Saemund, one of the early Christian Priests there, who perhaps had a lingering fondness for Pagani**, collected certain of their old Pagan songs, just about becoming obsolete then,--Poems or Chants of a mythic, prophetic, mostly all of a religious character: that is what Norse critics call the _Elder_ or Poetic _Edda_. _Edda_, a word of uncertain etymology, is thought to signify _Ancestress_. Snorro Sturleson, an Iceland gentleman, an extremely notable personage, educated by this Saemund's grandson, took in hand next, near a century afterwards, to put together, among several other books he wrote, a kind of Prose Synopsis of the whole Mythology; elucidated by new fragments of traditionary verse. A work constructed really with great ingenuity, native talent, what one might call unconscious art; altogether a perspicuous clear work, pleasant reading still: this is the _Younger_ or Prose _Edda_. By these and the numerous other _Sagas_, mostly Icelandic, with the commentaries, Icelandic or not, which go on zealously in the North to this day, it is possible to gain some direct insight even yet; and see that old Norse system of Belief, as it were, face to face. Let us forget that it is erroneous Religion; let us look at it as old Thought, and try if we cannot sympathize with it somewhat.
The primary characteristic of this old Northland Mythology I find to be Impersonation of the visible workings of Nature. Earnest ****** recognition of the workings of Physical Nature, as a thing wholly miraculous, stupendous and divine. What we now lecture of as Science, they wondered at, and fell down in awe before, as Religion The dark hostile Powers of Nature they figure to themselves as "_Jotuns_," Giants, huge shaggy beings of a demonic character. Frost, Fire, Sea-tempest; these are Jotuns. The friendly Powers again, as Summer-heat, the Sun, are Gods. The empire of this Universe is divided between these two; they dwell apart, in perennial internecine feud. The Gods dwell above in Asgard, the Garden of the Asen, or Divinities; Jotunheim, a distant dark chaotic land, is the home of the Jotuns.
Curious all this; and not idle or inane, if we will look at the foundation of it! The power of _Fire_, or _Flame_, for instance, which we designate by some trivial chemical name, thereby hiding from ourselves the essential character of wonder that dwells in it as in all things, is with these old Northmen, Loke, a most swift subtle _Demon_, of the brood of the Jotuns.
The savages of the Ladrones Islands too (say some Spanish voyagers) thought Fire, which they never had seen before, was a devil or god, that bit you sharply when you touched it, and that lived upon dry wood. From us too no Chemistry, if it had not Stupidity to help it, would hide that Flame is a wonder. What _is_ Flame?--_Frost_ the old Norse Seer discerns to be a monstrous hoary Jotun, the Giant _Thrym_, _Hrym_; or _Rime_, the old word now nearly obsolete here, but still used in Scotland to signify hoar-frost.
_Rime_ was not then as now a dead chemical thing, but a living Jotun or Devil; the monstrous Jotun _Rime_ drove home his Horses at night, sat "combing their manes,"--which Horses were _Hail-Clouds_, or fleet _Frost-Winds_. His Cows--No, not his, but a kinsman's, the Giant Hymir's Cows are _Icebergs_: this Hymir "looks at the rocks" with his devil-eye, and they _split_ in the glance of it.
Thunder was not then mere Electricity, vitreous or resinous; it was the God Donner (Thunder) or Thor,--God also of beneficent Summer-heat. The thunder was his wrath: the gathering of the black clouds is the drawing down of Thor's angry brows; the fire-bolt bursting out of Heaven is the all-rending Hammer flung from the hand of Thor: he urges his loud chariot over the mountain-tops,--that is the peal; wrathful he "blows in his red beard,"--that is the rustling storm-blast before the thunder begins.
Balder again, the White God, the beautiful, the just and benignant (whom the early Christian Missionaries found to resemble Christ), is the Sun, beautifullest of visible things; wondrous too, and divine still, after all our Astronomies and Almanacs! But perhaps the notablest god we hear tell of is one of whom Grimm the German Etymologist finds trace: the God _Wunsch_, or Wish. The God _Wish_; who could give us all that we _wished_!
Is not this the sincerest and yet rudest voice of the spirit of man? The _rudest_ ideal that man ever formed; which still shows itself in the latest forms of our spiritual culture. Higher considerations have to teach us that the God _Wish_ is not the true God.