Chapter 1

Först troer jeg mit gode svärd.

Og saa min gode hest,

Dernäst troer jeg mine dannesvenne,

Jeg troer mig self allerbedst;

 [['First trust I my good sword,

    And so my good steed,

    Next trust I my (Danish) page(s?),

    I trust myself best of all;']]

and it is Christian sentiment besides, which strives to elevate and consecrate the inner man (see Suppl.).

We may assume, that, even if Paganism could have lived and luxuriated a while longer, and brought out in sharper relief and more spontaneously some characteristics of the nations that obeyed it, yet it bore within itself a germ of disorganisation and disruption, which, even without the intervention of Christian teaching, would have shattered and dissolved it. (10) I liken heathenism to a strange plant whose brilliant fragrant blossom we regard with wonder; Christianity to the crop of nourishing grain that covers wide expanses. To the heathen too was germinating the true God, who to the Christians had matured into fruit.

At the time when Christianity began to press forward, many of the heathen seem to have entertained the notion, which the missionaries did all in their power to resist, of combining the new doctrine with their ancient faith, and even of fusing them into one. Of Norsemen as well as Anglo-Saxons we are told, that some believed at the same time in Christ and in heathen gods, or at least continued to invoke the latter in particular cases in which they had formerly proved helpful to them. So even by christians much later, the old deities seem to have been named and their aid invoked in enchantments and spells. Landnâmabôk 3,12 says of Helgi: 'hann trûði â Krist, en þô hêt hann â Thôr til sæfara ok harðræða ok alls þess, er honum þôtti mestu varða'; he believed in Christ, and yet he called upon Thor in voyages and difficulties, &c. Hence the poets too transferred heathen epithets to Christ. Beda 1, 15 relates of Redwald, an East-Anglian king in the beginning of the 7th century: 'rediens domum ab uxore sua, a quibusdam perversis doctoribus seductus est, atque a sincereitate fidei depravatus, habuit posteriora pejora prioribus, ita ut in morem antiquorum Samaritanorum, et Christo servire videretur et diis quibus antea serviebat, atque in eodem fano et altare habebat in sacrificium Christi et arulam ad victimas daemoniorum' (see Suppl.). This helps to explain the relapses into paganism.

The history of heathen doctrines and ideas is easier to write, according as particular races remained longer outside the pale of baptism. Our more intimate acquaintance with the Greek and Roman religion rests upon writings which existed before the rise of Christianity; we are oftener at fault for information as to the altered shape which that religion had assumed among the common people in Greece and Italy during the first centuries of our era. Research has yet to penetrate, even deeper than it has done, into the old Celtic faith; we must not shrink from recognizing and examining Celtic monuments and customs on ground now occupied by Germans. Leo's important discovery on the real bearings of the Malberg glossary may lead to much. The religion of the Slavs and Lithuanians would be far more accurately known to us, if these nations, in the centuries immediately following their conversion, had more carefully preserved the memory of their antiquities; as it is, much scattered detail only wants collecting, and traditions still alive in many districts afford rich material. On the Finnish mythology we possess somewhat fuller information.

Germany holds a middle place, peculiar to herself and not unfavourable. While the conversion of Gaul and that of Slavland were each as a whole decided and finished in the course of a very few centuries, the Teutonic races forsook the faith of their fathers very gradually and slowly, from the 4th to the 11th century. Remains of their language too have been preserved more fully and from the successive periods. Besides which we possess in the works of Roman writers, and especially Tacitus, accounts of the earlier undisturbed time of Teutonic heathenism, which, though scanty and from a foreign source, are yet exceedingly important, nay invaluable.

The religion of the East and South German races, which were converted first, is more obscure to us than that of the Saxons; about the Saxons again we know incomparably less than about the Scandinavians. What a far different insight we should get into the character and contents of the suppressed doctrine, how vastly the picture we are able to form of it would gain in clearness, if some clerk at Fulda, Regensburg, Reichenau or St. Gall, or one at Bremen, Corvei or Magdeburg, had in the eighth, ninth or tenth century, hit upon the plan of collecting and setting before us, after the manner of Saxo Grammaticus, the still extant traditions of his tribe on the beliefs and superstitions of their forefathers! Let no one tell me, that by that time there was nothing more to be had; here and there a footmark plainly shows that such recollections could not really have died out. (11) And who will show me in Sweden, which clung to heathenism longer and more tenaciously, such a composition as actually appeared in Denmark during the twelfth century? But for this fact, would not the doubters declare such a thing impossible in Sweden? In truth, the first eight books of Saxo are to me the most welcome monument of the Norse mythology, not only for their intrinsic worth, but because they show in what an altered light the ancient faith of the people had to be placed before the recent converts. I especially remark, that Saxo suppresses all mention of some prominent gods; what right have we then to infer from the non-mention of many deities in the far scantier records of inland Germany, that they had never been heard of there?



ENDNOTES:

10. Old Norse sagas and songs have remarkable passages in which the gods are coursely derided. A good deal in Lokasenna and Harbard's song may pass for rough joking, which still leaves the holiest things unshaken (see Suppl.). But faith has certainly grown fainter, when a daring poet can compare Oðinn and Freyja to dogs (Fornm. sög. 2, 207. Islend. sög. 1, 11. ed. nov. 372. Nialss. 160); when another calls the gods rângeyg (squint-eyed, unfair) and rokindusta (Fornm. sög. 2, 154). When we come to Freyr, I shall quote a story manifestly tending to lessen the reverence for him; but here is a passage from Oswald 2913: 'dîn got der ist ein junger tôr (fool), ich wil glouben an den alten.'---If we had a list of old and favourite dogs'-names, I believe we should find that the destinations of several deities were bestowed upon the brute by way of degradation. Vilk. saga, cap. 230. 235, has handed down Thor (but cf. ed. nov., cap. 263) and Paron, one being the O.N., the other the Slav name in the Slovak form Parom = Perun ch. VIII. With the Saxon herdsmen or hunters Thunar was doubtless in use for dogs, as perhaps Donner is to this day. One sort of dog is called by the Poles Grzmilas (Linde 1, 779a. 2, 798), by the Bohemians Hrmiles (Jungm. 1, 759) = Thunder, Forest-thunder. In Helbling 4, 441 seq. I find a dog Wunsch (not Wünsch). Similar to this is the transference of national names to dogs: the Bohemian Bodrok is a dog's name, but signifies an Obotrite (Jungm. 1, 150); Sâmr in the Nialssaga seems to mean a Same, Sabme = Lapp; Helbling 4, 458 has a Frank (see Suppl.).  (back)

11. As late as the tenth century the heroic tale of Walther and Hildegund was poetized in Latin at St. Gall, and a relic of heathen poetry was written down in German [deutlich, a misprint for deutsch?], probably at Merseburg.  (back)