an life than the religion we
have described, and it has appeared to many scholars of late years
that they cannot be regarded as a pure product of paganism, but are
in great part influenced by Christianity both in matter and in
sentiment. The older Edda, written in verse, is said to have been
collected by Saemund Sigfusson the learned, one of the early Christian
priests of Iceland, who lived about the eleventh century. The other
Edda is in prose; it is a collection made about two centuries later.
The form given to the myths in these collections is due to the
Skalds, who flourished in Iceland in the early Middle Ages; but the
legends themselves are older. Nothing is known precisely about their
origin or early diffusion.

The Eddas may be compared in many respects with the Homeric poems. As
in the latter, the gods form a family, the members of which come
together to a certain place for meetings, while individually they
have their own adventures, their loves, their jealousies, their
jokes, their tricks. In the Eddas too we find that the gods are not,
strictly speaking, eternal; they succeeded an older race of gods, and
their turn too may come to pass away. They are called Aesir, which is
the plural of As. The etymology of this is uncertain; compare the
Sanscrit Asura, said to mean the living or breathing one. The Aesir
are spoken of in later times, not in the Eddas, as if they had been a
race of warriors; they are said to have come in to Scandinavia and
got the better of those who lived there before, because they
worshipped a superior set of gods.[4] An historic reminiscence may
lurk here. Before the Aesir there were giants, and the earth with all
its parts is made of the body of one of these giants,[5] whom the new
race superseded as governors of the world. But the giants are still
there and their spirit is unchanged; there is a danger of their
interfering to subvert the rule of their successors.

[Footnote 4: See a similar statement about the Incas, chapter vi.]

[Footnote 5: Compare "Purusha" in the _Rigveda_.]

There are other cosmogonic myths besides that of the division of the
giant Ymir. One is on this wise. Ere this world began, there was on
one side Niflheim, the land of mist and cold, on the other side
Muspelheim, the region of fire; between these two lay Ginnungagap,
the north side of it frozen, the south side glowing hot, and life
originated by the meeting, in one way or another, of the heat and
cold. There