Norsefolk, while all that remain they lump
under some slighting head. Every folk has from the beginning of time
sought to explain the wonders of nature, and has, after its own fashion,
set forth the mysteries of life. The lowest savage, no less than his
more advanced brother, has a philosophy of the universe by which he
solves the world-problem to his own satisfaction, and seeks to reconcile
his conduct with his conception of the nature of things. Now, it is not
to be thought, save by "a priori" reasoners, that such a folk as the
Northmen--a mighty folk, far advanced in the arts of life, imaginative,
literary--should have had no further creed than the totemistic myths
of their primitive state; a state they have wholly left ere they enter
history. Judging from universal analogy, the religion of which record
remains to us was just what might be looked for at the particular stage
of advancement the Northmen had reached. Of course something may have
been gained from contact with other peoples--from the Greeks during the
long years in which the northern races pressed upon their frontier; from
the Irish during the existence of the western viking-kingdoms; but what
I particularly warn young students against is the constant effort of
a certain order of minds to wrest facts into agreement with their pet
theories of religion or what not. The whole tendency of the more modern
investigation shows that the period of myth-transmission is long over
ere history begins. The same confusion of different stages of
myth-making is to be found in the Greek religion, and indeed in those of
all peoples; similar conditions of mind produce similar practices, apart
from all borrowing of ideas and manners; in Greece we find snake-dances,
bear-dances, swimming with sacred pigs, leaping about in imitation of
wolves, dog-feasts, and offering of dogs' flesh to the gods--all of them
practices dating from crude savagery, mingled with ideas of exalted and
noble beauty, but none now, save a bigot, would think of accusing the
Greeks of having stolen all their higher beliefs. Even were some part of
the matter of their myths taken from others, yet the Norsemen have given
their gods a noble, upright, great spirit, and placed them upon a high
level that is all their own. (8) From the prose Edda the following
all too brief statement of the salient points of Norse belief is made
up:--"The first and eldest of gods is hight Allfather; he lives from
all ages, and rul