Part 15 (1/2)
The Eddas may be compared in many respects with the Homeric poems. As in the latter, the G.o.ds form a family, the members of which come together to a certain place for meetings, while individually they have their own adventures, their loves, their jealousies, their jokes, their tricks. In the Eddas too we find that the G.o.ds are not, strictly speaking, eternal; they succeeded an older race of G.o.ds, and their turn too may come to pa.s.s away. They are called aesir, which is the plural of As. The etymology of this is uncertain; compare the Sanscrit Asura, said to mean the living or breathing one. The aesir are spoken of in later times, not in the Eddas, as if they had been a race of warriors; they are said to have come in to Scandinavia and got the better of those who lived there before, because they wors.h.i.+pped a superior set of G.o.ds.[4] An historic reminiscence may lurk here. Before the aesir there were giants, and the earth with all its parts is made of the body of one of these giants,[5] whom the new race superseded as governors of the world. But the giants are still there and their spirit is unchanged; there is a danger of their interfering to subvert the rule of their successors.
[Footnote 4: See a similar statement about the Incas, chapter vi.]
[Footnote 5: Compare ”Purusha” in the _Rigveda_.]
There are other cosmogonic myths besides that of the division of the giant Ymir. One is on this wise. Ere this world began, there was on one side Niflheim, the land of mist and cold, on the other side Muspelheim, the region of fire; between these two lay Ginnungagap, the north side of it frozen, the south side glowing hot, and life originated by the meeting, in one way or another, of the heat and cold. There are very primitive myths of the shaping of man out of two pieces of wood, of Night and Day as drivers of chariots and horses, of the sun and moon fleeing from wolves, and so on. A more poetic conception is the division of the world into Asgard, the garden of the aesir; Midgard, the world of man; and Utgard, the world outside.
In the first Odin has his seat Hlidskjalf; when he sits in it he can see and understand whatever is happening in any part of the broad world (is he the sun, then?). The third region is generally called Jotunheim, the home of the giants, an icy region at the extreme part of the habitable world. A bridge exists from the dwelling of men to that of the G.o.ds; it is called Bifrost, and is the rainbow.
The G.o.ds have various places of meeting; but their princ.i.p.al seat is under a great tree, the ash. Yggdrasil[6] is a tree worthy of the G.o.ds; it is a world-tree; its roots extend to all the worlds; its branches spread even over heaven. Under it is the fountain Mimir, spring of wisdom, from which Odin drinks daily. Near it is the dwelling of the Norns, fates or weird sisters, who establish laws and uphold them by their judgments, and allot to every man his span of life. They are named Urd the past, Verdandi the present, and Skuld the future. Daily do they water the ash from the spring to keep its leaves fresh, and help it to contend with its numerous foes, for a great serpent is continually gnawing at its root, and it has also other troubles. This myth of Yggdrasil is the apotheosis of Teutonic tree-wors.h.i.+p, and is richly suggestive.[7]
[Footnote 6: Yggdrasil=Odin's horse=the gallows. Is it the cross?]
[Footnote 7: Carlyle in his _Heroes_, p. 18, draws out the spiritual significance of it and of Norse mythology generally.]
The G.o.ds of the Eddas.--We now come to the G.o.ds of the system. Odin is in the Eddas the founder of the world as now const.i.tuted. He has displaced the old formless race of G.o.ds, and is the leader of a new and vigorous race now ruling in their stead. The old scholars rationalised Odin into a chief who had led a migration from Asia to Norway in early times. He is the inventor of the art of writing by runes and the founder of poetry; thus he has the aspect of a culture-hero; that is to say, of a man of advanced views who, for the benefits he conferred on his people, was exalted first to a hero and then to a G.o.d. But the wors.h.i.+p of Odin or Wodan is one of the earliest things we know about the German race. He is the G.o.d of the South-Germans from the very first. His earliest character is that of a storm-G.o.d. Whether his name is connected with the German _wuthen_, rage (Scot. _wud_) or with the Vedic Vata, who is a G.o.d of storm, he is from the first an impetuous being. The early myth of him is scarcely dead at this day; the peasant hears him rus.h.i.+ng through the woods at night. That is the ”wild hunt of Wodan,” he says; the G.o.d is out with his followers, and woe to him who gets in his way! The early Germans thought of him as a kind being who fulfilled the wishes of men, and it was probably this side of his character that caused him to be identified with Mercury. In the Eddic theology he is a patron of war, as becomes the chief G.o.d of a warlike people. He arranges battle and dispenses victory; the heroes who fall in battle he receives into his heavenly army; they live with him in Valhalla or Valholl, the hall of choice. Odin chooses those who are to go there; he is a.s.sisted in this by the Valkyries or choice-maidens. Life in Valhalla is a constant round of fighting, the wounds of which are healed at once, and feasting, the materials for which are ever renewed. Odin, like other great G.o.ds, bears traces of low surroundings, as if he had once lived among savages. He can turn himself into an eagle or other animal to gain his object, and he has engaged in disreputable adventures. But he tends to improve, and the Eddas show him at his best. Here he is called the All-father, the Ruler of all, who gave man a soul that shall never perish; and we hear that he needs no food and takes no share himself in the feasts of the heroes. All the righteous shall be with him in Vingolf (the same as Valhalla), but the wicked shall go to Hel, the kingdom of Hel or Hela, the G.o.ddess of the under-world.
Thor or Donar, Thunder, is said to be the mightiest of the G.o.ds; he is identified, as we saw, with Jove, but he is a rougher and more primitive deity. He drives in a chariot drawn by two goats, and is possessed of three things which have wonderful properties. The first is the hammer Mjolnir, which the Frost- and Mountain-giants cannot resist when he throws it; the second is the belt of strength, which makes him twice as strong when he puts it on; and the third a pair of gauntlets with which he grasps his mallet. Many stories are told of his prowess, of his conflicts with the giants, who, however, give him a good deal of trouble with their cunning; and of his catching the Midgard serpent which surrounds the world at the bottom of the sea.
Being a G.o.d of storm, he forms a connection with agriculture, and thus gains a more sedate aspect; he has also to do with marriage, and a hammer is used symbolically at Icelandic weddings. Thor is only half-brother to the other sons of Odin; his mother was Fiorgyn, the earth; the wors.h.i.+ps of Odin and Thor, originally distinct, seem to have been united at an early period.
The G.o.d Tyr, son of Odin by a giantess, is the Eddic figure of the German Tiw or Ziu, etymologically equivalent to Zeus or Jupiter, but identified by the Romans with Mars. His greatness belongs to early times; he was then a sword-G.o.d, and had an extensive wors.h.i.+p in various parts of Europe. In the Eddas he has scarcely any character, and seldom takes a prominent part in the legend. Loki, by etymology a fire-G.o.d (Germ. _Lohe_, Scot. _Lowe_),[8] is in one account the brother of Odin, in another his son by a giantess. His character is fitful; sometimes he acts a brotherly part by the G.o.ds and helps them out of their difficulties by clever devices, and sometimes he provides entertainment for them; but for the most part he is an embodiment of cunning and mischief; his course is downwards, he tends to become a being purely evil, setting himself heartlessly against the wishes of the other G.o.ds, and acting so as to imperil them and their world till they are obliged to cast him out of heaven. He is thus a kind of Lucifer or Satan, and like the Christian devil, his ultimate fate is to be bound till the end of the world shall arrive.
Baldur, the son of Odin and Frigga, is the best and brightest of the G.o.ds. Like Apollo, he has to do with light, and no pollution can come near him; he has also to do with the administration of justice, and p.r.o.nounces sentences which can never be reversed. Heimdall also is a light and gracious G.o.d; he is the warder of the aesir, and stays near the bridge Bifrost. Of him it is told that he wants less sleep than a bird, sees a hundred miles off by night or day, and hears the gra.s.s grow on the ground and the wool on the sheep's back. Bragi is the G.o.d of poetry and eloquence, the best of all skalds.
[Footnote 8: The etymology is not perhaps correct, but it suggested itself and influenced the view taken of this G.o.d, in very early times.]
Of the G.o.ddesses, Frigga, wife of Odin, stands first, an august matron of mysterious knowledge, whom even G.o.ds consult, and by whom men swear; she has also to do with marriage, and the childless appeal to her. Etymologically she is scarcely to be distinguished from Freya, wife of Odur, who, however, is lighter in character, and is rather a G.o.ddess of love. The G.o.ddesses in the Eddas are more shadowy figures than the G.o.ds; there are others, and an attempt is made to reckon up twelve of them to answer to the twelve chief G.o.ds, but their names are taken from the qualities they represent, and they have little reality.
The story of the death of Baldur, brought about by the evil mind of Loki in defiance of the whole divine family, sounds the note of tragedy in the divine family of the Eddas. The G.o.ds themselves suffer, and are unable to retrieve the misfortune which has come upon them. With one accord they try to get Baldur brought back from the under-world, but they are foiled by the same agency of evil which carried him off. With the death of Baldur the G.o.ds feel that their rule, which, we saw, had a beginning, and with it the world they govern, for the two are inseparably bound up with each other, is coming to an end. The G.o.ds perish in the ruin of the world; and this is well, for sin cleaves to them and to their house, and they are not fit to endure. Ragnarok, the twilight of the G.o.ds, comes on; the universe is burnt up in a mighty conflagration, and while there are abodes of bliss and abodes of misery where some survive, the universe as a whole is entirely changed, and a milder race of G.o.ds will rule over a better world.
If this mythology were found to be of native Scandinavian growth, it would prove that Teutonic religion was capable of lofty development, and would throw back an interesting light upon its previous history.
Here, it has been maintained, we see the Teutonic faith rising to monotheism. Odin has among his other t.i.tles that of All-father; he is rising above the other G.o.ds to a position of supremacy, which will fit him, if the process were allowed, as it was not, to advance somewhat further, to represent pure deity and to attract to himself an undivided reverence. Here also we find a religion which was formerly a rude intercourse between barbarous men and savage G.o.ds, clothing itself with an ideal element. As the Greeks found religion in beauty and the Romans in utility, so did the Germans find it at last in pathos. They attain to the conception of suffering deity; in Baldur a G.o.d falls victim to malice and wickedness, and the sorrow of his fall takes possession of the whole of heaven. Thus pain and sacrifice are hallowed, for man by the history of the G.o.ds, and his intercourse with them leads him into heights and depths unknown before.
But the conviction is now establis.h.i.+ng itself that this phase of Teutonic religion is borrowed from Christianity, which was then seriously menacing the existence of the old faith, and that it is the shadow of their approaching extinction by the new religion, which occasions among the Northern G.o.ds this feeling of sadness. They feel themselves falling from their position; they are to be G.o.ds no longer, but are to yield to the world-order, based on a deeper law than theirs, which called them into being and now is preparing their dismissal. Distinctly Christian ideas enter the old world of G.o.ds; the ideas of sin, of sacrifice, of a final judgment, of a good G.o.d who dies, of an evil spirit who, after prevailing for a time, is chained up to await his doom. That a sense of guilt rests on the G.o.ds shows that they are abandoning their rule, and they acknowledge that their successors will be better than they have been.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED
Grimm's _German Mythology_, translated by Stallybra.s.s, 4 vols.
Grimm's _Fairy Tales_. Mr. Lang writes an Introduction to the English translation in Bell's edition.
Mannhardt, _Germanische Mythen_, 1858, and _Wald- und Feld-kulte_, 1875, 77.
For the later Northern section, Vigfusson and Powell's _Corpus Poetic.u.m Boreale_, especially the Excursus on Religion, i. 401.
Dasent, _Burnt Njal; or Life in Iceland at the end of the tenth century_.
Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_.
Thorpe, _Northern Mythology_.
De la Saussaye, _The Religion of the Teutons_, 1902, the most comprehensive statement of the whole subject.