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mythological fables obtained. Whatever the cause may have been, those fables became the belief of the people, as the theogony of Hesiod and the machinery of the Homeric poems were accredited in Greece.

The accounts which have reached us of their system are of undoubted authenticity; and they are more complete than those of any other barbarous superstition. It acknowledged the patriarchal truth that one Almighty God hath existed for ever, by whom all things were made. Alfader, the universal parent, was the name by which he was known. Long before the earth was made, he formed Nifleheim, or Evil-Home, the abode of the wicked, in the remotest north. Opposite to this, in the remotest south, there existed a fiery region called Muspelsheim, the dominion of a dreadful being, by name Surtur, which is to say, the Black, who held in his hand a burning sword. Between the world of fire and Nifleheim there was a great abyss, into which rivers of venom, rising from a fountain in the middle of hell, rolled and concreted, filling that side of the abyss with incrusted poison, and ice, and cold vapours; beneath which, in the interior, there were whirlwinds and tempests. On the other side, sparks and lightnings continually proceeded from the world of Surtur. Thus, there breathed always an icy wind from the north, and a fiery one from the south; in the middle of the abyss, beyond the influence of either, it was light and serene. To the north of this clear calm region the work of creation began. A breath of life went forth, and warmed the cold vapours; they resolved into drops; and by the power of him who governed, the giant Ymir was produced. A male and female sprung from under his arm during his sleep, and a son from his feet, and these begat the race of the Giants of the frost, who multiplied, and were all wicked like Ymir, their father. At the same time that Ymir was produced, the same liquefaction gave birth to the cow Oedumla, by whose milk, which flowed in rivers, the giant Ymir was fed. From the cow there sprung a man gifted with beauty and power; he was the father of Bore; and Bore, marrying the daughter of a giant, begat Odin and his two brethren, between whom and Ymir there was enmity.

These brethren were Gods; they slew Ymir, and the blood which issued from his wounds drowned all the giants of the

frost except one wise giant and his family, who escaped in a bark, and perpetuated the race of the giants. The three brethren then dragged the body of Ymir into the midst of the abyss, and of it they made the heaven and the earth. They made the water and the sea of his blood, the mountains of his bones, and the rocks of his teeth; the firmament they made of his skull, and placed four dwarfs, called East, West, North, and South, to support it at the four corners where it rested upon the earth; they tossed into the air his brains, which became clouds, and from his hair they made the herbs of the field. Then they seized fires from Muspelsheim, and placed them in the upper and lower parts of the sky, to enlighten the earth. The earth which they made was round; round about it was the deep sea, and the shores were given to the giants; but they raised a fortress, called Midgard, against the giants, which, with its circumference, surrounds the world; and in the middle of the earth they built Asgard, which is the court of the Gods. There Odin had his palace called Lidskialf, the Terror of the Nations, from whence he beheld all places and all things. He and his brethren one day, as they were walking upon the shore, found two pieces of wood floating upon the waves, and taking them they made of the one a man, and a woman of the other; the man they named Aske, and the woman Emla, and these were the parents of the human race.

But Odin took Frigga, who is the earth, his daughter, to wife, and from that marriage the Ases, that is to say, the Gods, proceeded. Their sacred city is in Heaven, under the ash Ydrasil, which is the greatest of all trees, for its roots cover Nifleheim, and its branches spread over the whole earth, and reach above the heavens. The way from heaven to earth is by a bridge, which is the rainbow; and at the end of that bridge Heimdal, the sentinel of the gods, hath his station to watch the giants. He sees an hundred leagues round him by night as well as by day; his hearing is so acute that he hears the wool grow on the sheep's back; and when he sounds his trumpet it is heard throughout all worlds. The souls of all who were slain in battle were received in heaven, in the palace of Odin, called Valhalla, which had five hundred and forty gates. There they passed their lives in continual enjoyment, fighting and cutting each other to pieces every morning, then returning whole to

dine upon the boar Serimner, who was hunted and eaten every day, and restored to life every night that he might be ready for the morrow; their drink was ale out of the skulls of their enemies, or mead, which a she-goat produced every day instead of milk, in quantity sufficient to inebriate them all. But this life of perfect enjoyment was not to endure for ever; for, mighty as the Gods of Valhalla were, they had enemies mighty as themselves, and who were destined to prevail over them at last.

The most remarkable of these was Loke; he was of the race of the giants: handsome in his person, of extraordinary ability and cunning, but wicked and malicious, and of so inconstant a temper, that he often associated with the Gods, and on many occasions extricated them from great danger. This Loke had three dreadful offspring by a giantess. The wolf Fenris was one, the Great Serpent was the second, and Hela, or Death, the third. The Gods knew from many oracles what evils would be brought upon them by this accursed progeny, and to defer a destiny which was not to be averted, Odin sent for them from the country of the Giants. Hela he placed in Nifleheim, and appointed her to govern the nine dolorous worlds, to which all who die of sickness or old age are fated. Grief is her hall, and Famine her table; Hunger her knife, Delay and Slackness her servants, Faintness her porch, and Precipice her gate; Cursing and Howling are her tent, and her bed is Sickness and Pain. The Great Serpent he threw into the middle of the ocean, but there the monster grew till with his length he encompassed the whole globe of the earth. The wolf Fenris they bred up for a while among them, and then by treachery bound him in an enchanted chain, fastened it to a rock, and sunk him deep into the earth. The Gods also imprisoned Loke in a cavern, and suspended a snake over his head, whose venom fell drop by drop upon his face. The deceit and cruelty which the Gods used against this race could not, however, change that order of events which the oracles had foretold. That dreadful time, which is called the Twilight of the Gods, must at length arrive; Loke and the wolf Fenris will then break loose, and, with the Great Serpent, and the Giants of the frost, and Surtur with his fiery sword, and all the powers of Muspelheim, pass over the bridge of heaven, which will break beneath them. The Gods, and all

the heroes of Valhalla, will give them battle. Thor, the strongest of the race of Odin, will slay the Great Serpent, but be himself suffocated by the floods of poison which the monster vomits forth. Loke and Heimdal will kill each other. The wolf Fenris, after devouring the Sun, will devour Odin also, and himself be rent in pieces by Vidar, the son of Odin; and Surtur, with his fires, will consume the whole world, Gods, heroes, and men perishing in the conflagration. Another and better earth will afterwards arise, another Sun, other Gods, and a happier race of men.

Such is the brief outline of that mythology which is detailed in the Edda. It had grown up in the interval between the Saxon conquest and the first Danish invasions. The deified progenitors of the Anglo-Saxon kings were here converted into beings wholly mythological; and except in their names, there appears to have existed little or no resemblance between the earlier and later religion of these kindred nations. How much of the fabulous superstructure was intended to be believed by those who framed it, or how much was actually believed, cannot at this distance of time be determined. Possibly, as among the Greeks, and as perhaps was the case with many Monkish legends, tales which were invented in mere sport of fancy obtained a credit that had neither been designed nor foreseen, but which was allowed to prevail by those who found advantage in its prevalence. There were some daring spirits who disbelieved such Gods, and openly defied them; but such darings arose from the excess of that ferocious spirit which the system itself produced and fostered; for monstrous as the mythology is, it had a dreadful effect upon the national character.

The nations by which the kingdoms of the Heptarchy were founded were not more cruel in war than the Greeks and Romans in their best ages; but the Danes equalled in cruelty the worst barbarians of Asia or Africa. Under the name of Danes, our old historians include the people of Sweden and Norway, as well as of Zealand and Jutland. Those countries were then divided into numberless petty kingdoms; the population was confined to the coast and the rivers; the habits of the people were wholly piratical, and their institutions were founded upon a system of piracy. For the prevention of civil war, it was their custom that,

on the death of a king, one of his sons should be chosen to succeed him, and the rest provided with ships, that they might assume the title of Sea-Kings, and conquer a territory for themselves, or live as freebooters upon the ocean. The Land-Kings themselves made piracy their sport during the summer: and all persons who were able to fit out ships, carried it on under the inferior title of Vikingr. It was their boast that they never slept under a smoky roof, nor drank over a hearth; and they who had accumulated wealth in this course of life, ordered it to be buried with them, that their sons might not be tempted to desist from the only pursuit which was accounted honourable.

These habits of piracy were rendered more ferocious by the character of their dreadful superstition. To a people who were taught that all who died of age or sickness were doomed to an abode of misery in the world to come, the greatest of all calamities was to die in peace. Men threw themselves from precipices to avoid this evil. A bay in Sweden, surrounded with high rocks, which was one of the places frequented for this purpose, is still called the Hall of Odin, that name having been given it when it was believed to be the entrance to his palace, for those who sought it by a voluntary death. And as their notions of future reward were not less preposterous than those which they entertained of future punishment, they were even more injurious in effect. When the Vikingr spent the day in carnage, and refreshed themselves by drinking ale and mead out of human skulls, they fancied that they were establishing their claim to the joys of Valhalla, by taking this foretaste of its happiness on earth.

But among men, as among wild beasts, the taste of blood creates the appetite for it, and the appetite for it is strengthened by indulgence. Men who had learnt to delight in the death of their enemies were not contented with inflicting mere death; they craved for the sight of torments. The Spread Eagle of heraldry may perhaps be derived from one of their inhuman practices toward their prisoners. This subject is too horrible to be pursued. Suffice it to record the name of Olver, the Norwegian, who, because he abolished in his company of pirates the custom which was common among them, of tossing infants upon pikes, obtained the name of Barnakall, or the Preserver of Children,

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