1 น้ " " " * * * "น "" " "" " + "" ฟ1ครั้ง , " ""+ - - - ขาย อนเงพะงงนะเนระนผairuuuusei * + + + 1 * - - - 1. : : . + : : " " " " " - " " . . : * - - - - - - " - : : : . . . . . . A 1,235,508 , .. * - " ๆ . . . . : . . . . . . . . . : ๆ * * * * * * :: :: "" : : : : : : : : : :"ite : 1. !.....: : : ๆ t " ย : " * " * : " " 16 - ล .. 4 4 1 5 1 พ . • - | " 8 " " + + | * • # 1 + • - 1 . 1 - + " *- เจนเนย ! ; 19 + * ' . ย 13 . " จ: 15 " : "" * 14 ปี อย + ! !! " ใน ! ' อา* + - " + - *เเเเ ใ A + t + ' + : . - ::: 9 i te : ::: แนน 14 -14 " - 11 เเ:1! ะ " " 1 " เE 1 -1 :: : . เ **แผนจะไปแttttttisarawut14v4y; * :เรานะคะ " SITY OF Call MIVERS JVERSITY MICHIG TA M 7. THE IBRARIE RIES. NV The Gods of Our Fathers A STUDY OF SAXON MYTHOLOGY. BY HERMAN ISTERN o Allaman VOXONTE ΔΡΑΝΣΟΥΣΙΝ whole 7 . N E W YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1898 BL 860 .5844 Copyright, 1898, by Harper & Brothers. All rights reserved. It would be an interesting work to show how Norse and Greek Mythologies respectively have colored the religious, social, political, and literary character of Greek and Romance perples on the one hand and Norseinen and Teutons on the other. Somebody will undoubtedly in due time be inspired to undertake such a task. RASMUS B. ANDERSON. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII 1. THE FORMATION OF THE WORLD. ..... II. THE GODS AND THEIR ABODES-ODIN... III. THE OTHER GODS-THÔR OR DONAR .... IV. THE QUEENS OF ASGARD-ASINGES.... V. LOKI AND HIS BROOD . . . . . . . . ; VI. THE GIANTS AND THE DWARFS. . . . . . . VII. THÔR'S ADVENTURES . . . . . . . . . . . 130 VIII. THE FIRST ACT IN THE WORLD - DRAMA — THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE GODS . . . . . . . 167 IX. THE SECOND ACT OF THE WORLD - DRAMA--ENDING IN BALDUR'S DEATH . . . . . . . . . . 196 X. THE THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD - DRAMA-ENDING IN THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. . . . . . 221 INTRODUCTION It may be considered no exaggerated surmise that among cultured people who are not scholars, aside from the hearers of Wagner's operas, there is one conversant' with Norse mythology to one hundred conversant with the mythology Mythology of the Greeks and the Romans. The 1. Popularly Iliad is known to thousands, the Edda to dozens. The divinities of Olympus are household names; they pervade all modern literatures; they have become generic designa- tions in all civilized languages, synonyms of per- petual principles in our ethical and social vocab- ulary. Such expressions as “Cupid's arrows,” “a Junoesque form," "a palladium of liberty," "pro- tean changes," "a mentor," "a stentorian voice," etc., everywhere pass current as linguistic legal tender, because the golden coin of classic knowl- edge is behind it as the common property of all. What Venus and Bacchus, the Fates and the Si- rens mean, who does not know? But how many have ever heard of Freya, of Thôr, Baldur, and Loki, of the Nornes, the Valkyries? Yet the lat- ter constituted the gospel upon which our pagan forefathers, in the days of their unalloyed nation- ality, fed their hearts and minds, while the former vii INTRODUCTION were imported later along with an alien civiliza- tion. The reason for this anomaly lies in the break between mythology and literature in the Saxon Historical race. The gods of the North were ban- Sketch. ished before the poets could fashion the receding material into works of art. Christianity intervened before the old cultus could ripen into a culture. The Saxon Homer was lacking at the proper time. The Latin and Greek languages were the vehicles of both Christianity and classic mythology. The Muses have had the entrée through their association with the angels. Medi- æval Christian civilization proceeded by way of the Roman Empire. In England the Saxons were themselves invaders and strangers. They had scarcely begun to crystal- lize into sufficient cohesiveness to evolve a literary treatment of the paternal religion when Christian- ity supervened. Its unsparing, imperial spirit in- capacitated it for a liberal interest in the old re- ligion. The race-feeling gave way to the church organization. Thus the Saxon gods followed their Celtic predecessors, and Wodan, Thôr, and Freir soon became mere memories. Their worship dur- ing the Middle Ages grew almost as shadowy as that of the Druids. The Völkerwanderungen of the Germans on the Continent resulted in their dispersion for a time. When the flying particles settled down again, the new conformation showed a complete tribal amal- gamation in some parts with the remnants of the Roman Empire-as the Longobardi with the peo- ple of Northern Italy, and the Franks with the Romanized Celts in Gaul—and in all parts a com- viii INTRODUCTION plete religious and political domination of the Latin ideal. Through the greater proximity of Germany to Rome, the Cæsarean ecclesiasticism of the pa- pacy sat more heavily upon Germany than upon England during the Middle Ages. The “Holy Roman Empire," although delusive and disastrous on account of its ultramontane basis, yet served to preserve a kind of national solidarity — a mediæval United Germany - which proved a conserving bulwark to the paternal tradi- tions. England, on the contrary, became modified by the Norman-French domination. When it final- ly emerged from this domination in the fourteenth century, with Saxon life and language triumphant, the old religion of the pagan fathers, saving vague traces in names and in popular superstitious beliefs and customs, was entirely obliterated. Gower and Chaucer apparently know as little of the gods of their fathers as of the gods of Mexico. In Germany, on the contrary, not only were these popular allusions more common and more explicit, but, in spite of the external ascendency of Latin ecclesiasticism and Latin classicism, the fourteenth century saw a national literary bloom, that compre- hended all the bounds and marches of the Father- land, in the celebration of their respective traditional heroes. The epic folk - songs in Middle High Ger- man breathe the aroma and move in the atmosphere of the old religion. Of course, Catholic orthodoxy forbade a pronounced reference to it. Hence the stage setting, in which the heroes move, is chrono- logically Christian, but the vista in the background leads our gaze through the Teutonic Urwald tow- ards a turreted, mystical cloud - bank, which our awed hearts divine to be the home of the ancestral INTRODUCTION gods. Sigurd. G11?:** Iettel, Morung, Rol demigods, as much as Hercules, Theseus, w jason are Greek demigods. Their spirit and forms are those of Thôr's and Wodan's race. We almost hear the grim battle- songs of the Einheriar and Valkyrien echoing over their mighty, stalwart contests. The gentler notes of the Christian pæan of peace and love are certain- ly not yet heard. Sigurd has not yet yielded to Parcival as the typi- cal hero of adventure and song. Indeed, Parcival is more of a modern type, reprojected into a medi- æval framing. But whither are the gods them- selves flown? Naturally to the North-to Scandi- navia, the distinctive, eventual home of Old Saxon thought and life. There their existence was pro- longed for a few centuries longer, till the times of Harold Bluetooth and King Olaf Trygvasson. There that race of rock - framed, Vulcan - hearted heroes, which, with languid wonder, we somewhat loosely designate as Vikings and Berserks, was schooled and developed under the tenets of the old faith. There also whatever of literary expression of the old religion in epic folk-lore is yet extant was wrought. When, before the onward encroachment of Chris- tianity from the South, the old gods were forced to fly farther, they fittingly made their last stand on the Ultima Thule of the European continent and of European civilization, on the lonely island of Ice- land, where the iceberg - laden arctic wintry sea mingles, its thụnders with the hot hissing of the geysers, Nature thus furnishing at once most sug- gestive symbols of their mission and the worthiest hymn of farewell, as, beneath the light of Hecla, Х INTRODUCTION they went out forever into hyperborean darkness. It is gratifyingly fitting, too, as well as momen- tously providential, that here should be found, after their departure, that priceless literary relic of the Norse religion-the Iliad of the Saxon race—the Edda. Like the myths and songs of the Iliad, its sagas, too, come down from the age of the gods themselves, beyond the reach of pedantic school- cavilling. What hoary Skalds first sang them to a table-round of huge-limbed, feasting warriors will never be known. Let us be thankful for knowing the name of the Christian priest, who was far enough removed from Rome, in body and in mind, to collect and preserve these precarious epics in the twelfth century. All honor to Sæmund! All honor also to Snorre Sturleson after him, the compiler of the Younger Edda, the Hesiod of the North! These men, with their arctic Tinacria, will never be for- gotten. We are glad that America was represented at the millennial celebration of Iceland in 1874, and that then our own poet-traveller, Bayard Taylor, sang in his welcome-ode to the King of Denmark : Here, as in thousand years of old, The same words sound, a voice uended, As when their life and law defended The spearmen with their shields of gold; The same land yet the same speech giveth, The ancient soul of Freedom liveth, And hither, King, we welcome thee. America, the chief child of the Motherland and the Fatherland, has a profound interest in these things. There was once a greater Germany than exists in a political form to-day. It included Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, England and the Lowlands of Scot- xi INTRODUCTION land, the present Empire of Germany, the Baltic Provinces of Russia, Austria, Holland, and the Ger- man Cantons of Switzerland. It even overflowed beyond the Rhine and beyond the Alps. It was bound together by stronger ties than those of po- litical coercion--by the holy ties of a common lan- guage and a common religion, and this religion is the one we are considering. To-day, however, there is a greater Germany still. It comprehends a large part of both hemispheres and of all continents. It is planted colonially in Asia, Africa, America, and Australasia. It is the world-empire of the Saxon family, politically and intellectually the dominant race of the earth. If any one would trace its ancestral springs of thought and character, he must study this my- thology. Mythology-uūgos and lóyos-is one of those desig- nations that comprise within them all history. Both is parts of the compound may be translated of Norse as word. The first is the word or utter- Mythology. *** ance of savage man, the second that of civilized man. The first is the näive, creative concept; the second the intelligent, interpretive analysis. The one is artistic, poetical; the other scientific, logical. The compound word may be Moths and defined as the logic of the myth. The Mythology in fathers had no mythology, but only myths. It is we who, at a later date, with critical exegesis, bring down their intuitive conceptions to the character of a science. With them the myth, whether as a cosmogony or as a religion, was final. These two words thus mark two stages--the ancient and the modern. Properly there are three steps rather than only Characteristic general. xii INTRODUCTION two-mythos, the primitive conception ; epos (also word), the clothing of this conception in poetical form in legend, saga, story; and logos, the subse- quent literary criticism, the analytical and syntheti- cal treatment of both the first. The myth is the purest folk - poetry. It is the mental medium through which primitive man views The Myth as Nature, and the mode in which he recon- Poetry. ciles its outer workings with his inner consciousness. . The savage, being unsophisticated, is incapable of abstractions and pure reasoning. The visual rays of Nature, undulating in upon him, condense and fall about him as concrete pictures. The savage, the child, and the poet experience the same process. Every savage is a child, but not every savage is a poet. The first crude step is common to both the former-namely, the näive act of the imagination, by which the phenomenon of Nature is personified, humanized - as, for example, picturing the white crests of the ocean breakers as horses' manes, and supplying a car or a shell and a driver to complete the human picture. This is properly already a mythos. But the poet is required for the next step-the organic fitting in of the newly fledged Neptune into the whole company of personified phenomena-his animation with life, soul, motives, and a rational rôle. This is the epos. On account of the hoary antiquity of the mythic epos and the obscurity of its individual authorship, we are contented rather loosely to attribute its cre- ation to the anonymous folk-genius of the prehis- toric people. This is inexact. There must have been some man above his fellows, some primæval poet who, breaking the spell of mere awed and xiii INTRODUCTION wondering exclamation involved in the first step, rose to something of an intellectual mastery of the wonder by vitalizing the disjecta inembra of Nature into a social scheme. Who, when, and where this primæval poet was will never be known. Somewhere on the shore of the Balticor the North Sea, the Rhine, or a Norwegian fiord, and after the migration of the German tribes from Asia, for his song was of Norse, not Asiatic, Nature. Carlyle thinks that Odin him- self is this original Norse poet, he being evidently of the Euhemerist school of mythological interpre- tation, which assumes that the gods are deified men. This theory is probably a myth, without a logos. i Odin, on repairing to Mimir's well, became Single- eyed. Carlyle, at least in regard to his theogony, seems to have come away cross-eyed, fortunately, however, without any impairment to his stentorian eloquence of voice. Yet the myth is the poetry of the people in a com- pleter degree than is the poetry of any subsequent, The Muthosas cultured age, if for no other reason than Religion. that it was believed by them as a religion. Our appreciation of the spiritual message of a mod- ern poem is always somewhat neutralized by our critical attitude towards its artistic workmanship. The gods were to the people not poetical conceptions but actual beings, worshipped in sacrifices, prayers, and vows; believed in as protectors and directors of the lives of men; looked up to as dispensers of rewards and punishments; and followed as models of conduct and character. There are no agnostics in a mythic age. As a religious cult, Norse my- thology is to us superstition, idolatry, “a false re- ligion," if you will. Its deities never existed actu- ally. It is fictitious in form and letter, but true in xiv INTRODUCTION substance and spirit. Truth is eternal and universal. It is the common treasure of all mankind. But it lies hidden away in material and ritual images, like gold in quartz, and cannot become the current gold of Thought until it is liberated from its temporal and local incrustations. This process of refinement is inherent in man. The devotees of mythology everywhere, of their own accord, come to make the same distinction which we make between the literal unreality and the spirit- ual verity of their creed. It is a common theory of Church history that Christianity has had to overcome the pagan gods. This is inaccurate. When the mythic stage is past the gods are overcome. Before that Christianity can accomplish little. This is the case in India to- day. Faith in the Olympic gods had largely de- clined before Christianity appeared. The three- century - long contest that ensued was, like the fight of the ghosts in the air after a certain battle of great moment, a death-struggle between the two spiritual systems of thought. And we may add that it ended in a truce and a compromise. The same decadence of the heathen faith antedated the intro- duction of Christianity among the Teutons. The more bloodless yielding of the latter leads us to the surmise that their old creed was nearer in spirit to the new one, for our ancestors were certainly not of a temper to tamely yield anything upon demand. One cardinal doctrine of our mythology we know certainly to have prepared the minds of men for the change - 2. l., that the gods are but passing manifestations of the Ever - Divine, and the prophecy of their actual passing in Rag- narök. XV INTRODUCTION a Mouldin Factor of Saxon mythology, then, should be precious to us on account of its poetic beauty and its ethic lessons ; Mythology as but further, also, for the philosophic in- ding sight it affords us into the Saxon charac- Character. ter, together with the light it sheds on the history of culture. Scientific criticism has not yet discovered a more potent factor in the character and doings of men and nations than sincere faith in religion. “What a man thinketh in his heart that he will be." What he really believes about good and evil, life and death, duty and destiny, must serve to shape his course, and eventually his character. If this is true, then the Kultur historian has not yet sufficiently utilized Saxon mythology. The historian, the literary crit- ic, the sociologist, each introduces the Saxon char- acter into his discussion as a thing made to his hand - a thing original, autochthonic - as though character were not a product, and the most com- plex, finished product at that. If any account is called for of that character, the physical philosophy of our day deems it sufficient to refer to climate and diet! The product is ex- plained by a chemical formula. Given a certain climate, inducing a certain diet and general habit of body, place man in it, and, lo! you have a certain religion and a certain civilization as the result. This cut-and-dried mode begets philosophers more read- ily than philosophy. We have seen that Northern Nature furnished the Saxon seer the outlines, the staging and scaf- folding, for his building. The structure itself is in- tellectual, spiritual, at the last traceable point, where it disappears in the individual soul of the man-in- sight, inspiration, genius, or by whatever name we xvi INTRODUCTION may call the elusive divine gift. Spiritual vision, with its consequent culture, has never come in any other way. Genius is independent of climate. “The wind bloweth where it listeth.” Dante is more som- brely and seriously Norse than Milton. Christian- ity, Eastern and Southern in geographical origin, has found its most profound apprehension and most fruitful consummation among its climatic antipodes, the Saxons of the North and West. Mind is direct- ly influenced by thought, only indirectly by diet and environment. We know that education, direct men- tal nurture, is, on the whole, the most decisive factor in individual character. There must have been an education that favorably disposed the Saxon race towards Christianity. It can be no other than their ancient religion. The moral earnestness and the romantic social ideality which characterize the Saxon mind are qualities of education rather than natural endowments. We have noted the different attitude of the Roman and the German towards Christianity. The reason for the difference is that classic Paganism, when its Pantheon fell into decay, left men with an anti-Christian view of life, while Norse Paganism left men with a pro-Christian view of life. All mythologies in common start with a personi- fication of Nature's forces. Primitive man on step- The Process of ping from his cave perceives not only the Mythi. powers, but perceives that they are in a state of activity. The sun, the moon, the sea, the river, the air are in motion. Since motion is con- nected with conscious energy in himself, he at- tributes human intelligence and will to them. An- thropomorphosis is the first step in mythology. The next discovery he makes is that of conflict. xvii INTRODUCTION Certain forces are ranged against other forces. Day and night are at variance with each other. The storm - wind attacks the tree. The frost as- saults the life of plant and animal. Fire devours voraciously all things in its path. Nature reveals itself to him in the character of a drama, a warfare. The arena of this conflict widens. At first the warfare revolves within the compass of the day. Now it is perceived to include the year, inasmuch as summer is the daytime and winter the night- time of the year. Of course, this discovery is con- tingent on climate and latitude. In tropical Nat- ure the variation between summer and winter is too slight for mythological application. Hence the transition from diurnal to annual im- personation is the first emphatic feature of Norse mythology. Inde duplex fama est. The arena widens further. As the day and the year have their birth and their Divergence of death, the world itself must have its be- Classic and ginning and its end. Out of the original Mythology. night of chaos the morning of creation sprang. Here mythology ascends to the sublime conception of a cosmogony. All mythologies, religions, and systems of the universe revert to cosmogony. Greek mythology is no exception. But its reference to the beginnings of the world suggests no sense of dramatic unity and roundness, since there is no provision for an end. The Norse system not only completes its cos- mical edifice, but proceeds towards the work from an entirely different point of attack. Its world- view is moral and eternal. From it time assumes the character of a world-day or world-year, a cycle Norse xviii INTRODUCTION or æon, a part of a greater whole. At this point the two systems part company. For meanwhile the diurnal and annual rotation of light and dark- ness has experienced an extension in another direc- tion. The period of light is observed to be also the period of life. Conversely, darkness is death. Sum- mer is the lifetime of Nature, winter its death, and spring its resurrection. Here mythology has moved into a new realm, that of human existence, in which the great problems of life and death are the eternal poles. Nature repays man's loving attention in les- sons of her own. But life and death are concomitants and expo- nents of conduct and character. Immortality is an attribute of divinity. Divinity means superiority over all other beings in power-1.6., virtually in character. Gods are supreme because they ought to be, because they are supremely wise, good, and perfect. They must be immortal. The imperfect should be mortal. It contains the inherent germ of decay; it is essentially morbid and moribund. Now if gods and godlike men become mortal, they must first have fallen. Night and day, winter and summer, hence, typify not only death and life, but also guilt and inno- cence. When mythology reaches this stage of de- velopment it enters upon its highest domain, that of ethics. It is in this field of thought that we must seek for the beginnings of moral and spiritual training in the Teuton race. No mythology has entered so deeply into the great ethic problems of the world as this. Is physical Nature the revealer of truth to man, or is there a transcendental inspiration preceding and exceeding her message? Is she his Alma xix INTRODUCTION Mater in both the physical and academical sense? This question enters into one of the absorbing Comparison of philosophical controversies of modern Norse Sirsand times. Of course, the latter does not be- Mythology. long to our present subject. We are con- cerned with the contemplation of Nature on the part of mythic man. Was not, then, For contemplation he and valor formed ? Or, as a more recent Voice of the Spiritual has sung, Man, her last work, who seemned so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, had the message in his heart as he stepped forth to look upon Nature. And when he rolled forth the psalm, she gave back as her response an echo. Without attempting to dogmatize about a thing so remote and mist-enveloped, is it not sufficient to ascertain that the primitive psalm, to whatever skies it is rolled, is the same, as Truth must ever be? Chal- dean seer, Syrian patriarch, Ionian sage, Etruscan bard, and Saxon skald sing it alike. The burden of it is that man is other than the material world; that while he is in it, he is not of it; that while he feels Nature's elementary congeniality embracing his senses, his lonely, hungry heart feels the touch of a higher destiny. There is a moral seriousness and aloofness and wholesomeness in these hoary patriarchs of Thought. Their sensuality even is childlike and clean. They do not dream of such a thing as a prostitution of the soul to its cult. Leaving out of consideration the occult and gro- tesque mythologies of the East and confining our XX INTRODUCTION comparison to the classic and the Norse mytholo- gies, it is an undoubted fact that both began with this same lofty, spiritual attitude towards Nature, The tragedies of Æschylus and Sophocles especially remind us of that spirit, which we may designate as the antique Aryan mood. If the mood afterwards divided into two distinctly opposite views of Nat- ure, the development can be attributed only to the subtle, inexplicable affinity of race - genius for a erence not direct emigration and thus determine the secondary causes of climate, region and coun- try? Let us now observe these opposite aspects, seen by the Greek and the Northman. The blue skies of Ionia and Hellas, the perpetual sunshine and almost perpetual spring of the South, Dica : afford a picture of repose. There is little the Aspect of change from summer to winter. Nat- ure ure's forms are fixed. They stand in a relation of accomplished harmony to each other. If there have been travail, upheavals, and revolu- tion, they are over now. They belong to the mythic period of mythology. Man is not a sufferer in them, but may dream of them with the languid luxuriance Nature. the reminiscent mythos. His consciousness is an Æolian harp, almost passively receiving the singing zephyrs of a semi-tropic world-bower, and giving forth facile responses. Life is facile and Elysian. Its wants are easily supplied. Nature's maternal breasts are perennially flowing and perfectly beau- tiful. In the North the picture is far different. Here all is conflict and commotion. Baleful winds rush across the scene. A leaden sky lowers over the xxi INTRODUCTION : earth for the greater part of the year. The sun- shine must wage perpetual warfare with the clouds. The sea is a raging monster, not at all like the blue, rippling Mediterranean, droning gently around happy isles, with their smiling vineyards and olive- groves. The benignant tendencies of the earth are quick- ly and continually interrupted by hostile forces. Winter only yields after contesting every inch of ground, and soon returns. If man would obtain aught of subsistence and enjoyment, he must arm himself with valor and wrest it, fighting, from his enemies. He must needs be an actor, a fighter on land and sea. Nature reveals herself not in the beauty of lyrical repose, but in the vehement aspect of tragedy. The Olympian conclave enjoy eternal peace, dis- turbed only by good-natured rival partisanships for human heroes. “The storm-and-stress period” of their dynasty-the fight with the Titans—is a thing of the past. The Asen, on the contrary, are in the very thick of the fight with the Jötuns. Olympus is a divine banqueting - hall, from which the gods sometimes depart in quest of diversion. Walhalla is a warlike camp, to which the gods repair for rest and refreshment. Jupiter's incognitos are like a prince's masquerade, domino and all; or, at best, like the Baghdad street adventures of the Calif Haroun Al Raschid. The visits of Wotan, “the Wanderer," are more like those of King Alfred in the camp of the Danes. The appearance of the gray mantle and the broad-rimmed slouch hat is always ominous of a danger to the very existence · The Greek mind, seizing upon Form as the essen- xxii INTRODUCTION tial revelation of Nature, has wrought out for the world the eternal norms of Beauty; the Saxon - mind, seizing upon Motion as the essen- view Classic, tial revelation of Nature, has imparted Saxon World- view Ro- to the world the eternal ideal of En- mantic. or. This divergence runs through all history ever since. It recurs at every epochal stage, in the ap- prehension of every momentous phenomenon in the intellectual world. In politics the South emphasizes the State; the North, Liberty. In religion the South develops ec- clesiasticism-its organization, its ritual, the form- al; the North contends for the Gospel, individual piety, the spiritual. Greco-Latin Christendom is Catholic, German Christendom is Protestant. In literature the South begets the Renaissance, the North the Reformation. If, therefore, Norse my- thology lacks the æsthetic beauty of classic my- ethical grandeur of the former. The merging of the mind in the contemplation of sensuous beauty, and the abandonment of life to re- The Moral pose, lead to sensuality and moral laxity. Contrast. Whatever man thereby gains in art he loses in character. Contrariwise, next to an ideal, nothing tends so much to keep man pure as en- forced activity. Our Saxon forefathers were gross, but they never were pampered. Sensuality never attained to a purpose among them. In spite of the continued ascendency of the Southern model and the repeated effort at its literary domestication in the North, as during the Restoration in England, and “the emancipation of the flesh" propaganda by Heine and others of the "young Germany" xxiii INTRODUCTION school in Germany, no Saxon country has ever wit- nessed such epidemics of debauchery as prevailed during the Empire in Rome, the Renaissance in Italy, and the age before the Revolution in France. Tacitus, the last of the old Romans, wrote his book about Germany, to which we owe much of our knowledge of Saxon mythology, for the ex- press purpose of holding up before decadent Rome the example of a people, semi-savage, but clean, and hence unconquerable. The superiority of Norse mythology over Greek mythology, in the matter of moral seriousness, is evident in its cardinal conceptions. As Northern thought has reflected the troubled face of Nature and perceived the soul of things to consist in change, motion, and aspiration, so it has translated its mo- tives and principles back into the Northern con- science, causing Nature to symbolize and univer- salize the elements of righteousness. The gods of Greece and Rome evince little concern for essential rectitude in men. The very word Piety means something different to the classic and the Saxon mind. Their solicitude was for the super- ficial observances of religious rites and social courte- The Idea of sies. Neglect of the altars and inhospitali- Guilt. ty were severely punished. Guilt, except in the æsthetically shocking forms of incest and parricide, is ignored. In the antique code of the North, falsehood, perjury, is an inexpiable crime, suf- ficient to involve the whole world in ruin, gods and men together. We look in vain among the light- hearted dramatis persona of Greek theology for personifications bodying forth the sharply discern- ed, eternal contrasts of good and evil. In Baldur and Loki the serious Northern Muse has given us both. xxiv INTRODUCTION The same heart-searching penetration character- Free-will and ized the Northern treatment of the awful Destiny. problem of free-will and fate. Both systems remove the final determination of events beyond the mundane arena. Both place it in the hand of an invisible, omnipotent, and om- niscient Disposition. In both, with remarkable coincidence, three sombre spinning sisters, repre- senting Past, Present, and Future, are the triune expression of this eternal Tribunal, herein reveal- ing a consciousness of the super-conventional and of continuity in Law, and also that the ultimate reach of human wit must forever lose itself in the periphery of Faith. The more worldly Southern conscience contents itself with throwing down all final responsibility here. The Parcæ are inexorable. They allow no conditions. They cannot be consulted. Their de- crees are absolute. Fatum est. It has been spoken. It is the last word. The hero in the Greek tragedy must stagger on to the final catastrophe, a passive instrument of Destiny; or, like a man tied hand and foot beneath a falling house, must roll agon- ized eyes upward, until Atropos, to our relief, pro- ceeds to cut the thread. Pity and Terror such a spectacle may inspire as Aristotle demands of Tragedy, but never a kajápocs TaInuárwv (purification of the passions). This is no drama at all, but only a passion, an assassination.. The whole process is unmoral, for without freedom of will there can be no question of guilt or inno- cence, and no morality. The Norns, on the con- trary, equally fateful and awful, are not the dis- posers of life, but the guardians of law. They may be consulted. They do allow conditions. Man is XXV INTRODUCTION of the World. never for a moment, never even at the last, over- whelmed and robbed of his freedom. If Brun- hild will fling the curse - bringing ring of the Nib- lungs back into the Rhine, all shall yet be well. Macbeth may be tempted, but he is not determined by the “ Weird Sisters." After all, they are but the corporeal shadows of his own subjective wishes. His will forever remains the divine, inalienable, last instance of his destiny. What a momentous influence this doctrine has exerted in the vindication of moral sanity and in the preservation of society can be measured by any thoughtful reviewer of history. Norse mythology has raised and extended this law of responsibility to the ethical constitution of The Moral the world. Under it the world grows to Constitution a moral cosmos, the æon of Time becomes a period of probation. While mythology everywhere busies itself with cosmogony, it is the peculiar greatness of the Norse system that it has also created a marvellous escha- tology. The Uranidæ are aware of their beginning, but the dolce far niente of their Elysian existence seems to deprive them of the inclination to contemplate their "latter end." They are unconditionally im- mortal. Their perpetual youth depends upon no conformity to a law of conduct, but inheres in the inexhaustible buoyancy of their sensuous nature. There is no “ineinento mori !” to mar the joy of their ambrosial revelry. There is a materialistic aversion for contemplating death. Physical life is self-sufficient. There is no elaborated provision for aught beyond. The entrance to Hades is covered up with the flowers of poetry, for on this side is the xxvi INTRODUCTION centre of gravity of the world. On the other side all is vagueness, gloom, and shadow. When man dies, unless, as Hercules, he experiences an apotheosis, he leaves his real ego behind with his body. There is no defined, essential immortality of the soul. Ulysses, in the netherworld, dimly sees the attenuated Manes rush by. The outlines of individuality are barely visible. Consciousness is a languishing memory of the sunlight. The shade of Achilles says to him that he would rather be a slave on earth than the king of the dead. The place is a kind of Mammoth Cave, in the labyrinthine corridors of which forever skulk and shiver the miserable wretches, who have been forsaken by their guide and can never find their way out. Are they ghosts or emaciated prisoners? Ghosts should not be sensible of hunger and cold. This is worse than the Buddhists' Nirvana, worse even than Dante's Hell. There is no judgment, no discrimination between the good and the bad. This is the common fate of all who die. What matter that Plato, the Idealist, indignantly repudiated this necyomanteia, or that Hesiod and others have im- proved upon it? The Homeric view remained the view of classic Paganism. It needs must be so, for without infusing a moral heroism into life you can- not conquer death. The little channel of our exist- ence must be filled to overflowing with the living waters of eternal striving and ideal, so that the flood, bearing us on its tide, may wash away the barriers of death. Classic Paganism is really agnostic, an ignoring of the Unseen, and an unavailing effort to idealize the physical and the conventional. Its fitting em- blem is a broken column, festooned with vine leaves. Its manhood is an eternal torso, beautiful and in- xxvii INTRODUCTION spiring to the sculptor, but headless and forever baffling to the thinker. The Norse man is completer, because his life- philosophy exceeds death, and feeds upon the Be- yond. His physical world is not self-sufficient. It is but one scene in a world-drama or panorama. Its highest purpose is its symbolical message. Its sum- mer endures as long as the sunlight of right and truth irradiates it. When these are violated, Rag- narök, the Twilight of the Gods, ensues. There is no help for them. Their raison d'être, their charter, is forfeited. The moral props and rational founda- tions of the structure are broken. The fall must follow. The guilt - accurséd world is consumed by fire. But there is a palingenesia. The Good is es- sential and vital. It has been vindicated, the trans- gression against it expiated in the conflagration of the old sinful order. Out of its ashes, phoenix-like, a new heaven and a new earth shall rise, in which righteousness shall dwell. Is this not inexpressibly sublime? Nowhere else have the biblical concep- tions of sin, guilt, expiation been so amazingly an- ticipated. Under their sway the world grows solar indeed. History becomes apocalyptic, and man truly godlike. From the despairing wail of the South, proclaim- ing the failure of its creed : “Pan, great Pan, is dead!" mankind turns to that funeral scene in the North, where Odin whispers into the ear of the dead Baldur, lying on the funeral pyre in his own ship, the mysterious runes of Hope and Resur- rection. This is the message of Norse mythology to the Saxon race, received in the hoary days of its im- pressionable childhood ; that race which, since the xxviii INTRODUCTION days of its manhood, has performed most of the serious business of civilization, both of thought and of action. The influence of the ancestral ideal and animus can, at this late day, perhaps, be never cal- culated. Our fathers builded better than they knew. Is it not time that filial piety and gratitude and pride should enlist our interest in their work, and thus a tardy historical justice be accorded to their long- obscured service ? Who knows if, without it, we should now possess a Spenser and a Shakespeare, a Schiller and a Goethe, a Hans Christian Andersen and a Thor- waldsen, or a Carlyle and a Tennyson ? THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS CHAPTER 1 THE FORMATION OF THE WORLD Ginungagap. THERE was a time when there was yet nothing of this fair world of ours to be seen-neither earth nor sky, nor sun, moon, nor stars; nothing save oma vast, gloomy, horrid abyss, without form or life, called Ginungagap (Yawning of the Abysms). But the spirit of the All-father, who had always been, brooded over the formless Void, and His thoughts became creative acts. In the course of time originated Niflheim (Mist- · home) in the North and Muspelheim (Fire-home) Nigheim in the South. From Niflheim sprang and the well Hwergelmir (Roaring Caldron) in twelve streams, Eliwagar (Strange Bil- lows). When these came under the influence of heat from Muspelheim, vapor was formed, which congealed into snow and ice, gradually filling up the abyss, Ginungagap. The North was the playground of ever wintry storms; the South the home of mild serenity and gentle showers. From the alternating conjunction of both there came about the habitable, although stern, middle state of Muspelheim. THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Asen. the old Northland, the home of our Saxon fore- fathers. From the vapor-born ice two living beings were made, the vast giant Ymir, or Oergelmir (Rushing Ymir and Clay), signifying the chaotic, original Audhumbla. fermenting matter, and the cow Aud- humbla (Moist One), who stands for the maternal s sustenance principle of the earth. Ymir drank the milk of the cow Audhumbla. While he lay Hrim- sleeping, a man and a woman were cre- thursen. ated from his armpits. These became the parents of the Hrimthursen (race of Ice-giants). During the same time the cow Audhumbla, while licking the salty blocks of ice, caused a human being to start therefrom. This is Buri (Born). He in turn had a son, Bör, who married Belsta, a daughter w of the ice- giant, Boelthorn, and thus be- * came the father of the three earliest Asen (Supports or Pillars ) - Wodan or Odin (Spirit), Wili (Will), and We (Holiness). Wili and We are shadowy characters and practi- cally disappear from the history of the gods. Odin remains, and becomes the father of gods and men. Between these and the Hrimthursen, or Ice- giants, there is henceforward eternal, implacable warfare. All Norse mythology revolves around this fact. The giants are the hostile, inhospitable forces of Northern Nature, the Asen are the princi- ples and energies of Culture. They become the fa- thers and fostering rulers of men, teaching them the arts of war and peace, and protecting them against the destructive encroachments of the Ice- giants. This is the story of primitive civilization. The gods themselves are glorious kings of men, not lacking in human peccability. THE FORMATION OF THE WORLD All-father. Deluge. Although Odin, like the Zeus-pater of the Greeks, is usually designated All-father, yet, being created, om he is only a temporal representative of and the true, invisible, incomprehensible All- father, who is expected to reveal himself in a bet- ter way at a future time. The sons of Bör killed the original giant Ymir, who was so vast that all the Frost-giants were drowned in the deluge of blood that flowed from his wounds. One alone escaped, Bergelmir, who, with - his wife, took refuge in a boat, Lüdr (Boat s or Cradle), and, after the subsidence of the Flood, settled down on earth and became the pro- genitor of the new race of Hrimthursen, who, with the same implacable hatred, continue the hostility against gods and men. There are points of simi- larity as well as dissimilarity in the Edda's account of the Flood with those of India, Greece, and the Bible. The gods threw the body of Ymir into Ginunga- gap and proceeded to build the world out of its vari- ous parts. His blood became the sea, his flesh the Building of earth. The mountains were formed out the World. of his bones, the jagged ridges, peaks, and cliffs from his teeth, and the clouds from his brains. His skull became the rounded vault of heaven, his hair was changed into the grasses, shrubs, and trees of the earth, while the eyebrows of the slain mon- ster were by the deft hands of the kindly Asen fashioned into a fair fastness, called Midgard (Mid- castle), which, having been surrounded by high walls, was assigned by them to men as their dwell- ing - place, where they should be secure from the Hrimthursen. The latter were driven away to the outermost THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS bounds of the world into the region of hyperborean darkness and barrenness, whereby the spread of Darkness yet covered the face of the Earth. · Therefore the Asen seized the sparks of fire that Sun and were flying from Muspelheim, and fixed Moon. them in the sky as stars. Furthermore, they constructed and set in motion the resplendent Sun - car, drawn by the noble stallions, Arwakr (Early Wake) and Alswidr (All fleet) and driven by the shining maiden Sol, or Sunna. Before her she holds a shield, Swalin (Cooling), to mitigate the fiery rays of the Sun-chariot, which would otherwise con- sume the world. The beautiful, gentle boy, Mani, her brother, drives the softly tempered Moon-car. (In our popular personification of the Sun and the Moon, the former is masculine, the latter feminine. This is derived from the Latin, and the absence of gender in the form of the article in English has aided in establishing the conception. In the other Saxon languages the grammatical form follows the mythological image.) Before Mani's car rides the Night on her black steed, Hrimfaxi (Frost-maned), who at dawn, before his departure, shakes the foam from his bit, which falls upon the Earth in the form of dew. Behind Mani's car rides the Day on his white horse Skin- faxi (Light-maned). Both Sol and Mani are the children of Mundilföri (Axis-swinger), wherein the early discovery of their revolution around their own axis is indicated. Once, in his course around the Earth, Mani discovered two unhappy children in a desolate forest, whom their hard-hearted father compelled to carry buckets of water all night long. Out of pity Mani received them into his car, where THE FORMATION OF THE WORLD they are still to be seen. Their names are Bil (the Waning), and Hjuki (the Quickened-i.l., the Wax- ing or Cresent). The Swedish peasants to-day point out the forms of these children, with their bucket (Saegr) and their pole (Simul) in the cloudy spots of the moon. Of Hjuki and Bil Mr. S. Baring Gould has this to say in his instructive little book, Curious Myths : “ Are we not at once reminded of our nursery rhyme ?- Jack and Jill went up the hill To fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, And Jill came tumbling after. “This verse, which to us seems at first sight nonsense, I have no hesitation in saying, has a high antiquity, and re- fers to the Eddaic Hjuki and Bil. The names indicate as much. Hjuki, in Norse, would be pronounced Juki, which 'would readily become Jack; and Bil, for the sake of eu- phony, and in order to give a female name to one of the children, would become Jill. “The fall of Jack, and the subsequent fall of Jill, simply represent the vanishing of one moon spot after another, as the moon wanes.” Yet the same author cites with much glee the clever skit of a French abbé, proving that Napoleon Bonaparte is an impersonification of the Sun, and written in ridicule of the credulity and enthusiasm of certain German mythologists. Both Sun and Moon are pursued, each by a fero- cious Wolf. Sköll is the name of the Sun's pursuer, and Hati that of the one following the Moon. Whenever they seize their fleeing prey, solar and lunar eclipses occur. While their victims invaria- bly free themselves from the jaws of these wolves, THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS at the time of the final world-catastrophe they shall be swallowed up. The completed edifice of the world includes distinct abodes of living beings on three planes. It is a The Different two - storied building with a basement. Homes. Upon the ground-floor, in addition to Mid- gard, or Mannheim (Man-home), already noted, are Utgard (Outer Castle), or Jötunheim (Giants' Home), Jötun being another designation for Hrim- thursen, Frost-giants, and Wanaheim (Home of the Wanen, a separate race of gods who will be more particularly noted later). Utgard is on the north- ern confines of the earth's surface, surrounded by walls of ice. Wanaheim is supposed to be situated on the coasts of the sea. Around the conformation of the habitable land curls the huge body of the Midgard Serpent, a sym- • Midgard bol of the slumbering, unfriendly, all sur- Serpent. rounding Sea. The subterranean realm is divided into three distinct spaces. Niflheim is already known as the northern extreme of original Ginungagap. Then there is Swartalfaheim (Home of the Black Elves), and beyond this, and beneath Niflheim, far down in the bowels of the earth and far out on the extremest bounds of the North, is Niflhel (Mist Hell). This is the realm of Hela, the primeval goddess of death, to whom gods and men must in time repair. It is inexpressibly gloomy and awful. To reach it, you must ride for nine nights through the dark, subterranean valleys of Swart- alfaheim. Then you must cross the Giöll River, the Styx of the Northern Hades. In the region above the earth we find Muspel- heim, the old fire - home, the southern extreme of Ginungagap, inhabited by Muspel's sons-i.l., the THE 12 FORMATION OF THE WORLD Flames, which by their nature ascend into the air. They are also hostile to the Asen and their human protégés, and, at the final world-conflict, will come to the aid of the giants and devour the god-built structures of the world. There is, furthermore, Ljosalfheim (the Home of the Light Elves, a race of radiant, beautiful Fairies, as bright as the Black Elves are dark). They are the fitting denizens of the purely ethereal, celestial, roseate sky, the hap- pily tempered supernal abode of Light without Heat. They are friendly to the Asen, and, with their home, are assigned to the Asen- god of the Sun. Their palace, Gimil, in the rejuvenated world, will become the dwelling-place of all good and just men. The Elves, both bright and dark, seem to be el- S Elves. ementary occupants of their respective homes, as no account is anywhere to be found of their creation. The Dwarfs, on the other hand, who, as Kobolds, Brownies, Heinzelmännchen, etc., so frequently fig- bure ure in German and Scandinavian folk-lore, do not fare so well. Their origin, according to mythology, is hardly so creditable to them as their service to mankind, imagined later, would seem to warrant. It is no less than this—that they proceed- ed from the maggots which were found in the car- cass of the monster giant Ymir before it was util- ized in the construction of the world. It is true that, along with their canny skill and intrepid in- dustry, they evince a spiteful, sullen, and even ma- lignant nature. Apparently their disposition be- came softened in the popular imagination. Their home is in the rocky caves and crevices of the earth, where, as blacksmiths and as guardians of treasures, they are often impressed into service by Dwarfs. THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Bifröst. the gods and the heroes, but always with defiant and treacherous resistance from the little workmen. As the last and chief structure in the super-ter- restrial region we note Asgard, or Asenheim (the a Castle or Home of the Asen). This is the Asgard. regal, resplendent Capitol of the Norse world. It is situated in the zenith of the heavens, directly over Midgard. Only one passage leads to it from the earth, Bifröst (Quivering * Rest), the Rainbow. The gods have con- structed this with special regard to their security. Hence it is the strongest work in existence. It has three distinct colors. Daily the Asen ride over this bridge from Asgard to Urd's Well to hold council. Being of flame and light, it is impassable to the hostile Frost-giants, but to the sons of Mus- pelheim it offers no terrors or barrier. Hence, to keep these enemies out of their celestial citadel, a warden has been appointed, Heimdall, who keeps guard at the top of the arched bridge, and with his Giallarhorn will, at the last day, sound the note of alarm at the coming of Muspel's sons, and then fall in battle at his post.. Asgard is really a collection of fortified palaces, occupied by the chief gods and goddesses. They will be enumerated, with the names of these, at a later place. The creation of man is thus related : One day, as the three sons of Bör— Wodan, Wili, and We-were Creation walking along the seashore, they found lan. two trees, an ash and an elm. Out of the former they fashioned man; out of the latter, woman. The first of the gods gave them life and soul, the second intelligence and motion, the third sight, hearing, and language. of Man. THE FORMATION OF THE WORLD The most remarkable thing in the whole uni- verse of Norse mythology is the ash-tree, Yggdrasil om (Shiver, or Awe-bearer, on account of its e vast size and sacred meaning). It is the tree of life, a picture of the living world of man-its mystery, its meaning, its growth and de- cay. Nay, it is the picture of the material uni- verse and of time. The material world has its life, its soul, an animus, unique and rational; the living organism, manifesting thought, purpose, history, which the moderns call Nature and the ancients called macrocosmos, because man, the macrocos- mos, found in it the principles and processes of his own consciousness. It is characteristic of the profound Norse or Sax- on sentiment that it should illustrate the world of man in the form of a tree, manifesting not only, as this does, life and growth and decay in the complet- est, most imposing picture, but affording, in the tracing of the invisible roots, play for the ethical sense, the philosophical bent, and the poetical mood. It is not too much to say that nowhere in the realm of early thought is there a conception to be com- pared to the tree Yggdrasil in beauty and sug- gestiveness. It has three roots. The first is embedded in Mid- gard, the home of Man; the second pierces the abode of the Hrimthursen, or Frost-giants; and the third is lost in the depths.of Helheim, or the Neth- erworld. The bole of the tree towers into the sky, and the branches spread over the entire world. The crown reaches into Asgard, where it is sometimes spoken of as a separate tree, under the name of Lärad (Stillness Expending). Under the shade of this THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS crowning arbor repose the souls of Einheriar (he- freshed with mead from the goat Heidrun, who pastures on Lärad's rich foliage. The deer, Eik- thyrnir, also eats of these leaves. From his antlers such a quantity of drops trickle down that they feed the streams of the Netherworld. It is probable that the rain was symbolized in this deer. Four oth- er deer—Dain, Dwalin, Dunneyr, and Durathror--- continually run around the stem of the tree and bite off the fresh buds growing there. They have been interpreted to signify the seasons of the year. But the most destructive foe of the mighty ash is Nidhöggr (Hard-hacker), a dragon-worm, emerging from Niflheim, who forever gnaws at the root ex- tending hither. The allusion to death itself is here unmistakable. An eagle, who knows many things, sits among the branches. Between his eyes is placed a hawk. A squirrel, Ratatwiskr (Branch- piercer), constantly runs from the eagle to the giant worm, carrying angry messages to and fro and seeking to bring about discord between them. Plainly the eagle in the upper boughs means the Daylight. Between the Daylight and the dark, deadly Netherworld there must, of course, be eter- nal discord. The destructive influences at work on the tree are counteracted by the springs to be found at its roots. The one beside the root in Midgard is Urd's Well. The one watering the root in the giants' land is Mimir's Well. The third root, penetrat- ing Helheim, is refreshed by Hwergelmir, the parent - stream of Ginungagap, and fed by the tributary waters from the antlers of the deer Eikthyrnir. IO THE FORMATION OF THE WORLD These wells are deeply significant. Urd (The Past) is one of the three Nornes. The other two The Nornes. are Werdandi (The Present) and Skuld (The Future). As we know, they are the Fates of Norse mythology. Yet they are not so aloof from men as are the Fates, being guardians of moral law and oracles of wisdom. Therefore they are the natural wardens of Yggdrasil and are found sitting together on its projecting trunk. Urd is the chief of the three, as The Past always, with its traditions, establishments, and heredities, overtops The Present and The Future. Urd's Well, Urd's Well. in Midgard, signifies historic knowledge and the wisdom of experience. Yggdrasil, the tree of mankind's life, is watered from it. Thus the progress of humanity must ever be refreshed from the living lessons of The Past-nations, from the glorious deeds of its heroic founders, individ- uals, from the virtuous example of their fathers. Mimir's Well is a deeper source of wisdom. Be- ing located in the land of the giants, who existed me before the world of Time or Man became, Mimir's Well. se it represents prehistoric facts, primeval truth, the knowledge that transcends human rec- ords and intelligence. Even Odin, the chief of the Asen, the highest mind in the world of Time, must repair to Mimir for a draught from his well—i. e., for the acquisition of transcendent intelligence. Mimir (Memory, or Mind) is of the race of giants, and the wisest of beings, because he daily drinks from the waters of the spring. His dipper is also called the Giallarhorn, which name describes the crescent-moon shape of his dipper and of Heim- dall's trumpet. Odin was granted the desired drink by paying for it with the loss of one eye. Hence, IT THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS when he appears to men it is as an old, one-eyed man. Some, referring to the original anthropo- morphism, wherein Odin is the sky, have conceived the forfeited eye to be the moon, which may be seen reflected in the depths of a sombre pool. This leaves out of account the fact that the whole con- ception of Yggdrasil and Mimir's Well is a transi- tion from the Physical to the Intellectual. Mimir's Well is subterranean, incapable of reflecting the moon. Indeed, it is wholly fictitious and philo- sophical. The myth must, therefore, mean that whoever would drink wisdom from this fountain must become single-eyed-i, C., he must be willing to regard all things without bias, sincerely, un- swervingly. What is the lesson of Mimir's Well, therefore, but this, that the deeper source of our knowledge lies beyond the mere utilities and ex- pediencies of society and history, that truth is ideal and not conventional ? The third well is more mystical and awful still. It springs from hoary, darkling, boundless Ginun- gagap, that primal Immensity and Eter- Hwerg *** nity, from which all creations and confor- mations emerge, and into which they again crumble away. Of its nature not even Odin has any ken. Human wit sinks down baffled before it. It is the Absolute Reality, forever inscrutable. Confronted with it, all the individual and collective genius and glory of men are “such stuff as dreams are made on." Since the rude Saxon seer stood on the edge of “the Yawning of the Abysms,” and sought to pen- etrate its depths in search of the ultimate source of things, men have made marvellous progress. They have discovered, traced, and named myriads of worlds in the heavens. They have delved into I mir. 12 THE FORMATION OF THE WORLD the rocks and found the key to the book of the earth, turning over its stratified pages one by one, back to the very first chapter. They have spread over the globe and wrought out numberless inven- tions for the conquest of Nature and the ameliora- tion of their physical existence. They have sought out each other and learned from each other the highest thoughts and mightiest works of the past. They have entered into the realm of the beauti- ful and into the arena of social endeavor, creat- ing arts, literatures, commonwealths, and civiliza- tions. They have taken up the lofty maxims of Christianity, and, despite the opposition of igno- rance, superstition, and selfishness, have won for the individual freedom of thought and spiritual growth, and for society the ideals of endless Co-operation and amelioration. Apparently they have exhausted the waters of Urd's Well. They have repaired to the mystic border- land of Nifl- heim, and dipped from the waters of Mimir's Well, first by means of faith, and now by means of science. Despite the clamor of material progress, many have dwelt on the tranquil heights of Lä- rad's rustling bower. The meanest and narrow- est to - day enjoys an outlook immeasurably wider than that of the ancient seer in his lonely ice- bound home. And yet the thoughtful lover of mankind is driven to the bitter confession that the tap-root of our World-tree is being gnawed in twain by the hellish Nidhöggr of Materialistic Decay and Unbelief. That the tree of mankind reaches into Infinitude, that it is a phenomenon of that, not only anchoring there, but receiving its life and di- rection thence, must forever be a fundamental and vital belief. Agnosticism declines to consider the . 13 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS roots, and childishly busies itself with the foliage. Pessimism, its offspring, goes farther, and dogmati- cally declares the whole mystery of the roots a mistake and a mockery. But though Yggdrasil dies and is burned, it will grow again, for Ginun- gagap and Hwergelmir remain forever. CHAPTER II THE GODS AND THEIR ABODES-ODIN THERE are two distinct races of gods known to Norse mythology—the Asen, or Asas, and the Wan- Asen and en, or Wans. Very little is known of the Wanen. origin and early history of the latter. They appear upon the scene only as scattered in- dividuals, and in connection with their absorption into the Asen family. Those that in this manner obtain a permanent place in the Norse Pantheon will be described with it. The location and interpretation of the Wanen have called forth much learned inquiry. But such questions of comparative mythology are not with- in the scope of this work. Nor have they, despite the thoroughness of German scholarship, been finally answered. Yet the amalgamation of the two races of gods is so important both to the history and to the meaning of the system that we cannot dis- miss it lightly. We will, therefore, summarize the results attained: First. The Wanen were an older race than the Asen. Secondly. They were probably the early divinities of certain Teuton tribes, as the Goths and the In- gowonian tribes of Sweden, while the Asen cult be- longed to the western Germans and proceeded by the way of the Danish Islands into Scandinavia, gradually absorbing the cult of the Wanen. 15 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Thirdly. They were eventually distinguished as a more maritime race than the Asen. This distinction is indicated in the location of their seat, Wanaheim, which is rather vaguely assigned to the sea-coast. It will also appear in the account of their amalga- mation with the Asen. Fourthly. As to their symbolical meaning and nat- ure, it is generally supposed that their name, which in the different old Teuton dialects means Desire, Beauty, and Splendor, characterizes them as the rep- resentatives of the Grace and Delight of Nature, while the Asen, meaning Beams, or Pillars, more comprehensively stand as the moral as well as phys- ical supports of the world. We need not consider them together, but may for the present drop the whole vague subject. The main fact is the domination of the more positive Asen cycle. In the completed circle of the Asen family we shall find gods not only of Wanen, but even of Hrimthursen descent. Following is a list of the chief Asen divinities : Odin, or Wodan. Niördr. Thôr, or Donar. Baldur. Tyr, or Zio. Hödur. | Heimdall-Rigr. Forseti, Forasizzo. Freir, or Frö. Hermodr. Uller, or Holler. Wali. ( Bragi. Loki. (Hel. Gerda. Nerthus. Iduna. Goddesses. { Rinda. Nanna, or Nanda. Fricca. Skadhi. (Freya, or Frowa. Sîf. Gods. THE GODS AND THEIR ABODES-ODIN Other more subordinate or occasional personages will be mentioned at the proper place. The most lovable, genial, quickening thing in Nature is the warm, sunlit summer air. It warms and thrills and gratifies the breast of Odin. " the earth and the breast of man. It vivi- fies and beautifies. It draws perfume from the flowers, songs from the birds' throats, and love and poetry from men's hearts. This was Odin, whose name means breath. In the ancient languages breath and spirit are expressed by the same word. The genial, gentle air, that enlivens, expands, and glorifies the seeds of life, is therefore the best illus- tration within our grasp of Spirit or Mind. Thus Odin originally comprehends not only all the activities of genial Nature in the fight with the un- congenial, destructive ones, but also all the activi- ties of man in his struggle for civilization. We can perceive in him the monotheistic memory of the spiritual All-father. He is the god of the sunshine, the sky, the spring, the summer winds, as well as of war, the chase, love, poetry, letters, and the arts. If the name Odin designates breath, or the air, in its gentler, zephyr-like manifestation, the other va- Wodan, riations of the name, Wodan, Wuotan, Yuotan. plainly allude to its more thorough-go- ing activities. Wodan, allied to our English verb, to wade, probably expresses the passing through, the all-penetrating, leavening, principle of vitality. in Nature, while Wotan, or Wuotan-German Wutli, rage - designates the wind in its violence. It is natural that this aspect of the god's character should have prevailed as the preponderating type of strength and excellence in the North, found in 17 Wild Chase. the wild, headlong battle onslaughts, the fierce rough - riding of the chase, the undaunted advent- ures of the Vikings, and the immortal rage of the Berserks. There are still extant in Germany many folk- legends of nocturnalhunting-parties rushing through Wodan the air to the terror of some belated wan- and the derer. These are Odin's ghostly rides, when he would sally forth in the dead of night with troops of followers, the neighing of horses, the baying of dogs, and the shouts of riders resounding in the upper air. Woe to the wan- derer who, at their approach, failed to throw him- self prone on the earth and hide his face till the troop was past. He was apt to be roughly caught up and set down at dawn in some distant land, whence he might be fortunate enough to return home months, or even years, after, a sadder and wiser man. As the supreme god of war, Odin's rôle is very Odin complete. Especially is he the tutelary Walfather. patron of single combat, and all other forms of battle were, then almost unknown. The combatant who fell in a hand-to-hand encounter was the chief object of his care. He was supposed to be chosen (Wahl, choice ) for the god's higher society and the joys of Wal- halla (Hall of the Chosen). One of the Walkyrien was deputed to attend him in battle, and, Walkyrien. " after his fall, bear him before her on her horse to the upper abodes. The Walkyries were beautiful maidens, daughters of Odin, his confi- dantes and messengers. They were pure, serious, and spiritual. While they personify the spirit of battle, and, as such, are sometimes represented with Einheriar. 18 THE GODS AND THEIR ABODES-ODIN flying hair and wild mien, hastening to the fray, they are, on the other hand, truly feminine, full of sympathy and tenderness. Their mission is really to dignify, mitigate, and refine the rude shock of arms. They act as nurses and angels of the battle-field. Under their ministrations and in their presence combat grows heroic. There is an antici- pation of Chivalry in their presence. Life must be a warfare. It is only incumbent on us that it have a noble end. We still rear monuments and write verses in honor of those who have fallen in a good cause. Their death was not a failure, but a inartyr- | dom and victory. The Walkyries were immortal, but also tender- hearted, women. Thus, occasionally, one of them, like Brunhild, was found willing to forfeit her im- mortality for the love of a mortal hero. In view of Odin's office as guardian and guide of the dead, Tacitus naturally compared him Odin, the Norse with the Roman Mercury. The parallel * is made clearer by the common functions of fostering commerce and wealth. Omitting less significant activities, it will reward our interest to describe the intellectual analogies with Mercury and Mercury's brother, Apollo. Odin is the personification of Mind. But he is so with the limitations of Man and Time. Hence, we see him repairing to Mimir's Well in the God of quest of transcendent knowledge. By the i draught he becomes at once the wisest be- ing in the world, and qualified as the supreme ruler of men. The word Polytheism should not prejudice against Heathen Thought. The Heathen were not ob- livious of "the one true God.” The altar to the Un- known God never quite disappears from their inner- Mercury. Odin, Wisdom. 19 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS most shrine. Odin is but a “ broken light” of Him. The title All- father is only borrowed from Him. In "The Fooling of Gylfe," a saga of the Younger Edda, Ganglere asks: “Where is the Supreme God? What can He do? What mighty works has He ac- complished ?' Har answered : 'He lives from ever- lasting to everlasting, rules over all His realm, and governs all things, great and small. Then re- marked Jafnhar: 'He made heaven and earth, the air, and all things in them.' Thride added : 'What is more important, he made man and gave him a spirit, which shall live, and never perish, though the body may turn to dust or burn to ashes. All who live a life of virtue shall dwell with Him in Gîmle or Vingolf. The wicked, on the other hand, go to Hel, and from her to Niflhel-that is, down into the ninth world.' Then asked Ganglere : 'What was He doing before heaven and earth were made ?' Har made answer: Then was He with the Frost- giants.'" We come upon the same faith and knowledge in other places. It is plain that, with this larger faith in the background, the wiser among our ancestors must have regarded their poetical creed with feel- ings much akin to our own. From the mystery and magic attached to the word Rune (German raunen, to whisper passionate- ly or mutter mysteriously), we learn the the Inventor impression which the first use of writ- * ten characters makes upon the mind of a primitive people. The savage always regards the use of letters with superstitious amazement. The first attempts at significant writing were but signs or pictures, suggesting some characteristic of an individual or a thing. For example, a spear was Odin, of Runes. 20 THE GODS AND THEIR ABODES-ODIN a symbol or “determinative" for Odin. This was, then, Odin's Rune. Such characters were cut into little blocks or staves of beech-wood (German Buch- stabe, letter). A set of these would much resemble a child's box of A-B-C blocks. They were used much in the same way, too, being, as Tacitus tells us, tumbled out upon the ground in a confused pile. Three blocks were then taken at random and placed together, and the combination was supposed to spell (observe the magic in this word) a message or pre- diction. Some good Christians use the Bible in the same way. Here we have gambling, magic, and lit- erature jumbled together. When runes became let- ters and the mysterious sign-language an alphabet, the early, uncanny character still adhered to them. The art of inscribing thoughts is at first practised with a kind of awe. The short sentence, pithy and pregnant with mysterious meaning, is still a rune. It is oracular, and magic power is ascribed to it. It is employed on solemn occasions, in incantations, divinations, oracles, and sacrificial worship. It is muttered or mumbled in a sacred tone of voice--a sort of “pulpit tone." All writing is at first a kind of Sacred Scripture or Holy Writ. All early re- corded utterances are epigrammatic, emphatic, orac- ular, and occult, as the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the cuneiform inscriptions of the Assyrians, and the picture-writings of the Aztecs, and, later on, the sententious philosophisms of the Ionian sages and the Hebrew proverbs. The crude art corresponds with the timid thought. At last the rune, or en- graved letter, was used for a literary purposemin writing the staff-rhyme and alliteration-although the magic spirit was still felt to quicken and con- summate the dead letter. 21 Odin, the Poetry Odin is not merely the inventor of the technique of poetry, but the source of its more es- Author of sential element, the divine afflatus. Of 13. this attitude the following quaint story is related : At the reconciliation of the Wanen and Asen, a memento of the occasion was proposed. Thereupon the gods from both sides approached and spat sali- va into a common receptacle. Out of this saliva a man was fashioned, called Kwasir. He is so wise that no question put to him Kwasir. remains unanswered. He travelled all over the world to teach men wisdom. In his wanderings he came to the dwarfs, Galar and Fialar, who called him aside and treacherously murdered him. They caught up his blood into two jars, named Son and Bodn, and a kettle called Odh- rärir, and mixed it with honey in a mead such that whoever drank of it became a sage or a bard. To the gods they reported that Kwasir had been choked in the abundance of his own wisdom, since no one was found clear-minded enough to draw all his knowledge from him. After this they invited the giant Gilling, with his wife, to visit them. During the visit they rowed out to sea with the giant and capsized the boat. Gilling, unable to swim, was drowned. The lamen- tations of his wife they silenced by rolling a mill- stone on her head as she was crossing the thresh- old of their door. When Suttung, the nephew of the murdered giant, heard of these things, he came and seized the malicious dwarfs and carried them to a lonely cliff in mid-ocean. They induced him to spare their lives, he taking as a ransom the pre- cious mead. Suttung conveyed the two vessels and 22 THE GODS AND THEIR ABODES-ODIN the kettle to his castle, Hnitbergen, and placed his daughter, Gunnlödh, as guardian over them. Thus the art of the Skalds is variously called Kwasir's Blood, the Dwarfs' Drink, Suttung's Mead, and Gunnlödh's Charge. But Odin had heard of these doings, and, with the assent of the other Asen, set field where nine workmen were busy mowing hay with blunt scythes, he offered to sharpen these, and with a whetstone from his girdle soon made their blades keen. Each of them was then eager to pos- sess the wondrous whetstone. As Odin could not gratify them all, he flung it into the air. In the scramble for it, the rustics cut each other's hands with their scythes. Thereupon Odin left them. Now these rude swains were the glebemen of Bau- gi, the brother of Suttung. Odin appeared at his house, begging entertainment for the night. The master complained to his guest of the accident that had disabled his laborers in the midst of the har- vest. The wily god, calling himself Bölwerkr, an- nounced his readiness to finish the haying for a drink of Suttung's mead. Baugi protested that he had no right to dispose of it, but promised to lend his aid in obtaining the drink. Accordingly Böl- werkr labored during the entire summer, and at the approach of winter they repaired together to Suttung's abode, where Baugi explained his con- tract and requested of his brother the desired draught. But Suttung refused the request. Then Bölwerkr, producing an auger, told Baugi to bore a hole through the mountain upon which Suttung's castle stood. Baugi reluctantly complied, and soon announced that the opening was completed. Böl- werkr, mistrusting him, blew into the hole, when THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS the splinters flew outward, showing that the tunnel was not finished. He commanded Baugi to work on, until when Bölwerkr blew into the hole the splinters flew inward. Then changing himself into a snake, he quickly crawled into the opening. The baffled Baugi struck at him with the auger, but missed his mark. The serpent arrived in Sut- tung's subterranean vault, where Gunnlödh sat guarding the precious mead. Assuming the form of a god he won the maid's favor and her consent that he should take three draughts of the liquid. With the first draught he emptied the kettle, Odh- rärir, with the second the vessel called Bodn, and with the third the other vessel, Son. Thus he had it all, and, assuming the form of an eagle, he quick- ly flew away towards Asgard. When Suttung, from his castle window, saw him flying, he also took eagle-wings and gave pursuit. The Asen per- ceived the two eagles from afar and placed vessels in readiness. Odin barely had time to arrive and empty the liquid into the vessels before the gates of Asgard were closed upon the outwitted giant. Hence poetical inspiration is called, among other names, Odin's Prey, or Odin's Catch, or the Drink of the Asen. The fastidious poets of our day may have heard this account, and denied themselves the aid of the drink. In strong contrast with the above disguises is the noble form in which the chief of the Asen usually Odin's appeared. Nothing could be more impos- Appearance. ing than the sight of him, as, seated on his horse, Sleipnir, a radiant white stallion, he rides forth at the head of his troop of Einheriar from Asgard, to gallop over the clouds. His spear, Gun- gnir, is in his hand. Upon his head is a golden 24 THE GODS AND THEIR ABODES-ODIN alt efill upon his thighest seaties in Asgard, 7 helmet with a waving plume. His body is covered with the Brünne, or coat of mail, dazzling to be- . hold. His sword, Notung, dangles at his side. On his arm is seen the bracelet, Draupnir, while from his shoulders float the folds of his sky-blue, star- spangled mantle, which possesses miraculous prop- Hlidskialf. ..erties. Perhaps he seems more majestic " still upon his throne. This is Hlidskialf (the Quivering Air), the highest seat in Walhalla, overlooking all other celestial domiciles in Asgard, and commanding a view of the whole world. Two ravens, Hugin (thought) and Munin (re- membrance), perch on his shoulders. Every day he sends them forth to survey and report upon the events of the world. When they return they whis- per their information into his ears. At his feet crouch two wolves, Geri and Freki, to whom he flings pieces of flesh from the inexhaustible boar Sährimnir, and who run before him like dogs when- ever he sallies forth. Next to his visits among men as the Wanderer, with gray mantle and broad-brimmed hat, he is in- . vested with chief interest as the presid- alhalla ing lord of Walhalla. This is the human heaven of the Teutons, a sort of Olympus and Ely- sium combined. Men's ignorance of their future state has always, led to the projection of their mundane life into the next. Their heaven thus is nothing more than an embellished continuation of their earth-life. It changes with this. It is in no sense a revelation of the hereafter, but merely of their ideals here. The artistic and epicurean Greek reflected his character in the picture of Elysium. The dreamy Oriental, who has attained to the utmost limit of self-oblit- Walhalla. 25 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS eration here, anticipates the consummation of the process in Nirvana. The Indian imagines a hap- py hunting - ground. The conventional Christian picture of Heaven is reflected in Milton's "Para- dise Lost,” which in turn is a reflection of the theo- logical and political ideals of Puritanism and the English Commonwealth. Knowing the character and life of our Pagan an- cestors, we could readily reconstruct their Heaven. A race of warriors, stalwart, serious, and gross, must inevitably conceive a Heaven like Walhalla. All the cardinal points of their character and their system culminate here—their practical fighting nat- ure, their burly animalism, their substratum of poetry and philosophy, and their wholesome moral cleanness. It is, mutatis mutandis, the character of the Saxon peoples to-day. The exclusive denizens of Walhalla were the Einheriar, whose apotheosis raised them even above some of the gods. As fighting was their glory on earth, so it is their happiness in Heaven. Each morning they repair to the battle-ground before the hall to engage in single combat. Those who fall are at once restored to life. When the day's exer- cises are over they return to the vast hall, where they loll about the festive board. The cook, An- drimnir, supplies great platters of flesh from the roasted boar, Sährimnir, which they wash down with mighty draughts of mead or beer, while they are intellectually regaled by the soul - stirring ode or saga of the Skald. There is no dainty sipping of nectar or eating of ambrosia here. But neither is there any voluptuousness, for Fricca, the ma- tronly spouse of Odin, presides at the board, like the wife of an English country gentleman at a din- 26 THE GODS AND THEIR ABODES-ODIN ner-party of her husband's guests, who have come for a few days' shooting. And the Walkyrien, who minister in the hall, are no Houris or even Hebes, but ideal German girls and irreproachable god- desses. Neither must we imagine that all this deifying of combat is from the mere love of hacking limbs and cracking skulls. There is a profound moral pur- pose in it-namely, to be in training for the final world-conflict which is sure to come, and is forever hovering in the background. The ghastly drink- ing-cups, made out of the skulls of fallen foes, are a modern myth. Truly, Walhalla is not a contempti- ble fiction, but may offer lessons even to us. Odin never loses his position at the apex of the mythological pyramid. Hence, these meagre hints about him will be best supplemented by the al- lusions introduced hereafter. His character of originator of spiritual gifts should never be lost sight of. CHAPTER III THE OTHER GODS—THÔR OR DONAR The most conspicuous, the best known, the most admirable of the Asen is Thôr. In both his charac- ter and his work he stands nearest to men. There is a rich, burly, almost Falstaffian humor in him, a godlike breeziness and brusqueness in his ever- prompt appearance, that creates love as well as laughter. There is nothing celestial or intention- ally dazzling and overawing about him. He does not attempt to pose as a god. His insignia are not ornamental. They are his useful tools and arms. Neither is his mighty prowess ornamental. He is the work-day god in the Asen conclave. And his indefatigable and incredible industry is all exer- cised for the immediate benefit of men. He is the veritable Deus ex machina, always rushing upon the scene in the nick of time and always equal to the occasion. Herculean effort is his natural exer- cise. He goes at it with such hearty good-will, such joy in the doing of it, such whole-souled thor- oughness, that we feel as though we could hear his deep, godly guffaw like the neighing of a war- horse. Here is the original Berserker, who, in the headlong fury of courage and the mad love of the tumult, seems incapable of deliberation and insen- 28 THE OTHER GODS-THÔR OR DONAR nd dange homelace. prâgr. sible to odds and danger. Yet this precipitateness is accompanied with a homely common-sense that makes him almost commonplace. No wonder that Tacitus should have named him the German Her- The German cules. Like Hercules, he has been degrad- Hercules. ed from his original position, for Thôr in the earlier myths, and among certain Teu- ton tribes later, was regarded as the chief of the Araba gods. Even in the Edda he is desig- nated as Âsabrâgr, the Asen prince. Atli, another sobriquet of his, means Grandfather, Sire. When we consider his name and office, it seems that we should compare him with Jupiter rather than with Hercules. Thộr, or Donar, means Thun- der. He is therefore the lightning-hurling god, the Jupiter Tonans of the North. However, the air is a more spiritual element than the lightning. Again, Odin, as we have seen, embodies the intel- lectual, cultural activities of man, thought, poetry, sentiment, and moral aspiration. Thôr moves with- in the lower sphere of physical nature and agricult- ure. The former will always be the higher, how- ever much of practical importance will attach to the latter. The labor of a poet is more valuable than the labor of a farmer. Thôr is pre-eminently the god of farmers and la- borers, the patron of the settler who clears the land. This appears from his equipment, his domes- tic relations, and his work. Jupiter, with Hellenic grace of poise, flings his bolts as an exercise of majesty or of vengeance. Thôr's lightning is al- ways industrial, is directed at the giants, not at the heads of men, and the action may be awkward enough. This apped his work. bolts as an 29 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS His Miölnir. Meging Personally Thôr is a stalwart figure with a full, flowing, red beard, the color intimating Appearance the nature of his element. He appears and Outfit. me standing erect in a car, drawn by two goats, Tanngniostr (Tooth-rasper), and Tanngris- nir (Tooth-gnasher). In his hand he holds his re- doubtable hammer, Miölnir (Grinder), the most important weapon in all Norse My- thology. Around his portly waist is bound a mi- raculous girdle, Megingiadr, which has the property of redoubling his strength. He is the only one of the Asen who drives in- stead of riding. His vehicle evidently illustrates his industrial, agricultural rôle. The goats, with their springing motion, describe the zigzag move- ment of lightning. Perhaps the circumstance that they are the most aggressive pioneer domestic ani- mals upon the farm, pasturing upon the rocky mountain side, symbolizes the aggression of agri- culture into these regions. The hammer, of course, designates the shooting shaft of lightning, or the thunder-bolt itself. When Thôr puts on his iron gauntlets and, seizing the hammer by the handle, sends it whizzing forth, it never misses its mark, and never fails to demolish what it strikes. Then, like a boomerang, it returns into the god's hand. Thôr is the most active champion of the agricultul- ral world against the giants-2. 6., the rude, barbar- izing forces of Nature. There are two classes of these-the aggressive, such as the blighting winds ; and the passively resisting, such as the rocky ledges on the land. He attacks them both, taking long journeys to the East, whence the cold winds come, and grinding the rocks to powder to reclaim them 30 THE OTHER GODS-THÔR OR DONAR for arable use. The demons of Heat, also, which in cloud-bursts and drouths assail the harvests, he op- poses and puts to flight. The time and occasion in which the grateful fancy of men chiefly pictures him is in the spring, when the grasses and wild flowers begin to peep forth from under their wintry incubus. It is then that the Frost-giants grow desperate and dare their utmost. In great hordes they come flying from the North and the East to roam over the fields and nip the springing grain. But suddenly there is a rushing, rattling thunder heard, and from afar the manly god is seen blowing defiance through his waving beard. Ere his rattling car has arrived, he flings Miölnir and fells the foremost Hrimthursen. The others take flight, and when Thôr draws rein the birds are singing and men are rejoicing, for now summer has come. The god of the thunder-storm has brought it about. Odin is Thôr's father in the completed adjustment of the Asen genealogy, but a tribute to his former pre-eminence and independence remains in the story that he was brought up by foster-parents of Hrim- thursen blood, Wingnir and Hlora, whence Thôr bears the surnames Wingthôr and Hloridi (the Wingéd Thôr). Indeed, although the mightiest and most feared enemy of the Hrimthursen, there is much resemblance to them in his character. Şif is the name of his wife, a goddess of the earth. Her golden hair, probably an allusion to Sif, his Wife. * the golden grain, is one of the three jewels in Heaven which the dwarfs have made, the oth- er two being Odin's Spear and Freir's * Ship. His daughter is Thrûd (Strength). His two sons are Môdi and Magni (Might and His Offs 31 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Valor). Thrudwang or Thrudheim is the name of Thôr's homestead. This is the arable land, the w field or farm. The mother of his two " sons is called Jarnsaxa, a more particular designation for Sif. The name means either the Rock or the Sword, which, with Thôr, becomes the ploughshare. From the wedding of Thôr with either of the two the yeoman's brawn and bravery are born. Thôr's Hammer is not merely used for crushing the stupid pates of the giants. It is an instrument and symbol of general progress in refinement and social order. With it he measures off and marks the bounds of men's fields; with it he solemnizes marriage; with it he builds bridges. Here the energetic god comprehends the whole cycle of ma- terial civilization-marriage and the family, prop- erty and the State, commercial intercourse and material improvement. He is the most modern of the gods. If we were still Asen worshippers, he would count his fanes and shrines by the hundreds in the Western Prairies, on the Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific Slope. His effigy would surmount the domes of our new State capitols, his hammer would be affixed as an emblem over the door of each telegraph-office, and his magic girdle would be lengthened out to mark the lines of our transcon- tinental railroads on the company's folders. It is therefore natural that his worship should have been the last to be surrendered to the new religion. He was the national god of Norway. Plants and animals of a red color were sacred to him—the fox, the squirrel, the robin, and the oak, the roan-tree, the house-leek. 32 THE OTHER GODS-THÔR OR DONAR Thrudwang, his country estate, is by the affec- tion of his devotees raised to Asgard, and a manor reared in the midst of it, Bilskirnir, which Thrudwang Bilskirnir. 29 surpasses all other celestial residences Dupaw in vastness, Odin himself stating that it has five hundred stories, while his own Walhalla has only that number of doors. It is likely that Bilskirnir typifies the boundless vaulted dome of heaven, while Hlidskialf is only the zenith. How- ever, like many another country gentleman, Thôr is rarely seen in his baronial hall. His life is spent in the councils of the gods and in the battles with their enemies. There, in a succeeding chapter, we will meet him again. The name Tyr-genitive, Tys or Tus—is found in all Indo-European languages to designate God.* . The original stem is the Sanscrit div, which means to shine. This describes the chief attribute of the resplendent God of heaven- i. l., the supreme, the one only God. We have seen that Odin and Thôr, in their several localities, occu- pied this position until, in the union of the tribal cults, the latter was subordinated to the former. The same process is evident of Tyr. He is the third deity of supreme character among the Teuton peo- ples. We have thus the interesting discovery to start from that the nucleus of the Norse Pantheon is not a Trinity, but a Trilogy. It is as though some far - distant historian of religion discovered the fact that the three monotheistic peoples of this age—the Jews, the Moslem, and the Christians- worshipped the supreme deity under the three ap- Tyr or Zio. * Gothic Tius, Greek Zeus, Gen. Diós, Latin Jupiter for Djuspa- ter, Gen. Jovis for Djovis. Furthermore, Dêvas, Theos, and Deus. 33 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS pellations of Jehovah, Allah, and God. While these three names point to the same Being, it is a mere truism to say that they actually call to mind three very different characters or conceptions. The con- . ception of God, of what He is like, varies not only as between races but between individuals. Each man, in a sense, creates his own God. Also, it changes, develops in races and individuals. While religious society will probably never again become polytheistic, yet the same evolutionary contest for supremacy and final enthronement must go on now that went on between the god-ideals of our heathen forefathers. The god who inspires the Turks to massacre the Armenians cannot remain identified with the God whom Jesus Christ taught. The same test will detach and degrade him that de- tached and degraded Tyr from the supreme place- namely, the test of men's own growing conscious- ness as to what is most godlike and best. The proc- ess that resulted in the grouping together of the various Teuton deities to a clearly established Asen hierarchy or oligarchy was not one of crude accom- modation or of physical tribal superiority. It was as profound and genuine a moral discrimination as is taking place in theological thought to-day. We have learned that mythology is the intellectual treatment of the phenomena of Nature for purposes of worship. The seizure, selection of the phenome- non is an act of elective affinity and a revelation of character. The act of imagination which created Tyr reveals a ruder stage of character than that which created Odin or Thôr. The shafts of light, as well as those of lightning, proceed from heaven. Both appear to be hurled. Thus the supreme pict- ure above men's heads was that of a shaft-hurling 34. THE OTHER GODS-THÔR OR DONAR god, or a god of war. Tyr means war, pure and simple. Tacitus, who calls him the German Mars, reports that he was the national god of the Sem- nones, the oldest branch of the Suebi, and that human sacrifices were brought to him. We cannot regret that such a ruthless deity should be lowered in rank when we meet with him as a member of the Asen family. Here we find him relegated to third place as a war-god, and made to serve the purposes of civilization. Inasmuch as the warfare of actual armies plays no rôle in Norse My- thology, his official functions are virtually over, and the grim old general is retired on half-pay and put upon light reserve duty. His business in Asgard is to act as head keeper of the Fenriswolf, of whom we shall learn in another place. Through too close contact with this monster he loses his right arm, whence he obtains the further character of retire- ment and of a pensioner in the quasi invalid ap- pearance which he henceforth bears, just as some battle-scarred veteran has lost his arm, not by a cannon-ball, but by a buzz-saw or the kick of a mule. His emblem and rune is the sword. When Chris- tianity superseded the old Faith, this sign (1) was changed into the cross, with which it has some re- semblance. Between the two symbols there is re- semblance, too, since the cross also stands for war- fare, although of a far better kind. Tyr becomes the son of Odin in Asgard. He was worshipped under the names of Saxnot and cond Heru by other Saxon tribes. The sword of Tyr's has ever exerted such a dazzling, fascinat- Sword. ing ban upon the minds of men that we can understand the eager credulity with which they 35 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS perpetuated the following story, in which Tyr's emblem is glorified. In the popular admiration of military success the world-conquerors were super- stitiously invested with its possession. Thus Julius Cæsar was believed to have become the owner of Tyr's sword. We may not understand the reasons for conferring a German god's weapon upon the chief enemy of German liberty, unless by the sur- mise that worship of military glory overbore patri- otism. We can see a fitness in making Cologne the place where the talisman was preserved, since Co. logne was the chief Roman colony on German soil. Once, while Vitellius, the Roman prefect, was loll- ing at the banquet, being a notable gourmand, a native messenger was announced. Impatiently quitting his favorite pleasure, he rose and left the banquet-hall, when, at the door, he was met by a gigantic German, who handed him a sword with these words: “Take this sword. It will procure you renown and the Empire. Hail, Cæsar Augus- tus!" When the Roman looked up, after examin- ing the weapon, the German was gone. Vitellius returned to his guests and related the strange oc- currence, at the same time drawing the sword, which flashed like lightning. " That is the sword of the divine Julius,” they cried, and at once added, “Hail, Cæsar Augustus! Hail, our Imperator !" The next morning the legions took up the shout. His lieutenant defeated the rival emperor, and Rome opened her gates to Vitellius. But the ban- queter was greater in him than the conqueror. Over the gross pleasures of the table he forgot both sword and empire. A German mercenary was per- mitted to steal the former, and the latter in conse- quence easily fell from his enervated grasp. In the 36 THE OTHER GODS-THÔR OR DONAR the showanderungen tila," the scoanube on insurrection which ensued he was drawn forth from his hiding-place and despatched by the same soldier with the sword of Tyr. In the course of time its possessor buried it on the shore of the Danube. Centuries passed. The Völkerwanderungen rolled over the prostrate em- pire. One day Attila, “the scourge of God," was resting on the shore of the Danube on his way southward, with his horde of Huns, when a peasant appeared in camp with a shining sword under his arm. He related that his cow had wounded her foot on the projecting point of the buried weapon. “It is the sword of the war-god; it will make me the master of the world," cried Attila, seizing it and swinging it above his head. And so it seemed to prove. In his devastating career Attila murdered the Burgundian king, and compelled his daughter, the beautiful Idilko, to yield up her hand in marriage. But there was more hate of her father's murderer than love of her polygamous bridegroom in her heart. On the wedding-night, when the barbarian reeled from his drunken debauch to bed, Idilko, with Tyr's sword, to the relief of the trembling world, cut his gory career short. Through the Middle Ages it reappears briefly from time to time. After the battle of Mühl- berg, Duke Alba exhumed it for the last time. If Napoleon, in his turn, had possession of it there is no record of the fact. Probably it was too large for the stature of le petit caporal, if not too ro- mantic for his mathematical mind. May it re- main buried “nine fathoms deep," as was Thôr's hammer. We preserve a living reminiscence of the god in 37 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS the name of our third day of the week, as we like- wise commemorate Wodan in the fourth, and Thôr Tuesday, in the fifth. Thus the ends of Time are and day, brought together, and, in their busy, Thursday. work - day life, men unthinkingly pro- nounce the names of the gray dawn of History. Wednesday, HEIMDALL-RIGR This god was also at one time the sole personifi- cation of Deity. One of the most helpful lessons of mythology lies in the study of the process by which it selected, tried, and disposed of various qualities, seemingly most divine. We cannot es- cape the conclusion that our rude forefathers felt the burden of existence to consist in their essen- tial ignorance, and sought to lift it by “feeling after God, if peradventure they might find Him." Men must ever have more than a technical theo- logical interest in this problem. To find God means to find our ideal, our way of life. With our modern complacency we are apt to deny the ancients the capacity for fruitful, ethical research. But have we not already found much profound discrimina- tion in their thought ? Why could they not think as earnestly as we do? . It is probable that they thought with more earnestness as well as freedom, since they were not narrowed by existing creeds, or distracted by our thousand different artificiali- ties of a more materialistic life, or weakened in in- terest by centuries of cant and doubt. We may have the advantage of experience, while they had the advantage of bold, youthful genius. They asked the same question that we ask : What is the essential thing in Godhead? Is it Wisdom or 38 THE OTHER GODS-THÔR OR DONAR Majesty or Power or Sympathy or Moral Perfec- tion ? . What thing in Nature best expresses it? The Sky, the Sun, the Air, the Thunder ? Looking from our distant stand-point at their way of asking and answering these questions, it would seem that they tried first one quality and aspect of Nature and then another by the test of supreme excellence in their minds. A certain "sur- vival of the fittest " was the result. Odin finally retained the highest place, from which the others had been dethroned. We follow the same course. Only we, with our monotheistic foundation, do not suffer the rejected qualities to preserve a separate existence. The difference in tendency and result is that they, with their poetical, personifying treatment, divided and separated the divine aspects of Nature, while the moderns, with their unifying, philosophi- cal treatment, combine and centralize them. With them God therefore becomes the many agents; with us the one thing. Their process ends in Polythe- ism, ours inclines towards Pantheism. The scope of this work precludes an exhaustive tracing of premythological theology. On the other hand, a work on Norse mythology, which confined itself to a mere enumeration of the gods, would be worse than imperfect. It would be a perversion and obscuration of the subject, since, as we have learned, the peculiar merit of Saxon thought lies in its dramatic motion and development, in the in- cipiency and progress -of its mythology. The ig- 11oring of this fact has resulted in the popular sub- ordination of the Norse to the Greek system. In artistic perfection of outline and in charming versa- tility the latter has the advantage in the comparison. 39 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS The key-note to the whole celestial oratorio of the North is the discovery that each divinity was at first a distinct apprehension and embodiment of God. others already considered, however much of diffi- culty and obscurity there is in his interpretation. He is a Sword-god, too. He represents the supreme source of Light with its sword-like shaft. There- fore his castle, Himinbiörg, is placed in the zenith Himinbioig. .. of the sky, where it might be supposed to se encroach upon Odin's Hlidskialf. But here his function diverges from that of Odin. He becomes the basking Sunlight. As such he be- comes identified with the deer Eikthyrnir, who pastures upon the foliage of Lärad, the crown of the World-ash, projecting into the zenith. From the deer's antlers water trickles down to feed the subterranean river Hwergelmir. From this cir- cumstance the twofold mythic deduction proceed- ed that Heimdall was born of nine mothers, sup- posedly the nine Wave-maidens, daughters of Oegir, the Sea-god, and that he is the symbol of the rain. The Whence his permanent, final office is Rain-god. the guardianship of the rainbow Bifröst. Here his character is fully developed and embel- lished. His sickle-shaped sword becomes the sickle- shaped Giallar-horn. He is invested with Argus- like sleeplessness and far - sightedness. “He re- quires less sleep than a bird, and sees as well by night as by day; he hears the grass growing in the earth and the wool growing upon the backs of sheep.” The eagle on the topmost bough of the World-ash also lends him meaning—namely, eagle- eyed watchfulness. The eagle has later given place 40 THE OTHER GODS-THÔR OR DONAR renticeship on tearth also Founding of to the more demonstrative domestic guardianship of the cock, whom we still see as a weather-vane upon church steeples. We see that Heimdall's elevation into Asgard re- sults in no sinecure. But he has served his ap- po prenticeship on earth also. Under the . name of Rigr he wanders among the green avenues of the earth. It is the rain that makes green the environs of the earth. But the rain with the sunshine not only produces verdure, but also leads to culture, domesticity, and social or- ganization. Thus it is with entire plausibility that the following sweet story is related of the origin of the social orders : At the sea-coast Heimdall-Rigr found a hut with the door open. He entered. The old couple, Ai and Edda (grandsire and grandame), enter- tained him hospitably for three days with ilal Ranks. their coarse fare. As a reward, a son was born to them,who became the father of the Thralls,or bondsmen, by his inarriage with Thyr the handmaid. Rigr went farther, and found a house, in which dwelled the owners, Afi and Amma (grandfather and grandmother). Their hospitality was reward- ed in the same manner. Their son was Karl, the provident house - father. He married Snör, and from them are descended the free farmers. The third visit of Rigr was in a lordly manor. Here in state resided Father and Mother, the former busied with bow and arrows, the latter with her fine toilet. Despite their aristocratic indolence, they also greeted the stranger cordially, and with the same reward. Their son, Jarl (Earl), married the slender-waisted, elegant, high-bred Erna. From them are descended the nobles and princes. 41 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Irmin. Heimdall is also supposed to be identical with Irmin, the divine progenitor of the Germans. That the name German is connected with that of this god, the Old Nordic form, Jorinun, seems to offer conclusive evidence. Heimdall is evidently of Wanen descent. His maritime birth indicates this, also his general peace- ful nature. FREIR OR FRÖ . TYY A If Heimdall's transfer from the Wanen to the Asen is less explicit than we should like, that of this god is clear. Through the clatter of arms and the tragic march of mythic ideals and destinies there is an echolike reference to a conflict and recon- ciliation between the Asen and Wanen. The Saga briefly relates that when peace came about, host- ages were mutually given. Niördr, with his chil- dren, Freir and Freya, came from the Wanen to the Asen; while Hönir, Odin's brother, went from the latter to the former. It is probable that in this account we have pri- marily neither more nor less than an historical hoe reminiscence, clothed in poetical tradi- Wanen tion, of a very matter-of-fact accommo- 13011dation and completion between the re- spective god-families of contending tribes. At the same time there is a deeper meaning in this prosy transaction - namely, the metaphysical or psy- chological rounding - out of the god ideal. The two divine coteries represent the two aspects of Nature and of the human mind—the active and the passive. What the Wanen stand for in the form of delight and desire, the Asen take up as an ag- gressive programme. The Wanen are the dreamers, Union of and Asen. 42 THE OTHER GODS-THÔR OR DONAR in the Saxon the Asen the fighters. The first forever dwelt in the mystic, indefinable borderland of Wanaheim. They are somewhat like the Greek gods, contented with the mere joy of existence, basking in volupt- uous ease, or like the self-contained qualities with which theology was wont to invest God in His ab- solute being before He entered upon the work of creation. It was a necessity of the hardy North- ern mind to complete this conception by the addi- tion of heroic activity. So the mythologic inter- change and amalgamation is, in its deeper signifi- cance, that psychological and actual union of the Wanen Pensive and the Practical which is dis- and Asen tinctive in the Saxon character. In the Character. separate development of later times the Germans assumed more of the former, the English more of the latter characteristics, those becoming the thinkers and dreamers, these the workers and fighters. In the Scandinavian peoples of to-day both tendencies are still combined, as they were in the early Teuton race as a whole. As to Niördr, the father of Freir and Freya, we are hardly warranted in enumerating him as a peer are among the Asen. He was the chief of the Wanen family, and the god of the sea; not of the sea in its tumultuous oceanic mood, over which Oegir presided, but of the sea-coast and the placid waves. While he preserves this character after his entrance into Asgard-as his castle, Noatun (Ship-harbor), indicates-his su- preme position is, of course, surrendered to Odin, and he retires at once into characteristic Wanen passivity and a shadowy background. His office as the early god of the navigable summer sea must yield before the more venturesome zeal of the Vi- 43 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS kings, who braved the wintry terrors and boundless mysteries of the deep, over which the genuine Neptune of the North, Oegir (Terror), presided. Niördr's marriage with Skadhi will be related at a later place. If Niördr's outlines become attenuated, and in a manner effaced, upon his amalgamation with the Asen, they still pass to his children and fellow-host- ages, who, on their part, assume the highest rank and the most pronounced active role in Asgard, while they lose nothing of their hereditary Wanen sweetness and light. Freir, indeed, occupies hence- forth the third place in the Asen system, as his statue in the golden temple at Upsala, beside those of Odin and Thôr, indicates. He is the god of the sunshine and rain and verdure, the god of peace and peaceful labor, as well as of love and marriage. Some of these offices he has inherited from his fa- ther, others have devolved upon him from Odin. In his popular appearance and general character he resembles Apollo. The original Sunna yields up dir her sun-chariot to him, just as Helios does the Saxon to Phoebus-Apollo, whence he is often rep- resented as driving a pair of fiery steeds, and the horse was sacred to him. But the most common picture of him is that of a youthful, al- most boyish god, riding on a boar with golden bris- w... tles (Gullinbursti), his own smiling face ** radiant with sun-rays as with a halo. The boar was therefore sacrificed to Freir. If we permit the meaning of Asgard, with its shining, striving occupants, to impress itself on our minds—namely, as the citadel and nucleus of light and effort and progress, in the midst of the inclemencies and barbarities of the wintry North- Fieir, Apollo. Gullinbursti. 44 THE OTHER GODS-THÔR OR DONAR we can easily understand the various divine per- sonifications which radiate into the darkness like rays of light-most palpably Freir, or Frö. When the long Northern winter set in the days grew shorter and shorter, the sun farther and farther Fieir's Feast. luminary with ever fonder regret and longing. When at last, at the end of December, the winter solstice occurred, and the radiant god turned his face earthward again, how natural that men should mark the event with a notable holiday, and make of it a green oasis in the barren desert of the year? Symbolic fires were lighted on the hill-tops, but the chief celebration was in - doors, which was made um green and festive with festoons of rose- mary, mistletoe, and holly. In allusion to the wheel or disk of the Sun, the great, round Yule-log (from jul, or giul, wheel) was lighted in the capacious fireplace, in the ruddy glow of which all sat down to the good cheer on the board, while, amid rejoicing and religious ceremonies, the head of Freir's beast, the boar's head, was borne into the room. This is the original of our Christmas holi- day. In the South, in Rome, it had its counter- part in the Saturnalia. As there, so with our heathen forefathers, it was marked by good cheer, hilarity, and boisterous happiness, by the liberties accorded to the servants and hospitality to stran- gers. Every one knows how many of the old cus- toms associated with this celebration are still pre- served at Christmas in an English country house. The hearth-fire of a Northern home, what a real focus it is of warmth, of light, of sweet domestic life! The most primitive mode of warming; men are turning to it again in preference to all modern 45 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS The Hearth. improvements. Painters and poets have immortal- ized it. Life-long memory holds it sacred. It is a symbol of the Northern heart that, within Northern the icy incrustations of convention, and * amid the wintry blasts of adversity, burns with a great, ideal glow. It is the transfigura- tion of in-door life and of the holy associations of the family. Around its wholesome,.roseate flames, not only the home, but commonwealths, hallowed, homelike institutions, magnanimous social edifices, states, empires are grouped. It is the Northern reproduction of sunshine transfused and winged with creative endeavor. The South may bask in the sun, under its perennial vine and fig-tree, but the danger is that, fawnlike in its sensuous enjoy- ment, it will doze and gambol its warmth away; but when the Saxon of the North opens the door and sets his earnest face against the rude barbari- ties of the world he carries the inspiration of the hearth-fire with him. If the home is the Saxon Holy of Holies, and the hearth-fire its Shekinah, the god Freir is the im- manent deity. This is his best characterization. From this focus radiate his other attributes and of- Temple of fices. His temple at Thwera was a sa- r. cred refuge. No weapons were allowed in it. The celebrated Frode-peace centres in him-a period of truce, when wars, feuds, and enmities were suspended. From his mother, Nerthus, he has these functions. From his father, Niördr, he has his mar- itime character. He is the patron of skippers and fishers, not of the truculent Vikings, but of those sailing the inland sea in peaceful, commercial pur- suits. His ship, Skidbladnir, has been mentioned as one of the three most curious and precious jewels Freir. 46 THE OTHER GODS-THÔR OR DONAR Skidbladnir. fashioned by the dwarfs - sons of Iwaldis. It was made to sail both the sea and the air, and to be fold- www. ed together like a piece of canvas. Some *have found in it a symbol of the clouds. The Golden Age, with the Latins the Age of Saturn, is associated with him, the paradisian era, before the love of money led to envy, perjury, and murder, when men lived together in peace and con- tentment and brotherly love. Finally, his connection with Helheim, the realm of the dead, on the one hand, and with Alfheim, the home of the Light-elves, or Fairies—which is as- signed to him as his seat, and which is also to be the capital of the rejuvenated world-on the other, need offer no difficulty to our understanding of his character. As the express god of the sun, the re- gion of light belongs to him. The Netherworld is primarily the dead portion of the year, in which the god of light hibernates. The buoyant optimism, with which the Saxon views the world, finds its ex- pression by means of the annual drama. There is ever the hope of a new spring, for the year as well as the æons. Among the Christmas customs in England, perhaps the one most plainly adverting to Freir is the one still observed (?) at Queen's Col- lege, Oxford. The boar's head is brought in on a charger. One of the tabarders sings the following song, while all the scholars present in the refectory join in the chorus: “The boar's head in hand I bear, Bedecked with bays and rosemary, And I pray you, masters, merry be, Quot-quot estis, in convivio. Chorus.—Caput Afri defero, Reddens laudes Domino. 47 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS “The boar's head, as I understand, Is the bravest dish in the land. Being thus bedecked with a gay garland, Let us servire cantico. Chorus.—Caput Afri, etc. “Our steward has provided this, In honor of the king of bliss, Which on this day to be served is, In Regimensi Altrio. Chorus.—Caput Afri," etc. Of course, the Dominus refers to Christ, but Frcir means Lord. Besides which he was also “the king of bliss " long before the Gospel entered England. Despite the garniture of mediæval Church Latin, those gentle scholars annually perform a pure piece of heathen worship. ULLER, OR HOLLER If Freir, on the whole, reflects the in-door bright- ness of winter, Uller stands for its out-door amuse- ments-for the mastery which man attains over the forbidding barbarity of even a Northern winter. Strictly speaking, the whole Asen court yearly re- tires into winter-quarters. Their active campaign opens in the spring. To bridge over this virtual abandonment of the field to the enemy, Uller was called into existence. He is the wintry alternate of Odin, although in his make-up and offices he pop- ularly shares none of the spiritual functions of All- father. He is pictured as a youthful hero, wrapped in furs, skimming over the ice on skates, and holding ve a huge bow in his hand. The bow is of yew, whence the name of his palace, Ydalir, meaning Yew - vale. His name, in the 48 THE OTHER GODS-THÔR OR DONAR aspirated modification, Wuller, is connected with wool, and possibly alludes to the fleecy appearance of the snow, his native element. We must think of the Northern wintry landscape at its best for a background to his figure, the glassy smoothness of the ice, the magic reflections of the ice-blink, the glistening whiteness of the snow-over which hunt- ers glide on their keel-like snow-shoes-and, at night, the color marvels of the Aurora Borealis. He is called the friend of Baldur, with whom he alternates as a dweller in the Netherworld. Uller, of course, spends the summer there. Thus he is the protector of the seed during winter. His marriage with Skadhi, after her luckless ex- perience with Niördr, marks the beginning of win- ter. Of her, later. He is known by the name of Schildâs (Shield-lord), a supreme designation. His skates carried him over unfrozen water as well as ice. Skates were first made of bones, and curled upward to have the shape of a boat or shield. He is invoked by duellists, perhaps not as lord of the shield, but as a representative of the Netherworld, which character he bears as the god of winter. He is the son of Sif, the wife of Thôr, but out of a former marriage. Thôr, as the god of summer, who weds the earth after her connection with win- ter, cannot be his father. An account of his alternations with Odin, carried out with a lack of dramatic distinctness in various myths, we will spare the reader, and content our- selves with the unique picture of him in the fore- ground of the bright, wintry landscape, as the racy god of winter sport, THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS BALDUR AND HÖDUR These brothers are the Castor and Pollux of Norse mythology, although their fraternal relation is the reverse of that between the shining Dioscuri, being known by the avoidance of each other's so- ciety. Freir stands for the sunlight, and the in-door brightness of winter, Uller for the out-door mas- tery of its severity. Hödur embodies its gloom and brooding darkness. We might expect such a per- sonification to be classed among the Hrimthursen, or the family of Loki, since the general tenor of the conception is anti-cultural and thus apparently hos- tile to the Asen. Hostile, and even fatal, he does prove, but without any malicious intention on his part. Here is the distinction between him and the enemies of the Asen. He is represented as blind. He leads a passive, glooiny, sullen life, sitting apart and taking no share in the joys and strivings of Asgard. Poetically, his presence there is justified in the observation that the mortal half of the year, aside from its winds and other belligerent energies, is also conservative of life. Psychologically, he is the expression of the brood- Hondurin ing melancholy, the profound sombreness the Saxon in the Saxon mental make-up, which is just as truly divine, artistic, and creative as its sunnier mood. If the name Hödur can etymologically be brought into connection with Hader (Striſe), the designation is, evidently, ex post facto, to describe the denoue- ment of the human drama that proceeded out of the original Nature-myth. Baldur (Bold) is, then, the light side of the year, Mood. 50 THE OTHER GODS-THÔR OR DONAR whose ascendency reaches its climax in the sum- mer solstice, when he falls at the hands of his dark brother, Hödur. While in the efforts and offices of Odin, Thôr, and other divinities, there is liberty and boundless play - room and variation, in the solar tragedy of the year there is fixed and fatal regu- larity. Nothing could seem prosier than the common- place alternation of summer and winter ; nothing could seem a more barren subject for poetical em- bellishment, and yet the genius of the North has developed out of this mere meteorological circum- stance a character that in winning beauty and moral perfection stands second only to that of Jesus Christ, and a story that, in pathetic, romantic tenderness and dramatic sublimity, is unexcelled in the whole range of fiction. In Baldur we find the most exquisite creation of our mythology. All other personifications show an admixture in their imagery of what the Germans call Tendenz-1.., an industrial or partisan motive, and, consequently, in their humanized manifesta- tion, an admixture of sin. Baldur is the light in its essential brightness, sweetness, and holiness, shin- ing simply for its own sake, and by means of its native effulgence. Hence, the Saga labors to por- tray him as the supreme example of innocent and unmurmuring suffering. His castle is Breidablick (Broad-view). Nothing impure is permitted to enter it. It is a de fitting house for its master. His holiness is equalled by his loveliness-such that all things in the world loved him. That the Saxon mind, in its crude, barbarous stage of development, and with its bent towards Breidablick 51 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS roughness, violence, and rude strength, should have conceived such a divinity is an amazing evidence both of its versatility and its profundity. It may explain the readiness with which our forefathers bowed before that holy and lovely One who said : “And I, when I am lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." A nearer view of Baldur will be ob- tained in the account of his marriage, and of the final events of the Asen rule. BRAGI We have seen how the many-sided activity of Odin, as the originator of the spiritual impulses in man, has eventually been divided up and distrib- uted among various representative personifications. Of these, poetry becomes personified in Bragi, who, of course, like Baldur, Uller, and the other younger divinities, is a son of All-father Odin. He is the lord of the Skalds, or singers, whence his name, Bragi (Lord). The guild of Skalds in turn is called Bragr Karla, Bragi-people. He is usual- Bragr Kaila. ly pictured as a youthful man with a long beard, handsome face, and large, bright eyes, and a harp in his hands. He is a kind of combination of Apollo and Orpheus. The late date of his deifica- tion has suggested the theory that a purely historical personage has experienced apotheosis in this char- acter-a celebrated improvisator and harper of the eighth century, Bragi, the son of Boddi. However this may be, his place among the gods is undoubted, and clearly distinguished, as we shall more explic- itly see in the account of his wife, Iduna, and in the events preceding Ragnarök. THE OTHER GODS-THÔR OR DONAR FORSETI (FORASIZZO) This personage with the Italian-like name, which, however, is pure Germanic, and means President- German, Vorsitzer—is a still younger member of the Asen family. Baldur, among other offices as god of light, was regarded as the judge of men, the presiding officer at trials. His justice was so transparent, his rea- son so lucid, that no one ever found fault with his After his death his judicial office passed to his son, Forseti, who maintained the same reputation for incorruptible impartiality which Baldur had enjoyed. His judgments are all arbitraments. He seeks to reconcile litigants and enemies. His court a of justice in Asgard is Glitnir (the Shining). While no mythic saga exists of him, legendary allusions to him are numerous. Thus the origin of the Frisian law is referred to him Origin of the in the following tradition : The twelve Frisian Code. Asegen (judges or jurymen) appointed by the tribe are in a boat driven helplessly hither and thither by storm-winds. (What better illustra- tion of the judicial floundering of the average en- lightened jury could be found?) In their despair they cry to the gods. Suddenly a thirteenth sits in the stern of the skiff and wields the rudder. As the boat approaches the land he hurls an axe on shore. Where it touches the earth a spring gushes forth. Seated all around it, the stranger teaches them the principles of right and justice. As soon as they have acquired the necessary wisdom he disappears. It is Forseti. The spring is a reminder THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS of Urd's Well, whither the gods were wont to re- pair for council and court. It is the ever-recurring picture of wisdom. On the Island of Helgoland we find the spring again. This island was called Fosite's Land. Men Fosite's were required to drink of this well si- Land. lently, indicating the necessity of thought in the acquisition of wisdom and judicial capacity. This well on Helgoland was held sacred for many centuries. The deer pasturing around it were not molested. Even sea - robbers and pirates were afraid to commit depredations there. It is plain that in these traditions the memory of some Norse Moses or Solon, who first gave laws and justice to a lawless people, is gratefully ex- alted and preserved. The investment of such a character with divinity reveals the constitutional bent of the Saxon mind towards social order and essential right, which has since become the source and perpetual preservative of popular rights and liberties with chartered political institutions. WALI AND HE These two are mentioned last because of the subordinate parts they play in the events of the Asen reign. They are occasional, not permanent, actors. Wali is the son of Baldur, and the avenger of his murder. He really belongs to the new age predicted by mythology. Hermôdr is generally represented as the brother of Baldur and Hermôdr, the Winged" Hödur. His distinct office is that of mes- Y. senger of the gods, although he hardly appears as such before he is sent to Hel to beg Bal- dur's release. Mercury. 54 THE OTHER GODS—THÔR OR DONAR Recurring to the Nature - myths, expressed in Baldur's fate, we learn that Wali, or Ali, who, a mere infant, slays the slayer of Baldur, is the re- turning sunlight in the winter solstice. Blind Hö- dur, the dark period of the year, does not long maintain the fruit of his victory. In the expansion of the myth to the world-year, Wali represents the resurrection of light and good- ness, whence he is prominently mentioned as one of the gods of the rejuvenated world. He is some- times conceived as Baldur's younger brother, and the son of Odin and Rinda, the goddess of the earth. He is pictured as a warrior and bowman. Many humanizing and historicizing stories centre about him. Among these the account given by Saxo Grammaticus, the early Christian historian, whose ecclesiastic tendency to eliminate Paganism from the ancestral myths and reduce them to his- torical events is well known. It represents Wali as a Finnish magician and leader of a warlike host, who siies for the hand of a Russian princess. Another cycle of heroic sagas revolves around the Legends of striking circumstance of his prodigious Wali. infancy-thus the pretty story current among the Angles in Schleswig. One day the as- sembled people at the sea-shore observed a little boat without rudder or crew gently rocking land- ward. At the mast-head a shining shield, round as the disk of the sun, was affixed. The vessel, visibly unguided, gracefully rounded the headland, and sailed into the harbor. When the people hauled it ashore, to their amazement they beheld a beau- tiful infant asleep on a sheaf of straw. With a common impulse they threw themselves on their knees and proclaimed the angelic visitant their 55 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Skeaf. king. He was lifted out and brought up by the people. As he grew up to manhood, he excelled all other youths in wisdom and feats of arms. In course of time he was raised on the shield and crowned. For several years he reigned with per- fect beneficence, establishing peace, cultivating vir- tue, and promoting prosperity among the adoring people. But the term of his stay expired, and when the day of his departure came, he had his jewels replaced in the mystic boat, and then lay down in it, when the waves again gently carried him away. But the grateful people have never forgotten the e reign of Skeaf, as they named him, from ** the sheaf on which he lay. The warlike Gerdanes relate the same pleasing story of Skiold (English, Shield), evidently also meant for Wali. Mediæval variations of the same theme are pre- served in the story of the Knight of the Swan, and in that of Lohengrin. It is supposed that Wali is the original of St. Valentine, as our St. Valentine's Day, February 14th, concluded the month specially dedicated to him, a midwinter period of increasing light. The name Wali has been brought into con- nection with zvell and wcal. Hermôdr is usually accounted Baldur's brother, but, aside from his ride to Hel, nothing character- istic is known of him. Medi in the hengrinalen CHAPTER IV THE QUEENS OF ASGARD-ASINGES Principle. Two things we might expect to find deified in feminine form by the myth first, the passive, re- ceptive object of a beneficent force; and, second, the sourceful side or maternal principle of Nature. The first concept would give rise to the bridal Incarnation of and wifely ideal. It would seize upon the Feminine the beauty, the desire-producing attrac- * tion in physical and spiritual processes, and invest and illustrate it with the lovely charm of maidenhood and womanhood. The other would busy itself with the origin, the birth-giving mani- festations of life, both in matter and in mind, per- sonifying these with the venerable attributes of motherhood. The whole of the silent, inward drama of life has its play-room here. Moreover, when we pass from the creative stage of the Nature-myth to the portals of Asgard, and look in upon the noble group of living, moving women, we shall find in them the best illustrations of the moral, social, and domes- tic ideals of our forefathers --ideals that, with little change, have remained intact to the present day. The Germanic type of woman in life and in art has been frequently charged with weakness and 57 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS narrowness. Her confinement to the domestic sphere, her general subordination to man, the charm Carmonie of her naïve and childlike mentality, her Ideal of fluttering, blushing reserve and restraint Womanhood. in action, have been resented by the rep- resentatives of other nationalities and of the cham- pioning spirit of modern progress, as tyrannical barriers of convention, set up by priest and dema- gogue to rob her of her growth. Gretchen's charm- ing prattle, Desdemona's tears, and Ophelia's ditties could not appease these critics. They would tear the veil and girdle from this timid creature, push her forth, and set her free. In the time of Tacitus, Roman women had be- come emancipated. But that thoughtful writer turns with abhorrence from the Agrippinas and Messalinas towards the German woman, holding her up to his degenerate countrymen as the model of a regenerated society. He saw nothing but enormity and ruin in the casting aside of woman's reserve. The German woman of his day was the direct product of the mythic ideal and discipline. Society suffered such an alarm and such a reaction from Roman dissoluteness that throughout the Middle Ages it held to the other extreme with re- gard to woman's protection, immuring her in con- vents, yet erring on the safe side. We are now able to discriminate. Saxon mythology embodied in its male and female personifications the differ- ence found in Nature between the active-expres- sive and the passive - receptive principles. The word passive is misleading, through its secondary meaning of inert. The receptive principle is not less active than the expressive. Nor is it less im- portant or dignified. 58 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD-ASINGES If that ineffable reserve, which we, with helpless, worshipping iteration, term womanliness, makes its initial appearance in these goddesses, we cannot quarrel with it as a mark of inanity or servility. On the contrary, we perceive in it a natural expres- sion of that proud, self- respecting power which must be sought and won. And so with regard to the other conditions, which might be construed as badges of servitude, but originally, at least, are quite the reverse. What is the domestication of the fair women in Asgard but an enthronement, an en- shrinement? The receptive and reproductive part is accorded the position of honor. Its work is the highest and holiest. Woman is made the queen, not in the conjugal sense of a shadow or complement to the king, but as the supremne object and sovereign power. The god is a prince-consort, a royal pur- veyor and warrior to her. There is no pragmatic sanction needed to raise her to that place. She is found there in the eternal order and constitution of things. There she sits at the sacred source of things, guarding the mysteries and jewels of the race. Accordingly, she is invested not only with loveliness, with beauty, which is nothing less than the inherent attribute of freedom and mastery, but with divination, with intuitive insight, which is the intellectual mark of supremacy, as beauty is the æsthetic ; also with purity and refinement, the cul- minating, the moral or character bloom of perfec- tion and supremacy. Whatever may have been the perversions of this position in later times, it is cer- tain that German mythology and early German manners knew nothing of a subordination of wom- an to man. On the contrary, she is the final arbi- tress in all public matters, in war and peace. If 59 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Woman's among the Geimans. the Roman general, on the eve of battle, consult- ed birds and the entrails of animals, the German warriors consulted their wives. A divine Station spirit of wisdom was believed to dwell Eaily in woman's breast. Veleda, the priestess mans of the Bructeri, was an example of the position woman occupied in Germany. If the Spartan and the Roman matrons are cited as mod- els of public-spiritedness and courage, the German matrons went farther, for they usually went into camp, and even into battle, with the men. No- where else in the world was the chastity of woman guarded with such sacred care. In the loves and wedlocks of the Asen there is no trace of inequality between husband and wife. Odin's unions might be excepted. Since he is the originator of all the spiritual moments in man, the feminine and mate- rial complement becomes divided and multiplied, and no one female figure is coequal with him in all his aspects. While he may be designated, in a sense, as a polygamist, it is only the natural and symbolical union of each of his qualities with its appropriate object that is taught. It is not analo- gous to a human marriage. This is far different from the promiscuous amours of Jupiter, which have no spiritual symbology, but are salacious ex- hibitions of the redundant sensuality of the South, unhappily for men, deified in the life and the char- acters of Olympus. It should further be noted that Odin's generative, creative unions are pre-mythic as to time, as well as in character and appearance, and thus removed from human analogy, and from the possibility of contaminating influence. When the family life of our mythology begins in Asgard, he is the model of a virtuous German paterfamilias. 60 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD- ASINGES At the corresponding stage in the Hellenic system, his Greek brother is causing Madam Hera- * Juno her most sleepless nights. Hera. HEL There are two feminine personages who exceed Odin in mysterious greatness. The one, Urd, or Weird Wurd, with which weird (the “weird sis- Sisters. ters" in Macbeth) is connected, we have already viewed. She is the chief of the Nornes, the personification of the mysterious, hoary past, the warden of ultimate knowledge in history (zuurde, became). The other sits at the gates of the Ulti- mate in Life. The river Hwergelmir is deeper than Urd's Well. The oldest and vastest personification known is that which makes a woman of the earth itself. With her heaven-the sky, with its sunshine, rain, and thunder-is wedded. The earth is the ob- ject and receptacle of these generative influences, and, in turn, the mother of living forms. We find at least three distinct goddesses expres- sive of the earth- Rinda, typifying the crust or surface; Nerthus, the mother of gods, embodying the deeper, fruitful nature of the earth; and Hel, the profoundest of all, the awful genius of the last and lowest region, at once the womb and the tomb of all life. Our word hell has only a local, not a personal, meaning. This local meaning is of the most terri- ble kind. The Revised Version of the Scriptures and a more candid philology are contributing to a truer understanding of the Greek and Hebrew concep- tions embodied in the original biblical terms. But the Saxon term never had a local meaning. The 61 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Hel. local designation, as we have seen, is Helheim. Hel is the person presiding in it. The word literally means concealed, implying the hidden, es subterranean habitation of the goddess. The horrors with which her abode was invested were simply those which Pagan fancy and fear as- sociate with death and the unknown Beyond. There are places of punishment as well as, originally, of enjoyment imagined there, although both are vague. They are not the subjects of mythological elabora- tion. The happy abodes of the dead are, in course of time, transferred to the various domiciles of As- gard. The gods, who may in the beginning have dwelt in or under the earth, now live in the sky above the earth. Helheim, in the cosmogony of the Edda, is a geological product primarily. It takes the place of Ginungagap, the primitive, azoic chaos from which the fair formations of the world were upheaved. Throughout the Asen regime it retains this character of the telluric source and goal of all visible forms, animate and inanimate. It is vaster than the Hebrew Sheol or the Greek The Saxon Hades. It is the place of departed spirits Hell. only incidentally and temporarily, for in the rejuvenated world, after Ragnarök, it disappears. Of Naströnd, the place of punishment there, later. The belief in an everlasting torture of condemned souls is present by inference only in the creed of our forefathers. Furthermore, the realm of Hel as an abode of departed spirits virtually appears only at the close of the Asen dynasty, at the break- ing up and crumbling away of that æon, with its sin-impaired institutions and constructions. The ultimate maternal profundity receives them back. There they slumber in a dark limbo, in a state of 62 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD- ASINGES incubation, until the eternal principle of life shall reform and recreate them. Personally, Hel is so ancient, so vast and venera- ble, and also so mysterious and profound, that my- thology has not ventured to imagine a husband for her. There could be no commensurate mate for her except the eternal All - father, and we need not look, even in Norse mythology, for a poetical stroke so bold, or a metaphysical logic so mystical, as would imagine such a union. The dictum of Hor- ace,“ Ne fas omnia scire," is acknowledged most by the boldest thinkers. The Northern Muse evinced good taste in fixing the bounds of human wit at this place. When Hel is conceived in her dark as- pect-as the gloomy, hateful matron of the grave- she has been wedded to Loki, the Satan of the Saxons, who, at the earliest stage of myth devel- opment, was merely the god of fire and warmth. When he is said, on the other hand, to have begot- ten Hel with the giantess Angurboda, the deteriora- tion in the conception is marked. Probably the hostile, destructive side of Death was alone aimed at then. There are thus two sides of Hel-death and birth. What is the universe, with all its kaleidoscopic phe- nomena, but a panorama, moving eternally from one point back again to it? At this point sits Hel. If the dead must go to her, on the other hand, the new-born babes were supposed to come from her. These two functions were separately personified. It Berchta seems conclusive that in Berchta we have and Holda. the bright or life-giving side of Hel, and in Holda the dark or death - giving side. It is easily conceivable that, in course of time, the somewhat abstract, metaphysical speculation that 63 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS combined the two aspects would yield to the more dramatic tendency towards separating them. It would require a very sombre or a very supermun- dane mood to habitually think of death while sur- rounded by sweet, prattling infancy. It is also natural, that, in this twofold personification, death should be more and more assigned to Hel, while the perennial principle of life would be artistically perfected and multiplied to various feminine incar- nations. The fact is, that not only Nerthus and Rinda, or their many equivalent characters, who were quasi extra or ante Asen in their worship, but all the Asen and Wanen goddesses proceed from the idea of the maternal, vital principle, and embody some manifestation of its perennial victory. Meanwhile, Hel, as the Persephone of the Norse Netherworld, becomes the theme of awed and excited Fancy. She is occasionally robbed of her beauty, her ho- liness, and even her aloofness, and invested with horror, repulsiveness, and even malevolence. Some- times she leaves her subterranean kingdom in her omnivorous love of killing, and then she stalks over the earth in the form of pestilence. The bridge leading to her abode is guarded by a maiden named the Môdgudhr (Soul - agony). Her hall is Môdgudhr, Ganglat, and called misery, her dish is hunger, her * knife is greed. Her man-servant's name is Ganglat (Lazy); her maid - servant's, Ganglöt (Slow). On the whole, however, the solemnity of the other world maintains its sway in the portrayal of her, and she is thought of as vast, brooding, and dispassionate. The waves of the world - life lie down, the echo of their rampant clamor scarce Ganglöt. 64 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD-ASINGES Cher sombre calificant whent of the woher a reaching her sombre cavern. Great and small are alike meek and insignificant when they come to her. Even the celestial tournament of the gods is a ripple only, or a bubble, which elicits neither a smile nor a tear. NERTHUS (JÖRDH) Procession Neithus. The most notable goddess on the mainland of Germany in the first centuries of the Christian era was this deity, plainly the mother - earth in its fruitful maternal energy. The Celtic name, Nerthus, signifies strength. She was conceived as a benef- icent, motherly patroness of men, now resembling the Cybele, or Bona Dea of the Romans, now the Egyptian Isis. Tacitus describes the pro- of cession annually held in her honor. On an island in the ocean stood a sacred grove, wherein her car was kept. When the god- dess was supposed to have arrived on her annual visit and to be seated in the wagon, covered with a white sheet, which no one save the priest was al- lowed to touch, the latter hitched a span of cows to the car, and the procession began. It was highly festive and triumphal. At its approach men ar- rayed themselves in their holiday attire, adorned their houses, and gave themselves up to rejoicing. War is suspended. All weapons and iron utensils are locked away, and, for the time, the Golden Age of peace and love is come again. But the goddess tires of her outing and wishes to return. Arrived at her grove, the wagon, the sheet, and the goddess herself (probably an idol) are washed in the sea, after which the attendants are swallowed up by the waves. This ending is, to our minds, hardly con- sonant with the kindly spirit of the ceremony, yet 65 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS who shall deny that, despite this Pagan feature, the general effect of such a celebration may have been refining? Some surmise that the car must have been a ship, in order to get to the mainland, and that it was there placed on wheels. Astholm As the alma inater earth, Nerthus has been re- for earth Northus has been garded as a mother of gods. We must bear in mind that her worship flourished before the Asen genealogy was established or the Asen cult re- duced to a system. This latter process was con- summated in Scandinavia. The worship of this goddess among the Suebi, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Suiones—the ancestors of the modern Swedes- together with the presence of the boar and the bullock as her sacrificial animals, as well as Freir's, point to a connection between her and this mari- time and Wanen god. For these reasons Niördr has been fixed upon as her husband, and Freir and Freya are believed to be her children. There seems sufficient ground that Jördh (German Erde, earth), among many other more obscure names, may be applied to her. Jördh is the mother of Thôr. However, we need not be more solicitous about genealogy than the myth itself was. Genealogy is, with it, always subservient to symbology. Very often some family link-mother or father, son or daughter-is dropped to make room for the en- grossing symbolical importance of the particular personification under consideration. RINDA The name of this goddess (German, Rinde; Eng- lish, rind) points to the crust of the earth, and would explain her meaning to be a superficial revival of 66 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD-ASINGES Rinda. Nerthus, the fruitful earth goddess. The fruit-pro- ducing soil, or top layer of the earth, would find its recognition in her. Later treatments, however, have seized upon the frozen ice-crust as her dis- tinctive habitat, and have illustrated, in her wed- ding with Odin, the reluctant yielding of the win- try ice-crust to the animating, melting embraces of the celestial power. The account of Saxo Gram- maticus has been alluded to. As a sample of post- mythic, historical fiction it may be of interest. After the fall of Baldur, it is predicted by the Finnish chief Rostioph (Horse-thief) that Othin will wed with Rinda, the daughter of the king of the Ruthenes (Russians), and that their offspring (Wali) is des- Historicizing in tined to avenge the death of Baldur. (The Legend of Finns were regarded by the Norsemen as de magicians, who are the invariable succes- sors of the superstitious side of the gods. The Russians, of course, are the representatives of the gigantic, frozen North.) Othin approaches the Russian king first as a warrior and general. In his disguise, with the immortal slouch-hat pulled down over one eye, we recognize Odin's usual human in- cognito. He puts to flight the enemies of the king, and then, as a reward, claims the hand of the prin- cess. The father willingly consents, but the un- bending Rinda gives him, instead of the desired kiss, a Muscovite box on the ear. Then he as- sumes the form of a goldsmith, and seeks to win her favor with presents of rings and bracelets. This time the cold-hearted beauty varies the repulsion with a slap on the mouth, which, we may believe, was not a gentle love-tap. For the third time he assails her coyness, this time in the appearance of a handsome young cavalier. But the unrelenting 67 young lady now fairly and squarely knocks him down. Having resisted the three conventional suits of valor, wealth, and beauty, she is plainly insensible to legitimate methods, wherefore he touches her with his magic wand and deprives her of her reason. Now he reappears in female garb, under the character of a wise woman, named Wecha, professing skill to cure the young queen. He is received into the circle of her attendants, and ulti- mately achieves the object of his suit. Wali, or Bous, is born, and takes the place of Baldur, the departed god of light. The fable, in its main features, is only a new ver- sion of the old, old story which epitomizes all Norse mythology, the importuning of winter's hold on the earth by the genial progress of heaven. The first disguise is a Thôr - like sally of spring ; the second holds out the promise of the golden happy evolutions and labors of summer. Finally the baffled god must resort to the exercise of all his actual, melting magic. FRICCA OR FRIGGA Confusion of We now come to the Asen goddesses proper. The foremost place belongs to the queen of heaven, the spouse of Odin. There is not a more disturb- ing obscurity in our mythology than the confusion between Fricca and Freya. At first view Fricca with it seems that one of the noble ladies is 4 fated to be swallowed up by the other- the only part in the sad business for us being the choice of the victim. Without carrying the con- fusion or distress any further into the mind of the Freya. 68 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD-ASINGES reader, it may be sufficient to state at once that no sacrifice is necessary. The intermingling of the two characters is found in the secondary field of mythological research, that of popular reminiscence, consisting of surviving folk-lore, proverbs, provin- cial and rural customs and superstitions. Out of these ravelled strands and tangled bits of thread German mythologists have been compelled to weave their Ariadne's cord and trace their labyrinthine course out into the open of a national system. When we consult the primary source of our knowl- edge of the subject-1.., the Icelandic collection of sagas, we find the two characters distinctly enough separated. At the celestial court of Asgard each occupies her own proper position-Fricca, the undis- puted one of Odin's consort and queen; Freya, that of chief princess of the blood-although in the pop- ular esteem and the actual worship accorded to them their respective functions are often inter- changed. In Fricca (the Married One) the fecund mater- nal principle has met with its final crystallization. We have traced its humanizing progress through the stages marked by Hel, Nerthus, and Rinda. In Fricca, the feminity, travailing for freedom, has cast off the last remaining envelope of the Nature- myths and the flavor of earthiness, and steps forth into an incarnation of pure womanliness and moth- erliness. That she typifies the earth is a reminis- cent abstraction, a mere heraldic device in her escutcheon, something that she might smilingly al- lude to in a cosey evening talk with Odin. Not only her escutcheon, but her crown and sceptre, too, are held in abeyance, put away into a garret lum- ber-room of symbolism, like the royal insignia of 69 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS some sensible modern monarchs, who dress and live like other people. The queen and the goddess yield to the matron in her. Withal, there is some- thing so kindly and sympathetic, so sweetly domestic and motherly about her, that we feel as if we could easily and profitably worship her, that when we knelt before her it would be, not to mumble runic prayer formulas or waft incense fumes, but to kiss her hand and lay our head on her knees, and confide our troubles to her affectionate heart, sure that the di- Motherhood vine glory of her eyes would be veiled by of God. the tear of sympathy. It is in this crav- ing for divine mother-love that the key to the enig- ma must be found that almost half of Germany clings to the religion of the Madonna. The moth- erhood of God, coldly overlooked by early Protes- tantism, is only now finding renewed recognition. What a genuine German or English mother she is! Juno's harsh imperiousness, ostentatious im- posingness, and shrewish, amazonian exhibitions of power are lacking here. Such a grande dame would make as intractable a Saxon housewife as the wooden horse of Troy would make a lady's palfrey. And it is the typical Saxon housewife that is en- be throned in Fricca, the hallowed woman- Fricca, the , Ideal of hood, whose sweet presence transfigures heaven into a home, and home into a heaven. Yet she is a goddess, every inch of her -truly all the more a goddess because her sway is quiet and refined and intrinsic, requiring no melo- dramatic machinery to set it forth, no stilted tragedy cothurnus in which to stalk. So essentially and nat- urally is the wife and mother the tutelary divinity of the Saxon penetralia and arcana, that Fricca's hall, as a matter of course, is found to be the centre of Motherhood. 70 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD- ASINGES tic model is not to betars that fcovered Asgard life. There she is represented, like Penel- ope, sitting amid her attendants, holding the distaff, her real sceptre. Among her attendants are Ful-, Fulla, Hlin. win la (Plenty), the keeper of her jewels; and Hlin, the mediatress between her and men. Fricca's distaff was discovered and vener- ated in the three stars that form Orion's girdle. That she is not to be understood as a mere domes- tic model is perceived in the fact that she is con- sulted by Odin in all affairs of state-for she is gift- ed with the knowledge of all things in the world- and in her active participation in public events. Here her special part is that of protectress. A pretty story is told of her labor in this capacity, il- lustrating her labor as a kind of mother of God, who intercedes in behalf of her devout protégés, and also the charming, womanly tact and "man- agement” of her mighty spouse. It is one of the favorite traditions of the Lombards. One day Wodan sat on his throne, when the chiefs of the Vandals, Ambri and Assi, approached and Lombard prayed for victory over the Winiler, who, Legend. though a subject tribe, had refused trib- ute. They promised to make his altars smoke with the blood of horses if he heard their prayer. Wodan promised to grant the victory to those he should first see on the following morning, and urged the Vandals to be up betimes. Before retiring, he teasingly reported his promise to Fricca, because he knew her to favor the Winiler as the weaker party. Wodan was sleeping the sleep of the just, while Fricca waked and wept. She loved the more gen- tle and refined Winiler, who were wont to bring her, as sacrifices, the fruits of the field. While she reflected on their imminent fate, Gambara, a queen 7I THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS of the Winiler, approached with Ibor and Ago, her sons, and prayed for her intercession in their be- half. This increased the distress of her compas- sionate heart. But suddenly she looked up, smiling through her tears, while she instructed Gambara thus : At the first streak of dawn on the morrow the Winiler were to range themselves towards the north and west. Further, the women were to ac- company the men, in order to make their ranks outnumber the otherwise larger host of their ene- mies, and, to conceal their sex, they were to loose their "back hair" and bring it forward over their cheeks, and depend it from their chins to resemble beards. Whether the goddess slept that night we are not informed. At any rate, she was awake be- fore her husband, and, while he still dozed, she moved the couch around so that when he opened his eyes and looked out of the windows of Hlidski- alf his gaze was westward. There stood the army of the Winiler near by, and in the front ranks the strange warriors, with beards flowing down over their breasts. The Vandals had marshalled them- selves in battle order towards the south and the east in order to meet the sun and be first in the eye of the god. “What strange long-beards are these ?” he cried, rubbing his eyes. “Long - beards (Longo - bardi) thou hast named them, Longo- bardi they shall hence be called, and since thine eyes have first alighted on them theirs is the victory," gleefully answered Fricca, while a smile brighter than the dawn played on her fair face. Wodan joined in the laugh, and declared himself fairly worsted. The Vandals were signally defeated, and thus the Longo- bardi became free. The celestial couple, we may 72 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD-ASINGES suppose, then gayly went to breakfast, where Fricca, while pouring out the mead, with many a sly glance told the joke on All-fadur to the huge-limbed Ein- heriar and the golden-haired Valkyrien, and the silvery laugh of these, with the intonating guffaw of those summoned-Thôr and Freir and Baldur, and all the shining crew of Gladsheim-to hear the diverting recital. We yet can hear their immortal laughter which celebrates the truth that woman's gentleness and wit are supreme. It would be a petty piece of pedantic spite, an act worthy of a grammarian's soul, to spoil the de- lightful story by objecting that Longo-bardi means not Long-beards, but Long-spears. Yet there have been such mean, grovelling souls ! Fricca's palace is Fensal (Sea-hall), a recurrence of the confusion with the Wanen character of Freya, daughter of Niördr. The drowned find " entrance there. Fricca's visits to her marine castle must be brief, as she is never missed from Odin's side, where she shares with him equal- ly the government of the world, and the dead, par- ticularly the faithful lovers and married people, for her distinctive sphere is pure, wedded love, and the sacred relationships of the home. Fensal. FREYA OR FROWA That Frigga and Freya have been identified among the ancient Germans is evident from the two names which have the same meaning. Frigga is derived from the Low German form, friggen, and Freya from the High German form of the verb freien, to wed. We have frequently found occa- sion to observe the important historical fact that, 73 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Christian the Myth. while the German and Scandinavian gods are the same, their ceremonial and literary crystallization transpired in Scandinavia, not in Germany. The parent country was earlier constrained to yield up its worship to Christian proselyting. Thus its per- sonages and institutions must be pieced together from scattered fragments, surviving in those names and sayings — oral, local, and traditional, that the strong, racial fondness will never permit to die—and after passing through the disintegrating medium of the new religion. This latter factor has not yet been considered in our study. It is an instructive one. The Roman Catholic foreign missionary of on the early Middle Age—a St. Boniface, the Treatment of " Apostle of Germany," a St. Patrick, the “Apostle of Ireland”—was neither poet nor philosopher nor scientist. He saw neither truth nor beauty in the “Paganism” before him. His one passionate zeal was to root it out. If he had any scholarly interest in any form of Paganism, it would be for that of Greece and Rome-and it is only fair to him to say that he had not that. Thus the bearing of the Church towards the old religion was uncompromisingly, undiscerningly hostile. Those beliefs which survived the Church sought to make harmless by banishing them to its ever- convenient and ever - capacious Inferno. “Facilis descensus Averni” describes more than one kind of descent. In other words, it made of the gods, who would not die, devils, demons, witches, and all the other infernal rabble with which the mediaval Church abounded. We should not blame it too much, remembering that Milton, from Protestant zeal, did the same thing with the gods of the Med- iterranean peoples. On the other hand, some of 74 THE T QUEENS OF ASGARD- ASINGES 7 IN Freya, a the survivors of the German Pantheon met with a happier fate, being transformed into Christian saints and angels. There is an obvious modicum of truth in both kinds of metempsychosis. Yet when we come to know the gracious Freya, the brightest or- Christian nament of the Asgard court, we cannot sup- She-devil. press our resentment at the monkish malice that clumsily degraded her to a Christian she-devil. We can appreciate the severe Christian morality which, in such hands, must condemn the sensual side of beauty and love, as expressed in a Venus Libitina, to the place of a devil. Modern art and literature have not yet solved the ques- tion whether beauty and love are gods or devils. But Freya is not a Venus Libitina. That she survives in this capacity is proved by many popular allusions, and especially by the un- lucky character attached to the day of the last week in which her name lives. This superstition antedates the death of our Lord, com- monly held to be its source. In Asgard, then, Freya is both personally and symbolically distinguished from Fricca. She is the sister of Freir, and shares with him the province of light and life. She came into the Asen circle as a hostage from the Wanen, in which transfer the subtle, mystic truth may be hinted at, that the in- ward, essential quality of beauty and brightness that the Wanen represent becomes the aggressive, regnant quality that the Asen embody. Her Wanen character is further evidenced in the name she is frequently known by - Frowa, woman. und The "frou-frou," or rustling of a woman's skirts, would seem a very slight noise among the Frowa. 75 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS multitudinous and clamorous sounds in the world. The footfall of the rabbit on the dry leaves of the woods, the sough of the evening zephyr whispering in the pine-tree boughs, the gentle whir of a bird's wings at dawn of day, are akin to it. Yet neither Odin's tempestuous wild chase, nor Thôr's hammer, nor Oegir's oceanic roar are comparable to it in effective power. It is next in power to “the still small voice," just as Freya in Asgard is next in power to Odin. Is it next to this, truly ? Who can fathom the secret of the magic that lies in the mere grace and beauty of woman? The mood of the devotee is not calm enough for cold analysis, and yet what other mood has man ever been able to maintain? The utterances of poets are ecstatic exclamations mostly.. If the accident of physical perfection were all of grace and beauty, the subject would forever baffle reason, maddening and compelling the senses only. But it is not. The charm is in the mind, which moulds the body into an artistic vehicle for itself. Among the Greeks, not only poetry but the plastic arts early entered into the service of mythology. Much of our interest in this is really admiration for the masterpieces of Greek sculpture and painting that have immortalized certain gods and goddesses. This is notably true of Venus Aphrodite. Among the Saxons this artistic auxiliary is wanting. It is only within our own times that painters and sculp- tors have treated subjects from the Northern sys- tem. While the eclipse of Freya by Venus has thus been perpetuated, on the other hand she has been kept freer from a sensuous degradation. She also is the incarnation of womanly beauty, with all that it means, both for good and for evil. Odhr is her 76 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD-ASINGES Odhr. Adonis. She was married to him among the Wa- nen, but had to abandon him when she came to the o Asen. The separation is said to have pressed golden tears from her eyes. How- ever, as with many an ancient and modern beauty, the early matrimonial venture did not interfere with her resuming her maiden name and status, or with the return of her good spirits. We have learned that the active exercise of natu- ral principles was confined by the Saxons to male personifications, so that we should not look among them for such exquisite, regal characters as Pallas, Aphrodite, or Artemis, to each of whom the whole autonomy of a mental kingdom is assigned. Freya is the only female member of the Asen family who approaches such sovereignty. It is that of beauty and love. Collaterally she reigns over the fair season of the year and all benign things that min- ister to love. As the goddess of spring, the giants seek to get her into their possession. In her asso- ciation with Odin she seems to assume functions that might be expected to belong to Fricca. Thus it is she who is recognized as the leader and mistress of the Valkyries, and who serves as a kind of Hebe in Walhalla. She receives half of those fallen in Folkwang. battle into her palace, Folkwang (the Sessrumnir. Populous Abode), the chief hall of which is Sessrumnir (the Many - seated). On the whole, these features of the sketch tend to raise her as the image of pure beauty to a position of independent um and regnant supremacy beside Odin, while Beauty the Complement Fricca is associated with him as co-mon- rutharch by virtue of wifehood and mother- hood. The myth seems to teach that beauty is also truth, that the æsthetic is as divine and spirit- of Truth. THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS ual as the ethic, and that a belief, to be current coin, must bear the one as obverse, the other as reverse. Her connection with the dead and with Hel, of whom she is sometimes viewed as a rejuvenation, intimates the immortality of love. She is pictured as standing in a car, like Thôr's, drawn by a pair of huge cats. An article of jewellery owned by her, Brisinga- men, the meaning of which is obscure, plays a rôle in Brisingamen. Asgard as romantic and sensational as the ** diamond necklace at the court of the Bour- bons. It was a golden collar, or some kind of costly neckwear. Many stories are told about the manner of her obtaining, losing, and regaining it. Dwarfs, of course, were the fashioners of it. All the gods were interested in its preservation. Once it was pilfered by the eternal marplot and bête noire Loki, and then there was indeed the devil to pay until it was restored. Some have interpreted it to mean the verdure, the chief ornament of the goddess of summer, which is robbed by the ardent, fiery god of heat, Loki, and restored by the god of rain, Heimdall. This may have been the original sub- stance of the myth, although in the halcyon days of Asgard life the allegory has given way to the story, with its genuine human dramatic interest. It is in this period that we must look for her true portrait, for some of the post-Eddic sagas have de- graded her character with aspersions of sensuality. This is inevitable with a personage whose stock-in- trade is beauty. Even in these decadent concep- tions she does not descend to the level of a Venus- at most only to that of a Helen or a Mary Queen of Scots. In the saga of Olaf Trygvasson the story of Bris- 78 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD-ASINGES ingamen is related in the later flippant tone. Here Freya is also introduced as Odin's consort. The four dwarts--Alfrig, Dvalin, Berling, and Grer-have wrought the trinket in their smithy and give it to her in return for certain undue favors. Odin learns of this, and commands Loki to get possession of it. But Freya kept her bower locked. Loki trans- formed himself into a fly, and sought for an open- ing to get in. He needed one only large enough to admit the air, for fire requires air. At last he found the slightest crack in the roof. Through this he glided inside. Freya and her attendants were asleep. The necklace was on her neck, but the side containing the lock lay beneath. So Loki changed himself into a flea and stung her on her cheek. At this she turned in her sleep, and the lock becoming exposed, Loki reassumed his proper shape, deftly unlocked and slipped it off, going out of the door with it to Odin. Thus was this fair Imogen robbed. But she afterwards received it back from Odin, like Shakespeare's heroine, evidently establishing her innocence. It would be an idle conjecture whether a lovely woman was created to represent the manifold func- tions assigned to Freya, or that these are tributes to the beauty and love of woman. It must suffice to know that every region of the universe contrib- utes to this queen's royal domain. Every species of life is present with its gift, as are the fairies at the birth of a peerless princess. The moon reap- pears in her, as the sun in her brother, Freir. Sum- mer arrays her with beauty and delight. The mer- maids in the green, grotted chambers of her palace, Folkwang, call her queen. The Valkyries, over the turmoil of the battle-field, hail her as their mistress. 79 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS There the warrior with his dying gaze beholds her and dies happily. For even the gloomy features of Hel yield to her fair face in the horrible caverns of the Netherworld. In Asgard she is the bright particular star." All Nature, from heaven to hell, from Niflheim to Muspelheim, brings its most ex- quisite bloom that she may adorn herself therewith. Simrock associates the name Qdhr with Odin, and suggests mind or sensation as its meaning. Grimm finds an allusion in him to Kwasir, the spirit or personification of poetry, which wanders over the earth.' Then Freya, who, as Vanadis, seeks Odhr, would mean poetical longing or feeling. She is said to have found him in the far South. Why may we not conclude that the German longing for the sunny South is expressed in this illusive quest, a longing which Heine has described in his poem of a snow-covered fir dreaming of a palm in the South, and which has found historical expression in the Välkerwanderungen, when German hordes sought homes in Italy, Spain, and even Africa ? Of course, Freya means more than this. She has many names-Mardal, Horn, Gefu, Syr, Vanadis — which she assumed among the various nations to which she came in search of Odhr. But when our fathers combined all things fair and soft- ening and reassuring in her they called her Frowa, woman. GERDA Freir once seated himself on Hlidskialf, Odin's exalted throne, and permitted his gaze to sweep the Myth of landscape northward. There he beheld Gerda. a house in the midst of a high hedge, and a maiden opening the door to go in. When she 80 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD-ASINGES lifted her hand to the latch, the sky, the waters, and the land reflected from the dazzling whiteness of her arm, and all the beauty of the earth shone forth from her. Freir was smitten to the heart with her beauty, and thus his presumption was punished. When he returned to the society of the gods he spake not a word, but went about gloomy and preoccupied. His trouble depressed them all, though none ventured to question him. At last his father, Niördr, called Skirnir, his son's servant, and commissioned him to do so. Skirnir reluctantly Skirnir's obeyed. Freir readily told his grief, and Ride added : “Thou shalt repair to this maid- en and urge my suit with her, and bring her back with thee as mine." Skirnir consented on condi- tion that the god would lend him his sword for the journey. Freir gave him not only the sword, “which of its own accord swang itself against the brood of giants," but his horse and the ring, Draupnir, from which every ninth night eight other rings were wont to drop. To these in- signia Odin added the magic wand, Gabantein. Thus Skirnir fared forth, having further provided himself with eleven golden apples from Iduna's store. Day and night he rides until he reaches the impenetrable hedge, guarded by fiercely barking dogs. His horse clears it at a bound, and, unmind- ful of the dogs, he gallops on to the house. There he brings his master's suit before the maid. But she rejects the god's overtures of love. Skirnir offers her the ring and the golden apples. She re- fuses. Then he draws the sword and flourishes it over her head. Unquailingly she defies danger and force. At last he resorts to the magic wand, and, amid dreadful imprecations, threatens to touch 81 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS her with it. The imprecations are to the effect that she shall be forever debarred from the society of man, from the solace of love and wedded happi- ness, that she shall be held imprisoned and exiled among the Frost-giants, and suffer the curse of lone- ly old age-impatience, longing, and remorse. Al- ready he had cut the rune Th—Thurs, or Frost- giant, the symbol of her awful fate--and lifted the wand, ready to utter the formula which would ren- der the rune effectual, and bring down the wand to fix the irrevocable ban, when the coy maiden re- lented, and promised to meet her lover after nine Tryst at nights in the grove Barri (the Verdant), Barri. at tryst, to give him her heart and hand. Joyfully Skirnir rides back to Asgard and reports the promised rendezvous to Freir. The happy but impatient god exclaims : “Long is one night, longer are two. How may I three endure ? Oft me seemeth a month not so long As half a night of waiting.” But, like every lover, he survives the suspense, and, at the appointed time, is happily united with the lady of the glistening arms. This lovely myth is but another variation of the central theme in the climatic Nature-system of the North. The interpretation is not difficult. Frier here is not narrowly the Sun - god, or the god of Love, but more widely the god of vernal fruitful- ness. Gerda is neither the sprouting grain nor the Aurora Borealis, as has been surmised, but the earth herself. She is held imprisoned by the mighty, unruly sovereigns of the North, the wintry Frost- giants. The hedge around her house may indicate 82 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD- ASINGES the ice. In some versions of the story it is either supplanted or supplemented by a Wafurlogi (Ger- Wafurlogi. man, Waberlohe), a wall of flickering fire. sa The Waberlohe recurs in the Nibelungen saga, where Odin kindles it around the sleeping Brunhild. It probably signifies the forbidding bar- riers of death. In Gerda's case the wintry sleep of the earth is so profound as to be an actual though passing sleep of death, an imprisonment in the Netherworld. But within her tomblike dungeon she yet lives, and is accessible to the love-messages of celestial, vernal warmth. The dogs are the storm - winds which howl around her abode. Her father is 1. Gymir, a surname of Oegir, the god of Gymir.-Beli. the wintry sea. Her brother is Beli (the Bellower), the vernal thunder-storm, here conceived not Thôr-like, but Thurs-like. The former Freir is said to bribe with gold—the golden light; the lat- ter he slays with his sword—the sunbeam. Gerda seems a member of the hostile family of giants, but she is really a prisoner. Her reluctance to enter- tain Freir's offer proceeds from fear of her family. Skirnir (the Enlivener) is the outrider of the Vernal god-i.2., the early, melting breeze of spring. He scales the hedge and even penetrates the fire- wall of Hel. When he reaches the white-armed fair one, he seeks to elicit love responses with the seductive gifts of the ring—the self - multiplying synıbol of fecundity-and the apples of Iduna, the symbol of rejuvenation. Then he threatens with the stroke of the sword—the sunbeam. Finally he suspends over her the horrible danger of having her deathly imprisonment perpetuated. At this, Gerda's true love is aroused and alarmed. She 83 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS consents to wed after nine nights — namely, the nine winter months, in the vale of Barri the Ver- dant – when Nature shall have begun to grow green. This is one of the numerous annual myths of the North; for the union of Freir and Gerda is of yearly recurrence, like the procession of Nerthus, and countless' other celebrations and elaborations of the same topic. We can only wonder at the fer- tility of the Norse imagination, which could com- pose so many various and beauteous modifications out of this rather monotonous air. Gerda can scarcely be called a steady habitué of Asgard. Indeed, all the royal ladies, except good, domestic Mother Fricca, were much given to travel and change of climate, and visiting health resorts, like the royal ladies of Europe and the rich ladies of America to-day. Skirnir is sometimes taken as Freir himself. What became of the god's sword in this courtship is un- known, but at "the Twilight of the Gods” it is missed. Loki jeeringly says to Freir, apropos of Skirnirsför (“Skirnir's Ride"): C TIT. “With gold thou boughtest Gymir's daughter, And gavest to Skirnir thy sword. When Muspel's sons through Myrkwidr ride, Wherewith wilt thou conquer, unhappy one?"! IDUNA A new embodiment of the recurring vital, ger- minant principle in Nature is this goddess. On her Nature side she typifies the green foliage ; on her Culture side, spiritual rejuvenation. She is ac- counted the daughter of Iwaldis, the chief of the 84 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD- ASINGES Youth. race of dwarfs, who altogether with their subter- ranean ingenuity darkly personify the hidden effi- cient life energies of the earth. The one beautifully suggestive and many-wise significant circumstance of her existence is that in Poetry the Asgard she is wedded to Bragi, the god of Renewer of poetry. Poetry-2.6., contemplation of the beautiful, lofty enthusiasm, ideality of view and feeling and aspiration-transfigures the commonplace, work-day aspects of earth and life, renews our zest, and preserves our hearts from aging. The poetical soul never grows old. The gods preserve their youth by eating of the apples, which Iduna is warden of. . As the culmination of physical and spiritual youth and greenth, she is the special object of the giants' evil desires. The following myth will illus- trate this: The three Asen-Odin, Loki, and Hönir (the lat- ter a shadowy figure, a brother of Odin, but a kind Iduna's of Roi sans terre, who, through his de- Capture. parture, as hostage to the Wanen, com- pletely disappears from the scene)-once took a journey across the mountains and arid, waste coun- try, where they soon suffered for fare. But on en- tering a valley they discovered a herd of oxen. They helped themselves to one, and, kindling a fire, proceeded to boil him. When they supposed that he was cooked enough, they took off the cover and found that he was not yet done. Again they wait- ed and looked. When they found that the stew had made no more headway than before, they be- gan to discuss the strange occurrence. While they talked they heard a voice above them in an oak- tree, which said that he, the speaker in the tree, 85 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS was the cause of the delay. Looking up, they dis- covered an eagle, very large, who said that if they promised to give him part of the stew he would soon have their dinner ready. To this they con- sented. At once he alighted on the ground beside the fire and took the two haunches and both shoul- ders as his portion. Loki, enraged at this greed, seized a stick and thrust it into the eagle's body. At this the huge bird flew up, while Loki's hands clung to the end of the stick. The eagle flew along so closely to the ground that Loki's feet dragged over the stones and bushes. Finding his hands fastened to the stick, he became alarmed, and begged the eagle to release him. But the eagle said that he should never get free unless he en- gaged to bring Iduna with her apples out of As- gard. This Loki was fain to vow. Thereupon his hold was loosed, and he returned to his companions, to whom he did not relate the oath. At the appointed time he decoyed Iduna into the woods, under the pretext of having found some re- markable apples there, and also prevailed on her to take some of her immortal apples along to com- pare them with those in the forest. When Iduna entered the woods, the giant, Thiassi, suddenly swooped down on her in the form of the eagle and bore her away in his talons to Thrymheim, his fast- ness. At Iduna's disappearance the Asen grew old and gray. They met, and anxiously consulted. When it was ascertained that she had been seen last in Loki's company, he was summoned and threatened with torture and death if he failed to tell her whereabouts. Alarmed, he told the whole story, and promised to go in quest of her on condition 86 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD- ASINGES that Freya loaned him her falcon disguise. Pro- vided with this, he winged his way northward to Jötunheim and alighted in Thiassi's abode. The giant happened to be absent, rowing on the sea. Loki quickly transformed Iduna into a nut, and flew away with her towards Asgard. But Thiassi, returning on the instant, doffed his sailor's garb, donned his eagle-shirt, and gave pursuit. When the gods saw the falcon flying, and the eagle be- hind him, they went out into the court-yard with an armful of shavings. Loki reached the court-yard first and dropped the nut, out of which the fair goddess of youth immediately sprang. The eagle, in his headlong flight, shot over the wall, when the Asen put fire to the shavings, and his pinions were singed so much by the flame that he could not es- cape. Thereupon they slew him. His eyes they threw into the sky afterwards, for the sake of pro- pitiating his daughter, Skadhi, and formed two stars of them. This is another allegory of the year. Giants in the form of eagles are common images of storm- winds. The stem thryn, or thruum, in Thrymheim, signifies thunder. There is a giant Thrym, of whom we shall learn more in the account of Thôr's advent- ures. Thrymheim accordingly means the storm- swept, reverberating, wooded, mountain region. Thiassi is a wind. The thunder in the name of his abode must refer to the autumnal equinox, with its late, destructive thunder-storms. The remain- ing features of the fiction are explainable from these premises. The interference with the cooking is caused by the wind blowing the fire from under the pot. As Gerda's marriage describes the vernal re- lease of the earth, Iduna's rape describes its autum- THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS nal imprisonment. The aging of the gods at the disappearance of the verdure, typified in Iduna, is an allusion to the bleakness and the grayness of autumn and winter. Loki's double part in the be- trayal and in the restoration is inherent in the Pro- tean versatility of fire. Of this later. In this in- stance he evidently means the south wind. The particle Id in Iduna corresponds to our par- ticle Re, and always means, therefore, again, re- turn, renewal. With the central idea of the rejuvenation of Nature projecting in all directions, into all divine provinces, there is necessarily much overlapping of divine functions. This is found to occur as well in the metaphorical sphere, into which the Nature- myth evolves. Thus we shall see that the apples Apples of of Iduna, by a mystic, psychical me- Iduna. tonymy, become the liquid Odhrärir, the drink of poetry and immortality. By the same process Iduna is sometimes identified with Gunn- lödh, sometiines with Urd, inasmuch as the wa- ters of Urd's Well also possess rejuvenating prop- erty. On the lower plane of physical illustration these delicate, airy creations-Gerda, Iduna, Nánna, and others—are little more than personified figures of speech, with too little flesh and blood to enlist human interest. When the annual myth widens into the cosmical and the physical phenomena of the seasons roll away like stage curtains to make way for the moral drama of Time, we shall find these allegorical characters invested with firm out- lines, with genuine humanity, capable of moving us as truly as Ophelia and Desdemona-all the more capable because, in addition to their compact, wom- k of Lina is vith mossess 88 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD-ASINGES anly verisimilitude, their fateful situation is uni- versal and vicarious. The allegory retreats behind the tragedy, and the highest end of imaginative character creation is gained-i. l., the oblivion of the fictional illusion. The literary greatness of our mythology appears in its dramatic action, not in the costuming of its dramatis persona. There we shall meet with Iduna again. NANNA, NANDA This lovely creature is perhaps the most exquisite flower in the entire bouquet of Asen goddesses, the most exquisite in the world of bloom, the most ex- quisite in the world of action. She appeals to us by her helpless loveliness. The Saxon ideal of woman- hood culminates in her. She has no power save her delicate beauty and her unresisting suffering. Our experience of this rough world tells us, at the first sight of her, that she is fated to suffer, to bear the very brunt and sharpened spear-thrust of retribu- tion in her heart, because she is, of all, the most innocent and inoffensive. Her beauty is so modest, so unconscious, so entirely without demand of recog- nition, that she would be most willing to have been ".... born to blush unseen, And waste her sweetness on the desert air." Yet her mere existence is a fact, her becoming an action that, in spite of her shrinking, lays hold on and projects her into the din of the world - fight. No matter how blushingly, she must fulfil the law of her being; the womanly in her must arise and respond to the knock of the manly when this comes. It is the fairest and purest, this manly principle 89 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS that, by the subtle affinity of love, seeks her out, being no other than Baldur, the Light in its sub- The Daughter limated, purely supermundane essence. of the Bud. And she is the daughter of Neps (German Knospe, the bud), the daughter of the bud. Can fancy and language go further in the refinement of bloom? She is akin to the rainbow tints that nestle in an ocean shell, or the evanescent colors of the sunset sky. Nay, she is more exquisite, be- cause she is the final distillation of the gross proc- esses of earth-life. It is most meet, therefore, that a production so fairy-like and Psyche-like-the most ethereal blossom of earth-should be mated with the most ethereal personification of the celestial world. There is a lesson contained in this union, than which there is nothing more profound or delicate. Baldur, as the pure, basking Light, forms the local and moral capstone in the Asen arch. The whole personnel culminates in him as its final, con- joining apex. He holds it all together at the top. It was necessary, therefore, that his character should be kept intact, that he should remain absolutely holy and self-contained. He should maintain the highest purpose of divin- ity, to move and vivify all things without being him- self moved or changed by anything. He should remain“ the Father of lights, with whom is no varia- bleness, neither shadow of turning:" But Baldur and the incipient disintegration of the Asen 2. structure.occurs right here. When Nanna was called into being by the unconscious kiss of the Light-god, instead of holding serenely to his course in his upper sphere, it is said that he looked down and beheld her while at bath-i. l., at the dawn, when she was bathed in dew. The sight of her Love of Baldur and Nanna. 90 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD- ASINGES charms inspired him with love. This was the be- ginning of guilt. This is the admixture of sin in love. No matter how sweet, how gentle it was, a Beginning shock went through the whole cosmic of Sin. frame, shaking it down to the hoary abode of Hel. Baldur was pure no longer, and his fall opened the way for the deflection or refrac- tion of his confrères. Nanda, or Nanna, signifies maiden. Herein the sensual impairment and sac- rifice of the union is also remembered-namely, the sacrifice of maidenhood to the demands of wifehood and motherhood. Is this all morbidly subtle ? Hardly, to the serious thinker. Something of the kind is taught in the beautiful story of Cupid and Psyche. We should seek to compass the general lesson that mythology aims at in the weddings of “the sons of God with the daughters of men.” The symbology revolves around the distinction between the celestial and the terrestrial. There must be an affiliation, but it must not entail any surrender of the divine aloof- ness and equipoise in the shining Higher Ones. In Freir's forfeiture of his sword, such a surrender has been observed. It may be owing to the vague influ- ence of this story of Baldur and Nanna that his character as pure Light became turbid, and he was also regarded sometimes as a War-god. Then Nanna was degraded to Courage, palpably a violation of her name and meaning, which is Modesty. Notwith- standing the sweet sin, for which they must suffer, their wedded life in Asgard is perhaps the most delicate conjugal model ever held up to the gaze of the Saxon race. She is “the daughter of Neps” to the last, but her love is stronger than death, as she refuses to survive the death of the beloved. 91 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS SKADHI It may prove a relief to our feelings to proceed from the sentimental study of Nanna's character to the contemplation of this more robust young lady. We have been introduced to Skadhi as the daughter of the storm-giant Thiassi, who lost his wings and his life through the improvised bonfire of the gods in their front yard. There is no shrink- ing, heart-breaking softness in her breezy nature. She is, and remains, a Thursen daughter, with the wild, untamed heart of her race. After her father's death, one day there blew a squall around Asgard's turrets, and when the gods looked forth, behold, there, with flying hair and rosy cheeks and gleaming eyes, stood Skadhi, armed cap-a-pie, as the old story-books used to put it, and demanded amends for her father's murder! Here was an awkward quandary. The amazon was so courageous, and withal so fresh and handsome, that it would have been ungodlike even for Thôr to at- tack her, if he had been so willed, and for aught we know the Thunder - god was away at the time on one of his skull-hammering tours. The young lady did not inquire, but defied the whole heaven of them. As usual, Loki, the Ulysses of the conclave in subtle counsel, came to the rescue. Perhaps he was anxious to save his own skin, knowing himself the chief transgressor in the Thiassi episode, and being an arrant coward. Thus he proposed to the enraged Northern beauty before the gates that she should become civil, and, letting by-gones be by- gones, adopt herself into the Asen kin by choosing 92 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD- ASINGES a husband from among them. Skadhi, who was of a marriageable age, and sensibly reflecting that any trouble she might make could not restore her dead father to life, consented. Loki stipulated that, in Skadhi's hits 10 her choice, she should see only the feet Adoption and of the candidates. Possibly he calculated Marriage. so that this would exempt him from the possibility of her embraces and future vengeance, for he is generally credited with the fabled pedal deformity of Satan. We are not told what the married ladies of Asgard said to this Turkish pro- posal. It may be that they relied on Loki's inge- nuity to devise a further scheme of escape, in case the choice fell on a husband who was not free. However, the arrangement ended happily, as it should in heaven. Skadhi came into the hall, where her eyes were blindfolded in such a manner that she could not look higher than the feet of the gods, who had taken off their boots, or sandals, and ranged themselves in line before her. Stopping, after several passages along the line, before the one with the most beautiful feet, she exclaimed : “ This is he, Baldur is without fail !” We may imagine poor Nanna about to swoon at these words. But when the bandage was removed from Skadhi's eyes, she saw that it was not Baldur, but Niördr, the elderly Wanen-god, father of Freir and Freya. Niördr, like some retired English merchant whose children have gotten into the peerage, finds his occu- pation and importance in contemplating that social triumph. It does not appear that he has anything in particular to do. His good looks, however, are well conserved. His feet suggest his Wanen beau- ty, and, being a kind of widower, and thus foot- loose, it certainly was a happy circumstance for all 93 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS concerned to marry him off to the troublesome fe- male, who was anxious to fight the whole table round. Whether she made a wry face at the disap- pointing selection we do not know, but she married him out of hand. However, this match, though made in heaven, turned out not so happy as matches made there are proverbially believed to do. It was not the disparity in age, but rather a native in- compatibility of temper and taste that estranged the pair. Niördr owned a castle in Wanaheim, Noatun, by the quiet summer sea. Unfortunately for the matter-o'-fact mind, mythology is wont to play fast and loose with such petty details as time and place. Thus, we cannot understand how a host- age should be permitted to leave the residence and go off to his provincial castle. Possibly he went out on parole, or his character as an easy-going gentleman was a sufficient guarantee of his harm- lessness. More wonderful still is the flexibility of Asgard, very much like that of some modern king- doms. Whenever through any arrangement a new member was added to the Asgard court from the Wanen, the Hrimthursen, or the dwarfs, his or her patrimony was at once annexed. Thus Thrymheim, Skadhi's castle in Jotunheim, in the very heart of the enemy's country, became Asen territory. Now Niördr and Skadhi both loved their respective homes, and when the question of where to spend the honeymoon came up, the trouble began. Skadhi A climatic wished to live on the storm-swept, wooded Mésalliance. heights, where she had gambolled in her childhood. Niördr wished to live by the balmy, dabbling and babbling waves, and listen to the singing of the swans, for he was a gentleman of quiet tastes, and, in his genteel, leisurely way, a 94 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD-ASINGES sort of poet. However, they compromised, as good married people should, to the effect that they would spend nine nights in Thrymheim and three in Noatun. Thus, they did their best, but were not happy. When they left Thrymheim Niördr sang : “Weird to me are the mountains, Not long endured I there, Nine nights only. The howling of the wolves was horrible to me Compared with the singing swans.” When they left Noatun, Skadhi sang : “I could not sleep by the shore of the sea, For the singing of the birds ; Each morning from the watery waste The sea-mew wakened me." Sea-shore This was a sad state of things—Niördr fated to shudder and Skadhi to yawn. He found that he has had married a storm-wind, and she found versus that she had married a dreaming hypo- Mountains. 1. chondriac. It was like a marriage be- tween an Esquimau maiden of Mount St. Elias in Alaska, and a Minorcan of St. Augustine. What a climatic mésalliance! What an irony of Fate! Yet the writer has known a good American couple, with their several ailments, in California, repeating this hoary contest between sea-shore and moun- tains. Here was food for the laughter of the gods. No doubt Loki laughed in his sleeve, watching them as they dragged each other miserably to and fro via Asgard. The Nature element in the story is the old one. The nine nights at Thrymheim and the three nights at Noatun are the nine winter months and the 95 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS three summer months of the North. The Wanen- god, of course, typifies the mild, balmy weather. Skadhi's transfer from the hostile camp of the giants is the most significant feature. Gerda was only a prisoner, while Skadhi is a born giantess. She is surnamed Öndurdis, the skater, thus present- ing a female counterpart of Uller. Her incorpora- tion into the Asen household indicates the partial reclaiming of the wintry North for culture. Later we find her actually married to Uller. SIF AND THRÛD Sif's Hair. The wife of Thôr should be of importance on ac- count of her mighty husband. Yet she almost dis- appears behind his stalwart figure. Only her golden hair remains notably visible. This is well known c . to signify the golden, waving grain. Her * name has, by a rather far-fetched inter- pretation, been explained in connection with her hair. Sif (German, Sippe) means Kin or Relation- ship. What more numerous kin is there than the stalks of golden grain in a harvest-field ? asks the exegete. None indeed, we humbly answer, unless it be the kin or Sippschaft of word-quibblers, who with their trite omniscence form a never - ending rotation of crops. Sif's golden hair was manufactured by the dwarfs. Loki once cut it off—i.l., the hot wind destroyed the grain-but Thôr compelled him to procure a yet finer head of hair from the dwarfs-namely, from the invisible, reproductive forces of Nature. The poor lady's hair has been robbed many times since. Modern mythologists have used it to spin fine theories about her name, some of which would, 96 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD-- ASINGES no doubt, make her hair stand on end, could she hear them. Thrûd is the daughter of Thôr and Sif. She signifies the seed. The myth has not left her un- furnished with a romance. During Thôr's absence Thrills she was betrothed to the pale-faced dwarf Betrothal Alwis. The Thunderer, on his return, determined to break off the engageinent. He made their union conditional upon the dwarf's ability to answer all questions the god might put to him. Alwis (All-knowing) boasted his knowledge of the nine worlds, with their various languages, and chal- lenged Thôr's test. But while the examination proceeded, the sun shone into the room, when the denizen of the cavern was compelled to slink away. This is a pretty clothing of the history of the seed, which, during the absence of the Summer-god, falls into the embrace of the dark powers of the under- ground regions, but in the spring is released by springing to the surface. Both Sif and Thrûd are so emphatically of the earth earthy, that we are not surprised at their Ceres and usual absence from Asgard. Perhaps at Proserpine. no other point do Greek and Norse my- thology touch each other more closely. The myth of Ceres and Proserpine is carried out more fully. Other goddesses are : Saga, who, on account of their high esteem for song, was personified by the Teutons. Her palace is Sökkwabek (the Waterfall). The Grimnismal is the only Eddaic song containing an allusion to Goddesses of her. Odin is there said to repair to her Lower Rank. hall to drink from golden cups. His character as inspirer of song is pointed to in the passage. THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Eir (the Healer) is the Norse Hygeia, invoked by the sick. Gefu, or Gefion (Anglo-Saxon Geofon, Old-Saxon Geban, the Ocean-current), is at times regarded as one of the designations of Freya, at times as the .. name of a separate divinity. She is a “May," and, like Freya, receives the souls of the unmarried. King Gylfi, of Swithiod, a tradition relates, was once so well pleased with the song of a travelling female minstrel, that he promised her a tract of land so large as four oxen could plough in one day and one night. But the improvisatrice was a god- dess, and the oxen that she employed were of the Jötun race. They ploughed so deeply that the land was torn from its roots and carried west- ward by them into the sea. Gefion called it See- land. In the place where it had stood a sound arose, which the Swedes call Lögr. This reminds us of the story of Dido. In the oxen the waves are sup- posed to be typified. Gefion is likewise a rejuvenation of Hel. Fulla (Plenty) is the companion and confidante of Fricca. She holds the distaff and guards the chest for the Asen queen. Her flowing hair is bound with a golden ribbon. Hnos (Jewel) is the daughter of Freya and Odhr. Her beauty is so elegant that all things daintily beautiful are named, after her, Hnos. Siöfn (Love) is a feminine Cupid. Her name is supposed to be connected with the German seuf- 201l, to sigh. Lofn rules over the next stage in love, that of vows. German loben, geloben, to vow. She has permission from Odin and Freya to bring true lovers together, no matter what difficul- ties stand in the way. 98 THE QUEENS OF ASGARD- ASINGES Wara (Oath) guards the sanctity of love vows, and punishes their violation. Wor, or Vor (Ware, Aware), searches the thoughts of the heart. These are all in the train of Freya. Syn guards the threshold, as well as defendants in a legal cause. Hlin protects those who are in danger. Snotra is a Grace, wise and courtly. Gna is sent out by Fricca to gather tidings from the world. These latter are Fricca's handmaidens. The list could be lengthened. It is hard to find the dividing line between mere figures of speech and genuine personifications. There are other, more prominent, goddesses of Teutonic peoples, which might be introduced here. Such are Bertha, the Spinster; Ostara (Anglo-Saxon Eostra), from which our Easter festival is derived, --- a goddess of the dawn and the spring; and Nehalen- nia, probably a more Celtic than Saxon personage. However, some of these never attained to more than a tribal or provincial establishment. Others are plainly local variations of those already consid- ered, especially Nerthus and Freya. Still others do not exceed the province of nominal abstractions. All are too much the subjects of scholarly dis- pute to afford a definite portraiture, besides being removed from our mythology as an organic whole. CHAPTER V LOKI AND HIS BROOD THE enemies of the gods should properly be di- vided into two chapters. Loki's confederates, strictly speaking, are his brood and kin. The gi- ants are allied with him only in the general and final war against the gods. In the previous skir- mishes we have seen Loki to be a genuine As, if not the most frequent sufferer from the hostility of the giants. If he is always treacherous, it is not be- fore the last onslaught that he openly turns against his associates, and even then there is no emphasis placed on his friendship for the enemy. Like all traitors, he is hated and mistrusted by both parties. This is the most suggestive feature of his charac- ter-viz., his twofold nature of a god and the chief Loki's Dual enemy of the gods. It affords us a study Nature. of practical interest. The origin of evil may be considered, per se, as a curious and specula- tive question, but as throwing light on the nature of sin it is an intensely moral, personal matter. Before all else, we should be willing to approach the thoughts of our forefathers on this subject with re- spect and docility. The true learner is no respecter of persons, but gratefully accepts truth wheresoever he finds it. Whether the apples of gold are pre- sented in vessels of silver or of earthen-ware, they are precious for their own sake. 100 LOKI AND HIS BROOD From the Sanscrit root, lug or luk, proceed the va- rious equivalents in the Indo-European languages, bearing the fundamental meaning of fire - lux, levkós, lizhaw, leuchten, Licht, light. We have seen Loki accompany Odin and Hönir in the Thiassi affair. Such a triad of patriarchal Fire the Basis gods frequently recurs. They represent of Loki. the three elements, air, water, and fire. Among the Greeks the trio, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hephæstos, stand for these elements. That Loki, or Logi, invariably designates the element fire is evident from the existence of Utgardloki, an extra mundane demonic personage or domain, standing in the same relation to Loki that Hades may hold to Hephæstos. Does this assist us in the comprehension of the la double character of Loki? That fire may Twofold Character of be both beneficent and destructive, Schil- ler has beautifully expressed in his Song of the Bell : Wohlthätig ist des Feuers Macht, wenn sie der Mensch bezähmt, bewacht, Und was er bildet, was er schafft, Das dankt er dieser Himmelskraſt, Doch furchtbar wird die Himmelskraft, wenn sie der Fessel sich entrafft, Einhertritt auf der eig’nen Spur, Die freie Tochter der Natur. Fire. How useful is the power of flame, If human skill control and tame! And much of all that man can boast, Without this child of heaven, were lost, But frightful is her changing mien, When, bursting from her bonds, she's seen To quit the safe and quiet hearth, And wander lawless o'er the earth. Translation by. S. A. ELLIOT. IOI THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Loki's Traits from Fire. While all elements have this twofold side, none so much calls for the vigilant control of man, none manifests so much of a demoniac energy as fire. The many-sided association of Loki is explicable from the elementary analogy. He is a god, for site what is more indispensable to culture than Explicable fire? His Promethean, gigantic revolt me and hostility, on the other hand, are indi- cated in the rampant, devouring rage of fire in its unfettered state. His connection with the dwarfs lies in the volcanic or Vulcanic seat and artisan im- portance of fire, his ultimate confederation with Muspelheim in the congenial heat of the torrid South. His fatherhood of Hel indicates the con- suming and vanishing of the world into smoke. Furthermore, his serpentine, insinuating insidious- ness is pictured in the stealthy, creeping treach- ery of his typical element, and his preternatural, baneful knowledge in its Lynkean glare of light, beside which his Protean ease of metamorphosis can be adduced to the same illustration. In view of the fact that these salient features of Loki are found in the Christian Satan, it would be Loki and an interesting investigation to ascertain Satan. how much the latter owes to the former in the matter of his make-up. We have learned something from the Nature- analogy, but when we come to the ethical problem- why mythology constituted him the embodied prin- ciple of evil? we have yet the main thing to learn. There has been a literary evolution of the devil. From the mediæval devil of the Passion Plays, with Evolution his Satyr-like uncouthness and clownish- of Satan. ness, to Milton's Satan was a great step. From Milton's Satan to Goethe's Mephistopheles IO2 LOKI AND HIS BROOD was another. The latter is the true modern devil. Cynicism is his nature. He is "the spirit that de- nies.” God is the Truth, the Good Spirit, Love. To believe Him is to assert Him as the solution and "The Spirit consummation of man. To deny Him is that Denies.” to assert falsehood, evil, matter, sense, and selfishness as our life-programme. It is essen- tially a question of the mind and of life-philosophy, of Weltanschauung, too. Hence, Paul's subtle.intima- tion : "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places”-i.., perverse, ruling ideals in world-views. While the Bible and literature have contributed their share to the drawing of the sketch of the Evil One, our mythology has done no less. Indeed, the clearness and completeness with which it anticipated our modern conception are remarkable. There is no evidence that Goethe knew anything of the old religion, yet Loki might sit for a portrait of Me- phisto. The question of the origin of evil, or how Satan could arise in the presence of God without spring- Origin of ing from God, is really a metaphysical a quandary. Whenever literature conde- Question. scends to become a handmaiden of theol- ogy (not religion), and essays "to vindicate the ways of God to man,” as in Milton's case, it fails. Milton not only failed “to vindicate" the anomaly, but emphasized and vulgarized it. In the conscience, or larger insight of the soul, we are aware of an agency corresponding to the pseudo- light of Fire. It is “the spirit that denies” the evi- dence of our intuitions and ridicules the aims of our Evil not a Literary 103 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS aspirations. The genuine “Light that lighteth every one that cometh into the world” is celestial. It shows us all objects in their true relation, and makes clear our own position and purpose. But the bane- ful, terrestrial glare of Loki, or Lucifer, not only con- fuses but never shines except to burn away our bloom and our structures. In the words of James, “This wisdom descerideth not from above” – 1. l., from the divine, spiritual consciousness in us—“but is earthly, sensual, and devilish.” It is the Father of Lies, the fundamental falsehood, the betrayer, adversary, murderer. Yet it is not only temporary but necessary. Truth cannot exist without the con- ceivability of denial. Hence Satan, in the Book of Job, appears before God, and Loki is found among the Asen. Denial must proceed with its corroding, destroying work. It is a part of the divine econo- my. While the fire consumes much that is good, it destroys itself also. Time is but a genre picture of Truth. In the rejuvenated world, Loki is not re- vived. The merit of our mythology in the personi- fication of evil lies in the excellent human portrai- ture of Loki. He is the most finely drawn character of all. As the court fool, the cynic, and heavy vil- lain of the play, as the resourceful plotter and ma- licious leader of the foes, he enlists our interests and commands our admiration. It is perhaps needless to add that this desultory mention of the vast subject of evil cannot be put for- ward as exhaustive, but, at best, as suggestive only. LOKI'S BROOD Loki's wife is Sigyn. With her he had two sons. Neither the wife nor the sons serve any symboli- 104 LOKI AND HIS BROOD cal purpose on his evil side. The most prominent trait in Sigyn's character is her indestructible devo- tion to her husband in his downfall and Sigyn. $94. suffering. His infernal progeny was be- gotten with the horrid giantess, Angurboda (An- guish-messenger). They are these three- Algurboda. Hel. the Goddess of Death, the Fenris- wolf, and the Midgard Serpent. Hel's character has been sufficiently described, and it appears that her descent from Loki is only to explain her destructive, abhorrent aspect. When the gods learned that these three monsters were plotting evil, and would probably prove fatal to the Asen regime, Odin sent to fetch them into his pres- ence. After due counsel, All-father flung Hel into the Netherworld, where he gave her power over nine worlds. The Midgard Serpent he hurled into the sea. The Fenriswolf it was resolved to keep in no Asgard. Tyr was the only one who dared Fettering of the to go to him and give him food. When the gods perceived how fast he grew, they became alarmed and determined to fetter him. They fashioned a strong chain, called Läding, or Läding. Tea Leuthing. Then they brought the wolf and bade him try his strength on it. He deemed it so weak that he readily permitted them to fasten it on him. The first time he stretched himself it broke. Then the gods constructed another chain, called Droma, which was twice as strong. They flattered him into submitting to this by represent- de ing the fame he would win by tearing it. Thus they placed it on him. But again he stretched himself, and the chain broke in many places and the pieces flew far asunder. Now the gods feared that Droma. 105 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS they might be unable to fetter him at all. How- ever, Odin sent Skirnir, Freir's servant, to the dwarfs in Swartalfaheim for a chain. He returned ... with one called Gleipnir, which the dwarfs Gleipnir. had cunningly forged out of six things the sound of a cat's foot-fall, the beards of women, the roots of the mountains, the sinews of bears, the voice of the fishes, and the spittle of birds. It seemed quite frail, but when the gods, one after another, tested it with all their might they could not break it. Now they repaired with it to the wolf. When he saw it he said: "If it is as weak as it seems, I will gain little honor in tearing it in two; but if it has been made with cunning and craft, I will not allow you to tie it on me.” The gods replied that after breaking those other rope and iron bands he could easily rid himself of this silken thread, but that if he could not they would have no need to fear him, and therefore would set him free. The wolf inferred from their anxiety and persistency that they were using de- ceit, and did not trust their promise. However, he finally consented to the trial on condition that one of them should thrust his hand into his mouth and keep it there during the trial as a surety of good faith. The gods looked at each other quailingly. But Tyr, the wolf's keeper, came forward and thrust his hand into the beast's jaws. The gos- samer shackles were fastened on the wolf, who stretched and strained and ramped. In vain. He was a prisoner at last. In his rage and despair he bit off Tyr's hand. All the gods except Tyr Gelgia. laughed. Then they took up the rope Giöll. called Gelgia, at the end of the net, and pulled him by it through a great rock, named Giöll, 106 LOKI AND HIS BROOD and fastened him far down in the depth of the earth. Beneath him they placed another rock, ... Thwiti, which served as a sounding- Thwiti. board. The baffled creature snapped at them during this proceeding, but they thrust a sword into his wide-open mouth, so that the handle rests on his lower and the point in his upper jaw. There he roars terrifically, while venom perpetually trickles from his lolling tongue. This flowing venom forms a stream called Wan. This shall endure until Ragnarök, when the wolf shall be free. The Midgard Serpent, after falling into the sea, curls its vast, sinuous bulk around the earth, seizes Midgard its tail in its mouth, and quietly awaits its Serpent. opportunity at Ragnarök. Once only it is raised to the surface by Thôr, but its hour not yet having come, it sluggishly drops into the deep again. The interpretation of these three prodigious ene- mies of the gods must proceed from their connec- tion with Ragnarök, and is therefore mainly escha- tological. Loki, as their father, is viewed in his character of destroyer, towards which all his traits and activities tend. His three children thus typify the final devouring of the world. Verbal analysis does not help us entirely, neither does the recollec- tion of the annual element, of which there is a sub- stratum. We must necessarily anticipate some- what in transporting ourselves to the end of time. The serpent is called Jörmungandr. Gandr means wolf. Jörmun is an appellation of Odin's. Its general signification is Supreme, or Jörmungandr. " the All-either Jove or Pan. In Ragnarök it is not the serpent but the Fenris- wolf that kills Odin. He is called Wanargandr, the 107 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Fenriswolf. fen or marsh wolf. The Midgard Serpent is thus completely explicable as the sea, which, in the final Wanargandr. in convulsive cataclysm, shall overflow its same banks and devour the world, the All. In Hel, the devouring of life in its temporal form is well known to be represented. In the contemplation of the Fenriswolf we must beware of losing ourselves in details. Physical ge- Meaning inography might wish to claim him as the grapy11181 of the figure of igneous devastation, to offset the aqueous submersion of the Midgard Ser- pent. But this place must be reserved for Surtur of Muspelheim. He certainly typifies a higher species of dissolution than both the other mon- sters-namely, the moral and social. This is indicat- ed by the delicate net Gleipnir, which means Law. on The rope of hemp and the chain of iron, Inherent the emblems of rude force, the wolf-2.l., the low, elementary, animal nature of man-can break. The silken cord-woven of such non-natural, almost impalpable, and, hence, super- material strands-not only binds the brute, but it grows harder by straining. It is indicated also in the circumstance that Odin assigns the other two devouring agencies to their respective rooms in the edifice of creation—they are elemental and fatal, beyond his control—while the wolf is allowed to re- main and grow up among the gods. Tyr, the old, bloody War-god, feeds him. He is fettered, but not exterminated. It is too late for that now. The Asen (Pillars of Moral Order) have fostered the very principle of violence in their midst, have permitted this unholy thing to grow into a devour- ing monster in the sacred capitol and residence of refinement. It is too late that Tyr looses his right Law an Restraint. 108 LOKI AND HIS BROOD hand-z.l., that the spirit of war receives its crip- pling rebuke from its own violent consequences. It is too late that the gods resort to deceit and per- jury, the sad confession of their own fall. The full- grown enemy of social order and humane sentiment, whom they should have strangled as a cub, can now but be banished until the other hostile develop- ments shall have come to a head, when he will break loose and join the final conflict. Then the very chief of the Asen, the highest representative of the spiritual, celestial Odin, shall fall his victim. How much history has been foreshadowed in these myths of Loki's Brood! How little civiliza- tion avails without killing the wolfish nature in man and the wolfish element in our institutions ! The attempt to permit this monster to grow up amid the gods of refinement proved the dissolution of the Roman Empire and the ancient classic civil- Illustration ization, when poets and philosophers de- from History. voured the substance of a province at one banquet, and enslaved thousands of their fellow- men, and Roman matrons, lolling on marble seats under silken canopies, turned down their thumbs and clapped their white hands, crying Habet ! over the prostrate form of a dying gladiator! Bru- tality may stalk beneath the frescoed porticos of a library, or amid the soft deliciæ of a salon. When it does, it must be permitted to grow until it ends only with the downfall of its specious surroundings. This is the warning lesson of the Fenriswolf, which the pillars of our own civilization will do well to heed. CHAPTER VI THE GIANTS AND THE DWARFS SEVERAL chapters might be devoted to an inves- tigation of those subordinate beings with which mythology peopled the elements-dwarfs, elves, Nixen et al. But, on the one hand, their relation to the dramatic development and the ethical teach- ings of our mythology is almost neutral, and, on the other, their own development belongs chiefly to the post-mythic period of fable and folk-lore. Hence, we will content ourselves with the incidental allusions in the progress of our story. The light-elves, as the originals of the fairies and fays, deserve more than a mere mention. Although unassociated with the grave polemics of Asgard, they seem to have held as large a place in early popular belief and life as did their descendants in mediæval times. They were worshipped as house- hold gods. Their images and runes were engraved upon door-posts. In the emigration of a tribe these door-posts were carried along to the new home. A sacrifice, called Alfablôt, was rendered to both kinds of elves. This, in the earliest times, was usu- Alfablôt. ally a pot of milk, and reappears in later days. They would certainly be supposed to make more active patrons and chaperons than the Roman lares and penates, who seem to have IIO THE GIANTS AND THE DWARFS done little to pay for their keep. In addition to this domestic tutelary function, they were also iden- tified with the bright aspects of Nature, with trees, flowers, etc., thus answering somewhat to the dry- ads and hamadryads. Here, too, they are superior in liveliness and fineness to their classic equivalents. Altogether the fairies are the rarest creatures of Saxon folk fancy, and completely refute the charge that the Northern hand is incapable of a delicate touch. Where else can be found beings so dainty, airy, winsome, and spirituel, and yet so human in their sympathy, as Puck and Ariel, Oberon and Titania, and the fairy godmothers of the German and Scan- dinavian tales? These are a never-failing source of delight to our children, and the grown-up people, returning to them after the heat and burden of the day, find in them a strange fascination and re- juvenation. Mr. Gradgrind, indeed, may pooh-pooh them as useless nursery twaddle; but the Fairy Tales. ancese man of healthy heart perceives in them a deep reality. We all know these tiny sprites and their doings-now dancing by moonlight on the green, forming with their locked hands the so-called Elfin-ring, and making the grass grow greener by the touch of their light step; now rocking in the chalices of flowers and singing a concert of fairy music, by which is probably meant the subtle dron- ing sounds of Nature at night; then entering the abodes of men, sometimes to commit mischievous pranks, such as curdling the milk or knotting the horses' manes and tails ; but for the most part bent on the benevolent labor of disentangling the knotty problems of their more ponderous human friends. III THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS But it is to mythology that, as usual, we must revert for an understanding of their original mean- ing. Alf is supposed to be connected with alb, white. Thus the name Gosalf is doubly significant of light and brightness. There is a bright aspect, an airy, roseate element, as it were, in Nature and in human life. Is not our world-view on the whole subjective rather than ob- jective? In their deeper significance these nimble, graceful, transfiguring creatures are the qualities in us capable of finding this brighter side. We love the fairies to-day because they express beauty, joy, sympathy, humor, delicacy of feeling, and an artistic touch. As in other lessons of my- thology, the modern product, evolved out of the cruder mediæval investment, struggles back to the freedom of the original conception. The creation of a home for the light-elves that is that shall be the abode of the blest in another world, intimates the eternal integrity and supremacy of these qualities. The Christian priests degraded the elves to demons, and put the angels in their place. However, these proved such unbending celestials that the people, in spite of ban and interdict, brought their favorites back. And here they have The dwarfs in mythology proper should be no- ticed especially at this point. Of their creation and general nature we are already cognizant. They ex- emplify the stages of advancement in the early world. Our occasional allusions to them may be summarized thus: I. At first, when civilization was yet quite agri- cultural, they are the hidden forces of vegetable I I2 THE GIANTS AND THE DWARFS growth. The entomological character ascribed to them at their birth enters fitly into this office. 2. When the useful arts were invented, they be- came the artisans and artificers of the new indus- try. Their workshops at the roots of plants widen into subterranean smithies. 3. When industrialism becomes sinful and op- pressive, they change from ironmongers and gold- smiths into hateful, sullen hoarders of treasures. All three offices enter into the plot of our my- thology. Not even Surtur the Black requires any more extended mention here. Loki and his Brood, as to origin and environment, may be designated as es- sentially semihostile to the Asen. The giants are openly, irreconcilably inimical. The feud between The these two classes of beings is the kernel Irreconcilable of the whole Eddic system. It appears in ** its cosmogony, in the origin and slaying of Ymir, the prototype of the elemental, in the the- ogony, the gods' springing from the salt-i.l., the spiritual principle, in the blocks of ice. It runs through the entire world-period, involving, during the progress of the action, every creature, all creation. It ends only with the end of the world, of which it is the cause. It gives color and tendency to all characters. All the creatures of the Norse genius are recruits, trained and equipped for this warfare, which grows so universal that no living thing, not even the plants, can keep out of it at the last. It is a fight unto death. No compromise is possible. This mortal enmity is inherent in the nature of each side. Having learned the motive of it in the nature of the gods, it remains for us to investigate the motive of it in the nature of their opponents. Conflict. H-I 113 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Modern physical science, in its mature wisdom and marvellous ascendency over the elements, might pity the naïve superstition of our forefathers, who attributed malignity to them. And yet, in our own day and land, many sufferers might apply for a share of the pity, accompanied, not with a smile, The Elements but a tear. The cyclone victims of the To-day, Northwest, the inhabitants of Louisville and St. Louis, not to mention scores of lesser towns, the farmers of arid Western Kansas and Nebraska, the wailing citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, the flooded farms and cities of the Ohio and Missis- sippi bottoms, and the impoverished orange-growers of Florida, not to speak of the sailors, are in the mood to appreciate Schiller's words : “Denn die Elemente hassen Das Gebild der Menschenhand.” “For the elements do hate The fabrics of the human hand." If with all the ameliorations of science and civili- zation the fight with the rude, destructive forces of Nature is still so unavailing, how much more gi- gantic must it have seemed to the poorly equipped pioneers of Northern Europe, whose settlements were as tiny oases in a sombre, forbidding waste of raging elements? If at the momentary mercy of the death - dealing elements, in spite of common- sense and scientific knowledge, man ejaculates an involuntary prayer to Heaven, shall we despise the poor inhabitant of Midgard who, under similar cir- cumstances, did the same, without our modern half- belief? The mythic predication of intelligence and voli- tion of the elements—common to the savage and to I14 THE GIANTS AND THE DWARFS Lord Tennyson and Ambassador Lowell—as we have seen, is not so very crude an impression after all. The extremes of human thought here meet. Man's wit, after making the whole circuit of empiric ex- ploration, comes back to the starting-point of awed attention to Nature's utterances. The one lesson that man has learned in the jour- ney is universal law. However, as long as the pres- ence of law is not fully utilized for man's protec- tion, the division of Nature into friendly and un- friendly camps will endure, for ignorance is the mother of fear. Our ideas about giants--derived from fairy tales- do not harmonize with the picture that mythology The Giants. paints of them. In the German and in Fairy Lore. Scandinavian Mährchen, the most prom- inent trait of the huge creatures is their stupidity. Their original malignity is partly effaced. While some of them have a penchant for keeping beauti- ful princesses locked up in their strongholds, and others love to go swaggering about with clubs, many of them are quite good-natured. With their malignity, their hoary intellectuality and divinity have vanished. The mythic giants were Earliest the earliest dynasty of gods. Faint traces Dynasty of of ety of of a giant cult are discernible still. In their fundamental nature the giants and the Asen are alike, both being based upon elements and physical phenomena. The differentiating test is a movable one. Natural forces which of the to-day seem hostile may to-morrow be reclaimed into friendliness. The story of Skadhi is an illustration of this. The god-ideal is a progressive one. It grows higher as man does. Giants the Gods. Progress God-ideal. 115 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS The savage at first worships force, the gigantic, that which overawes and overwhelms. As the di- vine in him struggles into separate consciousness, it seeks out as its new counterpart in Nature the genial and endearing, and calls this his god. The older dynasty are left behind. The destructive anger, which at first he sought to propitiate with worship, man now marks as demonic malignity. The same process goes on in all of us. We also be- gin with a divine ideal, half god and half demon. Culture then comes in to emphasize the discrimina- tion and widen the breach. Last in the course of refinement, ethics, the conscience, enter to dis- criminate and eliminate among the gods, and finally to sit in judgment upon them in Ragnarök, The victory of mind over the rude forces of Nat- ure, and the victory of spirit over the material and sensual in man, this is the dual problem of mythol- ogy, which we have wrongly divorced and assigned to civilization and religion separately. Why did our fathers, after they had formulated their higher stage of insight in the Asen system, continue to attribute preternatural intelligence to the giants? Only because of the moral and spirit- enca ual character, which all mythology as- in the sumed, and which not only kept the orig- e inal investiture intact but gradually in- tensified it. Mere physical symbolism could have produced only giants, like those of the mediæval times, narrow and dull. As the oldest class of beings, they were, of course, gifted with primary wisdom. They are the reposi- tories of original knowledge. It is in keeping with their dethroned and aggrieved position that they jealously guard this knowledge from the use of Intelligence Elements. 116 . THE GIANTS AND THE DWARFS Hoary the Giants. men. The gods must obtain it from them by force or stratagem. This is especially the business of Odin, the purveyor of spiritual gifts and Wisdom of endowments to men. How he succeeded * with Mimir and with Suttung we have seen. Wafthrudnir, the omniscient Jötun, is an- other, with whom he is obliged to engage in an in- tellectual wrestling bout. Of his visit to Wala we shall learn further on. The giants thus are not all representatives of the rude forces of Nature. Some of them so complete- ly stand for pre- Asen intelligence, for perpetual, inherent principles and tendencies of the mind, that they may be called pure abstractions or men- tal qualities, as Môdgudhr (Soul - agony) and Imr (Doubt), the sons of Wafthrudnir, who symbolize sophistry. Their hostile character does not escape us even here. Yet there are others, free even from hostility and malignity. Oegir, the cave-dweller, a masculine coun- terpart of Hel, really a god, but on account of his association with the Netherworld counted with the giants, is said to be joyous as a child. He is really the god of the sea. His cave is a submarine grotto, Degir and where he dwells with his wife, Ran. His Ran. name, Thursen-like enough, means storm or rage, implying the ocean in its wildness. But, like Neptune, he dwells apart in his own realm, in- different, if not friendly, to the Asen. The deluge at Ragnarök is not of his contriving. He has no relation to the Midgard Serpent. Thrym, even, the prince of the Jötuns, whose name signifies thunder, is portrayed in a homely pict- ure, adorning his dogs with golden collars, combing 117 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS out the manes of his horses, and rejoicing at the home - coming of the raven - black cattle with the golden horns. In Thôr's adventures we shall have occasion to observe the good-nature and even hilarity of the giants. The names, Jötuns and Thursen, which we have used indiscriminately, designate their devouring Jötuns and nature. The former means to eat, the Thursen. latter thirst. As to the general domain of the giants, we dare not look to mythology for very precise geographi- cal orienting. The salient fact in the relation be- tween them and the gods is cultural rather than local. The gods have expelled them from the hab- itable part of the earth, have fortified this re- deemed territory for the secure existence of men Location of under the name of Midgard. Like the Jötunheim. province of the Romans in Gaul, this now becomes a nucleus of civilized dominion amid the barbarian aborigines towards the North. While the Asen make incursions into the Thursen wilds, the general impression we get from the story is that they are on the defensive. They are not more suc- cessful in pushing out their termini than were the Romans across the Rhine. They consider them- selves fortunate in preserving Midgard and Asgard from the invasion of their foes. The wall of de- fence is a kind of Chinese wall against the Thursen Tartars. This is the status qu10 up to Ragnarök. The fighting until then consists of single combats and skirmishes. Underlying this colonial scheme is the primitive geographical conception of our fa- thers about the earth, the sea, etc. Even in the maps of the Roman Empire, the North, beyond Scythia 118 THE GIANTS AND THE DWARFS and Scandinavia, assumes a mythic character. It is Cimmerian and Hyperborean land, unearthly, paleo- logical-a Dantean world, peopled with Amazons and monsters. Childish ignorance always peoples the dark with such inhabitants. In our own day we have not quite conquered that territory yet. In regard to the sea, the ancient Saxons believed, as we per- ceive from the picture of the Midgard Serpent, that it lay around the earth as round an island. The Mythic earth was a flat, plate-like piece of land, Geography. held up at the four cardinal points by the four dwarfs-Austri, Westri, Nordri, Sudri. In this limited comprehension they were not much worse than the learned Salamancan junta that passed upon the heretical theory of Columbus. The general name of the region into which the gods had driven the giants is Utgard (Outer Castle). The location, aside from the certainly northern di- rection, is vague. Was it this side or the other side of the sea ? If the sea was imagined as a ser- pentine, narrow channel, it is probable that Utgard was situated beyond it, in the extra-mundane, un- earthly region. This would help us to understand the proximity of and transition to the Netherworld that recurs in the myths relating to the giants' abode. Hermôdr rides nine nights to the Giöll River, which separates the territory of the gods from that of the giants. This stream may be iden- tical with the narrow sea. Other myths, however, contradict this conclusion. There remains for us a brief consideration of the division of the giants according to their habitats. We note Mountain and Forest giants, Frost or Wind giants, Water-giants and Fire-giants. 119 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Wood and Giants. All giants of fairy lore are of the woods and the stony mountain - sides. They dwell in caves, fis- a sures, and rocky clefts, and shun the light Mountain of day. Rocky ledges, outcroppings of stone, mark the lowest, most passive ob- stacle to agriculture. Hence, their habitués are characterized by sullen, dogged resistance rather than by aggressive hostility to gods and men. Thôr's hammer comes into play to pulverize and reduce them to obedience. Jarnsaxa, the Adaman- tine, has been mentioned. In Jarnwidr, the Ada- mant forest, dwell the Jarnwidiur, of whom one gives birth to the wolves who shall devour the sun and the moon. Gridr, a giantess opposed to Thôr, is of the mountains. She wears iron gauntlets. Her son, Widar, wears iron shoes. The giant Hrungnir has a head and a heart of stone. Hyndla, with whom Freya has a controversy; Suttung, Gunn- lödh's father; Bergelmir, the old, are cave-dwellers and mountain-giants. Even Thrym of Thrymheim, Skadhi's grandfather, belongs primarily to this class. His castle is the wind-echoing, wooded mountain- heights, the thunder-reverberating summit, where the giantdom of mountains, woods, and storm-wind is combined. A notable genius of the wild-wood life, who proceeds from mythology into the heroic sagas, is Witolf with the iron beam. He is so huge and so impetuous that his brethren keep him chained until before the battle. The keenest, most aggressive foes of the Nordic gods and men are the wintry Storm - giants, the Hrimthursen proper (from Hrim, frost, storm-giants. and Thurs, giant). Ymir is the original Hrimthurs. Then we note Hraeswelgr (Corpse-devourer), the Norse Boreas, a I 20 THE GIANTS AND THE DWARFS kind of embodiment of winter itself. He is repre- sented sitting at the farthest end of heaven, in the form of an eagle, ready to swoop whizzing over the abodes of men. The eagle dress is common to all this tribe. It denotes their omnivorous voracity of destructiveness and their arrow-like fleetness. Hrimgrimnir (Frost-grimness) is one mentioned in connection with Gerda's imprisonment. Ymir, like Odin, bears many surnames-Oergelmir, Brimír, Fornjotr, Neri, Thirwald, Thrigeitr, Alwald- all of which convey the meaning of storm, and some of which become family names of his descendants. An obscure tradition attributes three patriarchal sons to him, corresponding to the patriarchal trilo- gy of gods—Odin, Wili, We, or Odin, Hönir, Loki. These are Kâri, Hlêr (Oegir), Logi. They represent the three elements-air, water, and fire-in their violent, untamed nature. Kâri is thus Giant Trilogy. dimly regarded as the Thursen equivalent and opponent of Odin, and the sire of all wintry in- clemencies. Among his children are Frosti, Jökull (Iceberg), Snör (Snow), Fönn (Dense Snow), Drifa (Snow-storm), Miöll (Fine, Glistening Snow). What a blizzard family ! Some of these personifications appear as acting personages in fables and semi-his- torical love tales. Thrym, Thiassi, Beli, are descendants of Kâri. Idi and Gângr are rain - winds. Egdir is another giant in eagle form, who, at the breaking of Ragna- rök, is to sit on a hill and exultingly strike his harp. Here the demoniacal joy in destruction grows dithy- rambic. It is the very poetry of anarchy. Ymir, the personified chaos, is reborn in this Neronic bard of dissolution. We will meet other members of this arctic brood in the story of Thôr's advent- I 21 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS ures. Manifestly climate should have much credit for the teeming population in this part of the Saxon Nature-household, just as climate has peopled the out-door world in the Greek system with teeming lesser earth-divinities. But the more psychical and world-dramatic character of the Norse system should not be forgotten. Here, also, the cold, freezing blasts of destruction are real factors in human nature and The Giants in society. The forces of anarchy are of Anarchy. always blowing at the gates of Asgard. They can be stayed only by the gods – 1. ., the agencies of warmth and light, of love and kindly influence, not by counterblasts of selfish violence. now prevails in the industrial world can alone be dissolved. Otherwise our era shall have its Rag- narök, as others before it have had theirs. Politi- cal recrimination on the one hand and millennial dreams on the other are equally inadequate to the problem. That the Water-giants are less numerously and less distinctly conceived than the giants of the frozen Northland is owing to the limited Water-giants. mer experience our fathers had of the sea. The venturesome voyages of the Vikings are of later date. To the same circumstance is owing the dual presidency of the sea. Niördr and the Wanen in general presided over the quiet summery sea, which alone men in that day dared to navigate. Oegir represented the vast deep, which was practi- cally unknown, which men viewed with terror from the safe heights of the coast. Therefore Oegir is not pictured, like Neptune, driving his car over the crests of the waves-viz., subduing and utilizing the element, but as dwelling in a submarine palace, a I 22 THE GIANTS AND THE DWARFS kind of merman, a being of mystery and awe. Since the ocean was thus a world entirely separate from the business of men, Oegir was not believed to have any share in the Asen programme either good or bad. Some memory of the tidal wave from a volcanic spasm in early times may have suggested the myth of the Midgard Serpent. Hönir, whom we have learned to be the brother of Odin, and who, under more favorable conditions, would have naturally assumed the role of the Norse Neptune, virtually disappears between Niördr and Oegir. With the latter the Asen are on very ami- cable terms. Every year during September they pay him a visit, and drink ale with him in his shin- ing palace. The submarine treasures with which his hall is adorned are supposed to produce the phosphorescent shimmer of the waves. He has two servants — Funafengr (Fire - catcher) and Eldir (Lighter). Loki slays the first of these, wherein the intimation may be conveyed that the translucent phosphorescence of the sea pales before the glaring light of the Fire-god. On the other hand, Oegir cannot but be classed with the giants. As such we have seen him genealogically brought into connection with Forn- jolt under the name of Hlêr, which means grave, and suggests his infernal character. A more active designation of this side of him is Gymir. The Swedish poet, Tegner, has composed a mod- ern saga about Oegir that breathes the true spirit derm of the ancient sagas, while conveying into Saga of the antique framing the more modern picture of maritime adventure. The fol- lowing is a liberal rendering of a passage in the Frithjof saga : A Modern Oegir 123 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Wiking sailed, it is said, returning home from a sea-fight, When he espied a man astride of a piece of wreckage, Carelessly rocking about as though he played with the billows. Tall and heroic of form, of noble mien was the stranger, Bright, yet changeable too as the light that plays on the ocean. Blue was his mantle, of gold his girdle, and edged with coral. White was his beard as the foaming waves, but his hair was sea- green. Wiking steered alongside and rescued from peril the wrecked one, Bore him away in his shell of a boat to the landing. There he entreated him well with the best that his house af- forded, And at the hour of rest conclucted him unto the chamber. But at the sight of the couch the stranger, laughing, objected: “Fair is the wind, and my ship, as thou sawest, not useless wholly. Hundred miles, at the least, I hope yet to sail before nightfall. Thanks, and farewell. A token, Wiking, I gladly would leave thee, But my riches afar in the depths of the ocean are hidden.” On the morrow thereon stood Wiking, and gazed o'er the waters, When with wonder he saw a dragon-ship nearing the harbor. Like an eagle pursuing his prey, it sped along fleetly. Not a sailor was seen, not a helnisman e'en at the rudder, Yet unerring it wound between the rocks of the channel, As though spirit-manned, and, when into the bay it glided, Sails were reefed by invisible hands, and dropped was the anchor. Thus it was brought unto port. But Wiking stared with amaze- ment Until the playing waves to him began singing this message : . “Oegir sends unto his host, as a grateful guerdon, the dragon." Royal the gift was, in sooth. The oaken planks in the framing Were not joined by man's art, but solidly grew together. There stretched at full length it lay, a dragon indeed of the ocean. High did the rampant neck, as a prow, vault gracefully upward, And the surmounting head with its open mouth, red-flaming. Blue as the sky was the body and golden star-studded, But at the helm in the stern, the tail, in mighty rings curling, Glowed with silvery scales. And when its black wings it un- folded, 124 THE GIANTS AND THE DWARFS Bordered with red and with gold, it flew with the storm at a wager, Till even the eagle was left behind. But when it teemed glis- • tening With heroes in armor, it seemed like a king's floating castle. Far - famed was this ship, I trow, the fleetest of all Northern sailers. The dragon is a very common mythic personifi- cation of the sea in its destructive rage. The Mid- gard Serpent is the vastest conception of such a sea monster. The dragons of the heroic sagas, infest- ing marshes and moist places, and whom the heroes Beowulf and Sigurd and others slay, are sve probably nothing more than the marshy or tide-swept shores, which the pioneer settlers have re- claimed from the dominion of malaria and poison- Dragons. monster bespatters his slayer may mean the deadly miasma. In Ragnarök, Thôr and the Midgard Ser- pent thus inflict death upon each other. The North Sea, in the storms of spring, has from time immemo- rial devastated the low coasts of Germany and the Netherlands. The myth has furnished a pair of genii to impersonate this annual outbreak, in Gren- Dragon- del and his Mother. Beowulf is the drag- slayers. on - slayer here. However, Siegfried, or Sigurd, is also a Netherland hero. Goethe's Faust, in passing over the region on the magic mantle, is horrified at the sight of the destruction, and deter- mines to devote the remainder of his life to the In this benevolent work Doath and Mephistoph- eles actually find him, an ideal Beowulf of mod- ern literature. Another giant of the sea, who figures in the he- 125 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS roic epics, is Wate (the Wader), a personification of the tide. Mimir, as the contemplative genius of hoary wis- dom, has been considered. He is expressly enu- Mimir as a merated among the Water-giants. As the Vater-giant. guardian of the treasures of the deep, he bears the surname Hoddimir. In this aspect of his character he has become the prototype of all drag- ons and giants, 'who guard buried treasures of gold, such as Fafnir. The whole cycle of epics that cluster around the Nibelungen treasure illustrate a fatal perversion of Mimir's function—namely, the seeking of gold in lieu of wisdom, the only genuine, satisfying treasure. The ocean is the most impos- ing symbol of mysterious profundity, in the depths of which lie concealed fabulous treasures. But we mistake our own nature and degrade the Titan or the God in us to a monster when we mistake the in- tellectual for the material character of that treas- ure. Truth lying at the bottom of a well is a rem- iniscence of the mythic lesson. Schiller's “ Diver” is one of the numerous unconscious illustrations in literature. Other maritime giants opposed to the gods are Sökkmimir, Asmund, and Starkadr. The classing of fire on the side of the gods or the Fire-giants. e giants depends, as we have seen in Loki, upon the stress we lay upon either its na- tive or its tamed activity. Prometheus' theft of fire is, in the Greek story, an act of philanthropy. The Olympic gods there perform the part of our Saxon giants as the jealous enemies of men, while the Titan fulfils the kindly Asen office of champion and patron. Who can read the pains of Prometheus, as described by Æschy- 126 THE GIANTS AND THE DWARFS lus, without hating the brutal tyranny of Zeus ? On the other hand, who does not exult in the chain- The Myth of pion's defiance? We sympathize with him Prometheus. because we feel the justice of his and our cause, and the injustice of the god. This is proved by Zeus' acquiescence in the fait accompli of the theft. The fire remains on earth for man's com- fort and progress. The episode seems a case of lèse majesté merely. The Greeks, we know, had no eschatology. In the Norse system everything is colored by the last events. Thus it is only at the end of time that the agencies of fire become pronounced enemies of the gods. In the frozen North men could hardly fear too much fire. Therefore the wild analogues of Loki are not found opposed to the gods, as are the Wind and Frost giants. While they must be classed with these, they are apprehended in their most beneficent relation, even to the extent of bringing out their original position of gods. They are really only modifications of Loki, and perform the same office that is related of Prometheus. The third son of Fornjot, the Old, is Hâlogi (Mounting Flame). The kingdom in which he rules is called Hâlogaland, the northern 31 part of Norway. With his wife Glöd (Glow) he has two daughters, Eisa (Ashes) and Eimyria (Live Coal). These are abducted to distant islands by two Jarls, Wêseti (Founder) and Wefil (Wife- seizer). In this legend early emigration is indi- cated, together with the pleasing account of the transplanting of the old hearth - fire to the new home. A son of Hâlogi, Bui (Building, Culture), by his name confirms this story. These names are found changed in some other myths, and acts are Hâlogi. 127 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS alluded to on the part of this family which arouse the enmity of Odin. Thôr is said to have destroyed the throne of Fornjot, by which the cessation of the worship of these early fire-gods is probably in- dicated. Volcanic and igneous geological formations in the North have served as foundations for mythic crea- tions of a Cyclopean character ; but as nothing re- mains of them except the usual gigantesque and grotesque stories of the hurling of prodigious rocks, à la Milton's "Paradise Lost,” their relation to our mythology is too slight to occupy our attention. The presence of fire in the bowels of the earth was well known to our ancestors, from the volcanic ir- ruptions and the hot springs in their wild and ele- ment-scarred country. While they did not expand this subterranean source of fire into a burning In- ferno, they expected from it that diabolical insur- rection which would consume the world. With the The fire from beneath should be joined the fire 10F from above-viz., the torrid heat of Mus- by Fire. pelheim, personified in Surtur and his myrmidons. This expectation is still entertained by many earnest people, in connection with the sub- lime visions of the Apocalypse. The popular spread of scientific knowledge is gradually modifying this belief. Our observation teaches us that heavenly bodies grow extinct through cold rather than heat. Thus the fiery consumption of the world is coming to assume a figurative meaning. It is the moral and social order that is to be destroyed. A thoughtful comprehension of the teachings of our mythology shows us the same meaning in the thrilling spectacle of Ragnarök. Knowledge will always be divided into esoteric and exoteric. The Destruction of the World 128 THE GIANTS AND THE DWARFS priest and the prophet are evermore at variance. The vulgar imagination delights to luxuriate in the bodily terrors of stage thunder and lightning, over- looking in its childish superficiality the ethical and spiritual processes of the real drama, with its psychical portraiture, its heart-wringing reproaches, and its religious possibilities. The ancestral evan- gel is thus found, in prophetic insight and fore- sight, to be abreast of the highest thought in an- cient or modern times on this consummate theme. CHAPTER VII THÔR'S ADVENTURES THE reader, by this time, will have perceived that our subject is cryptographic. The Northern Muse has chanted her lessons in parables. This is the key-note to the whole system, without which understanding it is impossible. Popular works on mythology, such as Bulfinch's Age of Fable, de- vote the bulk of their space to the stories of Greek gods, and then add a supplementary chapter on Hindoo and another on Scandinavian mythology, the writers thus announcing by the arrangement itself in what slight regard they hold the last-men- tioned production. In the limited space which they grudgingly accord to the matter, they enu- merate a few names and relate a few of Thôr's ad- ventures—bare data, without an attempt even at in- terpretation. No wonder that the reader shares their low estimate of the system. But such an arrangement is unfair. If all the data of the Northern cycle were placed beside those of the Southern, the method would still be prejudi- cial, since it is invidious to compare dissimilar things. The merit of the Greek fables is almost entirely on the surface, in the vivid artistic embellishment of the story. The merit of the Saxon fables is almost entirely below the surface, in the symbolism of the 130 THÔR'S ADVENTURES message. The Southern Muse is a beautiful queen, the Northern a soulful prophetess. If we compared the Lord's Parable of the Sower, without the inter- pretation, with an eclogue of Virgil, the former would suffer, albeit rational criticism must cry out against such injustice. Literature purporting to be a reproduction of life should have, as its most searching test, completeness. That production will be the best which is, not the most beautiful, but the most comprehensive, which contains the largest share of life. But the chief, if not the largest, part of life lies below the surface, below our actions, in our thoughts, faith, convictions, and motives. This is at least the Saxon view of the matter. For this reason we place Shakespeare and Goethe above Corneille and Racine, and accord to those novelists the highest place who, other things being equal, have traced the springs of actions and character most thoroughly. The same criterion is applied to the view of Nat- ure. Saxon poetry is romantic (the word should be Germantic). It feels an influence in the sights and sounds of Nature corresponding to man's deeper sensations of the soul. As Bryant says: To him, who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language. The poetry of the South is classic-i.C., descriptive of the visible forms of beauty in Nature, ignoring the sentimental and spiritual. The Greek heard no various language, only the one of sensuous grace. The primrose to him was a primrose only. Now mythology is simply a nation's archaic poetry. Is 131 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS it not strange that critics, who appreciate the sym- bolism of later Saxon poetry, should disregard that of the earliest ? If we condemn our mythology because it is . cryptogramic—that is, symbolical—we must con- sistently condemn the best in our poetry, if not life itself, since the true meaning of life is hid- den. Yet it is not unfathomable. The secret is an open secret, after all. Neither is our mythology cabalistic. Its interpretation is easy and simple. Nature and the soul, the two foci of the ellipse in which it revolves, are explicit enough. What the old mythists meant is plainly indicated by the names they employed. The obscurity therefore would be mainly linguistic. There is very little obscurity or confusion. Mythologists are more in harmony than any other class of expounders. This is especially true of Thôr's labors. Thôr is first the Thunder, then the harbinger of spring, then the aggressive champion of agriculture and civilization. That is all. There is nothing ar- bitrary or occult in this. Apparently his activity is all industrial. Truly it penetrates all the layers of creative life. The pioneer who subdues the wil- derness cultivates other things at the same time- first his own manhood, then society, and, last, the world. The Pilgrim Fathers builded in their clear- ings a great deal more than their rocky farms. So Thôr is the patron of marriage, of property-rights, of bridges and highways. While these initiatives of civilization proceed from his central function as a pioneer farmer, and not, as with Odin, from a creative, spiritual source, the order of procedure is more in accord with our experience, 132 THÔR'S ADVENTURES Odin the Two Aspects of Thôr and Odin arrive at the same result from op- posite starting-points and by different roads. In Thôr and the one the achievements of culture are wo transcendentally created, in the other in- Culture. dustrially evolved. There should be no opposition between the gods, as there is none in the nature of the case. What we have wrought out in the way of actual achievement has existed before in the form of mental concept. The distinction between the man of thought and the man of action is one of those false antitheses with which popular philosophy abounds. A man of thought without action is as inconceivable as a man of action without thought. Was Washington less a man of thought-viz., less inspired with motive and reason-than Jefferson, Franklin, and Thomas Paine, the political philosophers of the Revolution ? On the other hand, were they less men of action be- cause they did not wield the sword? The poet is popularly defined as a man of thought, and regarded as a dilettante in the serious business of the world. The ancients knew better. They reversed the defi- nition in the name they gave him--Tours, the maker. The writer of a song may be a more successful war- rior than the general who won the battle. Indeed, the song may have won the battle. We may say then that Odin represents concep- tion, Thôr execution. Both are equally divine and beneficent. Thôr is the good iconoclast of Midgard breaking down the rude barriers and encroach- ments around men, and making them accessible to the downpour of light from Gladsheim. He is the apostle of Asgard to the struggling mortals of earth. Once the myth has accentuated the divergence 133 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS of Odin and Thôr. It is a scene worthy the hand of some Norse Æschylus. On the bank of one of those arctic rivers that, with their sombre Harbard Saga. vase background of Hel's Niflheim, suggest a remote geological landscape to us, the vehement ex- plorer stands baffled and lost, when, on the opposite side, in the awful solitude, appears a lonely figure. Thôr impetuously calls to him for direction. The stranger replies by jeering him with his impotence and with being the god of the thralls, and advises like a quarrel between Ajax and Thersites. Epi- thets roll to and fro across the river, like the crash of ice-gorges or pristine thunder-claps. Thôr, after his wont, is about to hurl his hammer, his ever- ready argument, when the mists lift and the stran- ger stands out clearly as the Wanderer in the gray mantle and the broad-brimmed hat. At this Thôr turns without another word. Casting a part- ing look behind him as he goes, he beholds the gray stranger vanishing in a cloud of diaphanous glory. The ideal is supreme. Let the champion of empiric refinement carry his conquests to the ut- most limits : there in the midst of primeval, forbid- before him and beyond him, at once the bar and the direction to his further progress. Nevertheless, in the altercation we side with Thôr. He is nearest to us in our actual struggle. Art is long, and life, alas, all too short! In our hunger after the true, the beautiful, and the good, in our impatience at the giants and monsters of barbarity in our social conventions, we turn with grateful love to such an intrepid champion, glad to follow him on his sallies into the enemy's country. 134 THÔR'S ADVENTURES These are veritable conquering incursions. While based upon agricultural and industrial processes, they assume above these a general allegorical and historical meaning. They have been the subjects of learned disserta- tion in various Saxon lands. The most profound treatment accorded Thôr undoubtedly is the ex- haustive monograph of the German Uhland. Him- self a great poet, besides a learned professor, and im- bued with loyal partiality for the ancestral thought Uhlandia and early literature of his own Father- "The Myth land-a thing unhappily wanting entire- of Thôr." ler, in whom the classic models were paramount- he was able to produce an interpretation of Thôr to which all thoughtful students of the subject can- not but revert. We gladly acknowledge our indebtedness to such a master. It is a sad commentary on the prevalent indifference to our mythology that, even in Germany, where Uhland the poet is loved and learned by heart, his great work on Thôr is scarcely known be- yond the circle of professional mythologists. To attempt either a progressive sequence or a complete biography of the god in the selection of the Adventures is out of the question. We must content ourselves with the principal ones and with plunging 212 inedias res. The first in our list is dis- tinguished for its Homeric humor. One night, while all the Asen were peacefully sleeping in their golden palaces, Thôr had an un- easy dream. It was no less than that his bringing of hammer, Miölnir, was stolen. It seemed mer to him that a giant hand reached out and snatched it away. The alarm awakened him, The Home- the Hammer. 135 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS when, horresco referens, the dream proved to be true. The hammer was gone! With a cry that shook the foundations of Asgard, Thôr sprang from his couch. The gods sprang to arms and rushed into his presence. To them Thôr communicated the amazing intelligence. Of course it is the gi- ants who have abstracted it through magic. What is to be done? What can be attempted against the mighty foes without the hammer? As usual, Loki, the resourceful, suggests a plan. He offers to repair to the enemy on condition that Freya lend him her falcon robe. To this the beautiful goddess readily consents. Loki puts it on and flies away towards Jötunheim. Arrived before its sombre walls, he shouts for Thrym, the Thursen king. The latter pokes his head out of an aperture and inquires the business of the visitor. Loki for once deems it best to be frank, and tells him what has happened, and asks the giant if he knows aught of the stolen property. Thrym, equally frank, admits that he has taken it, adding : “Miölnir is buried eight post- stations, or rasts, deep in the earth, and shall not return into Thôr's hands until you bring me Freya to wife." Qui est la feinme ? Loki might have known. However, the brazenness of the uncouth brute so staggers him that he leaves without a word. His announcement of the condition on his return produces a general chorus of indignant ex- clamations. Freya rejects the proposal with the deepest scorn. In much anxiety the gods assemble at Urd's Well for deliberation. There Heimdall suggests that Thôr himself should be dressed up as a bride and proceed to Thrym's hall in the place of Freya. At first Thôr rages against the demeaning suggestion, but Loki offers to accompany him as 136 THÔR'S ADVENTURES attendant, and, being eager for revenge, and not in- sensible to the fun of the situation, the Thunderer consents. It must have been a memorable diversion for the Shining Ones when, back in Asgard, they ar- rayed the mighty form in the snowy bridal linens and swathed the flaming beard in the flowing veil, Loki, with his sardonic smile, playing the maid, and the lovely goddesses, with their silvery laughter and their blushing rebukes, correcting the clumsy mis- takes. At last the toilet was complete, and Thôr sat before Freya like Hercules before Omphale. How he did tower above her unbridelike as he rose amid the shouts of the gods and took his seat be- side Loki in the car! We can imagine Freya run- ning after them, as the goats began to gallop off, and calling out to him to soften the lightning gleam of his eyes, and be sure to keep the iron - gaunt- leted hands hidden in the folds of the veil. Thus, amid the thunderous rattle of the car, the pair dis- appeared in the clouds. When they approached Jötunheim they beheld Thrym sitting, watching the return of the cattle with the golden horns, patting the heads of his growling, golden - collared dogs, and gloating over the shimmer of his jewels heaped up in trays be- fore him. Evidently he wished to produce a favor- able impression on his reluctant bride with the picturesque display of his treasures, showing by his eager expectancy that he regarded her coming as the completion of his domestic establishment. Presently the supposed bride was seated by his side. Whether he perceived anything unusual in her size is not said. Probably a giant's standard in all mat- ters was huge. Soon they sat down to the bridal banquet. Then the eyes of the giant bridegroom 137 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS opened wide with amazement, for the gentle lady beside him outdid all others in feats of eating. A whole ox, eight salmon, and all the pastry intended for the ladies, disappeared in a hurry beneath the veil. Two tubs of mead followed, wherewith to wash the viands down. The wedding guests wit- nessed this wonder with wry faces. But Loki the maid explains to the astonished bridegroom that the lady had fasted for eight days on account of her love and longing for him. A moment later the eager lover attempts to lift the veil to snatch a kiss. The coy maiden prevents him, but she could not prevent his catching a glimpse of the flaming eyes. Again the tiring - maid explains that the bride's eyes are so red from waking and weeping for him. Then the poor sister of Thrym approaches, according to custom, to beg a wedding present from the bride, but the tall, veiled figure does not move or respond. At last he gives orders that the ham- mer should be fetched from the bowels of the earth in order to solemnize the marriage therewith, and then, as an additional symbol of the rite, be placed in the lap of the bride. At this command Thrym, if he had not been half-drunk with love and mead, might have heard a low chuckle under the veil. The hammer is brought, the ceremony performed. “Now lay it in the bride's lap!" joyfully cries Thrym. Scarcely is this done when the festive joy turns into consternation. Up rises the supposed bride. The bridal fríppery and female gauds fall to the ground, and before them stands the mighty god in all his towering strength, like Ulysses be- fore his wife's suitors. A thunder-clap reverberates through the hall, a flash of lightning with its blind- ing glare lights up the scared faces of the feasters, 138 THOR'S ADVENTURES for Miölnir is already at work. With a crushed skull Thrym sinks prone to the earth. One after another follows. Fire bursts from the gable of the roof, the pillars of the house crack in twain. In another moment the whole building crashes into a heap of ruins. When Thôr and Loki remount their car outside, the vernal sun is shining and inen greet the victorious god with joyful acclaim as they proceed to turn the site of the giant's home into a grain-field. The reader has by this time anticipated the hæc fabula docet. The burial of the hammer eight post- Vernal stations deep in the earth is the abeyance Allegory of the thunderbolt of the summer shower during the eight winter months. The demand for Freya as the wife of Thrym is the old encroachment of winter upon the liberty of the joyous season that recurs every spring. The bridal masquerade of Thôr denotes the clothing upon of the thun- der-storm by the beauty and benignity of spring. Loki's instrumentality is the causal one of heat. Heimdall's is that of rain. The home-bringing of the hammer is a glorifica- tion of marriage. The broad humor and horse-play Social of the mock-marriage is not intended as a Teaching. parody, but rather a vindication of right- ful wedlock. The most important crop on the farm are the boys and the girls. To the normal, out- door, healthy life of the farm we must look not only for our provisions but for the best type of manhood and citizenship, for the rich, healthy blood with which to replenish the enæmic condition of the body politic. We Americans should not need to be reminded of this truth. There is also an ex- quisite unity of man and Nature revealed in the 139 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS universal stirrings of spring-tide. In that season of revival, when the sap rises in the trees, the wild flowers lift their heads in the woods to greet the returning sunlight, and the birds begin to pair, the goddess of love and beauty comes into play, and exquisite poetical longings rise in the heart of man. In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove ; In the spring the young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. Truly it is not a poetical license but a scientific fact to say that all life is one. The world is a temple The Unity of many floors. The voices of Nature of Life. sing a chorus. If man lays his head upon the beauteous mother's bosom and intently listens, with one ear he can hear the singing of the dwarfs at work in their underground smithy and the sphynx-like drone of Hel deeper still, with the oth- er All-father's ethereal lyrics from Hlidskialf in the blue empyrean, and as he then rises and goes to work after Thôr, like Burns behind his plough, his toil will be attuned to the rhythm of Nature's song, and what he works will be wrought for the ages. Thôr and Loki one day drove away together. In the evening they arrived at a farm - house. The Thôr and farmer had two children-a son, Thialfi, Hrungnir. and a daughter, Röskwa. But, despite the labors of the three, their store was scant. So Thôr slaughtered his two goats and had their flesh prepared for the evening meal. When it was all consumed he commanded Thialfi to lay the bones in order upon the skins. However, the insatiable rustic, before doing so, crushed the hind leg of one of the goats in order to get at the marrow. In the 140 THÔR'S ADVENTURES morning Thôr consecrated the bones and skins with his hammer, when the goats arose with their flesh and blood restored. But when Thôr hitched them up to drive away, he perceived that one limped with his right hind leg. He thereupon remarked to the farmer that the bones must have been tam- pered with. The frightened father confessed the fault of his greedy son, and, to propitiate the anger of the god, offered to give up his children into per- Thialfi and petual service. Accordingly Thialfi and Röskwa. Röskwa henceforth are Thôr's bond-ser- vants. Another version of the myth declares Loki to be the instigator of the misdeed. The myth is capable of a twofold interpretation- an elemental or an agricultural. The house-father Agricultural is the farmer or cultivator in a generic Lesson. sense. Uhland regards Thialfi as human industry, and Röskwa as alertness or quickness. The farmer is invited to the god's feast. The di- vine power of Nature prepares the field for man. But man cannot overreach the god's bounty by us- ing his own industry in the exhaustion of Nature's spontaneous provision. By doing so he only crip- ples the divine process of growth. He must finally atone for this industrial sin by rendering up his in- dustry and activity into co-operation with Nature. This is especially the condition of success in the North. The inhabitants of the tropics may be able to subsist on the redundant vegetation there with- out much toil. The other view of the story is that Thialfi and Röskwa, who reappear in other myths, describe the Phenomena of manifestation of the Thunder - god—the Lightning, former meaning the lightning, the lat- ter its fleetness, Loki's share in the injury to 141 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS the goat is that of fire in the lightning. The first explanation contains the more instructive lesson. Resuscita- Resuscitations are very common in the tions. beliefs of mythology and magic. To Vir- gil, who, altogether innocently, figured as a magi- cian during the Dark Ages, the gift of performing such has been attributed. Merlin also is credited with this power. In the consecrating, runic rôle of Thôr's hammer, the benison of the domestic hearth-fire, the domes- Vicinity and tic board, and the marked-off homestead Domesticity. shimmers through. These three are in- terdependent. In the settlement of the land com- munity, vicinity is not more important than sepa- ration into family homesteads. The division of our public domain into sections and quarter-sections is a survival of Thôr and his hammer. Having secured the service of Thialfi as a kind of Sancho Panza, our knight of the magic ham- mer is next found engaged with a gigantic villain named Hrungnir. In the account of this combat, to avoid monotony, we will attempt to weave nar- rative and interpretation together as warp and woof. Hrungnir (the Accumulation) has a head and a triangular heart of stone. His shield is also of mong stone, and the weapon in his hands.is with a grindstone. He and Thôr have chal- gan lenged each other to meet and fight to a finish at Griottunagardr (the rocky boundary of the arable land). Plainly this adversary is the stony ledge of a hill country that resists the aggression of the plough. But the giants, in order to cover and supplement the strength of their Goliath, have constructed a man of clay, nine roods high and Holmgang Hrungnir 142 THÔR'S ADVENTURES Möckurkalfi. three roods broad under the arms. They named me him Möckurkalfi (Cloud or Mist Calf), the sticky clay deposit at the moist base of the rocky hill-side. Thialfi is appointed by Thôr to subdue this ad- versary—that is, human industry is sufficient to overcome such an obstacle. Thôr himself attacks Hrungnir. The divine power of the elements is requisite for the pulverizing of the rocks. As the god approaches, Thialfi warns Hrungnir to cover Rock and himself from below. Thereupon the giant Clay. places his shield under his feet. Man is accustomed to attack the rocky hill-side from below, from the alluvial valley. The Thunderer, however, rushes to the fray from above. From afar he hurls Miölnir. Hrungnir flings his whetstone. Midway the two missiles meet. The stone breaks in two pieces, whereof one falls to the ground but the other lodges in Thôr's forehead. Then the irre- sistible hammer whizzes on, and striking the gi- ant's head, crushes it into a thousand fragments. The stony-hearted monster falls prone upon Thôr, who has been felled by the piece of grindstone, so that one gigantic leg lies across his neck. Neither Thialfi nor the Asen, who have hurried to the scene, are able to free the god. He is relieved at last by his son Magni, who is only three years old. The serious result of the encounter denotes the precipitation of the vast stony masses into the cul- tivated valley, endangering the existence of the god of agriculture. Neither human industry nor the other bright agencies of culture avail to re- move the incubusrsonified Acom Magni is the personified Asen-strength of Thôr himself. However, although relieved of the weight ( 143 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS of the dead giant's body—i. l., although the ele- ments succeed in subduing the stony landslide-the fragment still remains in Thôr's forehead - 1. l., single bowlders stick fast in the field, which the plough encounters as a boat does a hidden snag in the water. The manner in which this was extracted is related in connection with another very different myth of Thôr. On his way home, the enchantress Grôa. a Grôa begins to chant incantations and magic runes over him. The stone begins to grow loose. Thôr thinks to encourage her by telling the service he had rendered her missing husband, Örwandil, the Bold. He states that he ... had carried Orwandil across the infernal waters of Eliwagar in a basket on his back. As a proof of the truth of this news he relates that one of Örwandil's toes was projecting from the bas- ket and was frozen in the arctic cold, that he (Thôr) had broken it off and flung it into the sky, where it was now to be seen in the form of the constellation Örwandil's known as Örwandil's Toe. He further Toe assured her that her husband would soon return home. Grôa is so overjoyed at the tidings that she forgets to keep up her magic drone. Thus the rocky splinter still remains in Thôr's brow for a time. Uhland, who furnishes the most suggestive com- ments to all these narrations, explains Grôa' to mean the green, the springing growth of the field, which is vainly desirous of covering up the wound Agricultural in Thôr's forehead -- viz., the unsightly Features. rocks in the acre. Örwandil is the seed, which the farmer - god bears across the arctic streams of winter. The seed is his precious ward. The name Örwandil means Arrow-worker, contain- 144 • THÔR'S ADVENTURES ing an allusion to the springing, shooting of the seed. He imprudently exposes a toe to the rigors of winter. The seed has sprung into the blade too early and is nipped by the frost. If, in the above desultory chapter, with its three successive stages, marked by Thialfi, Hrungnir, and Örwandil, there is a disappointing lack of dramatic march of events, owing perhaps to our mingling of interpretation with narrative, there is certainly nothing lacking to the complete picture of Thôr as the patron of agriculture. Before taking leave of Literary this picture we must, at the risk of fur- ftermath. ther impeding the narrative, instituto an aftermath for the sake of the rich gleanage of liter- ary discoveries latent in these myths. The numerous votive stones and altars in old German stone-quarries, dedicated to Hercules Sax- anus, vainly challenged the ingenuity of scholars, until Simrock, a profound mythologist, offered a plausible solution. It was puzzling why the Ro- mans should erect so many monuments to a demi- god who was not even a Roman but a Greek per- sonage, and that on alien soil, when so few had been found within Roman territory. Reverting to the familiar passage in Tacitus which designates Thôr as the German Hercules, Simrock surmises that the votive commemorations were established by Ger- les man soldiers in the Roman army to Saxanus. Thôr, under the title of Hercules Saxa- nus. These mercenaries kept their own creed, but adapted the nomenclature to their intellectual su- periors and rulers, the Romans. The Nature-allegories of mythology do not die, as we have seen. They are evaporated, like water, and redistilled after many years in various rainfalls Hercules K 145 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS form. Thus Thôr influences the legends of the Apostle Peter. Others, in oral and traditional folk- lore. Still others flow along the deeper channels of human thought, holding in solution the perpetual material of literary representation. Saxo Grammaticus has historically redomesti- cated the story of Örwandil. The latter slays Kol- ler (the Cold, mythically conceived). Fengo, also a genuine mythic character, meaning the Miller, in turn destroys Örwandil (the Seed) and marries Geruthe, or Grotti (the Mill). Subsequently Ame- leth (äuvlov, Meal or Flour) also falls a victim to the murderer. He is the son of Örwandil and Ge- ruthe. This meagre allegory of the flour-mill lived “Hamlet." www and grew until it came into the magic mee hands of Shakespeare. What this god- like miller has ground out of it has been wonder- bread, indeed, to the hearts and minds of men. Is there not a beautiful poetical suggestiveness in the discovery that “Hamlet,” with its depth and breadth, also enjoys a commensurate length of existence, reaching back to Thôr and Eliwa- gar? But another popular masterpiece of the modern drama has grown out of the story of Örwandil. In the heroic saga he survives as Orendel, and is called the oldest of heroes. One of the later ver- sions of the saga makes him the son of Eigel, King of Trier. This Eigel in his youth was a famous knight - errant, noted especially for his skill with the bow. At the court of King Nidung he abode a long time. One day the king imposed a trial of marksmanship on him that still fills us with shud- dering to think of. Eigel was required to shoot an 146 THÔR'S ADVENTURES apple off the head of his own three-year-old boy. This legend is found in various Saxon lands. What “Wilhelm Schiller has wrought out of the Swiss Tell.” variation in his “Wilhelm Tell” every school-boy knows. Tell is thus found to be a typi- cal mythic personage. However, it is safest not to tell a Switzer so. From peasant to professor they are ready to fight for their hero's historic genuine- ness. To find these hoary myths again so far from home is like meeting an old acquaintance after Routine of many years in a distant land. The Knowledge world is not very large, after all-even the world of man's thought. The knowledge upon which we live and thrive, like the seasons which produce our bread, is a solar routine. "There is nothing new under the sun," we may repeat after Solomon, but without the disgust of the blasé king. The sun, with all things under it, is an old story ; but, to the healthy man, what a miracle of variety and beauty! Loki once, while disporting in Freya's falcon robe, flew towards the bounds of Jötunheim. From Journey afar he caught sight of a fire - belching Geitödhs chimney, and, deeming himself safe in gard. his winged disguise, he approached and alighted on the window of a castle that belonged to the mighty Thurs Geirödh. The giant, on per- ceiving him, ordered a servant to seize the bird. Loki thought to tantalize them and failed to fly away. When the servant's hand was stretched out within reach of him, he found, to his terror, that he was no longer able to flee. Thus he was caught. The giant took him, and, gazing at him with flaming eyes, said: “Thou seemest indeed a rare bird. Tell to Geirödhs- 147 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS me who thou art." But Loki held his peace. Then the giant said: "I will loosen thy tongue for thee," and he locked him up in a chest for three months without food or water. At the end of that time he took him out and repeated the question. Loki, now quite subdued, confessed his name and begged to be set free. But the giant laughed loud and long: "At last I have one of the Asen in my power! Thou shalt not get away until thou dost promise to bring Thôr to me without his hammer and his girdle.” This promise Loki was fain to make, and very humbly and anxiously he flew back to Asgard. What stratagem he employed to pre- vail on Thôr to relinquish his hammer and girdle we are not told, but he did so prevail, possibly by flattering his prowess. Beside Loki's knavery Thôr appears with a good deal of rustic gullibility. Thus the pair set out together. On the way they passed the house of the giantess Grîd, who warned Thôr against Geirödh, and loaned the unarmed god her own gauntlets, girdle, and staff. Then they came to Wimur, the great- est of all streams. Thôr was about to Wimur. plunge in when he discovered Gialp, Geirödh's daughter, standing diagonally across the stream and causing it to overflow. Thôr drove her away by throwing a huge stone at her, Gialp.. P crying out: “You should dam a river at its source." Then, with Loki clinging to his gir- dle, he waded through. At the opposite bank he caught hold of a sorb - apple bush, and by its aid clambered up. They presently arrived at Geirödhs- gard and entered the hall. Thôr, tired out, took a seat on the only chair in the room, but no sooner had he done so than he found the chair raised up Grid. 148 THÔR'S ADVENTURES towards the ceiling with the evident purpose of crushing him. He braced his giant-staff against the beams above and mightily forced the chair down, when a loud outcry was heard under him. Gialp and Greip, Geirödh's daughters, who had lifted the chair, lay beneath it with crushed spines. Thereupon a giant domestic entered the hall and invited Thôr out into the court to a trial of strength with the master of the house. Tongues of flame were mounting up the walls and escaping through the chimney. Suddenly Geirödh, from be- hind an iron pillar, hurled a red-hot wedge or bolt at the amazed god, but Thôr caught it with his iron gauntlets and sent it whizzing back with such force that it passed through the pillar and through the giant and buried itself in the ground beyond. The giant in death was turned to stone. The vic- torious god planted the stone as a perpetual monu- ...ment of his achievement. There is actu-, Stone ally shown this day near the country-seat *. Haukadal, in Iceland, in the midst of gey- sers and volcanic débris, a petrefaction exactly re- sembling a huge, cowering human figure, transfixed through the middle! Ubi facta, aut petrefacta, lo- quuntur, opus est non verbis. The myth calls for careful discrimination be- tween the three embodiments of fire and lightning- Thôr, Loki, and Geirödh. The latter is evidently not a pure Storm-giant, but rather "a demon of the glowing heat, which empties itself in cloud-bursts”— Electrical Uhland. The difference between him and Varieties. Thôr is. that between the destructive thunder-storm and the beneficent thunder-shower. Thôr's hammer is missing in this encounter, be- cause the thunder-storm this time does not proceed Icelandic Monument. . 149 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Grid. Floods. from him. Gialp and Greip are the roaring flood and the whirling current. In their agency the Gialp and overflowing of mountain-streams, endan- Greip. gering agriculture and life, is exempli- fied. Grîd, in her double aspect of giantess and friend of Thôr, is more difficult of explanation. She a · must signify the cessation or transition of the storm to a more tolerable kind of weather. Her staff does not take the place of Thôr's hammer in the final contest, but is only used for he wading through the river. This is a Thôr, the Subduer of weak point in the symbolism of the myth. ** Thôr slays the giant with the lightning, after all. The chair may without question be ad- mitted to mean the bridges, the real seat of Thôr. Loki's incarceration is taken by Uhland to mean the waning light. In order to free himself, he leads Thôr at the solstice into the power of the Fire-giant. There is vagueness enough about the myth, after all has been said and done towards its elucidation. We will do well not to exact too precise a detailed account of it, but rather to receive the general im- pression of one of those electrical battles of the elements, before which man stands a helpless spec- tator. The sorb-apple bush, through its part in this adventure, became one of the plants sacred to Thôr. If Thôr's venture in Geirödh's domain of savage elementary hostility was attended with precarious Utgardloki. conditions, his warlike journey to Utgard- loki is cited to demonstrate, by its com- plete failure, that there are bounds set even to Thôr's titanic aggressions. In this excursion he “beards the lion in his den." Like his Greek brother, Her- cules, he boldly enters the outermost fastness of Nature, the Netherworld, where all semblance of 150 THÔR'S ADVENTURES habitable proportions and human outlines is trans- formed into genii-like vastness and ultimate, over- awing force. The imagination would cower before these Brobdingnagian incarnations but for the ac- companiment of that early-world humor which is inseparable from our champion. Loki, as the fire-fiend in civilized form, accom- panies the Thunderer. Through his secret sym- pathy with the infernal fire, he entices Thôr into this mad adventure. Thôr takes Thialfi and Rösk- wa along. The goat-chariot is left behind, and on foot the party set out through forest, barren hill- country, and mist - enveloped mountain heights, while the scenery grows more and more inhospita- bly unearthly. As night approached they came to a roomy, unoccupied house, which they warily en- tered, and lay down hungry and tired in one of the farthest recesses. At midnight they were awakened by a thunder- ous earthquake, which alarmed them exceedingly. During the remainder of the night Thôr stood guard at the entrance, hammer in hand. What was their amazement to behold at dawn a vast giant rise from the ground before them! It was his snoring that had caused the earthquake. Their Unearthly wonder and dread increased when they Proportions. saw him pick up his glove, for this was the house in which they had spent the night, and the thumb was the recess where they had slept. What must have been the feelings of the much- feared Thunderer to be reduced to a petty Hop o' my Thumb! Such is the relativeness and variableness of all measurements. However, with Dr. Watts, he com- forted himself that “the mind's the standard of the 151 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS man.” The god in him was not abashed. He boldly accosted the huge man-mountain, demand- ing his name. The giant listened as though he had heard an insect buzzing in the grass, and was much amused when he caught sight of the tiny visitors. . But he good-naturedly told them his name, Skrymir. we Skrymir (the Boaster). Then he quietly opened his pack and proceeded to eat his breakfast without offering them a crumb. After that he led the way onward. Thôr and his companions had hard work to keep up with his seven-league strides, and when he stopped for the night they were al- most dead with hunger and weariness. Having consumed his supper and tied up the remains in the pack, he tossed it to them and lay down to sleep under an oak-tree, where he was soon snoring once more, so that the woods and mountains reverberated with the noise. Thôr vainly tried to untie the pack. Baffled and angered by the giant's and churlishness, he raised his hammer and fetched him a crashing blow on the pate, but the huge sleeper only rubbed the spot, muttering that a leaf must have fallen on his head, and then re- sumed his snore. Again Thôr brought Miölnir down, this time upon the crown of the yokel's head, into which the hammer sank deeply. But the mon- ster, now half awake, scratched his head and com- plained that an acorn had fallen on it. Towards morning, Thôr, with all his might, wielded a third stroke on the sluggish poll. The hammer crashed into it up to the handle. The earth shook with the weight of the blow, and rocks and trees rolled down the hill-side with a roaring sound, but Skrymir only rubbed his skull, remarking that the birds had dropped a twig from the tree upon him. Then he Iron Bands. 152 THÔR'S ADVENTURES arose and bade the little folks good-bye, telling them that his way lay northward, while they inust travel towards the east. There, he said, they would come upon men larger than himself, and warned them to behave modestly, as became their size, lest they get into trouble. Thereupon he disappeared in the woods. . The abashed Asen pursued their journey in the direction indicated, and at noon arrived at the cas- Utgardloki's tle of Utgardloki. It was a thing of im- Castle. mensity. Moreover, the entrance was barred with an iron railing. The stout-hearted Lil- iputians, however, nothing daunted, readily squeezed through the spaces between the bars and entered a hall, where they saw assembled a large number of giants, vaster, indeed, than Skrymir. In their midst sat Utgardloki, their king, who received the greet- ing and the names of the intruders with contempt. “Is this the redoubtable Asathôr, the mighty god ?" he roared, in a voice like thunder, while fire glowed Trials of * from his eyes. Still, he condescended to Strength. a trial of strength between his people and the new-comers. The first trial was one of eating. Loki boasted his ability in this department. Ut- gardloki appointed his cook, Logi, to compete with the Fire-god. A trough was filled with meat, and the two contestants began at the opposite ends to eat their way towards each other. In the middle they met, but Loki having eaten only the meat off the bones, while Logi had consumed meat, bones, and the trough in the bargain, the prize was award- ed to the latter. Then came Thialfi's turn, who 'entered the lists to run a race with Hugin, the giant's servant. Poor Thialfi was immediately left far behind. 153 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Now Thôr himself takes up the contest, at first in drinking. Utgardloki produces a filled horn, which he empties in one draught, and the weakest of his attendants in three. But, though Thôr swills until he is ready to burst, there is no noticeable de- at lifting. Thôr attempts to lift Utgardloki's cat paw slightly. Last of all he is engaged in a wrest- ling match. Utgardloki jeeringly permits him to exhibit his strength on his nurse, Elli, declaring it unfair to allot him a man as a rival. Thôr, with all the strained exercise of his powers, is not able to budge the old woman, while she, with an easy shove, brings him upon his knees. Mocking laughter from the giants greeted every failure of the puny wights. But the master of the house, after the completion of the trials, hospitably entertained the vanquished. On the morrow, as they were about to leave, he accompanied them courteously a part of the way, and explained that the whole experience was magic, that the Asen had contended against primeval, un- conquerable powers. Thus he went on to say: "I myself was Skry- mir. Unobserved by thee, Thôr, I held a block of Utgardloki's mountain in front of my head. Thy Explanation. three strokes made all the earth shudder. The third opened an abyss all the way to Swart- alfaheim My cook Logi is the all-devouring Wild- lie. Hugin, who outran Thialfi, is Thought. The Irinking-horn was connected with the ocean. Thy draughts at its rim exposed the shores and caused the ebb-tide to flow backward. The gray cat is the Midgard Serpent, which thou wast about to lift out of her ancient bed. My nurse Elli (Eld) is noth- 154 THÔR'S ADVENTURES ing less than Age, which none has ever been able to withstand. Now go, and never return. My kingdom is inaccessible to man's petty conquests, for it is the kingdom of mountains, icebergs, and the sea.” Thôr was about to swing his hammer again, but Utgardloki was gone, and out of the clouds mocking faces and voices seemed to repeat the refrain, “Go, go!” Some of the features of this myth are media- val. Skrymir is the orthodox fairy - tale giant. Others are purely Eddic. Thôr's inability to undo the bands of the giant's haversack is the oft-told tale of the resistance of the rock - ribbed moun- tain region to food-yielding treatment. The fable, in its completed form, shows the touch of vari- ous hands. The poignant culmination might be characterized as ultra-modern, if our claim to the proprietorship of World-pain can be established. It Modern would appear that the sensible chasm be- Application. tween the unsatisfying Attained and the Unattained, or Unattainable, cut through the heart of myth-making man also, only he did not utilize the pain with the complacent invalidism of our neu- rotic age. He had only a cry for it. Such a primi- tive cry, like the Ai, Ai! of Prometheus, is this myth. The meeting of Utgardloki and Asaloki is like the visit of a galled and jaded horse of civili- zation to a wild steed of the prairie. The Pegasus of imagination has had his wings crushed down be- neath the harness when he became a cart-horse. The kingdom of Utgardloki is not so much the ultimate boundary of the material earth as the oc- Occult cult borderland between the material and Borderland. the mental. This is indeed the giant-in- habited, unconquered domain. All larger scientists, 155 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS whose purpose goes beyond the labelling of stones and bones, Thôr-like, admit their defeat here. Lord Kelvin, in a recent address in Glasgow, confessed that after fifty years of investigation he felt that he knew little more than before. Newton's confes- sion has become a staple sermon illustration. The mystic borderland is equally prodigious whether we enter it in the microcosm, man, or in the ma- crocosm, the universe. When will Thialfi catch up with Hugin? When will Thôr overcome Elli ? Are we on the eve of the occupation of the land, as so many think? Will the ether prove the medium through which a new telegraphy shall send its waves to other planets and a new telepathy flash its messages back to the source of thought? Or must we, sadly returning with Thôr, fall back on Odin, as Goethe did when, at the instigation of Schiller, he gave up his scientific experiments and returned to poetry? Will the borderland have to be kept shut up within the traditional belief in bib- lical texts, and in the sceptical uncertainty about Hindoo adepts and American mediums and mental healers? We seem to have made this advance ahead gardloki's territory, Thôr and Odin, scientific re- search and imagination, have joined their forces. The iron bars, the entrance to a burial vault; the names Utgardloki and Elli, the deep sea—which Eternal one version of the myth has Thôr's party dsa to wade through-together with the Dan- Utgard. tesque interior of the mausoleum - like abode, connote an invasion of the beyond, which our religious belief has deprived of earth - life se- quence and similarity. The makers of the myth evinced a healthier fearlessness in conceiving the Attraction Towards 156 THÔR'S ADVENTURES invasion at all. The Asen indeed returned crest- fallen and empty-handed, albeit a new deputation may come back from the land of the children of Anak with luscious clusters of Eshcol in their hands. Like the North Pole, this region will never lose its fascination. The great myths of Thôr show marks of having been pieced together out of divers older traditions, Homeric is to accomplish a consummate picture of Compilation his powers. His vernal encounter with of Thôr Sagas. ** the Storm and Frost giants is so primary an exercise of his office that it requires no literary portrayal. In his master efforts, as in the zodiacal tasks of Hercules, there is an invariable movement from the physical to the cosmological. The move- Movement of ment from the natural year to the world- the Myth. year we know to be the easiest step of our mythology. That the winter should grow into the reign of the Netherworld, or death, is a sugges- tion inherent in the Northern climate and in the Northern mind, and constitutes the key to the whole system of world - view. It is regarded by some as the salient feature of the last adventure of Thôr, which we are now to relate. Degir, the lord of the ocean, as we know, occasion- ally exchanged friendly visits with the Asen. Once, The Fetching when taking leave of them, he promised of Hymir's that he would invite them to a banquet Brewing- kettle in his submarine palace at the time of the flax-harvest, in September. When the time came, but no invitation with it, Thôr somewhat brusque- ly reminded Oegir of his remissness. The wily mer- man, who, apparently from his Thursen-nature, had no deep love for the gods, replied evasively that for such a number of guests of such redoubtable 157 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS drinking capability, a brewing-kettle of sufficient dimensions was lacking. It was certainly unking- like to obtrude this Philistine detail of the cuisine upon his illustrious guests, but then the flowing bowl always formed the centre-piece in the feasts of our fathers. The gods were bent on the invita- tion, and put their heads together to find out, if possible, where to obtain the vessel. Then Tyr, the one-armed hold-over secretary of war, stated that his step- father, Hymir, had a kettle a mile Tyr's Step- deep and wide at his country - place be- father Hymir. yond the icy streams of Eliwagar, in the distant Northeast, and that if Thôr consented to accompany him he, Tyr, one-armed though he was, would not shrink from the perilous undertaking of going in quest of it. The kinship to Hymir (Win- ter) is news to us, but then the old soldier, Tyr, is known to have had what the novelists call a “check- ered career," which should not be too curiously in- quired into. The proposal was, of course, exactly to Thôr's mind, and in a trice the two were seated in the A Journey goat-cart, rumbling away nor’-nor'-east à la Kennan. towards Hymir's abode. They accom- plished the Siberian tour without mishap or delay -gods always do- from broken wagons, missing relays, or Russian gendarmes. When they reached there they found zero weather. The reception was equally cold. At the entrance of the ice-palace sat w, two women. One was the grandam, a headed monster with nine hundred heads, who dam. deigned not to bob even one of them, but frowned at the visitors with all her faces. She plainly had an old grudge against Tyr, dating from the shadowy period of his relationship in that quarter. Nine-hundred- Grandain. 158 THÔR'S ADVENTURES His companion she disliked, of course, on his own account. But the other woman, the giant's gen- The All- tle wife, the typical patient Griseldis, All- golden One. golden, with white eye - brows, received them amicably, though withal in trembling anxiety. This was easily explained when the footsteps of the giant were heard as he returned from the chase. Such a truculent villain was this giant Hymir- one of the kind who, on entering their kennel, roar, “Fe, faw, fum !” When he strode in, stamping, his breath was a blizzard, his hair fell over his shoulders as a snow-storm, and his tangled forest of a beard was a solid icicle. At each step avalanches tumbled, glaciers crashed, rocks burst in twain. The poor wife hurried the intruders behind a pillar, but the many-headed ogress of a grandmother blabbed the secret, for which she had only too much natural temptation. When Hymir glared at the pillar it burst in two, and the two wretches were fully ex- posed to view. We should expect his look now to Introductory freeze them on the spot, but Thôr was Amenities. still Thôr, and, grasping Miölnir with a tight grip, he bade the giant come on. Hymir knew enough of the hammer's history not to wish to come on, so he suggested that they bury the hatchet, if not the hammer, and have a bite and a sup in friendship. Three oxen were killed and dressed for supper. In such a cold latitude copious feeding is the approved method of conserving warmth. Accordingly, Thôr gave an exhibition of his eating capacity by incontinently devouring two of the three oxen. We must suppose that the old lady, with her decimated regiment of hungry mouths, took her repast at a side-table. Then they all retired for the night. The next morning the 159 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Record. out aged his com he arctic mir an host, who had not been mollified by Thôr's inroads upon his larder, sullenly informed his guests that w he would have to go fishing for their The Greatest Fish-story on breakfast, as his herd would not long hold 4 out against a steady beef diet. Thôr laughingly offered his company. It was not morn- ing, as regards light, for the arctic night now pre- vailed. In the gloom and mist, Hymir and Thôr repaired to the sea-shore. Thôr inquired where he should find bait for his hook. “Find it yourself!" snorted the ill-natured fellow. Thôr, nothing loath, strode to the herd, and grasping the e largest ox, called Himinbriotr (Heaven breaker), plucked his head off, and returned with it to the strand. By this time Hymir's fear was getting the best of his surliness. Thôr tossed the ox-head into the boat, sprang in after it and, snatch- ing the oars, merrily rowed out to sea. Present- ly Hymir said that they had reached the fishing- ground. But Thôr answered that he was after deep-sea sport, and lustily pulled on. After a short interval, Hymir, with the icebergs bobbing like corks around them, cried that they were lost if they did not return. But Thôr's laugh rose above in the bellow of the waves and the grind of the Fishing the icebergs as the boat went rocking ground. See on. The god had his Berserk and Viking mood on, the vernal-god, the mighty Uhlan of cult- ure, before whom crouched Winter with the heart melting out of him, for to-day Thôr felt it in him to do wonders of valor. At last he stopped. Hymir cast his lines over- The First board, and soon had a couple of whales Catch. dangling. They were not angling for smelt that day. Thôr baited his hook with Himinbriotr's Rowing to 160 THÔR'S ADVENTURES head and sent it to the bottom. At once he felt a bite—and a game fish it was, for the line played out so that the gunwale smoked. Thôr got a pur- chase on the rope and was thrown on his knees. But, rising, he pulled so taut that his feet went through the boat and he stood on the bottom of the sea. Then he pulled in with all his Asen mus- cle, while the water was churned to a geyser. It is still the common opinion that a man must be half- Thôr's Game. seas over before he can see the real sea- serpent. Hymir guessed what kind of an ichthyosaurus was doing the tail-lashing, for it was like that of a hundred thousand tarpon. The bilge- water was swishing into the boat, threatening to wash all the wintry picturesqueness out of him. There was such a mêlée of god, boat, and sea that poor Hymir turned sea-sick and his teeth began to chatter, besides which the pair of whales now be- came alarmed and tried to stampede. As yet, how- ever, he believed that Thôr was only bent on a lit- tle fun with the arch-reptile. Fun it was for the The Asen mad god, albeit the fun of a war-steed Berserk. neighing and pawing for the battle. He was in that temper that a man sometimes feels when a divine rage of iconoclasm comes over him, when he pants for a vast fight, and would like to borrow the sceptre of the Lord God Almighty for one hour to smash all the megatheria of Humbug. But the laws of good and of evil must take prece- dence of our rage. What we have marred we cannot restore with bluster and fury. Shall the decrees of the Nornes be annulled ? Anticipating Shall the time-programme of the world Doom. be violated and the universal cataclysm be precipitated by this unfettered hammer-swinger? Ć IOT THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Thus questions Hymir, as, terror-banned, he kneels in the bows. It would seem so, for Thôr hears nothing but the song and the dance of his own vernal sprites, as to the rhythm of it he draws in the coil. He is singing—as sailors at the capstan sing their Heave-ho!-singing the higher pæan of progress and harmony and victory, while his red beard flows like a banner in the storm. Now with an upheaval as of a tidal-wave, the waur head of the Midgard Serpent emerges, spitting venom as a whale spouts, salt-water. The earth shakes and trembles in all its nine worlds. The stars go out like snuffed candles in the arctic twilight. But Thôr wraps the rope around his left hand and with the right fumbles at his belt for Miölnir. “No, the unlawful and awful shall not happen," says Hymir, who, forgetting to play at castanets me with his teeth, jumps up and with his Hymir's Desperate knife slashes the cable in two. Down Intervention. . sinks the horrible head, but before it dis- appears, Miölnir has struck it, inflicting only a wound—not fatal, thanks to the water. Then Thôr turns on Hymir, and with a blow of his fist on the jaw sends him sprawling to the bottom of the boat, so that the giant's feet kick at the now relighted stars and his icy beard is shivered like glass. Hymir takes his punishment unmurmuringly, grateful that Miölnir was otherwise engaged at the time, but his having risen to the height of the oc- casion with his knife somewhat brings back his old burly self-confidence. Thus, while whimpering over Taking Home his jaw, he sullenly tells Thôr to get the Catch them back to land. The latter, without ado, loads the boat with the blubbering giant and the whale-blubber on his broad back, and wades to shore. 162 THÔR'S ADVENTURES Meanwhile General Tyr has been cosily ensconced behind the stove, twirling his military mustache with his one hand, and tiring out the eighteen hun- dred ears of his grandmother, talking over his youthful escapades, quite unconscious of the great things transpiring on that day. When the two roisterers return they all sit down to their oleagi- nous breakfast. Then Thôr, who is tired of the vis- it, straightway comes to the point in the matter of the beer-kettle. Hymir, though hors de combat, is growing ugly again. He doesn't want to give up the kettle at all—not he. Still he does not care to bring on fresh trouble by a downright refusal, and plainly Thôr is not in a singing humor now-the post-ecstatic reaction that we all know having set in. So he resorts to the stale device of a tricky strength New Strength test. If Thôr succeeds in breaking the Trials. drinking-bowl before them by dashing it against a harder substance, he shall have the kettle. Thôr throws the bowl against a pillar. The pillar is splintered, the wall is crushed, but the bowl is not nicked. “The giant's head is harder than stone,', whispers the sympathetic All-golden One to Thôr. The next instant the bowl falls in a thousand pieces about the giant, and he is rubbing an impro- vised phrenological bump of caution on his obdu- rate cranium. Now the gods make their adieus to The Kettle the ladies and proceed to the yard where Obtained. the kettle stands. The gallant warrior Tyr, probably feeling the eyes of the ladies upon him, is eager to display his power. He takes his hand out of his pocket and wrenches at the thing, but cannot move it an inch. At this he bristles with becoming indignation, and mutters a soldierly oath. But Thôr lifts the huge caldron in his himed out of movendiginates the 163 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Thôr's Fight. brawny arms, and, turning it over, sets it on his head like a gigantic Mambrino's helmet, then with the handle clattering against his heels, strides away. However, they are not to get away so easily. Presently they hear behind them the multitudinous rush and roar of pursuing hosts. Hymir has called out all his forces. From caverns, abysses, and rocky clefts they issue, from the mountain-summits and from the Polar Sea — regulars, tousing, shrieking Hrimthursen with distended nostrils, and weird auxiliaries from the bounds of Niflheim, horrescent, e uncanny forms, Gorgon-faced fiends and Greatest furies of savagery, bat-like occupants of * night and chaos and the Inferno, an ir- ruption of the pandemonium of destruction. The brigadier was of no use again. Civilized warfare would not avail with these Sioux and Comanches of the wilds. Setting the kettle down, Thôr put Miöl- nir to playing a tattoo, with the usual effect. When the echo of his thunder had subsided and the last of the monsters disappeared in their holes, the Arc- tic night was over. The roseate dawn lighted up a battle-field strewn with the wrecks of avalanches, ice - walls, and rocks. Together the two remount the car and fetch the troublously sought brewing- kettle to Oegir, so that the banquet should, despite all, take place. The kettle, according to Uhland, is the Arctic Sea, which Thôr transports southward into Oegir's realm -2. C., removes it into the circle of navigation, where it becomes amenable to the Asen gathering, or the purposes of human progress. The crystal bowl must be the ice itself. The white-browed All-golden One is the impris- oned light, the many-headed grandam is the many- 164 THÔR'S ADVENTURES peaked, snow-covered mountain range. The lapse from the surface in this grewsome frontier-cam- Interpreta- paigning is so easy that an infernal de- tion s cent has not failed to attach itself to the tale of the kettle. The latter does survive in folk- lore, sometimes as a barrel, out of which the devil preaches, sometimes as a bell. It would mean the basin or hole of hell. The witches' caldron, that forms such an indispensable utensil in the house- keeping of mediæval diablerie, may be a variation of it. Then Thôr certainly surpassed Hercules. The latter brought Cerberus up out of the hole, while the former pulled the hole itself out. That a crowning achievement on the part of Thôr is set forth in this myth, one of his names, Thôr- kettil, abbreviated into Thôrkîll, indicates. This is a perpetual trophy, like Africanus or Coriolanus. In- deed, it is the acme of Thôr's symbolical career of endeavor, wherefore we have thought best to place it last in the list. It is such, not because of the in- fernal element in it. Quite the contrary, Infernal because it denotes the remaining resort wat beyond the futile engagement with the Netherworld. The infernal turn given to the in- terpretation is incongruous, a clumsy, later attach- ment. The Utgardloki episode marks the furthest possibilities in this direction. Thôr turns back from the realm of spectres and immensities, where his hammer-strokes are aimed at thin air, and in the new excursion shows us something better than coquetry with the occult-namely, to conquer the palpable barbarities in our bounds. There is a fascination in the uncanny. In terror there is a certain sensuous titillation not unpleasant. But duty and work are better. The Gothic good- Not an Encounter. 165 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS sense and good-humor of Thôr teach us even more than his labors. The deepest chasm before us is that between our knowledge and our life. We can- not dream and peer our way into the beyond. We must live up to and into it. The Schlaraffenland of the German fairy-tale was surrounded by a wall of millet-pap, through which you had to eat your way. Thôr could have done it. Let us not regret the gray cat, but rejoice over the blow he gave the real serpent when he had her wriggling on his hook. CHAPTER VIII THE FIRST ACT IN THE WORLD - DRAMA-THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE GODS In saying that Norse mythology is a drama of the world, no one means that there is a play in lit- erary form present, but only that its conception of early society resulted in a tragedy. We have seen this much in the introduction, in the clear-cut dis- cernment between good and evil. This fundament- al view of a conflict is the leaven that permeates the whole lump of personages, actions, and develop- ments. Most of the characters have been called into being by the exigencies of this view. The others have been directed by it. The elements of greatness in the system, its bold philosophy, its moral seriousness, its poetical grandeur, are the fruits of it. It is in keeping with this fact that modern artis- tic treatments of the subject inevitably assume the character of a tragedy-thus, Wagner's operas and Ibsen's plays. No Saxon country has a national epic. The “Paradise Lost" and the “Messiad” are not Saxon, neither is Tennyson's “King Arthur.” The “Nibelungenlied” is a tragedy. The Odinic Homer or Dante — if that great Teutonic poet ever appears—will not write an epic with Snorre 167 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS they stand ur with his his Palaa Real Drama. Sturleson's and Saxo Grammaticus's attenuated legendary Odin as his hero, but a trilogy or cycle : of tragedies. The material will yield to no other mould. Saxon mythology is both a genuine drama and a world-drama. Odin and his Paladins are more than a King Arthur with his Round Table of Knights. They stand for something more than the embodi- ment of certain Nature-forces or moral qualities. They assume not only the parts of deific energies Nam in their separate manifestations, but they thology a combine these into a living programme, e animated, vitalized by conscious total and final purpose. It is not a single battle between op- posing principles, but a complete campaign, fought out to the bitter, fateful end. All the technical requisites of a drama are pres- ent. A drama must have three parts—a beginning, a middle, and an end. The division of the tragedy into five acts is an amplification. The second and the fourth acts might be dispensed with. There are but three essential divisions. In the first act the die is cast, the hostile forces are marshalled, the declaration of war has been made. The play may begin as an idyl, all peace and sweetness and joy ; the inherent separation and opposition may be de- ferred to the end of the act, but before the act is over the gauntlet must have been thrown down, the challenge must have passed. The second stage carries the contest to its climax. The last, to its inevitable results. These three acts are found in our topic. The first ends in the fall of the gods, the second in Bal- dur's death, and the third in Ragnarök. The dramatis persona are genuine men and wom- 168 THE FIRST ACT IN THE WORLD-DRAMA Iceland. en. The apocalypse also furnishes a tragic view Unique as a of Time, but in compact simplicity and World-view. human interest this falls below that of our system. Being the most notable essay to combine Nature with the operations of the soul and the fate of so- ciety, the Nature - side of this drama deserves a The Nature special notice. Every drama brings Nat- basis. ure into sympathy with its great moments. The latter is laid under tribute to furnish the mel- odrama to the play. Norse mythology would not be what it is in its final elaboration without the local, climatic setting which it received in Iceland. e Into the life and landscape of this Scandi- navian island the molten ore of the Asen religion was poured as into a mould. From the outlines of the mould we gain a knowledge of the casting. The northern part of the island lies within the Arctic zone. On the southern coast, sheltered in the embrasure of Faxa Fiord, the little capital and metropolis, Reykjavik, like a nest of eider - ducks, looks out over the sea towards Europe, from whence it was built. The visit of a ship is the occasion of a holiday. The visitors are welcomed with grate- Location, ful embraces and importunate hospitali- Climate. ty. Even during the few short summer months the approach is difficult on account of the vast, rolling “Spanish waves," as the billows there- abouts are called. Nowhere else in the world is the sea heavier or higher. In the winter all communi- cation with the world is cut off. The straggling lit- tle city, with its scattered, outlying farmsteads, then lives through its annual ordeal between the two terrors of land and sea. For the land has relin- 169 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Heat. quished its stable character here and is become like the sea. At any moment it may rock and heave and break forth into a rolling tide of fire. From time immemorial Heat and Cold have repaired hith- er to fight out their never-ending duel. The whole a country, like a battle-field, is strewn with Arctic Cold and Volcanic the records of the mighty conflict. Glac- iers and lava-beds alternate. Towering mountain-peaks, their sides covered with ice-fields, their tops crowned with never-melting snow, stand guard like frigid sentinels, to preserve the kingdom of winter from genial invasion. From the North Pole the cutting blasts come shrieking to mingle their cry with the thunderous grind of icebergs on the coast and the thunderous thud of avalanches in the val- leys. This is bad enough, but it is only the challenge of one of the combatants. Mount Hecla, Skapta Jo- kul, and other volcanoes, hurl back defiance, con- veyed in anger-vibrant rumblings and black, sky- beclouding puffs of smoke, from their craters. What the horror of desolation of such outbreaks must have been the excoriated, fire-furrowed face of the land indicates. It is like the face of an old man furrowed by passions, tears, and sweat. The country has been so often singed over that not a tree, except a stunted, bush-like species of birch, is to be seen. Deluged with lava, rained upon by showers of ashes and gravel, the centre of the island is a brown, bleak desert, and the southern habita- ble rim is reclaimed only in spots and with difficul- ty. The surface is cracked open in a thousand gjas or fissures. Huge bowlders of pumice-stone and of magnetic iron lie about as mementos of the fury and power of the Cyclops, who hurled them out of their burning caverns. Some of the record- 170 THE FIRST ACT IN THE WORLD-DRAMA IYI Hecla's 1766. ed eruptions of the two volcanoes mentioned, re- mind one of Pliny's description of the Vesuvian outbreak that buried Herculaneum and Pompeii. In the spring of 1766 Mount Hecla in- Outbreak in dulged in an unusual exhibition of rage. A continuous outpour of sand, red rocks, pumice, and ashes was kept up. Bowlders six feet in circumference were flung fifteen and twenty miles away. For a circuit of one hundred and fifty miles the earth was covered with a layer of sand four inches deep. The air was so darkened that at a distance of one hundred and forty miles men could not distinguish black from white. The in- habitants of the Orkney Islands received a shower of volcanic dust like black snow. All this was ac- companied by the artillery of subterranean thun- ders that shook the earth. But this effort of Hecla was entirely eclipsed by that of her rival, Skapta Jokul, in the year 1783., Skapta This monarch of burning mountains Outbreak in stands in the southwest corner of the 1783. island, in the midst of an area of four hundred square miles, which, on account of its precipices and ice - gorges, has never been trodden by the foot of man. Lord Dufferin, in his Letters from High Lati- tudes, thus describes the eruption of 1783 : Jokul's “The preceding winter and spring had been unusually mild. Towards the end of May, a light-bluish fog began to float along the confines of the untrodden tracts of Skapta, accompanied in the beginning of June by a great trembling of the earth. On the Sth of that month, in- mense pillars of smoke collected over the hill country tow- ards the north, and, coming down against the wind in a southerly direction, enveloped the whole district of Sida in 171 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS darkness. A whirlwind of ashes then swept over the face of the country, and on the roth, innumerable fire-spouts were seen leaping and flaring amid the icy hollows of the mountain, while the river Skapta, one of the largest in the island, having first rolled down to the plain a vast vol- ume of fetid waters mixed with sand, suddenly disap- peared. "Two days afterwards, a stream of lava, issuing from sources to which no one has ever been able to penetrate, came sliding down the bed of the dried-up river, and in a little time—though the channel was six hundred feet deep and two hundred broad--the glowing deluge overflowed its banks, crossed the low country of Medalland, ripping up the turf before it like a table-cloth, and poured into a great lake, whose affrighted waters flew hissing and screaming into the air at the approach of the fiery intruder. Within a few more days the basin of the lake was completely filled, and, having separated into two streams, the unexhausted torrent again recommenced its march-in one direction overflowing some ancient lava-fields, in the other, re-enter- ing the channel of the Skapta, and leaping down the lofty cataract of Stapafoss. But this was not all. While one lava flood had chosen the Skapta for its bed, another, de- scending in a different direction, was working like ruin within and on either side the banks of Hverfisfliot, rushing into the plain, by all accounts, with even greater ſury and velocity. Whether the two issued from the same crater it is impossible to say, as the sources of both were far away within the heart of the unapproachable desert, and even the extent of the lava flow can only be measured froni the spot where it entered the inhabited districts. The stream which flowed down Skapta is estimated at about fifty miles in length by twelve or fifteen at its greatest breadth; that which flowed down the Hverfisfliot, at forty miles in length by seven in breadth. Where it was imprisoned, between the high banks of Skapta, the lava is five or six hundred feet thick ; but as soon as it spread out into the plain, its depth never exceeded one hundred feet. The eruption of sand, ashes, pumice, and lava continued till the end of 172 THE FIRST ACT IN THE WORLD-DRAMA August, when the Plutonic drama concluded with a violent earthquake. “ For a whole year a canopy of cinder-laden cloud hung over the island. Sand and ashes irretrievably overwhelmed thousands of acres of fertile pasturage. The Faroe Islands, the Shetlands, and the Orkneys were deluged with vol- canic dust which perceptibly contaminated even the pure skies of England and Holland. Mephitic vapors tainted the atmosphere of the entire island; even the grass, which no cinder-rain had stiffled, completely withered up; the fish perished in the poisoned sea. A murrain broke out among the cattle, and a disease resembling scurvey at- tacked the inhabitants themselves. Stephenson estimates that 9000 men, 28,000 horses, 11,000 cattle, 190,000 sheep, died from the effects of this one eruption." To have lived through one such catastrophe is enough to furnish the imagination with material for the nightmares of a lifetime. The fiery inun- dations of Etna and Vesuvius are horrible enough, albeit the kindly southern sun soon covers up the seared pathway with vines and clambering verdure. What must existence be in a country where the demoniacal reign of fire alternates only with the Horror of demoniacal reign of ice? What induce- Desolation ment could have prompted human beings to brave the dangers of the sea in seeking this lonely, doubly and trebly cursed inferno as a place of settlement ? Was not Norway cold enough? Our amazement increases when we learn that Ice- land was settled, not by the expulsion of the dregs of society, by the poor or vicious classes, but by the voluntary emigration of nobles. Only one mo- tive has been found adequate for such expatria- tion. Neither wealth nor ease nor honor beckoned from that barren haven. Nothing but the love of liberty could compass a living immolation like that. 173 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Settlement. Harold Haarfager, a contemporary of English Al- fred, was the first to unite the numerous petty prin- cipalities and duchies of Norway into a wa kingdom, just as Edgar did the Saxon Heptarchy in England. It is the old story. He was as unscrupulous as ambitious, sparing not even his own blood and kin that stood in his way. When he had removed all the rival rulers he be- gan upon the nobles, whose rank and allegiance were conditioned in certain Udal rights. Rather than permit these to be robbed by the tyrant, a number of the nobles, with their families, em- barked in a dragon-shaped galley and sailed away from their beloved Norway towards that distant, dimly known island in the Northern Sea. In- golf was the leader of the band. Arrived on the shores of Iceland, he cast overboard the pillars of his old home, so that the gods might indicate the place of landing by them. Where the tide washed these ashore the colonists disembarked and built their new homestead, and this became the capital, Reykjavik. Here, amid the vitrified rocks, the basalt columns, beds of dolorite and lava-fields, be- tween mountains rolling fire and snow down their sides, geysers or stokers hissing their mighty jets heavenward, and the mad ocean booming and ramping around all, they builded their lonely farm- houses and their little republic. On a Island fertile plain, named by them Thingvalla, epublic. beside the river Oxeraa, inclosed by the abysmal chasm of Almanna Gja, which gives access only by a narrow causeway that was kept guarded, they chose the meeting-place for their Althing, or popular governing assembly. The government was patriarchal and democratic. The fertile valleys af- The New 174 THE FIRST ACT IN THE WORLD-DRAMA Old and the Religions. forded a rude plenty. The long winter nights af- forded leisure for thought and study. The isolation afforded freedom from the wars and revolutions of Europe. The number of the colonists steadily grew. They were Thôr and Odin worshippers. The im- mense gravity and vehement clashings of the Nat- ure forces were calculated to develop both imagi- nation and muscle to their utmost stalwart capacity. On land and on sea men had to be heroes. The later comers in the tenth century brought tidings of the New Religion. At length, in the year 1000 A.D., the inevitable decision between the new and the old confronted the fathers of this, the last refuge of the Asen. That meeting of the Althing beside the Contest black, yawning rampart of the Almanna between the Gja, which convened to settle the ques- New tion whether Jesus should be God, or S. Thôr and Odin and Freir, is one of the most dramatic moments in all history. The Chris- tian missionaries sent over by Olaf Trygvasson, the first royal convert of Norway, were present. Over against them stood the priests of the ances- tral religion and their fierce, white - haired ad- herents. The controversy waxed long and loud, and was probably not very different from ordinary religious polemics. When it was at its height, so it is told, a low peal of subterranean thunder rolled. underfoot. In any other country this would have stampeded the meeting and postponed the old-and- new-school controversy. But Icelanders are used to living on the lid of a tea-kettle. A champion of the old faith, with sudden inspiration, seized upon the occurrence as an aid to his cause. "Listen," he exclaimed, “to Odin, muttering his angry threats at the treasonable proposal. His fires will consume us 175 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS if we yield." But, as usual, there was a reply from the other side. “With whom were the gods angry, then, when these rocks were consumed ?" quickly put in one of the Christians, pointing to the volcanic relics about them. This was conclusive. The ques- tion was put, and the New Religion was voted in by a large majority. The Asen were dead. No, hard- ly that, nor yet for many years to come. The old beliefs lingered long, nor are they quite extinct to- Saxon Self day. It is a remarkable testimony to the Government. efficacy of their self-government that so momentous a question was decided by those wild spirits, with blood like lava in their veins, not through violence, but through a deliberate vote of the majority. The change was not all too violent. Some of the early emissaries of the Gospel were more Pagan than Christian, if we may judge by An Early the example of their leader, Thangbrand. Proselyte. He was a truculent apostle, as quick to draw the sword as St. Peter before his conversion. He is said to have been sent from Norway because the odor of sanctity in which he stood in the mother- country was not over - fragrant. The old chroni- cler relates : “Thangbrand was a passionate, un- governable person, and a great man - slayer, but a good scholar and clever. Thorvald and Veterlid the Skald composed a lampoon against him ; but he killed them both outright. Thangbrand was two years in Iceland, and was the death of three men before he left it.” When the New Religion was voted the Establish- ment by this plebiscite and the old cult began to fall From Myth into desuetude, then the myths changed From hoytly into mouth to Mythology. into mythology. The ecclesiastical ma- chinery of Catholicism produced but a faint rattle 176 THE FIRST ACT IN THE WORLD-DRAMA Saxons in Ultima Thule. The Roman Catholic Church has inherited from her predecessor, the Roman state, a flexible, facile liberality towards foreign gods, and a politic readiness to adapt them, by an easy christen- ing transition, to the manifold niches in her saintly pantheon. She has ever been political more than dogmatical. The Scandinavian peoples, from their hardy freedom, have never been dominated by the papal esprit de corps. They have ever been natural Protestants and Non - Conformists. It Natural was not until the Lutheran revolt came Fotestants to them in the sixteenth century that they seized upon Christianity with their old-time storm and stress animation. Their old gods had slumber- ed in the coffins of Christian saints. Now they awoke. Mediæval ecclesiasticism, with its South- ern classic insistence on form, uniformity, organi- zation, fixędness, was an interregnum of gestation. The Norse spirit, indoctrinated into the romantic world-view of liberty, action, and progress, could no more thrive under such a system than could Gerda come in the ban of Winter. When the Refor- mation the mation came, like another Skirnirsför, · the Norse with this modern age of revolt and end- tit. less aspiration, the Norseman felt the wafting of the heated wind caused by Miölnir's flight upon his cheek, and knew that the Roman epic had sung itself out and the world - drama of - the Asen was progressing in a new and commensu- rate stage-setting. Meanwhile, in the first few centuries after the introduction of Christianity, from 1000 to 1400, transpired the most fruitful period of Icelandic in- tellectual and adventurous activity. During this period Greenland was colonized and the mainland The Relor- Revival of Spirit. M 177 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Period of of North America discovered. The Icelanders be- came the scholars, scientists, and diplomats of North- Classic ern Europe. An age of literary bloom crary flourished on the island. Histories, me- Iceland. moirs, romances, biographies, poetry, sta- tistics, archæologies in great abundance sprang into being. Then the little republic became an appanage to the crown of Norway, and with its in- dependence its literary life became extinct. Very little of the literary labor of that period now sur- vives. The colonies in Greenland were mysteri- ously swept out of existence. The discovery of America led to no practical results, unless we ac- cept the apocryphal story that Columbus visited Iceland and learned of the Norseman's discovery while there. The two enduring, monumental labors of this period, to which the scenery and the history of the island are but a pedestal, which tower into larger .. proportions than Hecla and Skapta Tokul, The Badas. are the two Eddas. The conditions of time and place were entirely opportune for the consum- mation of the Asen faith in an adequate literary form. The tragic, agonizing convulsions of Nat- ure supplied the motif of vast and intense move- ment, emphasizing and developing the dramatic elements of the system. The contest between the · two religions produced both polemical sympathy and philosophical discrimination. The discipline of general literary activity had prepared critical judg- Snorre ment and taste. The genius of Snorre Sturleson. Sturleson furnished the last requirement for the work. His life and character are in har- mony with his surroundings and his system. He may be said to have written his sagas with the sophical ctivity had pihe genius 178 THE FIRST ACT IN THE WORLD-DRAMA point of a sword. He was very unlike the blind Homer, the blind Milton, or the pale seer Dante. Rich, haughty, ambitious, a warrior, a dominator of men, the leader of the Pagan party, a fierce volcanic nature, with the frame of a Thôr, his days were spent in deeds of violence, and when at night he sat down to write in the rude Nordic Low German the mighty acts of the old gods, now de- throned and derided by the priests of a softer creed, it was as though the Valkyries hovered over him as muses, and his work became instinct with the rage of the old fight. Thus he wrote his Prose Edda and his Heimskringla, the latter a crude attempt at uni- versal history, in which the gods are treated as early historic heroes. This work is a palpable compro- mise with the New Religion. Virgil's musical hex- ameters have not saved his effort to combine mythology and history from the laughter of pos- terity. Whether the motive be conciliation, as in Snorre, or national vanity, as in Virgil, or hero wor- ship, as in Carlyle, the attempt can only result in the spoiling of both. It is not in this way that the gods proceed from men, or men from the gods. Historicized gods must ever prove insipid heroes, as would a prince or a general in his shabby gold lace swaggering in a workshop. Snorre's life was brought to a fitting close. He was assassinated in the year 1241 by his three sons- in-law. It is well known that Greenland, Iceland, Spitz- Climatic bergen, and the north of Norway formerly Reminiscence possessed a milder climate than they do Golden Age. now. Thus Nature looks back to an idyllic day when the drama of the world began. The argument of our poetic cycle, if we may call of the 179 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS not Ethic or Metaphysical, it so, is to trace the attitude and the fate of the Good, represented by the gods, as it enters crea- tion and society. It there meets its natural foes. In the creation of the gods and the giants the in- cipient world-conflict is already precipitated. This is not a conflict of spirit with matter precisely. My- thology does not relate the creation of matter, but only its conformation. So far as we can tell, mat- ter always was here. Neither is it a conflict of Good and Evil, as abstract conceptions. Both gods and giants spring from matter. Nor are they essen- Mythological tially different in moral characteristics. Good and Evil The warfare is neither metaphysical nor hisi.com, ethical primarily, but cultural. Second- but Cultural. arily it is metaphysical, as the principles of ideal growth and of destructive crudeness may be designated as spiritual and physical respectively; and ethical as the vital is found to be the Good, and the mortal to be the Evil. A literary work must contain scientific analysis and ethical lessons, yet only in solution, lest the living stream be clogged. The Golden Age of the Gods is the joyful time when they are yet unaware of hostility. The Edda relates that after they had assigned places Eddic Golden Age of the to the sun and the moon, and set the ds. stars in their courses, given names to night and new moon, and ordered the times, they met on the Field of Ida, there to engage in work and play. House and sanctuary arch they towering, Furnaces build they metal they forge, Fashioning tongs and handsome tools. They threw in the court-yard joyous the dice, And lacked not golden objects then, Till Thursen daughters three. there joined them Rich in might from Jötunheim. Gods. i so THE FIRST ACT IN THE WORLD-DRAMA No matter how long the Golden Age may have continued in actual duration, from the stand-point End of the of the drama it is over almost as soon as First Act. it begins. The three Thursen daughters are the Nornes, the goddesses of Time. With the advent of Time the Golden Age ceases. Here are the arbitresses of Destiny and History. Their shadows fall across the joyous game of the Shining Ones. These look up into the sombre faces of the comers and read there the monition that the play is over and the conflict has begun. They are no longer beams of pure light, but temporal figurants, with the shadow dogging their footsteps. What has happened? Nothing more, nothing less than the declaration of war. The presence of the Asen in the world is that already. The coming of Cosmos into the realm of Chaos is an invasion, an aggression. It will surely be resisted. Hencefor- ward the bearers of Culture must go to work with a tool in the right hand and a weapon in the left. The children of Israel must build the walls of Je- rusalem, holding the trowel in one hand and the sword in the other, one eye on the wall, the other on the forces of Sanballat and Tobiah, the Ammonite. The New England settler dare not forget to carry the rifle afield along with the hoe, nor fail to scan the edge of the clearing for a glimpse of the lurk- ing savage. The first passage cited outlines the whole programme of the Asen-house, sanctuary, industry. . But something further has happened. We have seen that it lies in the nature of Light to be uncon- scious of Shadow. It is only when it leaves its supernal home and enters into the world of mate- 181 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS rial forms that it is impaired. The Asen have made themselves assailable; they have forfeited their na- .. tive invulnerability by partaking of error Incipient Sin. or evil. We must look elsewhere to dis- cover that fatal event. We find it in another pas- sage of the Edda song, the “Wöluspa": Gullweig Heid, wala. Then was murder first in the world When with tridents Gullweig they prodded, In the hall of the High, where flames flared brightly. Three times consumed, she is thrice born anew, Unseldom and often, yet ever she lives. Heid was she called wherever she went, Well-spoken Wala, wolves did she tame. Brewing art knew she, peace of soul robbed she, Loved one forever of evil folk. What does this dark, oracular allusion mean? What the Nordic Pytho here chants, thus deeply droning, is the shuddering moment when Sin was conceived. The industrial act is denoted in the personification with the three names. The first syllable of the first name, Gull, means gold. The second syllable, Weig, means both stuff and sub- stance, and an intoxicating drink. The whole word evidently means gold in ore. Turning it in the flames with forks is the primitive process of refin- ing. The remaining verses of the first stanza de- scribe the imperishableness and ever - recurring supremacy of gold. The word Heid means, first, quality, thenart, and finally value, property, wealth- the three stages of material enrichment. The in- toxication of the love of gold is then enlarged into witchery or magic, for Wala is the original witch- not a vulgar mediæval hag, but a hoary Thursen queen, gifted with preternatural knowledge, dwell- 182 THE FIRST ACT IN THE WORLD-DRAMA ing in the confines of the Netherworld. Her power is exercised in taming wolves—. C., controlling the rude, physical rage of the giant outbreaks into more subtle effort; in the art of brewing, her es- sential office, the combining of the dark, occult prod- ucts of lower Nature, as a counterfeit to the miracle of higher Nature, for the benumbing infatuation of man-the Hecate of Middle-Age lore and of “Mac- beth”; and, last, the robbery of man's salvation of soul. The latter phrase has a Christian sound. The theory is held by some that the riper, higher thought of Saxon mythology is borrowed from Christianity. It would be easy to show that contemporary Chris- Coincidences tian thought was scarcely worth borrowing. of Revelation. Coincidences like this only indicate the affinity of spirit and the community of ideas among seekers after truth. Does the pathos of mythology, then, amount to nothing but the bathos of a commonplace? Does the precipitation of the world-drama eventuate into a canting, monkish platitude against gold, indus- trialism, and material civilization ? Superficial re- formers deem the sin of society to consist herein and clamor for a return to Eden. That this easy clamor has an untrue ring the example of the Church proves, whose tirades against gold have been equalled only by her love of it. All material things are symbols and moulds for the spiritual. The spiritual substance, which we fill these the Love of moulds with, constitutes the sin or sin- he Sin. lessness of civilization. The celestial light must suffuse the earth-forms to produce the vari- colored pictures and Nature's life-drama. That mythology does not accuse gold of being the curse Not Gold but Gold the Sin. 183 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS of society is learned from these verses, which speak of the rejuvenated world : Then will again the wonderful disks Of gold be found lying strewn in the grass, Which the Asen had in the days of yore. Intellectual Aspects. The intellectual sin of the gods was the exalta- tion of the material into the place of the spiritual, the forfeiture of the gold of sunshine for and Social the dull gold in the bowels of the earth. is. The moral sin, which follows, is the abuse of gold for the purpose of social wrong, injustice, and oppression. We have noted the primal refrac- tion in the case of Baldur. Material civilization is not materialism, but a means to intellectual eman- cipation. Mankind begins in a garden but ends in a city. This is not the sin. In common with other reminiscences of a fall, this veteran preaching of our race has for its golden text that worldliness is the sin. A multi-millionaire may be unwordly and altruistic. A savage may be worldly and selfish. This egotism and injustice leads to the first fratri- cide. Then was murder first in the world. The other steps follow with theatrical rapidity. The development of the dwarfs from the benevo- lent energies of growth into malevolent wardens of gold is placed here. The following account should be inserted in this connection, as it affords a comprehensive view of sten the incipient gold-rule, and is interesting and Gju” as the basis of the various Nibelung le- 38. gends. It is taken from the “Skaldska- parmal,” or “Poetical Diction," in the Younger Edda, R. B. Anderson's translation : The Niflungs Kungs. 184 THE FIRST ACT IN THE WORLD-DRAMA " It is related that the three Asas went abroad to learn to know the whole world-Odin, Hönir, and Loki. They came to a river, and walked along the river-bank to a force, and near the force was an otter. The otter had caught a salmon in the force and was eating it with his eyes closed. Loki picked up a stone, threw it at the otter and hit him in the head. Loki bragged of his chase, for he had secured an otter and a salmon with one throw. They took the salmon and the otter with them, and came to a byre, where they entered. The name of the bonde who lived there was Hreidmar. The Asas asked for night- lodgings, stating that they had plenty of food, and showed the bonde their game. But when Hreidmar saw the otter, he called his sons, Fafner and Regin, and said that Otter, their brother was slain, and also told who had done it. Then the father and the sons attacked the Asas, seized and he was Hreidmar's son. The Asas offered, as a ransom for their lives, as much money as Hreidmar himself might demand, and this was agreed to and confirmed with an oath. Then the otter was flayed. Hreidmar took the otter- belg and said to them that they should fill it with red gold and cover it with the same metal, and when this was done they of the swarthy elves, and he came to the dwarf whose name is Andvare, and who lived as a fish in the water. Loki caught him in his hands and demanded of him, as a ransom for his life, all the gold he had in his rock. When they entered the rock, the dwarf produced all the gold he owned, and that was a very large amount. Then the dwarf concealed in his hand a small gold ring. He begged Loki, who had seen it, not to take the ring away from him, for with it he could increase his wealth again. Loki said the dwarf should not keep as much as a penny, took the ring and gold, and went out. But the dwarf said that the ring should be the bane of every one who possessed it. Loki replied that he was glad of this, and, that all should be fulfilled according to his prophecy, he would take care to bring the curse to the ears of him who was to receive it. 185 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS He went to Hreidmar and showed Odin the gold; but when the latter saw the ring, it seemed to him a fair one, and he took it and put it aside, giving Hreidmar the rest of the gold. They filled the otter-belg as full as it would hold, and raised it up when it was full. Then came Odin, and was to cover the belg with gold ; and when this was done, he requested Hreidmar to come and see whether the belg was sufficiently covered. But Hreidmar discovered a mouth-hair and demanded that it should be covered too, otherwise the agreement should be broken. Then Odin brought forth the ring and with it covered the hair. But when Odin had taken his spear, and Loki his shoes, so that they had nothing more to fear, Loki said that the curse that Andvare had pronounced should be fulfilled, and that the ring and the gold should be the bane of its possessor; and this curse was afterwards fulfilled. This explains why gold is called the otter-ransom, or forced payment of the Asas, or strife-metal. “What more is there to be told of this gold? Hreidmar accepted it as a ransom for his son, but Fafner and Regin demanded their share. Hreidmar, however, was unwilling to give them as much as a penny. Then the brothers made an agreement to kill their father for the sake of the gold. When this was done, Regin demanded that Fafner should give him one-half. Fafner refused to share with his broth- er, saying that he had himself slain his father to obtain it; and he commanded Regin to get him gone, for else the same thing would happen to him as had happened to Hreidmar. Fafner had taken the sword hight Hrotte, and the helmet which had belonged to his father, and the lat- ter he had placed on his head. This was called the Aeger's helmet, and was a terror to all living to behold. Regin had the sword called Refil. With it he fled. But Fafner went to Gnitaheath (the Glittering Heath), where he made himself a bed, took on him the likeness of a dragon, and lay brooding over the gold. “Regin then went to Thjode, to King Hjalprek, and be- came his smith. There he undertook the fostering of Sigurd (Siegfried), the son of Sigmund, the son of Volsung 186 THE FIRST ACT IN THE WORLD-DRAMA and of Hjordis, the daughter of Eylime. Sigurd was the mightiest of all thc kings of hosts, in respect to both fami- ly and power and mind. Regin explained to him where Fafner was lying on the gold, and urged him on to try to get possession of it. Then Regin made the sword, which is hight Gram (Wrath), and which was so sharp that when Sigurd held it in the flowing stream it cut asunder a tuft of wool which the current carried down. In the next place Sigurd cut with it Regin's anvil in twain. Thereupon Sigurd and Regin repaired to Gnitaheath. Here Sigurd dug a ditch in Fafner's path and sat down in it.” How Sigurd killed Fafner and then the treacher- ous Regin, and carried off the treasure to the court of King Gjuke, where he wedded Gudrune, with the jealousies of Gudrune and Brynhilde, and the fatal workings of the curse, this all belongs to the heroic saga, and is familiar to the lovers of Wag- ner's operas and the students of the Nibelungen- lied. Returning to the plot of the Asen - drama, we learn : The fortress wall of the gods is broken War-versed Wanen stamp the field. Over the people flung Odin the spear- Then was murder first in the world. The citadel wall of the Asen is their spiritual in- tegrity. The materialistic impairment has made the breach. They are still the guardians of light, but their fall now necessitates vigilance and coun- ter violence, which would have been obviated had their unconscious aloofness continued. Now transpires "the war in heaven," that ob- scure episode — the battle between the Asen and Wanen. What are these Wanen, these gods of beauty and 187 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS delight, but a kind of elementary earth-spirits, like an Undine, ethereally sensuous, the embodiments of æsthetic physical joy, without soul? What more Battle of Asen apt than that they should seize the op- Wanen. portunity when the Asen had betrayed their supersensuous mastery to strike for con- trol? But it shall not be. The divine retains the pre- ponderance. The Asen.gain the day. It is true, their sin prevents a decided victory. The war ends in a compromise, in an exchange of permanent hostages, by which the permanent weakening of the purely divine, by the admixture of the purely earthly, may be poetically taught. On the other hand, in the elimination of the remaining Wanen, the announce- ment is made that in the moral war now ensuing there is no room for a neutral third party, based upon the sensuous æsthetic. The parole of "art for art's sake" would have received no mercy from the Asen. Now Peace, the divine dove, flies affrighted back to the realm of pure spirit, to the bosom of eternal All-father. The sunbeam changes into the spear, which, inscribed with bloody runes, Odin flings over the people. Henceforth the good must make its way, no more as serenely basking light, but by means of warfare, until, ages hence, from One bet- ter than Odin, Freir, or Baldur, men shall learn the better way, meanwhile shedding rivers of interne- cine blood in senseless fury, indistinguishable as to spirit and purpose from the rage of the giants. The Peace The peace of Frodi is another mythologi- of Frodi. cal designation of the Golden Age. Frodi is a later reincarnation of Frö or Freir. The Skalda relates that in his day peace and security 188 THE FIRST ACT IN THE WORLD-DRAMA Fenja and Grotti. were so universal that a gold ring lay for years untouched upon the Jalangheath. Then Frodi, grown evil, set two giant handmaidens, Menja— Fenja and Menja, to work in the mill Grotti, which ground anything that the miller desired. At first he commanded them to grind peace and happiness. Then he gave them gold to grind, and, from avarice, permitted them to rest only long enough to sing a song. In this interval they sang him the Grotto Song. Before they finished it they had ground out a hostile army, so that in Mysingr. 3 the night a sea-king, Mysingr by name, came and, killing Frodi, carried much booty away, along with it the mill and the two giantesses. On board the ship he ordered them to grind salt. At Origin of Salt midnight they asked him if they had not in the Sea. ground enough, but he required them to toil on. This they did for a little while longer. Then the ship sank to the bottom of the sea. The Mael- Hence the sea has become salty. Where strom. the sea falls through the hole in the mill- stone a gulf was formed-the maelstrom. Now two other makeshift consequences of the baleful fall appear. To the surgeon are added the priest and the lawyer: There sat the councillors on stools of justice, Gods, high and holy, council held there. If they should punish unfaithfulness only Or if atoning sacrifice take. We must not forget that all this is history, or the generalizing and summarizing of early sages from their little observation of men's doings. What they observe is an epitome of history, because men are 189 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS still what they were then. Their conclusions be- come a forecast. At any point in the Fall, the kings of men were free to amend the wrong and avert the conse- qences ; but they, like their successors everywhere, resort instead to compromises, to the establishment of altar and court. This is an acquiescence in the loss. All establishment is in the nature of a com- promise with sense and superficial observance. Fear usurps the place of free homage and free obedience; on the one hand with ritual mummery, on the other with the menace of repression. The two have ever since been found in company, too—the priest and the gendarme. In the earliest stage of society there were no ceremonial sacrifices or penal complexities. The more complex the growing injustice makes the code, the more punctilious becomes the ritual. But, alas! since the Asen began to repair to Urd's Well for court and council, to bicker and dicker on the composition of code and cultus, what millen- nial orgies of blood! And not before social injus- tice begins to yield shall it be said : “Neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” Farther and farther the serpent coil unwraps it- self: Then went the councillors to seats of justice, Gods high and holy held council there, Who had with wickedness filled the air, Development of Sin.- Or given Odur's bride to the giants. Conquered by anger, Thôr then delayed not, Seldom he dallies when such he hears : Then vanished promises, oaths and word-pledges, All firm agreements lately well wrought. Odur's bride is Freya. The peace between the 190 THE FIRST ACT IN THE WORLD-DRAMA The Wall- Jötunheim. Asen and Wanen is established, but the war be- tween the gods and the giants is declared, and the wall around Walhalla is down. : Then came a builder who offered to build a wall in three half-years, demanding as his pay the god- dess Freya, besides the sun and the moon. builder from The gods came together to debate the pro- mheim. posal. Their conclusion was to grant him what he demanded on condition that he should finish the task in one winter, and that he should do it with- out the assistance of any one. When they reported this condition, he stipulated that he might employ Swadilfari. . his horse Swadilfari in the work. Loki advised the Asen to concede this point. Thereupon the Jötun set to work on the first win- ter day, hauling the rocks with his horse during the night and building during the day. When the gods perceived the vast size of the loads and the rapid progress of the undertaking, they began to fear for their bargain. But the contract had been ratified with strong oaths. Now the winter was drawing to an end. But three days were lacking till the first summer day. There stood the wall completed all but the gates. Again the Asen met and anxiously deliberated as to what should be done. The anger of all turned against Loki, whose wretched counsel had made imminent the awful calamity. He was threatened with torture and death if he failed to de- vise an immediate remedy. Trembling with dread he promised. That night when the build- er drove his stallion out to the hills for stones, a beautiful mare appeared and neighed. The steed Swadilfari broke his traces and ran after her. Both horses disappeared in the woods. The owner of the stallion pursued them all night long. The Loki's Trick 191 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Thôr's Crime. next day, having no building material, he could not work. It now seemed probable that Loki, who had assumed the form of the mare, would succeed in his crafty scheme. However, the gods did not wait to see, but summoned Thôr from the East, where he had been all this time slaying monsters. When he com came and learned the story he crushed the skull of the builder with a stroke from Miölnir. That this myth possesses epochal significance is shown by the existence of two versions in the Edda, and of innumerable variations in German and Scan- blication dinavian folk-lore. In these latter the ar- of this Myth. tificer is usually a dwarf or some other uncanny handicraftsman, a trull, or the devil pure and simple. The reward is the soul of the peasant, priest, or architect--whosoever the high contract- ing party may happen to be. The time allotted is changed from the winter to one night. The work must be finished before early cock-crow. Some- times the task is the building of a bridge, as at Frankfort-on-the- Main, but the favorite story is that of the devil building a church and getting fooled out of his promised reward by some clumsy trick or technicality-a proceeding that still enjoys much favor with Protestants and Catholics alike. There is hardly an old cathedral in Germany with- out the crowning association of this dull piece of popular diabolism. It is to be believed, notwith- standing the practical jokers, that the poor dupe succeeds in getting the account settled. Frequently the condition consists in guessing the name of the anonymous builder. In the Norwegian legend of King Olaf we have a connecting link between the myth of Swadilfari and the mediæval reproductions. 192 THE FIRST ACT IN THE WORLD-DRAMA Legend of that one cathedraj ngaged a w It will be remembered that the name of Swadilfari's master is not given. This omission may be regarded as supplied in the following: The holy King Olaf had engaged a wandering giant to build a cathedral. The compact was gend of that Olaf should find out the name of the St. Olaf. builder before the task was finished or else give up Sun and Moon in addition to his own sacred, royal person. The structure was almost complete. Only the roof and the steeple were lacking when poor Olaf, driven forth by despair, was wandering over hill and dale, vainly cudgelling his brains over the situation. Presently he heard a child crying. Following the sound, the king ap- proached a giant's habitation in the mountains. While he listened, the royal cavesdropper heard the mother pacifying the child after the manner of, “Hush, my baby bunting.” The lullaby he heard soothed him even more than the babe, for the giant- mother sang, “Pst, pst, my child, don't cry. To- morrow your father, Wind-and-Weather, will come home and bring us Sun and Moon and St. Olaf, too," or words to that effect. Overjoyed, Olaf returned, when he found the giant just putting the steeple in place. Olaf shouts up to him : “ Vind och Veder! du har sätt spiran sneder !" (Wind-and-Weather, you have set the steeple crook- ed !) Or, according to another version, in which the giant's name is Bläster (Blower): “Bläster, sätt spirar väster !” (Blower, set the spire towards the west!) At the mention of the name, like a somnambulist, the giant, with a great crash, fell down from the roof and was shattered to a thousand pieces. And so the N 193 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS baby giant didn't get the saint to make a rag doll of, which seems a great pity. The recovered name suggests the interpretation of the physical basis of our myth, for this is never missing in mythologic fictions. The giant is the winter. The building - stones which his horse Swadilfari (Ice-hauler) drags to- gether are blocks of ice. The wall, then, is to be The Physique an ice fortification. While this would of the Myth. protect the seeds and life germs of the hibernating earth from the assaults of the giants, on the other hand it would imprison the bright agencies of life, the Asen. This, with the depart- ure of Sun and Moon and Freya, the glory of the year, would mean the total surrender of the world into eternal arctic darkness and death. Loki treacherously advised towards this end. We know his duplicity. But his hour of coalescence with the infernal fires has not yet come. He must yet serve the purposes of culture. The two horses are winds - the north wind and the south wind. In their chasing to and fro the shifting winds and variable- ness of temperature at the close of winter are charmingly depicted. All this is a many-times-told tale, albeit the ethi- cal momentousness of the incident is anything but threadbare. It is upon this that the Saga lays her finger. It is the final step in the fall of the gods pushed out upon the world-stage. Let us note the development of the plot in a brief résumé. The pillars of Light and Truth betray their ce- Summary of lestial nature by the newly born love of mofthenes gold, thus constituting materialism. Eter- First Act. nity, the reign of spirit, gapes open. Time appears in the hiatus. The Nornes take their seat at the foot of Yggdrasil. the Scenes 194 THE FIRST ACT IN THE WORLD-DRAMA The gods fashion the dwarfs into guardians of gold. Gullweig approaches. The witch's caldron and the gold-smithy roll upward their twin fuming qualms. The fortifications of Walhalla fall. The Wanen assail the dismantled fortress. Odin flings his spear over the nations of men. Murder is born in the world. The time-and-matter-impaired gods betake them- selves to the judgment seats and establish penal codes and a sacrificial cultus. The coming of the first winter. Walhalla has sunken to the level of Jötunheim. Its exposure. The almost fatal first assault of the giants. The incipient role of Loki. Walhalla is saved through treachery, perjury, and violence. Thôr's hammer, the symbol of industrialism and material civiliza- tion, is now the only effective weapon against the powers of chaos and death. CHAPTER IX THE SECOND ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA — ENDING IN BALDUR'S DEATH THAT the fall of the gods is not a modern after- the “Wöluspa.” The modern temper is incapable of inventing such an interpretation. In our boast- ful engrossment with mechanical and material progress we are disinclined to admit even a ques- tioning of its all - sufficiency for the salvation of mankind. The inseparability of material and actu- al progress has grown to be a popular axiom. A verdict, therefore, like that of our mythology, which Schwärmerei be resented as a piece of crude German * Schwärmerei. So much is this the case that the inmost truth of Christianity is drowned by the clatter of ecclesiastic and political ma- chinery. For the time being the captains of in- dustry, the inventors of patents, the political and economical manipulators, and the dealers in all kinds of applied science have the entire say. It were quite useless to attempt an interference with their vociferous concert. In the story of the Fall we perceive the mental sin retiring behind the moral wrong. It is the 196 SECOND ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA Mental Sin Moral Wrong Body of Material ] broken faith of the Asen, the assassination of the Builder, that practically constitutes their condem- nation. But the other misstep is the Precedes first. Moral erring proceeds from er- ong roneous belief, from a false philosophy. After gold is divinely invested, Then was murder first in the world. Now follow all those other sallies of violence al- ready related, to which the gods are driven by their treachery, and which, although temporarily success- ful, involve them further in fatal conse- Mythological quences--the defence of Freya against 1. Thrym, the release of Gerda by Freir, in which the sword of the Sun-god is lost, the rape of Iduna, etc. In these successive collisions a gradation of suc- cessful aggressiveness on the part of the giants is visible. Thôr's herculean campaigns, which are strewn over this period of active hostilities, seem Thôr's only to be Asen conquests. In reality Conquests. they amount to little more than explora- tions and personal combats on the field between the two hostile armies. Unlike the combat of David and Goliath, they do not end in the permanent flight of the Philistines. However, the most fatal consequence of the Fall is the development of the hostile principle within Domestic the camp of the gods. Loki, with his Development Mephisto sneer and his Achitophel ad- vice, grows more and more ubiquitous and indispensable, to the entanglement and betrayal of divine truth and power. The engendering of his baleful brood and their rapid adolescence in mon- strous ugliness and enormity under the very eyes of Evil. 197 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS full - blown flower. Of what avail is the tattoo of Thôr's hammer on icy and rocky skulls far away, when these malevolent, virus-dripping mouths gape at home? The plain meaning of this brood should prevent us from ascribing subtleties to the myth-makers that were not in their minds. The meaning is internal demoralization. It is coextensive with the entire province of the gods. The Midgard Serpent marks the boundary of material conquest, Hel that of life, and the Fenriswolf that of ethical growth. It is for us to put it in the right place in the development of the plot-namely, in this second act—when the on- sets of the enemy compel the gods to take account of their resources, intrinsic and extrinsic. These they now find impaired. Henceforward they must act on the defensive. The second act is the mighty battle-period of the play. They fight hardest after their invulnerability is gone. The story of Iduna, already narrated, is confined to the physical mainly. She is the Ver- dure, betrayed into the power of the wintry wind by heat and restored by the same agency. The adum- bration to an intellectual year is tentative. Here she is the wife of Bragi, the god of Poetry, and means the rejuvenation of ideal thought. When- ever poetry declines, youthful feeling is robbed by bleakness through aridity. But it recurs in a new season of mental bloom. There is another myth, however, belonging to this Second Myth place, which stands related to the plot of of Iduna. the world-year. It was probably recom- posed from the original myth as a sequel to the , Wöluspa. dure, bad restored blectual year pod of Poets SECOND ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA Metaphras It is one of the most mysterious in mythology. Erik Halson, a learned Icelander of the seventeenth century, studied it for ten years without obtaining satisfactory light. It is not the only time that the unimaginative scholar has burrowed in the lumin- ous cloud of symbolic language as though it were the compact earth of technical terms. The office of poetry is not precise designation, but large in- timation, which requires the unfolding of our wings. We have seen that various kindred figures are in- terchangeably used to describe the same thing. Odhrärir's Drink, Urd's Well, and Iduna's Apples, ... all three mean spiritual rejuvenescence. asis. The first is the wine of inspiration, the second keeps the world-ash green, the third is the ambrosia of immortality. Perhaps the deepest attraction in Nature is her possession of the magic of transfiguration and re- newal, which we lack. The loss of Iduna, following that of innocence, indicates the ethical conditions of the problem. The myth relates that the gods are alarmed by evil foreboding's about the safety of Odhrärir, which has been intrusted to Urd's keeping. Of course, the water of Urd's well is meant, since it is also the drink of immortality. The water has lost its re- freshing power, and the decay of the world-ash has Iduna's set in. Therefore, Odin's raven, Hugin, is Departure. sent forth to obtain the prophecy of two wise dwarfs as to the issue. Their answer is described as darkly, mutteringly dream-like, howbeit unmis- "Odin's Ra. takably unfavorable. Hugin is Thought ven Charm.” or Reflection. The simple meaning of the passage therefore is that the brooding anxiety of the gods results only in more certain anxiety. 199 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Vale of Other symptoms of the waning vitality of Nature are then enumerated. Finally Iduna is introduced in her own name as the youngest daughter of the dwarf, Iwaldi. The dwarfs are not merely the arch artificers and me- chanics in mythology, but, as we have seen, the subterranean productive energies of Nature. “The youngest daughter of Iwaldi” would consistently indicate the verdure of the latest year. She is said not to have been overpowered and carried away by Thiassi, as in the other myth, but to have Nörwi's sunk down from the crown of Iggdrasil Daughter. into the vale of Nörwi's daughter be- neath the trunk of the world-tree. Nörwi, or Narfi, is a giant, and his daughter is Night; sometimes conceived as a relation, some- times as the synonym of Hel. So far the poem ap- pears to contemplate the autumnal fall and burial of the leaves only, but both the circumstance that it is the foliage of the symbolical world-tree, that sinks into the grave, and the sequel of the tale re- move the process from the annual to the cosmical sphere. “The melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year.” eee For the tiding over of our hearts across the gloom of the ordinary winter, “Hope, that springs perennial,” is sufficient, but who can bear to view the darkening and fading of a world with the hor- rible fear that there will never be another spring ? This is the mood of the Asen, as they meet for con- sultation. The bleakness of Nature is reflected in the care-drawn lines and aging gray of their faces. Heimdall, Loki, and Bragi are sent by Odin to visit the unhappy goddess in her living tomb to ask her 200 SECOND ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA Danutation tation. what her misfortune bodes to the destinies of the world. There is a profound poetical fitness in the choice of this deputation. Their mission is without re- sult. In reply to all their questions about her own welfare and their own she only weeps in silence. She seems in a semi-unconscious, somnolent condi- tion, that condition of removal beyond our inter- ests which is more appalling and heart-wringing than the spectacle of the greatest suffering, when, tion with the tenderest terms of endearment and with the beseechings of despair, we call upon the loved one to recognize and answer us, and she only stares at us for a moment with lack- lustre eyes and then relapses into the awful power of another world. The embassy returns, all but Bragi, the husband, who remains to guard his be- loved. This Orpheus does not return with his Eurydice. What a picture of Saxon devotion and fidelity is this his staying! Thus the singer disap- pears after his spouse, the charming dispenser of verdure and youth. When Heimdall and Loki re- ascend to Walhalla, the song of the birds and the lay of the bards are over. The gods are sitting at their banquet, but it is a joyless repast, which is not enlivened by the report of the two emissaries. However, All - father seeks to cheer the company with hope for the morrow, exhorting all not to let the night pass in inactivity, but severally to think upon plans meet to remedy the situation. When the moon sends her silver beams into the hall, Odin and Frigga arise from the board and dismiss the other Asen with heavy hearts. The night arises, the daughter of Nörwi with her thorny wand touches the nations of the earth, and mortals sink 201 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS. into sleep. Even the gods feel the power of her drowsy reign. Heimdall, the ever - vigilant, who needs less sleep than a bird, nods at his post. It is as though Loki had mixed an extract of poppies or some other subtle narcotic with their drink. But Odin does not succumb. All night long he has brooded over the fate of his dynasty. Who can fathom the thoughts of the god during that night? The poet who could do it would have to be him- Cinta self a god, vaster in conception, finer in execution than Isaiah, Milton, or Goethe. Nevertheless, for the encouragement of the coming Teuton poet, it should be pointed out that in this night, if not before, Odin has suffered a shrinkage in his province. He has become a dissolving view of a theophany merely, a “broken light” of the Ever mind. All the knitting of his Olympian brows, all the excursions of his wanderer soul are those of an eagle in a cage, beating his breast against the wires here and there. Having forfeited his self-deter- mining freedom, the flexible conditions crystallize and solidify into unyielding boundaries. He can no longer hew his way whithersoever he listeth, but is reduced to the expedient of consulting through the bars with the denizens of the shadowy beyond. The myth describes the dawn of the new day with the same poetical beauty as it described the coming of night. At the first glimmer of light, the Thursen and Gygien, or Giantesses, the dwarfs and black elves and other rovers of the night flee to their holes, and the gods arise from their beds. Here the myth of Odin's “Raven Charm" abruptly ceases, like a croak from the bird of evil omen. Iduna's fate is left undetermined. As there is no further allusion to her, we are constrained to con- 202 SECOND ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA clude that she does not return. In one of the strophes of the song she has been cited by the name of Nanda, just as in the beginning by that of Urd. Nanda is a refinement of Iduna, as Iduna is of Urd and Gerda. As the inexorable decadence proceeds the terres- trial correlatives of light grow more and more ab- stract and exquisite, as one after another they yield to fate. Verdure and youth having followed wis- dom and rejuvenation, the quintessence of bloom and her wedded lord, light, pure and simple, must take their turn. When the gods arise from the uneasy slumbers of that night, which, at Odin's behest, they were to employ in plans for Iduna's rescue, the march of the tragedy had advanced another step, and they were confronted with a new and graver misfortune, “Wegtams- which constitutes the climax of the drama. kwida.” This is the subject of another saga, the “Wegtamskwida,” or “Journey of the Wanderer." It is an older song than that of the “Raven's Charm.” The latter has probably been written as a prelude to the former. When the gods assemble in the morning it is to deliberate, not about Iduna, but about Baldur, in in regard to whose fate they have had the About Bal- most disquieting dreams. Odin does not at await the close of the conference, but, leaving the hall, he flings the saddle upon Sleipnir and gallops away to consult the enchantress, Wala, in the Netherworld. It is like Saul's resorting to the Witch of Endor, the same narrowing clutch of fate, the same irresistible working out of sin. Only in this instance it is Wala herself that is conjured up from her grave, and who penetrates the disguise Premonitions dur's Fate. 203 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS of the questioner. The “Wegtamskwida” is, in turn, an imitation of a yet older song, the “Waft- hrudnismal,” in which Odin engages in a question bout with the. omniscient Jötun Wafthrudnir with reference to primal and final knowledge. We are less concerned at this place with these prophetic catechisings than with the actual events of the drama. The most suggestive lesson of this riding to and fro is the pitiable desperation. “The Spirit of the Lord has departed from this king," and now he must resort to ghosts and oracles. Grey thus describes “The Descent of Odin ": . Uprose the king of men with speed, And saddled straight his coal-black steed ; Down the yawning steep he rode, That leads to Hela's drear abode. Him the dog of darkness spied ; His shaggy throat he opened wide, (While from his jaws, with carnage filled, Foam and human gore distilled ;) Hoarse he bays with hideous din, Eyes that glow and fangs that grin ; And long pursues with fruitless yell, The father of the powerful spell. Onward still his way he takes, (The groaning earth beneath him shakes,) Till full before his fearless eyes The portals nine of hell arise. Right against the eastern gate, By the moss-grown pile he sate'; Where long of yore to sleep was laid The dust of the prophetic maid. Facing to the northern clime, Thrice he traced the Runic rhyme; Thrice pronounced in accents dread, The thrilling verse that wakes the dead : Till from out the hollow ground Slowly breathed a sullen sound. 204 SECOND ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA Prophetess : What call unknown, what charms presume To break the quiet of my tomb ? Who thus afflicts my troubled sprite, And drags me from the realms of night? Long on these mould’ring bones have beat. The winter's snow, the summer's heat, The drenching dews and driving rain ! Let me, let me sleep again. Who is he with voice unblest, That calls me from the bed of rest? Odin: A traveller to thee unknown, Is he that calls, a warrior's son. Thou the deeds of light shalt know; Tell me what is done below, For whom yon glitt'ring board is spread, Dressed for whom yon golden bed. Prophetess : Mantling in the goblet see The pure bev'rage of the bee : O'er it hangs the shield of gold ; 'Tis the drink of Balder bold: Balder's head to death is given, Pain can reach the sons of heaven. Unwilling I my lips unclose : Leave me, leave me to repose. Odin : Once again my call obey, Prophetess, arise, and say, What dangers Odin's child await, Who the author of his fate? Prophetess : In Hoder's hand the hero's doom ; His brother sends him to the tomb, Now my weary lips I close : Leave me, leave me to repose. 205 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Odin: Prophetess, my spell obey, Once again arise, and say, Who th' avenger of his guilt, By whom shall Hoder's blood be spilt ? Prophetess : In the caverns of the west, By Odin's fierce embrace comprest, A wondrous boy shall Rinda bear, Who ne'er shall comb his raven hair, Nor wash his visage in the stream, Nor see the sun's departing beam, Till he on Hoder's corse shall smile Flaming on the funeral pile. Now my weary lips I close: Leave me, leave me to repose. Odin : Yet awhile my call obey ; Prophetess, awake, and say, What virgins these, in speechless woe, That bend to earth their solemn brow, That their flaxen tresses tear, And snowy veils that float in air ? Tell me whence their sorrows rose: Then I leave thee to repose. Prophetess: Ha ! no traveller art thou, King of men, I know thee now; Mightiest of a mighty line- Odin : No boding maid of skill divine Art thou, nor prophetess of good ; But mother of the giant brood ! Propheless : Hie thee hence, and boast at home, That never shall inquirer come 206 SECOND ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA To break my iron sleep again, Till Lok has burst his ten-fold chain; Never till substantial Night Has reassumed her ancient right; Till wrapt in flames, in ruin hurl'd, Sinks the fabric of the world. The events centring in Baldur's death are al- most the only passage that has elicited attention from English and American poets. Matthew Arnold, William Morris, Robert Buchanan, Long- fellow, W. M. W. Call, have left us beautiful tributes to the fairest of the gods, tributes to the moral beauty of his character, and therefore adding little to the interest or understanding of the system. Having thus received communications from the prophetess, Wala, that turn anxiety into certainty, Odin returns to prepare his family for the worst. But Frigga, who, with a mother's clinging love, re- fuses to acquiesce in the decrees of fate, thinks to avert the threatened calamity to her beloved by in- oculating all Nature, as it were, with her love. She proceeds, namely, to take an oath from all objects, animate and inanimate, that they will not hurt Baldur. Who but a divine mother could think of such a fate-defeating, boundless remedy? Now the gods take fresh hope. Warily at first they test the scheme by hurling lighter missiles at Baldur. As these fall harmlessly from him, they gradually increase the dangerous character and the force of the missiles until at last he stands as a shining target in a perfect hail-storm of weapons, and the floor about his feet looks like an armory. Upon this remarkable diversion suddenly the sar- donic face of Loki peers in. He is not a little of a 207 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS prestidigitateur himself. What an acquisition he would have been to a straitened theatrical troupe on the road for the variety of rôles he could play! Having inquired what was to the fore, off he flies to his dressing-room, whence he reappears as an old woman, and in this disguise enters Frigga's apartments. The dear, good soul was in an ex- pansively happy mood, as we may well believe. Moreover, like all good women, she thought no evil, and dearly loved a little comfortable gossip. Her mother-heart was so full of gratitude and joy that it had to overflow. Thus, when the old crone came hobbling in, Frigga welcomed her cordially, and over a cosey cup of tea they were soon talking about the all-absorbing topic. A little innocent vanity at the success of her ingenious ruse may have entered into her mind to help drive out her divine penetra- tion. So when the sympathetic granny presently asked, in apparent simplicity, if she was sure that she had overlooked nothing in the swearing-in proc- ess, Frigga confided to her, of course under the seal of strictest secrecy, that she had skipped only one plant, a miserable, insignificant little parasite, called the mistletoe. This was enough for her in- terlocutress. In a moment she left. In another moment Loki again entered the court, where the Baldur's strange target-practice was still going on. Death. To Höder, the blind brother of Baldur, he glided up, and, placing a mistletoe with a bow in his hands, urged him to join in the sport. The poor, unsuspecting god gladly complied. Under Loki's direction he aimed. Then the horrible hap- pened. Baldur, pierced through and through, fell dead. We quote from Matthew Arnold's" Baldur Dead”: 208 SECOND ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA So on the floor lay Balder, dead ; and round Lay thickly strewn swords, axes, darts, and spears, Which all the gods in sport liad idly thrown At Balder, whom no weapon pierced or clove ; But in his breast stood fixed the fatal bough Of mistletoe, which Lok the accuser gave To Höder, and unwitting Höder threw- 'Gainst that alone had Balder's life no charm. And all the gods and all the heroes came, And stood round Balder on the bloody floor, Weeping and wailing; and Valhalla rang Up to its golden roof with sobs and cries; And on the tables stood the untasted meats, And in the horns and gold-rimmed skulls the wine. And now would night have fall'n and found them yet Wailing; but otherwise was Odin's will. The poem of twelve hundred lines is too long to quote in full. We must content ourselves with oc- casional extracts. The afflicted Asen repair to their several homes. That night Höder, wandering about, caine desolate to his mother. He suggests that Hel might be willing to give up Baldur, if he, Höder, offered him- self as a substitute. He spoke, the mother of the gods replied : Höder, ill-fated, child of bale, my son, Sightless in soul and eye, what words are these ? That one, long portioned with his doom of death, Should change his lot, and fill another's life, And Hela yield to this and let him go! She counsels instead that Hermodr, the swift messenger of the gods, take Sleipnir and ride to Hermodr's Hel to ask on what other condition she Ride. would consent to relinquish Baldur. This is done. The ride consumes ten nights, and is most awful. Hel agrees to give Baldur back if all living 209 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS things weep for him. This seems easy enough, as all living things are weeping for him. Yet there is one exception: Thöck, a withered, skinny, toothless. hag, who lives in a cave in the wood Jarnvidr, where the trees are all iron. She mocks and jeers the gods : Hela keeweep they ws. pyre. Is Balder dead ? and do ye come for tears? Thok with dry eyes will weep o'er Balder's pyre. Weep him all other things, if weep they will- I weep him not ! let Hela keep her prey. So Hela kept her prey. Meantime the gods make preparations for Baldur's funeral. There are points in it which both Matthew Arnold and Tegner, whose poem will be given below, omit. Baldur's body was carried to the sea and placed upon his ship Hringthorn, which was the largest craft afloat. Thôr was present to consecrate the pyre with his hammer. But when they attempted to launch the vast vessel they could not. Then they sent to Jötunheim for a giantess called Hyr- Baldur's rockin. She came riding on a wolf, guided l’uneral. by a bridle which was a snake. Odin com- manded four Berserks to hold the wolf, which they accomplished only by throwing him down. Hyr- rockin jumped off, and with a kick sent the Hyrrockin. " ... ship into the water with such force that the rollers smoked and all the land trembled. Thôr, at this unseemliness, raised his hammer to dash her to pieces, but the other gods interfered. Then they laid Baldur's corpse on the funeral pile. When Nan- na saw this her heart broke, and she was placed be- the Lit. side him. As Thôr was consecrating the now lighted pyre, a tiny dwarf, Lit, got be- tween his feet. Thôr seized the hapless wight and pitched him into the flames. There was a large funeral 210 SECOND ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA concourse present. Besides the gods, Hrimthursen, dwarfs, elves, had come to show their respect for the all-beloved god. Thus, after Odin had laid the ring Draupnir on the pile and whispered parting runes into Baldur's ear, the great ship sailed, burn- ing, out into the sea. Therefore, while Hermodr lingered with Hel and Baldur's ghost, Nanna joined them. Arnold brings Höder thither, too, he having died also of remorse and despair. This is pure poeti- cal license, however. He dies otherwise, namely, at the hand of Wali, the avenger. Ere Hermodr re- turns, Nanna sends tokens to Frigga and Fulla. Baldur sends Draupnir with greetings and assur- ances of a speedy reunion : He spoke, and waved farewell, and gave his hand To Nanna ; and she gave their brother blind Her hand in turn for guidance; and the three Departed o'er the cloudy plain, and soon Faded from sight into the interior gloom. But Hermod stood beside his drooping horse, Mute, gazing after them in tears. The sweetness and holiness of his character, joined to the pathetic nature of his death, have engrossed the poets to the exclusion of Baldur's wider meaning. His ideal goodness and innocent death have made him the Saxon archetype of our Baldur, the Lord Jesus Christ, and, no doubt, facilitat- Saxon Christ. ed the conversion of our fathers to Chris- tianity. In the life of Jesus they beheld Baldur again. In the Passion they saw his death. In the Resurrection they hailed his return. Their minds were thus also prepared for the mystery of a suffer- ing God, forever a scandal to the Greeks and foolish- ness to the Jews. The beautiful legend of Baldur, taken by itself, must have exerted an immeasurable 2 II THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS influence for refinement on the Teuton character, a perpetual restraint to the natural brutality of the North. Tegner's “Drapa,” or Death - song, is a touching summary of Baldur's passing away. Long- fellow's translation is well known: I heard a voice that cried, “ Balder the Beautiful Is dead, is dead !" And through the misty air Passed like the mournful cry Of sunward sailing cranes. I saw the pallid corpse Of the dead sun Borne through the Northern sky. Blasts from Niffelheim Lifted the sheeted mists Around him as he passed. And the voice forever cried, “ Balder the Beautiful Is dead, is dead !” And died away Through the dreary night, In accents of despair. Balder the Beautiful, God of the summer sun, Fairest of all the Gods ! Light from his forehead beamed, Runes were upon his tongue, As on the warrior's sword. All things in earth and air Bound were by magic spell Never to do him harm; Even the plants and stones ; All save the mistletoe, The sacred mistletoe ! 2 12 SECOND ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA They laid him in his ship, With horse and harness, As on a funeral pyre. Odin placed A ring upon his finger, And whispered in his ear. They launched the burning ship! It floated far away Over the misty sea, Till like the sun it seemed, Sinking beneath the waves. Balder returned no more! So perish the old Gods! But out of the sea of Time Rises a new land of song, Fairer than the old. Over its meadows green Walk the young bards and sing. Build it again, O ye bards, Fairer than before ! Ye fathers of the new race, Feed upon the morning dew, Sing the new Song of Love ! The law of force is dead ! The law of love prevails ! Thôr, the thunderer, Shall rule the earth no more, No more with threats Challenge (?) the meek Christ. Sing no more, O ye bards of the North, Of Vikings and of Jarls ! Of the days of Eld Preserve the freedom only Not the deeds of blood. 213 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Baldur. However far our mythology rises into the heights of spiritual intimation, its feet always rest on the solid foundation of physical Nature. Baldur is the Light in its supremacy, in mid- summer. His death is the waning of light after During the summer-solstice. Höder is the dark Meaning of period of the year, or Winter. He is not de a Thurs for all that, but a son of Odin, because he designates the harmless, indifferent dark- ness. The succession of the seasons is in itself not only free from hostile animus, but of divine order- ing, and beneficial. In the rejuvenated world Baldur and Höder peacefully dwell together. Höder's admission into Gimil (German Hiininel, Heaven, the Walhalla of the New World) is morally proper, because his deed was without guilt. Our statutory codes recognize the difference between murder and manslaughter. Ideal judicature adjudges'according to motives and sentiments of the heart only. But in this actual world, groping, erring man has been dominated by the dim intuition that outraged nature and so- ciety demand a penalty, that shed blood cries to ... heaven for vengeance. The lex talionis is man unwritten law of primitive human nat- ure, with which ancient legislators have been com- pelled to reckon, and which they could only regulate by concessions and restrictions until a better law should come to their aid. The custom of blood-vengeance prevailed among all Teuton tribes. It admitted of no exception and w no delay. The nearest of kin to the slain man was the natural avenger. He made an oath not to cut his hair or beard or finger-nails, nor to wash his hands and face, until he had wreaked Wali. 214 SECOND ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA vengeance on the slayer. Hence Wali, the son (or brother?) of Baldur, must hasten, though but one night old, to avenge his father. Says the Wöluspa : Baldur's brother was scarcely born, Who, one night old, felled Odin's heir. . His hands he washed not, his hair he combed not, Ere Baldur's slayer he bore to the pyre. VL1 Wali is the incipient return of light after the turning-point at Yuletide. But what place does the real murderer, Loki, oc- cupy in the solar problem? Fire may be pictured as eclipsing the sun, but only in some Icelandic conflagration. In the normal process of the year no such phenomenon occurs. It is evident that the myth here steps from the physical basis upon the stage of the world - play. Loki's moral meaning outruns the elementary one. Baldur's invulnerability to ordinary missiles in- heres in the incorporeal nature of light. Uhland says: “ The only weapon that penetrates him is a The Misha symbol of sombre winter. The mistletoe, which grows and ripens in winter, has alone not been enlisted in his behalf.” Some have explained the overlooking of this plant in the oath by its insignificance, others by its parasitic nature; still others by its abnormity, as a growth without seed or soil, and hence uncanny and demoniac. The mistletoe, whose popular surviving use is that pleas- ing Christmas privilege accorded to youths and maidens in our festive parlors, was formerly an object of sacred regard among both Celtic and Germanic peoples. Pliny reports that the Druids esteemed nothing as holier than the oak and the mistletoe growing upon it. ' red resplinyI than 215 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS The Druids were named after the oak, just as Dryads are. On the other hand, mistletoe is pure Saxon, from inist. The oak and the mistletoe seem to have been symbols of the Druidic cult, which was certainly one of the grove or woods, whatever else it may have been. The belief was that the mistletoe had fallen from the sky and chosen the oak - tree; that it became full-grown only in the sixth month of the thirtieth year of the century, when it pos- sessed all - curative properties. Steeped in water and given to animals to drink, it made them fruit- ful. It was an antidote against poisons, and a per- fect panacea. The Druid, clothed in white, climbed into the tree, cut the plant with a golden sickle and caught it up in a white mantle. The sacrifice, two white steers, which had never been used for draught labor, was kept waiting until this rite was over. Some other features of the pathetic story require special elucidation. Nanna, or Nanda, is well un- derstood. But who is Lit, the dwarf, who gets be- tween Thôr's feet and is flung into the fire by the .. irascible Thunderer? Uhland knows. He Lit. ** explains Lit (Litr) to be the Color, the soft, delicate tinge or tint of the floral world in early summer. When Baldur and Nanna pass away, he must follow. We are glad to find our friend Thôr relieved of the odium of this act, which has the shocking air. of a brutal dragoon in the Thirty Years' War. Thôr has hitherto been rough, but not cruel. His impatience, even on the sad occasion of the double funeral, does honor to his heart. His presence, beyond the common char- acter of mourner, is called for in the ritual func- tion, belonging to him, of dedicating the funeral pyre with his hammer. But his distinctive office of 216 SECOND ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA chief fighter of the giants is brought into requi- sition in his compelling the giantess Hyrrockin to launch the ship Hringthorn. Hyrrockin Hyrrockin. ne (the Fire-Smoked), according to Uhland's surmise, is the singeing heat of the sun.. The ship is the track of light. But who or what is Thöck, who alone of all ob- jects in the animate and inanimate creation refuses to weep for Baldur? Plainly nothing in the phys- ical world except the totally unillumined, cavern- un infesting Darkness, from Döck (the Dark). * This purblind, lurking, insensible personi- fication in the world of man is Egotisin. If, as the Younger Edda declares, Loki himself assumed the shape of Thöck, the intimation is conveyed that, despite all the guises which the Principle of Evil may clothe itself in, at the critical moment Ego- tism will be found its final definition. Thöck, in her cave, confesses to no benefit having come to her from the god of light. The human bats, who glory in their insensibility and in difference to ethical and æsthetic influences, have yet to learn that their pride is nothing more than brutal ignorance and selfishness. The ring Draupnir (Drop or Drip), which Odin places on the funeral pile, and which Baldur sends back from Hel's abode, we remember from Skir- nirsför as the emblem of fruitfulness and increase. In this connection, therefore, it is a token of renewal. The touching, womanly act of loving remem- brance exhibited in Nanna's sending a veil or a Tokens from scarf to Fricca and a ring to Fulla is Helheim. in itself human and poetical enough to justify its insertion in the gloomy course of the tragedy. However, even it does not lack connec- 217 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS tion therewith both on its annual and its millen- nial side. Both veil and ring have been referred to the flowers of autumn. Fricca is the matron of the goddesses, the patroness of wedlock. As such, the veil, the symbol of marriage, belongs to her. Fulla is the maid with the luxuriant, full-flowing hair, the marriageable girl, to whom the engagement- ring is properly sent. These sweet, womanly insig- nia have no place in Hel's house. There the bloom of beauty fades away. There, there is no marriage or giving in marriage. There only the spiritual, eternal part of love survives, of love that is stronger than death, and is grounded in the irrefragable affini- ties and unions of Nature. So the crown-jewels of womanhood and the sexual relations are sent back to earth, where they must continue in use to the end. Until time is no more they shall be preserved in the holiest shrine of mankind. The Ever-woman- ly beyond the grave endows the Hither-womanly with them. The death of Baldur is so pitiful and, withal, beau- tiful an episode in the religious traditions of our forebears that we feel the inadequacy of any other tributes than the tears of women and the melodi- ous wails of poets. It has occupied the same place among the ancient Saxons as the death of Adonis did in classic antiquity and the death of our Lord does among Christians-a thing of inexpressible tenderness, pity, and regret, and, therefore, the source of a saving reproach against all violence, as jous well as the centre of certain undefined Sacrifice. feelings of a vicarious sacrifice. Doubt- less these feelings may account for the deeply poetical attraction in the theme. They are among the most sacred realities of our soul. It is not be- 218 SECOND ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA cause men deny them, but, on the contrary, because they cherish them as too sacred, that they resent the rude touch of the dogmatist. The most unal- loyed gold in our hearts may not be coined into sovereigns or dollars, but should be kept in the treasury of our physical economy as a reserve fund, or as the real money of the realm, upon which to draw for the nominal value of the money of circu- lation. The sufferings and fate of Nanna have unques- tionably added the genuine domestic feature so peculiar to Teutonic life, and have served to deepen the pathos as well as exhaust the allegory. Love and conjugal fidelity receive their Saxon canoniza- tion here. Reverting now to our theory of a drama, it may well be asked what connection exists between Bal- dur's death and the previous developments of the plot. Apparently there is none, and his murder is a mere accident. It is introduced by dreams, forebodings, and orac- ular predictions only. But these are the mythical equivalents of reasons. Why were they directed towards Baldur? Is Iduna's immolation the direct antecedent of Baldur's fate? Yes; the time of fall- ing leaves is followed by the time of fading light. But the physical analogue does not convey the mo- mentum of the play. This is human and social. Here Baldur is the ultimate refinement of light, intellectually and spiritually. He typifies lofty thought, delicacy of feeling, holiness. What does the myth mean to teach by his early death, there- fore, but that in the drama of moral decadence this quality is the first to be sacrificed ? Is this not a slight matter to be immortalized by 219 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS the crowning effort of mythology, by scores of poems in ancient and modern times? We can say so only when we have experienced the same loss. The ineffable radiance, the soft enamel have been brushed away, the point of the Asen arch has been broken off. Well, what then ? If the point be the keystone of the arch, very much that is grievous and fatal. An age that can no longer give birth to a gentlemanly type of manhood in thought, in feel- ing, in the conduct of life, is already doomed, no matter how long its Odins and Thôrs, its spiritual pillars and its progressive conquests, may survive. Its essential sterility is confessed. What lofty ground our mythology has taken in perceiving this truth and rescuing it from its obscurity by placing it in the focus and climax of its drama! When, after years of separation, we meet an old friend, and discover the loss of this Baldur-like feat- ure in him or her, does not the shock that we feel intimate the tragic, mortal nature of what has hap- pened? The initial sin, the love of gold, led to the loss of Baldur. Neither cause nor effect is physical. Despite his belovedness he was found vulnerable. The same sin always brings about the same result. The gold cult generates crude and low ideals of manhood, standards of morality, and aims of life- in one word, vulgarity. CHAPTER X THE THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD - DRAMA, ENDING IN THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS Is this forlorn product of unknown balladists and saga men really something of an inspired vision of the world as it has turned out, or have we been im- puting our modern meditations to them? As to the latter charge, we have in our quota- tions from the Elder Edda permitted them to speak for themselves. We have been compelled in our study of their thought to look through the medium of our thought. The distinction between ancient and modern is thus found to be greatly diminished. The latest children of the race, brought face to face with their rude forefathers, recognize the family lineaments. Perhaps they are less capable of recog- nizing them than strangers are. No one has traced the influence of Odin and Thôr upon English litera- ture so clearly as the Frenchman Taine. Do we not overestimate our originality in the so-called problems of modern thought? In so far as they are the problems of humanity, they cannot be only modern except in their new phases and corollaries. We may expect to find that men have labored at them from the beginning. We should not permit the vast disparity in conditions and in- 221 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS stitutions to obscure the unity and continuity be- tween our elders and us. The divisions of history are as adventitious as the parallels of latitude and longitude in geogra- phy. The Edda is a collection of songs written by many men. These writers were not collaborators, except in the sense of contributing successive treat- ments of the same theme to a common system until this assumed a certain completeness. This system we find it adequate to designate as a drama. Of course, the old harpers never heard this Greek word. They knew nothing of the theatre, of literature, or of natural science. They knew Nature, and human nature, as poets. · Impressed by the energy and the clashings of Nature's efforts, they were seized with the bold design of pouring the life of man into it as a mould or model. At first Nature was, therefore, the dominant factor in the combination, but as the contemplation of moral operations and social de- velopments widened, man became paramount, and we thus find the myth frequently breaking away from the minutiæ of physical analogy. The Skalds could not know history as we do, except through unconscious prophecy. Their experience was primi- tive compared with ours. Therefore they could not have felt the presence of certain critical queries which our age has raised with regard to this vast problem. One of these might pertinently be ap- plied as a test to their labor at this point. The Nature-model of their world-view-can we take it seriously? Do the laws and processes of Nature and Nature repeat themselves in the soul of History. man and in that myriad-fold movement which we call history? We know that an iron, au- tomatic routine obtains in the physical world. Is 222 THIRD 1 ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA its counterpart the be-all and end-all in the spir- itual world? The question is not new. It is as old as man. It has been put by polytheist, theist, and pantheist. Formerly the religionist's formula- tion was the common one-namely, the question of free-will versus destiny. To-day it is asked by the culture historian-does history make man, or man history? Buckle and Carlyle have taken opposite sides. Certainly something like the annual recur- rence in Nature is perceptible in man's realm. Here, too, Baldur reaches the zenith of his full-orbed efful- gence, and is then slain by Höder. There are lumi- nous classic periods yielding to dark ages - ages of Pericles and Augustus, followed by those of the grammarians and barbarians. Not only the sol- stice, but the sacrifice is visible. It seems to be a law that Truth must pass through the tribulation of martyrdom ere it can be made into bread. We are not concerned in this place with the mod- ern controversy. We know that if our myth-makers had not vindicated originality, freedom, and the power of progress for the Asen, a drama would have been out of the question. In Nature these three are absent. They did vindicate them. They looked beyond the phenomena of Nature. Out of these they builded indeed a scaffolding for their time-stage ; but the stage itself, with the persons playing on it, is moral. After the stage was built, like good workmen, they took the scaffold down- 2.2., they paid no more regard to physical probabili- ties, for the events of the third act became more and more figurative, and the material is made to bend to the wishes of the spiritual allegory. The act is di- vided into three scenes—the punishment of Loki, the Fimbul winter, and Ragnarök. 223 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS It was natural that Loki's instrumentality in the death of Baldur should result in an open rupture with the gods. His treacheries hitherto had been so well disguised and so well offset by timely ser- vices that, notwithstanding his evermore apparent cynical nature and evil rôle, they had so far not invalidated his position as one of the Asen. But now the case was different. The murder of the best and fairest god, the favorite of heaven and Loki earth, was quite another matter than the Outlawed. playing of tricks on goddesses or giants. It was an irremediable act, as well as one of open, deadly hostility. Loki in this deed throws off all disguise, and reveals at once his true character as the principle of evil, and his set purpose of de- stroying the whole dynasty and régime of the Asen. Reparation being impossible, mere threats will no longer avail. The anger and revenge of the gods are enkindled against him. It is determined to deal with him as the archenemy to the extreme of their power. It may be said, indeed, that to recognize the in- stigator of their troubles and calamities in the ag- glomeration of misfortune and the confusion of moral insight was a gain to the gods. Notwith- standing the departure of Iduna and Bragi, and the death of Baldur and Nanna, they were gods still, “every inch of them.” Their perception, their indignation, and their purpose are divinely equal to the occasion. Nevertheless, in the loss of these two pairs, the shining hierarchy have been robbed of their finest susceptibilities and faculties. Their pristine omnipotence of sway is broken. The rec- ognition and rupture come too late now to destroy the principle of evil from their household. They 224 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA now can only abate or suspend the progress of it. Surely this is an invariable law. Loki, on his part, also viewed the situation cor- rectly. Perceiving that all hope of again winning the favor of the injured gods was vain, he fled. However, before they proceed to pursue and punish him, an episode occurs of deep significance psycho- logically, which serves also finally to fill the meas- ure of his now rampant malevolence. This is the episode of Oegir's banquet. We have had frequent occasions to allude to the mysterious Poseidon of the Northern seas, and to “Degirs- the interchange of hospitalities between drecka.” him and the Asen. The annual banquet in Oegir's Hall, which fell in September, would nat- urally come after the time of Baldur's death, viewed in its physical aspect. The gods, as it appears, did not omit their visit after their affliction, although they could not have been in a very festive mood. Oegir and his wife Ran welcomed them. The names of these divinities, as well as of Degir and Ran, with their their daughters, the Waves, poetically marehe speak the wild vehemence and voracity of the Ocean, which only holds itself in the lulling abeyance of civility during the coming of the mild summer gods. Ran, Roena, is Plunder. Oegir is Destruction. Carlyle has cited the interesting pres- ervation of the name among the fishermen of Not- tingham, who, at the approach of the swirl in the river, cry out: “Take care, Eager will get you !" Himingloefa, Sky-clear; Duva, Diver; Blodughad- da, Bloody-haired; Hefring, Swelling; Bylgja, Bil- low; Kolga, Raging Sea, are the names of the Waves. These all murmuringly subsided when Odin, with his family, came. The guests were all seated at the Children, 225 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS table with their host and hostess, when suddenly the fugitive Loki entered. The servant of Oegir, who may have attempted to bar the way of the intruder, Loki slew. We have found this to mean the out- shining of submarine twilight by the dazzling glare of fire. The tumult that arose upon this audacious deed was so menacing that Loki, true to his nature, of whose valor the better part was ever discretion, turned and fled. But scarce had the banqueters settled down to some semblance of quiet, when, to their amazement, he reappeared. This new te- merity so dazed them that they could only look, without speech or action. Loki, now confronting them as their avowed enemy, with the desperation of an outlaw, proceeds to defy and accuse them. Loki They are tried by fire. He takes them the Accuser. one by one, as does Frau Schnipps the saints at the gate of heaven in Bürger's poem, and holds up their sins before them. Not one escapes, from Odin down to the veriest varlet and Abigail of the entire entourage. We may believe that he laid on the colors with an unsparing hand, and that when he got through with them they hardly rec- ognized aught of their own divinity. Here is your full-fledged, orthodox Satan; at first tempter, then betrayer, then slayer, and, last, accuser. This crown- ing office of the Evil One, mentioned in both the Old and the New Testament, grotesquely played upon in Talmudic lore, and so exhaustively utilized in Christian dogmatics, has an undoubted foundation in fact and actual experience. Do we not recognize in it the last chord in the gamut of sin ? "Loki ap- pears here as the evil conscience of the gods, as the consciousness of their guilt” (Simrock). It is this quasi-ethical function that procures Satan the other- 226 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA the Gods. wise anomalous unmolested audiences with God in the biblical accounts, notably in the Book of Job, which Goethe has so daringly imitated in the Prol- ogue to his “Faust." Loki's appearance and de- nunciations at the banquet of the gods, amid their queen silence, is a subtler stroke still. Their Conscience of abashed silence shows him to be their so own conscience. He is a god still, one of their number, fostered and cherished by them to the last. The act of breaking with him, and proceeding against him after this, indicates the saving residuum of good, which is roused to heroic discrimination and separation through their appalling introspection. Those who regard the whole matter of good and evil as a conventional stock-in-trade of society will, of course, find little edification in these superfine distinctions. Their sympathy, if they had any at Loki all for the higher lessons of mythology, the Cynic. would probably be with Loki's cynical motive. For it is not to be supposed that he de- nounces the gods as a preacher of righteousness. This would be suicidal. If his act results in that, it is only as a reaction against his sneer. The sneer is directed not so much against their unsuccessful professions of the good as against the good itself. This is his essential character and part. The Asen have failed of realizing holiness. Vėry well; the more fools they for trying, since the thing is a fig- ment only. Goethe's Mephistopheles, throughout his adula- tions, is laughing in his sleeve at God, as at a pompous old fogy, a kind of sanctimonious Grand Monarque. Whenever an age fails of realizing its high professions, its Lokis and Mephistos are sure to appear with their sneering persiflage. We have 1 227 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS them with us to-day, in diplomacy, in practical politics, in popular philosophy, in journalism, and especially in the novels of lady writers. Who does not know this typical hero, this combination of roué, gentleman, and thinker? The meaning of the word cynic, dog-like, does not fail of its evidence in him, suggesting the snarling at something beyond his understanding, or as Faust, with loathing, ex- presses it : “Thou mocking birth of dirt and fire !" When Loki had finished his denunciations he ran away and hid on a mountain. There he built him- self a house with four doors, so that he could keep a watch towards all the points of the compass. At Loki's night he kept guard, but in the day- Capture. time he frequently changed himself into a salmon and disported in the waterfall that fell down the precipice, and which is called Franângr. At such times he thought how the gods would strive to catch him. By a strange infatuation, during the day he amused himself in weaving a net, while a fire burned before him. Odin, from his lofty watch in Hlidskialf, had espied the fugitive's whereabouts. Thus, one day, while at work on his weaving, Loki, happening to look up, perceived the gods near by. Instantly he threw the net into the fire, and, assum- ing the form of a salmon, jumped into the water. When the Asen hurried to the spot the net was not yet consumed. Kwâsir, the wisest among them, dis- covered the outlines of it in the glimmering ashes, and informed the others of its use. Thereupon they fell to weaving another. When it was done, the gods took it to the water and cast it in. Then they drew it towards the shore after the manner of fishermen 228 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA Force of with a seine, Thôr holding one end and the remain- ing Asen the other. But Loki, when he saw the net closing about him, hid himself on the bottom be- tween two large stones. Thus the net brushed over him. However, in their next attempt the gods fast- A Fishing ened weights to the lower meshes, so that Party in the the net at all points swept the ground. Franânge. This time Loki, when he had been driven close to shore and found that he could not slip un- der the net, leaped over it back into the deep water. Now Thôr entered the middle of the stream, while the remaining Asen divided themselves into two parties, one at each end of the net. When Loki again sought to vault over it, Thôr seized him in the middle. The fish slipped forward in Thôr's hand, so that the god had to hold him by the tail. The grasp of that hand, which wielded Miölnir, was so crushing that it compressed the tail, wherefore the salmon since then has had a pointed tail. Now Loki, restored to his human shape, was carried off to a cave. There the gods took three long blocks of stone and stood them on end, after hewing three holes or hollows in the upper sides. Then they caught Loki's two sons, Wali and Narwi. Wali was transformed into a wolf, who thereupon mangled his brother Narwi. The gods took his entrails and therewith bound Loki on the hollowed-out edges of Loki's the three stones. One of the stones stood Binding. under his shoulders, another under his loins, and the third under his knee-joints. Skadhi -the etymology of whose name, from Schade, mal- ice or injury, if correct, comes into play here for the first time-took a poisonous serpent and fast- ened it above the prisoner's head in such a posi- tion that the virus dripping from its mouth falls 229 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS upon his face. Sigyn, his wife, sits beside him, catch- ing up the venom in a bowl. Whenever this is filled she goes to empty it, during which time the poison drops on him. The pain is so great that Loki roars and ramps in his bonds, which causes earthquakes, But the entrails with which he is bound have turn- ed into iron, and however much he may strain he cannot get free until Ragnarök. Commentators have busied themselves with the physical features of this story. Thus the salmon- Lachs, lux-suggests the shining fish, the four-sided house on the mountain, the tower of Lynceus, etc.; but the paramount purpose of the story is plainly the ethical lesson, the progressive movement of the drama. Loki, in his last development, bursts into full flower as Evil itself. This is, indeed, still elu- sive, Protean, hard to localize. Nevertheless, the gods accomplish the orienting and fixing of it. The Devil Luckily Evil is so constituted that it aids Chained. its pursuers. It cannot remain hidden. Why do they not give Loki the coup de grâce now they have him in their power? Ah, if only some holy knight - errant would kill the devil ! Some good people believe that our liberal the- ology has done away with him. Unfortunately, new terminologies have no more effect on him than so many paper wads. We have forced him into a new metamorphosis and nothing more. The rea- son why the gods do not deal capitally with him is not physical but psychical. They dare not. He is one of them. He is in every one of them. He is in the whole of their sinful world-order, as the tares among the wheat. The best they can do under the circumstances is to bind him. These bonds, as we have seen in the case of the Fenriswolf, whose mean- 230 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA ings, we also learned, are law, the moral order of society, the concatenation of decency, public opinion, legal enactments, penalties, keep Evil in check as chains do a mad dog. Every one knows that this arrangement is only ad interim. It is a poor make- shift. Ever and anon Loki rattles at his chains and shakes the very pillars of the social edifice. The Our Morality foundations quake from the subterranean a Status quo. tremor of Evil. Such alarms are not in- frequent even in these days of nineteenth-century civilization. Certainly some kind of control of evil is better than none, but it is a poor kind of civilization, hard- ly worth the name, that must put up with it as an integral part of its house-keeping. It is like one of those mediæval castles with a dungeon right under the banquet-hall, or a modern home whereof one member of the family is a murderous maniac con- fined in a distant room. At any moment he may burst forth, perchance while we are feasting with our friends, or steal upon us while we are asleep, and strangle or stab us to death there. Even though he never should, yet the haunting fear, the danger, is there forever-forever the gnawing pain at our heart, the desperate tension of suspense, the hourly returning agony, the start, the terror, the momentary killing of every budding hope, the fear- ful mockery of our dissembled laughter. Oh, the hollowness and agony of such a life! Only a fool could call it normal. Yet very many, if not most Door mihin people, seek to make themselves at home House- in such a world, with no other solicitude regarding Evil than that the chains might not break in their lifetime. Après nous le déluge ! Others, and among them prophets of our age, keeping. 231 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Prometheus. dreaming and talking in their sleep, sleeping the drunken sleep of material progress, drone of a natural death of Evil in its chains. Loki's being captured, as it were, in the meshes of his own net and fettered with the entrails of his own off- spring, convey the lessons of the uneasy self- betrayal of Evil on the one hand, and of the en- forced confinement provoked by its own excesses on the other. The temporary chaining of the personifications of the god-hostile principle is apparently a world-wide intuition, since it is found set forth in more than one mythology as well as in religious eschatology. The Titans in the Greek system, true to the uncom- pleted Pagan conception of that system, do not get free. The exception is Prometheus, who, however, is not an enemy, but rather a friend of mankind, really more divine than his ar- bitrary oppressor, Zeus. To say that the millennial imprisonment of Satan is the exclusive revelation of Christian prophecy is, therefore, a narrow, unproven claim. It is rather only another revelation of universal human truth. 3. The word Antichrist in its verbal mean- and ing is symbolical and consummate. It designates the sum and extreme effort of all those developments that war against the sway of those principles that Christ stands for. While these allegorical expectations have questionless been sug- gested by the contemplation of subterranean, men- acing eruptions, they find their deepest foundation in the faith and hope of the soul and in the experi- ences of history. The touching, redeeming incident of Sigyn's lov- ing fidelity in that horrid scene of violence has been Millennium Antichrist 232 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA affectionately dwelt upon and reproduced by the old German muse. Thus Wolfram von Eschenbach's Sigune, who refuses to depart from the Siġune. Sigrun slain body of her husband, is a revived Si- gyn. Uhland also suggests that Sigrun, the beloved of Helgi, has proceeded from the same source. Whatever either our biblical calculations about the nature of the millennium or our philosophical forecasts about the outcome of law may conclude in, the progress of the drama of our mythology evolves no relief to the gods from the incarce- ration of Loki and his brood. Evil, indeed, in its personified form is neutralized. It writhes and burns beneath the dripping of its own element. But, aside from its ravings and bellowings and rockings, that continue to affright Asgard and Midgard, the impairment it has wrought in the world cannot be patched up any more. Baldur is Fimbul dead. The light has gone out. Now fol- Winter. lows a winter so dark, so drear, that even the baleful light of Loki would not be as frightful in comparison. The winter is the eternal bugbear in the Northern mind. It marks the nadir in the an- nual life. Darkness and cold, stagnation and death of Nature and man's creative activity, are its accom- paniments. The physical features of this winter are intolerable enough. It endures three years, with no respite of a single summer between. The sun is the pale ghost of itself, hanging dead and cold in the heavens. Snow continually falls. The giants hold high carnival therein, blowing it hither and thither. They roam unhindered over all the earth. The cold grows more and more intense. It freezes all the streams and cracks the rocks in twain. The only 233 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS signs of life and motion are the crunching of ice- bergs, the down-thunderings of avalanches, and the howling of the storm. Where is Thôr now with his hammer? Alas, there is no spring-tide waiting for him any more! He sits cowering in his imprisoned palace, like the lowliest hind of Midgard in his hut, waiting for the end. Any kind of end would be better than this-fire, conflagration, subversion. But this is not the worst. This is but the orches- tral crash–the turning down of the lights after the sorrowful scene while the curtain drops. The actual, strenuous thing that has transpired and pushed its Moral shadows out upon the physical world-walls Darkness. is the preceding moral and social darkness. Thus saith the “Wöluspa": Brothers pursue and fell each other, Brothers and sisters breaking their blood-bonds. Things unheard of, murders, adulteries. Hatchet-age, sword-age, where shields shiver, Wind-time, wolf-time, ere the world crumbles. No one spares the other more. Three years of extreme demoralization, of return- ing savagery, of lawless, impious self - seeking have gone before the Fimbul winter. Avarice has grown so passionately insatiable and inexorable that it rushes headlong over the most sacred feelings, tearing to pieces in its eager quest the bonds of Nature that would restrain it. The visions of the Apocalypse that paint the move- ments preceding the end of the ancient world are more martial, more melodramatic, more sublimely overawing to the imagination, probably because they revolve in the larger imagery of the Roman Empire. Thestrokes in the “Wöluspa” are not paint- 234 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA Fratricide. Incest. ings, but engravings cut with an iron pencil. Brother slaying brother, the son unsparing of the father, the hallowed rights of kindredship and family violated, this marks the lowest depths of moral degradation. ... Says Simrock : “ To the German it is the * acme of savage wildness if the bonds of blood, which to him are the holiest thing, are no longer respected and fall the victims of avarice." This unfettering of the wild beast in man, this mor- al and social dissolution in one direction, opens the way for his unchecked ravening in any cther. The purity of the family, the sacredness of the marriage relation, which was equally characteristic of the Ger- manic race, is next sacrificed. All this is . “unheard of," unnatural. Other races may survive the desolation of the home. The Saxon race never can, for it is our temple and our Hatchet-age. citadel. “Hatchet-age, sword-age," do Sword-age. not mean war in general, for the Teuton did not regard war as wicked. Gods and men alike were warriors. It is this unnatural, impious, frat- ricidal war that is meant. Avarice is the mother of brutality as well as of vulgarity. Are not most wars inspired by this animal greed? Is not much of what tyrants and demagogues call patriotism a deceitful euphemism for the same motive? The ancients knew little of "the brotherhood of man," because they knew so little of “the father- hood of God." It was for the ancient Saxon to stand guard over the centre rather than the cir- cumference of society. If we are sincere with our modern parole of extending the protection and cherishing warmth of the centre to the circumfer- ence, we may at least be advised by our ancients as to what is the chief hinderance thereto, 235 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS “Wind-age, Wolf-age.” Here we have a further development of the drama of sin. The Wind-age is Wind-age the unhindered sway of the giants, the Wolf-age. bitter, biting cold of egotism, the bleak- ness and the blighting vandal ferocity of the ele- mentary impulses that delight in ravaging among the fair fruits of Culture. The Wolf-age and Wolf- rage are worse. The winds have no high intelligence, no discrimination. They know not what they do really. Theirs is a blind fury. Its play-room is on the lower plane of material, artistic products and monuments. After an irruption of vandals, men can build again and create new works of art if their spiritual resources are unexhausted. The Wolves are endowed with malevolent intelli- gence, and imbued with the conscious purpose of destruction. In mythology they always typify this. Their aim is higher than that of the Winds. They seek to devour the living sources of Culture. On a Siberian prairie the winds blow promiscuously upon the sleigh and the travellers alike, while the pack of howling wolves, with open maw and red, lolling tongue, are after the occupants of the sleigh. The Fenriswolf is the perfected conception of the whole tribe. As the offspring of Loki, he embodies the infernal element in the world. As a wolf, he has stripped off those redeeming human features which in Loki do not fail to attract us, and even excite compassion for his sufferings—the wit and humor, the versatility and comeliness and esprit that at- tach to Evil in its artistic aspects. In of the this stage the abysmal destructiveness is Apocalypse. disguised. In the Fenriswolf it alone is revealed. He is Destruction-ingulfing, omniv- orous Destruction-personified in all its beastly re- The Beast 236 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA Moral Devoured. pulsiveness and unsparingness. He is the Beast of the Apocalypse. But his time has not yet come- not quite yet. In the chapter on the Creation we Sköll and have met his prototypes—Sköll and Hati, Managarm. or Managarm, as Hati is also called. These two wolves, suggested as to their astronomical ori- gin by solar and lunar eclipses, are continually in pursuit of the Sun and the Moon respectively. Whenever they get hold of their prey, eclipses oc- cur. But they are invariably compelled to let go their hold. These seizures of the heavenly lumi- naries indicate periods of moral and intellectual darkness in the spiritual realm. Now the time has come when, according to prediction, the two wolves keep hold of their prey. This is the Wolf- Luminaries age of the Edda. The Sun and the Moon reg. are swallowed up! That the Inferi should be able, under any circumstances, to devour the Su- peri may justly be ridiculed as a childish fairy-tale, equally unwarranted by astronomy and history. But we should remember what mythology is try- ing to exhibit. The Sun and Moon here are not the heavenly bodies of light in their absolute in- tegrity. They are only the manifestations of light in the lustrum of Time. As such they are identi- cal with the reign of the Asen itself. So the reign of the Asen is already ended, although they still live! In the spiritual world there are no startling cataclysms. When will men learn this? The real Reigns of Terror proceed quietly, gradually, unob- served of the vulgar stare. Only the spiritually re- fined observer of the signs of the times perceives them. The multitude may be feasting and singing their loudest. Their orators may be bandying their maxims, vociferatingly and gesticulatingly, quite ig- 237 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS norant of the sad truth that these maxims are dead, mere echoes of the past, dead and buried and gone Drama versus forever, not to be resurrected — no, nor Melodrama. even galvanized-into any semblance of life any more. The swallowing up of the Sun and the Moon is only a stroke of dramatic éclat. The reign of the Asen, as effectually regnant gods, was over when the unholy moral deterioration set in without let or hinderance on their part. Yes, when Iduna and Bragi, Baldur and Nanda departed, the light faded. Extinct and inert, the pale luminaries hung in the sky, an easy prey to the wolves. The work of these is but the formal seal on what has actually transpired. This actual decadence is a sufficient explanation of the fate of Sun and Moon. But Simrock finds an additional detailed explana- tion in a passage of the “Wöluspa.” Speaking of Managarm, it there says : Him fattens the marrow of fallen men, The blood bewrays the hall of the blest. The Sun's light darkens in coming summers, All weathers rage : know ye the meaning ? Simrock advances the suggestion that, through the fattening of the wolves on the marrow of slain men, they have grown so strong that they now can overtake and consume the Sun and Moon. The slain are those fallen in the unnatural, internecine war, for it is their blood alone that could defile the hall of the blest-i. c., the sanctuary of the moral world. Thus the Fimbul winter is fully ushered in. Ragnarök at But what of Ragnarök ? When will that Last. dreaded catastrophe begin? Is not this very much like it? Indeed it is. It is Ragnarök. The nearer the tragedy approaches its end, the more 238 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA incessantly its march proceeds. The last move- ment is but the grand concentration of the various long-preparing forces. Is not the liberation of the human mind from sensuousness the ultimate ideal of freedom, the intellectual problem of the ages? “Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free.” “ Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss.” The usurpation of the material has been the bane of all religious teaching, as it is now of science and civ- ilization. In the parallelism of the literal and the figurative, the former usually betrays the latter, Tyranny of as did Hippomenes' apples Atalanta in the Letter. the race. The champion of the Letter and of Matter tyrannizes by his intolerant assump- tion of orthodoxy. Yet he is the arch-heretic, sin- ner, and betrayer. What is Ragnarök, or the Göt- terdämmerung, or the Twilight of the Gods, to which we have been looking forward so long? Some hugely terrible convulsion and conflagra- tion of Nature; some unspeakable Icelandic night- mare, before which the imagination cowers and The Real whimpers with delicious horror? Noth- Ragnarök. ing of the kind. Our mythology has not put forth its final effort to produce a nursery-tale for frightening children, or the baroque bugaboo of a common blood-and-thunder story, however mag- nified. It is the ethical dénouement of the ethical drama, which is to be read in the closet, since it can never be seen performed with its stage accessories. The illustrations from Nature are the stage accesso- ries. So far as we can foresee, this earth of ours has a peaceful future of millions of years before it. If it ever dies, it will die the death of gradual extinction, like an old man in his bed, not amid the throes and 239 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS then tirse thoughtful people theme spasms of a violent catalysis, like Edgar Allan Poe's House of Ussher. Under no circumstances could its end be simultaneous with the end of the Asen régime, rightly understood, Perhaps it is this wrong con- ception of Ragnarök that is to be chiefly blamed for turning the attention of thoughtful people from the whole matter of Norse mythology, just as the literal end-of-the-world writing and preaching has turned thoughtful Christians from the Book of Daniel and the Apocalypse. It is no wonder, for the Wagnerian grand opera, as a serious cosmical theme, would be nothing but a bizarre opera bouffe. If Ragnarök is the breaking loose of the chained monsters of Ill and Woe, the main question arises, The Breaking what has caused their chains to break ? of the Chains. We may search the whole physical uni- verse, as well as the whole circle of sagas, in vain for a physical cause. But when we recall the nat- ure of the chains with which these embodiments of evil and overthrow were bound, the question is readily answered. The chains being the restraints of law, the moral dissolution shadowed forth in the Fimbul winter is the breaking of the chains. Not all the enemies of the gods are bound with chains. Yet when Loki and the Fenriswolf get loose, they all come forth from the status quo where they have been held by the same moral and logical conditions. The time for all of them has now come. Man himself, through the enervating indulgence of sin, grows to relax his hold over the ever - waiting, ever-straining lower powers of de- struction. When Old Roman virtue and citizen- ship were dead, the city and the empire fell an easy prey to the barbarians. This is the law that mythology endeavors to teach in its last act, and it 240 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA is a law that lives to-day, that suffers no amend- ment in any age whatsoever. In the Skaldska- parmal the gods themselves are designated as the Höpt and moral fetters of the world, as the Höpt Bönd. and Bönd—the clasps and bands—that hold evil in check. Their name, Asen or Asas, as we know, defines them as the Pillars of the moral order. Regin, according to Grimm, means Regin. * the world-ordering powers-“ Die welt- ordnenden Gewalten." He translates Ragnarök, therefore, as the obscuration or extinction of Time Definition of and the ruling gods—“Die Ver finsterung Ragnarök. der Zeit und der waltenden Götter." We refer once more to the “Wöluspa,” that lay of the Elder Edda that contains the Wala's gloom-en- shrouded prophecy, only pointing, in passing, to the Doric simplicity and the laconic, runic preg- The Wala nancy of thought that mark the style of again. expression there—a style which, however different from Hellenic grace or modern perspicu- ity, seems very well adapted to its purpose. Hrym fares from East and lifts the shield, Jörmungandr rolls in Jötun ire, The worm whips the surf, the eagle wafts, Corpses he tears, Naglfar is loosed. From the East fares the keel ; Muspel's sons come Across the sea sailing, Loki their steersman. The Midgard When Loki and the Fenriswolf burst their bonds, Jörmungandr, or the Midgard Serpent, also stirs in her bed on the bottom of the sea. As Serpent she rises, and, gathering the world - en- circling folds of her vast bulk, emerges from the deep, the sea overflows. The mighty swell tears the ship Naglfar from its moorings. Comes. 241 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Naglay Of this ship it is said that it is constructed out of the finger and toe nails of the dead. A pious re- ze spect for the dead enjoined the duty upon van the living of cutting the nails of the corpses, and thus preparing them for decent burial. The uncut nails were used in the other world as walls were the amintim which are building material for this ship, the completion of which was one sign of the coming end. If due at- tention to the dead had been kept up, the end would have been indefinitely postponed. But in the grow- ing riot of avarice and murder this saving obsery- ance was, of course, neglected. That a great ship could be built out of such insignificant articles as nail-parings is an appalling revelation of the num- ber of murdered and uncared-for bodies. A tender disposal of the dead-such as is incul- cated in more than one place in Old Saxon relig- ion-is, perhaps, the best test of humane sentiment. Its disappearance is the last aggravation of unnat- ural social dissolution. From all sides now the hoary, monstrous enmi- ties converge : Muspel's sons- . l., the Flames- from the South, under Loki's pilotage, who knows so well whither to lead them; the ship Naglfar, Gathering of commanded by Hrym, with his savage the Foes. host of Hrimthursen, or Frost-giants, from the East. To the Norwegian, and the Ice- lander, too, the region of greatest cold lay in the East, in Siberia, whither Thôr also was wont to re- pair to fight the trolls; Hel's abode, on the other hand, lay northward. From the infernal depths comes the Fenriswolf, the picture of abysmal Over- throw. His mouth is open, as the gods had left it. The upper jaw touches heaven, the lower scrapes the earth. Out of the sea wallows the Midgard 242 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA dragon, spitting venom. From the sky descends the unsated moon - devourer, Managarm. From Hel's abode appears the Saxon Cerberus, Garm, to open the way to the hungry netherworld, and vary the multifarious din of the approaching battle with his diabolical yelping ; while at the northernmost coign of the heavens the giant eagle Hraeswelgr, Corpse-devourer, whets his beak and his talons, and rises to waft a storm southward with his vast wings ere mounting thereupon to dart into the fray. Meanwhile, what about our beloved friends shut up in their Asgard fastness? Do not our hearts yearn towards them as we see them gazing from their turrets and towers at the narrowing ring of The Belea- beleaguering enormities? Have we not guered Gods. learned to love them all as our cham- pions, and for their own sakes—yes, because of their very failings, which are so truly human? Is there no hope of victory? Must all this fair household go down before that bestial onset? Is there no re- demption for the sinful, trembling world? With these anxious questions we turn to All-father Odin peering forth from the windows of Hlidskialf. As in answer, he descends for one last consultation with Mimir's Head, at the Well. The other gods with us silently await his return. When he comes, a glance at his face tells us the result. There is no escape from the impending doom. The time is past for that. The little rift in the lute, upon which at dawn they so sweetly played their music of the spheres, has burst apart so far that it is as wide as Ginungagap. In the hour-glass of the æon the sands to their last grain are trickling down. Since they failed to speak at the right time, fatum est, the 243 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Immolation. Voice of the Universe has spoken now in vindica- tion of its violated law. No legerdemain of divin- ity, no shining array of culture, no oracle of the occult can gainsay its dictum. Well, what then? Do they blanch and tremble ? Do they propose to barricade themselves within their fortress, to die like rats in a hole? Not a bit of it. Our ancient Sagamen wrote their tragedy as they fought their battles. The Saxon Muse in this Rag- narök business simply mounts to the up- Sublime Fortitude of permost air of the pure sublime. There 1. is nothing finer in history or fiction-not Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans at Ther- mopylæ, combing their hair and joking about the cloud of arrows under which they will fight-not the six hundred riding to the charge at Bala- klava. We might say that the leading forth of the heroes of Walhalla by Odin to their last battle is the apoth- eosis of Saxon courage. But it is far more. It is an index of redemption. Odin does not lead a forlorn hope with the courage of despair. They do not go down to a certain defeat, but to victory- albeit a victory bought at the cost of their own lives, like Nelson's at Trafalgar. These time-repre- sentatives of Light must fall indeed, but not before their adversaries have likewise received their death- blows. Their going into battle is, therefore, not without the element of an expiation. Waiving all further reflections upon the meaning of their death, let us take position where we can witness the splendid sally that they made. Heimdall has long ere this been blowing his Gial- lar-horn. When from his post on the crest of curv- 244 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA Asgard. ing, beauteous Bifröst he descried the first approach of the foe, he sent forth the long-predicted blast ast of doom. The battle is to be fought on The Last Sally from the plain Vigrid, from Vig (battle), and 14 rîdha (to ride). It is one hundred post- stations, or rasts, in extent each way. First comes Odin on Sleipnir at the head of the Einheriar. Never was war - steed more magnifi- cently caparisoned. As for the rider, how much of our eternal, dearest treasure he bears his resplen- dent accoutrements convey to us. He wears the full regalia and insignia of his office as the king of gods and men—the golden helmet, the shining byr- nie, the spear Gungnir. It must seem incongruous to us that the Einheriar, who, strictly speaking, are already dead, should gallop forth to another death. Is not the whole spectacle a cavalcade of ghosts? Assuredly it is. They are all ghosts. It does not appear that the Einheriar took any part in the bat- tle, except as Odin's body-guard and retinue. It is not a battle at all between two armies, but a succes- sion of duels between opposing principles, a deadly tournament of knights. Next there strides alone the burly figure of Thôr, our beloved backwoods god. He has left his goat-chariot behind. The battle- field is near by, and his enemy has come to seek him. Then follow Heimdall and Freir and Tyr, after which the gates of Asgard swing shut. There is no allusion to the fate of the fair women who stay behind, and who might be imagined waving a tearful farewell to their champions, as we picture the gentle châtelaines doing from the balcony of a mediæval castle, when the troop of mailed cavaliers ride away on a crusade to the Holy Land. 245 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Hastening to the walfield Vigrid, we find the duels already begun. The first is that of Odin with The Single the Fenriswolf, the Father of ideal striv- Combats. ing with destruction. These are the two imperial combatants, upon whose fight the other. representative powers present must have gazea with bated breath, for when it was ended they stay Odin's End was decided. We know how it ended: " Full-panoplied Odin goes down into the bloody chasm of the wolf's jaws. 1 But he goes down as did Curtius into the chasm in the Forum. His ingulfment stops the gap. No, this yawning throat shall not revert to the Tohu va Bohu of chaotic Ginungagap. History shall not be turned back to the beginning for all men's er- rors. Odin cannot truly die. See, what an amaz- ing thing happens ! No sooner has he disappeared, and ere the hosts of evil can raise their shout of triumph, while the A monstrous minotaur is licking his gory chaps, a youthful hero appears, springing up as though from the ground, and advances gayly to the attack. Who is he? Widar, the youngest son of Odin, known to the Skalds as Widar the Silent. But what of him? The grave Simrock permits himself the facetious sarcasm of remarking that he is called the Silent because he has kept silent to all the absurd theories advanced about him. After such a thrust from a master who has never allowed his own learning or imagination to trip up his good taste, it would be hazardous to enumerate these theories. Is the epithet not sufficiently explained in the silence that mythology has maintained about him ? This reserve is so general that we are led to 246 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA doubt his existence during the active campaign of the Asen, and makes us incline to the opinion that he is simply Odin reborn, as Wali is Baldur reborn. The name Widar or Vidar means Again, Re, or Rursus; Norse, Vidh; Gothic, Vithra; German, Wieder. The rejuvenation of Nature, which is the Saflent feature of our whole mythology, is, of course, exemplified once more in him. The Grimnismal says of his dwelling-place. Widi. Green are the shrubs and high is the grass In the land of Widar, Widi. It is Life, true Vitality, that ever “springs per- ennial.”. However, the distinctive lesson of his op- portune appearance here is the immortality of what Odin st o r—the indestructibility of it even for a mom The new champion and avenger of his father, with youthful ardor, springs at the wolf, and planting his foot, shod with a marvellous shoe, on End of the the nether jaw, Samson-like, wrenches the Wolf. upper jaw apart. In an instant it is done, and the Beast of the Bottomless Pit rolls over dead. It would be a trivial marring of the high tragedy in progress here to bring in Widar's Shoe for inspec- om tion - trivial enough to warrant a new Widar's Shoe. os injunction that the cobbler should stick to his last—had not the heart of mythology wrought up in it one of its most tender and significant lessons of goodness. The shoe of Widar is the counterpart of the ship Naglfar. It is made of the scraps of leather, the remnants of worn-out shoes that are cast away by the wearer. In the days of our mythic forefathers shoes were harder to obtain than they are to-day, although it is to be hoped that they wore longer than our factory- 247 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS made foot-gear. It was enjoined upon the rich not to wear their shoes out utterly, but before that to give them to the poor, inasmuch as Widar's Shoe, upon which depended the immortality of the gods and the redemption of the world, was constructed of these humble tokens of mercy! Can we find even in the gracious precepts of Christianity a more momentous appreciation of ansambst in mice that and that divinest charisma that “droppeth like the gen- : nothin tle dew from heaven,” and must in the last instance. solve all world-problems? Now our redoubtable friend Thôr meets his old antagonist, with whom he had indulged in that pre- liminary passage-at-arms in Hymir's boat. Now the dragon does not dodge. She has rolled up from the briny deep and undammed her inundating element. Thôr and the Spewing out streams of envenomed saliva, Serpent. she vents her long and sluggishly pent-up rage against Culture, writhing with an oceanic pas- sion of revenge against its champion. But Thôr is the vernal god still. Miölnir has lost none of its force or cunning. The contest is brief. The last blow that the hammer wields has crushed the ser- pent's head. As with the convulsive twitchings of the death agony throughout her vast folds, she set- tles down forever, Thôr totters nine paces back- ward. Then Miölnir sinks from his grasp, and the Thôr gone mighty form falls, killed by the deadly too. slaver from the monster's mouth. “Then you and I and all of us fell down.” But we cannot stop for lamentations or medita- tions, for the other holmgangs are in progress. The Tyr and fight is raging all around us. Tyr and Managarm. the Moon-wolf Managarm are wrestling with each other, until they both lie stretched out 248 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD DRAMA side by side. There is no quarter given or taken in this doomful encounter. Where is Loki, the instigator of all the trouble ? Heimdall seeks him, and soon these two are at it Heimdall all over the Walground, the Rain and and Loki. the Fire. At last they fall by each other's hand. Thus, at all events, the devil is dead at last! Can the fate of the world yet be stayed ? The Devil Alas, there is Surtur, who, while Loki Dead! step by step exchanged his elementary nature of fire for the ethical principle of evil, came to assume the former. Surtur the Black-i. l., the Surtur's Smoke — who hovers over the legions of Charge. Muspelheim, the Flames. Over his leap- ing, blood-red ranks he now qualms forth to take Loki's place. Freir alone is left to do him combat- Freir, the Sun-god-and he bereft of his sword, that Freir's he forfeited in the Skirnirsför. The Sun- Obliteration. god is blotted out by the Soot-god. The numberless Muspel host are already swarming up to the battlements of Asgard-Muspel, which, accord- ing to Grimm, means wood or forest spoilers, and which appears in mediæval Saxon and Bavarian Surtalogi, or of poems about Judgment Day, thus afford- the World- ing us an understanding of the world- conflagration. 10h conflagration as a magnified forest fire. Crackling, roaring, leaping, the fierce, fiery pirates mount all the natural and cultural edifices of the earth. Some of them attack the sacred world-ash Vægdrasil Yggdrasil. Their name is legion. Their Falls. rage is implacable. In a short time the mighty tree falls athwart the battle-field, where it is soon finished by the relentless marauders. Mean- while other swarms have mounted the bridge Bi- fröst, now no longer guarded by Heimdall, and of them. Their name a shor 249 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS assail the golden city of the gods. In a short time its shining palaces are wrapped in fire. With Asgard in a shudder of horror we turn to the awful Flames. sight, thinking of the goddesses confined there. Must they be burned to death? Ah, no; a kindlier death has saved them ere this from such a Fate of the fearful fate. When their champions fell Goddesses. on the bloody field, like Nanda, painlessly they expired of broken hearts. Their end was gentle, as were their lives. Gentle also will be their sojourn in Hel's gloomy abode, until they re- turn again to bless the earth with their bright pres- ence and soft ministrations. Now pandemonium reigns unchecked. While the flames wreak havoc on all combustible things, the Pandemo- sea overflows its banks. The headlong nium. sons of Muspel at last have gorged them- selves so much that they die. Surtup likewise per- ishes; for where there is no more fire there is no longer smoke. The grim Hrimthursen now are let loose by Hrym, who has held them in leash like dogs: Over the desolate earth they fly hither and thither, shrieking and howling with delight at their savage freedom. Thus Ragnarök leaves the world barren, black- ened, submerged, wind-swept, dark, cold, and dead; a gaunt, ghastly skeleton of its former self, the work of evil passions. The picture that Schiller has paint- ed of the fire's work will fit the scene: Leergebrannt Ist die Stätte, Wilder Stürme Rauhes Bette. In den öden Fensterhöhlen Wohnt das Grauen, 250 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA Und des Himmels Wolken schauen Hoch hinein. Burned and blackened Is the site, Where wild storm-winds Roam and fight. In the windowed holes amazing Horror dwells, And the clouds of heaven are gazing From far above. To add further preachments to the text would be repeating what the reader has already done for himself. Our work would be incomplete, not merely as to the data, but especially for the understanding of the whole, if we neglected to add the necessary informa- Anticlimax. tion about the renewal and future of the Renewal. world. The doctrine of a New Heaven and a New Earth is as integral and elaborate a part of the Saxon religion as of Christianity. It has been ac- corded as much poetical treatment in the literature of mythology as the cosmogony, theogony, Rag- narök, and other features. Thus the Wala's prediction, speaking of herself: The Wala for the Last Time. Then sees she emerge For the second time The earth from the water And again grow green. The floods recede, The eagle flies over them, Who hunts for fishes Upon the rocks. The Asen meet On the field of Ida, * * The old site of council and judgment. 251 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS To speak of the great, The world-encircler. * Age-hoary sayings They remember there, Runes discovered Of Fimbultyr. + Then shall again The wonderful Golden disks be found Lying in the grass, Which in the yore The Asen had, The prince of gods And Fiölnir's race. I Then all unsown: The fields shall bear; All evil departs, Baldur returns. In the victory-god's heaven Dwell Hödur and Baldur, The Walwise gods : Ken ye the meaning ? Then Hönir himself Can choose his lot, $ And the sons of both brothers | Together till The wide-spreading Windheim: Ken ye the meaning ? A hall I see Brighter than the sun, Roofed over with gold, On Gîmil's heights. ** There shall approved Heroes dwell ** The Creator. † The Unknown God. I A by-name of Odin. $ Return from the Wapen. U Of Odin and Hönir. ** The New Heaven. 252 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA Enjoying honors Without any end. Then rides the Mighty To the gods' divan, The Strong from above, Who all things pilots. He decides the contest, All quarrels composes And formulates Eternal laws. Wafthrudnismal adds other features to the proph- ecy: Widar and Wali The sanctuary keep, Prophecy of When Surtur's fire subsides. Modi and Magni * Shall swing Miölnir And fight the war to end. A new race of men shall people the new earth. Warthrudnis- mal. Lif and Lifthrasir of In Hoddmimir's wood Live hidden away, $ Their food is The morning dew; From them a new race rises. Furthermore, a daughter of the sun shall reign in the renewed sky. The sun, as we remember, is feminine: A daughter is born Of the shining goddess, Before the wolf devours her.|| Resplendent fares, after The fall of the gods, The maid in the ways of the mother. † Life and Vitality. s During the fire. * Courage and Strength, Thôr's sons. † Wisdom-concealing. Mimir's Well. Il Sköll, the Sun wolf. 253 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS: The Younger Edda thus refers to this subject : Then asked Ganglere: What happens when heaven and earth and all the world are consumed in flames, and when all the gods and all the Einherjes and all men are dead? You have already said that all men shall live in some world through all ages. Har answered: There are many good and many bad abodes. Best it is to be in Gîmle-in heaven, Plenty is there of good drink for those who deem this a joy in the hall called Brimer. That is also in heaven. There is also an excellent hall, which stands on the Nida moun- tains. It is built of red gold, and is called Sindre. In this hall good and well-minded men shall dwell. Nastrand is a large and terrible hall, and its doors open to the north. It is built of serpents wattled together, and all the heads of the serpents turn into the hall and vomit forth venom that flows in streams along the hall, and in these streams wade perjurers and murderers. So it is here said: A hall I know standing Far from the sun On the strand of dead bodies. Drops of venom Fall through the loopholes. Of serpents' backs The hall is made. There shall wade Through heavy streams Perjurers And murderers, etc. R. B. ANDERSON'S Translation. The remainder consists mainly of the quotations given above, from the Elder Edda. These are the bare literary outlines of the regen- erated world. We see that it is a new mythology, a new religion and theology that speak here. 254 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA Character- The old gods return, but not in their former flesh- and-blood vitality. They have been refined into spiritual principles. Their functions de- istics. scend to their children, which are scarcely omments. more than abstract qualities. Odin as All-father has given way to Fimbultyr, the invisible, everlasting God. There is almost a complete ap- proach to monotheism. The beautiful, shining galaxy of Sun-divinities, whose faces and forms are so familiar to us, are superseded in the heavens by the one Sun-goddess, as colorless a personification as the Roman Luna. All this is a decided gain to orthodox theology, but withal a decided loss to poet- ical mythology. We are loath to forego our living friends with their warm-blooded realism, their feast- ings and fightings, their wooings and weddings. We have been fed for so many generations upon the cold manna of dogmas and abstractions. However, this is a pettish caprice of the stomach. Or is it a more wholesome index — that revulsion of feeling that disgusts us with the flowing milk and honey of the Promised Land? The preference of Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained may have its deeper counter- part in the preference for the subject. We don't want a world without fight and stir. All we want is more hopeful conditions for conquest, the barest evidences of progress. All we ask is to be relieved of the fear of those horrible 'gandrs, lurking open- mouthed with their huge hunger of annihilation at the edge of our field. Let us take courage. Jörmun- gandr and Wanargandr are gone and Miölnir is can still here. The march-stones of Progress *** shall be pushed on. While Thôr takes his ease in his inn beside his foaming tankard, Strength and Courage shall proceed with his work of civiliza- Gains. 255 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS tion. Anon the old Berserk may come forth and, stretching his mighty legs, give the youngsters a lesson in the right mode of twirling the honest old hammer, so that it may hit the bull's-eye. Widar and Wali, not to mention Baldur and Hödur, or the other junior divinities, will not be too celestial to deign consulting Father Odin on nice points of ethics and asthetics. Tyr will be there no more, nor Loki, which is a happy riddance, as all must own. On the other hand, Bragi returns, the chief of the Skalds. That his harping repertoire has been enriched with new songs of a deeper strain we may well believe. With him comes Iduna, scat- tering fresh flowers of brighter hue and sweeter perfume than those of the old world. With her come her sister goddesses, reborn, with all traces of tears washed from their fair faces, and, what is best, no longer to dwell apart in lofty castles as celestial ideals, but as domesticated graces of character amid men, as Creatures not too bright or good For human nature's daily food. This is the substantial gain resulting from the fiery ordeal of rebirth through which the world has passed. That Fimbultyr henceforth shall adminis- ter justice, what does this bespeak save the coming to pass of the saying that is written elsewhere, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them and be their God." As for Gîmil, the heaven of the new world, there is a marked improvement in the absence of the coarse joys of Walhalla, and, for that matter, in the 256 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA absence of all detailed account of life there, a tactful treatment which the Christian heaven has not had Gîmil. the good fortune to receive. A more val- uable improvement still is the assurance that all heroic souls shall find entrance there, not merely the fallen warriors. The battle of life has been spiritualized. On the whole, this new earth, we cannot but confess, is as good a world as a mod- ern reformer might construct on the spur of the moment—a good, sensible, work-day world, not a namby-pamby, impossible heaven, nor an undesir- able primitive paradise. It is quite probable that Christianity has influenced this last page of mythol- ogy, since the two had existed side by side for a generation when it was written. Résumé. Having started out with a plea for filial attention to the thoughts of our ancestors, we now come back to that appeal after traversing our road me together. Youth is proverbially restive under paternal advice. Moreover, the last heir of Time has especial acquirements to boast of. Chief among these, perhaps, is his cosmopolitanism. He might, therefore, resent an appeal to his race-con- sciousness as narrowing. However, despite our laudable catholicity of knowledge, our foreign trav- els, international studies, and liberal sympathies, it is manifestly impossible for us to get rid of our family lineaments. Nor is it desirable. The best world-citizen is he who seeks to enrich his individ- uality, not dissipate it, by a loving cultivation of his fellows. Thus only will he be able to contribute something completing to the human picture-gallery. A composite photograph may be a curiosity, but as a representation of living faces it is misleading. 257 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS politanism. Our world-wide intercourse has unfortunately pro- duced an actual being of this washed-out, composite Ineffectual kind, a creature that might serve as a ki Cosmo- title vignette to Baedeker, a face without marked features, without the zeal of faith in anything, without a serious life purpose or defi- nite character. Much of our modern culture is of the same curious kind. Our poets for ages have crowded around the base of Parnassus, dabbling in the water of the fountain Castalia until this must be as muddy as the well Zemzem. We know this well, and others beyond. We affect an interest in Oriental thought. Nevertheless, it is impossible to expatriate the blood out of our veins and remain alive. We cannot suc- cessfully imitate other nationalities. The channels of national thought and life are so precipitously deep that whoever would enter them must go back to their source. The most gifted and accomplished have failed at reproducing the genius of an alien people as signally as does an undergraduate with his Latin and Greek verses. Frederick the Great's Letters are not French ; Milton's Italian Sonnets are not Italian ; Goethe's Xenien are not Greek ; Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia is not Oriental. Let us be sincere about our classic acquirements. Let the literary reader, in a mental review of mod- ern poems-English, American, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian–that have a classic subject for their theme, and their number is legion, at- Classic tempt to recall one that has permanently oubjects. affected the popular heart or borne the fruit of an inspiring message. The writer cannot recall one that will endure this test. Longfellow's “Psalm of Life” outweighs volumes of those pret- Literary 258 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA ty laborations before this tribunal. Tennyson's “Break, break, break," and other short, intense ut- terances of Saxon longing and aspiration, move us forever, while his “ Ulysses," "The Lotos Eaters," “Enone,” etc., leave us cold. Schiller's Ballads and Goethe's Songs live in the hearts of succes- sive generations of Germans, while their Hellenic lucubrations are passed by. “The people who know not the classics are ac- cursed !” some modern scribe may retort in expla- nation. But the people are not altogether unconver- sant with classic lore. Cultivated readers, lovers of poetry, as a class, are familiar with Greek and Roman mythology and history. A knowledge of classic literature has even been extended in recent years far beyond college and university walls by means of Chautauqua and other reading-clubs, uni- versity-extension courses, books, and popular lect- ures. It is not so much that these subjects are associated with dead languages and a departed civ- ilization, as that the animus pervading them is ultramontane-not only foreign, but hostile to our Saxon feeling and Christian ideals. What names are more alive and current than Cupid and Venus ? Yet we use them with a mental protest, or lightly, as ornaments of speech, knowing that they do not express all of love and beauty to us. For this rea- son also we know that our poets, the high-priests of our feeling and ideals, are incapable of interpreting the classic spirit. They lack the frank sensuality requisite to translate the fundamental thought. How much of the language, even of the Augustan age, is untranslatable on the score of decency? The more exquisitely they adorn these subjects with the witchery of imagination and verse the 259 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS more completely do they cover them up with the web of a modern, refined sentiment. Their work, if successful, as in the case of a Goethe or a Swin- burne, it sometimes seems to be, we would surely repudiate as a betrayal of our holy faith. Since it is unsuccessful, we accept it as elegant trifling, with which they sought to please themselves in an idle hour, or as pardonable exhibitions of intellectual aristocracy. Let the classical scholar, who is something more besides, cast up the profit and loss of the centu- Classic ries of laborious grubbing which in our Scholarship. colleges we have accorded to Latin and Greek. His honest confession will be that the game has not been worth the candle or the mid- night-oil ; that, first, very few learn Latin and Greek ; that, next, the few who do find little profit in it to either their culture or their conduct of life ; that, last, the noteworthy effect of it upon all is a certain snobbish class conceit, which manifests itself now in the worship of a mythical female that older pedants have taught us to dub Alma Mater, now in the rudeness of calling our friends Philistines, and now in the desperate venture of a Latin quo- tation, when the doubt whether the noun belongs to the second or the fourth declension, or whether the verb is a deponent or not, causes us the cold sweat that our temerity deserves. What a flimsy, pre- posterous make-believe this possession of an accom- plishment that is attached to us by the slender threads of a grammar and a dictionary! We are much like the Roman flamens, who could not pass each other without their tongues in their cheeks, only we have not the good sense to keep ours there. If the study of the ancient languages is necessary 260 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA Classic History. as a mental discipline, or for the better mastery of our own, let us confine it to these ends. Is it not time that, for the enrichment and establishment of our character, we were returning to the classics of our own race ? Let the student of history ponder the question how much and precisely what classic civilization has bequeathed to posterity. Greece achieved wisdom and Rome government, we are told. In accepting this terse summary we forget Antiquity in the main fact, that both Greece and Rome tory: failed. We are so learned that, according to a German proverb, we do not see the woods on account of the trees. The Greeks by wisdom failed to find out God-i.l., the Good, Truth ; and Rome, when her travail was over, was found to have brought forth Cæsarism. The practical philosophy of a civilization is best set forth at its mature devel- opment by its popularly applauded lyrical poets. These are the natural exponents of its living thought. Thus the settled bent of classic antiquity is voiced not by Pythagoras and Pindar, Socrates and Plato, Cato and Cicero, but by such singers as Horace and Ovid, Catullus and Tibullus. Every one knows that the burden of their song is a sensual egotism, in which the restraints of taste are fast breaking down before the impetuous brutality that they cultivate. The spirit of the system is well embodied in those hideous creations of its mythology of Egyptian and Assyrian origin, apparently-centaurs, griffins, sphinxes, sirens, satyrs, whose head alone is human and all beneath pure beast, the head all the more baleful because prostituted to the service of the nether parts. 261 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS That a civilization built on such teaching should perish in its own bacchanalian deluge of blood was inevitable. It did not require the lofty sentence passed upon it by St. Paul on Mars Hill, nor the “Mene, Mene, Tekel," written by the ghostly hand of Destiny on the walls of its banqueting-halls. Society was regenerated by Christianity out of the new material of the Saxon peoples, whom we, after the Romans, are accustomed to stigmatize as barbarians, but who were a hundredfold more re- fined than they. Not even Christianity could save them. Saxon genius, with its vast hunger of soul, repair- ing to them and their works, is a prodigal son leav- ing his father's house for a strange land to feed on the husks that the swine have trampled. Yet this has been done so much that mediæval and modern history might almost be symbolized in the quest of the Teuton Tannhäuser. In how many ways have we not built Christian churches out of the ruins of the Colosseum? Is not the Cæsarean model still present, not only etymologically, but as a political menace, in Kaiser and Czar? Is not our social morality, on the whole, an attempted com- promise between Christian-Saxon ideals and classic worldliness ? It may well be asked what, then, despite the ethic repulsion and artistic tyranny of classicism, forms Fatal the fatal fascination in that experiment, Fascination. with which mankind ought, in reason, to be done with forever ? Without question it must lie in that kind of peace that pervades the unhesitating surrender of the soul to sensualness. Schiller has expressed this in his poem, “ The Gods of Greece": 262 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA Zwischen Sinnenlust und Seelenfrieden Bleibt dem Menschen nur die bange Wahl ; Auf der Stirn' der hohen Uraniden Glänzet ihr vermählter Strahl. Lust of senses, peace of soul, Man must anxious choose between; On the Uranidæ's brow the whole Glowing, wedded ray is seen. Men grow tired of the fight. Intellectually, this longing for peace appears when some earnest seeker after truth-tired and distracted with the jangling opinions of Protestantism, and frightened by the disorderly results of individual freedom - throws himself upon the bosom of the Roman Church, where he can close his eyes and cease to think. May his slumbers be sweet, albeit Schiller's percep- tion and his poem were sophomoric. The brow of the Uranidæ reflected only the bovine peace of sen- suousness, because there was neither soul nor peace of soul beneath. That sort of peace is nevermore for us. Ours comes through the sword alone, while theirs brings not merely the sword but death. This is the eternal difference between Roman and German, and it behooves us to choose which we will serve. If we say that the Greek with his ar- tists, the Jew with his prophets, the Roman with his proconsuls, were providential, who will say that the Saxon with his singers was not also? In view of this, the noble apostrophe of Kingsley seems the worthiest modern tribute to our subject : Wake again, Teutonic Father ages, Speak again, beloved primeval creeds; Flash ancestral spirit from your pages, Wake the greedy age to noble deeds. 263 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS Whenever one race seeks to appropriate the ways of another, it always produces a caricature. When the English tried to Frenchify their society and literature, under the Stuarts, they succeeded in copying-no, in grossly travestying—the vices of their models. The grace and virtue they could not reach, for virtues are native and original, and can- not be communicated. Puritanism, which was an attempt to Anglicize Old Testament Judaism, re- sulted equally in an outlandish anachronism. In the widest extent is this true of the two systems under consideration. Our heathen ancestor was not of a kind to shame his latest descendant, if he was clothed in the skins of wild beasts. Only a cad could think of Our Ancestor. such things. He made Cæsar quail be- fore his arms, and Tacitus bow before his virtues. Rome never looked at his blue eyes and huge frame without a secret fear at her heart. He was destined to overwhelm her in more ways than one. He swept the Gauls before him like a flock of sheep. He drove the Britons to the Highlands of Scotland and Wales. The knightly Norman acknowledged him victor, as the Roman did the Greek. Above all things, he has brooded with those blue eyes and builded with those brawny arms of his. What he brooded and builded it may repay us to sum up in a parting glance at the three main parts of his system-his world-edifice, his gods, and his drama of Time. 1. The mental house he lived in was a large one. Its porticos or vestibules, the chief local crea- tions of his building, look out upon infinitude. We recall them readily: Unfathomable Ginungagap; the world - ash Yggdrasil, the symbol of the uni- 264 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA - - - - - - - verse's life, with its crown in the clouds and its feet in the wisdom-watered source of things; Oegir's His Mental ocean rolling outward, boundless and bot- House. tomless; the catacombs of Hela's home, receding beyond the pursuit of thought; the im- penetrable border - land of the preternatural, from which Thôr recoiled; the farther Beyond, with its sphinx - like sentinels-hoary, sombre, passionless- the Nornes, Mimir, Alwis, Wala, from whom even Odin returns abashed. The German Urwald, no doubt, was a suggestion of it all. The breath of Eternity blows through it, setting the leaves to! rustling and the waves to murmuring. An awful house, perhaps, too much like a Gothic cathedral for most people to move into. It is certainly different from ours, a forest-and a mystery-denuded modern home. Which world is the truer cannot be demon- strated as a theorem, but must be established by the character of its inhabitants. The superficially observed difference between the ancient and the modern Teuton is one of valor. But physical courage must proceed from intellectual courage, which is candor. Candor is the open- eyed, all-sided contemplation of the whole. Now, as to details of knowledge, our fathers are to us as children. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of all phe- nomena, the master-fact of all, is that of the uni- verse itself, the truth that our little world, both outer and inner, hangs suspended within Infini- tude, and is a part of it. This is as much an actual- ity as electricity or the bacillus. It is more so, since it is larger, and therefore more consequential. To ignore it is unscientific, uncandid, unvalorous, and must result in not only a diminished but in a false world. To say that we can obtain no exact knowl- 265 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS edge about that which transcends our grasp may be true, but there are other benefits besides exact knowledge-inspiration, expansion of the soul, en- thusiasm. Our age is suffering from formula rabies. What it cannot formulate it spurns, and the less it can formulate the smaller its world must be made. There must be no poetry in man's heart and no wonder in his face. All enthusiasm is priestcraft, all mystery superstition. But our forefather's atti- tude towards Nature was just this one of awe and wonder, of open, wondering teachableness. To him there was more there than the material for a formu- la. Is our attitude of dogged and dapper knowledge better? Is the field of the microscope less infinite than that of the telescope? Do not our science and his ignorance in the presence of the infinitude of what we do not know come to very much the same thing? Whatever this new paganism may be, it is cer- tainly un-Teuton. If it were not such a clumsy, modern word, we might characterize Teuton morality and life as tran- scendental. However, the adjective is usually asso- ciated with the noun nonsense. We mean merely that the Saxon mind looked beyond the material and conventional for its source of inspiration, and in the critical moments of history it appealed to that source. 2. It is a religious truism that the worship of the one true God is the sine qua non of salvation. Mon- otheism has been contrasted with poly- His Gods. cuce theism as light with darkness, or truth with error. All polytheism is indiscriminately stig- matized as idolatry, superstition, and wickedness. This is so deeply embedded in our prejudices that 266 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA we can hardly be brought to seriously study the creations of mythology. It may, however, be regarded as doubtful that mere formal monotheism is much more fruitful than any other mere ism. A vast flourish has been made of the Sh’ına Israel! But surely a watch- word that is repeated in a synagogue of usurers or a Christian congregation of egotists with no other effect than one of unctuous complacency is barren enough. The truth is that not the conception of One God, but the faith that God dwelled among them, inspired the Jews with spiritual energy. The one is theology, the other religion. But faith, as Carlyle, reminds us, was present in the early Saxons before their nature-allegories. Furthermore, it is equally doubtful that we can be pure spiritual mon- otheists. When we endeavor to present God to our minds, we imagine some kind of bodily Presence, which is idolatry. What we worship truly and at best are those qualities which appeal to us humanly as most satisfying and saving, and which we there- fore call divine or, collectively, God. Our heathen ancestors, as we saw, knew of the one true God behind the Asen. The mistakes they made in their parable have been often alluded to. They lacked the corrective of Jesus Christ. But what do their Elohim, their thrones, princi- palities, and powers teach us ? Stripped of their personality, they are permanent deific objects of aspiration. Odin is Spirituality ; Thôr, Civilization; Freir, Intelligence; Baldur, Goodness ; Heimdall, Social Order ; Uller, Robust- ness ; Bragi, Poetry ; Forseti, Justice ; while Tyr is Violence; Loki, Evil-of which, finally, what more can be said than that it begins as a fire in a handful 267 THE GODS OF OUR FATHERS of leaves, and, if not checked, will end in the burn- ing of the world. Niördr and the Wanen are Ele- mentary Desires. As to the beauteous feminine symbolizations, translated into our prose, who does not know that Fricca is Motherhood; Freya, Womanhood; Nanda, Maidenhood or Delicacy ; Iduna, Rejuvenation, etc. ? Such divinities must not die. It will be dooms- day, indeed, for the world when they are made to yield to such modern claimants for our thrones as Anangké, or Necessity, Plutus of the lower regions, Demos, the Mob, or deified Cæsar, on the other hand; to Lutetia-Materialism, to Vulgarity or Cant, not to mention Bacchus and Venus, who have long since exceeded their native, classic province. 3. In regard to the didactics of the world-drama, its parting word of exhortation is but this—that His World- man is free to strive, that therefore neither Drama. Providence nor evolution absolve us from striving. Neither religion nor science should be permitted to lull us into the fatalistic hope that the world will take care of itself. These are the three chief lessons of the heathen faith of our race, and these three are one. And man is ne'er of his worth bereft So long as these three words are left. -Schiller. Under their rain and sunshine the acorn of Teu- ton nature grew to the oak-tree of Teuton charac- ter. Our forefather was not elegant. He was a gross feeder, a heavy drinker, and, withal, somewhat of a swashbuckler ; but knowing him as we do, he might very properly say of his accomplished scion, in the words of Jaques in the Forest of Arden, “I think 268 THIRD ACT OF THE WORLD-DRAMA of as many matters as he, but I give Heaven thanks and make no boast of them.” When we think of his strength and boldness, of his vast visions and vast labors, of the poetry and the chivalry of his nature, of his earnestness and soundness, and reflect that all this is the kernel of much that is the best in us to-day, we feel that he has the right to take leave of us with the fatherly reminder, “Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged !" THE END BY ANNA ALICE CHAPIN WONDER TALES FROM WAGNER. Told for Young People. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. Miss Chapin's idea of reducing to a compact and readable form the more or less involved stories of Wagner's operas is one that met with pronounced success in her first book, “The Story of the Rhinegold.” Although announced as “for young people,” it was received with marked favor by older lovers of Wagner, who found in it an intelligent, consecutive, and concise guide to the narrative covered by the Nibelungen cycle. "Wonder Tales from Wagner" is planned upon much the same lines, and forms an invalu. able companion volume to its predecessor. Told with singular simplicity and grace, these stories of the old gods have all the charın of modern fairy-tales and are, moreover, of great assistance in the study of Waguer and Wagner's operas. THE STORY OF THE RHINEGOLD. (Der Ring des Nibelungen.) Told for Young People. Illustrated. Post Svo, Cloth, Or- namental, $1 25. The legend of the Rhinegold is both interesting and dramatic, and it has lost nothing of either quality in the hands of Miss Chapin. It may have been written with the liope of explaining the music of Wagner to young folks, but we imagine that old people will find in it a great deal of much needed information.--N. Y. Herald. The stories on which Wagner founded his great operas are told in a clear, beautiful, story-telling manner that claims and holds the attention. The musical motif of each development of the stories is given, and greatly adds to the value of the book.-Outlook, N. Y. NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS les The above works are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by the publishers, postage prepaid, on receipt of the price. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 3 9015 00070 2129 - ------- DO NOT REMOVE OR MUTILATE CARD , 是 ​ | 4 「. 中学 ​{ ,,, “ , , , , , ,, | 11 產生​, 看 ​「” : -- : . . . . - - | | . . - 中国 ​.. - . 角 ​一 ​中學一 ​在工程​, 事 ​」 , 主音​: 1 . b' t 重量 ​1 . 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