LITMIR.BIZ

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inference. The Goths, like all the Scythians, were accustomed to deify their deceased heroes. This is expressly affirmed by several writers, especially by Adam of Bremen; and heroes are mentioned, who, we find, were deified. Thus, Armin, or Ermin, the courageous supporter of Germanic independence against the Romans, was worshipped as a god; and his famous idol, which was called, after his name, Irminsul, drew multitudes of pagans to the Isle of Rugen: it was, indeed, regarded as the palladium of Germanic liberty. The facility with which kings and heroes were deified is still more strikingly illustrated in the life of St. Anscar, the apostle of the Scandinavians. Alarmed at the success which attended the preaching of that admirable missionary (this was about the middle of the ninth century), the priests of the Odinian worship had recourse to a bold imposture. By their contrivance a man suddenly appeared in the Swedish capital, who affirmed that he had just attended a general meeting of the gods, and that he was bearer of a communication from them to king Olaf and his people. The substance of it was, that the ancient deities had always been most indulgent to the Swedes; that, hitherto, they had found no reason to complain of an ungrateful return from their worshippers; that now, however, there was a sad decline in the sacrifices and other proofs of devotion; and that their wrath was especially excited by the introduction of a new deity—of one peculiarly hostile to the gods of the kingdom. “If,” added they, “you Swedes really wish to increase the number of gods, we will readily admit your departed king, Eric, to the honours of deification.” That the proposal was accepted—that a temple was immediately erected to Eric—that his altars perpetually smoked with sacrifices—are among the most indubitable facts of history. Hence, there is nothing unreasonable in the deification of Odin; indeed, he could not have avoided the honour. One so celebrated as he was—a great warrior, a great legislator, the founder of a new empire, and of a new religion—assuredly could not fail to be invested with the same honours as an Armin or an Eric. Indeed, as it was the obvious policy of the Asiatic followers of Odin to represent the authority of their pontiff king and his successors as founded on divine, not on human, sanction—as that authority was avowedly theocratic—he must, of necessity, have been regarded as a god, if not in his lifetime, immediately after his decease.^[33]

      The temporal no less than the spiritual government of Odin, and the social superiority of his immediate followers over the inhabitants he found in Sweden, drew our attention in the early pages of this Introduction. Our opinions on this subject are strongly confirmed by a judicious living writer. “Odin founded the empire of the Sviar, which was originally confined to a small territory around the Mœlar Sea, in the present Swedish province of Upland, called the lesser Svíthjód, in contrast to the greater Svíthjód, or Scythia, whence they migrated, and Mannaheim, or the Home of Man, in contrast to the celestial abode of Asgard. By degrees the Sviar, as the leading tribe governed by the pontiff kings, the immediate descendants of Odin, and having the custody of the great temple at Sigtun, the principal seat of the new superstition, acquired an ascendancy over the Goths, who possessed the more southern tract of country called Gautland, Götland, or Göta-rike. This precedence of the Sviar over the Goths is established by the express terms of the ancient fundamental law of their joint empire, according to which the ‘king was elected by the national assembly of all the Swedes (å Ting allra Svia), at the Mora-Stone, in the plain near Upsal, and the assembly of all the Goths (Ting allra Göta), shall re-elect or confirm him.’^[34] This distinction between the two tribes is constantly preserved in the traditions and annals of the middle ages, and the division between the Svia and Göta-rike is strongly marked by a chain of mountains running between Södermanland and East Gothland. It is also recognised at this day in the constitution of the supreme judicial tribunals called the Svea and Götha Hofrät, established during the reign of Gustavus Adolphus, and to which a third has been recently added for the provinces of Scania and Bleking.”

      “One of the ancient documents which throws the most light upon the history of the heroic age in the north, is the most recently published of the Eddaic poems, called Rigs-mál. The prince of that name is said to have been the son of Skjold, and, according to the chronology of Suhm, reigned in Scania about the end of the second century of the Christian era.^[35] This poem contains a minute classification of the different orders of society, personified as the children of king Rig, who is supposed to have divided them into distinct castes, assigning to each its respective rank in the social scale. As a literary composition, it resembles the Anglo-Saxon poem of Bjówulf, and all other genuine traditionary poems or romances of uncivilised nations, in its unpretending and Homeric simplicity of style and incidents. In this respect it has been justly called one of the most curious and interesting ‘manners-painting strains’ that have been preserved and handed down to posterity.^[36] The effects of the original Gothic migration and conquest in Scandinavia are here distinctly marked in the features of the slave caste, descended from the aboriginal Finns, and distinguished from their conquerors by black hair and complexion, as well as the squalid poverty and misery in which they were compelled to live. The caste of freemen and freeholders, lords of the soil which they cultivated, and descended from the Gothic conquerors, with their reddish hair, fair complexion, and all the traits which peculiarly mark that famous race—is in like manner personified in a vivid description of a single family. Then comes the caste of the illustrious Jarls and the Herser, earls and barons, who are distinguished from the others by their still fairer hair and skin, by their noble employments and manners, from whom descend the kingly race, skilled in Runic science, in manly exercises, and the military art.”

      “We have, here, the early history of the Scandinavians traced in a few lines; but these are strongly marked, and confirmed by all the traditions of the ancient north, respecting the different races of men by which the country was successively occupied.^[37] The first Gothic emigrants subdued the Celto-Finnish tribes, who were the primitive inhabitants of the country, and reduced them to servitude, or drove them, first, to the mountains, and then to the desert wilds and fastnesses of Norrland, Lapland, and Finland. Here the Jötnar, as they were called by their Gothic invaders, continued to adhere to the grovelling superstition of their fathers, which was that form of polytheism which has been called Fetichism, or the adoration of beasts and birds, of stocks and stones, all the animate and inanimate works of creation. The antipathy between these two races, so continually alluded to in the songs and sagas of the mythic and heroic age, is significantly expressed in the legend of Njördr, who dwelt by the sea-side, and Skade, a mountain-nymph of the rival race of the Jötnar, whom he had espoused. She very naturally prefers her native abode on the Alpine heights, whilst he insists on dwelling where he can hear the roar of the ocean billows. At last, they compromise this matrimonial dissension by agreeing to pass nine nights alternately among the mountains, and three on the sea-shore. But Njördr soon tires of this compact, and vents his dissatisfaction in a lay to this effect:—‘How do I hate the mountain wilds! I have only passed nine nights there; but how long and tedious did they seem! There one hears nothing but the howling of wolves, instead of the sweet notes of the swan.’ To which Skade extemporises this response:—‘How can I rest on the sandy sea-shore, where my slumbers are every morning broken by the hideous screaming of the sea-gulls?’ The result is, that she deserts her husband, and returns to the mountains, where her father dwells: there, snatching up her bow, and fastening on her snow-skates, she bounds over the hills in pursuit of the wild beasts.”^[38]

      “The Sviar, who migrated with the historic Odin, achieved no forcible conquest over their national brethren of the Gothic tribe, by whom they had been preceded. The ascendancy of Odin and his followers over their predecessors was acquired and maintained by superstition, and their supposed superiority in magic and the other arts which win the confidence or influence the fears of a barbarous nation. The older worship of the primitive inhabitants, and of their conquerors, was modified by this new prophet, who, taking advantage of the pre-existing belief in the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and the incarnation of divine spirits, so widely diffused among the ancient people of the earth, pretended to be the former Odin, who had again descended among his faithful Goths.^[39] His worship thus soon supplanted that of the more ancient Odin, and the attributes and actions of both were gradually confounded together in the apprehension of the Scandinavians. But it did not supplant that of Thor, whom the primitive people of the north regarded as the elder and most beneficent of the deities. In him they worshipped the goodly elements of nature—the light, the heat, and especially the thunder, shaking

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