:B R.AFLY- OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS £93 R97uEa v.l The person charging this material is re- sponsible for its return to the library from which it was withdrawn on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books or* reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. To renew call Telephone Center, 333-84OO UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBAN A-CHAMPAIGN NOV 2 4 1B80 2 1 1984 :DECOS'»! L161— O-1096 Teutonic Mythology Gods and Goddesses of the Northland IN THREE VOLUMES By VIKTOR RYDBERG, Ph.D., MEMBER OF THE SWEDISH ACADEMY; AUTHOR OF "THE LAST ATHENIAN" AND OTHER WORKS. AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE SWEDISH BY RASMUS B. ANDERSON, LL.D., EX-UNITED STATES MINISTER TO DENMARK ; AUTHOR OF "NORSE MYTHOLOGY," "VIKING TALES," ETC. HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON, LL.D., Ph.D., EDITOR IN CHIEF. J. W. BUEL, Ph.D., MANAGING EDITOR. VOL. I. PUBLISHED BY THE NORRCENA SOCIETY, LONDON COPENHAGEN STOCKHOLM BERLIN NEW YORK 1906 s s^s I ^ % Qorroeim fte anb Romance of Jlorrtjern Curope ILibrarp of Supreme $rtnteb in Complete Jform VIKING EDITION MCMVI OF THE Diking Edition There are but six hundred and fifty sets made far the world, of which this is COPYRIGHT, T. H. SMART, 1905. 'EUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. TABLE OF FTEN" VOLt itroducticn — T i) The A, - ^in o£ the Aryans 15 >3ft>J«*: U..,JAXIMI3H.,ldlJai.. 20 obbo:° lr^tJof.9cf aril f.r.vr VTJO ?)^STn^bo^ 'Jill rioiflv/ sslqqii srJ} io • Tf; oaxo S Keia; Older Periods of ,<^JU!j. ll '•1 3^1)11(1 Saxon an i?rati( Teutonic Emigrat; I ,119 in. [yths Concerning the Cr Man. ;e Original Patrr UN, HEIMDAL. LOKE, AND BRACE. :.ird was keeper which ihc gods '- • •nerally regarded LU'imdal, the -on of nin<- i the the bridge of lli Mimmonrd .ill ,\hen he and ,ich other. He was th' light. h beautiful in ".oifer in char : destruction. • had three offspring-, \r. : the Midcrard serpent, - of Mel. ; !u- chief /, / TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. TABLE OF CONTENTS. VOLUME ONE. PART I. Page Introduction — The Ancient Aryans I (a) The Aryan Family of Languages 3 Hypothesis of Asiatic Origin of the Aryans 5 Hypothesis of European Origin of the Aryans 15 The Aryan Land of Europe 20 (b) Ancient Teutondom • 26 PART II. (a) Mediaeval Migration Sagas 32 The Troy Saga and Prose Edda 44 Saxo's Relation to the Story of Troy 47 Older Periods of the Troy Saga 50 Story of the Origin of Trojan Descent of the Franks.. 60 Odin as Leader of the Trojan Emigration 67 Materials of the Icelandic Troy Saga 83 Result of Foregoing Investigations 96 (b) Popular Traditions of the Middle Ages 99 Saxon and Swabian Migration Saga 107 The Frankish Migration Saga in Migration Saga of the Burgundians 113 Teutonic Emigration Saga 119 PART III. Myths Concerning the Creation of Man 126 Scef, the Original Patriarch 135 Page Borgar-Skjold, the Second Patriarch 143 Half dan, the Third Patriarch 147 Halfdan's Enmity with Orvandel and Svipdag 151 Halfdan's Identity with Mannus 153 Sacred Runes Learned from Heimdal 159 Sorcery, the Reverse of Sacred Runes 165 Heimdal and the Sun Goddess 167 Loke Causes Enmity Between Gods and Creators 171 Halfdan Identical with Helge 180 The End of the Age of Peace 185 War with the Heroes from Svarin's Mound 194 Review of the Svipdag Myth 200 The World-War and its Causes 204 Myth Concerning the Sword Guardian 213 Breach Between Asas Vans. Siege of Asgard 235 Significance of the World- War 252 The War in Midgard. Hadding's Adventures 255 Position of the Divine Clans to the Warriors 262 Hadding's Defeat 268 Loke's Punishment 273 Original Model of the Bravalla Battle 281 The Dieterich Saga 285 PART IV. Myth in Regard to the Lower World 306 Gudmund, King of the Glittering Plains 309 Ruler of the Lower World 312 Fjallerus and Hadingus in the Low World 317 A Frisian Saga, Adam of Bremen 319 Odainsaker and the Glittering Plains 321 Identification of Odainsaker 336 Gudmund's Identity with Mimer 339 Mimer's Grove .341 LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURES VOL. I. Frontispiece — Idun, Heimdal, Loke, and Brage. Page Thor the Thunder God 120 Giant Thjasse in the Guise of an Eagle Carries off Loke. 174 Odin Punishes the Monstrous Progeny of Loke 300 STOCKHOLM, NOVEMBER 20, 1887. HON. RASMUS B. ANDERSON, United States Minister, Copenhagen, Denmark. DEAR SIR, It gives me pleasure to authorise you to translate into English my work entitled "Researches in Teutonic Mythology," being convinced that no one could be found better qualified for this task than yourself. Certainly no one has taken a deeper interest than you in spreading among our Anglo-Saxon kinsmen, not only a knowledge of our common antiquity, but also of what modern Scan- dinavia is contributing to the advancement of culture — a work in which England and the United States of America are taking so large a share. Yours faithfully, VIKTOR RYDBERG. I. INTRODUCTION. A. THE ANCIENT ARYANS. 1. THE WORDS GERMAN AND GERMANIC. ALREADY at the beginning of the Christian era the name Germans was applied by the Romans and Gauls to the many clans of people whose main habitation was the extensive territory east of the Rhine, and north of the forest-clad Hercynian Mountains. That these clans constituted one race was evident to the Romans, for they all had a striking similarity in type of body; moreover, a closer acquaintance revealed that their numerous dialects were all variations of the same parent language, and finally, they resembled each other in customs, traditions, and religion. The characteristic features of the physical type of the Germans were light hair, blue eyes, light complexion, and tallness of stature as compared with the Romans. Even the saga-men, from whom the Roman historian Tacitus gathered the facts for his Germania — an inval- uable work for the history of civilisation — knew that in TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY the so-called Svevian Sea, north of the German continent, lay another inportant part of Germany, inhabited by Sviones, a people divided into several clans. Their kins- men on the continent described them as rich in weapons and fleets, and in warriors on land and sea (Tac., Germ., 44). This northern sea-girt portion of Germany is called Scandinavia — Scandeia by other writers of the Roman Empire ; and there can be no doubt that this name referred to the peninsula which, as far back as historical monu- ments can be found, has been inhabited by the ancestors of the Swedes and the Norwegians. I therefore include in the term Germans the ancestors of both the Scandina- vian and Gothic and German (tyske) peoples. Science needs a sharply-defined collective noun for all these kindred branches sprung from! one and the same root, and the name by which they make their first appearance in history would doubtless long since have been selected for this purpose had not some of the German writers applied the terms German and Deutsch as synonymous. This is doubtless the reason why Danish authors have adopted the word "Goths" to describe the Germanic nation. But there is an important objection to this in the fact that the name Goths historically is claimed by a partic- ular branch of the family — that branch, namely, to which the East and West Goths belonged, and in order to avoid ambiguity, the term should be applied solely to them.. It is therefore necessary to re-adopt the old collective name, even though it is not of Germanic origin, the more so as there is a prospect that a more correct use of the words German and Germanic is about to prevail in Germany TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY itself, for the German scholars also feel the weight of the demand which science makes on a precise and rational terminology.* 2. THE; ARYAN FAMILY OF LANGUAGES. It is universally known that the Teutonic dialects are related to the Latin, the Greek, the Slavic, and Celtic lan- guages, and that the kinship extends even beyond Europe to the tongues of Armenia, Irania, and India. The holy books ascribed to Zoroaster, which to the priests of Cyrus and Darius were what the Bible is to us ; Rigveda's hymns, which to the people dwelling on the banks of the Ganges are God's revealed word, are written in a language which points to a common origin with our own. However unlike all these kindred tongues may have grown with the lapse of thousands of years, still they remain as a sharply- defined group of older and younger sisters as compared with all other language groups of the world. Even the *Viktor Rydberg styles his work Researches in Germanic Mythology, but after consultation with the Publishers, the Translator decided to use the word Teutonic instead of Germanic both in the title and in the body of the work. In English, the words German, Germany, and Germanic are ambig- uous. The Scandinavians and Germans have the words Tyskland, tysk, Deutschland, deutsch, when they wish to refer to the present Germany, and thus it is easy for them to adopt the words German and Germanisk to describe the Germanic or Teutonic peoples collectively. The English lan- guage applies the above word Dutch not to Germany, but to Holland, and It Is necessary to use the words German and Germany In translating deutsch, Deutschland, tysk, and Tyskland. Teutonic has already been adopted by Max Muller and other scholars in England and America as a designation of all the kindred branches sprung from one and the same root, and speaking dialects of the same original tongue. The words Teuton, Teutonic, and Teutondom also have the advantage over German and Ger- manic that they are of native growth and not borrowed from a foreign language. In the following pages, therefore, the word Teutonic will be used to describe Scandinavians, Germans, Anglo-Saxons, &c., collectively, while German will be used exclusively in regard to Germany proper. — TRANSLATOR. TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Semitic languages are separated therefrom by a chasm so broad and deep that it is hardly possible to bridge it. This language-group of ours has been named in various ways. It has been called the Indo-Germanic, the Indo- European, and the Aryan family of tongues. I have adopted the last designation. The Armenians, Iranians, and Hindoos I call the Asiatic Aryans ; all the rest I call the European Aryans. Certain it is that these sister-languages have had a com- mon mother, the ancient Aryan speech, and that this has had a geographical centre from which it has radiated. (By such an ancient Aryan language cannot, of course, be meant a tongue stereotyped in all its inflections, like the literary languages of later times, but simply the unity of those dialects which were spoken by the clans dwell- ing around this centre of radiation.) By comparing the grammatical structure of all the daughters of this ancient mother, and by the aid of the laws hitherto discovered in regard to the transition of sounds from one language to another, attempts have been made to restore this original tongue which many thousand years ago ceased to vibrate. These attempts cannot, of course, in any sense claim to reproduce an image corresponding to the lost original as regards syntax and inflections. Such a task would be as impossible as to reconstruct, on the basis of all the now spoken languages derived from the Latin, the dialect used in Latium. The purpose is simply to present as faithful an idea of the ancient tongue as the existing means permit. In the most ancient historical times Aryan-speaking people were found only in Asia and Europe. In seeking TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY for the centre and the earliest conquests of the ancient Aryan language, the scholar may therefore keep within the limits of these two continents, and in Asia he may leave all the eastern and the most of the southern portion out of consideration, since these extensive regions have from prehistoric times been inhabited by Mongolian and allied tribes, and may for the present be regarded as the cradle of these races. It may not be necessary to remind the reader that the question of the original home of the ancient Aryan tongue is not the same as the question in regard to the cradle of the Caucasian race. The white race may have existed, and may have been spread over a considerable portion of the old world, before a language possessing the peculiarities belonging to the Aryan had appeared; and it is a known fact that southern portions of Europe, such as the Greek and Italian peninsulas, were inhabited by white people before they were conquered by Aryans. 3. THE HYPOTHESIS CONCERNING THE ASIATIC ORIGIN OP THE ARYANS. When the question of the original home of the Aryan language and race was first presented, there were no con- flicting opinions on the main subject.* All who took any interest in the problem referred to Asia as the cradle of the Aryans. Asia had always been regarded as the cradle of the human race. In primeval time, the yellow Mongo- * Compare O. Schrader, Sprachverglcichung und Urgeschichte (1883). 5 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY lian, the black African, the American redskin, and the fair European had there tented side by side. From some common centre in Asia they had spread over the whole surface of the inhabited earth. Traditions found in the literatures of various European peoples in regard to an immigration from the East supported this view. The progenitors of the Romans were said to have come from Troy. The fathers of the Teutons were reported to have immigrated from Asia, led by Odin. There was also the original home of the domestic animals and of the culti- vated plants. And when the startling discovery was made that the sacred books of the Iranians and Hindoos were written in languages related to the culture languages of Europe, when these linguistic monuments betrayed a wealth of inflections in comparison with which those of the classical languages turned pale, and when they seemed to have the stamp of an antiquity by the side of which the European dialects seemed like children, then what could be more natural than the following conclusion : The original form has been preserved in the original home; the farther the streams of emigration got away from this home, the more they lost on the way of their language and of their inherited view of the world ; that is, of their mythology, which among the Hindoos seemed so original and simple as if it had been watered by the dews of life's dawn. To begin with, there was no doubt that the original tongue itself, the mother of all the other Aryan languages, had already been found when Zend or Sanscrit was dis- covered. Fr. v. Schlegel, in his work published in 1808, TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY on the Language and Wisdom of the Hindoos, regarded Sanscrit as the mother of the Aryan family of languages, and India as the original home of the Aryan family of peoples. Thence, it was claimed, colonies were sent out in prehistoric ages to other parts of Asia and to Europe ; nay, even missionaries went forth to spread the language and religion of the mother-country among other peoples. Schlegel's compatriot Link looked upon Zend as the oldest language and mother of Sanscrit, and the latter he re- garded as the mother of the rest ; and as the Zend, in his opinion, was spoken in Media and surrounding countries, it followed that the highlands of Media, Armenia, and Georgia were the original home of the Aryans, a view which prevailed among the leading scholars of the age, such as Anquetil-Duperron, Herder, and Heeren, and found a place in the historical text-books used in the schools from 1820 to 1840. Since Bopp published his epoch-making Comparative Grammar the illusion that the Aryan mother-tongue had been discovered had, of course, gradually to give place to the conviction that all the Aryan languages, Zend and Sanscrit included, were relations of equal birth. This also affected the theory that the Persians or Hindoos were the original people, and that the cradle of our race was to be sought in their homes. On the other hand, the Hindooic writings were found to contain evidence that, during the centuries in which the most of the Rigveda songs were produced, the Hin- dooic Aryans were possessors only of Kabulistan and Pendschab, whence, either expelling or subjugating an TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY older black population, they had advanced toward the Ganges. Their social condition was still semi-nomadic, at least in the sense that their chief property consisted in herds, and the feuds between the clans had for their object the plundering of such possessions from each other. Both these facts indicated that these Aryans were immi- grants to the Indian peninsula, but not the aborigines, wherefore their original home must be sought elsewhere. The strong resemblance found between Zend and Sanscrit, and which makes these dialects a separate subdivision in the Aryan family of languages, must now, since we have learned to regard them as sister-tongues, be interpreted as a proof that the Zend people or Iranians and the San- scrit people or Hindoos were in ancient times one people with a common country, and that this union must have continued to exist long after the European Aryans were parted from them and had migrated westwards. When, then, the question was asked where this Indo-Iranian cradle was situated, the answer was thought to be found in a chapter of Avesta, to which the German scholar Rhode had called attention already in 1820. To him it seemed to refer to a migration from a more northerly and colder country. The passage speaks of sixteen countries created by the fountain of light and goodness, Ormuzd (Ahura Mazda), and of sixteen plagues produced by the fountain of evil, Ahriman (Angra Mainyu), to destroy the work of Ormuzd. The first country was a paradise, but Ahriman ruined it with cold and frost, so that it had ten months of winter and only two of summer. The second country, in the name of which Sughda Sogdiana 8 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY was recognised, was rendered uninhabitable by Ahriman by a pest which destroyed the domestic animals. Ahri- man made the third (which by the way, was recognised as Merv) impossible as a dwelling on account of never- ceasing wars and plunderings. In this manner thirteen other countries with partly recognisable names are enume- rated as created by Ormuzd, and thirteen other plagues produced by Ahriman. Rhode's view, that these sixteen regions were stations in the migration of the Indo-Iranian people from their original country became universally adopted, and it was thought that the track of the migra- tion could now be followed back through Persia, Baktria and Sogdiana, up to the first region created by Ormuzd, which, accordingly, must have been situated in the interior highlands of Asia, around the sources of the Jaxartes and Oxus. The reason for the emigration hence was found in the statement that, although Ormuzd had made this country an agreeable abode, Ahriman had destroyed it with frost and snow. In other words, this part of Asia was supposed to have had originally a warmer temperature, which suddenly or gradually became lower, wherefore the inhabitants found it necessary to seek new homes in the West and South. The view that the sources of Oxus and Jaxartes are the original home of the Aryans is even now the prevailing one, or at least the one most widely accepted, and since the day of Rhode it has been supported and developed by several distinguished scholars. Then Julius v. Klaproth pointed out, already in 1830, that, among the many names of various kinds of trees found in India, there is a single TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY one which they have in common with other Aryan peoples, and this is the name of the birch. India has many kinds of trees that do not grow in Central Asia, but the birch is found both at the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes, and on the southern spurs of the Himalaya mountains. If the Aryan Hindoos immigrated from the highlands of Central Asia to the regions through which the Indus and Ganges seek their way to the sea, then it is natural, that when they found on their way new unknown kinds of trees, then they gave to these new names, but when they discovered a tree with which they had long been acquainted, then they would apply the old familiar name to it. Mr. Lassen, the great scholar of Hindooic anti- quities, gave new reasons for the theory that the Aryan Hindoos were immigrants, who through the western pass of Hindukush and through Kabulistan came to Pend- schab, and thence slowly occupied the Indian peninsula. That their original home, as well as that of their Iranian kinsmen, was that part of the highlands of Central Asia pointed out by Rhode, he found corroborated by the cir- cumstance, that there are to be found there, even at the present time, remnants of a people, the so-called Tad- chiks, who speak Iranian dialects. According to Lassen, these were to be regarded as direct descendants of the original Aryan people, who remained in the original home, while other parts of the same people migrated to Baktria or Persia and became Iranians, or migrated down to Pendschab and became Hindoos, or migrated to Europe and became Celts, Greco-Italians, Teutons, and Slavs. Jacob Grimm, whose name will always be men- 10 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY tioned with honour as the great pathfinder in the field of Teutonic antiquities, was of the same opinion; and that whole school of scientists who were influenced by roman- ticism and by the philosophy of Schelling made haste to add to the real support sought for the theory in ethno- logical and philological facts, a support from the laws of natural analogy and from poetry. A mountain range, so it was said, is the natural divider of waters. From its fountains the streams flow in different directions and irrigate the plains. In the same manner the highlands of Central Asia were the divider of Aryan folk-streams, which through Baktria sought their way to the plains of Persia, through the mountain passes of Hindukush to India, through the lands north of the Caspian Sea to the extensive plains of modern Russia, and so on to the more inviting regions of Western Europe. The sun rises in the east, ex oriente lux; the highly-gifted race, which was to found the European nations, has, under the guidance of Providence, like the sun, wended its way from east to west. In taking a grand view of the subject, a mystic harmony was found to exist between the apparent course of the sun and the real migrations of people. The minds of the people dwelling in Central and Eastern Asia seemed to be imbued with a strange instinctive yearning. The Aryan folk-streams, which in prehistoric times deluged Europe, were in this respect the forerunners of the hordes of Huns which poured in from Asia, and which in the fourth century gave the impetus to the Teutonic migrations, and of the Mongolian hordes which in the thirteenth century invaded our continent. The ii TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Europeans themselves are led by this same instinct to follow the course of the sun : they flow in great numbers to America, and these folk-billows break against each other on the coasts of the Pacific Ocean. "At the breast of our Asiatic mother," thus exclaimed, in harmony with the romantic school, a scholar with no mean linguistic attainments — "at the breast of our Asiatic mother, the Aryan people of Europe have rested ; around her as their mother they have played as children. There or nowhere is the playground ; there or nowhere is the gymnasium of the first physical and intellectual efforts on the part of the Aryan race.". The theory that the cradle of the Aryan race stood in Central Asia near the sources of the Indus and Jaxartes had hardly been contradicted in 1850, and seemed to be secured for the future by the great number of distin- guished and brilliant names which had given their adhe- sion to it. The need was now felt of clearing up the order and details of these emigrations. All the light to be thrown on this subject had to come from philology and from the geography of plants and animals. The first author who? in this manner and with the means indicated, attempted to furnish proofs in detail that the ancient Aryan land was situated around the Oxus river was Adolphe Pictet. There, he claimed, the Aryan language had been formed out of older non-Aryan dialects. There the Aryan race, on account of its spreading over Baktria and neighbouring regions, had divided itself into branches of various dialects, which there, in a limited territory, held the same geographical relations to each other as 12 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY they hold to each other at the present time in another and immensely larger territory. In the East lived the nomadic branch which later settled in India ; in the East, too, but farther north, that branch herded their flocks, which afterwards became the Iranian and took possession of Persia. West of the ancestors of the Aryan Hindoos dwelt the branch which later appears as the Greco-Italians and north of the latter the common progenitors of Teutons and Slavs had their home. In the extreme West dwelt the Celts, and they were also the earliest emigrants to the West. Behind them marched the ancestors of the Teu- tons and Slavs by a more northern route to Europe. The last in this procession to Europe were the ancestors of the Greco-Italians, and for this reason their languages have preserved more resemblance to those of the Indo- Iranians who migrated into Southern Asia than those of the other European Aryans. For this view Pictet gives a number of reasons. According to him, the vocabulary common to more or less of the Aryan branches preserves names of minerals, plants, and animals which are found in those latitudes, and in those parts of Asia which he calls the original Aryan country. The German linguist Schleicher has to some extent discussed the same problem as Pictet in a series of works published in the fifties and sixties. The same has been done by the famous German-English scientist Max Muller. Schleicher's theory, briefly stated, is the follow- ing : The Aryan race originated in Central Asia. There, in the most ancient Aryan country, the original Aryan tongue was spoken for many generations. The people 13 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY multiplied and enlarged their territory, and in various parts of the country they occupied, the language assumed various forms, so that there were developed at least two different languages before the great migrations began. As the chief cause of the emigrations, Schleicher regards the fact that the primitive agriculture practised by the Aryans, including the burning of the forests, impoverished the soil and had a bad effect on the climate. The prin- ciples he laid down and tried to vindicate were: (1) The farther East an Aryan people dwells, the more it has preserved of the peculiarities of the original Aryan tongue. (2) The farther West an Aryan-derived tongue and daughter people are found, the earlier this language was separated from the mother-tongue, and the earlier this people became separated from the original stock. Max Miiller holds the common view in regard to the Asiatic origin of the Aryans. The main difference between him and Schleicher is that Miiller assumes that the Aryan tongue originally divided itself into an Asiatic and an European branch. He accordingly believes that all the Aryan-European tongues and all the Aryan-Euro- pean peoples have developed from the same European branch, while Schleicher assumes that in the beginning the division produced a Teutonic and Letto-Slavic branch on the one hand, and an Indo-Iranian, Greco-Italic, and Celtic on the other. This view of the origin of the Aryans had scarcely met with any opposition when we entered the second half of our century. We might add that it had almost ceased to be questioned. The theory that the Aryans were 14 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY cradled in Asia seemed to be established as an historical fact, supported by a mass of ethnographical, linguistic, and historical arguments, and vindicated by a host of brilliant scientific names. 4. THE HYPOTHESIS CONCERNING THE EUROPEAN ORIGIN OP THE ARYANS. In the year 1854 was heard for the first time a voice of doubt. The sceptic was an English ethnologist, by name Latham, who had spent many years in Russia studying the natives of that country. Latham was unwilling to admit that a single one of the many reasons given for the Asiatic origin of our family of languages was conclusive, or that the accumulative weight of all the reasons given amounted to real evidence. He urged that they who at the outset had treated this question had lost sight of the rules of logic, and that in explaining a fact it is a mistake to assume too many premises. The great fact which presents itself and which is to be explained is this : There are Aryans in Europe and there are Aryans in Asia. The major part of Aryans are in Europe, and here the original language has split itsdf into the greatest number of idioms. From the main Aryan trunk in Europe only two branches extend into Asia. The northern branch is a new creation, consisting of Russian colonisation from Europe; the southern branch, that is, the Iranian-Hin- dooic, is, on the other hand, prehistoric, but was still growing in the dawn of history, and the branch was then 15 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY growing from West to East, from Indus toward Ganges. When historical facts to the contrary are wanting, then the root of a great family of languages should naturally be looked for in the ground which supports the trunk and is shaded by the crown, and not underneath the ends of the farthest-reaching branches. The mass of Mongo- lians dwell in Eastern Asia, and for this very reason Asia is accepted as the original home of the Mongolian race. The great mass of Aryans live in Europe, and have lived there as far back as history sheds a ray of light. Why, then, not apply to the Aryans and to Europe the same conclusions as hold good in the case of the Mongolians and Asia? And why not apply to ethnology the same principles as are admitted unchallenged in regard to the geography of plants and animals? Do we not in botany and zoology seek the original home and centre of a species where it shows the greatest vitality, the greatest power of multiplying and producing varieties? These questions, asked by Latham, remained for some time unanswered, but finally they led to a more careful examination of the soundness of the reasons given for the Asiatic hypothesis. The gist of Latham's protest is, that the question was decided in favour of Asia without an examination of the other possibility, and that in such an examination, if it were undertaken, it would appear at the very outset that the other possibility, that is, the European origin of the Aryans — is more plausible, at least from the standpoint of methodology. This objection on the part of an English scholar did not even produce an echo for many years, and it seemed to 16 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY be looked upon simply as a manifestation of that fondness for eccentricity which we are wont to ascribe to his nationality. He repeated his protest in 1862, but it still took five years before it appeared to have made any impression. In 1867, the celebrated linguist Whitney came out, not to defend Latham's theory that Europe is the cradle of the Aryan race, but simply to clear away the widely spread error that the science of languages had demonstrated the Asiatic origin of the Aryans. As already indicated, it was especially Adolphe Pictet who had given the first impetus to this illusion in his great work Origines indo-curopeennes. Already, before Whit- ney, the Germans Weber and Kuhn had, without attack- ing the Asiatic hypothesis, shown that the most of Pictet's arguments failed to prove that for which they were intended. Whitney now came and refuted them all with- out exception, and at the same time he attacked the assumption made by Rhode, and until that time univer- sally accepted, that a record of an Aryan emigration from the highlands of Central Asia was to be found in that chapter of Avesta which speaks of the sixteen lands created by Ormuzd for the good of man, but which Ahriman destroyed by sixteen different plagues. Avesta does not with a single word indicate that the first of these lands which Ahriman destroyed with snow and frost is to be regarded as the original home of the Iran- ians, or that they ever in the past emigrated from any of them. The assumption that a migration record of histor- ical value conceals itself within this geographical mytho- logical sketch is a mere conjecture, and yet it was made 17 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY the very basis of the hypothesis so confidently built upon for years about Central Asia as the starting-point of the Aryans. The following year, 1868, a prominent German linguist — Mr. Benfey — came forward and definitely took La- tham's side. He remarked at the outset . that hitherto geological investigations had found the oldest traces of human existence in the soil of Europe, and that, so long as this is the case, there is no scientific fact which can admit the assumption that the present European stock has immigrated from Asia after the quaternary period. The mother-tongues of many of the dialects which from time immemorial have been spoken in Europe may just as well have originated on this continent as the mother- tongues of the Mongolian dialects now spoken in Eastern Asia have originated where the descendants now dwell. That the Aryan mother-tongue originated in Europe, not in Asia, Benfey found probably on the following grounds : In Asia, lions are found even at the present time as far to the north as ancient Assyria, and the tigers make depredations over the highlands of Western Iran, even to the coasts of the Caspian Sea. These great beasts of prey are known and named even among Asiatic people who dwell north of their habitats. If, therefore, the ancient Aryans had lived in a country visited by these animals, or if they had been their neighbours, they cer- tainly would have had names for them ; but we find that the Aryan Hindoos call the lion by a word not formed from an Aryan root, and that the Aryan Greeks borrowed the word lion (Us, Icon} from a Semitic language. 18 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY (There is, however, division of opinion on this point.) Moreover, the Aryan languages have borrowed the word camel, by which the chief beast of burden in Asia is called. The home of this animal is Baktria, or precisely that part of Central Asia in the vicinity of which an effort has been made to locate the cradle of the Aryan tongue. Ben fey thinks the ancient Aryan country has been situated in Europe, north of the Black Sea, between the mouth of the Danube and the Caspian Sea. Since the presentation of this argument, several defend- ers of the European hypothesis have come forward, among them Geiger, Cuno, Friedr. Miiller, Spiegel, Posche, and more recently Schrader and Penka. Schrader's work, Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte, contains an excel- lent general review of the history of the question, original contributions to its solution, and a critical but cautious opinion in regard to its present position. In France, too, the European hypothesis has found many adherents. Geiger found, indeed, that the cradle of the Aryan race was to be looked for much farther to the west than Benfey and others had supposed. His hypothesis, based on the evidence furnished by the geography of plants, places the ancient Aryan land in Germany. The cautious Schrader, who dislikes to deal with conjectures, regards the ques- tion as undecided, but he weighs the arguments presented by the various sides, and reaches the conclusion that those in favour of the European origin of the Aryans are the stronger, but that they are not conclusive. Schrader himself, through his linguistic and historical investiga- tions, has been led to believe that the Aryans, while they 19 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY still were one people, belonged to the stone age, and had not yet become acquainted with the use of metals. 5. THE ARYAN IvAND OF EUROPE. On one point — and that is for our purpose the most important one — the advocates of both hypotheses have approached each other. The leaders of the defenders of the Asiatic hypothesis have ceased to regard Asia as the cradle of all the dialects into which the ancient Aryan tongue has been divided. While they cling to the theory that the Aryan inhabitants of Europe have immigrated from Asia, they have well-nigh entirely ceased to claim that these peoples, already before their departure from their Eastern home, were so distinctly divided linguisti- cally that it was necessary to imagine certain branches of the race speaking Celtic, others Teutonic, others, again, Greco-Italian, even before they came to Europe. The prevailing opinion among the advocates of the Asiatic hypothesis now doubtless is, that the Aryans who immi- grated to Europe formed one homogeneous mass, which gradually on our continent divided itself definitely into Celts, Teutons, Slavs, and Greco-Italians. The adherents of both hypotheses have thus been able to agree that there has been a European- Aryan country. And the question as to where it was located is of the most vital importance, as it is closely connected with the question of the original home of the Teutons, since the ancestors of the Teutons must have inhabited this ancient European- Aryan country. 20 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Philology has attempted to answer the former question by comparing all the words of all the Aryan-European languages. The attempt has many obstacles to over- come; for, as Schrader has remarked, the ancient words which to-day are common to all or several of these lan- guages are presumably a mere remnant of the ancient 'European-Aryan vocabulary. Nevertheless, it is possible to arrive at important results in this manner, if we draw conclusions from the words that remain, but take care not to draw conclusions from what is wanting. Trie view gained in this manner is, briefly stated, as follows : The Aryan country of Europe has been situated in latitudes where snow and ice are common phenomena. The people who have emigrated thence to more southern climes have not forgotten either the one or the other name of those phenomena. To a comparatively northern latitude points also the circumstance that the ancient European Aryans recognised only three seasons — winter, spring, and summer. This division of the year con- tinued among the Teutons even in the days of Tacitus. For autumn they had no name. Many words for mountains, valley, streams, and brooks common to all the languages show that the European- Aryan land was not wanting in elevations, rocks, and flowing waters. Nor has it been a treeless plain. This is proven by many names of trees. The trees are fir, birch, willow, elm, elder, hazel, and a beech called bhaga, which means a tree with eatable fruit. From this word bhaga is derived the Greek phegos, the Latin fagus, the 21 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY German Buche, and the Swedish bok. But it is a remark- able fact that the Greeks did not call the beech but the oak phegos, while the Romans called the beech fagus. From this we conclude that the European Aryans applied the word bhaga both to the beech and the oak, since both bear similar fruit; but in some parts of the country the name was particularly applied to the beech, in others to the oak. The beech is a species of tree which gradually approaches the north. On the European continent it is not found east of a line drawn from Konigsberg across Poland and Podolia to Crimea. This leads to the con- clusion that the Aryan country of Europe must to a great extent have been situated west of this line, and that the regions inhabited by the ancestors of the Romans, and north of them by the progenitors of the Teutons, must be looked for west of this botanical line, and between the Alps and the North Sea. Linguistic comparisons also show that the Aryan terri- tory of Europe was situated near an ocean or large body of water. Scandinavians, Germans, Celts, and Romans have preserved a common name for the ocean — the Old Norse mar, the Old High German man, the Latin mare. The names of certain sea-animals are also common to various Aryan languages. The Swedish hummer (lob- ster) corresponds to the Greek kamaros, and the Swed- ish sal ( seal ) to the Greek selachos. In the Aryan country of Europe there were domestic animals — cows, sheep, and goats. The horse was also known, but it is uncertain whether it was used for riding or driving, or simply valued on account of its flesh and 22 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY milk. On the other hand, the ass was not known, its domain being particularly the plains of Central Asia. The bear, wolf, otter, and beaver certainly belonged to the fauna of Aryan Europe. The European Aryans must have cultivated at least one, perhaps two kinds of grain; also flax, the name of which is preserved in the Greek linon (linen), the Latin linum, and in other languages. The Aryans knew the art of brewing mead from honey. That they also understood the art of drinking it even to excess may be taken for granted. This drink was dear to the hearts of the ancient Aryans, and its name has been faithfully preserved both by the tribes that settled near the Ganges, and by those who emigrated to Great Britain. The Brahmin by the Ganges still knows this beverage as madhu, the Welchman has known it as medu, the Lithuanian as medus; and when the Greek Aryans came to Southern Europe and became acquainted with wine, they gave it the name of mead (methu). It is not probable that the European Aryans knew bronze or iron, or, if they did know any of the metals, had any large quantity or made any daily use of them, so long as they linguistically formed one homogeneous body, and lived in that part of Europe which we here call the Aryan domain. The only comman name for metal is that which we find in the Latin aes (copper), in the Gothic aiz, and in the Hindooic dyas. As is known, the Latin aes, like the Gothic aiz, means both copper and bronze. That the word originally meant copper, and afterwards came to signify bronze, which is an alloy of copper and 23 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY tin, seems to be a matter of course, and that it was applied only to copper and not to bronze among the ancient Aryans seems clear not only because a common name for tin is wanting, but also for the far better and remarkable reason particularly pointed out by Schrader, that all the Aryan European languages, even those which are nearest akin to each other and are each other's neighbours, lack a common word for the tools of a smith and the inventory of a forge, and also for the various kinds of weapons of defence and attack. Most of all does it astonish us, that in respect to weapons the dissimilarity of names is so complete in the Greek and Roman tongues. Despite this fact, the ancient Aryans have certainly used various kinds of weapons — the club, the hammer, the axe, the knife, the spear, and the crossbow. All these weapons are of such a character that they could be made of stone, wood, and horn. Things more easily change names when the older materials of which they were made give place to new hith- erto unknown materials. It is, therefore, probable that the European Aryans were in the stone age, and at best were acquainted with copper before and during the period when their language was divided into several dialects. Where, then, on our continent was the home of this Aryan European people in the stone age? Southern Europe, with its peninsulas extending into the Mediter- ranean, must doubtless have been outside of the bound- aries of the Aryan land of Europe. The Greek Aryans have immigrated to Hellas, and the Italian Aryans are immigrants to the Italian peninsula. Spain has even within historical times been inhabited by Iberians and 24 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Basques, and Basques dwell there at present: If, as the linguistic monuments seem to prove, the European Aryans lived near an ocean, this cannot have been the Mediterranean Sea. There remain the Black and Caspian Sea on the one hand, the Baltic and the North Sea on the other. But if, as the linguistic monuments likewise seem to prove, the European Aryans for a great part, at least, lived west of a botanical line indicated by the beech in a country producing fir, oak, elm, and elder, then they could not have been limited to the treeless plains which extend along the Black Sea from the mouth of the Dan- ube, through Dobrudscha, Bessarabia, and Cherson, past the Crimea. Students of early Greek history do not any longer assume that the Hellenic immigrants found their way through these countries to Greece, but that they came from the north-west and followed the Adriatic down to Epirus; in other words, they came the same way as the Visigoths under Alarik, and the Eastgoths under Theo- doric in later times. Even the Latin tribes came from the north. The migrations of the Celts, so far as history sheds any light on the subject, were from the north and west toward the south and east. The movements of the Teutonic races were from north to south, and they migrated both eastward and westward. Both prehistoric and historic facts thus tend to establish the theory that the Aryan domain of Europe, within undefinable limits, comprised the central and north part of Europe; and as one or more seas were known to these Aryans, we cannot exclude from the limits of this knowledge the ocean penetrating the north of Europe from the west. 3 25 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY On account of their undeveloped agriculture, which compelled them to depend chiefly on cattle for their support, the European Aryans must have occupied an extensive territory. Of the mutual position and of the movements of the various tribes within this territory nothing can be stated, except that sooner or later, but already away back in prehistoric times, they must have occupied precisely the position in which we find them at the dawn of history and which they now hold. The Aryan tribes which first entered Gaul must have lived west of those tribes which became the progenitors of the Teutons, and the latter must have lived west of those who spread an Aryan language over Russia. South of this line, but still in Central Europe, there must have dwelt another body of Aryans, the ancestors of the Greeks and Romans, the latter west of the former. Farthest to the north of all these tribes must have dwelt those people who afterwards produced the Teutonic tongue. B. ANCIENT TEUTONDOM (GERMANIEN). 6. THE GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION Of ANCIENT TEUTONDOM. THE STONE AGE OF PREHISTORIC TEUTONDOM. The northern position of the ancient Teutons necessar- ily had the effect that they, better than all other Aryan people, preserved their original race-type, as they were less exposed to mixing with non-Aryan elements. In the south, west, and east, they had kinsmen, separating them 26 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY from non-Aryan races. To the north, on the other hand, lay a territory which, by its very nature, could be but sparsely populated, if it was inhabited at all, before it was occupied by the fathers of the Teutons. The Teutonic type, which doubtless also was the Aryan in general before much spreading and consequent mixing with other races had taken place, has, as already indicated, been described in the following manner : Tall, white skin, blue eyes, fair hair. Anthropological science has given them one more mark — they are dolicocephalous, that is, having skulls whose anterior-posterior diameter, or that from the frontal to the occipital bone, exceeds the transverse diameter. This type appears most pure in the modern Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, and to some extent the Dutch, in the inhabitants of those parts of Great Britain that are most densely settled by Saxon and Scandinavian emigrants; and in the people of certain parts of North Germany. Welcker's craniological measurements give the following figures for the breadth and length of Teu- tonic skulls : Swedes and Hollanders, .... 75 — 71 Icelanders and Danes, .... 76 — 71 Englishmen, 76 — 73 Holsteinians, 77 — 71 Hanoverians, ) I rtrt nn The vicinity of Jena, Bonn, and Cologne, J Hessians, 79 — 72 Swabians, 79 — 73 Bavarians, 80 — 74 Thus the dolicocephalous form passes in Middle and Southern Germany into the brachycephalous. The inves- 27 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY tigations made at the suggestion of Virchow in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and Austria, in regard to blonde and brunette types, are of great interest. An examina- tion of more than nine million individuals showed the following result: Germany, 31.80% blonde, 14.05% brunette, 54.15% mixed. Austria, 19.79% blonde, 23.17% brunette, 57.04% mixed. Switzerland, 11.10% blonde, 25.70% brunette, 61.40% mixed. Thus the blonde type has by far a greater number of representatives in Germany than in the southern part of Central Europe, though the latter has German-speaking inhabitants. In Germany itself the blonde type decreases and the brunette increases from north to south, while at the same time the dolicocephalous gives place to the bra- chycephalous. Southern Germany has 25% of brunettes, North Germany only 7%. If we now, following the strict rules of methodology which Latham insists on, bear in mind that the cradle of a race- or language-type should, if there are no definite historical facts to the contrary, especially be looked for where this type is most abundant and least changed, then there is no doubt that the part of Aryan Europe which the ancestors of the Teutons inhabited when they developed the Aryan tongue into the Teutonic must have included the coast of the Baltic and the North Sea. This theory is certainly not contradicted, but, on the other hand, sup- ported by the facts so far as we have any knowledge of them. Roman history supplies evidence that the same parts of Europe in which the Teutonic type predominates at the present time were Teutonic already at the beginning 28 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY of our era, and that then already the Scandinavian penin- sula was inhabited by a North Teutonic people, which, among their kinsmen on the Continent, were celebrated for their wealth in ships and warriors. Centuries must have passed ere the Teutonic colonisation of the peninsula could have developed into so much strength — centuries during which, judging from all indications, the transition from the bronze to the iron age in Scandinavia must have taken place. The painstaking investigations of Monte- lius, conducted on the principle of methodology, have led him' to the conclusion that Scandinavia and North Ger- many formed during the bronze age one common domain of culture in regard to weapons and implements. The manner in which the other domains of culture group themselves in Europe leaves no other place for the Teu- tonic race than Scandinavia and North Germany, and possibly Austria-Hungary, which the Teutonic domain resembles most. Back of the bronze age lies the stone age. The examinations, by v. Duben, Gustaf Retzius, and Virchow, of skeletons found in northern graves from the stone age prove the existence at that time of a race in the North which, so far as the characteristics of the skulls are concerned, cannot be distinguished from the race now dwelling there. Here it is necessary to take into consideration the results of probability reached by com- parative philology, showing that the European Aryans were still in the stone age when they divided themselves into Celts, Teutons, etc., and occupied separate territories, and the fact that the Teutons, so far back c.s conclusions may be drawn from historical knowledge have occupied 29 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY a more northern domain than their kinsmen. Thus all tends to show that when the Scandinavian peninsula was first settled by Aryans — doubtless coming from the South by way of Denmark — these Aryans belonged to the same race, which, later in history, appear with a Teutonic phy- siognomy and with Teutonic speech, and that their immi- gration to and occupation of the southern parts of the peninsula took place in the time of the Aryan stone age. For the history of civilisation, and particularly for mythology, these results are important. It is a problem to be solved by comparative mythology what elements in the various groups of Aryan myths may be the original common property of the race while the race was yet undivided. The conclusions reached gain in trustworth- iness the further the Aryan tribes, whose myths are compared, are separated from each other geographically. If, for instance, the Teutonic mythology on the one hand and the Asiatic Aryan (Avesta and Rigveda) on the other are made the subject of comparative study, and if groups of myths are found which are identical not only in their general character and in many details, but also in the grouping of the details and the epic connection of the myths, then the probability that they belong to an age when the ancestors of the Teutons and those of the Asiatic Aryans dwelt together is greater, in the same proportion as the probability of an intimate and detailed exchange of ideas after the separation grows less between these tribes on account of the geographical distance. With all the certainty which it is possible for research to arrive at in this field, we may assume that these common groups 30 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY of myths — at least the centres around which they revolve — originated at a time when the Aryans still formed, so to speak, a geographical and linguistic unity — in all prob- ability at a time which lies far back in a common Aryan stone age. The discovery of groups of myths of this sort thus sheds light on beliefs and ideas that existed in the minds of our ancestors in an age of which we have no information save that which we get from the study of the finds. The latter, when investigated by painstaking and penetrating archaeological scholars, certainly give us highly instructive information in other directions. In this manner it becomes possible to distinguish between older and younger elements of Teutonic mythology, and to secure a basis for studying its development through centuries which have left us no literary monuments. TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY II. A. MEDIAEVAL MIGRATION SAGAS. THE DARNED SAGA IN REGARD TO THE EMIGRATION FROM TROY-ASGARD. 7. THE SAGA IN HEIMSKRINGLA AND THE PROSE EDDA. In the preceding pages we have given the reasons which make it appear proper to assume that ancient Teutondom, within certain indefinable limits, included the coasts of the Baltic and the North Sea, that the Scandinavian countries constituted a part of this ancient Teutondom, and that they have been peopled by Teutons since the days of the stone age. The subject which I am now about to discuss requires an investigation in reference to what the Teutons them- selves believed, in regard to this question, in the earliest times of which we have knowledge. Did they look upon themselves as aborigines or as immigrants in Teutondom ? For the mythology, the answer to this question is of great weight. For pragmatic history, on the other hand, the answer is of little importance, for whatever they believed gives no reliable basis for conclusions in regard to historical facts. If they regarded themselves as aborig- ines, this does not hinder their having immigrated in 32 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY prehistoric times, though their traditions have ceased to speak of it. If they regarded themselves as immigrants, then it does not follow that the traditions, in regard to the immigration, contain any historical kernel. Of the former we have an example in the case of the Brahmins and the higher castes in India: their orthodoxy requires them to regard themselves as aborigines of the country in which they live, although there is evidence that they are immigrants. Of the latter the Swedes are an example: the people here have been taught to believe that a greater or less portion of the inhabitants of Sweden are descended from immigrants who, led by Odin, are supposed to have come here about one hundred years before the birth of Christ, and that this immigration, whether it brought many or few people, was of the most decisive influence on the culture of the country, so that Swedish history might properly begin with the moment when Odin planted his feet on Swedish soil. The more accessible sources of the traditions in regard to Odin's immigration to Scandinavia are found in the Icelandic works, Heimskringla and the Prose Edda. Both sources are from the same time, that is, the thir- teenth century, and are separated by more than two hun- dred years from the heathen age in Iceland. We will first consider Heimskringla's story. A river, by name Tanakvisl, or Vanakvisl, empties into the Black Sea. This river separates Asia from Europe. East of Tanakvisl, that is to say, then in Asia, is a country form- erly called Asaland or Asaheim, and the chief citadel or town in that country was called Asgard. It was a great 33 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY city of sacrifices, and there dwelt a chief who was known by the name Odin. Under him ruled twelve men who were high-priests and judges. Odin was a great chief- tain and conqueror, and so victorious was he, that his men believed that victory was wholly inseparable from him. If he laid his blessing hand on anybody's head, success was sure to attend him. Even if he was absent, if called upon in distress or danger, his very name seemed to give comfort. He frequently went far away, and often remained absent half-a-year at a time. His kingdom was then ruled by his brothers Vile and Ve. Once he was absent so long that the Asas believed that he would never return. Then his brothers married his wife Frigg. Finally he returned, however, and took Frigg back again. The Asas had a people as their neighbours called the Vans. Odin made war on the Vans, but they defended themselves bravely. When both parties had been victori- ous and suffered defeat, they grew weary of warring, made peace, and exchanged hostages. The Vans sent their son Njord and his son Frey, and also Kvaser, as hostages to the Asas; and the latter gave in exchange Honer and Mimer. Odin gave Njord and Frey the dignity of priests. Frey's sister, too, Freyja, was made a priestess. The Vans treated the hostages they had received with similar consideration, and created Honer a chief and judge. But they soon seemed to discover that Honer was a stupid fellow. They considered themselves cheated in the exchange, and, being angry on this account, they cut off the head, not of Honer, but of his wise brother Mimer, and sent it to Odin. He embalmed the head, 34 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY sang magic songs over it, so that it could talk to him and tell him many strange things. Asaland, where Odin ruled is separated by a great mountain range from Tyrkland, by which Heimskringla means Asia Minor, of which the celebrated Troy was supposed to have been the capital. In Tyrkland, Odin also had great possessions. But at that time the Romans invaded and subjugated all lands, and many rulers fled on that account from their kingdoms. And Odin, being wise and versed in the magic art, and knowing, therefore, that his descendants were to people the northern part of the world, he left his kingdom to his brothers Vile and Ve, and migrated with many followers to Gardarike, Russia. Njord, Frey, and Freyja, and the other priests who had ruled under him in Asgard, accompanied him, and sons of his were also with him. From Gardarike he proceeded to Saxland, conquered vast countries, and made his sons rulers over them. From Saxland he went to Funen, and settled there. Seeland did not then exist. Odin sent the maid Gefion north across the water to inves- tigate what country was situated there. At that time ruled in Svithiod a chief by name Gylfe. He gave Gefion a ploughland,* and, by the help of four giants changed into oxen, Gefion cut out with the plough, and dragged into the sea near Funen that island which is now called Seeland. Where the land was ploughed away there is now a lake called Logrin. Skjold, Odin's son, got this land, and married Gefion. And when Gefion informed Odin that Gylfe possessed a good land, Odin went thither, *As much land as can be ploughed in a day. 35 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY and Gylfe, being unable to make resistance, though he too was a wise man skilled in witchcraft and sorcery, a peace- ful compact was made, according to which Odin acquired a vast territory around Logrin ; and in Sigtuna he estab- lished a great temple, where sacrifices henceforth were of- fered according to the custom of the Asas. To his priests he gave dwellings — Noatun to Njord, Upsala to Frey, Himminbjorg to Heimdal, Thrudvang to Thor, Breidab- lik to Balder, &c. Many new sports came to the North with Odin, and he and the Asas taught them to the people. Among other things, he taught them poetry and runes. Odin himself always talked in measured rhymes. Besides, he was a most excellent sorcerer. He could change shape, make his foes in a conflict blind and deaf ; he was a wizard, and could wake the dead. He owned the ship Skidbladner, which could be folded as a napkin. He had two ravens, which he had taught to speak, and they brought him tidings from all lands. He knew where all treasures wrere hid in the earth, and could call them forth with the aid of magic songs. Among the customs he introduced in the North were cremation of the dead, the raising of mounds in memory of great men, the erection of bauta-stones in commemoration of others; and he introduced the three great sacrificial feasts — for a good year, for good crops, and for victory. Odin died in Svithiod. When he perceived the approach of death, he suffered himself to be marked with the point of a spear, and declared that he was going to Gudheim to visit his friends and receive all fallen in battle. This the Swedes believed. They have since worshipped him in the belief 36 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY that he had an eternal life in the ancient Asgard, and they thought he revealed himself to them before great battles took place. On Svea's throne he was followed by Njord, the progenitor of the race of Ynglings. Thus Heimskringla. We now pass to the Younger Edda,* which in its Fore- word gives us in the style of that time a general survey of history and religion. First, it gives from the Bible the story of creation and the deluge. Then a long story is told of the building of the tower of Babel. The descendants of Noah's son, Ham, warred against and conquered the sons of Sern, and tried in their arrogance to build a tower which should aspire to heaven itself. The chief manager in this enter- prise was Zoroaster, and seventy-two master-masons and joiners served under him. But God confounded the tongues of these arrogant people so that each one of the seventy-two masters with those under him got their own language, which the others could not understand, and then each went his own way, and in this manner arose the seventy-two different languages in the world. Be- fore that time only one language was spoken, and that was Hebrew. Where they tried to build the tower a city was founded and called Babylon. There Zoroaster became a king and ruled over many Assyrian nations, among which he introduced idolatry, and which wor- shiped him as Baal. The tribes that departed with his master-workmen also fell into idolatry, excepting the *A translation of the Younger or Prose Edda was edited by R. B. Ander- son and published by S. C. Griggs & Co., Chicago, in 1881. 37 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY one tribe which kept the Hebrew language. It preserved also the original and pure faith. Thus, while Babylon became one of the chief altars of heathen worship, the island Crete became another. There was born a man, by name Saturnus, who became for the Cretans and Macedonians what Zoroaster was for the Assyrians. Saturnus' knowledge and skill in magic, and his art of producing gold from red-hot iron, secured him the power of a prince on Crete; and as he, moreover, had control over all invisible forces, the Cretans and Macedonians believed that he was a god, and he encouraged them in this faith. He had three sons — Jupiter, Neptunus, and Plutus. Of these, Jupiter resembled his father in skill and magic, and he was a great warrior who conquered many peoples. When Saturnus divided his kingdom among his sons, a feud arose. Plutus got as his share hell, and as this was the least desirable part he also received the dog named Cerberus. Jupiter, who received heaven, was not satisfied with this, but wanted the earth too. He made war against his father, who had to seek refuge in Italy, where he, out of fear of Jupiter, changed his name and called himself Njord, and where he became a useful king, teaching the inhabitants, who lived on nuts and roots, to plough and plant vineyards. Jupiter had many sons. From one of them, Dardanus, descended in the fifth generation Priamus of Troy. Priamus' son was Hektor, who in stature and strength was the foremost man in the world. From the Trojans the Romans are descended ; and when Rome had grown to be a great power it adopted many laws and customs which 38 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY had prevailed among the Trojans before them. Troy was situated in Tyrkland, near the centre of the earth. Under Priamus, the chief ruler, there were twelve tribu- tary kings, and they spoke twelve languages. These twelve tributary kings were exceedingly wise men; they received the honour of gods, and from them all European chiefs are descended. One of these twelve was called Munon or Mennon. He was married to a daughter of Priamus, and had with her the son Tror, "whom we call Thor." He was a very handsome man, his hair shone fairer than gold, and at the age of twelve he was full- grown, and so strong that he could lift twelve bear-skins at the same time. He slew his foster-father and foster- mother, took possession of his foster-father's kingdom Thracia, "which we call Thrudheim," and thenceforward he roamed about the world, conquering berserks, giants, the greatest dragon, and other prodigies. In the North he met a prophetess by name Sibil (Sibylla), "whom we call Sif," and her he married. In the twentieth genera- tion from this Thor, Vodin descended, "whom we call Odin," a very wise and well-informed man, who married Frigida, "whom we call Frigg." At that time the Roman general Pompey was making wars in the East, and also threatened the empire of Odin. Meanwhile Odin and his wife had learned through pro- phetic inspiration that a glorious future awaited them in the northern part of the world. He therefore emigrated from Tyrkland, and took with him many people, old and young, men and women, and costly treasures. Wherever they came they appeared to the inhabitants 39 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY more like gods than men. And they did not stop before they came as far north as Saxland. There Odin remained a long time. One of his sons, Veggdegg, he appointed king of Saxland. Another son, Beldegg, "whom we call Balder," he made king in Westphalia. A third son, Sigge, became king in Frankland. Then Odin proceeded farther to the north and came to Reidgothaland, which is now called Jutland, and there took possession of as much as he wanted. There he appointed his son Skjold as king; then he came to Svithiod. Here ruled king Gylfe. When he heard of the expedi- tion of Odin and his Asiatics he went to meet them, and offered Odin as much land and as much power in his kingdom as he might desire. One reason why people everywhere gave Odin so hearty a welcome and offered him land and power was that wherever Odin and his men tarried on their journey the people got good harvests and abundant crops, and therefore they believed that Odin and his men controlled the weather and the growing grain. Odin went with Gylfe up to the lake "Logrin" and saw that the land was good; and there he chose as his citadel the place which is called Sigtuna, founding there the same institutions as had existed in Troy, and to which the Turks were accustomed. Then he organised a council of twelve men, who were to make laws and settle disputes. From Svithiod Odin went to Norway, and there made his son Sseming king. But the ruling of Svithiod he had left to his son Yngve, from whom the race of Ynglings are descended. The Asas and their sons married the women of the land of which they had taken 40 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY possession, and their descendants, who preserved the lan- guage spoken in Troy, multiplied so fast that the Trojan language displaced the old tongue and became the speech of Svithiod, Norway, Denmark, and Saxland, and there- after also of England. The Prose Edda's first part, Gylfaginning, consists of a collection of mythological tales told to the reader in the form of a conversation between the above-named king of Sweden, Gylfe, and the Asas. Before the Asas had started on their journey to the North, it is here said Gylfe had learned that they were a wise and knowing people who had success in all their undertakings. And believing that this was a result either of the nature of these people, or of their peculiar kind of worship, he resolved to inves- tigate the matter secretly, and therefore betook himself in the guise of an old man to Asgard. But the foreknow- ing Asas knew in advance that he was coming, and resolved to receive him with all sorts of sorcery, which might give him, a high opinion of them. He finally came to a citadel, the roof of which was thatched with golden shields, and the hall of which was so large that he scarcely could see the whole of it. At the entrance stood a man playing with sharp tools, which he threw up in the air and caught again with his hands, and seven axes were in the air at the same time. This man asked the traveller his name. The latter answered that he was named Gang- lere, that he had made a long journey over rough roads, and asked for lodgings for the night. He also asked whose the citadel was. The juggler answered that it belonged to their king, and conducted Gylfe into the hall, 4 41 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY where many people were assembled. Some sat drinking, others amused themselves at games, and still others were practising with weapons. There were three high-seats in the hall, one above the other, and in each high-seat sat a man. In the lowest sat the king; and the juggler informed Gylfe that the king's name was Har; that the one who sat next above him was named Jafnhar; and that the one who sat on the highest throne was named Thride (thridi). Har asked the stranger what his errand was, and invited him to eat and drink. Gylfe answered that he first wished to know whether there was any wise man in the hall. Har replied that the stranger should not leave the hall whole unless he was victorious in a contest in wisdom. Gylfe now begins his questions, which all concern the worship of the Asas, and the three men in the high-seats give him answers. Already in the first answer it appears that the Asgard to which Gylfe thinks he has come is, in the opinion of the author, a younger Asgard, and presumably the same as the author of Heimskringla places beyond the river Tanakvisl, but there had existed an older Asgard identical with Troy in Tyrkland, where, according to Heimskringla, Odin had extensive possessions at the time when the Romans began their invasions in the East. When Gylfe with his ques- tions had learned the most important facts in regard to the religion of Asgard, and had at length been instructed concerning the destruction and regeneration of the world, he perceived a mighty rumbling and quaking, and when he looked about him the citadel and hall had disappeared, and he stood beneath the open sky. He returned to Svit- 42 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY hiod and related all that he had seen and heard among the Asas ; but when he had gone they counselled together, and they agreed to call themselves by those names which they used in relating their stories to Gylfe. These sagas, remarks Gylfaginning, were in reality none but historical events transformed into traditions about divinities. They described events which had occurred in the older Asgard — that is to say? Troy. The basis of the stories told to Gylfe about Thor were the achievements of Hektor in Troy, and the Loke of whom Gylfe had heard was, in fact, none other than Ulixes (Ulysses), who was the foe of the Trojans, and consequently was represented as the foe of the gods. Gylfaginning is followed by another part of the Prose Edda called Bragaroeduy (Brage's Talk), which is pre- sented in a similar form. On Lesso, so it is said, dwelt formerly a man by name Mgir. He, like Gylfe, had heard reports concerning the wisdom of the Asas, and resolved to visit them. He, like Gylfe, comes to a place where the Asas receive him with all sorts of magic arts, and conduct him into a hall which is lighted up in the evening with shining swords. There he is invited to take his seat by the side of Brage, and there were twelve high-seats in which sat men who were called Thor, Njord, Frey, &c., and women who were called Frigg, Freyja, Nanna, &c. The hall was splendidly decorated with shields. The mead passed round was exquisite, and the talkative Brage instructed the guest in the traditions concerning the Asas' art of poetry. A postscript to the treatise warns young skalds not to place confidence in the stories told to Gylfe 43 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY and &gir. The author of the postscript says they have value only as a key to the many metaphors which occur in the poems of the great skalds, but upon the whole they are deceptions invented by the Asas or Asiamen to make people believe that they were gods. Still, the author thinks these falsifications have an historical kernel. They are, he thinks, based on what happened in the ancient Asgard, that is, Troy. Thus, for instance, Ragnarok is originally nothing else than the siege of Troy; Thor is, as stated, Hektor; the Midgard-serpent is one of the heroes slain by Hektor; the Fenris-wolf is Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, who slew Priam (Odin) ; and Vidar, who survives Ragnarok, is ^Eneas. 8. THE TROY SAGA IN HEIMSKRINGLA AND THE PROSE EDDA (continued). The sources of the traditions concerning the Asiatic immigration to the North belong to the Icelandic litera- ture, and to it alone. Saxo's Historic, Danica, the first books of which were written toward the close of the twelfth century, presents on this topic its own peculiar view, which will be discussed later. The Icelandic accounts disagree only in unimportant details ; the funda- mental view is the same, and they have flown from the same fountain vein. Their contents may be summed up thus: Among the tribes who after the Babylonian confusion of tongues emigrated to various countries, there was a 44 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY body of people who settled and introduced their language in Asia Minor, which in the sagas is called Tyrkland; in Greece, which in the sagas is called Macedonia; and in Crete. In Tyrkland they founded the great city which was called Troy. This city was attacked by the Greeks during the reign of the Trojan king Priam. Priam descended from Jupiter and the latter's father Saturnus, and accordingly belonged to a race which the idolaters looked upon as divine. Troy was a very large city; twelve languages were spoken there, and Priam had twelve tributary kings under him. But however power- ful the Trojans were, and however bravely they defended themselves under the leadership of the son of Priam's daughter, that valiant hero Thor, still they were defeated. Troy was captured and burned by the Greeks, and Priam himself was slain. Of the surviving Trojans two parties emigrated in different directions. They seem in advance to have been well informed in regard to the quality of foreign lands ; for Thor, the son of Priam's daughter, had made extensive expeditions in which he had fought giants and monsters. On his journeys he had even visited the North, and there he had met Sibil,, the celebrated proph- etess, and married her. One of the parties of Trojan emigrants embarked under the leadership of ^Eneas for Italy, and founded Rome. The other party, accom- panied by Thor's son, Loride, went to Asialand, which is separated from Tyrkland by a mountain ridge, and from Europe by the river Tanais or Tanakvisl, There they founded a new city called Asgard, and there preserved the old customs and usages brought from Troy. Accord- 45 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY ingly, there was organised in Asgard, as in Troy, a coun- cil of twelve men, who were high priests and judges. Many centuries passed without any political contact be- tween the new Trojan settlements in Rome and Asgard, though both well remembered their Trojan origin, and the Romans formed many of their institutions after the model of the old fatherland. Meanwhile, Rome had grown to be one of the mightiest empires in the world, and began at length to send armies into Tyrkland. At that time there ruled in Asgard an exceedingly wise, prophetic king, Odin, who was skilled in the magic arts, and who was descended in the twentieth generation from the above- mentioned Thor. Odin had waged many successful wars. The severest of these wars was the one with a neighbour- ing people, the Vans ; but this had been ended with com- promise and peace. In Tyrkland, the old mother coun- try, Odin had great possessions, which fell into the hands of the Romans. This circumstance strengthened him in his resolution to emigrate to the north of Europe. The prophetic vision with which he was endowed had told him that his descendants would long flourish there. So he set out with his many sons, and was accompanied by the twelve priests and by many people, but not by all the inhabitants of the Asia country and of Asgard. A part of the people remained at home ; and among them Odin's brothers Vile and Ve. The expedition proceeded through Gardarike to Saxland; then across the Danish islands to Svithiod and Norway. Everywhere this great multitude of migrators was well received by the inhabitants. Odin's superior wisdom and his marvellous skill in sorcery, 46 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY together with the fact that his progress was everywhere attended by abundant harvests, caused the peoples to look upon him as a god, and to place their thrones at his disposal. He accordingly appointed his sons as kings in Saxland, Denmark, Svithiod, and Norway. Gylfe, the king of Svithiod, submitted to his superiority and gave him a splendid country around Lake Mselar to rule over. There Odin built Sigtuna, the institutions of which were an imitation of those in Asgard and Troy. Poetry and many other arts came with Odin to the Teutonic lands, and so, too, the Trojan tongue. Like his ancestors, Saturnus and Jupiter, he was able to secure divine wor- ship, which was extended even to his twelve priests. The religious traditions which he scattered among the people, and which were believed until the introduction of Chris- tianity, were misrepresentations spun around the memo- ries of Troy's historical fate and its destruction, and around the events of Asgard. 9. SAXO'S RELATION OF THE STORY OF TROY. Such is, in the main, the story which was current in Iceland in the thirteenth century, and which found its way to Scandinavia through the Prose Edda and Heim- skringla, concerning the immigration of Odin and the Asas. Somewhat older than these works is Historia Danica, by the Danish chronicler Saxo. Sturlason, the author of Heimskringla, was a lad of eight years when Saxo began to write his history, and he (Sturlason) had 47 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY certainly not begun to write history when Saxo had com- pleted the first nine books of his work, which are based on the still-existing songs and traditions found in Den- mark, and of heathen origin. Saxo writes as if he were unacquainted with Icelandic theories concerning an Asiatic immigration to the North, and he has not a word to say about Odin's reigning as king or chief anywhere in Scan- dinavia. This is the more remarkable, since he holds the same view as the Icelanders and the chroniclers of the Middle Ages in general in regard to the belief that the heathen myths were records of historical events, and that the heathen gods were historical persons, men changed into divinities; and our astonishment increases when we consider that he, in the heathen songs and traditions on which he based the first part of his work, frequently finds Odin's name, and consequently could not avoid presenting him in Danish history as an important character. In Saxo, as in the Icelandic works, Odin is a human being, and at the same time a sorcerer of the greatest power. Saxo and the Icelanders also agree that Odin came from the East. The only difference is that while the Icelandic hypothesis makes him rule in Asgard, Saxo locates his residence in Byzantium, on the Bosphorus; but this is not far from the ancient Troy, where the Prose Edda locates his ancestors. From Byzantium., according to Saxo, the fame of his magic arts and of the miracles he performed reached even to the north of Europe. On account of these miracles he was worshipped as a god by the peoples, and to pay him honour the kings of the North once sent to Byzantium a golden image, to which 48 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Odin by magic arts imparted the power of speech. It is the myth about Mimer's head which Saxo here relates. But the kings of the North knew him not only by report ; they were also personally acquainted with him. He visited Upsala, a place which "pleased him much." Saxo, like the Heimskringla, relates that Odin was absent from his capital for a long time; and when we examine his statements on this point, we find that Saxo is here telling in his way the myth concerning the war which the Vans carried on successfully against the Asas, and concerning Odin's expulsion from the mythic Asgard, situated in heaven (Hist. Dan., pp. 42-44; vid. No. 36). Saxo also tells that Odin's son, Balder, was chosen king by the Danes "on account of his personal merits and his respect- commanding qualities." But Odin himself has never, according to Saxo, had land or authority in the North, though he was there worshipped as a god, and, as already stated, Saxo is entirely silent in regard to any immigra- tion of an Asiatic people to Scandinavia under the leader- ship of Odin. A comparison between him and the Icelanders will show at once that, although both parties are Euhemerists, and make Odin a man changed into a god, Saxo confines himself more faithfully to the popular myths, and seeks as far as possible to turn them into history; while the Icelanders, on the other hand, begin with the learned theory in regard to the original kinship of the northern races with the Trojans and Romans, and around this theory as a nucleus they weave about the same myths told as history as Saxo tells. 49 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY 10. THE OLDER PERIODS OE THE TROY SAGA. How did the belief that Troy was the original home of the Teutons arise? Does it rest on native traditions? Has it been inspired by sagas and traditions current among the Teutons themselves, and containing as kernel "a faint reminiscence of an immigration from Asia," or is it a thought entirely foreign to the heathen Teutonic world, introduced in Christian times by Latin scholars? These questions shall now be considered. Already in the seventh century — that is to say, more than five hundred years before Heimskringla and the Prose Edda were written — a Teutonic people were told by a chronicler that they were of the same blood as the Romans, that they had like the Romans emigrated from Troy, and that they had the same share as the Romans in the glorious deeds of the Trojan heroes. This people were the Franks. Their oldest chronicler, Gregorius, bishop of Tours, who, about one hundred years before that time — that is to say, in the sixth century — wrote their history in ten books, does not say a word about it. He, too, desires to give an account of the original home of the Franks(Hirf. Franc., ii. 9), and locates it quite a dis- tance from the regions around the lower Rhine, where they first appear in the light of history; but still not farther away than to Pannonia. Of the coming of the Franks from Troy neither Gregorius knows anything nor the older authors, Sulpicius Alexander and others, whose works he studied to find information in regard to the early 50 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY history of the Franks. But in the middle of the following century, about 650, an unknown author, who for reasons unknown, is called Fredegar, wrote a chronicle, which is in part a reproduction of Gregorius' historical work, but also contains various other things in regard to the early history of the Franks, and among these the statement that they emigrated from Troy. He even gives us the sources from which he got this information. His sources are, according to his own statement, not Frankish, not popular songs or traditions, but two Latin authors — the Church father Hieronymus and the poet Virgil. If we, then, go to these sources in order to compare Fredegar's statement with his authority, we find that Hieronymus once names the Franks in passing, but never refers to their origin from Troy, and that Virgil does not even mention Franks. Nevertheless, the reference to Virgil is the key to the riddle, as we shall show below. What Fredegar tells about the emigration of the Franks is this : A Frankish king, by the name Priam, ruled in Troy at the time when this city was conquered by the cunning of Ulysses. Then the Franks emigrated, and were after- wards ruled by a king named Friga. Under his reign a dispute arose between them, and they divided themselves into two parties, one of which settled in Macedonia, while the other, called after Friga's name Frigians (Phrygians), migrated through Asia and settled there. There they were again divided, and one part of them migrated under king Francio into Europe, travelled across this continent, and settled, with their women and children, near the Rhine, where they began building a city which they called Troy, TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY and intended to organise in the manner of the old Troy, but the city was not completed. The other group chose a king by name Turchot, and were called after him Turks. But those who settled on the Rhine called themselves Franks after their king Francio, and later chose a king named Theudemer, who was descended from Priam, Friga, and Francio. Thus Fredegar's chronicle. About seventy years later another Frankish chronicle saw the light of day — the Gesta regum Francorum* In it we learn more of the emigration of the Franks from Troy. Gesta regum Franc orum (i) tells the following story: In Asia lies the city of the Trojans called Ilium, where king ^£neas formerly ruled. The Trojans were a strong and brave people, who waged war against all their neighbours. But then the kings of the Greeks united and brought a large army against ^Eneas, king of the Trojans. There were great battles and much bloodshed, and the greater part of the Trojans fell, ^neas fled with those surviving into the city of Ilium, which the Greeks besieged and conquered after ten years. The Trojans who escaped divided themselves into two parties. The one under king- ^Eneas went to Italy, where he hoped to receive auxiliary troops. Other distinguished Trojans became the leaders of the other party, which numbered 12,000 men. They embarked in ships and came to the banks of the river Tanais. They sailed farther and came within the borders of Pannonia, near the Mceotian marshes (navigantes pervenerunt intra termmos Pan- noniarum juxta Mceotidas paludes), where they founded a city, which they called Sicambria, and here they remained TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY many years and became a mighty people. Then came a time when the Roman emperor Valentinianus got into war with that wicked people called Alamanni (also Alani). He led a great army against them. The Alamanni were defeated, and fled to the Mceotian marshes. Then said the emperor, "If anyone dares to enter those marshes and drive away this wicked people, I shall for ten years make him free from all burdens." When the Trojans heard this they went, accompanied by a Roman army, into the marshes, attacked the Alamanni, and hewed them down with their swords. Then the Trojans received from the emperor Valentinianus the name Franks, which, the chronicle adds, in the Attic tongue means the savage (feri}, "for the Trojans had a defiant and indomitable character." For ten years afterwards the Trojans or Franks lived undisturbed by Roman tax-collectors; but after that the Roman emperor demanded that they should pay tribute. This they refused, and slew the tax-collectors sent to them. Then the emperor collected a large army under the command of Aristarcus, and strengthened it with auxiliary forces from many lands, and attacked the Franks, who were defeated by the superior force, lost their leader Priam, and had to take flight. They now proceeded under their leaders Markomir, Priam's son, and Sunno, son of Antenor, away from Sicambria through Germany to the Rhine, and located there. Thus this chronicle. About fifty years after its appearance — that is, in the time of Charlemagne, and, to be more accurate, about the 53 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY year 787 — the well-known Longobardian historian Paulus Diaconus wrote a history of the bishops of Metz. Among these bishops was the Frank Arnulf, from whom Charle- magne was descended in the fifth generation. Arnulf had two sons, one of whom was named Ansgisel, in a contracted form Ansgis. When Paulus speaks of this he remarks that it is thought that the name Ansgis comes from the father of ^Eneas, Anchises, who went from Troy to Italy ; and he adds that according to evidence of older date the Franks were believed to be descendants of the Trojans. These evidences of older date we have con- sidered above — Fredegar's Chronicle and Gesta regum Francorum. Meanwhile this shows that the belief that the Franks were of Trojan descent kept spreading with the lapse of time. It hardly needs to be added that there is no good foundation for the derivation of Ansgisel or Ansgis from Anchises. Ansgisel is a genuine Teutonic name. (See No. 123 concerning Ansgisel, the emigra- tion chief of the Teutonic myth.) We now pass to the second half of the tenth century, and there we find the Saxon chronicler Widukind. When he is to tell the story of the origin of the Saxon people, he presents two conflicting accounts. The one is from a Saxon source, from old native traditions, which we shall discuss later; the other is from a scholastic source, and claims that the Saxons are of Macedonian descent. According to this latter account they were a remnant of the Macedonian army of Alexander the Great, which, as Widukind had learned, after Alexander's early death, had spread over the whole earth. The Macedonians were 54 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY at that time regarded as Hellenicised Trojans. In this connection I call the reader's attention to Fredegar's Chron- icle referred to above, which tells that the Trojans, in the time of king Friga, disagreed among themselves, and that a part of them emigrated and settled in Macedonia. In this manner the Saxons, like the Franks, could claim a Trojan descent; and as England to a great extent was peopled by Saxon conquerors, the same honour was of course claimed by her people. In evidence of this, and to show that it was believed in England during the cen- turies immediately following Widukind's time, that the Saxons and Angles were of Trojan blood, I will simply refer here to a pseudo-Sibylline manuscript found in Oxford and written in very poor Latin. It was examined by the French scholar Alexandre (Excursus ad Sibyllina, p. 298), and in it Britain is said to be an island inhabited by the survivors of the Trojans (insulam reliquiis Tro- janorum inhabitatam} . In another British pseudo-Sibyl- line document it is stated that the Sibylla was a daughter of king Priam of Troy; and an effort has been made to add weight and dignity to this document by incorporating it with the works of the well known Church historian Beda, and thus date it at the beginning of the eighth cen- tury, but the manuscript itself is a compilation from the time of Frederick Barbarossa (Excurs. ad Sib., p. 289). Other pseudo-Sibylline documents in Latin give accounts of a Sibylla who lived and prophesied in Troy. I make special mention of this fact, for the reason that in the Foreword of the Prose Edda it is similarly stated that Thor, the son of Priam's daughter, was married to Sibil (Sibylla). 5S TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Thus when Franks and Saxons had been made into Trojans — the former into full-blooded Trojans and the latter into Hellenicised Trojans — it could not take long before their northern kinsmen received the same descent as a heritage. In the very nature of things the begin- ning must be made by those Northmen who became the conquerors and settlers of Normandy in the midst of "Trojan" Franks. About a hundred years after their settlement there they produced a chronicler, Dudo, deacon of St. Quentin. I have already shown that the Macedo- nians were regarded as Hellenicised Trojans. Together with the Hellenicising they had obtained the name Danai, a term applied to all Greeks. In his Norman Chronicle, which goes down to the year 996, Dudo relates (De mori- bus et gestis, &c., lib. i.) that the Norman men regarded themselves as Danai, for Danes (the Scandinavians in general) and Dania was regarded as the same race name. Together with the Normans the Scandinavians also, from whom they were descended accordingly had to be made into Trojans. And thus the matter was understood by Dudo's readers ; and when Robert Wace wrote his rhymed chronicle, Roman de Ron, about the northern conquerors of Normandy, and wanted to give an account of their origin, he could say? on the basis of a common tradition : "When the walls of Troy in ashes were laid, And the Greeks exceedingly glad were made, Then fled from flames on the Trojan strand The race that settled old Denmark's land; And in honour of the old Trojan reigns, The people called themselves the Danes." 56 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY I have now traced the scholastic tradition about the descent of the Teutonic races from Troy all the way from the chronicle where we first find this tradition recorded, down to the time when Are, Iceland's first historian, lived, and when the Icelander, Saemund, is said to have studied in Paris, the same century in which Sturlason, Heimskrin- gla's author, developed into manhood. Saxo rejected the theory current among the scholars of his time, that the northern races were Danai-Trojans. He knew that Dudo in St. Quentin was the authority upon which this belief was chiefly based, and he gives his Danes an entirely different origin, quanquam Dudo, rerum Aquitanicarum scriptor, Danos a Danais ortos nuncupatosque recenseat. The Icelanders on the other hand, accepted and continued to develop the belief, resting on the authority of five hundred years, concerning Troy as the starting-point for the Teutonic race; and in Iceland the theory is worked out and systematised as we have already seen, and is made to fit in a frame of the history of the world. The accounts given in Heimskringla and the Prose Edda in regard to the emigration from Asgard form the natural denouement of an era which had existed for centuries, and in which the events of antiquity were able to group themselves around a common centre. All peoples and families of chiefs were located around the Mediterranean Sea, and every event and every hero was connected in some way or other with Troy. In fact, a great part of the lands subject to the Roman sceptre were in ancient literature in some way connected with the Trojan war and its consequences: Macedonia 5 57 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY and Epirus through the Trojan emigrant Helenus ; Illyria and Venetia through the Trojan emigrant Antenor ; Rhe- tia and Vindelicia through the Amazons, allies of the Trojans, from whom the inhabitants of these provinces were said to be descended (Servius ad Virg., i. 248) ; Etruria through Dardanus, who was said to have emi- grated from there to Troy ; Latium and Campania through the ^neids; Sicily, the very home of the ^nean tradi- tions, through the relation between the royal families of Troy and Sicily; Sardinia (see Sallust) ; Gaul (see Luca- nus and Ammianus Marcellinus) ; Carthage through the visit of yEneas to Dido ; and of course all of Asia Minor. This was not all. According to the lost Argive History by Anaxikrates, Scamandrius, son of Hektor and And- romache, came with emigrants to Scythia and settled on the banks of the Tanais; and scarcely had Germany become known to the Romans, before it, too, became drawn into the cycle of Trojan stories, at least so far as to make this country visited by Ulysses on his many journeys and adventures (Tac., Germ.}. Every educated Greek and Roman person's fancy was filled from his earliest school-days with Troy, and traces of Dardanians and Danaians were found everywhere, just as the English in our time think they have found traces of the ten lost tribes of Israel both in the old and in the new world. In the same degree as Christianity, Church learning, and Latin manuscripts were spread among the Teutonic tribes, there were disseminated among them knowledge of and an interest in the great Trojan stories. The native stories telling of Teutonic gods and heroes received 58 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY terrible shocks from Christianity, but were rescued in another form on the lips of the people, and continued in their new guise to command their attention and devotion. In the class of Latin scholars which developed among the Christianised Teutons, the new stories learned from Latin literature, telling of Ilium, of the conflicts between Tro- jans and Greeks, of migrations, of the founding of colonies on foreign shores and the creating of new empires, were the things which especially stimulated their curiosity and captivated their fancy. The Latin literature which was to a greater or less extent accessible to the Teutonic priests, or to priests labouring among the Teu- tons, furnished abundant materials in regard to Troy both in classical and pseudo-classical authors. We need only call attention to Virgil and his commentator Servius, which became a mine of learning for the whole middle age, and among pseudo-classical works to Dares Phry- gius' Historic, de Hxcidio Trojce (which was believed to have been written by a Trojan and translated by Cornelius Nepos!), to Dictys Cretensis' Ephemeris belli Trojani (the original of which was said to have been Phoenician, and found in Dictys' alleged grave after an earthquake in the time of Nero!), and to "Pindari Thebani," Epitome Iliados Homeri. Before the story of the Trojan descent of the Franks had been created, the Teuton Jordanes, active as a writer in the middle of the sixth century, had already found a place for his Gothic fellow-countrymen in the events of the great Trojan epic. Not that he made the Goths the descendants either of the Greeks or Trojans. On the 59 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY contrary, he maintained the Goths' own traditions in regard to their descent and their original home, a matter which I shall discuss later. But according to Orosius, who is Jordanes' authority, the Goths were the same as the Getce, and when the identity of these was accepted, it was easy for Jordanes to connect the history of the Goths with the Homeric stories. A Gothic chief marries Priam's sister and fights with Achilles and Ulysses ( Jord., c. 9), and Ilium, having scarcely recovered from the war with Agamemnon, is destroyed a second time by Goths (c. 20). 11. THE ORIGIN OF THE STORY IN REGARD TO THE TROJAN DESCENT OF THE FRANKS. We must now return to the Prankish chronicles, to Fredegar's and Gesta regum Francorum, where the theory of the descent from Troy of a Teutonic tribe is presented for the first time, and thus renews the agitation handed down from antiquity, which attempted to make all ancient history a system of events radiating from Troy as their centre. I believe I am able to point out the sources of all the statements made in these chronicles in reference to this subject, and also to find the very kernel out of which the illusion regarding the Trojan birth of the Franks grew. As above stated, Fredegar admits that Virgil is the earliest authority for the claim that the Franks are descended from Troy. Fredegar's predecessor, Gregor- 60 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY ius of Tours, was ignorant of it? and, as already shown, the word Franks does not occur anywhere in Virgil. The discovery that he nevertheless gave information about the Franks and their origin must therefore have been made or known in the time intervening between Gregorius' chronicle and Fredegar's. Which, then, can be the pas- sage in Virgil's poems in which the discoverer succeeded in finding the proof that the Franks were Trojans? A careful examination of all the circumstances connected with the subject leads to the conclusion that the passage is in 2Bneis, lib. i., 242ff. : "Antenor potuit, mediis elapsus Achivis, Illyricos penetrare sinus atque intima tutus Regna Liburnorum, et fontem superare Timavi: Unde per ora novem vasto cum murmere mentis It mare proruptum, et pelago premit arva sonanti. Hie tamen ille urbem Patavi sedesque locavit Teucrorum." "Antenor having escaped from amidst the Greeks, could with safety penetrate the Illyrian Gulf and the inmost realms of Liburnia, and overpass the springs of Timavus, whence, through nine months, with loud echoing from the mountain, it bursts away, a sea impetuous, and sweeps the fields with a roaring deluge. Yet there he built the city of Padua and established a Trojan settlement." The nearest proof at hand, that this is really the passage which was interpreted as referring to the ancient history of the Franks, is based on the following circumstances : Gregorius of Tours had found in the history of Sulpi- cius Alexander accounts of violent conflicts, on the west 61 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY bank of the Rhine, between the Romans and Franks, the latter led by the chiefs Markomir and Sunno (Greg., Hist., ii. 9). From Gregorius, Gesta regum Francorum has taken both these names. According to Gesta, the Franks, under the command of Markomir and Sunno, emigrate from Pannonia, near the Moeotian marshes, and settle on the Rhine. The supposition that they had lived in Pannonia before their coming to the Rhine, the author of Gesta had learned from Gregorius. In Gesta, Markomir is made a son of the Trojan Priam, and Sunno a son of the Trojan Antenor. From this point of view, Virgil's account of Antenor's and his Trojans' journey to Europe from fallen Troy refers to the emigration of the father of the Frankish chief Sunno at the head of a tribe of Franks. And as Gesta's predecessor, the so-called Fredegar, appeals to Virgil as his authority for this Frankish emigration, and as the wanderings of Antenor are nowhere else mentioned by the Roman poet, there can be no doubt that the lines above quoted were the very ones which were regarded as the Virgilian evidence in regard to a Frankish emigration from Troy. But how did it come to be regarded as an evidence ? Virgil says that Antenor, when he had escaped the Achivians, succeeded in penetrating Illyricos sinus, the very heart of Illyria. The name Illyricum served to designate all the regions inhabited by kindred tribes extending from the Alps to the mouth of the Danube and from the Danube to the Adriatic Sea and Haemus (cp. 62 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Marquardt Rom. Staatsverwalt, 295). To Illyncum belonged the Roman provinces Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Mcesia, and the Pannonians were an Illyrian tribe. In Pannonia Gregorius of Tours had located the Franks in early times. Thus Antenor, with his Trojans, on their westward journey, traverses the same regions from which, according to Gregorius, the Franks had set out for the Rhine. Virgil also says that Antenor extended his journeys to the Liburnian kingdoms (regna Liburnorum}, From Servius' commentary on this passage, the middle age knew that the Liburnian kingdoms were Rhetia and Vin- delicia (Rhetia Vindelici ipsi sunt Liburni). Rhetia and Vindelicia separate Pannonia from the Rhine. Antenor, accordingly, takes the same route toward the West as the Franks must have taken if they came from Pannonia to the Rhine. Virgil then brings Antenor to a river, which, it is true, is called Timavus, but which is described as a mighty stream, coming thundering out of a mountainous region, where it has its source, carrying with it a mass of water which the poet compares with a sea, forming before it reaches the sea a delta, the plains of which are deluged by the billows, and finally emptying itself by many outlets into the ocean. Virgil says nine; but Servius interprets this as meaning many : "finitus est numerus pro infinito." We must pardon the Frankish scribes for taking this river to be the Rhine ; for if a water-course is to be looked for in Europe west of the land of the Liburnians, which answers to the Virgilian description, then this must be 63 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY the Rhine, on whose banks the ancestors of the Pranks for the first time appear in history. Again, Virgil tells us that Anterior settled near this river and founded a colony — Patavium — on the low plains of the delta. The Salian Franks acquired possession of the low and flat regions around the outlets of the Rhine (Insula Batavorum) about the year 287, and also of the land to the south as far as to the Scheldt; and after pro- tracted wars the Romans had to leave them in control of this region. By the very occupation of this low coun- try, its conquerors might properly be called Batavian Franks. It is only necessary to call attention to the similarity of the words Patavi and Batavi, in order to show at the same time that the conclusion could scarcely be avoided that Virgil had reference to the immigration of the Franks when he spoke of the wanderings of Antenor, the more so, since from time out of date the pronunciation of the initials B and P have been inter- changed by the Germans. In the conquered territory the Franks founded a city (Ammian. Marc., xvii. 2, 5). Thus it appears that the Franks were supposed to have migrated to the Rhine under the leadership of Antenor. The first Frankish chiefs recorded, after their appearance there, are Markomir and Sunno. From this the conclusion was drawn that Sunno was Antenor's son ; and as Marko- mir ought to be the son of some celebrated Trojan chief, he was made the son of Priam. Thus we have explained Fredegar's statement that Virgil is his authority for the Trojan descent of these Franks. This seemed to be established for all time. 64 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY The wars fought around the Moeotian marshes between the emperor Valentinianus, the Alamanni, and the Franks, of which Gesta speaks, are not wholly inventions of the fancy. The historical kernel in this confused semi-mythi- cal narrative is that Valentinianus really did fight with the Alamanni, and that the Franks for some time were allies of the Romans, and came into conflict with those same Alamanni (Ammian. Marc., libs, xxx., xxxi.). But the scene of these battles was not the Moeotian marshes and Pannonia, as Gesta supposes, but the regions on the Rhine. The unhistorical statement of Gregorius that the Franks came from Pannonia is based only on the fact that Prankish warriors for some time formed a Sicambra cohors, which about the year 26 was incorporated with the Roman troops stationed in Pannonia and Thracia. The cohort is believed to have remained in Hungary and formed a colony, where Buda now is situated. Gesta makes Pannonia extend from the Moeotian marshes to Tanais, since according to Gregorius and earlier chroni- clers, these waters were the boundary between Europe and Asia, and since Asia was regarded as a synonym of the Trojan empire. Virgil had called the Trojan king- dom Asia : Postq.uam res Asice Priomique evertere gen- tern, &c., (dineid, iii. 1). Thus we have exhibited the seed out of which the fable about the Trojan descent of the Franks grew into a tree spreading its branches over all Teutonic Europe, in the same manner as the earlier fable, which was at least developed if not born in Sicily, in regard to the Trojan 65 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY descent of the Romans had grown into a tree overshad- owing all the lands around the Mediterranean, and extend- ing one of its branches across Gaul to Britain and Ireland. The first son of the Britons, "Brutus," was, acording to Galfred, great-grandson of yEneas, and migrated from Alba Longa to Ireland. So far as the Gauls are concerned, the incorporation of Cis-Alpine Gaul with the Roman Empire, and the Roman- ising of the Gauls dwelling there, had at an early day made way for the belief that they had the same origin and were of the same blood as the Romans. Conse- quently they too were Trojans. This view, encouraged by Roman politics, gradually found its way to the Gauls on the other side of the Rhine; and even before Caesar's time the Roman senate had in its letters to the ^Eduans, often called them the "brothers and kinsmen" of the Romans (fratres consanguineique — Caesar, De Bell. Gall., i. 33, 2). Of the Avernians Lucanus sings (i. 427) : Averni . . . ausi Latio se fingere fratres, sanguine ab Iliaco populi. Thus we see that when the Franks, having made them- selves masters of the Romanised Gaul, claimed a Trojan descent, then this was the repetition of a history of which Gaul for many centuries previously had been the scene. After the Prankish conquest the population of Gaul con- sisted for the second time of two nationalities unlike in language and customs, and now as before it was a political measure of no slight importance to bring these two nationalities as closely together as possible by the belief in a common descent. The Roman Gauls and the Franks 66 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY were represented as having been one people in the time of the Trojan war. After the fall of the common father- land they were divided into two separate tribes, with separate destinies, until they refound each other in the west of Europe, to dwell together again in Gaul. This explains how it came to pass that, when they thought they had found evidence of this view in Virgil, this was at once accepted, and was so eagerly adopted that the older traditions in regard to the origin and migrations of the Franks were thrust aside and consigned to oblivion. His- tory repeats itself a third time when the Normans con- quered and became masters of that part of Gaul which after them is called Normandy. Dudo, their chronicler, says that they regarded themselves as being ex Antenore progenitos, descendants of Antenor. This is sufficient proof that they had borrowed from the Franks the tradi- tion in regard to their Trojan descent. 12. WHY ODIN WAS GIVEN ANTENOR'S PLACE AS LEADER OF THE TROJAN EMIGRATION. So long as the Franks were the only ones of the Teutons who claimed Trojan descent, it was sufficient that the Teutonic-Trojan immigration had the father of a Frank- ish chief as its leader. But in the same degree as the belief in a Trojan descent spread among the other Teu- tonic tribes and assumed the character of a statement equally important to all the Teutonic tribes, the idea would naturally present itself that the leader of the great 67 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY immigration was a person of general Teutonic import- ance. There was no lack of names to choose from. Most conspicuous was the mythical Teutonic patriarch, whom Tacitus speaks of and calls Mannus ( Germania, 2 ) , the grandson of the goddess Jord (Earth). There can be no doubt that he still was remembered by this (Mann) or some other name (for nearly all Teutonic mythic persons have several names), since he reappears in the beginning of the fourteenth century in Heinrich Frauenlob as Mennor, the patriarch of the German people and Ger- man tongue.* But Mannus had to yield to another universal Teutonic mythic character, Odin, and for reasons which we shall now present. As Christianity was gradually introduced among the Teutonic peoples, the question confronted them, what manner of beings those gods had been in whom they and their ancestors so long had believed. Their Christian teachers had two answers, and both were easily reconcil- able. The common answer, and that usually given to the converted masses, was that the gods of their ancestors were demons, evil spirits, who ensnared men in supersti- tion in order to become worshipped as divine beings. The other answer, which was better calculated to please the noble-born Teutonic families, who thought themselves descended from the gods, was that these divinities were originally human persons — kings, chiefs, legislators, who, endowed with higher wisdom and secret knowledge, made *"Mennor der erste was genant, Dem diutische rede got tet bekant." Later on in this work we shall discuss the traditions of the Mannussaga found in Scandinavia and Germany. 68 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY use of these to make people believe that they were gods, and worship them as such. Both answers could, as stated, easily be reconciled with each other, for it was evident that when these proud and deceitful rulers died, their unhappy spirits joined the ranks of evil demons, and as demons they continued to deceive the people, in order to maintain through all ages a worship hostile to the true religion. Both sides of this view we find current among the Teutonic races through the whole middle age. The one which particularly presents the old gods as evil demons is found in popular traditions from this epoch. The other, which presents the old gods as mortals, as chiefs and lawmakers with magic power, is more com- monly reflected in the Teutonic chronicles, and was regarded among the scholars as the scientific view. Thus it followed of necessity that Odin, the chief of the Teutonic gods, and from whom their royal houses were fond of tracing their descent, also must have been a wise king of antiquity and skilled in the magic arts, and infor- mation was of course sought with the greatest interest in regard to the place where he had reigned, and in regard to his origin. There were two sources of investigation in reference to this matter. One source was the treasure of mythic songs and traditions of their own race. But what might be history in these seemed to the students so involved in superstition and fancy, that not much infor- mation seemed obtainable from them. But there was also another source, which in regard to historical trust- worthiness seemed incomparably better, and that was the Latin literature to be found in the libraries of the convents. 69 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY During centuries when the Teutons had employed no other art than poetry for preserving the memory of the life and deeds of their ancestors, the Romans, as we know, had had parchment and papyrus to write on, and had kept systematic annals extending centuries back. Conse- quently this source must be more reliable. But what had this source — what had the Roman annals or the Roman literature in general to tell about Odin? Absolutely nothing, it would seem, inasmuch as the name Odin, or Wodan, does not occur in any of the authors of the ancient literature. But this was only an apparent obsta- cle. The ancient king of our race, Odin, they said, has had many names — one name among one people, and another among another, and there can be no doubt that he is the same person as the Romans called Mercury and the Greeks Hermes. The evidence of the correctness of identifying Odin with Mercury and Hermes the scholars might have found in Tacitus' work on Germany, where it is stated in the ninth chapter that the chief god of the Germans is the same as Mercury among the Romans. But Tacitus was almost unknown in the convents and schools of this period of the middle age. They could not use this proof, but they had another and completely compensating evidence of the assertion. Originally the Romans did not divide time into weeks of seven days. Instead, they had weeks of eight days, and the farmer worked the seven days and went on the eighth to the market. But the week of seven days had been in existence for a very long time among certain 70 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Semitic peoples, and already in the time of the Roman republic many Jews lived in Rome and in Italy. Through them the week of seven days became generally known. The Jewish custom of observing the sacredness of the Sabbath, the first day of the week, by abstaining from all labour, could not fail to be noticed by the strangers among whom they dwelt. The Jews had, however, no special name for each day of the week. But the Oriental, Egyp- tian, and Greek astrologers and astronomers, who in large numbers sought their fortunes in Rome, did more than the Jews to introduce the week of seven days among all classes of the metropolis, and the astrologers had special names for each of the seven days of the week. Saturday was the planet's and the planet-god Saturnus' day; Sunday, the sun's; Monday, the moon's; Tuesday, Mars'; Wednes- day, Mercury's ; Thursday, Jupiter's ; Friday, Venus' day. Already in the beginning of the empire these names of the days were quite common in Italy. The astrological almanacs, which were circulated in the name of the Egyp- tian Petosiris among all families who had the means to buy them contributed much to bring this about. From Italy both the taste for astrology and the adoption of the week of seven days, with the above-mentioned names, spread not only into Spain and Gaul, but also into those parts of Germany that were incorporated with the Roman Empire, Germania superior and inferior, where the Romanising of the people, with Cologne (Civitas Ubio- rum) as the centre, made great progress. Teutons who had served as officers and soldiers in the Roman armies, and were familiar with the everyday customs of the TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Romans, were to be found in various parts of the inde- pendent Teutonic territory, and it is therefore not strange if the week of seven days, with a separate name given to each day, was known and in use more or less extensively throughout Teutondom even before Christianity had taken root east of the Rhine, and long before Rome itself was converted to Christianity. But from this introduction of the seven-day week did not follow the adoption of the Roman names of the days. The Teutons translated the names into their own language, and in so doing chose among their own divinities those which most nearly corre- sponded to the Roman. The translation of the names is made with a discrimination which seems to show that it was made in the Teutonic border country, governed by the Romans, by people who were as familiar with the Roman gods as with their own. In that border land there must have been persons of Teutonic birth who officiated as priests before Roman altars. The days of the sun and moon were permitted to retain their names. They were called Sunday and Monday. The day of the war-god Mars became the day of the war-god Tyr, Tuesday. The day of Mercury became Odin's day, Wednesday. The day of the lightning-armed Jupiter became the day of the thundering Thor, Thursday. The day of the goddess of love Venus became that of the goddess of love Freyja, Friday. Saturnus, who in astrology is a watery star, and has his house in the sign of the waterman, was among the Romans, and before them among the Greeks and Chaldseans, the lord of the seventh day. Among the North Teutons, or at least, among a part of them, his 72 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY day got its name from laug* which means a bath, and it is worthy of notice in this connection that the author of the Prose Edda's Foreword identifies Saturnus with the sea-god Njord. Here the Latin scholars had what seemed to them a complete proof that the Odin of which their stories of the past had so much to tell was — and was so recognised by their heathen ancestors — the same historical person as the Romans worshipped by the name Mercury. At first sight it may seem strange that Mercury and Odin were regarded as identical. We are wont to con- ceive Hermes (Mercury) as the Greek sculptors repre- sented him, the ideal of beauty and elastic youth, while we imagine Odin as having a contemplative, mysterious look. And while Odin in the Teutonic mythology is the father and ruler of the gods, Mercury in the Roman has, of course, as the son of Zeus, a high rank, but his dignity does not exempt him from being the very busy messenger of the gods of Olympus. But neither Greeks nor Romans nor Teutons attached much importance to such circum- stances in the specimens we have of their comparative mythology. The Romans knew that the same god among the same people might be represented differently, and that the local traditions also sometimes differed in re- gard to the kinship and rank of a divinity. They there- fore paid more attention to what Tacitus calls vis numi- nis — that is, the significance of the divinity as a symbol of nature, or its relation to the affairs of the community and to human culture. Mercury was the symbol of wis- * Saturday is in the North called Loverdag, Lordag — that is, Laugar- dag = bathday. — TR. 6 73 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY dom and intelligence; so was Odin. Mercury was the god of eloquence; Odin likewise. Mercury had intro- duced poetry and song among men ; Odin also. Mercury had taught men the art of writing ; Odin had given them the runes. Mercury did not hesitate to apply cunning when it was needed to secure him possession of something that he desired ; nor was Odin particularly scrupulous in regard to the means. Mercury, with wings on his hat and on his heels, flew over the world, and often appeared as a traveller among men; Odin, the ruler of the wind, did the same. Mercury was the god of martial games, and still he was not really the war-god; Odin also was the chief of martial games and combats, but the war- god's occupation he had left to Tyr. In all important respects Mercury and Odin, therefore, resembled each other. To the scholars this must have been an additional proof that this, in their eyes, historical chief, whom the Romans called Mercury and the Teutons Odin, had been one and the same human person, who had lived in a dis- tant past, and had alike induced Greeks, Romans, and Goths to worship him as a god. To get additional and more reliable information in regard to this Odin-Mercury than what the Teutonic heathen traditions could impart, it was only necessary to study and interpret correctly what Roman history had to say about Mercury. As is known, some mysterious documents called the Sibylline books were preserved in Jupiter's temple, on the Capitoline Hill, in Rome. The Roman State was the possessor, and kept the strictest watch over them, 74 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY so that their contents remained a secret to all excepting those whose position entitled them to read them. A college of priests, men in high standing, were appointed to guard them and to consult them when circumstances demanded it. The common opinion that the Roman State consulted them for information in regard to the future is incorrect. They were consulted only to find out by what ceremonies of penance and propitiation the wrath of the higher powers might be averted at times when Rome was in trouble, or when prodigies of one kind or another had excited the people and caused fears of impending misfortune. Then the Sibylline books were produced by the properly-appointed persons, and in some line or passage they found which divinity was angry and ought to be propitiated. This done, they published their interpretation of the passage, but did not make known the words or phrases of the passage, for the text of the Sibylline books must not be known to the public. The books were written in the Greek tongue. The story telling how these books came into the pos- session of the Roman State through a woman who sold them to Tarquin — according to one version Tarquin the Elder, according to another Tarquin the Younger — is found in Roman authors who were well known and read throughout the whole middle age. The woman was a Sibylla, according to Varro the Erythreian, so called from a Greek city in Asia Minor; according to Virgil the Cumaean, a prophetess from Cumse in southern Italy. Both versions could easily be harmonised, for Cumse was a Greek colony from Asia Minor; and we read in Ser- 75 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY vius' commentaries on Virgil's poems that the Erythreian Sibylla was by many regarded as identical with the Cumsean. From Asia Minor she was supposed to have come to Cumse. In western Europe the people of the middle age claimed that there were twelve Sibyllas : the Persian, the Libyan, the Delphian, the Cimmerinean, the Erythreian, the Samian, the Cumaean, the Hellespontian or Trojan, the Phrygian and Tiburtinian, and also the Sibylla Europa and the Sibylla Agrippa. Authorities for the first ten of these were the Church father Lactantius and the West Gothic historian Isodorus of Sevilla. The last two, Eu- ropa and Agrippa, were simply added in order to make the number of Sibyllas equal to that of the prophets and the apostles. But the scholars of the middle ages also knew from Servius that the Cumaean Sibylla was, in fact, the same as the Erythreian; and from the Church father Lactan- tius, who was extensively read in the middle ages, they also learned that the Erythreian was identical with the Trojan. Thanks to Lactantius, they also thought they could determine precisely where the Trojan Sibylla was born. Her birthplace was the town Marpessus, near the Trojan Mount Ida. From the same Church father they learned that the real contents of the Sibylline books had consisted of narrations concerning Trojan events, of lives of the Trojan kings, &c., and also of prophecies concern- ing the fall of Troy and other coming events, and that the poet Homer in his works was a mere plagiator, who had found a copy of the books of the Sibylla, had recast 76 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY and falsified it, and published it in his own name in the form of heroic poems concerning Troy. This seemed to establish the fact that those books, which the woman from Cumae had sold to the Roman king Tarquin, were written by a Sibylla who was born in the Trojan country, and that the books which Trojan bought of her contained accounts and prophecies — ac- counts especially in regard to the Trojan chiefs and heroes afterwards glorified in Homer's poems. As the Romans came from Troy, these chiefs and heroes were their ancestors, and in this capacity they were entitled to the worship which the Romans considered due to the souls of their forefathers. From a Christian standpoint this was of course idolatry; and as the Sibyllas were be- lieved to have made predictions even in regard to Christ, it might seem improper for them to promote in this man- ner the cause of idolatry. But Lactantius gave a satis- factory explanation of this matter. The Sibylla, he said, had certainly prophesied truthfully in regard to Christ; but this she did by divine compulsion and in moments of divine inspiration. By birth and in her sympathies she was a heathen, and when under the spell of her genu- ine inspirations, she proclaimed heathen and idolatrous doctrines. In our critical century all this may seem like mere fancies. But careful examinations have shown that an historical kernel is not wanting in these representations. And the historical fact which lies back of all this is that the Sibylline books which were preserved in Rome ac- tually were written in Asia Minor in the ancient Trojan 77 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY territory; or, in other words, that the oldest known col- lection of so-called Sibylline oracles was made in Mar- pessus, near the Trojan mountain Ida, in the time of Solon. From Marpessus the collection came to the neigh- bouring city Gergis, and was preserved in the Apollo temple there; from Gergis it came to Cumae, and from Cumse to Rome in the time of the kings. How it came there is not known. The story about the Cumsean woman and Tarquin is an invention, and occurs in vari- ous forms. It is also demonstrably an invention that the Sibylline books in Rome contained accounts of the heroes in the Trojan war. On the other hand, it is ab- solutely certain that they referred to gods and to a wor- ship which in the main were unknown to the Romans before the Sibylline books were introduced there, and that to these books must chiefly be attributed the remark- able change which took place in Roman mythology dur- ing the republican centuries. The Roman mythology, which from the beginning had but few gods of clear iden- tity with the Greek, was especially during this epoch enlarged, and received gods and goddesses who were worshipped in Greece and in the Greek and Hellenised part of Asia Minor where the Sibylline books originated. The way this happened was that whenever the Romans in trouble or distress consulted the Sibylline books they received the answer that this or that Greek-Asiatic god or goddess was angry and must be propitiated. In con- nection with the propitiation ceremonies the god or god- dess was received in the Roman pantheon, and sooner or later a temple was built to him; and thus it did not 78 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY take long before the Romans appropriated the myths that were current in Greece concerning these borrowed divin- ities. This explains why the Roman mythology, which in its oldest sources is so original and so unlike the Greek, in the golden period of Roman literature comes to us in an almost wholly Greek attire; this explains why Roman and Greek mythology at that time might be regarded as almost identical. Nevertheless the Romans were able even in the later period of antiquity to discriminate be- tween their native gods and those introduced by the Sibyl- line books. The former were worshipped according to a Roman ritual, the latter according to a Greek. To the latter belonged Apollo, Artemis, Latona, Ceres, Hermes, Mercury, Proserpina, Cybile, Venus, and Esculapius; and that the Sibylline books were a Greek-Trojan work, whose original home was Asia Minor and the Trojan territory, was well known to the Romans. When the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter was burned down eighty- four years before Christ, the Sibylline books were lost. But the State could not spare them. A new collection had to be made, and this was mainly done by gathering the oracles which could be found one by one in those places which the Trojan or Erythreian Sibylla had vis- ited, that is to say, in Asia Minor, especially in Erythrae, and in Ilium, the ancient Troy. So far as Hermes-Mercury is concerned, the Roman annals inform us that he got his first lectisternium in the year 399 before Christ by order from the Sibylline books. Lectisternium was a sacrifice: the image of the god was laid on a bed with a pillow under the left arm, and beside 79 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY the image was placed a table and a meal, which as a sacri- fice was offered to the god. About one hundreds years before that time, Hermes-Mercury had received his first temple in Rome. Hermes-Mercury seemed, therefore, like Apollo, Venus, Esculapius, and others, to have been a god orig- inally unknown to the Romans, the worship of whom the Trojan Sibylla had recommended to the Romans. This was known to the scholars of the middle age. Now, we must bear in mind that it was as certain to them as an undoubted scientific fact that the gods were orig- inally men, chiefs, and heroes, and that the deified chief whom the Romans worshipped as Mercury, and the Greeks as Hermes, was the same as the Teutons called Odin, and from whom distinguished Teutonic families traced their descent. We must also remember that the Sibylla who was supposed to have recommended the Romans to worship the old king Odin-Mercurius was be- lieved to have been a Trojan woman, and that her books were thought to have contained stories about Troy's heroes, in addition to various prophecies, and so this man- ner of reasoning led to the conclusion that the gods who were introduced in Rome through the Sibylline books were celebrated Trojans who had lived and fought at a time preceding the fall of Troy. Another inevitable and logical conclusion was that Odin had been a Trojan chief, and when he appears in Teutonic mythology as the chief of gods, it seemed most probable that he was identical with the Trojan king Priam, and that Priam was iden- tical with Hermes-Mercury. 80 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Now, as the ancestors of the Romans were supposed to have emigrated from Troy to Italy under the leader- ship of ^neas, it was necessary to assume that the Romans were not the only Trojan emigrants, for, since the Teutons worshipped Odin-Priamus-Hermes as their chief god, and since a number of Teutonic families traced their descent from this Odin, the Teutons, too, must have emigrated from Troy. But, inasmuch as the Teutonic dialects differed greatly from the Roman language, the Trojan Romans and the Trojan Teutons must have been separated a very long time. They must have parted company immediately after the fall of Troy and gone in different directions, and as the Romans had taken a southern course on their way to Europe, the Teutons must have taken a northern. It was also apparent to the scholars that the Romans had landed in Europe many centuries earlier than the Teu- tons, for Rome had been founded already in 754 or 753 before Christ, but of the Teutons not a word is to be found in the annals before the period immediately preceding the birth of Christ. Consequently, the Teutons must have made a halt somewhere on their journey to the North. This halt must have been of several centuries' duration, and, of course, like the Romans, they must have founded a city, and from it ruled a territory in com- memoration of their fallen city Troy. In that age very little was known of Asia, where this Teutonic-Trojan colony was supposed to have been situated, but, both from Orosius and, later, from Gregorius of Tours, it was known that our world is divided into three large divis- 81 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY ions — Asia, Europe, and Africa — and that Asia and Eu- rope are divided by a river called Tanais. And having learned from Gregorius of Tours that the Teutonic Franks were said to have lived in Pannonia in ancient times, and having likewise learned that the Mceotian marshes lie east of Pannonia, and that the Tanais empties into these marshes, they had the course marked out by which the Teutons had come to Europe — that is, by way of Tanais and the Mceotian marshes. Not knowing any- thing at all of importance in regard to Asia beyond Tanais, it was natural that they should locate the colony of the Teutonic Trojans on the banks of this river. I think I have now pointed out the chief threads of the web of that scholastic romance woven out of Latin con- vent learning concerning a Teutonic emigration from Troy and Asia, a web which extends from Fredegar's Frankish chronicle, through the following chronicles of the middle age, down into Heimskringla and the Fore- word of the Younger Edda. According to the Frankish chronicle, Gesta regum Francorum, the emigration of the Franks from the Trojan colony near the Tanais was thought to have occurred very late; that is, in the time of Valentinianus I., or in other words, between 364 and 375 after Christ. The Icelandic authors very well knew that Teutonic tribes had been far into Europe long be- fore that time, and the reigns they had constructed in re- gard to the North indicated that they must have emi- grated from the Tanais colony long before the Franks. As the Roman attack was the cause of the Frankish emi- gration, it seemed probable that these world-conquerors 82 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY had also caused the earlier emigration from Tanais ; and as Pompey's expedition to Asia was the most celebrated of all the expeditions made by the Romans in the East — Pompey even entered Jerusalem and visited its Temple — it was found most convenient to let the Asas emigrate in the time of Pompey, but they left a remnant of Teu- tons near the Tanais, under the rule of Odin's younger brothers Vile and Ve, in order that this colony might con- tinue to exist until the emigration of the Franks took place. Finally, it should be mentioned that the Trojan migra- tion saga, as born and developed in antiquity, does not indicate by a single word that Europe was peopled later than Asia, or that it received its population from Asia. The immigration of the Trojans to Europe was looked upon as a return to their original homes. Dardanus, the founder of Troy, was regarded as the leader of an emigration from Etruria to Asia (JEneid, iii. 165 ff., Serv. Comm.). As a rule the European peoples re- garded themselves in antiquity as autochthones if they did not look upon themselves as immigrants from regions within Europe to the territories they inhabited in his- toric times. 13. THE MATERIALS OF THE ICELANDIC TROY SAGA. We trust the facts presented above have convinced the reader that the saga concerning the immigration of Odin and the Asas to Europe is throughout a product of 83 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY the convent learning of the middle ages. That it was born and developed independently of the traditions of the Teu- tonic heathendom shall be made still more apparent by the additional proofs that are accessible in regard to this sub- ject. It may, however, be of some interest to first dwell on some of the details in the Heimskringla. and in the Younger Edda and point out their source. It should be borne in mind that, according to the Younger Edda, it was Zoroaster who first thought of building the Tower of Babel, and that in this undertak- ing he was assisted by seventy-two master-masons. Zoro- aster is, as is well known, another form for the Bactrian or Iranian name Zarathustra, the name of the prophet and religious reformer who is praised on every page of Avesta's holy books, and who in a prehistoric age founded the religion which far down in our own era has been confessed by the Persians, and is still confessed by their descendants in India, and is marked by a most serious and moral view of the world. In the Persian and in the clas- sical literatures this Zoroaster has naught to do with Babel, still less with the Tower of Babel. But already in the first century of Christianity, if not earlier, tradi- tions became current which made Zoroaster the founder of all sorcery, magic, and astrology (Plinius, Hist. Nat., xxx. 2) ; and as astrology particularly was supposed to have had its centre and base in Babylon, it was natural to assume that Babel had been the scene of Zoroaster's activity. The Greek-Roman chronicler Ammianus Mar- cellinus, who lived in the fourth century after Christ, still knows that Zoroaster was a man from Bactria, not from 84 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Babylon, but he already has formed the opinion that Zoroaster had gotten much of his wisdom from the writ- ings of the Babylonians. In the Church fathers the saga is developed in this direction, and from the Church fath- ers it got into the Latin chronicles. The Christian his- torian Orosius also knows that Zoroaster was from Bac- tria, but he already connects Zoroaster with the history of Nineveh and Babylon, and makes Minus make war against him and conquer him. Orosius speaks of him as the inventor of sorcery and the magic arts. Gregorius of Tours told in his time that Zoroaster was identical with Noah's grandson, with Chus, the son of Ham, that this Chus went to the Persians, and that the Persians called him Zoroaster, a name supposed to mean "the liv- ing star." Gregorius also relates that this Zoroaster was the first person who taught men the arts of sorcery and led them astray into idolatry, and as he knew the art of making stars and fire fall from heaven, men paid him divine worship. At that time, Gregorius continues, men desired to build a tower which should reach to heaven. But God confused their tongues and brought their pro- ject to naught. Nimrod, who was supposed to have built Babel, was, according to Gregorius, a son of Zoro- aster. If we compare this with what the Foreword of the Younger Edda tells, then we find that there, too, Zoro- aster is a descendant of Noah's son Cham and the founder of all idolatry, and that he himself was wor- shipped as a god. It is evident that the author of the Foreword gathered these statements from some source 85 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY related to Gregorius' history. Of the 72 master-masons who were said to have helped Zoroaster in building the tower, and from whom the 72 languages of the world originated, Gregorius has nothing to say, but the saga about these builders was current everywhere during the middle ages. In the earlier Anglo-Saxon literature there is a very naive little work, very characteristic of its age, called "A Dialogue between Saturn and Solomon," in which Saturnus tests Solomon's knowledge and puts to him all sorts of biblical questions, which Solomon an- swers partly from the Bible and partly from sagas con- nected with the Bible. Among other things Saturnus informs Solomon that Adam was created out of various elements, weighing altogether eight pounds, and that when created he was just 116 inches long. Solomon tells that Shem, Noah's son, had thirty sons, Cham thirty, and Japhet twelve — making 72 grandsons of Noah ; and as there can be no doubt that it was the author's opinion that all the languages of the world, thought to be 72, originated at the Tower of Babel, and were spread into the world by these 72 grandsons of Noah, we here find the key to who those 72 master-masons were who, ac- cording to the Edda, assisted Zoroaster in building the tower. They were accordingly his brothers. Luther's contemporary, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, who, in his work De occulta Philosophia, gathered numerous data in regard to the superstition of all ages, has a chapter on the power and sacred meaning of various numbers, and says in speaking of the number 72 : "The number 72 corresponds to the 72 languages, the 72 elders in the syn- 86 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY agogue, the 72 commentators of the Old Testament, Christ's 72 disciples, God's 72 names, the 72 angels who govern the 72 divisions of the Zodiac, each division of which corresponds to one of the 72 languages." This illustrates sufficiently how widespread was the tradition in regard to the 72 master-masons during the centuries of the middle ages. Even Nestor's Russian chronicle knows the tradition. It continued to enjoy a certain authority in the seventeenth century. An edition of Sul- picius Severus' Opera Omnia, printed in 1647, still con- siders it necessary to point out that a certain commenta- tor had doubted whether the number 72 was entirely exact. Among the doubters we find Rudbeck in his At- lantica. What the Edda tells about king Saturnus and his son, king Jupiter, is found in a general way, partly in the Church-father Lactantius, partly in Virgil's commenta- tor Servius, who was known and read during the middle age. As the Edda claims that Saturnus knew the art of producing gold from the molten iron, and that no other than gold coins existed in his time, this must be considered an interpretation of the statement made in Latin sources that Saturnus' was the golden age — aurea secula, aurea regna. Among the Romans Saturnus was the guardian of treasures, and the treasury of the Ro- mans was in the temple of Saturnus in the Forum. The genealogy found in the Edda, according to which the Trojan king Priam, supposed to be the oldest and the proper Odin, was descended in the sixth generation from Jupiter, is taken from Latin chronicles. Herikon of the 8? TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Edda, grandson of Jupiter, is the Roman-Greek Erich- tonius; the Edda's Lamedon is Laomedon. Then the Edda has the difficult task of continuing the genealogy through the dark centuries between the burning of Troy and the younger Odin's immigration to Europe. Here the Latin sources naturally fail it entirely, and it is obliged to seek other aid. It first considers the native sources. There it finds that Thor is also called Lorride, Indride, and Vingthor, and that he had two sons, Mode and Magne; but it also finds a genealogy made about the twelfth century, in which these different names of Thor are applied to different persons, so that Lorride is the son of Thor, Indride the son of Lorride, Vingthor the son of Indride, &c. This mode of making genealogies was current in Iceland in the twelfth century, and be- fore that time among the Christian Anglo-Saxons. Thereupon the Edda continues its genealogy with the names Bedvig, Atra, Itrman, Heremod, Skjaldun or Skold, Bjaef, Jat, Gudolf, Fjarlaf or Fridleif, and finally Odin, that is to say, the younger Odin, who had adopted this name after his deified progenitor Hermes-Priam. This whole genealogy is taken from a Saxon source, and can be found in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle name for name. From Odin the genealogy divides itself into two branches, one from Odin's son, Veggdegg, and another from Odin's son, Beldegg or Balder. The one branch has the names Veggdegg, Vitrgils, Ritta, Heingest. These names are found arranged into a genealogy by the English Church historian Beda, by the English chron- icler Nennius, and in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. From 88 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY one of these three sources the Edda has taken them, and the only difference is that the Edda must have made a slip in one place and changed the name Vitta to Ritta. The other branch, which begins with Balder or Beldegg, embraces eight names, which are found in precisely the same order in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. In regard to Balder, the Edda says that Odin appointed him king in Westphalia. This statement is based on the tradition that Balder was known among the heathen Ger- mans and Scandinavians by the name Fal {Pair, see No. 92), with its variation Fol. In an age when it was be- lieved that Sweden got its name from a king Sven, Gotaland from a king Got, Danmark from a king Dan, Angeln from a king Angul, the Franks from a duke Francio, it might be expected that Falen (East- and West-Phalia) had been named after a king Fal. That this name was recognised as belonging to Balder not only in Germany, but also in Scandinavia, I shall give further proof of in No. 92. As already stated, Thor was, according to the Edda, married to Sibil, that is to say, the Sibylla, and the Edda adds that this Sibil is called Sif in the North. In the Teutonic mythology Thor's wife is the goddess Sif. It has already been mentioned that it was believed in the middle age that the Cumsean or Erythreian Sibylla orig- inally came from Troy, and it is not, therefore, strange that the author of the Younger Edda, who speaks of the Trojan descent of Odin and his people, should marry Thor to the most famous of Trojan women. Still, this marriage is not invented by the author. The statement ? 89 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY has an older foundation, and taking all circumstances into consideration, may be traced to Germany, where Sif, in the days of heathendom, was as well known as Thor. To the northern form Sif corresponds the Gothic form Sibba, the Old English Sib, the Old Saxon Sibbia, and the Old High German Sibba, and Sibil, Sibilla,. was thought to be still another form of the same name. The belief, based on the assumed fact that Thor's wife Sif was iden- tical with the Sibylla, explains a phenomenon not hitherto understood in the saga-world and church sculpture of the middle age, and on this point I now have a few re- marks to make. In the Norse mythology several goddesses or discs have, as we know, feather-guises, with which they fly through space. Freyja has a falcon-guise; several discs have swan-guises (Volundarkv. Helreid. Brynh., 6). Among these swan-maids was Sif (see No. 123). Sif could therefore present herself now in human form, and again in the guise of the most beautiful swimming bird, the swan. A legend, the origin of which may be traced to Italy, tells that when the queen of Saba visited king Solomon, she was in one place to cross a brook. A tree or beam was thrown across as a bridge. The wise queen stopped, and would not let her foot touch the beam. She pre- ferred to wade across the brook, and when she was asked the reason for this, she answered that in a prophetic vision she had seen that the time would come when this tree would be made into a cross on which the Saviour of the world was to suffer. 90 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY The legend came also to Germany, but here it appears with the addition that the queen of Saba was rewarded for this piety, and was freed while wading across the brook from a bad blemish. One of her feet, so says the Ger- man addition, was of human form, but the other like the foot of a water-bird up to the moment when she took it out of the brook. Church sculpture sometimes in the middle age represented the queen of Saba as a woman well formed, except that she had one foot like that of a water-bird. How the Germans came to represent her with this blemish, foreign to the Italian legend, has not heretofore been explained, although the influence of the Greek-Roman mythology on the legends of the Romance peoples, and that of the Teutonic mythology on the Teu- tonic legends, has been traced in numerous instances. During the middle ages the queen of Saba was called queen Seba, on account of the Latin translation of the Bible, where she is styled Regina Seba, and Seba was thought to be her name. The name suggested her iden- tity, on the one hand, with Sibba, Sif, whose swan- guise lived in the traditions; on the other hand, with Sibilla, and the latter particularly, since queen Seba had proved herself to be in possession of prophetic inspira- tion, the chief characteristic of the Sibylla. Seba, Sibba, and Sibilla were in the popular fancy blended into one. This explains how queen Seba among the Germans, but not among the Italians, got the blemish which reminds us of the swan-guise of Thor's wife Sibba. And hav- ing come to the conclusion that Thor was a Trojan, his wife Sif also ought to be a Trojan woman. And as it TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. was known that the Sibylla was Trojan, and that queen Seba was a Sibylla, this blending was almost inevitable. The Latin scholars found further evidence of the cor- rectness of this identity in a statement drawn originally from Greek sources to the effect that Jupiter had had a Sibylla, by name Lamia, as mistress, and had begotten a daughter with her by name Herophile, who was en- dowed with her mother's gift of prophecy. As we know, Mercury corresponds to Odin, and Jupiter to Thor, in the names of the days of the week. It thus follows that it was Thor who stood in this relation to the Sibylla. The character of the anthropomorphosed Odin, who is lawgiver and king, as represented in Heimskringla and the Prose Edda, is only in part based on native northern traditions concerning the heathen god Odin, the ruler of heaven. This younger Odin, constructed by Chris- tian authors, has received his chief features from docu- ments found in the convent libraries. When the Prose Edda tells that the chief who proceeded from Asgard to Saxland and Scandinavia did not really bear the name Odin, but had assumed this name after the elder and dei- fied Odin-Priam of Troy, to make people believe that he was a god, then this was no new idea. Virgil's com- mentator, Servius, remarks that ancient kings very fre- quently assumed names which by right belonged only to the gods, and he blames Virgil for making Saturnus come from the heavenly Olympus to found a golden age in Italy. This Saturnus, says Servius, was not a god from above, but a mortal king from Crete who had taken the god Saturnus' name. The manner in which Saturnus, 02 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY on his arrival in Italy and the vicinity of Rome, was re- ceived by Janus, the king ruling there, reminds us of the manner in which Odin, on his arrival in Svithiod, was received by king Gylfe. Janus is unpretentious enough to leave a portion of his territory and his royal power to Saturnus, and Gylfe makes the same concessions to Odin. Saturnus thereupon introduces a higher culture among the people of Latium, and Odin brings a higher culture to the inhabitants of Scandinavia. The Church father Lactantius, like Servius, speaks of kings who tried to appropriate the name and worship of the gods, and con- demns them as foes of truth and violators of the doc- trines of the true God. In regard to one of them, the Persian Mithra, who, in the middle age, was confounded with Zoroaster, Tertulia- nus relates that he (Mithra), who knew in advance that Christianity would come, resolved to anticipate the true faith by introducing some of its customs. Thus, for ex- ample, Mithra, according to Tertulianus, introduced the custom of blessing by laying the hands on the head or the brow of those to whom he wished to insure prosper- ity, and he also adopted among his mysteries a practice resembling the breaking of the bread in the Eucharist. So far as the blessing by the laying on of hands is con- cerned, Mithra especially used it in giving courage to the men whom he sent out as soldiers to war. With these words of Tertulianus it is interesting to compare the following passage in regard to Odin in the Heim- skringla: "It was his custom when he sent his men to war, or on some errand, to lay his hands on their heads 93 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY and give them bjannak." Bjannak is not a Norse word, not even Teutonic, and there has been uncertainty in re- gard to its significance. The well-known Icelandic philo- logist, Vigfusson, has, as I believe, given the correct defi- nition of the word, having referred it to the Scottish word bannock and the Gaelic banagh, which means bread. Presumably the author of Heimskringla has chosen this foreign word in order not to wound the religious feel- ings of readers with a native term, for if bjannak really means bread, and if the author of Heimskringla desired in this way to indicate that Odin, by the aid of sacred usages, practised in the Christian cult — that is, by the laying on of hands and the breaking of bread — had given his war- riors assurance of victory, then it lay near at hand to modify, by the aid of a foreign word for bread, the im- pression of the disagreeable similarity between the heathen and Christian usages. But at the same time the complete harmony between what Tertulianus tells about Mithra and Heimskringla about Odin is manifest. What Heimskringla tells about Odin, that his spirit could leave the body and go to far-off regions, and that his body lay in the meantime as if asleep or dead, is told, in the middle age, of Zoroaster and of Hermes-Mer- curius. New Platonian works had told much about an orig- inally Egyptian god, whom they associated with the Greek Hermes and called Hermes-Trismegistus — that is, the thrice greatest and highest. The name Hermes- Trismegistus became known through Latin authors even to the scholars in the middle age convents, and, as a mat- 94 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY ter of course, those who believed that Odin was identical with Hermes also regarded him as identical with Hermes- Trismegistus. When Gylfe sought Odin and his men he came to a citadel which, according to the statement of the gatekeeper, belonged to king Odin, but when he had entered the hall he there saw not one throne, but three thrones, the one above the other, and upon each of the thrones a chief. When Gylfe asked the names of these chiefs, he received an answer that indicates that none of the three alone was Odin, but that Odin the sorcerer, who was able to turn men's vision, was present in them all. One of the three, says the doorkeeper, is named Hdr, the second, Jafnhdr, and the one on the highest throne is Thridi. It seems to me probable that what gave rise to this story was the surname "the thrice-highest," which in the middle age was ascribed to Mercury, and, conse- quently, was regarded as one of the epithets which Odin assumed. The names Third and High seem to point to the phrase "the thrice-highest." It was accordingly taken for granted that Odin had appropriated this name in or- der to anticipate Christianity with a sort of idea of trinity, just as Zoroaster, his progenitor, had, under the name Mithra, in advance imitated the Christian usages. The rest that Heimskringla and the Younger Edda tell about the king Odin who immigrated to Europe is mainly taken from the stories embodied in the mytholo- gical songs and traditions in regard to the gocl Odin who ruled in the celestial Valhal. Here belongs what is told about the war of Odin and the Asiatics with the Vans. In the myth, this war was waged around the walls built 95 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY by a giant around the heavenly Asgard (Volusp., 25). The citadel in which Gylfe finds the triple Odin is decor- ated in harmony with the Valhal described by the heathen skalds. The men who drink and present exercises in arms are the einherjes of the myth. Gylfe himself is taken from the mythology, but, to all appearances, he did not play the part of a king, but of a giant, dwelling in Jotunheim. The Fornmanna sagas make him a de- scendant of Fornjotr, who, with his sons, Hler, Logi, and Kan, and his descendants, Jokull, Sneer, Geitlr, &c., doubtless belong to Jotunheim. When Odin and the Asas had been made immigrants to the North, it was quite natural that the giants were made a historical people, and as such were regarded as the aborigines of the North — an hypothesis which, in connection with the fable about the Asiatic emigration, was accepted for centuries, and still has its defenders. The story that Odin, when he perceived death drawing near, marked himself with the point of a spear, has its origin in the words which a heathen song lays on Odin's lips : "I know that I hung on the wind-tossed tree nine nights, by my spear wounded, given to Odin, myself given to myself" (Havam., 138). 14. THE RESULT OF THE FOREGOING INVESTIGATIONS. Herewith I close the examination of the sagas in re- gard to the Trojan descent of the Teutons, and in re- gard to the immigration of Odin and his Asia-men to 96 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Saxland, Denmark, and the Scandinavian peninsula. I have pointed out the seed from which the sagas grew, the soil in which the seed could be developed, and how it gradually grew to be what we find these sagas to be in Heimskringla and the Younger Edda. I have shown that they do not belong to the Teutonic heathendom, but that they were born, as it were of necessity, in a Christian time, among Teutons converted to Christianity, and that they are throughout the work of the Latin scholars in the middle age. The assumption that they concealed within themselves a tradition preserved ^or centuries among the Teutons themselves of an ancient emigration from Asia is altogether improbable, and is completely refuted by the genuine migration sagas of Teutonic origin which were rescued from oblivion, and of which I shall give an account below. In my opinion, these old and genuine Teutonic migration sagas have, from a purely historical standpoint, but little more claim than the fables of the Christian age in regard to Odin's emigration from Asia to be looked upon as containing a kernel of reality. This must in each case be carefully considered. But that of which they furnish evidence is, how entirely foreign to the Teutonic heathens was the idea of an immigration from Troy or Asia, and besides, they are of great interest on account of their connection with what the myths have to say in regard to the oldest dwelling-places, history, and diffusion of the human race, or at least of the Teu- tonic part of it. As a rule, all the old migration sagas, no matter from what race they spring, should be treated with the utmost 97 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY caution. Large portions of the earth's surface may have been appropriated by various races, not by the sudden influx of large masses, but by a gradual increase of the population and consequent moving of their boundaries, and there need not have been very remarkable or mem- orable events in connection therewith. Such an expan- sion of the territory may take place, and be so little re- marked by the people living around the centre, that they actually do not need to be aware of it, and much less do they need to remember it in sagas and songs. That a few new settlers year by year extend the boundaries of a race 'has no influence on the imagination, and it can continue generation after generation, and produce as its final result an immense expansion, and yet the separate generations may scarcely have been conscious of the change in progress. A people's spreading over new ter- ritory may be compared with the movement of the hour- hand on a clock. It is not perceptible to the eye, and is only realized by continued observation. In many instances, however, immigrations have taken place in large masses, who have left their old abodes to seek new homes. Such undertakings are of themselves worthy of being remembered, and they are attended by results that easily cling to the memory. But even in such cases it is surprising how soon the real historical events either are utterly forgotten or blended with fables, which gradually, since they appeal more to the fancy, monopo- lise the interest. The conquest and settlement of Eng- land by Saxon and Scandinavian tribes — and that, too, in a time when the art of writing was known — is a most 98 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY remarkable instance of this. Hengist, under whose com- mand the Saxons, according to their own immigration saga, are said to have planted their feet on British soil, is a saga-figure taken from mythology, and there we shall find him later on (see No. 123). No wonder, then, if we discover in mythology those heroes under whose lead- ership the Longobardians and Goths believed they had emigrated from their original Teutonic homes. B. REMINISCENCES IN THE POPULAR TRADI- TIONS OF THE MIDDLE AGES OF THE HEATHEN MIGRATION SAGA. 15. THE LONGOBARDIAN MIGRATION SAGA. What there still remains of migration sagas from the middle ages, taken from the saga-treasure of the Teu- tons themselves, is, alas! but little. Among the Franks the stream of national traditions early dried up, at least among the class possessing Latin culture. Among the Longobardians it fared better, and among them Chris- tianity was introduced later. Within the ken of Roman history they appear in the first century after Christ, when Tiberius invaded their boundaries. Tacitus speaks of them with admiration as a small people whose paucity, he says, was balanced by their unity and warlike virtues, which rendered them secure in the midst of the numerous and mighty tribes around them. The Longobardians dwelt at that time in the most north- 99 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY ern part of Germany, on the lower Elbe, probably in Luneburg. Five hundred years later we find them as rulers in Pannonia, whence they invade Italy. They had then been converted to Christianity. A hundred years after they had become settled in North Italy, one of their Latin scholars wrote a little treatise, De Origine Longo- 'bardorum, which begins in the following manner: "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ! Here begins the oldest history of our Longobardian people. There is an island called Skadan, far in the north. There dwelt many peoples. Among them was a little people called the Vinnilians, and among the Vinnilians was a woman by name Gambara. Gambara had two sons: one by name Ibor, the other named Ajo. She and these sons were the rulers among the Vinnilians. Then it came to pass that the Vandals, with their dukes Ambri and Assi, turned against the Vinnilians, and said to them: Tay ye tribute unto us. If ye will not, then arm yourselves for war!' Then made answer Ibor and Ajo and their mother Gambara: 'It is better for us to arm ourselves for war than to pay tribute to the Vandals'. When Ambri and Assi, the dukes of the Vandals, heard this, they addressed themselves to Odin (Godan) with a prayer that he should grant them victory. Odin an- swered and said: 'Those whom I first discover at the rising of the sun, to them I shall give victory'. But at the same time Ibor and Ajo, the chiefs of the Vinnilians, and their mother Gambara, addressed themselves to Frigg (Frea), Odin's wife, beseeching her to assist them. Then Frigg gave the advice that the Vinnilians should 100 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY set out at the rising of the sun, and that the women should accompany their husbands and arrange their hair so that it should hang like a beard under their chins. When the sky cleared and the sun was about to rise, Frigg, Odin's wife, went to the couch where her husband was sleeping and directed his face to the east (where the Vin- nilians stood), and then she waked him. And as he looked up he saw the Vinnilians, and observed the hair hanging down from the faces of their women. And then said he : 'What long-beards are they ?' Then said Frigg to Odin : 'My lord, as you now have named them, you must also give them victory!' And he gave them vic- tory, so that they, in accordance with his resolve, de- fended themselves well, and got the upper hand. From that day the Vinnilians were called Longobardians — that is to say, long-beards. Then the Longobardians left their country and came to Golaida, and thereupon they occupied Aldonus, Anthaib, Bainaib, and Burgun- daib." In the days of Charlemagne the Longobardians got a historian by name Paulus Diaconus, a monk in the con- vent Monte Cassino, and he was himself a Longobardian by birth. Of the earliest history of his people he re- lates the following: The Vinnilians or Longobardians, who ruled successfully in Italy, are of Teutonic descent, and came originally from the island Scandinavia. Then he says that he has talked with persons who had been in Scandinavia, and from their reports he gives some facts, from which it is evident that his informants had refer- ence to Scania with its extensive coast of lowlands and 101 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY shallow water. Then he continues: "When the popu- lation on this island had increased beyond the ability of the island to support them, they were divided into three parts, and it was determined by lot which part should emigrate from the native land and seek new homes. The part whose destiny it became to leave their native land chose as their leaders the brothers Ibor and Ajo, who were in the bloom of manhood and were distinguished above the rest. Then they bade farewell to their friends and to their country, and went to seek a land in which they might settle. The mother of these two leaders was called Gambara, who was distinguished among her people for her keen understanding and shrewd advice, and great reliance was placed on her prudence in difficult circum- stances." Paulus makes a digression to discuss many remarkable things to be seen in Scandinavia: the light summer nights and the long winter nights, a maelstrom which in its vortex swallows vessels and sometimes throws them up again, an animal resembling a deer hunted by the neighbours of the Scandinavians, the Scritobinians (the Skee* Finns), and a cave in a rock where seven men in Roman clothes have slept for cen- turies (see Nos. 79-81, and No. 94). Then he relates that the Vinnilians left Scandinavia and came to a coun- try called Scoringia, and there was fought the aforesaid battle, in which, thanks to Frigg's help, the Vinnilians conquered the Vandals, who demanded tribute from them. "The snow-skate, used so extensively in the north of Europe, is called Sfci in the Norse, and I have taken the liberty of introducing this word here and spelling it phonetically — skee, pi. sTcees. The words snow-shoes, snow-skates, hardly describe sufficiently these skees used by the Finns, Norsemen, and Icelanders. Compare the English word skid, the drag ap- plied to a coach-wheel. — TE. 102 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY The story is then told how this occurred, and how the Vinnilians got the name Longobardians in a manner cor- responding with the source already quoted, with the one addition, that it was Odin's custom when he awoke to look out of the window, which was open, to the east to- ward the rising sun. Paulus Diaconus finds this Longo- bardian folk-saga ludicrous, not in itself, but because Odin was, in the first place, he says, a man, not a god. In the second place, Odin did not live among the Teutons, but among the Greeks, for he is the same as the one called by the Romans Mercury. In the third place, Odin- Mercury did not live at the time when the Longobardians emigrated from Scandinavia, but much earlier. Accord- ing to Paulus, there were only five generations between the emigration of the Longobardians and the time of Odoacer. Thus we find in Paulus Diaconus the ideas in regard to Odin-Mercury which I have already called attention to. Paulus thereupon relates the adventures which happened to the Longobardians after the battle with the Vandals. I shall refer to these adventures later on. They belong to the Teutonic mythology, and reap- pear in mythic sources (see No. 112), but in a more orig- inal form, and as events which took place in the beginning of time in a conflict between the Asas and Vans on the one hand, and lower beings on the other hand ; lower, indeed, but unavoidable in connection with the well-being of nature and man. This conflict resulted in a terrible win- ter and consequent famine throughout the North. In this mythological description we shall find Ajo and Ibor, under whose leadership the Longobardians emigrated, 103 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY and Hengist, under whom the Saxons landed in Britain. It is proper to show what form the story about the Longobardian emigration had assumed toward the close of the twelfth century in the writings of the Danish his- torian Saxo Grammaticus. The emigration took place, he says, at a time when a Danish king, by name Sno, ruled, and when there occurred a terrible famine. First, those starving had resolved to kill all the aged and all children, but this awful resolve was not carried out, thanks to a good and wise woman, by name Gambaruc, who advised that a part of the people should emigrate. This was done under the leadership of her sons Aggo and Ebbo. The emigrants came first to Blekingia (Blek- inge), then they sailed past Moringia (More) and came to Gutland, where they had a contest with the Vandals, and by the aid of the goddess Frigg they won the victory, and got the name Longobardians. From Gutland they sailed to Rugen, and thence to the German continent, and thus after many adventures they at length became mas- ters of a large part of Italy. In regard to this account it must be remarked that although it contains many details not found in Paulus Diaconus, still it is the same narrative that has come to Saxo's knowledge. This Saxo also admits, and appeals to the testimony of Paulus Diaconus. Paulus' Gambara is Saxo's Gambaruc ; Ajo and Ibor are Aggo and Ebtx>. But the Longobardian monk is not Saxo's only source, and the brothers Aggo and Ebbo, as we shall show, were known to him from purely northern sources, though not as leaders of the Longobardians, but as mythic charac- 104 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY ters, who are actors in the great winter which Saxo speaks of. The Longobardian emigration saga — as we find it re- corded in the seventh century, and then again in the time of Charlemagne — contains unmistakable internal evi- dence of having been taken from the people's own tradi- tions. Proof of this is already the circumstance, that although the Longobardians had been Christians for nearly 200 years when the little book De Origine Longo- bardorum appeared, still the long-banished divinities, Odin and Frigg, reappear and take part in the events, not as men, but as divine beings, and in a manner thoroughly corresponding with the stories recorded in the North con- cerning the relations between Odin and his wife. For although this relation was a good and tender one, judg- ing from expressions in the heathen poems of the North (Volusp., 51; Vafthr., 1-4), and although the queen of heaven, Frigg, seems to have been a good mother in the belief of the Teutons, this does not hinder her from being represented as a wily person, with a will of her own which she knows how to carry out. Even a Norse story tells how Frigg resolves to protect a person whom Odin is not able to help; how she and he have different favourites among men, and vie with each other in bringing greater luck to their favourites. The story is found in the prose introduction to the poem "Grimnismal," an introduction which in more than one respect reminds us of the Longo- bardian emigration saga. In both it is mentioned how Odin from his dwelling looks out upon the world and ob- serves what is going on. Odin has a favourite by name 8 105 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Geirrod. Frigg, on the other hand, protects Geirrod's brother Agnar. The man and wife find fault with each other's proteges. Frigg remarks about Geirrod, that he is a prince, "stingy with food, so that he lets his guests starve if they are many." And the story goes on to say that Geirrod, at the secret command of Odin, had pushed the boat in which Agnar was sitting away from shore, and that the boat had gone to sea with Agnar and had not returned. The story looks like a parable founded on the Longobardian saga, or like one grown in a Christian time out of the same root as the Longobardian story. Geirrod is in reality the name of a giant, and the giant is in the myth a being who brings hail and frost. He dwells in the uttermost North, beyond the mythical Gandvik (Thorsdrapa, 2), and as a mythical winter symbol he corresponds to king Sno in Saxo. His "stinginess of food when too many guests come" seems to point to lack of food caused by the unfavourable weather, which neces- sitated emigrations, when the country became over-popu- lated. Agnar, abandoned to the waves of the sea, is protected, like the Longobardians crossing the sea, by Frigg, and his very name, Agnar, reminds us of the names Aggo, Acho, and Agio, by which Ajo, one of the leaders of the Longobardians, is known. The prose introduc- tion has no original connection with Grimnismdl itself, and in the form in which we now have it, it belongs to a Christian age, and is apparently from an author belong- ing to the same school as those who regarded the giants as the original inhabitants of Scandinavia, and turned winter giants like Jokull, Snaer, &c., into historical kings of Norway. Io6 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY The absolutely positive result of the Longobardian narratives written by Longobardian historians is that the Teutonic race to which they belonged considered themselves sprung, not from Troy or Asia, but from an island, situated in the ocean, which washes the northern shores of the Teutonic continent, that is to say, of Ger- many. 16. THE SAXON AND SWABIAN MIGRATION SAGA. From the Longobardians I now pass to the great Teu- tonic group of peoples comprised in the term the Saxons. Their historian, Widukind, who wrote his chronicle in the tenth century, begins by telling what he has learned about the origin of the Saxons. Here, he says, different opinions are opposed to each other. According to one opinion held by those who knew the Greeks and Romans, the Saxons are descended from the remnants of Alexan- der the Great's Macedonian army ; according to the other, which is based on native traditions, the Saxons are de- scended from Danes and Northmen. Widukind so far takes his position between these opinions that he consid- ers it certain that the Saxons had come in ships to the country they inhabited on the lower Elbe and the North Sea, and that they landed in Hadolaun, that is to say, in the district Hadeln, near the mouth of the Elbe, which, we may say in passing, still is distinguished for its re- markably vigorous population, consisting of peasants whose ancestors throughout the middle ages preserved 107 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY the communal liberty in successful conflict with the feudal nobility. Widukind's statement that the Saxons crossed the sea to Hadeln is found in an older Saxon chronicle, written about 860, with the addition that the leader of the Saxons in their emigration was a chief by name Hadugoto. A Swabian chronicle, which claims that the Swabians also came from the North and experienced about the same adventures as the Saxons when they came to their new home, gives from popular traditions additional details in regard to the migration and the voyage. According to this account, the emigration was caused by a famine which visited the Northland situated on the other side of the sea, because the inhabitants were heathens who annually sacrificed twelve Christians to their gods. At the time when the famine came there ruled a king Rudolph over that region in the Northland whence the people emi- grated. He called a convention of all the most noble men in the land, and there it was decided that, in order to put an end to the famine, the fathers of families who had several sons should slay them all except the one they loved most. Thanks to a young man, by name Ditwin, who was himself included in this dreadful resolution, a new convention was called, and the above resolution was rescinded, and instead, it was decided to procure ships, and that all they who, according to the former resolution, were doomed to die, should seek new homes beyond the sea. Accompanied by their female friends, they em- barked, and they had not sailed far before they were at- tacked by a violent storm, which carried them to a Danish 1 08 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY harbour near a place, says the author, which is called Slesvik. Here they went ashore, and to put an end to all discussion in regard to a return to the old dear father- land, they hewed their ships into pieces. Then they wan- dered through the country which lay before them, and, together with much other booty, they gathered 20,000 horses, so that a large number of the men were able to ride on horseback. The rest followed the riders on foot. Armed with weapons, they proceeded in this manner through the country ruled by the Danes, and they came to the river Alba (Elbe), which they crossed; after which they scattered themselves along the coast. This Swabian narrative, which seems to be copied from the Saxon, tells, like the latter, that the Thuringians were rulers in the land to which the immigrants came, and that bloody battles had to be fought before they got possession of it. Widukind's account attempts to give the Saxons a legal right, at least to the landing-place and the immediate vicinity. This legal right, he says, was acquired in the following manner : While the Saxons were still in their ships in the harbour, out of which the Thuringians were unable to drive them, it was resolved on both sides to open negotiations, and thus an understanding was reached, that the Saxons, on the condition that they ab- stained from plundering and murder, might remain and buy what they needed and sell whatever they could. Then it occurred that a Saxon man, richly adorned with gold and wearing a gold necklace, went ashore. There a Thuringian met him and asked him : "Why do you wear so much gold around your lean neck ?" The youth 109 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY answered that he was perishing from hunger, and was seeking a purchaser of his gold ornaments. "How much do you ask?" inquired the Thuringian. "What do you bid?" answered the Saxon. Near by was a large sand- hill, and the Thuringian said in derision: "I will give you as much sand as you can carry in your clothes." The Saxon said he would accept this offer. The Thur- ingian filled the skirts of his frock with sand ; the Saxon gave him his gold ornaments and returned to the ships. The Thuringians laughed at this bargain with contempt, and the Saxons found it foolish ; but the youth said : "Go with me, brave Saxons, and I will show you that my foolishness will be your advantage." Then he took the sand he had bought and scattered it as widely as possible over the ground, covering in this manner so large an area that it gave the Saxons a fortified camp. The Thur- ingians sent messengers and complained of this, but the Saxons answered that hitherto they had faithfully ob- served the treaty, and that they had not taken more ter- ritory than they had purchased with their gold. Thus the Saxons got a firm foothold in the land. Thus we find that the sagas of the Saxons and the Swabians agree with those of the Longobardians in this, that their ancestors were supposed to have come from a northern country beyond the Baltic. The Swabian ver- sion identifies this country distinctly enough with the Scandinavian peninsula. Of an immigration from the East the traditions of these tribes have not a word to say. no TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY 17. THE PRANKISH MIGRATION SAGA. We have already stated that the Prankish chronicles, unlike those of the other Teutonic tribes, wholly ignore the traditions of the Franks, and instead present the scho- lastic doctrine concerning the descent of the Franks from Troy and the Mceotian marshes. But I did not mean to say that we are wholly without evidence that another theory existed among the Franks, for they, too, had tra- ditions in harmony with those of the other Teutonic tribes. There lived in the time of Charlemagne and after him a Frankish man whose name is written on the pages of his- tory as a person of noble character and as a great educa- tor in his day, the abbot in Fulda, later archbishop in Mayence, Hrabanus Maurus, a scholar of the distin- guished Alcuin, the founder of the first library and of the first large convent school in Germany. The fact that he was particularly a theologian and Latinist did not prevent his honouring and loving the tongue of his fa- thers and of his race. He encouraged its study and use, and he succeeded in bringing about that sermons were preached in the churches in the Teutonic dialect of the church-goers. That a Latin scholar with so wide a hori- zon as his also was able to comprehend what the majority of his colleagues failed to understand — viz., that some value should be attached to the customs of the fathers and to the old memories from heathen times — should not sur- prise us. One of the proofs of his interest in this mat- ter he has given us in his treatise De invocatione lin- iii TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY guarum, in which he has recorded a Runic alphabet, and added the information that it is the alphabet used by the Northmen and by other heathen tribes, and that songs and formulas for healing, incantation, and prophecy are written with these characters. When Hrabanus speaks of the Northmen, he adds that those who speak the Ger- man tongue trace their descent from the Northmen. This statement cannot be harmonised with the hypothesis con- cerning the Asiatic descent of the Franks and other Teu- tons, except by assuming that the Teutons on their im- migration from Asia to Europe took a route so far to the north that they reached the Scandinavian peninsula and Denmark without touching Germany and Central Europe, and then came from the North to Germany. But of such a view there is not a trace to be found in the middle age chronicles. The Prankish chronicles make the Franks proceed from Pannonia straight to the Rhine. The Icelandic imitations of the hypothesis make Odin and his people proceed from Tanais to Saxland, and found kingdoms there before he comes to Denmark and Sweden. Hrabanus has certainly not heard of any such theory. His statement that all the Teutons came from the North rests on the same foundation as the native traditions which produced the sagas in regard to the descent of the Longobardians, Saxons, and Swabians from the North. There still remains one trace of the Frankish migration saga, and that is the statement of Paulus Diaconus, made above, concerning the supposed identity of the name Ansgisel with the name Anchises. The identification is not made by Paulus himself, but was found in the Frank- 112 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY ish source which furnished him with what he tells about the ancestors of Charlemagne, and the Prankish source, under the influence of the hypothesis regarding the Tro- jan descent of the Franks, has made an emigration leader mentioned in the popular traditions identical with the Trojan Anchises. This is corroborated by the Ravenna geographer, who also informs us that a certain Anschis, Ansgisel, was a Teutonic emigration leader, and that he was the one under whose leadership the Saxon tribes left their old homes. Thus it appears that, according to the Prankish saga, the Franks originally emigrated under the same chief as the Saxons. The character and position of Ansgisel in the heathen myth will be explained in No. 123. 18. JORDANES ON THE EMIGRATION OF THE GOTHS, GEPID^E, AND HERUUANS. THE MIGRATION SAGA OF THE BURGUNDIANS. TRACES OF AN ALAMANNIC MIGRATION SAGA. The most populous and mighty of all the Teutonic tribes was during a long period the Gothic, which car- ried victorious weapons over all eastern and southern Eu- rope and Asia Minor, and founded kingdoms between the Don in the East and the Atlantic ocean and the Pil- lars of Hercules in the West and South. The traditions of the Goths also referred the cradle of the race to Scan- dinavia. Jordanes, a Romanised Goth, wrote in the sixth century the history of his people. In the North, he says, TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY there is a great ocean, and in this ocean there is a large island called Scandza, out of whose loins our race burst forth like a swarm of bees and spread over Europe. In its capacity as cradle of the Gothic race, and of other Teutonic tribes, this island Scandza is clearly of great interest to Jordanes, the more so since he, through his father Vamod or Alano-Vamut, regarded himself as de- scended from the same royal family as that from which the Amalians, the famous royal family of the East Goths, traced their ancestry. On this account Jordanes gives as complete a description of this island as possible. He first tells what the Greek and Roman authors Claudius Ptolemy and Pomponius Mela have written about it, but he also reports a great many things which never before were known in literature, unless they were found in the lost Historia Gothorum by Cassiodorus — things which either Jordanes himself or Cassiodorus had learned from Northmen who were members of the large Teutonic armies then in Italy. Jordanes also points out, with an air of superiority, that while the geographer Ptolemy did not know more than seven nations living on the island Scandza, he is able to enumerate many more. Unfortu- nately several of the Scandinavian tribe-names given by him are so corrupted by the transcriber that it is useless to try to restore them. It is also evident that Jordanes himself has had a confused notion of the proper geo- graphical or political application of the names. Some of them, however, are easily recognisable as the names of tribes in various parts of Sweden and Norway, as, for instance, Vagoth, Ostrogothse, Finnaithse (inhabi- 114 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY tants of Finved), Bergio, Hallin, Raumaricii, Ragnaricii, Rani. He gives us special accounts of a Scandinavian people, which he calls sometimes Svehans and sometimes Svethidi, and with these words there is every reason to believe that he means the Swedes in the wider or more limited application of this term. This is what he tells about the Svehans or Svethidi : The Svehans are in con- nection with the Thuringians living on the continent, that Teutonic people which is particularly celebrated for their excellent horses. The Svehans are excellent hunters, who kill the animals whose skins through countless hands are sent to the Romans, and are treasured by them as the finest of furs. This trade cannot have made the Svehans rich. Jordanes gives us to understand that their econom- ical circumstances were not brilliant, but all the more brilliant were their clothes. He says they dressed ditis- sime. Finally, he has been informed that the Svethidi are superior to other races in stature and corporal strength, and that the Danes are a branch of the Svethidi. What Jordanes relates about the excellent horses of the Swedes is corroborated by the traditions which the Ice- landers have preserved. The fact that so many tribes inhabited the island Scandza strengthens his conviction that this island is the cradle of many of the peoples who made war on and invaded the Roman Empire. The island Scandza, he says, has been officina gentium, vagina nationum — the source of races, the mother of nations. And thence — he continues, relying on the traditions and songs of his own people — the Goths, too, have emigrated. This emigration occurred under the leadership of a chief "5 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY I named Berig, and he thinks he knows where they landed when they left their ships, and that they, like the Longo- bardians, on their progress came in conflict with the Van- dals before they reached the regions north of the Black Sea, where they afterwards founded the great Gothic kingdom which flourished when the Huns invaded Eu- rope. The saga current among the Goths, that they had emi- grated from Scandinavia, ascribed the same origin to the Gepidae. The Gepidae were a brave but rather sluggish Teutonic tribe, who shared the fate of the Goths when the Huns invaded Europe, and, like the Goths, they cast off the Hunnish yoke after the death of Attila. The saga, as Jordanes found it, stated that when the ancestors of the Goths left Scandza, the whole number of the emi- grants did not fill more than three ships. Two of them came to their destination at the same time; but the third required more time, and therefore the first-comers called those who arrived last Gepanta (possibly Gepaita), which, according to Jordanes, means those tarrying, or the slow ones, and this name changed in course of time into Gepidae. That the interpretation is taken from Gothic traditions is self-evident. Jordanes has heard a report that even the warlike Teu- tonic Herulians had come to Germany from Scandinavia. According to the report, the Herulians had not emigrated voluntarily from the large islands, but had been driven away by the Svethidi, or by their descendants, the Danes. That the Herulians themselves had a tradition concern- ing their Scandinavian origin is corroborated by history. 116 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY In the beginning of the sixth century, it happened that this people, after an unsuccessful war with the Longo- bardians, were divided into two branches, of which the one received land from the emperor Anastasius south of the Danube, while the other made a resolve, which has ap- peared strange to all historians, viz., to seek a home on the Scandinavian peninsula. The circumstances attend- ing this resolution make it still more strange. When they had passed the Slavs, they came to uninhabited re- gions— uninhabited, probably, because they had been abandoned by the Teutons, and had not yet been occupied by the Slavs. In either case, they were open to the oc- cupation of the Herulians; but they did not settle there. We misunderstand their character if we suppose that they failed to do so from fear of being disturbed in their pos- session of them. Among all the Teutonic tribes none were more distinguished than the Herulians for their in- domitable desire for war, and for their rash plans. Their conduct furnishes evidence of that thoughtlessness with which the historian has characterised them. After pene- trating the wilderness, they came to the landmarks of the Varinians, and then to those of the Danes. These granted the Herulians a free passage, whereupon the ad- venturers, in ships which the Danes must have placed at their disposal, sailed over the sea to the island "Thule," and remained there. Procopius, the East Roman his- torian who records this (De Bello Goth., ii., 15), says that on the immense island Thule, in whose northern part the midnight sun can be seen, thirteen large tribes occupy its inhabitable parts, each tribe having its own king. Ex- 117 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY cepting the Skee Finns, who clothe themselves in skins and live from the chase, these Thulitic tribes, he says, are scarcely to be distinguished from the people dwelling far- ther south in Europe. One of the largest tribes is the Gauts (the Gotar). The Herulians went to the Gauts and were received by them. Some decades later it came to pass that the Herulians remaining in South Europe, and dwelling in Illyria, were in want of a king. They resolved to send messengers to their kinsmen who had settled in Scandinavia, hoping that some descendant of their old royal family might be found there who was willing to assume the dignity of king among them. The messengers returned with two brothers who belonged to the ancient family of rulers, and these were escorted by 200 young Scandinavian Heru- lians. As Jordanes tells us that the Herulians actually were descended from the great northern island, then this seems to me to explain this remarkable resolution. They were seeking new homes in that land which in their old songs was described as having belonged to their fathers. In their opinion, it was a return to the country which con- tained the ashes of their ancestors. According to an old middle age source, Vita Sigismundi, the Burgundians also had old traditions about a Scandinavian origin. As will be shown further on, the Burgundian saga was con- nected with the same emigration chief as that of the Saxons and Franks (see No. 123). Reminiscences of an Alamannic migration saga can be traced in the traditions found around the Vierwaldstadter 118 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Lake. The inhabitants of the Canton Schwitz have be- lieved that they originally came from Sweden. It is fair to assume that this tradition in the form given to it in literature has suffered a change, and that the chroniclers, on account of the simliarity between Sweden and Schwitz, have transferred the home of the Alamannic Switzians to Sweden, while the original popular tradition has, like the other Teutonic migration sagas, been satisfied with the more vague idea that the Schwitzians came from the country in the sea north of Germany when they settled in their Alpine valleys. In the same regions of Switzer- land popular traditions have preserved the memory of an exploit which belongs to the Teutonic mythology, and is there performed by the great archer Ibor (see No. 108), and as he reappears in the Longobardian tradition as a migration chief, the possibility lies near at hand, that he originally was no stranger to the Alamannic migration saga. 19. THE TEUTONIC EMIGRATION SAGA FOUND IN TACITUS. The migration sagas which I have now examined are the only ones preserved to our time on Teutonic ground. They have come down to us from the traditions of vari- ous tribes. They embrace the East Goths, West Goths, Longobardians, Gepidse, Burgundians, Herulians, Franks, Saxons, Swabians, and Alamannians. And if we add to these the evidence of Hrabanus Maurus, then all the German tribes are embraced in the traditions. All 119 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY the evidences are unanimous in pointing to the North as the Teutonic cradle. To these testimonies we must, finally, add the oldest of all — the testimony of the sources of Tacitus from the time of the birth of Christ and the first century of our era. The statements made by Tacitus in his masterly work concerning the various tribes of Germany and their re- ligion, traditions, laws, customs, and character, are gath- ered from men who, in Germany itself, had seen and heard what they reported. Of this every page of the work bears evidence, and it also proves its author to have been a man of keen observation, veracity, and wide knowl- edge. The knowledge of his reporters extends to the myths and heroic songs of the Teutons. The latter is the characteristic means with which a gifted people, still leading their primitive life, makes compensation for their lack of written history in regard to the events and ex- ploits of the past. We find that the man he interviewed had informed himself in regard to the contents of the songs which described the first beginning and the most ancient adventures of the race, and he had done this with sufficient accuracy to discover a certain disagreement in the genealogies found in these songs of the patriarchs and tribe heroes of the Teutons — a disagreement which we shall consider later on. But the man who had done this had heard nothing which could bring him, and after him Tacitus, to believe that the Teutons had immigrated from some remote part of the world to that country which they occupied immediately before the birth of Christ — to that Germany which Tacitus describes, and in which he 1 20 THOR, THE THUNDER-GOD. j| (From the paiati'ifi by na. E. Wtnye.) HPHOR was reputed to be the son nf Odin, .= imamed the •»• father, and Jorth, the earth. He was th patron of culture and of heroes, friend of mankind and rr of giants. He always cnrrit-i a heavy hamm^ The Crusher, with which he fi Light, insisted by tl tning. From Thor is derived the middle English rsday (Thorsday) and Thunder. ;e North die. T< ve must, oldest of all- e sources i'rom the time of the id the of our era. ments made by Taci work tribes of G< their re- oms, an- are gath- iany itself, had seen and heard every page of the work author to have been and wide knowl- - extends to the latter is Deople, still T^ifT riarchs and tribe her 'he Teui we •nan who had done this ring him, and after ..it the Teutons had immigrated from <>rld to that -to 120 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY embraces that large island in the North Sea where the seafaring and warlike Sviones dwelt. Quite the con- trary. In his sources of information Tacitus found noth- ing to hinder him from assuming as probable the view he expresses — that the Teutons were aborigines, au- tochthones, fostered on the soil which was their father- land. He expresses his surprise at the typical similarity prevailing among all the tribes of this populous people, and at the dissimilarity existing between them on the one hand, and the non-Teutonic peoples on the other ; and he draws the conclusion that they are entirely unmixed with other races, which, again, presupposes that the Teutons from the most ancient times have possessed their country for themselves, and that no foreign element has been able to get a foothold there. He remarks that there could scarcely have been any immigrations from that part of Asia which was known to him, or from Africa or Italy, since the nature of Germany was not suited to invite peo- ple from richer and more beautiful regions. But while Tacitus thus doubts that non-Teutonic races ever settled in Germany, still he has heard that people who desired to exchange their old homes for new ones have come there to live. But these settlements did not, in his opinion, result in a mixing of the race. Those early immigrants did not come by land, but in fleets over the sea; and as this sea was the boundless ocean which lies beyond the Teutonic continent and was seldom visited by people liv- ing in the countries embraced in the Roma'n empire, those immigrants must themselves have been Teutons. The wor«is of Tacitus are (Germ., 2) : Germanos indigenas 9 121 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY crediderim minimeque aliarum gentium adventibus et hospitiis mixtos, quia nee terra olim sed classibus advehe- bantur qui mutare sedes qucerebant, et immensus ultra atque ut sic dixerim adversus Oceanus raris ab orbe nostro navibus aditur. "I should think that the Teutons them- selves are aborigines (and not at all mixed through immi- grations or connection with non-Teutonic tribes. For those desiring to change homes did not in early times come by land, but in ships across the boundless and, so to speak, hostile ocean — a sea seldom visited by ships from the Roman world." This passage is to be compared with, and is interpreted by, what Tacitus tells when he, for the second time, speaks of this same ocean in chapter 44, where he relates that in the very midst of this ocean lies a land inhabited by Teutonic tribes, rich not only in men and arms, but also in fleets (pr&ter viros armaque classi- bus valent), and having a stronger and better organiza- tion than the other Teutons. These people formed sev- eral communities (civitates}. He calls them the Sviones, and describes their ships. The conclusion to be drawn from his words is, in short, that those immigrants were Northmen belonging to the same race as the continental Teutons. Thus traditions concerning immigrations from the North to Germany have been current among the con- tinental Teutons already in the first century after Christ. But Tacitus' contribution to the Teutonic migration saga is not limited to this. In regard to the origin of a city then already ancient and situated on the Rhine, Asciburgium (Germ., 3), his reporter had heard that it was founded by an ancient hero who had come with his 122 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY ships from the German Ocean, and had sailed up the Rhine a great distance beyond the Delta, and had then disembarked and laid the foundations of Asciburgium. His reporter had also heard such stories about this ancient Teutonic hero that persons acquainted with the Greek- Roman traditions (the Romans or the Gallic neighbours of Asciburgium) had formed the opinion that the hero in question could be none else than the Greek Ulysses, who, in his extensive wanderings, had drifted into the German Ocean and thence sailed up the Rhine. In weighing this account of Tacitus we must put aside the Roman-Gallic conjecture concerning Ulysses' visit to the Rhine, and confine our attention to the fact on which this conjecture is based. The fact is that around Asciburgium a tradi- tion was current concerning an ancient hero who was said to have come across the northern ocean with a host of immigrants and founded the above-named city on the Rhine, and that the songs or traditions in regard to this ancient hero were of such a character that they who knew the adventures of Ulysses thought they had good reason for regarding him as identical with the latter. Now, the fact is that the Teutonic mythology has a hero who to quote the words of an ancient Teutonic document, "was the greatest of all travellers," and who on his journeys met with adventures which in some respects remind us of Ulysses'. Both descended to Hades; both travelled far and wide to find their beloved. Of this mythic hero and his adventures see Nos. 96-107, and No. 107 about Asci- burgium in particular. It lies outside the limits of the present work to inves- 123 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY tigate whether these traditions contain any historical facts. There is need of caution in this respect, since facts of history are, as a rule, short-lived among a people that do not keep written annals. The historical songs and traditions of the past which the Scandinavians recorded in the twelfth century do not go further back in time than to the middle of the ninth century, and the oldest were already mixed with stories of the imagination. The Hellenic historical records from a pre-literary time were no older ; nor were those of the Romans. The question how far historically important emigrations from the Scandinavian peninsula and Denmark to Germany have taken place should in my opinion be considered entirely independent of the old migration traditions if it is to be based on a solid foundation. If it can be answered in the affirmative, then those immigrations must have been par- tial returns of an Aryan race which/ prior to all records, have spread from the South to the Scandinavian coun- tries. But the migration traditions themselves clearly have their firmest root in myths, and not in historical memories; and at all events are so closely united with the myths, and have been so transformed by song and fancy, that they have become useless for historical pur- poses. The fact that the sagas preserved to our time make nearly all the most important and most numerous Teutonic tribes which played a part in the destiny of Southern Europe during the Empire emigrants from Scandinavia is calculated to awaken suspicion. The wide diffusion this belief has had among the Teu- tons is sufficiently explained .by their common mythology 124 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY — particularly by the myth concerning the earliest age of man or of the Teutonic race. As this work of mine ad- vances, I shall find opportunity of presenting the results of my investigations in regard to this myth. The frag- ments of it must, so to speak, be exhumed from various mounds, and the proofs that these fragments belong to- gether, and once formed a unit, can only be presented as the investigation progresses. In the division "The Myth concerning the Earliest Period and the Emigra- tions from the North," I give the preparatory explana- tion and the general resume (Nos. 20^-43). For the points which cannot there be demonstrated without too long digressions the proofs will be presented in the divis- ion "The Myth concerning the Race of Ivalde" (Nos. 96-123), 125 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY III. THE MYTH CONCERNING THE EARLIEST PERIOD AND THE EMIGRATIONS FROM THE NORTH. 20. THE CREATION OF MAN. THE PRIMEVAL COUNTRY. SCEF THE BRINGER OF CULTURE. The human race, or at least the Teutonic race, springs, according to the myth, from a single pair, and has ac- cordingly had a centre from which their descendants have spread over that world which was embraced by the Teu- tonic horizon. The story of the creation of this pair has its root in a myth of ancient Aryan origin, according to which the first parents were plants before they became human beings. The Iranian version of the story is pre- served in Bundehesh, chap. 15. There it is stated that the first human pair grew at the time of the autumnal equinox in the form of a rheum ribes with a single stalk. After the lapse of fifteen years the bush had put forth fifteen leaves. The man and woman who developed in and with it were closely united, forming one body, so that it could not be seen which one was the man and which one was the woman, and they held their hands close to their ears. Nbthing revealed whether the splendour of 126 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Ahuramazda — that is to say, the soul — was yet in them or not. Then said Ahuramazda to Mashia (the man) and to Mashiana (the woman): "Be human beings; become the parents of the world!" And from being plants they got the form of human beings, and Ahura- mazda urged them to think good thoughts, speak good words and do good deeds. Still, they soon thought an evil thought and became sinners. The rheum ribes from which they sprang had its own origin in seed from a primeval being in human form, Gaya Maretan (Gayo- mert), which was created from perspiration (cp. Vafthrudnersmal, xxxiii. 1-4), but was slain by the evil Angra Mainyu. Bundehesh then gives an account of the first generations following Mashia and Mashiana, and explains how they spread over the earth and became the first parents of the human race. The Hellenic Aryans have known the myth concern- ing the origin of man from plants. According to Hesio- dus, the men of the third age of the world grew from the ash tree (ek meleon} ; compare the Odyssey, xix, 163. From this same tree came the first man according to the Teutonic myth. Three asas, mighty and worthy of worship, came to Midgard (at husi, Volusp., 16 ; compare Volusp., 4, where Midgard is referred to by the word salr) and found a landi Ask and Embla. These beings were then "of little might" (lift megandi) and "without destiny" (drldgslausir) ; they lacked ond, they lacked odr, they had no la or l&ti or litr goda, but Odin gave them ond, Honor gave them odr, Loder gave them la and litr goda. In reference to the meaning of these words I 127 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY refer my readers to No. 95, simply noting here that litr goda, hitherto defined as "good colour" (godr litr}, signi- fies "the appearance (image) of gods." From looking like trees Ask and Embla got the appearance which before them none but the gods had assumed. The Teutons, like the Greeks and Romans, conceived the gods in the image of men. Odin's words in Havamal, 43, refer to the same myth. The passage explains that when the Asa-god saw the modesty of the new-made human pair he gave them his own divine garments to cover them. When they found themselves so beautifully adorned it seems to indicate the awakening sense of pride in the first human pair. The words are: "In the field (velli at) I gave my clothes to the two wooden men (tveim tremonnum). Heroes they seemed to themselves when they got clothes. The naked man is embarrassed." But the expressions a landi and velli at should be ob- served. That the trees grew on the ground, and that the acts of creating and clothing took place there is so self- evident that these words would be meaningless if they were not called for by the fact that the authors of these passages in Havamal and Voluspa had in their minds the ground along the sea, that is, a sea-beach. This is also clear from a tradition given in Gylfaginning, chapter 9, according to which the three asas were walking along the sea-beach (med scFvarstrondu) when they found Ask and Embla, and created of them the first human pair. Thus the first human pair were created on the beach of an ocean. To which sea can the myth refer? The 128 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY question does not concern the ancient Aryan time, but the Teutonic antiquity, not Asia, but Europe; and if we furthermore limit it to the Christian era there can be but one answer. Germany was bounded in the days of Taci- tus, and long before his time, by Gaul, Rhoetia, and Pan- nonia on the west and south, by the extensive territories of the Sarmatians and Dacians on the east, and by the ocean on the north. The so-called German Ocean, the North Sea and the Baltic, was then the only body of water within the horizon of the Teutons, the only one which in the days of Jordanes, after the Goths long had ruled north of the Black Sea, was thought to wash the primeval Teu- tonic strands. The myth must therefore refer to the German Ocean. It is certain that the borders of this ocean where the myth has located the creation of the 'first human pair, or the first Teutonic pair, was regarded as the centre from which their descendants spread over more and more territory. Where near the North Sea or the Baltic was this centre located? Even this question can be answered, thanks to the mythic fragments preserved. A feature common to all well-developed mythological systems is the view that the human race in its infancy was under the special protec- tion of friendly divinities, and received from them the doctrines, arts, and trades without which all culture is impossible. The same view is strongly developed among the Teutons. Anglo-Saxon documents have rescued the story telling how Ask's and Embla's descendants received the first blessings of culture from the benign gods. The story has come to us through Christian hands, which, 129 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY however, have allowed enougn of the original to remain to show that its main purpose was to tell us how the great gifts of culture came to the human race. The saga names the land where this took place. The country was the most southern part of the Scandinavian peninsula, and especially the part of it bordering on the western sea. Had these statements come to us only from northern sources, there would be good reason for doubting their originality and general application to the Teutonic tribes. The Icelandic-Norwegian middle-age literature abounds in evidence of a disposition to locate the events of a myth and the exploits of mythic persons in the author's own land and town. But in this instance there is no room for the suspicion that patriotism has given to the southern- most part of the Scandinavian peninsula a so conspicuous prominence in the earliest history of the myth. The chief evidence is found in the traditions of the Saxons in England, and this gives us the best clue to the unanim- ity with which the sagas of the Teutonic continent, from a time prior to the birth of Christ far down in the middle ages, point out the great peninsula in the northern sea as the land of the oldest ancestors, in conflict with the scholastic opinion in regard to an emigration from Troy. The region where the myth located the first dawn of hu- man culture was certainly also the place which was re- garded as the cradle and centre of the race. The non-Scandinavian sources in question are: Beo- wulf's poem, Ethelwerdus, Willielmus Malmesburiensis, Simeon Dunelmensis, and Matthaeus Monasteriensis. A closer examination of them reveals the fact that they have 130 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY their information from three different sources, which again have a common origin in a heathen myth. If we bring together what they have preserved of the story we get the following result :* One day it came to pass that a ship was seen sailing near the coast of Scedeland or Scani,** and it approached the land without being propelled either by oars or sails. The ship came to the sea-beach, and there was seen lying in it a little boy, who was sleeping with his head on a sheaf of grain, surrounded by treasures and tools, by glaives and coats of mail. The boat itself was steady and beau- tifully decorated. Who he was and whence he came nobody had any idea, but the little boy was received as if he had been a kinsman, and he received the most constant and tender care. As he came with a sheaf of grain to their country the people called him Scef, Sceaf.*** (The Beo- wulf poem calls him Scyld, son of Sceaf, and gives Scyld the son Beowulf, which originally was another name of Scyld.) Scef grew up among this people, became their benefactor and king, and ruled most honourably for many years. He died far advanced in age. In accordance with his own directions, his body was borne down to the strand where he had landed as a child. There in a little harbour lay the same boat in which he had come. Glit- *Geijer has partly indicated its significance in Svea Hikes Hafder, where he says : "The tradition anent Sceaf Is remarkable, as it evidently has reference to the introduction of agriculture, and shows that it was first introduced in the most southern part of Scandinavia." **The Beowulf poem has the name Scedeland (Scandia) : compare the name Skadan in De origins Longobardorum. Ethelwerd writes : "Ipse Skef cum uno dromone advectus est in insulam Oceani, quse dicitur Scani, armis circumdatus," &c. ***Matthseus Westmonast. translates this name with frumenti mani- pulus, a sheaf. TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY tering from hoar-frost and ice, and eager to return to the sea, the boat was waiting to receive the dead king, and around him the grateful and sorrowing people laid no fewer treasures than those with which Scef had come. And when all was finished the boat went out upon the sea, and no one knows where it landed. He left a son Scyld (according to the Beowulf poem, Beowulf son of Scyld), who ruled after him. Grandson of the boy who came with the sheaf was Healfdene — Halfdan, king of the Danes (that is, according to the Beowulf poem). The myth gives the oldest Teutonic patriarchs a very long life, in the same manner as the Bible in the case of Adam and his descendants. They lived for centuries (see below). The story could therefore make the culture in- troduced by Scef spread far and wide during his own reign, and it could make his realm increase with the cul- ture. According to scattered statements traceable to the Scef-saga, Denmark, Angeln, and at least the northern part of Saxland, have been populated by people who obeyed his sceptre. In the North Gotaland and Svealand were subject to him. The proof of this, so far as Denmark is concerned, is that, according to the Beowulf poem, its first royal family was descended from Scef through his son Scyld (Skjold). In accordance herewith, Danish and Icelandic genealogies make Skjold the progenitor of the first dynasty in Den- mark, and also make him the ruler of the land to which his father came, that is, Skane. His origin as a divinely- born patriarch, as a hero receiving divine worship, and as the ruler of the original Teutonic country, appears also in 132 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Fornmannasogur, v. 239, where he is styled Skdninga god, the god of the Scanians. Matthseus Westmonast. informs us that Scef ruled in Angeln. According to the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, the dynasty of Wessex came from Saxland, and its progenitor was Scef. If we examine the northern sources we discover that the Scef myth still may be found in passages which have been unnoticed, and that the tribes of the far North saw in the boy who came with the sheaf and the tools the divine progenitor of their celebrated dynasty in Upsala. This can be found in spite of the younger saga-geological layer which the hypothesis of Odin's and his Trojan Asas' immigration has spread over it since the introduction of Christianity. Scef's personality comes to the surface, we shall see, as Skefill and Skelfir. In the Fornalder-sagas, ii. 9, and in Flateyarbok, i. 24, Skelfir is mentioned as family patriarch and as Skjold's father, the progenitor of the Skjoldungs. There can, therefore, be no doubt that Scef, Scyld's father, and through him the progenitor of the Skjoldungs, originally is the same as Skelfir, Skjold's father, and progenitor of the Skjoldungs in these Icelandic works. But he is not only the progenitor of the Skjoldungs, but also of the Ynglings. The genealogy beginning with him is called in the Flateryarbok, Skilfinga cett edr skjol- dunga orn in deform i .< 'ke and vlien th. ,. :' ,ut! lo release Asgar'd \\1irrenpo?: goddf-;s in hi? rain TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY : :i of the wo: :out any ^e as to the person indk .-lllvaldi, 'di, Audvaldi, may be names of :.he same person. Of these variations I are in their sense most closely related, prefix I (Id) and All may interchange in the I 'iout the least change in the meaning. Compare iikr, and idglikr; all-litill and ilitill; all-nog, ignog and e other hand, the prefixes in Olvaldi -iiffQtfiPt jneanin^s of the com- i ,a~ • — ..22AfHT TMAIO •fcgj^gjmst satisfacton' evi- less are the same father i ^2 S. 19 i -•>.*. b»fcWl?it 'to'Wft-!^ - •'•rtfr>tth»' ences are of the decision pronounced by m^cA'^as advice upon the treasures presented to the sons of Ivalde regarded it as a mortal offence, ingratitude of the gods. Loke, the origina- ie, is caught in the snares laid by :!y described in Thjodolf nce on a black diabolical horse rode to hell. Thi- explains the remarkable denouement of the Diei ^', namely, that he, the magnanimous and cek ;ero, was captured by the devil. Otto of Friesingen (first half The Kaiser chronicle «l) T-\' .• • , , evils took Dietench and >o pilksrriU of«. •[ ~/\O \ rmv/ »"'+'•"' *— * -SOT • Uile 3>lr,ri* sill ., aself *C* l-X*j Hi*-* k Vi* V- W» fc^V»VA Tf \JV*J V*1C *^ . ' l^^t llV X* I K?«IJ./jL'VC4l V\i i?Jl ever .riiliC) Ito-mcvol) or! >J«. • Saxo tells that Hadding made war on a King Han- duanus, who had concealed his treasures in the bottom of a lake, and who was obliged to ransom his life with a en treasure of the same weight as his body (7 Handuanus is a Latinised form of the dwarf Andvani. The Sigurd saga cord event, and calls the TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY ii.). The German saga is also able to tell of a war which Dieterich waged against a dwarf king. The war has furnished the materials for the saga of "Laurin." Here, too, the conquered dwarf-king's life is spared, and Dieterich gets possession of many of his treasures. In the German as in the Norse saga, Hadding- tjijodrekr's rival to secure the crown was his brother, supported by Otacher-Ottar (Svipdag). The tradition in regard to this, which agrees with the myth, was known to the author of Anhang des Helderibuchs. But already in an early day the brother was changed into uncle on account of the intermixing of historical reminiscences. The brother's name in the Norse tradition is Gud- hormr, in the German Ermenrich (Ermanaricus} . Er- menrich Jormunrekr means, like thjodrekr, a ruler over many people, a great king. Jordanes already has con- founded the mythic Jormunrekr-Gudhormr with the his- torical Gothic King Hermanaricus, whose kingdom was destroyed by the Huns, and has applied to him the saga of Svanhild and her brothers Sarus (Sorli) and Ammius (Hamdir}, a saga which originally was connected with that of the mythic Jormunrek. The Sigurd epic, which expanded with plunder from all sources, has added to the confusion by annexing this saga. In the Roman authors the form Herminones is found by the side of Hermiones as the name of one of the three Teutonic tribes which descended from Mannus. It is possible, as already indicated, that -horm in Gudhorm is connected with the form Hermio, and it is probable, as already pointed out by several linguists, that the Teu- 301 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY tonic irmin (jormun, Goth, airmana) is linguistically con- nected with the word Hermino. In that case, the very names Gudhormr and Jormunrekr already point as such to the mythic progenitor of the Hermiones, Herminones, just as Yngve-Svipdag's name points to the progenitor of the Ingvceones (Ingsevones), and possibly also Had- ding's to that of the Istaevones (see No. 25). To the name Hadding corresponds, as already shown, the Anglo- Saxon Hearding, the old German Hartung. The Has- dingi (Asdingi) mentioned by Jordanes were the chief warriors of the Vandals (Goth. Orig., 22), and there may be a mythic reason for rediscovering this family name among an East Teutonic tribe (the Vandals), since Hadding, according to the myth, had his support among the East Teutonic tribes. To the form Hasdingi (Goth. Hasdiggds) the words istcewmes, istvczones, might read- ily enough correspond, provided the vowel i in the Latin form can be harmonised with a in the Teutonic. That the vowel i was an uncertain element may be seen from the genealogy in Codex La Cava, which calls Istaevo Ostius, Hostius. As to geography, both the Roman and Teutonic records agree that the northern Teutonic tribes were Ingaevones. In the myths they are Scandinavians and neighbours to the Ingsevones. In the Beowulf poem the king of the Danes is called eodor Inguina, the protection of the In- gsevones, and frca Inguina, the lord of the Ingaevones. Tacitus says that they live nearest to the ocean (Germ., 2) ; Pliny says that Cimbrians, Teutons, and Chaucians were Ingaevones (Hist. Nat., iv. 28). Pomponius Mela 302 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY says that the land of the Cimbrians and Teutons was washed by the Codan bay (iii. 3). As to the Hermiones and Istaevones, the former dwelt along the middle Rhine, and of the latter, who are the East Teutons of mythology, several tribes had already before the time of Pliny pressed forward south of the Hermiones to this river. The German saga-cycle has preserved the tradition that in the first great battle in which Hadding-thjodrekr measured his strength with the North and West Teutons he suffered a great defeat. This is openly avowed in ihe Dieter ich poem "die Klage." Those poems, on the other hand, which out of sympathy for their hero give him victory in this battle ("the Raben battle") neverthe- less in fact acknowledge that such was not the case, for they make him return to the East after the battle and remain there many years, robbed of his crown, before he makes his second and successful attempt to regain his kingdom. Thus the "Raben battle" corresponds to the mythic battle in which Hadding is defeated by Ingaevones and Hermiones. Besides the "Raben battle" has from a Teutonic standpoint a trait of universality, and the German tradition has upon the whole faithfully, and in harmony with the myth, grouped the allies and heroes of the hostile brothers. Dieterich is supported by East Teutonic warriors, and by non-Teutonic people from the East — from Poland, Wallachia, Russia, Greece, &c. ; Er- menrich, on the other hand, by chiefs from Thuringia, Swabia, Hessen, Saxony, the Netherlands, England, and the North, and, above all, by the Burgundians, who in the genealogy in the St. Gaelen Codex are counted among the 303 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Hermiones, and in the genealogy in the La Cava Codex are counted with the Ingaevones. For the mythic de- scent of the Burgundian dynasty from an uncle of Svip- dag I shall present evidence in my chapters on the Ivalde race. The original identity of Hadding's and Dieterich's sagas, and their descent from the myth concerning the earliest antiquity and the patriarchs, I now regard as demonstrated and established. The war between Had- ding-Dieterich and Gudhorm-Ermenrich is identical with the conflict begun by Yngve-Svipdag between the tribes of the Ingaevones, Hermiones, and Istaevones. It has also been demonstrated that Halfdan, Gudhorm's, and Hadding's father, and Yngve-Svipdag's stepfather, is identical with Mannus. One of the results of this in- vestigation is, therefore, that the songs about Mannus and his sons, ancient already in the days of Tacitus, have, more or less influenced by the centuries, continued to live far down in the middle ages, and that, not the songs themselves, but the main features of their contents, have been preserved to our time, and should again be incor- porated in our mythology together with the myth in re- gard to the primeval time, the main outline of which has been restored, and the final episode of which is the first great war in the world. The Norse-Icelandic school, which accepted and de- veloped the learned hypothesis of the middle age in re- gard to the immigration of Odin and his Asiamen, is to blame that the myth, in many respects important, in re- gard to the olden time and its events in the world of gods 304 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY and men — among Aryan myths one of the most impor- tant, either from a scientific or poetic point of view, that could be handed down to our time — was thrust aside and forgotten, The learned hypothesis and the ancient myth could not be harmonised. For that reason the latter had to yield. Nor was there anything in this myth that par- ticularly appealed to the Norse national feeling, and so could claim mercy. Norway is not at all named in it. Scania, Denmark, Svithiod (Sweden), and continental Teutondom are the scene of the mythic events. Among the many causes co-operating in Christian times, in giving what is now called "Norse mythology" its present char- acter, there is not one which has contributed so much as the rejection of this myth toward giving "Norse mythol- ogy" the stamp which it hitherto has borne of a narrow, illiberal town mythology, which, built chiefly on the foun- dation of the Younger Edda, is, as shall be shown in the present work, in many respects a caricature of the real Norse, and at the same time in its main oulines Teutonic, mythology. In regard to the ancient Aryan elements in the myth here presented, see Nos. $2 and 111. 305 IV. THE MYTH IN REGARD TO THE LOWER WORLD. 44. MIDDLE AGE SAGAS WITH ROOTS IN THE MYTH CONCERN- ING THE LOWER WORLD. ERIK VIDEORLE^S SAGA. FAR down in Christian times there prevailed among the Scandinavians the idea that their heathen ancestors had believed in the existence of a place of joy, from which sorrow, pain, blemishes, age, sickness, and death were excluded. This place of joy was called Odainsakr, the- acre-of-the-not-dead, Jord lifanda manna, the earth of living men. It was situated not in heaven but below, either on the surface of the earth or in the lower world, but it was separated from the lands inhabited by men in such a manner that it was not impossible, but never- theless exceeding perilous, to get there. A saga from the fourteenth century incorporated in Flateybook, and with a few textual modifications in For- nald. Saga, iii., tells the following: Erik, the son of a petty Norse king, one Christmas Eve, made the vow to seek out Odainsaker, and the fame of it spread over all Norway. In company with a Dan- ish prince, who also was named Erik, he betook himself 306 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY first to Miklagard (Constantinople), where the king en- gaged the young men in his service, and was greatly bene- fited by their warlike skill. One day the king talked with the Norwegian Erik about religion, and the result was that the latter surrendered the faith of his ancestors and accepted baptism. He told his royal teacher of the vow he had taken to find Odainsaker, — "frd honum heyrdi ver sagt a voru landi" — and asked him if he knew where it was situated. The king believed that Odainsaker was identical with Paradise, and said it lies in the East be- yond the farthest boundaries of India, but that no one was able to get there because it was enclosed by a fire-wall, which aspires to heaven itself. Still Erik was bound by his vow, and with his Danish namesake he set out on his journey, after the king had instructed them as well as he was able in regard to the way, and had given them a letter of recommendation to the authorities and princes through whose territories they had to pass. They trav- elled through Syria and the immense and wonderful India, and came to a dark country where the stars are seen all day long. After having traversed its deep for- ests, they saw when it began to grow light a river, over which there was a vaulted stone bridge. On the other side of the river there was a plain, from which came sweet fragrance. Erik conjectured that the river was the one called by the king in Miklagard Pison, and which rises in Paradise. On the stone bridge lay a dragon with wide open mouth. The Danish prince advised that they re- turn, for he considered it impossible to conquer the dra- gon or to pass it. But the Norwegian Erik seized one 307 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY of his men by one hand, and rushed with his sword in the other against the dragon. They were seen to van- ish between the jaws of the monster. With the other companions the Danish prince then returned by the same route as he had come, and after many years he got back to his native land. When Erik and his fellow-countryman had been swal- lowed by the dragon, they thought themselves enveloped in smoke; but it was scattered, and they were unharmed, and saw before them the great plain lit up by the sun and covered with flowers. There flowed rivers of honey, the air was still, but just above the ground were felt breezes that conveyed the fragrance of the flowers. It is never dark in this country, and objects cast no shadow. Both the adventurers went far into the country in order to find, if possible, inhabited parts. But the country seemed to be uninhabited. Still they discovered a tower in the distance. They continued to travel in that direc- tion, and on coming nearer they found that the tower was suspended in the air, without foundation or pillars. A ladder led up to it. Within the tower there was a room, carpeted with velvet, and there stood a beautiful table with delicious food in silver dishes, and wine in golden goblets. There were also splendid beds. Both the men were now convinced that they had come to Odainsaker, and they thanked God that they had reached their destination. They refreshed themselves and laid themselves to sleep. While Erik slept there came to him a beautiful lad, who called him by name, and said he was one of the angels who guarded the gates of Paradise, 308 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY and also Erik's guardian angel, who had been at his side when he vowed to go in search of Odainsaker. He asked whether Erik wished to remain where he now was or to return home. Erik wished to return to report what he had seen. The angel informed him that Odainsaker, or jord lifanda manna, where he now was, was not the same place as Paradise, for to the latter only spirits could come, and the land of spirits, Paradise, was so glorious that, in comparison, Odainsaker seemed like a desert. Still, these two regions are on each other's borders, and the river which Erik had seen has its source in Paradise. The angel permitted the two travellers to remain in Odain- saker for six days to rest themselves. Then they re- turned by way of Miklagard to Norway, and there Erik was called vid-fdrli, the far-travelled. In regard to Erik's genealogy, the saga states (For- nald. Saga, iii. 519) that his father's name was Thrand, that his aunt (mother's sister) was a certain Svanhvit, and that he belonged to the race of Thjasse's daughter Skade. Further on in the domain of the real myth, we shall discover an Erik who belongs to Thjasse's family, and whose mother is a swan-maid (goddess of growth). This latter Erik also succeeded in seeing Odainsaker (see Nos. 102, 103). 45. MIDDLE AGE SAGAS (continued}. ICELANDIC SOURCES IN REGARD TO GUDMUND, KING ON THE GLITTERING PLAINS. In the saga of Hervor, Odainsaker is mentioned, and 309 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY there without any visible addition of Christian elements. Gudmund (Godmundr} was the name of a king in Jotun- heim. His home was called Gnmd, but the district in which it was situated was called the Glittering Plains (Glasisvellir} . He was wise and mighty, and in a heathen sense pious, and he and his men became so old that they lived many generations. Therefore, the story continues, the heathens believed that Odainsaker was sit- uated in his country. "That place (Odainsaker) is for everyone who comes there so healthy that sickness and age depart, and no one ever dies there." According to the saga-author, Jotunheim is situated north from Halogaland, along the shores of Gandvik. The wise and mighty Gudmund died after he had lived half a thousand years. After his death the people wor- shipped him as a god, and offered sacrifices to him. The same Gudmund is mentioned in Herrod's and Bose's saga as a ruler of the Glittering Plains, who was very skilful in the magic arts. The Glittering Plains are here said to be situated near Bjarmaland, just as in Thorstein Baearmagn's saga, in which king Gudmund's kingdom, Glittering Plains, is a country tributary to Jotunheim, whose ruler is Geirrod. In the history of Olaf Trygveson, as it is given in Flateybook, the following episode is incorporated. The Northman Helge Thoreson was sent on a commercial journey to the far North on the coast of Finmark, but he got lost in a great forest. There he met twelve red- clad young maidens on horseback, and the horses' trap- pings shone like gold. The chief one of the maidens was 310 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Ingeborg, the daughter of Gudmund on the Glittering Plains. The young maidens raised a splendid tent and set a table with dishes of silver and gold. Helge was invited to remain, and he stayed three days with Inge- borg. Then Gudmund's daughters got ready to leave; but before they parted Helge received from Ingeborg two chests full of gold and silver. With these he returned to his father, but mentioned to nobody how he had ob- tained them. The next Yule night there came a great storm, during which two men carried Helge away, none knew whither. His sorrowing father reported this to Olaf Trygveson. The year passed. Then it happened at Yule that Helge came in to the king in the hall, and with him two strangers, who handed Olaf two gold-plated horns. They said they were gifts from Gudmund on the Glittering Plains. Olaf filled the horns with good drink and handed them to the messengers. Meanwhile he had commanded the bishop who was present to bless the drink. The result was that the heathen beings, who were Gudmund's messengers, cast the horns away, and at the same time there was great noise and confusion in the hall. The fire was extinguished, and Gudmund's men disappeared with Helge, after having slain three of King Olaf's men. Another year passed. Then there came to the king two men, who brought Helge with them, and disappeared again. Helge was at that time blind. The king asked him many questions, and Helge ex- plained that he had spent most happy days at Gudmund's ; but King Olaf's prayers had at length made it difficult for Gudmund and his daughter to retain him, and before TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY his departure Ingeborg picked his eyes out, in order that Norway's daughters should not fall in love with them. With his gifts Gudmund had intended to deceive King Olaf ; but upon the whole Helge had nothing but good to report about this heathen. 46. MIDDLE AGE SAGAS (continued}. SAXO CONCERNING THIS SAME GUDMUND, RULER OE THE LOWER WORLD. Saxo, the Danish historian, also knows Gudmund. He relates (Hist. Dan., viii.) that King Gorm had resolved to find a mysterious country in regard to which there were many reports in the North. Incredible treasures were preserved in that land. A certain Geruthus, known in the traditions, dwelt there, but the way thither was full of dangers and well-nigh inaccessible for mortals. They who had any knowledge of the situation of the land insisted that it was necessary to sail across the ocean surrounding the earth, leave sun and stars behind, and make a journey sub Chao, before reaching the land which is deprived of the light of day, and over whose mountains and valleys darkness broods. First there was a perilous voyage to be made, and then a journey in the lower world. With the experienced sailor Thorkillus as his guide, King Gorm left Denmark with three ships and a numerous company, sailed past Halogaland, and came, after strange adventures on his way, to Bjarmaland, situated beyond the known land of the same name, and anchored near its 312 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY coast. In this Bjarmia ulterior it is always cold; to its snow-clad fields there comes no summer warmth, through its deep wild forests flow rapid foaming rivers which well forth from the rocky recesses, and the woods are full of wild beasts, the like of which are unknown elsewhere. The inhabitants are monsters with whom it is dangerous for strangers to enter into conversation, for from uncon- sidered words they get power to do harm. Therefore Thor- killus was to do the talking alone for all his companions. The place for anchoring he had chosen in such a manner that they thence had the shortest journey to Geruthus. In the evening twilight the travellers saw a man of un- usual size coming to meet them, and to their joy he greeted them by name. Thorkillus informed them that they should regard the coming of this man as a good omen, for he was the brother of Geruthus, Guthmundus, a friendly person and the most faithful protector in peril. When Thorkillus had explained the perpetual silence of his companions by saying that they were too bashful to enter into conversation with one whose language they did not understand, Guthmundus invited them to be his guests and led them by paths down along a river. Then they came to a place where a golden bridge was built across the river. The Danes felt a desire to cross the bridge and visit the land on the other side, but Guthmundus warned them that nature with the bed of this stream has drawn a line between the human and superhuman and mysterious, and that the ground on the other side was by a sacred order proclaimed unlawful for the feet of mor- 21 313 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY tals.* They therefore continued the march on that side of the river on which they had hitherto gone, and so came to the mysterious dwelling of Guthmundus, where a feast was spread before them, at which twelve of his sons, all of noble appearance, and as many daughters, most fair of face, waited upon them. But the feast was a peculiar one. The Danes heeded the advice of Thorkillus not to come into too close con- tact with their strange table-companions or the servants, and instead of tasting the courses presented of food and drink, they ate and drank of the provisions they had taken with them from home. This they did because Thor- killus knew that mortals who accept the courtesies here offered them lose all memory of the past and remain for ever among "these non-human and dismal beings." Dan- ger threatened even those who were weak in reference to the enticing loveliness of the daughters of Guthmundus. He offered King Gorm a daughter in marriage. Gorm himself was prudent enough to decline the honour; but four of his men could not resist the temptation, and had to pay the penalty with the loss of their memory and with enfeebled minds. One more trial awaited them. Guthmundus mentioned to the king that he had a villa, and invited Gorm to accom- pany him thither and taste of the delicious fruits. Thor- killus, who had a talent for inventing excuses, now found one for the king's lips. The host, though displeased with the reserve of the guests, still continued to show them friendliness, and when they expressed their desire to see "Cujus transeundi cupidos revocavit, docens, eo alveo humana a mon- strosis rerum secrevisse naturam, nee mortalibus ultra fas esse vestigiis. TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY the domain of Geruthus, he accompanied them all to the river, conducted them across it, and promised to wait there until they returned. The land which they now entered was the home of terrors. They had not gone very far before they discov- ered before them a city, which seemed to be built of dark mists. Human heads were raised on stakes which sur- rounded the bulwarks of the city. Wild dogs, whose rage Thorkillus, however, knew how to calm, kept watch outside of the gates. The gates were located high up in the bulwark, and it was necessary to climb up on ladders in order to get to them. Within the city was a crowd of beings horrible to look at and to hear, and filth and rot- tenness and a terrible stench were everywhere. Further in was a sort of mountain-fastness. When they had reached its entrance the travellers were overpowered by its awful aspect, but Thorkillus inspired them with cour- age. At the same time he warned them most strictly not to touch any of the treasures that might entice their eyes. All that sight and soul can conceive as terrible and loathsome was gathered within this rocky citadel. The door-frames were covered with the soot of centuries, the walls were draped with filth, the roofs were composed of sharp stings, the floors were made of serpents encased in foulness. At the thresholds crowds of monsters acted as doorkeepers and were very noisy. On iron benches, surrounded by a hurdle-work of lead, there lay giant monsters which looked like lifeless images. Higher up in a rocky niche sat the aged Geruthus, with his body pierced and nailed to the rock, and there lay also three 315 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY women with their backs broken. Thorkillus explained that it was this Geruthus whom the god Thor had pierced with a red-hot iron; the women had also received their punishment from the same god. When the travellers left these places of punishment they came to a place where they saw cisterns of mead (dolia) in great numbers. These were plated with seven sheets of gold, and above them hung objects of silver, round as to form, from which shot numerous braids down into the cisterns. Near by was found a gold-plated tooth of some strange animal, and near it, again, there lay an immense horn decorated with pictures and flash- ing with precious stones, and also an arm-ring of great size. Despite the warnings, three of Gorm's men laid greedy hands on these works of art. But the greed got its reward. The arm-ring changed into a venomous ser- pent; the horn into a dragon, which killed their robbers; the tooth became a sword, which pierced the heart of him who bore it. The others who witnessed the fate of their comrades expected that they too, although innocent, should meet with some misfortune. But their anxiety seemed unfounded, and when they looked about them again they found the entrance to another treasury, which contained a wealth of immense weapons, among which was kept a royal mantle, together with a splendid head-gear and a belt, the finest work of art. Thorkillus himself could not govern his greed when he saw these robes. He took hold of the mantle, and thus gave the signal to the others to plunder. But then the building shook in its founda- tions; the voices of shrieking women were heard, who 316 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY asked if these robbers were longer to be tolerated; be- ings which hitherto had been lying as if half-dead or lifeless started up and joined other spectres who attacked the Danes. The latter would all have lost their lives had not their retreat been covered by two excellent arch- ers whom Gorm had with him. But of the men, nearly three hundred in number, with whom the king had ven- tured into this part of the lower world, there remained only twenty when they finally reached the river, where Guthmundus, true to his promise, was waiting for them, and carried them in a boat to his own domain. Here he proposed to them that they should remain, but as he could not persuade them, he gave them presents and let them re- turn to their ships in safety the same way as they had come. 47. MIDDLE AGE SAGAS (continued). FJALLERUS AND HAD- INGUS (HADDING) IN THE LOWER WORLD. Two other Danish princes have, according to Saxo, been permitted to see a subterranean world, or Odain- saker. Saxo calls the one Fjallerus, and makes him a sub-regent in Scania. The question who this Fjallerus was in the mythology is discussed in another part of this work (see No. 92). According to Saxo he was banished from the realm by King Amlethus, the son of Horven- dillus, and so retired to Undensakre (Odainsaker), "a place which is unknown to our people" (Hist. Dan. iv.). The other of these two is King Hadingus (Hist. Dan., 3*7 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY i.), the above-mentioned Hadding, son of Half dan. One winter's day, while Hadding sat at the hearth, there rose out of the ground the form of a woman, who had her lap full of cowbanes, and showed them as if she was about to ask whether the king would like to see that part of the world where, in the midst of winter, so fresh flowers could bloom. Hadding desired this. Then she wrapped him in her mantle and carried him away down into the lower world. "The gods of the lower world," says Saxo, "must have determined that he should be transferred liv- ing to those places, which are not to be sought until after death." In the beginning the journey was through a territory wrapped in darkness, fogs, and mists. Then Hadding perceived that they proceeded along a path "which is daily trod by the feet of walkers." The path led to a river, in whose rapids spears and other weapons were tossed about, and over which there was a bridge. Before reaching this river Hadding had seen from the path he travelled a region in which "a few" or "certain" (quidam), but very noble beings (proceres) were walk- ing, dressed in beautiful frocks and purple mantles. Thence the woman brought him to a plain which glittered as in sunshine (loca aprica, translation of "The Glittering Plains"), and there grew the plants which she had shown him. This was one side of the river. On the other side there was bustle and activity. There Hadding saw two armies engaged in battle. They were, his fair guide ex- plained to him, the souls of warriors who had fallen in battle, and now imitated the sword-games they had played on earth. Continuing their journey, they reached a place TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY surrounded by a wall, which was difficult to pass through or to surmount. Nor did the woman make any effort to enter there, either alone or with him: "It would not have been possible for the smallest or thinnest physical being." They therefore returned the way they had come. But before this, and while they stood near the wall, the woman demonstrated to Hadding by an experi- ment that the walled place had a strange nature. She jerked the head off a chicken which she had taken with her, and threw it over the wall, but the head came back to the neck of the chicken, and with a distinct crow it an- nounced "that it had regained its life and breath." 48. MIDDLE AGE SAGAS (continued). A FRISIAN SAGA IN ADAM OP BREMEN. The series of traditions above narrated in regard to Odainsaker, the Glittering Plains, and their ruler Gud- mund, and also in regard to the neighbouring domains as habitations of the souls of the dead, extends, so far as the age of their recording in writing is concerned, through a period of considerable length. The latest cannot be referred to an earlier date than the fourteenth century; the oldest were put in writing toward the close of the twelfth. Saxo began working on his history between the years 1179 and 1186. Thus these literary evidences span about two centuries, and stop near the threshold of heath- endom. The generation to which Saxo's father belonged witnessed the crusade which Sigurd the Crusader made in 319 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Eastern Smaland, in whose forests the Asa-doctrine until that time seems to have prevailed, and the Odinic reli- gion is believed to have flourished in the more remote parts of Sweden even in Saxo's own time. We must still add to this series of documents one which is to carry it back another century, and even more. This document is a saga told by Adam of Bremen in De Situ Dani&. Adam, or, perhaps, before him, his authority Adalbert (appointed archbishop in the year 1043), has turned the saga into history, and made it as credible as possible by excluding all distinctly mythical elements. And as it, doubtless for this reason, neither mentions a place which can be compared with Odainsaker or with the Glittering Plains, I have omitted it among the literary evidences above quoted. Nevertheless, it reminds us in its main features of Saxo's account of Gorm's journey of discovery, and its relation both to it and to the still older myth shall be shown later (see No. 94). In the form in which Adam heard the saga, its point of departure has been located in Friesland, not in Denmark. Frisian no- blemen make a voyage past Norway up to the farthest limits of the Arctic Ocean, get into a darkness which the eyes scarcely can penetrate, are exposed to a maelstrom which threatens to drag them down ad Chaos, but finally come quite unexpectedly out of darkness and cold to an island which, surrounded as by a wall of high rocks, con- tains subterranean caverns, wherein giants lie concealed. At the entrances of the underground dwellings lay a great number of tubs and vessels of gold and other metals which "to mortals seem rare and valuable." As much 320 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY as the adventurers could carry of these treasures they took with them and hastened to their ships. But the giants, represented by great dogs, rushed after them. One of the Frisians was overtaken and torn into pieces before the eyes of the others. The others succeeded, thanks to our Lord and to Saint Willehad, in getting safely on board their ships. 49. ANALYSIS OF THE SAGAS MENTIONED IN NOS. 44-48. If we consider the position of the authors or recorders of these sagas in relation to the views they present in re- gard to Odainsaker and the Glittering Plains, then we find that they themselves, with or without reason, believe that these views are from a heathen time and of heathen origin. The saga of Erik Vidforle states that its hero had in his own native land, and in his heathen environ- ment, heard reports about Odainsaker. The Miklagard king who instructs the prince in the doctrines of Chris- tianity knows, on the other hand, nothing of such a coun- try. He simply conjectures that the Odainsaker of the heathens must be the same as the Paradise of the Chris- tians, and the saga later makes this conjecture turn out to be incorrect. The author of Hervor's saga mentions Odainsaker as a heathen belief, and tries to give reasons why it was be- lieved in heathen times that Odainsaker was situated within the limits of Gudmund's kingdom, the Glittering Plains. The reason is: "Gudmund and his men be- 321 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY came so old that they lived through several generations (Gudmund lived five hundred years), and therefore the heathens believed that Odainsaker was situated in his do- main." The man who compiled the legend about Helge Thore- son connects it with the history of King Olaf Trygveson, and pits this first king of Norway, who laboured for the introduction of Christianity, as a representative of the new and true doctrine against King Gudmund of the Glittering Plains as the representative of the heathen doc- trine. The author would not have done this if he had not believed that the ruler of the Glittering Plains had his ancestors in heathendom. The saga of Thorstein Baearmagn puts Gudmund and the Glittering Plains in a tributary relation to Jotunheim and to Geirrod, the giant, well known in the mythology. Saxo makes Gudmund Geirrod's (Geruthus') brother, and he believes he is discussing ancient traditions when he relates Gorm's journey of discovery and Hadding's journey to Jotunheim. Gorm's reign is referred by Saxo to the period immediately following the reign of the mythical King Sno (Snow) and the emigration of the Longobardians. Hadding's descent to the lower world occurred, according to Saxo, in an antiquity many centuries before King Snow. Hadding is, in Saxo, one of the first kings of Denmark, the grandson of Skjold, progenitor of the Skjoldungs. The saga of Erik Vidforle makes the way to Odain- saker pass through Syria, India, and an unknown land which wants the light of the sun, and where the stars 322 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY are visible all day long. On the other side of Odain- saker, and bordering on it, lies the land of the happy spirits, Paradise. That these last ideas have been influenced by Chris- tianity would seem to be sufficiently clear. Nor do we find a trace of Syria, India, and Paradise as soon as we leave this saga and pass to the others, in the chain of which it forms one of the later links. All the rest agree in transferring to the uttermost North the land which must be reached before the journey can be continued to the Glittering Plains and Odainsaker. Hervor's saga says that the Glittering Plains and Odainsaker are situ- ated north of Halogaland, in Jotunheim; Herrod's and Bose's saga states that they are situated in the vicinity of Bjarmaland. The saga of Thorstein Bsearmagn says that they are a kingdom subject to Geirrod in Jotunheim. Gorm's saga in Saxo says it is necessary to sail past Halo- galand north to a Bjarmia ulterior in order to get to the kingdoms of Gudmund and Geirrod. The saga of Helge Thoreson makes its hero meet the daughters of Gud- mund, the ruler of the Glittering Plains, after a voyage to Finmarken. Hadding's saga in Saxo makes the Danish king pay a visit to the unknown but wintry cold land of the "Nitherians," when he is invited to make a journey to the lower world. Thus the older and common view was that he who made the attempt to visit the Glittering Plains and Odainsaker must first penetrate the regions of the uttermost North, known only by hearsay. Those of the sagas which give us more definite local descriptions in addition to this geographical information 323 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY all agree that the region which forms, as it were, a fore- ground to the Glittering Plains and Odainsaker is a land over which the darkness of night broods. As just indi- cated, Erik Vidforle's saga claims that the stars there are visible all day long. Gorm's saga in Saxo makes the Danish adventurers leave sun and stars behind to continue the journey sub Chao. Darkness, fogs, and mists en- velop Hadding before he gets sight of the splendidly-clad proceres who dwell down there, and the shining meadows whose flowers are never visited by winter. The Frisian saga in Adam of Bremen also speaks of a gloom which must be penetrated ere one reaches the land where rich giants dwell in subterranean caverns. Through this darkness one comes, according to the saga of Erik Vidforle, to a plain full of flowers, delicious fragrances, rivers of honey (a Biblical idea, but see Nos. 89, 123), and perpetual light. A river separates this plain from the land of the spirits. Through the same darkness, according to Gorm's saga, one comes to Gudmund's Glittering Plains, where there is a pleasure-farm bearing delicious fruits, while in that Bjarmaland whence the Glittering Plains can be reached reign eternal winter and cold. A river separates the Glit- tering Plains from two or more other domains, of which at least one is the home of departed souls. There is a bridge of gold across the river to another region, "which separates that which is mortal from the superhuman," and on whose soil a mortal being must not set his foot. Fur- ther on one can pass in a boat across the river to a land which is the place of punishment for the damned and a resort of ghosts. 324 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY Through the same darkness one comes, according to Hadding's saga, to a subterranean land where flowers grow in spite of the winter which reigns on the surface of the earth. The land of flowers is separated from the Elysian fields of those fallen in battle by a river which hurls about in its eddies spears and other weapons. These statements from different sources agree with each other in their main features. They agree that the lower world is divided into two main parts by a river, and that departed souls are found only on the farther side of the river. The other main part on this side the river thus has another purpose than that of receiving the happy or damned souls of the dead. There dwells, according to Gorm's saga, the giant Gudmund, with his sons and daughters. There are also the Glittering Plains, since these, according to Hervor's, Herrod's, Thorstein Bsearmagn's, and Helge Thoreson's sagas, are ruled by Gudmund. Some of the accounts cited say that the Glittering Plains are situated in Jotunheim. This statement does not contradict the fact that they are situated in the lower world. The myths mention two Jotunheims, and hence the Eddas employ the plural form, Jotunheimar. One of the Jotunheims is located on the surface of the earth in the far North and East, separated from the Midgard inhabited by man by the uttermost sea or the Elivogs (Gylfaginning, 8). The other Jotunheim is subterra- nean. According to Vafthrudnismal (31), one of the roots of the world-tree extends down "to the frost- 325 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY giants." Urd and her sisters, who guard one of the foun- tains of Ygdrasil's roots, are giantesses. Mimer, who guards another fountain in the lower world, is called a giant. That part of the world which is inhabited by the goddesses of fate and by Mimer is thus inhabited by giants, and is a subterranean Jotunheim. Both these Jotunheims are connected with each other. From the upper there is a path leading to the lower. Therefore those traditions recorded in a Christian age, which we are here discussing, have referred to the Arctic Ocean and the uttermost North as the route for those who have the desire and courage to visit the giants of the lower world. When it is said in Hadding's saga that he on the other side of the subterranean river saw the shades of heroes fallen by the sword arrayed in line of battle and contend- ing with each other, then this is no contradiction of the myth, according to which the heroes chosen on the bat- tle-field come to Asgard and play their warlike games on the plains of the world of the gods. In Voluspa (str. 24) we read that when the first "folk"- war broke out in the world, the citadel of Odin and his clan was stormed by the Vans, who broke through its bulwark and captured Asgard. In harmony with this, Saxo (Hist., i.) relates that at the time when King Had- ding reigned Odin was banished from his power and lived for some time in exile (see Nos. 36-41). It is evident that no great battles can have been fought, and that there could not have been any great number of sword-fallen men, before the first great "folk"- 326 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY war broke out in the world. Otherwise this war would not have been the first. Thus Valhal has not before this war had those hosts of einherjes who later are feasted in Valfather's hall. But as Odin, after the breaking out of this war, is banished from Valhal and Asgard, and does not return before peace is made between the Asas and Vans, then none of the einherjes chosen by him could be received in Valhal during the war. Hence it follows that the heroes fallen in this war, though chosen by Odin, must have been referred to some other place than Asgard (excepting, of course, all those chosen by the Vans, in case they chose einherjes, which is probable, for the reason that the Vanadis Freyja gets, after the reconciliation with Odin, the right to divide with him the choice of the slain). This other place can nowhere else be so appropriately looked for as in the lower world, which we know was destined to receive the souls of the dead. And as Hadding, who, according to Saxo, de- scended to the lower world, is, according to Saxo, the same Hadding during whose reign Odin was banished from Asgard, then it follows that the statement of the saga, making him see in the lower world those warlike games which else are practised on Asgard's plains, far from contradicting the myth, on the contrary is a conse- quence of the connection of the mythical events. The river which is mentioned in Erik Vidforle's, Gorm's, and Hadding's sagas has its prototype in the mythic records. When Hermod on Sleipner rides to the lower world (Gylfaginning, 10) he first journeys through a dark country (compare above) and then comes 327 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY to the river Gjoll, over which there is the golden bridge called the Gjallar bridge. On the other side of Gjoll is the Helgate, which leads to the realm of the dead. In Gorm's saga the bridge across the river is also of gold, and it is forbidden mortals to cross to the other side. A subterranean river hurling weapons in its eddies is mentioned in Voluspa, 33. In Hadding's saga we also read of a weapon-hurling river which forms the boun- dary of the Elysium of those slain by the sword. In Vegtamskvida is mentioned an underground dog, bloody about the breast, coming from Nifelhel, the proper place of punishment. In Gorm's saga the bul- wark around the city of the damned is guarded by great dogs. The word "nifel" (nifl, the German Nebel}, which forms one part of the word Nifelhel, means mist, fog. In Gorm's saga the city in question is most like a cloud of vapour (vaporanti maxime nubi simile}. Saxo's description of that house of torture, which is found within the city, is not unlike Voluspa's description of that dwelling of torture called Nastrand. In Saxo the floor of the house consists of serpents wattled to- gether, and the roof of sharp stings. In Voluspa the hall is made of serpents braided together, whose heads from above spit venom down on those dwelling there. Saxo speaks of soot a century old on the door frames; Voluspa of Ijorar, air- and smoke-openings in the roof (see further Nos. 77 and 78). Saxo himself points out that the Geruthus (Geirrodr) mentioned by him, and his famous daughters, belong to the myth about the Asa-god Thor. That Geirrod after 328 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY his death is transferred to the lower world is no contra- diction to the heathen belief, according to which beauti- ful or terrible habitations await the dead, not only of men but also of other beings. Compare Gylfaginning, ch. 46, where Thor with one blow of his Mjolner sends a giant nidr undir Niflhel (see further, No. 60). As Mimer's and Urd's fountains are found in the lower world (see Nos. 63, 93), and as Mimer is mentioned as the guardian of Heimdal's horn and other treasures, it might be expected that these circumstances would not be forgotten in those stories from Christian times which have been cited above and found to have roots in the myths. When in Saxo's saga about Gorm the Danish adventur- ers had left the horrible city of fog, they came to another place in the lower world where the gold-plated mead-cis- terns were found. The Latin word used by Saxo, which I translate with cisterns of mead, is dolium. In the class- ical Latin this word is used in regard to wine-cisterns of so immense a size that they were counted among the immovables, and usually were sunk in the cellar floors. They were so large that a person could live in such a cistern, and this is also reported as having happened. That the word dolium still, in Saxo's time had a similar meaning appears from a letter quoted by Du Cange, written by Saxo's younger contemporary, Bishop Geb- hard. The size is therefore no obstacle to Saxo's using this word for a wine-cistern to mean the mead-wells in the lower world of Teutonic mythology. The question now is whether he actually did so, or whether the sub- 22 329 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY terranean dolia in question are objects in regard to which our earliest mythic records have left us in ignorance. In Saxo's time, and earlier, the epithets by which the mead-wells — Urd's and Mimer's — and their contents are mentioned in mythological songs had come to be applied also to those mead-buckets which Odin is said to have emptied in the halls of the giant Fjalar or Suttung. This application also lay near at hand, since these wells and these vessels contained the same liquor, and since it originally, as appears from the meaning of the words, was the liquor, and not the place where the liquor was kept, to which the epithets Odrczrir, Bodn, and Son ap- plied. In Havamal (107) Odin expresses his joy that Odrarir has passed out of the possession of the giant Fjalar and can be of use to the beings of the upper world. But if we may trust Bragar. (ch. 5), it is the drink and not the empty vessels that Odin takes with him to Valhal. On this supposition, it is the drink and not one of the ves- sels which in Havamal is called Odrarir. In Havamal (140) Odin relates how he, through self-sacrifice and suf- fering, succeeded in getting runic songs up from the deep, and also a drink dipped out of Odrarir. He who gives him the songs and the drink, and accordingly is the ruler of the fountain of the drink, is a man, "Bolthorn's cele- brated son." Here again Odrserer is one of the subterra- nean fountains, and no doubt Mimer's, since the one who pours out the drink is a man. But in Forspjalsljod (2) Urd's fountain is also called Odrserer (Odhr