years
ago the Norwegians were still worshippers of Odin. It is interesting
also as the creed of our fathers; the men whose blood still runs in
our veins, whom doubtless we still resemble in so many ways. Strange:
they did believe that, while we believe so differently. Let us look a
little at this poor Norse creed, for many reasons. We have tolerable
means to do it; for there is another point of interest in these
Scandinavian mythologies: that they have been preserved so well.

In that strange island Iceland,--burst-up, the geologists say, by fire
from the bottom of the sea; a wild land of barrenness and lava;
swallowed many months of every year in black tempests, yet with a wild
gleaming beauty in summer-time; towering up there, stern and grim, in
the North Ocean; with its snow jokuls, roaring geysers, sulphur-pools
and horrid volcanic chasms, like the waste chaotic battle-field of
Frost and Fire;--where of all places we least looked for Literature or
written memorials, the record of these things was written down. On the
seaboard of this wild land is a rim of grassy country, where cattle
can subsist, and men by means of them and of what the sea yields; and
it seems they were poetic men these, men who had deep thoughts in
them, and uttered musically their thoughts. Much would be lost, had
Iceland not been burst-up from the sea, not been discovered by the
Northmen! The old Norse Poets were many of them natives of Iceland.

Saemund, one of the early Christian Priests there, who perhaps had a
lingering fondness for Paganism, collected certain of their old Pagan
songs, just about becoming obsolete then,--Poems or Chants of a
mythic, prophetic, mostly all of a religious character: that is what
Norse critics call the _Elder_ or Poetic _Edda_. _Edda_, a word of
uncertain etymology, is thought to signify _Ancestress_. Snorro
Sturleson, an Iceland gentleman, an extremely notable personage,
educated by this Saemund's grandson, took in hand next, near a century
afterwards, to put together, among several other books he wrote, a
kind of Prose Synopsis of the whole Mythology; elucidated by new
fragments of traditionary verse. A work constructed really with great
ingenuity, native talent, what one might call unconscious art;
altogether a perspicuous clear work, pleasant reading still: this is
the _Younger_ or Prose _Edda_. By these and the numerous other
_Sagas_, mostly Icelandic, with the commentaries, Icelandic or not,
which go on