreian Sibylla originally came from Troy, and

it is not, therefore, strange that the author of the Younger Edda, who

speaks of the Trojan descent of Odin and his people, should marry Thor

to the most famous of Trojan women. Still, this marriage is not invented

by the author. The statement has an older foundation, and taking all

circumstances into consideration, may be traced to Germany, where Sif,

in the days of heathendom, was as well known as Thor. To the northern

form Sif corresponds the Gothic form _Sibba_, the Old English _Sib_, the

Old Saxon _Sibbia_, and the Old High German _Sibba_, and Sibil, Sibilla,

was thought to be still another form of the same name. The belief, based

on the assumed fact that Thor's wife Sif was identical with the Sibylla,

explains a phenomenon not hitherto understood in the saga-world and

church sculpture of the middle age, and on this point I now have a few

remarks to make.

In the Norse mythology several goddesses or dises have, as we know,

feather-guises, with which they fly through space. Freyja has a

falcon-guise; several dises have swan-guises (Volundarkv. Helreid.

Brynh., 6). Among these swan-maids was Sif (see No. 123). Sif could

therefore present herself now in human form, and again in the guise of

the most beautiful swimming bird, the swan.

A legend, the origin of which may be traced to Italy, tells that when

the queen of Saba visited king Solomon, she was in one place to cross a

brook. A tree or beam was thrown across as a bridge. The wise queen

stopped, and would not let her foot touch the beam. She preferred to

wade across the brook, and when she was asked the reason for this, she

answered that in a prophetic vision she had seen that the time would

come when this tree would be made into a cross on which the Saviour of

the world was to suffer.

The legend came also to Germany, but here it appears with the addition

that the queen of Saba was rewarded for this piety, and was freed while

wading across the brook from a bad blemish. One of her feet, so says the

German addition, was of human form, but the other like the foot of a

water-bird up to the moment when she took it out of the brook. Church

sculpture sometimes in the middle age represented the queen of Saba as a

woman well formed, except that she had one foot like that of a

water-bird. How the Germans came to represent her with this blemish,

foreign to the Italian legend, has not heretofore been explained,

although the influence of the Greek-Roman mythology on the legends of

the Romance peoples, and that of the Teutonic mythology on the Teutonic

legends, has been traced in numerous instances.

During the middle ages the queen of Saba was called queen Seba, on

account of the Latin translation of the Bible, where she is styled

_Regina Seba_, and Seba was thought to be her name. The name suggested

her identity, on the one hand, with Sibba, Sif, whose swan-guise lived

in the traditions; on the other hand, with Sibilla, and the latter

particularly, since queen Seba had proved herself to be in possession of

prophetic inspiration, the chief characteristic of the Sibylla. Seba,

Sibba, and Sibilla were in the popular fancy blended into one. This

explains how queen Seba among the Germans, but not among the Italians,

got the blemish which reminds us of the swan-guise of Thor's wife Sibba.

And having come to the conclusion that Thor was a Trojan, his wife Sif

also ought to be a Trojan woman. And as it was known that the Sibylla

was Trojan, and that queen Seba was a Sibylla, this blending was almost

inevitable. The Latin scholars found further evidence of the correctness

of this identity in a statement drawn originally from Greek sources to

the effect that Jupiter had had a Sibylla, by name Lamia, as mistress,

and had begotten a daughter with her by name Herophile, who was endowed

with her mother's gift of prophecy. As we know, Mercury corresponds to

Odin, and Jupiter to Thor, in the names of the days of the week. It thus

follows that it was Thor who stood in this relation to the Sibylla.

The character of the anthropomorphosed Odin, who is lawgiver and king,

as represented in Heimskringla and the Prose Edda, is only in part based

on native northern traditions concerning the heathen god Odin, the ruler

of heaven. This younger Odin, constructed by Christian authors, has

received his chief features from documents found in the convent

libraries. When the Prose Edda tells that the chief who proceeded from

Asgard to Saxland and Scandinavia did not really bear the name Odin, but

had assumed this name after the elder and deified Odin-Priam of Troy, to

make people believe that he was a god, then this was no new idea.

Virgil's commentator, Servius, remarks that ancient kings very

frequently assumed names which by right belonged only to the gods, and

he blames Virgil for making Saturnus come from the heavenly Olympus to

found a golden age in Italy. This Saturnus, says Servius, was not a god

from above, but a mortal king from Crete who had taken the god Saturnus'

name. The manner in which Saturnus, on his arrival in Italy and the

vicinity of Rome, was received by Janus, the king ruling there, reminds

us of the manner in which Odin, on his arrival in Svithiod, was received

by king Gylfe. Janus is unpretentious enough to leave a portion of his

territory and his royal power to Saturnus, and Gylfe makes the same

concessions to Odin. Saturnus thereupon introduces a higher culture

among the people of Latium, and Odin brings a higher culture to the

inhabitants of Scandinavia. The Church father Lactantius, like Servius,

speaks of kings who tried to appropriate the name and worship of the

gods, and condemns them as foes of truth and violators of the doctrines

of the true God.

In regard to one of them, the Persian Mithra, who, in the middle age,

was confounded with Zoroaster, Tertulianus relates that he (Mithra), who

knew in advance that Christianity would come, resolved to anticipate the

true faith by introducing some of its customs. Thus, for example,

Mithra, according to Tertulianus, introduced the custom of blessing by

laying the hands on the head or the brow of those to whom he wished to

insure prosperity, and he also adopted among his mysteries a practice

resembling the breaking of the bread in the Eucharist. So far as the

blessing by the laying on of hands is concerned, Mithra especially used

it in giving courage to the men whom he sent out as soldiers to war.

With these words of Tertulianus it is interesting to compare the

following passage in regard to Odin in the Heimskringla: "It was his

custom when he sent his men to war, or on some errand, to lay his hands

on their heads and give them _bjannak_." Bjannak is not a Norse word,

not even Teutonic, and there has been uncertainty in regard to its

significance. The well-known Icelandic philologist, Vigfusson, has, as I

believe, given the correct definition of the word, having referred it to

the Scottish word _bannock_ and the Gaelic _banagh_, which means bread.

Presumably the author of Heimskringla has chosen this foreign word in

order not to wound the religious feelings of readers with a native term,

for if _bjannak_ really means bread, and if the author of Heimskringla

desired in this way to indicate that Odin, by the aid of sacred usages,

practised in the Christian cult--that is, by the laying on of hands and

the breaking of bread--had given his warriors assurance of victory, then

it lay near at hand to modify, by the aid of a foreign word for bread,

the impression of the disagreeable similarity between the heathen and

Christian usages. But at the same time the complete harmony between what

Tertulianus tells about Mithra and Heimskringla about Odin is manifest.

What Heimskringla tells about Odin, that his spirit could leave the body

and go to far-off regions, and that his body lay in the meantime as if

asleep or dead, is told, in the middle age, of Zoroaster and of

Hermes-Mercurius.

New Platonian works had told much about an originally Egyptian god, whom

they associated with the Greek Hermes and called Hermes-Trismegistus--that

is, the thrice greatest and highest. The name Hermes-Trismegistus became

known through Latin authors even to the scholars in the middle age

convents, and, as a matter of course, those who believed that Odin

was identical with Hermes also regarded him as identical with

Hermes-Trismegistus. When Gylfe sought Odin and his men he came to a

citadel which, according to the statement of the gatekeeper, belonged to

king Odin, but when he had entered the hall he there saw not _one_

throne, but three thrones, the one above the other, and upon each of the

thrones a chief. When Gylfe asked the names of these chiefs, he received

an answer that indicates that none of the three alone was Odin, but that

Odin the sorcerer, who was able to turn men's vision, was present in

them all. One of the three, says the doorkeeper, is named _Har_, the

second, _Jafnhar_, and the one on the highest throne is _Thridi_. It

seems to me probable that what gave rise to this story was the surname

"the thrice-highest," which in the middle age was ascribed to Mercury,

and, consequently, was regarded as one of the epithets which Odin

assumed. The names _Third_ and _High_ seem to point to the phrase "the

thrice-highest." It was accordingly taken for granted that Odin had

appropriated this name in order to anticipate Christianity with a sort

of idea of trinity, just as Zoroaster, his progenitor, had, under the

name Mithra, in advance imitated the Christian usages.

The rest that Heimskringla and the Younger Edda tell about the king Odin

who immigrated to Europe is mainly taken from the stories embodied in

the mythological songs and traditions in regard to the god Odin who

ruled in the celestial Valhal. Here belongs what is told about the war

of Odin and the Asiatics with the Vans. In the myth, this war was waged

around the walls built by a giant around the heavenly Asgard (Voelusp.,

25). The citadel in which Gylfe finds the triple Odin is decorated in

harmony with the Valhal described by the heathen skalds. The men who

drink and present exercises in arms are the einherjes of the myth. Gylfe

himself is taken from the mythology, but, to all appearances, he did not

play the part of a king, but of a giant, dwelling in Jotunheim. The

Fornmanna sagas make him a descendant of _Fornjotr_, who, with his sons,

_Hler_, _Logi_, and _Kari_, and his descendants, _Joekull_, _Snaer_,

_Geitir_, &c., doubtless belong to Jotunheim. When Odin and the Asas had

been made immigrants to the North, it was quite natural that the giants

were made a historical people, and as such were regarded as the

aborigines of the North--an hypothesis which, in connection with the

fable about the Asiatic emigration, was accepted for centuries, and

still has its defenders. The story that Odin, when he perceived death

drawing near, marked himself with the point of a spear, has its origin

in the words which a heathen song lays on Odin's lips: "I know that I

hung on the wind-tossed tree nine nights, by my spear wounded, given to

Odin, myself given to myself" (Havam., 138).

14.

THE RESULT OF THE FOREGOING INVESTIGATIONS.

Herewith I close the examination of the sagas in regard to the Trojan

descent of the Teutons, and in regard to the immigration of Odin and his

Asiamen to Saxland, Denmark, and the Scandinavian peninsula. I have

pointed out the seed from which the sagas grew, the soil in which the

seed could be developed, and how it gradually grew to be what we find

these sagas to be in Heimskringla and the Younger Edda. I have shown

that they do not belong to the Teutonic heathendom, but that they were

born, as it were of necessity, in a Christian time, among Teutons

converted to Christianity, and that they are throughout the work of the

Latin scholars in the middle age. The assumption that they concealed

within themselves a tradition preserved for centuries among the Teutons

themselves of an ancient emigration from Asia is altogether improbable,

and is completely refuted by the genuine migration sagas of Teutonic

origin which were rescued from oblivion, and of which I shall give an

account below. In my opinion, these old and genuine Teutonic migration

sagas have, from a purely historical standpoint, but little more claim

than the fables of the Christian age in regard to Odin's emigration from

Asia to be looked upon as containing a kernel of reality. This must in

each case be carefully considered. But that of which they furnish

evidence is, how entirely foreign to the Teutonic heathens was the idea

of an immigration from Troy or Asia, and besides, they are of great

interest on account of their connection with what the myths have to say

in regard to the oldest dwelling-places, history, and diffusion of the

human race, or at least of the Teutonic part of it.

As a rule, all the old migration sagas, no matter from what race they

spring, should be treated with the utmost caution. Large portions of

the earth's surface may have been appropriated by various races, not by

the sudden influx of large masses, but by a gradual increase of the

population and consequent moving of their boundaries, and there need not

have been very remarkable or memorable events in connection therewith.

Such an expansion of the territory may take place, and be so little

remarked by the people living around the centre, that they actually do

not need to be aware of it, and much less do they need to remember it in

sagas and songs. That a few new settlers year by year extend the

boundaries of a race has no influence on the imagination, and it can

continue generation after generation, and produce as its final result an

immense expansion, and yet the separate generations may scarcely have

been conscious of the change in progress. A people's spreading over new

territory may be compared with the movement of the hour-hand on a clock.

It is not perceptible to the eye, and is only realized by continued

observation.

In many instances, however, immigrations have taken place in large

masses, who have left their old abodes to seek new homes. Such

undertakings are of themselves worthy of being remembered, and they are

attended by results that easily cling to the memory. But even in such

cases it is surprising how soon the real historical events either are

utterly forgotten or blended with fables, which gradually, since they

appeal more to the fancy, monopolise the interest. The conquest and

settlement of England by Saxon and Scandinavian tribes--and that, too,

in a time when the art of writing was known--is a most remarkable

instance of this. Hengist, under whose command the Saxons, according to

their own immigration saga, are said to have planted their feet on

British soil, is a saga-figure taken from mythology, and there we shall

find him later on (see No. 123). No wonder, then, if we discover in

mythology those heroes under whose leadership the Longobardians and

Goths believed they had emigrated from their original Teutonic homes.

B. REMINISCENCES IN THE POPULAR TRADITIONS

OF THE MIDDLE AGES OF THE

HEATHEN MIGRATION SAGA.

15.

THE LONGOBARDIAN MIGRATION SAGA.

What there still remains of migration sagas from the middle ages, taken

from the saga-treasure of the Teutons themselves, is, alas! but little.

Among the Franks the stream of national traditions early dried up, at

least among the class possessing Latin culture. Among the Longobardians

it fared better, and among them Christianity was introduced later.

Within the ken of Roman history they appear in the first century after

Christ, when Tiberius invaded their boundaries.

Tacitus speaks of them with admiration as a small people whose paucity,

he says, was balanced by their unity and warlike virtues, which rendered

them secure in the midst of the numerous and mighty tribes around them.

The Longobardians dwelt at that time in the most northern part of

Germany, on the lower Elbe, probably in Luneburg. Five hundred years

later we find them as rulers in Pannonia, whence they invade Italy. They

had then been converted to Christianity. A hundred years after they had

become settled in North Italy, one of their Latin scholars wrote a

little treatise, _De Origine Longobardorum_, which begins in the

following manner: "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ! Here begins the

oldest history of our Longobardian people. There is an island called

Skadan, far in the north. There dwelt many peoples. Among them was a

little people called the Vinnilians, and among the Vinnilians was a

woman by name Gambara. Gambara had two sons: one by name Ibor, the other

named Ajo. She and these sons were the rulers among the Vinnilians. Then

it came to pass that the Vandals, with their dukes Ambri and Assi,

turned against the Vinnilians, and said to them: 'Pay ye tribute unto

us. If ye will not, then arm yourselves for war!' Then made answer Ibor

and Ajo and their mother Gambara: 'It is better for us to arm ourselves

for war than to pay tribute to the Vandals'. When Ambri and Assi, the

dukes of the Vandals, heard this, they addressed themselves to Odin

(Godan) with a prayer that he should grant them victory. Odin answered

and said: 'Those whom I first discover at the rising of the sun, to them

I shall give victory'. But at the same time Ibor and Ajo, the chiefs of

the Vinnilians, and their mother Gambara, addressed themselves to Frigg

(Frea), Odin's wife, beseeching her to assist them. Then Frigg gave the

advice that the Vinnilians should set out at the rising of the sun, and

that the women should accompany their husbands and arrange their hair so

that it should hang like a beard under their chins. When the sky cleared

and the sun was about to rise, Frigg, Odin's wife, went to the couch

where her husband was sleeping and directed his face to the east (where

the Vinnilians stood), and then she waked him. And as he looked up he

saw the Vinnilians, and observed the hair hanging down from the faces of

their women. And then said he: 'What long-beards are they?' Then said

Frigg to Odin: 'My lord, as you now have named them, you must also give

them victory!' And he gave them victory, so that they, in accordance

with his resolve, defended themselves well, and got the upper hand. From

that day the Vinnilians were called Longobardians--that is to say,

long-beards. Then the Longobardians left their country and came to

Golaida, and thereupon they occupied Aldonus, Anthaib, Bainaib, and

Burgundaib."

In the days of Charlemagne the Longobardians got a historian by name

Paulus Diaconus, a monk in the convent Monte Cassino, and he was himself

a Longobardian by birth. Of the earliest history of his people he

relates the following: The Vinnilians or Longobardians, who ruled

successfully in Italy, are of Teutonic descent, and came originally from

the island Scandinavia. Then he says that he has talked with persons who

had been in Scandinavia, and from their reports he gives some facts,

from which it is evident that his informants had reference to Scania

with its extensive coast of lowlands and shallow water. Then he

continues: "When the population on this island had increased beyond the

ability of the island to support them, they were divided into three

parts, and it was determined by lot which part should emigrate from the

native land and seek new homes. The part whose destiny it became to

leave their native land chose as their leaders the brothers Ibor and

Ajo, who were in the bloom of manhood and were distinguished above the

rest. Then they bade farewell to their friends and to their country, and

went to seek a land in which they might settle. The mother of these two

leaders was called Gambara, who was distinguished among her people for

her keen understanding and shrewd advice, and great reliance was placed

on her prudence in difficult circumstances." Paulus makes a digression

to discuss many remarkable things to be seen in Scandinavia: the light

summer nights and the long winter nights, a maelstrom which in its

vortex swallows vessels and sometimes throws them up again, an animal

resembling a deer hunted by the neighbours of the Scandinavians, the

Scritobinians (the Skee[7] Finns), and a cave in a rock where seven men

in Roman clothes have slept for centuries (see Nos. 79-81, and No. 94).

Then he relates that the Vinnilians left Scandinavia and came to a

country called Scoringia, and there was fought the aforesaid battle, in

which, thanks to Frigg's help, the Vinnilians conquered the Vandals, who

demanded tribute from them.

The story is then told how this occurred, and how the Vinnilians got the

name Longobardians in a manner corresponding with the source already

quoted, with the one addition, that it was Odin's custom when he awoke

to look out of the window, which was open, to the east toward the rising

sun. Paulus Diaconus finds this Longobardian folk-saga ludicrous, not in

itself, but because Odin was, in the first place, he says, a man, not a

god. In the second place, Odin did not live among the Teutons, but among

the Greeks, for he is the same as the one called by the Romans Mercury.

In the third place, Odin-Mercury did not live at the time when the

Longobardians emigrated from Scandinavia, but much earlier. According to

Paulus, there were only five generations between the emigration of the

Longobardians and the time of Odoacer. Thus we find in Paulus Diaconus

the ideas in regard to Odin-Mercury which I have already called

attention to. Paulus thereupon relates the adventures which happened to

the Longobardians after the battle with the Vandals. I shall refer to

these adventures later on. They belong to the Teutonic mythology, and

reappear in mythic sources (see No. 112), but in a more original form,

and as events which took place in the beginning of time in a conflict

between the Asas and Vans on the one hand, and lower beings on the other

hand; lower, indeed, but unavoidable in connection with the well-being

of nature and man. This conflict resulted in a terrible winter and

consequent famine throughout the North. In this mythological description

we shall find Ajo and Ibor, under whose leadership the Longobardians

emigrated, and Hengist, under whom the Saxons landed in Britain.

It is proper to show what form the story about the Longobardian

emigration had assumed toward the close of the twelfth century in the

writings of the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus. The emigration took

place, he says, at a time when a Danish king, by name Snoe, ruled, and

when there occurred a terrible famine. First, those starving had

resolved to kill all the aged and all children, but this awful resolve

was not carried out, thanks to a good and wise woman, by name Gambaruc,

who advised that a part of the people should emigrate. This was done

under the leadership of her sons Aggo and Ebbo. The emigrants came first

to Blekingia (Blekinge), then they sailed past Moringia (Moere) and came

to Gutland, where they had a contest with the Vandals, and by the aid of

the goddess Frigg they won the victory, and got the name Longobardians.

From Gutland they sailed to Rugen, and thence to the German continent,

and thus after many adventures they at length became masters of a large

part of Italy.

In regard to this account it must be remarked that although it contains

many details not found in Paulus Diaconus, still it is the same

narrative that has come to Saxo's knowledge. This Saxo also admits, and

appeals to the testimony of Paulus Diaconus. Paulus' Gambara is Saxo's

Gambaruc; Ajo and Ibor are Aggo and Ebbo. But the Longobardian monk is

not Saxo's only source, and the brothers Aggo and Ebbo, as we shall

show, were known to him from purely northern sources, though not as

leaders of the Longobardians, but as mythic characters, who are actors

in the great winter which Saxo speaks of.

The Longobardian emigration saga--as we find it recorded in the seventh

century, and then again in the time of Charlemagne--contains

unmistakable internal evidence of having been taken from the people's

own traditions. Proof of this is already the circumstance, that although

the Longobardians had been Christians for nearly 200 years when the

little book _De Origine Longobardorum_ appeared, still the long-banished

divinities, Odin and Frigg, reappear and take part in the events, not as

men, but as divine beings, and in a manner thoroughly corresponding with

the stories recorded in the North concerning the relations between Odin

and his wife. For although this relation was a good and tender one,

judging from expressions in the heathen poems of the North (Voelusp., 51;

Vafthr., 1-4), and although the queen of heaven, Frigg, seems to have

been a good mother in the belief of the Teutons, this does not hinder

her from being represented as a wily person, with a will of her own

which she knows how to carry out. Even a Norse story tells how Frigg

resolves to protect a person whom Odin is not able to help; how she and

he have different favourites among men, and vie with each other in

bringing greater luck to their favourites. The story is found in the

prose introduction to the poem "Grimnismal," an introduction which in

more than one respect reminds us of the Longobardian emigration saga. In

both it is mentioned how Odin from his dwelling looks out upon the world

and observes what is going on. Odin has a favourite by name Geirrod.

Frigg, on the other hand, protects Geirrod's brother Agnar. The man and

wife find fault with each other's proteges. Frigg remarks about Geirrod,

that he is a prince, "stingy with food, so that he lets his guests

starve if they are many." And the story goes on to say that Geirrod, at

the secret command of Odin, had pushed the boat in which Agnar was

sitting away from shore, and that the boat had gone to sea with Agnar

and had not returned. The story looks like a parable founded on the

Longobardian saga, or like one grown in a Christian time out of the same

root as the Longobardian story. Geirrod is in reality the name of a

giant, and the giant is in the myth a being who brings hail and frost.

He dwells in the uttermost North, beyond the mythical Gandvik

(Thorsdrapa, 2), and as a mythical winter symbol he corresponds to king

Snoe in Saxo. His "stinginess of food when too many guests come" seems to

point to lack of food caused by the unfavourable weather, which

necessitated emigrations, when the country became over-populated. Agnar,

abandoned to the waves of the sea, is protected, like the Longobardians

crossing the sea, by Frigg, and his very name, Agnar, reminds us of the

names Aggo, Acho, and Agio, by which Ajo, one of the leaders of the

Longobardians, is known. The prose introduction has no original

connection with _Grimnismal_ itself, and in the form in which we now

have it, it belongs to a Christian age, and is apparently from an author

belonging to the same school as those who regarded the giants as the

original inhabitants of Scandinavia, and turned winter giants like

Joekull, Snaer, &c., into historical kings of Norway.

The absolutely positive result of the Longobardian narratives written by

Longobardian historians is that the Teutonic race to which they belonged

considered themselves sprung, not from Troy or Asia, but from an island,

situated in the ocean, which washes the northern shores of the Teutonic

continent, that is to say, of Germany.

[Footnote 7: The snow-skate, used so extensively in the north of Europe,

is called _Ski_ in the Norse, and I have taken the liberty of

introducing this word here and spelling it phonetically--_skee_, pl.

_skees_. The words snow-shoes, snow-skates, hardly describe sufficiently

these skees used by the Finns, Norsemen, and Icelanders. Compare the

English word _skid_, the drag applied to a coach-wheel.--_Tr._]

16.

THE SAXON AND SWABIAN MIGRATION SAGA.

From the Longobardians I now pass to the great Teutonic group of peoples

comprised in the term the _Saxons_. Their historian, Widukind, who wrote

his chronicle in the tenth century, begins by telling what he has

learned about the origin of the Saxons. Here, he says, different

opinions are opposed to each other. According to one opinion held by

those who knew the Greeks and Romans, the Saxons are descended from the

remnants of Alexander the Great's Macedonian army; according to the

other, which is based on native traditions, the Saxons are descended

from Danes and Northmen. Widukind so far takes his position between

these opinions that he considers it certain that the Saxons had come in

ships to the country they inhabited on the lower Elbe and the North Sea,

and that they landed in Hadolaun, that is to say, in the district

Hadeln, near the mouth of the Elbe, which, we may say in passing, still

is distinguished for its remarkably vigorous population, consisting of

peasants whose ancestors throughout the middle ages preserved the

communal liberty in successful conflict with the feudal nobility.

Widukind's statement that the Saxons crossed the sea to Hadeln is found

in an older Saxon chronicle, written about 860, with the addition that

the leader of the Saxons in their emigration was a chief by name

Hadugoto.

A Swabian chronicle, which claims that the Swabians also came from the

North and experienced about the same adventures as the Saxons when they

came to their new home, gives from popular traditions additional details

in regard to the migration and the voyage. According to this account,

the emigration was caused by a famine which visited the Northland

situated on the other side of the sea, because the inhabitants were

heathens who annually sacrificed twelve Christians to their gods. At the

time when the famine came there ruled a king Rudolph over that region in

the Northland whence the people emigrated. He called a convention of all

the most noble men in the land, and there it was decided that, in order

to put an end to the famine, the fathers of families who had several

sons should slay them all except the one they loved most. Thanks to a

young man, by name Ditwin, who was himself included in this dreadful

resolution, a new convention was called, and the above resolution was

rescinded, and instead, it was decided to procure ships, and that all

they who, according to the former resolution, were doomed to die, should

seek new homes beyond the sea. Accompanied by their female friends, they

embarked, and they had not sailed far before they were attacked by a

violent storm, which carried them to a Danish harbour near a place,

says the author, which is called Slesvik. Here they went ashore, and to

put an end to all discussion in regard to a return to the old dear

fatherland, they hewed their ships into pieces. Then they wandered

through the country which lay before them, and, together with much other

booty, they gathered 20,000 horses, so that a large number of the men

were able to ride on horseback. The rest followed the riders on foot.

Armed with weapons, they proceeded in this manner through the country

ruled by the Danes, and they came to the river Alba (Elbe), which they

crossed; after which they scattered themselves along the coast. This

Swabian narrative, which seems to be copied from the Saxon, tells, like

the latter, that the Thuringians were rulers in the land to which the

immigrants came, and that bloody battles had to be fought before they

got possession of it. Widukind's account attempts to give the Saxons a

legal right, at least to the landing-place and the immediate vicinity.

This legal right, he says, was acquired in the following manner: While

the Saxons were still in their ships in the harbour, out of which the

Thuringians were unable to drive them, it was resolved on both sides to

open negotiations, and thus an understanding was reached, that the

Saxons, on the condition that they abstained from plundering and murder,

might remain and buy what they needed and sell whatever they could. Then

it occurred that a Saxon man, richly adorned with gold and wearing a

gold necklace, went ashore. There a Thuringian met him and asked him:

"Why do you wear so much gold around your lean neck?" The youth

answered that he was perishing from hunger, and was seeking a purchaser

of his gold ornaments. "How much do you ask?" inquired the Thuringian.

"What do you bid?" answered the Saxon. Near by was a large sand-hill,

and the Thuringian said in derision: "I will give you as much sand as

you can carry in your clothes." The Saxon said he would accept this

offer. The Thuringian filled the skirts of his frock with sand; the

Saxon gave him his gold ornaments and returned to the ships. The

Thuringians laughed at this bargain with contempt, and the Saxons found

it foolish; but the youth said: "Go with me, brave Saxons, and I will

show you that my foolishness will be your advantage." Then he took the

sand he had bought and scattered it as widely as possible over the

ground, covering in this manner so large an area that it gave the Saxons

a fortified camp. The Thuringians sent messengers and complained of

this, but the Saxons answered that hitherto they had faithfully observed

the treaty, and that they had not taken more territory than they had

purchased with their gold. Thus the Saxons got a firm foothold in the

land.

Thus we find that the sagas of the Saxons and the Swabians agree with

those of the Longobardians in this, that their ancestors were supposed

to have come from a northern country beyond the Baltic. The Swabian

version identifies this country distinctly enough with the Scandinavian

peninsula. Of an immigration from the East the traditions of these

tribes have not a word to say.

17.

THE FRANKISH MIGRATION SAGA.

We have already stated that the Frankish chronicles, unlike those of the

other Teutonic tribes, wholly ignore the traditions of the Franks, and

instead present the scholastic doctrine concerning the descent of the

Franks from Troy and the Moeotian marshes. But I did not mean to say

that we are wholly without evidence that another theory existed among

the Franks, for they, too, had traditions in harmony with those of the

other Teutonic tribes. There lived in the time of Charlemagne and after

him a Frankish man whose name is written on the pages of history as a

person of noble character and as a great educator in his day, the abbot

in Fulda, later archbishop in Mayence, Hrabanus Maurus, a scholar of the

distinguished Alcuin, the founder of the first library and of the first

large convent school in Germany. The fact that he was particularly a

theologian and Latinist did not prevent his honouring and loving the

tongue of his fathers and of his race. He encouraged its study and use,

and he succeeded in bringing about that sermons were preached in the

churches in the Teutonic dialect of the church-goers. That a Latin

scholar with so wide a horizon as his also was able to comprehend what

the majority of his colleagues failed to understand--viz., that some

value should be attached to the customs of the fathers and to the old

memories from heathen times--should not surprise us. One of the proofs

of his interest in this matter he has given us in his treatise _De

invocatione linguarum_, in which he has recorded a Runic alphabet,

and added the information that it is the alphabet used by the Northmen

and by other heathen tribes, and that songs and formulas for healing,

incantation, and prophecy are written with these characters. When

Hrabanus speaks of the Northmen, he adds that those who speak the German

tongue trace their descent from the Northmen. This statement cannot be

harmonised with the hypothesis concerning the Asiatic descent of the

Franks and other Teutons, except by assuming that the Teutons on their

immigration from Asia to Europe took a route so far to the north that

they reached the Scandinavian peninsula and Denmark without touching

Germany and Central Europe, and then came from the North to Germany. But

of such a view there is not a trace to be found in the middle age

chronicles. The Frankish chronicles make the Franks proceed from

Pannonia straight to the Rhine. The Icelandic imitations of the

hypothesis make Odin and his people proceed from Tanais to Saxland, and

found kingdoms there before he comes to Denmark and Sweden. Hrabanus has

certainly not heard of any such theory. His statement that all the

Teutons came from the North rests on the same foundation as the native

traditions which produced the sagas in regard to the descent of the

Longobardians, Saxons, and Swabians from the North. There still remains

one trace of the Frankish migration saga, and that is the statement of

Paulus Diaconus, made above, concerning the supposed identity of the

name Ansgisel with the name Anchises. The identification is not made by

Paulus himself, but was found in the Frankish source which furnished

him with what he tells about the ancestors of Charlemagne, and the

Frankish source, under the influence of the hypothesis regarding the

Trojan descent of the Franks, has made an emigration leader mentioned in

the popular traditions identical with the Trojan Anchises. This is

corroborated by the Ravenna geographer, who also informs us that a

certain Anschis, Ansgisel, was a Teutonic emigration leader, and that he

was the one under whose leadership the Saxon tribes left their old

homes. Thus it appears that, according to the Frankish saga, the Franks

originally emigrated under the same chief as the Saxons. The character

and position of Ansgisel in the heathen myth will be explained in No.

123.

18.

JORDANES ON THE EMIGRATION OF THE GOTHS, GEPIDAE,

AND HERULIANS. THE MIGRATION SAGA OF THE

BURGUNDIANS. TRACES OF AN ALAMANNIC MIGRATION

SAGA.

The most populous and mighty of all the Teutonic tribes was during a

long period the _Gothic_, which carried victorious weapons over all

eastern and southern Europe and Asia Minor, and founded kingdoms between

the Don in the East and the Atlantic ocean and the Pillars of Hercules

in the West and South. The traditions of the Goths also referred the

cradle of the race to Scandinavia. Jordanes, a Romanised Goth, wrote in

the sixth century the history of his people. In the North, he says,

there is a great ocean, and in this ocean there is a large island called

Scandza, out of whose loins our race burst forth like a swarm of bees

and spread over Europe. In its capacity as cradle of the Gothic race,

and of other Teutonic tribes, this island Scandza is clearly of great

interest to Jordanes, the more so since he, through his father Vamod or

Alano-Vamut, regarded himself as descended from the same royal family as

that from which the Amalians, the famous royal family of the East Goths,

traced their ancestry. On this account Jordanes gives as complete a

description of this island as possible. He first tells what the Greek

and Roman authors Claudius Ptolemy and Pomponius Mela have written about

it, but he also reports a great many things which never before were

known in literature, unless they were found in the lost _Historia

Gothorum_ by Cassiodorus--things which either Jordanes himself or

Cassiodorus had learned from Northmen who were members of the large

Teutonic armies then in Italy. Jordanes also points out, with an air of

superiority, that while the geographer Ptolemy did not know more than

seven nations living on the island Scandza, he is able to enumerate many

more. Unfortunately several of the Scandinavian tribe-names given by him

are so corrupted by the transcriber that it is useless to try to restore

them. It is also evident that Jordanes himself has had a confused notion

of the proper geographical or political application of the names. Some

of them, however, are easily recognisable as the names of tribes in

various parts of Sweden and Norway, as, for instance, Vagoth,

Ostrogothae, Finnaithae (inhabitants of Finved), Bergio, Hallin,

Raumaricii, Ragnaricii, Rani. He gives us special accounts of a

Scandinavian people, which he calls sometimes Svehans and sometimes

Svethidi, and with these words there is every reason to believe that he

means the Swedes in the wider or more limited application of this term.

This is what he tells about the Svehans or Svethidi: The Svehans are in

connection with the Thuringians living on the continent, that Teutonic

people which is particularly celebrated for their excellent horses. The

Svehans are excellent hunters, who kill the animals whose skins through

countless hands are sent to the Romans, and are treasured by them as the

finest of furs. This trade cannot have made the Svehans rich. Jordanes

gives us to understand that their economical circumstances were not

brilliant, but all the more brilliant were their clothes. He says they

dressed _ditissime_. Finally, he has been informed that the Svethidi are

superior to other races in stature and corporal strength, and that the

Danes are a branch of the Svethidi. What Jordanes relates about the

excellent horses of the Swedes is corroborated by the traditions which

the Icelanders have preserved. The fact that so many tribes inhabited

the island Scandza strengthens his conviction that this island is the

cradle of many of the peoples who made war on and invaded the Roman

Empire. The island Scandza, he says, has been _officina gentium_,

_vagina nationum_--the source of races, the mother of nations. And

thence--he continues, relying on the traditions and songs of his own

people--the Goths, too, have emigrated. This emigration occurred under

the leadership of a chief named Berig, and he thinks he knows where

they landed when they left their ships, and that they, like the

Longobardians, on their progress came in conflict with the Vandals

before they reached the regions north of the Black Sea, where they

afterwards founded the great Gothic kingdom which flourished when the

Huns invaded Europe.

The saga current among the Goths, that they had emigrated from

Scandinavia, ascribed the same origin to the Gepidae. The Gepidae were a

brave but rather sluggish Teutonic tribe, who shared the fate of the

Goths when the Huns invaded Europe, and, like the Goths, they cast off

the Hunnish yoke after the death of Attila. The saga, as Jordanes found

it, stated that when the ancestors of the Goths left Scandza, the whole

number of the emigrants did not fill more than three ships. Two of them

came to their destination at the same time; but the third required more

time, and therefore the first-comers called those who arrived last

Gepanta (possibly Gepaita), which, according to Jordanes, means those

tarrying, or the slow ones, and this name changed in course of time into

Gepidae. That the interpretation is taken from Gothic traditions is

self-evident.

Jordanes has heard a report that even the warlike Teutonic Herulians had

come to Germany from Scandinavia. According to the report, the Herulians

had not emigrated voluntarily from the large islands, but had been

driven away by the Svethidi, or by their descendants, the Danes. That

the Herulians themselves had a tradition concerning their Scandinavian

origin is corroborated by history. In the beginning of the sixth

century, it happened that this people, after an unsuccessful war with

the Longobardians, were divided into two branches, of which the one

received land from the emperor Anastasius south of the Danube, while the

other made a resolve, which has appeared strange to all historians,

viz., to seek a home on the Scandinavian peninsula. The circumstances

attending this resolution make it still more strange. When they had

passed the Slavs, they came to uninhabited regions--uninhabited,

probably, because they had been abandoned by the Teutons, and had not

yet been occupied by the Slavs. In either case, they were open to the

occupation of the Herulians; but they did not settle there. We

misunderstand their character if we suppose that they failed to do so

from fear of being disturbed in their possession of them. Among all the

Teutonic tribes none were more distinguished than the Herulians for

their indomitable desire for war, and for their rash plans. Their

conduct furnishes evidence of that thoughtlessness with which the

historian has characterised them. After penetrating the wilderness, they

came to the landmarks of the Varinians, and then to those of the Danes.

These granted the Herulians a free passage, whereupon the adventurers,

in ships which the Danes must have placed at their disposal, sailed over

the sea to the island "Thule," and remained there. Procopius, the East

Roman historian who records this (_De Bello Goth._, ii., 15), says that

on the immense island Thule, in whose northern part the midnight sun can

be seen, thirteen large tribes occupy its inhabitable parts, each tribe

having its own king. Excepting the Skee Finns, who clothe themselves in

skins and live from the chase, these Thulitic tribes, he says, are

scarcely to be distinguished from the people dwelling farther south in

Europe. One of the largest tribes is the Gauts (the Goetar). The

Herulians went to the Gauts and were received by them.

Some decades later it came to pass that the Herulians remaining in South

Europe, and dwelling in Illyria, were in want of a king. They resolved

to send messengers to their kinsmen who had settled in Scandinavia,

hoping that some descendant of their old royal family might be found

there who was willing to assume the dignity of king among them. The

messengers returned with two brothers who belonged to the ancient family

of rulers, and these were escorted by 200 young Scandinavian Herulians.

As Jordanes tells us that the Herulians actually were descended from the

great northern island, then this seems to me to explain this remarkable

resolution. They were seeking new homes in that land which in their old

songs was described as having belonged to their fathers. In their

opinion, it was a return to the country which contained the ashes of

their ancestors. According to an old middle age source, _Vita

Sigismundi_, the Burgundians also had old traditions about a

Scandinavian origin. As will be shown further on, the Burgundian saga

was connected with the same emigration chief as that of the Saxons and

Franks (see No. 123).

Reminiscences of an Alamannic migration saga can be traced in the

traditions found around the Vierwaldstaedter Lake. The inhabitants of

the Canton Schwitz have believed that they originally came from Sweden.

It is fair to assume that this tradition in the form given to it in

literature has suffered a change, and that the chroniclers, on account

of the similarity between Sweden and Schwitz, have transferred the home

of the Alamannic Switzians to Sweden, while the original popular

tradition has, like the other Teutonic migration sagas, been satisfied

with the more vague idea that the Schwitzians came from the country in

the sea north of Germany when they settled in their Alpine valleys. In

the same regions of Switzerland popular traditions have preserved the

memory of an exploit which belongs to the Teutonic mythology, and is

there performed by the great archer Ibor (see No. 108), and as he

reappears in the Longobardian tradition as a migration chief, the

possibility lies near at hand, that he originally was no stranger to the

Alamannic migration saga.

19.

THE TEUTONIC EMIGRATION SAGA FOUND IN TACITUS.

The migration sagas which I have now examined are the only ones

preserved to our time on Teutonic ground. They have come down to us from

the traditions of various tribes. They embrace the East Goths, West

Goths, Longobardians, Gepidae, Burgundians, Herulians, Franks, Saxons,

Swabians, and Alamannians. And if we add to these the evidence of

Hrabanus Maurus, then all the German tribes are embraced in the

traditions. All the evidences are unanimous in pointing to the North as

the Teutonic cradle. To these testimonies we must, finally, add the

oldest of all--the testimony of the sources of Tacitus from the time of

the birth of Christ and the first century of our era.

[Illustration: THOR, THE THUNDER GOD. (_From the painting by M. E.

Winge._)

Thor was reputed to be the son of Odin, surnamed the All-father, and

Jorth, the earth. He was the source of wisdom, patron of culture and of

heroes, friend of mankind and slayer of giants. He always carried a

heavy hammer, called The Crusher, with which he fought, assisted by

thunder and lightning. From Thor is derived the middle English words

Thursday (Thorsday) and Thunder.]

The statements made by Tacitus in his masterly work concerning the

various tribes of Germany and their religion, traditions, laws, customs,

and character, are gathered from men who, in Germany itself, had seen

and heard what they reported. Of this every page of the work bears

evidence, and it also proves its author to have been a man of keen

observation, veracity, and wide knowledge. The knowledge of his

reporters extends to the myths and heroic songs of the Teutons. The

latter is the characteristic means with which a gifted people, still

leading their primitive life, makes compensation for their lack of

written history in regard to the events and exploits of the past. We

find that the man he interviewed had informed himself in regard to the

contents of the songs which described the first beginning and the most

ancient adventures of the race, and he had done this with sufficient

accuracy to discover a certain disagreement in the genealogies found in

these songs of the patriarchs and tribe heroes of the Teutons--a

disagreement which we shall consider later on. But the man who had done

this had heard nothing which could bring him, and after him Tacitus, to

believe that the Teutons had immigrated from some remote part of the

world to that country which they occupied immediately before the birth

of Christ--to that Germany which Tacitus describes, and in which he

embraces that large island in the North Sea where the seafaring and

warlike Sviones dwelt. Quite the contrary. In his sources of information

Tacitus found nothing to hinder him from assuming as probable the view

he expresses--that the Teutons were aborigines, autochthones, fostered

on the soil which was their fatherland. He expresses his surprise at the

typical similarity prevailing among all the tribes of this populous

people, and at the dissimilarity existing between them on the one hand,

and the non-Teutonic peoples on the other; and he draws the conclusion

that they are entirely unmixed with other races, which, again,

presupposes that the Teutons from the most ancient times have possessed

their country for themselves, and that no foreign element has been able

to get a foothold there. He remarks that there could scarcely have been

any immigrations from that part of Asia which was known to him, or from

Africa or Italy, since the nature of Germany was not suited to invite

people from richer and more beautiful regions. But while Tacitus thus

doubts that non-Teutonic races ever settled in Germany, still he has

heard that people who desired to exchange their old homes for new ones

have come there to live. But these settlements did not, in his opinion,

result in a mixing of the race. Those early immigrants did not come by

land, but in fleets over the sea; and as this sea was the boundless

ocean which lies beyond the Teutonic continent and was seldom visited by

people living in the countries embraced in the Roman empire, those

immigrants must themselves have been Teutons. The words of Tacitus are

_(Germ., 2): Germanos indigenas crediderim minimeque aliarum

gentium adventibus et hospitiis mixtos, quia nec terra olim sed

classibus advehebantur qui mutare sedes quaerebant, et immensus ultra

atque ut sic dixerim adversus Oceanus raris ab orbe nostro navibus

aditur._ "I should think that the Teutons themselves are aborigines (and

not at all mixed through immigrations or connection with non-Teutonic

tribes). For those desiring to change homes did not in early times come

by land, but in ships across the boundless and, so to speak, hostile

ocean--a sea seldom visited by ships from the Roman world." This passage

is to be compared with, and is interpreted by, what Tacitus tells when

he, for the second time, speaks of this same ocean in chapter 44, where

he relates that in the very midst of this ocean lies a land inhabited by

Teutonic tribes, rich not only in men and arms, but also in _fleets_

(_praeter viros armaque classibus valent_), and having a stronger and

better organization than the other Teutons. These people formed several

communities (_civitates_). He calls them the Sviones, and describes

their ships. The conclusion to be drawn from his words is, in short,

that those immigrants were Northmen belonging to the same race as the

continental Teutons. Thus traditions concerning immigrations from the

North to Germany have been current among the continental Teutons already

in the first century after Christ.

But Tacitus' contribution to the Teutonic migration saga is not limited

to this. In regard to the origin of a city then already ancient and

situated on the Rhine, Asciburgium (_Germ._, 3), his reporter had heard

that it was founded by an ancient hero who had come with his ships from

the German Ocean, and had sailed up the Rhine a great distance beyond

the Delta, and had then disembarked and laid the foundations of

Asciburgium. His reporter had also heard such stories about this ancient

Teutonic hero that persons acquainted with the Greek-Roman traditions

(the Romans or the Gallic neighbours of Asciburgium) had formed the

opinion that the hero in question could be none else than the Greek

Ulysses, who, in his extensive wanderings, had drifted into the German

Ocean and thence sailed up the Rhine. In weighing this account of

Tacitus we must put aside the Roman-Gallic conjecture concerning

Ulysses' visit to the Rhine, and confine our attention to the fact on

which this conjecture is based. The fact is that around Asciburgium a

tradition was current concerning an ancient hero who was said to have

come across the northern ocean with a host of immigrants and founded the

above-named city on the Rhine, and that the songs or traditions in

regard to this ancient hero were of such a character that they who knew

the adventures of Ulysses thought they had good reason for regarding him

as identical with the latter. Now, the fact is that the Teutonic

mythology has a hero who to quote the words of an ancient Teutonic

document, "was the greatest of all travellers," and who on his journeys

met with adventures which in some respects remind us of Ulysses'. Both

descended to Hades; both travelled far and wide to find their beloved.

Of this mythic hero and his adventures see Nos. 96-107, and No. 107

about Asciburgium in particular.

It lies outside the limits of the present work to investigate whether

these traditions contain any historical facts. There is need of caution

in this respect, since facts of history are, as a rule, short-lived

among a people that do not keep written annals. The historical songs and

traditions of the past which the Scandinavians recorded in the twelfth

century do not go further back in time than to the middle of the ninth

century, and the oldest were already mixed with stories of the

imagination. The Hellenic historical records from a pre-literary time

were no older; nor were those of the Romans. The question how far

historically important emigrations from the Scandinavian peninsula and

Denmark to Germany have taken place should in my opinion be considered

entirely independent of the old migration traditions if it is to be

based on a solid foundation. If it can be answered in the affirmative,

then those immigrations must have been partial returns of an Aryan race

which, prior to all records, have spread from the South to the

Scandinavian countries. But the migration traditions themselves clearly

have their firmest root in myths, and not in historical memories; and at

all events are so closely united with the myths, and have been so

transformed by song and fancy, that they have become useless for

historical purposes. The fact that the sagas preserved to our time make

nearly all the most important and most numerous Teutonic tribes which

played a part in the destiny of Southern Europe during the Empire

emigrants from Scandinavia is calculated to awaken suspicion.

The wide diffusion this belief has had among the Teutons is sufficiently

explained by their common mythology--particularly by the myth

concerning the earliest age of man or of the Teutonic race. As this work

of mine advances, I shall find opportunity of presenting the results of

my investigations in regard to this myth. The fragments of it must, so

to speak, be exhumed from various mounds, and the proofs that these

fragments belong together, and once formed a unit, can only be presented

as the investigation progresses. In the division "The Myth concerning

the Earliest Period and the Emigrations from the North," I give the

preparatory explanation and the general _resume_ (Nos. 20-43). For the

points which cannot there be demonstrated without too long digressions

the proofs will be presented in the division "The Myth concerning the

Race of Ivalde" (Nos. 96-123).

III.

THE MYTH CONCERNING THE EARLIEST

PERIOD AND THE EMIGRATIONS

FROM THE NORTH.

20.

THE CREATION OF MAN. THE PRIMEVAL COUNTRY.

SCEF THE BRINGER OF CULTURE.

The human race, or at least the Teutonic race, springs, according to the

myth, from a single pair, and _has accordingly had a centre from which

their descendants have spread over that world which was embraced by the

Teutonic horizon_. The story of the creation of this pair has its root

in a myth of ancient Aryan origin, according to which the first parents

were plants before they became human beings. The Iranian version of the

story is preserved in Bundehesh, chap. 15. There it is stated that the

first human pair grew at the time of the autumnal equinox in the form of

a _rheum ribes_ with a single stalk. After the lapse of fifteen years

the bush had put forth fifteen leaves. The man and woman who developed

in and with it were closely united, forming one body, so that it could

not be seen which one was the man and which one was the woman, and they

held their hands close to their ears. Nothing revealed whether the

splendour of Ahuramazda--that is to say, the soul--was yet in them or

not. Then said Ahuramazda to Mashia (the man) and to Mashiana (the

woman): "Be human beings; become the parents of the world!" And from

being plants they got the form of human beings, and Ahuramazda urged

them to think good thoughts, speak good words and do good deeds. Still,

they soon thought an evil thought and became sinners. The _rheum ribes_

from which they sprang had its own origin in seed from a primeval being

in human form, Gaya Maretan (Gayo-mert), which was created from

perspiration (cp. Vafthrudnersmal, xxxiii. 1-4), but was slain by the

evil Angra Mainyu. Bundehesh then gives an account of the first

generations following Mashia and Mashiana, and explains how they spread

over the earth and became the first parents of the human race.

The Hellenic Aryans have known the myth concerning the origin of man

from plants. According to Hesiodus, the men of the third age of the

world grew from the ash tree (_ek meleon_); compare the _Odyssey_, xix,

163.

From this same tree came the first man according to the Teutonic myth.

Three asas, mighty and worthy of worship, came to Midgard (at _husi_,

Voelusp., 16; compare Voelusp., 4, where Midgard is referred to by the

word _salr_) and found _a landi_ Ask and Embla. These beings were then

"of little might" (_litt megandi_) and "without destiny"

(_oerloegslausir_); they lacked _oend_, they lacked _odr_, they had no _la

or laeti or litr goda_, but Odin gave them _oend_, Honor gave them _odr_,

Loder gave them _la_ and _litr goda_. In reference to the meaning of

these words I refer my readers to No. 95, simply noting here that _litr

goda_, hitherto defined as "good colour" (_godr litr_), signifies "the

appearance (image) of gods." From looking like trees Ask and Embla got

the appearance which before them none but the gods had assumed. The

Teutons, like the Greeks and Romans, conceived the gods in the image of

men.

Odin's words in Havamal, 43, refer to the same myth.

The passage explains that when the Asa-god saw the modesty of the

new-made human pair he gave them his own divine garments to cover them.

When they found themselves so beautifully adorned it seems to indicate

the awakening sense of pride in the first human pair. The words are: "In

the field (_velli at_) I gave my clothes to the two wooden men (_tveim

tremoennum_). Heroes they seemed to themselves when they got clothes. The

naked man is embarrassed."

But the expressions _a landi_ and _velli at_ should be observed. That

the trees grew on the ground, and that the acts of creating and clothing

took place there is so self-evident that these words would be

meaningless if they were not called for by the fact that the authors of

these passages in Havamal and Voeluspa had in their minds the ground

_along the sea_, that is, a sea-beach. This is also clear from a

tradition given in Gylfaginning, chapter 9, according to which the three

asas were walking along the sea-beach (_med saevarstroendu_) when they

found Ask and Embla, and created of them the first human pair.

Thus the first human pair were created on the beach of an ocean. To

which sea can the myth refer? The question does not concern the ancient

Aryan time, but the Teutonic antiquity, not Asia, but Europe; and if we

furthermore limit it to the Christian era there can be but one answer.

Germany was bounded in the days of Tacitus, and long before his time, by

Gaul, Rhoetia, and Pannonia on the west and south, by the extensive

territories of the Sarmatians and Dacians on the east, and by the ocean

on the north. The so-called German Ocean, the North Sea and the Baltic,

was then the only body of water within the horizon of the Teutons, the

only one which in the days of Jordanes, after the Goths long had ruled

north of the Black Sea, was thought to wash the primeval Teutonic

strands. The myth must therefore refer to the German Ocean. It is

certain that the borders of this ocean where the myth has located the

creation of the first human pair, or the first Teutonic pair, was

regarded as the centre from which their descendants spread over more and

more territory. Where near the North Sea or the Baltic was this centre

located?

Even this question can be answered, thanks to the mythic fragments

preserved. A feature common to all well-developed mythological systems

is the view that the human race in its infancy was under the special

protection of friendly divinities, and received from them the doctrines,

arts, and trades without which all culture is impossible. The same view

is strongly developed among the Teutons. Anglo-Saxon documents have

rescued the story telling how Ask's and Embla's descendants received the

first blessings of culture from the benign gods. The story has come to

us through Christian hands, which, however, have allowed enough of the

original to remain to show that its main purpose was to tell us how the

great gifts of culture came to the human race. The saga names the land

where this took place. The country was the most southern part of the

Scandinavian peninsula, and especially the part of it bordering on the

western sea. Had these statements come to us only from northern sources,

there would be good reason for doubting their originality and general

application to the Teutonic tribes. The Icelandic-Norwegian middle-age

literature abounds in evidence of a disposition to locate the events of

a myth and the exploits of mythic persons in the author's own land and

town. But in this instance there is no room for the suspicion that

patriotism has given to the southern-most part of the Scandinavian

peninsula a so conspicuous prominence in the earliest history of the

myth. The chief evidence is found in the traditions of the Saxons in

England, and this gives us the best clue to the unanimity with which the

sagas of the Teutonic continent, from a time prior to the birth of

Christ far down in the middle ages, point out the great peninsula in the

northern sea as the land of the oldest ancestors, in conflict with the

scholastic opinion in regard to an emigration from Troy. The region

where the myth located the first dawn of human culture was certainly

also the place which was regarded as the cradle and centre of the race.

The non-Scandinavian sources in question are: Beowulf's poem,

Ethelwerdus, Willielmus Malmesburiensis, Simeon Dunelmensis, and

Matthaeus Monasteriensis. A closer examination of them reveals the fact

that they have their information from three different sources, which

again have a common origin in a heathen myth. If we bring together what

they have preserved of the story we get the following result:[8]

One day it came to pass that a ship was seen sailing near the coast of

Scedeland or Scani,[9] and it approached the land without being

propelled either by oars or sails. The ship came to the sea-beach, and

there was seen lying in it a little boy, who was sleeping with his head

on a sheaf of grain, surrounded by treasures and tools, by glaives and

coats of mail. The boat itself was steady and beautifully decorated. Who

he was and whence he came nobody had any idea, but the little boy was

received as if he had been a kinsman, and he received the most constant

and tender care. As he came with a sheaf of grain to their country the

people called him Scef, Sceaf.[10] (The Beowulf poem calls him Scyld,

son of Sceaf, and gives Scyld the son Beowulf, which originally was

another name of Scyld.) Scef grew up among this people, became their

benefactor and king, and ruled most honourably for many years. He died

far advanced in age. In accordance with his own directions, his body was

borne down to the strand where he had landed as a child. There in a

little harbour lay the same boat in which he had come. Glittering from

hoar-frost and ice, and eager to return to the sea, the boat was waiting

to receive the dead king, and around him the grateful and sorrowing

people laid no fewer treasures than those with which Scef had come. And

when all was finished the boat went out upon the sea, and no one knows

where it landed. He left a son Scyld (according to the Beowulf poem,

Beowulf son of Scyld), who ruled after him. Grandson of the boy who came

with the sheaf was Healfdene--Halfdan, king of the Danes (that is,

according to the Beowulf poem).

The myth gives the oldest Teutonic patriarchs a very long life, in the

same manner as the Bible in the case of Adam and his descendants. They

lived for centuries (see below). The story could therefore make the

culture introduced by Scef spread far and wide during his own reign, and

it could make his realm increase with the culture. According to

scattered statements traceable to the Scef-saga, Denmark, Angeln, and at

least the northern part of Saxland, have been populated by people who

obeyed his sceptre. In the North Goetaland and Svealand were subject to

him.

The proof of this, so far as Denmark is concerned, is that, according to

the Beowulf poem, its first royal family was descended from Scef through

his son Scyld (Skjold). In accordance herewith, Danish and Icelandic

genealogies make Skjold the progenitor of the first dynasty in Denmark,

and also make him the ruler of the land to which his father came, that

is, Skane. His origin as a divinely-born patriarch, as a hero receiving

divine worship, and as the ruler of the original Teutonic country,

appears also in _Fornmannasoegur_, v. 239, where he is styled _Skaninga

god_, the god of the Scanians.

Matthaeus Westmonast. informs us that Scef ruled in Angeln.

According to the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, the dynasty of Wessex came from

Saxland, and its progenitor was Scef.

If we examine the northern sources we discover that the Scef myth still

may be found in passages which have been unnoticed, and that the tribes

of the far North saw in the boy who came with the sheaf and the tools

the divine progenitor of their celebrated dynasty in Upsala. This can be

found in spite of the younger saga-geological layer which the hypothesis

of Odin's and his Trojan Asas' immigration has spread over it since the

introduction of Christianity. Scef's personality comes to the surface,

we shall see, as Skefill and Skelfir.

In the Fornalder-sagas, ii. 9, and in Flateyarbok, i. 24, Skelfir is

mentioned as family patriarch and as Skjold's father, the progenitor of

the Skjoldungs. There can, therefore, be no doubt that Scef, Scyld's

father, and through him the progenitor of the Skjoldungs, originally is

the same as Skelfir, Skjold's father, and progenitor of the Skjoldungs

in these Icelandic works.

But he is not only the progenitor of the Skjoldungs, but also of the

Ynglings. The genealogy beginning with him is called in the

Flateryarbok, _Skilfinga aett edr skjoldunga aett_. The Younger Edda also

(i. 522) knows Skelfir, and says he was a famous king whose genealogy

_er koellut skilvinga aett_. Now the Skilfing race in the oldest sources

is precisely the same as the Yngling race both from an Anglo-Saxon and

from a heathen Norse standpoint. The Beowulf poem calls the Swedish

kings _scilfingas_, and according to Thjodulf, a kinsman of the Ynglings

and a kinsman of the Skilfing, _Skilfinga nidr_, are identical

(Ynglingatal, 30). Even the Younger Edda seems to be aware of this. It

says in the passage quoted above that the Skilfing race _er i

Austrvegum_. In the Thjodulf strophes _Austrvegar_ means simply

Svealand, and _Austrkonungur_ means Swedish king.

Thus it follows that the Scef who is identical with Skelfir was in the

heathen saga of the North the common progenitor of the Ynglinga and of

the Skjoldunga race. From his dignity as original patriarch of the royal

families of Sweden, Denmark, Angeln, Saxland, and England, he was

displaced by the scholastic fiction of the middle ages concerning the

immigration of Trojan Asiatics under the leadership of Odin, who as the

leader of the immigration also had to be the progenitor of the most

distinguished families of the immigrants. This view seems first to have

been established in England after this country had been converted to

Christianity and conquered by the Trojan immigration hypothesis. Wodan

is there placed at the head of the royal genealogies of the chronicles,

excepting in Wessex, where Scef is allowed to retain his old position,

and where Odin must content himself with a secondary place in the

genealogy. But in the Beowulf poem Scef still retains his dignity as

ancient patriarch of the kings of Denmark.

From England this same distortion of the myth comes to the North in

connection with the hypothesis concerning the immigration of the

"Asiamen," and is there finally accepted in the most unconcerned manner,

without the least regard to the mythic records which were still well

known. Skjold, Scef's son, is without any hesitation changed into a son

of Odin (Ynglingasaga, 5; Foreword to Gylfag., 11). Yngve, who as the

progenitor of the Ynglings is identical with Scef, and whose very name,

perhaps, is or has been conceived as an epithet indicating Scef's tender

age when he came to the coast of Scandia--Yngve-Scef is confounded with

Frey, is styled Yngve-Frey after the appellation of the Vana-god Ingunar

Frey, and he, too, is called a son of Odin (Foreword to Gylfag., c. 13),

although Frey in the myth is a son of Njord and belongs to another race

of gods than Odin. The epithet with which Are Frode in his _Schedae_

characterises Yngve, viz., _Tyrkiakonungr_, Trojan king, proves that the

lad who came with the sheaf of grain to Skane is already in Are changed

into a Trojan.

[Footnote 8: Geijer has partly indicated its significance in _Svea Rikes

Haefder_, where he says: "The tradition anent Sceaf is remarkable, as it

evidently has reference to the introduction of agriculture, and shows

that it was first introduced in the most southern part of Scandinavia."]

[Footnote 9: The Beowulf poem has the name Scedeland (Scandia): compare

the name Skadan in _De origine Longobardorum_. Ethelwerd writes: "Ipse

Skef cum uno dromone advectus est in insulam Oceani, quae dicitur Scani,

armis circumdatus," &c.]

[Footnote 10: Matthaeus Westmonast. translates this name with _frumenti

manipulus_, a sheaf.]

21.

SCEF THE AUTHOR OF CULTURE IDENTICAL WITH HEIMDAL-RIG,

THE ORIGINAL PATRIARCH.

But in one respect Are Frode or his authority has paid attention to the

genuine mythic tradition, and that is by making the Vana-gods the

kinsmen of the descendants of Yngve. This is correct in the sense that

Scef-Yngve, the son of a deity transformed into a man, was in the myth a

Vana-god. Accordingly every member of the Yngling race and every

descendant of Scef may be styled a _son of Frey_ (_Freys attungr_),

epithets applied by Thjodulf in Ynglingatal in regard to the Upsala

kings. They are gifts from the Vana-gods--the implements which point to

the opulent Njord, and the grain sheaf which is Frey's symbol--which

Scef-Yngve brings with him to the ancient people of Scandia, and his

rule is peaceful and rich in blessings.

Scef-Yngve comes across the ocean. Vanaheim was thought to be situated

on the other side of it, in the same direction as AEgir's palace in the

great western ocean and in the outermost domain of Jormumgrund (see 93).

This is indicated in Lokasenna, 34, where Loke in AEgir's hall says to

the Van Njord: "You were sent from here to the East as a hostage to the

gods (_thu vart austr hedan gisl um sendr at godum_)". Thus Njord's

castle Noatun is situated in the West, on a strand outside of which the

swans sing (Gylfag., 23). In the faded memory of Scef, preserved in the

saga of the Lower Rhine and of the Netherlands, there comes to a

poverty-stricken people a boat in which there lies a sleeping youth. The

boat is, like Scef's, without sails or oars, but is drawn over the

billows by a swan. From Gylfaginning, 16, we learn that there are myths

telling of the origin of the swans. They are all descended from that

pair of swans which swim in the sacred waters of Urd's fountain. Thus

the descendants of these swans that sing outside of the Vanapalace

Noatun and their arrival to the shores of Midgard seems to have some

connection with the coming of the Van Scef and of culture.

The Vans most prominent in the myths are Njord, Frey, and Heimdal.

Though an Asa-god by adoption, Heimdal is like Njord and Frey a Vana-god

by birth and birthplace, and is accordingly called both _ass_ and _vanr_

(Thrymskv., 15). Meanwhile these three divinities, definitely named

Vans, are only a few out of many. The Vans have constituted a numerous

clan, strong enough to wage a victorious war against the Asas (Voelusp.).

Who among them was Scef-Yngve? The question can be answered as follows:

(1) Of Heimdal, and of him alone among the gods, it is related that he

lived for a time among men as a man, and that he performed that which is

attributed to Scef--that is, organised and elevated human society and

became the progenitor of sacred families in Midgard.

(2) Rigsthula relates that the god Heimdal, having assumed the name Rig,

begot with an earthly woman the son Jarl-Rig, who in turn became the

father of Konr-Rig. Konr-Rig is, as the very name indicates and as

Vigfusson already has pointed out, the first who bore the kingly name.

In Rigsthula the Jarl begets the king, as in Ynglingasaga the judge

(Domarr) begets the first king. Rig is, according to Ynglingasaga, ch.

20, grandfather to Dan, who is a Skjoldung. Heimdal-Rig is thus the

father of the progenitor of the Skjoldungs, and it is the story of the

divine origin of the Skjoldungs Rigsthula gives us when it sings of

Heimdal as Jarl's father and the first king's grandfather. But the

progenitor of the Skjoldungs is, according to both Anglo-Saxon and the

northern sources above quoted, Scef. Thus Heimdal and Scef are

identical.

These proofs are sufficient. More can be presented, and the identity

will be established by the whole investigation.

As a tender boy, Heimdal was sent by the Vans to the southern shores of

Scandinavia with the gifts of culture. Hyndla's lay tells how these

friendly powers prepared the child for its important mission, after it

was born in the outermost borders of the earth (_vid jardar thraum_), in

a wonderful manner, by nine sisters (Hyndla's Lay, 35; Heimdallar

Galdr., in the Younger Edda; compare No. 82, where the ancient Aryan

root of the myth concerning Heimdal's nine mothers is pointed out).

For its mission the child had to be equipped with strength, endurance,

and wisdom. It was given to drink _jardar magn svalkaldr saer_ and _Sonar

dreyri_. It is necessary to compare these expressions with _Urdar magn_,

_svalkaldr saer_ and _Sonar dreyri_ in Gudrunarkivda, ii. 21, a song

written in Christian times, where this reminiscence of a triple

heathen-mythic drink reappears as a potion of forgetfulness allaying

sorrow. The expression _Sonar dreyri_ shows that the child had tasted

liquids from the subterranean fountains which water Yggdrasil and

sustain the spiritual and physical life of the universe (cp. Nos. 63 and

93). _Son_ contains the mead of inspiration and wisdom. In Gylfaginning,

which quotes a satire of late origin, this name is given to a jar in

which Suttung preserves this valuable liquor, but to the heathen skalds

_Son_ is the name of Mimer's fountain, which contains the highest

spiritual gifts, and around whose rush-bordered edge the reeds of poetry

grow (Eilif Gudrunson, Skaldskaparmal). The child Heimdal has,

therefore, drunk from Mimer's fountain. _Jardar magn_ (the earth's

strength) is in reality the same as _Urdar magn_, the strength of the

water in Urd's fountain, which keeps the world-tree ever green and

sustains the physical life of creation (Voelusp.). The third subterranean

fountain is Hvergelmer, with hardening liquids. From Hvergelmer comes

the river Sval, and the venom-cold Elivogs (Grimner's Lay,

Gylfaginning). _Svalkaldar saer_, cool sea, is an appropriate designation

of this fountain.

When the child has been strengthened in this manner for its great

mission, it is laid sleeping in the decorated ship, gets the grain-sheaf

for its pillow, and numerous treasures are placed around it. It is

certain that there were not only weapons and ornaments, but also

workmen's tools among the treasures. It should be borne in mind that the

gods made on the plains of Ida not only ornaments, but also tools

(_tangir skopu ok tol goerdu_). Evidence is presented in No. 82 that

Scef-Heimdal brought the fire-auger to primeval man who until that time

had lived without the blessings produced by the sacred fire.

The boy grows up among the inhabitants on the Scandian coast, and, when

he has developed into manhood, human culture has germinated under his

influence and the beginnings of classes in society with distinct

callings appear. In Rigsthula, we find him journeying along "green

paths, from house to house, in that land which his presence has

blessed." Here he is called _Rigr_--it is true of him as of nearly all

mythological persons, that he has several names--but the introduction

to the poem informs us that the person so called is the god Heimdal

(_einhverr af asum sa er Heimdallr het_). The country is here also

described as situated near the sea. Heimdal journeys _framm med

sjofarstroendu_. Culture is in complete operation. The people are

settled, they spin and weave, perform handiwork, and are smiths, they

plough and bake, and Heimdal has instructed them in runes. Different

homes show different customs and various degrees of wealth, but

happiness prevails everywhere. Heimdal visits Ai's and Edda's

unpretentious home, is hospitably received, and remains three days. Nine

months thereafter the son Trael (thrall) is born to this family. Heimdal

then visits Ave's and Amma's well-kept and cleanly house, and nine

months thereafter the son Karl (churl) is born in this household. Thence

Rig betakes himself to _Fadir's_ and _Modir's_ elegant home. There is

born, nine months later, the son Jarl. Thus the three Teutonic

classes--the thralls, the freemen, and the nobility--have received their

divine sanction from Heimdal-Rig, and all three have been honoured with

divine birth.

In the account of Rig's visit to the three different homes lies the

mythic idea of a common fatherhood, an idea which must not be left out

of sight when human heroes are described as sons of gods in the

mythological and heroic sagas. They are sons of the gods and, at the

same time, from a genealogical standpoint, men. Their pedigree, starting

with Ask and Embla, is not interrupted by the intervention of the

visiting god, nor is there developed by this intervention a half-divine,

half-human middle class or bastard clan. The Teutonic patriarch Mannus

is, according to Tacitus, the son of a god and the grandson of the

goddess Earth. Nevertheless he is, as his name indicates, in the full

physical sense of the word, a man, and besides his divine father he has

had a human father. They are the descendants of Ask and Embla, men of

all classes and conditions, whom Voeluspa's skald gathered around the

seeress when she was to present to them a view of the world's

development and commanded silence with the formula: "Give ear, all ye

divine races, great and small, sons of Heimdal." The idea of a common

fatherhood we find again in the question of _Fadir's_ grandson, as we

shall show below. Through him the families of chiefs get the right of

precedence before both the other classes. Thor becomes their progenitor.

While all classes trace their descent from Heimdal, the nobility trace

theirs also from Thor, and through him from Odin.

Heimdal-Rig's and _Fadir's_ son, begotten with _Modir_, inherits in

Rigsthula the name of the divine co-father, and is called Rig Jarl.

Jarl's son, Kon, gets the same name after he has given proof of his

knowledge in the runes introduced among the children of men by Heimdal,

and has even shown himself superior to his father in this respect. This

view that the younger generation surpasses the older points to the idea

of a progress in culture among men, during a time when they live in

peace and happiness protected by Heimdal's fostering care and sceptre,

but must not be construed into the theory of a continued progress based

on the law and nature of things, a theory alike strange to the Teutons

and to the other peoples of antiquity. Heimdal-Rig's reign must be

regarded as the happy ancient age, of which nearly all mythologies have

dreamed. Already in the next age following, that is, that of the second

patriarch, we read of men of violence who visit the peaceful, and under

the third patriarch begins the "knife-age, and axe-age with cloven

shields," which continues through history and receives its most terrible

development before Ragnarok.

The more common mythical names of the persons appearing in Rigsthula are

not mentioned in the song, not even Heimdal's. In strophe 48, the last

of the fragment, we find for the first time words which have the

character of names--_Danr_ and _Danpr_. A crow sings from the tree to

Jarl's son, the grandson of Heimdal, Kon, saying that peaceful amusement

(_kyrra fugla_) does not become him longer, but that he should rather

mount his steed and fight against men; and the crow seeks to awaken his

ambition or jealousy by saying that "Dan and Danp, skilled in navigating

ships and wielding swords, have more precious halls and a better

freehold than you." The circumstance that these names are mentioned

makes it possible, as shall be shown below, to establish in a more

satisfactory manner the connection between Rigsthula and other accounts

which are found in fragments concerning the Teutonic patriarch period.

The oldest history of man did not among the Teutons begin with a

paradisian condition. Some time has elapsed between the creation of Ask

and Embla, and Heimdal's coming among men. As culture begins with

Heimdal, a condition of barbarism must have preceded his arrival. At all

events the first generations after Ask and Embla have been looked upon

as lacking fire; consequently they have been without the art of the

smith, without metal implements, and without knowledge of agriculture.

Hence it is that the Vana-child comes across the western sea with fire,

with implements, and with the sheaf of grain. But the barbarous

condition may have been attended with innocence and goodness of heart.

The manner in which the strange child was received by the inhabitants of

Scandia's coast, and the tenderness with which it was cared for

(_diligenti animo_, says Ethelwerd) seem to indicate this.

When Scef-Heimdal had performed his mission, and when the beautiful boat

in which he came had disappeared beyond the western horizon, then the

second mythic patriarch-age begins.

22.

HEIMDAL'S SON BORGAR-SKJOLD, THE SECOND PATRIARCH.

Ynglingasaga, ch. 20, contains a passage which is clearly connected with

Rigsthula or with some kindred source. The passage mentions three

persons who appear in Rigsthula, viz., Rig, Danp, and Dan, and it is

there stated that the ruler who first possessed the kingly title in

Svithiod was the son of a chief, whose name was Judge (_Domarr_), and

Judge was married to Drott (_Drott_), the daughter of Danp.

That Domar and his royal son, the latter with the epithet _Dyggvi_,

"the worthy," "the noble," were afterwards woven into the royal pedigree

in Ynglingasaga, is a matter which we cannot at present consider.

Vigfusson (_Corpus Poet. Bor._) has already shown the mythic symbolism

and unhistorical character of this royal pedigree's _Visburr_, the

priest, son of a god; of _Domaldr-Domvaldr_, the legislator; of

_Domarr_, the judge; and of _Dyggvi_, the first king. These are not

historical Upsala kings, but personified myths, symbolising the

development of human society on a religious basis into a political

condition of law culminating in royal power. It is in short the same

chain of ideas as we find in Rigsthula, where Heimdal, the son of a god

and the founder of culture, becomes the father of the Jarl-judge, whose

son is the first king. _Domarr_, in the one version of the chain of

ideas, corresponds to Rig Jarl in the other, and _Dyggvi_ corresponds to

Kon. Heimdal is the first patriarch, the Jarl-judge is the second, and

the oldest of kings is the third.

Some person, through whose hands Ynglingasaga has passed before it got

its present form in Heimskringla, has understood this correspondence

between _Domarr_ and Rig-Jarl, and has given to the former the wife

which originally belonged to the latter. Rigsthula has been rescued in a

single manuscript. This manuscript was owned by Arngrim Jonsson, the

author of _Supplementum Historiae Norvegiae_, and was perhaps in his time,

as Bugge (_Norr. Fornkv._) conjectures, less fragmentary than it now is.

Arngrim relates that Rig Jarl was married to a daughter of Danp, lord of

Danpsted. Thus the representative of the Jarl's dignity, like the

representative of the Judge's dignity in Ynglingasaga, is here

married to Danp's daughter.

In Saxo, a man by name Borgar (_Borcarus_--_Hist. Dan._ 336-354)

occupies an important position. He is a South Scandinavian chief, leader

of Skane's warriors (_Borcarus cum Scanico equitatu_, p. 350), but

instead of a king's title, he holds a position answering to that of the

Jarl. Meanwhile he, like Skjold, becomes the founder of a Danish royal

dynasty. Like Skjold he fights beasts and robbers, and like him he wins

his bride, sword in hand. Borgar's wife is Drott (_Drotta_, _Drota_),

the same name as Danp's daughter. Skjold's son Gram and Borgar's son

Halfdan are found on close examination (see below) to be identical with

each other, and with king Halfdan Berggram in whom the names of both are

united. Thus we find:

(1) That Borgar appears as a chief in Skane, which in the myth is the

cradle of the human race, or of the Teutonic race. As such he is also

mentioned in _Script. rer. Dan._ (pp. 16-19, 154), where he is called

Burgarus and Borgardus.

(2) That he has performed similar exploits to those of Skjold, the son

of Scef-Heimdal.

(3) That he is not clothed with kingly dignity, but has a son who founds

a royal dynasty in Denmark. This corresponds to Heimdal's son Rig Jarl,

who is not himself styled king, but whose son becomes a Danish king and

the progenitor of the Skjoldungs.

(4) That he is married to Drott, who, according to Ynglingasaga, is

Danp's daughter. This corresponds to Heimdal's son Rig Jarl, who takes

a daughter of Danp as his wife.

(5) That his son is identical with the son of Skjold, the progenitor of

the Skjoldungs.

(6) That this son of his is called Halfdan, while in the Anglo-Saxon

sources Scef, through his son Scyld (Skjold), is the progenitor of

Denmark's king Healfdene.

These testimonies contain incontestible evidence that Skjold, Borgar,

and Rig Jarl are names of the same mythic person, the son of the ancient

patriarch Heimdal, and himself the second patriarch, who, after Heimdal,

determines the destiny of his race. The name _Borgarr_ is a synonym of

_Skjoeldr_. The word _Skjoeldr_ has from the beginning had, or has in the

lapse of past ages acquired, the meaning "the protecting one," "the

shielding one," and as such it was applied to the common defensive

armour, the shield. _Borgarr_ is derived from _bjarga_ (past. part.

_borginn_; cp. _borg_), and thus has the same meaning, that is, "the

defending or protecting one." From Norse poetry a multitude of examples

can be given of the paraphrasing of a name with another, or even several

others, of similar meaning.

The second patriarch, Heimdal's son, thus has the names Skjold, Borgar,

and Rig Jarl in the heathen traditions, and those derived therefrom.