of Denmark and the adjacent regions, poured like a
torrent over Gaul and Southern Germany. They met and overthrew in
succession four Roman armies; until, finally, they were conquered by the
military skill and genius of Marius. After this eruption was checked, the
great northern volcano slumbered for centuries. Other tribes from
Asia--Goths, Vandals, Huns--combined in the overthrow of the Roman Empire.
At last the inhabitants of Scandinavia appear again under the name of
Northmen, invading and conquering England in the fifth century as Saxons,
in the ninth century as Danes, and in the eleventh as Normans again
overrunning England and France. But the peculiarity of the Scandinavian
invasions was their maritime character. Daring and skilful navigators,
they encountered the tempests of the Northern Ocean and the heavy roll of
the Atlantic in vessels so small and slight that they floated like
eggshells on the surface of the waves, and ran up the rivers of France and
England, hundreds of miles, without check from shallows or rocks. In these
fragile barks they made also the most extraordinary maritime discoveries.
The sea-kings of Norway discovered Iceland, and settled it A.D. 860 and
A.D. 874. They discovered and settled Greenland A.D. 982 and A.D. 986. On
the western coast of Greenland they planted colonies, where churches were
built, and diocesan bishoprics established, which lasted between four and
five hundred years. Finally, in A.D. 1000, they discovered, by sailing
from Greenland, the coast of Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Massachusetts Bay;
and, five hundred years before the discovery of Columbus, gathered grapes
and built houses on the southern side of Cape Cod. These facts, long
considered mythical, have been established, to the satisfaction of
European scholars, by the publication of Icelandic contemporaneous annals.
This remarkable people have furnished nearly the whole population of
England by means of the successive conquests of Saxon, Danes, and Normans,
driving the Keltic races into the mountainous regions of Wales and North
Scotland, where their descendants still remain. Colonizing themselves also
everywhere in Northern Europe, and even in Italy and Greece, they have
left the familiar stamp of their ideas and habits in all our modern
civilization[325].

Sec. 2. Idea of the Scandinavian Religion.

The central idea of the Scandinavian belief was the free struggle of soul
against material obstacles, the freedo